Horror Film Stereotypes

Otto F. Wahl, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at George Mason University, analysed the horror film stereotype of mentally ill murderers in his 1995 book Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness. He notes that a string of films based around mad doctors came after Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) including such films as Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1932), The Black Cat (1935), and Mad Love (1935). All of these films feature similar plots of a doctor “gone mad” and senselessly murdering clients. A similar trend came after Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) of films portraying psychotic killers whose only motivation is their insanity; Homicidal (1961), Maniac (1963), Paranoiac

(1963), and Nightmare (1963). This suggests that, aside from the well known fact that filmmakers like to cash in on trends, they lacked an understanding of the effects of mental illness. These films perpetuated the stereotype that the mentally ill are unstable, inherently psychotic. After reading this, I was interested to see if other mediums communicated similar stereotypes in order to back up Wahl’s claims. A university study conducted by student Lindsay Ray looked at the representation of mental disorders in magazines from 1985-2008. She found that the older articles used far less sympathetic language and more “danger terms”, 75% of these terms being danger to others. Less than 40% of the older articles were about human experience, the rest being scientific information. Although this study only goes back to 1985, the trend appears to be consistent across the time period it was taken in, and thus would have likely continued further into the past. Unfortunately, I could not find any similar studies dated further back to support this claim, so it may be unreliable.

However, this study reinforces Wahl’s findings by also suggesting a lack of understanding of the real experience of mental illness and instead putting focus the darker side of illness. The communication of primarily scientific information appears to me as a way of alienating the mentally ill from the wider population by making them seem more like patients than humans. Wahl analyses this idea further in chapter three of his book in which he looks at the physical presentation of the mentally ill. He notes that the mentally ill are often portrayed “recognizably different from others in both manner and appearance, that they stand out as deviant and bizarre”. He presents the example of Peter Lorre, a well known actor in the 1930-50s who was typecast as “deranged and obsessed men” in a number of films because of his appearance. After reading this, I was interested to see what others had said about this typecast. Film historian Philip Kemp describes Lorre as “Squat, stocky, round-faced, at once pitiable and terrifying, he seemed a textbook illustration of schizophrenia… Small wonder if he found himself cast as madmen and

murderers”. This shows an agreement from multiple sources that Lorre was primarily cast as madmen because of his unusual appearance. Wahl puts forth even more evidence of filmmakers creating a certain look for the mentally ill