Dying A Desperate Death

Copperfox

Copperfox

Well-known member
There can't be any worse horror than being attacked by an unbeatable assailant from whom you can't escape. In my early childhood, my nightmares often involved such a no-win situation. For instance, I once dreamed I was a dirt farmer in the Old West, being attacked by vindictive cattlemen. I tried to shoot back, but my gun wouldn't fire. So I uselessly shouted, "Bang, bang!"

TV shows like "Twilight Zone," "The Night Gallery" or "The Outer Limits" often trapped characters in this or that hopeless doom. Even the non- fantasy Alfred Hitchcock series included at least one "Ha ha, evil is unbeatable, so nothing you do can save you!" episode.

This brings to mind various movies along the same lines. For instance, one Jekyll-and-Hyde movie ends when Mister Hyde SEEMS to have been conclusively slain.... until some smirking character breaks the fourth wall to ask the audience, "Are you SURE??" Likewise, at the very close of "House on Haunted Hill," one of the surviving haunted-house explorers coldly addresses the camera, declaring ominously, "The spirits are coming for me now..... and then...... they'll come for YOU!!!"

Thanks but no thanks. Give me Tarzan, Wonder Woman, the Ghostbusters, Sheena the Jungle Queen, or Captain America racing to my rescue. Even Luke Skywalker, provided he ISN'T the pessimistic loser in the ultra-downbeat sequel trilogy.
 
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Couldn't agree with you more! I think it's part of the deconstructionist myth that there is no happily ever after, just breathing room. You see that in the later Star Wars movies that speak of "balance" between the light and dark sides of the force because for all of forever they're both hanging around. I think going from the whole "good guys beat the bad guys" mentality of 1945 to the Korean War, the Cold War, and Vietnam soured people on the whole concept of:

There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow when all the world is free

There'll be love and laughter
And peace ever-after
Tomorrow, just you wait and see...

Of course the modern obsession with "franchises"...endless sequels of Rocky, for instance, has something to do with it. The one thing filmmakers dread most of all is "happily ever after" since it requires them to be creative from scratch all over again and do something different.
 
Sometimes it's one monster helpless against another monster. "Battle Beyond the Sun" depicted a blobby space monster with NO means of defense being massacred by another blobby monster which was all teeth and claws. "The Black Scorpion" had part of its action inside a deep cavern, where one of the giant scorpions likewise massacred a big tentacled worm whose tentacles couldn't make any impression on its assailant's chitinous exoskeleton. The latter case calls to mind giant squids never having a chance against sperm whales, or starfish unfailingly prying oysters open.



It can also happen that characters who DESERVE to die desperately are spared because their potential slayer magnanimously opts to bring them to justice alive. The animated Superman features carried by movie theaters during World War Two make a perfect example.

It would in any case have been hopelessly absurd, while Allied forces were sacrificing their lives in the real world, to portray an unbeatable hero conquering the Axis powers all by himself. But the solution here was built right into the character of Superman: he would never knowingly slay anyone. What he could and did contribute was SUPPORTING the war effort. He would assist in various construction projects all over friendly territory; he served as a realistic airborne target for anti-aircraft gunners in training; and he would carry sunken or disabled ships to drydocks for overhaul.

Here we have the setup for somebody NOT dying desperately. In one of the Max Fleischer cartoons, Clark Kent was advised that Japanese infiltrators had stolen the prototype of an upgraded Air Corps bomber for their empire's use. Faster than a speeding bullet, Superman overtook and boarded the plane. The villains inside, since they preferred an honorable death over surrender, went ahead and hopelessly mobbed the Man of Steel. He simply subdued them, carefully set the bomber down, then handed his humiliated-but-uninjured prisoners over to law enforcement.

Up, up and away, and we go get popcorn before the main feature commences.
 
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Now, during the recent months when many of us couldn't log in, I _mailed_ numerous articles and story-chapters to Evening Star to get them into the indicated threads. _Everything_ in "Desperate Death" up till the above post has clearly not yet made it on forum.

One of my examples of this frightful no-way-out scenario referred to "House on Haunted Hill." At the end of that film, a character looks into the camera and tells the audience: "Next, the evil spirits are coming to get _YOU!_"

Here's my next step:

"House on Haunted Hill" is completely unrelated to the horror novel "The Haunting of Hill House." Its first cinematic adaptation shortened the title to "The Haunting." Here the heroine (Julie Christie, if memory serves me) was doomed to die so she could become one of the resident ghosts. (By the way, this film was _extremely_ subtle and artistic, dropping little hints of the phantom presence until the protagonist met her fate.)

Much later came a movie restoring the full title-- AND giving us a delightful surprise at the finish. Some power of good thwarted the demonic presence and _liberated_ all the imprisoned ghosts, allowing them to move on to a peaceful afterlife.
 
I'll take Luke Skywalker from the sequel trilogy. Particularly the end of The Last Jedi, when he is, once more, the Luke Skywalker we know and love from the Original Trilogy.

He had been pessimistic at the beginning of that film, but by the end, what he says to Kylo Ren is everything: "Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong. The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi."

This is not pessimistic Luke Skywalker. This is Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, reclaiming and embracing the fact that he is a legend, and one who brings hope to the universe. And this is proven in the very end of the film, when children are seen playing with toys, telling the story of Luke Skywalker's stand against Kylo Ren. That story had already spread to those who needed it.

Give me a Luke Skywalker who has a character arc where he grows and changes as a character from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie, and changes in the right direction, any day.
 
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