Fender Bender - Crossing the Borders of Slasher Cinema's Subdivisions

In my Eek! Speak blog posts, I always discuss my love of the horror genre in its many forms. More often than not I tend to write about my favorite movie subgenre, the slasher film. This may seem to be a limited slice of horror, but for me it’s the most flavorful slice of that bloody pie. If I dissect that category even further, we have a multitude of sub-subgenres, each one worthy of sampling and study. There are the theme day slashers (My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, Happy Birthday To Me), woodsy slashers (Friday the 13^th, Sleepaway Camp, The Final Terror), rural slashers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Two Thousand Maniacs), college slashers (The Dorm That Dripped Blood, Final Exam, Scream 2), police procedural slashers (10 to Midnight, Too Scared To Scream, In the Cut), shopping slashers (The Initiation, Hide and Go Shriek, Intruder), phone slashers (When A Stranger Calls, Don’t Answer The Phone, Scream), sorority slashers (The House on Sorority Row, Girl’s Nite Out, Sorority House Massacre), asylum slashers (Slaughter High, Alone in the Dark, Happy Hell Night), queer slashers (Cruising, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Evil Laugh), final boy slashers (The Burning, Night Warning, My Soul To Take) and more. Some of these titles, like The Initiation, can fall into multiple sub categories (theme day, shopping, and sorority). Like the repetitive body counts in these kill films, the categories and crossings go on and on and on.

Theme day, shopping, and sorority.

     Rather than limited, these slasher films alone provide a cinematic diet full of variety. Sometimes, nothing satisfies the appetite better than, say, a blind final girl slasher film (See No Evil, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Mute Witness).

     In particular, I want to single out two subgenres of the slasher subgenre, the suburban slasher movie and the road psycho movie. One of horror’s greatest achievements, Halloween, may be the most iconic suburban slasher film, while also defining the theme day slashers and flirting with asylum slashers in the opening act. Other notable suburban slashers include Slumber Party Massacre and its topless sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the first and final Scream films. Wes Craven returned to this category repeatedly throughout his career, with Shocker, The People Under the Stairs, My Soul To Take, New Nightmare, and more. Even Red Eye, Craven’s terrorist thriller on a plane, ends in slasher territory with a suburban house chase that would belong in any of his terror films.

Wes Craven's favorite killing ground.

     The strength and scares of these suburban slasher films comes from taking the expected remote terrible place, whether a summer camp, desert, or coal mine, and transplanting that deadly place into your formerly welcome home. You don’t wander onto the psycho’s home turf; they wander into yours. Terror can come knocking or trick-or-treating, pulling up your driveway and crawling through your bedroom window while you take a shower, or better yet, a bubble bath.

In front of the most iconic suburban slasher house, the Doyle house from Halloween.

     Now let’s hit the highway and look at road psycho cinema. The Model T of this high-octane category is Duel, followed by later models like Roadgames, Death Valley, The Hitcher, Welcome to Spring Break, Crash, Highwaymen, and Death Proof. Whether on two wheels or four, these madmen can speed after or right into you anywhere at any time. Your airbags won’t save you against a sharp knife. I would even venture to add Halloween to this list, considering Michael Myers steals a car after his asylum escape and spends the first half of the film stalking from behind the wheel.

Big knife or big tires, the result is the same. From Highwaymen.

     The reason I’m so focused on home invaders and maniacs on wheels is due to Fender Bender, which had its world premiere on May 23^rd in Los Angeles, and is currently enjoying a limited local run before its premiere on Chiller on June 3^rd. Fender Bender is a perfect mating of the suburban slasher and road psycho subgenres, creating a body count that is totally original, timelessly familiar, and revving with ambitious scares.

At Fender Bender's world premiere at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles, May 23, 2016.

