As Halloween Drew Near, I Feasted on Horror Flicks

Elements of surprise, build-up of suspense, and creases of character’s frustrations make up a standard horror flick.  I picked out few unknown catchpenny flicks to gorge on days leading up to Halloween plus a 1978 classic.  I correlate key movie themes with critical social issues relevant in today’s society.  I hope you fall to my finding with welcome.

Hunted

PG-13

1:49

April 28, 2015

Rory J Saper, Christina Jastrzembska, Kelly Rowan, Merritt Patterson

Vertical Studios

#5747 in Horror Movies & TV (Top 10:  Halloween, Scream)

 

  

It’s Not Nice Guys That Finish Last But The Skinny Boys

 

 

 

Rufus in Hunted

Rufus comes into town.   A skinny boy’s arrival in town coincides with violence which surrounds him.  Rufus seems different but he does not carry a violent bearing.  Why?

 

Because ectomorphic boys are not usually associated with violence.  William H. Sheldon’s studied body builds and their behavioral tendencies, temperament, susceptibility to diseases, and life-expectancy.  Ectomorphic have linear shape and are often taller build. 

 

Most men fall in the midrange.  Median male somatotype consists of this ratio:  4.0, 4.0, 3.5.  Median women have these figures:  5.0, 3.0, 3.5.  Women tend to be more endormorphic, less mesomoprhic  than men but equally ectomorphic.

 

Young men with 3.5-6.0-2.0 have high mesomorphic score of 6.  These make up 6% of the population.  Recividist delinquents, chronic runaways, unmanageable school truants are mostly mesomorphic with high andromorphy which refers to masculine traits like flaring broad chest, low waist, large arms, prominent muscle relief, large bones and joints, and fat distribution.  

 

3.5-5.0-2.3 somatotypes are “primary” criminals with adult felony convictions.  In contrast, a whole sample would have 3.8-4.5-2.9.  Persistent criminals are relatively mesomorphic and non-ectomorphic.  To be mesomorphic is to be muscular. 

 

Ectomorphs are identified with these personality traits:  introverted, inhibited, restrained temperaments.  Mesomorphs often conduct themselves with different temperaments:  expressive, extroverted, domineering, and high activity. 

 

“Dionysian” temperament is unrestrained and impulsively seeks self-gratification.  While our body forms are not directly correlated to criminal behavior, criminal personalities are more impulsive and uninhibitedly seek gratification.   

 

Rufus and Tracy in Hunted

So Rufus is deemed as trouble but does not actively stir up violence to those around him.  Rufus and Tracy meet and form a companionship.  Tracy is relatively modern in her female sexuality which may be too liberal for some of the town’s folks.  Clay, another boy in town, for example, judges her activities with boys.  Clay’s background suggest more conservative upbringing but he displays violent behavior:  he throws pebbles at Rufus at night when he is out with Tracy.  Throwing something at someone is a form of family violence.  So are pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, kicking, biting, hitting, beating up somebody, threatening with gun or knife, or using gun or knife.  Clay may have grown up with family violence like a battered wife or husband at home.  Rufus retaliates by taking a bite of Clay’s neck revealing his inhumane nature.      

 

 

Are there more people with Clay’s views on dating?  Certainly.  Non-marital and extramarital activities were once considered crimes.  Really?  Yes.  Oral sex, adultery, sodomy, and fornication were once seen as crimes.  When state laws set sexual conduct as a crime, it is usually aimed at homosexuals.  Rhode Island, for example, elicited a crime by imprisonment for “abominable crimes against nature,” which equates to anal sex.  Imprisonment of up to 20 years and minimum of 7 years are educed for such crimes.  Two men were arrested in 1986 for sodomy in Georgia.  They could not overturn their decision in Supreme Court because of the state’s law.  Illinois was the first state to decriminalize homosexual behavior.  Gay men and women were treated as criminals.      

 

 

Men & Women Love Differently and the Relationships You Should Seek

 

Tracy and Rufus in Hunted

Tracy and Rufus have premarital sex but without any arrests.  They form a friendship but their loving relationship is yet to explore by the movie’s end.  Francesca Cancian explored the topic of feminine and masculine love and their differences.  Feminine love is expressed through emotion expression and talking about their feelings.  Males tend to offer help, share activities, spend time together, and have sex.  Tracy and Rufus helped each other and had sex but have not shared many activities or spent that much time together.  Male love is more instrumental and integrates physical aspects of love.  Girls/women crave verbal interaction and emotional expressions. 

