Mitcz.com : Official blog of Rev. Mitcz, the demented devilish comedian from Hollywood, CA.

One of my favorite bloggers and cartoonists (Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame) once asked “how the fuck do you explain the popularity of horror movies?“. I sat on this article for awhile, and realized I never finished it, so I’m doing that now. I will not only answer his question, but give some pretty elaborate examples behind my reasoning. I realize this is better as a Halloween post and not a damn-near-the-holidays post, but to hell with conventions.

As I see it, the love for horror movies boils down to one or more of the following :

1. We love/relate to the hero(es)
2. We love/relate to the villain(s)
3. We just want a demented laugh
4. We just want a good scare
5. We like being fucked with

Breaking that down, I’ll explain each reason and give examples where it’s been done well.

We love/relate to the main character(s)

I originally wanted to say “protagonist(s)” instead of “hero(es)”, but the “heroes” are rarely protagonists in horror films (and, frankly, rarely heroic – but let’s just go with it). Many times we’re watching the villain(s) go on a rampage against a group of characters that are the focus of a story and they’re just running around defending themselves. They’re not on a mission, per se, they’re just trying to stay alive. That would make the killer the protagonist. Sorry to be so pedantic, I’m the son of a drama teacher and it would feel wrong to not explain this distinction.

A vast majority of horror movies are working on the premise that you’ll want to root for the good guy, thereby making the bad guy seem scarier. After all, if you relate to a character in any story, you feel like whatever happens to them is happening to you. And, if you feel like you’re being chased, you’re going to be scared.

What pisses me off are shit-house horror flicks that rely on me relating to and liking the main character, but not making them anyone I give a shit about. This is either due to a lack of a proper backstory, or just cause there’s not enough character development to make them human and likable. This is why, to me, 30 days of Night sucked ass. I didn’t give a shit about the main characters. I didn’t know who they were, and they weren’t interesting/likable enough for me to give a shit.

If you’re not going to make your main characters likable or multi-dimensional enough, at least make the villain likable and amusing. Again, 30 days of Night failed at that, as well. It’s not the only one : Hostel 2, most of the Saw movies, the entire Blade franchise, and Underworld suffered as well (sure, sure, Kate Beckinsale was pretty neat – but she answered to some douchebag vampire gothbag, which made me question why she was listening to him in the first place, thereby making her character weak and dramatically lame).

Where has this been used to good effect? Here’s some brief examples.

The Descent – A group of rough-and-tough chicks (many of them also attractive, which helps), including a woman who’s child and husband are killed in the first 2 minutes of the movie. We watched them all having a grand old time right away, seeing how they live when they’re at the apex of life, and then we immediately see the frailty of happiness as her daughter and husband are killed instantaneously in a car crash. When the whole crew gets together, you can’t really find one amongst them that you don’t like. You might not love them all, but you certainly don’t despise any of them. As a further stroke of writing genius, each of them have flaws that make them multi-dimensional and you’re not entirely on the side of any single one of them, but you certainly don’t wish them harm. There’s a shitload of layers to this film, but the basics are this : you like these girls, and you want them to survive. What happens to them scares the shit out of you because you empathize.

Hostel – You’ve got 3 guys here. The geeky, introverted nice guy Josh. The suave, well-toned Paxton (whom you might not like at first, but come to realize pretty quick is just a young dude having fun, and he’s a really good friend) and the goofy-but-harmless foreigner Oli. Like The Descent, you’re not entirely on the side of any of them, but you don’t wish them harm. I thought the first Hostel was an amazing film, because you fucking hate everyone they come into contact with but you genuinely relate to and like those main characters. Again, you empathize so you’re frightened by what happens to them.

Alien/Aliens – Ripley fucking rules. That’s all there is to it. You have no empathy for giant, acid-spewing aliens – you just know they can fuck shit up. But if you don’t love Sigourney Weaver’s character in these films, I posit that you either hate women or you have no taste. That it takes place in an alien world adds to the scare because you don’t know the rules of the landscape – so really anything is possible. We’ll ignore the remainder of the Alien franchise for now.

Halloween – Don’t pretend you don’t love Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. This was especially scary for women, because she’s a babysitter and that strikes at the heart of a lot of teenage girls. Even though I only did a little babysitting in my teens (and mostly during the day, at that), I was scared for JLC. The remainder of the Halloween series focused on Michael Meyers, but (as we’ll explore later in this article) he didn’t have any personality to latch onto so… frankly, who gives a shit about him?

