Carrie (2013)

 

Directed by Kimberly Peirce

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde, Ansel Elgort, Alex Russell, Portia Doubleday, Judy Greer, Zoë Belkin, Karissa Strain, Katie Strain, Samantha Weinstein.

Release date: October 18, 2013

Nationality: American

Genre: Horror

Budget: $30,000,000 (estimated)

Revenue:

$16,101,552 (Opening Weekend USA)

$35,266,619 (Gross USA)

Synopsis:

The film starts with Margaret White (Julianne Moore), a religious, yet disturbed woman, who gives birth to a baby girl alone in her house. She intends to kill the infant right away, but changes her mind and jumps years later, when we meet her daughter Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shy, unassertive girl, who nears her graduation from Ewen High School in Maine.

While showering after gym class at school, Carrie experiences her first menstrual period, and unaware of what’s happening to her, she naively thinks she is bleeding to death. The other girls ridicule her, and longtime bully Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) records the event on her smartphone and uploads it to YouTube. Gym teacher Miss Desjardin (Judy Greer) comforts Carrie and sends her home with Margaret, who believes menstruation is a sin. Margaret demands that Carrie abstain from showering with the other girls, stating that it’s the reason she is being punished. When Carrie refuses, Margaret hits her with a Bible and locks her in her “prayer closet.” As Carrie screams to be let out, a crack appears on the door, and the crucifix in the closet begins to bleed.

Miss Desjardin informs the girls who teased Carrie that they will endure boot-camp style detention for their behavior. When Chris refuses, she is suspended from school and banned from the prom. She storms out, vowing revenge.

Carrie learns that she has telekinesis, the ability to move things with her mind. She researches her abilities, learning to harness them. Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) regrets teasing Carrie in the shower room and attempts to make amends by asking her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort), to take Carrie to the prom. Carrie accepts Tommy’s invitation. When she tells her mother, Margaret forbids Carrie to attend. Asking her mother to relent, Carrie manifests her telekinesis. Margaret believes this power comes from the Devil and is proof that Carrie has been corrupted by sin.

Chris, her boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell), and his friends plan revenge on Carrie. They kill a pig and drain its blood into a bucket. Margaret tries to prevent Carrie from going to the prom, but Carrie telekinetically locks her mother in the closet. At the prom, Carrie is nervous and shy, but Tommy kindly puts her at ease. As part of Chris and Billy’s plan, Chris’s friend, Tina Blake (Zoë Belkin), slips fake ballots into the voting box, which name Carrie and Tommy prom queen and king.

At home, Sue receives a text from Chris taunting her about her revenge on Carrie. Sue drives to the prom, arriving just as Carrie and Tommy are about to be crowned. Sue sees the bucket of pig’s blood dangling above Carrie but, before she can warn anyone, Miss Desjardin hustles her out, suspecting that Sue is planning to humiliate Carrie.

Chris dumps the bucket of pig’s blood onto Carrie and Tommy. Chris’s shower video appears on large screens above the stage, inciting laughter from some in the audience, until the bucket falls onto Tommy’s head, killing him. Enraged, Carrie takes her revenge telekinetically, killing several of the students and staff (except for Miss Desjardin). A fire breaks out and, as the school burns to the ground, Carrie walks away, leaving a trail of fire and destruction in her wake. Chris and Billy attempt to flee in Billy’s car. Chris urges Billy to run Carrie over, but Carrie flips the car into a gas station, setting the place on fire, and killing them.

 

Carrie arrives home and she and Margaret embrace. Margaret tells Carrie about the night of Carrie’s conception. After having shared a bed platonically with her husband, they yielded to temptation one night and, after praying for strength, Carrie’s father “took” Margaret, who enjoyed the experience. Margaret attacks Carrie, who attempts to flee but kills her with several sharp tools. She becomes hysterical and makes stones rain from the sky to crush the house. When Sue arrives, a furious Carrie grabs her with her powers, but senses something inside Sue, and tells her that her baby is a girl. Carrie pushes a stunned Sue out of the house to safety as the house collapses and apparently kills the Whites.

