Back when I was a budding young editorialist, I wrote a fun little piece comparing superheroes to slasher villains. While I now think that the similarities between the two fandoms are a bit more nuanced than I initially thought, with slashers often borrowing more from professional wrestling than comic books, there are still several comparisons that I stand by to this very day.
One such similarity is the widespread use of iconic masks among slasher villains. From Jason to Ghost Face, the inclusion of eerie headwear, or at least some form of over-the-top makeup, has since become a mandatory part of telling a story within the genre. However, as prevalent as this aesthetic piece of the slasher puzzle may be, it’s hard to explain exactly why this idea became so widespread in the first place. I mean, if you question any modern filmmaker attempting to create an original slasher villain, they’ll likely tell you that their antagonist wears a mask because “that’s just how it’s done.”
Unfortunately, I’ve always been an inquisitive horror fan, so that dismissive answer never quite worked for me. So let’s dive down the slasher rabbit hole and attempt to understand exactly how villainous masks became such an important part of the genre.
Naturally, the idea of masked murderers predates slasher movies by centuries. After all, the most practical application of wearing a mask is to conceal one’s identity, so it stands to reason that criminals have always worn face coverings in order to avoid getting recognized. That being said, there’s also a much more ancient and esoteric tradition of masks, with nearly every culture on earth having some form of ritual or ceremony involving simulated faces.
In the world of fiction, the first major killers to incorporate masks into their outfits were actually both figures from early 1900s French literature. Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera used a theater mask to conceal his corpse-like demeanor (with this design later making it onscreen via the book’s many adaptations), and Allain and Souvestre’s pulp villain Fantômas comes remarkably close to fulfilling the modern stereotype of a masked sociopath with a penchant for over-the-top crimes.
We’d see several more examples of terrifying masks in both fiction and reality as the years went by, with images of real criminals like the Zodiac Killer and Texarkana’s Phantom Killer still haunting the public consciousness to this very day, but it would be a while before this trend really took off in the world of film.
If you really think about it, the first wave of proto-slashers didn’t actually wear masks at all. Characters like Billy from 1974’s Black Christmas and the Giallo killers that inspired him were usually depicted as murderous forces of nature concealed by clever editing and POV sequences rather than physical coverings. In fact, the same can be said of Norman Bates’ disguise in 1960’s Psycho, as that killer’s cross-dressing outfit was meant to be a red herring for the audience itself.
The two major exceptions to this rule came in the form of The Town That Dreaded Sundown and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. However, both examples featured sensationalist villains inspired by real-life killers – Ed Gein, who famously skinned freshly dead women in order to make masks and other articles of necrotic clothing in Leatherface’s case, and the aforementioned Texarkana Phantom in The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
It was only with the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978 that we’d see the first modern Slasher villain that included a mask as an important part of the character’s fictional mythology. As I’ve mentioned before in previous articles, I’ve always been partial to the interpretation that the hastily altered William Shatner mask that Michael Myers steals at the beginning of the movie is meant to symbolize that the boogeyman is dressing up as a “human being” for Halloween, which is also why the script refers to Michael as “The Shape” throughout his killing spree.
In a way, this take on Myers’ mask actually harkens back to the ancient origins of ritualistic face-coverings, which is another reason why the killer’s design struck a chord with so many viewers.
With the success of Halloween, filmmakers everywhere began using masks to signify that their villains had become more than human. The first Friday the 13th movie may have been more of a Giallo-inspired whodunnit, but the sequels immediately began experimenting with masks in order to create their own easily-recognizable horror icon. While Part II’s Jason was a bit too similar to Texarkana’s Phantom Killer, Part III’s hockey mask turned him into the face of the genre.
I think Jason is an especially great example of this because, though the hockey mask by itself doesn’t really mean anything for the character, the bone-white visage gives him an abstract resemblance to a skeleton. This is another reason why my favorite Jason design comes from that crossover comic where Ash Williams chainsaws half of his mask off and reveals a toothy undead grin that leaves Voorhees looking like the Grim Reaper. The less detailed face also reminds me of the design philosophy behind H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph, where the lack of discernible eyes makes it hard to tell if the creature is looking directly at you during any given moment.
In any case, the idea of using masks to elevate human killers to movie monsters would eventually be adapted by Masters of Horror like Wes Craven. The late director even claimed that he always envisioned the Ghost Face killers as becoming slightly superhuman once they had donned the iconic Fun World outfit, which I think is an appropriately meta philosophy for the Scream series.
As the years went by, folks grew up with the masked killer trend fueling their favorite scary movies, so it’s only natural that new generations of filmmakers would continue to emulate the elements that made their favorite Slashers so memorable. That’s how the cycle of nostalgia helped to keep this trend alive for so long, with most modern horror movies not even meaning for these masks to reference any specific film or character.
In fact, I’d argue that there’s more variety in the current slasher landscape than we ever saw during the genre’s “original” run. From The Grabber’s multi-faceted demon face to Little Death’s air-conditioning vent head, slasher masks have evolved into an art form in and of themselves, and I can’t wait to see where the genre takes these killer faces next.
