User blog:Users Afraid/PE Proposal: Button Face from Nightbreed

I seem to have a regard for PE villains on the things i watch. Should i be worried that the things i like are edgy enough to be filled with these scumbags? or modern content creators simply love to build characters around a troupe? not the later for shure, the baddie we're talking tonight is from the good ol' 90's, you know, Michael Jackson, arcade games, and lots of slasher sequels. On a minor scale, this era was marked by the release of a particular movie known as Nightbreed, made by the legendary Clive Barker (may be more known for creating Hellraiser).

With villains like Pinhead, Rawhead Rex and Candy Man under his command, Barker has shown to have a lot of creativity in terms of creating pure nightmare fuels for our hearts. But for me, and maybe others who have watched the movie or read the book, Barker's most vile creator is not a monster, but a human being....if you can call him like that.

Say hello to Button Face.

What's the Work?
Cabal is a 1988 'horror' novel (sorry Barker, as much as i liked the book i really can't call him like that) (dark fantasy/thriller would be better), created of course by our man Clive Barker. The story is about a disturbed man called Aaron Boone, with lots of mental disorders to his command, he is forced to daily see his psychiatrist. His often dreams of blood, murder and death are often opaqued his visions of him being tortured by horrible creatures, nightmarish beings that drag him to an infernal place that they call home:  Midian

His psychiatrist, a sharp, quiet and intelligent may be the best psych ever, as he managed to make this man feel normal, after years of being submitted to hospitals and mental asylums, until one fatidic day, the natural intellect of his psychiatrist would soon be changed by despair and shivers.

He suspects that Aaron has committed the heinous crime that slasher films would later make a normal standard: murder.

11 families have been found massacred, when i said families i don't mean only the parents: womans, elders and even little children, were found horribly slaughtered, the killer just f**** destroyed their bodies so hard that they are barely recognizable (the symptoms of the classic mutilator, except that this guy did it while their were alive)

Even if the book doesn't state so, it is obvious that they were dealing with a family annihilator, practically a familicide, except that the killer doesn't need to be part of the family and of course, he doesn't let anyone alive. His psychiatrist is sure that poor and unstable Aaron Boone is smart enough to sneak on eleven different houses without the police to notice, and Aaron, with his psychiatrist being his voice of reason, starts thinking the same too.

The summary is, Aaron's guiltyness of the crimes he may or not may commited leaded him to commit suicide, but failed in the process (seriously, who would believe this guy is a killer?). On the hospital, he meets another disturbed man named Narcisse that tells him that Midian and monsters are freaking real babe, and Aaron makes his new purpose in life to go to this place and live among his kind, or so he says.

A story full of creative monsters, dark gods, love, life and death, with the extra of a mad slasher doing what he knows the best and giving Boone and his lover Lori lots of problems.

A filmical adaptation of this book came 2 years later: Nightbreed, and even with his failure on critics and box office, it gained a lot of cult status (you know, the last hope of every failure but decent films on cinema), good enough to release an uncut version in 2014 (of course, much better than the original)

The film is practically a summarized version of Cabal, no more else is to be added, except for the personality of his big baddie, today we are talking of the film version of the masked mad slasher Button Face

Book Version
As i made two pages for the same character (they are similar enough, no need to make different pages) i need to talk about the book version first.

Philip K. Decker is the true name of Cabal's main villain. Of course, as you may noticed he is Boone's psychiatrist. And of course, as you may also noticed is that he is the face behind the masked mad slasher Button Face.

Apparently, Decker wants to help Boone to cure his contants visions and dreams of gruesome murders and getaways to Midian, with apparent success. Of course, this is not the case. In reality, this well-manicured freak wants to frame Boone of his own murders by making him believe he commited them, so Boone would be punished instead of him and move to another town to continue his killing spree. He had a good plan, who would suspect from the good doctor and not from the mentally ill pacient? NO ONE. He almost succeeds on his ultimate plan, except that he forget the important detail that he is not in a truly horror book and there are freakin monsters living on it. Boone gets revived by the Nightbreed. Guided by Narcisse (which later Decker murders at cold blood in his own hospital room) Decker assumes that Boone is alive somehow and tries to murder his now alone lover Lori to make him go out. He succeeds, but is surprised by a now monster Boone and beats the crap out of him. Narcisse, now as part of the Breed tries to murder Decker but he escapes. Decker decides that the Breed now are part of his murder tendencies too, and builts a batallion with the help of this ugly disgusting man known as Captain Eigerman, chief of Shere Neck's police department, to exterminate every citizen of Midian, no discriminations allowed. Eigerman and the Sons of the Free (batallion's name) destroy Midian, but Boone (with the help of Breeds leader Lylesburg) freed powerful monsters known as Berserkers to destroy the sons. They succeed, but Baphomet (Breed's god) eloquently decides that Midian has existed long enough and Boone should lead them to a different place, and self-destruct Midian while the battle between the Breeders and the Sons is ongoing. Decker takes this opportunity to mask himself as Button Face, and kill Lori, as she is the only witness (aside from Boone, who thinks was pretty much death at this point) that knows about his true murderous intentions. Narcisse was protecting Lori. Decker beheads Narcisse and uses his head to mock Aaron. Aaron and Button Face fight. Of course Aaron win cuz' he's the hero and chokes Decker so hard he destroy his filthy, murderous throat while he chokes on his own blood and gives him his well-deserved death. Midian is destroyed. Baphomet gives Aaron the task to find a new Midian. Aaron decides to transform Lori in one of the Breed and live with her a happy immortal monster life instead. The remaining Tribes of the Moon (or Nightbreed, whatever) members are alone and homeless. They still wait Aaron to guide them to their new home. He is not returning soon.

