S&Man – What Does it Say About Me?

Why are horror films so popular?  Why do these stories of death and dismemberment and destruction come back to us again and again and again?  And why do we find them so entertaining? I’m sure that I don’t have an answer. No one answer will be complete. 

How is that we can be entertained and amused by a movie’s depiction of someone being killed – but we (most of us) are repulsed by the idea of watching someone actually die?  Do we derive some sort of voyeuristic thrill from watching a horror movie? 

In 1960 the British filmmaker Michael Powell released the movie Peeping Tom to great controversy.  The film revolved around a serial killer who murders women while using a portable movie camera to record their dying expressions of terror.  Though it was initially scorned by critics, it has since become regarded as a complex and classic film.  Do we, like the film’s main character, derive a thrill from watching horror movies?  We would loathe to admit it.  But it might be true. 

Roger Ebert, in his review of Peeping Tom, says that "Movies make us into voyeurs. We sit in the dark, watching other people's lives. It is the bargain the cinema strikes with us, although most films are too well-behaved to mention it."[i]

But put aside the horror film for the moment. Voyeurism as entertainment has all but swallowed up television programming.  Every so-called “reality show” on television is based on the premise of allowing cameras (us voyeuristic viewers) to watch people as they are without a script. How is it that admitting that you like Survivor is acceptable – even respectable, but mention that you like horror movies and people look at you as if they suspected you to be mentally unstable?  Is there really that much of a difference?

Yes. I’m sure there is a difference, but I’m not sure I could define it. That’s why the question – Why are horror movies so popular? – is difficult to answer. And that’s part of what makes the movie S&Man (2006) so compelling and so revolting.

On the surface S&Man is a documentary about the world of underground and fetish horror films, films with a limited and specific audience.  These are not films for my mother (or, I’ll assume, your mother).  It is a journalistic look at the directors, and actors who make films about simulated death, torture, and paraphilia (aberrant sexual practices).  Through interviews with a variety of people like Carol J. Clover (a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film), a forensic psychologist,  and horror film director, Bill Zebub, a fairly balanced view of this underground world is presented to the viewer. 

But quietly and without fanfare, director J. T. Petty, slips something horrible beneath the surface of this pseudo-documentary.  One of the filmmakers that he interviews – Eric Rost[ii] - may be crossing the line between “reality-show” entertainment and voyeuristic murder.  And the deeper we look, the more horrifying it becomes.

Is it a “snuff” film?  Or is it just a movie?

This movie, like Peeping Tom, turns us viewers into voyeurs of a sort.  And that is the horror of this movie; that we are pulled in, that we are simultaneously entertained and repulsed by what’s being put on in front of us. It is horrifying and is entertaining.

Did I like the movie S&Man?

What does it say about me if I did?

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[i] "Roger Ebert: Great Movies: Peeping Tom". rogerebert.suntimes.com.

[ii]  A fictional character… as real as it seems, keep in mind that he is a fictional character.