[tense music]
male narrator: What's the most disturbing genre in movies?
[shrieking]
[metal and teeth scraping]
♪
For many, the answer is body horror.
♪
- [screams]
- Sort of queasy to think
we're walking packages of flesh
just waiting for a virus to corrupt us.
[screaming]
- When the body is the host of something from within,
how horrifying is that?
[growling and screaming]
- All these deep, repressed things that people
don't wanna think about, and what if they all came out?
♪
- [whimpering]
- We'll tear your soul apart.
- Oh, "Hellraiser"'s incredible.
[bestial snarl]
It's sort of wonderfully delicious.
[dramatic musical sting]
- It is all about the terror of being alive,
and the terror of having a body,
and the terror of other people,
and the terror of the natural
and supernatural world.
♪
- I am a human being!
[monkey snarls]
- That is at the core of body horror--
what makes the human being a human being?
- [screams]
- Is it this or is it something else?
♪
[explosion] - [screaming]
[eerie music]
♪
- [screams]
narrator: We all have bodies.
Some are young and strong.
[artery hisses]
Others are crumbling prisons.
It doesn't take much to go from one state to the other.
♪
A little time...
- [groans]
narrator: Disease...
- [screams]
narrator: And misfortune...
- [screaming] [boiling water hissing]
narrator: And you could be living body horror.
- [moaning growl]
narrator: But for some people, there is a special thrill
in exploring the terrors of the flesh
and the extremes of sensation.
People like Clive Barker,
writer-director of the ground-breaking
psychosexual horror classic,
"Hellraiser."
[eerie dissonance]
- We have such sights
to show you.
- [gasps]
narrator: "Hellraiser" begins
as thrill-seeking bad boy Frank opens up a portal
to a dimension of pleasure and pain.
[eerie dramatic music]
♪
After Frank's apparent death,
his brother Larry, edgy second wife Julia,
and Larry's daughter Kirsty move into the family home.
♪
But bits of Frank are still in the floorboards.
A dash of blood gives him a way
to escape the hell dimension.
[dramatic music]
♪
- One of the things I love about that film,
the transformation from nothingness
to this man forming.
♪
Little by little, you start to see more of the body,
and initially it's some really wonderful
sort of puppetry work.
And then it turns into a real actor
with this sort of sinewy, bloody muscles.
- [yelps]
♪
[yelps]
- Julia? - [gasps]
narrator: Frank's return reanimates
his secret affair with Julia.
- You'll do it?
- Yes.
I will.
narrator: She begins luring men into the attic...
- [grunts] [bone crunches]
narrator: To feed Frank their flesh.
[dark music]
- The wonderful thing about "Hellraiser" is that in fact,
though it's a horror film,
it's really a very sick love story.
Julia is so in love
with Frank, but she can't leave him.
We know what that's like.
You get in a relationship with someone,
you know it's unhealthy, but you just can't get out.
You won't leave.
[blow lands] She is so addicted
to this diseased love affair
that she would be willing to go out and kill people
to help bring him back to life.
- I'm going to live and you're going to help me, yes?
- Yes.
♪
narrator: In the ultimate case of identity theft,
Frank kills his brother and puts on his skin.
[dramatic musical sting]
But his plans are disrupted
by his resourceful young niece.
- Give me that.
♪
- I think Kirsty is a very normal girl
and doesn't expect that the trajectory of her life
will end up having to negotiate
with demons from hell
for her own soul. [chuckles]
narrator: Kirsty opens Frank's puzzle box...
[box zaps]
Accidentally summoning
Hellraiser's breakout stars,
the Cenobites,
transdimensional lords of pleasure and pain.
- They are the perfect combination
of carnal and something otherworldly
that is literally stitched together.
♪
[teeth chattering]
- There's a great image from "Hellraiser"
that it's always just stuck with me,
which is the Chatterer,
and he's sticking his fingers down Kirsty's throat.
- [screams]
- And that, to me, just sums up "Hellraiser."
It's invasive. It just pushes the limits.
- [yelping]
narrator: "Hellraiser"'s sadomasochistic imagery
was highly unusual for its time.
The unique look of the Cenobites,
tight, black leather and extreme body modifications,
was inspired by the S&M culture.
Clive Barker took their darkly erotic style
into the mainstream.