As a voice-over gives her testimony in court regarding the prom incident, Sue visits Carrie’s grave and places a single white rose by the headstone. As she leaves, the gravestone’s surface begins to break.

 

Commentary:

The film, with a mainly female cast, takes a horrific look at girl-on-girl violence. While the aspect of Carrie being telekinetic and getting revenge on everyone at her school by murdering them at prom is unlikely, the underlying cause is a very common one. The relationship between Carrie and her longtime bully Chris is one of the most important details in the plot, it drives the action along as Carrie is tormented and realizes that she has telekinetic abilities. It’s interesting that the bully has a commonly male name and displays dominant male characteristics.

 

In a sense Carrie and Chris create a binary of what women are expected to be like and what women are like when they defy the social standards. Carrie is quiet, shy, sweet, and obedient. A perfect example is how Carrie reacts to her teacher’s mean remarks after reading her poem to the class. Chris is outspoken, assertive, mean, and fearless. A perfect example of this is when Chris is with her boyfriend and his friends killing the pig, and they can’t do it, so she steps up and kills it herself.

The film places a strong significance on the color red. Whether it’s blood, clothing, signs in the background, or paint, red is important throughout. The early scenes with Carrie getting her period for the first time and rubbing her bloody hands on Sue’s white shirt foreshadows as much of the change in Sue, as the change we will see in Carrie. Sue regrets picking on her, a panicked girl who is clearly afraid, and ends up setting the scenes into motion in her efforts to alleviate her own guilt.

If you notice, Sue is also wearing a red scarf here.

Chris is wearing red suit when she tells Carrie to stop smiling, in usual bullying manner.

There are also red candles in the background when Carrie is born.

The final scenes when Carrie leaves the prom and looks for Chris culminates in her stopping the car at maximum impact, the red car, and knocking Chris’s boyfriend unconscious.The ultimate face off between the two is a very important scene. Carrie sees Chris’s sunglasses hanging from where the bucket of blood that covered Carrie and killed Tommy fell from. So in her biggest act of revenge, she hunts her down to kill her. When the car crash doesn’t, she send the car into the gas station and watches Chris blast through the front window. This ultimate act of violence shows a switch between the two girls, where Chris is the fearful one and Carrie is not the dominant and fearless female.

The extreme nature of Margaret, Carrie’s mom, also plays an important role in the film as she represents an outdated view of the world and a lack of understanding of women. She sees female sexuality as a sin and believes tat God punishes all women for being female by giving them menstrual periods.

When Carrie takes on a more assertive role, telling her mother that she is going to prom, and making her own dress that her mother points out “shows her dirty pillows,” Margaret steps back into a submissive female role. 

The fact that she attempts to kill Carrie as a newborn, but is unable to because of the “instant” motherly love that all women are said to feel upon childbirth further perpetuates her classic female role. But, the fact that she regularly locks her daughter in a closet and tries to kill her again, stabbing her several times, after prom shows a strong female side of herself that is lying underneath the surface throughout the film.

 

This is evident in the fact that she even became pregnant with Carrie without being married, and that she has sexual desires which she punishes herself for regularly. In reality, the character of Margaret is more like a woman scorned than a devout Christian.

Ultimately, the film portrays two extremes of female behavior, showing what happens when forced into a box and what happens with the lack of restrictions. More interesting though, is that these behaviors are interchangeable between the characters. Carrie, Chris, Sue, and Margaret all show depth within their roles as they struggle to hide parts of them that society deems as unacceptable female behaviors.

