Secret Motivations

 Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Often, in horror stories and films, a secret, past or present, drives and directs protagonists' or antagonists' actions:

Schizophrenia (Norman Bates [Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film adaptation of Robert Bloch's 1959 novel Psycho], Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill, and David Calloway [John Polson's 2005 film Hide and Seek]);

crimes of various kinds (Marion Crane's adultery and theft and Norman Bates's murder in Psycho; Grace Newman's murders in Alejandr Amenábar's 2001 film The Others; Freddy Kreuger's murders in Wes Craven's 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street; the teenage friends' murder in Jim Gillespie's 1997 film adaptation of Lois Duncan's 1973 novel I Know What You Did Last Summer; Horrocks's wife's adultery with Raut in H. G. Wells's 1895 short story “The Cone”;

deceit or betrayal (Marion Crane's adultery and her theft of her employer's money in Psycho; the adultery of Horrocks's wife and lover Raut in “The Cone”; the teenage characters' attempt to cover up what they believed to be their killing of a man in I Know What You Did Last Summer);

sexual deviance (voyeurism in Michael Powell's 1960 film Peeping Tom, Victor Zarcoff's 2016 film 13 Cameras, and Psycho; lesbianism in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca and Shirley Jackson's 1959 Gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House; transvestism in Hitchcock's Psycho, Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill, Jonathan Deeme's 1991 film adaption of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs; and transgenderism in Robert Hiltzik's 1983 film Sleepaway Camp; and sadism (Robert Harmon's 1986 film The Hitcher);

past psychological trauma (the denial of Angela Baker true sex and gender in Sleepaway Camp and Carrie White's victimization by high school bullies in Stephen King's 1979 novel Carrie and Brian De Palma's 1974 film adaptation of the book);

vengeance (many horror stories and movies, including Edgar Allan Poe's 1846 short story “The Cask of the Amontillado,” “The Cone,” A Nightmare on Elm Street, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and a host of others); and

suggestibility (the narrator-protagonits's runaway imagination in H. G. Wells's 1894 short story “The Red Room” and, possibly, the protagonist of Bram Stoker's 1891 short story “The Judge's House” and his 1914 short story “Dracula's Guest”).

As we can see, the same story or film may contain multiple instances of secret motivators: Hitchcock's Psycho contains two characters, Marion Crane and Norman Bates, who, between them, are driven by no fewer than four types of secrets: schizophrenia, crime (murder), sexual deviance (voyeurism) (Bates) and deceit or betrayal (adultery), and crime (theft) (Crane).

On the surface, such characters appear to be normal and to be motivated by ordinary drives, such as the need to nurture, the pursuit of profit, affiliation, pleasure, leisure, generosity, and kindness. The normal, apparent motivations of these characters seem to “explain” them; in reality, however, they merely disguise their true desires, aims, and purposes; they are red herrings, not clues, to the nature of the characters, fictitious personas that allow the characters to act without arousing suspicion. Marion Crane is a thief, but she poses as a traveler. The protagonist of Peeping Tom and the landlord in 13 Cameras are both voyeurs and murderers, but the former poses as a photographer, the latter as nothing more than a landlord. Horrocks, in “The Cone,” is a vengeful victim of adultery, but he poses as a tour guide of sorts. The schizophrenic in Hide and Seek poses as a nothing more than a psychiatrist who has his daughter Emily's psychological welfare at heart.

The disguise of normality is also disarming. It suggests that dangerous characters are either harmless of beneficial: a motel owner, teenage friends, scientists, a camper, a mother, a doctor. The disguise of normality makes it easier for such characters to stalk and slay their prey. Indeed, such characters can even appear to be the victim, rather than the victimizer, to him- or herself, if not to the public (although they often appear to be the victim to the public as well, at least for a time): David Calloway and Grace Newman are examples.

