Editorials
Stuffed with Fear: How Taxidermy Haunts the Horror Genre
I have unintentionally surrounded myself with stuffed animals for most of my life. Not those ones, though. The ones seen in the antique shops I visit, and the museums I work at, sometimes covered by protective glass or left to gather dust. Some of them are beautiful, some hilariously horrifying.
My Grandfather’s Craft: Beauty in the Macabre
Bill Waldron, my grandfather, was a skilled taxidermist. I remember Christmases visiting my grandparents in Minnesota, sleeping in their dark, musty spare room in the basement. Adjacent was my grandpa’s workroom: a windowless, incredibly bright cave potent with chemical fumes from myriad acids, glues, and paints. He was self-taught, and his work was beautiful.
After hunting or fishing trips, he often gave my dad taxidermy pieces of the animals they caught together: bear, deer, walleye, and even caribou. This caribou hung in our family living room, a cobwebbed fixture high above the fireplace. It fell one year and would have killed our dog had he been sleeping in his usual spot.
A dead animal is a really weird thing to put on your wall. Americans have been doing this for centuries. Taxidermy was all the rage in the Victorian era: it was a sign of wealth, masculinity, and virility. A trophy won, stuffed, and displayed for guests to see in your entryway, man cave, or den. Teddy Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill residence on Long Island is a perfect example of how we use the American wilderness as art and furniture. Bucks, bears; swordfish, Great White sharks; pheasants, wolves; and yes, even beavers have something to offer aesthetically.
The Role of Taxidermy in Horror Movies
While the taxidermy animal may have been a specimen of craftsmanship and a symbol of American masculinity, in a post-Psycho (1960) America, the image of the taxidermist became ominous. They were recluses with a weird hobby, one that, more often than not, insinuated murderous impulses. After all, several real serial killers slaughtered small animals in their youth and took up taxidermy as a hobby (or cover-up). Ed Gein and Jefferey Dahmer, the former being the inspiration for Norman Bates, are notable examples.
The products of the taxidermist’s work adorn haunted, cracked walls; hide secrets; torment the living; and serve as portentous reminders of life’s absurdity. These mounted, macabre monstrosities can be incredibly campy, too. In some cases, perhaps the chemical fumes got to the artist’s head. The horror genre has embraced taxidermy and the allure of the skillful yet dangerous taxidermist.
The following list of characters is neither a ranking nor an analysis of their use of taxidermy on human victims. Wings and/or four-plus legs are prerequisites, folks!
Jame & Bubba
While chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (TCM, 1974) and the deranged Buffalo Bill do not explicitly perform animal taxidermy in their respective films, it’s hard to imagine them not experimenting with animals before, well…
Gumb, due to his perceived gender dysphoria, is drawn to the beautiful world of bugs. His favorite, the Death’s Head hawkmoth, became a creature synonymous with the horror genre. The Asiatic moth, raised from eggs, nourished by honey and nightshade, was “loved” by Gumb. “The significance of the moth is change,” states Dr. Hannibal Lecter, “Our Billy wants to change too.”
Taxidermy exposes the delicate beauty of moths and butterflies, focusing on the vibrant wings. Gumb’s walls were covered with odds and ends, a mixture of fascist imagery and delicate butterfly paintings. I wouldn’t be surprised if a framed butterfly or moth taxidermy display was framed somewhere in that house of tortures.
Similarly, Bubba Sawyer, known as Leatherface, enjoys toying with physical change in his respective house of horror. But, his apparent taxidermy, littering the walls of the Sawyer home, has nothing to do with his desire to transform.
Bubba’s taxidermy is focused on what’s around him in the Texas heat: longhorns, deer, armadillos. While the monarch butterfly is native to Texas, I think that would have been too delicate a taxidermy for a Sawyer to attempt.
Joe, “I’m getting into taxidermy.” “Of course you are. Classic!”
Joe is a lesser-known horror slasher. He is new to the craft, but boy is he busy! You’re Killing Me (2015) is a coming-out-as-a-murderer story, with Joe fresh out of a psychiatric institution and ready to start dating… among other things. The small animals he targets are mainly chickens and canaries, though it looks like he also dabbled with reptiles.
We learn that Joe comes from a stifling home life with a domineering mother, like Norman Bates, who had him committed to the hospital to curb his impulses. Speaking of Norman…
Norman, “My hobby is stuffing things.”
