Mental Disorders and Ilnesses Will, Like Murder, Out

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Throughout the 1960s, a trend in horror movies is the human “monster.” Often the victim of a significant mental disorder or a mental illness of some kind, the “monster” frequently preys upon his or her peers: he or she is “one of us” without being one of us. Therefore, the monster seems even more terrifying, since victims have no sense of the monster's monstrosity: he or she seems just like everyone else.

Examples abound, including Psycho (1960), Peeping Tom (1960), Nightmare (1963), The Sadist (1963), and Straight-Jacket (1964).

Survivors include a sister and her boyfriend (Psycho) and a neighbor (Peeping Tom). In this subgenre of the horror film, survivors tend to be few and far between, as do heroes. A woman searching for her sister, who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and her boyfriend and a naive, but sincere, young woman who has befriended a psychotic neighbor have the right stuff: courage, loyalty, and love, in the sister's case; friendliness and compassion, in the neighbor's case. Do they survive because of these qualities, or are they simply lucky? By leaving such a question in viewers' minds, these films are unsettling: perhaps our fates do not depend on our behavior, but on pure, dumb luck.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is so familiar it need not be summarized. Anthony Perkins, as the mad transvestite killer Norman Bates, who, half the time believes he's his dead mother, provides a stand-out performance, as does his first victim, Janet Leigh, as Marion Crane. Hitchcock gives his audience some hints about Bates's state of mind: Bates's nervousness and evasiveness, the birds he's stuffed and mounted as an amateur taxidermist, his statement that “sometimes, we all go a little mad,” and his admission that he is under his mother's control. Such clues, however, don't seem to register with Crane, as they do with Detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam). (Nevertheless, both Crane and Abogast are killed.)

Peeping Tom features a camera operator's assistant, Mark Lewis, whose sideline is photographing scantily clad or nude women for a his local porn dealer and whose pastime is filming the young women he kills to capture their expressions as they are faced with their own imminent murders for a documentary work-in-progress.

Between sessions with his camera, he enjoys replaying his victims' screams as he watches their terror in the comfort of his home. The movie's back story suggests that Lewis was himself victimized by his father, a psychiatrist who subjected his son to bizarre experiments during the boy's childhood. In the last moments of the film, he becomes his own final victim.

Nightmare keeps audiences guessing. Janet sees her mother kill her father. Her mother is institutionalized. At the finishing school at which she stays, Janet has nightmares about a woman in white (her mother). A teacher takes her home, but her guardian, Henry Baxter, is not there, so the teacher leaves Janet in the care of Grace, a nurse-companion whom Henry has hired.

Janet's nightmares continue, and she is sedated when Henry returns home. When Henry's wife comes home, Janet mistakes her for the woman in her nightmare and stabs her to death, after which she is institutionalized.

Grace, who has been masquerading as the woman in white in Janet's “nightmares,” marries Henry, with whom she has conspired to deceive Janet into believing she was experiencing nightmares. Suspecting that Henry seeks to drive her mad, Grace stabs him to death, thinking the police will suspect Janet, who, Grace believes, has escaped from the institution. However, Janet has not escaped, so Grace is arrested and charged with Henry's murder.

Besides Janet's mother, who else is mad? Janet? Grace? Both?

 

An everyday incident turns into a nightmare of pain and suffering when a trio's car breaks down near a combination gas station-junkyard and a pair of sadistic serial killers on the run from the police turn up. The Sadist is horrific not only because of the acts of sadism the killers commit against their victims, but also because it shows how an ordinary inconvenience can be transformed, without reason or justification, into an orgy of violence and misery, just like (snap) that.

As in Nightmare, Straight-Jacket pits a daughter against one of her parents. This time, however, it's the youngster, Lucy, who's the villain. Her mother, Carol, hoping to marry a wealthy married man whose parents Lucy has alienated following her return home from the mental institution to which she'd been confined after murdering her husband and his mistress, commits murders, hoping Lucy will be blamed, going so far as to disguise herself as her daughter as she does so. However, despite the dead bodies, things don't go exactly as either Carol or Lucy hoped.

Although a bit far-fetched, each of these films generates suspense and fright by showing what troubles troubled characters can cause, for themselves as well as for others. Except for the murderous couple in The Sadist, the villains are everyday people—mothers, daughters, a camera operator's assistant, a motel proprietor—who happen to suffer from significant mental disorders or illnesses.

