American Mary (2012) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 14

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American Mary, stay away from me. American Mary, let be-ee-ee.

Celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year, American Mary is an interesting character study of a talented young woman whose life gets altered dramatically by her naivete. It bridges horror and the body modification subculture to create a unique film that questions the motives of the lead character, as both a protagonist and an antagonist.

Before Viewing

A woman, presumably the titular Mary, performs some different surgeries on people after having quit medical school. Either with or without their permissions. Some appear to be amputations, and others are body modifications. She seems to get a kick out of this in a perverse way. The trailer doesn’t get into this too deeply, but piques the viewer’s  interest just enough.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) is a surgical student that is behind on her bills. One of her professors, Dr Grant (David Lovgren) berates her in class even though she is an exceptional student. To make some extra money she answers a personal ad for a strip club. Mary arrives with a resume, which owner Billy (Antonio Cupo) finds funny. When he discovers she has medical experience, he asks her if she wants to make a quick five-grand, and shows her into a back room where a man lies bloody and beaten on a table. She fixes the man up, goes home, and vomits.

She begins getting calls for a “Dr. Mason” from Beatress (Tristan Risk), a rich woman who has had surgeries to look like Betty Boop. She offers Mary money to show up and help her friend with some “minor surgery.” Ruby (Paula Lindberg) wants to be more doll-like and asks Mary to desexualize her in a Barbie doll sort of way. Mary removes her nipples and sews up most of her vulva, collects her money and returns home determined to never do this again.

At her surgical residency, Dr Walsh (Clay St. Thomas), the doctor in charge, is cruel, sadistic and has a grim sense of humor. He acts inappropriately with her, asking Mary to attend a party for surgeons and doctors that evening. She perceives the invite as a networking opportunity. He has other plans. At the apartment, she is drugged and raped by Dr Grant, who video tapes her as well. In the morning she walks home, sweeps the medical books off her table and quits school. She asks Billy if he wants to make a quick five-grand.

Billy and his bodyguard Lance (Twan Holliday) bring Dr. Grant into the back room where she begins a 24-hour session of practicing body modifications, such as tongue bifurcations and voluntary amputation, on him. After this she opens a clinic in her apartment to provide this service to paying customers. She is soon visited by Detective Dolor (John Emmet Tracy) who questions her about the missing Grant. She claims to have no information. Back at the club, she mentions Dr Walsh to Billy but asks him not to do anything.

Beatress introduces Mary to twins from Berlin (Sylvia and Jen Soska) that run a popular body modification website. They love “Bloody” Mary’s work, as she is known on the internet, and want her to work on them. They wish to be “better connected’ and ask for her to swap their left arms with each other, as well as make some other modifications per a drawing. Afterwards, Mary heads to a warehouse where she keeps the quadruple amputee Grant hanging on hooks by the skin on his back. She takes pictures of her work, but is attacked by a security guard. Mary grabs his billy club and beats him to death.

Detective Dolor visits again to discuss the missing Dr Walsh, who Billy has taken and beaten. Mary’s only relative, her Nana, dies which causes Mary to go off the deep end. She threatens a woman in a bathroom with her surgical tools after witnessing her sodomizing Billy, but abruptly stops when she notices a security camera. Beatress calls her one night to warn her that Ruby’s husband was upset by Mary’s work having beat Beatress to get Mary’s location. Mary is stabbed by the man in her workshop. She kills him and crawls to her operating room and begins to stitch herself up. The next morning Detective Dolor discovers the husband’s body and Mary’s both dead from loss of blood.

“Don’t you ever devalue what you do, Mary. You make sure they deserve it, and don’t waste a minute of your time thinking about them when you’re done.” – Lance

American Mary is a body horror film celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year. It is the last film in a week of anniversaries, starting with Nosferatu (100 years old) and running through the last 5 decades starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (50 years), Visiting Hours (40 years), Army of Darkness (30 years) and Ju-On: The Grudge (20 years). It was written and directed by the Soska Sisters, who are Canadian twins that produce, write, direct, act, and have created several other films in the horror genre including Dead Hooker in a Trunk, See No Evil 2, and a remake of David Cronenberg’s Rabid. The film deals with modern societal issues such as individualism, sexism, and misogyny, creating a character that is immediately identified with by audiences. Over the course of the film she slowly changes. The story sends Mary on a strange journey from victim, to anti-hero, to villain, with all the conflicting messages that that entails.

