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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Boone: You?... You did it? Decker: Yes. Boone: All of them? Decker: And more. Boone: ...Why? Decker: ...Because I like it. |
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| ~ Decker admitting to being a serial killer to Boone in the book. |
| “ | Murder is very, very real. It might start in the mind, but then it changes to flesh and blood. | „ |
| ~ Dr. Decker on murder. |
| “ | Decker: [chuckles] I'm not one of them. I'm here to destroy them. See, I've cleaned up a lot of breeders. Families like cesspools. Filth making filth, making filth. And I did it over, and over, and over again. But it was all leading me here. I was born to destroy Boone and the breed together. Gas Station Owner: Y-You're crazy! Decker: No, I'm Death. Plain and simple. |
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| ~ Dr. Decker before killing the gas station owner and his most famous quote in the film. |
Dr. Philip K. Decker, better known by his alias Ol' Button Face, is the main antagonist of Clive Barker's 1988 horror dark fantasy novella Cabal and his 1990 film adaptation Nightbreed.
Initially appearing to be a renowned and experienced psychiatrist who intends to help his mentally disturbed patient Aaron Boone, who experiences nightmares of a place inhabited by monsters called Midian, he is actually a sadistic masked serial killer who takes pleasure in slaughtering entire families and seeks to frame Boone for his crimes so he can continue killing, which he believes, is the reason why he is alive: to end all life, as he believes himself to be Death incarnate. He is also Boone and Lori's arch-nemesis, as well as the biggest threat to the Nightbreed's existence.
He was portrayed by famous horror film director David Cronenberg.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
General[]
- He is a serial killer who targets and murders entire families and "breeders", including their children, in ways so brutal and gruesome that it leaves his victims looking unrecognisable, to the point where he proudly declares himself as Death incarnate.
- When Boone starts evading him, he abandons his modus operandi of targeting families and starts killing any stranger he encounters in even more gorey ways all to frame the former out of petty spite.
- While he kills people on the belief that he is cleaning up "filth", in particular couples and families to prevent them from "breeding", he's far too sadistic and hypocritical to be a genuine extremist given that he commits far more worse acts than the people he murders and chooses to kill in a cruel manner, poetically making him the biggest "filth" out of everyone in the movie, with him even admitting to Boone that he enjoys the act of murdering and watching people attempt to escape from him, and does so out of sexual pleasure in the book.
- Despite his hatred of sex and "breeding", he has no issue with seducing women like Sheryl Ann if it means furthering his own goals.
- In addition, all of the people he killed were likely innocent and simply living out their lives, being targeted because of his own twisted hatred towards family and love.
- His love of killing is further proven in the film by his secret room that contains his collection of knives and walls decorated with photos of his victims.
- While he appears to have a second personality in the form of the Mask which talks to him and begs him for the blood of innocents, this does not affect his Moral Agency as he only ever mentions his mask persona controlling him once, and its shown that he can suppress his own murderous urges whenever he wants, showing the personality only has partial influence over him and the relationship between the two is more symbiotic if anything given that they both enjoy slaughtering people.
- In addition, he is never depicted as insane, as he is high-functioning and cunning enough to feign innocence with his highly regarded status as an educated and sophisticated man of psychiatry to trick people and get away with his crimes, manipulate others to his advantage to the point where he can make weak-minded people believe they did crimes they never committed, and thinking before he kills people.
- The theatrical cut film version, on the other hand, is even worse, as he lacks this secondary personality, so is completely conscious of everything he's doing and egotistically sees himself above everyone as the embodiment of Death as the reason he exists, seeking to exterminate humanity which he deems filth.
- Once he discovers the existence of the Nightbreed and Midian after learning Boone revived as one of them, he becomes xenophobic and borderline genocidal towards their very existence just because they disprove his beliefs that nothing can come back from death, bruising his huge ego about being Death incarnate, and seeks to kill them all too out of petty spite for being proven wrong, even though many of the 'breed are good people and/or children, with him becoming so obsessed with Midian to the point of committing even more monstrous crimes just to discover its location and to further frame and permanently kill Boone forever.
- Hypocritically, he lies to Joyce and Eigerman that the Nightbreed will be capable of a lot of bloodshed if left unchecked, when he's that very person terrorising humanity, killing and pinning the blame on many innocent people.
- While he has allies in the form of Eigerman and the police, he shows no genuine care for any of them at all, merely seeing them as weapons to further his goals. He even planned to let Eigerman die during the battle in Midian, and had he survived, he would've killed him too in a similar manner to Joyce.
- As a result, he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and shows no remorse for his monstrous crimes at any point in either version, expressing zero sympathy or even emotion other than pure hatred towards the very existence of human and monster life.
- He sets the heinous standard of both the book and film with his own series/high kill count of brutal murders (including that of children), his sadistic personality and being the one to lead and cause the Sons of the Free to slaughter many Nightbreed and destroy their home in the first place, making him directly responsible for their crimes.
- Overall, he serves as the book and film's representation of how truly ruthless, cruel and evil humanity can be, in stark contrast to the friendly and welcoming nature of the Nightbreed, the very species they shunned, oppressed and committed genocide upon purely out of paranoia towards their appearances, with him being the real monster of the story.