- Clive Barker is kind of the master
of sexuality in horror.
[dissonant notes]
Clive is, quite famously, gay, and, you know,
a lot of his material comes from that perspective,
but it's not about a sexual preference,
it's about gender issues,
it's about the threat of what one's gender represents.
[dramatic music]
- He's showing us parts of ourselves
that we didn't even know existed,
and because he doesn't make moral judgement,
everything is fair game.
[tense music]
narrator: With the help of the Cenobites,
Kirsty has her bloody revenge on Frank.
- [screams]
- The Cenobites are impartial.
I don't think Clive wrote them as bad or evil.
They give people what they ask for.
- [whimpering] - Explorers
in the further regions of experience,
demons to some,
angels to others.
- So in "Hellraiser,"
what is the monster? What is the menace?
I think that the menace is really obsession,
you know, much more than the demons.
♪
You go with the demons
when you can't rise above your own obsessions,
your own fixation on the puzzle box,
when you've turned away from your life
and into that unhealthy fixation.
- [rasping] Not leaving us so soon, are you?
[hook screeching]
narrator: Clive Barker blazed the trail
for sexually transgressive monsters.
[women screaming]
But when it comes to body horror--
[guttural sputtering]
One name stands above them all:
- [screams]
narrator: Cronenberg.
[bone snaps] - [screams]
[dramatic music]
- [breathing heavily, snarling]
[tense music]
narrator: Say the words "body horror" and odds are
you'll immediately think of a film
by David Cronenberg.
[yelling, screaming]
[pulsating music]
- [screams]
narrator: The films Cronenberg made in Canada
in the 1970s and '80s probed our deepest anxieties
about the fragility of human bodies
and human minds.
[glass shatters]
[water splashing]
[tense music] - [gasps]
narrator: Cronenberg was never solely out to shock.
- [gasping]
narrator: His early films
were pointed commentaries on society,
never sharper than in his film, "Videodrome."
- [gasps] [static hisses]
- You wanna try a few things?
narrator: James Woods and Debbie Harry
play Max and Nicki, amoral hedonists
who become victims of their dark desires.
♪
- The plot of "Videodrome," a TV station programmer
wants something with a little more pizazz
and finds this bizarre show that shows torture.
[eerie music]
- There's no plot.
It just goes on like that for an hour.
Torture, murder, mutilation.
- For perverts only. - It's absolutely brilliant.
I mean, look, there's almost no production cost.
You can't take your eyes off it.
It's incredibly realistic.
Where do they get actors that can do this?
[dramatic musical sting]
- He's fascinated with it
and he starts trying to track it down.
Where are these videotapes coming from?
[ominous music]
narrator: Max learns that "Videodrome" tapes
contain a hidden signal that triggers
vivid hallucinations.
♪
It's all part of a right-wing conspiracy
to clamp down on lax morality.
- Please.
- You're getting fed this message
through watching videos that are broadcast
from a secret place somewhere on Earth.
- Murder.
- [whimpering] [static buzzing]
- We've all kind of have a thing
of watching something that--
that we probably shouldn't be watching,
and we're kind of tantalized by it in some way,
but we don't know why, or-- we shouldn't be watching this.
- [screaming] [flail snapping]
- God, I can't believe it. - I'll turn it off.
- No, no, no, it's okay. I can take it.
[ominous notes]
- It definitely starts a disintegration of the mind
as well as the body.
♪
- The TV starts, like, reaching into him,
and he's got a-- I mean, let's call it.
It's a chest vagina.
♪
The videotape goes into him
or it goes into the TV-- there's a lot of both.
- Oh, my God! [gasps]
- It all feels very personal, you know?
James Woods pulling the gun,
that image of him just pulling the gun out of his stomach.
♪
[gunfire and screaming]
- Yes, you shoot flesh pellets from a flesh gun
that's attached to the end of your arm,
but is that really happening
or is that because of what you've been fed
through watching television?
- Death to "Videodrome"! Long live the new flesh!
[feedback screeches]
[tense music]
♪
- What are you waiting for, lover?
- It's got all these crazy metaphors in it about, like,
intimacy, and sexual weirdness,
and exposing that part of yourself to other people,
and also how you're influenced by the media
and, like, what have you decided
and what has the media decided for you,
which I still think is stuff that's if not as relevant,
more relevant now.
