Recently I was told something interesting by someone on twitter. Not to namedrop but it wasHBD chick. Apparently a fan of the Halloween franchise recreated the Myers house from John Carpenter’s original 1978 classic Halloween.
Image from Myers House NC website
HBD Chick jokingly asked if it was my house. I’m a huge Halloween fan but even I wouldn’t go so far as replicating the Myer’s house, although it’s a really cool idea. In fact, I can’t tell if they replicated the house because they’re Halloween fans or if they admired the house for its intrinsic value. It really is quite tasteful in its simple elegance and reminds me a bit of the house I really did live in during early childhood.
Indeed one reason I became such a huge Halloween fan is Carpenter’s original masterpiece reminded me a bit of the kinds of neighborhoods in which I spent my earliest years. One of my most popular posts of all time is about how middle class Michael Myers from the original Halloween series should be diagnosed with autism, while the white trash Michael Myers of Rob Zombie’s controversial remake should be diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Apparently the couple who created this Myers house replica hold a Halloween bash every year. After this post, I wouldn’t be surprised if I get a personal invitation to attend since I just put them on the map. Sorry guys, I have too much on my plate this year, but have a blast!
In general, there seems to be a tendency to overestimate the intelligence of people who do evil things. This is known as the Hannibal Lecter myth named after the 150+ IQ evil psychopath from the Silence of the Lambs movies.
I think the reason the Hannibal Lecter myth is so popular is that the reason intelligence evolved in the first place was survival (the mental ability to adapt situations to our advantage), and prior to evolution of higher morality, primates were largely motivated to use our intelligence only for selfish purposes (though all conscious behavior is selfish on some level), so sadly, on an instinctive level, intelligence used for evil goals is the intelligence many people recognize most easily.
Sadly, many people secretly admire evil, but they can’t come out and say it, so instead they just say “he was an evil genius, a terrible human being, but brilliant. Just brilliant!!!” This is a safe way of praising an evil-doer, while making it look like you are condemning them. It also makes people feel sophisticated, because they are expressing the nuanced understanding that people are multi-dimensional (positive traits like intelligence can coexist with negative traits like evil).
Another reason for associating evil with brains is that many mentally retarded people are the opposite of evil. They come across as the most loving, trusting, friendly, giving people you will ever meet. So if the most good people are often mentally retarded, it’s only natural to think the most evil people are geniuses.
Evil geniuses and saintly retardates notwithstanding, the reality is that evil people are probably less intelligent on average, because the same brain defects that impair one’s compassion for others, also likely impair one’s cognitive function, since the functioning of one brain system is likely correlated with others.
With Halloween only weeks away, it’s time for scary topics.
Hannibal Lecter is the fictional evil psychopath from the Silence of the Lambs movies, who uses his 150+ IQ to harass law enforcement experts by paying close attention to their accents, and accusing them of being proles.
He actually reminds me quite a bit of our very own Jorge Videla/Mugabe, who often uses these avatars.
It would have been fascinating if Videla/Mugabe really did look like the second avatar, and was actually some genius black guy driven mad by resentment over HBD, but in real life, he claims to be of an upper class WASP background, and claims to look like this:
Of course, unlike Hannibal Lecter, Videla is not an evil psychopath, but he uses his 160 IQ (1560 on the old SAT) to harass us HBD experts for entertainment, and say horrific shocking things, and Videla also accuses HBDers (people who believe in behavioral genetics) of being proles (low class), and pays special attention to the accents of HBDers (he for examples believes the great Charles Murray’s accent is affectation to hide a prole background):
I always liked Murray’s original way of speaking, and have sometimes found myself trying to imitate it when having intellectual discussions with friends, but the thought that it could be an affectation is pretty funny.
It’s understandable why criminal Hannibal Lecter would hate the FBI, but it’s strange that 160 IQ Videla/Mugabe, would so hate people who believe IQ is primarily genetic. You would think someone with such a high IQ would want to believe it was genetic, so it’s fascinating that he’s devoted much of his life to declaring war on those who do.
I have my own theories about what motivates him, but I don’t really know.
As both a celebrity and horror fan, I was saddened by the news that actress Betsy Palmer passed away this week at 88. Palmer first gained fame as a 1950s game show panelist, but achieved iconic status in the horror community for her brilliant performance as an all-American summer camp mom in the very first Friday the 13th movie, which in my opinion was one of the best movies of all time, largely because of Palmer.
