Shadowy House

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The more you learn the more you realize just how little you know.  The House of Dark Shadows was like a key, a missing puzzle piece for me.  Dark Shadows has been on my mind quite a bit lately.  I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert.  I never saw the whole series on television—I saw many episodes once, during my childhood.  Enough to know who the characters were—especially Barnabas—but when I stopped watching it (when? Why?) I started reading the novels by Marilyn Ross.  Clearly the soap opera was gaining enough ratings to merit the building of a franchise.  But the thing was, there is so much in life that I never concentrated on it.  I read the novels occasionally, and I never saw House of Dark Shadows when it came out in 1970.  Not, in fact, until 2022.

Since I was only eight when it came out, even though it was rated PG, I would’ve had neither the means nor the money to get to a theater.  I had, in fact, never even heard of it.  Having been raised a Fundamentalist, I have a tendency to believe there is just one way a story goes.  I know there are variations—they occur in the canon of Scripture, even—but something deep-seated tells me it should go this way.  House of Dark Shadows (which explains a lot of Tim Burton’s decisions for his movie reboot) has a different story line.  Given that it was 1970 it would have been in the midst of the initial series broadcast.  The movie was quite successful.  Still, Barnabas ends up victimizing Carolyn (which in the novels he is reluctant to do), and Roger, and outright killing a number of people.

I spent the movie trying to process how the story should go.  Of course, I haven’t seen the soap opera enough to know.  This Dark Shadows franchise is episodic and it doesn’t add up.  The film was shot quickly and leaves gaps in the story.  It certainly doesn’t track well with the tale of the Maine family who knows about “cousin Barnabas”and that he visits Collinwood from time to time.  Our course, between the series and the novels there are many, many avenues to select.  When Tim Burton got the idea to make a movie he had an abundance of stories from which to choose.  The House of Dark Shadows isn’t a great movie.  It is gothic and moody and a standalone story.  And it has me wondering about what other dark shadows conceal.

The Best Religious Horror Movies Streaming Now

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Here’s an extra-special second guest post this week, enjoy!

Many horror movies have religious themes, plotlines or undertones. Here are a handful of the best religious horror movies to make you pray the bad away, in order of release.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rated R

Director: Roman Polanski

Starring: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon

A young couple moves into a NYC apartment with a haunted past. When the wife gets pregnant, she experiences an array of strange feelings, believing her baby may be the spawn of Satan.

Stream Rosemary’s Baby on Hulu, Sling TV, The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime Video.

The Exorcist (1973)

Rated R

Director: William Friedkin

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow

An increasingly strange-acting 12-year-old girl causes her mother to volley between scientific and supernatural explanations. Ultimately, she seeks the aid of a priest who himself is experiencing a crisis of faith.

Stream The Exorcist on Netflix.

The Exorcist spawned two sequels: Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) available to stream on Apple TV, Vudu and DirecTV and The Exorcist III (1990) available to stream on Apple TV and FuboTV. There was also a 2016 television remake of The Exorcist that lasted two seasons and is now available to stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

Carrie (1976)

Rated R

Director: Brain De Palma

Starring: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie

Based on a novel by Stephen King, the master of horror himself, this is the story of a shy, introverted and sensitive teen bullied by her schoolmates and abused at home by her highly religious mother. Then, she becomes imbued with the devilish power to take revenge on them for the suffering and humiliation they’ve made her endure. This is such a timeless and beloved horror classic, it’s been remade twice: once made-for-TV in 2003 starring Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson in the leading roles and again in 2013 starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore in the leading roles.

Stream all three versions of Carrie on Apple TV, Vudu and AMC On Demand.

The Omen (1976)

Rated R

Director: Richard Donner

Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remmick, David Warner

When the wife of an American diplomat gives birth to a stillborn child, he adopts a child named Damien. After the child’s first nanny commits suicide, the family calls in a priest, who delivers a dire warning: the child may be the anitchrist himself.

The original The Omen spawned two sequels and one remake.

Stream the original The Omen on Hulu, Paramount+, Epix on Amazon Prime Video or Epix On Demand, Tubi and DirecTV.

Stream Damien: Omen II (1978) and Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981) on Apple TV and Vudu,

Stream the 2006 remake of The Omen on HBO Max.

