Movie Character Update II

Jan 03, 2008 00:03

Peter Kelson from “Lost Souls” (2000): Peter Kelson is a man who has used his brains to become successful and famous. He is a psychologist who writes true crime books analyzing the motivations of serial killers. He is basically agnostic, although raised Catholic, and has stated publicly that he does not believe in "Evil with a capital 'E'". Rather, he postulates that his victims suffer from "malignant narcissism" which disconnects them from the reality of their acts. When he is confronted by a strange young Catholic fanatic who tells him he is fated to be possessed by the Antichrist, he is naturally skeptical, until his life begins to become very strange indeed...

Sam Spade, from “The Maltese Falcon” (1941): Like most of Dashiell Hammett's detective characters, Sam Spade is a man with no specific past, just a job to do and an amoral code of ethics that drives him to get it done. Hammett himself said: "Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client." Unlike Hammett's most frequently used character, the unnamed "Continental Op," Spade works for himself, does not always get along with the police, and appears to have some appeal for the opposite sex.

In the novel, Sam Spade gives us an unintentional insight into himself (and, some have suggested, into Hammett) during a lengthy parable narrated to Brigid O'Shaughnessy (AKA Wonderly and LaBlanc). He tells her about a case he was hired to investigate - the disappearance of a man called Flitcraft. Flitcraft had been a respectable middle class husband and father, but one day abandoned his wife in Tacoma without explanation. Spade finds Flitcraft in Spokane, where he has a new wife and a very similar life to the one he left in the previous city. He explains to Spade that he had a moment of revelation the day he left when walking to lunch, as a large steel girder fell from a construction site and nearly killed him: "He was more shocked than really frightened. He felt as if someone had taken the lid off his life and let him look at the works." Spade says that Flitcraft realized that he had been "a good citizen and a good husband and father, not by any compulsion, but simply because he was a man who was most comfortable in step with his surroundings...The life he knew was a clean, orderly, sane, responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things...What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had got out of step, and not into step, with life." The irony, Spade explains, is that, after coming to this moment of self-understanding, Flitcraft had wandered off to "find himself," only to return to a life very much like the one he abandoned. "He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to their not falling." For Sam Spade, life is a kind of con-game, which each person plays on him- or herself, and moments of transcendant understanding are only momentary jogs in a machine which otherwise functions almost completely on automatic.

Ruan Hong from “So Close to Paradise” (1998): Ruan Hong is also known as Dongzi or shoulder pole, after the basic tool of the Chinese porter. A good Communist Chinese citizen, he believes that people should live by their labor and obey the law. He is considered very innocent by his roommate.

Henry Hogan from the “Tales From The Darkside” episode, “Baker’s Dozen” (1986): Harry Hogan is an ad-man who is tired of churning out his best ideas for someone else's profit. He has a plan to go into business for himself by raising up a local cookie shop into a national corporate giant. He knows he'll get his way too - because he's got the edge on Ruby Cuzzins, and her questionable ingredients. But before he knows it, he's in over his head with down-home Louisiana voodoo and a strange old kitchen rat named Aloitius...

Tom White, from “Two Thousand Maniacs” (1964): Tom White was a teacher of history at a High School in Pennsylvania. As a younger man, he was enthusiastic and ambitious, and was known for his regular appearances at teachers' conventions, where he invariably presented papers on pedagogy. It was while on his way to one such convention that he met his future wife. As a result of car trouble, he was picked up hitchhiking by young Terry Adams, a lovely young woman from Illinois. They apparently had an odd bonding experience somewhere in the deep south, they claimed in a town called Pleasant Valley, which does not appear on any map. The couple remained closed-mouthed about occurrences in Pleasant Valley, but the police report they filed hints at acts of murder and cannibalism, apparently engaged in by the entire town as some kind of Civil War rememberance.

Their marriage was to be short-lived. Terry apparently left Tom for his old friend Luke Withers, a door-to-door vacuum salesman. Tom apparently lost his enthusiasm for teaching, and was thereafter remembered as a dour old man by his students.