Stories and films in which a secret is at the heart of one or more characters, whether protagonist or antagonist or both, suggest a threefold division of plot: Part I: Appearance is maintained through the adopted persona; Part II: the character's secret is discovered or revealed; and Part III: reality is exhibited as the character's true identity is perceived.

Characters + Twist = Outcome

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

It's possible to analyze the plot dynamics of horror fiction, whether a particular narrative or drama takes the form of a novel, a short story, a narrative poem, or a movie), in a variety of ways.

In the scheme proposed in this post, two (occasionally, more) characters are involved in a relationship of some sort, and an unknown, unusual or extraordinary twist causes or facilitates a significant outcome, which may or may not be catastrophic.

Movie: Hide and Seek (2005)

Characters: Dr. David Calloway and Emily Calloway

Relationship: Father and daughter

Twist: David is schizophrenic; he has an alter ego called "Charlie"

Outcome:  Charlie is killed after he attacks Emily (murder and attempted murder)

Movie: The Exorcist (1973)

Characters: Father Damien Karras and Regan MacNeil

Relationship: Father Karras, an exorcist, exorcises demon-possessed Regan

Twist: The demon possesses its true target, Father Karras

Outcome: Father Karras commits suicide, but Regan is delivered (deliverance)

Movie: The Others (2001)

Characters: Grace Stewart, Anne Stewart, and Nicholas Stewart

Relationship: Grace is the mother of Anne and Nicholas

Twist: Grace and her children are ghosts

Outcome: Grace discovers that she is in Limbo after having killed Anne and Nicholas and murdered herself (discovery of truth)

 

 Movie: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Characters: Malcolm Crowe and Cole Sear

Relationship: Malcolm is a psychologist; Nathan is one of his patients

Twist: Malcolm discovers he is a ghost (discovery of truth)

Outcome: Malcolm is able to rest in peace (acceptance)

Movie: Psycho (1960)

Characters: Norman Bates and his “mother”

Relationship: Norman is a motel owner; he lives with and takes care of his mother

Twist:  Norman is schizophrenic; “Mother” is Norman's alter ego, who kills a motel guest

Outcome: “Mother” completely takes over Norman's mind (destruction of personality)

Movie: The Most Dangerous Game (1924)

Characters: Sanger Rainsford and General Zarof

Relationship: Rainsford is Zaroff's guest

Twist: Zaroff hunts Rainsford

Outcome: Rainsford survives, after killing Zaroff (implied) (survival)

Horror Fiction: The Appeal to the Need to Escape

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In advertisements, the need to escape, Jib Fowles informs the readers of Mass Advertising as Social Forecast, is often figurative, referring to the need to get away from it all for a bit of rest and relaxation. For this reason, the need to escape is often associated with pleasure, and it need not be “solitary.” Two or more people can “escape together into the mountaintops” or to a resort, or a couple may escape on a romantic getaway designed for just the two of them.

Of course, an escape can be literal, too. One can seek to escape from physical danger or incarceration. The type of escape in horror fiction may start with the former type of escape, as it does in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), and turn into the latter type of escape, or it may begin with a trapped or imprisoned character seeking to escape from his or her confines, as in Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), Hide and Seek (2005), or the series of Saw (2004-present) movies. In horror, after all, the theme is loss. In the case of horror fiction that appeals to the need for escape, escape is difficult or impossible, and it is likely to be denied altogether, although, in rare cases, escape may be permitted.

“The Pit and the Pendulum”: Poe's short story was inspired by his reading of an account of Napoleon Bonaparte's general, Antoine Charles Louis, Comte de Lasalle's, visit to the Palace of the Inquisition in Toledo, Spain, after his entry into the city. As Kevin J. Hayes points out in The Annotated Poe, Poe alters the sequence of events as they were reported in his source, “Anecdote towards the History of the Spanish Inquisition,” having the general arrive after his own story's protagonist has been sentenced to death, so that the Inquisition's enemy can rescue the condemned prisoner just before he is killed, thereby preserving his narrative's “tension and terror.” Poe's story is a relatively rare example of a protagonist who escapes his horrific fate, thanks to the intervention of another.

