Plot summary

Chyna Shepard is a college student visiting the family of her friend, Laura Templeton, for a long weekend. Chyna, who was abused and neglected by her mother as a child, finds the Templeton house provides something she has yearned: acceptance. This comes to a violent end when Edgler Vess, a serial killer, breaks into the house in the night and methodically kills all of the occupants except Laura and Chyna.

Chyna hides from him under her bed and waits until he goes downstairs. She searches the house and finds Laura's father shot and tied to a toilet seat, and the mother stabbed to death in the shower. Chyna encounters Vess on the stairs eating a spider before she sneaks into Laura's room. She finds Laura tied up and raped. Chyna sneaks away, promising to return. Before she can intervene, Vess kills Laura and takes her to his motor home. Chyna hears Laura screaming and runs upstairs intending to attack Vess with a knife. Unaware Laura is dead, Chyna sneaks aboard the motor home and finds her friend's corpse. Before she can escape, Vess drives away. Chyna hides in a back room, planning to escape at the earliest opportunity. When he stops at a gas station, she sneaks out of the motor home, and heads inside the gas station to find a phone. Chyna surreptitiously watches Vess boast to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, prisoner in his basement, before he kills them and drives away. Chyna feels compelled to follow Vess and help free the girl. She takes an attendant's car, and follows Vess. Chyna passes Vess while traveling through a state park and crashes her car into a redwood tree. While Vess gets out to investigate, Chyna sneaks onboard the motor home.

By the time Vess reaches his house, he has discovered that Chyna is on board. Fascinated, he decides not to kill her immediately to see what she will do. Chyna breaks into his house and goes into the basement to find Ariel, locked in a room and catatonic. Before she can free Ariel, Vess attacks Chyna in the kitchen, punching her unconscious before binding her with a chain in the kitchen. He taunts her for a while, revealing details about his past and past crimes. Obsessed with the "intensity" of any particular experience, sensory and existential, Vess styles himself as a "homicidal adventurer", and has killed continually since childhood. He offers to allow Chyna to live if she aids him in mentally torturing Ariel out of her catatonia

Catatonia

Catatonia is a state of neurogenic motor immobility, and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor. It was first described in 1874: Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein ....

. Then, Vess leaves for work. Chyna escapes from her chains by breaking away from the table to which she is chained and slamming her chair into a wall. She releases Ariel from her prison. Vess has trained a pack of deadly Dobermann pinschers to guard his property and kill anyone attempting to get in or out. Chyna dresses in Vess's dog-training clothing and sprays ammonia on the dogs to get through the dogs and into the motor home. She and Ariel exit the house, and take a vehicle. Chyna sees a police car on the road, so she pulls over to signal it, only to discover that the driver is Vess, the local "county sheriff". In the ensuing showdown, she rams his police car, soaking him and the highway with gasoline, though this fails to kill him as he escapes his car and uses a shotgun to disable the motor home, causing it to tip over. Chyna and Ariel escape the crippled wreck but Vess catches up to them and knocks Chyna to the ground but Ariel continues on, distracting Vess long enough for Chyna to get a lighter she'd grabbed at the gas station. She uses it to ignite the gas covering Vess and the highway before rolling to safety. She catches up to Ariel and watches as Vess meets his end in the flames. They are then rescued by a passing motorist.

A few months later Chyna adopts Ariel, who has begun to speak in small phrases and meets a man who she falls in love with.

Characters

Chyna Shepherd:

Chyna is a 26-year-old graduate student still coming to terms with her abusive past, who risks her life to save a young girl from a killer. She is trained to use guns and is inventive.

Edgler Foreman Vess:

Edgler is the local sheriff, charming and well-liked; in his secret life, however, he is a brutal serial killer who preys on men, women and children, according to his mood. He kills for the sheer "intensity" of it; he believes that life is all about accruing sensation, and that he must live with intensity in order to discover new sensations. He meets his match in Chyna, who repeatedly surprises him through the novel, and he even admits that she frightens him as he was not able to sense her twice in the novel. His intuition proves correct as it is her who kills him in the end, lighting him on fire.

Vess tortured and killed animals

Zoosadism

Zoosadism is a term coined by Ernest Borneman referring to pleasure derived from cruelty to animals. Zoosadism is part of the Macdonald triad, a set of three behaviors that are a precursor to sociopathic behavior.-Research:...

 as a child and committed his first murders at the age of nine when he burned his parents to death after they caught him torturing a turtle; their death was considered an accident. Two years later he stabbed his grandmother to death because she didn't clean the bathroom to his satisfaction; he was judged in need of therapy, and was later adopted. He killed his adoptive parents when he was 20, once again by fire, for the insurance money and started his killing spree six years before the novel begins. By this time, he had kidnapped and killed six women and has been holding a teenage girl for a year after killing her parents and brother. In the novel he kills eight people, making his body count at least 22.

Ariel DeLane:

Ariel is a kidnapped teenager who withdraws into catatonia. She has been held captive by Vess for months. Vess regards Ariel as a challenge because she has taken the longest to crack of all his captives. Vess longs to see her final breakdown but Chyna is able to rescue her. After the final confrontation with Vess on the highway, she's adopted by Chyna.

Laura Templeton:

Laura is Chyna's best friend, who is killed by Vess.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Intensity was made into a two-part TV movie in 1997 that first aired in America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 on the Fox Network

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

. It starred Molly Parker

Molly Parker

Molly Parker is a Canadian actress, notable for her roles in Canadian and American independent films and the HBO television series Deadwood.Parker won a Genie Award in 1997 as Best Actress in a Leading Role for Kissed...

, John C. McGinley

John C. McGinley

John Christopher McGinley is an American actor, most notable for his roles as Perry Cox in Scrubs, Bob Slydell in Office Space, Sergeant Red O'Neill in Oliver Stone's Platoon and Marv in Stone's Wall Street. He has also written and produced for television and film...

, and Tori Paul.

The 2003 French horror film High Tension

Haute Tension

Haute Tension is a 2003 French horror film that was later released in 2004 in the United Kingdom and 2005 in the United States and Canada. The film, directed by Alexandre Aja, stars Cécile de France, Maïwenn and Philippe Nahon....

("Haute Tension" in the original French), directed by Alexandre Aja

Alexandre Aja

Alexandre Aja is a French film director who rose to international stardom for his 2003 horror film Haute Tension .-Personal life:...

, is loosely based on the book. The movie adds a younger brother to the family (who is also murdered), spares the best friend, removes the Ariel character, and changes most of the events after the main characters leave the family's house.

External links

• Intensity Book Review