Success Quote by Terence Fisher

Ruthlessness usually reads as a character flaw; Terence Fisher flips it into a perverse credential. In his framing, the cruelty isn’t born of appetite or ego but of devotion, the kind of devotion that lets you stop seeing people as people and start seeing them as materials. That’s the first bite of the quote: “only because of his ideals” turns violence into a moral instrument, which is exactly how the most chilling antagonists justify themselves. Fisher, a director best known for revitalizing Gothic horror at Hammer, is talking like someone who understands that monsters don’t need fangs; they need a mission.

Then comes the more modern, almost managerial dread: he doesn’t even get what he wants. “Unfortunately he doesn’t succeed” drains the romance out of fanaticism. If idealism were merely tragic, failure would be a release valve. Fisher suggests the opposite. The plan “fails and gets out of hand and takes charge of him,” a neat inversion where the ideology stops being a tool and becomes the operator. It’s not just that he makes terrible choices; it’s that his self-image as an idealist requires escalation, because backing down would admit the ideals were a pretext.

Calling idealism “a great excuse” is the dagger. Fisher isn’t praising it; he’s noting its social usefulness. Ideals launder ruthlessness. They make harm feel principled, even noble, and they invite spectators to debate intentions instead of counting bodies. That’s horror logic applied to real life: the scariest villain is the one who can look sincere while the machinery he started keeps moving without him.