Preying

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Several aspects of Let Us Prey don’t make a whole lot of sense.  The police in this small Scottish town are all corrupt, at best.  And when push comes to shove, they choose to murder one another.  For some reason the sergeant wraps himself in barbed wire as he tries to bring the wrath of God onto his subordinate officers.  The night starts out with four prisoners being locked up and only one survives.  He’s shown emerging from the sea, with ravens, at the start of the movie and he’s never really explained.  He’s there to collect the souls of sinners and he seems to be able to control other people.  The whole thing turns into a bloodbath before it’s over.  In other words, it lacks the subtlety of much Euro-horror that I’ve watched.  One thing it does have, though, is plenty of use of the Bible.

I suppose with a title like Let Us Prey such a development shouldn’t be unexpected.  Rachel is a new constable in the police station.  The story begins with the stranger, Six—the number of his jail cell—nearly being hit by a car.  Or having been hit.  The teenage driver is arrested and finds a pedophile teacher already in the lock-up.  Two other police officers, after having sex in their patrol car, find the stranger and bring him in.  The local doctor examines him but when the doctor attacks him, he’s arrested as well.  Finally, Six is locked in.  It’s discovered that the doctor had murdered his family earlier in the evening, and the reckless driver had earlier hit and killed a classmate while out driving.  The pedophile kills himself and the two other police officers murder the doctor.  Then the sergeant, who’s a serial killer, comes back to kill everyone left alive.  Six and Rachel survive and Six reveals that he’s collecting wicked souls and invites Rachel to join him.

The Bible quotations (some not accurate) all come in the context of retribution.  The sinners are to be punished.  Rachel, however, escaped a childhood abduction and seems to bear no burden of sin.  The other police—who had all decided Rachel should die—end up dead themselves.  A gritty, supernatural police story, this film suggests a larger backstory without providing a lot for viewers to go on.  The openly Christian sergeant wears a cross, drinks when he drives, and kills his homosexual lovers.  Is there perhaps a message that the movie’s trying to convey?

Name Your State

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My grandfather’s name was Homer.  I’ve often wondered about that since he was from a long line of uneducated farmers.  Since he was born in Bath, New York, and since I’ve poked around upstate for genealogical purposes, I noticed that there were several place names derived from the classics, including Homer.  I suspect that’s where his name came from.  His ancestors had biblical names.  This got me to wondering about the many upstate classics town names of Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, Corfu, Palmyra, and more.  A little (very little) research led me to Robert Harpur.  Harpur was a one-time clerk in the New York State Surveyor General’s office, and he assigned names to several towns, using classical sources.  I haven’t found a comprehensive list, but all of this makes me homesick for upstate, a place I’ve never lived.

My Homer

My mother’s paternal line had deep roots in New York state.  Nobody in the family went to college, although my grandfather did take a couple of courses at Cornell to qualify as a country teacher.  Then, many years later, my daughter moved to Ithaca.  We spent many fine weekends there and would’ve moved there had we been able to afford it.  It was a kind of homecoming.  But the connections have a way of wending their way around, as they often do.  Robert Harpur settled in Binghamton, New York.  Harpur College, now Binghamton University, State University of New York, was named after him.  Not aware of any of this, my daughter attended Binghamton University.  (There was even a picture of me on their website for a while, a photo snapped by someone as I sat in the financial aid office one parents’ weekend, begging for more money.)  I have no way of proving this, but it seems that Harpur’s interest in the classics may have led to my grandfather’s unusual Christian name.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  Homer had a sister named Helen.  Of Troy?  (There’s also a Troy, New York.)  Perhaps a family name?  My records don’t really answer that for me.  And they had a brother named Ira.  Ira is a biblical name, but it also may be a variant of the name Hera, the wife of Zeus.  This had nothing to do with my writing my dissertation on Asherah, who is perhaps the namesake of Hera, or at least it has been proposed.  I doubt my ancestors would’ve named a son after a Greek goddess (the family was of Teutonic origins).  Or maybe great-grandpa Adam was more educated than he let on and had read the Iliad?  If only I could afford to get back to Ithaca I might just go on an odyssey of my own.

