Showing posts with label The Unseen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Unseen. Show all posts

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Stephen Furst of The Unseen Dies

News outlets are reporting that actor Stephen Furst has died. According to JD Knapp at Daily Variety [June 17, 2017]:


Stephen Furst, best known for getting his start in “Animal House,” has passed away due to complications with diabetes, Variety can confirm. He was 63 years old. 

Furst died in his Moorpark, Calif. home on Friday. His sons Nathan and Griff Furst confirmed their father’s death on Facebook Saturday evening.


New media are highlighting what they regard as Furst's most noteworthy acting achievements, such as roles in Animal House, Babylon 5, and St. Elsewhere. They're overlooking the work by Furst that most impressed me: that of "Junior" Keller in the 1980 horror film, The Unseen.

The Unseen is one of my favorite horror films. (And I am not the person to say that lightly.) A framed poster from the film currently hangs in my living room. The one on the right. There are many Unseen posters out there, with different images. I should know. I own a few. 

In The Unseen, Furst performed splendidly as an inbred, retarded killer. In my review of the film, I wrote: 

But it is Stephen Furst (Animal House) who shines as Junior Keller ... the unseen. Weldon describes Junior as a "murderous, retarded, overweight, full- grown baby." That's kinda what Junior looks like, but not really what he is. Having seen The Unseen a dozen or so times, I suspect he kills the women by accident. He merely wants a closer look (at Lamm's golden hair, for instance), and pulls too hard. A child who doesn't know his own strength. And he's not a "full-grown baby," he just looks like one because he's fat, dressed in soiled diaper-like rags, and he can't talk. He can only grunt.

Okay actors. Here's an assignment: Portray a sympathetic mutant retard killer, while wearing soiled diaper-like rags, in makeup that makes you look like some ugly incestuous spawn from Deliverance. And all you're allowed to do is grunt. Grunt and stomp and pound and grunt.  And oh yeah, try and be nuanced and subtle.

Furst does it.




His Junior is ugly and frightening, yet we detect his motivations beneath his grunting and stomping. His frustrated ineffectual attempts to communicate with Bach and recruit her for his playmate. His love for mom. His fear, then anger, at dad. However repulsive and scary and unsympathetic Junior initially appears, his demise is poignant. I hesitate to equate Furst's Junior with Karloff's Monster, but I also hesitate to dismiss the comparison out of hand.


You can see the entire film on YouTube (although I also own it on Beta, VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray -- in addition to seeing it in the theater when it was first released.)




Some horror fans hate The Unseen. Why do I love it so much? You can read my entire review here.

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For more about The Unseen, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.


Sunday, March 9, 2014

Insidious Chapter 2: Sexual Deviancy as a Threat

It's unusual to see a horror film like Insidious Chapter 2 these days. In it a man turns serial killer because his mother forcibly raised him as a girl. Sexual confusion, deviance, and transvestism are presented either as sources of evil or creepy things to be feared.

One could argue that it was denying the man his true (heterosexual) orientation -- not his transvestism -- that compelled him to kill, but that requires some thought. On the story's surface -- which is all that most viewers will consider -- a man in a woman's dress is presented as creepy and dangerous.




When I saw this surprise revelation onscreen, I suddenly realized how rarely sexual deviancy is depicted as threatening in modern horror films, as compared to 30-50 years ago. Sexual deviants (is that term still used today?) were a common threat in horror and crime films of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, with examples too numerous to list in their entirety. But consider a few examples...

A serial killer with an incestuous love for his mother (Psycho). A murderous lesbian couple doing the work of Satan (The Sentinel). A lesbian punished for her sexual sin (Class Reunion Massacre). A brother who rapes his sister (The Unseen). A transvestite serial killer (Terror Train). A gay transvestite serial killer (Hide and Go Shriek). A male transvestite in love with his sister (Stripped to Kill). A mother who castrates her son (Castle Freak).

A film that mirrors Insidious Chapter 2 especially closely is Sleepaway Camp, wherein a young boy is forcibly raised as a girl. After a sex change, s/he continues serial killing in the sequels.

Today there are parents who are openly raising boys as girls (or visa versa) and insisting that, though their child has a penis, the world recognize him as a girl. What was once considered a source of horror, something to be hidden from the world, is now proudly proclaimed.

Critics debate whether horror is an inherently progressive or conservative genre. In Monsters from the Id, E. Michael Jones argues that horror is mostly about deviance from traditional sexuality. Nevertheless, modern horror films have mostly followed society's changing attitudes toward sexuality, making Insidious Chapter 2's retro-sexuality a curiosity.

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For more about interpreting themes in horror films, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.