Family Plots: The Role of Family in the North American Horror Film (60's to 80's)
The history of the North American horror film has constantly held one thing in common throughout the years which is to craft stories that prey on our fears as a collective. One of the earliest horror films: F.W. Murnua's Nosferatu (1922) was one of the earliest films based on Bram Stroker's Dracula. Dracula would be made in 1932 and with Nosferatu preyed on our fears of something coming in the middle of the night turning us into something unnatural. These two films would join other classic horror films like The Wolfman (1941), Frankenstein (1931), and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) as films that, not only preyed on that fear, but would also deal with the issue of identity loss.
The horror film over time moved away from the classic monster movie and addressed something that was beginning to change also in American society which was the family unit. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was one of the first horror films that dealt with the horror film coming from inside the family. Psycho would kick start a whole new genre using our fears and anxiety within the family. George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) was one of the first films that dealt with the crumbling of the family unit. The whole film was symbolic of the times which it came out and Romero has stated that Night of the Living Dead was about revolution and how the American society was changing. The family unit is portrayed through the Coopers. The Coopers have only stayed married because of their daughter. In the end, the daughter ends up eating her parents symbolizing a rebellion against the last reminence of family life.
There would be more films that reflected much of how the American landscape was changing: social and political. Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) was an allegory of a post-Vietnam America. The atrocities of the Vietnam War paved way for the horror film to go further in its depiction of violence and horror. The film was more brutal than any of the horror films preceding Last House on the Left reflecting another brutal chapter in American history with the Manson murders.
One film in 1974 that tried to capture the sentiment of the post-Vietnam family was Bob Clark's Dead of Night (also known as Deathdream, The Night That Andy Came Home, and The Veteran). Dead of Night tells the story of Andy, who is killed in Vietnam, and finds his way back to his family. Andy seems like his old self till people are found murdered. Andy's father sees a difference in his son and figures out that Andy is a very different person than what he once knew.
The mother refuses to realize that her son has changed. She doesn't realize that he came back a different person which is how some American families felt after their loved ones came back from Vietnam, but Andy represents the soldiers who came back and their lives changed forever after the war.
Dead of Night is ultimately a social commentary on the effects that war has, not only on the soldier, but the family back home. Andy's actions tear his family apart. The war also takes its toll on the character Andy who sits in a catatonic-like state trying to adjust to civilian life. Andy also covers up his appearance drawing comparisons to classic monster characters like The Invisible Man or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Unlike other zombie films like Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, Andy needs to feed on blood rather than the flesh of the living. In one scene, Andy kills the town doctor, draws his blood, and injects himself with the blood. Andy is more of a vampire than zombie, but watching this scene in which Andy "shoots up" is more of metaphor of how drug addicted the soldiers coming home was.
The American horror films of the 60's and 70's, more often, reflected the change in family with underlying themes of the supernatural, the occult, and cannibalism. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) was one film that depicted the occult overtaking and influencing the family unit. The film dealt with issues that were becoming prevalent in American society at that time. The once depiction in film involving a happily married couple starting a family soon changed to a family having marital problems with a child along the way. Polanski depicted the tenants in Rosemary's Baby as any normal people throwing away images of how the occult looked liked in such films as Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960), Hal Warren's Manos: Hands of Fate (1966), and Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (1957). Polanski suggested that the occult could be anyone and even the typical family was not immune to the horrors of satanic powers. Rosemary's Baby would pave the way for other horror films to tackle the issues of the occult and family with other films such as Bryan Forbes's The Stepford Wives (1975) which like Rosemary's Baby uses the idea of a perfect society to cover up a more sinister plan.
The Stepford Wives deals with issues of conformity and perfection. The main character, Joanna, soon finds out that all her friends have been replaced by robots to uphold the ideal role women play in the family structure. The film is a study of feminism and ultimately satires how women have been portrayed in films years ago. The Stepford Wives also deals with the loss of identity. Like with films such as Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and John Carpenter's The Thing, there is an unnatural force that takes over the bodies of its host and ultimately leaving a perfect "copy." These three films do draw comparisons to Nazi Germany where they wanted a Utopian society and the thought where one would live in a world where everyone is a carbon copy of each other makes for a horrific realization.
