Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer
Sean Paul Murphy, Storyteller

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Recent Horror Films (circa 1982)

You know I must be desperate for blog material when I recycle old papers I wrote decades ago in college, but it seems appropriate in new capacity as an instructor at Towson.  Here is a paper I wrote in an early film class.  (Either Aesthetics of Film, Spring 1982, or History of Film, Fall 1982).  I was supposed to review one film, but chose instead to look at trends in (then) modern horror films.

BTW, although I corrected some spelling and grammatical mistakes, I resisted the urge to rewrite the piece and make myself sound more articulate, thoughtful or prophetic:




RECENT HORROR FILMS

This is not a critique of one film.  This paper is a critique of three separate films that have been released in recent years which I feel are prime examples of the three basic types of horror films. The first film I plan to discuss is An American Werewolf in London, which I feel is one of the few recent films that fits into the mode of the classic horror films prevalent in the thirties and forties. The second film I plan to discuss is Dawn of the Dead, an example of what I call the paranoid films that were popular in the fifties and sixties. Lastly I will discuss Halloween II which is a prime example of today's slasher films.


An American Werewolf in London is a horror/comedy film released last summer. It is about a young American man who survives an attack by a werewolf while he and a buddy hike through Northern England. Bitten, the American later becomes a werewolf himself. The most interesting aspect of the film involves the way the scenes of horror and comedy are blended.

Most of the humor comes from the relationship between the hero and his dead buddy Jack. His friend, who was killed in the original werewolf attack, is condemned to walk the earth until the bloodline of the werewolf ends. The only way to accomplish that would be if his friend, who survived the attack, is killed. Jack visits his old friend periodically throughout the film and tries to convince him to kill himself before anyone else is hurt. The interesting twist is that Jack does not return as a deadly serious ghost. He still has the same personality and sense of humor he possessed when he was alive.

The film features some of the most realistic and gruesome violence to flicker across the big screen this year. The special effects and make-up in this film are tremendously effective. The young man's transfiguration into a werewolf is probably the best I have ever seen. Another high point of the special effects was Jack's appearance through the film, starting with his rather fresh wounds and his gradual decomposition. The scenes of violence (as well as the rest of the movie) were filmed and paced very well by director John Landis.  The film generated a great deal of suspense.

My major problem with the film concerned the blending of the comedy and the horror. Both elements in and of themselves were portrayed well, but I felt the violence was too graphic and jarring against the relatively light atmosphere of the comedy. I found myself being pulled in two different directions which limited the overall effectiveness of the film. That was a pity because I felt this film had the potential to be one of the great monster movies.

An American Werewolf in London bears a greater resemblance to the classic horror films such as Dracula, The Wolf Man, King Kong and Frankenstein than it does the typical slasher films of today. Like George Waggner's The Wolf Man (1941), the film generates a great deal of sympathy for the man committing the murders because the evil did not originate with him. In none of the above mentioned films did the monster choose to be evil. In the case of Dracula and the Wolf Man, the evil entered them as a result of an attack by supernatural beings. (That said, Dracula, as portrayed by Bela Lugosi relished doing evil and was not sympathetic.) The Frankenstein monster did not choose to be evil, the evil entered him when a criminal brain was placed in his skull. As for King Kong, the giant ape had no conception of good or evil. He simply responded to situations as the law of the jungle dictated. He was not inherently evil.

The primary characteristic of the classic monster movies of the thirties and forties is that evil enters an average person from an outside source. That is also the case in An American Werewolf in London. Aside from the uneasy mix of horror and comedy, I generally enjoyed this film and I only regret that more films of this style are not made. They are a breath of fresh air in a horror market devoted almost exclusively to slasher films now.


The next film I plan to discuss is Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to the cult classic Night of the Living Dead. The film is about four people struggling to survive in a huge shopping mall besieged by hordes of the walking dead and living marauders. The plot is simple. Four people flee Philadelphia, which is on the verge of civil collapse after a horrible onslaught of flesh-eating zombies. Using a traffic helicopter, they land of the roof of a large shopping mall. They seal up the building and undergo many struggles while trying to survive in this mecca of materialism until two of the four are killed and the others must flee again.


