Old Movies

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Something strange is happening.  (“How’s that new?” you might well ask.)  There seems to be a bifurcation taking place in my brain, what techies might call “partitioning.”  Specifically it regards what I think of as “old movies.”  By this I don’t mean movies from the sixties or before.  No, I mean movies I saw some time ago, often on DVD or even VHS, sometimes in theaters, that became part of my standard repertoire.  I imagine most cinephiles have certain films to which they keep coming back.  But for me, the “old movies” are those I haven’t blogged about.  Also, they predate streaming so, in that sense, they are “old.”  You see, I’m not a very internet-savvy thinker.  It took me quite a few years to figure out I could link my posts with other posts on my own blog so that in the rare event that someone might want to read more they could click on the links like you do on Wikipedia.  (Now that you’re here, stay a while!)

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

This blog was started in 2009.  For most of its history it has been daily.  I didn’t automatically start blogging about movies, though.  For a few years I tried to tie all my posts into religion, widely conceived.  Then, kind of establishing my own “brand,” I started writing about less ethereal topics.  Including movies that don’t have religion in them.  By far most of the movies I discuss on this blog are first-time films for me.  Occasionally I’ll go back and address one of my “old movies.”  This occurred to me the other day when I went to link to Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.  I thought I’d posted about it, but it’s one of my oldies, so I hadn’t.  I don’t even remember when I first saw it.  If feeling nostalgic, I’ll look backward, as an historian is wont to do, but it doesn’t happen often.

Since we can’t see ahead in our lives with any real clarity, I didn’t anticipate this blog focusing on darker themes. When I started, finding a position back in academia seemed like a possibility.  For me this blog is therapy, but this is as good a place as any to talk about movies, and most of mine fall into an ill-fitting genre called “horror.”  Even among these, my “old movies,” like The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, Sleepy Hollow, or even Paranormal Activity, which now more or less define my research, were missed out for having been too old (having been seen too long ago).  Most of the movies discussed in the past few years here have been streamed.  Many of them are easily forgotten.  But the old ones, they’re stuck, apparently for good. Such is the power of old movies.

Light Shadows

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I often do things backwards.  It’s not really intentional.  You see, I’m busy with my day job and something most people may not realize is that researching and writing are also a full-time job.  Only they don’t pay well, unless you’re a professor.  In any case, I find out about things in odd ways.  A friend got me watching What We Do in the Shadows, the current FX television show.  I then realized it was based on a movie so I decided I should see that before going any further.  The movie is funny, but the television show develops some of the same bits so really, it is best to see the movie first.  It turns out that while I’ve been busy working, and writing books on other types of horror movies, this franchise has been developing.  So what’s it about?  Vampires unliving together.

One of the contradictions about vampires, as the undead, is that they live by certain rules that make them distinct.  Going back to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they don’t always live alone.  In fact, three female vampires live in Castle Dracula (although the Count moves to England without them).  What We Do in the Shadows is based on the premise of vampire roommates in contemporary housing.  How would they get along as roommates?  Many of us have experienced roommates and we know the kinds of conflicts that normally arise.  Would the undead have some other complications?  In case you haven’t gathered so already, this is comedy.  There are a few vampire chase scenes and a hilarious interaction with werewolves, all filmed as a mockumentary.  It’s pretty funny stuff.

There’s nothing too serious here, but there is bloodshed, of course.  And the developing of different characters for the undead and putting them together in one house does lead to all kinds of situations, some of them adult.  The television show is binge-worthy, if you’ve got the time and if you like vampires.  If you want to start from the beginning, the movie sets the premise well.  Vampires are so well established culturally that there’s plenty of room to fly.  Comedy horror has really come into its own.  Vampires have been culturally ascendant for quite some time now.  They are yet another thing I was fascinated by as a child that later became cool.  I wrote one of my senior term papers on vampires in high school, before college convinced me such things were puerile.  Now I’m finding that the culture has gone after them.  As I say, sometimes I do things backwards, even on a large scale.  

Getting By

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There are some books, such as Trina Paulus’s Hope for the Flowers, or Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy,  the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, that are inherently hopeful and that you like to have around.  Especially in the coming four years full of hate-filled rhetoric.  My wife asked for Regina Linke’s The Oxherd Boy: Parables of Love, Compassion, and Community, for Christmas.  Of course, I read it too.  It is yet another to add to this hopeful shelf.  The thing about these three books is that you could easily read them all in an unrushed afternoon.  All three are profoundly hopeful outlooks on life.  I would recommend having them at hand.  The Oxherd Boy is a combination of beautiful artwork with bits of wisdom drawn from Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism that can keep you centered in difficult times.