Side Note:

In comparing the climactic prom scene in the original 1976 version with the 2013 remake, the new Carrie seems to enjoy her revenge with a sadistic smile while the old Carrie has a wide eyed look on her face, giving off the impression that she has reached her breaking point but doesn’t actually WANT to hurt these people. The prom scene in the original also has Carrie turn down the house lights and turn on the red spotlights throughout the gym. This is interesting because of the importance place on the color red in the remake, and the significance of the blood. The new Carrie also decided to spare the guidance counselor/gym teacher, while the original goes out of her way to kill her for laughing. Below is a video that shows both the new prom scene and the original.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

Cast:   Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Shiloh   Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas,   Julie Christie, Alexandria Maillot

Release date:   March, 11 2011

Nationality:   American/Canadian

Genre:   Fantasy/Thriller

Budget:   $42,000,000 (estimated)

Revenue:

$14,005,335 (Opening Weekend USA)

£842,398 (Opening Weekend UK)

$37,652,565 (Gross USA)

Synopsis: 

Valerie is a young woman who lives with her parents, Cesaire (Billy Burke) and Suzette (Virginia Madsen), and older sister Lucie (Alexandria Maillot) in Daggerhorn, a village on the edge of a forest plagued by a vicious werewolf. She’s madly in love with the town woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry Henry Lazar (Max Irons), son of the wealthy blacksmith Adrien Lazar (Michael Shanks). So Valerie and Peter decide to run away together, until they learn that the Wolf has broken its truce (that he would not prey on the townspeople in exchange for cattle stock sacrifices) and has murdered her sister Lucie.

Suzette finds out about Peter and Valerie’s love and tells her that she didn’t love   her father when she married him either, she was actually in love with someone  else, but that learned to love him. Father August (Lukas Haas), the town   preacher, calls for the famous witch hunter, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) to   save the town and destroy the wolf.

They divide into groups to hunt the wolf, with one group consisting of Peter, Henry, and Adrien. Peter separates from just before the Wolf attacks and murders Adrien. The men corner the wolf and kill it. Suzette is devastated by Adrien’s death, and Valerie realizes that he was the man she loved, figuring out that the reason Lucie wasn’t arranged to marry Henry as the oldest is because she was really Henry’s half-sister and Adrien’s illegitimate daughter.

The next day, as the town’s people celebrate, Father Solomon reveals that, had they killed the real Wolf, it would have returned to its human form as it is a werewolf, but what they slew was a common grey wolf. He also reveals that they’ve entered the Blood Moon Week, an event that happens every thirteen years, in which whoever is bitten by the

Wolf is cursed to become one as well. His men then begin an investigation into the town’s people to find the Wolf in its human form. Later that night, the wolf attacks again as Valerie and her friend Roxanne (Shauna Kain) venture into the village to search for Roxanne’s autistic brother, Claude (Cole Heppell). They’re cornered by the beast, and he telepathically communicates with Valerie, threatening to kill Roxanne and destroy the village if Valerie doesn’t leave with it. The Wolf then escapes, vowing to return to learn Valerie’s decision.

The next day Claude is captured by Father Solomon’s men, after he’s seen performing a card trick and accused of dealing in the dark arts. The men try to force him to reveal the Wolf’s true identity but he does not know, so they lock him up in a large iron elephant brazen bull.  In exchange for Claude’s release, Roxanne accuses Valerie of being a witch since she was able to communicate with the Wolf, but her brother is already dead by the time the Captain opens the elephant.

Valerie is then captured, put on trial and displayed at the town’s square as bait to lure the Wolf out so he can kill it. Henry and Peter join forces and help Valerie to escape. but Peter is captured and thrown into the elephant, while Father Solomon orders Henry to be killed for helping Valerie. Father Auguste saves Henry and is then killed by Father Solomon. Henry takes Valerie to the church, but they are attacked by the Wolf, who bites off Father Solomon’s hand, which contains silver-coated fingernails. The townspeople shield Valerie from the Wolf, who is once again forced to flee, but not before burning a paw by touching holy land. Valerie dreams that the Wolf is her Grandmother (Julie Christie), who lives in a cabin in the nearby woods, so she goes to check on her. Father Solomon, having been cursed by the Wolf, is killed.