The most memorable aspect of the film is the extreme violence. This is undoubtedly one of the most graphically-violent films ever made. I have seen films which portrayed violence more realistically than Dawn of the Dead, but I have never seen a film that portrayed as many different atrocities on such a large scale.  No where have I ever seen so much human flesh slashed, hacked, shot, ripped and chewed off and devoured in a  two hour period. When it comes to violence, nobody does it like director George Romero.

It is interesting how the audience becomes acclimated to the violence by the end. (I should know since I have seen the film numerous times and I have paid a great deal of attention to the audience reaction). Audience reaction is extremely intense in an opening sequence where National Guardsmen attempt to force some people to leave a housing project. In those scenes people are killed and mutilated in many explicit manners. By contrast, the audience reaction is more muted in the later sequence when a motorcycle gang raids the shopping mall. The violence is probably more gruesome, but the audience reaction to it is no where near as great. It is as if the violence is so overwhelming throughout the entire movie that by the end you become adjusted to it.

On the whole I really liked this film. Granted, the acting was bad but I still think that it was a good movie. I thought that the settings for the film were particularly good and that the flow of the action was good. 

I have always liked these paranoid/isolation films. Others films of this subgenre include Night of the Living DeadInvasion of the Body Snatchers, The Last Man on EarthThe Omega Man and even Rosemary's Baby. Each of them pits a person or a small group of people against an enemy which seems to have taken control of normal society. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a great example of this as the hero discovers that the town is being taken over by aliens and he realizes that he has no one to trust except himself. Much the same thing happens in Rosemary's Baby as Rosemary realizes that something evil is going on and that she has no one to turn too.

These films have a few things in common. They begin with a person or a small group battling an enemy that has taken away or neutralized any real hope of outside help. The cavalry never rides over the hill in the last reel to save the heroes. Another important aspect in these films is the use of ordinary people and settings as a threat. In Dawn of the Dead a shopping mall turns into a place of death and destruction. Also, Romero's monsters aren't aliens with three eyes, they are housewives, working men, students and other seemingly normal people. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a ordinary California small town populated with ordinary people become the threat to the hero's individuality and free will.  

Another characteristic of these films is that they usually end on either a fully or partially pessimistic note. In Night of the Living Dead all of the protagonists die. In Rosemary's Baby, the devil's child is brought into the world. The Omega Man dies at the end. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was supposed to have a far less optimistic conclusion, but the studio added a hopeful note at the last minute. Dawn of the Dead also ends pessimistically, with the two survivors fleeing with no place to go.

The last film that I plan to discuss is Halloween II, a prime example of the violent slash and hack high body count horror films which are the current fad in the genre. Halloween II is a simple film about a mad psycho killer, who slays a slew of people on Halloween night. (Have you noticed that every day will soon have a horror film named after it, with Friday the 13th, Halloween I & II, Valentine's Day and Prom Night, how long will it be before there is a movie called Christmas Day. New Year's Eve, and Easter Morning?)


As these films go Halloween II is pretty good though it wasn'y as good as the original Halloween. The director of the film definitely made an effort to duplicate the style John Carpenter used in the original, but the film is not up to the same caliber. The point of view technique was used well in the first film, but overused in the sequel. I also do not feel the director was able to generate any empathy for any of the characters in this film (with the possible exception of Jamie Lee Curtis or Donald Pleasence, who both appeared in the original). The characters were not real people, but only pawns to be murdered one by one. Granted, the first film wasn't Hamlet but there was an adequate introduction to the characters before they were sliced. This film just introduces a bunch of stereotypes to quickly die in order to build up an impressive body count by the end.

