Monstrous Motives

I was thinking about a story I’d like to write. As a teenager, I wrote—or tried to write—a screenplay called Slasher, which was a silly spoof of slasher films that acted as a kind of origin story for the concept of a “slasher” killer. The idea was that a normal rural teenager, named Simon Lasher (get it?), was walking in a corn field and got struck by lightning, thus becoming a depraved killer. The more he kills, the more infamous he becomes, so eventually that type of killer was named after him. I don’t know that I still have any of the writing I produced around this idea, but I wish I did.

Clearly, at that time, I was interested in the idea that the over-the-top killers of that type of movie really didn’t have any coherent motive for anything they did. Getting struck by lightning was enough to flip the switch. But the story I was thinking about again today is a little different. I’m attracted to the idea of writing a kind of memoir from the point of view of, basically, Jason Voorhees. I like the idea that his self-perception is very different than we might expect—that he’s thoughtful and philosophical and without malice, in a funny, ironic way. Maybe it’s a bad idea, but who cares. I think it would be fun to write. So does Stephen King who, of course, got here first…

But then I got to thinking today that it would be interesting to research (and write about) the motives given in slasher movies for the actions of the killer. There is often some dime-store psychology that pins a slasher killer’s behavior on childhood traumas, for example. Interestingly, too, this explanation of motive doesn’t really stay put—it’s common for a sequel to alter the backstory, or invent brand-new reasons, or simply discard whatever we were told prior. What are we to make of the psychological justifications given or implied?

For example, why does Norman Bates kill Marion Crane in the guise of his mother? In Psycho (1960) we’re subjected to a scene at the end in which a psychiatrist spouts a bunch of Oedipal gobbledygook. What the shrink doesn’t quite say outright is anything about Norman’s homosexuality, but it’s hard today not to pick up on a number of elements of that “diagnosis.”

Or, in Halloween (1978), we get Dr. Loomis’s running commentary about his own attempts to help young Michael Myers, who he has come to feel cannot be helped and must be institutionalized for life. There have been numerous retcons over the course of the series and its remakes that change his family history a bit, but most of them have just been attempts to change Laurie Strode’s relationship to Michael. The inciting incident for Mike’s madness, though, appears to be the scene at the beginning of the original movie in which the child Michael murders his older sister. The movie suggests this might be because she has neglected him while babysitting so she can have sex with her boyfriend—an “explanation” that we either accept at face value or assume must not be the whole story, since it’s pretty flimsy. Yet adult Michael does kill several other babysitters on Halloween night who appear to have done the exact same thing—neglected their young charges so they can have sex. (One wonders if it’s possible that any of John Carpenter’s childhood babysitters might still be alive and have something to confess?)

The motives as given in horror films are typically weak and silly, cartoonish simplifications of psychological concepts. Nevertheless, they might also get right at the heart of the traumas and prejudices such films are actually about—the real agenda.