Summary

Catch up on these, and you can say you’ve survived the most harrowing classic religious horror films of all time.

Collecting the Past

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Some readers, probably, react with embarrassment when I go on about Dark Shadows.  The fact is, however, that our childhoods somehow define us and mine included frequent doses of Dark Shadows after school.  This was complemented by the series of potboiler novels by William Edward Daniel Ross, writing as Marilyn Ross.  We didn’t have much money when I was a child (some things never change) and the only means I had of procuring the books in our small town was Goodwill.  The novel series ran from 1966 to 1972, roughly concurrent with the television show.  Since I was buying them second-hand I could never tell which, if any, I would find in the book bins.  If I did find any, I’d buy them.  I got rid of them when I “grew up.”

Dark Shadows, however, has come back to me at various points in my life and about a decade-and-a-half ago I began, somewhat shamefacedly, trying to rebuild that earlier collection.  The individual volumes are considerably more than the nickels and dimes I’d originally paid for them.  In fact, the rate of change has been somewhat astronomical.  Some of the volumes are rare.  Given the prices, I suspect I’m not the only nostalgia-poisoned child of the sixties and seventies who’s buying them.  There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes with having finally completed a task years in the making.  When the box containing the last volume arrived, it was a moment of private ecstasy.

All of this has me thinking about other influences Dark Shadows has had on me personally.  It is probably responsible for my lifelong love of Maine.  The television show was filmed mostly in Terrytown, New York, better known by the name given in Washington Irving’s tale, Sleepy Hollow.  I wasn’t aware of this on my visit to Terrytown—which was before the more recent television series based on, but not filmed in that location, aired.  My first publication regarding religion and horror was based on Sleepy Hollow.  There’s a sense of connectedness here.  To get the final volume, which is rare, I had to buy a collection of several of the books.  Like a man who found a pearl of great price went and sold all that he had so that he could buy the field in which the pearl was.  We’re never told what he did with the rest of the field.  If I had to venture a guess I’d say he used it to house his Dark Shadows collection.

Scary Movies About Scary Movies

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Hi all, here’s a guest post to enjoy:

In a meta-twist on the horror movie genre comes the horror film about horror films. Here are some of the most popular and well-executed (see what we did there?) navel-gazing scary films, ie. scary movies about scary movies.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Rated R

Director: Oren Peli

Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs

This film has a relatively standard horror plot: a family is stalked by a murderous demon. What makes this film unique, however, is how it’s told. Much of the film is seen through the vantage of security cameras and other devices used to make it appear they were all culled together to thread together the story. This movie spawned a whole series of eight films.

Stream Paranormal Activity on Paramount+, Pluto TV and Netflix.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Rated R

Director: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Starring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

When this film – likely the progenitor of the entire found-footage horror sub-genre, first released, its uniquely modern (for the time) style of storytelling scared viewers in a whole new and unfamiliar way. Told through a video camera held by an increasingly panicked teen, this poorly lit, blurry, grainy, unsteady, hyper-realistic video-as-film follows friends investigating the myth of a witch and ending up getting lost in the woods.

Stream The Blair Witch Project on Apple TV and Vudu.

Scary Movie (2000)

Rated R

Director: Keenan Ivory Wayans

Starring: Anna Faris, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Regina Hall, Shannon Elizabeth

Warning: This film is as much a comedy as it is a horror film. This parody of slasher flicks satirizes popular ones of the day and their classic tropes. Don’t let the comedy fool you though; it’s still got its fair share of scares! The movie spawned four sequels applying the same formula to formulaic haunted house, mysterious object, alien invasion and demon-possessed children movies.

Stream Scary Movie on Apple TV and Vudu.

Midnight Movie (2008)

Rated R

Director: Jack Messitt

Starring: Rebekah Brandes, Daniel Bonjour, Greg Cirulnick, Mandell Maughan

The polar opposite of the Wayan brothers’ franchise, this horror film takes its horror seriously. Replete with classic blood and gore with a little sex and nudity thrown in (thank you, Mr. Hitchcock,) it involves a rare midnight screening at a dilapidated old theater of a slasher film whose maker apparently went insane from it. That doesn’t dissuade the audience, however, all of whom are unaware that when the lights go down, this bloodbath features audience participation.