Valerie decides to take the dead Solomon’s hand with her on her   trip to see her Grandmother, but on the way she is confronted by   Peter. She then notices that he is wearing a glove on his right hand,   the same paw that the Wolf burned trying to enter the church,   assumes that Peter is the Wolf and stabs him. Arriving at   Grandmother’s house, Valerie is horrified to find her dead, and   learns that the Wolf is her father, Cesaire, and that he’s the one that   killed her. He exlpains that the curse was passed to him by his own   father, and he intended to leave the village but wanted to take his children with him. He sent a note to Lucie pretending to be Henry to meet him at night so he could ask her to accept her “gift.“ However, upon confronting her, he couldn’t communicate with her, and, realizing she was not his daughter, murdered her in a fit of rage. He then took revenge against Adrien, his wife’s lover, and now wants Valerie to accept the curse and join him.

Horrified by her father’s actions, she refuses just as Peter appears to confront Cesaire, who bites Peter (thus giving him the curse) and tosses him aside. Peter is able to throw an axe into Cesaire’s back, distracting him while Valerie stabs Cesaire with Father Solomon’s hand and kills him. The pair then fill Cesaire’s body with rocks so he can never be found and dump him into the lake. To protect Valerie, until he learns to control his new curse, Peter leaves vowing to return only when he’s able to ensure her safety.

Valerie moves to her grandmother’s house, leaving her old life behind as she can’t go back to the village because she is married to the wolf (Peter) and she wants to keep that a secret. In the last scene Valerie appears of the cabin on a full moon, holding a baby, and as she hears a growl, she turns and sees Peter in wolf form and smiles.

Commentary:

The film pushes the boundaries of the helpless, innocent little red riding hood we know, and presents us with a sexually aggressive, rebellious, and fearless Valerie, stepping up to assert herself on various occasions.

 

• The film opens with Valerie saying “My Mother always told me, don’t talk to strangers, go get water and come straight home. I tried to be a good girl and do what she said, believe me, I tried.” These lines set the stage for a rebellious red riding hood, with a dark side that is evident from the first scene where she captures a rabbit, and later kills and skins it. Already this negates the cookie cutter version from the FT that portrays her as a helpless victim.
• Valerie tells her Grandmother “I don’t feel like it’s my wedding, I fee like I’m being sold” – challenging the common stigma that dictates that a girl/princess needs a wedding to have a happy ending.
• In the FT, when the wolf tells Red he’s going to “eat her up,” she is afraid which leaves readers to interpret the literal meaning of those words. But in the film, when Peter tells Valerie “I could eat you up,” she is sexually aroused by his words. This gives our modern Red a sexual identity, and appetite, not seen in other adaptations.
• During only real exchange between Valerie and her father where they discuss their family secret, she tells him “There must be a God, cause you’re the devil,” to which he replies, “And you’re the devil’s daughter.” This poses the question, is she as innocent as she seems? Why is her family cursed with this wolf? The fact that, up until he killed Lucie, Cesaire was a good father shows the complexity of the villain in the story. This line is further blurred when Peter becomes a wolf, and Valerie decides to stay with him anyway.

The Stepfather (2009)

Film: The Stepfather (2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Directed by Nelson McCormick

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Cast: Dylan Walsh, Sela Ward, Penn Badgley, Amber Heard, Jon Tenney, Paige Turco

Release date: October 16, 2009

Nationality: American

Genre: Crime/Thriller

Budget: $20,000,000 (estimated)

Revenue:

$11,581,586 (Opening Weekend USA)

$28,802,131 (Gross USA)

Synopsis:

It’s a typical day as Grady Edwards (Dylan Walsh) gets ready in a bathroom. He shaves off his beard, dyes his hair, and takes out his brown contact lenses. He then goes downstairs with his luggage and fixes himself peanut butter toast and coffee. As he leaves the house, the camera reveals the bodies of his wife and her three children – dead.

Susan Harding (Sela Ward) is shopping in a grocery store when meets Grady, who introduces himself as David Harris, a man who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. He charms her, and six months later, they are engaged to be married. Susan’s eldest son, Michael (Penn Badgley) has been away at military school and returns home to find his mother engaged and David living at their house. To earn Michael’s trust, David invites him down to the basement, where he has installed wall cabinets with secure locks, and tries to bond over tequila shots.