 

Feminine love is expressed through emotional support and expression.  Masculine love is expressed through material support and sex.  Tracy and Rufus’s can fall under an androgynous relationship which is further divided into as independent or interdependent.  Though they live across the street from each other, they lead separate lives.  Check.  If they lead separate but shared lives as long as it doesn’t interfere with their independence, their relationship develops into an independent.  Tracy and Rufus would most likely have an independent relationship.  Interdependent is even better but usually applies to more mature individuals.  If Tracy and Rufus become better as a result of their commitment to each other, the relationship blossoms into an interdependent one.  Rufus does look better by the film’s end with his clean shaven haircut as they get ready to board the school bus.  Interdependent relationship develops individuals as a product of the relationship.  So date and be with someone who makes you grow as a person. 

          

 

   

 

Pulse

Pulse

PG-13

1:26

Kristen Bell, Rick Gonzalez, Ian Somerhalder

 

 

Where is the Digital Age Headed?

 

 

Mattie and Dexter also have an independent relationship.  But before Dexter, Mattie had Josh whom she loved.  Can she make it through the movie with Dexter’s help?

 

The movie sets out with crowds of voiceovers teeming over the busied internet.  Droves of users huddle over the internet sharing/downloading on top of one another.  Josh, Mattie’s boyfriend, springs up onto college campus.  He senses a black demonic figure emerging in the shadows.  It absorbs and inhales all of his life’s spurts when he is alone at the library leaving him depleted, fagged out, and ready to drop.  And he croaks by hanging himself surely fleeing from the listless, vapid state and releasing himself from the demonic plague.  Mattie witnesses his death.      

 

Kristen Bell as Mattie in Pulse

Mattie watches her friends Stone and Izzie overtaken by the demonic plague which ensued onto campus.  They perish into sooty ashes.  Mattie finds Dexter through a copy of a written check in his name during her quest to find answers.  They track down Ziegler who is taped off at his apartment as his way of mounting guard against the demonic plague. 

 

Mattie and Dexter in Pulse

Ziegler lets them in on his job assigned to Josh.  Ziegler discloses the frequency he unearthed during his telecom project in which the demonic plague came through.  Mattie and Dexter confront it by uploading the file Josh had worked on in the basement of Ziegler’s building.  They break out within thin margins.  But it is not over.  As they rest their foreheads on one another napping in the truck, a demonic figure rises above them nearly absorbing their life spirits.  Surprise.  They start the engine and escape it when the truck hits a dead zone in which no frequency, no signals can come through. 

 

The movie explores the aftermath of the internet sharing which surfaced as a widely controversial topic hitting a discord with few parties.  When computers and the internet became a fad few decades ago, freedom of speech vs rights to privacy clashed at the opposite streams by sparring groups.  It begs us to question:  what if we shared something which harms us come through our frequency? 

 

 

 

Solstice

Solstice

PG-13

1:30

2008

Amanda Seyfried, Shawn Ashmore, Tyler Hoechlin,

 

 

How We Learn To Have a Conscience

 

 

Criminals look at the expected value of the crime.  If you have 1 in 8 chance of getting away for stealing $100, you would take a gamble on that than 1 in 2 chance of getting caught.  Expected value is determined by taking product of the value of the gain multiplied by probability of obtaining it. 

 

                                                $100 X .8 = $80 

                                                $100 X .5 = $50

 

If a thief has 1 in 2 chance of stealing $100, than the value of his crime only adds up to $50.  If his odds go up to 1 in 8 chance, his value raises to $80.  You’d take the $80, right? 

 

For the disappearance of a 12-yr-old girl Malin in the movie Solstice, the odds of getting caught goes up as Megan uncovers the mystery behind her sister’s suicide.  Certainty of the success of his clean slate becomes less certain.  The value of the non-crime lies in the future.  Can he avoid risk of being caught and punished and avoid penalties unrelated to the criminal system like loss of reputation and sense of shame? 