There’s no real storyline here, but rather reflections.  “Eastern wisdom” is kind of a tired trope, but the “religions” of that part of the world can infuse a bit of sanity into many of the facades western religions throw up.  I’m not anti-Christian; I fear our society is.  It has taken one of these facades and claimed the name “Christian” so that it can get its hate on and feel righteous doing so.  There are seldom positive benefits when politics finds religion.  If any.  The Oxherd Boy reminds us to look for the good in simple things.  A life with friends and one in which love is the primary outlook.  I believe Christianity began that way, but it became politicized in under four centuries and politics tend to engender hatred.  A truly Christian state, through and through, has never, ever existed.  And it’s not coming here.

We know hate mongering will take the norm.  In fact, while out driving recently I noticed an increase in rude and angry behavior on the part of not a few drivers.  There was a noticeable uptick in such behavior shortly after Trump’s first election.  In a nation of people that imitate what they see on the media, I suggest staying inside and reading a book.  I would recommend The Oxherd Boy among them.  As long as you’re stocking up, don’t forget Hope for the Flowers and The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse as well.  Books don’t need to be written by academics to try to make the world a better place.  In fact, sometimes I wonder about the choices I’ve made.  So I’ll pull down the books that give me hope, and reflect.

Poe Day

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Perhaps best known for his rabidly racist The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith was nevertheless influential in early filmmaking.  I’m fascinated by how literature made its way to celluloid, particularly in the early days.  It was thus that I discovered Griffith’s Edgar Allen [sic] Poe, a silent film from 1909.  A dramatized version of Poe’s writing of “The Raven,” this seven-minute movie opens with Virginia Poe—the “Lenore” of the poem—in the process of dying at the Poe’s hovel.  Not able to keep warm or to find nourishment, she languishes on a cot until Poe arrives home and covers her with his coat.  At that moment a raven appears on the bust of Pallas above the chamber door, leading Poe to write the poem in a white heat.  He knows it’s a masterpiece and leaves Virginia promising success.

In a scene only too familiar to any writer, Poe takes the poem to the publishers, three of whom simply dismiss him, the third laughing at his work.  This particular scene rings so true.  A fourth editor buys it from him on the spot.  This is, in fact, how publishing works.  I’ve had 33 short stories either published or accepted for publication.  By far the majority of them were rejected multiple times.  One of them, previously turned down by six editors, ended up winning a prize.  So it goes.  You’ll never find an editor who “gets” you every time.  Even those who like your work may eventually start sending you elsewhere.  I often wonder how many writers of what would be classics died unpublished because of some editor’s choice.  But back to Poe.

Screenshot: public domain,

Newly paid for his work, he buys food and a blanket and returns home jubilant.  Of course, it is only to find Virginia dead.  Poe’s life did have its share of intense drama.  His death remains mysterious all these years later, and Virginia’s death was a severe blow to him.  “The Raven” was published in 1845 and Virginia died two years later, with Poe himself passing yet two years beyond that.  This film, which I learned about from Jonathan Elmer’s In Poe’s Wake, was made sixty years after Poe’s death.  He’d already become an icon by then, instantly recognizable in pancake makeup.  But even now, more than a century later, publishing is still a matter of the same process.  One of my own novels has been declined over 100 times, despite having once been under contract.  I do know the feeling of being rejected by publishers, even as I participate in a ritual as old as writing for publication.  Happy birthday, Mr. Poe.

Steering

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I’ve always been self-critical.  Often when someone points out something I’ve done wrong I’ve already figured out that I’ve made the mistake and the reminder is painful.  I can’t help but think that my childhood made me this way.  In any case, since I haven’t ever found much success is writing, I figure I must need help with it.  Recently I’ve read books on various aspects of writing by Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft (published posthumously).  I’ve read quite a few more over the years.  I recently saw Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin.  I confess that I haven’t read a ton of Le Guin’s fiction, but she is treated with a great deal of reverence in literary circles that I figured a bit of advice from a master couldn’t hurt.  Besides, it isn’t a long book.

