male narrator: I'm Eli Roth.
I want to introduce you to nine uncategorizable films
that pushed the boundaries of horror...
[terrifying music]
Nine films that tell us dark truths about society
and ourselves.
- [screams]
narrator: Nine films filled with fear...
and fun.
- [screaming]
narrator: Nine nightmares you'll never forget.
[tense music]
- [screams abruptly]
[eerie music]
♪
- [screams]
[chainsaw revving]
narrator: Horror is the outlier genre of cinema.
Some people fear it.
Others don't respect it,
but that renegade status lets it go places
no other genre can reach.
Great horror films entertain us and provoke us.
They put society under a microscope...
- Sam?
narrator: Making us question not just what we fear...
[bell rings] - [screams]
narrator: But why we fear it.
[suspenseful music]
And there's no better recent example
than Jordan Peele's "Us."
♪
In 2017, Jordan released his first film, "Get Out,"
an Oscar-winning commercial and critical hit
satirizing racism in America.
♪
- The Armitages are so good to us.
- What you experienced in your first movie is, like,
to come up with the Academy Award,
to make a movie that is, like,
probably the most culturally significant horror film
since "Night of the Living Dead,"
and then you're like, "Now I have to follow that up."
- The expectationswere a bitch.
As you know, you, like--you kind of have to say,
"Okay, well what got me herein the first place?"
looking at "Get Out"and imagining
what people are expecting.
[ominous notes]
[heart pounding]
If I can kind of start to understand or pinpoint
what I think people are expecting,
I can start to plot how to subvert that.
♪
[deep ominous notes]
♪
- There is a Black family vacationing in Santa Cruz
at their summer home,
basically the only Black family you can see
on this beach.
So it speaks to isolation almost immediately.
And over the course of a normal evening, the young son, Jason,
realizes there's a family standing outside.
♪
[dramatic musical sting]
And once the family breaks into the house,
we realize these are doppelgangers,
that everyone who's broken into the house
is a mirror image of this family.
♪
- You know, I think both films, in a strange way,
are about losing your identity and sort of who you are--
like, what the external world sees
and what you are on the inside.
- Both of these moviesbecame clear to me
when I decidedto be vulnerable
and--and--andlook--look within.
- [shouts unintelligibly]
[pants wheezily]
Asked myself what really scares me,
asked myselfwhat I'm not ready to face.
- What are you people?
- Which felt related to what we're not ready to face.
- [hoarsely] We're Americans.
[ominous music]
- What would it be like to see someone
who looked exactly like you?
Who is that person? What does that mean?
Are they taking something away from you,
or are you taking something away from them?
- [hoarsely] Run! - [yelping]
narrator: At first,
the film seems to be about one family in peril...
- [roaring]
narrator: Then we discover
everyone has a doppelganger living underground,
invisibly tethered to their counterparts on the surface.
Now, our tethered twins have emerged
to murder us.
[sharp musical sting]
[suspenseful music]
I remember you telling me after we shot last year
that you were gonna go shoot something
that felt like "Lost Boys."
♪
- Yeah, we're in the same place--
Santa Cruz Boardwalk-- the exact same location.
Did you hear the lineabout "Lost Boys" in there?
- You know, they're filming something about a carousel.
You should see if they're looking for extras.
- [screams]
[shouts unintelligibly]
[dramatic music]
- But I always thought this idea of "Lost Boys"--
that there's a monster up here,
and so I thought,with that same location,
what if there's a monsterunderneath as well?
- Mm-hmm. - On the opposite side.
- Yeah.
- [hoarsely] They created the Tethered
so they could use them to control the ones above.
[unsettling music]
Like puppets.
- I was thinking about, uh, incarceration.
I was thinking about class. - Mm-hmm.
- I--I was thinking about the term "us and them,"
the--the idea of "us and them"
and the--the--the division
when--when yousort of identify an "us."
You create a "them."You create an other.
- Don't waste your strength. Don't try to fight it.
You can't stop the inevitable.
- Much like "Get Out,"
this is a--a systemic monster we're dealing with.
- It really does appear to be,
on a fairly straightforward level,
a story about the haves and the have-nots.
