Analysis of Illogical Terror - Essay Example

First Illogical Terror Horror movies have captivated the audiences since the early days of cinema. After all, they trigger the primal fears among people. The authors play with the fear of death and the unknown through the creatures of darkness. Zombies, demons, vampires give these terrors shape and form. Val Lewton was a legendary screenwriter of the horror genre. The movie The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick is an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel by the same name. It offers stark similarity with Lewton’s style of horror in the sense that it portrays illogical terror. In The Shining Jack Torrance (the main character) has a son Danny. He possesses a strange power of seeing future events in his vision. He views blood coming out of an elevator of Overlook Hotel, the place where his father wants to go become the caretaker. The strange force is also present in the telepathic powers of the hotel chef. He offers Danny ice cream through this power. This seems illogical yet vaguely corresponds to people’s perceptions of demonic possessions and haunted places. Logically, it should not terrorize the audiences but it does. Val Lewton uses similar ideas. In his movies, a strange force either haunts a place (building, castle etc.) or it resides in people. In his film Cat People (1942) this strange power lies in a woman, Irena Dubrovna. She can turn into a beast (an overgrown black panther) when sexually aroused. Val Lewton’s The Haunting (1980) also incorporates a similar uncanny force. In the Female Spectator, Lesbian Specter: The Haunting, Patricia White states “It is the uncanny house that the heroine is forced to inhabit - and to explore… The woman provokes the uncanny; her experience of it remains a shadowy area.” She is shown to have psychic powers. Exactly what happens to her at the house or what she does to the ‘creatures’ living in the house is a mystery. This uncanny force is the theme of The Shining. Towards the end of the movie, the audiences are shown a photograph of Jack from 1921. The story unwinds in such a way that it gives an impression that probably Jack Torrance was a ghost from the beginning. His decision to take his wife, Wendy, and son to the hotel triggered the ‘force’. The Haunting shows a similar context. The team that visits the haunted house triggers paranormal events. The Leopard Man (1943) is fascinating in the sense that this uncanny force is not real. It gives the illusion that the forces there. For instance, all the way through the movie the audiences keep guessing that probably the man can turn himself into a leopard. But the evidence from the murder scene and the mauled bodies reveal that someone made it look like as if it was the work of an animal. It is only at the end that this uncanny force that the mystery is solved. When the culprit gets caught, he confesses that when the escaped leopard kills a man it triggers this effect, an impulse to murder people. The psychological manipulation of fear is the secret weapon of any horror movie, and Val Lewton was very skilled at it. His skills were so profound that he created terror out of nothing, even illogical ones. His film The Seventh Victim (1943) is probably so absurd in its horror plot that it almost qualifies as a crime drama. The manipulation of fear is done through shadowy camerawork. The setup of horror is illogical because it revolves around the mystery of a missing woman (Jaqueline) and her sister Mary, who goes in search for her. Eventually, she commits suicide. Jaqueline commits the crime of revealing the identity of a satanic cult that she was a member. And as a punishment she is supposed to die. It is illogical in its terror plot as there is no genuine horror it is just a psychological thriller. Lewton does not put the ‘horror’ in his by showing bleeding fangs of a beast but with the use of space, mystery, and cinematography. In Lewtonian space: Val Lewton’s films and the new space of horror J.P Telotte states that, “as horror films began to min Lewtonian space for a variety of horrific effects: as space itself became loaded with a sense of dread, as were in a film like The Shining; as the off-screen world began, reflexively, to encroach on the on-screen,…, and where physical space, even when it is ostensibly ‘home’, is itself the stuff of alienation and effective cinematic horror.” A traditional technique by Val is known as the ‘Lewton Bus’. The term refers to a scene in the movie Cat People where Irena chases another woman on the street. The audience is waiting for her to transform into a vicious Black Panther and attack her. The timing of the shot, the camera angle, and the suspense captivates audiences and compels them to expect the beastly transformation of the woman, but that never happens. Instead, they hear a strange hiss of a bus stopping. This technique of creating an anticipation of fear that is pushed away by something as foolish as a sound of a bus has been adapted in several other movies. It sets up the unpredictability of the audience it almost mocks the audiences for trying to predict the plot. Lewton’s work has been mostly famous because of its nonviolent techniques. There is hardly any blood or flesh tearing in his movies. His