Success of the Silence of the Lambs

Over the weekend I rewatched one of my favorite films of all time, Silence of the Lambs. The film has be hailed by many a critic and it's easy to see why, simply stated it's a goddamn masterpiece.

It's writing, it's production design, the casting, it call comes together in such a harmonious way. Each scene is rich with subtext and detail, and it does such a fantastic job of showing rather than telling.

In trying to write the character of a maniacal psychopath it's hard not to take a few pages out of the good doctor Lecters book. I see so many movie villains now a days with traces of his marvelously malevolent personality. I love the way we're introduced to him as a character.

First off we're given snippets of his backstory, how he killed and ate his patients for seemingly no reason. Secondly we're informed by an orderly escorting Clarice to Lectors cell of the unbridled brutality that Lector inflicts on others, even while he's still incarcerated. We're told that we aren't allowed to get too close to his cell, and that we can't tell him anything other than the information that we've been cleared to disclose. Every shred of information that Lector learns about you is ammunition he can use against you. With that in mind it makes it all the more chilling when before engaging Clarice in conversation, Lector smells the air for a moment and tells her what skin lotion she uses, and the perfume she wore the night before. It's chilling, invasive, and remarkably thrilling. While I don't think I have the writing chops to crank out a character with the complexity of lector, it's still extremely interesting to watch the ways he unnerves us, and take that as inspiration. 

You Don't Need Money to Scare the S*** Out of People

As a college student looking pursue a career in the movie industry, I have heard the same advice on countless occasions: 

"Movies? Yikes...You should probably study something more stable; like psychology, or art history." 

However, upon realizing that I'm pretty set in my decision to make films, people in the industry give me another piece of advice: 

"Start by producing horror. They're relatively cheap to make, and they have a built in audience." 

I decided to do my own research on the topic. How small of a budget can horror films have and still make a profit? Does a bigger budget necessarily guarantee a better movie? I started by comparing two horror films with very different budgets.

This is the trailer for the 2010 thriller, The Wolfman directed by Joe Johnston. It cost $150,000,000 to produce.

This is the trailer for the 1978 horror film, Halloween, directed by John Carpenter. The independent film had the minuscule budget of $325,000.

When looking exclusively at box office sales, The Wolfman outperformed Halloween; grossing a whopping $139,789,765 as opposed to Halloween's $70,000,000. Despite this, in the end, The Wolfman lost $10,210,235 while Carpenter's Halloween made $69,675,000. This comparison isn't the only example of low budget horror films ultimately earning more money than bigger budget productions.

Director Tobe Hooper's 1974 film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is my all-time favorite example of the little budget guys coming out on top. The thriller cost under $140,000 to produce and ended up grossing $26,000,000. Not bad Tobe. Not bad. 

For those who haven't seen it:

Horror movies will *almost always sell tickets.

 ( *I use the word "almost" due to the failure of the horror film Playback which earned exactly $265 at the box office in 2012.)

Horror films will always sell tickets, but they'll never be blockbusters. Some people just don't like scary movies. They never will. Luckily, there will always be those high school couples and adrenaline junkies that will go out and see anything classified as a horror film. Keeping this in mind, it doesn't economically make sense to spend millions upon millions of dollars to produce a genre of movie that targets a relatively small (although stable) population.

So in the end, the second piece of advice is correct. Scary movies are a great place to start when you want to break into the industry but don't have any money. Still, if horror isn't your thing, there's always porn.