Editorials
Danger Zones: The Transgressive Nature of Horror
In my defense, I thought it might be helpful, a kind of catharsis. First of all, I must say that my wife is the purest soul I’ve ever met, unendingly compassionate and completely selfless. Honestly, I have no idea how she puts up with me, but I am grateful for it every day. She’s never been a big fan of horror but was intrigued by the cover and synopsis of a Blu-ray I picked up—Ari Aster’s Midsommar. I warned her that it has some pretty intense stuff in it, but if she would like to watch it with me, it might ultimately be a positive thing.
Some background. A few years before we met, she found herself in a very bad situation and an abusive relationship, which she was able to escape with some help from a few close friends and a lot of innate bravery. I had read pieces and heard podcasts from women who had been in similar situations who found viewing Midsommar to be a freeing and empowering experience. I told her I’d warn her about the gory bits and that we could stop it at any time. To my surprise, she made it through the whole movie. The moment it ended, she stood up and said, “I feel like I’m going to throw up. I’m going to take a shower.” A few minutes later, I went to check on her and found her shaking and crying, disturbed to her core by what she had just seen.
I say all this (very much with my wife’s permission) to convey one salient point: horror is not a safe space. It is a danger zone. More than any other genre, horror is confrontational. It holds up a mirror to life, to society, to us as individuals and we don’t always like what we see. More often than not, fantastical monsters, horror icons, and Scandinavian death cults are masks placed over the very real terrors felt by the filmmakers that create them and the audiences that consume them. From its earliest days, horror was seen as a tool for social and political reflection. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari deals with a powerful man forcing his destructive and murderous will upon an innocent; perhaps a comment on the Kaiser sending a generation’s finest to its doom in the trenches of World War I. Nosferatu reflects on the fears and aftermath of a plague that had ravaged Europe and the world just a few years before. Dracula touched on American fears of the outsider, while Frankenstein and The Wolf Man asked audiences to sympathize with “monsters.”
‘Cannibal Holocaust’
None of these films are particularly confrontational or “dangerous” to us now, but in their day, they most certainly were, calling down the ire of critics and censors. The truth is, however, that the most extreme and outrageous art of yesterday quickly becomes the wall adornments for today’s hotel rooms. Edward Van Sloan’s prologue to Frankenstein, warning that what we are about to see may “shock” or “horrify” us, was serious in 1931 but is laughable today. Or consider the moral outrage ascribed to films like Peeping Tom, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Friday the 13th, all films that are considered acceptable, perhaps even tame today. Or to take a more extreme example, Ruggero Deodato, the director of Cannibal Holocaust, was brought up on murder charges because of the savage realism of his film. The charges were dropped when the film’s actors arrived in the courtroom very much alive and in once piece, but the opponents of the film were only barely satisfied. Today, none of these movies are considered to be “over the line” by most horror fans. The fact that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Shining, The Thing, Scream, and The Descent now adorn lists of “comfort horror” for many illustrates how quickly familiarity breeds desensitization.
This is why it is important, nay—the duty of new filmmakers to continue to confront us and make us uncomfortable.
The term “comfort horror” is in itself an oxymoron. Horror, by its very definition, is something uncomfortable, something disturbing, something transgressive. To be clear, I have nothing against comfort horror. There is nothing wrong with returning time and again to the movies we love. There is power in facing and overcoming these fears and finding comfort in that. The solace found in the familiar is good for us, but it also ceases to hold the same kind of power when we are lulled rather than disturbed. Horror is a call to examination and to action. Comfort rarely stirs us to either.
Wes Craven was particularly articulate on these points. He believed that the first thing the audience should be afraid of is the filmmaker. In other words, we should be uncertain of where they will take us and what dangers they will confront us with. It is a lesson he learned from Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho, who caught the audience off guard by killing off a star less than halfway through the film. He also learned it from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the only horror film he had seen before mounting his own extremely confrontational debut film The Last House on the Left. Craven recognized the power that the genre had to tell stories in an entertaining way that could tap into the conscience for social change. He recognized that Romero’s film was about revolution and dealt with hot button topics like race in America in a way that films like Look Who’s Coming to Dinner could not. Craven’s entire filmography deals with the deeper issues of society and he was often vehemently criticized for it, particularly by those who could not see past the violence and gore to what was actually being said.