Books about writing aren’t volumes that you fly through, though.  Steering the Craft has ten relatively short chapters and ten writing exercises, some in multiple parts.  As I read through I stopped and did each of the exercises.  I really didn’t want to cheat myself of the experience of learning from a departed sage.  The experience was refreshing.  As will surprise none of my regular readers, I’m in the midst of another writing project.  The thing about steering is that you’re constantly doing it.  And if the captain is someone who’s been through these waters, it’s best to listen.  At the same time—and Le Guin was very aware of this—hard and fast rules tend to be neither.  What spells success for one author becomes abject failure for another.  Some of us write because we must, whether anybody reads us or not.

But the exercises.  Exercise is good for your health.  Even writers with native talent need to stay in shape.  I’ve been doing creative writing, in one form or another, constantly, since at least the Nixon Administration.  Publication began in the academic realm when I was working on my doctorate.  I had my first fiction piece published in 2009.  Keen eyed readers will notice that is the same year I began this blog.  I’d been pretty much booted from academia by then, but I’d been writing in the meantime.  Essays, novels, short stories.  Then I tried a nonfiction book or two.  There is a great gulf between writing and publication.  An ocean, in fact.  And if you hope to cross an ocean, it is always helpful to learn how to steer.  I’m still trying to learn why my boat seems to be leaking, though.

Old Dracula

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Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the “old movies” about which I posted some time back.  I’ve seen it at least a couple of times, and I wrote a previous blog post about it (October 11 2009).  This is a film about which I have conflicted feelings.  It has immense visual appeal and it influenced a tremendous number of followers.  It also did exceptionally well at the box office.  Since 1992 was a year in which I’m pretty sure I saw no movies in the theater (finishing a doctorate, moving back to America, and commuting weekly from Champaign-Urbana to Nashotah House drained my time and energy.  Besides, still being fairly newly married, I had not transitioned to horror movies again (that’s a different story, also involving Nashotah).)  Being a former literalist, when I first saw it I resisted the title since it takes significant liberties with Stoker, but the overall story is probably the closest of any vampire movie I’ve seen.

The strengths of the movie include its interaction with religion.  Vlad begins by renouncing God and becoming an agent of evil, stabbing a cross, and drinking the literal blood that pours out.  A number of Stoker’s own religious elements are also portrayed, and the ending brings God back into the picture, implying a kind of redemption for the defeated vampire.  The stylishness and opulence of the movie also make for engaging viewing.  It doesn’t have the gothic feel that it might—there seem to be some almost Burtonesque elements to it and some of the casting decisions feel ill fitting.  Anthony Hopkins just doesn’t do it for me as Van Helsing.  His one-liners feel out of place, and his interpretation of Van Helsing as a whole doesn’t resonate with me.

I do like Gary Oldman’s Dracula, however.  He’s right up there with Lugosi (but not quite at that level).  The conflicted vampire is an appealing character—much more intriguing than the pure evil kind.  This Dracula forsakes God because church rules about suicide keep his Elisabeta out of Heaven.  Even now the rulings seem not to allow for much nuance.  At heart, the vampire is a religious monster.  Fear of the crucifix may go back to Bram Stoker, but this movie tries to give it a backstory.  It’s a question of theodicy—why bad things happen to good people, essentially.  This is probably the biggest reason people end up turning away from religion, and it’s something theologians ponder.  While it isn’t my favorite vampire movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is stylish and accurate to a degree.  But it also turns back the pages a bit further than Stoker’s book does.

Reading Unwritten

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There’s a style of writing—I’m not sure what it’s called—where an author keeps revealing new, and necessary information on nearly every page.  The effect on me, as a reader, is almost as if the book is backwards; too much wasn’t revealed up front and that kept me from understanding the story as it unfolded.  I confess that the fault is mine.  I’ve always appreciated a narrative that begins with much of what you need to know and then reveals unexpected things along the way.  This unwieldy preamble is to say that I had trouble getting into the otherwise delightful fantasy The Library of the Unwritten.  A. J. Hackwith is a solid writer, but since this is fantasy there’s some introduction to the unfamiliar world that readers like yours truly needs.  At least a bit more than is on offer here at first.

