e it." (Pinedo, 1999, p.45).
             A films' audience is a vital tool for analysis, the audience's knowledge, and expectations, as well as the film's target demographic. 'Slasher' films in general, (including Halloween) have a target audience the same age as the majority of the victims in the film. The audience of a slasher movie can, therefore, identify with the character onscreen, Vivian Sobchack notes that a sub-genre solely devoted to teenagers watching and awaiting their senseless annihilation emerged with Halloween in 1978. These slasher movies seem to appeal to adolescent feelings of rage and helplessness - feelings always present but specifically articulated in apocalyptic terms in an age marked by generalized nuclear fear and the particularly brutal events of the 1960s youth and antiwar movements. These films abstract and ritualize adolescent isolation, rage, and helplessness, and it's particularly interesting to note how they rigorously repress the presence of parents and families, the latter's impotence and failure an absence that necessitates an
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