Hide and Seek: After the suicide of his wife, Allison, psychologist David Callaway takes his nine-year-old daughter Emily to upstate New York, hoping the change of scenery will help Emily recover from the loss of her mother. Instead, Emily is placed in extreme danger: David has developed dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder. He now has both his own personality and that of the murderous “Charlie,” who emerged to murder Allison after David witnessed her being unfaithful to him during a New year's Eve party. He himself has blocked the memory of Charlie's murder of Allison and truly believes she drowned herself in their bathroom.

When David discovers he has never unpacked the boxes in the study of the house he is renting, despite having been in the room on multiple previous occasions, he realizes he has another personality. By now, he has killed again, having pushed a local woman, Elizabeth, from his daughter's bedroom window, and he kills a third time when the local sheriff questions him about Elizabeth's disappearance. His family friend, Dr. Katherine Carson, also a psychologist, pays a visit, but David shoves her down the basement stairs, where she sees the sheriff's body. David then initiates a game of hide and seek with Emily, who escapes from her bedroom, and hides in the cave in which she first encountered Charlie.

Taking the sheriff's firearm, Katherine forces her way out of the basement and discovers David hunting for Emily. After Emily distracts David, Katherine shoots him, thereby rescuing Emily. The movie provides four alternate endings. In the first, which is used in the version of the film shown to United States audiences, Emily, living with Katherine, seems well adjusted, despite the horrific trauma she has suffered. However, when she leaves the table, where she has been drawing while eating her breakfast, to accompany Katherine to school, the camera shows that she has drawn herself with two heads, suggesting that, like her father, Emily has developed multiple personality disorder, in which case she may have escaped her ordeal physically, but she has not escaped the experience mentally. In another possible ending,

Emily's drawing of herself shows her with only one head, implying that she does not have multiple personality disorder.

Like the ending shown to U. S. Audiences, alternates three, four, and five suggest that Emily has developed multiple personality disorder.

The third ending shows Emily in a bedroom. As Katherine tucks her in, she assures Emily that she loves her. As Katherine leaves the room, Emily asks her to leave the light on, but Katherine says she cannot do so. She shuts the door, which contains a screened window, and locks it from outside, revealing the bedroom's location as that of a psychiatric hospital. Emily gets out of bed, starts to count, and enters the bedroom closet, and grins at her reflection in the mirror.

The fourth alternate ending is identical to the third, except that, in this version, Emily does not count.

The fifth possibility starts the same way as the third, but the bedroom is in Emily's new home, not in a psychiatric ward. After Katherine tucks Emily into bed and reassures her that she loves her, Emily gets out of bed to play Hide and Seek with her reflection.

Although one of the five endings suggests that Emily has escaped, both physically and psychologically, from her father's murder of her mother and two other adults and his attempted murder of her, the existence of the four alternative endings imply that she is psychologically damaged and may well have developed multiple personality disorder. If, on the basis alone of the number of possible endings, we calculate the odds that Emily did, in fact, psychologically escape her ordeal, her chance of having done so is only twenty percent—not very good odds.

I Still Know What You Did last Summer: After Julie James accompanies her friends to an island resort, the holiday retreat loses power as a hurricane advances toward the island. Later, their only remaining means of communication, a two-way radio, is destroyed, and they are left alone with a killer, a fisherman named Ben whom Julie and some of her friends had thrown into a lake last summer. They'd thought they'd killed him when their vehicle, the driver of which was drunk, struck him on a mountain road.

One by one, Julie's friends are killed. Only three survive: Julie, her boyfriend Ray, who joined the party late, after evading an earlier attempt on his life, and Karla, Julie's Boston roommate. The Coast Guard rescues them, and Julie marries Ray. While he brushes his teeth, the bathroom door is shut and locked. Julie, seated on the bed in their bedroom, sees Ben under the bed. She screams, as he grabs her with the hook that replaces a long-lost limb, and she is hauled beneath the bed, her fate remaining a mystery.

