Neal Stephenson, in his seminal cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, observed that, “Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
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Are scary movies just gory splatter films filled with gratuitous sex and violence? Of film’s many genres, only pornography is generally held in lower regard than horror films. Other genres that have their roots in ‘50s B-movies and ‘60s exploitation cinema, such as science fiction and fantasy, enjoy much greater success and esteem. The Wizard of Oz and Flash Gordon bring back fond childhood memories, while Lord of the Rings and Star Wars have found modern mainstream success. Only so-called thrillers like M. Night Shyamalan’s films and the many Japanese remakes of recent years usually have similar financial support from Hollywood.
Even within the genre of horror there is a pecking rank. Elegant and erotic, vampires have the charisma to attract Francis Ford Coppola, Neil Jordan, and other quality directors. Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito have both been drawn to the primal energy of playing a werewolf. Buried at the bottom of this heap lies the zombie.
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