io9
Critics are always saying that horror movies are about fearing vaginas, but they're wrong. Sure there's vadge imagery aplenty in horror (just watch the run of Alien movies if you don't believe me), but the scariest science horror flicks of the last thirty years are actually about everything that can go wrong with a dude. I'm not just talking about the malfunctioning penis that blows up Tokyo in Legend of the Overfiend. I'm talking about something deeper. And yes, maybe even . . . harder.
For my money, two of the scariest science horror flicks out there are David Cronenberg's 1980s version of The Fly, and Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. What stands out about them, aside from the fact that they are eat-your-arm scary, is that they are both sustained, visually-arresting movies about men going apeshit because they are men.
The Fly is a simple tale of a guy who has invented a teleportation pod that has a bug in it — literally. One day when our mad scientist Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is zooming between pods a fly gets stuck in there with him and the computer decides the best way to deal with the situation is to merge the two creatures genetically and create BrundleFly.
The film's special effects sometimes look strange and jerky to our CGI-trained senses, but Cronenberg manages to use a puppet-and-prosthetics infrastructure to his advantage by sticking to visuals that look as real as possible. When our mad scientist Jeff Brundle merges genetically with a fly and starts to transform, we are truly grossed out by his mulchy face and sudden need to eat sugary food by barfing on it first and then slurping it up fly-style.
Brundle is a stereotypical male science geek, totally obsessed with his machines and teleportation experiments to the point of caring about little else (though he does take some time out to get with Geena Davis — who wouldn't?) He's your basic guy nerd who doesn't give a crap about his body or meatspace. It's all about the machines. Brundle's rapid physical deterioration into half-fly, half-man is as pathetic as it is terrifying: He makes us gag and we feel sorry for him, so when he goes lethal, we sort of understand why. His gooey revenge is exactly what the Star Wars Kid has in mind for us.
28 Days Later draws its frenetic horror from another stereotypical idea about what dudes are like when given the chance. A virus turns most of the population of England into bloodthirsty, mindless superzombies, and one of the only holdouts against the diseased hordes is a military squadron holed up in a fortified mansion in the country. Our heroes, who have also managed to survive and escape London, join the military dudes for safety.
But then they discover the truly scary shit. These military guys, led by Christopher Eccleston at his most eye-buggingly Naziesque, have been trying to lure women into their little lair so that they can imprison them, rape them, and "restart the human race." Unfortunately, two of our heroes are female and now they're trapped between zombieland and a dark, dudely place.
This is a gory movie, but its horror doesn't come from looking at decaying bodies like it does in The Fly. Instead, it's scary because we're watching a decaying society. In Boyle's vision of the apocalypse, a bunch of guys with guns are more horrifying than any genetic disaster. He seems to suggest that men automatically revert to a state of violence and rape when provoked, and the inevitability of that transformation is what terrifies — the fact that these men seem so blind to the fact that they've become monsters.
And yet one of the heroes of 28 Days, Jim, is a guy who refuses to join Eccleston and his rape gang. He has no interest in possessing his female companions, and his blood-soaked rescue of the women takes up the latter half of the film. I think seeing the evil military guys through the eyes of another man who doesn't want to be like them makes this movie even more of a nail-biter. It would be easy for Jim to join up, to stay safe in the house protected by their guns, and to have a little gang rape for fun on the side. But he fights tooth and nail (literally) to stop that from happening.
In fighting the monstrous men, of course, Jim has to become a little bit like them. Those fight scenes are some of the most chair-grippingly intense I have ever seen. Scary, gory, shocking.
That's true horror, people. And never a vadge in sight.
Comments
Agreed, and yet, oddly enough, after transforming into Brundle fly, Goldblum appears to have no genitalia.
Hmmm. Do girl-nerds care about something other than their science? If they did, wouldn't that make them not nerds anymore?
I'd have thought that nerd was actually a gender-neutral term.
The original b&w version of the fly had a slightly creepy ending.
The Changeling, with George C Scott always won for one of my favorites. Great horror story. Classic ghost tale. well acted, superb camera work. No flashy special effects.
Uratsukidoji!!
500ft long tentle penii!!
I am way too excited about that!!
The thumbs in the eyes revenge in 28 Days Later is one of the more intense scenes I can think of in any movie.
It's been a while since I've seen a vadge, so forgive my ignorance... but don't you kinda sorta defeat the premise of your post by including a picture of naked Jeff Goldbum crouched in a giant faux-vagina?
Is it just me, or is Goldblum sitting in a vadge?
