Unconventional Horror Villains

Christine

Idle Hands

Hello and HAPPY FALL, MY FRIENDS!!! We have finally arrived at my favorite time of the year, when the temperatures drop (in theory), the leaves change to every shade of warmth, and suddenly, my obsession with horror movies doesn’t seem so strange or concerning to others. The Summer lovers roll their eyes and lament the changing of the seasons, as if the majority of each globally-warmed year isn’t filled with sunshine and heat and opportunities for them to savor and sizzle, but I can’t relate! Somehow, my head is held higher and I have perfect posture in Autumn, my witchiness is no longer just a vibe my frizzy hair and big nose give off, it is an energy that I feel called to and welcomed by, as the sun hangs lower in the sky and the veil between the living and the dead becomes thinner each day. It’s not October just yet, and some may say it is too early to dust off the cauldrons and jack-o-lanterns, but I say, it’s past time to celebrate Halloween. This is such a brief season, always truncated by the claustrophobic sentimentality of Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I wish to soak up every scary second of this haunted holiday that I can. That’s why, for the fifth year in a row, I’m beginning my month of horror double features a week early, this time with a round of films surrounding unconventional horror villains. To ascribe the descriptor of “unconventional” to horror may seem redundant, for horror—in its very essence—is often a subversion of what we already consider to be “normal” and “good.” But horror is such an established genre, that even this very creepy and kooky and unexpected world has established tropes and villains. Ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies, aliens, men wielding knives—I’ve seen them all before. So let’s explore some unique horror antagonists, that break the usual macabre mold, and deliver some innovative scares with their unnerving and unconventional ways.

I could’ve begun with Quentin Dupieux’s 2010 film Rubber, which follows the deadly spree of a killer tire, or perhaps Nicholas Jacobs’ 1991 film The Refrigerator, but instead I accidentally landed on two films about teenage boys, and the unique things that bring about their doom. Up first is a film I saw once as a child and loved, from one of my favorite directors and one of my favorite writers, respectively, this is John Carpenter’s 1983 adaptation of Stephen King’s Christine. Though Stephen King has noted that this adaptation is “boring” to him, I would argue that Christine is one of is his purest, most straightforward scary stories, brought to life beautifully by the king of horror cinema—which makes it one of my favorite King stories-turned-movies. The film opens on a car assembly line in 1957 Detroit—the shining, hopeful center of the American automotive industry—where a steady stream of new Plymouth Furys are being finalized and readied for the road. Among the generic, cream-colored cars, a glimmering red beauty stands out. Its sharp, silver details sparkle and somehow seduce the camera toward it, and in the blink of an eye, a worker’s hand is crushed by the front hood. Moments later, another curious employee enters the vehicle, absentmindedly ashes his cigar on the brand new upholstery, the car’s radio turns on by itself, and before we can register the growing danger, someone opens the driver’s side door and the man’s lifeless body spills out. We then cut to Rockbridge, California, September 12, 1978, where a hopelessly nerdy high school senior named Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) is rushing off to school with his jock best friend, Dennis (John Stockwell.) Arnie is a textbook uncool geek, with thick glasses and a brown bag lunch made by his mother, but his cool friend Dennis is tries his best to encourage Arnie to be more social—suggesting that since they’re now seniors, “It’s time we got you laid.” “You need a girl to get laid,” Arnie responds, and when Dennis begins listing female suitors, Arnie lists complaints for them all, like a present-day incel. Dennis the football player blows off advances from a young Kelly Preston, before he has to save Arnie from the aggro bullies who torment him on the daily. These are Stephen King bullies, so they’re extra cruel, extra motivated, and look at least 37 years old. But on the drive home, Arnie’s spirits are lifted when he spots something hidden in the overgrown grass of a nearly-abandoned home: a bright, cherry red, classic Plymouth Fury, that beckons to him like a siren on a jagged rock. The car’s owner appears and tells Arnie that this car’s name is Christine, that his “asshole brother got it back in ‘57”, and even when we learn that this asshole brother is now dead, Arnie makes an offer and buys the beat up car. Arnie’s parents are furious that he would spend his savings on this junker, but in Arnie’s first act of rebellion he tells them that for 18 years, he has done whatever they have said, and he’s going to have this one thing for himself. It’s a sympathetic cause, and at first, it merely seems like a bad financial investment. Arnie’s sole focus and passion becomes fixing up Christine, using the local junkyard for parts and storage, and in a matter of weeks Arnie has made Christine look brand new. As the car flourishes, so does Arnie—his glasses come off, his shoulders loosen, and he begins to sport a James Dean-esque greaser look, fit for a badass car like Christine. Arnie’s newfound sense of confidence lands him a date with the hot new girl in school, Leigh (Alexandra Paul), a revelation so shocking that it causes Dennis to fumble a ball during a football game—resulting in a career-ending injury. Dennis hardly recognizes the Arnie that comes to visit him in the hospital: hair slicked and eyes appearing indifferent, uttering cryptic things about his stifling parents and the bullies who once made his life hell. Dennis begins to have concerns about Christine and the power she holds over his bestie, and these concerns are shared by Leigh after a date at the drive-in. Arnie leaves her in the car only briefly, but as she bites into a burger, the familiarly ominous sound of the radio indicates that Christine is awake and paying attention, and locks every door when Leigh begins to choke. She was already weirded out by Arnie’s obsession with Christine, but this brush with death leads Leigh to believe that the car is sentient, and in fact, very jealous. Arnie takes Leigh home and tells her that he thinks she’s just “sexually frustrated”, before getting back in Christine, struggling to start the car, then soothingly says, “It’s alright baby, everything is the same”, which finally gets Christine’s engine going. I remembered this near-death scene to be much scarier as a child, but the more frightening kills are reserved for later, after the gang of bullies trash Christine, and she hunts them down one by one. This marks a shift in the film—for this critic at least—because at this point I begin to root for the killer car, and I am positively giddy when she effortlessly drives down the mutton-chopped bullies, even while engulfed in flames. The premise of a “possessed car” may not seem scary, but there is something utterly disquieting about the calm way this car peels into a scene and stalks its prey—particularly because they blacked out Christine’s windows, making it impossible to tell if anyone is even behind the wheel. Equally freaky is Arnie’s transformation, from docile dork to a slick, sick-in-the-head rebel. Stephen King is sort of the grandfather of fucked up teen movies, which clearly inspired similarly twisted teen transformations like the ones depicted in Jennifer’s Body and Ginger Snaps, but it’s often Carrie that gets all of the praise and prestige and remakes. But Arnie is just as sympathetic, just as complicated, and in the end, just as tragic of a figure as all of the other misguided, acceptance-starved youths that came before and after him. I forgot how frightening this film’s use of 50s rock n’ roll is, how brutal the kills are, I had completely forgotten that Harry Dean Stanton was in this at all, and how vaguely homoerotic Arnie and Dennis’ friendship is—let alone how queer and bizarre Arnie’s romantic connection to his car can be. All of this magic, I think, can be credited to master horror craftsman John Carpenter, who is one of the only filmmakers (apart from maybe Cronenberg) to successfully humanize a car and properly portray the potential of its dangerous allure. Production on this film began before the novel was even published—a wild but common occurrence for Stephen King stories—and John Carpenter later admitted that he didn’t even want to direct this movie, but after The Thing flopped at the box office, he needed a win. The PG-13 rating didn’t exist yet, and the producers feared that if Christine were rated PG, no one would see it. So, naturally, the F word was inserted generously, so it could qualify for an R rating. Multiple scenes, particularly in Arnie’s neighborhood, were shot in the same South Pasadena neighborhood where Carpenter shot Halloween—which is, believe it or not, the same neighborhood where tonight’s next film was shot. (I really wish my psychic film-pairing abilities would transfer over to psychic predictions of lottery numbers, but I digress.)

