Fear, terror, and suspense characterize horror movies, as elicited not only by vampires, zombies, monsters and ghosts, but also by serial killers, aliens, psychological delusions and other sources of nightmares.
The most riveting and jolting films are those where viewers more intimately identify with characters: protagonists or villains, be they demons, spirits or people simply gone mad. Besides camera angles, eerie music and pace, one more element proves necessary in easing audiences into the ambivalent aura often shrouding such films. The clothes and the appearance of the characters have become inseparable in forming personalities, influencing the emotions and even predispositions of a rapt audience.
Let us begin with perhaps the most famous monster in the horror genre: the vampire. With the most unforgettable scenes and dialogue, one portrayal looms, or should we say hovers, above the rest. Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula has enthralled the public because it has completely romanced the demon. Not only has it dressed the bloodsucker in the full regalia of alternating brilliant red robes with high coiffure and three-piece suits with top hats, it has granted Count Dracula utmost compassion.
Though Lucy Westenra was costumed in an excess of white lace and big jewelry to portray the blood-lipped mistress of death, Mina Harker (played by Winona Ryder), with beauty accentuated by her dresses of sleek, embroidered silk — not unlike the Count’s — gave dimension to the devil. She managed to brandish his one weakness. The character of Mina became Dracula’s history, a new present and his hope for salvation. None of these would have seemed real if not for the mystique of Mina Harker herself, best suggested by her hair and wardrobe, which were more than just period. Without them, would her hypnosis and possession, even her final abandonment of her companions to be with the Count, seem as believable?
The Count reverted to his mortal state before finally giving up his soul. Horror movies, however, have insisted on also depicting strictly nefarious demons, who, in contrast, come dressed in utterly ordinary clothes. Often, this is how the devil himself, with thousands of years of metaphors and images, is presented.
The devil, otherwise known as Leland Gaunt in Stephen King’s Needful Things, is way past middle age, with graying hair. He is extremely charming, a true gentleman, and kind. In other words, he is dressed as unassumingly and unobtrusively as sin itself: in a flawless suit, with combed hair and trimmed moustache, cuff links and a thin leather-strapped wrist watch.
Gaunt’s eye color changes, becoming the exact shade the observer deems most attractive — a natural cosmetic secret perfect for the sinister plans of the prince of manipulation. The devil sells the townspeople objects they most desire, in exchange for seemingly random little favors — pranks and betrayals — that end up destroying the town and leaving several deaths.
The devil, known in more religious terms, is also referred to as the Antichrist. Likewise meant to spread destruction, the devil appears to be an early starter in the horror series Omen, where he enters the world with the name Damien Thorn. In the first movie, the boy — the actual offspring of a female jackal — is exchanged for the murdered infant from the house of a senior diplomat. Thus, like Leland Gaunt, he is able to dress well, wearing not only jumpers and innocent stripes, but pea coats and ties as well.
How else shall the scourge of heaven wreak havoc, including knocking his pregnant foster mother off a stool and letting her fall two flights, but in junior designer duds? It is as if what Damien wears is the black velvet for his inhumanly deadpan face, like that of an OshKosh B’Gosh doll with a bowl haircut staring straight from a shelf.
There is another story with the son of Satan, but revolving more around its surrogate mother — one with a famous pixie haircut and with the name Rosemary. Mia Farrow is the picture of innocence, though also of a little naivety, in Rosemary’s Baby, with her cute maternity dresses cut way above the knee, florals with miniscule petals as well as big patterns, pearl earrings, white Chelsea collars and small checks. These also make her the perfect unwitting victim. Like in many horror stories, terror is more stark for the innocent.
Most famous for its revered TV series that took one more step into the subliminal, The Twilight Zone went straight for the jugular and slit open sensitive areas in the human psyche. Though still utilizing aliens, monsters and ghosts, the series opened doors into a higher level of paranoia, into a more real sense of it-can-happen-to-you. There may be no shower scenes with approaching silhouettes in the backdrop, but the show placed the audience right at the center of things and left them there, rattled and with a strange taste in the mouth, to wonder exactly what happened. Fear was fear of the self, fear of despair, fear even of knowing and discovering.
Like Hitchcock in the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Rod Sterling was the amiable host (and often writer) of The Twilight Zone. Like the former, he wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and tie to present stories that were deceptively simple yet ultimately disturbing. His commonplace dress and matter-of-fact tone set the eerie mood of each episode. Below is Sterling’s introduction to the episode called “The Shelter”:
“What you’re about to watch is a nightmare. It is not meant to be prophetic; it need not happen. It’s the fervent and urgent prayer of all men of goodwill that it never shall happen. But in this place, in this moment, it does happen. This is… the Twilight Zone.”
Many times, plain, ordinary situations are presented. Only the twist in point of view or an additional outside interference makes monsters appear onscreen — not with scales or antennas, but in ordinary human clothes and in everyday human weakness. Humans are the monsters that destroy themselves. Presented in another fashion, the series’ messages may sound moralistic, but in subtle horror, they inch close to terror.
That is why the most horrifying tales are not of monsters and ghouls in rubber, plastic and fangs; not of bloody plots with ever-novel ways of equipping death; and not with endless special effects, but of the eerie things in between, dressed in the most typical of clothes and appearing in the most straightforward of guises.
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Photos are from Wikipedia.com, Film.virtual-history.com, Movies.msn.com, Scifi.com/twilightzone, Movies.yahoo.com, and Emovieposter.com.