The End.

Movie
Movie's pretty much the same, except that he murdered 6 families instead of 11. Same modus operandi. Button Face gets revived at the end on the original theatrical version, still unknown if this is still canon or not.

The main changes are only on his personality who i will list below.

Character Traits
This is the big difference between book's and movie's Decker.

They're both intelligent, cold, charming and calculating individuals who use this traits at their advantage to get away with murder.

When their mask is on however, they soon change: they are extremely vicious, sadistic, merciless and deranged. They absolutely lovers of mocking their victims at the last minutes of their lives, the book version seems more prone to give creepy one-liners and make this words the last thing his helpless victims will hear. The movie version still does so, but in minor scale. Button Face is not a fully torturer, he doesn't take his time to bind his victim and spent hours and hours having fun with them, his modus operandi is not like that. He doesn't let them go easy, either. Lover of sharp weapons, Button Face literally just slash their victims to death, making a completely bloody mess and an horrible unrecognizable corpse. His victims are mostly complete families, that of course includes the children who share the same fate as the other members, Button Face doesn't discriminate at the time of killing. The book version says that he does it for fun, he likes and enjoys taking other people lifes for his own enjoyment, and takes sexual pleasure on how his victims squirms and try to run from him. Unfortunately for him, he was dragging lots of attention from the police, how he was planning to avoid the mens in blue? by using his affably psychiatrist persona to drive his most unstable patient Aaron Boone insane and frame him from all his murders. Yep, it is THIS KIND of character.

Jeez, he already sounds like a scumbag to me, why not just approve both versions?

Well...

Mitigating Factors
The main reason why i'm separating both characters on the proposal is because the book version is as crazed as his patients are.

Book Decker is a dissociative, psychotic scum. He projected a second personality on his own mask that talks to him and begs him for blood of the innocent, with of course Decker obeys. One time he claims (and the book multiple times) that this personality takes complete control of him and that he has no control of his own actions.....

This is only partially true

Decker admits he is being controlled by his schizoid persona once Boone overpowers him and knows he is about to be killed (yeah, appart from scumbag he is a true coward). This is his last chance to beg for mercy to his frame victim to avoid and horrible death. He still manages to escape tho, and he doesn't mentions this never again on the book. We've seen his mask talking to him multiple times on the book asking for death, death and more death. This is were we see that Decker can suppress his urges whenever he wants, and the mask only has partial influence over him. Before Boone transforms into one of the Nightbreed (were he knows Boone would be death and no one would know his dirty secret) he admits that he likes the sole act of brutally murdering people and does so for pleasure. Hell, the bastard even murdered TWO KIDS in his way to Midian to make the police that Boone did it.

Even if the mask control hims somehow, he doesn't do anymore, and both Decker and his Button Face persona had almost a symbiotic relationship were they both enjoy massacring people.

Dissociative or not, Decker is never showed to be someone that is completely insane and doesn't know what he is doing, always using the intellect and reason before acting, thinking before raising the bloody knife. I'll let you decide if he fits or not. In my opinion? I think he does.

Personality (Film)
This is were the festival begins. Film Decker is the same as his book version, child murders and all.

The difference? his schizoid persona is GONE. Yep, this Decker is not fueled by voices in his head, but the sole reason of death and suffering. He is an extremely egotistic individual who thinks himself to be death, that is his sole purpose of existing and most exterminate humankind (filth as he calls).

Once he discovers the monsters of Midian, he decides that they are filth too, and puts them on the spot from his murder plan. He's not a normal killer anymore, Decker evolved to a genocidal scumbag who wants the complete eradication of all the Nightbreed just because they exist (and also, because Boone is one of them). Man, the Breed can be ugly af monsters but the majority of them are not bad, they have been recluded his whole lifespan thanks to the extreme discrimination from humans, and having someone who wants to exterminate them because they exist is plainly sick.

Decker has allies, but doesn't give a damn jacksheet about them too. He only uses them as weapons for his plans, specially Eigerman. Once Joyce starts suspecting he has something weird on him (he hasn't even discovered that you're a killer yet, come on), Decker backstabs him and murders him with a razor knife. His plan for Eigerman was letting him die on the battle for Midian, but whereas he survived, he would suffer a same fate than Joyce too (at the end, Ashberry spared him the annoyance)

Heinous Standards
Jeez, this character is so messed up, probably whe are contemplating another Game of Thrones

Just kidding, no one sane would ever say that.

Still, both Cabal's and Nightbreed's heinous standards are not that high as they seem. The normal standard for a villain is murder, but as Decker is the one with the highest body count, sadistical personality and genocidal tendencies, i think he fits. It helps that he sets the standards too, for being the main antagonist.

Moral Event Horizon
Mass murder (including child and elder murder), incrimination to a helpless individual, driving the same individual to madness by using his mind against him....and drugs of course, torture, genocide, and obviously setting all of this standards for being the overarching antagonist and not having anyone who surpasses him.

Conclusion
I think Button Face is one of the vilest characters that i've uploaded, and even if not pure evil, undoublty the most vile character Clive Barker has ever made. But at the end, you decide.