Fiction's greatest monsters are mortal men who soar into a sky of darkness on wings made from the bones of their victims. They are driven by ambition rather than concrete motivations, reducing the humanity they encounter to puzzle pieces in their grand designs. The most complex of such antagonists are mythologized within their own stories, villanized by some but strangely revered by others. There is perhaps no greater work of art that embodies this as William Faulkner's Southern Gothic masterpiece Absalom, Absalom! Sutpen is biblical in both his actions and the accounts of Miss Rosa. He warps reality to fit his goals of a dynasty built on the backs of slavery. A core tenet of a slave owner is a disregard for the humanity of an entire race, but he goes further and reduces them to mere bodies as seen by his desire to fight his slaves to assert dominance. That is true evil; an assumption of ontological superiority. A common antecedent to this is the notion of "playing god" - a classic archetype in horror. This is the "mad doctor", a ruthlessly skilled scientist focused on bending the natural order of the world and intrinsic facets of humanity of others to fit their ideas of how the world should be. One of the most intriguing mad doctors in horror cinema is Robert Ledgard from Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In. Just as Sutpen strips his slaves and his family of free will and bodily autonomy, Ledgard robs Vicente of his own body and gender. They arrive at this point in opposing directions; Ledgard's evil is a fall from grace in a perverted attempt at avenging his daughter's rape, while Sutpen starts fallen, his nefariousness a fait accompli. These men are motivated by an imperialistic conquest of other's bodies. There have been countless mad doctors in horror cinema and literature that incite a sense of body horror yet these characters are intertwined in the auxiliary effects of their inexorable experiments and designs.

Almodóvar was clearly inspired by Absalom, Absalom as the film follows a very similar narrative pattern of discordant accounts and multiple viewpoints. Both the aforementioned Miss Rosa Coldfield and Marilla Ledgard from The Skin I Live In are matriarchal figures that offer a feminine critique of these tyrannical patriarchs, often witnessing their misdeeds from the periphery. They're revered by their peers and underlings who view their exploits through the lens of the achievement rather than the atrocities that took place to get there. We see this with Ledgard's standing as a widely respected doctor and Quentin's adulation of Sutpen. The latter bases his entire plan on gaining the “respectability” central to his “design.” in Jefferson.

Marilla plays into the "noble victim" stereotype. She is aiding and abetting Ledgard in his treatment of Vera, but she makes it clear that she is forced to do so by her own son. She never shows any desire to escape that cycle. She mythologizes Robert and justifies his actions and makes him a sympathetic figure to Vera. She is almost too close to Ledgard to be a true spectator and thus ends up being an accomplice. She absorbs Ledgard's pain, leaving him free to carry out his heinous acts without a conscience. Rosa has a more detached view of Sutpen, which in line with the disconnect she has faced from all the pivotal figures in her life starting with her sister Ellen. She only deals in memory and legend, for she simply hasn't engaged with her loved ones in any other way. Rosa is an exemplar of self-image and authorship. For all her soliloquies , she rarely recounts an interaction that she was a part of. This plays into her distrust of Sutpen, as he is another person she heard tales of and knew only as the man that whisked her sister away. Her descriptions of Sutpen are comically evil. She projects her own lack onto those under Sutpen's vice-like grip, heightening their pain by adding her own. Rosa wants Quentin (and the reader) to be sympathetic to her childhood and struggles but she is also self-assured in rising above it to forge her own identity. This lends a sense of authority and gravity to her vilification of Sutpen. Meanwhile, Marilla is plagued by her shared lineage with the man in her story and her account of Robert is unable to escape the rose-tinted lens of her worldview. Despite the varying approaches, both characters seek to piece together the portrait of these men through reconnecting accounts and people from the past. They recognize the evil these men have wrought but are rendered impotent in their vindictiveness due to the societal oppression they face.

Bodies also illicit the malicious nature of these antagonists. The fundamental terror of body horror comes from the mind-body dualism, and the reduction of humanity to just our physical form. Sutpen views his slaves as nothing more than their bodies. He exploits them to create his legacy, both for Sutpen's Hundred but also himself. He abuses the existing power dynamic to wrestle his slaves in front of his children to create a poweful image, knowing full well that the slaves have to let him win. Ledgard does something similar with his skin experiments on Vicente, holding him captive and using the threat of death and exposing Vicente's crime to manufacture consent. Their victims are described as zombies in their stories, their souls made to bear the brunt of their owner's machinations. It is a concerted denial of bodily autonomy, the truest of objectification. This is the callousness of these characters. No matter how ambitious or motivated by greatness they are, it ultimately hinges on a fundamentally instrumentalist view of those they have domain over. Ledgard takes this further in turning Vicente into a mirror image of his wife, objectifying both people involved as he continues to sexually assault Vicente as Vera. Both the slaves and Vera become objects of subordination for these men as they fetishize the idea of ownership. These desires are masked by their stated goals of scientific legacy for Ledgard and enduring legacy for Sutpen, but the ways in which these designs are carries out thin the veil covering these evil ambitions. As with most characters, the driving force behind these characters can be equated to a Lacanian sense of "lack". Ledgard grieves the loss his wife and in some sense the innocence of his daughter, which motivates his capture of Vicente. Sutpen was slighted by a slave on the Tidewater plantation, which causes his need for "respectability." The grand designs of these men are conceived in the crucible of fragile masculinity, and their actions are a direct overcompensation.

Such ambitious characters are almost set up for failure. Hubris is defined by the overbearing pride that comes before the fall. Almost every mad doctor story ends with their creation being their downfall, from Frankenstein to The Fly. Both Sutpen and Ledgard follow this pattern. It is a form of "innocence" or willful ignorance of morality. They view the steps towards their goal as so methodical, devoid of human emotion. Sutpen was unable to avow the tyranny of his ways and instead falls to a world that does not need his ideals anymore. The very people he oppressed in order to build Sutpen's Hundred set it ablaze as a final act of rebellion against a man who was too hateful to recognize the spirit of revenge in those he fundamentally viewed as less than. Ledgard thinks Vicente owes his life to him, so when Vera escapes or even desires freedom, he his shocked since he didn't even consider that possibility. This is the fatal flaw of the oppressor. They get too comfortable in their conquest and ultimately disregard how badly the oppressed desire liberation.

Both works paint complex portraits of evil. They examine the very condition through pastiches of dissonant whispers and fanciful fragments. Their callous rise and resounding fall is a narrative arc we have witnessed since the dawn of humanity, but they explore the unique kinds of pain and suffering they inflict on the way around them. The reckless, naive lust for conquest is often their downfall for it sets up an anti-human power structure that is bound to fail.