This is a fun book with a fun premise.  Books in Hell’s library are unwritten and restless.  If not watched, their characters come to life and the book goes missing.  The idea of the unfinished also applies to paintings and other creative endeavors.  At first I thought this was going to be like Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next novels (several of which are discussed on this blog; you’ll have to use the search function) but the character from a book quickly gets swallowed up in a larger story involving demons with backstories slowly revealed, as well as a librarian and a muse, also with baggage that we only see once the train has left the station.  About halfway through, the story really starts to move and becomes quite enjoyable.  I guess I need more orientation than some readers.

The novel unfolds into a potential battle between Heaven and Hell, but those aren’t the only realms in play.  There’s Earth, of course, as well as Valhalla, and some nameless realms where the gods have died out.  And it focuses on a library.  It’s this final aspect, I suspect, that leads many people to categorize this novel as an example of Dark Academia.  Indeed, that’s where I discovered the book, on a display table with that label.  Although written with a light hand, and often somewhat funny, there is a deeper meaning here, a narrative about the importance of books that faces the reality that some would rather destroy them than read them.  I’m sure there are some religious folk that would see this book as promoting satanism and darkness, but instead it emphasizes loyalty and goodness.  I’ll be pondering it a while.

Burn Out

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The Los Angeles fires are terrifying.  In my case, I can’t help but think of the Peshtigo, Wisconsin fire of 1871.  I read two books about it, the first because my daughter, in late elementary school in Oconomowoc, heard about the fire in class.  Embers of October by Robert W. Wells is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.  After we’d safely moved out of Wisconsin I read Denise Gess and William Lutz’s Firestorm at Peshtigo.  Frightening stuff.  I feel for those suffering from the Los Angeles fires.  America is particularly vulnerable to such things since, according to books I read when writing Weathering the Psalms, the western half of the nation exists in, for the most part, a perpetual drought.  (Those who live in Seattle may disagree.)  Rain doesn’t fall evenly across the country.  I grew up in the relatively moist eastern part (we get a lot of rain), but even here fires are a possibility.  We had a very dry October, and a very dry May the year before.

Image credit: Mike McMillan/USFS, public domain as a work of the US government, via Wikimedia Commons

Global warming will only increase the problems, I fear.  Too long too many people in power haven’t taken it seriously enough.  The weather is a large, extremely complex phenomenon that we still don’t understand.  I sit shivering at my desk on a cloudy January day looking at weather apps that tell me it’s sunny outside.  One thing we do know about it is that if we tamper with it in one place, it affects the weather everywhere.  What if, instead of posturing and fussing with people who live in other countries, with larger entities trying to control them, we all turned our attention to that sky we hold in common?  Trying to understand its needs and temperaments?  Realizing that if crops fail in one country there will be shortages everywhere?

The fires aren’t just Los Angeles’ problem.  Large nations posturing about who has the biggest leader has proven ineffective time and again.  We need cooperators and collaborators, not nationalists.  Embers of October, especially, paints a Hell on Earth.  One that couldn’t be escaped by many of the people in this small town that was utterly wiped out by a natural disaster.  Such things should be required reading.  Instead, small-minded people ban books claiming ignorance is bliss.  Trying to avoid a metaphorical Hell, they introduce a real one here on earth.  And yet, some use even this to divide people against each other.  And people who have no will to help one another is Hell indeed.

Upstate

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Unrequited love is sometimes tragic.  Other times it’s merely sad.  People are attracted to places.  Or at least the idea of places.  I was born in Pennsylvania, but to a wandering family.  I keep looking for roots—my tribe.  I didn’t know my father well growing up, but my mother’s family, before taking on that rootless search for greener pastures, was from upstate New York.  For several generations.  I’ve tried many times to land a teaching post somewhere upstate, but in vain.  Even when I knew the people in the department and had been to campus, like that time at Syracuse University.  It was raining when I visited, back in my Routledge days.  I was taken by what I experienced there, never to be welcomed myself.  My family was from a bit further north, around Albany, the head of the Hudson Valley.

At the time I wasn’t aware that my childhood hero Rod Serling was born in Syracuse.  My daughter was at school in Binghamton, which is where Serling grew up.  That I knew.  Nor did I know that Dan Curtis, creator of Dark Shadows—that other childhood staple—had gone to college at Syracuse.  Something about upstate.  I’ve remarked to my family that when traveling in this part of the country I catch glimpses of familial facial features in some strangers.  A passing glance suggests that they might be distantly related.  My unknown tribe.  Economics, however, have always kept me away.  Even when I explained in my cover letters that I felt that special connection my applications were summarily brushed aside.  Probably by folk who knew who their tribe was.  Probably from somewhere else.

