Autopsy of a Slasher Film

We always begin  
with original sin. What made him    
pick up a knife and walk the streets    
like a death-dealing door to door salesman?    
(‘Would you like to try one of our knives?    
You’ll never leave meat on the bone again.’)    
Often it’s humiliation, something    
to prick the male ego like a pig’s bladder    
and watch it expel air, an old Halloween trick    
for “haunted” suburban houses.    
Sometimes it’s just grief, or even      
mere insanity, alone. Throw in      
some Freud, for Good Measure.    
     
Let’s take Terror Train, the one that    
Jamie Lee Curtis did after Halloween.    
She plays a med student. The other studs    
are Alpha Taus, bow-wow, and enlist    
her in a prank on a shy and geeky kid    
who just wants to be loved. Don’t we all?    
They make him think that a girl wants him,    
then stick a cadaver in her bed.    
     
(What was her story? Did she teach high school    
for thirty years, marry a scientist,    
raise two kids, enjoy a glass of wine with    
Sunday’s lunch, and still have a scar    
from when she was twelve and fell off a horse
that her parents had rented for her?
What did she do before she became    
a thing, against which an unwitting boy    
has come to rub his genitals?)
     
He gropes for her, expecting yielding flesh,    
firm and flush yet pink and squeezable,    
but finds instead a green and slick, dead breast.    
He screams and Jamie Lee looks on    
in horror as he winds himself      
in sheets, and falls from the four-poster bed.    
Cue title cards.    
     
Or else we can try something Italian:    
Deep Red    
Only a moment, this opening scene,    
but over time it expands and unfolds,    
so that the glimpse we get    
of the Original Sin is better understood    
with each new layer of onion peeled.    
     
A scream of frenzied pain and fear.    
Two silhouettes in murderous posture.    
A bloody knife. It clatters to      
the hardwood floor and then a pair    
of child’s legs step into frame,    
wearing white stockings and dainty shoes.    
     
What tragedy of tortured sexuality,    
abuse, insanity, and bloody violence    
unfurls from here? Goblin tunes play out    
across the opening credits, before      
we see the thumbnail portrait    
of a very domestic despair.