Character Development in Horror Films // An Introduction (Part 2)
Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 5:00PM | in Articles by Eric Corson 
BY ERIC CORSON
In her book Men, Women, and Chain Saws, Carol Clover writes: "The function of monster and hero are far more frequently represented by males and the function of victim far more garishly by females. The fact that female monsters and female heroes, when they do appear, are masculine in dress and behavior (and often even name), and that male victims are shown in feminine postures at the moment of their extremity, would seem to suggest that gender inheres in the function itself(…)" As appealing as this theory might be, I would argue the opposite. Men, especially when they are shown as competent heroes, are ultimately always the victims. Victims to the most terrifying and enigmatic of all the forces of nature: female sexuality.
Welcome to part two of Character Development in Horror Films. After showing different strategies of how a compelling psychology of pathologically mad characters can be crafted in a film, we will now examine how women are depicted in early oddball horror flicks. Horror is particularly telling in this regard, as the genre's filmmakers and audience alike are predominantly male. No wonder then, that women and their sexuality are frequently the center of attention in these movies. One of the more goofy incarnations of this theme is the infamous monster-falls-for-the-hot-chick-film, especially popular in the 1950's and 60's. Eegah (1962), without a doubt one of the worst movies of all time, is a good example, as the monster in question is a pre-historic giant who survived to modern times, and nothing screams more raw masculinity than a brawny, chest drumming, mace swinging hulk who can't articulate himself right.
The central piece to Eegah is a 20-minute long scene in which the hot chick Roxy and her father are held captive in the pre-historic monster's cave and have to comply to his wants in order to avoid getting beaten to death. After informing the giant that, "She is mine," Daddy advises Roxy to hold still while Eegah touches her everywhere and sniffs her. "Don't do anything to scare him," he advises her, to which she answers: "Me scare him?" The filmmakers are obviously worried about the fact that women are oblivious to their forbidding nature. Nonetheless, they should be protecting and caring even towards the most hellish beasts. And Roxy is just such a gal. After Eegah is done inspecting her, he begins to talk to his "dead relatives" which are a bunch of head-shaped stones piled on top of each other. His sexual harassment and psychotic delusions bring Roxy's heart to melt: "Think how lonely he must be," she ponders.
In the morning, Eegah leaves the cave, no doubt to attend to his business as a hunter-gatherer, and leaves Daddy and Roxy behind. As any daughter in her right mind would do, she immediately offers to shave her father instead of trying to escape. "It will make you feel better," she says. Of course they have all the utensils they need with them. As Roxy attends to her father, Eegah comes back with flowers for the lady. Daddy, sensing that the pre-historic beast might go too far, insists they must get his mind on something else.
After assessing all her options, Roxy begins to hum and sing to divert Eegah's attention. "He's interested," Daddy remarks. "He almost forgot to shut the door!" And now Roxy offers what has to be the central message of the film: "Well, that doesn't say much of my sex-appeal!" Thankfully for Roxy, Eegah falls in love with her and begins stalking her. Unfortunately for the love sick sapient, his behavior leads him straight to death. The central message of the movie is thus two-fold: Even towards terrifying brutes women have to comply and be caring, and must furthermore feel rewarded when they make them horny. But Eegah is also a cautionary tale in that men are warned that sexual attraction towards a woman can be their downfall.
A variation of this theme can be found in Creature Of The Black Lagoon, a 1954 film (that was released in 3D, no less) about a group of scientists who discover a strange underwater creature while taking rock samples on the Amazon river. Of course there is one naive woman, Kay, among the group and the monster falls in love with her when she takes a swim in the river (foolishly, like she is told by the men). The film is much less apologetic in making her the center of all sexual wants. Two of the scientists on the boat compete for her love in addition to the monster. Since everything revolves around her, the character gets nothing much to do, except change outfits frequently (on a boat in the middle of the Amazon river, mind you) and ask foolish questions. But even here, when the scientists debate whether or not to kill the menacing creature, Kay, mother figure to the marrow, has to remind them that it will not be of any danger if left alone.
At the end of the film though, the monster proves Kay wrong. He grabs her, takes her to his underwater grotto and is hunted and shot to death by the remaining crew, which adds a twist to the message in Eegah: not only can the longing for a woman be potentially dangerous for the physical well-being of a man, but he has also to take into account the presence of other men who will fight for dominance over the woman. What a complicated world we live in. (Believe it or not, there is a sequel to this film called Revenge of the Creature. Released only a year later, it unfortunately doesn't offer anything new on male-female relationships).
