Stuart Gordon's Atmospheric Fear Itself Entry Eater is About the Enduring Horrors of Misogyny
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the site and career-sustaining column where I give YOU, the ferociously sexy, intimidatingly brilliant Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for each additional selection.
I am bummed that my journey through the complete filmography of Stuart Gordon is approaching the finish line because I have greatly enjoyed this journey.
Gordon isn’t just a great horror filmmaker. He’s a great filmmaker, period. The fact that he spent much of his career working in low-budget doesn’t make him any less of a filmmaker or legend.
The frightmaster understood the human element in horror. He knew how to make fright fables and terror tales rooted in the messiness and imperfections of humanity. Gordon wasn’t just interested in scaring people; he wanted to understand them as well.
“Eater”, Stuart Gordon’s sole contribution to the only season of Fear Itself, Mick Garris’ follow-up to his more successful horror anthology series Masters of Horror, epitomizes what made Gordon stand out from his fellow horror filmmakers.
It’s damn near impossible to miss the social commentary in it or that, one one level, the villain in it is Duane Mellor (Stephen R. Hart), a deranged Cajun mass murderer with an unfortunate predilection for eating the hearts of his victims in order to gain their strength and spirit. Yet on another, more metaphorical level, the bad guy in the story is misogyny.
The lead role of plucky new police officer Danny Bannerman fits snugly into Elizabeth Moss’ wheelhouse playing strong-willed young women confronted with virulent, hateful sexism of both the institutional and individual variety.
That describes the actress’ breakout role in Mad Men as well as her iconic roles in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Invisible Man.
Moss’ plucky heroines are at a profound disadvantage in spheres controlled by awful men because they are women but also because the actress is so small. Moss is 5’3 and maybe one hundred pounds.
In Eater Moss seems even smaller and even more vulnerable because the serial killer in the police station where Danny is cursed to work is fucking massive, a hulking brute with sharp teeth and a greasy mop of hair that sometimes obscures his face.
Eater opens by establishing that life as a rookie police officer, or “Boot” is a horror show for Danny Bannerman even before hearts start getting eaten.
Danny’s African-American superior Sergeant Williams treats her with respect, as a professional with dignity who is damn good at her job, but her white colleagues treat her contemptibly.
They’re overgrown schoolyard bullies in uniform, drunk on the power that comes with the profession. Mattingley (Orange is the New Black’s Pablo Schreiber) is a sweaty, weasel-faced creep who goes out of his way to make Danny’s life miserable.
Marty Steinwitz (Stephen Lee), meanwhile, is a gluttonous degenerate who is forever shoving food into his insatiable maw in a way that’s nearly as stomach-churning and viscerally disturbing as Duane Mellor, the Eater of the title, devouring actual human flesh.
The creepy cops might see their treatment of Danny as a matter of hazing the new guy but they really just hate women as a gender and Danny specifically and would happily embrace any excuse to mistreat her.
Danny is a horror buff with a weakness for true crime so when a monster who has killed, and sometimes eaten thirty-two unfortunate souls is moved to her police station she is horrified but also intrigued and morbidly curious.
The bayou-bred mass murderer is a dedicated practitioner of Voodoo and black magic. So he performs a sinister ritual while incarcerated that allows him to shape shift and assume the identity of everyone whose heart he has consumed.
As the night goes on the behavior of Danny’s colleagues grows more curious and sinister. Is she dealing with the garden-variety sexism and belligerence of cops who are fucking assholes under the best of circumstances or the evil machinations of someone who doesn’t just hate women but also kills and eats them?
The performances of the actors playing Danny’s asshole coworkers are beautifully modulated so that actions are grotesque and disgusting but not in a way that’s cartoonish or lapses into caricature.
In Gordon’s shadowy, morally ambiguous world even before their bodies are taken over by a deranged killer the cops are not the good guys. Sure, there are good cops like Danny and her superior but they very much appear to be the exception rather than the rule.
Marty and Mattingley don’t just abuse their power with a public they clearly despise; they abuse their power with Danny as well. They make an already difficult and often thankless job even harder.
Gordon’s adaptation of Peter Crowther’s short story is long on mood and atmosphere. From the very first frame it is apparent that something is deeply wrong and that is only partially attributable to Duane and his evil machinations.
Gordon grounds the supernatural horror in the grim everyday reality of being a strong, determined woman in a sexist field dominated by awful men who are extremely reluctant to concede power, particularly to someone who does not look or act like them.
Moss is fantastic as usual. She’s a fantastic actress, which makes it unfortunate that she belongs to the fame slave cult known as Scientology.
As always Gordon makes the most of his limited resources. With the exception of flashbacks to Duane’s crimes, this takes place entirely in a building that grows darker and more ominous by the moment. The veteran frightmaster turns a liability into a strength by playing up the claustrophobic elements of the story.
Crowther’s short story was adapted by the screenwriting team of author and editor Richard Chizmar and handsome movie star Jonathan Schaech, of That Thing You Do fame.
I don’t think someone as handsome as Schaech should be a successful writer but he and Chizmar do a fine job crafting a narrative that’s tight, nasty, scary and grim.
I’ve got two more Gordon TV projects ahead in the Masters of Horror segment The Black Cat, which is based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe, and the 1990 television movie Daughter of Darkness. I’ve got two more feature films in Stuck and Edmond.
It will be melancholy when this project is over but I will treasure the memories.
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