Job Months

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I’m sure you’ve had them too.  Job-like months when everything seems to happen all at once.  Your bank account grows anemic, making Quicken feel more like quicksand.  Our most recent started when the roof leaked yet again during heavy storms—I sure am glad climate change isn’t real!  Can you imagine how it’d be if we had extreme weather?  This house dates from the late nineteenth century and presumably, if such super-soakers had always been common, well, the roof would’ve been replaced down to the joists.  In any case, in our fourth call to the roofers over seven years, we faced yet another scary bill.  Then the sink began to leak.  Some minor repairs I can do myself, but this house was an either a DIY’s paradise or purgatory.  For us, mainly the latter.  

A couple years back there was a leak from the upstairs toilet tank.  Now, I’ve replaced the guts of a toilet more than once.  I bought the parts and went to work.  It was then that I discovered a previous owner had purchased a fancy-brand toilet for which toilet guts couldn’t be purchased (well, maybe from Japan or China, by slow boat).  You’ll probably agree that without an outhouse, a working toilet is more or less a necessity.  I watched YouTube and my wife and I went to Lowe’s and bought a new toilet.  I’m sure angels were laughing watching the two of use wrestle this metric-ton porcelain throne up the stairs (and demons laughed as we got the old one down).  Installing it looked straightforward.  When it started to leak, the plumber—we’re on a first-name basis now—came over.  He pointed out the faulty mounting pipe and asked if I’d installed it.  It was from the previous owner with high-class taste in toilets.  He turned to his companion and said, “This is why we’ll never go out of business.”

So a twenty-dollar toilet gut replacement turned into a $600 full toilet replacement.  This was in my mind when I had my head under the sink.  We seem to have stopped the water getting in from above, at least for the moment, but now it was clear that the base cabinet under the sink was going to need to be replaced as well.  I called Doug and he said he’d slot me in as quickly as he could.  I’m pretty sure Job didn’t have indoor plumbing.  He probably had to repair his own roof a time or two, though.  Only in his case, it happened just before God made a bet with Satan.  So the story goes.

Non-Saints

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It was an epiphany.  My wife has, on more than one occasion, accused me of playing the martyr.  I know very well that I let other people step all over me.  The epiphany came when I was reading about Stephen’s martyrdom in the Acts of the Apostles (in the New Testament).  Unbidden by me, a memory—more of a distinct impression, a deeply planted feeling—arose.  I started reading the Bible at a young age.  The story of Stephen is disturbing to a child.  The thought of being stoned to death for saying what you believe is a species of horror.  The memory, or impression, was of my mother pointing out how good it would be to be like Stephen.  He is not technically my namesake, but since there were no male role models in my family, I subconsciously made the connection: Stephen the martyr, Steve the martyr.

Giovanni Battista Lucini – Martyrdom of St. Stephen, public domain. Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/martyrdom-of-st-stephen/twGNCf3waLKDvA via Wikimedia Commons

It’s strange to realize this suddenly after half a century of not consciously recollecting it.  What we teach our children stays with them.  If we tell them that it’s good to die for your beliefs, well, we shouldn’t be surprised when they grow up with strong convictions.  (My brother tells me that Virgos think they’re always right and that’s why we’re stubborn; is it the stars or is it the Good Book?)  The Bible puts a positive spin on Stephen’s death.  Formal sainthood isn’t a biblical concept, but he dies forgiving his murderers.  It struck me there in the middle of a working day.  Some of my subconscious personality traits floated to the surface.

My deep desire to avoid Hell also formed my young outlook.  Although my beliefs have to be held accountable to what I’ve learned over decades of study, that fear never departs.  This too was planted in me before I had any real concept to absorb it.  When I grew old enough, the horror became academic, but nonetheless real for it.  I’d studied the history of Hell and I knew New Testament secrets.  To avoid the bad place, be like Stephen.  The dilemma is that as life goes on, we continue to learn.  Young parents don’t know as much as old ones do.  And since we have to teach our children not to run out into the street, or not eat that thing they found, we cast ourselves as The authority.  And that includes things religious.  If we live an examined life, we see shades of nuance where once there was only certainty.  And sometimes we have epiphanies.

X-Rayed

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If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the comic book ads for x-ray specs.  That’s the idea behind a Roger Corman film that Stephen King thought one of the scariest he’d seen.  X, subtitled The Man with X-Ray Eyes, came out in 1963.  Not to be confused with the X of the modern trilogy, this X follows a Doctor Xavier who develops a formula that allows him to see inside people so that he can accurately diagnose and cure them.  This formula may affect his sanity, however, and he kills a friend who is trying to take the ability from him.  A wanted man, he finds a carnival barker who exploits his gift as a trick.  It was a bit jarring to see Don Rickles in a horror movie, but stranger things have happened.  In the midst of this exploitation, an old friend finds him and drives him to safety.