The American horror film turned to another avenue to reach and scare its audience going away from the occult and monsters. There was another force that was behind the sinister underlings of the American family: the supernatural. These films used the most basic of American folklore. The films had the same basic story: some demonic or supernatural force possessing or trying to force a family from their home. Another early form of the "haunted" film goes back to the 30's with Norman Z. McLeod's Topper (1937) about a loving couple who is killed in an auto accident and return as ghosts to help a banker renew his zest for life. Although, the film doesn't dwell in an evil motive and scares its person, it is one of the first films that use the idea of the paranormal that interferes in the lives of the living. The early films that used this kind of "haunting" include films such as: Rene Clair's I Married a Witch (1942), and Henry Koster's The Bishop's Wife (1947).
One of the main objectives in a horror film is to give the audience a sense of easiness and not feeling safe. The haunting film accomplishes this in by showing the protagonists in a situation that they do not feel safe. The film also uses a setting that is supposed to be a bastion of safety and that is the home.
One of the first films that dealt with an evil spirit was The Uninvited (1942) about a brother and sister who buys a seaside home that is haunted with vengeful spirits. Later, other films would be released that would deal with this kind of paranormal: William Castle's 13 Ghosts (1960) and its remake in 2001, Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), Stuart Rosenberg's The Amityville Horror (1979) and its remake in 2005, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist (1982), and more recently Robert Zumeckis's What Lies Beneath (2000), Alejandro Amenabar's The Others (2001), and Courtney Soloman's An American Haunting (2005). Every one of these films uses the haunting as a way to drive the family from their homes except The Others,/i> which uses the living to drive out the spirits.
Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist (1982) is a perfect example of the haunting film. The story revolves around a suburb that is built upon a cemetery. In the subsequent events the house becomes haunted by spirits that want to drive away the family that has disturbed its peace. In the beginning of the film, the poltergeist is friendly, but soon is an evil force that takes the youngest child away to the other side. In that scene, the poltergeist brings a tree to life to attack the little boy creating a ruse for the spirits to kidnap the little girl. The parents rush to save their boy instead of thinking about the other two children. After the boy is safe is when their focus turns to the little girl: Carol Ann. The oldest child is never addressed or worried about during this time. The ignoring of the oldest child in the family represents how the oldest child feels when there are more than one sibling in a family.
The family home is the antagonist in this film. The Freeling family is not safe in their home and the two subsequent films they are pursued by the poltergeist. The poltergeist isn't the only antagonist in this film, but the suburb developers have a slight role in this film. The developers see profit above the morality responsibility of not uprooting a cemetery. At the climax of the film where the family gears up for "going into the void" to retrieve Carol Ann, the mother is the one to possibly sacrifice herself to save her child. It is this primal instinct of a mother, like in Cronenberg's The Brood, where the mother will do anything to save her offspring. When the mother comes out at the other side clutching tightly Carol Ann suggesting a new beginning to the family and showing the audience that she will never let her go of her child.
One can come up with the conclusion that there are other possible explanations for each film's haunting as with The Shining which could be explained by stressed induced hallucinations and the classic case of cabin fever. An American Haunting is based on the "Bell Witch" of Tennessee which terrorized a family from 1817 to 1821. It is the first recorded haunting to have caused a death. The legend has been handed down generations after generations where it is explained that the haunting was nothing more than the repressed memories of incest. Some of these films are present day folklore as is the case of The Amityville Horror which is based on George Lutz's account of the 28 days that he lived in the house with his family and claimed that it was haunted.