Michael starts to suspect that something is not right when David uses the wrong name when mentioning his dead daughter. After Susan mentions that an elderly neighbor warned her that America’s Most Wanted ran a profile on a serial killer that looked just like David, David storms into the woman’s house and throws her down her basement stairs, breaking her neck. Another incident occurs when Susan’s ex-husband Jay (Jon Tenney) confronts David angrily about laying hands on his younger son, Sean (Braeden Lemasters), after David grabbed him roughly for failing to turn down the volume on his video game. He warns Susan that she knows nothing about David, and to be careful. Doubts about David continue to grow when he quits his job working as a real estate agent for Susan’s sister, Jackie (Paige Turco) to avoid giving a photo ID. Later on, Jay confronts David again, this time about an apparent lie regarding his college history. David clubs him with a vase and suffocates him with a plastic bag, hiding his body in the freezer in the basement and his belongings in his locked cabinets. He sends Michael a text with Jay’s phone saying that David checked out okay, and not to worry.

When the neighbor woman’s body is discovered two weeks later, David tells the family. Michael is alarmed because he overheard when the postman told David, and he gave less details than David did. While Michael’s girlfriend, Kelly (Amber Heard), tries to get him to focus on college applications, he grows more and more obsessed with the contradictions in David’s stories. Kelly tries to grab his attention by saying she is having sex with another guy. Michael, who is obsessed with David’s stories, doesn’t pay attention, and Kelly leaves.

The situation finally comes to a head when David intercepts an email from Jackie about hiring an investigator. He then goes to Jackie’s house and drowns her in her pool. Determined to discover what was in the locked cabinets, Michael breaks into the basement as Kelly keeps a lookout. In the basement, Michael eventually discovers his dad’s body in a freezer. David knocks out Kelly and traps Michael in the basement. The commotion wakes up Susan, and he berates her parenting skills and shouts that he thought she could be “Mrs. Grady Edwards”. On Susan’s stunned reaction, realizing he said the wrong name David grimaces and asks, “Who am I here?”

Susan then runs to the bathroom and locks herself in. David kicks the door in shattering the mirror behind it, she picks up a shard of the glass mirror holding it behind her. David grabs Susan, they struggle and she manages to stab David in the neck with the shard, David falls to the floor and is presumed to be dead. Michael escapes from the basement and finds Kelly. They find Susan in the hallway across from the bathroom, thinking David is dead. Then, he approaches from behind and blocks the stairs, chases all of them into the attic where he and Michael fight, eventually falling onto the roof and then falling off the edge of the roof to the ground, where they both lie unconscious.

Michael finally wakes up in a hospital and learns that he had been in a coma for just over a month and that David is still alive. He fled the scene before the police arrived. The end scene shows David, who has again changed his name to Chris Ames, working at a hardware store when he meets a woman who was shopping with her two sons.

Commentary:

The film is male dominated for the most part, with the mother portrayed as a professional women who has been easily manipulated by a man, David. The few women in the film that speak out against David’s odd past, like Aunt Jackie, or how similar he looks to a wanted killer on the news, the neighbor, are immediately murdered. Michael’s girlfriend is portrayed as often being just as trusting as his mother in terms of David, but does have a scene where she gets “creeped out” by him as he ogles her in her bikini.

The final show down with David includes a fight scene with Kelly, Michael’s girlfriend, where she proves that she is not as weak as she may look. It’s interesting that David’s character, while a homicidal killer and pathological liar, is not a rough and rugged kind of man. Instead, he is seen as a more sensitive type of man, until he gets upset and shows how ungentle he actually is.

Fright Night (1985)

                    Directed by Tom Holland

Cast: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark, Dorothy Fielding, Art J. Evans.