Then to Las Vegas, where his sight allows him to win unabated.  When the police are called he steals a car and increasingly sees through the fabric of the universe.  He stumbles into a road-side revival where the preacher encourages him to take Matthew 5 literally and he does so as the congregation chants “pluck it out!”  What makes this final scene so arresting, apart from qualifying it for Holy Sequel, is that before the minister tells him to mutilate himself, the doctor says he sees through the darkness to the eye that “sees us all.”  He sees God.  The minister interprets this as the Devil, confusing the most elemental entities that exist one for the other.

The movie has some lighthearted moments, some even apart from Don Rickles.  When the doctor begins to see through everybody’s clothes, it’s presented in a humorous way.  But for the most part, the film is played straight and it manages to raise some serious issues for those who think through the implications.  Our senses evolved to help us survive.  Accessing abilities beyond that is a catalyst for disaster.  Indeed, Dr. Xavier early on notes that he’s approaching godhood because of this newly won ability.  It also means that an individual might know too much.  It seems that at the end he does.  The movie is remarkable even today in several ways.  Technology has made special effects more believable, but the human side of this story remains unaltered.  A doctor wanting to help patients becomes more of a monster than a man, in some respects.  And perhaps the most remarkable aspect is that this is a serious horror film made by Roger Corman for AIP. Scary even to a young Stephen King.

End of the Story

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You know that feeling?  Like when you’re driving in thick fog and you know you should stop but you’re late and you have to keep going?  There comes a moment as you’re driving when you know that it’s going to end, and probably badly.  Yet you keep on going.  Trump has me thinking of the end of the world quite a bit.  I know there are many evangelicals out there praying for it fervently while the rest of us would like a little more time on this beautiful planet.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand this outlook, because I do.  I grew up with it and I’ve never forgotten the sensation it caused.  And then I pondered that we are story-telling, and story-thinking creatures.  Perhaps other animals don’t think this way, but we constantly tell ourselves stories.

A story has a beginning, a middle, and well, eventually, an end.  We all know, at some level, that we’re mortal.  Life will end, and every completed story has an end.  Why not the world?  It’s a strangely haunting idea, the world continuing on without us here to make it interesting.  Plants will grow in any soil they can find, even microscopic cracks in the pavement.  Every year it’s like one day everything is suddenly green where only the day before we could see the sky through the branches.  And animals continue their quests for food, mates, and shelter.  Some live to hide while others strut.  Each has a role to play and if you watch them closely you’ll find yourself narrating their stories.  That rabbit.  That bluejay.  That fox.  They have a beginning, middle, and end.  If they can’t tell it, we can do it for them.  It comes naturally to us.

Long ago I learned how one version of Bible interpretation came up with the end of the world as we know it.  I also learned that this was contrived, just as all interpretations are.  This particular one has landed, like a seed, in the cracks of our mind.  It grows, just like that weed in the pavement.  This story must have an end.  We can imagine it no other way.  Even when we grow up and realize that the story was only one we told to children—children old enough to handle it, of course—we still have this certainty that an end is coming.  Like driving in the fog, we just know it.  Even when we realize that in reality we should be putting on the brakes.

Who’s Counting?

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While joking around recently with my daughter, I started counting to ten in Spanish.  I’ve never studied the language, but I can stumble through academic articles in it with a dictionary.  In a senior moment I forgot that “ten” was “diez.”  We had a laugh about it and got back to life.  The next day while doing my sit-ups, I was counting in German, as is my habit.  (The push-ups get counted in English, thank you.)  It struck me that “dreizehn” is where the “teens” start, and I wondered if this was because of some base-six counting.  I decided to check Spanish to see if the pattern holds.  Those of you who know Spanish know that it doesn’t.   In English, which follows German, our teens begin at “thirt” (third).  

Numbers have always fascinated me.  Math not so much.  While I find the base-ten system natural, there is something to be said for base-six.  I’m not sure if that’s where German “zwölfe” comes from, but it does give us our “twelve.”  But those teens are always difficult, aren’t they?  In human life we hit sexual maturity with all of its complications.  Do we project those onto our numbers?  Do other animals do the same?  We now know that some animals have at least the concept of absolute numbers down.  Some birds know exactly how many eggs are in their nests, and bees know what “zero” means.  Their lives tend to be shorter than ours.  Do their ideas of numbers reflect that?