[pleasant orchestral music]
♪
- Sort of existing with a privilege
and--and a privilege that many of us enjoy
is a violent act.
And that's--that'sthe central theme of "Us,"
is this idea that,
when we look at the mirror,
both individually and collectively,
we might realize, well,
it's not as simple as, "I'm the good guy."
- You know, we're all part of a system.
There's a story behind everything we enjoy.
There's a factory. There's a--a line.
There's--there's somebody working overtime,
you know, to--to try to make us happy
if we can afford it.
♪
Our little pleasures are coming
at the cost of invisible people
that we really don't want to acknowledge or see
because it's inconvenient.
[ominous notes]
narrator: The family at the center of the film
are better equipped to handle the Tethered
than most horror film protagonists...
- [shrieks]
narrator: Partly because, as Black people in America,
they are always on guard.
- Let's make some traps or something,
like some "Home Alone"-type stuff.
That way if she comes--
- Tell me you did notjust reference "Home Alone."
- Well, havinga Black protagonist
in--in a horror movie,
as a writer, is a trap
because you can't have them dothe stupid response.
- They have the upper hand.
This is the time to run,
not to be sprinklingMicro Machines on the floor.
- What are Micro Machines?
- What's "Home Alone"?
- It's--it's partlya satirical comment,
but partly very groundedin real--real life.
This country is--is a--
is a horror show...
- Yeah. - For Black people, you know?
This is--we're in a horror movie.
[eerie music]
I try and access
what I'm actually afraid of or what I'm--you know.
- Mm-hmm.
- And that--part of the processof making these movies,
I swear, I kind--I--I overcome my fear.
[match snaps and hisses]
- [rasping]
narrator: Race and class divisions
can turn everyday lives into horror movies,
but what about people
in the most privileged position in society?
What nightmares stalk the ruling class?
- [screams wildly]
narrator: In the year 2000,
Christian Bale gave an unforgettable performance
as the antihero of "American Psycho"...
[chainsaw revving]
A dark satire of human behavior
at the top of the economic ladder.
[suspenseful music]
- "American Psycho,"
based on the notorious novel by Bret Easton Ellis,
is about a young, wealthy businessman
who seems to have a perfect life.
- I work on Wall Street.
- So he's, uh, very handsome;
he has a perfect apartment;
he has a-- you know, a high-paying job.
So it's about someone
whose life is full of perfect surfaces
and who is so filled with, sort of, rage and emptiness
that he disembowels young women.
- I like to dissect girls.
Did you knowI'm utterly insane?
- Uh... [chuckles]
Uh, great tan, Marcus.
I mean, really impressive.
Where do you tan? - Salon.
[musical sting]
- "American Psycho" is one of the best satires of all time.
- You can always be thinner, look better.
- To me, it really, really caught what the '90s was about.
♪
Suddenly, metrosexuality came in
and men became obsessive with grooming products,
skin care, waxing, tanning booths.
- What beautiful skin you have, Mr. Bateman.
- And what suits you were wearing,
the kind of explosion in fashion and commerce
and restaurants and status.
It was just this Wall Street world.
- Gene, great jacket. Matsuda?
- Valentino Couture.
- It's really a satire of consumerism...
- Where did you get that overnight bag?
[car trunk slams] - Jean Paul Gautier.
- You know, American vulture capitalism
at the end of the 20th century.
And it's all expressed in this person who looks good,
but is actually a monster.
- [hollowly] I guess you could say
I just want to have meaningful relationship
with someone special.
- I wanted Bateman to be the object of fear.
[tense music]
When Christian and I were in preparation
for "American Psycho,"
we talked about him as being like a--a Martian--
someone from another planet
who doesn't know how to be a human being.
♪
So when Bateman's going to have sex with someone,
he watches a porno movie.
[chainsaw revving and woman screaming on TV]
- If he's gonna, uh, commit a murder,
he's gonna watch a--a famous horror movie.
[chainsaw revving and woman screaming on TV]
- The fact that it was directed by a woman, I think,
was such an interesting counterbalance to the book.
Even though he's doing all of these crazy things,
there isn't this misogynist,
anti-woman, kind of gross tone about the movie.