Next is a film that I’ve been dying to see since I learned about it, a clever take on body horror that features an unconventional horror villain that is attached to a rather conventional one: this is Rodman Flender’s 1999 horror-comedy Idle Hands. Rarely do horror films, or really any films, have memorable opening credits sequences anymore, but Idle Hands begins with a credits rollout that was just as gnarly and aesthetically 90s as the rest of the film. We are first introduced to a wholesome couple a few nights before Halloween, as the woman (Connie Ray) thumbs through a catalogue of Thanksgiving decor ideas, and her husband (Fred Willard) groans that they just finished decorating for Halloween. As they get in bed and turn off the lights, neon lettering appears on the ceiling and spells out, “I’m under the bed”, but as Fred Willard discovers, there is nothing there. He grumbles that it’s probably just their son, Anton, playing a prank, but when unsettling noises are heard throughout the house and both parents inexplicably disappear, it is apparent that this is no prank. The next day, somehow completely unaware and unscathed, teenage dirtbag Anton (Devon Sawa) awakes in his attic room, and begrudgingly gets out of bed. He strolls down the stairs, steps past pools of blood, still not noticing that anything is amiss, even when he’s able to smoke weed and watch cartoons unperturbed in the living room. He unlocks his inhaler necklace to reveal a hidden pipe, but when he realizes he’s out of weed, he trudges over in his PJs to his bud’s house for more. He crawls into the basement bungalow of fellow teenage dirtbags, the blue-haired Mick (Seth Green) and the red-headed and rotund Pnub (Elden Henson), who claim to be out of weed themselves as they each let out one last puff from their boob bong. Anton is profoundly annoyed, and Mick says, “Anton, all you do is smoke pot and watch TV all day. Don’t get me wrong, that is what life is all about, but shouldn’t you have some ambition?” Anton responds, “I mean, my dream life would be to lie around and watch TV while some hot broad delivers me food,” to which Mick says, “Until your parents kick your oily ass out” which finally triggers a realization in Anton: he hasn’t seen his parents in a couple days. Mick and Pnub then inform Anton of the serial killer activity in the area, the new curfew for teens, and the upcoming Halloween dance at school—all things Anton has been unaware of while in his state of slacker hibernation. Nothing clicks for Anton yet, but he is stirred more awake when he spots his crush, Molly (Jessica Alba), riding her bike through the neighborhood. Meanwhile, a state away, Vivica A. Fox is dressed as a nun and escorted to a jail cell where the alleged serial killer is being held. She notices that his hands are mysteriously mangled and darkened, and she yells in her frustration, “It’s gone!” before storming off, ripping off her habit, revealing a chicer look, and getting into her RV. It’s not until later that she reveals her identity as Debi, a “Druidic priestess sworn to fight a certain evil force that possesses the laziest fuckup it can find. It will kill as many people as possible and then drag a free soul into the Netherworld.” Back at Anton’s increasingly-messy home, he is blissfully watching porn in the living room and preparing a sandwich, until he finally notices blood on the knife he’s using. Anton then finds his parent’s bodies hidden as Halloween decor, and fears the killer is still in his house. His friends come over to help look for clues, one of them being a piece of Anton’s shirt, clutched in his mother’s cold hands. “The killer was wearing your shirt?” one of them asks, “The killer was wearing ME!” Anton realizes, horrified, as his right hand begins to inexplicably glow and move on its own. Mick and Pnub scatter in their fear, but Anton tries to reason with them, to which Mick nervously says, “If OJ can get off, then I’m sure—” but he is cut off when Anton’s hand breaks a beer bottle and shoves it into Mick’s head. Anton tries desperately to control his hand, but it chases Pnub around the house until it successfully decapitates him, and Anton is left all alone. That is… until his friends come back from the dead, aggravated at first, then resigned and chill about their undeadness once they start smoking weed again. Anton seeks advice from his devil-worshipping, punk rocker neighbor, Randy (Jack Noseworthy), who quotes the bible: “…‘Idle hands are the devil’s playground’, so keep your hands busy.” Anton tries his best to do so, and even takes up knitting, but his hand has an insatiable appetite for murdering, and has no care for the body it is attached to. Even when I thought the hand was trying to be Anton’s wingman, and it forces him to talk to Molly, it turns out the hand just wants to kill her too. Idle Hands was really not at all what I thought it would be. It was way funnier than expected and less pervy than I feared, but still written with the same kind of horny-man-abandon that was the custom of the time. Devon Sawa, one of the best scream kings around, is doing Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd levels of physical acting and looking like every childhood crush of mine, and everyone else’s, while doing it. The hand itself was shockingly terrifying, and puppeted by magician Christopher Hart, who also played The Thing in The Addams Family (1991). Jessica Alba was funnier than I know her to be, Vivica was beyond iconic, the soundtrack was electric, the production design was incredible, and honestly, before shit hits the fan, this cast is an ideal blunt rotation. So why did I only learn of this movie a few years ago? Well, Idle Hands unfortunately opened on April 30, 1999, just ten days after the Columbine High School massacre, which led to Columbia Pictures cancelling the premiere and screenings at many theaters—especially in Colorado, where the shooting occurred. Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain berated Idle Hands in Congress as “another grossly violent film targeted at teens that uses killing as a form of comic relief.” No one could’ve predicted this tragedy, especially back then, and it’s disappointing that this kooky horror-comedy was affected by this monstrous event. Watching Idle Hands now, it feels ahead of its time. And any disjointed storytelling likely came from the multiple changes decided by test audiences, who wanted more weed smoking, and for Jessica Alba to expose more skin—both of which were granted. To quote Seth Green in his interview with The A.V. Club, “We all thought we were making a different movie. Me and the boys—Devon and Elden—we were convinced we were making a high drama with some comedic elements, and we tried to make our relationship as lifelong best friends believable... The director was attempting to make a throwback Italian horror film, like a Dario Argento flick. The writers really wanted it to be Heathers. And the studio, listening to the test marketing, really wanted the zombies to be cuter, and have more wacky antics.” Differing opinions and perspectives and third-choice director aside, Idle Hands is a fun, colorful, gory, and grimy horny-horror-comedy perfectly fit for the era in which it was made, even though it has only recently garnered appreciation. I didn’t mean to watch two coming-of-age horrors surrounding treacherous teenagers, but I thoroughly enjoyed both films, and think they’d entertain audiences of all ages. They may not be the scariest horror films ever made, but their innovative horror villains made for some really unique, ambitious storytelling. Thank you for reading along this week, dear reader, and for kicking off the Halloween celebration over a month early with me. Until next time, creep it real, and keep your hands to yourself! ;)