Hollow

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Now that we’re officially in September, it’s kosher to talk of Halloween horror (I’ve seen Christmas decorations in the stores already).  Well, around here we don’t really need an excuse, but since it’s handy I’ll use it.  Regular readers know I’ve been on a Sleepy Hollow kick lately, and I’d been wanting to see The Hollow.  Released as an ABC television movie, it had a fairly modest budget of only about $900,000 but managed to pull in stars with name recognition.  A pre-Penny Kaley Couco also appears as the new version of Katrina Van Tassel.  Let me back up a bit.  This is set in the present day.  Halloween eve.  Karen (not Katrina) is watching a Sleepy Hollow retelling being done by Ian Cranston, but her bored escort, Brody (Brom, anyone?), goes to the graveyard instead with some of his friends.  Two of them are killed.  Oh yes, there will be spoilers.

It turns out that Ian, who’s just moved to the area, is the last remaining descendant of Ichabod Crane.  You see, after Ichabod fled, and settled in New York City, he changed his name for fear that the Horseman would find him.  Now that a Crane is back in town, the Horseman rides again.  The teen-rivalry between Ian and Brody plays out at Karen takes a shine to the newcomer.  A descendant of Hans Van Ripper, who unaccountably talks like a pirate—lots of “ye”s thrown in—realizes that the Horseman’s after the young Cranston.  Since he’s the town drunk, though, nobody really believes anything he says.  On Halloween the town has a haunted hay ride in which each side of the love triangle is involved.  Brody plays the Horseman, but suddenly there are two of them—uh oh!

Cranston, who’s on the fencing team (to the everlasting shame of his football-coach father), is able to engage the fiend in swordplay and eventually destroys him.  He gets the girl and impresses his father all in one predictable way.  There are some laughs along the way, but for the most part this is played as teen drama.  Some racy scenes (and head-chopping) led to an R rating, but there’s little that’s surprising here.  For anyone who’s interested in the various ways Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” has been repackaged over the years, it’s a reasonable enough diversion.  When Halloween draws closer, however, it may well be time to try something a bit more appropriate for the harvest season.

The Time Is Nigh

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Although I have many authors I like to read, I haven’t fully explored the oeuvre of many.  I’m an eclectic reader and I’m also often limited by bookstores as to what I pick up.  I’ve read Shirley Jackson’s two biggest successes, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as her famous short story, “The Lottery.”  I knew she had written much else, but I couldn’t really tell you what.  When I go into a small, independent bookstore I hate to leave with nothing, and seeing Jackson’s The Sundial on the shelf, I decided to give it a try.  In some ways it was quite a departure from her usual style in that it is openly humorous.  Nevertheless, it’s clear that this is the same thinker who gave us the Castle.

Plotwise, the story is about anticipating the end of the world.  The Halloran family lives in a large mansion on the money made by the original patriarch,  but is beset by interpersonal issues.  A wealthy family, there are at least three contenders for control of the fortune.  When one of the family members has a premonition about the end of the world, they come to believe it and prepare for the event with personality quirks becoming more and more pronounced as they realize the only people that are going to be left to judge them will be themselves.  Various guests stop by and the matriarch decides on who might stay, and survive, and who must go.  A group of twelve, including two domestics, is finally settled upon.

As with all Jackson novels, there are layers here.  Things to think about.  One of the funny scenarios involves the goodhearted maid—perhaps the most innocent of all the survivors—revealing to a local villager what’s about to happen.  Not believing her, he refers her to a group of religious believers that have come to a similar conclusion.  This leads to a meeting between the matriarch of the Halloran family and the leaders of the religious group.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that their versions of the end of all things are different, and Mrs. Halloran turns them away since she can’t relinquish her secular beliefs about the matter.  As the time grows closer, the reader is drawn in by the conviction of those in the house.  Their isolation and reflections on life with no other people beyond themselves grows in intensity.  After putting the book down a sense of doom lingers.  And that, it seems, is what Shirley Jackson is very capable of doing, even if in a comedic gothic setting.

Pitfalls

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While watching Roger Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum, it occurred to me that these movies have improved with age.  The series of American International Pictures’ Corman Poe productions do manage to capture a mood.  One of the reasons, I suppose, is that Vincent Price was an able, often underrated, stage performer.  No, these aren’t like modern movies.  They’re clearly fictional and the backdrops are pretty obviously fake and it always seems to be thunder-storming outside. They are going for a mood, and for those who watch films for the feelings they generate, this can work.  Although based—very loosely—on Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum was screen-written by Richard Matheson, an able novelist in his own regard.