As human beings we know that that good old base-ten number 100 is kind of a life goal.  We know that 100 is “old age,” but we know that it isn’t exactly unusual for a person to live that long.  Of course “ninety” is compatible with either base-six or base-ten, and is a more reasonable goal.  Numbers are used for marking.  They’re so basic to our everyday life that, unless you’re a mathematician, accountant, or scientist, we hardly think about them at all.  Civilization began, however, with gods and numbers.  Kings wanted to know how many people they controlled (some things never change).  In the Bible God punishes David for trying to find out.  There’s even a book called Numbers.  The Mesopotamians used a base-six system that gave us the 360-degree circle.  We still use it even though a 1000-degree circle would give us much greater precision.  I could muse about numbers and counting systems all day, but it’s time to go do some sit-ups, in German.

Cat Tales

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Sometimes I go into an independent bookstore and just look what’s on the shelf.  Often this ends up being an attempt to find a book that isn’t monstrous in length.  Much of what’s currently on offer is long, but I grew up reading 128-page paperbacks (not great literature, granted) that set my expectations.  Now, I do read long books.  Since books and movies are staple topics for discussion on this blog, however, I need to keep things moving in both kinds.  All of which is to say that I picked up Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books because it was short.  This particular bookstore was one where I know and trust the owner’s taste.  I’d bought Haruki Murakami’s works there before.  I really didn’t know what I was getting into this time, though.  I like cats.  I like short books.  I like the Japanese authors I’ve read.  So.

The BISAC code on the back of this one didn’t state that it was fantasy.  I like some fantasy fiction, but my tolerance is limited.  The fault is mine entirely; I own that.  I enjoy speculative fiction and a book with a talking cat felt like it might fit that niche.  I thought the story of The Cat Who Saved Books was good, and the message was sound.  But it felt a bit trite.  The previous Japanese author I’d read was Murakami, and he’s pretty incredible.  I can give you a taste of this book, however, and raise a question about it.  A teenage boy is left taking care of his grandfather’s bookshop after his guardian dies.  A talking cat appears and leads him to four labyrinths where the boy has to rescue books that are being misused.  His arguments to save them don’t seem profound, but something might’ve been lost in translation.

The question is that one of the characters claims to be a book almost two-thousand years old that has had more influence than any other book. Was this the Bible?  Interestingly, nearly every book mentioned in this novel is from the “western canon.”  I have to wonder if this particular book, which is a rather severe character, is the Good Book.  I don’t suspect there’s any way to find out, really.  Still, it seems to fit the sense that Natsukawa uses.  This is an innocent enough fantasy novel.  I guess I prefer my fantasy to have solid rules laid down so that I have an idea what to expect.  But then again, my perspective is that of a primarily western reader, and one who craves short books now and again. I’m open to learn.

Bible and Horror

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Having written Holy Horror, I keep an eye out for Bibles in horror contexts.  In the context of A Nightmare in New Hope there was the torso and head of Fr. Alameida from Stigmata.  In his hands he clutches a Bible.  Of course, if you’ve seen Stigmata you’ll know that Alameida is already dead at this point, having been so from the start of the film.  Those visiting a horror museum are likely completely nonplussed by seeing a Bible there.  Much of the horror genre builds on religious themes.  Witness The Nun.  The original costume for her is standing over in the corner right there.  If I had enough time (i.e., if I were in an academic post again) I would be spending my time trying to figure out this connection.  I’ve written about religion and horror in four books, in several articles on Horror Homeroom, and in too many blog posts to remember.  There is a connection that only professors have the luxury of thinking time to explore.

A couple hours later at Vampa, Vampire Paranormal Museum, Bibles were again in evidence.  Indeed, in profusion.  Vampire hunters, it seems, never wanted to be without the Good Book.  Many of the vampire hunting chests (entire chests!) included a Bible.  As noted in a previous post, Michael Jackson owned a vampire hunting kit for a while, until the Jehovah’s Witnesses convinced him he shouldn’t.  In one of nature’s ironies, in the mail when we got back from the museum was a handwritten letter to me from the local JW Kingdom Hall.  Religion and horror.  Vampa also owns a rarity, an exorcism chair.  Things get a bit muddy here since the chair dates from the nineteenth century but exorcism as we know it largely derives from the movie, The Exorcist.  And that takes us back to New Hope.

