The Science of Monsters

In Halloween Dr. Loomis shoots Michael Myers and it seems as though the monster is slayed, but as a popular horror trope, Michael cannot be brought down so easily. He is able to get up and continue on his killing spree. Can some people handle pain better than others? There are several factors that could account for a person’s ability to work through pain or a major injury. The first is adrenaline. When in a stressful or intense situation our primitive brain alerts our sympathetic nervous system and releases adrenaline. An adrenaline rush, or fight-or-flight response, can cause people to temporarily not feel any pain and even allows some people to have almost superhuman strength.

A view of the brain.

Another possible reason Michael Myers may be able to continue on after being shot is because of a condition known as congenital insensitivity to pain. People with this disorder have an indifference to or are unable to feel pain. This can be very dangerous and for many children it has proven to be fatal. Being unable to feel injuries, or be aware of illness, can cause many symptoms to go unnoticed like burns or even broken bones. Another explanation for insensitivity to pain was explored in popular TV show, The X-Files (1993–2018). In the episode “Home,” a family who has practiced inbreeding for generations has lost their ability to feel, making them seemingly unstoppable. Others believe Michael Myers is somehow immortal, perhaps for supernatural reasons, and is incapable of dying. Maybe we’ll find out in the next sequel. Whatever you believe about Michael Myers’s relentless pursuit to murder, one thing is clear: Halloween and its impact on slasher movies and culture are solidified for years to come.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWO

CHILD’S PLAY

Year of Release: 1988

Director: Tom Holland

Writer: Tom Holland, Don Mancini

Starring: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon

Budget: $9 million

Box Office: $44 million

Everyone has seen a doll. Whether it was your own, your sibling’s, or a well-loved doll at your daycare, we have all been exposed to their glassy, watchful eyes. Much like children, dolls hold a particular innocence which should make us feel calm and safe. Right now, you might be remembering a good friend who went on adventures with you. A Barbie with tangled, blonde hair perhaps, or a porcelain baby doll you had to rock carefully. As ubiquitous and innocent as they may be, dolls also hold an inherent conflict in their soft insides. They are at once an object and a person. We lock them away in closets and boxes, only to later treat them like friends. It is no wonder that dolls, strangely human, strike fear in our collective hearts.

Filmmakers Tom Holland and Don Mancini capitalized on this fear of dolls when they created the movie Child’s Play (1988). The story of a killer, Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), transferring his evil soul into the body of a Good Guys doll, resonated with audiences and sparked a lifetime of sequels. There is just something about seeing that small, plastic hand wrapped around a knife that both scares and delights fans of Child’s Play, but Chucky, the red-haired and freckled doll from Child’s Play isn’t the first haunted doll to terrify people. The idea of haunted or possessed dolls goes all the way back to ancient Egypt. Enemies of Ramesses III were said to have created waxen figures of him, believing his spirit would inhabit the doll. They hoped this strategy could be used to kill him. This is similar to the concept of voodoo dolls or poppets, which could be used to carry a curse or to protect a person. There are some famous allegedly haunted dolls in history, including the Raggedy Ann doll who inspired the Annabelle (2014) movies and a Barbie doll who is said to have supernatural powers.

Child’s Play took inspiration from the story of a haunted doll named Robert. The owner claimed that the doll was possessed, through voodoo, with the soul of someone intended on torturing his family. The doll itself was based on the popular Cabbage Patch Kids and My Buddy dolls of the 1980s. Through this plot the writers wanted to explore the effects of advertising and television on children. Ironically, members of the public protested the initial release of Child’s Play in fear that the film would incite violence in children.

Does media inspire people to become violent? In 1982 the movie Halloween II inspired a man to stab an elderly couple a combined forty-three times.¹ The perpetrator, while admitting the crime, blamed his actions on a drug-induced flashback to a stabbing scene in the horror movie. Child’s Play 3 (1991) was cited as the inspiration for two murders² in the United Kingdom in 1992 and 1993. The perpetrators in the latter became the youngest convicted murderers of the twentieth century.