method has been largely based on the power of suggestion. The horror takes place inside the mind of the audience, not on the screen. The Shining relies on this technique. In one scene, Jack is possessed by some demon is chasing his wife and son with an ax. The ending is ‘happy’ because Wendy and Danny escape the hotel while Jack freezes himself to death in the maze. Similarly in the Cat People actual violence is not shown. There are violent events, but the bloodshed is not sprayed onto the screen (figurative speech) to frighten the audience. I Walked with a Zombie (1943) has a build up to a violent ending. There are suggestions that the voodoo believers might try kill Jessica. The Shinning also plays on the suggestive technique. The chef’s telepathic powers and Jack’s violent behavior suggest that the uncanny force is pulling the strings. The Man Leopard is even more powerful in the power of suggestion. Throughout the movie, the audiences keep guessing that probably the man turns himself into a leopard and kills the people. It is suggested, but it is never true. In fact, it is a bait for the audiences. They want to think that a man-beast is out on a rampage. Instead, it is just a psychopath killer. The Haunting might be an exception when it comes on screen suggestions. It is a not full of suspense or a build up towards a major story. The house is already revealed to be haunted. The team goes there to investigate the paranormal activity. Theodora has a reputation for being psychic while Eleanor is coming from a disturbed background. Just like Jack in The Shinning, which has a drinking problem and violent outbursts. Lewton’s setting and context are essential for the horror to work. J.P. Telotte writes about Lewton’s work in Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Film of Val Lewton, saying that Lewton “draws fundamentally on a realm of darkness and psychic imagery for its existence”. He adds “The horror film offers an important psychological experience, although one who’s significance most viewers remain unconscious of, just as they do their dreams.” A story or plot can be told and retold, but the quality of its interpretation depends upon the person portraying, telling, directing or producing it. There are directors and producers that love to make their movie graphical and decorate with gore and blood while others such as Val Lewton excite the subconscious by using tools such as mystery, the unseen and suggestions to stimulate their fears. The Shining shows Jack’s son Danny that possesses a strange power of sensing things. He has a vision about the room 237 in the hotel. He also has visions that an elevator spews blood. This child or childish character has also been a crucial part of Lewton’s movies. For instance, there are characters that sense the paranormal activities, events or creatures. This suspicion is evident in the Cat People where the victim of this demonic possession Irina senses that she has this power. Irena keeps sketching the Black Panther at the Zoo. At her apartment, she also has a statue of a King impaling a Black Panther, implying that she possesses the sense or an orientation towards the beastly nature of big cats. In The Seventh Victim Mary also senses that something is wrong when she tries to find her sister Jaqueline. She visits her apartment and sees only a chair and a noose hanging above it and senses that something is terribly wrong. It can be called intelligence, impulse, predictability or studying the environment. This sense of additional curiosity about the paranormal or the supernatural is also evident in The Shining by Danny’s curious nature as well as in Lewton’s many movies. The fear of death or the unknown is not illogical. Everyone is afraid of dying or being harmed from the unknown. The way these fears are put into a horror movie to instill fear or terror in the audiences can be logical or illogical. An example of a rational terror technique would be to establish a folklore such as a demon’s thirst for drinking blood like Dracula. He sucks the blood of his victims and leaves them dry. He either converts them into vampires or kills them. The logic is given as a premise that a demon exists with certain traits, and the story builds on it. An illogical technique would be similar to the one used in The Shinning and many of Lewton’s movies. Jack has a drinking problem but with the unleashing of the uncanny force he gets out of control. The question remains if the hotel is haunted or is it just the insecurity of a child that is feeding the addiction. Jack’s outburst could have been triggered by binge drinking or facing writer’s block in his efforts of writing. The audience cannot clearly understand whether it is a paranormal activity, or someone is having a psychotic breakdown. Jack’s interaction with the ghosts can be a hallucination. The viewer keeps guessing if the paranormal is real or an illusion. There are many similarities in Val Lewton’s technique of making horror movies and the movie The Shining. Maybe Lewton had a small budget to make horror movies, therefore, making the plot illogically suspicious or plainly simple was his biggest weapons. His cinematographic skills, and timing of events in the movies created fear among the audience even from an illogical plot. Read More