Horror films that surround their stories around a certain family are broken up into two antagonists: the parents and the children. What makes these films horrific to watch is that this type of horror film signifies the end of the nuclear family. The idea of a member of a family wanting to hurt or even kill another makes for a horrific reality. The horror films in the 70's gave us several films that involved the children being the protagonists in the film. The Exorcist (1973) tells the story of a little girl who is possessed by the devil. The film ultimately deals with more complicated issues than just a little girl being possessed such as: good vs. evil, the loss of innocence, and how far one would go to save their child. The Exorcist has its theologian aspects, but what makes this considered to be the scariest film in the history of horror films is the exorcism itself. It's the love of the mother, who is dealing with her faith, sticking by her daughter believing there is still good in her. The Omen (1976) went a step further in portraying evil in the form of a child only this time the child ends up being the son of Satan. In The Omen, Robert Thorn, played by Gregory Peck, is an ambassador to the United States when his wife has a stillborn child. She has no idea that her husband replaces that child with another. As in The Exorcist, it is the act of love that ultimately becomes the driving force of evil.
The act of having children, watching them grow up, and hoping for a better future than what the parents had is a big part of the American dream. The idea of something going wrong with any step along the way is what every parent fear. Going back to the science fiction films of the forties and fifties, the threat of nuclear exposure causing mutation was a main theme. Larry Cohen brought us the film It's Alive (1974). The film starts off right away with the Davies checking into the hospital for the birth of their second child. The following scene shows Mr. Davies looking into the room for newborns glowing about becoming a father for the second time. He is then called into the room where he comforts his wife. Mrs. Davies pleads to her husband that this birth seems different than before. Mr. Davies then retreats to a room where other expecting fathers are huddled together talking about the environment and how there are chemicals used everyday that is changing the environment. It is this conversation that we get a little hint about things to come. In the birthing room, the events start to unfold that this is not a normal birth and that something is wrong here. Cohen keeps everything simple at this point with the doctor saying that the head is a little bigger than normal and soon the scream of a nurse. The next scene is a complete opposite where we see an assistant staggering out from the room holding his throat, collapsing, and then we are shown the room where everyone is dead except for Mrs. Davies shouting, "Where is my baby!" The whole shot of the room with everyone dead is shot very random with zoom in shots to show chaos in an otherwise normal event in a couple's life.
The audience is eventually shown what the baby looks like and it is unrecognizable as a normal baby, but soon the mother accepts it for what it is: her son. The husband in the beginning wants to destroy the abomination, but parental instinct takes over and accepts it also as his son.
Mutation is another explanation for another film Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977). The film involves two completely families: you have the victims being the all-American type family and you have the protagonists being cannibals. The protagonists in this film are a family of cannibals living in the mountains near a former Air Force nuclear testing facility. The story is an ultimate fight for survival where the family endures a horrendous ordeal where in the end, themselves, becoming the savages.
The mutation is more prevalent in THHE's remake. The story has stayed the same, but the looks of the mutated family is more defined. The lesson of nuclear fallout is layed out in the beginning montage where it uses stock footage of former nuclear weapon testing and the use of documented human mutation. This montage lays out the backdrop of the film and culminates in the end where one of the mutated humans sitting in a Lazy-boy saying, "You did this to us!" As it is in the original THHE's and the remake the attack on the families are a microcosm of the crumbling "nuclear family" and where American society was heading into the eighties.
Another film in the seventies that showed a family of cannibals as its protagonists was Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). The film inspired by the true life story of Ed Gein, one of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history. Ed Gein displayed necrophilia behaviors and inspired such films like Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Mary Herron's American Psycho (2000) whose main character Patrick Bateman makes references to Gein.
The group finds a house where a family of cannibalistic psychopaths lives. The iconic character in this film: Leatherface, who like Gein, wears a mask made from human skin. The film is a look into pure terror where no one is immune to death. TTCM, was one of the first films where even the handicap are susceptible to murder as with later films such as Steve Miner's Friday the 13th Part Two (1981).
TTCM was the anti-road trip film throwing away the images from other road trip films like Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969). The film like Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) was a look into the grim side of the U.S. a symptom of a post Vietnam War America. The film's look has a documentary look even down to its prologue narrated by John Larroquette. Even it its final scene where Leatherface is running down the highway chasing after the lone survivor, Sally, wielding his chainsaw over his head is yet another metaphor for how the country was coping with the end of the Vietnam War.
