The Science of Monsters

Is it Hannibal Lecter’s high IQ that captivates us? Hopkins’s portrayal as a man with a dense vocabulary certainly subverts our expectations of the mute thugs of our nightmares. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers were not known for their sparkling dinner repartee. Perhaps it is this stark difference that absorbs our attention. In fact, a serial killer with an abnormally high IQ is not just a fiction of Thomas Harris’s. Ed Kemper, a real serial murderer popularized by the horrifically disturbing performance by Cameron Britton in 2017’s Mindhunter (not to be confused with Manhunter!) tested on the IQ scale at 145.⁴ This would mean he’d passed “highly gifted” and was on the low end of “genius.”⁵ This “genius” used his cunning for evil, killing strangers and family members alike. Rodney Alcala, known to the world as “The Dating Game Killer,” responsible for numerous murders of young women across the country, is estimated to have an IQ of about 170. This would mean Alcala is of the “highest genius” and may explain how he was able to escape capture by the police, change his identity, and study at NYU as a wanted man. Another “gifted” serial killer is the infamous cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who hovered on the IQ scale near Kemper at 144. While Lecter and Dahmer obviously share in their fixation on eating human flesh, one would have to assume Lecter’s IQ would be of the more Alcala variety, if not higher.

What is interesting to note, is that all of these murderers are well-known in the public sphere, which lends to the notion that as a society we are fascinated with high-functioning serial murderers. As Oleson maintains, “the public exhibits a seemingly insatiable appetite for true crime, and has exalted many serial killers into its pantheon of infamy, but one serial killer commands the popular imagination unlike any other: Dr. Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter.” While his superior brain enhances Dr. Lecter’s charm, there are other facets to his villainy. In his article for Psychology Today, Dr. Scott Bonn attempts to explain Lecter’s appeal:

Like many Hollywood monsters and boogeymen, Dr. Hannibal Lecter is exciting and magnetic because he is completely goal oriented, devoid of conscience and almost unstoppable. Hannibal Lecter is uniquely different than any other Hollywood movie monster or killer, however. Unlike cartoonish characters such as Godzilla or Freddy Krueger, Dr. Lecter is human. He is also brilliant, witty and even charming.⁶

Again, we are faced with the duality of monsters. Hannibal Lecter is both monster and man, an amalgam of the two. This schism has burst forth as a defining component of a memorable movie villain. Bonn continues, asserting that it is this humanity that ultimately generates our mesmerization by Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter:

My research suggests that Dr. Lecter’s enduring popular appeal and the terror he invokes are due to the fact that he is depicted as a mortal man. In many ways, he is like the rest of us. He bleeds and he feels pain. His humanness makes him a much more relatable and identifiable villain to the public.

As we continue our pursuit of further understanding film’s most notorious monsters, we are curious to note if this duality exists in witches, slashers, creatures, and beyond.

With all serial killers, both real and fictional, there are a multitude of psychological questions we could pose, though one word or taboo concept is synonymous with Dr. Lecter. Every viewer of The Silence of the Lambs surely must have squirmed in their seat at the mention of Lecter’s cannibalistic proclivities. While homicidal cannibals like Hannibal Lecter are rare, there are humans who have found themselves in harrowing conditions which have led to eating their fellow humans. Aside from anomalous serial killers, what is the reasoning behind modern-day cannibalism? According to researchers, “it appears that human cannibalism has been carried out during most prehistoric and historic periods. Several Homo species, including Homo sapiens and other ancestral hominin species, practiced this type of consumption, which is associated with a wide range of behaviors.”⁷ Cannibalism has existed in every era of humanity, yet it is the modern era, when cannibalism is no longer needed for ritual or nutrition, that strikes the most interest in filmmakers and consumers of media.

The Donner Party is widely known as a prime example of “normal” or non-deviant humans resorting to cannibalism to survive. In the winter of 1846, the Donners, along with eighty members of their settler party, became inexorably trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. In what was considered one of the worst winters on record, thirty-nine people perished from the cruel effects of the low temperatures and drifts of relentless snow.