NEAR DARK (1987)

SYNOPSIS

Near Dark is a 1987 “hillbilly vampire” movie (Rosenbaum J, 2009)that follows Caleb Colton in a small Kansas town who becomes involved with a family of nomadic undead. The movie is about Caleb’s struggle separating from his family, and serves as a case study of the moral development of a conflicted teenager.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NEAR DARK

While Near Dark aims to depart from other 1980s vampire movies such as Fright Night (1985) and The Lost Boys (1987), its central character is nonetheless a vampire, the apex predator. Inspired by Lord Byron’s Fragment of a Novel (1819), John William Polidori, a physician, conceived the vampire in his novella, The Vampyre; a Tale. Polidori’s creation, Lord Ruthven (also referenced in Byzantium, 2012), depicts a blatant disregard for and violation of other’s rights, cardinal features of Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD).

Building on Polidori’s precept, Abraham “Bram” Stoker was further inspired by texts such as An Extraordinary and Shocking History of a Great Berserker Called Prince Dracula in creating Dracula in 1897. The Count’s imprisoning Jonathan Harker is further testament to the vampire serving as a metaphor for APD. In Near Dark, the gang’s feeding frenzies depict the Freudian id guided by the pleasure principle. Their biological drive to feed is the basic Maslowian need (“A Theory of Human Motivation,” 1943), and conflicts with Caleb’s love and compassion for his sister, Sarah.

Scenes in Near Dark also reveal how horses react when approached by vampires. Such scenes underscore that horses are prey animals with “coherent” heart rates. Since their heart’s electromagnetic field (torus) is 5x that of humans, horses’ heart rates mimic humans’ who are in close proximity. The end product of these dynamics is that horses are exquisitely sensitive to human’s non-verbal communications. While vampire movies demonstrate this by having horses buck, universities such as Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School utilize horses to teach students and residents about non-verbal communication and bedside manners (http://www.springreinsofhope.com/about/capraBio.php).

Last week’s movie: You’re Next (2011)
Next week’s movie: Children of the Corn (1984)

ALIEN ABDUCTION (1998)

SYNOPSIS

Incident in Lake County is a larger-budget version of The McPherson Tape which originally aired on UPN on January 18, 1998. Despite The Blair Witch Project (our February 27 destination) having been credited with the found footage explosion, Alien Abduction actually predates SaI?nchez and Myrick’s work.

Alien Abduction is presented as a video tape made by Tommy, a teenager in Lake County, Montana, during his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. This week’s 52in52 blog will focus on Tommy and his family’s close encounter with an alien invasion as well as the original mockumentary which is purported to be from the Northwoods, Connecticut U.F.O. Case 77.

THE PSYCHIATRY OF ALIEN ABDUCTION (1998)

Classified as “Alien Beast” on Joss Whedon’s Big Board in Cabin in the Woods (2012), the alien invasion/abduction subgenre captures our culture’s universal fear of the unknown. This archetypal fear can be traced as far back as the 17th-century when Charles Perrault wrote his folkloric tale, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), a prosocial warning not to wander into the unknown. Its alien inclusion occurred in 1938, when H. G. Wells’s novel, The War of the Worlds, was broadcast on radio on “Devil’s Night” (October 30). The beginning of the radio drama was presented as a series of news bulletins reporting the invasion of Martians. Similar to the radio broadcast by Orson Wells, which threw the town of Grover’s Mill, NJ into widespread paranoia, The McPherson Tape also created controversy, as it was created to appear as a genuine home video.

Like the zombie, alien beasts evolve along with a culture’s fears. Therefore, a post-World War II variation of the “unknown” theme includes the idea that “they are among us.” This is depicted in Who Goes There?, a novella by John Campbell that was adapted to the screen as The Thing from Another World (and remade in 1982 as John Carpenter’s The Thing). In Carpenter’s film, members of an Antarctic research station battle an alien life form that was awakened from its dormancy deep within the ice. Since the alien can assimilate at the molecular level, the researchers grow paranoid of each other, any one of whom can be the alien, phenotypically disguised.

This week’s movie also depicts extreme denial best demonstrated by the family’s intention to leave the house – “will you be by tomorrow for breakfast?” – despite just having spotted a gray in their backyard.

Men in Black (1997) merges this ego defense with the above “they are among us” theme: “There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do… Not… Know about it!” (Agent K).

Another ego defense, dissociation, is manifested by Rene (then the grandmother) when she’s described, “like you were sleepwalking” and doesn’t remember how she got from the kitchen to the door. Interestingly, it is during one of these dissociative episodes that the grandmother attempts to open the door for the aliens (paralleling having to invite a vampire into the home). This scene further pushes the “aliens are among us” narrative forward as it implicates us as an active participant in our own demise (abduction).

The film ends with an announcement to contact 800-555-7070 with any information of the McPhersons’ whereabouts.

Last week’s movie: Leprechaun (1993)
Next week’s movie: Idaho Transfer (1973)