Captain Steve Harris, from “Ambush!” (1969): Captain Harris came from a plantation family whose fortunes were in bad condition at the outbreak of the Civil War. He hoped that a Confederate victory would "help the small slave owner" to regain his position of nobility and honor in a society that had come to value industry over elegance. His superiors regarded him as an exemplary officer, one whose loyalty and dedication to the cause of the South was above dispute, and a man with a genuine understanding for discipline and command.

Captain Harris and his outfit served with distinction throughout the War, although toward the end there was a noted tendency not to take prisoners, and some of his superiors worried that his ruthlessness could provoke the Union forces into cruel retaliations. He also displayed an independent streak that made it difficult to rein him in.

It was during the early months of Reconstruction that the incident took place that put Captain Harris' name into history. Apparently he had convinced the men of his weary, near-starving unit that the war was still on, but that they had simply been cut off from the front lines for some time (this had actually been true for the last weeks of the war). Having come across intelligence that dated from the war regarding the transportation of Union funds, he decided to carry out a guerrilla attack on the armed wagon that would be carrying the money to pay the Union troops in Georgia. It is unclear whether it was his intention to use this money to attempt to rebuild the Confederate army, to fund a KKK-type underground resistance, or simply to line his own pockets. In any event, the operation was ill-advised because the Union was no longer transporting large amounts of cash through that particular route, inasmuch as most of the fighting forces had been sent home.

His men killed the guard of the pay-wagon, and he took several persons prisoner, attempting to threaten or torture from them the location of the money which he had not found. When this was unsuccessful, his brutal treatment of an African-American servant girl apparently provoked a group of freed slaves, dwelling in a nearby shantytown, to exact vicious revenge. Captain Harris did not survive to face trial for war crimes.

Hjalmar Poelzig, from “The Black Cat” (1934): Hjalmar Poelzig was one of the most celebrated architects of postwar Europe. His style, a curious combination of Bauhaus and Art Deco, with definite Expressionist influences, has been seen as influential to several of the most important architects of the twentieth century, not least Frank Lloyd Wright.

During the First World War, Poelzig served in the Austro-Hungarian army, with the rank of Major. He commanded the fortress at Marmorosch, which was the site of one of the fiercest battles on that front. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and there was later an inquiry into Major Poelzig's actions, suggesting that he had failed to commit at a crucial time, although no charges were ever levelled.

After the War, it is understood that Poelzig became interested in Theosophy and Spiritualism, ultimately abandoning them as too mild, and seeking membership in the Fraternitas Saturni, the German offshoot from the Ordo Templi Orientis. Apparently, he left soon thereafter, taking nearly the entire Hungarian membership with him to found a new occult organization, whose practices were so secret that not even the name of the group has survived. This is also because most of the cult was killed in the tragic accidental explosion that took Poelzig's life and destroyed the house he had designed on the former site of the fortress he once commanded.

Dr. Viet, from “Bride of the Gorilla” (1951): Dr. Viet was the only physician for hundreds of miles in a region dominated by rubber plantations and tribal villages. He associated solely with the ruling class of white plantation owners, although he was considered a good man by many of the workers, whose wounds and illnesses he treated when requested. In general they preferred their own witch doctors, but they appreciated his ministrations in a pinch.

Dr. Viet was very close to the Van Gelder family, having known Klaas Van Gelder for many years prior to his marriage to the much younger Dina. His testimony at the inquest to Van Gelder's death helped to clear Barney Chavez of any wrongdoing, although locally suspicions were aroused when Chavez married the widow shortly thereafter. The tragic madness of Chavez which began soon after the wedding prevented the couple from ever finding happiness. Dr. Viet remained to comfort Dina, in his austere, paternal way.

Caesar, from “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes,” (1973): Caesar was an orphan - his parents were killed almost immediately after his birth by humans who feared that they would spawn the race of intelligent apes that one day would rule the earth. He was raised in a circus, by the kindly Armando, a man who loved animals, and treated him almost as he would a son. When Caesar finally came of age, Armando took him into the city to see the society humans had made - a society in which apes were a new class of slaves. Originally brought into human homes to replace the beloved cats and dogs which died of a mysterious plague, apes quickly learned a new role as servants, and humans became accustomed to having them take care of menial tasks.

