Line #39 Main/SinisterSouthwest


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6	[[quoteright:350:[[Film/TheHillsHaveEyes2 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9v529yhwmyay2wmyo0ycguijejo.png]]]]
7
8	->''"From the dusty mesa, her looming shadow grows''\
9	''Hidden in the branches of the poisoned creosote.''\
10	''She twines her spines up slowly towards the boiling sun''\
11	''And when I touched her skin my fingers ran with blood."''
12	-->-- '''Music/TheHandsomeFamily''', "Far From Any Road"
13
14	Sometimes the darkest tales come from the brightest desert.
15
16	Sinister Southwest is a genre of crime/horror/thriller stories set in the American Southwest, a vast zone that includes UsefulNotes/NewMexico, UsefulNotes/{{Arizona}}, and certain parts of UsefulNotes/{{Colorado}}, UsefulNotes/{{California}}, UsefulNotes/{{Nevada}}, UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Utah}}. A largely desert landscape that contains the hottest temperatures in the United States, along with some of its most violent and bizarre history, the region naturally lends itself as a backdrop to more intense works.
17
18	Probably the most famous RealLife weird incident in the Southwest's history happened on July 8, 1947. {{Roswell\|ThatEndsWell}} Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The Army quickly retracted the statement and instead said that the crashed object was merely a conventional weather balloon; inevitably the public came to believe that extraterrestrials had crashed on Earth and that they and their vehicle had been taken to Nevada and stored in a little place called Area51. As if that wasn't enough about aliens, the infamous Skinwalker Ranch of Utah has been a hotbed of UFO activity for decades, with dozens of reports of strange creatures and cattle mutilations in the area. Speaking of the term "{{Skinwalker}}," that creature (along with [[MagicalNativeAmerican other elements]] of Myth/NativeAmericanMythology) is another likely culprit for weirdness in the area.
19
20	Local urban myths include that of ''La Llorona'' ("the Weeping Woman"), a spectral figure who drowned her children and now haunts the ditches and streams looking for more victims; and the {{Chupacabra}} ("goat sucker"; originally reported in Puerto Rico but it appears to have migrated to the mainland), a blood-drinking creature that has been held responsible for some of those aforementioned mutilations.
21
22	Finally, nuclear testing in the southwest is another popular culprit for weirdness in fiction, with many a NuclearMutant emerging from the desert to terrorize BMovie audiences throughout the '50s and '60s.
23
24	Closer to home, the Southwest edge of California was home to UsefulNotes/CharlesManson and his Family; the New Mexico State Penitentiary outside Santa Fe was the site of the bloodiest prison riot in US history in 1980, and [[TheCartel cartel violence]] and political upheaval have become a mainstay along the Texas/Mexico border in the 21st century.
25
26	Sinister Southwest works usually involve a mix of several elements: stories of crime or {{Horror}}, a focus on the [[ThirstyDesert barren desert landscape]], and a more rural setting (although the action can shift to some of the bigger cities, like Albuquerque, Phoenix, or El Paso). Additionally, many works may be influenced by the largely Latin American culture of the region.
27
28	May overlap with WeirdWest (but differs, in that Sinister Southwest works may be set in the modern-day and feature no supernatural elements). Compare LovecraftCountry and SouthernGothic, for other American settings with supernatural and/or horror elements. Can often involve HillbillyHorrors. See also VivaLasVegas, where some more cynical stories might use [[UsefulNotes/LasVegas Sin City]]'s illicit reputation as a setting for horror stories.
29	----
30	!!Examples:
31	[[foldercontrol]]
32
33	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
34	* ''Anime/ElCazadorDeLaBruja'' follows a bounty hunter named Nadie who, instead of killing her assigned target, decides to become the bodyguard of a young witch named Ellie as they both seek their own freedoms. As the two slowly move further south through Mexico, they find themselves being chased by other bounty hunters and getting involved in a sinister conspiracy from an ancient witch coven. The setting never strays too far from desert and cactus environments and small towns.
35	* ''Manga/SoulEater'' features the [[ExtranormalInstitute Death Weapon Meister Academy]] in Death City, Nevada. Students are split into "Weapons" ([[EquippableAlly humans who can transform into weapons]]) and the "Meisters" who fight with them. While the characters do travel around the world to hunt down witches and other monsters feasting on souls, Death City itself is a WeirdnessMagnet by its very nature.