The Host – You’ve gotta love that whole family, really. They’re just regular people and your heart goes out to the deadbeat dad who wants a better life for his kids, but just can’t pull it together. What makes this story special is seeing him find an opportunity to prove his worth as a father, and because he’s so likable and goofy – we want him to succeed.

We love/relate to the villain(s)

This is what fucks up a lot of non-horror fans. But, frankly, I doubt they’ll ever “get it”. Making a likable villain is tricky. You need to make him/her/it tough enough to survive, but also give them vulnerabilities, quirks and/or a personality that make them kind of goofy and likable. The only way to properly explain this one is by example.

Nightmare on Elm Street – It could be argued that there were likable characters in the first NoES, and frankly that’s the only one of the series that follows a more traditional villain-chases-hero plotline. But, something interesting happened with this series that made it one of the better (and, in my personal opinion, best) horror franchises based on a common villain : Freddy Krueger is enjoyable. He cracks one-liners, he’s got a pretty lengthy backstory, he’s a scary monster but also human, and… let’s be honest, he’s got a pretty neat weapon. It also helps that he has really creative killing methods — almost none of which actually involve his built-in weaponry. Seriously… the forced-suicide-as-a-puppet killing in NoES : Dream Warrior? Genius!

Hellraiser – Like NoES, the first one is more like a classic horror flick. But, once Hellraiser 2 kicked off it quickly became all about Pinhead and the Cenobites. After that, it got into some campy-ass territory, sure, but I still enjoyed Pinhead’s killings and one-liners. I genuinely enjoyed Hellraiser : Bloodline, for instance, because of its heavy focus on Pinhead and making his lines so damned quotable. To wit..

and…

How do you not LOVE that shit?

Wishmaster – Ignore every Wishmaster flick after this one. The first one was a stroke of genius. Not only the creative kills (which go into another category I’ll explain in a moment), but everyone I’ve watched this movie with laughs out loud when the security guard says “Well, you’ll have to go through me. Which is something I’d just LOVE to see….” (because, you see, saying “I’d love to see..” is the same as “I wish…” to a genie).

We Just Want A Demented Laugh

This gets into the territory that, if you were the critical and holier-than-thou type, you might point at a horror fan and say “you’re a fucking psychopath”. But, frankly, I don’t think I need to defend my schaudenfreude here. Entertainment – specifically, fictional entertainment – is about fantasy. It’s not a stretch to say that likely most horror fans grew up (as I did) as outcast geeks, dreaming of all sorts of fucked-up death sentences against their oppressors. So, watching the douchebag jock get disemboweled by a chainsaw is an amusing site. This particular category of horror film is rarely malicious, though. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and the entertainment is from the sheer absurdity, as well as “ohhhman… I love how fucked up that was”. That’s one of those great feelings you get laughing at something you shouldn’t – and it’s something I explore a lot in my stand-up comedy. When asked to defend this style of humor.. I’m fucked. I got nothin’. I just figure if you “get it”, then you wouldn’t ask. If you don’t… you never will.

The trick to pulling off this style correctly is in being goofy about it. You should avoid going for insanely-fucked-up if you have a malicious intent of any kind. For instance, I laugh when my black friends tell me what’s commonly referred to as “nigger jokes”, but I’d be pretty fucking offended hearing the same joke from someone in the KKK.

Now, let’s get to the examples..

Dead Alive – If you haven’t seen Peter Jackson’s earlier work (Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, Dead Alive) then you really should. They’re insanely fucked up. And wonderful. I’ve always heard Dead Alive held a number of records – gallons of blood spilled, number of people shown slaughtered, most kills for under a given budget – but I’m not sure how many are true. The point is that when you watch a scrawny New Zealander take out hundreds of crazed zombie-like monsters with a modified lawnmower, you know you’ve hit paydirt. This movie provides so many “ohhh that’s horrible!” (while laughing your ass off) moments, it should get some kind of award.

Ichi The Killer – This is probably one of the most fucked-up films I’ve seen (though, I also have a copy of the banned Norwegian film “Revenge” which shows a real, human cadaver’s eyeball being scalpeled) and it’s something of a legend among horror fans. Those that have seen it will immediately tell you their favorite scene, those that have only heard about it from others will light up when they see it in your DVD collection, and those that have no idea what this movie is… well, you want to be careful when showing it to them. And make sure you keep a bucket handy in case they need to hurl.

Gremlins 1 & 2 – I honestly consider these movies to be close, in spirit, to Dead Alive. Just silly fun and mindless destruction. Most wouldn’t even consider Gremlins a horror flick – more like a comedy. But, they’re ostensibly horror. I don’t personally consider Dead Alive to be horror, either, but there’s too much gore for most people to consider it comedy. To put it another way : if marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin – Gremlins is the gateway drug to considering gore-horror a form of comedy.