Friday the 13th was the most successful and influential of all the rip-offs of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, but it didn’t just copy the narrative structure and cinematic conventions of Halloween, it improved upon them, with its atmospheric setting (a summer camp in June), irony, surprises, and poignant ending.
The film hired Palmer because she brought gravitas to the low budget slasher flick. When Palmer read the script she famously called it “a piece of shit” but she needed money for car repairs so she decided to take the part, figuring the movie would come and go, so she would suffer no shame for being seen in it. Little did she know that the movie would spawn the most successful franchise in the history of horror, and would bring her a huge new passionate fan base.
With Christmas eve only hours away, now is the perfect time to blog about one of my absolute favorite movies of all time: Silent Night Deadly Night. And it occurs to me that this Christmas season marks the 30th anniversary of this horror masterpiece.
The plot: A little boy named Billy is taken by his parents to visit his grandfather in the mental hospital. The grandfather is catatonic and seems to have lost the ability to speak, but when Billy’s parents leave him alone with the grandfather, he suddenly comes alive to warn Billy that Christmas eve is the scariest night of the year and to watch out for Santa:
In an amazing coincidence, that night Billy witnesses both parents killed by a man dressed as Santa, an experience that traumatizes him for life.
Growing up in an orphanage, he is severely punished for any behavior seen as naughty.
When Billy turns 18, he gets a job in a small toy store, and when the guy who dresses up as Santa on Christmas eve calls in sick, Billy is pressured into taking his place. Being forced to dress up as the man he thinks killed his parents is too much. Billy snaps, and begins roaming the town with an ax, dressed as Santa, looking for naughty people to punish.
This film was extremely controversial when it first came out, and was actually pulled from theaters, only to resurface years later on video. As a kid I remember waiting for everyone in my family to go to sleep on Christmas eve, and then sneaking downstairs to watch it in a dark room lit only by the multicoloured glow of the Christmas tree. It was the ultimate forbidden fruit; the film they tried to BAN:
And yet with its haunting music, small town atmosphere, nostalgic feel, and childlike story, it captures the Christmas spirit better than any movie I have ever seen. And horror has always been part of the Christmas tradition, going all the way back to Charles Dickens.
And there is HBD in this movie. Although the film plays up the idea that Billy’s psychosis was caused by his incredibly traumatic childhood, the fact that he grows up to be just like the demented grandfather he hardly knew, speaks to the power of genes.
This winter season, wait for an especially cold and snowy night, make a thick cup of homemade real hot chocolate, and watch this movie. The original 1984 classic, not the horrible 2012 remake, that follows a completely different story-line.
This is turning out to be one of the best Halloweens in years. Yesterday I went out and got drunk out of my mind and this evening I’m having a quiet night at home watching horror films on a gorgeous high definition huge screen TV (which is the only way to watch horror), one of which is Heebie Jeebies. Shockingly IMDB (which I usually agree with) currently only rates this film 3.2 out of 10. I couldn’t disagree more
While this film is no masterpiece, it contains one of the scariest moments I have ever seen. A guy plays a prank on his sister, convincing her that all their friends are being murdered as she cowers in terror under a curtain in the basement. After the prank is over, the guy pulls the curtain to check that his sister was not too traumatized by the prank. At first his sister is catatonic; too traumatized by the prank to even speak. All her friends get up to reassure her that they’re not really dead; it was just a joke and that the blood they have splashed all over themselves is fake. Finally getting the joke, the guy’s sister begins to laugh. The brother finds this reassuring.
SPOILER ALERT
But then she begins to laugh just a little too hard, and then she grabs a pair of garden shears, and cuts her brother’s head off.
This has got to be one of the scariest scenes in movie history and one that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Here’s the trailer:
With Halloween night only hours away, it’s time to examine the IQ’s of various slashers (someone else on the internet has made similar attempt). Not every character I’m examining is a slasher, strictly defined, but they’re all close enough.
Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw movies: IQ 46
Leatherface is too stupid to talk but he does squeal like a pig. Not being able to talk indicates a mental age of less than one year, and since Leatherface is an adult, and since mental development peaks around age 16, Leatherface is verbally functioning at a level no more than 6% of normal cognitive development (1/16) or a verbal ratio IQ 6.