36	[[/folder]]
37
38	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
39	* ''Film/TheBadBatch'': TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, the U.S. Government created a PrisonColony for undefined "undesirables" deep in the Midwestern desert. The place is best described as [[Film/EscapeFromNewYork Manhattan Island Penitentiary]] with a lot more sun, [[ScavengedPunk a lot more junk]] and a lot more [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalism]].
40	* ''Film/TheBeastOfYuccaFlats'' is a legendarily-awful BMovie about a Russian scientist who tries to defect to the US but gets caught in a nuclear test in Nevada, turning him into a murderous monster who roams the desert, killing people.
41	* ''Film/BoneTomahawk'': A Western-horror in which a posse led by the local sheriff takes on a CannibalTribe of [[ContemporaryCaveman contemporary cavemen]].
42	* ''Film/{{Breakdown}}'': A married couple relocating to California run afoul of kidnappers in the Southwest outback, leading to a sinister cat-and-mouse game between them and the husband, played out over isolated desert highways, truck stops, and small towns.
43	* ''Film/CarnivalOfSouls'' is perhaps the best horror movie ever made in Utah. A church organist moves to Salt Lake City, where she becomes obsessed with an abandoned carnival ground outside of town, and also becomes convinced that a mysterious ImplacableMan is stalking her.
44	* ''Film/{{Duel}}'': A suspense movie set on the remote highways of inland California, where a mild-mannered Los Angeles CityMouse becomes the target of a psychotic truck driver.
45	* ''Film/FromDuskTillDawn'': Two murderous bank robbers on the lam in the Texas badlands take a family hostage while making a run for the Mexican border. They succeed in crossing and make a clean getaway... only to end up in a strip club full of Aztec vampires.
46	* ''Film/TheGiantGilaMonster'' is set in the "the enormity of the west". The emphasis is less on sun-bleached deserts and more on empty roads and barren forests, but it still emphasizes the vast emptiness of the area, and the idea that a gila monster could grow that big without anyone noticing.
47	* ''Film/TheHillsHaveEyes1977'' and its [[Film/TheHillsHaveEyes2006 2006 remake]] feature a family traveling through the New Mexico desert attacked by a CannibalClan mutated by atomic testing.
48	* ''Film/HobokenHollow'': Based on the RealLife [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Slave_Ranch Texas Slave Ranch]], the film is about a man kidnapped by ranchers in Texas and MadeASlave.
49	* The Music/RobZombie-directed films ''Film/HouseOf1000Corpses'' and ''Film/TheDevilsRejects'' take place in the fictional town of Ruggsville, Texas, the home of the murderous Firefly family.
50	* ''Film/{{Identity}}'': The motel where most of the action takes place is apparently on a lonely American desert highway. Subverted when we learn its true address: [[spoiler:inside a serial killer's mind]].
51	* ''Film/ItCameFromOuterSpace'' has an alien spacecraft crashing in the Arizona desert, and [[WeComeInPeaceShootToKill paranoia taking over]] in the nearby town.
52	* ''Film/LastManStanding'': A mysterious gunslinger enters a dying Prohibition-era Texas town, and plays two violent gangs against each other.
53	* ''Film/ManosTheHandsOfFate'' has a family on vacation through the El Paso area run afoul of a sinister {{cult}} of ambiguously-undead beings.
54	* ''Film/TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld'' is a '50s scifi movie set on a U.S. Navy base on the Salton Sea, a landlocked body of saltwater in southern California. The surrounding land is shown mostly as trackless, sparsely-populated desert, emphasizing the base's isolation when strange monsters come up out of the sea.
55	* ''Film/NearDark'': a young farmhand in an Arizona town falls for a mysterious girl... who turns out to belong to a rag-tag family of vampires terrorizing the desert.
56	* ''Film/NocturnalAnimals'': In Edward's novel, Tony and the family are driving through a rural road in the Texas desert when they get attacked by the gang. It ends with Tony's wife and daughter being sexually assaulted and then brutally murdered.
57	* ''Film/{{Nope}}'': An isolated gulch town in the California desert is terrorized by mysterious flying object.
58	* ''Film/RaisingArizona'': a parody of Arizona stereotypes, centered around a hapless criminal and his wife stealing a baby to raise as their own, only to end up battling a Satanic biker.