- Jean?
Sorbet?
- When we were filming "American Psycho,"
I realized that
the fear a woman has of going on a date
or going to a guy's apartment and something bad happening
or him suddenly transforming
from one kind of person into another
is-- is a very strong female fear.
- Can we go now?
- We're not through yet.
- Movies are a way of exploring those fears.
[chainsaw revving] - [yelps]
[wet impact] - [screams]
- We don't want to admit it, but all of us--
there's a part of us that is like Patrick Bateman,
that is obsessive, that wants things.
It's like this personification of all the greed
and the vanity and the consumption
and the vapidness--
all the stuff that we suppress;
that we say we don't have;
that we say, "That's just other people";
it's all reflected in Patrick Bateman,
but we're watching him
and there is a part of him that's in all of us.
- [laughing]
I... [gasps]
Just have to kill a lot of people!
And um...
[tense music fades]
[stutters and sniffles]
I'm not sure I'm gonna get away with it this time.
- He's not punished at the end,
so you're not giving the audience that satisfaction,
actually.
But I felt like the--
the satirical and also of the moral point
of Bret Easton Ellis's book
was that he wouldn't get found out
because society didn't care to find him out.
- I chopped Allen's [bleep] head off.
The whole message I left on your machine was true.
- Excuse me.I really must be going now.
- Society just didn't care
as long as he conformed to the perfect, you know,
surfaces and perfect, uh, stereotypes
of--of the successful businessman.
No one would bother.
- This confession has meant nothing.
[unsettling music]
[musical sting]
narrator: Faced with the emptiness of consumer culture,
many turned to the spiritual comforts of religion.
- ...accursed!
♪
narrator: But there can be a fine line
between a religion and a death cult.
- No! - No!
narrator: Most religions teach the way of peace,
yet religious differences have led
to an almost unthinkable amount of bloodshed.
- He brought you upto be a pagan.
[eerie music]
narrator: This paradox is at the heart
of two films about faith...
[musical sting]
"Midsommar" from 2019...
and "The Wicker Man"...
[all gasp]
From 1973.
♪
"The Wicker Man" has the reputation
for being the greatest British horror film of all time.
[goat shrieking]
It was one of those movies I didn't see until late in life
because I would look at the video box and go,
"What's scary about a wicker man?"
- Oh, God! Oh, Jesus Christ!
[single drum beating ominously]
- I finally saw it,
and it's one of those movies that changed my life.
[organ playing hymn] all: ♪ In pastures green
♪ He leadeth me
- It has to do with Christianity versus paganism.
[tense music]
A police inspector is sent
to this remote isle of Summerisle
to investigate the disappearance of a young girl.
[chalk scraping] - Rowan Morrison.
- And he's this repressed, uh, Christian
coming to grips with this society
that is the total opposite of everything he believes in.
- I find degeneracy,and there is brawling in bars.
There is indecencyin public places.
- Open sex and wild dancing
and all this uninhibited craziness that he's not used to
and he has a hard time adjusting to that.
- Can I do anything for you, sergeant?
- Oh, I doubt it...seeing you're all raving mad.
- And the fun of the film
is watching him getting taken down a notch or two.
- They do love their divinity lessons.
- But they--they are--are naked.
- Naturally.
It's much too dangerous
to jump through the fire with your clothes on.
- Oh, Christopher Lee did that picture for almost no money
because he liked the part so much.
And I think it was his favorite part
of anything he'd ever done.
[peaceful music]
It's a truly weird, pagan, fascinating movie.
It's almost a musical.
I mean, it's got all these Paul Giovanni songs.
[pianist playing slow song] - ♪ She took the tinker
♪ By the hand
- They created a score
that are folk songs integral to this island
to tell the story
of their religion and their culture.
together: ♪ For patching
♪ And plugging is his delight ♪
[echoing musical sting]
- The lyrics of these songs are so--
everything's a double entendre and everything's sexual.
[musicians playing upbeat folk music]
And it's a very, very subversive, sexual movie.
- [raps loudly on bar]
[music stops]
- This police officer is unwittingly being led,
thinking he's on an investigation,
thinking he's gonna catch the killer of a little girl,
until he realizes
that he's been a sucker this entire time.
