60 Nights of Horror #18: Night of the Hunter
Knight of the cunter
I don’t think I have anything real to contribute to the discourse on this movie. It’s beautifully made, brilliantly acted, but fuck fuck FUCK does it hate its women. And the women all hate women! The only woman who isn’t talking shit on other women is Shelley Winters, who’s implied to have the IQ of a rattle and therefore worth the contempt of everyone from real life serial murderer Harry Powers to her own children. The little girl Pearl is excused because she’s a literal child, but damn, everyone else, even Lillian Gish is like “Women are dumb, and everything bad that happens to them is their own fault.”
Once upon a time I was dating a fancy man and we got into an argument in the bar of a frou-frou hotel.
He was telling me about the movie “Unforgiven,” which I still haven’t seen, and he was giving me a rundown of the plot when he says “So these prostitutes-”
“Sex workers,” I interrupted.
“So all these… sex workers… are getting raped and murdered by a maniac, and Clint Eastwood-”
“A maniac raped and killed the sex workers, you mean.”
“That’s what I said,” he sighs, 15 years my senior and weary of being corrected all the time.
“The way you say it sounds like they got themselves raped and murdered.”
“Well they did.” He has no idea the hornets’ nest he just stepped in. And in such fancy shoes.
“Did they?” I’m squinting at him now.
“Are you saying they wouldn’t have gotten raped and murdered if they weren’t working in a brothel?”
“I’m saying that they wouldn’t have gotten raped and murdered if a maniac hadn’t raped and murdered them. They could have happily made their money and lived their lives if a rapist-murderer had never come along. Do you agree?”
He’s frustrated. “I’m SAYING that if they wouldn’t have put themselves in the POSITION to BE raped and murdered they wouldn’t have made themselves targets for a rapist murderer!”
“And I’M telling you that rape and murder is solely on the shoulders of the rapists and murderers! It has jack shit to do with what a person does for a living, they shouldn’t have been raped and murdered!”
“Well they SHOULDN’T be working in a brothel then!” he’s laughing, exasperated.
I take a deep breath and place my hands together.
“When a school shooting happens, do we blame the kids who got shot or do we blame the shooter? Is it the kids fault that they were in school? That they made themselves targets?”
“That’s different and you know it.”
“Is it? Someone sees a sitting duck and takes their opportunity. If someone says ‘I’m gonna go out and rape and murder tonight,’ is it the fault of whoever it happens to? These women are made to suffer solely based on the fact that they are hospitable. Because they’re there. They didn’t GET raped and murdered, SOMEONE, some FUCKING ASSHOLE, raped and murdered them.”
I can’t remember how that argument ended, but that was the gist of it. We broke up soon after.
I remember thinking about that while watching this movie, especially whenever Icey Spoon opens her mouth. She’s like “Wowee little Pearl, someday you might find a nice man to cling to since with a head as big and as round as yours, you probably take after your dear mother, who, bless her heart, is dumb as a box of rocks. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a man as nice as your new daddy, whom I implicitly trust despite knowing him for exactly ten seconds because he said the J word. Also your brother is a mannerless little shit for not liking our new friend. Come along now, let your new daddy give y’all a bath, since as a Christian he couldn’t possibly BE a molester or a murderer, but if he WAS, it’d be YOUR fault for being there, of course you understand, boy children can really take a pounding!”
And somewhere off in the distance, Lillian Gish is rocking in her chair, clutching a shotgun and agreeing.