The Poe story hinges on the terror of the slowly descending pendulum and it has been used and reused in various guises over the years in everything from horror films to James Bond movies.  Corman’s Poe movies often set trends.  For example, in the backstory to Pit and the Pendulum, Nicholas’ (Price) father was a member of the Inquisition.  He kept a personal torture chamber in his basement—well, he lived in a castle, after all.  One of the victims of his father was Nicholas’ mother, an event the young Nicholas witnessed.  A very similar scenario, with even some similar shots, occurs in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.  I’m sure it must occur elsewhere as well, but in making a narrative of the story, this is my own unprofessional observation.

Yes, Corman is often over the top.  His films know they’re for entertainment purposes.  He’s not above camp and gimmicks.  The strange juxtaposition, in my own case, is that movies are meaningful.  Ninety-minutes to a couple of hours relieved from the constantly pressing demands of work and trying to maintain some sort of social life.  (And yard work.)  In ancient times, I suspect, myths served a similar purpose.  They still do.  Our myths have become more Technicolor over the years and have evolved from celluloid to pixels.  Their function has also evolved from escapism to a location of meaning.  On a recent weekend on my own I ended up watching five movies, feeling guilty between times for not painting the porch or doing that plastering that’s requiring attention in the attic.  The movies, however, give meaning to these other more mundane tasks such as work or housekeeping.  They’re not literally true, I know, but we need not disparage Roger Corman for stating the obvious.  Myths entertain as well as inform.

Like Sheep

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Since horror grew up in the late 1960s, religion has become a favorite theme in the genre.  Although religion had been in horror from the beginning, Rosemary’s Baby marked a definite sea change.  More and more religion has been moving from a subsidiary theme to the main vehicle of horror.  Małgorzata Szumowska’s The Other Lamb is a case in point.  “Shepherd” is the leader of a separatist religion that consists only of women.  The premise itself is creepy enough, but it becomes clear that Shepherd—the group literally has a flock of sheep—physically abuses the women.  They are divided into two groups: sisters and wives.  When unexplained things happen, Shepherd gives prophetic pronouncements.  His followers are expected to accept everything he says on blind faith.  Many religions do this by proclaiming faith against evidence a virtue.

One thing that I’ve emphasized in various presentations I’ve done is that Christianity, and perhaps all religions, work because believers are great followers.  While Shepherd uses biblical-sounding language, there are no Bibles in the film.  There are recognizably Christian themes, but the doctrine isn’t familiar.  Part of the reason, obviously, is that Christianity has a negative view of sex and Shepherd treats his flock as his harem.  The women follow because he “rescued” them from worse situations and their communal life is better.  Only it’s not.  When a woman director stands behind such a film, there’s clearly a message being sent about male privilege.  Any system set up with male superiority will lead to abuse.  When Shepherd’s enclave in the woods is discovered, they must move.  He instructs the women that they are going to find Eden.

Throughout, the movie is more creepy than scary in the traditional sense.  There are no jump-startles, but the situation makes you sense that something’s not right.  The women, acclimated to this lifestyle, many of them for years, know no other way of being or even where to go.  They have no vehicles.  Forced to move, they walk—Shepherd carries nothing while the women backpack out supplies.  Once Eden, on the shore of a lake, is reached, Shepherd baptizes the sisters and drowns the wives so the younger women can take their place.  You get the sense throughout that this movie is a parable.  Men like to take the privilege of determining women’s fates without understanding women’s needs.  This new kind of horror is insightful and symbolic.  There is no final girl when women band together.  The Other Lamb deserves wider exposure than it’s had.  It’s a good example of what religion can do to those who simply follow.

Walking Home Alone

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It is an American-Iranian, female-directed vampire movie.  Shot in black-and-white and entirely in subtitled Persian, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a very unusual and artsy movie.  The film has been described as a “spaghetti western” as well, but that’s a bit more difficult for me to see.  If all these disparate elements seem odd, the director’s background may help explain it.  Ana Lily Amirpour was born in England, but of Iranian heritage.  She moved to the United States as a child and began making movies quite early.  A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is her best-known film to date (I only found out about it by reading a book about horror films that recommended it.)

