Tied by conventions by Christer Persson. Article written in 1995
Whores or Madonnas?
Some
critics claim that horror movies are hostile towards women. That they are
only in the films in order to give a male audience some candy to look at,
that men get a fucked up impression of women in general. Pause for a minute
and let the little grey thing inside your head go to work for once, isn't it
the males that are portrayed like monsters? The women, with very rare
exceptions like the mannish Ilsa, are victims of a patriarchal
world. In the real world the governments are dominated by men and has been
for a very long time, but that doesn't mean that every man is an asshole.
It's a fact, though, that women has a hard time proving to the men in charge
that they also are competent of doing the same work. The common view is that
women is as good as men, but why is it that the monster role is a male thing?
Shouldn't women have a part in this dirty handywork as well, or is the
monster role set aside for men?
The movie industry is no exception when it comes to exploiting women. Horror movies are mainly films made by men for men, just like porn movies. The difference between sex and horror is that the men portrayed in horror usually are creeps and the women are incarnations of the madonna, while the men in porno flicks are anonymous cocks who penetrates the female object (whore). In terms of being hostile towards women, it is movies like Pretty Woman who give men a distorted notion of women. I don't carehow much people try to slander horror movies for the way women are portrayed, sometimes horror movies are closer to life than you might think but not for a moment are we to forget '...keep repeating it's only a movie, it's only a movie', to keep in mind that film is a way of explaining the world we're living in and no matter how cruel a film seems to be, reality is always a bit crueler. It's justified to draw a parallel between reality and fiction sometimes. You can cast Saddam Hussein in the role of Torqemada (Lance Hendriksen) in Pit and The Pendelum and suddenly the film is a metaphor for the horrors of Iraq. Think 'Saddam' when Torqemada appears on screen and it's scary to see how close to reality the film is. The executions of innocent people, the mass psychosis of a whole country who hails Torqemada/Saddam as a real cool guy, while he in reality is a psychotic massmurderer. The common view on horror movies at large being hostile towards women is plain bullshit. Of course there are pictures where women are just thrown in to show their tits and the other thing, I'm not being naive here. I watch those films too, but they are never as enjoyable as pictures that have some kind of message, how ever stupid the message may seem to be.
That women are victims of impotent men, may not be the first that struck your mind when you watch a film by Stuart Gordon, but I tell you, a true feminist has reared his bearded face.
Mr. Gordon
Stuart Gordon is at his very best one of the most inventive directors alive
and ten years ago his name was the hottest since hell opened it's gates. The
theme in his pictures is, on the surface, gore and intestines, but
underneath the theme revolves around sick, disturbing sex. Maybe Stuart
himself, in the privacy of his home, doesn't like kinky sex, but he likes to
stuff his movies with this subject matter. His best work are tales about
twisted and sickening sex. It doesn't matter if you're a bad or a good
character, sexual experiences in Gordons universe are closely connected with
death. In his films there is no thing called love, only sex and desire.
Instead of love there is a pathological obsession for an innocent girl who
doesn't share the admires' feelings. The old 'Beauty and the Beast' theme,
with the exception that the beast underneath his flesh is a... beast.
My ding-a-ling
In Castle Freak, the poor freak
(Jonathan Fuller), who has been beaten, tortured and humiliated his whole
life by his demented mother, tries to make contact with the opposite sex.
With the knowledge that he has been imprisoned in a dungeon since he was
five and now is about forty-five, his preferences to the other sex is a bit
vague, if you know what I mean. Since he only have been exposed to hatred
and oppression his whole life, it hardly comes as a surprise that he's
showing love and affection by being an oppressor. After sneaking upon
Jeffrey Combs, who also happens to be starving for some sex, and watching
him screw the local whore (she's a whore, I'm not being a sexist here), the
freak wants his piece of the action. But since his mother so mercifully cut
off his dong, the only thing remaining is anger and sexual frustration.
First he tries to repeat the scene he has witnessed, like a charade, but
when the whore discovers that he has no penis, the monster inside of him
awakens and things go nasty, i.e. the whore dies a brutal death. The freak
attacks her sexual areas (breasts and vagina) and mutilates her. Maybe the
freak should give John Wayne Bobbit a call, since the unfortunate morning he
lost his penis and got it sewn back to it's original place, he's become a
famous porno-star and meets young, voluptuous, attractive women every single
day.
A character close to the castle freak, is the already mentioned mad monk Torqemada in the uneven, but far from bad, Pit and the Pendelum. Maybe because Pit and the Pendelum being shot at the very same castle. Who knows? Torqemada has his lower abdomen intact, but suffers from impotency, one of the worst things that can happen to a man. So his way of expressing emotions gets very violent and solely towards women. It's his incompetence of making love that drives him to hunt and kill women, accusing them of being witches. The fear of women has driven men into strange deeds over the centuries, but the inquisition, which is the scenario in Pit and the Pendelum, is strangely enough one of the best documented era of methodical slaughter of the opposite sex. And it's even stranger that the ones in charge of the practical work were monks, either Franciskans or Dominicans, i.e. men who had sworn an oath to take dissociation from women. If it had been ordinary men I guess, in a short period of time, people had been more critical against the horrible works, but since it was God's men at work everything must have been OK.
