Of Frankenstein and his Monster

As a youth, I had very definite feelings about Frankenstein, both in book form and in film. These feelings were those of a lonely child who felt a kinship with outcasts, who thought being a weird kid meant she was on the same level as a creature stitched together from cadavers, and whose first published writing (thank you, Teen Ink!) was an essay on the fundamental sadness of the classic monster movie plot. Hell, I even got into college on the strength of a different essay about the relationship between monster movies and Greek Tragedy, and on the exhaustive earful I gave the phone interviewer who asked me the follow-up questions. (After listening to my explanation of the American racial politics that allowed Frankenstein's creature to be portrayed more sympathetically than Fu Manchu, the interviewer's reply was something to the extent of "You must give movies a lot of thought!")

So imagine my surprise when I re-watched the films and reread the book this past year and finally noticed how many children my beloved monster murdered.

Let's back up a little here. For those lacking familiarity with the book and movies, Frankenstein tells the story of a scientist who revives a creature made of dead bodies and brains. The book has him immediately abandon his creature when it jolts to life and he sees how ugly it is, the movies have him pressured by his colleagues to destroy his creation after they realize he mistakenly gave it the damaged brain of a madman. In both cases, the creature escapes and wreaks havoc, especially when the doctor refuses to create a mate for him. In the book, he is a rational and sensitive being, well aware of how cruel his rejection is, taking a very deliberate revenge on a society that has no place for him. The movies have him as an unspeaking (except for a few lines in the second movie) brute whose primal loneliness turns to bestial rage when he finds nobody can look at him without fear. Bride of Frankenstein has the doctor finally cave to him (and a flamboyant fellow mad scientist a little too interested in the mating habits of monsters) and build a wife; this wife takes one look at her husband and screeches, leaving him even more abandoned than before.

How cruel the doctor was, I thought as a girl. How could a man build a child and then not love him? How wicked the townspeople were, rejecting him because of his looks! How heartless the bride was for doing the same! And how tragic was my poor monster, who could have been so much more.

And now a few facts from these same media: in the book, the monster knowingly murders Frankenstein's brother and wife for the crime of being connected to him, and may have framed an innocent woman for the former crime. In the films, he has probably the highest bodycount of all the Universal monsters (or not- I haven't seen all the Wolfman movies, so let's say the jury's still out.) Some are accidents, some are clearly not. And the Bride's first moments of life are to look around and have strange men pushing her to the arms of large, hulking man with desire in his eyes.

I still feel sorry for the creature, who was given no chance. And I still feel that Frankenstein himself was monstrously (haha) irresponsible towards the fate of his creation. But things are no longer quite as black and white as they once were.

Rereading the book, I felt a great deal of pity for the doctor, clearly brilliant but consumed by impulsivity and obsession that tip into madness (if he were real, I might label him as a sufferer of severe bipolar disorder.) What a waste his genius went to! If only someone could have told him he was heading in the wrong direction in his search for immortality and artificial life. "Nanotechnology, dear boy! That's the way to go!" He'd have to invent the Difference Engine first, but what a story that would make...

Furthermore, he had good reason not to build the poor creature a mate. She rejects him in the film, and can I really blame her? What would this creation think, forced to mate with a beast, knowing her own ugliness and inability to join society? What would she do, bound by a bargain she had no part of? Would she really be a loving and faithful companion to her husband's travels, or would she strike out at him as he did at his creator, blaming him for her miserable existence?

The monster is a pitiable figure (and as long as I'm handing out armchair diagnoses, probably suffers from PTSD or Borderline Personality Disorder caused by childhood abandonment.) His troubles make his villainy understandable and relatable, but they don't make it excusable. In a kind society, he would be given counselors and rehabilitation, but perhaps not exoneration. If he's a morally complex character, it's because he plays the aggressor in addition to the victim.

I'm not sure what we can take from all of this. Maybe it's that moral ambiguity is better understood when one is older, or a good book or movie can give you different things each time you come back to it. Or maybe the only lesson is that romantic ladies and gentlemen of all ages like to overthink our monster stories.

Monster Movies to Check Out

I was going to make a Halloween blog post about the scariest movies I've seen, but all my favorite blogs have already done that. Besides, I haven't seen many classic slasher movies, so I might not be the best person to list scary movies. Instead, here are what I consider personal favorite interpretations of movie monsters. Some are scary, some are funny, some are just plain bizarre- maybe you'll find something among them!

