If you could create your own slasher...

[Disastermind]

If you could create your own slasher tell us all about him/her. When they're from, why they're crazy and what they would look like.

[Roderick Usher]

Billy

A 10 year old boy who is lithe and sneaky and doesn't give a fuck about anything. He hides well and likes old-school practical jokes with a twist, like the bucket of water above the door...except it's a bucket of razor blades

He's particularly fond of poisoning people before slashing them up, so he isn't at such a tremendous size advantage.

He's a child of the system, fostor homes and abuse only unlocked the monster that was always lurking under the surface

Hmm...

That's not such a bad idea

[Disease]

I'm not telling you, for fucks sake!

[Disease]

Billy

A 10 year old boy who is lithe and sneaky and doesn't give a fuck about anything. He hides well and likes old-school practical jokes with a twist, like the bucket of water above the door...except it's a bucket of razor blades

He's particularly fond of poisoning people before slashing them up, so he isn't at such a tremendous size advantage.

Hmm...

That's not such a bad idea

Seen or read the young poisoners handbook?

[Roderick Usher]

Seen or read the young poisoners handbook?

no, sounds cool

[Disease]

Great movie


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115033/


Awesome script acting, music, all of that...

[massacre man]

I'd picture mine as something more of a comic book villain without much of a detailed backstory. The hero would happen upon him or purposely find him when he's about to kill someone in a cliche slasher movie kind of way (at a camp, near a broken-down van in the middle of nowhere) before being thwarted (or not).

[horrorchic]

Mine, is a serial killing girl. She first snaps when she is ten and murders her parents, mother first. It is made to look like her father murdered her mother then killed himself.
She stays dorment for twelve years till she is the sanctity of her house again and coaxes people into renting the room of her six bedroom ranch. Each one being murdered, even the cop that is undercover finding out it was too late to change anything.

She has a secret and you will have to wait till I am finsihed with it in my script to find out though. :P

[Zero]

three words:

george w bush

[horrorchic]

I could see that, but I thought this was to create our own.

[bloody_ribcut]

mine would be a mentally retarted twenty-three year old in a nike jacket, his name is gary and he kills because he's obsessed with michael myers movies.
he claims michael is his brother, and must continue his bidding in secretcey.

[knife_fight]

I always liked Michael Myers more when he didn't have a motivation for killing. it's much scarier, to me, that anyone, at any time, could just flip out and go on a rampage. when they started delving too much into his backstory (motive, what drove him to it, etc.) the franchise lost me big time. it just lets the audience breathe a big sigh of relief like, "OHhhhh, he was abused! that'swhat drove him over the edge! whew! for a second I thought anyone could be a killer at any moment!"

so my killer would be like that. no backstory. just one day flips his shit and starts murdering people in brutal ways (a la Hatchet). except he'd be skinny and not ugly or malformed in any way. just to, yet again, get back to the "regular joe" ideal.

[ChronoGrl]

Billy

A 10 year old boy who is lithe and sneaky and doesn't give a fuck about anything. He hides well and likes old-school practical jokes with a twist, like the bucket of water above the door...except it's a bucket of razor blades

He's particularly fond of poisoning people before slashing them up, so he isn't at such a tremendous size advantage.

He's a child of the system, fostor homes and abuse only unlocked the monster that was always lurking under the surface

Hmm...

That's not such a bad idea

I like that. I'm much more interested in just plain sociopaths than with serial killers who have a backstory.

Also, starting them young is so incredibly creepy and gothic, very much like The Bad Seed or The Other. If we excuse our children for "not knowing any better," how much can we really excuse them fore?


I think that I would like to work on a female serial killer, because you don't see many in movies (I'm not saying that you don't see them at all, mind you, just that you don't see many). As a young girl she is completely sociopathic with no concept of right or wrong or a concept of consequence. She is incredibly sadistic, but not because she enjoys inflicting pain on people and things, but she is curious and extremely fascinated by the psychology of pain and suffering. She does not understand suffering and therefore does not understand what happens when she causes other things to suffer (slow straight razor to a wounded bird or mouse; twisting a playmate's arm much, much to far, just to watch them scream in rapt curiosity).