In this world of internet loneliness, we long for connection.  We lived in Wisconsin for over a decade.  The only people I really got to know were those I knew from Nashotah House.  And this was even with years of involvement with the PTO, serving on the building committee, and even being president one year.  People were busy even back then.  I was thinking perhaps I’d found my tribe in Wisconsin. But then…  The move to New Jersey put me close to my ancestral state, but not in it (my mother was born in Jersey).  Economics, that dismal science, dictated that a move had to be back to Pennsylvania, where I was born among strangers.  Our nation is one of many tribes, including those we sought to exterminate to steal their land.  We have plenty of space, but we value economics over belonging.  You may buy the presidency, but you can’t buy your tribe.

Measuring Books

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You know how some email servers stock your inbox with ads?  I almost never pay attention to them.  Then one for Books by the Foot showed up.  I had to click.  The basic idea is simple enough: you want to look smart so you fill your shelves with books by a company that sells them by the linear foot.  You can get color coordination, rainbows, old books, you name it.  Now this isn’t a free ad.  In fact, this is a rather sad state of affairs.  I’m sure their antique books have been vetted for any real treasures, but the fact that people want to buy books just for display evokes, well, melancholy.  I’m pleased that books retain their cachet as symbols of pride, but these are not books for reading.  I’m left with mixed feelings.  The website states that they have over 5 million books on hand.

At least they’re not selling ebooks.  I love books.  They are a wonderful symbol and I suspect they are among the most noble things that humans achieve.  I grew enamored of books as I entered my tweens.  I was terribly shy by that point.  We had moved to a new, and rough small town where I really didn’t know anybody.  Life, which hadn’t been exactly a picnic to that point, seemed to be getting scarier.  So I read.  And I never really stopped.  Ironically, during my professorial days I had less time to read entire books.  Those who’ve dabbled in higher education know that at even the hint of organizational skill you get bumped into administration, whether you want to or not.  And administration is busy work.  Yes, even professors have it too.  In any case, when I got bumped back down to being a mere adjunct, I started reading a lot again.

One time one of my bosses asked me how many books I had.  This was early in the pandemic when we were seeing inside each other’s houses for the first time, via Zoom.  My office is one of my main book repositories.  (Along with the attic and the living room.)  I answered truthfully that I’ve never counted.  I started using Goodreads in 2013 to keep track of the books I read.  In those early days I didn’t put everything in there (who hasn’t read a book they’re embarrassed to admit to once in a while?), but when I started the reading challenges in 2016 I did.  Mine has been a life defined by books.  Starting with the Good Book, and including many quite the opposite, I have earned books by the foot.  But I’m not selling.  Symbols have value beyond cash, at least in my mind.

Steve or Stephanie

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I know gender is a construct, and all.  I even put my pronouns (he, him, his) on my work email signature.  I haven’t bothered on my personal email account since so few people email me that the effort seems superfluous.  But I’m wondering if the tech gods, aka AI, understand.  You see, with more and more autosuggests (which really miss the point much of the time), at work the Microsoft Outlook email system is all the time trying to fill things in for me.  Lately Al, which I call Al, has been trying to get me to sign my name with an “@“ so people can “text” me a response.  No.  No, no, no!  I write emails like letters; greeting, body, closing.  People who email like they’re texting sound constantly disgruntled and surly.  Take an extra second and ask “How are you?”  Was that so hard?  But I was talking about gender.

So Al is busy putting words in my fingers and every time I start typing my closing name it autosuggests “Stephanie” before I correct it.  It’s starting to make me a little paranoid.  It does seem that men and women differ biologically, and I identify with the gender assigned to me at birth.  I’m pretty sure Dr. Butter said “It’s a boy,” or something similar all those years ago.  Now I’m not sure if Al is deliberately taunting me or simply going through the alphabet as I type.  Stephanie comes before Stephen (which isn’t my name either) or Steve.  The thing is, I type fairly fast (I won’t say accurately, but fast) and Al has trouble keeping up.  But still Al is autosuggesting Stephanie for me every time.  I’ve been using computers since the 1980s; shouldn’t Al know who I am by now?

Of course, when Al takes over such human things as gender will only get in the way.  I guess we have that to look forward to.  Gender may be something socialized, I realize.  For those of us approaching ancient, we had gender differences drilled into our heads growing up.  I recently saw one of those cutesy novelty signs that resonated with me: “Please be patient with me, I’m from the 1900s.”  I’m not a sexist—I have supported feminism for as long as I can remember.  But I don’t like being called Stephanie.  What if my name was Stefan?  That isn’t autosuggested at all.  I know of others whose names are even earlier, alphabetically.  Maybe Al is overreaching.  Maybe it ought to leave names to humans.  At least for as long as we’re still here.

Re-untold

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In retrospect, Universal’s Dark Universe, itself a shadowy concept, could have been a thing.  With the budget behind it, Dracula Untold could’ve been spectacular.  As so often happens, however, poor writing seems to have brought Vlad the Impaler to his knees.  I suppose it was rather tacky of me to fall asleep during it when a friend showed it to me shortly after it was available on streaming.  My excuse was that we started late and I’m a very early riser.  Finding it on a network to which I have access, and on a free weekend, I decided to give it another try.  I didn’t fall asleep the second time, but I did end up disappointed.  Action-horror is a tough sub-genre to pull off well.  As some critics pointed out, if Dracula could defeat 1,000 men singlehandedly (which he does shortly after being turned), then why does he not do so when it’s crucial?

What I did find intriguing is the older vampire that lives in Broken Tooth Mountain.  What is his backstory?  And why, if Dracula can just die, does the older vampire not do so himself, when he clearly wishes to?  He just has to step out on a sunny day.  The menace of the classic vampire isn’t on the battlefield, but in the one-on-one situations.  At night, when you’re sleeping.  Or otherwise unable to protect yourself.  The movie does have some good moments—and with a budget like that, it should have—but overall it struggles.  

Part of the difficulty is understanding Vlad the Impaler being, at heart, a nice guy.  Although he impaled thousands of people, he really just wants peace and a domestic life with his wife and son.  He’s reluctant to challenge the Turks until one taunts him upon taking his son hostage.  He tries to protect his people, but when they help save him (as vampires that he personally has turned), he destroys them all when it’s over.  The question of motivation hangs unanswered over the whole thing.  Dracula is never evil, not even when he declares himself the son of the Devil.  He attacks only in self-defense and although he does shed unnecessary blood, it is only in the fog of war.  And the motivation issues also apply to his pre-vampiric allies.  They don’t seem to be able to make up their minds whether Vlad is a good guy or not.  They try to kill him then they fight next to him.  There’s a lot going on here—maybe too much—and it seems that the story wasn’t thought out well enough to make it all work.  Vampires, it seems, don’t always cooperate.

Finding Vampires

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Parents always dread when their child will ask them the inevitable question: where do vampires come from?  A number of people have undertaken to answer that question, and Mark Collins Jenkins attempts it with aplomb.  Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend is quite a romp through the fields of the undead.  Ranging from the chewing dead through epidemics, Montague Summers, movies, Varney the vampire, the origin of the word “vampire,” where zombies come from, and practices of dealing with corpses, this study may not convince the reader that the mystery has been solved, but it will provide lots of information.  I’ve been pondering vampires lately, and this book ties many of these loose threads together well.  Jenkins has a talent for beginning a chapter on an apparently unrelated topic and then weaving it into the growing, ever expanding vampire tapestry.

I’ve read, many times, that vampires have ancient origins.  That really depends on how you define “vampire.”  This book explores those ancient roots, but unflinchingly points out that our modern idea of the walking dead drinking the blood of the living springs from the Balkan peninsula, largely in the eighteenth century.  This isn’t a strictly chronological study, and it isn’t limited to Europe and the lore that grew from that region between Asia Minor and Western Europe.  That doesn’t stop Jenkins from going back further in history.  It was a journey on which I learned much.  I also confess that I was nearly grossed out a time or two.  The vampire requires a stout constitution to study.  Interestingly, it seems that the word “vampire” might’ve derived from a word denoting “heretic.”  Religion and horror belong together, as I’ve said many times.

There’s always a danger with wide-ranging studies, since it’s not possible to turn a specialist’s eye toward all the cultures and historical periods under scrutiny.  Those who’ve tried it, such as James Frazer (of Golden Bough fame), come to be viewed with suspicion by later specialists.  (I discuss this in my little book on The Wicker Man, by the way.)  Jenkins does rely on Frazer a time or two.  Writing a general history on this subject almost necessitates that, however.  Even with the internet and “experts” being those who can gather the largest followings, academia has rightfully demonstrated that to get the real story you need to bury yourself with resources around a very small subject and be willing to live and breathe it for years.  Even then you might get it wrong.  But I digress.  This is a fine study of vampires and their possible origins.  It was a learning experience for me and I now have a better idea how to answer that dreaded question.