Because they are relatives or neighbors or business owners, they catch their victims with their guards down, as any of us might be caught off guard by similar human monsters disguised as fellow citizens. That is their greatest source of terror in a time in which society seemed, for many, turned upside-down and parents and children were caught not only in a generation gap, but also in a cultural war in which, for parents, society might seem to be coming apart at the seams and, for their children, tradition was a thing of the past in more ways than one.

These films frighten as much for their subtexts as they do for their violence. It may be, as Bates observes, that, “sometimes, we all go a little mad.” We just don't want to be the person who does, nor do we want to be the victim of the one who does.

Freaks of Nature (and Applied Science)

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies of the 1950s often feature bizarre freaks of nature, in the films' titles as well as in the movies themselves: The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), giant ants (Them!) (1954), Godzilla (1954), Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), Tarantula! (1955), The Mole People (1956), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), The Alligator People (1959), The Wasp Woman (1959), The Return of the Fly (1959), and on and on . . . and on.

Victims include scientists' assistants, the expedition ship's crew members, and scientists, (The Creature from the Black Lagoon); a store owner, a state trooper, an FBI agent and most of his family (Them!), ships' crews, islanders, and residents of Tokyo (Godzilla), a diver (Monster from the Ocean Floor), a scientists and a laboratory assistant (Tarantula!), an archaeologist (The Mole People), an adulteress and her lover (Attack of the Giant Leeches), a hermit handyman and a newlywed bridegroom (The Alligator People), a cosmetics company owner (The Wasp Woman), a spy, and a scientist (The Return of the Fly).

Although some victims are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, others are attacked because, as investigators or scientists, they play integral roles in the campaigns to stop the monsters or support such individuals, as the ships crews and lab assistants do. They are troops, as it were, in the perpetual war of science vs. nature.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon succumbs to massive gunfire. Sub-machine guns and flamethrowers dispatch the giant ants in Them! Godzilla is asphyxiated by a secret weapon that destroys oxygen molecules. A napalm attack, courtesy of a squadron of Air Force fighters, kills the giant tarantula of Tarantula. The Mole People find it difficult to withstand the debilitating effects of natural sunlight. Dynamite explosions end the menace of giant leeches. A faceful of carbolic acid and blunt trauma from a fall from a height is too much for the wasp woman. The Return of the Fly's human fly reverts to being only a human after the process that transformed him into a human fly is reversed. Only the fate of the alligator people is ambiguous.

These films suggest that freaks of nature are overcome—that is, annihilated—in one of two ways. Nature kills them, or they are destroyed by an application of human technology. While the Mole People are subdued by nature, the Creature of the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, the giant tarantula, the giant leeches, and the human fly are destroyed by human technology. The wasp woman is destroyed by both human technology (carbolic acid) and nature (gravity).

Interestingly, these films' freaks of nature are the spawn both of nature itself and of human technology. More often than not, the latter both produces and destroys these freaks. The theme of these movies seems to be that, yes, technology can backfire—it can produce monsters—but so can nature itself. In either case, though, technology can be counted on to destroy monsters, whether they are of natural or technological origin (or both). Through technology, even when meddling with nature itself causes monstrous results, science saves!

Scientists may not be gods. They err, because, well, to err is to be human. But they also know how to fix their mistakes. That's not ideal, these films imply, but it's the best we can do, and being a demi-god isn't half bad.

The Humor of Horror (Or Is It the Horror of Humor?), Part 3

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Besides Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams, a third cartoonist who often finds humor in horror (or horror in humor) is James Thurber.

Thurber's cartoons often rely on implication. His artwork and captions, working together, suggest a conclusion, which Thurber leaves to his readers to infer. Thus, his work is one part of a two-way communication between himself, as artist, and his reader. Of course, in most instances, Thurber is pretty clear about the conclusion to be drawn.

His female figures often dwarf his male figures, suggesting the way his men—often husbands—see their wives. Henpecked, the submissive male characters are timid; they are careful not to offend or annoy their bigger, dominant spouses, women who could crush them by their sheer size alone.

In one cartoon, a large woman is seated on a couch with a much smaller male figure. She looks demure, with her hands folded on her lap, as she looks down at the little man beside her (whose posture makes it appear that he is about to bolt from her presence). Smiling, but looking directly at him, with a gaze that suggests the possibility of danger, if not madness, declares, “If you can keep a secret, I'll tell you how my husband died.”