[ominous musical sting]
- It's about faith
and how faith doesn't really pan out for you.
- There is no sun god!
There is no... goddess of the fields!
- I wouldn't say it's on the side of the pagans,
but it certainly comes close,
because as devout as the hero is,
it doesn't save him.
- No! No! Think!
Just think what you're doing!
[words echoing]
Think what you're doing! Think!
- The reason "The Wicker Man" has such staying power is
you look at this cult
that believes that burning and sacrificing a virgin
is going to bring back the crops.
That makes perfect sense to them.
pagans: [together] ♪ Summer is a-comin' in
- To this other person, it's absolutely insane
because everything he believes
is from a Christian perspective...
pagans: [together] ♪ And blows the mead
- And these are coming from a pagan perspective.
What is totally normal to one person
is absolutely terrifying to another,
and I think there's something very real about that.
[suspenseful music]
The culture clash captured by "The Wicker Man"
was a big influence on my film "Hostel."
So I visually paid tribute to it.
♪
And you can see elements of both films
in Ari Aster's "Midsommar."
♪
In the wake of a devastating loss,
a young woman joins her self-absorbed boyfriend
and his fellow grad students
on a trip to the Swedish countryside.
They've been invited to witness
an annual folk celebration.
[locals whoop]
- The writing of "Midsommar" was pretty therapeutic.
I was going through a breakup and was looking for, uh,
kind of an angle on a breakup movie.
♪
What's, like, the evil version of that?
[echoing scream]
narrator: The students enter what at first appears to be
a peaceful community of nature-worshipping pagans.
[bell dings]
- I love that it is, like "The Wicker Man,"
set in this isolated, very homogenous community
that is supposed to signify safety...
- [gasps]
- And then have it completely turn around.
- No! - No!
- [gasps]
- The Americans are trying to be cool,
and they want to be open and they want to embrace it
and they want to understand it
and they don't quite get what's going on.
- What's going on?
- [claps] [ethereal whooshing]
- But they get caught up in the ritual
and the pomp and the circumstance
and they don't want to offend the culture
and, you know, they wind up paying the price for it.
- [blows]
♪
narrator: The film's protagonist is gradually drawn
into what turns out to be a death cult...
♪
And the other travelers are ritual sacrifices.
- She ends up finding, in this community,
what might be a home.
- You are the family now, yes?
Yes, you are the family!
- And of course,
the irony is that they are a eugenicist community
of murderers.
- [shrieking]
- But they're also much more empathic,
they're--they're much more compassionate.
[all wailing]
- And that's why people join cults.
[eerie music]
People don't join cults because they want to be mass murderers.
[ominous droning music]
♪
They join cults because they need connection.
[peaceful droning music]
♪
narrator: "Midsommar" was a slow-burn film
that built to a fiery conclusion.
But horror can also go way over the top to make a point.
[rushing music]
narrator: When you think of a morality tale,
you might picture something like this.
- [speaking Swedish] Amen.
others: Amen.
[suspenseful music]
♪
- I hope you rot in hell.
narrator: But in horror,
stories about suffering terrible consequences
for your poor behavior can be scary and fun,
like "Creepshow."
"Creepshow" was a horror fan's dream.
It still is.
It's the combination of George Romero,
Stephen King, and Tom Savini.
Me, as a 12-year-old horror fan,
knowing that this was the director
of "Dawn of the Dead"...
♪
This was the guy that did all the gore
in "Dawn of the Dead" and "Friday the 13th."
[intense string music]
And Stephen King writing these stories?
This was gonna be the greatest movie ever made.
[sparse ominous music]
♪
- Well, my first thing with George was he said,
"Why don't we do a number of stories
like 'Tales from the Crypt'?"
And I went, "Yeah, let's--let's do that."
- It's a comic book. - What?
- It's a comic book! - It's a comic book!
[musical sting] - Look.
- Because really, what is a comic book?
It's a storyboard for a movie, right?
narrator: "Creepshow" is presented
like an EC comic book from the 1950s,
with five macabre stories...
♪
- [shouts]
narrator: And an all-star cast.