Vampires



The fashions may not have aged well, but The Lost Boys is still one of my all-time favorite movies. Love the vampires (nasty and stylish,) love the slayers (tiny and nerdy,) love the music (especially the main theme.) I've seen this movie too many times for it to still scare me, but I did my share of screaming the first time around, and it's fun and witty enough to keep me coming back every time.

Werewolves



This movie isn't for everyone- it's more art house than proper horror, and the feminist fairy tale motif is layered on pretty thick. If that doesn't scare you off, though, track down a copy of this Red Riding Hood update, and enjoy a sensual, surreal nightmare of a movie. It's based on the work of Angela Carter (a writer I love,) and boasts the only werewolf transformation sequence to really send chills down my spine.

The Frankenstein Monster



The original Karloff movies are great, and I even like the Kenneth Branagh version, but Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks made what must be, in spirit, the truest movie to the original novel. The monster is lonely and frightened and desperate for love, and in this generation, he finally gets a Frankenstein who won't abandon him. It plays fair with monster movie tropes, and despite being a parody, it really feels like it could have been part of the Universal Studios Frankenstein series. And lest I forget, it's really, really funny.

Ghosts



Oh man, does this movie do a number on me. Guilliermo del Toro knows how to do beautiful, insidiously creepy ghost stories, terrifying me with nothing more than a child's laugh. The Orphanage also features surprisingly reasonable protagonists for a horror movie (my boyfriend and I cheered when the heroine actually- gasp!- called the police after finding evidence of foul play buried in the house.)

Mummies



When filmmakers try to make "romantic" Dracula adaptations, what they're actually doing is remaking this. An ancient monster rises from the grave to seek his reincarnated love, but in a welcome change of pace, she objects- she has a new life now, and he has no right to take it from her. The movie is sadly lacking in actual mummy action, but the first scene still stands as one of the all-time classic monster movie moments.

Aliens



Are they communists? Are they McCarthyists? Does it matter? Either way, the town of Santa Mira is being invaded by conformist aliens, and the increasingly futile struggle to escape is scary no matter what your political bent. They don't eat you or kidnap you, they just copy you and take away your personality- and sometimes, that's all aliens need to do to be frightening.

Zombies



I'm technically cheating here (the violent, mindless hordes in Pontypool aren't reanimated dead,) but I wanted to be able to plug this movie. I'm not usually a fan of zombie movies in general, but Pontypool takes the concept and twists it into something terrifyingly original. The very words we speak begin to get caught in our throats and drive us mad, and only a tiny Canadian radio station is safe- but for how long?

Bonus: Grab Bag



Silly, bloody and self-aware, this anthology film depicts the monsters faced in a small town on Halloween night. We've got ghosts, werewolves, pseudo-vampires, serial killers, and an adorably creepy child who might just be the spirit of ancient Samhain. If you can't make your mind up which monster you want to see the Halloween, put on this cult comedy-slasher and get 'em all in one package.

Steampunk Ramblings

Another confession: I'm the sort of girl who wears bustle skirts and corsets in her everyday life- and judging from the internet, I'm not alone. Whether your interest is in neo-Victorian attire, old-fashioned pulp magazines, or retro-futuristic architecture, looking back to the past has become a popular "nerd" source of inspiration. Think of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and put the stress on the last word; most young nerds/hipsters/goths/whatever you want to call us are often less interested in faithful recreation than in taking bygone aesthetics and incorporating them into modern contexts. Perhaps the most famous form of this is the "steampunk" genre- a style of dress, literature, music and film that imagines a world somewhere between yesteryear and the distant future.

Source

To be less cryptic, "steampunk" is a subset of science fiction that imagines a Victorian era with futuristic technology (or sometimes a futuristic era with Victorian aesthetics and social conventions.) It was an offshoot of cyberpunk, a genre familiar to those who have read Snow Crash or watched The Matrix, but replaced the emphasis on computer power with an emphasis on steam power- a sky full of airships, coal-powered death rays, and brass goggles everywhere. The "punk" part of the name is somewhat misleading; it's a holdover from cyberpunk, rather than an indication that steampunk is about rebellion or grittiness (though it certainly can be.)

There are pitfalls of the genre, just as there are things about it I love. One of the most parodied aspects is a tendency to smother everything in gears, and it's never good when the story (or music, or gaming experience) takes second place to marveling at how cool the setting is. It has cliches and stereotypes, and outfits can be a real hassle to assemble, especially if you're no good at sewing.