59	* ''Film/{{Southbound}}'': An anthology of horror stories set in an unnamed town in the Mojave Desert, with unwitting people threatened by skeletal monsters. It's heavily implied, however, that [[spoiler: this isn't the Mojave at all, but Purgatory.]]
60	* ''Film/{{Tarantula}}'' has rural Arizona terrorized by a GiantSpider, the product of a scientist's attempt to breed larger livestock animals.
61	* ''Film/{{Them}}'' is probably the movie that codified this as the default setting for '50s scifi movies, with a swarm of [[BigCreepyCrawlies gigantic ants]] terrorizing the New Mexico desert and eventually building a nest in the storm drains beneath Los Angeles.
62	* ''Film/TouchOfEvil'' is a FilmNoir about organized crime, JurisdictionFriction, and [[DirtyCop police corruption]] along the United States' border with Mexico.
63	* ''Film/TrackOfTheMoonBeast'' is about a [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent were-]][[UsefulNotes Tyrannosaurus Rex]] stomping around the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. The movie also prominently features a MagicalNativeAmerican character as TheProfessor, and there's a scene where all the main characters go see a southwestern folk music concert. It's not a very good movie, but it does get some nice moody shots of the desert.
64	* ''Film/{{Tremors}}'' has a pack of {{Sand Worm}}s terrorizing the residents of a small Nevada town. The monsters' origin is never really explained (until the sequels, anyway), but the characters speculate that they ''could'' be [[NuclearMutant products of nuclear testing]], or maybe aliens - both very appropriate origins for monsters in southwestern science fiction.
65	* ''Film/UTurn'': A drifter breaks down in Superior, Arizona and finds himself trapped in a plot to kill a rich man in town and escape with his wife. Too bad all the bizarre characters in Superior intend to keep him there.
66	* ''Film/Werewolf1996'' is a bad werewolf movie set in and around Flagstaff, Arizona, that invokes - but does not really follow - Native American {{skinwalker}} myths.
67	[[/folder]]
68
69	[[folder:Literature]]
70	* ''Literature/BloodMeridian'' is the brutal and violent tale of the Glanton gang, a group of Indian hunters who operated throughout the American Southwest and the Mexican province of Chihuahua from 1849 to 1850. The novel also has a few [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane ambiguous supernatural elements]] with Judge Holden himself a SatanicArchetype and possibly a HumanoidAbomination given his beyond human feats.
71	* ''The Books Of Blood'' by Creator/CliveBarker: "Skins Of The Fathers" concerns a young man who encounters a parade of strange monsters on an Arizona highway, and gets stuck in a fierce battle between them and a rowdy army of townsfolk.
72	* ''Literature/{{Desperation}}'': Welcome to Desperation, Nevada, a tiny [[DugTooDeep mining town]] now ruled by an oversized, maniacal cop named [[DemonicPossession Officer Collie Entragian.]] Several travelers encounter him, and very few make it out alive.
73	* ''Literature/FearAndLoathingInLasVegas''. Though [[VivaLasVegas Vegas itself]] comes across pretty negatively, Creator/HunterSThompson seems to have a deep and primal fear of the desert outside of town as well, and the book opens with him in a drug-induced panic about "huge bats" swooping down on him from the desert sky, then becoming irrationally suspicious that a hitchhiker might have links to Charles Manson. Later, when he tries to flee the city, he becomes paranoid about desert-dwelling lizards and has a run-in with a sinister, but ultimately extremely lenient, highway cop.
74	* ''Literature/{{Holes}}'': The corrupt Camp Green Lake is in the middle of the Texan desert, and is full of secrets, curses, ancient corruption and of course, deadly yellow-spotted lizards. And that's not even starting on the hundred-and-fifty year drought, and the heat.
75	* ''Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes'': "Dolan's Cadillac" concerns an everyday man plotting revenge against the Las Vegas gangster who murdered his wife to keep her from testifying against him. Said revenge involves trapping the gangster's Cadillac in a pit in the Nevada desert and burying him alive in it.
76	* ''Nightwing'': A tribal policeman in New Mexico investigates a rash of mysterious cattle mutilations, leading to a battle against a recently-deceased shaman's apocalyptic spell.