The title may set certain expectations that will be subverted by the film.  There will be spoilers here, so if you’re likely to see the film you might want to wait to read on.  Who knows?  Maybe spoilers will make you want to see it.  The girl who walks home alone is the vampire.  She’s perfectly safe at night.  The story involves her falling in love with a compassionate young man who’s trying to support his heroin-addicted father.  The movie is quite gritty.  The girl is a conflicted vampire, which happens to be my favorite kind.  She’s never explained.  She simply is.  Her first victim that we see is the drug-dealer and pimp who’s pressuring the young man’s family.  Although they live in poverty, he takes their car in payment.  He’s a nasty piece of work.

The young man, also conflicted, takes over the dead thug’s drug-selling business, but doesn’t take advantage of people.  The vampire is attracted to his virtue.  She also befriends one of the thug’s prostitutes because she’s sad.  Apart from the dead petty crime boss, everyone in Bad City lives in humble circumstances.  The young man finally throws his father out of the house.  The vampire attacks him, leaving him dead.  The young man, in love with the vampire but not knowing she’s a vampire, talks her into leaving with him although he can see she’s implicated in his father’s death.  This is a most unusual film, praised for its feminine outlook.  That’s unusual in both vampire movies and horror, but there’s no reason that it should be rare.  More of an art-house movie than a cineplex blockbuster, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a movie that will leave you wondering.  And that, it seems to me, is a good thing.

Wicker Back

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The dilemma of my eclectic interests sometimes runs up against the natural slowness of publishing.  My book on The Wicker Man has been given the green light by Auteur Publishing and should be out next year.  I just received the readers’ reports and they were positive enough to make me blush.  The thing is, I submitted the manuscript back in January and I’ve nearly finished writing my next book since then.  It’s on a different topic for which I’ve been collecting sources since January.  I really hope this next one won’t publish with an academic press.  The endless rounds of revision from peer review can wear a body out.  Reviewers, you see, have university jobs.  Libraries at their fingertips.  Sabbaticals.  (I work with authors who won’t write unless they have one of the latter.) Now my reading shifts back to Summerisle.

For those of us with 925s that get a paltry number of holidays per year (which are spent holidaying) and paid like most working stiffs, with no academic library access, this can present somewhat of a challenge.  I see peer reviews all the time.  Academics so deeply into the subject that they don’t (can’t) think of the practicalities.  When I see a reviewer write that a book is ready for publication, but if the author could only restructure the whole thing and approach it from this angle instead… I have to chuckle.  During my teaching career I worked in situations that didn’t allow for sabbaticals.  Even among academia those given such rare benefits are privileged.  It’s a wonder that so many books get written, all things considered.

Like waking from a dream world, I suddenly have to downshift to a previous project.  I haven’t really thought much about the Wicker Man since January.  My next book, which is eclectic, has been slowly gestating over the months.  My reading has been geared towards it and is financed personally.  I’ve tried contacting the local college and university libraries.  I can’t borrow, or do inter-library loan, so the weird resources I need I have to buy.  Preferably used.  One thing reviewers like to do is point out new resources.  And yes, I have to agree that my argument would be stronger with them.  I have a strategy to the way I write my books, now that I’ve found a receptive readership, so none of this is mishap, I hope.  (Ironically, now I get quite a few readers of my revised dissertation asking me questions about ancient West Asian studies.)  That trireme paddled from shore long ago.  I’ve moved my current project to another burner, and you’ll be hearing more about The Wicker Man in coming weeks.  Next year is the film’s fiftieth anniversary, so I have a deadline that I just can’t miss. It’s time to get reacquainted with an old friend.

The Burton of Thought

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I haven’t seen all of his films.  Some of them I have seen I didn’t really like.  When Tim Burton does strike a chord, however, he does so hard.  Burton on Burton is one of a series of books of interviews with directors.  This one covers all of Burton’s films up to Corpse Bride with free-ranging answers to what are really more remarks than questions.  (The book is edited by Mark Salisbury.)  Although I’ve not experienced his entire oeuvre, it’s pretty clear that I share quite a few sensibilities with Burton.  He expresses that what he’s looking for in movies is feeling.  A good plot helps, but it’s the emotion he’s after.  And he knows that the dark isn’t bad.  At many points I had to shake my head and say, “I thought I was the only one who thought like that.”

