Beyond Redemption? - An Examination of Slasher Movie Villains

The eve of the August 31 cinematic release of Rob Zombie's "re-imagining" of the most influential slasher film ever made, Halloween (1978), seems an opportune time to reexamine the moral dynamics of the slasher subgenre. I am not referring to these movies' oft-discussed treatment of youthful sexual behavior or drug use, but rather to the figure at the heart of all these movies: a character who is not only evil, but the dehumanized embodiment of it - and therefore beyond redemption. This is a conception that numerous filmgoers have found consistently appealing, and it usually goes unquestioned. Yet this notion of someone being beyond hope of moral rehabilitation is alien both to the religious ideals that most people in this country and the world profess and to the reality of human existence. Why then does the quasi-demonic bogeyman hold such appeal - a death grip, if you will -- in slasherdom?

It should be noted that, while, for time immemorial, horror fiction has propagated countless literal monsters, some more impersonal than others, the villain beyond redemption is far from a universal feature of the broader genre. For example, even in the most influential proto-slasher, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), and its sequels, the killer, Norman Bates (the inimitable Anthony Perkins for three decades; Vince Vaughn in Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake), is not only fully and quite recognizably human but disarmingly sympathetic. (Interestingly, the obese, bespectacled Norman of Robert Bloch's 1959 novel is overtly rude and misogynistic and therefore considerably less sympathetic than his thin, polite cinematic counterpart.) Norman, after all, is a victim of a traumatic past, a controlling and emotionally abusive mother, and the psychic ravages of his own mental illness. Beginning with 1983's Psycho II and culminating in 1990's Psycho IV, Norman emerges as the protagonist, struggles with rising determination against his demons, and finally overcomes them. In the last film, the good, decent man that was always submerged in his soul triumphs, thanks in part to the love of a wife and unborn child. Though the Psycho films present a stereotypical and somewhat offensive portrait of multiple personality, their character arc of moral and spiritual regeneration is deeply moving and consonant with religious values.

Then something happened peculiar occurred en route to a certain family-operated Texas slaughterhouse. In 1974, Norman Bates yielded the center stage of proto-slasher films to the overweight, mentally challenged, and, of course, chainsaw-wielding "star" of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This gentleman is, of course, known as Leatherface (portrayed by Gunnar Hanson in the original film), so named for his habit of wearing disembodied human faces as masks. (Oddly enough (or not), both Norman and Leatherface are loosely based upon real-life killer Ed Gein, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity of two murders in 1968 - yet another victim of the mind's treachery. Gein also served as partial inspiration for Jame Gumb, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, the serial killer antagonist of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs and the 1991 film of the same title.) No fair-minded viewer would judge Leatherface to be evil - he is simply an oversized child ordered about and relentlessly manipulated by his venal, mean-spirited, and abusive family. Yet in a sense, Leatherface is incapable of redeeming himself; he is not only depicted as being of exceedingly low intelligence, but as subhuman. He is seemingly incapable even of coherent speech; instead, he groans and howls like a wild animal and pursues his victims not in the way of a human murderer, but rather in the manner of a feral, non-human predator.

We can leave aside what is widely considered to be the first true slasher film, the original Black Christmas (1974), since its serial killer, Billy, is mostly unseen, and no back story or explanation is provided for his actions. (The film offers a very offensive caricature of multiplicity in lieu of genuine psychological insight.) For the full emergence of the slasher killer (at least apparently) beyond redemption and as a dehumanized embodiment of evil, we must turn to John Carpenter's Halloween and its antagonist, Michael Myers. There is nothing subtle about this portrayal. Michael, who has confined to a psychiatric hospital for 15 years after he murdered his older sister Judith when he was six years old, is referred to in the script and the end credits as "The Shape," undoubtedly one of the most thoroughly objectifying character designations in cinematic history. He never speaks or expresses emotion, and, for most of the film, his visage is concealed by an eerie, even more expressionless white mask. As his psychiatrist-turned-hunter Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) says repeatedly in the original film and in sequels, Michael is "not a man," "not human" (not to mention other characters' repeated references to Michael as the "bogeyman") but nothing more or less than unadulterated evil.[1] Underscoring this lack of humanity is Michael's superhuman physical indestructibility.

The closest the series ever comes to questioning this assumption is in a poignant scene near the end of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989). Michael has sought to murder his young niece, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). Jamie tries to hide in an open coffin, but her uncle finds her. For a fleeting moment, she seems to reach him: at her request, he removes his mask. She then says, "You're just like me," and reaches to wipe away his tears after he starts crying. However, Michael immediately reverts to his murderous rage and, significantly, re-dons his mask. Nicholas Grabowsky's novelization of 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers takes this exploration a step further. While in the film Halloween 4, Jamie goes over to her fallen uncle and holds his hand in silence, in the novelization she says, "I forgive you, Uncle Michael."[2] This, too, is a heartbreaking moment. Otherwise, however, the franchise never lets the drum beat message that Michael's soul is no more salvageable than Satan's. (Halloween 4 ends with a jolting twist: for a moment, Jamie becomes the Shape and attacks her foster mother. This could have been a launching pad for an exploration of the moral permeability of fallen humanity, but the franchise's producers opted to stick with their tried-and-true bogeyman.