- Long live the new flesh.
[explosion]
- My films tend to be very body-conscious,
and the body, and what is, and what it does,
and what it can do tends to be very central in my films.
To a certain extent,
it's your own body that's the monster.
[tense musical sting]
- He had lost his mother to cancer
and was experienced
with seeing the decline of the human body from within,
a revolt from within,
and so much of his work is about a body in revolt,
and changing, and turning septic,
and almost evil.
[ominous music]
narrator: Cronenberg's first American studio film
was his acclaimed remake of "The Fly."
[dissonant music]
- I'm working on something that'll change the world
and human life as we know it.
narrator: Seth Brundle,
memorably played by Jeff Goldblum,
has invented a teleportation device.
Unfortunately, when Seth tests it out,
his genetic pattern mixes with the DNA of a housefly.
[ominous music]
♪
[guttural sputtering]
♪
- [screams]
narrator: Seth slowly transforms
into a hybrid of man and insect,
much to the horror of his lover,
played by Geena Davis.
- He's turning into a fly, she loves him madly,
is seeing this change, can do nothing to stop it,
and neither can he. He doesn't want to stop it.
He thinks he's being enhanced, and in the beginning, he is.
- It's purified me, it's cleansed me,
and I'll tell you, I think it's gonna allow me
to realize the personal potential
I've been neglecting all these years.
[bone snaps] - [screams]
[dramatic notes]
- But then he's being destroyed from within,
and their love has to pass this metamorphosis,
and it's not possible.
- What will happen? - [panting]
Well, I think it's showing itself
as a bizarre form of cancer.
- The film was always looked upon as an AIDS metaphor.
It was made during the height of the AIDS epidemic,
but Cronenberg himself said he sort of saw it more
as a metaphor for the aging process
and how that gets fast-forwarded
in this character.
[soft dramatic music]
- Body horror is a meditation
on the transitory nature of the human form,
and, you know, we all get old, we all decay.
That's true horror to people.
[both screaming]
- Geena Davis' character isreally what that movie's about.
She was trying to stay in there with him
as long as she possibly could.
- [whimpering]
God, no, no!
- But ultimately,
she was the one who had to pull the trigger.
- [breathing heavily]
[wheezing]
- I think that "The Fly" says as much about love
as any film I've ever seen.
♪
- [cries]
narrator: But there's even more to body horror
than decaying flesh and physical abnormality.
♪
It also describes the reality of being dehumanized
because you're desirable.
- [gags]
narrator: Pretty faces, though, can mask deadly minds.
[tense music]
narrator: When we think of body horror,
we usually think of disease and deformity.
[tense music]
But being attractive
can also open up a world of body horror,
especially for women.
- [screams] - [gagging]
[soft tense music]
- Walking around in a female body is terrifying.
You're a target,
you're an object, and I think
that is part of the reason why
we put up all these walls is to, you know,
obviously, protect that.
- [gasps, screams]
narrator: Beauty can make you the target of predatory men.
- [gags]
narrator: Just as a perfect surface
can mask something twisted underneath.
In horror, both things can be true at the same time,
as we see in the films "Audition"...
- [gagging and screaming]
♪
narrator: And "Under the Skin."
♪
"Under the Skin" follows an alien succubus
whose mission is to collect men for use as a food source
for her people.
♪
[mechanical thunk]
♪
The Collector knows humans are easily manipulated
by appearances, which mean nothing to it.
- Do you think I'm pretty?- Aye, I think you're gorgeous.
- Do you? - Aye, definitely.
- Good.
narrator: So when the Collector picks up a man
suffering from neurofibromatosis,
the Elephant Man's disease,
she can effortlessly capture him.
♪
narrator: But for the first time,
she feels sympathy for her prey.
- We all love the assassin
who struggles with carrying out their task
because they've fallen in love with their target,
and that's essentially what happens
in "Under the Skin,"
is that she slowly becomes enamored of humanity
and the complexities of being human.
♪
One of the most beautiful moments
in "Under the Skin," for me,
was when Scarlett Johansson pauses
and stares at the fly trapped in the spider's web
and then decides to let one of her victims go.
[door latch clicks]
And that is the cascade that everything falls apart
and leads to her demise.
narrator: The Collector abandons her mission
and attempts to enjoy her human body,
but she's doomed to fail.