Another problem with this film was the way it stretched it's credibility beyond belief. The bulk of this movie is set in a hospital where our heroine is pursued by the mad killer. However, the hospital is lit more like Frankenstein's castle than a modern facility. It is dark and full of shadows, instead of being well-lit and orderly like a real hospital. Also, Jamie Lee Curtis appears to be the only patient in the whole place. We are taken all over the hospital but no other patients are seen. Also there is a scene where the police go into a school looking for the killer and find the word "samhain" written in blood on the wall. The killer's doctor explains that it is an old Druid word for a sacrificial ritual. The funny thing is that the killer had been sitting immobile in isolation for sixteen years since he was five-years-old. How is he supposed to know Druid mythology? This is just one of the many ways this film stretches its credibility.

What does this all add up to? It all adds up to a pretty bad movie as conventional films go, but this film is not a conventional film. It is a horror film. It is no masterpiece but compared to films like I Spit on Your Grave, The Silent Scream and The Boogeyman, you can see a certain level of professionalism in Halloween II. This is not a film that I would recommend to patrons at the Charles Theater, but if you like this type of film it is worth seeing.

I am a fan of this type of movie. I see a lot of horror movies because it is nearly impossible for me to be disappointed, regardless how good or bad it is. I really like it when a horror film grabs hold of my emotions and carries them along for ninety minutes. Halloween was one of those films. I feel that John Carpenter is probably the most talented director working in this sordid little genre and he did a great job with that film. Then there are incredibly bad films like The Boogeyman. I really enjoy them too. They are often so bad that they are funny. I can really get into a film like that, if the audience doesn't mind some heckling. In some ways I enjoy the really bad horror films more than the good ones.


Recently, however, I began to wonder about these films and their appeal to the general public. My concerns were inspired by a nasty little flick called I Spit on Your Grave. The film is about a girl who is raped repeatedly by four men and then seeks revenge. The film was appalling. After a ten minute introduction to the characters, the next fifty minutes of the film consisted of the woman being raped and beaten with the most explicit footage I have ever seen in an R-rated film. Then the woman takes revenge on them and murders them in various ways. In one case, she lured one man into a bubble bath with her and then sliced off one of his most private parts. She then locked him in the bathroom, went downstairs and listened to soft music as we hear the man upstairs trying to break out while he bleeds to death. Not a very nice film. As I left the theater I wondered what value a film like this had? The film was effective but what does that justify? I began to wonder what type of person takes pleasure in a film like that. I am sure that many people did. As a result, the producers will probably keep making them.

I think that it is important to see what films were popular in different periods in order to learn some things about society at that time. By looking at an overview of the horror films of the thirties I can see the way evil was expressed in American films. Evil was something that was isolated and inflicted on what were normally just and well-meaning men. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, wasn't someone who chose evil. Even Dracula, who relished the evil he committed, was once a normal man. Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll were not evil men either. They were idealists who went too far trying to reach a noble goal for mankind. In the thirties and forties evil seemed a thing that only occasionally entered the lives of normal men. There was also an optimism. All that was needed was a wooden stake or silver bullet to make the world safe again.

In the sixties with the paranoid/isolation films we see a different view of evil. The normal world is evil and trying to destroy men and take away their individuality. The heroes and heroines of these films depend only on themselves or a very small group for protection. There is no God in the heavens who will spare them if they let their defenses slip. If their defenses do fall they will die, and in the end of these films they generally do. These films do not possess a positive worldview at all.

Today the evil lives in man. The murderers are not possessed by devils or the victims of vampires or werewolves. They are simply heartless sociopaths murdering for their own pleasure, motivated by lust, power or a need for revenge.

So what does that say about us today? Do we still have faith in the goodness of our society and fellow man, or do we instead see the potential for evil in all of us?

Maybe the films we watch are an important clue. . . 

The grade: Above & beyond the call of duty. A.
If you want to see if my writing has improved since college, you should check out these sample chapters of my novel Chapel Street:


Sample Chapters:
Prologue - My Mother
Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru
Chapter 5 - Gina
Chapter 6 - Tombstone Teri
Chapter 7 - The Holy Redeemer Lonely Hearts Club
Chapter 8 - A Mourner
Chapter 9 - War Is Declared
Chapter 10 - The Motorcycle

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Or you can read my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press, which deals heavily with my college days:

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