HORROR: THE UNBELIEVABLE AND THE SEMI-REAL
“The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.”– Dracula, 1931
What defines horror? What connects such different films as Frankenstein (Whale, 1931), Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) and Alien ( Scott, R., 1979)? They are all movies designed to terrify and horrify their audiences. Mortality being universal, people are both frightened and fascinated by death. Film allows us a safe vantage point from which to confront death, danger, and fear. The spectacle of cinematic characters facing imminent death (generally in the form of violent and gruesome dismemberment ) both plunges the audience into fearful suspense about the characters’ fates and ultimately offers relief in the form of various reactions: “Thank God, it’s not me”; “ The monster was killed in the end”; or “ It’s only a movie”. Horror can provide the opportunity to explore and examine our fears. How do others react? How would I react? How does society react ? when confronted by something novel, dangerous, and terrifying? It has been said that horror is the least respectable of film genres. Certainly, the study of fear and social reaction to fear (in short, human behavior) is a legitimate subject of cinema. It is when fear and violence are exploited, rather than examined that film ceases to have redeeming value. Unfortunately, as the genre of horror has developed over the years, this has proven to be more the rule than the exception.
The narrative conventions of horror movies can be generalized as follows: there is a monster bent on taking human life that must be stopped. The origin of the monster varies. It is either man-made (Frankenstein, Terminator (Cameron, 1984) ); supernatural ( Dracula (Browning, 1931) , The Wolfman (Waggener, 1941), The Mummy (Freund, 1932) ); extraterrestrial (The Thing (Nyby, Hawks, 1951), The Blob (Yeaworth, Jr., 1958), Alien); or born of a disturbed, internal psychological state (Psycho, Halloween (Carpenter, 1978) ). The threat posed by the monster is usually a novel one. Society has either not forseen its existence or refuses to believe the threat posed by the monster is real. The hero or heroine, sometimes acting alone, sometimes in combination with others, must find both the courage and knowledge (of the monster’s true nature) in order to defeat it. The monster is ultimately killed or contained, but evil or the threat of evil remains constant.
Horror films have evolved over time, reflecting and reacting to society’s changing attitudes and fears. Early horror films of the 1920s and 30’s were rooted in Victorian literature and European folklore. The horrors of World War One, which saw millions slaughtered in mindless trench warfare, and the Great Depression served to undermine the belief in civilization and inevitable Progress. Science had failed; either to forestall disaster or explain it. There was a receptive audience for the images that horror films offered: of German scientists run amok ( The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Weine, Germany, 1919) and Frankenstein); evil from Central Europe (Dracula); or uncovered by imperialist British expeditions in Egypt (The Mummy). Horror films of the 1950s such as The Thing, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956) reflected the Cold War fear and paranoia of the nuclear age: what if aliens had a secret weapon and advanced technology and used it to conquer us?; Communists used brainwashing to control its people and agents. How could we spot a Communist (or an alien) if they looked just like us? The dark violence of the 1960s (the Richard Speck murders, Vietnam War atrocities such as the My Lai Massacre, the Manson family murders) shook America’s faith in itself. We were the good guys, what happened to us ? The answer was that we had been possessed by evil, an idea incorporated in such films as Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968) and The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973). In the 1970s, two trends in horror films emerged which remain dominant to this day–the “slasher”movie and the blurring of horror and real-life crime. Psycho, which could be described as the first “slasher “ film, was notable for several things: the use of the killer’s point-of-view (which simultaneously created an identification between the killer and viewer and a distance between the victim and viewer); and the use of psychology (rather than theology or folklore) to explain the killer’s motivation. It also shared a common lineage with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974). Both films were based on the real-life crimes of Ed Gein.
The slasher film has established itself as the quintessential horror film (or horror sub-genre, if you will). The commercial success of movies such as Halloween, Friday the 13th (Cunningham, Sean S., 1980), Nightmare On Elm Street ( Craven, 1984), and Scream (Craven, 1996) and their numerous sequels guarantees the continued presence of “slasher” films for some time to come. The conventions of “slasher” narrative (or what passes for narrative) is as follows: young people (though more commonly, sexually active young women) are stalked by a psychopathic killer. They are often killed in a post-coital state and are therefore either naked or half-dressed when penetrated repeatedly by their assailant’s large knife. Eventually, the hero or heroine (virginal or relatively virtuous), alone or with others, succeeds in killing the killer. Or at least until his incarnation in the following sequel.
The wishful thinking of certain feminist film critics aside, the “slasher’ picture is indeed the embodiment of the sadistic male gaze. Female terror is neither cover nor code for male terror; male characters are not victimized in the same psycho-sexual manner; they are not castrated, nor raped, nor tortured, nor terrorized in remotely the same way as their female counterparts. Female terror is not, not an “enabling” device for men to feel comfortable with their own fears; conversely, the murderous nature of the killer’s attack on an attractive young woman might, in fact, “enable’” a young male’s sexual assault of a woman. After all, if he doesn’t chop her up into little pieces afterwards, he hasn’t done anything (relatively) that bad, has he? And as these movies show, the victims “ask for it”, anyway: either by being promiscuous, or dressing provocatively, or by stupidly putting themselves in the killer’s path. What makes the “slasher “ film so offensive and without redeeming social or artistic value is its legitimization and reinforcement of the the worst images and instincts: aggression towards others; callousness towards victims; others’ pain as entertainment; others’ terror as a means of transcending one’s own sense of vulnerability and fear.
Even more disturbing than the proliferation and continued success of the “slasher” genre (whose audience is primarily limited to young males and young women seeking their company) is the relatively new phenomenon of the pseudo-realistic serial killer/ police procedural/ thriller, films such as Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991), Seven (Fincher,1995) and Copycat (Amiel, 1995) ). These are big-budget, A-pictures, directed by name directors, featuring respected and well-known actors. They are meant to appeal to a wider audience. These movies uphold serial killers as geniuses, great intellects gone a little too far. They affect distaste and outrage at what they are selling, scenes of psychopathic horror. By using real-life crime and police procedure, these films have succeeded in blurring reality and film. Murder as entertainment, murder as grist for movies, and finally, movies as the inspiration for murder. At least two couples went on killing sprees inspired by Natural Born Killers ( Stone, 1994). Three kids murdered one of their mothers in order to get the money to buy a Scream Halloween costume. The killers of Columbine pondered which director would film their life story, Spielberg or Tarantino? Nothing is real until it makes it to the Big Screen, and then, even then, it’s only a movie.
Hollywood can issue all the disclaimers it wants that there’s no connection between violent imagery and off-screen violence but the fact that the studios spend millions advertising their films ( i.e., influencing the public through imagery) speaks louder. The fact that no one’s made a Columbine movie yet seems to suggest that Hollywood is laying low. For the moment, anyway. The monster (of real violence, aided and abetted by the legitimacy movies confer) is still out there; every week brings news of another killing spree. Hollywood filmmakers bear a moral responsibility for what they portray and the manner in which they portray it. Real serial killers, at least, are unable to profit financially from their crimes. Life might be cheap but movies cost money. Hollywood ‘s serial murders make the studios a fortune and their consciences are clear.
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