- [chokes]
♪
- She tries to engage in consensual sex,
and it tears her suit.
♪
And the fact that his penis, his human penis,
tore her human skin suit because it's, like--
she's not there for penetration,
was a fascinating kindof, like, wake-up call for her.
♪
It's not your body,
and you've convinced yourself that it's your body,
so it absolutely is Cronenbergian in that aspect.
[tense music]
narrator: Because the Collector
is in the body of a woman,
she becomes the target of a violent man
who first wants to rape her then wants to murder her.
[gasoline splattering]
[tense music]
♪
- We experience through horror
what we tend to gloss over and pretend isn't there.
The horror of what our own bodies can do,
the horror of what other people can do,
the sexism that we deal with every day
is just what we deal with every day.
It's how you react to it,
it's whether you let it bother you or not,
and most of the time, you let it roll off your back,
and we're all very used to how we're treated in general.
♪
[wet squelching]
narrator: But in some body horror films...
[loud wet squelching, piano keys playing]
Women are the punishers.
- [gagging]
narrator: They turn the tables on men who've objectified them
and abused their power for sex.
[flesh sizzles] - [screams]
narrator: That's what happens in Takashi Miike's
profoundly disturbing film...
- [moans]
narrator: "Audition."
- "Audition" is--is horrifying.
♪
It starts out almost a social comedy
about a lonely guy,
and you're very sympathetic to the guy.
- This man is a widower and he is being encouraged
by his son to get back out there
and give it a go in the dating field.
- [speaking Japanese]
- And they do
just the absolutely despicable thing
of auditioning women to be his girlfriend.
narrator: With the producer's help,
the widower stages a fake casting call for a film,
but he's really casting for his ideal woman:
physically perfect and perfectly submissive.
He thinks he finds her in shy, serene Asami.
- And this woman, you know, becomes enamored of him.
She falls in love with him
and realizes the premise withwhich she has come to know him.
- And being unstable, as the woman is,
and being existing within a horror film,
her response to that is to
get very specific and really innovative revenge
on the man who deceived her.
♪
[tense musical sting] - [groans]
narrator: Every shot in "Audition"
is meticulously framed and beautifully lit.
The film's perfection hypnotizes you,
which makes the moment Asami goes to work
with her needles and wire all the more jarring.
- [whimpering softly]
[groaning]
- Suddenly, this demon is unleashed.
- [speaking Japanese]
[dramatic musical sting]
- The wire cutting in "Audition" is amazing.
- [groaning and gasping]
[eerie music]
♪
- What--what is it? [speaks Japanese]
[tense music]
♪
- That's--that's such an upsetting film.
[ominous music]
narrator: The otherwise decent man
abuses his power one time,
but he pays for all the times
it's been done to the woman in the past.
[clanking]
And that's the point.
You only need to do it once for it to be wrong.
- The reaction to this man doing a bad thing
is disproportionate,
but in the context of a horror film,
this is exactly what he had
coming to him. [chuckles]
♪
narrator: Body horror films tear off our masks
and expose us for who we really are.
- [screaming]
narrator: And sometimes, what's inside us
isn't pretty.
[sinister music]
narrator: Body horror movies have always fascinated me.
[both screaming]
So much so that my first film deals
with a highly-infectious skin-eating disease
and how it tears apart a group of friends.
[ominous music] - [faintly] Oh, my God.
♪
- I love how "Cabin Fever" draws inspiration
from a lot of classic horrorand gore films from "Evil Dead"
to the body horror films of David Cronenberg,
early Wes Craven and George Romero.
[dramatic music]
- Better close the door, Marcy.
You don't want to infect everyone.
♪
The thing about "Cabin Fever"
is we didn't know what it was gonna be.
I had never read a script like that.
I think at the time,
the scripts that were going outfor people our age
didn't have that level of gore.
♪
They didn't have that grittiness
and realness to them,
and they weren't pushing the envelope so far.
- The guy had bowled people's organs.
Arms, legs, everything.
- And I thought, "This is gonna be really incredible
or it's gonna blow up in our faces."
[tense music]
- [screams] - Whoo!
No more [no audio] finals!
- "Cabin Fever" is about five friends
who embark on a vacation in the woods, in a cabin,
and they each come down with a flesh-eating bacteria.