Writer Tom Wolfe described the seventies as the "me generation" where in the Western world the focus of social activism turned to pleasure of oneself. The established institutions of marriage, religion, and trust in the government were slowly losing its ground. Divorce rates in the country, single parent households, and pre-marital sex were on the rise. The "me generation" was not any more prevalent than in two of David Cronenberg's films: Shivers (1975) and The Brood (1979).
Cronenberg uses Shivers as an allegory for the eros of the times with the rise of STD's and AIDS. In the film, there is a parasite loose in an apartment complex where if someone becomes infected causing uncontrollable sexual desire with the disease spreading with the slightest of sexual contact. One could argue that this would be a precursor to the AIDS epidemic. John Carpenter's film The Thing (1982) would also use a parasite to spread its "disease" but in The Thing the scientists could not tell from the outside who was infected and who was not.
The Brood took a dark approach to address divorce and single parent households by using repressed memories and the primitive drive of motherhood to make one of the most twisted films of the modern horror film. In the film, Dr. Hal Reglan, played by Oliver Reed, uses controversial methods of psychoanalysis to treat the institutionalized wife of Frank Carveth, played by Art Hindle. A brood of mutated children are let loose to harm anyone that Nola Carveth, played by Samantha Eggar, feels threatens her family. The end of the film culminates in Nola giving "birth" to another child and licking the blood off of it basically showing her primitive maternal instincts.
Cronenberg uses repressed memories to explain Nola's childhood. He would later use this technique in one of his later films: A History of Violence (2005). In AHOV, repressed memories define the second half of his film and explain the first half. It also, turns the main character: Tom Stall, played by Viggo Mortensen, from the hero to the villain in an instance. Like in AHOV, The Brood uses Darwin's evolutionary theory as an underlying theme in the film where the wife's offspring is taking care of those who threaten her family. One line in the film summarizes an extreme child custody mentality of divorce in which Nola says, "I'd kill Candace before I'd let you take her."
In the eighties, the rise of the "slasher" film with such franchises like: Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street ushered in an unwritten set of rules that reflected a change in family values that the country was experiencing. The rules pertained to the behavior of the victims killed ranging from pre-marital sex to drug usage. Another aspect of these films was the protagonists in one way or another had to do with the byproduct of the family tragedy.
Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street also uses its settings respectively to reinforce two places that a parent expects their child to feel safe in: camp and their dreams. In Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), the film uses an iconic setting that is supposed to be the safest place to leave your kids and that is the summer camp.
In Friday the 13th, it starts off with the mother exacting revenge on the two camp counselors who were having sex while her boy, Jason, drowned. In the end, Mrs. Vorhees is beheaded. The films that followed showed an adult Jason exacting revenge on anyone who enters Camp Crystal Lake for the death of his mother. It is the witnessing the death of a parent that drove the antagonists to kill like in such films as George Mihalka's My Bloody Valentine (1981) or Charles E. Sellier Jr's Silent Night Deadly Night (1984).
In Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm St. (1984) Freddy Krueger, a child murderer, is burned alive by a group of an outraged community exact vigilante justice on him. Krueger comes back seeking revenge on those who burned him by invading their children's dreams and murdering them. What makes this film particularly horrifying is the notion that a parent cannot protect their children all the time which is a parent's worst nightmare. Freddy Krueger is this generation's boogeyman where he preyed on his victim's fears. Nightmare on Elm St. is one of the few horror franchises that saw a change in its killer. In the first film, Freddy's dream haunting are pulled off in a very sadistic way where in each subsequent film Freddy develops a sense of humor with one liners that were accustomed in other genre's like the Lethal Weapon or Rambo franchises. In the end, the horror genre has continued to scare its audiences. The horror genre is a reflection of our society preying on our fears and will continue to do so for many more generations.