Release date: August 2, 1985

Nationality: American

Genre: Horror

Budget: $9,000,000

Revenue:

$6,118,543 (Opening Weekend USA)

$24,922,237 (Gross USA)

Synopsis:

The film follows Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), a huge fan of traditional Gothic horror films, as he starts to suspect his neighbor of being less than human. He stays up late most nights watching the horror movie TV series “Fright Night” hosted by Charley’s hero, Hammer Horror style actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), who played a vampire killer for many years in horror movies.

Charley comes to conclusion early on that his new next door neighbor, Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire. Upon coming to this terrible realization, Charley tries to tell his naturally skeptical mother, and asks his friends for their help. In desperation he even calls the police about a girl that he believes Jerry killed, but when he reveals his vampire suspicions to them they believe he has a wild imagination and ignore his claims. That night Charley gets a visit from Jerry himself who offers Charley a “choice” (something he claims to lack himself): “Forget about me and I’ll forget about you.” Charley tries to use his crucifix on Jerry but he stops him and tries to kill him by pushing Charley out the window. Charley stabs Jerry through the hand with a pencil, and an enraged Jerry destroys Charley’s car in retaliation and warns Charlie that he plans to do much worse to him later.

Charley then turns to Peter Vincent, for help, but Peter dismisses Charley as an obsessed fan. Charley’s girlfriend, Amy Peterson (Amanda Bearse), fears for Charley’s sanity and safety so she hires the financially destitute Vincent to “prove” that Jerry is not a vampire by having him ingest what they claim is “holy water”, but it turns out to only be tap water (Jerry having claimed to Peter that ingesting actual holy water would be against his religious convictions).

Vincent accidentally discovers Jerry’s true nature after glancing his lack of a reflection in his pocket mirror, which causes him to accidentally drop and smash the mirror. With this terrifying knowledge Peter flees, but not before Jerry realizes Peter’s discovery after finding a piece of his pocket mirror on the floor.

Jerry hunts down and turns Charley’s friend, “Evil Ed” Thompson (Stephen Geoffreys), into a vampire. Ed then visits Peter and tries to attack him, only to be warded off when injured by a crucifix. Meanwhile, Jerry chases Charley and Amy into a club. While Charley is trying to call Peter for help, Jerry hypnotizes and abducts Amy, who bears a resemblance to Jerry’s lost love (whom Jerry has a painting of). With nowhere left to turn, Charley attempts to gain Peter’s help once more.

Peter, frightened from having dealt with Evil Ed, initially refuses, but then finally resumes his “Vampire Killer” role as Charley approaches his neighbor’s house. The two are able to repel Jerry’s attack using a crucifix, though only Charley’s works, since he has faith in its spiritual power. Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), Jerry’s live-in carpenter and daytime protector, appears and knocks Charley over the banister and to the ground. Peter flees to Charley’s house, finding that Mrs. Brewster is at work, and is attacked by Evil Ed, who takes a wolf form. Peter apparently kills Ed after staking him through the heart, but removes the stake afterwards. An unconscious Charley is taken to Amy who has been turned into a vampire by Jerry. Peter says the process can be reversed, but only if they kill Jerry before dawn.

Charley and Peter are then confronted by Billy, whom Peter shoots, on the assumption that Billy is human due to having a reflection and appearing during daytime. This theory proves to be incorrect. Billy rises again and is only killed when staked through the heart by Charley, dissolving him into goo and dust. Jerry appears, but Peter is able to lure the overconfident vampire in front of a window using a crucifix (which now works against Jerry in the hands of Peter, due to Peter’s renewed faith in its abilities). Just before the morning sun lights him ablaze. Jerry turns into a bat and attacks Peter and Charley (biting Charley in the process) before fleeing, wounded, to his coffin in the basement. Charley and Peter go in pursuit of Jerry; Peter breaks open Jerry’s coffin and tries to stake him through the heart whilst Charley has to fight off Amy, who has completed her transformation. By breaking the blacked-out windows in the basement, Peter and Charley are able to expose Jerry to the sunlight and kill him. Jerry’s death leads Amy to become human once more, and the three embrace.