My interest was primarily in artifacts from actual movies.  The Exorcist head of Regan McNeil in Nightmare in New Hope was, I believe he said, a cast.  A horror museum without at least a passing reference to The Exorcist would feel strangely incomplete.  And then there’s Maxxxine.  The entire X trilogy is framed around religion that leads to horror, over a couple of generations.  There’s a connection here and I haven’t found a convincing explanation for it yet.  It’s one of the many books that I’m working on at the moment.  But time is limited.  And Fr. Alameida’s presence in this room, holding tight to his Bible, reminds us that the topic bears exploration.

Meeting Buffy

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I have a confession to make.  I had never, before just recently, seen any of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  This is kind of embarrassing because it was being talked about even as I was just starting to teach at Nashotah House.  And it has been discussed in religion and horror books quite often.  I understood that the television series was considered better than the original movie, but I felt that it was important to go to the source, at least to start.  Joss Whedon, it is reported, distanced himself from the film he wrote because it began taking a different direction than he’d envisioned.  The television series, which was praised among any number of critics, was more what he had in mind.  Still, the film isn’t terrible.  The concept of a ditzy blonde being an unwitting vampire hunter is entertaining and Kristy Swanson plays a pretty good Buffy and Donald Sutherland a great Merrick.

Having not seen the series to compare, the movie stands fairly well on its own.  Vampire comedy horrors can be quite entertaining.  The plot here is a bit overwrought and the love story feels tacked on to the vampire narrative.  It lacks the strong through line characteristic of Joss Whedon movies.  So, Buffy doesn’t realize that she’s a slayer, a kind of reincarnated vampire hunter.  Merrick convinces her by telling her what her dreams have been.  And Buffy has preternatural abilities—reflexes beyond human reach.  And the vampires have been awaking in Los Angeles.  The story just doesn’t hold together as well as it should.  I was a bit surprised, however, to find the Bible quoted a time or two.

The charm, which also led me to read about Abraham Lincoln as a vampire slayer, is the unexpected juxtaposition.  A cheerleader, or the best president we’ve managed to elect in this divided country, and vampires?  Even more, vampire slayers?  Vampires, although monsters, are often symbolic and sometimes sympathetic ones.  Buffy’s vampires aren’t charming.  Sometimes funny, yes, but they aren’t the tormented souls that elicit human sympathy.  And Buffy adds its own backstory mythology.  In Dracula Van Helsing was a mortal aware of vampire habits.  Buffy sees this as a predetermined role, specifically female in nature.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to carve out the time to watch the television series.  But at least, at this point, I have been able to put a bit more flesh on the character of an unlikely vampire foe.  It only took me thirty-three years.

Deadly Seven

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Seven, styled Se7en, shades more toward the thriller end of the stick than horror.  The two are very closely related, of course, but as a gritty cop drama, the main horror element is the gore.  And the serial killer.  Indeed, it’s often compared to The Silence of the Lambs, a card-carrying horror club member.  My main complaint is that much of the movie is shot so dark that you can’t see what’s going on.  The unnamed city is about as cheerless as Bladerunner, and even when people aren’t being stalked by the serial killer they’re being murdered anyway.  So this dark setting brings together two detectives, one retiring (played by Morgan Freeman) and one with anger issues (Brad Pitt) set to take over.  The two are only supposed to overlap seven days, but the seven in the title refers also to the seven deadly sins.  

A literate cop drama—Freeman knows his literature (Milton, Chaucer, Dante, and even Thomas Aquinas)—it is a step above the standard crime drama.  The fact that Freeman spends his nights in the library may be the reason some people consider this dark academia.  The academic part is otherwise absent.  In any case, it is Freeman who recognizes that victims are being killed for their embrace of one of the seven deadly sins.  An obese man is fed to death, a greedy lawyer has to cut off a pound of his own flesh (in a hat-tip to Shakespeare).  When Freeman’s character tells Pitt’s that it’s from the Merchant of Venice, the later says “I’ve never seen it.”  Not read it, but watched it.  It’s Freeman who recognizes the endgame that the serial killer is playing and tries to warn Pitt.  But Pitt’s wrath is also a deadly sin.

