Killer Research and Examples

Michael Myers from Halloween

Many slasher films use a masked murderer as the killer in their movies. This is because it makes the villian scarier, as it is an unidentifiable killer who could be anyone, not specific to that setting (as it they could come to kill you). The face is a source of information about the person, we can learn alot about a person from their face, so without this facial recognition the audience feels powerless against the masked horrors in the films. Some of the most memorable masked villains include:

The Jigsaw Killer: a clown puppet

• 'Leatherface', the butcher in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, notable for his mask made of human skin.
• Michael Myers, from Halloween, who is one of the most recognisable slasher genre killers
• 'The Jigsaw Killer' in the Saw franchise. Shown in different ways, sometimes as a puppet clown on a tricycle or wearing a pig mask, for example.

We chose our mask from about three different masks:

We asked members of our target audience which mask they thought was scariest. Most said that the clown mask was too unrealistic and comic so we decided against that one. It was 50/50 about the other two masks. We decided on the old man mask as it is similar to Michael Myers's mask in that it looks like a real person. This was another way of adding intertexuality in our opening.

Many of the horror movie killers fit the stereotype that has been shown in most slasher films starting in the 1970s with films such as Halloween and The Town That Dreaded Sundown. This stereotype is a masked, mentally deranged killer who preys on young girls. Therefore we decided that this is how we would portray our murderer too.