The beauty of horror

Rating: 10/10 (6 October 2015)

That's probably the first really great and creative film by Tim Burton. He used a very young Johnny Depp who is marvelous and surprising in composure, retained and controlled emotions just as if he had none and was feeling nothing. It is true that the fact he has no hands makes his body language a little bit deficient. But his face has to be emotionless too and only his eyes express some human feeling. His nature is not exactly sure, certified and guaranteed. Is he an artificial man like the creature of Frankenstein? Vincent Price was a specialist of that kind of horror movies with "The hilarious House of Frankenstein," but also and above all the films adapted from Edgar Allen Poe and other authors in that line of human horror. So as a mad scientist he fits the role.
But Tim Burton was following a line that was common in many stories of haunted old castles and mansions and that Stephen King at that time was making famous in literature: not the mad scientist but the haunted house at the top of a hill surrounded by some suburban neighborhood. The mad scientist is just one more Dr Frankenstein building, fabricating, constructing a human creature though he does not have time to finish him: he has no hands and has scissors and blades of all sorts instead. But that's not the real subject of the story. The real subject is the contact of this man and the human society in which he is nearly by accident introduced. Surprisingly enough he can cope, at least not too badly, and he finds some simple middle way, meeting area where he can be of service and thus be accepted.
At this moment there is a bitter and sharp criticism of suburban America that can only accept a difference if it is interesting, meaning without any danger or risk, and if it can be useful for their own needs and interests, mainly financial. The point is that this suburban community is reduced to the wives of the community with a couple of children, a couple of teenagers and a couple of men. Sexist? Maybe? Realistic? Probably. These women bring up all kinds of interests of their own. Some are only interested in his carving hands to beautify their dogs, to sculpt their bushes and hedges, to cut their hair. For a plateful of cookies and nothing else. That's the middle class in all its beautified selfishness. Some others are only attracted by the physical change such a man can bring up in their love life which is without any love but only hormonal secretions. Some high school teenagers are only attracted by his great way at opening all kinds of locks in order for him to be the key to the house they want to burglarize.
Two women are different. Mrs. Avon Calling is just trying to make him feel normal, happy, rested and satisfied with some human warmth. She will finally realize at the end that she did not think of what his own reactions could be when he started being rejected because she forgot to think that the others will be hostile after a while, after their curiosity was satisfied and they found out they could not use him for everything they wanted and for ever. And that's all. No escape from the haunted castle at the top of the hill. Go back there and survive like a ghost, and don't forget to die sooner or later. Only two people show some empathy. The cop chasing him and shooting in the air to make people believe he is dead, but they don't; and the poor Mrs. Avon Calling's daughter who fell in love with him, or rather with his eyes but could not cope with the conflict her asking him to do something wrong for the sake of her supposed boyfriend was going to bring up in the form of a hostile reaction, practically some lynching of old.
That's where Tim Burton is great and at the same time unnerving. He always looks for the darker side of things in any situation and there is no escape at all: you have to drink your sour potion right to the last drop. Your sour potion? You're kidding. His sour bitter and rough potion that is in no way magic but a real curse on humanity. Tim Burton is a morbid entertainer who wants to make us lose all confidence in any future development or improvement of humanity because deep deeper and deepest man and woman are evil, evil like hell and evil like burning blazes in your backyard. It is great, it is good, it is dissuasive if you want to make friends with the weirdo newcomer in your suburban village. You better run first and thank God you escaped.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU