Way Cooler than Manson: Natural Born Killers (1994)

Abstract

Courtwright | Way Cooler than Manson: Natural Born Killers (1994) David T. Courtwright University of North Florida Way Cooler than Manson: Natural Born Killers (1994) "What characterizes the film is a complete lack of consistency to the point of being deliberately, totally illogical—which is fun."- Oliver Stone No bad publicity in America: mass murderer Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) besieged by interviewers, fans, and protesters on the way to his trial. 28 I Film & History Oliver Stone as Cinematic Historian | Special In-Depth Section "I wanted to have fun," Oliver Stone told an interviewer the summer Natural Born Killers (NBK) was released. "I really wanted to do a combination of a road movie, like Bonnie and Clyde, and a prison film, like The Great Escape and Papillon." His Bonnie and Clyde turned out to be Mickey and Mallory Knox, a pair ofpsychopathic lowlifes lifted from a Quentin Tarantino script and launched into cinematic hyperspace. Stone shrewdly cast Woody Harrelson, the hulking son of a real-life killer, as Mickey and, less shrewdly, Juliette Lewis, a whitetrash specialist, as Mallory. Mal, as she is known, has a little problem—a lecherous father and idiot mother. Enter Mickey, exit problem: Dad drowns in the fish tank, Mom burns in her bed. Mickey and Mallory wed one another in a pagan ceremony, exchanging rings of intertwined snakes. They get their kicks on Route 666, a stretch of desert highway they terrorize for three weeks. They wipe out bunches ofordinary people in ordinary places— a store, a slumber party, a roadside café—always leaving one survivor to tell the tale to the slavering media. They rack up 52 victims before being subdued by a phalanx of police led by self-appointed supercop Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). The number 52 connotes randomness, as in a deck of cards. Yet supernatural determinism is the apparent metaphysical basis of the film. The victims are fated to die. Mickey and Mallory are fated to kill. They are possessed by T.V. demons. They are possessed by real demons. Jonathan Edwards would have loved this movie—except for the ending, but more on that later. The Road to Batongaville The plot begins to turn, as in many a story oflove and violence, with an act of adultery. Mickey intimates that he wouldn't mind a little three-way action with Mallory and a terrified hostage, bound and gagged in their motel room. Mallory storms out, takes her rage for a drive. Mickey rapes the hostage—a shot deleted from the theatrical release, but restored in the director's cut on video. Mallory pulls in for gas, seduces a garage jockey on the hood of a Corvette, and then shoots him dead: "That's the worst fuckin' head I ever got in my life! Next time don't be so fuckin' eager!" Already lost in a moral desert, Mickey and Mallory soon find themselves stranded in a real one. "Right now," Mickey says, "I'd go down on a lawman for a gallon of gas." They stumble upon the hogan of an Indian shaman, played by Russell Means. Forewarned by a dream, he knows these demons have come to claim his life. Not that they mean to. The shaman dies when Mickey awakes from a nightmare about his abusive parents, gun blazing. "Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad," Mallory shouts at Mickey. "You killed life!" And they pay for it. Literally snake bit, they stumble into the Drug Zone, a surreal pharmacy lit gangrenous green, in search of an antidote. All out. The cops close in, grab Mallory. "I swear to God I'll cut her fuckin' tits off!" Scagnetti yells to Mickey, holed up in the pharmacy. He surrenders. Behind him we catch a glimpse of a sign, "Take Your Medicine ." It's administered à la Rodney King. Mickey is tasered and stomped into submission as a breathless Japanese correspondent delivers a blow-by-blow account. Violence, our most valuable export. Mickey and Mallory are convicted in a circus trial. (In one particularly gruesome scene, which Stone decided to delete, Mickey stabs awitness to deathwith a pencil.) Hero and heroine are shipped offto Batongaville Prison, where the bodies keep...