Despite these problems, the steampunk genre holds a special place in my heart. I'm more glad than I can say that I live in an era of modern medicine and women's suffrage, but as an admitted romanticist, I can't help being drawn to a world of elegance and adventure, even one that never truly was. Looking to the past during visions of the future is more than understandable- it can be beautiful, creative, and lots of fun.

Interested? Try these...

Comics: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Honestly, I never liked this as much as I wanted to- I just couldn't stand what I felt it did to some of my favorite Victorian characters. But if you're more flexible regarding literature than I am, check out this much-loved spy thriller/dark adventure series, where secret agents from classic novels do battle to protect London from mad scientists, aliens, and more.

Novels: The Difference Engine pretty much started it all off, and The Diamond Age is a fun blurring of the boundaries between steampunk and cyberpunk. You can also go for romance novels with Soulless, and the other books in the Parasol Protectorate series.

Television: You can't talk about steampunk without mentioning Wild Wild West, where gentleman spies keep America safe with clever gadgets and dashing heroics. The campy film version bears almost no resemblance to the original, but is a guilty pleasure of mine.

Films: Disney's Treasure Planet goes the "future world with Victorian fashions" route, in an update of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. You can also check out Back to the Future Part III- where else will you find a flying, time traveling train that runs on steam power?

Music: Rasputina, one of my favorite bands, uses electric cellos to make nearly unclassifiable rock songs with Victorian overtones. For a list of similar music, check out the Sepiachord website.

Roleplaying Games: If you liked Wild Wild West, give Deadlands a try- the dead are rising and sleeping monsters are awakening in the old west, and you're just a bunch of cowboys and scientists armed with gatling guns powered by the souls of the damned. If you prefer a European flavor to your steam, try Castle Falkenstein or Baron Munchausen; the former casts you as a Burroughs-esq pulp hero, and the latter...well, who the hell knows what the latter will cast you as.

Fashion: Gentlemen's Emporium is one of the best places on the web to get frock coats and frilly dresses, should you so choose. Clockwork Couture is a little inconsistent with their stock, but when they have good stuff, it's always beautiful.

Got any more recommendation? Feel I've completely misrepresented the genre? Let me know in the comments!

Looking for Love(craft) in all the Wrong Places

"Lovecraftian" is a common label to slap on horror games, movies, books and comics, and like many labels, it is simultaneously helpful and limiting. H.P. Lovecraft wrote stories about dark alien gods, expressing the terror he felt at the changing world and the intermixing of the foreign and the familiar. He created monsters that were at once aquatic and humanoid, masses of tentacles and mind-boggling angles, things that could drive a man mad to even contemplate. Lovecraftian horror is the fear that we are truly not alone in the universe; rather than inspiring religious devotion, Lovecraft used this feeling to suggest utter human insignificance.

Lovecraftian monsters such as Shoggoths, Deep Ones and even Great C'thlhu himself should be familiar to consumers of fantastical media. Whether in games (Call of C'thulhu, Trail of C'thulhu,) movies (The Dunwich Horror, Dagon) or in any of the many new stories set within the Lovecraft Mythos, new authors have worked to bring Lovecraft's visions to the modern age. Some of these products are quite good, but if I may offer my opinion, gamers and creators who want to truly tap into the Lovecraftian might want to venture off the path established by the man himself.

What do I mean by this? Well, C'thulhu and company were originally meant to be scary because they were strange and unfathomable. When you can buy plush toys of said monsters, that aura of the strange and unfathomable decreases significantly (not that I don't love some of those toys myself.) Lovecraft's stories were also full of rather dated (to put it kindly) anxieties that don't quite work for the modern horror afficianado; immigrants and their descendants have established that we're not going away any time soon, and tentacled monsters have become so commonplace in SF art that, far from boggling the mind, they inspire jokes about Japanese pornography.

There is still some terror and excitement to be had in traditional Lovecraftian fare, but if the above problems are too much for you, you can still enjoy media that take H.P.'s favorite concepts without using his specific creatures or stories. Consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In that television show, demons from other dimensions once ruled the earth, and their lines (and blood) mingled with those of humans to create vampires, humanoid abominations intent on reclaiming the Earth for their dark gods. That's almost a dead ringer for the plot of Shadow over Innsmouth, except that extraordinary humans such as Buffy and her friends are capable of fighting and defeating the monsters.

