Horror Movies: Who are the REAL monsters?

I started writing this blog entry around Halloween, which means I am probably writing this while some horror film is playing on TV. That’s the beauty of Halloween, there is a horror flick playing on almost every channel 24 hours a day for the entire month of October. Usually one of the classics of the genre. Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13^th, and all their various sequels and remakes. It is a good time of year if you’re a film fan.

But as I watch these many horror flicks, I have wonder what really motivates these movie monsters. Sure they’re killers, but what are they killing for? Humans kill all the time but there is usually a reason behind it. For good or for ill, death happens for a reason. And I believe the killers in our favorite films are no different.

Jason Vorhees is the hockey masked wearing killer from the Friday the 13^th films. But why? Why does Jason kill? Well, Jason was a mentally challenged young boy who died when the camp counselors who were supposed to be watching him went off to have sex. This inspired his mother, Mrs. Vorhees who is the killer in the original film, to go on a killing spree to avenge her son. And then in the subsequent sequels it is left to Jason, who is somehow still alive, to take up where his mother left off. So basically Jason is performing revenge killing. Not just at the people who caused his death but to the very youth culture in which they belonged. If you watch the Friday The 13^th films you will notice that it is the Teens who engage in sex who usually die first. They are the ones who first attract Jason’s wrath. So Jason is not just some mindless killer but a deeply damaged individual who went through a traumatic event in his youth.

If we really want to see a mindless killer we need to look at Michael Myers (no, not the SNL alum) who featured in the Halloween films (except for part 3 which is underrated). The motivation of Michael Myers is never revealed. He just kills. In later films in the series he seemed to want to target members of his family, but he will still kill any random individual who gets in his path. There is no clear target for his violence. Jason targeted misbehaving teenagers, and tended to ignore people who didn’t quite fit the parameters of those initial victims. Michael just kills and in several of the films is described as “pure evil.”

Of the many classic slasher killers from the horror films of my childhood, the one true character that can be called a monster is Freddy Krueger. Right from the first film Freddy is a supernatural creature whereas both Michael and Jason are originally mortals. Plus, whereas prior to the beginning of their films, Michael and Jason have yet to kill anyone, Freddy was a child murder long before the film franchise even starts. Before he haunted the dreams of the teenagers of Springwood, he was a notorious serial child murderer. Even before he was a movie monster, he would have been considered a monster. Now Freddy sometimes gets forgotten behind those other two because his films tend to have a lower body count. But if you look at how gruesome his kills are and the pleasure he gets from it, he is certainly a far worse monster than Jason or Michael.

 

Though as evil as Freddy is, he seems to be an amateur in the kill department when it comes to the star of the Hellraiser films, Pinhead. Pinhead is a Cenobite, who are a race of interdimensional demons who can only enter our world through a magic puzzle box. Once Pinhead and his minions are released they dispatch all those around them using the most depraved and sadistic methods they can conceive of. Usually this involves ripping off a persons skin, hanging them with hooks and chains, basically the types of things you would see in a very kinky S&M club but with the end results always being fatal.

While there are many more horror killers I could consider, I decided to keep it to those few. Leatherface is just a retarded hillbilly and the Leprechaun is more of a joke than a monster. Plus most other movie killer franchises do not have the same killer throughout their entire franchise so it is hard to examine the overall motivation of a particular killer. But with these four I think I can make my point pretty well. What truly makes a monster seems to be emotion. Both Pinhead and Freddy take pleasure and joy from their killing. Jason and Michael just kill because they don’t know how to do anything else. To me, this is what makes being killed by Freddy or Pinhead so terrible. With Jason or Michael they’ll most likely just stab you and let you die. But Freddy and Pinhead will both draw out your death and play with you which is a far worse way to die.