The Final Girls (2015)

Rated PG-13

Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson

Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Adam Devine

An orphan and several other high-school teens watch a B-movie slasher flick made by the orphan’s mother – an 80s scream queen, before she allegedly died. Suddenly, the friends all find themselves trapped inside the movie and face-to-face with some startling truths. To live to tell the tale however, they must adapt to the classic tropes of the genre.

Stream The Final Girls on Apple TV and Vudu.

Recap

After watching these scary movies about scary movies, you’ll never look at another horror movie the same way again!

Son of Comfort

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So the other day I was reading a book proposal for another editor.  It mentioned the mononymous Barnabas.  Since the proposal wasn’t from a biblical scholar I wondered if this was the same Barnabas mentioned in Acts as the sometime traveling companion to Paul of Tarsus.  As I began to type this into the search box—and this was on my work computer, which, I hope, doesn’t know my reading habits—it autosuggested Barnabas Collins as the first choice.  One of the frustrating things about devices these days is they know who we are and sometimes we want an objective opinion from the internet.  Is Barnabas Collins as popular as I like to think he is, or is it just a case of my work computer anticipating my off-hour whims?  I sincerely hope it’s the former.

The proposal, by the way, was surprisingly referencing Paul’s Barnabas.  I wasn’t aware that he was much known outside biblical studies circles.  Probably about as rarely as Barnabas Collins is known in such circles.  There has been a resurgence of interest in Dark Shadows that has taken place in spite of, or perhaps partially because of, Tim Burton’s movie.  The film made many missteps, but people from my generation who’d never heard of him before began to reference Barnabas Collins to me.  I’ve never been a soap opera watcher.  It does seem that many college students used to go through such a phase—again, it’s the story that draws them in—but that never really happened to me.  I’d grown up watching Dark Shadows, however, and I’ve been tempted a time or two to start watching the series again.  With well over a thousand episodes, some of which are lost, it would be a major time commitment.  And besides, it wouldn’t recapture those grade-school afternoons watching what my mom thought was a waste of time.

The name Barnabas probably means something like “son of comfort.” I don’t know how the somewhat desperate writers, trying to gain back a slipping audience, came up with the name.  Their introduction of the supernatural into the daily drama did, however, transform television.  The usual demographic for the show was a bit older than me when it was being aired and I didn’t by any stretch see the entire series.  I did see enough, however, to forever frame my view of vampires.  There have been efforts, including one current, to reboot the series on television.  It may eventually rise again from its coffin. Featuring, of course, Barnabas.

Masking the Devil

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There are many books on the Devil.  In fact, entire horror movies such as The Ninth Gate are based on that fact.  Since writing a book on demons (Nightmares with the Bible), I read a few of the many.  I’ve continued to read some further since, and one of them is Luther Link’s The Devil: A Mask without a Face.  The first thing to note about this book is that it is the same as The Devil: The Archfiend in Art from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century, as it was published simultaneously in the United States.  (The former was published in the United Kingdom.)  Many authors don’t realize that when you sign a publishing contract you’re selling the rights (the copyright) for your book.  Some publishers or agents will sell the rights in different territories to different publishers.  They don’t have to use the same title largely because, prior to Amazon it was difficult to buy UK published books in the US and vice-versa.  Now a lot of “buying around” happens so books published anywhere can be purchased anywhere.  (Except in authoritarian states.)

In any case, this book is a study of the Devil in art.  The UK subtitle, A Mask without a Face, focuses on the conclusions drawn, whereas the US subtitle is more descriptive of the contents.  There are a number of interesting points made by Link.  One of the most important is that of his conclusion—the Devil, in the biblical and theological worlds of the long Middle Ages, really isn’t so much a character or “person”as a representation of “the enemy.” His looks and actions depend on the circumstances.  As Link points out, to the Pope Luther was inspired by the Devil, to Luther the Pope was inspired by the Devil.  Both, Link concludes, were dealing with a mask without, well, a face. Further, since the Devil does God’s bidding, whether he can be considered evil or not must be questioned.