[dramatic musical sting]
- [wet coughing]
- Oh, God. Here.
- The paranoia sort of sets in,
and they start turning on each other.
- Okay, we can eat alone, we can sleep alone, whatever.
We have to talk to each other, we have to work together.
♪
- The tone is just so odd, and it's mostly, you know,
about the saturation level of the violence, and the gore,
and the--its intensity, you know?
Everything is just so intense that you're, like--
you jump and then you laugh
because it's so ridiculous that this is happening.
- [screaming]
- This guy's lit on fire,
this dog is suddenly attacking,
it's, like, it's just, oh, my God,
it just keeps coming at you
and that's sort of--that's the fun of watching the movie.
- Paul, that guy asked for our help.
We lit him on fire.
- My character, Paul, is a horribly selfish person.
Party's over, Winston. [thump]
He's just worried about himself, and that's the karma.
It comes back to bite him in the ass,
and then to bite them all in the ass.
[horn blasts]
♪
The makeup effects were done by KNB,
and they were back in LA, but the person on set
was this amazing makeup artist named Garrett Immel,
and it was really his ability to improvise with what we had.
[tense music]
And when Garrett did the workon Jordan's face, for instance,
this sort of legendary skull look, I mean, it was--
it was incredible.
[dramatic musical sting]
- I had never done prosthetic makeup work before.
[dramatic musical sting]
It's incredible artistry,
so applying it was, I would say,
two to four hours.
And then it's a slow process to take off,
because they have to re-use the appliances,
and if you just tear it off your face,
you'll tear your skin off, and then, in fact,
it really--your face would looklike mine did in "Cabin Fever."
But it was devastating to see myself that way.
- We all had to be sort of forewarned,
because, you know, we didn't want Jordan to feel too bad.
You know, how ugly she looked?
'Cause it was like, your immediate reaction
when she walked out of the trailer was like,
"Oh, my God!"
♪
[dramatic musical sting]
- You're there with your best friend,
but then you have to kill your best friend
because of this thing that's inside them.
And that's what the disease became in "Cabin Fever."
You're with your best friend,
but you gotta isolate them, or you've gotta kill them,
because whatever is inside them could get inside you.
And suddenly, you're not seen as human anymore,
and I think that there'ssomething very real about that.
You know, when lepers have leprosy,
what do we do? We isolate them.
When SARS happened,
when there's disease you don't understand,
tent 'em off.
People wanna get out? Too bad.
Epidemic, population control. Can't let it get out.
There's something really, really scary about that.
- Grim?
[ominous music]
- I would say it begins as a body horror film,
but then the real villain is people's cruelty, you know?
And people not willing to help somebody who has a disease.
- [muffled] Don't [no audio] come near me!
- Jeff! - Stop, stop!
I don't want to get sick!
I don't want any of us getting sick!
- Horror films usually-- usually leave you
with a sense of dread about the world,
and that's--I think that's healthy to explore.
- [gasps]
- The more the movie can make you feel
that reaction of, like,
"Oh, that's horrible, I don't want that in my life,"
good because that's what,
you know,we shouldn't want those things.
We shouldn't want-- like, violence is awful,
and if we can confront it in a way that is, like--
makes you want to look away, that is healthy, you know?
That's a good exercise of your imagination.
- [screams]
narrator: Paranoia was the menace of "Cabin Fever"...
- Showtime, Billy!
narrator: But sometimes,
they really are out to get you.
[cloth ripping] - What are you doing?
narrator: Especially if you're part
of the twisted world of "Society."
[cheers and applause]
narrator: F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said,
"The rich are different."
[excited clamoring]
narrator: In the film "Society,"
the rich are literally another species...
- Wanna play? [cackles]
narrator: Parasitic lifeforms that feed on the poor.
[evil laughter]
♪
- Brian Yuzna's "Society" is one of my all-time favorite
body horror movies.
The makeup effects by Screaming Mad George
in that film are unmatched.
[laughter] - [moans frightfully]
- "Society" is, like,
where '80s teen movie meets Cronenberg.
You've got a family with an older sister
who's getting ready to have her debutante sort of thing,
and the younger brother who just doesn't feel like
he fits into the family.
Can't figure out why.
- They don't approve of me, okay?