Stephen King himself
plays the doomed hayseed, Jordy Verrill.
♪
- I'm a goner already, Daddy...
ain't I?
♪
narrator: Each story was a moral tale
in which sinners were rewarded with ironic deaths,
and sometimes, ironic afterlives.
The teenaged Greg Nicotero was a frequent visitor
to the "Creepshow" set.
- I remember seeing them shooting the actors
with the colored lights in the background.
- I got my cake.
- All of a sudden, like, there's a bunch of guys
on dimmers, and they'd go... [imitates electricity]
- [screaming] - Happy Father's Day.
- Then they would turn it and the lights would change.
They were trying to immerse you into the comic book world.
♪
narrator: One of my favorite stories is "The Crate,"
where a henpecked college professor
comes into possession of a vicious animal...
- ...a couple of emeralds! - Don't!
narrator: With a thirst for human blood.
- [screaming]
- [laughing deliriously] I don't even know what it was.
- And it's Hal Holbrook and Fritz Weaver
and Adrienne Barbeau and this old crate,
and you're just waiting for Fluffy.
- [roars]
- I remember, as a kid, I read "Fangoria" magazine
and I saw pictures
of the monster that they called Fluffy.
And when that thing comes out of the crate...
♪
- The fun is inventing how to do this stuff.
♪
You know, the script, kind of, is sometimes very vague.
"We see a flash of fur and teeth."
[dramatic tense music]
Well, I gotta create a creature from that
that comes out of a crate
underneath steps in "Creepshow," you know?
- Something shiny.
- I had never built an animatronic creature before.
So I called Rob Bottin on the phone.
Took me to his house.
He tore the skins off to show me
how the mechanisms worked in the heads,
the fake heads that he was making.
[suspenseful music]
- As great as "The Crate" is,
nothing quite prepares you for E.G. Marshall's performance
as Upson Pratt.
"This is Upson Pratt, the Upson Pratt."
- Well, I found anothercockroach this evening, George.
- Oh, no.
- One of those big ones
right here in my $3,200-a-monthpenthouse apartment.
♪
narrator: Upson Pratt is a wealthy and vicious germaphobe
who treats everyone like vermin.
- You might go far, boy.
I've noticed that, in service jobs,
people like yourself often do--
people of color.
- You know, the Marshall story does represent
a lot of the sociopolitical things
that were going on at the time, you know,
with him being a blatant racist character
who is trying to live
in this sort of protected white bubble, literally,
in his compound,
and he's terrified
of other things getting into that world.
[bugs squeaking]
- Damn bugs--ugh!
Bugs! [shouts]
- Now you'd have a digital cockroach.
Back then, you really hadto do it with cockroaches.
- Cockroaches.
They were everywhere, Eli! - Yeah.
- Those cockroaches were everywhere.
[ominous music]
[cockroaches chittering] - [screaming]
- And when we did the final scene, where the b--
he just sort of explodes with bugs all inside him--
everybody was, like, right--
nervous, scared to death.
It could be one take. - Yeah.
- That's the only thing you could do.
There were, like, 5,000 cockroaches
and they were gonna blow 'em through this--this tube.
Quiet on the set,
get the cockroaches ready.
[chuckling] You know, cue the cockroaches.
[eerie music]
♪
- [screaming]
- And it was perfect
and everybody in the place just exploded into applause.
- It's one of the--
it's one of the great,great moments in movies.
[cockroaches chittering]
- "Creepshow" was-- was way ahead of its time
in terms of George and Steve King's
sort of love letter to EC comics.
- [cackles]
[thunder booms]
- Doing "Creepshow" really was--was their opportunity
to pay tribute to the stuff that inspired them.
[tense musical sting] - [screams]
narrator: In "Creepshow,"
bad people are punished with gruesome deaths.
The violence upset audiences
expecting a lightweight comic book movie,
but to really upset Americans,
do what Brian De Palma did:
make a horror film about sex.
- [gasps]
[dramatic music]
[gagging]
narrator: Few things provoke audiences more
than sexual violence.
It's a taboo region
that horror films are uniquely able to explore
because horror goes where the timid fear to tread.