Another interesting point is the strange continuity and lack thereof that characterize the representations of the Devil.  Some of the continuities go back to an antiquity (such as ancient Mesopotamia) that had by lost by the Middle Ages.  There was no real avenue of transmission since who remembered Humbaba after the tablets of Gilgamesh had been buried for centuries?  This seems to point to what Jung would’ve considered archetypes.  Or it could be that the same things scare people across the ages.  The point of the book isn’t to be comprehensive, but it does make a good point.  Anyone accusing someone of being the Devil opens themselves to the exact same charge.

Learning to Fly

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“Be afraid.  Be very afraid.” This quote originates with David Cronenberg’s The Fly.  Of course, after watching the original, how could I not watch its successful remake?  I initially saw this one upon its 1986 release in a Boston theater.  I hadn’t seen it in some 35 years but some of the scenes were as fresh in my memory as if I’d seen it last year.  It’s safe to say that it made an impression on me.  Even usual critics of horror gave the film high marks.  Both it and its predecessor with the same title were quite successful in the financial department and became part of popular culture.  The remake ends without the philosophical statement of Vincent Price in the original, choosing despair instead.  I’ve never seen the sequel.

I picked this up as a used DVD many years ago.  Mainly I wanted to have it on hand in case the mood struck to see it again.  I did recall that, as a Cronenberg film, it was a gross-out of body horror.  So much so that it’s difficult to classify it as science fiction.  It, along with its near contemporary Alien, demonstrated that the fusion of the genres was possible.  Perhaps inevitable.  At the same time, movies, like most other media, have proliferated to the point that such standouts are rare.  Yes, there are still Academy Awards and Golden Globes, but who but a professional can see all the offerings out there?  It feels like we’ve moved beyond the time when a movie could define a generation.  But on a deeper level, that’s why The Fly is about.

We, on the far end from the white male oligarchs, are blending.  We’re no longer simply accepting what we’re told.  We’re becoming more global and more people are starting to break into the power structures.  Even if they sometimes transform if they do.  I saw a recent newspaper article about what to do with your second home, as in decorating it.  Second home?  The majority of us are having trouble up keeping our one home, and that’s if we’re even owners.  Society needs a telepod.  The end results may be messy, for sure, but we need to stop thinking in exclusive terms.  Cronenberg indicated back in the eighties that the movie was about disease and aging and letting those we love go.  That gives the film its poignancy, in a kafkaesque way.  At the same time it may be a teaching tool.  Yes, we can be afraid, very afraid, and still learn.

D Evil

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The Devil, they say, is in the details.  T. J. Wray and Gregory Mobley look into those details in The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots.  It’s often a surprise to Christian readers that the Devil clearly evolves in the Bible.  From being virtually absent in the Hebrew section, he appears, almost full blown, in the New Testament.  This, of course, flies in the face of the idea that the truth was pretty much revealed from the beginning and that it’s consistent throughout.  The Devil in the details proves that it’s not.  The Bible has multiple suggestions of whence evil arises, God among them.  The Devil came to be one explanation of the origin of evil, but he’s not the only biblical one.

One of the things I found fascinating here, however, was that the authors often refer to popular culture to illustrate their point.  They particularly favor movies.  The authors are biblical scholars and it’s not at all unusual to find movie fans among them.  I suspect that since biblical scholars (apart from the linguists) specialize in stories it’s only natural that movies appeal.  They aren’t given extended discussion here, and indeed, a book about the Devil in the movies would be very thick if it attempted to be comprehensive.  Satan is a movie star.  Since he evolves into the embodiment of evil this is probably not surprising.  A good plot needs some evil in it, and one character in the western canon is the granddaddy of all evil.

Those looking for a fuller biography of the Prince of Evil may be disappointed that this book keeps to its remit—the biblical Satan.  There are, however, many more books about the Devil.  Maybe even more than movies in which he appears.  Scholars and laity both seem interested in this character.  He appears late on the scene, only within the last century or so of the biblical writing period.  His fullest portrait there is the highly symbolic book of Revelation.  And no matter what else you say about it, we can all admit Revelation is tricky to understand.  Since we take the Bible so seriously, one aspect of Satan that isn’t addressed here is his role as trickster.  Folkloric characters who cause chaos (which the Devil does) are often tricksters doing it for no particular reason.  We don’t know why the Devil is bad.  The Bible has no clear origin story for him, since he’s built up from several other cultures’ ideas of bad deities.  To sort it all out requires, well, the details.