For not knowing much about birds, Norman seems to specialize in them. All kinds of birds! He is the quintessential taxidermist of horror, surrounding himself with his craft. “I hate the look of beasts when they’re stuffed,” Norman reasons, why he chooses birds for taxidermy. Scholar Subarna Mondal argues that Psycho “brought taxidermy in mainstream narrative cinema at a time when taxidermy was beginning to be reviled.
Concern for animal rights, wildlife preservation laws and a clear shift in cultural response to taxidermy had already begun to see the art as the grotesque mind’s propensity to create grotesque bodies.” (Mondal, 2017). Norman’s birds are symbols of his caged madness rather than mere stuffed animals.
Norman’s birds of prey are impressive, and beautiful in their likeness, despite Norman’s assertion he knows “nothing” about them. His work is merely a “hobby… to pass the time, not fill it.” I argue horror’s most passionate taxidermist comes in the form of an Oreo-loving, vampire-killing, pot-smoking grandpa who may or may not be a member of the undead.
Grandpa, “Talk about a Texas Chainsaw Massacre!”
Grandpa Emerson of The Lost Boys (1987) is an endearing figure. We first meet him playing dead to scare his family, which is the perfect segue into his home décor. His man cave’s aesthetic is Teddy Roosevelt meets the American Southwest… on a budget. It’s “a real “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” as put by his grandson, Michael. Grandpa’s taxidermy is neither threatening, as with Leatherface’s body of work, nor precise, like Norman’s. This is evidenced by the odd critters he decides to preserve and gift his family (and dates!).
Maybe all the stuffed animals in Grandpa’s house are decoys for Santa Clara’s vampires, to throw them off the living humans inside. After all, he saves his whole family from the vamps. When I think of horror taxidermists, Grandpa always comes before Norman Bates. I prefer my taxidermists to be heroes.
My grandpa won competitions and awards with his taxidermy. In a feature for Minnesota’s Detroit Lakes Tribune, he was cited as a mentor for a local man getting into the craft, particularly woodcarving and painting fish. “He (Waldron) said, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but you could use some help with your painting.’” (Bowe, 2010).
Being a lineman for most of his adult life, the profession took a toll on his body. He became addicted to opioids in his 70s, resulting in a downslide physically and mentally. He passed away in 2024.
I still have the sunny he preserved for me; one we caught together on the lake. Funny, he always reminded me of Quint from Jaws, with his torn hat, mustache, and rough hands. Quint just didn’t have the artistry in him, I suppose: “Back home, I have a taxidermy man! He’s gonna have a heart attack when he sees what I brought him!”
Last year for 420, the great Sharai Bohannon hit you with the Top 5 Stoner Horror Movies on streaming. To celebrate 420 this year, we’re expanding our scope with horror movies to watch when you’re super stoned. There is a difference, you see. Movies don’t have to be about stoners in order to appeal to the righteously baked. Let’s jump right into it, before that edible kicks in.
5. Hausu (1977)
The only reason Hausu is ranked so low is that you may not speak Japanese. If you don’t, subtitles will likely be a struggle to keep up with. However, you don’t really need subtitles to keep up with Hausu. Obayashi Nobuhiko’s surrealist classic isn’t about plot. A witch is sucking the youth out of schoolgirls by killing them one by one. It’s not hard to parse. What Hausu is really about is giving you the brain-scrambles in every possible way.
Scenes as simple as schoolgirls getting on a bus are presented in a kaleidoscopic, colorful barrage of imagery. So imagine how it looks once the story actually gets balls-to-the-wall nuts. We’re talking characters being eaten by pianos and turning into piles of bananas. It’s wild, and it’s impossible to predict what’s around the next corner. However, the movie’s nonstop sense of fun is a safety net that should prevent you from getting too overwhelmed.
Hausu (1977) is currently streaming for free on Plex.
4. Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)
Honestly, being stoned could only improve this latter installment in the Amityville Horror franchise. You might not be alert enough to notice just how low budget this haunted house sequel is. This will allow you to focus on just how bananas its goopy, special effects-heavy time travel story gets. Between the inscrutable character motivations and creative visuals, it’s dreamlike in the best possible way.
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992) is currently streaming for free on Plex.
3. Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)
There’s nothing better than a post-Elm Street sequel to a straightforward pre-Elm Street slasher. Wes Craven’s 1984 classic was a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart of the slasher genre. However, its supernatural premise meant that copycat filmmakers had to shift their priorities as the slasher boom continued. It doesn’t matter a lick that the original Slumber Party Massacre had no supernatural elements. Its sequel’s a straight-up musical about a dream killer bearing an electric guitar with a giant drill bit on it. You just gotta roll with it. This movie also features some gloriously gross, cheesy nightmare sequences that stand among the best of the Elm Street ripoffs. Nothing could possibly dilate your stoned pupils more than the “evil chicken” or “exploding pimple” sequences. It’s also just 77 minutes long. Even if you’ve overestimated how much awakeness you had left in you, you can get through it.
Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) is currently streaming for free on Plex.
2. Suspiria (1977)
Dario Argento’s Suspiria is probably the most intense movie on this list in terms of its horror elements. So be warned. However, its purity as a visual experience is unmatched in the horror genre. Many filmmakers have tried and failed to recapture its color-drenched nightmare logic. Everything in the movie, from the plot to the aesthetic, feels simultaneously bizarre and perfectly ordered. Of course that woman has fallen into a room full of barbed wire. Of course that scene of a corpse crashing through a stained-glass ceiling is beautiful enough to make you weep. Honestly, maybe being stoned will get you onto whatever plane is required to fully pick up what it’s putting down.
Suspiria (1977) is currently streaming for free on Kanopy and Plex (which is a friend to all stoners, apparently).
1. Killer Party (1986)
Killer Party is also a post-Nightmare on Elm Street slasher. However, the liberties it takes with the genre are even more unhinged. It’s simultaneously a sorority slasher, a college comedy, and… well, I shouldn’t spoil that last subgenre. It’s a lot of different movies at once, all of which are perfectly designed to appeal to the stoned palate. Plus, its opening sequence within an opening sequence within an opening sequence should unlock your galaxy brain headspace right away.
Honorable Mention: Idle Hands (1999)
This title was already on Sharai’s list, otherwise it would have been at the top of mine. Not only is it a movie about stoners, but it’s a damn delightful horror-comedy thrill ride. 1990s horror icon Devon Sawa stars as a lazy young man whose hand is possessed by a homicidal demon. Things only get kookier from there.
Someone calls you on the phone. Already, this is a nightmare, but we’re not at the scary part yet. Let’s pretend you answer it. They ask, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” Your pulse races, sweat builds on your brow, and your voice begins to quiver. If you’re anything like me, this just became your favorite conversation ever. I love horror. The rush of a jump scare. The artistry of a well-executed kill. The familiarity of a formula and the thrill of upended expectations. Horror is malleable; there are at least as many fears as there are people on Earth, and my favorite subset is the Slasher.
What Defines Slasher Horror and Why It Resonates
What do I mean by Slasher? Not to be confused with slash fiction, which has its own merits, the dictionary definition reads thusly: a horror movie, especially one in which victims (typically women or teenagers) are slashed with knives and razors.
Simple. Clean. Anything but easy. For every The Strangers, there’s a The Strangers – Chapter Three. But the takeaway, at least my focus here, is that the killers in these movies are human, attack with everyday means, and therefore can be defeated by everyday means. And I find them extremely inspiring.
Supernatural Horror vs Slasher Horror: Where Hope Disappears
Hereditary is an astoundingly original and disturbing horror film with an ending that betrays everything that came before it. I absolutely loved jumping at every mouth click, the eerie presence of being watched by white-clad cultists, and a mother’s descent into madness brought on by generational trauma. I was all in! Then came the demon king Paimon. Any human connection we had, and the unrelenting tragedy the Graham family has had to endure, seems to have been for naught.
It is my contention that the film loses all of its dramatic umph the moment Toni Collette starts climbing walls and sawing off her head. You can’t beat a demon! You never had a chance. I love supernatural horror (my favorite series of any genre is The Evil Dead), but it does not leave you any room for victory, for the audience to think that “YES WE’VE WON” before having the rug pulled out from under once again (see Drag Me To Hell for the exception, not the rule). I like Midsommar more for that very reason; Florence Pugh’s Dani makes a choice. The horror comes because of human action, not an overpowering of it.
Why Human Villains Make Horror More Relatable and Beatable
People scare me. Aliens, ghosts, ghouls, imps, devils, and the like also scare me. But when a film’s villain is decidedly human, the horror hits harder because it can happen to us. Slashers deal with “the real” (again: knives, razors); they can be defeated. No film franchise better exemplifies this than Scream. In the first Scream, we see Sydney and the rest of the Scooby Gang kick/punch/evade Ghostface as he gets knocked down, falls, stumbles, and bumbles his way through the film while also scaring the ever-living crap out of some teens. These trips and slips add a layer of relatability to our evil purser.
