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.
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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