This memoir is also full of information on the way movies get made—not the technical side, but from the studio or creative side.  Someone has an idea.  It may be original or it may be an adaptation of a well-known tale.  Sometimes, especially in Burton originals, they begin as a series of sketches.  Anybody who’s watched DVD extras knows about storyboarding.  A movie is sometimes laid out in a series of cards that show, step-by-step, the action.  Before that, or maybe during, a script is written.  In order to get funded—for all this costs money—a studio or production company has to pick up the concept.  The person pitching it might be a screenwriter or a potential director.  And, as in every avenue of life, money talks.  Once you’ve had a breakout success they start to pay attention to you.

Although Burton and I grew up with similar outlooks, he notes that he never did like to read.  Being a visual artist (he got his start at Disney), that’s perhaps no surprise.  You start to realize, once you get a sense of the number of people involved, why film credits go on and on.  It takes a village to make a movie.  Not only that, directors may be involved with several projects simultaneously.  That’s not so different from being an (unofficial) writer, I suppose.  At any one time, from my experience, I’ve got at least a half-dozen projects going.  Some will never be finished, most will never be published.  And who knows?  Maybe someday one of my fiction stories might catch a sympathetic (or perhaps simply pathetic) director’s eye?  In the meantime, we go on creating.

October Early

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Still feeling that August is the new October, although that particular day happened to reach over ninety degrees, I watched Halloween.  Not the John Carpenter original; I’ve seen that one a few times before.  No, I watched the 2018 version only to learn it’s a retcon.  If you’re like me you’ll wonder what a retcon is.  It’s a portmanteau of “retroactive continuity.”  That’s where a sequel goes back and makes adjustments, or simply ignores, story elements from the original to take the story forward.  I haven’t followed the Halloween franchise.  There are too many movies I want to see that are original, with fresh ideas, to be spending my time trying to find my way through an emerging mythology of a serial killer.  Michael Myers, as horror fans know, inexplicably killed his sister as a child.  As an adult he terrorized Haddonfield, Illinois  one Halloween and Laurie Strode was the final girl.

What drew me to this sequel was that Jamie Lee Curtis was back as Strode, all grown up.  Michael predictably escapes again and goes for an even higher body count in Haddonfield.  Laurie, meanwhile, has gone NRA and booby-trapped her entire house in anticipation of this day.  You can see the draw, I hope.  You kind of want to see how this ends.  The original had Michael’s apparently dead body disappear at the end.  In the retcon he was arrested after that and re-institutionalized.  The thing is, you can never really kill a monster.  Original scenes and scenarios are revisited, and those familiar with the Carpenter story are rewarded by situations that subvert expectations.  Where is he hiding this time?  You always watch the credits roll wondering how “the authorities” don’t realize that a guy shot, stabbed, and incinerated and keeps coming back might be something other than human to be put in an asylum.

I should know better than to watch these kinds of movies when I’m home alone, but I don’t.  So it’s a good thing that I try to piece all these things together.  We have three strong women—three generations of final girls here, and the obligatory basis for a sequel.  (At least two, in fact, bringing the franchise up to thirteen movies.)  Laurie’s granddaughter is among the virginal, non-drinking final-girl prototypes.  Her less Puritan friends are killed off, although her worthless boyfriend survives the night.  You’ve got to love the endless self-references of such situations.  That’s why we keep on coming back.  We’ve seen it before but we still want more.  Even if it’s only August.

Some High School

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I have a soft spot for bad horror.  And Sleepy Hollow High isn’t exactly good horror.  It’s not horrible horror either.  It follows the story of five teenage delinquents at Sleepy Hollow High School.  Threatened with expulsion, their only choice is to do community service.  In this case that means picking up trash in the eerily secluded town park.  I won’t give away the one big spoiler, but it’s fair to say not is all that it seems.  It’s very low budget (paid for by credit cards and estimated to be $16,500) shows in several places, but it does keep you watching.  And wondering, to an extent.  It claims that the legend of Sleepy Hollow is true, but not exactly in the way you might think.  (Sorry for being cryptic—I don’t want to give too much away.)