     Fender Bender has a wickedly effective and simple premise that anyone with a driver’s license can relate to. A teenage girl is the victim of a minor fender bender in her suburban neighborhood. She trades her contact information with the other driver, who we know from first bump is a knife-wielding maniac with a habit for hunting humans (this is not a spoiler; it’s the basic set-up). Guess who will be paying the girl and her friends a visit on this stormy night?

Relentless and random.

     I have been a fan of writer/director Mark Pavia since the release of his first feature, the atmospheric and under seen Stephen King shocker The Night Flier. With that adaptation, Pavia became one of a handful of directors able to create that palpable King flavor on film. With his original killer thriller, Pavia proves just as adept with the slasher film, capable of creating not only shocking kills and dense suspense, but all of the quiet, important details that aficionados like me can really savor.

You're in his headlights.

     Fender Bender’s closest cousin in the suburban slasher category is undoubtedly Halloween. Remove Halloween’s theme day and asylum escape, and you have an adult male car stalker who follows a teenage girl home to hunt her over the course of one night, wearing a mask and armed with a knife, taking out any friends that get in the way and decorating the property with their remains. Fender Bender satisfyingly fits this formula while carving its own place in the suburban slasher cannon. As for the location, New Mexico is definitely not Haddonfield, Illinois, and the wide, dry vistas of Fender Bender’s suburbs add further isolation. There’s less of a chance your neighbors would hear you screaming bloody murder late at night.

Key ingredients in just the right portions.

     Also reminiscent of Halloween is Fender Bender’s visual style, and it’s more than just the Carpenter influenced widescreen cinematography. Meticulous attention is paid to set design, lighting, and framing for maximum suspense, the dark corners of the frame and long corridors of the house providing a constant threat. Pavia and company are obviously having a ball manipulating the architecture of terror in this suburban killing field.

     In the road psycho arena, Fender Bender gives us the Driver, a memorable new madman shrouded in mystery while engaging in intricate homicidal ritual. The stoic, shades wearing Driver requires the guise of an ordinary motorist to acquire his victims’ addresses and phone numbers. Only once does the Driver’s shades come off, and we are not allowed to see his eyes or the soul they might reflect. Once this traveling stalker follows his victim home, his human side is shed. The Driver becomes a murderous extension of his automobile, clad in full body black leather and a cylindrical mask that resembles the grille of his car. Only through the headlights of this mask do we see the Driver’s eyes, and indeed they are soulless. This killer seems to be fueled by hate, his victims, like those of the D.C. sniper, spread across the nation and chillingly random.

This is the Driver's mask.

     The Driver does engage in some messy hit and run mayhem, but unlike Vaughan from Crash and Stuntman Mike from Death Proof, his car is not his only murder weapon. The Driver, in his completely original garb, carries a completely original weapon, a massive, spring-loaded blade that could pop a tire with ease. Before dawn, bloody tire tracks will circle the house and blood will paint the interior. The Driver is proud of his human road kill, and leaves the arid landscape as wet as possible.

     As for one crucial early step in the Driver's ritual, using the phone numbers that his victims willingly pass on to him in his escalating stalking campaign, this puts Fender Bender firmly into the phone slashers sub-subgenre. A few scenes manage an eerie Don't Answer the Phone vibe, which is definitely a plus.

Don't answer the text!

     There is one other subdivision of slasher film that Fender Bender strongly resembles, and that is the retro slasher film, those killer films from the golden age between 1978 and 1984. While Fender Bender cannot technically qualify as retro due to its release date, it is impressive how effortlessly this film resembles those of that era. Fender Bender is steeped in all of the classic techniques that work: practical effects, catchy synth score, vulnerable characters we like, iconic masked maniac, elaborate murder set pieces. Best of all, there is no modern shaky handheld camerawork to ugly it up and date it. Fender Bender does slasher right.

Director Mark Pavia and his beautiful slasher baby.

     Now I’m hoping we can get Mark Pavia behind the wheel for a sequel. There are a lot more fenders to be bent across the country.

Armando D. Muñoz