They don't accept my friends.
[ominous music]
- And then it becomes more and more clear that
he's not actually part of the family.
The parents and the sister are really the family,
and they are part of this thing called "Society"
that they're always worried about,
like, "What will Society think?"
"Bill, be careful, you have to fit into Society."
- You know, you'll make such a great contribution to Society.
[soft dramatic music]
- I'd never seen a horror movie
that had a mythology
that was based on class.
- You're a different race from us,
a different species, a different class.
- The idea was how can you havefun with class exploitation?
narrator: The film's paranoid teen hero, Billy,
learns that he and his friends are pawns
in a sinister conspiracy...
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator: A conspiracy that the wealthiest people
in Beverly Hills all seem to be a part of.
[ominous music]
- Definitely has the formatof a high school hijinks movie.
The difference is is it quickly gets a little disturbing
when Billy listens to the tape
of his parents and sister goingto her coming out party.
- On the schedule, first we dine, then copulation.
With someone your own age first,
then with your mother and me.
- All of a sudden, it's taken
the high school hijinks to another place.
- That thing what I think it is?
- That's a really disgusting thing
to bring into Mom and Dad's bedroom.
- [stutters]
- Generally, it's accepted thathorror movies deal with taboos,
and one of the main taboos that we have is incest.
♪
It's so pervasive, that taboo,
that we don't hardly talk about it much.
I think it's the basis of a lot of horror movies
implicitly, not explicitly.
In "Society," we make it more explicit...
- If you have any edible fantasies
you'd like to indulge in, Billy, now's the time.
[laughs]
- That discomfort about sex,
which is really important in horror movies--
I always feel like horror and sex and death
are just so intertwined.
[dramatic music]
- Mom? Dad?
I'd like to have a little chat with you.
♪
narrator: It turns out,
Billy was adopted for the sole reason
of broadening Society's inbred gene pool.
[laughter]
- I do love the--[sniffs]
smell of the hunt...
and the taste of the Shunt. [all cheer]
- Let go of me!
♪
narrator: He'll be sacrificed at an event called the Shunt,
where Society shows its true face
and all of its other body parts.
[all shouting]
[laughter]
narrator: It's one of the strangest
and most disturbing sequences ever put on film.
♪
- They get together and their bodies merge.
Their clothes come off,
they start moving to this amorphous blob,
and they eat poor people, and they bathe in their blood,
and you see all of it in graphic detail.
♪
- It's the first time I had a chance to direct.
I said, "Wow, what haven't I seen that I'd like to see?"
I imagined a couple people in a room
and their bodies kind of melding together.
[laughter, slurping]
The whole idea of a big orgiastic ending--
I saw "The Ten Commandments" when I was a kid,
and it really affected me,
because, first of all, it's very magical.
It's like a horror movie.
[tense music]
The sea turns into blood...
[staff clatters]
There's sticks that turn into serpents,
there's a green mist that kills kids,
but at the end, there's this huge orgy
when they're worshipping the golden calf.
That certainly influenced me.
- The rich have always sucked off
low-class [no audio] like you.
♪
- Obviously, it's, like, all a metaphor
about propriety and fitting in and also capitalism
and having the upper class act as though
they've got access to much finer things, when really,
they have access to much more upsetting and debased things.
♪
narrator: Physical monstrosity is often equated
with moral deformity.
- [screaming]
narrator: But sometimes,
the "normal" people are the monsters,
and the so-called "freaks" are too good for this world.
- [whimpering]
narrator: Body horror films play
on a dark part of human psychology.
- [frightened yelling]
narrator: Our discomfort with any physical difference
from the norm.
[ominous music]
narrator: They have their roots
in the carnival sideshows
of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
where people with birth defects,
so-called "freaks," were put on display
for the general public's amusement.
Tod Browning, the director of "Dracula,"
worked those carnivals as a young man.
[laughter]
narrator: He turned his fascination
with the performers into one of the most
infamous horror films of all time:
"Freaks."
- [chanting]Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble.
- [chanting] We accept her, we accept her.
- [chanting]Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble!
- "Freaks" is a one-of-a-kind. It's a unique movie.
How it got made,
under the aegis of MGM in the 1930s,
I will never understand.
- Tomorrow night's the big night, eh, Daisy?
- Yes. Your sister's getting married.