Cabal/Nightbreed[]
- Prior to the story's events, he had murdered 11 entire families (6 in the film), including both the elderly and children, and had even mutilated them while they were all alive purely out of sadism.
- Slaughters an entire family of 3 by slashing the mother's face several times and slitting the father's throat. While his murder of the child isn't shown onscreen, its implied to be far more gruesome than that of his parents.
- Abusing his high position as psychiatrist as a "voice of reason", he convinces his patient Aaron Boone that he's responsible for the murders he committed, which leads him to nearly take his own life out of guilt for a crime he never committed. This is made even worse by the fact that he effectively took advantage of an innocent and mentally disturbed man, moulding his mind to take the fall for his actions so he can relocate and continue his crimes elsewhere without suspicion.
- Upon Boone questioning himself for his murders, Decker blames him almost immediately and tells him to confess to the police about what "he's" done.
- He gives Boone hallucinogens, which he lies are tranquillising pills, in order to drive him to further insanity and hospitalising him as a result.
- To rub salt in the wound, he is never publicly exposed for his crimes even after his death, in part due to his high reputation amongst everyone to the point where no one would suspect him, with Aaron and his girlfriend Lori being forced to go on the run as a result.
- He convinces the police into believing Boone had mutilated Narcisse's face (he had actually peeled his own face off) before interrogating and murdering the latter in cold blood, confirmed by when Narcisse returns as a Nightbreed in the cemetery and seeks to kill him to avenge his own demise.
- After apparently believing Boone's innocence in order to lull him into a false sense of security, he immediately lies to the police that Boone is armed and is reaching into his jacket, resulting in him getting gunned down, killing and reviving him as a Nightbreed.
- Upon discovering Boone's body had disappeared from the morgue, and listening to one of his sessions about Midian, he deduces that monsters do exist in Midian and angrily embarks on a xenophobic crusade to eliminate them all as he sees them as the worst in a world full of monstrosities against his beliefs about death.
- In the book, he murders two children on his way to Midian just to make the police believe Boone did it.
- He seduces, then stabs and slashes Lori's friend Sheryl Ann to death and ties her on a tree to be found by Lori, horrifying her.
- He traumatises and psychologically manipulates Lori throughout the story both in and out of character as Button Face out of sadistic pleasure, lying to her about Boone to make her feel guilty for being in a relationship, killing her friend to make her freeze on the spot and tormenting her by revealing his true identity to her when she asked how he [Button Face] knew her name to further horrify her, and then attempts to kill Lori to drive Boone out of hiding.
- He later personally targets and pursues her during the Battle of Midian to prevent her from exposing his crimes, scaring her even more and for good reason.
- He takes a gas station owner hostage when he lets slip that he knows about Midian and the Nightbreed, torturing the information about how they can be killed out of him before stabbing his heart, killing him.
- He slaughters practically everyone in the motel Boone and Lori were checking into, to their shock and horror, just to frame him once again and leading to his arrest, where he's beaten up in jail by Eigerman and his cronies.
- In particular, he brutally decapitates a motel clerk and cruelly places his head on the front desk to horrify his wife when she finds it, before stabbing her to death too.
- Stabs and slits Detective Joyce's throat with a razor blade when he's confronted by him after he discovered his mask and blades in the trunk of his car (although he survives in the director's cut).
- He rallies both the police and citizens to form a guerrilla group, the Sons of the Free, to exterminate the entire population of Midian, resulting in several defenceless Nightbreed being killed and the eventual destruction of Midian by explosives.
- He takes advantage of the ensuing chaos to disguise himself as Button Face and intends to both kill Boone and Lori to prevent them from exposing his murderous nature and to tie up loose ends.
- Kills Narcisse, who was revived as a Nightbreed and protecting Lori, once again via decapitation and presents his head on a stick, which he later throws at Boone to sadistically mock him before brandishing his knife against his flesh.
- He battles Boone with dual knives, causing more destruction to Midian in their ensuing fight.
- He takes advantage of Boone believing he killed him initially to impale his larger knife through his chest.
- While his death at the hands of Boone, who takes off his mask, impales him with the same knife still attached on his chest and drops him to his death is brutal, it is absolutely well-deserved and played for satisfaction, ending his reign of terror once and for all as well as avenging every innocent soul who was killed by his sadistic hands.
- Despite his demise, he still succeeded in destroying and driving the few surviving Nightbreed out of their home, leaving all of them alone and homeless, as well as Boone and Lori still being viewed as murderers responsible for his crimes in the eyes of the public, forcing them to find a new Midian as instructed by their god Baphomet.
- Due to killing Boone initially and partially framing her for the massacre he committed at the motel, he's also indirectly responsible for Lori killing and reviving herself as a Nightbreed to be forever with Aaron.
- In the ending of the theatrical cut of the film, he is resurrected as the Nightbreed Button Face by the priest Ashberry with the Baphomet's blood with the intent of wiping out the remaining Nightbreed, made ironic by the fact that he devoted himself to wiping them out.
Trivia[]
- He is one of the six characters, alongside Rawhead Rex, Frank Cotton, Julia Cotton, Phillip Channard and the literary version of the Hell Priest, created by Clive Barker to be Pure Evil. Amongst them, he is the only character from Cabal or Nightbreed to be Pure Evil.
External Links[]
- Dr. Decker on the Villains Wiki
[]
 Pure Evils
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