HOW SERIAL KILLERS HAVE INFLUENCED SLASHER FILMS

We have a strange fascination with serial killers; one that we might never be able to fully explain. A lot of the interest stems from the fact that they are just like us; they look like us, they hold down jobs like us, and they entertain our children. More than likely, our macabre interest in their heinous acts stems from the fact that it could be any one of us. We’ve all had dark thoughts; the desire to see some jerk tortured for being rude or the want to kill someone who pissed you off. The only difference between the serial killer and you is that you have the ability not to act on your impulses. This dark area in our psyche has influenced horror films throughout the course of time, especially the genre of slasher films.

Although considered to be the bastard child of the horror film genre, slasher films hold a very important place in our culture. Much like the serial killer, slasher films have a strange fascination for audiences, and many times, movie goers find themselves rooting for the killer in the films instead of the hero (or heroine as is often the case in slasher films). They always start out with a sense of normalcy, then twist into a ghastly (and often gory) representation of the dark side of human nature. The appeal of both serial killers and slasher films is their ability to hide fiendishness with the guise of the common place. The movie that started it, the one that opened the door for the genre, was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It’s no secret that the murders and decorating techniques of Ed Gein had an influence on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The symbolism is apparent in the opening scene, which describes the mass of grave robberies that have been affecting a small town. It is also apparent in the way the house in which Leatherface commits his murders is decorated. Like Gein, the family uses the body parts of their victims to fashion furniture and flatware. Leatherface himself takes on Gein’s personality traits and uses the flesh of his victims to create masks for himself. The parallels between what the family does to its victims (hanging them on meat hooks, cannibalism) and what Gein did are uncanny.

As described in numerous accounts about Ed Gein’s murders, when the police first entered his farmhouse, they were shocked and appalled at the mess, the stench, and the corpse hanging from the rafters. At first, they believed it was a deer carcass, which would have been very common in that part of Wisconsin. Once they figured out what it was, the gruesome nature of his murders came to light. Hooper uses this same premise in his film. It takes the notion of something common, like hunting to feed a family, and twists it into the macabre. In the case of the film, the idea of BBQ is exploited. While traveling through Texas, a land well-known for its ranching industry, the group of teens needs to get gas and stumbles on a station that sells both gas and BBQ meat. Later in the film, both the audience and the characters realize that the meat at the station does not come from cows, it comes from people. What once appeared to be common place and innocent has now turned fiendish.

The film claims that it was based on actual events. Although the actual events that are depicted in the movie never transpired, the Gein murders did. The film also mirrors the atrocities of other murders that happened in Texas around the same time it was made.

Filming of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre began on July 15, 1973, and ended on August 14, 1973, right about the time the crimes of Dean Corll came to light. Although the film was probably not directly influenced by the crimes, it is a testament to the fact the evil lurks everywhere and its horror knows no bounds. Looking back on the film and the murders from 30 years makes it easy to draw comparisons between the two.

Dean Corll was born on December 24, 1939, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His parents divorced, and he and his brother and mother moved to Houston, Texas. He was drafted into the military in 1964, but released on a hardship discharge to help his mother run her candy business. He was nicknamed “The Candy Man” because he often gave free candy to the neighborhood children. When his mother’s store closed, he trained to become an electrician.

As with most serial killers, there was nothing about Corll that stood out, except perhaps his choice of friends. He mostly hung out with young male teens. There were two who were particularly close to Corll--a 14-year old named Elmer Wayne Henley and a 15-year old named David Brooks. After Corll’s death, it became apparent that these two boys helped lure victims to his house where they were tortured, raped, and killed. Corll apparently paid them $200 to bring boys from low-income Houston neighborhoods, being promised free alcohol and drugs.

Corll was shot to death on August 8, 1973, by Henley. There had been an argument because Henley had brought a female over to Corll’s house. The police were skeptical at first that Corll had committed the atrocities that Henley claimed he did, but after Henley showed them the burial grounds, there were no further questions. In all, 27 victims were uncovered. Some of them had been shot while others had been strangled. There was evidence of torture on some of the victims, such as objects being inserted into their rectums and glass rods shoved into urethra and smashed. All of the victims had been sodomized.

It is not known why Corll committed these murders, and speculation is the closest thing we are going to get for an answer. Brooks was found guilty of one murder and sentenced to life in prison, while Henley was convicted of six and sentenced to six 99-year terms.

Although the actual killings of Corll and his helpers had no influence on the movie, it is not hard to see that they possibly could have. This is most evident in the way that the entire Leatherface family was involved in the capturing of its victims. Corll was fascinated with young boys, but since he was older, it would have been difficult for him to find victims. He used Brooks and Henley to bring victims to him; much like Leatherface relied on his brothers, the Hitchhiker and the gas station attendant. Like Henley and Brooks, they didn’t do any of the killing themselves, but benefited from the acts. The whole idea of having helpers adds to the suspense of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and makes the crimes in real life much more heinous. Who do you trust? Who can you run to for help?

Again, the notion of taking the common place and twisting it into the fiendish plays a role in these murders. No one knew what Corll was doing until he was dead. Families would report their children missing, but the police would write them off as runaways. Both Henley and Brooks probably had a pretty good idea what Corll was doing, but they did nothing to stop it until the violence was turned on them. They were good at luring victims because they seemed so normal.

In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the audience knows that something isn’t quite right with the Hitchhiker. He behaves erratically and cuts himself with a knife. At the first chance, the teens kick him out of the van and speed away. They know that the Hitchhiker is scary because he doesn’t act normal. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the gas station attendant. Like Corll’s helpers, he seems normal and willing to help, but his fiendish nature becomes all too apparent when he delivers his victim to Leatherface to be slaughtered.

There is no report that any of Corll’s victims were able to escape his torture, so there is no indication that anything was wrong until he turned his wrath on his helpers. The Leatherface family has their share of ups and downs, but they never turn against one another. It isn’t until Sally is driven by the desire to survive that their heinous acts come to light.

It is obvious that both Corll and the Leatherface family chose their victims very carefully. They knew that if they targeted the dregs of society (hippies or those considered runaways), no one would care if they went missing. It’s hard to say how long the murders would have continued if Corll wasn’t shot or if Sally hadn’t escaped from the house.

Serial killers are fascinating because they remind us of the dark that has the potential to exist within all of us. They take the common, every day and turn it into something heinous. They have a tendency to remind us just how evil we as humans can really be. Countless movies, TV specials, and studies have been done to figure out why a serial killer acts the way he does, and from a distance, it is captivating to know what makes them tick. Slasher films and horror films are generally created to emphasize what it is that a society fears. We all have a little of the macabre and fiendish existing within us, and what safer way to express it than through those individuals and movies that repulse us.