His nonverbal IQ is much higher though because he can operate a chainsaw and even run after people with it. He also has the spatial motor skills needed to remove people’s faces and sew them to his own. This probably indicates a mental age of at least 10, though not much more than that since Leatherface has had years of practice perfecting these skills, and unlike his family, is never once seen driving a vehicle, suggesting limited ability. A mental age of 10 implies a non-verbal ratio IQ of 63. Averaging this with his verbal ratio IQ of 6 gives an overall ratio IQ of 35. However it’s well known that ratio IQ’s give extreme results, and thus psychologists now use deviation IQ’s, so a ratio IQ of 35 is like a deviation IQ of 46.
Most fans of the Texas Chainsaw movies know that Leatherface is mentally disabled. Less known is that his whole family might be also according to film critic Roger Ebert who described them as a “a demented family of retarded murderers and grave robbers”. Since the correlation between adult IQ and first degree relatives is about 0.5, we’d expect the relatives of Leatherface to regress halfway from Leatherface’s IQ of 46 to the mean of psychotic killers (IQ 76). This suggests Leatherface’s family would average IQ 61, so Roger Ebert was correct to imply the whole family is mentally retarded, though an IQ in the 60s back in those days was defined as educable (mild) retardation, while Leatherface’s IQ of 46 was classified as as trainable (moderate) retardation, so that’s why Leatherface stands out as conspicuously disabled and the family he relies on to give him orders seems so much smarter (though one relative stupidly gets hit by a truck in this scene)
Jason from the Friday the 13th movies: IQ 50
In the very first Friday the 13th movie (1980) (one of the best horror films ever) it was very subtly hinted by his mother that Jason was a special needs child when she used the euphimism “he wasn’t a very good swimmer”, and indeed the makeup artist who created Jason’s appearance described him as “hydrocephalic, mongoloid pinhead”. In Friday the 13th part 2, the main character mentions that Jason never went to school as a child. According to IQ expert Arthur Jensen, the minimum IQ needed to attend a regular school was 50 though Jason can’t be much lower than that because he manages to survive on his own in the woods from age the age of 11 to 34 and at age 34, kill a platoon of teenagers using a wide variety of weapons.
But Jason’s low IQ is revealed by his extreme gullibility. In Friday the 13th part 2, a college psychology major manages to trick Jason into thinking she is Jason’s mother simply by putting on his mother’s sweater, even though Jason personally witnessed his mother being beheaded and the college girl is more than a decade younger than Jason and thus can’t be his mother. In Friday the 13th part 4, Jason is tricked by a little boy who shaves his head and pretends to be young Jason himself, only to hack Jason to death. The fact that Jason was outsmarted and killed by a little kid half his size shows Jason was not too bright. Despite being killed at age 34 (short life span is another sign of low IQ, though a weak one) Jason returned in part 6 as a zombie.
Michael Myers from Rob Zombie’s Halloween remakes: IQ 80
Schizophrenic mental patient from Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween
Because he was sent off to a mental hospital at age 10 in Rob Zombie’s Halloween remakes, Michael Myers probably has only a fourth grade education. Adults with only fourth grade education probably average IQ’s of 68. However in the Halloween remakes, Michael Myer’s grows up to be ridiculously tall (about 6’8″). Since height is weakly but positively correlated with IQ, we would statistically expect someone that incredibly tall to be significantly brighter than the average fourth grade dropout, hence an IQ around 80. For more information about this character’s IQ, see here.
Michael Myers from the original Halloween series: IQ 92
The original Michael Myers was sent to a mental hospital at age six and thus has only a kindergarten education. Statistically we should expect the average Americans with no formal education at all to average IQ 54, but the original Myers is likely a lot brighter than this. For one thing, unlike a lot of slashers, the original Myers can drive a car, despite spending his childhood and adolescence locked up. In addition his main victim and biological sister Laurie (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) probably has an IQ of 130, since she out-survives dozens of people and is a virgin because boys think she’s too smart to date. I would estimate the original Myers to have an IQ half-way between his sister Laurie (IQ 130) and the average IQ of first grade dropouts (IQ 54) so IQ 92 (typical of serial killers).
Billy from the original Silent Night Deadly Night: IQ 95
As a child Billy seemed like a bright boy who would have probably grown up to be a college graduate (average IQ 113), but he instead grew up to be criminally insane (average IQ 76) slasher. Let’s split the difference and assume his IQ is 95. Indeed some of the characters in the film state, he may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. But Billy’s psychosis is understandable when you consider that he witnessed his mother being raped and killed by a man dressed as Santa (who also killed Billy’s dad) and then was raised in an orphanage by a nun who mercilessly beat him if he said or did anything even remotely “naughty”. Perhaps this is one of those extreme cases where social environment matters and Billy’s later criminal insanity can not be blamed on defective biology. On the other hand, Billy’s grandfather is clearly demented too, so Billy likely inherited bad genes.