In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King stated that he considered Alien to be, at heart, a supernatural Lovecraftian film. In this case, humans travel the stars and find the ancient gods rather than the other way around, but the end results are the same. Alien even shares the Freudian sexual terror at the heart of many Lovecraft stories, albiet with phallic and toothy rather than vaginal and squishy monsters. At the end of the first movie, heroine Ripley is in much the same position as the heroic boat captain of Call of C'thulhu- she has used her ship to save herself from the alien, but can there ever be a true victory over such a creature, or is she only delaying the inevitable?

Lovecraftian creatures don't even have to be malevolent to be creepy. The ghoulish humor of the film The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Addams Family television show, and the game Monsters and Other Childish Things relies on the idea of aberrant entities being merely curious about humanity, and driving people mad with what they consider harmless fun or even attempts to help. If that sounds like legends of the Fair Folk, you'd be right; remember that the word "eldritch" originally meant "elvish", and you'll see the routes of Lovecraft's aliens even in fairy tales.

Especially interesting is when you find Lovecraftian elements in stories that aren't meant to be horror-related at all. Oscar Wilde's short story The Birthday of the Infanta shares exactly the same plot twist as Lovecraft's The Outsider, only with a different pre-reveal mood. The Indiana Jones films show godly artifacts that bend and distort reality, best kept away from humanity's use for fear of the damage they could cause. Moreover, one of the quintessential American heroes has a backstory that, with only a few tweaks, could describe Dunwich's Wilbur Whateley.

The child of a dead species from a distant planet, he passes as human but is fundamentally not. His small town knew he was strange, but never guessed what he truly was. This alien boy eventually traveled to the frozen north, where, buried in the ice, he found the legacy of his parentage, and brought it back with him when he came back to the world of humanity. Human scientists can slow him down, but they will never truly be able to destroy him, or even comprehend what he is.

Superman is Earth's champion, for which we are very lucky. Like horror itself, the Lovecraftian can be found almost anywhere, and it only takes a little bit of reframing to bring it out.

High Noon and What Came After

I find it interesting that so many movies feel the need to ‘respond’ to High Noon. Well, maybe interesting is the wrong word- more like baffling. I read about the attacks when it came out, calling the hero unmanly for showing fear and appearing to almost cry, and my reaction is a stunned cry of "But it’s High Noon! How can anyone hate High Noon?"

Apparently, some people did- or even if they liked it, felt the need to make a movie showing what should have happened. Rio Bravo and High Plains Drifter are both in some ways responses to the movie, though the responses are not quite the same. Rio Bravo is the response of a swaggering father saying "Son, you should be ashamed of yourself- you don’t need to rely on the townsfolk! And don’t show no fear, neither!" High Plains Drifteris the response of a troubled younger brother going "No man, what you oughtta do is go back there and kill every last one of those ungrateful sons of bitches!"

Funnily enough, I love all three of these movies. Rio Bravo is a delightful ensemble adventure, and the romance between John Wayne and Angie Dickinson is appealing (even if it is cribbed almost line for line from the director’s earlier movie, To Have and Have Not.) High Plains Drifter is a banquet of the bizarre, an epic, nihilistic horror movie masquerading as a western. I don’t even mind the rape scene- it certainly isn’t the most evil thing Clint Eastwood does over the course of the movie, which acknowledges that all those mysterious men with no names are scary for a damn good reason.

In the middle sits little old High Noon, an allegory for the Red Scare or Korea or urbanization or whatever us modern viewers like to attribute to it. It would be irritated by Rio Bravo’s response and horrified by High Plains Drifter, and would generally try to stay out of the conversation.

Why is it this movie provokes such strong reactions? There are many controversial movies and many ideas to be rebelled against, but why does the simple story of a man abandoned who sticks to his principles simply because it’s something he has to do (while being broken up inside that no one else seems to see it that way) upset people?

I don’t know. All I know is, while John Wayne looks on disgusted and Clint Eastwood paints the town red, tired and scared old Gary Cooper must stand by himself.

For High Noon, it’s a rather fitting position.

The Gentleman Vampire

First, a disclaimer- this is not a Twilight review. Whether you love the books or hate them, you can already find a hundred online reviews that bear out your opinion. I would, however, like to talk about some cultural notions about vampires its criticism has brought up.

Some say that vampires should never be romantic or attractive, that they're monsters and should be portrayed as such. Others say that vampirism has always been about sex, and that it makes perfect sense to use them in romance novels. The former often argue that romantic vampires aren't "real" vampires, if such a thing exists. Beast or lover, predator or protector- which is it?