- Because MGM was the [indistinct] of movie studios,
so for that studio to turn out this fascinating,
and yet, sometimes repellant film,
is just a marvel.
- "Freaks" didn't rely on special effects makeups,
it used disabled and deformed human beings
from real circuses and sideshows across the country
to be its main players.
- It reverses the tradition.
It has the freaks, or the people we care about,
and the beautiful people, the beautiful trapeze artists,
and the strongmen, the physical specimens,
are the monsters.
- Well, here's something for your eye!
- [laughs]
narrator: The film spins the tale of a trapeze artist
who marries a dwarf for his money
then plots to murder him.
[dramatic musical sting]
When she's found out,
the freaks take revenge.
♪
- The thing about that movie that's so difficult
is it generates such sympathy for the freaks.
And then the movie does this strange turn...
[shouting]
Which is when they, all the freaks,
come to mutilate her,
there's images you don't forget.
♪
- [shouts]
- [screams] [thunder booms]
- [screams]
[squawking]
narrator: "Freaks" was attacked by critics
and shunned by audiences.
- [screams]
narrator: For decades,
it was banned in many countries.
Today, it's considered a significant part
of film history.
[tense musical crescendo]
- [screaming]
- [indistinct]
narrator: In 1980, producer Mel Brooks
hired the young David Lynch to direct "The Elephant Man,"
a very different take on physical deformity.
[dramatic carnival music]
[laughter]
Nominated for eight Academy Awards,
"The Elephant Man" tells the true story
of John Merrick,
who goes from carnival exhibition
to friend of the English aristocracy.
- Because naturally,
some people do find my appearance disturbing.
- "The Elephant Man" is probably the antithesis
of Tod Browning's "Freaks"
in that it is so sympathetic
and it's from the point of view of someone
who was born as a monster,
even though his heart was that of an angel.
This is a man who's so deformed, so grotesque,
that he has to wear a mask
so that he doesn't frighten everybody
he comes in confrontation with.
[all exclaiming]
And is put on display in circuses
because he's a freak.
- Elephant...Man.
[audience murmuring]
narrator: Lynch employs a naturalistic style
that reflects the brutal realities of life
in Victorian England.
[all clamoring]
But combines it with dreamlike touches
that are uniquely his own.
[distorted howling]
♪
- That film, in black and white,
just shimmers.
The use of light and dark chiaroscuro shots--
it's ironic that you can say it's a thing of beauty,
even though it deals with
someone who is anything but beautiful.
But the power of that film is the very deft way
that Lynch first reveals the look of John Marrick
and then gradually lets you see him a little longer,
and you begin to understand
that it's not what's on the outside,
but what's on the inside that really does count,
corny as that may sound, but that's the entire premise.
- I am not an animal!
I am a human being!
- The tagline of the movie on the poster,
"I'm not an animal, I'm a human being,"
that is at the core of body horror--
what makes a human being a human being.
Is it--is it this?
Or is it something else? Is it something below?
- My life is full 'cause I know that I am loved.
- If you watch that film on an emotional level,
I want to be John Merrick.
He's a pure goodness, you know?
He's a loving creature
who's not been destroyed by all the darkness he's seen.
What more could we wish for ourselves?
- She's very pretty, your mother.
- Oh, yes.
- A friend of mine told me
he saw "Elephant Man" in the theater,
and there was a scene where the Elephant Man's
talking to the singer woman,
and it's a very sweet, gentle scene,
and she's kind of looking at him like he's a human,
and she saying, "It's so nice to meet you."
And there's this quiet moment.
And a guy in the theater went,
"Kill her, Elephant Man!" [chuckles]
Like, he's like, "It's a monster movie, right?
When's Elephant Man gonna startkilling people?"
[laughing]
[tense music]
- [screams]
narrator: Sometimes disgusting,
often disturbing--
- [whimpers]
narrator: But always powerful...
- [growling] [phone rings]
narrator: Body horror films
make us question our prejudices
against physical difference...
- You filth!
narrator: Our attitudes about sex and gender...
[wire sawing]
[screaming]
narrator: Our fear of disease and contamination...
- [shouts]
♪
narrator: And how much our appearance
determines who we are.
- [screaming]
narrator: They confront us with the beauty
and horror of being human.
- [screaming]