77	* ''Literature/NoCountryForOldMen'': A poacher in 1980s Texas finds the aftermath of a drug deal gone bloody in the desert and takes a briefcase full of money, leading to a peculiar hitman violently pursuing him across the state.
78	* The ''Literature/JillKismet'' series is an UrbanFantasy series set in the fictional Southwest city of Santa Luz. Being the resident "hunter" in Santa Luz essentially makes Jill TheSheriff as far as the supernatural is concerned, and the series deals heavily with issues of the NewOldWest amidst Jill's tangles with [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent weres]]--which lean more on {{skinwalker}} legends than European-style werebeasts, but are normally allies of humans--[[OurDemonsAreDifferent hellbreed]], and {{Apocalypse Cult}}ists. Jill's eventual apprentice is an ex-{{gangbanger}} from the town's barrio, which is mentioned to usually not be a safe place for Caucasians like herself (although the Latin gangs avoid her because of her reputation as a ''bruja'').
79	* The ''Literature/LeeNez'' novels are a VampireDetectiveSeries set in New Mexico. Lee, a New Mexico state trooper, is a "nightwalker" of Navajo heritage who was turned in an encounter with {{Ghostapo}} during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and spends much of his spare time hunting {{skinwalker}}s to protect the Navajo Nation, which leads him to a collision with FBIAgent Diane Lopez when her partner is killed by one of his targets.
80	* The ''Literature/SheriffJoannaBrady'' series by Creator/JAJance. Joanna is the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, which just so happens to include Tombstone. Jance prefers to call her books 'novels of suspense' rather than 'mysteries', and many of the crimes investigated by Joanna are fairly horrific.
81	* ''Mary'' by Nat Cassidy is the tale of a middle aged New Yorker who seemingly suffers from psychosis returning to her quaint hometown in Arizona to uncover repressed childhood memories. The town was founded by a quasi-Christian splinter group who venerate the desert as a cruel but mighty mistress, a force that weeds out the weak and unworthy, where only the strong and pure can survive. They secretly worship [[spoiler: a misogynistic serial killer who was killed in a shootout with police decades earlier, and once a year the cult viciously violates and murders kidnapped women in a ritualistic cleansing of sin]].
82	[[/folder]]
83
84	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
85	* ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'': California is one of the worst places to live in, according to this show.
86	** In ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryMurderHouse'', the titular ''Murder House'', a haunted, evil-attracting house, is located in Los Angeles.
87	** Similarly, ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryHotel'' also depicts a haunted building in LA: an hotel built by a serial killer and currently owned by vampires.
88	** ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryApocalypse'', as a follow up of ''Murder House'' also takes place in California - it notably focuses on a nuclear war shelter located in central California, and that used to be a school for warlocks (with as its most brilliant pupil the Antichrist himself).
89	** ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory1984'' gives us Camp Redwood, your typical slasher summer camp not so far away from LA (in fact it received a visit from notorious LA serial killer Richard Ramirez).
90	** ''Death Valley'', the second part of ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryDoubleFeature'' explores alien abductions in the titular valley, the existence of Area 51, and the crash of Roswell.
91	* ''Series/BreakingBad'': One of the darkest, most intense dramas in television history, a tale of the methamphetamine trade set in and around Albuquerque, NM. The desert landscapes give a heightened sense of tension and are often the setting for extreme violence. The prequel series ''Series/BetterCallSaul'' also taps into this in the later seasons.
92	--> '''Saul''': So, then, where's the trust?
93	--> '''Mike''': I trust the hole in the desert I'd leave you in.
94	* ''Series/MidnightTexas'': A young man named Manfred makes a mistake and ends up in trouble; his grandmother advises him to come to Midnight, TX. Some of the denizens include a vampire, a werebeast, and an angel. Others dabble with magic and witchcraft. Oh, and his grandmother is a ghost. One of the only normal people seems to be a young waitress... but her father is a serial killer. Filmed in New Mexico, the series makes use of deserts and scrub brush.
95	* The first three episodes of ''Series/PokerFace'' revolve around murder and corruption in, respectively, a Nevada casino, a New Mexico truck stop, and a Texas barbecue restaurant. Due to the show's WalkingTheEarth / MysteryOfTheWeek format, though, there's apparently someone up to no good everywhere Charlie goes.