As you've probably guessed, the answer is complicated. The idea of the gentleman vampire has always been a strange one, but its roots go back far beyond Twilight. Let's take a look, shall we?

Picture a year without a summer, a young doctor cooped up with a bunch of temperamental poets and their female companions, all of them thinking up ghost stories to relieve their boredom. One of the female companions writes a story about a tragic monster, which she titles Frankenstein. The doctor looks across the room at Lord Byron, then writes a story about a Byronic monster, which he titles The Vampyre. It's not a very good story, and rumors will persist that he plagiarized it from Byron, but it becomes quite popular, and the image it presents of a handsome, seductive vampire will forever change how people think of the creature.

More vampire stories are written as the years go by. An Irishman writes a breathtakingly beautiful novella about a vampire named Carmilla and her romantic obsession with an innocent young girl. The amusingly titled Varney the Vampire: Or the Feast of Blood will also be published, showing a vampire who hates his condition and commits suicide by volcano. And then, the same year that a German doctor coins the term psychoanalysis, another Irishman writes Dracula and changes everything.

The title character is not a romantic, but he is a gentleman in the truest sense of the word- a man with wealth and a title. He enjoys beautiful women, but doesn't much care about their consent (his attack on Mina is written almost explicitly as a rape scene); he feeds on his peasants and their helpless children, literally sucking the lifeblood of the working class. He is everything evil and corrupt about the old world, and it takes enlightened science, American cowboys, and the "new woman" to destroy him.

When the movies came, Dracula came with them. When Max Shreck played him, he was a dried up corpse, his fingernails still growing, who spread plague and could barely pass for human. When Bela Lugosi played him, he was an off-putting but strangely fascinating foreigner whose eyes and voice hypnotized the unsuspecting. When Christopher Lee played him, it was the sixties, and Dracula was a suave British creature out to lower everyone's necklines and break up respectable relationships. When Gary Oldman played him, his relationship with Mina had gone from one of rapist and survivor to one of true love.

Somewhere along the line, the meaning of the word "gentleman" changed- it became something anyone could be, so long as they held the door for ladies and drank expensive wine. What once meant you trained as a soldier and were better than the lower classes now meant you were polite and good looking. Being pursued by a gentleman vampire didn't seem like such a bad thing after all.

Anne Rice popularized the conception of vampires as brooding and misunderstood, and while not every vampire author has followed suite, they have all had to respond to her. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had vampire love interests, but separated the times when they were romantic from the times when they were vampiric. Now we have Twilight, with a pro-abstinence gentleman vampire; many teenage girls swooned, and many nasty things were said on the internet about the intelligence of females.

With all that said and done, where does that leave us? Is the gentleman vampire the only way to go, and has the vampire in general been thoroughly domesticated?

Of course not. If you want bestial and ugly vampires, there are writers and directors who agree with you (Guillermo del Toro wrote a book with that in mind, and from what I hear it's quite good.) I don't think we should give up on the gentleman vampire, though; after all, the Victorians sanitizing stories about fairies hasn't stopped the Fair Folk from being used to chilling effect in modern fiction.

Maybe we need to go back to Dracula and Carmilla to understand it. Think of someone wealthier and more powerful than you, who still wants what little you have- your loved ones, your body, your blood. Think of a relic of the past that refuses to die, dragging bloody tradition into the civilized world. Think of something devouring you while dressed in fine clothes, all because they hunger and will never be sated- and as a lord or lady, they have every right to do so.

I don't know about you, but I think that sounds pretty damn scary.

Field Guide to the Femme Fatale

Have you ever been trapped in a film noir? Of course you have. If you're a boy, you've probably thought to yourself, "There's a girl I like, but how do I know she's not out to screw me over?" If you're a girl, you may have thought, "Gee, I'd like to take a guy for all he's worth, but how do I know I have it in me?"

Wonder no more. For your education and safety, I now present the subcategories of femme fatale.

The Instigator

So there you are, minding your own business, when out of the blue some dame comes up and asks you to rob a bank with her. Normally you'd tell her to jump in a lake, but you've just never seen a girl with eyes so green or legs so long. What's a poor fellow to do?

I'd like to quote a first lady here and tell you to just say no, but I'm only human. I know how hard it is to say no to someone you love. And hey, you're actually relatively lucky if this is the femme fatale you're matched with; it's not in her best interests to screw you over, since you're in on the same scheme, and she may even really love you. What she says is something that's always manipulative, but which non-criminals have said since time immemorial: if you love me, you'll do it.