Caesar's outrage at this situation resulted in Armando's death under interrogation and his own capture by humans who believed him to be a normal, mute ape. Eventually he led the revolution that brought down human society and made the nightmare of the humans who killed his parents come true.

Dr. Henry Armitage, from “The Dunwich Horror” (1970): Professor Armitage (MA Miskatonic, PhD Princeton, Litt.D. Johns Hopkins) was one of Miskatonic University's most celebrated scholars, and served for many years on the Board of its Library, having especial responsibility for its collection of "rare and dangerous books." His work on the folklore of New England is still regarded as seminal, and his contributions to the study of Muslim Heresy, based upon his careful study of the banned _Necronomicon_ by "Abdul Alhazred" were considered of importance at the time, although today that text is known to be a forgery. Today he is mostly remembered for his connection with unexplained events in Dunwich, and concerning the degenerate Whateley family.

It seems Dr. Armitage first visited the Whateley farm in 1925, after corresponding for some time with Wilbur Whateley on obscure subjects of New England witchcraft. He is said to have "departed pale and puzzled" from that visit. Some years later Whateley came to the campus of Miskatonic to look at the carefully guarded copy of the _Necronomicon_ (under Dr. Armitage's care) and apparently attempted to steal the book. Dr. Armitage subsequently went to Dunwich where several unexplained deaths took place. The local populace credit him with having somehow stopped the Horror, as it came to be known, although he himself never spoke of the subject.

Professors Rice and Morgan, who apparently accompanied the professor for part of his work, occasionally gave hints that someThing had been brought from another dimension by the Whateleys, and that Armitage defeated it through the use of spells contained in the _Necronomicon_, but few have ever taken their stories seriously.

Dr. Henry Frankenstein, from “Frankenstein” (1931): Dr. Frankenstein was introduced to the world of horror by Mary Shelley, in her classic novel "Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus." In this novel known as "Victor," he has since been re-named many times by the film industry, but remains the dedicated man of science, seeking after truth at any price, until his discovery proves his own undoing. He digs up bodies from graves and sews them together to create a man, but soon abandons the creature to its own devices, where it discovers the repugnance humans feel towards that which is strange and unknown, and hence becomes cruel and monstrous. In the now-classic 1931 version, Dr. Frankenstein compounds this error by using the brain of a psychopathic murderer in his creation, and this version of the tale has become standard. Frankenstein's original misguided determination is often transformed into demonic madness in more modern re-tellings, but the message Shelley originally intended was that even good men can be corrupted by ambition and defeated by their own successes. The James Whale version of Frankenstein seems to be on the edge between naive hubris and actual blasphemy, as when he cries "in the name of God, now I know what it is to be God!" during the creation sequence (cut by Hollywood censors in a later release).

It should be noted that, in popular culture the name "Frankenstein" applies as frequently to the Monster as to his creator, and many films bill the monster under that name. While this is technically an error, it certainly can be argued that the Monster, as Frankenstein's parthenogenic creation, has the right to be seen as Dr. Frankenstein's child, and thus the legitimate heir to the title of Baron Frankenstein.

Kia, from “Incubus” (1965): Properly speaking, Kia is a "succubus," not an incubus. This is defined as "a demon who takes the form of a beautiful woman to seduce men to have sexual intercourse." As portrayed in the film, Kia does not actually have sexual intercourse with the men she seduces, but rather uses her sexual wiles to lead them to their doom. Her own downfall comes when, tired with bringing only previously corrupted souls to the Devil, she attempts to use her powers on a truly good man, and lead him from the path to Heaven. She learns, only too late, that Good may be as corrupting as Evil, and loses her Demonic status to become a human woman, capable of choosing Good or Evil.

As a result of her Infernal upbringing, she speaks only the artificial language Esperanto.

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