I may not be able to see myself terrorizing an entire high school, but I sure know it hurts to fall down the stairs. Ghostface is the ur-example of defeatability. Yes, he gets up again, but part of the genius is that there typically are two (or more) people sharing a mask, so whoever just took a stomach kick or a tumble on the lawn probably has some rest time between games, as it were. This faceless evil is seemingly everywhere, popping out from any doorway and around every corner, but we can defeat it with a well-placed shove or a bullet to the head.
How the Scream Franchise Shows Horror Villains Can Be Defeated
Scream 2 followed much of the same suit (and taught us to never underestimate Laurie Metcalf). Give or take your suspension of disbelief about how good voice changers have gotten, the same could be said for Scream 3 and the return to form of Scream 4.
Where the franchise begins to lose its luster is in 5CREAM (pronounced as intended five cream). A fairly fun reboot until the appearance of one Billy Ghost Gruff. The moment we bring in ghosts (or visions brought on by blood memory, however they explained Billy Loomis showing up) into a slasher, out goes the fun and the understanding that this is something to be defeated.
Scream 6 has some great bits, but Ghostface doesn’t need a gun to scare us, and the less said about Scream 7, the better.
Horror Sequels and the Problem With Unkillable Villains
We want someone to survive. Not always (see any Final Destination), but if a horror film has done its job well, we should care about the characters and what has happened to them. That is, until we see them go through the same circumstances again and again and again, and this time with roman numerals.
Let’s take a look at Laurie Strode. In the original Halloween, she survives vicious attacks by Michael Myers, who is just a guy. A scary guy for sure. A guy with “no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong”. But a guy nonetheless. We see his face!
People forget that Michael’s mask comes off, and there in all terrifying glory is… a dude who looks like he gave himself the nickname T-Bone. “But what about when he is shot and falls out of a second-story window, he gets up again,” you scream at your computer, “doesn’t that prove he’s more than a man?!” That’s exactly my point. At the end of Halloween (1976), we can presume Michael will go die in the brush like an injured animal, with his disappearance serving as a stark reminder that evil is inside and around all of us. Roll credits. Cue that funky synth score and play us off, John Carpenter to never visit Haddenfield again… what’s that? Halloween was a huge success? Massive return on investment? Nevermind! Money, as they say, is the root of all evil, and that has never been more apparent than in the horror movie business.
How Horror Franchises Remove the Possibility of Victory
This is why Michael Myers came back for 6 sequels, 2 reboots, and 3 requels, not counting the solitary spinoff. Horror makes money, a lot of it. One of the best ways a new filmmaker can break in is to make a successful horror film (heck, I am trying it myself). But with the franchising comes expectations. We need bigger kills; a cast of fresh-faced future stars; our original protagonist needs to hand over the reins, but also be on call for every iteration. And the villain CAN NOT DIE.
If our face of the franchise is taken off the board, how else are we going to milk him for all he’s worth? This is how we go from Michael Myers: the escaped institutionalized murderer, to Michael Myers: the embodiment of evil, who can also infect others with it literally, not inspirationally (hashtag opposite of justice for Corey Cunningham). Or in simpler terms, they took The Slumber Party Massacre killer, who used a stolen power drill to kill with impunity, and made him the personification of rockabilly killer with a drill on an electric guitar who kills with a song in his heart and hips that don’t lie and can’t die in Slumber Party Massacre II.
Yes, objectively cool. But The Driller Killer is not someone you can outrun.
HORROR IS A MIRROR (THIS IS WRITTEN IN LIPSTICK AS SOON AS YOU GET OUT OF THE SHOWER)
Horror has the great opportunity to reflect. It is the most immediate of film genres. What is scary today can be made into a movie tomorrow. What was scary 3 decades ago is often still scary today. When we see someone in a mask with a knife in their hand, it’s perfectly understandable to run. Scream. Panic. But if in your escape, you throw a pot of hot coffee on them and they are scalded, you have a chance. You can win. And the first step in winning is believing you can.
Why Modern Horror Needs Survivable Stories Again
Horror should not always be about impossible situations. We want heroes we can root for because we see ourselves in them. We want to yell at the screen, “Don’t go in there!” because we want them to survive. Or know that we wouldn’t be that dumb to split up the group.
As horror has moved on from its slasher heyday and into “the monster is actually our trauma,” this unexpected consequence has taken a toll. Life feels incredibly hard right now because we are not seeing villains we can defeat.
The Hope at the Heart of Slasher Horror
To quote a GREAT slasher (yes, Predator is a slasher and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fabulous final girl), “If it bleeds, we can kill it”. If it bleeds, we can win. There is no great conspiracy; villains are dumber than they appear, and we’re stronger than we think.
So answer the phone, you’ll be alright.
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