Art for an upcoming comic called Writhing Harvest, as part of my series The Secret Tongue (along with A Stalker Outside Time).
(c) Eric Byron Nelson, 2024
Friday, November 1, 2024
The Twenty Ninth Night of Halloween
ON THE TWENTY NINTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I finished watching a further series of Mad Scientist horror movies from the past week. These include: The Nest (1988), about genetically altered super-roaches let loose by a shady corporation; The Flesh Eaters (1964), about genetically altered super-amoebas let loose by a Nazi scientist working for a shady corporation; and a re-watch of David Cronenberg’s best mad science films, including The Brood (1979), The Fly (1986), and Crimes of the Future (2022, which inherits its title from Cronenberg’s early student film, about a plague unleashed by a Mad Scientist).
Cronenberg is known as the great master of body horror. But he should also be known as the great reinventor of mad science horror, as the majority of his films feature the antics of Mad Scientists in some capacity. His masterpiece, The Fly, is perhaps the greatest mad science horror film ever made. The Fly’s protagonist, Seth Brundle, is a tragic hero in the classic Frankenstein mold. He toils selflessly out of exuberant passion for science and a genuine desire to transform the world for the better. But because he must rely for funding on a corporation that jealously guards its secrets in order to maintain monopoly control, Brundle must work in isolation, without the oversight of colleagues to ensure safety. Thus, in a moment of impulsiveness while drunk, there is no one to stop him from using his new machine on himself, which literally does not yet have all the bugs worked out. Thus, like Frankenstein in the original novel, an instance of personal weakness in an otherwise heroic scientist, who has been forced to work in isolation, is all it takes for a worthwhile, potentially revolutionary experiment to produce a gruesome outcome.
In contrast, Cronenberg’s earlier film The Brood, another masterful work of indelible horror cinema, features the toxic male egotism of Dr. Hal Ragland, who has invented a metaphysical science called “Psychoplasmics” (one of my favorite sci fi jargon terms) that allows him to induce biological parthenogenesis in humans through highly abusive roleplay, under the guise of therapy. Although Dr. Ragland does succeed in his ultimate aim, his self-aggrandizing manipulation and abuse ruins the validity of his work as science.
This key contrast between Brundle and Ragland leads me to my overall thoughts on all of these works of Mad Scientist horror I watched this Halloween month. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to break this subgenre down typologically is by using the MMO method of criminal investigation: the MOTIVE of the perpetrator, i.e. the Mad Scientist; the MEANS of the mad experiment; and the OPPORTUNITY, or lack thereof, created by social and institutional circumstances.
MOTIVE:
(1) Noble Intent: The Mad Scientist can be driven by the truly noble intent to benefit humanity through good science, making them a tragic hero, e.g. Victor Frankenstein and Seth Brundle. A real world example of this would be Oppenheimer—at least according to Oppenheimer. Another highly debatable real world case, one that is much closer in nature to Frankenstein and Brundle, is that of Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who successfully created the first genetically altered humans by illegally circumventing human experimentation laws and editing the DNA of twin girls in utero to make them HIV immune.
(2) Selfishness: The Mad Scientist can be driven by ego and ambition, which ends up delegitimizing their work when they cut corners to serve their self-interest, e.g. Dr. Ragland. A real world example of this is Dr. Mengele, who let hateful pseudoscience and pointless brutality totally eclipse any legitimacy his work might have had, out of a desire to please his masters and gain more power.
MEANS:
(1) Worthwhile Risk: The mad science experiment has a good chance of yielding results that will be highly beneficial to humanity, such that even the (consenting) endangerment of human life is worth the risk, e.g. Brundle’s teleportation project. Various real world experiments in space flight fall under this category.
(2) Unnecessarily Destructive: The mad science experiment treats human lives as disposable fodder, and may even endanger humanity as a whole, for some minor potential benefit that is negligible compared to the cost, e.g. the mind control experiments in Strange Behavior. A real world example would be our own government’s ghastly attempts at mind control under the MKULTRA project, which left dozens of unwilling human subjects severely brain damaged, while yielding nothing of substantive benefit.
OPPORTUNITY:
(1) Open Support: The mad science experiment is conducted in the open, with full public knowledge and the support of major legitimate scientific institutions. The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), where the first manned space mission results in an astronaut’s monstrous mutation after he returns to Earth, is one of the very few horror film examples of this. Meanwhile, in the real world, most of mainstream science conducted at academic institutions meets this standard.
(2) Underground: Whether because of the persecution of a superstitious public or the imposed isolation of a power-hungry organization, the mad science experiment must be conducted in secret, with little to no oversight. All of the horror films I watched this month took place underground in this sense—I guess secrecy is just inherently more dramatic. A real world example would be the truly horrific experiments conducted by the Japanese military during World War II at Unit 731, a hellish research institute that is still shrouded in as much official secrecy as Area 51 is in the US.
So, what emerges from this horror subgenre taken as a whole is an implicit cultural critique of science. This critique suggests that tragedy can only be avoided when legitimate scientists with noble intent receive unrestricted public and institutional support in pursuit of a goal that is worth the risk taken.