The seven deadly sins aren’t biblical.  They emerge in early Christianity, taking shape through such writers as Tertullian, Evagrius, and Pope Gregory I.  They have remained in Catholicism as  pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth (which sounds like the profile of some narcissists in the news).  They’ve been used in proper horror films as well as in thrillers, giving a convenient number of infractions to pursue.  Seven is one of those films that has become more highly regarded over time.  One might say that a prophet is without honor in their own time.  In any case, the movie is gripping and sad and a bit bloody.  It doesn’t unfold exactly as you might expect.  And no matter its genre, it can leave you thinking.

Night Fears

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Have you ever had one of those dreams?  The kind where your subconscious turns on you brutally?  I’ve often said I’m my own worst critic but this one took it to a whole new level.  In real life I’m working on novel number eight.  One through seven haven’t been published (and at least two don’t deserve to be).  I’ve kind of been thinking that this one might see the light of day.  I finished a very rough draft about a couple months ago and I’ve been working on revisions since.  Meanwhile I keep reading novels and seeing how well they flow compared to my story.  That must’ve been on my mind because in my dream I was in a room with five or six publishing moguls.  In the way of dreams it seems that perhaps an agent had arranged this.  I was in the room with them and when they finished, each took their turn telling me how awful it was.  Their critique was brutal.  So bad I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I found tears on my cheek.

Of course, my writing time is early morning.  Work is uncompromising.  So I had to get up and work on what my subconscious had just told me was, in the words of Paul, skubalon.  (Look up the commentaries on Philippians 3.8, if you dare.)  Like any writer, I have my doubts about my own work.  This particular novel I’ve been working on, off and on, for almost three decades.  It’s an idea I can’t let go.  Just a couple months back I was proud of myself for finally finishing a draft of it, and this morning I’m tempted to delete all the files.  Why does one’s subconscious do this to a person?  My very first attempt at a novel, as a teen, was torn up by my own hands.

The other dream that has been recurring, in various forms, is where I’ve been hired back by Nashotah House.  I taught there for a decade and a half, and I wasn’t very happy toward the end, but I did my job well.  In real life I wouldn’t go back, but in my dreams I’m always overjoyed.  I wake up happy and optimistic.  Some version of that dream comes to me at least once a year, I suppose.  Sometimes several times.  Dreams are mysterious.  They’re telling us something, but they’re coy about exactly what.  That’s what made last night’s dream so bad.  There was no ambiguity.  This was pure, unadulterated self doubt in the room with me and it gave me no quarter.  I got up and continued work on the revisions anyway.  Who’s afraid of omens?

Good Hearts

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If you’re looking for more religion-based horror, you might try the 1987 film Angel Heart.  As I’m discovering quite a bit lately, I could’ve used this one in Holy Horror as well.  The religious elements are pretty hard to miss, beginning with the protagonist’s name, Harold Angel.  (Hark the, any one?)  A private detective, Angel is hired to find a missing person for a Louis Cyphre.  His search takes him from New York (where a guy keeps a pistol in a Bible (there’s maybe an entire book in this trope), down to New Orleans.  First he meets Cyphre in the back room of a black church but soon he starts getting chased out when he starts to uncover any clues.  Time to head to the Big Easy.

In New Orleans he finds all kinds of occult practices taking place.  And the folks are none-too-friendly when he starts making mention of the guy he’s after.  He ends up witnessing a voodoo ritual and complains about the bad religion he encounters.  The big reveal indicates that there’s been a case of mistaken identity.  Louis Cyphre (Lucifer) has actually been setting an elaborate trap all along.  The portrayal of the Devil as a sophisticated gentleman isn’t new, of course.  There is a scene where Angel and the Devil are in a church and Angel, being a detective, uses inappropriate language.  Lucifer (not yet revealed as such) has to remind him a couple of times to watch his tongue while in a sacred place.  Satan is more pious than Angel.

The movie has multiple issues, but it has become a cult film over the years.  Like many others that I’ve discussed on this blog, the entire plot draws its horror from religion.  Angel has a difficult time with the non-Christian worship he witnesses.  But really, it is the Christian Devil that’s the antagonist here.  Quite often in movies like this, fear of other religions is based on the supposition that Christianity is correct.  That’s been a broad American trait for centuries, and it gives horror room to run.  The idea of a generic Christianity (which is probably what most Christians hold to) overlooks the doctrinal differences, often quite significant, between denominations.  This particular avenue isn’t much pursued in horror films, at least in my experience.  Interestingly, like Cat People (1982), it places this religion-based horror in New Orleans.  There’s plenty to explore in that connection as well.  Angel Heart is not a great movie, but it can lead in some interesting directions; a holy sequel may be necessary.

