Contradicting Popular Opinion:
A.K.A.
An Enquiry Concerning the Importance of Horror
Readers of this column have probably noticed my respect for horror flicks. Scary films, monster movies and even slashers tend to be a lot more important than people realize. As we are approaching Halloween, it only seems appropriate to be talking about such matters.
Zeitgeist
Quick, name the Oscar winner for best picture released in 1933!
The answer is Calvalcade, based on a Noel Coward play. Most people don’t know a damn thing about it. Kate Hepburn won an Oscar that year for Morning Glory. I’m not sure how many of you have seen that film either.
But there is a movie from 1933 that you do know about even if you haven’t seen it yourself. A movie that is part of our collective unconscious. A movie that is being remade by Peter Jackson.
King Kong.
To the best of my knowledge, Kong has never won an award (aside from national film registry). But we all know what King Kong is. In terms of importance, King Kong is a more memorable film. It is a more important film.
But beyond all that King Kong is a better film. It is tight. It is remarkably paced. It has dazzling creatures with more personality than 99.9% of modern CGI monsters.
Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street: these are the movies that stay with us, whether they exist as “classics” or rites of passage, or simply as good films. (Of the films in this hastily slapped together list, Exorcist is probably my least favorite, but in terms of cultural impact few films surpass it.)
Understanding the Monster
Few pay attention to the messages of monster movies. And in part because of that thing, the films can say so much. The good monster film is subversive. It’s counter-culture.
There is much to be said on this topic, so I’m going to stick to one type of monster for now, the vampire.
( I hear that IP’s own Alex Lucard is one you know!)
Why the vampire? Because Lucard wrote about them this week, and because I already have an e-mail to DC where I explained our society’s confusion with movie vampires.
I know; I’m lazy.
Vampire movies are complex. Interview with a Vampire is basically the story of gay men, as actual blood sucking monsters, adopting a child. Near Dark essentially has the vampires as a punk band. Cronos is about vampirism as vanity. Blood and Donuts is a movie about the futility of the repressed life. The Blade Trilogy has vampires as “Whitey,” the man, the oppressor coupled with a power fantasy of revolution. Subspecies might have vampirism as aristocracy, making the transformation of the heroine something of a Pygmallion story.
Collectively, we all know what vampires are, but we don’t know what to do with them. Are they punks (like in Near Dark or The Forsaken ), upperclass (like in SubSpecies or Blade ), homosexuals( i.e. anything Ann Rice), pedophiles (again Anne Rice), or merely exotic rough sex specialists (Coppola’s Dracula, Lugosi, that Jim Carrey Vampire movie, etc)?
Is blood-drinking a sexual fluid swap? Or is it a religious communion? Or is it a attack from a predator? It can be all three, but only in the hands of a skilled film-maker. Since there are only about half dozen of those…
Oh, I listed a bunch of movies just then. Do not take me mentioning a movie as a recommendation. Approach all vampire movies with caution, for many are quite retched.
Equality
Horror flicks, slasher films in particular, are typically portrayed as viewing women negatively. They have a anti-woman stigma.
If we look deeper into the movies, however, we’ll see that this isn’t really the case. Horror movies have female leads. Nancy bests Freddy, Ripley fights the Aliens, Laurie outlasts Michael Myers. And the good horror movies will have female leads who are not punished for acting a sexual manner. These women don’t survive because they are virgins, but because they are smarter and tougher than those around them.
Really the “virginal” rule applies to mainstream movies more than horror films. Fucking Forest Gump punishes its female lead for her sexuality. Hollywood movies often have the sexually active woman as either some sort of psychopath (Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, etc.) or cannon fodder.
The same thing is true if you change gender to race. Horror films often have strong black characters. The best example here is Ben from Night of the Living Dead. Ben is the competent, the strongest person in the movie. Ben is the lead in a white movie.
He just happens to be black.
Most mainstream American movies to this day don’t have such characters. Oh he’s the black guy, he’s speaks in jive and has a big dick. Or he’s just a f*cking clown. Do I even need to provide examples of this shit?
Gore is good.
A lot of people have a very negative view of gore in films. As a whole, our culture seems divided about this thing. Censors are quick to trim scenes in movies featuring blood and guts. (This is especially true since the rise of the home video in the 80s.) Yet, in some ways we are drawn to it.
The Passion of the Christ made a jillion dollars in the box office, as did it’s spiritual predecessor Braveheart. Those movies seem to be about the nobility and glory of bleeding.
And they win awards.
A typical action movie might feature bullets flying everywhere, arms being ripped off, brains splattering, etc. Sometimes even in front of children! But we tend to accept these things as a society.
Quentin Tarantino and his followers tend to make movies where, for lack of a better phrase, “gore is cool.” Now, I’ve heard and read Tarantino’s defenses of his movies. He is prone to say things about the level of realism in his violence as compared to summer blockbusters, or how he examines the causes and effects of violence.
Of course, those things just aren’t true, further cementing my “Quentin is an idiot savant” theory. Tarantino uses violence as a story telling tool, but is careful to draw lines as to what he shows. What you seen in his movies is never as bad as what you think you saw. Watch carefully and you will notice a lot of stuff happening off screen, in black and white, in silhouette, etc.
What is the gore that bothers us then? When does violence stop being fun and cool?
When there is consequence involved.
Film-makers like Sam Peckinpah and Wes Craven are the guys that really detest violence. So what they have done is make movies where the violence is detestable. Action movies tend to be like video games. When a bad guy his shot, he just kind of fades away. Not so, when dealing with a Wes Craven type. People get shot and they bleed. If they do die, it usually takes a bit of time.
And that is what upsets people. And that is what the censors don’t want you to see.
The body count of The Hills Have Eyes is a small fraction of Conan the Destroyer. The violence of the latter is numbing. The violence in the former is horribly upsetting.
But ultimately that is what makes this type of gore better for you. It makes it life-affirming, it lifts the spirits.
“Being stabbed sucks. I’m glad I’m not that guy!”
Me too.
-Kennedy
Sources:
Grey, Ian “Sex, Stupidy and Greed” Juno Books 1997
Briggs, Joe Bob (John Bloom) “Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History” Universe Publishing 2003