We Just Want a Good Scare

Horror movies are supposed to be scary – at least, in theory. As shown above, oftentimes anything gory that doesn’t fit into any other category gets lumped into horror. And, frankly, that’s fine. Check out the Fangoria convention one of these days and you’ll see just about anything gory or campy-but-death-related being heralded. It’s a good time. Still, it’s kind of rare that a horror film is actually scary, given the broad definition of the genre. If you’re in for a scare, check out these examples…

The Shining – While some could consider 2001 a horror film for technophobes, no one denies that Kubrick’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining was a horror film no matter which way you slice it. This is the first mention on the list because you don’t really relate to Jack’s introverted son Danny, you probably consider Shelley Duvall’s character Wendy Torrance to be a weak housewife character (cause, really, she doesn’t do anything except annoy Jack and wander around scared all the time), and Jack Torrance is by no means likable – he’s a drunk psychopath with severe anger management issues. All of that is fine, though. The villain here is unseen. It’s all mental. It’s cabin fever. Being snowblind. Paranoia. Ghosts. Dementia. All of the above. WIth no definitive villain or hero, you’re just watching a family descend into madness, lead by a frightening character who suffers those effects the greatest. Perhaps why it’s most frightening is that there’s no particularly good reason this couldn’t happen to any of us in the same situation.

Psycho – A classic, and for good reason. I won’t belabor the obvious and oft-repeated reasons why beyond this : it’s a story about a psychotic man who appears perfectly normal. That’s something that will forever scare the shit out of people, because it’s happened many times in real life (Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Waynce Gacy were all well-respected in their towns).

Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Tobe Hooper said he made this movie because reclusive, tight-knit families in the South scared the shit out of him. I think once TCM hit, many more people shared his fear. Again, you’re not relating to the “heroes” (main characters) of the film cause you know very little about them. And you sure don’t want to relate to or like the fucked-up family they encounter. So, the film is stuck either being a dumb gore-fest without merit or being frightening. Hooper didn’t put much gore in his version (watch it again and count the times you actually see blood), but there was plenty of creepy imagery and an overall unsettling vibe. A masterpiece, to be sure. Still scares the shit out of me and I was born in the outskirts of a small town in Texas!

House of 1000 Corpses – To me, this is Texas Chainsaw Massacre for today’s audience. To hell with the TCM remake – this is what needed to be done. All the things I said about TCM above also apply here (albeit a little subdued, simply cause I was quite a bit older when this came out).

1408 – I love John Cusack, so this might’ve slipped into the “love the main character” category, but they intentionally want you to dislike his character as a fluff-writing douchebag. I’m a sucker for a good ghost story and/or movie about someone losing their fucking marbles, so this isn’t entirely unlike The Shining. Not sure why it didn’t do as well in the theaters, as everyone I’ve shown this to (now that I have it on DVD) has fucking loved it.

We Like Being Fucked With

This doesn’t apply solely to horror films – there’s plenty of suspense/drama/thriller flicks that fit this category. But, something horror movies are able to accomplish outside of those genres that adds an interesting edge is that you’re forced to relate to and follow a character that is horrifying and disturbing. One movie I left out of the list below, because I’m not entirely sure it fits into the horror genre, is Hard Candy. In that film, Ellen Paige plays a young woman meeting a photographer at his home. At the beginning of the film, you get the impression that the photographer is kind of a creep. Then you get the impression that Ellen Paige’s character is a psychotic woman, taking advantage of a vulnerable man. But, they further fuck with you as the film goes on because you hate both characters but also relate to both characters. I still haven’t figured out who’s side I’m on in that film (and, having watched the DVD extras, the director feels the same way).

Anyway, here’s some fine examples

Silence of the Lambs – It’s hard not to love and relate to Clarice Starling. She’s the underdog, in a male-dominated field, constantly undermined because of her inexperience (and her gender) who’s out to do right and prove her worth. Meanwhile, she’s also the only one the FBI can rely on to extract information from their favorite man-on-the-inside serial killer Hannibal Lecter. As a viewer, you mostly only hear about what he’s done that’s so horrifying – all you really see for most of the film is how pleasant he is. Gentlemanly, polite, exceedingly intelligent… and, sure, a little rough around the edges, but it’s to be expected when he’s got all these people over the years trying to fuck with him. You, like Clarice, are charmed by him. Then, of course, we see the claws come out and we see him do some pretty unruly shit to people who don’t really deserve that wrath. So, it fucks with you. Are you really rooting for the law (and Clarice) in bringing him down? Or are you kind of hoping he’ll escape, because now you’re sort of on his side, despite the atrocities he continues to commit? It fucks with you, for sure. And they follow that up nicely with Hannibal (the following two films were prequels, and quite a load of shit at that).