- [screams]
narrator: And even a comically bad slasher
can carry a surprising message about toxic masculinity.
- Where did this filth come from?
[grunts]
[screaming]
- "Pieces" is one of the greatest WTF horror films
of all time.
[saw scraping]
[telephone ringing]
For me, it might be
my favorite horror movie of all time
after all these years
because it just defies every rule
of what you're supposed to do.
[dramatic synthesized music]
- [weeps]
- It is so absurd
that, if you put it on with a room of people,
you will guarantee to have
the whole audience come out of it going,
"That's the best movie I've ever seen."
[dramatic music] - [screaming]
[mirrors shattering]
- Horror is the genre that gave us the idea of bad-good.
- [screams] [chainsaw revving]
- Like, there can be a really great horror movie,
and that's fun to watch, but a really bad horror movie
can be fun to watch too.
- [shrieking]Bastard!
Bastard!
[suspenseful music]
Bastard!
[booming musical sting]
narrator: The plot of "Pieces" follows a campus stud
and an undercover policewoman
trying to catch a mysterious chainsaw killer.
- [screaming] [chainsaw revving]
- It's got all the classic tropes of slasher movies.
[chainsaw revving]
- You!
- They have these beautiful Spanish girls
that always get naked right before they're chopped.
[dramatic music] - [gasps]
- The deaths are so over-the-top.
♪
At the end of the film,
the police catch the killer
and they're about to leave
and they open the door and the body falls out.
- Really--
- [screaming]
- [screams]
- And you realize
this guy's been making a human jigsaw puzzle.
It's an incredible shock moment.
- [screaming]
[sobbing]
- And then at the very end,
Ian Sera comes back 'cause he forgot his coat
and the hand of the body comes out
and just rips his genitals off.
- [screaming]
[flesh squelches]
- You can watch the movie on one level
and go, "This is a grade-Z slasher movie."
Or you could say,
"This is a subversive work of art
"by a master director who's making a comment
on this character who uses women like pieces of meat."
These girls are then killed
and the body... is the residual anger.
The anger of these girls
and the resentmentof these girls
of being used by this guyall boils up
and they castrate him at the end of the movie.
narrator: You don't expect great depth
from a movie like "Pieces."
More confounding to critics is when a brilliant filmmaker
deliberately challenges an audience
by fusing sex and violence with high cinematic style.
♪
Exhibit A: Brian De Palma's "Dressed to Kill,"
a provocative film
about the corrosive effects of sexual repression.
- "Dressed to Kill" is an interesting juxtaposition
of two women's expression of their own sexuality--
one being a conservative housewife
who is oppressed by her sexuality
and one being a young sex worker
who is empowered by her sexuality--
and the man who is a psychiatrist
who is his own worst patient
who's trying to draw the bridge
between his own relationship with his sexuality
and these two women.
narrator: Sexually frustrated Kate,
played by Angie Dickinson,
acts the part of the perfect wife and mother,
but she yearns for a more stimulating life.
Kate confides her feelings to her psychiatrist,
arousing his own secret desires.
[sweeping music]
- Would you want to sleep with me?
- Yes.
[tense dramatic music]
- [gasps]
[screaming]
♪
narrator: Then, in a shocking twist,
Kate is brutally murdered
by a mysterious black-gloved killer...
- [screaming]
narrator: A crime witnessed by the movie's other heroine,
Liz Blake, played by Nancy Allen.
- I think my nightmares on "Dressed to Kill"
really started when they did the... [imitates slashing]
[soft eerie music]
It's so strange because it's all so technical.
♪
But emotionally,
it really does-- somehow, it gets in.
At least with me, it gets back in there.
♪
Maybe it's all "Psycho's" fault for making me so scared.
["The Murder"] - [screaming]
narrator: Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"
famously kills off its protagonist
more than half an hour into the film.
♪
"Dressed to Kill" both updates and parodies "Psycho."
De Palma turns the trail blazed by Hitchcock
into a slyly satirical boulevard,
going places Hitchcock couldn't in 1960.
[soft ominous music]
narrator: The second half of "Dressed to Kill"
is a detective story
led by two amateur sleuths:
Liz Blake and Kate's adoring son Peter,
played by Keith Gordon.
