Editorials
‘Secret Window’ and the Thin Line of Dissociative Identity Disorder Representation [Unveiling The Mind]
Welcome to Unveiling The Mind. This bi-monthly column takes an analytical look at art that explores mental illness.
Is one bad day enough to make someone go mad? How far would one need to be pushed to dissociate from reality and go on a homicidal rampage? These are questions I’ve asked myself over the course of many years watching movies and playing video games. In some ways, I’ve had difficulty fully wrapping my head around such concepts. Without enough context to fully understand a character, how does Billy so-and-so go from being a pleasant dude one day to a psychotic killer the next?
In many cases with films of this subject matter, filmmakers are either hinting at or directly pointing to dissociative identity disorder. DID involves an individual balancing at least two distinct personality states and can include memory gaps. DID can also include OCD, eating and sleep disorders, depression and more. Also, those with DID are more likely to be violent towards themselves rather than act out towards others.
DID is one of the more popular tropes used throughout horror cinema. Everything from Psycho to High Tension has tried to piggyback off it. However, the disorder is rarely ever portrayed in a realistic (or honest) light. For those who have little to no understanding of what DID is, these depictions may be their only source (which is far from okay). There are layers to what DID involves and the struggles it can bring on. There are even some experts that debate whether it is a real disorder or an offshoot of other psychiatric problems.
For this month’s installment of Unveiling The Mind, I’m going to share my thoughts on a film that goes head on into such tropey waters. A film with an interesting enough premise, but that is bogged down by its half-baked protagonist and lack of psychological depth.
Secret Window stars Johnny Depp as Mort Rainey, a writer living in upstate New York. As soon as the film starts, the viewer is thrown into a moment of turmoil; we see Mort sitting in his car stressed and staring into space. After a couple sequences of abrasive driving and stealing some hotel keys, he makes his way into a hotel room, finding a woman sleeping with a man. We come to find out shortly that this is his wife. Secret Window then jumps six months later to a disheveled Mort who is struggling to write. He is visited by a man named John Shooter (John Turturro) who claims that Mort stole one of his stories. Throughout its runtime, tension escalates as Shooter messes with Mort, his taunting and acts becoming more violent.
Written and directed by David Koepp, Secret Window plays out just like a Stephen King novel – which is ideal, given that it is based off a King short story. Everything from the characters to the suspense and small-town atmosphere feel King-ian. There’s also a good bit of cheese along the way, but that cheese is not without its merits. It had been awhile since I re-watched Secret Window; upon my first view of this movie back in 2004, I loved it. However, now revisiting the film in 2020, I see it for a more problematic presentation.
It isn’t until the end of the movie that it is revealed that Shooter is actually Mort. Shooter is made up of abstract ideas from Mort’s mind, pieced together to help him cope with the infidelity and separation of his wife. However, in Mort’s case, coping appears to be torturing himself with accusations of plagiarism, burning down a house and killing people.
Several lines of dialogue provide intriguing bits that hint at the idea that Mort is not completely sane. In one scene where Mort is talking to his housekeeper, who finds a manuscript from Shooter in the trash, she makes a remark how she thought the name was a pseudonym that Mort was going under. In a later scene, Mort’s literary agent makes a comment about a crazy fan Mort had a run in with, and how the individual could not tell the difference between reality and the made-up stuff Mort writes about.
These types of narratives need more than twists though; twists can only go so far in making things engaging. When covering such heavy mental subjects in horror, or any genre, there needs to be in depth research regarding why and how a character acts. When it comes to the narrative striving to provide context to Mort’s psyche, that is where the film is the weakest.
To its credit, the film does brief glimpses into Mort’s past that point to a violent nature. The audience learns that Mort’s wife had a miscarriage, he had a drinking problem and he is someone with a temper. Though his frustrations with his wife are understandable, it’s a little concerning to see him take the phone while talking to her and shake it in a choking manner. However, the most problematic aspect of that relationship may be how he brought a gun when confronting his wife in bed with the other man.
But even if each of these points serve to acknowledge an unhinged Mort, they don’t provide a logical foundation for why he becomes so violent and disconnected from reality. Dissociation is a sincere symptom of DID, but murderous drive is not. In many works of horror, DID is used as an excuse for why a character acts violently – this is ludicrous. Proper research would confirm that those with DID are not a threat to anyone, and that it takes much more than the disorder itself to provoke violence towards others. And yes, the film does point out that Mort was a drinker in the past, but that is not enough to sell his horrific actions. The way Secret Window handles Mort’s descent into Shooter is – well, there is no progression there.
What may have helped the film is if the audience was given more insight into Mort’s life – specifically his younger years. Experts have found that DID tends to spring up in those who have suffered traumatic experiences in childhood; what possibly may have happened in Mort’s life to stir on such a disorder? Rather than attempt to explore this idea and how trauma has festered within him, the film only looks to provide bits of exposition, expecting the audience to buy in and accept. The audience experiences the turmoil Mort currently faces and is provided a small taste of matters from the past, but never a full comprehension of his psychological being.
When it comes to portraying mental illness in media, context is essential. Secret Window never tries to address Mort’s mind state beyond brief comments. It is all surface level psychological flare, lacking the potency of any deep-thinking substance. Not only does it make for poor writing, but it continues a pattern of lazy, somewhat harmful tropes.
Thankfully though, in the years since Secret Window’s release, we have seen small improvements. We are seeing horror effectively and respectively navigate subjects of mental health (while still providing loads of scares and tension). It is possible to utilize and cover mental illness in horror, one just has to put the time in to know what they are talking about and how to properly represent the disorders being presented on screen.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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