Despite the fact that the body of the man beside her is turned—he has to look over his shoulder to maintain eye contact with her—and he looks as though he is about to flee for his life, his closeness to her suggests he might be a suitor, one who, perhaps, is having second thoughts about becoming involved with her. If so, is she asserting her dominance over him now, by delivering an indirect threat against his life. If she murdered her husband, as her maniacal leer and her possession of a secret concerning the cause of his death suggests, perhaps she is suggesting that the same fate could await him, should he attempt to assert his will in their relationship.

Role reversal, once again, suggests a horror that might not be apparent, the secret terror that may lie at the heart of a relationship in which one person asserts absolute dominance over another under the ever-present threat of death.

Another of Thurber's cartoons has an existentialist bent. Engaged, presumably, in a rat race, finely dressed men and women rush past each other, in opposite directions, without exchanging so much as a glance, a smile, or a greeting. Behind them, in back of a wrought-iron fence, the “DESTINATIONS” mentioned in the cartoon's caption await them in a cemetery whose headstones bear common names, such as “Bill,” “Mary,” and “Jones” or, in the distance, are altogether illegible and, therefore, anonymous. The cartoon almost begs the question, What value does life—and ambition—have when it ends in death?

Finding humor in opposites, especially those as significant as life and death or purpose and meaninglessness, can be an effective means of unearthing horror.

The Humor of Horror (Or Is It the Horror of Humor?), Part 2

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Charles Addams bases most of his cartoons on a family of monsters that not only look human, but also often act like ordinary, typical people. The humor of his work derives, in large part, from his depiction of ordinary human behavior as being, in some way, eccentric, grotesque, or outrageous. Often, however, there is an additional element that makes a particular cartoon in his oeuvre unique.

Sometimes, only a thin line separates fantasy from reality. For example, despite steady scientific progress and technological innovations such as space satellites, computers, and the Internet, many people, even today, embrace an essentially medieval worldview. The possibility, in fiction, if nowhere else, of both supernatural and natural states of existence allows the opportunity for what Tzvetan Todorov calls the “fantastic,” the “marvelous,” and the “uncanny.”

According to Todorov, the fantastic exists only if seemingly inexplicable phenomena remain inexplicable—that is, if they cannot be resolved as being either marvelous or uncanny. A phenomenon is marvelous if it defies rational and scientific explanation; it is uncanny if, although strange, it can be explained by either reason or science. For example, some contend that Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw is fantastic, while H. G. Wells's short story is uncanny and Stephen King's short story “1408” is marvelous.

Whether Addams was aware of Todorov's paradigm or not, his drawing of stone gargoyles atop a balcony's wall and the shock of a woman who, gazing upward while her companions photograph the carved monsters, sees the shadow of a flying gargoyle on the wall above, fits perfectly into Todorov's scheme. Into the world of the ordinary, the marvelous appears, for the statue cannot be explained as one of the gargoyles on the wall. Its shape does not match any of those of the statues, none of the statues is detached from the wall, and the shadow is so situated that no unseen statue among the others could cast it. Therefore, the existence of the statues cannot itself explain the presence of the shadow. In Todorov's terms, the cartoon seems implies a marvelous resolution of the apparently fantastic.

Another of Addams's cartoons reflects the criticism of the homogenized sameness of some suburban housing tracts that Malvina Reynolds popular song “Little Boxes” also satirizes:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

According to Charles H. Smith and Nancy Schimmel, Pete Seeger Reynolds said, “as she drove through Daly City, . . . Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”

However, Addams's cartoon suggests more. The houses, indeed, “look just the same” as one another, but the residents differ considerably—and strangely. Each is bizarre but individual; each is “different” in his or her own way, yet each is regarded as normal by both him- or herself and by his or her spouse and child. Each also appears content and confident and seems to have positive self-esteem.

The first figure, at the left of the drawing, initially catches the viewer's attention, which is not surprising, since he is the largest and we are taught, in the United States, among other nations, to read from left to right. Once we notice his difference—or differences (he has three eyes, two noses, and two mouths—we may turn our gaze to the others who, like him, seem to be off to work, as their wives and children (one each to a couple), standing at their respective doorsteps, bid them farewell.