Did Julie escape her past? Although she goes to the island retreat hoping to forget the painful memories and nightmares associated with her participation in the events of last summer, Julie encounters Ben again, as she and her friends are stalked, and Ben kills several of them. Julie is almost killed herself, but Ray rescues her. The Coast Guard takes them back to the mainland, and they escape the island and the hurricane.

Although she seeks happiness, marrying Ray, Julie is captured again at the end of the movie by her nemesis, and her husband and protector is locked in the bathroom. Audience members are not shown Julie's fate, but it seems she may not have escaped her past, after all. A year after he was left to die in the lake, Ben has returned to avenge himself, and he kills again, as he had a year ago. Now that he has captured Julie, it seems unlikely she will escape the doggedly persistent serial killer.

Saw series: The Saw series of horror movies focus on the lengths to which captive men and women will go to escape. “John Kramer, also called the 'Jigsaw Killer' or simply 'Jigsaw' . . . . was introduced briefly in Saw and developed in more detail in Saw II. Rather than killing his victims outright, Jigsaw traps them in situations that he calls 'tests' or 'games' to test their will to live through physical or psychological torture and believes if they survive, they will be rehabilitated.”

Ordered to kill his fellow prisoner, Adam Stanheight, by six o'clock or have his wife and daughter killed instead, Dr. Lawrence Gordon saws off his own foot to escape. After cauterizing his wound with a steam pipe, Gordon leaves Stanheight in a bathroom as he goes to save his family and obtain assistance for Stanheight, and Kramer makes Gordon his apprentice as a sort of perverse reward for having survived the test. In Saw III, flashbacks reveal that another of Gordon's apprentices, Amanda Young, kidnapped Stanheight and murdered him to put him out of his misery.

Other sequels subject other victims to a variety of other mechanical traps invented by Kramer. Kramer carves out a jigsaw-shape of flesh from subjects who failed to escape his tests to show that they lacked the “survival instinct,” a practice which led the media to refer to him as the “Jigsaw Killer.” To date, there are eight movies in the series.

Due to its gory effects, the Saw series has been severely criticized, with detractors referring to it as “torture porn.” The series certainly appeals to the need for escape in an extreme fashion, and it's not for everyone. It does suggest that the “survival instinct” is such, in some individuals, at least, that a captive subjected to physical and psychological torment will do anything to escape, but it also shows that others will not. Gordon, for example, cuts off his own foot rather than killing Stanheight and then seeks help for the man he was ordered to kill.

It appears that Kramer admires Gordon's courage, if not his altruism, because he “rewards” the doctor for defying the command he was given and finding an alternative way to escape without sacrificing either Stanheight or his own family. Perhaps it was Gordon's intelligence, as much as his courage, that Kramer admired. In any case, the fact that Kramer would “reward” Gordon shows that, despite his own cruelty and monstrous capacity for evil, there remains the ability, at least, to appreciate certain attributes of human nature that transcend those of base instincts.

It's not surprising that the horror genre would include appeals to the need to escape. What may surprise is its examination of the effects of callous behavior on surviving victims. These effects include the development of mental disorders; lifelong guilt, fear, distrust, and misery; and death, but, on occasion, they also reflect courage, compassion, and a regard for others that's greater than one's own need to escape. Horror fiction is about loss, but, as horrific as its losses are, they are not always complete, and there is the chance that victims may not only survive, but eventually live at least a semblance of normal life.

But first, of course, they have to escape.

Techniques for Devising Plot Twists

copyright 2014 by Gary Pullman

By analyzing movies which end with an unexpected twist, one may discern various techniques that writers have employed to accomplish this feat. With some overlap among a few instances, here is one classification of such techniques:

Denial: the apparent experience never happened. Example: April Fool's Day (1986): It seems that a serial killer is murdering people, but the apparent deaths are all results of practical jokes (it's April Fool's Day, after all) perpetuated by pranksters who could be gainfully employed, if they weren't so immature, as Hollywood special effects wizards.