Related to the Black Widow (see below), but not always interchangeable. Lucky for you. Also related to the Damsel in Disguise (ditto,) but where that one pretends to be innocent, this one lets you know up front what you're in for. And you go for her anyway.

How to Spot: You know that woman in front of you, asking you to commit a crime? It's her.

How to Be One: If you must, target guys low on the intelligence scale. But really, think twice about being this variety; your boy toy's likely to kill you when he's had enough of your games.

As Seen In: Gun Crazy, Carmen Jones, Out of the Past

The Catalyst

I've tried to refrain from saying "It's your own fault" too much in this essay, but that's the case by definition with this lady. See, she may be a little promiscuous, a bit of a lush, prone to smoky eyeshadow, and maybe even have a mean streak, but you don't have to worry about her killing anyone. What you do have to worry about is how you act when you're around her. You get violently jealous, insanely posessive, and start scaring her with the depth of your "love." Problem is, so is ever other guy around her. And of course, you're sure it's all her fault.

Sometimes confused with Just Drawn That Way (see below,) but much less independent and much less happy.

How to Spot: If she's sleeping around and doesn't care if you know, this one is a good bet. Incidentally, ease up on the Othello impressions- if she's turned on by that, she's probably not the kind it's safe to be around.

How to Be One: Are you crazy? I know you want men around you paralyzed with love and lust, but you don't want Dennis Hopper or Glenn Ford stalking you. Trust me on this.

As Seen In: Gilda, Blue Velvet, The Blue Angel, Anatomy of a Murder

The Black Widow

This is probably what you think of when you hear the term 'femme fatale.' She's sexy as hell but stuck with a creep, and wants you to take said creep out. I can't say for sure she's screwing you over- sometimes the guy really is a creep and she really is in love with you. But remember, that creep she's with probably thought she was in love with him at one point. Some day that creep could be you.

Don't think you're safe if you're female, either. This type is known for ensnaring women just as easily as men. Particularly if said femme fatale is French.

How to Spot: You'll usually see her stuck in a small town diner or a huge and empty mansion, on the arm of a guy twice her age. Think real hard about how much you value your life before taking her up on anything.

How to Be One: Always have a backup plan. If things go wrong with your scheme or your sucker, be ready to bail and have a prepared way of doing so. Also, platinum blonde wigs seem to help.

As Seen In: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Body Heat, Les Diaboliques, Niagara- this is probably the most common subtype.

Just Drawn That Way

She's not a bad girl, not really. Is it a crime to wear slinky dresses and banter with private eyes? Of course not. She's just having some fun, and if she likes a guy and he gets in trouble, you can bet she'll be there to help bail him out.

You might call her the decoy femme fatale, but she's close enough that I consider her a subtype. She has all the trappings of trouble, but there isn't a predatory bone in her body. Some women can be sexy and fun loving without being evil- imagine that!

How to Spot: Banter is a good way to spot this one. If you're teasing her and she gives as good as she gets, you're in luck.

How to Be One: I know you've got a heart of gold, but try not to play too many games. The sooner you and the private eye start working together, the better for all concerned. Also, don't be afraid of slinky dresses.

As Seen In: The Big Sleep, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Pulp Fiction.

The Damsel in Disguise

While most femmes fatale tend to be rather blatant, this one isn't. At least, not to you. She's in trouble. She needs help. Some of it is her fault, but everyone makes mistakes. Those stories she tells you about how bad men have hurt her break your heart, and she's awfully keep on helping you solve that murder mystery. Well, you knew it was too good to be true...

This subtype can overlap with the Black Widow and can be mistaken for the Catalyst. She doesn't have to be the former and certainly isn't the latter; odds are she's a criminal mastermind, and you're a small pawn on a big chessboard.

How to Spot: Helping out girls in danger is perfectly admirable, but here's a tip- the more crimes she needs you to commit to save her, the more likely she's this.

How to Be One: You've got to be a good actress, and you've got to pick your targets. You want them loyal and not too curious- private eyes are tempting, but they ultimately ask too many questions.

As Seen In: The Maltese Falcon, Brick, The Killing (in one scene, anyway.)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This is less of a review than a brief analysis of the movie's "moral" (stop reading now if you don't want spoilers!) Upon re-watching this old favorite of mine, I was struck by the detail put into scenes about prospecting, particularly one that shows the details of panning for gold. Such details contribute nothing to the plot but are still a nice touch, letting us learn along with the characters about the realities of their new work.

