What Kind of Woman Makes a Good Man? The "Homicidal"-ly Bent Gender of Joan Marshall
Published in Chrysalis Quarterly Vol. 1, No.7, ‘94
SPOILER ALERT: This article includes important plot lines from the movie “Homicidal.â€
“Homicidal,” a 1961 horror film, bent gender in a fascinating manner. It should be said at the outset that “Homicidal” is not a great, or even especially good, movie. It was directed by William Castle, a self-proclaimed B-movie maker, who was most famous for his gimmicks. He took out a $1,000 insurance policy for anyone who “died of fright” during one film and equipped movie seats with a device to buzz the rear ends of viewers during “The Tingler.”
Like most Castle movies, “Homicidal” was made solely to entertain and is in most respects an undistinguished picture. Its convoluted plot often strains credibility; it is also highly derivative, for in many respects, including its title, the film borrows brazenly from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Psycho” of the previous year — while lacking the latter’s artistry and psychological depth.
Our story opens with a lovely blonde committing a seemingly motiveless murder. She escapes. We find out that her name is Emily and she is nurse to a mute, paralyzed elderly woman named Helga. Emily and Helga live in a secluded mansion with a man named Warren Webster. Helga was Warren’s nanny when he was growing up and Emily has become his girlfriend.
Warren is approaching his twenty-first birthday when he will inherit the family fortune. His older sister Miriam was cut out of their father’s will because Daddy so desperately wanted a son.
Miriam doesn’t appear to resent the gross favoritism shown her brother. Rather, she is concerned on his behalf since she suspects what the audience already knows — that Emily, the woman he loves and marries during the course of the film, is the “Homicidal” kook of the title.
As it turns out, Warren and Emily are the same person. Born a girl, Warren was raised as a boy by “his” mother who wanted to fulfill her husband’s desire for a son and enable the faux son to get Daddy’s millions. But to secure that money, Warren must eliminate the two people who know his true gender and then murder his sister since she is really entitled to their inheritance, i. e., it goes “either to a son or the oldest daughter.”
Thus, he invents Emily, a female alter ego to do his dirty work. At the end, Warren/Emily is about to kill Miriam when he is stopped by a police officer’s bullet.
But the gender mystery does not end when the story does. As the credits roll, a split screen shows an androgynously named “Jean Arless” taking a bow as both Emily and Warren. Thus, the viewer is left to wonder whether they had seen a man disguised as a woman or vice versa.
Suspense is not the purpose of this essay. “Jean Arless” was an actress named Joan Marshall. Her transformation into Warren was aided by good make-up and mask technicians. But the knowledge that it was in fact a woman playing a man rather than vice-versa means that it warrants a closer look.
Warren is not hidden in shadow as Mrs. Bates was in “Psycho.” The camera meets “him†head-on, showing him full and side view. Moreover, he remarks many times — as do other characters — on his dead father’s intense desire for a son instead of a daughter; such dialogue would be disastrous for the suspense if Warren had any “feminine” or “effeminate” traits. But he doesn’t.
Indeed, so convincing is Warren in his maleness that R. Bell-Metereau in “Hollywood Androgyny” remains perplexed and seems to lean toward the wrong conclusion, writing that “the only hint is the possible dubbing of Emily’s voice.”
Not that Warren isn’t a strange man. Afflicted with a distracting overbite, he is flamboyantly ugly. He is also, in this writer’s opinion, an even creepier fellow than Norman Bates. One senses that “something” is wrong but has no clue as to the sort of secret he holds.
Transgendered people typically speak of feeling “trapped in the wrong body.” Castle wrote in his autobiography that he first “thought of casting an actor” and interviewed many before deciding, “a man was wrong.” While there is no question that an actor could have been equally believable in the dual role, I doubt he would have had quite the eeriness of Joan Marshall’s Warren. Perhaps that ineffable quality could only be the effect of a beautiful woman deliberately trapping herself inside an ugly man.
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