Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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flows onto his throat and chest. This shot cuts to a high angle shot looking down on
him as more blood comes out and the arrow emerges even more. This is shown with
high, loud strings on the score at the moment the hand comes from underneath the
bed, the rustling of the bedclothes, and Jack gurgling through the blood. Finally,
Mrs. Voorhees’s death is not only shown in-shot, but also in slow motion. Alice is
shown in long shot and slow motion with a machete moving to strike Mrs. Voorhees.
There is a cut to Mrs. Voorhees’s mouth dropping in surprise, and then a cut to Alice
in close up as she swings the machete. There is then a reverse shot as the machete
passes through Mrs. Voorhees’s neck in slow motion, and the head comes off
rotating in the air and blood shoots out of the neck wound. There is the sound of the
machete swishing through the air, and the score contains strings holding a tremulous
high note. The slow motion and the tremulous note on the score highlight the violent
action, while the swish of the machete punctuates the point of mutilation.
While these images become central features of the film, the other deaths use
comparatively simple methods of implication in order to convey violence. The
deaths of the girl counsellor in the pre-credit sequence, Ned, Brenda, and Bill are not
shown at all. Ned is shown dead with his throat slashed in the top bunk where Jack
and Marcie are having sex, Brenda’s mutilated body is thrown through a window to
scare Alice, Bill is shown with multiple arrows piercing his body, going into the
wooden door, leaving his body suspended in the air, and the girl counsellor is not
shown in death at all, the image freezes and dissolves to white on her screaming face
in close up.
The remaining deaths – the boy counsellor, Steve and Marcie – all are shown
either just outside the frame or through implied editing and sound. Béla Balázs,
writes of “Sound-Explaining Pictures”, explaining thus, “The close-up of a listener’s