In the sequel, Billy’s younger brother Ricky takes over as the killer, further suggesting a genetic basis. Ricky is just a shorter stockier version of Billy, and since weight/height ratio is negatively correlated with IQ, I’d expect Ricky’s IQ to be somewhat lower (IQ 87), and indeed the scrawny guys in the neighborhood assume that Ricky is dumb. Here’s one of Ricky’s most popular kills:
The guy in The Strangers: IQ 120
The Strangers (2008) is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen, in part because we know so little about the killers, making their IQ’s especially hard to assess. All we know is that the killers are some guy and two girls who get off on terrorizing and killing a random upper class couple who are spending the evening in an isolated home. The male killer could be the father of the two female killers or he could be some high school kid and the two girls are his friends. Nothing is explained. The killers appear to have no understandable motive. When asked by one of the victims why they are doing this, one girl replies “because you were home”.
Maybe I’m being sexist but I assume the guy in the movie is the leader and I estimate his IQ to be 120; somewhat higher than the average crime leader. He and his two female sidekicks are smart enough to outsmart their upper-class (presumably university educated) victims all night, despite the fact the victims have a gun and the killers don’t.
Although pumpkinperson.com started as primarily a horror blog, my readership is now so intelligent that few of you can relate to my low-brow interest in slasher films. But with Halloween only days away, it is an interested that must be indulged. But Halloween itself is an experience many readers can’t relate to, and not because you’re intelligent, but because a lot of you live in climates where the leaves don’t change colors and where pumpkins don’t thrive. Many of you will never understand the sheer joy and coziness of lying on a couch with a blanket and a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold Canadian night, and watching a great horror film.
Racism in the horror community
Of course most horror fans disagreed with me that Texas Chainsaw 3D was a great horror film; indeed even hardcore fans of the Chainsaw franchise thought it was a disgrace that tainted the entire series. Although they’ll never admit it and lack the self awareness to know it, there’s a lot of racism in the horror community, and the fact the film’s protagonist was an absolutely gorgeous young white woman whose boyfriend was an athletic black man, was anathema to the predominantly white male horror audience. I believe horror attracts a lot of racists, because prehistorically, it was the mostly manly members of the tribe who defended the tribe against rival tribes, so even today, guys who are manly enough to watch horror films are genetically predisposed to ethnic nepotism. And indeed as I’ve previously discussed, subconsciously, the entire slasher genre was a rebellion against the liberalism of the 1960s.
But there’s another reason why slasher fans tend to be racist and that’s the fact that slasher films historically were uniquely focused on the white American experience. They tend to take place in stereo-typically white settings like suburbia (John Carpenter’s Halloween) or summer-camp (Friday the 13th), the backwoods of Texas (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) or a sorority house (Black Christmas). Indeed those four films really invented the modern slasher film and none of them had a single black character so for the Texas Chainsaw 3D to not only have a black character, but one who was played by prominent hip-hop star, and in a relationship with a gorgeous white woman, was a culture shock for many slasher fans.
Of course it would be absolutely idiotic and evil to smear everyone who didn’t love this film as much as I did as a racist, because ironically, another reason why this film was so hated is ignorance of HBD. Allow me to explain…
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: STOP READING IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THIS FILM
The plot: A young woman (Heather) who hates the parents who raised her discovers she was adopted, so she and her friends go on a road trip to Texas to visit the house she just inherited from her recently deceased biological grandmother. Little do they know that locked in the basement of the house is Leatherface, a mentally retarded chainsaw wielding maniac who wears the actual faces of his victims as masks. After Leatherface kills her boyfriend and her friends, Heather flees to the police where she discovers that Leatherface is actually her biological cousin and her only living blood relative. Other family members (the Sayers) were burned to a crisp by a mob of angry Texas rednecks who were furious that the Sawyers were cannibalizing the local teenagers.
