Fairy Tale and Film

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 
(Tobe Hooper, 1974), 
The Hills 
Have Eyes 
(Wes Craven, 1977) and 
Wrong Turn
(Rob Schmidt, 2003) offer 
the same advice. Characters stray into nightmarish territory when they 
enter unfamiliar homes and come face to face with the deviant families 
in residence, often engaged in atrocities such as murder and cannibalism. 
Sometimes, these figures are given a backstory, their aberrance explained 
by existing on the fringes of society and therefore beyond its laws. 
There is a hint of this in 
Psycho 
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), with the Bates 
Motel losing business due to a motorway diversion, cutting the family 
off from customers and away from prying eyes. The Sawyer family in 
Chainsaw
is also marginalised by modernity. Former labourers in the 
meat industry, seemingly dehumanised by their work yet unwilling 
to separate themselves from it,
 
they turn their isolated home into a 
slaughterhouse for straying humans such as Sally Hardesty (Marilyn 
Burns) – the family dinner scene a horrific variation on Alice’s tea 
with the Mad Hatter and his friends. The family in 
The Hills Have Eyes
are equally aberrant and abhorrent. The suggested result of nuclear 
radiation testing, they are similarly conceived as man-made monsters, 
lacking any sense of kinship with a world that has excluded them. 
Wrong Turn
ups the ante on the inbred hillbilly motif popularised in 
earlier horrors, their grotesque physical malformation a visible sign 
of their moral degradation.
5
The protagonists who survive these films 
all undergo an extreme rite of passage, leaving their homes, facing 
monstrous antagonists, yet living to tell their tale; thereby fulfilling 
Joseph Campbell’s template of the hero’s journey.
6
However, freakish 
families do not exist simply on the margins of society, and horror can 
reside even in apparently normal homes, forcing us to rethink the usual 
equation of home and safety. 

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118 
Fairy Tale and Film
The adolescent heroine in 
Hellraiser 
(Clive Barker, 1987) is set against 
a wicked stepmother who fatally betrays her father and turns the family 
home into a charnel house, propelling Kirsty towards independence 
when forced to rely on her wits.
7
A similar theme is evident in 
Halloween 
(John Carpenter, 1978), 
A
Nightmare on Elm Street
(Wes Craven, 1984) 
and the 
Scream
franchise (Wes Craven, 1996–2011), all of which situate 
killers in ordinary suburbs where parents fail to protect their adolescent 
offspring. Indeed, the slasher’s popularity with the teen market is partly 
explained by confirming their suspicions about an uncomprehend-
ing and untrustworthy adult world.
8
Parents are unable to keep their 
children from harm, or understand the hazards they face, and self-
sufficiency comes through realising this is the case. Fairy tales similarly 
insist on a necessary separation from parents. Death generally takes at 
least one parent before the child reaches adulthood, inviting ongoing 
problems for bereaved children. When a mother dies – as is usually 
the case – their daughters are either faced with ‘unnatural’ fathers who 
regard them as a replacement, or experience murderous jealousy from 
stepmothers. Abusive parents abound, with abandonment, infanticide 
and incest featuring among the perils child figures have to contend with 
as adults shockingly repudiate their presumed role as carers, forcing the 
protagonist to leave the family home. In most cases, however, a form 
of compensation is provided. A supernatural figure may be assigned to 
watch over bereaved children and help them prosper, while villainous 
parents generally get their comeuppance (admittedly mothers much 
more frequently than fathers). Moreover, although families are often 
positioned as sites of difficulty, successful adulthood is ultimately 
equated with marriage and having a family of one’s own, recuperating 
the familial ideal, even as this flies in the face of unhappy experience. 
It is partly due to this ambivalence that Laura Hubner contends that:
The fairy tale, as elastic, fantastical vehicle for imaginary worlds 
and taboo subject matter, can act as a strong voice for societal fears. 
But its powers to subvert and challenge existing codes and practices 
only partly account for its functioning in respect of fear, since fairy 
tales also use fear to purify and refine, to revert as much as to sub-
vert, often embracing long-established boundaries and pathways. 
(Hubner, 2007)
9
Accordingly, while the fairy tale uses dread and disorder to voice specific 
anxieties, it also re-establishes order and normalcy. Witches, ogres and 
abusive parents are generally exposed and overcome, and the virtuous 

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