Moreover, whether or not it was intended (and with such a prestige production it may well have been), it serves as a metaphor for how the gold itself reveals the true nature of the protagonists. Just as the water reveals which identical nuggets of rocks are valuable, so too does the entire ordeal of prospecting, as Tim Holt nearly buckles under his greed but manages to keep himself mostly morally pure- unlike Bogart, his foil.

Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs is not a monster; he is just a man who does a worse job resisting temptation than he imagined he would. Before prospecting, he was a loveable rogue, his main flaw seeming to be a lack of ambition, who will fight a man for what he is owed but take no more than his due. By the end he is a paranoid would-be-murderer and chronic betrayer, seeing the treachery in his own heart reflected in the eyes of his former friends.

The novel upon which the film was based is said to have been written as an anti-capitalist tract about how money destroys men's souls. As the film holds up today, the message appears to be a bit different. After all, Walter Huston and Tim Holt come out basically decent; only Bogart could be said to be "destroyed" by it, and even that couldn't have happened if he didn't have the hidden potential to be destroyed.

In Treasure of the Sierra Madre, gold serves not as a device to corrupt men, but a means of revealing their true nature. Those who are pure will stay pure. Those who never had the opportunity to be corrupt before will be presented with a chance- and may, like Bogart, discover a nastiness they didn't know they had.

Freaks

Exploitative. Progressive. A classic. A hack job. It's not often that you can agree with both sides of a controversy regarding a movie.

Its name is Freaks, and this oft-banned tale of revenge by deformed sideshow performers was director Tod Browning's follow-up to his earlier film, Dracula. As a former circus man himself, he decided he would terrify the world by showing them real live human oddities rather than mere movie monsters. Of course, he got exactly what he wished for in that regard, and not only did the movie flop, but it also ruined his career.

Declared a classic long after it would do anyone involved with it any good, Freaks is now known as part of the horror canon. But is it really a horror movie? It may well be a thriller, and it may well be unsettling to watch 'freaks' whom we know are not the product of special effects, and it was markteted in a way that suggested a monster movie. However, Freaks belongs in a category of its own, and I cannot think of any other film that falls under it.

Freaks is pehaps the only Reverse Monster Movie.

The classic structure of a monster movie is as follows: a creature is created or discovered, and is the only one of his kind among the 'normal' world. He possesses incredible power and strength, but either because of the humans' cruelty or his own derangement, he turns violent. The monster kidnaps a beautiful human girl, for reasons which are not always entirely clear. The humans come after him, torches and pitchforks in hand, and put an end to this monstrosity.

Strangely for a movie so early in the history of cinematic horror, Freaks takes this formula (which was still in the making- it was only 1932) and turns it on its head.

In this circus world, 'freaks' constitute a large percentage of the population, making the 'normal' people seem out of place. A strong man and a beautiful woman use their undeserved advantages against their abnormal coworkers, all of whom have been nothing but kind to them. The woman purpously seduces one of the freaks, attempting to lead him to his death. When such treachery is discovered, the mob comes after them bearing not torches and pitchforks, but knives held between their teeth...

The ending has caused many people to turn away from Freaks, as the titular characters are no longer portrayed as kindly and human but as monsters and killers. I would have to disagree on this point, though, and I feel the movie wouldn't have even a half of its power if it had ended any other way. We have watched these innocent people being mocked, cheated, humiliated and nearly killed by the villains, and these villains get just what they deserve from their own victims. It's not a pretty sight, but for at least this one viewer, it's a very satistfying one.

The weakest part of the film is easily the acting. The freaks were cast because they looked, well, freakish, and not because they could act. This fact shows, and at times it's hard not to laugh. The mere fact that the film was made to capitalise on the audiance's biases against the abnormal is also unpleasent, and make no mistake: Tod Browning may have been sympathetic toward his subjects, but what he had on his mind was the money coming from people they could scare, not on what a sensitive portrayal he could create of society's rejects.

As with Dracula, a simple truth must be faced about Tod Browning: he was a hack who happened to luck into great projects. You may say it's unfair to complain about directoral skills this early in the history of film, but if you look at what his contemporaries were making (such as the brilliant James Whale and his Frankenstein movies) this excuse falls apart. Browning never grasped that a movie is more than just a filmed play, nor did he care about anything except getting the punters to pay up, just as he had in his carnival days. He was not an artist, and his films suffer for it.