Beast #3 is Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel), the one who thinks that humans are such easy prey in From Beyond. Edward is a fully fledged sadist who likes to whip his girlfriends and to abuse them sexually, a proud member in The Impotency Club, although a weak limb didn't stop him, so when he reveals his 'real me' he looks like a gigantic erected penis. Not only does he look like a dick, both he and Jeffrey Combs gets dick-like tentacles growing out from their foreheads. The major difference between them is that Combs goes for the brain of the women since he has a normal sexual-life, but Pretorious still wants to have the experience of the flesh. No matter how far beyond you get, impotency is carved into the soul.
The chairman of The Impotence Club, Dr.Hill (David Gale) from Re-Animator is the by far most intense character in Gordon's universe. With his head removed, he still lets the little head do the thinking and he can't forget his crazy love for Megan (Barbara Crampton) Halsey. He gets power over the dead using Herbert West's (Jeffrey Combs once again!) potion. Dr. Hill has cheated death and laughed at it's face, but like the other losers he can't establish a normal relationship, so he when he transforms into his new form, he still wants to do only one thing, fuck. Talk about being narrow-minded. He orders his body to get Megan and ties her onto a autopsy bed in the morgue. Now he tries to charm her with pathetic lines like 'I've always admired your body' and so forth and when he realises that she's not willing to give her flower to him, he takes advantage of her orally. Very sick and very much a Stuart Gordon movie.
The Legacy of De Sade
In Friday The 13th and its never ending stream of followers, sex is
innocent. Two people cuddle a bit and are in love, or at least have the hots
for the other. In Gordon's movies sex is everything but normal. Instead of
the ol' 'in and out' he practices the more speculative 'hit and cry' type of
sex. Since the glory days of Marquis De Sade, sado-masochism (s/m) has been
a forbidden fruit when it comes to sex. It's the kind of hobby you don't
brag about to your friends or to your mother-in-law ( as long as they're not
involved of course). As with all other odd interests like collecting movies,
kill a lot of people during a longer period of time and/or buying 'zines
like this one, s/m have been an underground movement, which everybody knows
about but none has experienced! What's for sure is that it has been the
upper class who has had the financial possibilities to explore it's domains
or the lucky ones who have a puzzle box signed LeMarchand. So it isn't a
surprise that Dr. Pretorious with his fat salary, has the nicest s/m
collection in Gordon's films. At the beginning of the film we notice that
there is something very, very wrong with this guy, and our suspicion is
justified. Ken Foree finds Pretorious' VCR stuffed with steamy s/m sex,
including the good doctor himself and an unfortunate girl. It struck me that
I've read somewhere that there are more of this stuff recorded for the film,
but it was cut out of the final print because it became too much. I know I
wouldn't complain. Barbara Crampton in a leather outfit is still left in the
film. And here's something to think about, Crampton takes advantages of
Combs, masturbating his penis while his lying in a coma. For once we get a
rape of a man. Shamefully enough with the industry being ruled by men as
already said, he doesn't scream since he's not even aware of it. But it was
a scene with a girl on top and in control. The machine Pretorious and Combs
has invented stimulates the 'pineal gland', which is located in the brain,
and those exposed to it's power gets sexually aroused. It's that very sexual
feeling that makes the impotent Pretorious carry on the project, and when
Cramton as the asexual, professional psychologist gets exposed, she gives in
to all the sexual sensations she want. She will no longer wait until a man
invites her, now she's in control. Later in the film, no longer under the
influence of the machine, she does everything in her power to destroy it.
Because the machine woke the woman inside her, the woman she so desperate
tries to hide.
The essence of s/m is that you're in command, and maybe it's what the men in Gordons universe needs to be; in control. The two doctors, Hill and Pretorious, and Torqemada functions in the same way. They have to use their advantage over the weak to get the sexual rushes they need, maybe because they're impotent. What kind of sexual rush the castle freak's mother gets from keeping him locked up for forty-five years is a secret to everyone. The only male victim in Gordon's world is the freak, but he was beyond salvation even before the film started to roll before our eyes.
The Shortest Straw
Stuart Gordon's films are excellent examples, if maybe a little extreme, of
the world according to the horror industry. Like old traditional folklore -
like »Hansel and Gretchen« - the stories are to set an example of what
happens if you step outside 'normal' conventions. That women are exposed to
most of the violence in pictures are quite simple. Men are, according to old
standards, stronger on a physical level and uses their strength to either
impress upon or to suppress women. It works at a mental state, like when
Henry fonda shoots the little kid in the beginning of Harmonica you
know that this is the bad guy and he has to die. Movies work that way, also
the threat Candyman gives to Virginia Madsen in Candyman, that if
she gives herself to him, a little child will be spared. He knows, as a man,
which button to press and he takes advantage of the mother in her. Being
audience and witness when she sacrifies herself to Candyman, even though we
like her, we think she makes the right decision. It's her obligation to save
the child. Even Ripley (Sigorney Weaver) in Aliens gets reduced to
a 'mother' when she is jeopardizing her life saving Newt from the evil
aliens. A man becomes a monster when he takes control over women or children.
It's because of that man becomes the monster he is in horror movies.
Management by fear, just like in reality. It doesn't really matter if the
female is a whore or a madonna, it's when they are humiliated, physically or
on a mental level, men become beasts. The two sexes can be equal both in
status and financially, but in the movies someone has to be the weaker one
so the film can work. Up to this time it happens to have been women who have
drawn the shortest straw. For what reasons? I don't know. But if I may speak
as the man I am, I would prefer to be candy for the audience rather than the
male beast described in this article.
A feminist rolemodel?
Kiss me on the lips!
Was Torquemada a hooded monk?
Herbert West invents the ultimate head!