Film history, being a well of surprises and strange findings, offers even a reversal of this type of film with Queen Kong (I shit you not). In this 1976 British crime against cinema, a female film crew journeys to Africa where a giant ape, Queen Kong, falls in love with the crew's male star. She is subsequently brought to London where chaos and destruction ensue. Far from being a feminist counterpart to the wider known King Kong, Queen, walking the line between comedic spoof and horror spectacle (after all, the man is offered to the ape inside an over-sized wedding cake, and is later witness to a fight between Queen Kong and a dinosaur) is quite literally male fear of women personified. "The sea is like a woman," says a male member of the film crew. "Unfolding her vast mysteries before us. Relentlessly, relentlessly, relentlessly…" With such an emphasis on the relentless nature of the feminine mystery, what could quite possibly be more terrifying?
Released twenty years earlier, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman plays around with the same concept, while being openly misogynistic. Women are depicted as hysteric, cock-blocking, fun-spoiling, silly pests. Imagine what this means for the male species if these pesky creatures grow to 50 feet. What a nightmare! Harry, a cheating husband, has to endure exactly that: he gets harassed by his wife Nancy who, through extra-terrestrial radiation, grew into a giant and now walks around half naked. She finds him and his lover at a local bar and seeks revenge for his unfaithfulness. What a party pooper she is!
The Astounding She-Monster (1957) makes the fear of and contempt for women explicit. In the first scene, we hear a narrator announcing "Evil on to evil!" Cut to the first shot of the She-Monster: a curvy woman wearing groovy make-up and a tight bodysuit. Beware, men of the world! Fashionable women are out to get you! The other women shown are either annoying brats or useless drunks. Men, on the other hand, are proactive and expert heroes. Too bad screenwriter Frank Hall didn't give the She-Monster any motivation or terrifying traits, as she mostly just roams about the woods with uneasy steps and shoos away wolves and snakes.
In Mesa of Lost Women (1953) we have another serious contender for worst movie of all time. But we also get a mesmerizing scene at the beginning in which post-war male fear of women's sexuality is deconstructed. A mad professor shows off women-spider hybrids he created and with which he hopes to dominate the world: "Doctor, observe this girl," he demands of his colleague. "She has human beauty and intelligence but still possesses the capacities and instincts of the giant spider. She has the indestructibility of the insect. (…) I expect her to survive for hundreds and hundreds of years." "And what about males?" the colleague inquires anxiously. Answer: "Unfortunately, in the insect world, the male is a puny and unimportant thing." Bummer.
Mesa of Lost Women furthermore provides an interesting view of male dominance. Since the oversexed spider creatures are the product of a male mad scientist, the film seems to critique that in a society dominated by masculine codes of conduct, women are objectified and reduced to sexual tools. On the other hand, the film opens with a shot of a man being killed by kissing one of the women-spiders while a narrator asks in an impish tone: "Have you ever been by a girl like this?" as if a deadly lover was the ultimate conquest for every self-respecting womanizer.
After suffering through all this cinematic incompetence, the masculine view of women during the 1950's becomes increasingly evident. First and foremost, there is a clear divide between the woman-as-victim and the woman-as-monster. The woman-as-victim is not as interesting in this regard as not much has changed in the way movies portray femininity since then. Women are lowbrow and naive creatures, dependent on strong and expert men, who usually don't have much use for what females have to say. The only role these tender-minded dames have to play is to exhibit a mother-instinct of some sort; seemingly in order to grant the movies they star in a minimum of emotionality (you can read my review of Splice for a contemporary example).
The woman-as-monster is much more telling. All these monstrous (and, we are led to believe, terrifying) incarnations of menacing femininity account for the dilemma men of that age had to face: they dominated women in the public sphere, but were dominated by them in private - be it by there inscrutable sexuality (The Astounding She-Monster), or their insistence on the fact that a relationship actually involves two persons (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman). Mesa Of Lost Women is then just the expression of a legitimate fear: if men are disabled by women to act on their primal instincts, when will these sexy morality-beasts get rid of them altogether? Good thing male screenwriters invented the woman-as-victim, so that men can marvel at how easy life would be if these clichés existed in real life.
