The Science of Monsters

This book is a fun and approachable way to understand the science behind the monsters of our favorite horror films, the ones we came back to again and again, whether we were renting from Blockbuster, or watching our own scratchy VHS copies. We’ve devoted our lives to the study of film, literature, communication, and true crime, and so we relished this chance to delve deeper into the world of science and to then connect it to the world of horror. We had the opportunity to conduct research and visit with experts at the top of their fields; from scientists at the Mayo Clinic to creatives such as Simon Barrett, the screenwriter behind Blair Witch and V/H/S. Come with us on this journey to unveil the thrilling and sometimes disturbing truths behind the creation of horror’s greatest monsters.

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SECTION ONE

SLASHERS

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CHAPTER ONE

HALLOWEEN

Year of Release: 1978

Director: John Carpenter

Writer: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence

Budget: $300,000

Box Office: $60 million

Like most children growing up in the 1980s, we saw many horror movies on VHS for the first time. The nostalgia of visiting a video store, perusing the covers, and choosing the weekend’s haul holds countless fond memories for us. (In fact, it’s the experience that inspired us to create our Horror Rewind podcast.) Halloween was no exception. The plot of this 1978 horror movie begins with a six-year-old boy named Michael Myers. Dressed as a clown, Michael murders his sister by stabbing her with a knife that looks terrifyingly large in his tiny hands. This shock of a child, ready for trick-or-treating, brutally subverting our expectations of innocence is at the heart of Halloween’s appeal. Actor and comedian Jody Kujawa reflects on his experience seeing the movie for the first time:

That movie sat with me more than most horror films. It seemed like the most simplistic plot: a guy just wants to kill a lady for no apparent reason. But there is no greater horror than that. The thought that someone is out there, watching us, and they have decided we are going to die. Jamie Lee Curtis also really delivered a personality to the screen that later slasher knockoffs would never be able to correctly mimic because they missed the subtleties of Laurie Strode that made us terrified that she would die. Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter are horror film royalty.

Jamie Lee Curtis was just nineteen years old and an unknown when cast in Halloween. Most of her dialogue was written by producer and co-writer Debra Hill, who had been a babysitter herself in her youth, and prided herself in telling women’s stories from women’s perspectives. Halloween not only helped solidify Curtis’s status as a scream queen but also popularized the final girl trope and slasher films in general.

Was Halloween based on a real person? There is a claim that Myers could be based on Stanley Stiers, who was said to have gone on a killing spree in Iowa in the 1920s. He allegedly murdered his entire family on Halloween. Although the details of this urban legend are strikingly similar to the plot of Halloween, and the story itself is heavily shared on fan sites, there are no credible sources for this event.

John Carpenter, the writer and director of the cult classic, recounts being inspired to write the film while visiting a mental hospital for a class in college.¹ “We visited the most serious, mentally ill patients. And there was this kid, he must have been twelve or thirteen and he literally had this look.” The look is described by the lines Carpenter wrote for Donald Pleasence, who played psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis: “This blank, pale emotionless face. Blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.”

Some people look at the character of Michael Myers and see someone who embodies everyone; a part of themselves that could someday snap. Are we born evil? Are we all capable of murder? That brings us to the plausibility of the plot. Are children capable of murder? According to an article in The Atlantic,² psychopaths are among us. Children with psychopathic tendencies are described as having “callous and unemotional traits.” This includes characteristics and behaviors such as a lack of empathy, remorse or guilt, shallow emotions, aggression or even cruelty, and a seeming indifference to punishment. Researchers believe that nearly 1 percent of children exhibit these traits. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association included callous and unemotional traits in its diagnostic manual, DSM-5.