Just as mothers are blamed for violence in many of these films, so is mental illness.įive of the films portray their violent killers as man-driven crazy. Instead we should be looking at who the films show a damaging portrayal of. What Siskel and Ebert are missing in their discussion is that the negative representation in these slasher films is not accurately depicted by who is literally killed in the film. Siskel and Ebert’s assertion that these slasher films add no artistic value to the art of filmmaking is the most biased and untrue point they make in the 30 minute episode. However, the monstrous mother isn’t just seen in (apparently terrible) slashers of the 1980s, they are found in well respected horror films as well, such as Psycho (1960). These acts are then blamed on the character flaws of their mothers rather than their own character mothers become the scapegoat for men’s actions, and by extension women are the source of bad in the world. The sons of monstrous mothers often become monsters themselves, and this is typically expressed in the murder of women. Monstrous motherhood can be seen in quite a few horror movies these women are characterized as dominant, possessive, overbearing, and often abusive to their sons. In Boogeyman, a neglectful mother invites an evil man into her children’s lives. In Mother’s Day, men rape and torture women for their mother’s amusement. In Don’t Go Into The House, a man burns women alive because his mother’s abuse made him crazy.
Don’t Go Into The House, Mother’s Day, and Boogeyman all feature abusive mothers who are blamed for the violence of the film. However, these messages did not come from the deaths of beautiful young girls, they come from an often off-screen female presence. Some of the slashers I watched for the project absolutely did contain terrible messages about women. While Siskel and Ebert were correct to point out that women are shown in terror for a longer period of time than their male counterparts, most slashers show equal violence towards both women and men victims. They are going to show violence against people. Slasher films are inherently violent films. This “hot take” unfortunately lacks a startling amount of nuance. In Siskel and Ebert’s discussion this brutalization comes by virtue of the violence shown towards young women in the films. If you have ever watched Siskel and Ebert’s special “Women in Danger” episode of Sneak Previews, you know that the entire episode is spent talking about how the slasher movies of the 1980s brutalize women.