96	* ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'': In "[[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E2CarrionDeath Carrion Death]]", a multiple murderer named Diggs escapes police custody and tries to flee across the Mexican border in Texas, pursued by a motorcycle cop and a very hungry vulture. He manages to kill the cop, but not before he handcuffs himself to Diggs and swallows the key, forcing Diggs to drag the dead man through the wasteland.
97	* ''Series/TwinPeaks The Return'' has a substantial amount of SurrealHorror-filled screen time in the American Southwest, away from UsefulNotes/TheOtherRainforest setting of the first two seasons. Throughout the show, portals to other dimensions from which otherworldly entities emerge crop up in the middle of the desert, where they menace innocent rural townsfolk, including in Episode 8 where [[spoiler: the story's BigBad, Judy, a malevolent demon/EldritchAbomination, is introduced to the word as a result of nuclear testing in a small New Mexico town]]. There's also a subplot set in Las Vegas involving an insurance executive who's heavily embroiled in organized crime.
98	[[/folder]]
99
100	[[folder:Music]]
101	* The Music/BlueOysterCult album ''Music/{{Spectres}} has the track "Death Valley Nights," which is about the infamous desert, and the rock-operatic track "Golden Age Of Leather", about old Hell's Angels who decide the world no longer has a place for them and choose to die in a blaze of glory in the remote desert.
102	[[/folder]]
103
104	[[folder:Podcast]]
105	* ''Podcast/AintSlayedNobody'' is a ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' podcast series in the "[[WeirdWest Down Darker Trails]]" setting, set in Texas and New Mexico during the late 19th century.
106	* ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'' plays this for laughs, as the eponymous [[TownWithADarkSecret town with countless eldritch secrets]] (not to mention its even more sinister neighbor, Desert Bluffs) is said to be located somewhere in the Southwest.
107	[[/folder]]
108
109	[[folder:Video Games]]
110	* ''VideoGame/DeadlyCreatures'' takes place in the Sonoran Desert and has its main characters, a tarantula and scorpion, fighting and killing for survival under the backdrop of very real human greed and cruelty as one of their number falls to GoldFever.
111	* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' adds some Western flavor to the series' normal post-apocalyptic wasteland. But the ''Dead Money'' DLC steers firmly into this trope: you get roped into a heist of the legendary Sierra Madre casino that's been bottled-up since pre-War times. Along the way you have to deal with a poisonous fog, creepy Ghost People, backstabbing companions, and ghostly (but still quite deadly) holograms that populate the casino and surrounding villa. [[spoiler: And then you find out the whole thing was built as a trap for a rival of the owner, who just so happens to be one of those backstabbing companions.]] As the narrator says, getting to the casino is not the hard part.
112	* ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' and ''VideoGame/TheSims4'' have Strangetown and Strangerville, respectively, which are both based on the paranormal folklore around the southwestern deserts. Strangetown is full of aliens, serial killers, and mad scientists, while Strangerville has creepy "possessed" people.
113	[[/folder]]
114
115	[[folder:Visual Novels]]
116	* ''VisualNovel/{{Echo}}'''s basic premise is a town in Utah that is an absolute hellhole, the combination of horrid arid conditions, evil hicks and an EldritchAbomination condensing it into possibly the worst place on that earth. The prequel ''VisualNovel/TheSmokeRoom'' adds in the horrible homophobia and genocide of Native Americans and the sequel ''VisualNovel/{{Arches}}'' has the place reduced to a wasteland full of ruins.
117	[[/folder]]
118
119	[[folder:Web Original]]
120	* A common recurring theme in ''WebVideo/BedtimeStoriesYoutubeChannel'' is depicting the American Southwest as just as dangerous as the Appalachian Trails on the East Coast. Among the more notable cases covered here include Skinwalker and Stardust Ranches, the disappearances of dozens of prospectors and hikers in the desert, encounters with different kinds of cryptids, and mysterious hauntings on the US-Mexico border.
121	[[/folder]]
122	----
123	-->"''When the last light warms the rocks and the rattlesnakes unfold''
124	-->''Mountain cats will come to drag away your bones''
125	-->''And rise with me forever, across the silent sand''
126	-->''And the stars will be your eyes, and the wind will be my hands."''

Context Main / SinisterSouthwest