Body horror as a subgenre dates back to the 1950s with films like The Blob and The Fly, but really took off in the 1970s as special effects advanced with titles like Sssssss, The Incredible Melting Man, and Rabid. These movies usually deal with scientific or alien transformation of a person’s body, often in grotesque and horrible ways. Modern films have not shied away from the idea with the Saw franchise being one of the more popular examples of body horror, but also films like Kevin Smith’s Tusk (where a young man is transformed into a walrus), and Horns (about a young man who grows a pair of evil looking horns). American Mary works as both a body horror film–showcasing Mary’s involuntary work on Dr. Grant, as well as a slasher film–due to her proclivities and adeptness of her work.

Mary’s story is both tragic and expected. As a young woman trying to make it in what is often considered a man’s field (surgery) she is constantly confronted with misogyny and anger at her talents. Lured into a party that she assumes is for networking, only to be drugged and raped creates the impetus for her inner demons to come out. Grant’s assault creates the moment when Mary is able to realize her gifts of surgery come naturally to her, and creates a gateway into the viable field of body modifications; a field that she is completely unaware of. Unfortunately, her need for continued revenge and torture of Grant–keeping him alive for her own perverse pleasure, sends her down a darker road. The rage and entitlement that she feels bubbles to the surface easily when she assaults the dancer in the bathroom with her medical equipment. But none of these interactions lead to her downfall.

Mary’s death is not caused by the police capturing her for the dismemberment of Grant or the beating of the security guard. It’s not because she attacked someone that fought back. It’s not even related to the successful business she started which brings all sorts of strange people to her door. Her death stems back to the first modification she made for Ruby Realdoll. It was the original job she took because she was cash-strapped and needed money. The first job where she realized that her course work prepared her for operating on people, but realized she had some innate talent for the work as well. Her initial fears that the work she had chosen would come back to haunt her were realized. It just took many months for that bad karma to find her and kill her.

American Mary presents the viewer with a sense of identification with the lead character. Mary, like many other victims in horror films, is a female that falls under the oppression of stronger characters. But instead of that being the entire story arc, Mary becomes an instrument of retribution against the establishment characters of doctors Walsh and Grant. The film then becomes a revenge film about Mary proving she is good enough to both these misogynists as well as herself. She finds empowerment as well as a kinky sort of thrill with her newfound power. A power that twists her into a representation of the same sort of people that she was assaulted by in the first place. Encouragement comes from other characters in the film,  like Lance, who also identifies with her. He tells her not to devalue herself, even though her “gifts” are being used for extra-legal purposes. Lance relates the story of his mother who was attacked violently in her own home. He was unable to take revenge on the person who did this, unlike Mary. For Lance, Mary is the person he wishes he could be (or have been) after his mother’s attack. From his standpoint, whatever Grant is getting, he deserves.

Katharine Isabelle (who portrayed a werewolf in Ginger Snaps) creates a strong and empowered character with Mary. She begins as a naive student, but quickly graduates to confident business woman, and then unhinged psychopath in a great character arc. The film takes some shortcuts asking audiences to fill in a number of plot points, especially where Billy is concerned. Some further scenes between Mary and Billy would have been nice. There was obviously a mutual interest, and fetishistic attraction, between these two people on the fringe of society. It would have potentially made a more tragic film if they had found each other just before Mary was killed. Overall, American Mary is a disturbing film about the horrors that women must endure if they attempt to enter male-dominated professions. It also is a respectful film about the body modification subculture, presenting an honest look at the ways that humans choose to alter their appearances, even if that presents them as grotesque to normal society. It’s not quite as chilling as Tusk–which may be my top most disturbing recent body horror films, but it has plenty of moments to make audiences squirm.

Assorted Musings

• Mary’s red surgical attire may be a nod to similar red suits used by Jeremy Irons’ character in Dead Ringers, another surgical body horror film by David Cronenberg (who is the godfather of modern body horror films).
• The title, American Mary, is evocative of American Psycho, which is a film about a white collar executive that realizes his psychotic urges against the backdrop of modern society.