One of the reasons I appreciate efforts like this is that I know what it’s like to be possessed by a story you want to tell but being unable to find a publisher—or in this case, a distributor/studio—who’s willing to take a chance on you.  The movie is largely the effort of Kevin Summerfield and Chris Arth.  They are listed as co-directors and co-producers, and each has credited roles beyond that.  Neither one is famous, and yet they made the film anyway.  It’s the same impetus behind self-publishing, I suspect.  The problem with the latter is that anyone can do it, and it often shows.  Most of us don’t have access to proper movie equipment, props, and actors willing to work for free.  Heck, I don’t even know most of my neighbors.

Movies like this stand a chance of becoming cult favorites.  I have no idea how that happens or who makes the call on it.  Low budget (often), cult films catch the imagination of a certain kind of fan and eventually generates some buzz of its own.  Wikipedia articles will appear about some of the people involved because those who watch grow curious.  Our highly developed publicity systems make decisions on who or what gets exposure.  That doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t get a small dose of attention now and again, but those who’ve made it have had some help.  Sleepy Hollow High was perhaps able to cash in a bit on the previous year’s Tim Burton effort, Sleepy Hollow.  But there are horror movies—and stories—out there that nobody knows about.  And which might, if discovered, have their fifteen minutes.

Scary Cosmology

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In many ways a harrowing book, A Cosmology of Monsters, by Shaun Hamill, is a real achievement.  A monster story, it’s less a story about monsters than it is about people—which, upon thinking it over, is generally the case.  This story is about the suffering people undergo, sometimes simply for being who they are.  Hamill gets his hooks in early and drags you through this wonderful, terrible story.  Even now that I’ve finished it I’m not quite sure what to make of it.  What’s it about?  Maybe I can try to give you a few signposts and pointers.  To find out more you’ll need to read it and check my work.

The Turner family, through no fault of its own, has been living under a strange kind of curse.  It involves monsters, from what is probably another dimension, kidnapping and enslaving them.  The Turners aren’t alone in this.  Others who’ve been suffering from various causes are also targeted and treated.  Perhaps this is partially a parable on suffering and depression.  The Turner family faces death, missing children, forbidden love, and regret.  They run a local haunted house around Halloween, which the father’s regular job finances.  They do it for fun and it’s free.  It keeps them going when a terrible diagnosis is given.  Stressed financially and emotionally, they barely manage to stay together.  Noah, the narrator and only son, checks out the competition, including a Christian Hell House.  There he meets the girl he’ll eventually marry.  But the monsters don’t stop coming.  He befriends one.

An intricately interwoven story, you might call this horror but you would probably be closer to the truth with literary fiction.  There are uncomfortable facts about families.  Things we tend to overlook or ignore in order to keep society running smoothly.  These kinds of issues are brought out into the open here and mixed in with monsters.  On both the human and monster sides, the emotionally wrenching ideas have to do with relationships.  Noah, who was born just as his father was dying, establishes relationships both with his family and a monster.  As the story progresses over the years, his wife is added to this complex of relationships and they all end up, in a way, competing.  Decisions have to be made and someone you love must lose.  This novel makes monsters and humans the objects of the reader’s sympathy.  What’s more, it works.  I hope I haven’t given too many spoilers here, because this is quite an accomplishment, and well worth a reader’s time.

Lovecraft’s Palace

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So, to see Witchfinder General I had to buy a set of Vincent Price movies.  Complex copyright deals mean that not everything can be streamed—there’s a movie I’ve been waiting months to see because Amazon Prime says “not currently available in your area.”  That word “currently” tells you that it’s a rights issue.  In any case, that box of Price movies contained a few goodies I’d never seen and had wanted to.  And one that I hadn’t heard of: The Haunted Palace.  Legendary producer Roger Corman had Price star in a variety of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations.  (Witchfinder General wasn’t one of them.)  Corman wanted to make an H. P. Lovecraft movie, but the studio insisted it stay within the identity of this Poe series.  This movie is an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” but titled after a Poe poem, “The Haunted Palace.”

Suffice it to say, I knew little of this before I sat down to watch it.  I didn’t know, for example, that this was the first big-time movie based on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos.  I didn’t realize it would involve the Necronomicon and perhaps the first, blurry—to preserve the sanity of viewers—view of maybe Cthulhu.  The movie doesn’t specify which of the Old Gods is kept in this pit, so it could be Yog-Sothoth instead.  You see, as a child I watched some of the movies in this series.  They would’ve had to have been the ones showing on television, likely on Saturday afternoon.  The one that I clearly recall, and remember thinking “that’s not how it goes!” was The Raven.  And as a child I had never been exposed to H. P. Lovecraft.