Every scene is enhanced
by De Palma's vast knowledge of film technique.
♪
- Obviously, the story involves
a lot of double and mirror and two people looking alike
and, you know, having two personalities and splits.
[tense music]
Really good visual directors will find themes
and then they'll continue to find places to inject it
where maybe they hadn't even planned ahead of time,
but they keep seeing opportunities.
- When I speak of transsexuals,
I tend to speak of male-to-female
because there are a whole lot more of them
than the going the other way.
- The scene I remember the most is the television
where Donahue is interviewing someone
and Michael Caine is watching it.
Just the--the lighting, the way it's photographed,
and as kid, split screens drive me crazy.
You're like,"What am I supposed to watch?
What am I supposed to watch?"
But you just sort of give over to it.
It's got a very, very interesting effect
on the audience.
- More than that, I've always been a devout heterosexual.
[chuckles]
- The interview with the transsexual woman
signals to the audience that Kate's psychiatrist,
played by Michael Caine...
is also the killer.
- The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous.
It's breathtaking.
So it's unfortunate
that l--it sits on a foundation of transphobia
in a really big way, in a really blatant way.
- It played into a lot of clichés.
I mean, there were, you know--
trans people as being weird,
being dangerous, being other, being crazy.
- Because "Dressed to Kill" came out at a time
when trans people were still thought of as illegal,
making us murderers made perfect sense.
It wasn't a big stretch
to think that we would go from jail to killing someone.
[eerie music]
- I don't think that's what Brian's intention
of making the film was about.
Doesn't mean it's cool.
I mean, you know, I mean, that part of the film,
I feel like yeah, that has not dated well.
narrator: In 1980,
far more people were upset by the character of Liz Blake,
a sex worker the movie never judges or shames.
- Well, hi.
I'm Liz from the escort service.
I love Liz Blake.
She's smart. She has a sense of humor.
She's comfortable with her sexuality.
She's not afraid of it
or feels like she has to cover it up.
She just--she's a free s-- kind of free spirit.
Do you think you could put together
a--a coffee break and a hot lunch?
For tomorrow?
Yeah, I need a thousand dollars for my mother's operation.
Which was somewhat reflective of my own personality,
but not completely, you know?
I am a child of the '50s.
So I do have that repression.
[chuckles] Liz still lives in me a little bit.
Thank God straight [bleep]s are still in style.
♪
- That's why the film doesn't smack of misogyny to me--
because it feels like
Brian De Palma trying to understand
why people are so hung up on their sexuality.
♪
And it is designed to get you
to question your own relationship
with your sexuality.
narrator: In the hands of a master,
graphic scenes of violence become stylish explorations
of the language of cinema,
but film can also be a blunt instrument...
- [screams]
♪
narrator: Using violent horror
to make us face the worst parts of ourselves.
♪
- [screaming]
narrator: My great love is Italian horror.
- [screaming]
- Italian horror, as opposed to American horror--
they're like horror movies with no rules.
There were no limits on gore.
[indistinct chatter]
[dramatic music]
- [gasps]
[screams]
narrator: In the '70s and '80s,
directors like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci,
and Dario Argento...
- [sobbing]
narrator: Took the conventions of horror
and dialed them up to operatic intensity.
[intense dramatic music] - [cries out]
- They didn't know you weren't allowed
to have eyeballs exploding and eviscerations,
whereas American movies or Canadian movies like "Scanners"
had one big moment or a couple of big moments.
[loud pops]
- [howling bestially]
- The Italian movies,
it's just like one after another after another.
narrator: Dario Argento's debut film,
"The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,"
took the brutal Italian crime genre called giallo...
[horn honks]
narrator: And turned it into high art.
- [screaming]
[suspenseful music]
- So there was certain tropes you had to follow
for it to be a giallo.
You had to have red herrings.
You had to be guessing who the killer was the whole movie.
The killer had to wear gloves.
♪
Dario Argento rewrites the rules
with "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage."
- [shrieking]
- It's got all of the signature things
from Argento and the most fantastic score by Morricone.
The black-gloved killer--
that, most of the time, was Dario Argento's hands
'cause it had to be done right.