Of course, there are several problems here. First, only the scientists themselves can ever truly know if their motives are pure or are tainted by egotism. Second, it is often only in hindsight that we will know if the promised benefits in fact come to fruition and thereby outweigh the cost. And third, likewise, only in the future will we know if we are now being overly cautious and superstitious in putting limits on certain types of science, or if our caution is warranted. Meanwhile, under neoliberalism, there is not much we can do about power hungry organizations monopolizing and corrupting beneficial scientific innovation.
These problems create ever-present gaps through which the horrors of mad science can erupt into our world, at any time. And the further science advances, the more horrific these threats become.
The Nineteenth Night of Halloween
ON THE NINETEENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I finished watching the entire Hammer Film series of Frankenstein movies, made between 1957 and 1974, all directed by Terence Fisher and all starring Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein. (I'm excluding The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) and The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), as these are not directed by Terence Fisher and are out of continuity with his series; I did watch them and can confirm that they are not worthwhile.) (Also, to out-pedant the “Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, not his monster” pedants, in fact Victor Frankenstein is technically not a doctor, he hadn’t earned his doctorate by the time of his fateful experiment, after which he ceased studies due to “brain fever.” In this series, he does often pose as a doctor under an alias, but his actual title is Baron Frankenstein.)
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) is Hammer’s version of the original novel. Like the Universal version, its monster is an unintelligent menace. This is of course an egregious departure from the novel, where the monster is as intellectually eloquent and profound as it is physically powerful. (Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein (1994) gets this right, however, which is one of many reasons it is my favorite adaptation.) Fortunately, the creature effects distinguish themselves from Karloff’s iconic blockhead in being much gorier and creepier. Cushing’s take on Frankenstein also differs from the novel in that he is not a romantic hero but is instead cold and fixated on his Promethean quest to the exclusion of any concern for human life. Though Cushing masterfully evolves the character over the course of the series, coldness and reckless fixation remain his defining traits.
The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) is the direct sequel to Curse, picking up where it ended, with Victor’s scheme to escape the guillotine. Revenge is the best in the series (though I personally enjoyed rewatching Monster from Hell more). Unlike every other Frankenstein sequel before it, Fisher has the novel idea to tell a NEW STORY with the character! Incredibly, we get to see that Victor really is a superhuman scientist when he comes up with a NEW EXPERIMENT that is the logical next step in his project, rather than just doing the same old stitch-up-and-shock routine (which is all that the Universal version ever did (though Bride is great), to the point of becoming a two dimensional caricature, as lampooned in Young Frankenstein). Here he is focused on growing brainless but otherwise normal human bodies that he can then transplant the existing brains of living human donors into. Nothing that Victor does in this film is overtly villainous. And the process he is working to perfect is an obviously beneficial and transformative breakthrough for humanity. He first transplants the brain of a man debilitated by a degenerative disease into a healthy body. Then, Victor’s own brain is transplanted into a fresh copy of his body when he is mortally wounded. So he really is just a straightforward epic hero of science in this film. The true villain that forces the narrative mode back to tragedy is society’s prejudice against scientific progress. And this becomes the thesis of Fisher’s whole series: if society would stop persecuting Frankenstein, and if the scientific community and other institutional authorities would support him in his endeavors, humanity would be saved. In other words, according to Fisher, Frankenstein does nothing wrong (in essence); superstitious conservativism is what causes him to do reckless things that lead to disaster. And actually, this was also the thesis of Mary Shelley’s original 1818 version of the novel (religious outrage led to the later edition being mangled). Contrary to common cliché, Shelley’s novel is not a warning about the overweening hubris of science. It is rather about how prejudice against pioneering ideas in science leads to hidden experiments in private where individual human, or individual institutional, failings (cowardice in Victor’s case, avarice in the case of corporate and military science) precipitate catastrophe—an outcome that in turn gets twisted back into confirmation of society’s bias against science. So in this way, spiritually, Revenge is more true to Shelley’s intent than most other adaptations.
The following three sequels never surpass Revenge but rather serve as lesser variations on the same theme.
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) sees Frankenstein again changing things up with his experiment, this time on a more metaphysical tack. It seems that he has discovered a means to trap the human soul before it leaves a freshly dead body, inside of a kind of dome-shaped laser forcefield. This allows him to transfer the soul of his wrongly executed assistant into his girlfriend. Perhaps due to body dysmorphia (though I don’t know if Fisher was aware of this condition), the soul-fused creation visits a murder spree upon the people who got the assistant beheaded. This film again portrays Frankenstein as a sympathetic benefactor who is unfairly persecuted by a fiendish popular mob.
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) is well-made but is largely a repeat of Revenge, with Victor again focused on brain transplantation. What sets this one apart is that Victor has become a much nastier character, coldly murdering for the pieces he requires and implicating a young couple so as to pressgang them into his service. It’s not clear to what end Fisher takes this darker turn, other than to say that years of being unfairly treated like the villain by society has caused Frankenstein to lean into this role out of spite.