It has never bothered me that non-horror fans are critical of the genre. It is perfectly understandable to be repelled by violence and monsters. I find it funny when they are surprised by how well-adjusted, compassionate, and empathetic horror fans tend to be. The value of horror is an age-old argument dating back to debates between Plato and Aristotle. Plato felt that the violence and horror on display in the amphitheaters of Athens were bad for society, while Aristotle argued for the value of catharsis. In the late 1950s, it was Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent which took aim at horror comics on one side and EC Comics’ publisher William Gaines on the other. In the 80s, Wes Craven took up the Aristotelian argument when he said, “horror doesn’t create fear, it releases it,” against the Platonists like Gene Siskel, Geraldo Rivera, and Morton Downey, Jr. who angrily condemned the genre as anti-woman, pro-violence, and harmful to American youth.
‘Don’t Breathe 2’
My concern now, however, is that all too often the Platonic argument is rising not only from outside the so-called horror community, but from within it. This is my main reason for writing this article. The impetus for it came a couple months back when a trailer for Don’t Breathe 2 was released. In it, the Blind Man, the extreme villain from the first film, appeared to be presented as the hero of the sequel. The discourse was savage on both sides. On the one hand, those taking a Platonic argument cried out “how could you make such a vile person a hero?” While the Aristotelians made the argument that we hadn’t actually seen the movie and those on the other side of the argument were sounding an awful lot like the satanic panic voices of the past.
When the film was released about a month later to a rather tepid response, it all appeared to be much ado about nothing, though some thoughtful criticisms have arisen concerning the film’s premise. It was instructive, however, in bringing to light an important question: is there a line to be crossed? I think there is, but I do not think it is “should we be forced to sympathize with a monster.” As I’ve already mentioned, empathy with the monster has been a key part of horror since the Universal classics. The objection to the anti-hero is the same objections that faced Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (or Goodfellas for that matter). A huge objection to The Last House on the Left is a scene in which Krug and company are humanized as they stare at themselves in disgust, picking grass from their bloody hands after a particularly brutal and inhuman act. This is also the sequence that raises the film above others of its kind. Or take the far older examples of Oedipus, MacBeth, and Raskolnikov the wanton murderer from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. When it comes to this tactic, it all depends on how the material is handled. Is it satire? Is it cultural examination? Or is it merely exploitation? The audience will usually be able to tell the difference.
It is also important to remember that just because a film (or any artform) depicts something does not mean it advocates it.
Where that line is drawn is to some extent subjective. Those who are not fans of the genre feel we crossed it a very long time ago. Others feel we haven’t even come close. Most fall somewhere between. For me personally, there are some films I just won’t see. That is my choice based on my own tolerances, experiences, and capacities. It is important for each of us to know our own limitations and to decide where we personally draw the line. I do believe that snuff films or movies that involve abuse or criminal mistreatment in their making are over the line, and I believe few would disagree with me on those points.
But I do feel that filmmakers should be given the freedom to push us and confront us without facing puritanical outcries that border on censorship. What we decried and scoffed in the era of the Satanic Panic we must not participate in now. The mantle of confrontational horror has been passed from Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and Hooper to new voices that challenge our biases and viewpoints, prodding us out of our comfort zones like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Karyn Kusama, Robert Eggers, and Nia DaCosta. I long for current and future filmmakers to be able to bring us the next Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chain Saw, They Live, Scream, It Follows, or Get Out. But films like that don’t happen when movies are made by committee based on fan outrage, which has unfortunately been the fate of far too many films over the past several years. Creators must be allowed to create.
When it came down to it, what disturbed my wife so much about Midsommar was not the gore or the emotional intensity, but Florence Pugh as Dani’s enigmatic smile at the end of the film. She felt that Dani had merely traded one form of abuse for another, possibly worse one. As a lifelong horror fan, I sometimes lose sight of how transgressive the genre is meant to be. I have seen a lot and am bothered by less. When my wife and I watched this movie together, I enjoyed the experience. I felt safe. But I had forgotten that I had taken a companion unexpectedly into a danger zone.
‘Midsommar’
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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