 

Friends Zoe, Christian, and Mark at the country house

The movie’s storyline implies from the start that an incident incurred along the small bridge leading up to the country house.  The SUV comes to a halt at the spot.  Zoe, Christian, Mark, Alicia, Megan are in the SUV when it suddenly comes to a halt.  An incident had occurred past the bridge a short-term ago.  One of the boys had been involved in a hit-and-run accident where Malin was severely injured or killed.  Surprise.  Had the boy acted immediately, things may have turned out differently.  But he did not.  He buried her into his deep conscience and the soils of the forest instead. 

 

 

Friends stay at the summer country house in Solstice

One of the boys (Christian, Mark, Nick) committed omission of an act.  He can be held criminally liable for failure to assist (Statute 97).  Meril was also put in danger by someone else.  He had the duty to aid her but failed to do so.  The law requires certain acts of duty in situations like this.  He also had knowledge of the facts giving rise to his duty.  He knew Meril was severely hurt or killed.  He knew this as a fact.  He failed to act under the circumstances:

               

1.)     He was under legal duty to act;

2.)    He had necessary knowledge;

3.)    It was possible for him to act.

 

 

Who knows why the boy dug deep into the soils to hide Meril’s body?  Either way, his duty to act was required by law.  He was not just an innocent bystander witnessing a crime (no duty required).  I can only suggest that violence has been prevalent in both movies and television. 

 

T.V. weighs in acts of violence.  Viewing T.V. either enhances or displaces the satisfaction we get from acting violently.  This may occur because of the restraining affect of our conscience is weakened “disinhibition” or we find the picture of violence exciting, stimulating “modeling.”  T.V. viewing intensifies violence of T.V. viewers especially children.  Some argue that disclosed feelings of hostile, angry, excited after viewing violent film is short-lived.  Some say it has a long-term effect.    

 

 

Conscience is measured by our internalized constraints against certain actions, violation that causes feelings of anxiety.  Sophie shows outward display of conscience during the scene when the girl is buried into the ground.  She protests and exclaims, “We gotta tell somebody,” but the risk of getting caught is too grave for the male character.  Boys are more likely to commit street crimes because of nature and nurture that reassure aggressive, impulsive acts.  Though the male character in this situation is not mesomorphic, he is not ectomorphic like Rufus.  He has more of an average body type.  Mesomorphic builds bare resistance to learn classical conditioning.  Had the perpetrator been mesomorphic, impulsive, and low in verbal intelligence, it would have created monstrous outcomes.      

 

 

Conscience is learned.  Conscience is a product of conditioning.  And later on in the movie, the perpetrator’s anxiety surges as the car approaches the grave site of the young girl.    Frustrate.  A powerful conscience is needed for a modest yield, for example, an undertaking within the next 2 days.  Classical conditioning is shown by learning internalized rules.  Though the perpetrator in the movie showed pangs of conscience which is a conditioned response, he could not risk the penalties incurred from the accident.  

 

 

Crimes come with rewards.  Other than intangible benefits tied to crimes such as emotional/sexual gratification, sense of justice, and approval of others, losses also accrue immediately.  If you want to look at a person’s predisposal to crime, look at his attachment, time horizon, and conscience.  Take a good look at his relationship with his parents and if he had behaved well to get approval from them (attachment), his ability to see distant consequences of present day actions (time horizon), and proper conditioning to act appropriately in situations (conscience).  The intangible benefits do not apply to any of the characters in Solstice.  But losses do —pangs of conscience, onlooker’s disapproval, victim’s retaliation all adds up. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

PG

1:55

1978

Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum

 

 

Can Modern Science Gain New Ground for Human Specimens?

 

 

“Two different species cross-pollinate to produce a new one,” Elizabeth Driscoll remarks on a rare flower she found in her yard.  Her husband Geoffrey pays no attention to her new discovery but Elizabeth has uncovered something that will change the planet. 

 

 

At the start of the film, layers of gauzy, crystalline, glassy fibers loom over a dying planet searching for a new planet to live on until it drifts onto earth.  And at Elizabeth Driscoll’s backyard, a hostile microscopic organism fixes itself on top of the plant leaf to breed a new genus flower.  Suspense grows inside the viewer’s mind. 

 

Cut the camera angle onto Elizabeth Driscoll and her husband Geoffrey.  Elizabeth remarks on the rare flower she has discovered but Geoffrey remains unmoved, unimpressed.  They wake up the next day and it does not take long for Elizabeth to learn that her husband Geoffrey is not himself.  Drama increases in viewer’s eyes as suspense mounts with Geoffrey’s change in behavior by his opting out of an activity that he would normally attend with his wife.