Inversion: life is but a dream (or an hallucination). Example: When  a Stranger Calls (1979): A babysitter is terrorized by a psychotic killer who calls her repeatedly on the family's telephone—and the killer is in the house! The Descent (2005) also relies upon inversion for its plot twist, as does HighTension (2005) and Identity (2003).

Substitution: one person, place, or thing is replaced by another person, place, or thing. Example: Fallen (1998): The hero says he almost died in an ordeal, but he is possessed by the killer while he's speaking, so, in fact, it's the killer who almost dies, while the hero is already dead. Fridaythe 13th (1980) also uses this technique to generate its plot twist.

Marvelous: that which seems, in Tzvetan Todorov's terms, to be uncanny actually turns out to be marvelous (in other words, that which appears to be natural is really supernatural). Example: Carnivalof Souls (1962): A woman who believes she is the lone survivor of a car crash sees strange ghouls chasing her, but she's dead all the while. The SixthSense (1999) and TheOthers (2001) also employ the marvelous to create their plot twists.

Multiplication: e pluribus unum, reversed. Example: Scream (1986): A serial killer who stalks teens turns out to be two killers.

Impersonation: The Cabinet ofDr. Caligari (1920): A man relates his tale of madman Dr. Caligari, who along with his zombie-like henchman, committed a string of murders, but the narrator is the real madman, and he's telling his tale in an insane asylum; Caligari is, in fact, his doctor in the asylum. Angel Heart (1987), Sleepaway Camp and Saw (2004) also use impersonation to generate their plot twists.

Impersonation via split personality: a character masquerades as someone else. Example: Psycho (1960): Norman Bates seeks to cover up his mother's murders. The problem is that, years earlier, Norman killed his mother and developed a split personality: he has become both himself and his mother. This same technique generates the plot twist in Hideand Seek (2005).

Mistaken identity and Irony: through mistaken identity, something happens that is other than that which the audience has been led to expect. Example: Black Christmas (1974): When a sorority house must deal with a series of threatening telephone calls and the disappearances of some of their sisters, it is discovered that the man who dies, who is assumed to have been the killer, was not the murderer; the actual killer is still inside the house.

Duplicity: an actual situation is misrepresented to deceive someone. Example: The Wicker Man (1973): A policeman investigates a missing child on a British isle that celebrates pagan customs, but the story of the missing girl was fabricated to lure the cop to the island so that he could be sacrificed to the gods after being enclosed inside a burning "wicker man." Diabolique (1964) also uses duplicity to create its plot twist.

Jumped Conclusion: someone other than the suspect is guilty of a crime. Example: Friday the 13th (1980): In 1957, Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake; a year later, two counselors are murdered and the camp is closed. In 1979, the camp reopens, and a mysterious killer—possibly Jason, whose body was never found—begins to stalk the camp's counselors once again, but it's not Jason; it's his mother, Mrs. Vorhees. Substitution also creates the plot twist in Fallen (1998).

Unanticipated consequences: an act that is believed to effect a specific result has unanticipated consequences. Example: The Ring (2000): Rachel, a reporter investigating a video tape rumored to bring death to anyone who watches it, finds out that it is somehow tied to a mysterious young girl named Samara, whose body Rachel retrieves from a well, thereby freeing her spirit to kill again, rather than putting the ghost to rest, as Rachel believed would happen.

Irony: something happens that is other than that which the audience has been led to expect. (In a sense, most twist endings are ironic in one way or another. However, this category is reserved for plots that are intrinsically ironic: the irony results from the very nature of the storyline, rather than an element added at the end.) Example: When a Stranger Calls (1979): A babysitter is terrorized by a psychotic killer who calls her repeatedly on the family's telephone, and the killer is calling from within the house. The Mist (2007) also uses irony to create its plot twist.