She manages to grow up without a lot of psychiatric attention because her parents think that her acts are an expression of intellectual pursuit to understand the difference between life and death (remember when you were young and learned about mortality?). She cuts herself every now and again just to taste her own blood, but doesn't feel pain or horror. She is curious about suffering and cannot inflict it on herself (maybe she's masochistic).

Not much of a motive yet... Most "children's" motives are childish greed (in the Bad Seed it's the prestige of winning her class's medal)... Though I want to develop on that. I think that children as absolutely horrifying Big Bads as their sense of right and wrong our skewed and their reasoning is less emotionally developed than an adult.

[knife_fight]

Not much of a motive yet... Most "children's" motives are childish greed (in the Bad Seed it's the prestige of winning her class's medal)... Though I want to develop on that. I think that children as absolutely horrifying Big Bads as their sense of right and wrong our skewed and their reasoning is less emotionally developed than an adult.

but isn't that sort of a reason itself? as I mentioned in my post, it would allow the audience to breathe a sigh of relief of, "She's a kid and a kid's knowledge of right and wrong isn't developed, so she doesn't really know any better."

I'm not attacking your idea, it's a good one, I'm just asking a question. how could you possibly go about making it clear that the girl doesn't feel pain or remorse, without saying it outright Dr. Loomis style? it could definitely be an interesting concept to explore. to figure out a way to outline, for the audience, the killer's inner workings, without busting out some kind of doctor who, somehow, knows what's going on in the killer's mind.

even though you weren't talking to me, :D , I wanted my killer to know the difference between right and wrong, but he just plain doesn't care. perhaps make it even into some form of social commentary, a la Romero.

[Roderick Usher]

She manages to grow up without a lot of psychiatric attention because her parents think that her acts are an expression of intellectual pursuit to understand the difference between life and death (remember when you were young and learned about mortality?). She cuts herself every now and again just to taste her own blood, but doesn't feel pain or horror. She is curious about suffering and cannot inflict it on herself (maybe she's masochistic).

Not much of a motive yet... Most "children's" motives are childish greed (in the Bad Seed it's the prestige of winning her class's medal)... Though I want to develop on that. I think that children as absolutely horrifying Big Bads as their sense of right and wrong our skewed and their reasoning is less emotionally developed than an adult.

Sounds kinda like my favorite little girl

Penny Dreadful
(c) 2007

Penny was a little girl, no more than nine years old
But she had the devil in her; least that’s what I’m told.
The other girls all hated Penny, they teased her every day
Because dark clouds blacked out the sun when Penny came to play.

While the other girls drew ponies and rainbows on their books
Penny dreamt of guillotines and piercing flesh with hooks.
After school when all the kids would run to play outside
Penny slipped into her crypt to sharpen up her knives.

Her shelves were lined with remnants of experiments gone awry
Dogs and bats and toads and cats rearranged and left to die.
She flipped the switch, electrodes cracked and in walked Penny’s Mother
She shrieked “You cut that out right now! Untie your baby brother!”

In her cauldron Penny brewed a potion vile and green
And slipped it in the thermos of “Miss Perfect” Lizzy Dean.
Lizzy gagged and coughed and wheezed and then came something worse
Her hair turned white and all fell out as she ran crying to the nurse.

Penny was expelled from school and sent to see a shrink
They locked her in a rubber room and left her there to think.
And in that room her madness grew, she dreamt of blood and gore
Her nights were filled with witches, monsters, demons and much more.

She played it sweet and dressed in pink, the doctors all believed her
Penny returned the following day and hacked them with a cleaver.
Then to the school her fury turned and the classrooms all ran red
It took two dozen dentists to identify the dead.

