If nothing else, the golden age of exploitation allowed horror filmmakers the freedom to push the envelope, though the innovation didnt come from the major studios but from the independent sector. Produced for chump change, movies like Night Of The Living Dead, The Last House On The Left, The Texas Chainsaw and Halloween tore up the rule book and set the genre on a new course. That all ended in the 1980s with the collapse of the exploitation circuit and the dominance of multiplexes, which the studios rushed to fill with unchallenging uniform product. There was nothing remotely terrifying, for instance, about watching Jason Voorhees go to Manhattan or seeing Freddy Krueger attack a victim with the bon mots Kung Fu this, bitch! Every success launched a cottage industry of clones: Scream began the trend for hip horror, The Blair Witch Project kick-started the found footage subgenre and The Ring initiated the J-Horror cycle, but the only disturbing thing was how bland the end products were. The trend continued throughout the 2000s and beyond, with indie horror neglected in favour of studio pictures that were bigger, faster and offered more of everything. They werent necessarily better movies, but their box office grosses suggested otherwise.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