Scary Things

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I recently set myself the challenge to come up with the scariest movies I’ve seen, up to 1979.  The date is the publication date (I think) of Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, which gave me the idea.  Book publication dates can be difficult to decipher; I have the Berkley Trade paperback edition, which is copyrighted 1981 and published in ’82.  So, let’s just say 1980.  Now, I would never challenge Mr. King, who is older, and wiser (not to mention much better known) than me.  And I suspect, if I understand writers at all, his views may have changed since then.  Several of the films he discusses are thrillers.  And, of course, each person’s viewing history is unique as their thumbprint.  So let’s give it a try.  First, I need to say there are different kinds of scary.  We all have our triggers, and I’m going for things that frightened me.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

Since we’re using 1980 as the cutoff, The Shining has to be on the list (of course King wrote the novel).  Like most of these movies, I saw it at home and the theatrical experience would’ve made an even bigger impact.  The Exorcist also has to be on this list as well.  For older fare, Eyes Without a Face certainly qualifies.  The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is among those in this period but it isn’t terribly scary.  I watched a number of King’s movies—many of which I’d never seen—and found some frightening ones among them.  Night of the Hunter, which makes me add the original Cape Fear, should be included.  So is The Bad Seed.  Something all of these have in common, apart from perhaps The Exorcist, is that they derive their terror from psychology.  There may be some supernatural involved, but the mind is the truly scary part.

Growing up—and even in the present—I’m not really looking to be scared.  I have no trouble getting to that state all by myself, thank you.  The monster movies of childhood thrilled with the unusual, and the realm beyond the everyday.  The haunted house movie held its own frisson for a similar reason.  Of course, children are often not developed enough to understand the nuances of psychological horror.  The more I ponder it, the more it seems that “horror” is the wrong name for what I’m after.   We gain bragging rights by watching scary movies.  And I don’t count jump startles as truly frightening.  I’m more of an existential dread kind of guy.  But I do love monsters.  Even this little exercise made me realize how difficult ranking such movies can be.  Perhaps I should bow to the King.

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David Lynch movies aren’t always easy to understand.  Last year we watched Twin Peaks, including the movie Fire Walk with Me.  Some time before that I’d watched Eraserhead.  My earliest, and unwitting, experience with one of his movies was Dune, which I saw in a theater in 1984.  I had no idea of who Lynch was at that time, however.  As I began exploring the horror genre I found a contingent strongly denying that Lynch directs horror.  Still, there were enough elements in Twin Peaks and Eraserhead that some viewers do move in that direction.  Now, I’d heard of Mulholland Drive many times over the years and I’d seen it classified as horror a time or two, but mostly as a thriller.  Over the holidays I actually had time to sit down and watch it.  And I’m still not sure how to classify it.

I’m not even sure that I can say what it’s about.  Since I watch movies alone most of the time, I turn to the internet to have “discussion” about them.  IMDb and Wikipedia are often good starting points.  There is a tremendously long article in the latter on this film.  Quite often Wikipedia provides not a ton of information about films, but here’s a case where contributors simply can’t say enough.  And none of them know for sure what it’s about either.  I suspect that’s why David Lynch is so highly regarded as a film maker.  He’s an artist.  What artist can explain what their work really means?  Lynch has been notably tight-lipped about what he intended this movie to say, but if you’ve watched Twin Peaks through, you get an idea of what you might expect.  It’s certainly an intellectual experience, and a surreal one.  But is it horror?

One of the terms often used to describe the movie is “nightmare.”  That seems like a horror-laden word, doesn’t it?  It’s often a matter of the characters not knowing who they really are (and the viewers don’t know either).  The thing that ties most of them together is that they’re involved in a movie in some way.  I’ve come to believe that things like books and movies and songs—things we mentally “consume”—become part of our minds, just like food becomes part of our bodies.  Some of the films we see are like junk food—fun, but all fluff.  A David Lynch movie will give you something of substance to chew on.  And finally having seen Mulholland Drive, I’d say it’s a much horror as Lynch’s earlier work has been, however you interpret that.