American Psycho – This one fucks with you because it’s really hard to be on anyone’s side in this film. You certainly hate Patrick Bateman’s entire social circle and his girlfriend, and pretty much every single person he comes into contact with. They beat it into your head how vapid and shitty those people are. No one gives a fuck Bateman even exists, frankly, and you just wish they’d all get fucked. But… wait. We’re seeing this through the eyes of Bateman. And you don’t really like him, either. He’s also vapid, self-obsessed, paranoid, vain to an obsessive degree, and clearly psychotic. Is he also a killer? We never really find that out either. Part of me ended the film saying “well, if he just imagined it all – then he’s not so bad”, but… what if he imagined being told he didn’t kill anyone? Conversely, if he did only just imagine killing those people, does that really make him any more decent a person? Like I said, it fucks with you.

The Devil’s Rejects – You really want to hate the group of deranged killers that are the focus of this follow-up to House of 1000 Corpses, but Rob Zombie’s genius was in making you like them anyway. You’re not given much of a choice. They’re underdogs and outcasts. They’re kinda funny. They’re a tight-knit group that watches out for each other. They’re up against a scum-sucking lawman. Those are all traits that, given to any other character in any other film, would make you hoot and holler for them. But, here, you’re conflicted because these people are fucked up. And clearly need to be jailed. And beaten to death. That’s why the film works – you hate them and are being forced to root for them almost against your will. The final moments of this movie are just amazing. I hope one day I get to tell Rob Zombie how impressed I was with this flick. (and, full disclosure, I did already tell the whole cast how much I liked House of 1000 Corpses).

The Formula

So, all you budding horror directors out there, here’s the formula I’ve come up with..

If you want to make me root for the main character – give them a backstory, and make them likable.

If you fail at that (or it is not possible, given your cast and/or screenplay), then make the villain charismatic and humanizing in spite of their evil plans.

If neither of those apply, and you’re just going for gore – go all the fuck out and give me a reason to feel okay about watching that level of over-the-top gore, make it campy if you must (hell, Peter Jackson got handed the Lord of the Rings trilogy after a puppet-fuck movie and 2 indie gorefest orgies).

If you’re not looking to make an audience laugh, and you genuinely want to scare some people – make it realistic enough that I worry it might happen to me or someone I know.

If none of the above apply, or you just want to make a lasting impression, mix all of that shit into one film that gives everyone a “WTF?” feeling, but make it skirt the edge of all 4 points and you might work your way into cult status (and I’ll probably buy your DVD and blog about it).

Putting it all together

To me, the number one horror film of all time – the one that applies all five formulas into one amazing film is the original Dawn of the Dead. You’re rooting for the main characters because they’re comprised of a group of everyday people and amazing hero-types. None of them are 100% likable, but you can relate to each of them in some way. Even in the beginning, with no-name redneck characters hunting zombies for kicks, you feel a kinship of “wouldn’t that be kinda fun?”. The zombies are just goddamned funny, and they explain why you should relate to them (answer : because they’re just like you, they’re mindless consumers flocking to what comes natural) but they’re also scary as hell.

It’s at times gory in a funny/campy way, because of the various death sequences (choreographed by the brilliant Tom Savini – who learned all he needed to know about realistic gore from his time in the Vietnam War). It’s scary because, while you can outrun slow-moving zombies… where the fuck are you gonna go when the world is full of them? Finally, it fucks with you because all these elements come together with no actual crux, no actual plot, and no actual outcome. There’s no “happy ending”. It’s just a snapshot of an all-out zombie war and post-apocalyptic survival.

Funny side-story : I did an awards show with Ken Foree a few years back, and we went out for a smoke so I told him that I considered him one of the greatest horror movie heroes of all time and asked him what he thought of the Dawn of the Dead remake. As if he was a g’damn psychic, he laughed and said “Ahh man… if I say anything, that shit’s gonna end up all over the internet. ‘Ken Foree takes on the Dawn of the Dead remake….’ haha. Fuck that. But, seriously… those zombies move too damned fast. I think we did all we could do with the first one.. I don’t see the need for a remake, but… I didn’t hate it”.

Anyway, that’s how you make a fuckin’ horror movie. Just in case you were wondering.

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