Medical ethics in 20th Century movies
Keith S. Taber
(still from 'The Night of the Demon')
"The Night of the Demon" is a 1957 British film about an American professor who visits England to investigate a supposed satanic cult. It was just shown on English television. It was considered as a horror film at the time of its release, although the short scenes that actually feature a (supposedly real? merely imagined? *) monster are laughable today (think Star Trek's Gorn in the original series, and consider if it is believable as anything other than an actor wearing a lizard suit – and you get the level of horror involved). [*Apparently the director, Jacques Tourneur, never intended a demon to be shown, but the film's producer decided to add footage showing the monster in the opening scenes, potentially undermining the whole point of the film: but giving the publicity department something they could work with. 6]
(stills from 'The Night of the Demon' and ' Star Trek' episode 'Arena')
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The film's protagonist is a psychologist, Dr. John Holden, who dismisses stories of demons and witchcraft and the like, and has made a career studying people's beliefs about such superstitions. Dr Holden's visit to Britain deliberately coincided with a conference at which he was to present, as well as coincidentally with the death of one of his colleagues (who had been subject to a hex for investigating the cult).
[As was common at the time, although the film was in monochrome, the publicity was coloured. Whether the colour painting of the monster looks even less scary than the version in the film itself is a moot point.]
The film works much better as a kind of psychological thriller examining the power of beliefs, than as horror. (Director: 1 – Producer, 0.) That, if we believe something enough, it can have real effects is well acknowledged – but this does not need a supernatural explanation. People can be 'scared' to death by what they imagine, and how they respond to their fears. Researchers expecting a positive outcome from their research are likely to inadvertently behave in ways that leads to this very result: thus the use of double blind studies in medical trials, so that the researchers do not know which patients are receiving which treatment.
Read about expectancy effects in research
While the modern viewer will find little of suspense in the film, I did metaphorically at least 'recoil with shock' from one moment of 'horror'. At the conference a patient (Rand Hobart) is wheeled in on a trolley – someone suspected of having committed a murder associated with the cult, whom the authorities had allowed to be questioned by the researchers…at the conference.
(still from 'The Night of the Demon').
Holden's British colleague, Professor O'Brien, explains to the delegates,
"For a period of time this man has been as you see him here. He fails to respond to any normal stimulation. His experience, whatever it was, which we hope here to discover, has left him in a state of absolute catatonic immobility. When I first investigated this case, the problem of how to hypnotise an unresponsive person was the major one. Now the proceedings may be somewhat dramatic, but they are necessary. The only way of bringing his mind out of the womb of darkness into which it has retreated to protect itself, is by therapeutic shock, electrical or chemical. For our purposes we are today using pentothal [? 1] and later methylamphetamine."
Introducing a demonstration of non-consensual use of drugs on a prisoner/patient
(Still from 'The Night of the Demon')
After an injection, Hobart comes out of his catatonic state, becomes aware of his surroundings, and panics.
(Still from 'The Night of the Demon'.)
He is physically restrained, and examined by Holden (supposedly the 'hero' of the piece), who then hypnotises him.
(Still from 'The Night of the Demon'.)
He is then given an injection of methylamphetamine before being questioned by O'Brien and Holden. He becomes agitated (what, after being forcibly given 'speed'?), breaks free, and leaps, out of a conveniently placed window, to his death.
Now, of course, this is all just fiction – a story. No one is really drugged, and Hobart is played by an' actor who is unharmed. (I can be fairly sure of that as the part was played by Brian Wilde who much later turned up alive and well as prison officer 'Mr Barrowclough' in BBC's Ronnie Barker vehicle 'Porridge'.)
(Stills from 'The Night of the Demon' and from BBC series 'Porridge'.3 )
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Yet this is not some fantastical film (the Gorn's distant cousin aside) but played for realism. Would a psychiatric patient and murder suspect have been released to be paraded and demonstrated at a conference on the paranormal in 1957? I expect not. Would the presenters have been allowed to drug Hobart without his consent?
Read about voluntary, informed, consent
An adult cannot normally be medicated without their consent unless they are considered to lack the ability to make responsible decisions for themselves. Today, it might be possible to give a patient drugs without consent if they have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act (1983) and it was considered the action was necessary for their safety or for the safety of others. Hobart was certainly not an immediate threat to anyone before he was brought out of his trance.
However, even if this enforced use of drugs was sanctioned, this would not be done in a public place with dozens of onlookers. 4 And it would not be done (in the U.K. at least!) simply to question someone about a crime.5 Presumably, the makers of the film either thought that this scene reflected something quite reasonable, or, at least, that the cinema-going public would find this sufficiently feasible to suspend disbelief. If this fictitious episode did not reflect acceptable ethical standards at the time, it would seem to tell us something about public perceptions of the attitude of those in authority (whether the actual authorities who were meant to have a duty of care to a person under arrest, or those designated with professional roles and academic titles) to human rights.
Today, however, professionals such as researchers, doctors, and even teachers, are prepared for their work with a strong emphasis on professional ethics. In medical care, the interest of the patient themselves comes first. In research, informants are voluntary participants in our studies, who offer us the gift of data, and are not subjects of our enquiries to be treated simply as available material for our work.
Yet, actually, this is largely a modern perspective that has developed in recent decades, and sadly there are many real stories, even in living memory, of professionals deciding that people (and this usually meant people with less standing or power in their society) should be drugged, or shocked, or operated on, without their consent and even against their explicit wishes; for what is seen as their own, or even what is judged as some greater, good; in circumstances where it would be totally unacceptable in most countries these days.
So, although this is not really a horror film by today's measures, I hope any other researchers (or medical practitioners) who were watching the film shared my own reaction to this scene: 'no, they cannot do that!'
At least, they could not do that today.
Notes
1 This sounds to me like 'pentatyl', but I could not find any reference to a therapeutic drug of that name. Fentanyl is a powerful anti-pain drug, which like amphetamines is abused for recreational use – but was only introduced into practice the year after the film was made. It was most likely referring to sodium thiopental, known as pentothal, and much used (in movies and television, at least) as a truth serum. 5 As it is a barbiturate, and so is used in anaesthesia, it does not seem an obvious drug of choice to wake someone from a catatonic state.
2 The script is based loosely on a 1911 M. R. James short story, 'Casting the Runes' that does not include the episode discussed.
3 I have flipped this image (as can be seen form the newspaper) to put Wilde (playing alongside Ronnie Barker, standing, and Richard Beckinsale), on the right hand side of picture.
4 Which is not to claim that such a public demonstration would have been unlikely at another time and place. Execution was still used in the U.K. until 1964 (during my lifetime), although by that time being found guilty of vagrancy (being unemployed and hanging around {unfortunate pun unintended}) for the second time was no longer a capital offence. However, after 1868 executions were no longer carried out in public.
It was not unknown for the corpses of executed criminals to be subject to public dissection in Renaissance [sic, ironically] Europe.
5 Fiction, of course, has myriad scenes where 'truth drugs' are used to obtain secrets from prisoners – but usually those carrying out the torture are the 'bad guys', either criminals or agents of what is represented in the story as an enemy or dystopian state.
6 Some variations on a theme. (For some reason, for its slightly cut U.S. release 'The Night of the Demon' was called 'The Curse of the Demon'.) The various representations of the demon and the prominence given to it seem odd to a modern viewer given how little the demon actually features in the film.
The references to actually seeing demons and monsters from hell on the screen, "the most terrifying story ever told", and "scenes of terror never before imagined" raises the question of whether the copywriters were expected to watch a film before producing their copy.