Following closely in the wake of this holiday horror carnage is the Friday the 13^th franchise. The killer featured in the first (1980) film, Mrs. (Pamela) Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), does not fit into the archetypal slasher mode: not only she is a woman, but she is also recognizably human - fully verbal, clearly expressing the wounded love and controlled rage of a devoted mother driven mad by grief and a desire for vengeance. Also, as her memorable death at the hands of final girl Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) demonstrates, she is quite mortal.

However, beginning in Friday the 13^th Part 2 (1981), Pamela's son, Jason Voorhees, takes her place and shifts the series to more iconic slasher ground. Not only did Jason somehow survive his drowning as an eleven-year-old boy in 1957, but he survives blow after crushing blow until he is finally killed in the fourth installment, the deceptively titled Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter (1984). Beginning with the cleverly satirical Jason Lives: Friday the 13^th Part VI (1986), Jason is repeatedly resurrected. And, twist of twists upon the damned-from-the-get-go slasher vise, in Freddy vs. Jason (2003), he literally escapes from Hell, not through the grace of God, but rather through the machinations of an even greater evil. Moreover, he is portrayed as sub- as well as superhuman: he appears to be of below average intelligence, and his murders are motivated primarily by a childlike devotion to his mother's memory.

Science fiction novelist Pat Cadigan deepens the dehumanization of Jason in her novelization of the 2002 film Jason X and in a sequel, Jason X: The Experiment. Cadigan paints Jason explicitly as a predatory animal, noting: "As four as Rowan [the heroine] knew, he had four attitudes. One when about to kill; a second when killing; a third when looking to kill again; and another when rising from the dead, none of them subtle or open to interpretation and all virtually identical." Later, Cadigan adds, "He had now a fifth: the presence of higher-brain activity..." and characterizes him as targeting Rowan, in one instance, "as much in rage as in bloodlust. She had gotten the upper hand[,] and the killing machine was taking it personally. Or just a matter of predatory instinct; in other words, first kill the immediate threat, then kill everything else?"[3] While Cadigan is a gifted writer who adds intellectually interesting flesh to a rather skeletal film, this perspective seems to me a bit over the top and indeed distasteful. After all, how illustrative of the struggle, external and internal, between good and evil, can a mere brute predator who maybe has higher-brain functioning be?

Cadigan also provides a clever answer to the age-old question, What is Jason's problem with people who are having sex, anyway? The novelist asserts that Jason is ultimately neither human nor animal, and is something more fundamental than evil personified: rather, he is elementally "anti-life." As such, he is revolted and enraged by any counterforce, especially life-affirming sexual expression. Since he is anti-life, his system rejects a scientist's attempt to supplement his brain with DNA from the "loathsome living."[4] Personally, I find the idea of Jason having quite literally a pea brain to be on the order of the ludicrous, but, of course, so are many things about these movies.

As interesting as are all these ideas, I, for one, remain viscerally uncomfortable with the idea of anyone being truly beyond redemption. My discomfort stems from my Catholic faith and more generally from my personal sensibilities. Indeed, it is striking that, in a professedly majority-devout nation, such a thoroughly dualistic and, indeed, un-Christian notion of a person who is utterly irredeemable has maintained such currency for roughly three decades. Perhaps this is partly a function of postmodernism. Friedrich Nietzsche, the great-grandfather of this extremely diverse intellectual tradition, sought, as the title of one of his famous works attests, sought to construct an ethical system and social order "beyond good and evil." In various writings, Nietzsche also articulated an ideal "overman," or "superman," an essentially perfect (and, of course, for the arguably misogynistic Nietzsche, always masculine) human being who has overcome his very humanity by pursuing creativity with courage and abandoning the hoary precepts of Judeo-Christian "slave" morality.

I have often wondered whether this radically anti-egalitarian overman - so hideously perverted in Nazi propaganda - would more resemble by his popular namesake, Superman, or Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. To be sure, Nietzsche had neither the morally conventional caped do-gooder nor an uncreative homicide machine in mind, but all too often, even the greatest thinkers lose control of their intellectual offspring. As numerous examples both historical and fictional, especially those within the slasher movie universes, attest, attempts to circumvent a morality based on compassion and recognition of the myriad evils of oppression lead not to a more evolutionarily advanced realm liberated from outmoded values, but rather to a wasteland devoid of all values - the kingdom of unreflective and irreformable evil.

References:

Cadigan, Pat. Jason X. Nottingham, UK: BL Publishing, 2005.

________. Jason X: The Experiment. Nottingham, UK: BL Publishing, 2005.

Grabowsky, Nicholas. Halloween IV: The Special Limited Edition. Antelope, CA: A Diverse Media Book, 2003.

[1]Halloween (Compass International Pictures, 1978); Halloween II (Universal Pictures, 1981); Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Trancas International Films, 1988); Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Trancas International Films, 1989); Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Dimension Films, 1995); Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (Dimension Films, 1998); Halloween: Resurrection (Dimension Films, 2002). Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Universal Pictures, 1982) is unrelated to the Michael Myers storyline.

[2] Nicholas Grabowsky, Halloween IV: The Special Limited Edition (Antelope, CA: A Diverse Media Book, 2003), 168.

[3] Pat Cadigan, Jason X (Nottingham, UK: BL Publishing, 2005), 32, 34, 35.

[4] Pat Cadigan, Jason X: The Experiment (Nottingham, UK: BL Publishing, 2005), 303-306.