Science Fiction and Horror

I have a bad habit of watching movies and comparing them to almost every other work of literature under the sun. I'm starting to sense it's pretty annoying to those around me.

For example, while visiting some friends in Park City, Christina and I sat down to watch the 1954 classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon on AMC. The film is about a group of scientists who take a boat up the Amazon to research...something...I can't remember, but it's not important. What's important is that they soon find themselves under attack from a "gill-man" who is picking off the group (which of course features one attractive woman) one by one.

At one point the camera shows the woman swimming on her own while the monster gives the faintest of touches to her feet below water. So of course I said, "Wow, this movie is a lot like Jaws in how they did that." The camera work and just the amount of time spent under water made me think of almost every other water-based horror flick I'd ever seen, including Deep Blue Sea. I naturally started to feel like it was a forerunner of sorts.

Doesn't kill her. Takes her to his lair. Apparently, the monster just wanted to be looooved...

Later on, after the team of scientists ACTUALLY CAPTURES THE CREATURE, many of the crew are in favor of leaving the lagoon so that they might return home to civilization and bring in the creature for study. However, the leader of the scientists, Mark, refuses, claiming that their previous research and scientific inquiry is too danged important to give up just because a mysterious gill-man happened to murder a few members of the crew (a few more get killed as a result of staying). So I made my second comparison of the evening, claiming that was "just like Captain Walton being too stupid to head home in Frankenstein." 

Horror films and science fiction are close cousins to each other. It's a standard plotline anymore: a scientist's ambition becomes his downfall when he (I would say "or she" but the scientist who screws up is always male) either creates a monster through his pursuit of science OR leads others into a dangerous encounter with a monster in his pursuit of other discoveries. This is exactly why the professor would have been the first person to turn evil in Gilligan's Island...you know, if the show were a horror story and not a sitcom.

Guys! This coconut radio I invented will let us commune with the dead!!

You see this all the time:

• Victor Frankenstein was foolhardy when he thought he could "play God" and accidentally creates a superhuman monster, one who would have been friendly had Victor not screwed up a second time and shown him love and affection. 
• In 28 Days Later, scientists create the "Rage Virus" which, of course, is accidentally released, dooming most of Great Britain to a zombie existence. Oops.
• In Deep Blue Sea, marine biologists give sharks super intelligence, and are shocked to discover the sharks have begun turn on the humans (one of the dumber decisions I've seen. I mean really, why would you want to make sharks smarter?)
• In Prometheus, an old guy's pursuit of the science of immortality leads a crew to the planet where the aliens from Alien come from. You DO see an alien burst from a chest, which is cool. But then, you also see a woman perform a C-Section on herself to get rid of an alien....which is also cool.
• The Mist, a Stephen King book-turned-movie, features monsters attacking townspeople trapped in a supermarket when army scientists accidentally open a gateway to another dimension. Naturally, the townspeople start killing each other. 

In order for a horror movie to be really successful, I suppose it's important to make your characters tragic by making them the cause of all their own problems. For example, the Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films use the tactic of making you absolutely hate the main characters before killing them off because of their own stupidity. 

You find yourself cheering when Jason picks them off one by one

However, on the more positive side of the tragedy coin, we can all relate to ambition. By and large, ambition is something we admire in people. 

Perhaps that's what makes a film more relatable, and where else can you find better examples of ambition than in mankind's ambition to explain all of the natural universe? Science fiction has always offered fertile ground for horror films particularly for this reason. As long as we still feel a drive for discovery and a pursuit of the unknown, there will always be the thrill of knowing that we're approaching strange waters.