Dr. Matthew Jeeder

Dr. Matthew Jeeder is the secondary antagonist of Milo, a slasher movie of 1998 directed by Pascal Franchot. He is the creator of the main antagonist of the film, and is played by the late Italian-American actor Vincent Schiavelli (also starring Dr. Kaufman in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, The Organ Grinder in Batman Returns, and Buggy Ding Dong in Death to Smoochy).

History
Dr. Matthew Jeeder is an abortion doctor who works in an unnamed American town. In the film, he is an advocate of an experiment that led to the "creation" of Milo, a monstrous being born of an aborted fetus of an unknown woman, who died in mysterious circumstances (it is not given to know if this woman is one of many patients of the doctor or if it were his wife). The details inherent to this experiment are not known (it is said only that the fetus has been grown inside a particular incubator) nor are the reasons that led the doctor to experiment in this experiment explained, it is not known if he has it. made to conduct a life creation experiment (similar to Dr. Victor Frankenstein) or because animated by the desire to become a father, or both. Although the experiment goes ahead and Milo takes life, it is followed by terrible side effects. The creature demonstrates, in fact, an innate predisposition to evil and violence, a tendency to isolation, a very high strength and a block of growth, which leads him to remain eternally with the appearance of a child of 10 years. When the child demonstrates for the first time his danger by killing a little girl named May, Dr. Jeeder is forced to segregate him at home to prevent him from still hurting and being taken away. To avoid this, he stages the death of a child by drowning, and certifies his death. Despite the insane gesture of Milo ruin his career and destroy his life (which will lead Jeeder to be the object of contempt by the citizens, who will then systematically throw him at him or approach his home driven by curiosity), the doctor believes his words, when Milo justifies himself by saying that it was May and her friends who made him bad, bullying him and isolating him. When, sixteen years later, teacher Claire - May's friend and protagonist of the film - returns to the city to replace her friend Ruth (killed by Milo) as a local high school teacher, Milo - mysteriously escaped the segregation of the father - he begins to persecute her and her surviving friends Abigail and Marian, killing the former and taking her to the basement of their home. When Claire and Marian go to the doctor's house, Jeeder answers Claire's questions by saying that her son is dead and declaring himself sorry for May's death and morally destroyed by that terrible event. At Claire's insistence, the doctor shows her the grave (fictitious) of Milo, dug out of his garden, asking the girl if he wants to take a shovel to check for himself the death of the child. That same night Milo assaults and kidnaps Marian, and Dr. Jeeder decides to give in to Claire's pleas to tell the police the truth about Milo and find a way to stop his murderous fury, helping the girl rescue Kelso - the school janitor - seriously wounded following an attack by Milo, refusing to take him to the hospital and returning to his villa. Here the man has a brief verbal confrontation with Kelso, who says he well remembers him and his son, accuses him of being a mad fool and calls his son a monster. To these words, Jeeder responds by plugging Kelso's mouth with a piece of scotch and leaving him to die on the operating table, after which he puts Milo to sleep - which meanwhile has again tried to kill Claire - with a syringe of tranquilizer, and here he reveals to Claire about having given birth to Milo through an experiment, boasting of having given life to the "stillborn" one his mother had produced, and accuses Claire and her friends of having made her son a monster with their behavior. When Claire asks Kelso for help and asks Jeeder what he did to the man, Jeeder replies that he didn't do anything to him, but is convinced that he won't be able to survive. Claire tries to hide in the attic, but Jeeder imprisons her by locking the door, after which, after calling Milo "my sweet boy" with a tone full of sadness, she takes him to another room with the intention of giving him a other injection. We do not know what exactly Jeeder wants to do to Milo, if he wants to give him another sedative or let him give him a lethal injection (the second hypothesis seems very probable, given that the doctor shows a load of regret) but, as he prepares to do the injection, Milo regains consciousness and takes the syringe from the doctor's hand. With an expression of profound resignation, Jeeder is brutally killed by the creature he gave birth to.

Characterization
As previously stated, the reason that drove Dr. Jeeder to create Milo is not known: we do not know if he wanted to do it with the purely scientific (and megalomaniac) intent of creating life, or because of the desire to become a father. Despite the appalling cruelty of Milo, the doctor shows in some way to keep to him, as he segregates him at home after May's murder to prevent him being taken away, staging even a fake death, and giving him affectionate words in some occasions (even if part of his attachment could also be a sort of pride in a more or less successful scientific experiment). He also seems to show indifference to the fate of the girls killed by Milo, and he holds a grudge against them because, like his "son", he holds them responsible for his wickedness, with their attitudes. Despite everything, at the end of the film he seems to finally realize his son's dangerousness and probably also tries to stop him once and for all (even though the motivation for why he wants to give him an injection remains very ambiguous), and this awareness will end up costing him his life.