Conclusion

Abstract

The mother in horror cinema, then, occupies a strange place not quite determined by the conventional motivations or drives of horror characters. She embodies an altogether different figure from either villain or victim. Neither wholly evil or indifferent stalker/monster nor wholly damsel in distress, her maternity seems to situate her as always one step removed from either. As mother, her villainy is accompanied if not explained by a corresponding devotion to her children. Her monstrosity does not lie in her desire to annihilate the innocent, to kill randomly, rather she is driven by a desire to mother and to care, even if this is figured as corrupt or misguided. Even Mrs Voorhees of Friday the 13th (the mother most closely aligned with the stalker tradition) is motivated by the need to avenge her son’s death. Conversely, the mother is rarely subjected to the sadistic drives of the killer/monster. She may be pursued, but is rarely tortured, maimed, penetrated. Her masochism is not imposed upon her by an outside force. Instead, like the mother of the melodrama, hers is an honourable, often self-inflicted, suffering. Western horror cinema, therefore, shows the family as being destroyed or attacked from within: within the family home or within the family unit itself (by mother, father or child). Yet in a strange way, the mother is structured as either antagonist or protector because she holds the family together.