HUMAN MONSTERS
The movies are populated with serial killers, psychopaths, sadists, perverts, men, women, and children who are a long way from what anyone could call “normal.”
The most obvious human monsters are characters that are physically malformed, either by birth or accident. After the huge box office numbers of Universal’s Frankensteinand Dracula[both 1931], MGM wanted a horror film of their own. But when they released Tod Browning’s Freaksin 1932, critics and the public were MONMOV279HUMMON_020so repulsed that the studio quickly withdrew it from theaters and sold it off to a grindhouse distributor. Freaksis a powerful, disturbing film, in which real sideshow freaks play themselves in a tragic love story. Although mostly presented in a sympathetic light, Browning betrays his sideshow stars by exploiting their handicaps in the grisly revenge sequence in the final reel. A more uplifting story is The Elephant Man[David Lynch, 1980], the true story of Joseph Merrick, a cruelly deformed man in 19th-century London and the kindly surgeon who befriends and protects him.
Lon Chaney, Sr. “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” often portrayed physically grotesque characters in still-unmatched make-ups of his own design and execution. Chaney’s touching portrayal of Quasimodo, the tragic Hunchback of Notre Dame[Wallace Worsley, 1923] clearly conveys the passion and sensitivity hidden inside of Quasimodo’s ugly and misshapen exterior. Charles Laughton also gives an extraordinary performance as the Hunchback in William Dieterle’s excellent 1939 remake.
Lon Chaney’s most celebrated role is that of Erik, The Phantom of the Opera[Rupert Julian, 1925]. The Phantom, who wears a mask to cover his gruesome face, terrorizes the Paris Opera House from his hideout in the sewers. Chaney’s unmasking by Mary Philbin remains one of the great moments of the horror film. Universal remade The Phantom of the Operain 1943 [Arthur Lubin] with Claude Rains as the disfigured composer; and Hammer Films produced their own version [Terence Fisher, 1962] in which Herbert Lom was the Phantom. The lavish film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera[Joel Schumacher, 2004] is best avoided, but Brian De Palma’s rock’n’roll parody The Phantom of the Paradise[1974] is a lot of fun.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum[Michael Curtiz, 1933] shot in early two-color Technicolor, is the story of Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) a sculptor who makes life-like figures for a wax museum in London. When the museum’s profits diminish, his partner burns it down for the insurance money. Trying to save his beloved wax figures from the flames, Ivan Igor is knocked out and left to die in the inferno. A dozen years later, Igor, now in a wheelchair, opens a new Wax Museum in New York. The beautiful wax exhibits are actually real people that the now-insane sculptor has murdered and dipped in wax! Half wisecracking newspaper story and half horror film, Mystery of the Wax Museumhas another ghastly unmasking scene when Fay Wray hits Atwill’s face and his wax mask cracks and breaks, revealing his hideously scarred countenance.
The movie was remade by André de Toth in 1953 as House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, in full Technicolor, and in 3D. Disfigured characters seeking revenge is a plot used over and over again in movies, from the silent version of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs[Paul Leni, 1928], to Sam Raimi’s delirious Darkman[1990].
Cannibalism is frowned upon in polite society, but it is the focal point of a lot of movies. The fictional, penny-dreadful character of the murderous barber Sweeney Todd, whose victims became ingredients in Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies, was portrayed by the marvelous Tod Slaughter in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street[George King, 1936], and again by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd[2007]. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre[Tobe Hooper, 1974], the story of a group of friends who stumble across a deranged family of cannibals in the Texas badlands, is a truly nightmarish movie. It introduced us to one of modern cinema’s most iconic human monsters in Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), who wears a crude mask of somebody else’s skin, a bloodstained leather butcher’s apron, and carries a very loud chainsaw.
The graphic and gory Italian movie Cannibal Holocaust[Ruggero Deodato, 1980] is a fauxdocumentary about a lost American expedition to the Amazon. The movie then shows us the “found footage” left by the missing film crew. This extremely unpleasant picture is one of the first “first-person camera” narrative movies. The movies’ most popular cannibal is brilliant serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, from the crime novels of Thomas Harris. The first film to feature this repellent but fascinating character was Michael Mann’s Manhunter[1986], where he was played by Brian Cox. Lecter next appeared in The Silence of the Lambs[Jonathan Demme, 1991], the only horror movie to win five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins’ performance as Hannibal.
A person’s lack of sanity is not necessarily obvious at first meeting. The Old Dark House[James Whale, 1932] opens on a dark and stormy night, in which stranded travelers take shelter in the old dark house of the title. This is the home of the eccentric Femm family and their brutish, alcoholic butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff). Rather than tell you the plot, I strongly suggest you watch this deliciously camp black comedy from James Whale. But be careful of Saul, and do not let Morgan anywhere near liquor!
James Cagney plays a gangster who not only has mother issues, but was genuinely psychotic in White Heat[Raoul Walsh, 1949], and Richard Widmark is unforgettable as Tommy Udo, the giggling killer who pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs in Kiss of Death[Henry Hathaway, 1947]. But nothing prepared the public for two films from 1960 that brought a new level of terror to the movies. Psycho[Alfred Hitchcock, 1960] and Peeping Tom[Michael Powell, 1960] are two films from master filmmakers; the first, an international sensation, the other ended the director’s career. Peeping Tomis about a killer who murders women with a camera tripod that has a knife mounted on the end so that he can film his victims’ last moments of fear and death. Psychobegins as the story of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and an illicit love affair, but becomes the story of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) an insane, murdering transvestite who, at the end of the film, has literally become his own mother! One shot in lurid color, the other in black and white, both movies are unsettling classics.
From Jack the Ripper to Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh to that suspicious-looking guy sitting next to you, there are more than enough human monsters around to inspire filmmakers for generations to come.
Human Monsters[ Book Contents]
Freaks [Tod Browning, 1932]
Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), the beautiful trapeze artist, flirts with Hercules the strongman (Henry Victor), humiliating her husband Hans, a midget (Harry Earles). Freaksremains a powerful, and heartbreaking film.
Human Monsters[ Book Contents]
The performers in the circus sideshow gather round to see the Bearded Woman’s (Olga Roderick) new baby.
Human Monsters[ Book Contents]
The Elephant Man [David Lynch, 1980]
John Hurt as John Merrick (whose real name was actually Joseph Merrick), in a lovely film that plays fast and loose with the true story. With Anthony Hopkins as the doctor who becomes Merrick’s friend. Make-up artist Chris Tucker created Hurt’s effective make-up from casts of Merrick’s body, still held by the Royal London Hospital.