The second figure is portly. Doffing his hat, as the first figure does, he turns to face his family. His wife smiles and waves; his son waves. The gentleman wears a sports jacket, tie, and slacks, but his feet are bare, revealing sharp, pointed toes that match those of his sharp, pointed fingers.

The third figure is tiny, but game; undaunted by the rolled newspaper under his arm, which is half his own size, he looks over his shoulder, as he waves goodbye to his normal-size wife and son, who wave back.

Next, an obese man performs the same action as his neighbors, waving at his family as he departs for his day at work.

The next figure is a human octopus, with eight arms and no legs. As he shuffles down his walk, he doffs his hat to his wife and child, his wife returning his wave.

The final figure shown in the cartoon is tall and extremely thin, and he doesn't look back at his wife and child as he makes his way out of their front yard, but he has doffed his hat.

Although all the houses are identical, down to the tapered conical shrubs flanking their front doors, as are all the wives and children, the male residents differ a good deal from one another. Their wives and children seem to be exhausted by their roles; they are not individual persons but, each and all, The Wife and The Child. The horror of the cartoon comes from the sameness of the domestic lives the women and children—and, yes, the men—live. Despite the fact that the male characters are distinguished by their appearance, they live much the same lives as their wives, who look identical to one another.

The way of life, in identical houses on identical lots, and the identical papers carried by the men, who, despite their apparent individuality, live in the same type of houses, dress in a similar costume of coat, tie, slacks, and (except in the case of the figure with the sharp, pointed feet and the octopus man) shoes are what makes the characters in the cartoon as much the same as their houses and their families. A strict conformity to standard mores and social expectations are the horrors that have made everyone the same, even when significant differences exist, at least superficially.

Repetition is the technique that reveals the theme of Addams's cartoon. In and of itself, some find repetition eerie, especially when its reiterations seem unending. When such repetition is combined with a hard-and-fast conformity to rigid social conventions, its demonstration of the effects of such dehumanization is horrific, indeed, despite the humorous situation Addams's cartoon depicts. 

A third Addams cartoon exhibits a bit of ethnocentricity, the valuing of a another culture by the standards of one's own culture.

As a party of four black men wearing loincloths sit or stand about a huge cauldron at the edge of a bamboo forest in the background, one of them stirring its contents with a stick, a woman of their tribe, naked but for a string of beads around her neck, bends forward at the waist to offer a white man in khakis a bowl of food, presumably from the cauldron. A shelf below the thatched roof of a nearby hut displays four human skulls, seeming to suggest that the tribe are cannibals. Her guest grimaces in disgust, refusing to accept the bowl, which prompts the woman to say, as a parent might remonstrate with a stubborn and unreasonable child, “How do you know you don't like it if you won't even try it?”

The cartoon's readers may also find the idea of eating human flesh to be repulsive for the same reason that the disgusted man to whom the bowl is offered does. He need not sample the food to find it objectionable; he accepts his own culture's taboo against cannibalism as justified. In short, he finds human flesh, as food, obnoxious on principle. There is no need to “try” the dish to determine whether he would enjoy it.

From the native woman's perspective, her guest is being childish. She finds his position to be unreasonable. Experience, she suggests, should be the test of approval or disapproval. From her standpoint, he should “try” the meal; from his, eating human flesh is simply unthinkable.

By juxtaposing the standards of conduct dictated by two societies that differ sharply from one another, Addams suggests that some horrors are horrible only because taboos make them so. If one were a member of the woman's culture, he or she would find her guest's refusal to even “try” the dish she offers him—an affront to her people's hospitality—as rude as it is incomprehensible. If a member of his culture, one would find her offer of such a meal unenlightened at best and as horrific in any case.

As seen from the perspective of the man in khakis, the humor of the cartoon depends upon the reader's acceptance of the Western taboo against cannibalism, which makes the woman's chiding of him, as if he were a child, humorous because of the patent incongruity of it.

In a second reading of the cartoon, its humor depends upon seeing the guest, a grown man, acting in a petulant, childish, rude, and thoroughly unreasonable manner. If there is nothing intrinsically wrong with eating human flesh, he is the stubborn, unreasonable child she thinks he is.

Finally, the cartoon can also be seen as a satirical comment on the nature of morality itself, if morality is viewed as relative and ethnocentric, rather than as absolute and universal.