When Bible Met Horror

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My colleague (if I may be so bold) Brandon Grafius has recently published a piece titled “What Can Horror Teach Us about the Bible?” in Sojourners.  Brandon and I have never met in person, but we’ve worked together a number of times.  We share an interest in horror and we both teach/taught Hebrew Bible.  We’re not the only ones who’ve got this fascination.  When I was able to attend the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings in person, I would often meet up with others who, apart from their respectable jobs, have a real interest in horror.  There are quite a few of us.  Some journals, like Sojourners, are starting to ask the obvious question: what do these things have in common?

I can’t claim to have watched all the horror movies ever made.  It’s actually pretty difficult to access some of those I’d like to see and, believe it or not, I’m actually a selective viewer.  Often my choices are dictated by research.  Back when I was young, in college and seminary, I’d go to see horror movies with friends.  Since I was living alone in seminary that sometimes led to sleepless nights.  I recall vividly being unable to sleep after watching David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly.  (To this day I still haven’t seen the original with Vincent Price.  I see that it’s available to stream on Amazon Prime, and since we’ve got the internet back perhaps it’s time I do that.)  What I can claim is that I’ve always watched movies for religious elements and that I often find horror isn’t lacking in that department.

The point of Brandon’s article is that there are horror stories in the Bible.  Indeed, the more I ponder the Good Book the more I see that makes it a frightening text indeed.  Once you get past the sugar coating, there’s fear of substance inside.  Funnily enough, it seems Jesus didn’t often play the fear card, although even he did so from time to time, according to the Gospels.  Religion, which gives us such hope, also makes us so very afraid.  I’m really glad to know that I’m not the only one who’s started to come to that conclusion.  So maybe it’s natural for those raised religious to be fond of monsters.  Getting others to admit it can be tricky, and I’m sure some genuinely don’t like them.  Still, when you’re in a scary place, it’s best not to be alone.

Horror Shortly

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Some short books have an outsized punch.  Especially when dealing with a large topic such as “horror.”  This isn’t just horror movies, which could easily fill such a book, but also literature and other media as well.  Darryl Jones has proven himself on this topic before and this Very Short Introduction is a showcase of what is a fascinating genre.  I’ve read a number of books in this series and this stands out as one that works admirably within extreme limits—they are very short—in making good decisions about representative aspects in what is really a sprawling field of inquiry.  The introduction lays the task out well and I came away from each chapter feeling inspired.  Of course, not all of horror can be covered in less than 150 pages.  Some may find their favorite fear unaddressed, but they’ll learn something nevertheless.

In his first content chapter, Monsters, Jones focuses on vampires and zombies.  These are both forms of cannibals as they’re currently conceived, zombies being relative newcomers to most favored monster status.  His next chapter, on the occult and supernatural, takes on the Devil himself before addressing satanists, demons, and ghosts.  These are, of course, religious monsters.  Although Jones doesn’t dwell on that aspect, the close relationship is nevertheless evident.  For those of us who explore religion and horror this framing proves helpful.  It’s worth pausing here to consider how all of these entities overlap a bit.  As anyone familiar with ghost hunters knows, ghosts and demons may both be found haunted places, and the Devil is the head demon.  Of course, horror is a fiction genre but many people believe in these entities.  That brings religion and horror within the same room.

Body horror occupies the next chapter, and here werewolves come into the picture.  Other aspects of body horror are also discussed, but the painful transformation of the shapeshifter is prime territory.  Horror and the mind brings us to psychological thrillers and the gothic fear of madness.  The topic segues nicely into science, which the next chapter covers.  Not only science itself but the mad scientist.  Finally, the lengthy afterword looks at where horror has gone, and may be going, in the new millennium.  Something that struck me, and which brings this back into religion, is how frequently Darwin and evolution are mentioned.  This concept challenged the human place in the divine hierarchy and led to much of what we think of as horror.  This book is a great resource in a small package.