/washes eyes in acid
28 days later kind of horror is the real horror the Horror that colonel Kurtz in Apocalipsis Now talked about. it reminds me of something I read about the second world war and how the russians who salved all those woman in the nazi camps raped them before liberate them. so those woman who were totaly ripped by the nazy camp experience, almost corpses, hungry and hopless , expecting to be saved were afterall repeatly raped by who were supose to save them..its then when they really wanted to die..after have been able to survive that was the last thing they could expect from humanity.
that's kinda what happens in 28 days after isnt it?
i know, i know, i'm a total douchebag for making this correction, but her name is "geena" davis, not "gina"
The Alien series was awash in both male and female sexual imagery. Anything even remotely based on Giger's art HAS to be...(which, I think, was kinda the point)
@itispunky: Fixed!
@V.I.N.CENT: It's actually the giant head of a penis.
@braak: Nerd is a gender neutral term. That's why I specifically called him a guy nerd. Female nerds care all about their machines too, but I'm talking about cultural stereotypes in The Fly, not reality. Obviously in reality there are plenty of guy nerds who care about more than their machines too.
The Fly always creeped me out. Oh, and Geena Davis is ass ugly.
@Tim Faulkner: ...oddly enough, after transforming into Brundle fly, Goldblum appears to have no genitalia.
Sure he does. It's in a jar in the bathroom cabinet.
"His gooey revenge is exactly what the Star Wars Kid has in mind for us."
ROFLMAO!!!
How about Planet Horror? Especially the scene where Quentin Tarrentino's "Rapist #1" is trying to rape Rose McGowan before his penis finishes rotting off?
Nothing disturbs me more than movies, stories, or art in any form, depicting sexual assault except for the person that thinks it's cool.
In 28 Days Later, when the woman gives the girl drugs so she can handle being raped…I have no words to describe how horrified I was at the thought. A dick you can't say no to is very scary.
Man, I don't even know how to say how wrong you are about "The Fly". It's about dealing with disease and how it changes your body and your "connection" with it. Brundle before is just an average person, living unaware of what he is. After, he goes so far as to "categorize" parts of himself, to attempt to keep part of his "self" as he was, because he is now "aware" of his decreasing humanity as the disease progresses. His being a man is just secondary, in my view. Sexuality is only brought up via the maggot baby, which again is a fear of the loss of "humanness".
As for 28 days later- it has to be one of the most overrated films of the last decade. Two movies grafted together very uncomfortably.
@Freddie Freelance: Yes -- so gross/awesome. I know I should have included a bunch more penis horror here. My personal favorite is the scene where the zombie rat fights a severed zombie penis in Beyond Re-Animator.
@Metropolis: Well I can have her all to myself then!
The Goldblum Fly was the only horror movie I've ever been so horrified by that I had trouble watching. Largely because the character were so sympathetic that I actually cared what happened to them.
Unfortunately, Jeff then went on to play a long string of dreadful, anti-science characters, that I hate.
-Kle.
@Plague: I completely agree that The Fly is about dealing with disease. One of the things that's fascinating is watching Brundle become aware of his body, which he wasn't before when he was buried in his work with computers. I think your reading can fit with what I'm bumbling toward saying here, which is that The Fly is about a stereotypical nerd guy who is unaware of his body, who undergoes a transformation that forces him to become horribly aware of it. But part of the horror is that he got to this spot in the first place by not thinking through the impact his work might have on his body.
@Annalee Newitz:
Yes.
But I don't think that Cronenberg intended this as a "man issue", but as a human one.
Or, possibly what too much living in one's head at the expense of your physical/emotional self can cause.
Absolutely agree about 28 Days. That twist was part of what made it my fav Zombie flick of all time.
I always love the penile pineal gland in the glorious Re-Animator. Seriously, dood has a dick coming out of his forehead and tries to give oral pleasure with his decapitated head. Pure genius!
@lurleen:
You're mixing two different events. The Russians did liberate a bunch of the extermination camps, but didn't rape any of the prisoners. What they did do though, egged on by Russian propaganda, was rape 1000s and 1000s of German women civilians. Of all ages, including pre-pubescent girls and elderly women.
"The Fly" was fascinating because of the social commentary it forwarded in regards to the tenuous thread we have on our humanity, and it was really gross when he eat donuts... buzz buzz... "how the hell did a fly get into the forum... Crunchy take care of that fly would ya."
Crunchy = small virtual monkey with heightened IQ (way smarter than his master.)
@drift_marlo:
Uh, that was From Beyond with the pineal gland...
Re-animator had the decaptitated head head-giving.