Some of us have our own brand of cheap or free entertainment.  The small number of friends I had growing up didn’t care to read.  My family wasn’t literate, and most high school teachers couldn’t suggest much to a kid who’d somehow found Poe and liked what he read.  As I’ve said before, Goodwill was my bookstore.  I discovered Lovecraft on the internet during a lonely stretch of teaching at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.  Like many visionaries, Lovecraft didn’t achieve fame in his lifetime, but is now considered a bizarre American treasure.  The Cthulhu mythos is everywhere.  Even my auto-suggest is quick to fill in his name as I type.  The Haunted Palace isn’t a great movie—this is Roger Corman—but it’s a pretty good movie.  And its history in the cinematography of Lovecraft makes it worth part of a Saturday afternoon.

Beastly Story

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You think you know a story.  You know, you’ve heard it before, or seen it in a movie, so you think you know how it goes.  I’m not the biggest Disney fan in the world, but I have seen many of their movies.  Occasionally those movies are my first introduction to a story.  That was the case with Beauty and the Beast.  I saw this when my daughter was young, and in general found it a good story.  I’ve seen it a couple of times since, and I thought I knew how it went.  I got curious, however, regarding the origins of the tale.  Was it Grimm?  Other ancient folklore?  The reimagining of a classical tale like Pygmalion?  Well, it turns out it was a story from the eighteenth century written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.

I decided to read it.  The story is quite different than the Disney version, as is to be expected.  To begin with, Beauty has eleven siblings.  Her father is a merchant rather than an inventor.  The beast is described as having an elephant’s trunk and scales, not fur.  Once Beauty agrees to move into his palace in place of her father Beast is nothing but polite, if somewhat dull.  In broad outline the same action takes place—beauty falls in love with the beast and magically he transforms to a handsome prince.  Any story, as it’s retold, is re-envisioned.  There’s no such thing as the literal retelling of any tale.  As the Italians say, “translators are traitors.”  (Of course, I didn’t read the story in its original French, having had the aid of a traitor.)

As was perhaps the style back then, once the happy ending came the story had to be fully explained.  Indeed, this constitutes half its length, telling, not showing, the backstory.  To Disney’s credit, they do all this in a minute or two of animation time.  The modern reader, unless obsessed with the rules under which fairies operate, and the power struggles among them regarding those rules, will likely find this add-on a bit tedious.  But that’s often the way with original texts.  Think The Iliad.  Think the Bible.  Modern writers seldom explain things fully.  Ambiguity is valued among the literati.  Still, stories have origins.  They start someplace.  Those of us who are curious about those origins are inclined to dig, it seems.  Disney has become our storyteller for children.  It’s a good idea to look behind the curtain now and then, just to see what the original creator wrote.  To see how the story really goes.

The King

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Stephen King.  I haven’t read all of his books, but I’ve done quite a few.  I’ve watched movies based on some.  I read my first story by him in Junior High School.  I’ve even read books about him.  From what I can tell, he’s actually a man with his head on straight.  While some may find that a strange thing to write about a horror writer, it’s been my experience that those who enjoy horror, either as producers or consumers, are generally good people.  Recently King was testifying against the proposed buyout of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House.  Penguin Random House is already the largest trade publisher in the world.  The buyout would probably benefit King personally, but he testified it would make things worse for other writers and for independent bookstores.

How many people these days argue against things that benefit them personally?  Certainly not elected officials, particularly of what used to be a grand old party.  It’s all about me!  That seems to be the mantra of late capitalism.  King has publicly called for his own taxes to be raised.  This is nothing short of heroic.  While the Good Book advocates over and over for this kind of behavior, “Bible believers” have somehow overlooked it.  Leave it to a horror writer to get to the heart of the message.  I have no idea if King is part of any religious group or not—he certainly uses a lot of religious imagery and many religious concepts in his writing.  Of course, you don’t have to be in such a group to embody their proclaimed principles.