- [screaming]
- Penetrating the victim with a knife...
- [shrieking]
- But very, very stylish.
[intense music]
"Bird with the Crystal Plumage" really announces
the era of the modern horror film...
♪
narrator: And was a big influence on Brian De Palma.
- You look at "Dressed to Kill"
and you look at "Bird with the Crystal Plumage"--
you could put the movies on top of each other.
♪
narrator: But the most groundbreaking,
provocative Italian horror film of all time...
Is Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust."
♪
Deodato apprenticed under two master directors,
Sergio Corbucci and Roberto Rossellini.
- Francesco!
Francesco! Francesco!
- Think of the violence and the realism
of "Rome, Open City"...
[gunfire]
- Mama! Mama!
♪
- And the violence and politics of Corbucci's films.
[gunshot] - [shouting and moaning]
- And you combine them and you get Ruggero Deodato.
[people chanting]
- You're about to witness an ancient ritual
never before seen by civilized man.
- And that's why "Cannibal Holocaust" is so effective.
It's no accident.
[music rushing]
♪
- Today is, uh, Saturday the 25th.
If I were in New York right now,
I'd probably be out shopping.
- "Cannibal Holocaust" is the first
kind of found-footage movie.
- [wailing]
[cries out in Spanish]
♪
- "Cannibal Holocaust" starts out
with a group of documentary filmmakers
who went down to the jungles of the Amazon
to make a movie about cannibals and never returned.
"Cannibal Holocaust" narrator: Are they still alive?
And if so, where are they?
- They've disappeared
and we don't know what happened to them,
so then Professor Monroe goes through
and kind of retraces their steps
and finds all these clues
until he finally finds the skulls of the people,
and they're dead and there are all the film cans there.
♪
[eerie whirring] - Okay.
- The second half of the movie
is him back in New York City, watching the footage,
and what he sees is shocking.
[intense ominous music]
♪
- You know thisis gonna make us famous.
- Yeah, you think so, huh?
- Yeah. - How famous?
- Real famous and real rich.
[gunshot] - Die!
- But Professor Monroe discovers
that it wasn't that these documentary gr--filmmakers
were preyed on by cannibals and eaten by cannibals.
They were actually the manipulators.
[Riz Ortolani's "Love with Fun"]
[slow upbeat music]
♪
narrator: Deodato has said the film was a reaction
to the media's sensationalized coverage
of Italian terrorists.
[eerie music]
But for many viewers,
the political message was overshadowed
by the film's extremely realistic violence.
[tragic music]
- Everyone thought "Cannibal Holocaust" was real,
and this was years before "Blair Witch."
"Cannibal Holocaust" was so shocking
that Ruggero Deodato was brought up on murder charges.
♪
- But when he actually ended up in court,
Deodato was acquitted on the--the human killing
because he actually brought out the actors and said,
"Okay, you-- you think these guys are dead.
Here they are."
[indistinct shouting]
narrator: "Cannibal Holocaust" deeply affected me,
so much so that I had to make my own cannibal movie.
[all shrieking]
The documentary
that the kids in "Cannibal Holocaust" are making
is called "The Green Inferno."
So I named my movie "The Green Inferno"
as a nod to "Cannibal Holocaust."
[man screaming, flesh squelching]
This was the feature-film version of that.
[man screaming, flesh squelching]
- [exclaims in language]
narrator: Some artists are compelled
to challenge their audiences, but how far is too far?
For me, "Cannibal Holocaust" is right at the edge.
For others, it's way over it.
- I really think it's a movie that is so offensive
and so horrific
and really has something to offend everybody.
[dissonant music]
- It's supposed to be shocking.
You're not supposed to just watch it
and then move on to something else.
You know,
if you can get through "Cannibal Holocaust,"
you see some of the most incredible,
incredible filmmaking ever.
♪
[eerie music]
narrator: Horror is where our nightmares come to life.
It reveals humanity at its best and its worst...
♪
What we desire and what we dread,
who we are...
[gunshot]
And what we're afraid we might be.
- [grunts]
narrator: If we have the courage
to face our nightmares,
we can conquer our deepest fears.
- [screaming]