Character Development in Horror Films: An Introduction
BY ERIC CORSON
The most important thing for a film or TV show is character. You can have all the plot you want, if the characters are bland or boring, nobody cares. Of course, if your name is Roland Emmerich, you can make a whole career out of brainless spectacles with no characters of interest at all, but you have to destroy the world in a more spectacular way each time so that people bother to come see your movie. On the other hand, a plot heavy saga like Lost or even Harry Potter functions thanks to strong and compelling characters at its core. How does a writer go about making us understand the psychological intricacies of his characters? How does he make us invested into the characters and the story? Let's examine different strategies at hand, exemplified by three masterpieces of the horror genre.
The easiest device in order to take us into the mind of a character is the internal monologue, as shown in the 1975 classic Zaat written and directed by Don Barton. This foreboder of the McDonald's "give me back that filet o' fish"-adds follows Dr. Leopold as he tries to conquer and rule the world with a new race of underwater creatures. First, he transforms himself into a walking catfish and goes on to seek out a mate he can turn into a fish in order to start procreating. Much of the film's conflict stems from Leopold's (or Zaat's) inability to find and morph a suitable girl. Next, he plans to contaminate the Florida waters with his magic potion as to transform all the creatures of the sea into terrifying death warriors who will subdue mankind.
If all of this sounds a little outlandish, Barton thankfully gives us invaluable insight into Leopold's psyche through eerie voice over narration in which the character lays out his plans. We start with a clear and conceit classification of the underwater world: "Sargassum, the weed of deceit. Sargassum fish, mighty hunter of the deep!" Immediately, we comprehend that Leopold is a tortured individual, deceived by all things earthly. In his despair he has turned to the fish family, as indicated by the next sentence addressed to his friend the Sargassum fish: "What an inspiration you have been in my plot. Your life of hiding, waiting, stalking your prey. At just the right moment, ATTACK!" With this sentence Barton takes us further into a deeply troubled mind. Armchair psychology suggests that Leopold suffers from some form of sexual complex.
This might seem like a bold statement, but consider the following phrases addressed to a catfish that roams the sole fishtank in Leopold's richly furnished lab: "I will grow you rather rapidly, then attack!"; "We have to do something about your size"; "Soon the whole world will respect us!"; but also, in a much subtler fashion, "One final test to see that there has been no change in your acidity". Call me crazy, but there is a sexual predator at work here. As already mentioned, Leopold, once transformed into a bloodcurdling man-sized catfish, walks around the coastlines of Florida in order to find a mate he needs in order to create his new aquatic race that will take over the world. Thankfully, the first look into a mirror after his metamorphosis confirms that his looks should not stand in his way: "Nothing at all like a catfish, but it's beautiful!"
This statement lays bare another facet of Leopold's complex character. Everything he does backfires, but he has an astounding ability to look past his failures and adapt to the new situation. After all, if one's goal is to rule the world with an army of fellow walking catfish (even if they don't look like catfish), there must be compromise at some point. After his first attempt to turn a young bimbo into a fish fails miserably, he destroys half of his lab in a fit of rage, produces another girl seemingly out of nowhere, and plunges her into a bath of acid. I guess this is called scientific experiment.
Another motivation for Leopold to set in motion his evil plan is that former colleagues ridiculed him and his research, even though he graduated from MIT magna cum laude. He recalls one of them saying: "Your theory seems too unrealistic. I insist you do further experiments". If that is not a good reason to go on a killing spree instead of proving them wrong on the scientific field, I don't know what is.
With all of that in mind, a clear picture emerges. Leopold, who is described as psychotic and paranoid by the police, simply feels betrayed by life and thus is disgusted by his sad human existence where he can't get laid and fellow scientists won't give him access to human guinea pigs. The obvious solution to his problem is to turn into a hideous, awkward, algae covered beast and hope for world domination.
During his ode to the fishworld at the beginning of the film, Leopold exclaims: "I will become one of you!" As soon as this sentence is spoken, Barton cuts to an appalled looking blowfish that quickly swims away from the camera. If intentional or not, this is the perfect image to describe the entire movie.
A different approach to make us comprehend the mind of a character is the explanatory flashback, as employed in The Ice Cream Man (1995). Even after repeated viewing, its plot is not fully clear to me, but it revolves around a strangely squinting ice cream man who processes cockroaches, maggots, rats, dogs and human body parts into his lubricious ice cream, lusts for the neighborhood loozy, kills virtually everyone in his way for no apparent reason and kidnaps a kid who in turn succumbs to a severe case of stockholm syndrome.
In order to hold together such an intricate plot, the film needs a complex and rich character at its center. Gregory the ice cream man (played masterfully by Clint Howard) is just such a specimen and the film does not hold back from painting his psyche in vivid colors from the very first second on. We open with a shooting in a nice and clean suburban neighborhood during which an ice cream man is killed and falls to the ground dutifully holding on to a creamsicle during the last seconds of his life. Gregory rushes to him, grabs the delicious treat and sits down next to the body to enjoy the ice cream. His distraught mother comes running out of the house, asks him if he is alright to which Gregory can only offer: "Who is going to bring the ice cream now?"