Step Far

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It made a bit of a splash when it came out, Longlegs did.  It took a while to get to a streaming service I can access, but I can say that it’s a movie with considerable thought behind it.  And religion through and through it.  I would’ve been able to have used it in Holy Horror, and it is one of the very few movies where a character corrects another, saying “Revelations” is singular, not plural.  Somebody did their homework.  Although the plot revolves around Satanism, you won’t be spoon-fed anything.  The connection’s not entirely clear, but it does seem to involve some form of possession.  The plot involves ESP and a literal deal with the Devil.  Things start off with a future FBI agent encountering Longlegs just before her ninth birthday.

As an adult, she’s forgotten the childhood encounter but a set of murders with a similar MO indicates that a serial killer, called Longlegs, is on the loose.  The murders are all inside jobs, and it turns out that a doll with some kind of possessing ability is responsible for inspiring fathers to murder their families.  No details of the connection between the dolls, Satan, and the reason for the killings ever emerges.  The movie unnerves by its consistent mood of threat and menace.  Satan, the guy “downstairs,” appears more properly to be chaos rather than a kind of literal Devil.  Satanic symbols are used and there are plenty of triple sixes throughout.  The Bible has a role in breaking the killer’s code, but talk of prayer and protection also find their way in the dialogue.  Longlegs uses a ruse of a church to get the dolls into his victims’ houses.

I’ll need to see it again to try to piece more of the story together, but Longlegs is another example of religion-based horror tout court.  Serial killers are scary enough on their own, but when their motivation is religious they become even more so.  Nicholas Cage plays Longlegs in a convincingly disturbing way, but there’s definitely some diegetic supernatural goings on here.  The art-house trappings make the plot a little difficult to follow, particularly early on.  Religion, however, shines through clearly.  The FBI agent, although psychic, has ceased believing in religion while trusting the supernatural.  Even as the credits rolled I had the feeling that I’d missed some important clues.  And those clues would be important, particularly if I ever do decide to write a follow-up to Holy Horror.

Thinking of Home

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The earth, and even life on it, will, I’m confident, outlive our petty desires for money and being the king of the hill.  Scientists are getting tantalizingly close to demonstrating something that many of us already know—life exists elsewhere.  Chemical signatures of life appear as close as Venus and as far as K2-18b.  I suspect our universe is full of life.  And life is more than just rationality.  We’re creatures driven to survive and that level of will appears to be universal.  As Ian Malcolm says, “Life will find a way,” or something similar.  Earth Day should be a celebration but under too many Republican presidents it has become a plea to please stop intentionally harming our planet.  I grew up in that distorted religion known as Fundamentalism.  I learned that the destruction of the world was necessary to force God’s hand with the second coming.  The planet was here to exploit and waste since he’ll be back any day now.

Unlike many of my cohort, I decided to learn more about that perspective.  The more I learned the more shocked I became.  A warped and twisted message had been passed along as Gospel truth, and that the care the creator bestowed upon creation was merely a smokescreen to hide Jesus’ return.  I still believe we are not capable of completely destroying the planet.  Life will continue with or without us.  Life is persistent and hopeful.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take care of it.  Earth Day has become a rallying point for those who see the world sensibly.  We have so much wonderful life on this planet.  In our arrogance and in our tendency to take mythology literally, we have assumed the worst.  Why not take care of what we were given?  Jesus may not come back, but perhaps the Lorax will.

There are ways to live sustainably on this planet.  It does mean that some of the richest will need to surrender some of their wealth and power.  We need to learn the habits of requiring less and appreciating more what we have.  Like most people born into the world in this era, I struggle against the desire for new things.  Novelty is natural to such curious creatures as ourselves.  But there are other such curious creatures too.  They have a place here, even as those which seem to have no curiosity do.  It’s a planet big enough for all of us.  We just need to be sensible about it.  And remember the earth today and be thankful for our home every day.

Image credit: NASA/ISS Expedition 28, public domain from Wikimedia Commons