And yet, in a way Tod Browning was still a craftsman. He knew what worked on the most basic level, and he used it. And both of his major movies are still perfectly watchable, with Dracula saved by the performances of Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan, and Freaks by its pure strangeness and surprisingly sympathetic approach, unintended as that may be. Freaks may not be a great movie, but it is an important one to any student of the macabre, for it teaches two lessons better than anything else I can think of.

Firstly, don't count on abnormalities to tell you who the monster is (preachy and trite as that message may sound in print.) And secondly, don't assume this first lesson will be a comfortable one for your viewers, or a profitable one for you.

Freaks still has the capacity to shock, and is undoubtedly not for everyone. But if you think you can take it, check it out for an update on that old Sesame Street song: the monster in the mirror just might be you.

Notes on the Female Western

As a female fan of westerns, there’s a certain feeling you get while watching DVD special features. Maybe it’s the bevy of film critics talking about how The Wild Bunch changed their life, or the directors who saw The Good, The Bad And The Ugly as children and so decided they wanted to make movies. The feeling can be articulated in a simple sentence: “Where are all the girls?"

And, you realize, the makers of such special features aren’t being sexist or exclusive in having only male speakers, you’re just not the target audience and never have been. Sure, it’s great that you loved their movie, but you’re not really expected to- and if you do, there’s still a suspicion that you’re not fully getting it. It can make you feel like Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon A Time In The West, all the male eyes on you as you ride into a town where your kind is rarely seen.

Thus, I find it interesting when western movies try to change things up in this regard and put a female character in the lead. Female supporting cast members have always been common enough, and some of them are great (I particularly love the women in High Noon and Montgomery Clift’s love interest in Red River), but giving them the bulk of the screen time is something different, and it seems to me that there are three main ways filmmakers go about it- gender can be irrelevant, it can be patronized, or they can try treat it “normally”.

In the first category is Johnny Guitar. One of the things I love about this movie is that no one gives any clichéd “I can shoot as well as any man!” speeches- Joan Crawford is tough and Mercedes McCambridge is scary, and these are facts no one questions. Their gender isn’t exactly ignored (Vienna spent her life in saloons, and is proud of the fact that she actually owns this one), but it isn’t treated as their sole character trait. Did women in the old west really have gunfights and face down lynch mobs? Maybe, maybe not, and it doesn’t matter. There’s no time to spend “proving your worth”; it’s already been established, and you’ve got a railroad to fight over.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Cat Ballou, a movie that pretty much defines the patronizing category. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun movie and Lee Marvin as Kid Shaleen is a joy to behold, but one would think that even a comedy about a “bandit queen” might occasionally take its main character seriously. Jane Fonda is leered at by every single character, the camera included, and she’s treated as flighty broad constantly bailed out by guys who have a thing for her. She robs a train (though the plan was Lee Marvin’s) and then gets upset when people hate her for it, and when it comes time to gun down the man responsible for her father’s death she doesn’t get any grand gunfight, but instead poses as a hooker to get into the man’s room and only ends up shooting him in a struggle for the gun (presumably so the studio could argue it was an accident and let their heroine escape punishment by the censors.) I’ll forgive the fact that she ends up with a character who pretty much tried to rape her earlier in the movie (it was the sixties, after all), but that’s really the least of it; the very idea of her being a competent western hero is treated as a joke in itself.

The aforementioned Once Upon A Time In The West is a good example of the third category, the “normal” one. This woman does something other than shoot a gun for a living (here’s a tip- if she’s a supporting character she’ll be a teacher, if she’s a main character she’ll be a whore.) No shoot-outs in the street for her, and there’s no reason for her to have them. What she does have is a general sense of decency and integrity, more so than the gunmen around her, and because of this she’s the only one to survive or have an actual life to live after the bad guys go down. The concept is almost subversive in a genre that relies so heavily on violence- to have a central character who has a semi-realistic position in the world and doesn’t get any fights, yet still manages to impress and come out on top.

I’m going to hazard a guess that women who like westerns enjoy them for the same reasons that men do- we love the sight of the Arizona desert, we like the idea (whatever our politics) of taming or surviving in a wild land where the law is what we make for ourselves, and we like to imagine that we’re Clint Eastwood. Sometimes filmmakers give us what we want and sometimes they don’t, but we’re rarely on the forefront of their minds. The “female” western can be good or bad, but whether the heroine is a fighter or a lover, it works best if there’s reason to watch her besides her gender. Girls can like westerns, but nobody likes being a novelty act.