Baby brother danced and spun as Penny dropped the blade
She couldn’t help but giggle at the mess his blood had made.
Father slipped into her grip and Penny’s cleaver dropped
And turning to her mother, whispered “Just one more, then I’ll stop.”




http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k115/RoderickUsher_2006/penny7.jpg

[ChronoGrl]

but isn't that sort of a reason itself? as I mentioned in my post, it would allow the audience to breathe a sigh of relief of, "She's a kid and a kid's knowledge of right and wrong isn't developed, so she doesn't really know any better."

I'm not attacking your idea, it's a good one, I'm just asking a question. how could you possibly go about making it clear that the girl doesn't feel pain or remorse, without saying it outright Dr. Loomis style? it could definitely be an interesting concept to explore. to figure out a way to outline, for the audience, the killer's inner workings, without busting out some kind of doctor who, somehow, knows what's going on in the killer's mind.

even though you weren't talking to me, :D , I wanted my killer to know the difference between right and wrong, but he just plain doesn't care. perhaps make it even into some form of social commentary, a la Romero.

Ahhhh... I hadn't really thought out my character in regards to actual representation on the screen...

Sticky exposition can get just cheesy (sorry, Dr. Loomis, though you have my heart, your lines are so delightfully silly).

That's always been a problem that I've had in screenwriting and observing movies as well.

While observing movies: "WHY do we need so much exposition? Shouldn't the audience just... GET it?"

It's something that I like so much about movies like Lost in Translation... It conveys a feeling, and emotion of isolation and alienation withouth the characters saying, "MAN do I feel alienated and culture-shocked."

While writing screenplays: The biggest critique of my honor thesis (which was a screenplay) was that "motive" wasn't conveyed clearly and my professor was confused as to WHY the main character was acting a certain way... I believe that it takes a lot of talent to CONVEY what is unnatural states of being. That's why we have scenes like the last scene in Psycho in the police station... The compulsion to EXPLAIN every in and out of motive... When, really, this is the weakest scene in the movie.

...

Anyway... HOW to convey that she has no fear, pain, or remorse (even in The Bad Seed, there is the stilted dialogue of what a "Bad Seed" is and questionable origins of the child)...

I think that the visual of a young girl torturing a crying animal with a placid complexion of curiosity, and when asked by her parents, "WHAT are you doing?" she can reply, "I just wanted to know what it looked like inside."

WOW that was a cheesy line. But, honestly, I would have feared Michael Myers even without his Ahab foil Dr. Loomis. Maybe we should give the audience more credit and assume that they could understand how sociopathic my killer is without them having to be TOLD?

I like the concept of knowing the difference of right and wrong and not caring... I am interested in the amoral nature of Man... Being beyond punishment and consequence... And I feel that the better medium is children.

...

Rod - I think I heart you.

Reminds me of one of my favorite little rhymes:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

I remember my parents telling me about Lizzy Borden when my grandparents used to live in Fall River... I should go visit her house.

[knife_fight]

you can also use children effectively to convey feelings that would sound silly coming from an adult, such as the scene in "Julia" (book version, can't remember if it made it to the screen or not) when our heroine walks into a playground and, upon observing a curious child playing by herself, asks another, more social, youngster why no one is playing with her. the reply is simple, yet so thought-provoking, "because she's awful."
such a simple line, but it really packs a wallop.

I too am tired of filmmakers who feel they must spell everything out for their audience, but until the lazy audiences of the silver screen can start seeing film as both art and entertainment, I don't think it'll stop.

[Vodstok]

A wealthy man, well to do and actve in his community. He is a closet gay, but had an overbearing man's man for a father. he tortures and murders women, because he desperately weants to be a "man", but has not sexual feelings for them. he replaces his homosexual desires with lust for suffering women, getting his stimulation from their protacted deaths.


kind of andrei chickatilo meets john wayne gacy.

[ferretchucker]

THANKYOU ROD!

You mentioned penny dreadful in your thread about the illustrations and just the other day I was wondering what t he poem was about. Now I know!

