A Comic-Con Panel Psychoanalyzes Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers

When it comes to the cinema’s most ferocious serial killers, we spend too much time screaming at them, and too little time trying to understand what makes them tick.

That was the proposition put forth at what was perhaps Comic-Con’s most surprisingly serious panel: Freddy vs. Jason vs. Michael: Inside the Minds of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers. The presentation was led by Eric Bender, M.D. and Praveen R. Kambam, M.D., of Broadcast Thought, a group of medical professionals who consult with the entertainment industry on mental-health issues. Bender and Kambam are forensic psychiatrists who’ve worked in both prison and courtrooms.

For their panel, the pair took a diagnostic approach to analyzing fiction’s most terrifying killers. In a pre-panel conversation, the doctors explained their first and more immediate goal: “We advocate for less stigmatization of mental illness, removing the link between mental illness and violence,” Bender said. “Mentally ill people are rarely violent.”

Joined on stage by Mark Swift, the screenwriter of 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, the experts ran through a roster of Hollywood’s most fearsome killers and examined their basic psychological make-up.

The panelists faced a challenge in their study of Halloween's Michael Myers, as John Carpenter, director of the 1978 original, and Rob Zombie, director of the 2007 remake, presented fairly different interpretations of the character. The new Myers, they agreed, came with more backstory, while the first, Bender pointed out, is  “very uncommunicative, Nearly catatonic. It’s hard to get at what are the motivations here.”

Regarding Freddy, they felt the emotions driving his horrors were much more clear and consistent: “He is very, very intelligent,” said Kambam. “He internalizes the idea that he has to attack people at their most defenseless. Children, sleeping — he actually gains strength from their fear. Freddy shows the most pure sadism of the group.”

Freddy’s habit of taking control of slumbering children raised the troubling question of whether, in addition, to being a killer, he is also a child molester: Swift pointed out that Freddy’s creator, writer-director Wes Craven, took great pains to refer to his villain as only a killer. But, based on his own studies, Swift is of the mind that Freddy might be a molester. The doctors had little trouble putting Freddy in the “process-focused” category, in the company of other who take great pleasure in the very act of killing.

It was the hockey-mask wearing Jason, however, who was the subject of the most intense debate. Bender said, “The tough part is figuring out whether psychopathy is at play. He is non-vocal, it’s hard to figure what he wants. He lives in the woods, [and is] obsessed with his mother, like a feral child.”  Ultimately, all categorized Jason (and his seeming lack of pleasure in is slayings) under the “act-focused” grouping.

It was the major difference, Swift said, that led the filmmakers of 2004’s Freddy vs. Jason, to paint Jason as the eternal victim, and Freddy as the tormentor. Asked who — among the three killers — would prevail in a winner-takes-all battle, the doctors gave the edge to Jason. Said Kambam: “He’s just a machine. There is nothing to slow him down.”

Offstage, the doctors were asked if there was any hope of rehabilitation for any of these killers. They demurred, explaining while they do work with those convicted of violent crimes, there’s nothing modern science can offer to introduce any of these characters back to society.

But Bender took pains to point out that these symptoms themselves must be taken in a larger context: “Just because these factors help us understand motivation doesn’t mean they drive people to kill.”