When Leatherface and Heather discover they are relatives, Leatherface stops trying to kill her and Heather stops trying to flee him, and instead the two join forces against the rednecks that burned their family to death. This plot twist infuriated horror fans because (1) it portrayed Leatherface as a hero when he’s supposed to be a villain, and (2)they found it completely unrealistic that Heather would join forces with a homicidal maniac who sawed up her friends, just because he’s her only living blood relative. Horror fans found it unrealistic that Heather would even want to avenge the burning of a family she never knew, since that family were chainsaw wielding murderers who deserved to be burned alive.
HBD themes
An understanding of HBD (i.e. behavioral genetics) helps one appreciate this movie. HBD teaches that we are genetically predisposed to help those most genetically similar to ourselves, so this could have overwhelmed Heather’s disgust for her biological family’s vile nature. In addition, this tendency to help the genetically similar is intensified in inbred people according to blogger HBD Chick, probably because when you’re inbred, your kin are even more genetically similar to you; and the Sawyer family epitomizes the stereotypical inbred Southerner, though I don’t know if this inbreeding has occurred for enough generations for selection to work, which HBD chick feels is important. HBD also teaches that behavioral traits are highly genetic, especially in adulthood. Blogger Jayman sometimes argues that parenting has virtually zero impact; so it really doesn’t matter that Heather grew up a normal girl, instead of being raised by a family of murderers. She didn’t need to be raised by the murderous Sawyer family to become just like them; her genetic link was enough.
Another way all Texas Chainsaw movies are HBD aware is that Leatherface has an extremely low IQ. This makes sense from an HBD perspective because he comes from a family of inbred psychotic right-wing murderers. Studies of cousin marriages show it clearly depresses IQ (and other Darwinian fitness traits like height) and the criminally insane also have low IQ’s, and some HBD research suggests conservatives might too.
The film doesn’t touch on race, but that’s clearly the elephant in the room as the town rednecks fail to respect the authority of the black sheriff who in-turn does not respect them, leading to an interesting climax that horror fans also condemned as unrealistic.
The age of the heroine
Another reason so many horror fans hated this movie so much is that the film’s timeline implied that the character Heather was born in 1974 (the year of the first Chainsaw movie), making her nearly 40 since this film appeared to be taking place in the present day (the film came out in 2013) but since actress Alexandra Daddario would have been about 25 when she played her, horror fans went absolutely ballistic. I tried to calm a few of these people down, saying maybe the character is a just a really young looking 39 year old who hangs out with 20 year olds since she works in a grocery store (I had a boss like that), or maybe the character had plastic surgery; but horror fans would have none of it, and condemned it as an absurd plot hole they could not get past.
The psychology of this is quite interesting: young people value their youth so much that they don’t want to believe an older person could ever look as young as them, and young male horror fans are disgusted by the thought that a woman they are sexually attracted to could possibly be almost 40. I believe this relates to the conservatism of horror fans, since traditional values suggest a man should never be attracted to an older woman, and that women should be sexy only when very young (peak child bearing years) since it’s conservative to believe that sexuality is only for reproduction. On the DVD commentary, the film makers do a lot of damage control, denying that a timeline was clearly specified, but it was too little too late.
Directed by Paul Fox, The Dark Hours is a haunting tour de force. It’s the type of film you watch while curled up all alone on the couch with a thick cup of hot chocolate on a cold Canadian night. It’s a film you just get lost in, hypnotized by the slow pace, atmospheric score, and eerie, original, non-linear storytelling. The film oozes with atmosphere and is superbly well cast and acted.
The story revolves around forensic psychiatrist Samantha Goodman (Kate Greenhouse) and her troubled relationships with her low income husband, parasitic sister, very stupid party crasher (Dov Tiefenbach) and her terrifying patient, Harlan Payne (Aidan Devine), a tall bearded epileptic charismatic gay ax murderer. Greenhouse is uncannily believable in the part, reminding me of every hyper-educated woman I have ever known. There’s a familiarity about all of the characters. We learn just enough about each of them to know the type and recognize them as people we’ve fleetingly known. Dov Tiefenbach (who Friday the 13th fans will remember from Jason X) gives one of the most fascinating performances I have ever witnessed.
Slasher fans may be disappointed by the film’s slow pace and artsy ambiguous narrative structure and some viewers feel confused or even cheated by the time it ends. Aside from one gratuitously disgusting scene involving a finger, and a stylishly bloody scene involving a nail, the film is much more a psychological thriller than a splatter film, and unfolds like a group therapy session.
But there is evil in this movie. Not of the demonic otherworldly variety, but the darkness of human nature.