A few nights later Peter returns to his Fright Night TV series and announces a break from vampires, instead selecting to present an alien invasion movie, watched in Charley’s bedroom by Charley and Amy. The last shot shows two red eyes appearing from the darkness of Jerry’s house and Ed’s voice laughing and saying “Oh, you’re so cool, Brewster!”

Commentary:

The film opens with a virginal Amy afraid to let her boyfriend touch her breast, a sentiment she changes very quickly as she sits on the bed and decides to take off her shirt, exposing her bra. An act that her previously eager boyfriend ignores because he’s spying on Jerry, his new vampire neighbor. The dialogue changes here from Charley being the eager one to Amy saying “Do you wanna make love or not?” and quickly getting dressed before Charley even sees that she wasn’t. This paints Amy in a confusing light, is she the virginal girlfriend or the girl eager to have sex? This is interesting too because all of Jerry’s victims tend to be promiscuous women, call girls mainly. The portrayal of Amy switching sides so early on could be seen as a foreshadowing of events to come.

We don’t initially realize that Jerry’s victims are promiscuous women until we see it on the news later on in the film, but the idea is implied when we meet the blonde in the photographs below, one of his victims. She’s dressed as if she wear going to a nightclub early in the day, in a tight dress revealing that she isn’t wearing a bra. This could be seen as making a moral  judgement on these women for their sexual choices, implying that their punishment (death) was deserving.

 

 

 

While several women are killed, and Jerry even makes the moves on Charley’s mom, Amy is the only woman to be turned into a vampire. There’s a brief flirtation between Amy and Jerry when they first meet, as Amy looks a lot like an old love of his, and Amy is not exactly happy in her relationship with Charley. The fact that there’s friction between the two, mainly because Charley has become obsessed with getting rid of Jerry and Amy is feeling ignored, adds to the idea that Amy’s outcome if deserved. If she had stayed virginal in the beginning scenes, I feel like the audience would have been more likely to sympathize with her once she was turned.

When Amy encounters Jerry again in the dance club, she immediately falls under his spell and starts dancing very seductively with him. She even goes as far as to undo some of the buttons of her top and bend back the collar to give Jerry clear access to her neck. It’s interesting that Peter’s friend Ed is turned into a vampire as well, becoming “Evil Ed,” but he doesn’t get seduced. Jerry simply sneaks up behind him, covers his mouth and bites him on the neck. The male turning lacks the sexual aspect that is overly apparent in the female scenario.

Once Amy leaves with Jerry, she has a short moment of clarity at his house where she questions what she’s doing there. But this moment is short lived as Amy is seduced by Jerry’s sexual appeal, instead of his vampire charms this time, and has sex with him-during which he bites her turning her as well. Jerry approaches her, not in a violent way, but in a charming kind of way as he plays on her own desires. When Amy voluntarily has sex with Jerry, and embraces her sexuality and desires, she ends up getting turned into a vampire. This scene implies that women who openly engage in “wrong” sexual behaviors will be punished for it, going back to the idea that these outcomes are deserved.When she wakes up, she’s in a long silky white dress, which is ironic given that she just lost her virginity to Jerry, and she’s writhing in pain as she turns. The juxtapose of having Amy in white AFTER she’s engaged in elicit sexual activity is interesting because it tells the viewer that she only appeared to be innocent and virginal before, implying that this vampire side of her is more fitting. It’s also interesting because, once she turns, her hair grows long and redder.

 

Ultimately, what I found more interesting was the difference in the changes we see in Amy and Ed. Amy, as a vampire, is much more vicious with a larger mouth and huge fangs. She also displays a more seductress kind of behavior as she encounters Peter and Charley and tries to kill them. Given that Ed maintains his same human sense of humor, the overt sexuality in Amy tells us that she had this side of herself under the surface all along, a fact that we should have already seen coming from the very first scenes. Ed, or “Evil Ed,” grow fangs too but doesn’t look nearly as terrifying as Amy does once he’s a vampire. While he does get a bit scarier once Peter burns a cross into his forehead, the sexually charged female character is the scariest vampire in the film.