Horror and Politics in Jacob’s Ladder
Jacob’s Ladder
A film of War, Authority, and Fear
Horror is hyperbolic and extreme. Because of its ability to magnify and distort, it can be a powerful vehicle for political commentary. Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990) is one of those rare horror films that fulfill the potential of the genre, by creating an atmosphere of pure realistic terror.
In the 80s, Lyne was known in Hollywood for high grossing films such as Flashdance (1983) and Fatal Attraction (1987). Based on screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin’s personal interest rather than motive for profit, Jacob’s Ladder received a lukewarm response. It also only made one million dollars in profit. Thirty years later, it hasn’t gained the consideration it deserves, but it did attract a passionate cult of fans. Thanks to their analyses, we know that it’s one of the most significant horror films ever made.
The synopsis
The film follows philosopher and Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer in his descent into insanity. Jacob is tortured by frightening visions of demons, and is trapped between two lives – before the war with his wife and children, and after the war with his girlfriend Jezzie. Meanwhile, he senses that someone is insistently trying to murder him. Or perhaps all of these visions are a flashback/flashforward of the day in Vietnam when his platoon was given a hallucinogenic drug called “the ladder.”
Vietnams Pharmacological Warfare
The aftermath of the Vietnam war was a challenging time in American history: historian Lukasz Kamienski refers to a “post-Vietnam syndrome.” The US had lost public opinion’s support for its aggressive warfare and the myth of the American dream had been put into question. It also came out that the Pentagon had been conducting experiments on soldiers.
Kamienski calls the Vietnam war a “pharmacological war” because of the soldiers’ widespread use of drugs.
Alongside steroid injections and anti-psychotic drugs, they were given amphetamines to sharpen their senses and feel invulnerable. Drugs also worked as “consolers,” helping soldiers cope with a harsh climate, infections, and dirt.
Additionally, drugs helped optimise soldiers’ efficiency. Soldiers in Vietnam were young (the average age was 19), largely unprepared, and “too soft.” Moreover, the US had lost support for the war and was on the brink of defeat. They hoped that inflicting heavy casualties would force Vietnam into negotiations.
Drugs were given to soldiers to turn them into more efficient murderers, and this happened without their consent.
BZ, or 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, was one such drug. It was tested by the US government, allegedly to maximize soldiers’ aggressiveness. It altered behavior and caused powerful hallucinations. According to the chemist in Jacob’s Ladder, BZ (“the ladder”) was so powerful that soldiers lost control. Long before the Vietnamese offensive, they started brutally murdering each other (“brother against brother”). As the chemist reveals to Jacob, those who took it descended a ladder that reached the darkest side of their instincts.
The demons that torment Jacob and mess with his memories are hallucinations caused by “the ladder.” His madness is induced by the drug, it’s the sign that his psyche has been damaged by the experiment. Those trying to kill him want to stop him from digging too deep in the Pentagon’s affairs. One by one, the platoon’s survivors are disappearing in strange circumstances, and Jacob, who’s questioning his government’s conduct, is the next in line.
Jacob's bad trip: an allegory for purgatory
Throughout the film, Jacob’s apparent paranoid-schizophrenia worsens. First, he dreams of combat in Vietnam. Before long, he starts seeing hellish creatures, appearing in cars and trains or in the middle of the crowd. Increasingly often, he finds himself living his pre-Vietnam life. While avoiding murder attempts clearly directed at him, he becomes more and more absorbed into a nightmarish limbo, where demons play with memories taken from different stages of his life. He never knows which temporal layer he is in, and neither do we…
Scholar Anna Powell argues, the film purposefully confounds the watcher by overlapping three temporal dimensions (past, present, future). We cannot tell which dimension is hallucinatory in nature, and which actually took place.
“Jacob’s ladder” is also a reference to the Bible. In Genesis, chapter 28, Jacob dreams of a ladder marking his way to heaven. In the film, the ladder has a similar function, since (as the film’s twisted ending shows) Jacob is dying, right there by the Mekong delta. Unlike in the biblical story, this ladder leads to both heaven and hell. Jacob is mostly going down throughout the film, in a BZ-induced hell. His bad trip has a purgatorial function. As chiropractor Louie tells Jacob, paraphrasing Meister Eckhart,
“The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they’re not punishing you, he said. They’re freeing your soul.”
In order to go to heaven, Jacob must go through hell and burn his memories, only then will he find peace.
One scene features an actual descent into hell
Outside of the court where he tried to sue the army, Jacob is kidnapped by Pentagon agents, but manages to jump out of the car. Shortly after, he’s taken to a hospital. Even though he only hurt his back, it seems like a serious issue: the doctors claim that he is dead and take him where he belongs.
Jacob’s Ladder tricks the watcher’s mind just as much as Jacob’s, and never allows us to draw a coherent storyline. If Jacob has been hallucinating everything while lying disemboweled and on the brink of death in a Vietnamese forest, isn’t the whole BZ theory part of his hallucinations? We’ll never know. There have been cases of Vietnam veterans who reported similar experiences and tried to take action against the army.
Universal and Particular fear
According to a different reading, Jacob’s disturbing experience may be a graphic interpretation of soldiers’ post-traumatic stress and difficulty in readapting to life, and thus a denunciation of the horrors of war. Or it may be an exploration of the universal fear of death, that makes life suddenly appear as a short-lived dream. When Jacob’s wife and children come to visit him in the hospital, a terrifying voice breaks the sphere of warmth and intimacy that pervades the room and taunts Jacob: “dream on.” Jacob realises that what he’s seeing, real or imagined, won’t last for long.
Whatever is the most convincing interpretation, Jacob’s Ladder is an outstanding horror film. It’s able to stretch the concept of “monster” ( according to philosopher Noel Carroll the defining feature of horror films ) to encompass the frightening entities of war and authority. At the same time, it brings together everyone’s fear of death and the historically specific experience of soldiers who were abused by their government.