[Disastermind]

Mine, is a serial killing girl. She first snaps when she is ten and murders her parents, mother first. It is made to look like her father murdered her mother then killed himself.
She stays dorment for twelve years till she is the sanctity of her house again and coaxes people into renting the room of her six bedroom ranch. Each one being murdered, even the cop that is undercover finding out it was too late to change anything.

She has a secret and you will have to wait till I am finsihed with it in my script to find out though. :P


Sounds pretty cool. Kinda a Michelle Myers thing going on there in the beginning.

[Roderick Usher]

Rod - I think I heart you.



Yeah, I'm pretty lovable;)

[Despare]

I always liked Michael Myers more when he didn't have a motivation for killing. it's much scarier, to me, that anyone, at any time, could just flip out and go on a rampage. when they started delving too much into his backstory (motive, what drove him to it, etc.) the franchise lost me big time. it just lets the audience breathe a big sigh of relief like, "OHhhhh, he was abused! that'swhat drove him over the edge! whew! for a second I thought anyone could be a killer at any moment!"

so my killer would be like that. no backstory. just one day flips his shit and starts murdering people in brutal ways (a la Hatchet). except he'd be skinny and not ugly or malformed in any way. just to, yet again, get back to the "regular joe" ideal.

I don't think that helped make Michael seem "normal" at all. I think all the backstory did was show that he had a poor childhood before he snapped. It's not like multiple killings is a normal reaction to abuse. Michael went over the edge, far far beyond where any normal person would go. All the abuse did was kind of chip away at the shell that contained the evil inside the boy. If he wasn't abused then something else in his life would have let it out of him.

[knife_fight]

I don't think that helped make Michael seem "normal" at all. I think all the backstory did was show that he had a poor childhood before he snapped. It's not like multiple killings is a normal reaction to abuse. Michael went over the edge, far far beyond where any normal person would go. All the abuse did was kind of chip away at the shell that contained the evil inside the boy. If he wasn't abused then something else in his life would have let it out of him.

that's not really what I was trying to say. my point was, mainly, that the backstory makes him seem less scary, to me. "normal" is a relative term (and one that, incidentally, in my original post, I didn't refer to MM as. I was referring to my hypothetical slasher movie villain).

"normal" serial killers are routinely the products of abuse. it allows us to view the killer as something that we have seen before here in the real world.

to me, what was great about MM was that he had no reason to do it. he just did. and that makes it scary b/c it means that anyone, including us, could, at any time, become a monster. it's the old Werewolf tale, yet again.

[Despare]

it's the old Werewolf tale, yet again.

Except to turn into a werewolf one must encounter one, with evil it's already inside us.
I would like to see a slasher that simply roamed the US and Canada killing people without trying to hide it. He stops at a small town, slashes up a few people, and leaves. No trying to hide the bodies and no dwelling on what he did just killing and moving.

[ferretchucker]

Here's one I wrote about a year ago. Patent pending.

Dinga linga Dinga Linga die!


OH what a beautiful day,
the ice cream van is coming out,
children come and play,

The ice cream van parks and makes,
that dinga linga dinga linga noise,
with excitement the children shake!

One buys a vanilla cone,
with the last bit of strawberry sauce on top,
other children moan,

but just behind the van's back,
little Tim Tom screams,
before the final HACK HACK HACK!

Ice cream man brings him in,
puts him in a machine,
and puts the clothes in the bin,

and so to the front of the line, children force,
there's a hole new batch
of strawberry sauce.

[_____V_____]

I would like to see a slasher that simply roamed the US and Canada killing people without trying to hide it. He stops at a small town, slashes up a few people, and leaves. No trying to hide the bodies and no dwelling on what he did just killing and moving.

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee212/djjazzyjess43/Jeepers-Creepers3.jpg

Someone called?