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) is really fun, I love it. It is the most gothic and grotesque of the series, which it achieves by elevating atmosphere and style over realism and depth. An older Frankenstein has managed to take over a Bedlam-like asylum from the inside. And he uses the asylum's facilities to create the gratuitously hideous titular Monster. Seemingly at this point he does this out of simple love of his ghastly craft, having resigned himself to the fact that humanity at large will never accept his gifts. One of the best moments of the entire series comes at the very end: After his latest spawn has predictably wreaked gruesome havoc and been destroyed, he immediately starts sweeping up to prepare the lab for another go, leaving us with the parting words, “We must get this place tidied up so we can start afresh. Now we shall need new material, naturally ...” Thus he shows us that he will gladly keep repeating the same cycle forever. Truly the perfect ending for a character that only ever grows more relevant.
The Seventh Night of Halloween
ON THE SEVENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN ... I watched Strange Behavior (1981), directed by Michael Laughlin. This was surprisingly good! I loved the first half especially. Then it kind of loses steam in the second act. When they confront the Mad Scientist for the first time, the film had the opportunity to up the ante with brain-washed mayhem loosed upon small town America, but instead it drags its feet with predictable melodrama. All in all though, it's pretty awesome. Laughlin also directed the highly underrated Strange Invaders, the second entry in an intended "Strange" trilogy.
The Mad Scientist here is certainly a real scientist, but not one of the Frankensteinian tragic-hero ilk. She does not work in isolation but rather with the full backing and facilities of mainstream academia, possibly in collaboration with the military. And she does not undertake her MKULTRA-inspired mind-control experiments altruistically or with a pure devotion to discovery but rather with a gleeful megalomaniacal vision of remaking society through mental hygiene.
...
So, I'm going to focus on making more illustrated creepy flash fiction over the coming NIGHTS OF HALLOWEEN, which I will post when finished. Then I will share my summary thoughts on the Mad Scientists of all the horror movies I watch while drawing, closer to SAMHAIN. HAPPY HALLOWEEN MONTH!
The Sixth Night of Halloween
ON THE SIXTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I watched Donovan’s Brain (1953). This was kind of like a feature-length episode of the original Outer Limits. Actually, I know there was at least one episode with this same premise, and it was better done.
At least the Mad Scientist this time is an actual scientist, though. Dr. Cory wants to keep brains alive outside of the body. His experiments to this end are all conducted in a lab put together in his own home, cut off from any academic institution. It’s suggested he does this because his experiments are unorthodox or forbidden by mainstream science. Of course, it just so happens that a mortally wounded man is brought to the lab, and his life can only be saved by turning him into a self-aware brain in a vat.
So, Dr. Cory is in the classic Victor Frankenstein mold of a brilliant adept of the most advanced sciences, who is driven to change the world for the better through innovation upon the natural order, but who is forced to work outside the system, in isolation, in defiance of ethics and laws, due to the particular practices involved in his work being shunned as fruitless or dangerous or both. His well-intentioned but overweening ambition then results in tragedy when the very act that vindicates his experiment at the same time proves its danger.
The Fourth Night of Halloween
ON THE FOURTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I watched Kevin Smith’s Tusk (2014). Predictably, Smith’s intrusive unfunny comedy ruined this for me, even though the sections of genuine atmosphere and psychological terror unquestionably make this his best movie.
Anyway, the Mad Scientist here is once again not actually a scientist. Rather he belongs to that subclass of horror villain we may call the Experimental Surgery Fetishist. Due to a traumatic incident at sea long ago, he has made it his mission to transform people into walruses. He does this by imprisoning them in his backwoods mansion, amputating limbs, sewing together joints, and performing major skin grafts to create jagged human sculptures that resemble walruses in form and function. His motive for doing this is to somehow honor the walrus he forced to kill to survive at sea. He certainly qualifies as mad, in company with the mad doctors from films like Eyes Without a Face, Skin I Live In, Human Centipede, and Cronenberg’s recent Crimes of the Future, who take forced body modification to the furthest extremes in pursuit of some form of twisted love. But as such, they should probably more properly be thought of as Mad Artists than Mad Scientists.
The Third Night of Halloween
ON THE THIRD NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN ... I watched The Monster-Maker (1944). I chose it because I’ve decided to focus on the MAD SCIENTIST in horror movies this year. I don’t plan on summarizing or analyzing each movie as whole—you’ll have to look it up on Wikipedia if you want to know more (or this case, watch the whole thing for free on Youtube, where it’s been uploaded multiple times). Instead, I’m just going to focus on what is unique about the take on the Mad Scientist archetype and theme.
Here, we learn the Mad Scientist is not actually a scientist at all but a demented thief and con artist. He killed and stole the notes of a scientist working on a cure for Acromegaly. This is a real degenerative disease that causes progressive growth and distortion of the face and extremities. He has done this because he thinks that if he can derive the cure from the scientist's notes, he can become rich by withholding it from the world and charging vast sums to treat the afflicted. So, what makes him mad in terms of the science is his hope to exploit sick people for profit. Thus, by this film’s definition, every real world pharmaceutical company today is a monstrous Mad Science outfit. Which is not at all wrong!
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