I'm hard to scare in horror movies - The Exorcist girl did nothing for me, Freddy and Jason are just goofy, and the less said about franchise characters like Chucky and the Leprechaun, the better. When I look back over my movie history, I can really only think of a few movie villains that genuinely creeped me out. There was the Tall Man from Phantasm, Max Schreck in Nosferatu, the ghosts in The Fog, the original Michael Myers, that thing at the end of [REC], and a few others... and among them is Zakes Mokae's Peytraud, the guy who can say, "See you in your dreeeeeeems, blanc" and really mean it.
I love a lot of things about Peytraud. I love the way he talks. I love the way he says, "Dreeeems". I love the way he depersonalizes the hero as merely, "Blanc"... Just one more annoyance to be swatted out of the way, unless you really irritate him enough to give you his full attention, and you really, really don't want that. Dracula might toss you around and drink your blood, and the Alien might spray acid on you, but Peytraud will hammer a nail through your testicles just to convince you he's serious. Throughout the whole movie, he marvelously communicates the aura of the guy that you simply do NOT screw around with.
His sense of mounting menace helps. At first meet, you think he's just a bureaucrat, pushing papers at the ministry and being suitably brusque to foreigners messing in his country. But hero "Doctah Alan" finds out quickly that Peytraud is no pushover to be intimidated by the presence of an American in his Third World. The interactions between Bill Pullman and Mokae are electric and Mokae dominates every scene he's in. For the actors around him, it's like trying to do "Death of a Saleman" starring William Shatner - You just know that everyone's looking at THAT guy, no matter what you do.
It's a shame we never saw this guy again. Serpent was never going to be a franchise (This was back in the magical days when every single property that came out was not necessarily immediately vetted for franchise and toy marketing potential). But that's probably best - Overexposure would only have diluted his menace and malice, Freddy Krueger-style, until he became a shadow of his original self. I'm quite happy that he's a perfect one-time villain and he can easily stand alongside the famous "movie monsters". I can say with certainty that I would MUCH rather have to face off with Jason than Peytraud. At least Jason will only kill me. So thanks, Zakes, for giving us one of the best underappreciated villains in horror films!
And if you want to see a clip of just what makes this guy so amazing, watch and shudder. He wants to hear you SCREEEM, blanc.
Chime.in
Okay, I'm putting this on my watch list for a night when I need the **** scared out of me.
ReplyDeleteIt's an underrated gem. It has some silly moments, but it's a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteBro I see it like this, there are 2 separate categories of horror movie slashers, it is unfair to compare the 2 for what will become obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteCategory 1: Hannibal Lecter, Dargent Peytraud, Norman Bates, Jack Torrence, Leatherface
While these are all great horror villains, you notice they are all living, breathing human beings, all (more or less) realistic or close enough to it, Peytraud technically did have some ritual magic abilities but they didn't get all hollywood and new agey with it, or do anything which was too far out of the realm of realistic possibility. While most "magic" is fakery, new age crap, I do think *real* magic may theoretically exist, but it's nothing at all like Hollywood would suggest..... It's merely undiscovered or unpublicized science, there is far more we don't know about science than we do. In the colonial days if you told someone that people would fly some day, they woulda burned you at the stake as a witch... A couple centuries later and voila!, people flew the 1st airplane. I think hypothetically, real magic could exist along the lines of naturalistic forces. But it would be far more limited than the shit you see in Hollywood depictions usually.... Still, all these guys are mortal living humans whom can be killed by normal methods, no matter how frightening they may be.....
Category 2 are undead, unkillable killing machines, Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Pinhead, Candyman, Chucky, Reverend Kane, Pazuzu, Tall Man, Wishmaster, Desiderius, Matilda Dixon, Maniac Cop, etc etc.
leatherface is in a sense the liason among category 1ers to caetegory 2, but he's technically a category 1.... I won't say one category is any better than the other, it really depends on personal preference.
But hey, this guy could have been like the black Hannibal Lecter, or at least comparatively. He definitely did drink blood in one scene.
ReplyDeletePeytraud was scarier than Lector, for me - Sure, Lector is an evil SOB and will torture you happily, but he can't hop into your dreams every night and make you hallucinate during your days just to mess with you. I guess for me it's his sense of sheer evil glee in what he does that makes him stand out.
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