A couple of things are established with this scene: Gregory does not appear to be lactose intolerant, he is obsessed with ice cream and will, from now on, always associate ice cream with death. Cut to the present day where my last assumption is confirmed immediately. Gregory is now himself an ice cream man and keeps various artifacts of death inside his ice cream truck. In a subsequent scene, we get a first, short flashback in which Gregory remembers a giant needle being inserted through the skull inside his head. A neighborhood kid asks him if he feels alright (an echo to the first scene when his mother asks him the same thing) and Gregory answers "Ice cream man feels happy. Very, very happy", while caressing a hunting knife he conveniently keeps nearby.
This last phrase makes more sense as soon as we get offered other flashbacks. Apparently, Gregory was a patient in a mental institution (one can only speculate that the shooting he witnessed in the first scene contributed to his nondescript mental illness) and the doctor treating him repeats with upbeat fervor that there are "only happy days" for his patients, forcing Gregory to admit that he is indeed very happy. He is simultaneously fed oily ice cream by a nurse which further contributes to a Lost-like mythology as to how Gregory got haunted by ice cream. Obviously he was already taken up by it before being a mental patient, but the hospital only seems to have reinforced his obsession, resulting in him pursuing a career as a creepy ice cream man, killing and kidnapping people in the process.
By the end of the film though we get full closure thanks to a shocking twist no one could foresee. The ice cream man who gets shot at the beginning of the movie actually survives and comes to visit Gregory at the hospital in a wooden wheelchair, wordlessly handing him a richly furnished cone, to which Gregory exclaims: "It's a happy day! Thanks ice cream man!" Only now can we fully grasp the internal logic of Gregory's mind. As a child, he was a patient in a nuthouse, which explains his knack for killing, because as Hollywood has taught us time and time again, young mental patients are ticking time bombs, waiting on the first victim to fall into their hands. A deep bond connected Gregory to the ice cream man of his childhood. When he disappeared, Gregory fell into a deep well of depression, only to be dramatically rescued by the same person responsible for his despair: the ice cream man! From there on, Gregory knew exactly what he was destined to be: a serial killing, psychopathic ice cream man.
There is a horror genre that brings particular challenges to characterizations: the inanimate object turned killing machine genre. The 1974 made-for-TV movie Killdozer about a bulldozer turning against its masters however hardly struggles to offer us a compelling machine psychology and a fascinating look into the frighteningly sick mind of a serial killer.
A group of men do some work somewhere by the coast of Africa using bulldozers, mechanical shovels and other such machines. In the first scene of the movie we see a meteor hitting the earth. Of course, this mysterious rock from outer space casts some sort of spell on a massive bulldozer, causing it to come to life and attack the workers, killing them off one by one. In a strange scene near the beginning, we can see why a bulldozer would want to take revenge on a human being. It gets kicked at, jerked, dragged, rolled through dirt and, the movie boldly suggests, not taken seriously ("Come on, sweetheart, destroy!", one of the workers laughs). However, for a movie this concerned with the dichotomy between humanity and technology, I find this explanation for the bulldozer's subsequent impossible behavior not satisfying.
It seems rather, that the bulldozer itself is a lover of nature. After a few tentative attempts at rolling around and moving its shovel by itself, we witness the bulldozer literally staring at a table with the sole radio transmitter the crew has to keep in contact with the mainland. Shortly after, Killdozer rolls over said table, destroys the rest of the worker's camp and retreats to the beach, where it paces around, seemingly enjoying the breeze and anxiously awaiting the sunset. The bulldozer also kills one of the workers in the process, but it all seems more like the desperate act of a tree-hugger to me than a brutal murder.
Next, it turns over one of the crew's cars, causing it to explode and killing the man who was inside. But again, I suspect that the target was more the car than the human being, which is further suggested by another scene in which a worker who drunkenly drove to the beach to take a swim gets crushed in his car. The camera lingers for a while after, capturing a fascinating image: the bulldozer idles in front of the destructed vehicle, rotating its front shovel from right to left, as if it were shaking its head in despair. The interesting question is how to interpret this gesture. Is it simple discontent for technological advancement as symbolized by American car-culture (which would also raise the intriguing possibility of self-hate from Killdozer), or is it rather a narcissistic pose in which the bulldozer can simply not believe that such an easily crushable vehicle exists and dares standing in its way?
In any event, I do not recall a scene in which the bulldozer attacked a pedestrian. The only time it does attempt to do so, is by dumping a load of rocks and roots on them, an indication that the bulldozer wants to empower the naturalistic elements themselves instead of just acting in their regards. It is also interesting to note, that the more murders the bulldozer commits, the more confidence it gains. Timid at first, the bulldozer seems to take a liking to killing people and crushing things, as it increasingly seeks out the workers and their various technological appliances. It also gets more and more malicious as it frequently hides behind bushes and such so as to surprise the workers who stumble across the island, unable to identify a several tons heavy bright yellow bulldozer from afar.
The climatic event of the film is a battle between the bulldozer and a mechanical shovel operated by the two lone survivors on the island. Of course our killdozer would win this encounter, as it was sufficiently established that it harbors a deep hate for all things technological and that this feeling would give it just the kind of firepower it needs to win such a battle. In this sense, life or death are not even at stake anymore. The bulldozers psychological progression throughout the movie leads me to assert that in this scene, Killdozer only fights for his pride. It is not interested in harming the remaining workers, it simply won't bow in front of another machine that could endanger the bulldozer's status as king engine of the island.
Alas, in the end, through superior brain power, the humans accomplish to defeat the bulldozer, taking down one of American television's great characters.