DeforMALity in Horror: One More Thing that Skeeves me Out.
October 7, 2008
Read a script today in which the terrifying killer is fought off by his would-be victims, who know he is a neat freak and cleverly upset his porcelain knickknack collection so as to make him lose his shit.
This is not the first time that OCD or other hospital-corners fixations have been attached to bad people in movies to make them seem creepier. Actually, by my count it’s the 7001st time. Far fewer are the times that the homicidal maniac is a big old slob, which would seem more likely since homocide is such a big job it would seem to preclude thorough housekeeping.
In the same family for me are scripts in which the killers have some physical deformity. I read Wrong Turn back when it was looking for funding, and remember distinctly that the mountain men in it were described as being huge and hideous because of generations of inbreeding. Kind of taking a page from Deliverance’s backwoodsy book without actually reading that book, which is about some tiny, feeble banjo-playing people.
And it’s not just inbreeding. I’ve read lots of other stories involving a mentally or physcially disordered killer, including a script where the killer is afflicted with albinism and I was supposed to be scared by him touching the the creamy white skin of some kidnapped girl with his own…creamy white skin.
I guess it’s possible that being afflicted with a physical deformity could make you more likely to want to kill other people in ridiculous ways. And i definitely agree that people with mental disorders lend themselves to horror since there have been killers with such disorders in real life.
Still, I don’t like it. Unless it’s done very well, this sort of thing makes me go all cringey.
When you present a killer as having some sort of deformity or impairment, once i get past your lingering shots of their stump hand or pink eyes, lovingly grotesqued up by Rick Baker if you’re lucky, I still find them way less terrifying than other, less deformo characters. Possibly this is because I have hospital corners tendencies myself, but mostly I think it’s because it’s so easy and convenient to distance ourselves from the scary stuff by lumping it under the heading of “different,” or “not like anyone i know,” and there’s no heading that says that better than a physical or mental deformity. On the other hand, Ted Bundy has me practically peeing my pants when I hear his name because he looks like everyone and his smile only looks creepy when you know he used it to kill.
So unless a writer creates a very specific psychosis for their villain based on his or her deformity, i’m almost always going to respond better to a story with a good-looking killer with all his fingers and toes. And anyway, do albinos and inbreeders and *sharp intake of breath* very neat people really need yet another reason for people to look at them like they have the plague?
I should close with the caveat that all of the above doesn’t apply to the mentally retarded. I think they are aching to be stood next to the albinos and the OCD-havers as the next slasher to do some crazy, evil crimes. Am I right? I mean, these people have been confined to a portrait of innocent and good-temperedness for long enough! Probably because the people who make movies about mentally retarded characters are Oscar hounds and they know that horror movies with non-retarded physical or mentally disordered characters is a thankless labor of love, not a fucking accolade party. Case in point, where’s this guy’s oscar?
He acted his inbred heart out for you for NOTHING!
(It’s a sin to shoot a mockingbird, you know.)
The classic Horror Critics (particularly Julia Kristeva) discussed this subject in depth, the idea the fear is induced by showing “ugly things”, specifically called “The Abject” (this includes deformity, poop or piss, vomit, and other things we are taught not to put in our pieholes). The idea is that we want to be dirty as children, and our parents and society teach us to rid ourselves of that want to make mud pies and eat our boogers and to be neat, tidy, and clean. Therefore, seeing those things in abundance onscreen, we get shaken up by what makes us uncomfortable as well as getting a euphoria from it because that’s how we originally began. Take that society! As horror is wont to do.
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabjectmain.html
That’s probably where that neatnick serial killer thing comes from too, an example of societal needs overpowering and driving a person crazy. And the whole thought that if you’re a sloppy killer they’ll probably find you faster.
AMEN!!!! I whole-heartedly agree with you.
Horror remakes such as Black Christmas, The Hills have Eyes, and then newer, more violent film such as SAW, can be fun to watch, but they dont creep me out, cos I know its all based on fiction.
but movies like ED GEIN (the old one… from the 1990s, not the new recent one) really creeped me out and gave me nightmares, because that was based on a true story. Ed Gein was a shy socially reclusive man who looked like he culdnt harm a fly, but he was a blood-thirsty serial killer. It freaked me out for weeks and I was too scared to go outside of the house.
serial killers are way more scary than big ugly deformed monsters.
