The Bumbling Adult: A Retrospective

In horror movies, the most integral part of the story is getting those teenagers in a place where our killer would be able to take them out one at a time in an ecstasy of gore, sex, and random recently removed body parts.  This is harder than it sounds.  Think about it.  How would you strategically take out a group of nubile coeds that will hang out together at a specifically remote location, preferably under the cover of night?  Did you come up with a quick answer?  If you can you have successfully frightened me and please don't send me any personal messages.  Now part of this isolation theme is also of course, making it so no one can come to their aid.  Some of our favorite horror movie killers just take out the competition, but for most of them, the best tool that they have is to convince everyone that they don't exist.  Thusly we are given the persona of the bumbling adult.

The Bumbling Adult doesn't necessarily have to be a policeman, they just usually are.  The role of the bumbling cop is to be a symbol of safety and help from a different generation.  They are our mothers and fathers who took us from our youth and guided us all the way to adulthood.  They are the rocks in our lives, the people tha t no matter what happens, we know that they love us and will do whatever they can to make us feel safe and secure.

And in horror movies… no one believes the kids…. Ever.

There are numerous great examples of this in horror movies.  Most likely you can think of one or two characters off of the top of your head.  Do you think about Nancy's father (played by John Saxon) in A Nightmare on Elm Street?  Did you think of Charley Brewster's Mom in Fright Night?  Regardless, you get the point, there is a classic authoritative figure that is possibly capable of helping, but will in no way do so.  In the films there are a number of reasons that the authority figure would be unwilling to help, but most likely it boils down to not believing in their "child" (think of the term child in this case as the person on screen that the young people identify with. ) 

In case you needed another reason to think that Wes Craven's Scream was a great movie, the role of the bumbling cop was taken in a slightly different direction.  Because of Dewey's (David Arquette) relationship with his sister Tatum (Rose McGowan) whom he appears to be only separated by a few years, the High School kids saw him as one of their own.  They openly tease him as "Deputy Dewy" rather than to actually take him seriously and treat him with respect as a member of the police force.  They never ask for his assistance, but he is willing to give it.  Dewey is set up early as an outcast by the police as the new guy too.  The police force sees him as a child the children see him as an old loser who always shows up at the wrong time. 

Specifically referring to his timing, in one instance, he arrives to the phone after the killer has called and already hung up.  He is apparently always in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This reflects itself again when Dewy arrive at the house of slaughter at the end, only to get stabbed in the back.  So even though, yes Dewy was ineffective and still quite a little bit useless, he still had heart and good intentions to try and stop the killers. 

In John Carpenter's Halloween however, Nancy Brackett's (Annie Kyes) father Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) is much more of a bumbling adult.  He doesn't necessarily disbelieve the situation, but he needs some stiff convincing.  It isn't his daughter Annie or her friend Laurie that come running to him, but rather a semi-insane old man named Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence).  Loomis comes into town yelling and cursing about a little boy who is now grown up and coming after his little sister.  In his case it isn't a matter of not believing Dr. Loomis, but it's more about suppression.  Sherriff bracket is trying to suppress the image and the actions that plagued the town of Haddonfield years before.  When the bodies start piling up and the calls start coming in, Sheriff Brackett finally gets his act together and tried to help Dr. Loomis.  He was technically helping before, but driving around in a squad car wasn't enough.  Action force his hand which much like Dewey, arrived too late to do any good. 

The two examples that I mentioned are from two very unique movies.  Halloween is credited as starting the slasher genre and Scream was a film that put the slasher under the magnifying glass while creating an interesting story around it.  This formula of course doesn't apply to just police officers, but rather bumbling adult figures.  What is more exhilarating to a teenager than to prove their parents wrong?  It's a romantic notion that not only gives the child the power in the relationship, but also demeans the parents.  They appear to be weak and unstable: they are completely unfit to take on the demons, monsters, and killers that the children much face.  Which makes the victory over evil much more sweet when you do it all by yourself.

Who are your favorite bumbling adult figures?  Are you sick of this trend?  Do you want to see a whole movie about just bumbling cops and serial killers?  Sound off, let us know!