Goblin (1993) watch online HD

Goblin is not a fun movie to watch, as silly movies should be. If it didn't take itself as seriously as it did, maybe I would have considered rating it a 4 or 5. I can't honestly say that the movie is fresh in my mind, (having viewed it over 5 years ago), but a bad impression that lasts as long as this one warrants a warning to my fellow movie viewers. Watch out for the Goblin.

Let me start off by saying that Goblin, directed by Todd Sheets, is not a perfect movie. It's quite unpolished and overall poorly executed not unlike many SOV movies. However, I believe that this movie does have a voice on gender and sexuality issues in horror movies. The same kinds of themes that Slumber Party Massacre (1982) introduced are also addressed in Goblin, in rougher and rawer ways. The main theme is the fear of men, or more specifically phallophobia.

In both movies(SPM and Goblin), the characters, principally the male ones, are very alike. They are mostly passive and occupy the stereotyped roles women are usually filling. This sparks new ways of interpreting the roles of both genders in horror movies. Apart from the fact that all men in Goblin are long-haired (and I even confounded the character of the "Lost hiker", played by Todd Sheets himself, with a short skirt-wearing woman at first), they act in a female manner, for a horror movie at least. Courageousness, usually showed by males, is actually more prominent in females, especially in the one who could be the easiest to be victimized, Sherry, played by Kim Alber, who is pregnant. Whilst one of the male character arduously does "kill" the goblin, it's the character of Tammy, played by Jenny Admire, that is the first one to help constructively her friends by calling for help in the police car. What is interesting to note is also the fact that the survival rate in this movie is high. Where we usually see one or two survivors in typical horror movies, in Goblin, there is actually five survivors, including three women.

Where in Slumber Party Massacre, the main character is afraid of losing her virginity, therefore projecting her fears into a driller killer (the fantastic nature of her fears are actually exploited in a less subtle manner in Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) ), in Goblin, fear of actual rape is exploited. First of all, the Goblin is a half-man, half-creature figure. It seems to be controlled by his instinct, acting in a very animalistic manner. But it could very well be a masked man. Because of that, his identity remains a secret and he could be any man, even one of the male characters. This Goblin figure becomes the symbolic rapist, that any male can become. Most of the death scenes in Goblin are similar physically and metaphorically to an actual rape. The multiple tools used by the killer imitate a penis. The most obvious reference is the death scene in the ladder where some kind of a scythe is used to impale the woman in her genital area. What ensues most of these scenes is the disembowelment of the body of the victims. The killer then fiddles with what came out of the body. The camera usually and closely lingers on the flesh. The ritualistic manner in which these scenes take place, combining them with the way the victims are killed (by impalement), seems to imitate a rape, both physically and psychologically. Rape victims often describe a great feeling of emptiness after their traumatic experience. The disembowelment seems to represent physically this feeling and the way the killer fiddles with the remains recalls the degradation and profanation of the raped body.

Sexuality and nudity is often overbearing in horror movies, especially is recent films. A horror film seems to not be one without showing boobs or sexual intercourse. In Goblin, we get neither. Moreover, what could lead to a scene of a sexual nature is cut short or desexualize. For example, when the character of Jodie, played by Tonia Monahan, decides to change her clothes in the bathroom, the viewer, used to see female nudity in a horror movie, will expect to see breasts. However, none of that happens and the character only changes her shorts (that will later be torn by the killer). The main couples in the movie neither engage in a sexual activity or even kiss. What remains of some kind of sexuality in the movie are the murder scenes that, as I said, represent rape.

Gender and sexuality issues as social issues are nowadays very present in foreign or independent American horror movies ( A Serbian Film (2010), Anatomy from Hell (2004), Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008) )But this analysis shows that even if a independent obscure movie of a mediocre quality can have something to say on many issues. I'm waiting for the release of Goblin on DVD, I think it deserves to have a better distribution.