Jeffrey Dahmer is scarier than Jason Voorhees.
The antagonist is invariably monstrous - terrifying (a giant) or somehow deformed (scarred). In the EPIC OF GILGAMESH, the heroes confront the gigantic Humbaba. In the ODYSSEY, Odysseus outwits the one-eyed Cyclops. James Bond’s opponent in DR NO had metal hands - later, in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, he was up against a man with a prominent facial scar and, in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, a guy with a third nipple.
What makes ED GEIN, and others like it, so creepy is that the monstrosity is hidden. But, typically, the story will establish the antagonist as a character whose moral monstrosity is externalised as physical deformity. It would be foolish to consider this un-PC, or politically incorrect, because it is the way that stories work and always have done.
True - we could all do with being a bit smarter in the way we present the villain. The antagonist is always the ‘other’, which means there will always be a tendency to make the villain foreign or ugly or both. It takes a more grown-up attitude to recognise that the ‘other’ is much closer to ourselves than that. The ‘other’ can be a terrorist with a hook instead of a hand. He can also be our next-door neighbour.
But it is the function of the antagonist to bear the scars of their otherness. Without their inherent monstrosity, where would all our villains be?
http://www.scriptdoc.blogspot.com
All good points. I was recently inspired to do a piece for Fangoria about “what is going to scare us in the future..” with Bruce Campbell (whom I recently interviewed) Rob Zombie, Jeffrey Combs, Tom Savini….et al - but I lost my interest in the subject. Horror is becoming increasingly shocking and violent and the STORY is being left behind. They keep making Saw movies!
From where I sit (I’m a writer with a start-up prodco) I don’t know what to do. That’s retorical because I do know what to do. Not pitching to anyone but I have a wonderful horror flick that I’ve tweaked for four years. My antagonist is gay. He’s handsome and a productive member of society. He’s artistic too (must be a Virgo). The story has three elements to it: antagonist makes art with living humans (think of a CSI autopsy meets Vincent Price’s Wax Museum), the protagonist is latino (she’s attempting to escape being his next “work of art”) and there’s a love story (protagonist and male doctor are falling in love) - and it’s a trilogy.
Like the others said - Ed and Jeffrey are horrifying because they are real but who is looking for real these days?
look at all the smarty pantses on here today, many of whom have given this subject more careful consideration than me! I am flattered that people are reading.
Kind of agree with everything, and to script doc especially, i think i should refine my argument since admittedly it sounded like i was saying “why are there monsters in monster movies??” we definitely need the grotesque of the other in horror movies. I don’t watch much horror but i recognize that it serves some sort of cathartic, mythical purpose to see and be scared by things that we don’t know, just as turning the things we think we know into something scary does. what makes me cringe is when there’s a real disorder or specific deformity that is targeted. Like inbreeding or albinism or OCD. and yes, i guess there’s some PC-ness that brings on that cringe, but mainly i’m thinking, “come on. you’re going to try to put a medical name on your monster’s monstrous characteristics? it’s a monster! whether he’s hideously deformed or just actually not human it’s still a monster.” so it undercuts it for me when the writer tells me “well, he’s this monster because he’s got this genetic flaw that makes it impossible for his skin to produce pigment.” not scary to me. just kind of silly and weird. especially when, as in wrong turn, the backwoods inbreeding led to huge, 8 foot tall monsters. because everyone knows that inbreeding turns you into a skinny, pale little dude who plays banjo.
FIB is a great resource (especially when one can get a dialogue going with the blogger) because it gives those of us with our heads “elsewhere” the opportunity to check out the other side of the business.
Only in West Virginia does the in-breeding cause dudes to grow large, muscular and scary. Otherwise, you’re correct, they are systemically puny. (so your monster is from W. Virginia). Read any Siamese Twin slasher scripts lately?
No, I don’t have any.