Thinking of the needs of others was drilled into me as child raised in a Fundamentalist faith.  Looking around me these days, I don’t see many Fundamentalists that hold to that any more.  Enamored of power—especially the power to control other people’s lives—they flock after rich pretenders who care nothing for the Gospel.  Sacrifice (for that’s what we’re talking about here) is something horror writers know well.  It’s never easy giving up something that’s valuable to you.  Or even thinking about it.  Writing, while very enjoyable, is hard work.  Training your mind is like physical exercise—it doesn’t just happen.  I’ve got a few Stephen King novels on my “to read” pile.  They’re big books, often intimidatingly so.  Once I start reading, however, I know I’ll find the work engaging.  And if I pay attention, there will be a message there too.

Not that kind of book.

Paperback Reader

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Sometimes I wonder why I do it.  Horror is a strange category for books and films, but one thing that may be a draw is that they take me back.  Life, it seems, is cyclical.  I liked monsters as a kid, and grew out of it when college and graduate school taught me to be serious.  As a working academic this genre can spell death to your career, so when my career died anyway, I was left grasping at my childhood to try to make any sense of this.  Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell took me back.  Not that I’ve read all the books listed here—I came away with a list I want to read—but the lurid covers are a reminder of the kinds of things that caught my young imagination.

Subtitled The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction, this is actually a very fun book to read.  Hendrix has a light touch and had me nearly laughing out loud (quite an accomplishment) a time or two.  And I learned a lot.  Although I write books about horror, the genre is a large and sprawling one and this book takes a clear focus at the paperback market.  Just a reminder: paperback originals were designed to be sold and consumed quickly.  No waiting around for 18 months while profits from the hardcover roll in.  Hendrix really knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the history.  It also seems like he may have read more horror than is necessarily good for you.  He clearly knows how the publishing business works.

Several of these books were big enough that I knew about them.  He starts off with Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.  (And The Other, which I’m now obligated to find and read.)  In fact, the first chapter focuses on religion-themed horror.  This is something that only began in earnest in the late ‘60s.  While the horror paperback market may have tanked in the ‘90s, the film side of the genre has been doing quite well and continues to do so.  The late sixties also got that kick-started.  It seems that when people stopped running from the fact that religion is scary, horror itself grew up.  I was shielded from that part as a child, but now, looking back, I can see that things weren’t quite what they seemed.  This full-color, grotesquely illustrated book has great curb appeal.  And if you’re not careful, you can learn a thing or two as well.

Yep, Nope

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I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a movie that starts with a quote from Nahum.  I also honestly admit that Nope left me scratching my head, but very glad to have seen it.  I trust Jordan Peele implicitly as both a screenwriter and a director, and I know I need to see Nope again to make it all fit (if that’s possible).  His movies are the most Twilight Zoneish things out there, and despite Peele’s reported reason for naming the film Nope, I’m going to keep watching the skies.  It’s clear he had done his ufological homework.  Even the idea that—SPOILER ALERT—have you seen it yet?  Are you going to?  You might want to finish this later, if you haven’t—they are biological entities has been widely discussed.  

Although classified as horror, Nope has mercifully few jump startles.  In fact I noticed (there were maybe only 10 of us in the theater) that one couple had brought their kids.  I can imagine they had some interesting discussions on the car ride home.  For me, driving home alone, I felt like I’d watched Close Encounters, Twister, Signs, and Arrival simultaneously.  Peele set out to film a spectacle and he did indeed.  Horror has become more intelligent of late, and there’s so much going on here that I’ll need some time to sort it out.  The online nattering suggests the Nahum quote (“I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle”) reflects Peele’s thoughts on the Bible.  A more literal take might see the evacuation of waste creating a spectacle, which it does.  How to explain the angel form of the creature?

Alien horror works.  Alien sees them deep in apace, but many films, such as Fourth Kind, see them closer to home. Fourth Kind, also by an Africa American director (Olatunde Osunsanmi) never received critical acclaim, but I thought the first half was impossibly scary.  It’s natural enough to fear those we don’t understand.  Perhaps that’s one reason we tend to deny their existence.  If we deal with them in fiction we can call it horror and go home happy.  Nope asks us to consider whether our differences matter so much in the face of a non-discriminate predator that eats any human that enters its territory.  Even if they were there first.  I still have a lot of questions about the movie.  Some of them will likely never be answered.  One that will is “Do you plan on seeing it again?”  The answer is yep.