Stanley Kubrick: Master of Horror
Stanley Kubrick – Master of Horror
There was a time way back in my life where horror films were something that I could not watch. Specifically I remember one afternoon, after I discovered what a real film was supposed to be, where I decided to conquer my fear of scary films. The plan was a three-step process:
- Pick a bright, shining Summer day at noontime
- Open ALL the windows in the house
- Watch The Exorcist
Looking back on it, I now realize what awful conditions those were to experience a horror film under but it did the trick and snapped my fear of horror in general. After you see a film like that and then watch the documentaries, you become someone who “knows how the sausage is made”, and the film becomes just that: a film. Cut to now, some 13 years later, and now it’s just the opposite reaction. I can’t find a film that scares me at all in the horror genre. In fact, I’d say the scariest films I’ve seen have been across almost every other genre. Luckily for me, there’s one director who dipped his toes into those types of films over the years yet he is a guy who doesn’t get associated with scary films for some reason. That man is Stanley Kubrick, and there are a lot of reasons why at least one of his films should be on your watchlist this Halloween.
Part of Kubrick’s lasting power has been the immense achievement of even his smallest films. While easily his most unpopular directed feature, even the melodrama Lolita was a boundary-pushing adaptation for its depiction of a married man infatuated with an underage woman, in the early 60’s to boot. Kubrick always pushed the envelope of what an audience could handle into pretty bold territory right from the start, with his earliest films Fear & Desire, The Killing and Paths of Glory all dealing with heavy themes despite the restrictions of studio filmmaking. Even Spartacus, the Kirk Douglas starring epic was decidedly anti-establishment. Leave it to Kubrick to, in the age of Cecil B. DeMille, make a sword and sandal epic that simultaneously ignores any religious ties and features a homosexual subplot with the lead villain, again a trailblazing idea at the time. Too often, though, is Kubrick not given his due credit in terms of what he has done for horror. Where horror films live within very specific confines for the most part, Kubrick secretly injected horror into all of his films in ways that you may not have even realized.
The Shining is Kubrick’s only guaranteed “horror” film throughout his body of work. While the film has several different theories behind what my have happened within the plot and what the film is actually trying to say there is one consistent thing almost anyone who watches The Shining can take away from it. The film has a tangible, almost in-explainable sense of hopeless dread to it. Sure, there are your famous takeaways from the film with the two twin girls calling out for little Danny to “play with us”. Yes, the old woman in the bathtub rotting away is disturbing and off-putting and of course the creepy dead stare of Jack Nicholson mugging for the camera is always good for a shocker. I think underneath all the insane dread of Jack Torrance is the very real family drama at the center of the film, and Kubrick knew this too. Regardless of what Stephen King intended the story to be, I think even with all the supernatural elements that are clearly at work in this story the scariest thing about the film is the idea that despite being close to someone for years you may still have no idea who you’ve been sleeping with. That tiny little germ of an idea is at the center of why The Shining has lasted as long as it has, and why it still terrifies people today. Now granted, this film alone would quality Kubrick as a horror master to some, but it’s his work outside of this film that cements the legacy for me. For instance…
Full Metal Jacket. Possibly Kubrick’s most divisive bonafide classic, Jacket seems to continually get a bad reputation from scores of movie fans over the years. Some have called the film uneven, stating that the huge tonal shift after the first half of the film is too jarring to recover from. I couldn’t disagree more as the brilliance of R. Lee Ermey and the entire boot camp sequence are the perfect setup for the real-world that comes crashing into this film with Pvt. Pyle. The real horror attached to the film comes in Pyle’s performance. We see a naive, dimwitted man get grinded through the “system” and come out the other side as a broken and disturbed individual. There’s nothing scarier than losing your mind, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance of a pathetic man pushed a little too far is terrifying. Taking this element out of the conversation, you still have the sniper sequence at the end of the film where the platoon, after wasting some enemy soldiers that happen to be women, march off into the night humming the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club. The methodical, clean dehumanization of the characters in the film is what disturbs me most about Full Metal Jacket, and is oftentimes the thing that people overlook with this film. You walk away from this film feeling very off, but I think that’s part of what makes Kubrick’s skill set so special.
While it would be easy to ignore Kubrick’s classic black comedy Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb when talking about horror, it would be a shame to overlook the undercurrent of unchecked mental illness in this film, a running theme in all of Kubrick’s work. Gen. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, is clearly insane, believing there to be a Communist plot to “sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!”. On the other side of the fence, you have the very clearly brash and headstrong Gen Buck Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, ready to plunge headfirst into all-out nuclear war, accompanied by the chiefs of staff and the President of the United States, played by Peter Sellers, in the famous War Room. While you can cast aside the very real threat of the cold war in this country at the time the film was made, almost every lead character in the film, including Maj. King Kong, are all mentally incapacitated in some way, whether it be a chemical or character imbalance. The thought that these could possibly be the people with their finger on the trigger of global doomsday is made light of in the film, but make no mistake, Kubrick’s story was nothing short of disturbing to many Americans at the time. The best way to describe the reception to this film upon release, while no one would admit it, would probably be fits of nervous laughter. Again, Kubrick, working on a subconscious level, delivers the goods.
My final exhibit is 2001: A Space Odyssey, my personal favorite Kubrick film and one of my favorite all-time films. Possibly one of the most forward-thinking science fiction stories of all time, there is a lot of hope in 2001. Hope for the future, hope that we as a species will continually evolve and discover what’s next, hope that tomorrow will be better, no matter how bad today may be. However, 2001 is anything but optimistic. While not a negative film, Odyssey clearly understands the horror and hardship of trying to survive in space. While the wonder of being able to travel to Jupiter and the spectacle of the different space stations and crafts in the film is unbelievable, especially for 1967, elements like the iconic Monolith serve as a constant reminder of the disturbing danger of space and the unknown. 2001’s conflict is solely man-made: survival in space, HAL 9000 and human emotion are all preyed upon in the story, all three of which come to a head during the fourth act Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite sequence. If I were to pick what I think is the scariest movie scene of all time, I would absolutely go for the quick, almost subliminal close-ups during the star gate sequence. The visceral, primal nature of those quick cuts is so jarring that it does something to you on a very deep level that’s not easy to shake. 2001 is a classic, and it wears its horror influence right on its sleeve.
While I chose just a few of the Kubrick films to prove my point, all of his films utilize these horror elements to help make them such classic films. I think this Halloween it would make a ton of sense adding at least one of these film classics to your horror docket because if the aim is to get the crap scared out of you, Kubrick has got the goods. Enjoy your Halloween and, as always, Binge On!
Luke Norris
October 27, 2015 @ 7:23 pm
You had me up until 2001…which is just the worst. Certainly not knocking your choice (to each his own), but just never been a fan. I even tried it again about two months ago, but just can’t get behind it. Otherwise, I think this is one of your best written articles to date. You make some very valid points and made me think about a few things in a completely different way, which is what I think you were trying to do. Binge On brother.
Episode IV
October 28, 2015 @ 10:38 am
Thanks Luke. 2001 hit me at just the right time when I first saw it. I remember craving some serious sci-fi and I was fascinated by what the film’s meaning was. I’ve heard many over the years speak against the pacing of the film. For me, it’s perfect. I think every scene has reason to be as slow as it is, and the implications of the film are still being felt now. On top of that, I think it’s one of the best examples of “show, don’t tell” in film history. I’d also argue that Interstellar was nothing more than a remake of this movie, albeit with a father/daughter plot thrown in for good measure. Not knocking Interstellar too badly, but they even have an identical action scene centered around docking the ship. Always appreciate the feedback, brother.