 

Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams)

The screen shot changes to Matthew Bennell, a health inspector for Department of Health.  Suspenseful horror movies change scenes like this to build up the viewer’s suspense —cutting the camera shot from Driscoll’s to Bennell at a restaurant kitchen inspecting the tiniest corners.  Bennell stops by at the drycleaners whose owner complains of his wife not being herself.  So when Elizabeth complains of her husband Geoffrey, Matthew Bennell knows something is up.  Soon other husbands and wives acquire the know-how that their spouses are not really themselves.

 

 

Matthew stays at Elizabeth’s house falling asleep in her backyard.  During the short span of his sleep, a whopping flower expands its gauzy, crystalline fibers onto his arms cloning his human body.  Human clones grow out of a gigantic pod as humans sleep at nights!  Elizabeth’s discovery of a rare flower has grown to a monstrous proportion indicating that the pod people will soon take over the town and all across the world.  And back at her yard, clones of every one of them are growing as Matthew sleeps.  Surprise.  Mrs. Bellicec screams observing this monstrous sight.  Matthew awakens breaking the slow, suspenseful scene and arousing the protagonists into action. 

 

Bennell realizes when he calls the police that the pod people have gotten to them also.  Surprise.  They flee from them running out onto the streets but hit a barricading fence that balks their escape.  Bellicec volunteers to distract the mob setting himself out on a suicide mission.  Meanwhile Elizabeth and Matthew connect back onto the eerie, hollow night’s streets running over to find shelter at a building.  Bellicec returns not as his usual human form but converted as one of the pods.   Surprise.  The viewers may think right now, If he’s been gotten, what may happen to the rest?

       

 

They escape the cloned group and witness the wide discharging of a slew of gross green pods to the vapid crowds in the streets with wooden stares and lifeless walks.  These two last survivors try to blend into the crowd with a quick tip-off from Mrs. Bellicec but the cloned individuals spot their human form.  They manage to escape by jumping aboard a cargo truck headed to main headquarters where pods are inhabited as a breeding ground for alien invasion.  Can they put a stop to this invasion?  

 

 

Elizabeth injures her ankle and inevitably falls asleep perishing into a pale, ghastly decrepit form right in Matthew’s arms.  Yikes, the main female protagonist has been gotten!  Surprise.  Would the sole male protagonist now survive without anyone’s help?  Don’t they usually make it alive together?  The viewers know that the story is nearing its final conclusion.

 

Matthew sights a large ship boarding pods reserved for a travel out-of-state stampeding all his hopes for escape by sea.  Surprise.  He finds the warehouse and cuts the ropes fastened to the lights creating fire on the pods and a wide exodus of the cloned people.  But viewers know that it’s not over.

 

Next day, Matthew reports back to work pretending to be a clone synchronizing his walk to their rhythm.  You may think, ‘why is he endangering himself by putting himself in the masses of cloned individuals when he’s been spotted before?’  And alas, viewers get a wide camera shot angle of Matthew standing in D.C. possibly realizing his goal of meeting his friend.  Has Matthew become the hero of this horror story?  Has he outlived them all and somehow put an end to the pod people?  

 

Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) in Invasion of the Body Snatchers

You would want that to happen.  Mrs. Bellicec spots him calling out his name quietly across the street.  The camera narrows in on a closer shot to reveal his face.  But Matthew does not respond advantageously to her call, but he lets out a grotesque, squawky squeal like a wild hog.  Surprise.  He’s been gotten too.  Frustrate.  Did you foresee that as a viewer?  Or did you presume no chance of his survival as a human?  I thought no chance when he showed up back at work the following day.  

 

How is this 1978 remake relevant to movie fans today?  The subject of genetically modified or genetically engineered is widely talked about topic today.  Some people protest against it and some advocate for advanced research on artificial, scientific creations.  Thursday, October 21, 2021 New York Times article Breakthrough on Pig Organs in Transplants talk about a genetically altered pig’s kidney which was successfully attached to a patient at NYU Langone Health.  The pig’s kidney had been grown for transplant use from an increasing demand of 90,240 patients.  Past efforts have failed to successfully integrate with human bodily function in the 1960s and 1983 from chimpanzees and baboon’s organs, respectively.