[knife_fight]

Except to turn into a werewolf one must encounter one, with evil it's already inside us.

that is true. the aspect of the werewolf that I was comparing it to was that, as in my hypothetical movie, any average person could suddenly find themselves in a situation where they are the monster, without even doing anything wrong to begin with.
to push it even further, maybe the first half of the movie would be this regular guy going through his days and then something goes awry and he starts killing indiscriminately. and this thing that goes wrong isn't some kind of outside impetus, like abuse or anything like that, it's just one day his mind turns a corner where killing is just something he does now, and doesn't even consider that it may be wrong anymore, like going to the grocery store or driving a car. you could probly even cheese it up a bit by making him not even realize that he's the killer till the end (which, possibly, could make it more of a Frankenstein tale. the monster-who-isn't-a-monster). that would make it more marketable to the same type of producers who crank out Shyamalan's crap every few years.

but to get back to my original point, the bottom line is a killer who, with no motivations or reason or evil behind it, just does it because, like our friends Kriss Kross, "that's what he was born to do."

http://hitparade.ch/cdimg/kris_kross-jump_s.jpg

[VampiricClown]

I am currently working on one at the moment. But for what it is, you will have to wait.

[boxcutter]

I always liked Michael Myers more when he didn't have a motivation for killing. it's much scarier, to me, that anyone, at any time, could just flip out and go on a rampage. when they started delving too much into his backstory (motive, what drove him to it, etc.) the franchise lost me big time. it just lets the audience breathe a big sigh of relief like, "OHhhhh, he was abused! that'swhat drove him over the edge! whew! for a second I thought anyone could be a killer at any moment!"

so my killer would be like that. no backstory. just one day flips his shit and starts murdering people in brutal ways (a la Hatchet). except he'd be skinny and not ugly or malformed in any way. just to, yet again, get back to the "regular joe" ideal.

I believe that a slasher character doesn't necessarily have to have a backstory in order to be frightening. Consider some famous real life serial killers who had so-called normal middle-class upbringings, (Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer). Their backgrounds probably wouldn't make a very interesting or believable backstory for any crime or slasher movie. But they're still pretty damn scary.

On the other hand, I think that fleshing out a character with background information can only add to their fascination without in anyway detracting from the horror of their deeds. Take, for example, someone like Diane Downs, that woman who shot her children sometime back in the eighties because her boyfriend didn't want a family. She's been analyzed to death, histrionic, narcissistic, personality disorder, etc. Yet no reasonable person could feel more than a superficial feeling of reassurance from any explanation of her actions. The fact remains that she's just an evil bitch.

Anyway, here's my slasher. He's a Viet Nam veteran, close to sixty years old. Still relatively strong and healthy but old enough to be non-threatening. He's a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, wears old combat boots and sometimes a camouflaged field jacket. Yet he's actually well-groomed and avoids the appearance of an aging hippie.

When he was stationed overseas, he became interested in eastern religion and meditation techniques. One day, he witnessed a soldier's death while in a meditative state and the event had a profound effect on him. He became convinced that he could achieve spiritual growth by witnessing physical death.

When he returned to the States, he began haunting bus stations, labor pools, cheap diners, and other places where he might meet homeless men. He chose them as victims because they would be hard to trace and noone would miss them.

[Psycom5k]

Ok so here is mine...

Ai (Female Japanese name meaning "Love") - a 16 year old Japanese prostitute who had recently caught HIV from one of her clients. This drove her mad, not knowing who it had come from, but realizing that her life was over, and that she would die from the virus. She revisits each client that she had been with since she started, which had only been a month, and kills them each in a unique way, and because shes Japanese you know its fucked up. Like something involving a strap-on, only deadly, like from the movie Se7en. Each different client would involve some different form of death, each sick and perverted as only the Japanese can do. Possibly even something along the lines of making "People Sushi." Then after she had killed every client she has had, she kills herself, ending the movie, no sequels.

[occupier]

its would look like this ill tell the rest if it alows me

[horrorchic]

Sounds pretty cool. Kinda a Michelle Myers thing going on there in the beginning.

Yeah i want people to think that she really is fucked up, but at the same time not even sure it's her to start with, then it will get really crazy.