I saw 28 Days Later as being about how people lose it when societal order is taken away, which men tend to play into more violently. Look at the 1977 NYC blackouts. While the ending did have a Camp Kurtz flavor to it the soldiers, to me, were more desperate and probably a bit twisted from the loss of authority than brainwashed. The infected were a sort of catalyst for the really creepy (human) parts of the movie.
annalee, you totally grasped what made 28 Days later such an intelligent horror film. a lot of dystopian plots allude to sexual violence as a consequence, but its done in this hashed casual way that no one really sees the horror of women hiding from it or fearing it. considering the film was directed and written by men; it was a pretty bold move. and one that required an unusually intuitive actor like cullian murphy to pull off.
Two words of horror: vagina dentata.
Teeth and King Kong (Peter's version) If the slugs with teeth aren't vaginas, all wet and pink inside, I'll kiss yer bum.
you failed to mention that the most horrifying part of the fly is when geena davis gives birth the fly baby hybrid. im pretty sure that has something to do with a vag.
Have to agree with all the agreement about 28 Days Later. Definitely the most effective horror flick I've seen since "Henry: Portriat of a Serial Killer," which has nothing to do with sci-fi or vadges so it isn't topical here, for exactly the reasons mentioned. Not the zombies, but the reactions of the normal humans. One could say it was the desire for the vadge as oppposed to the fear of it that causes the movie to work, and also, the cause of me making the occasional fool of myself out at bars.
@Plague: I agree with you, and I'm sorry Annalee, but I think your trying to fit the triangle block into the circular peg here.
@braak: Nerd can be a gender-neutral term. But I think it depends on how old you are.
Sure, if you are 25-ish or under, the proliferation of technology and the majority of college students now being female has made it gender neutral.
But as a 40 year old guy, you say nerd to me-- I think of a guy, more specifically- me in my young to late teens.
And frankly, to my sensibilities, you can not be a nerd and have a girlfriend. They are mutually exclusive. Nerd + Girlfriend = Geek
Greatest vagina dentata of all time was Audrey II. Some might say the Sarlacc or the Alien, but come on - could they sing?? Though oddly, it was kind of penile, too. I kind of take Audrey II to be both the embodiment Seymour's repressed masculinity, AND a weird doppleganger for Audrey.
More on this topic than you ever thought possible: [mondomusicals.blogspot.com]
@pinafore: I'd argue that 28 Days Later' revelation of the true mindsets of the soldiers is one of the most forced and idiotic story techniques I've seen in the horror genre of the last years. The entire second half of the movie felt awkward and forced when compared to the themes and ideas portrayed in the first part.
I couldn't help but feel that the end half of 28 Days Later felt like the writer had sat down and deliberately set out to find the most disturbing ulterior motive for the soldiers - and for that reason, to me at least, it just felt underwhelming and poor.
Sexual assault and rape are two of the easiest ideas to insert into any script were a male presence is the majority in a lawless world, and because of that it often comes across as the worst. It's not that I don't find the subject horrible, it's that I found it so blatantly forced and lazy that it merely made the film itself seem horrible.
On the other hand a movie like Dawn of the Dead (1978) at least manages to maintain a consistent theme of society becoming more violent and dangerous through out the entirety of it's narrative progression. From the opening scenes it builds upon the ideas of survival bringing out the worst in people, and the end feels inevitable and fulfilling because of the establishment.
If 28 Days Later had ended at the half way point, or if it had changed the later half to be more in tune with the excellent first it would've been one of the best movies of all time, sadly it ended up being one of the biggest disappointments.
@SeeingI: Ha Ha forgot about Audrey II. Good one.
@PriorMarcus:
thanks for going in-depth on what my point was about 28 Days Later upthread.
Agree exactly.
@Plague: No problem. Glad we share the same point of view on the matter.
@MilesFromNowhere: yeah, vagina dentata was a horrifying thought. Nice one!
The Fly, would you really keep your man-bits in a jar after you started to mutate into something else?
@Her_royal_Highness: Oh how that "Help me! Help me!" SPLAT scene haunted my childhood.
@PriorMarcus: *smh* Why is it when an author thoughtfully attempts to take things beyond the bare-faced literal, it sets off a zombified chant of "square peg, round hole" with some of you guys?
See, this is why I'm so sorry Mr. Clarke will likely be more vividly remembered for "2001" than for "Childhood's End". So few people can stand to read the latter book and possibly come face to face with themselves.
When Seth changes into the fly, he is essentially being turned inside out and becoming more corporeal, more disturbingly fleshy. He becomes like an open, gaping wound. The horror is based on him becoming more "vaginal", even though we don't actually see a big vadge or vadge-like orifice hit the screen.