Living Right

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Horace Liveright had an outsized influence for his somewhat foreshortened years.  Initially a bond trader, he eventually moved into publishing where he founded the Modern Library as well as Boni and Liveright.  The Modern Library still exists, now as an imprint of Random House.  Liveright ceased publishing operations eventually, but the name was revived as an imprint of W. W. Norton.  There have been many publishing Wunderkindern, including Richard L. Simon, co-founder of Simon and Schuster (and father of Carly Simon), and the Scot William Collins whose name still appears in HarperCollins.  While reading about Liveright recently I learned that he also was responsible, in an unexpected way, for the development of the horror film.

Liveright never worked in the film industry.  He did, however, work as a stage producer in New York in the 1920s.  Among his most successful works was a play titled Dracula.  It starred Bela Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan as Dracula and Abraham Van Helsing, respectively.  The success of the Broadway show caught the attention of Hollywood and Lugosi and Van Sloan were cast in the same roles in Tod Browning’s Dracula, widely considered to be the first horror film, released in 1931.  Van Sloan went on to appear in Frankenstein as well, and Lugosi reprised his Dracula character as well as several other monsters.  It’s possible, perhaps likely, that horror would’ve begun with some other entry into the genre, but as history stands Dracula, based on Liveright’s stage production, started the whole thing.

Unless we work in it, we tend not to think about publishing too much.  We don’t pay attention to the publisher of the book we’re reading, and who lingers over the copyright page?  Giving a thought to these details, however, often adds new stories to the ones between the covers.  A fellow editor is fond of saying that books are as much about the author’s story as they are about the story the author’s telling.  The press, for example, often focuses on the former.  Who is it that wrote this book and why?  The question may be extended further—what publisher took it on and how did they even get into the business of deciding what people will read?  The internet has democratized that quite a bit, of course, and some authors can become their own authorities by knowing how to handle it.  So I’m taking one such opportunity to highlight the work of a sometimes forgotten pioneer who nevertheless began a publishing venture from which we’ve all most likely read.  And he also helped created the horror movie.

Whose Baby?

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Some books are better known as movies.  I suspect that I, like many, saw the movie Rosemary’s Baby without ever reading the book.  It turns out that they’re very similar.  The book takes the action a few minutes beyond the end of the movie, but otherwise they’re quite close.  Reading a horror novel where you know everything that’s going to happen isn’t exactly the recipe for thrills and chills, but I’m nevertheless glad to have done it.  For a book published as long ago as it was (1967) it still isn’t easily found used.  New copies tend to be just as expensive as new books.  I just wanted to have a read to see if Roman Polanski stayed close to Ira Levin or not.

Levin had a string of successful novels, but Rosemary’s Baby is probably still his best known.  He is quoted as saying he didn’t believe in the Devil and felt guilty that his book (and movie) may have led to many people taking on that belief.  In many ways Polanski’s movie kicked off the age of modern horror, being released the same year as George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.  Rosemary, however, opened the door to horror with overt religious themes.  It paved the way for The Exorcist and The Omen.  The latter, written by David Seltzer, was another example of a movie based on the Devil by an author who didn’t believe in him.  Personal belief aside, that trinity of movies remade the horror scene and led to one of the strangest cooperations in cinematic history.

In the book versus movie scenario often there’s a clear winner.  On other occasions the movie is so powerfully made that it overshadows its novel.  Rosemary’s Baby, along with The Exorcist, tended to do so.  (The Omen was novelized from the screenplay by the screenwriter.)  I wonder if that might not be because religion pays right into cinematic representation.  The novels, after all, can take several days of reading on a normal workaday schedule.  The film, if well done, transports the viewer there for a couple of hours and leaves you feeling as if you’ve been through, in the case of Rosemary, a traumatic pregnancy.  It so happened that the unholy trinity of religious horror tapped into that rapt storytelling of which celluloid proves so capable a medium.  Still, reading the novel fills in many of the gaps and brings to mind the benefits of the written word.  And this is, like a birth, something to be celebrated.

Incorporeal

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I’ve been struggling with the concept of incorporeality.  Well, not me personally, but in how it fits into demon movies.  Specifically the Conjuring universe.  I’ve recently been watching the series through again and the corporeality of demons strikes me as problematic.  As spiritual entities demons don’t have bodies—that’s why they possess people.  Yet in these films they can be contained by blessed spaces, or objects.  The doll Annabelle, in particular, has to be kept in a locked glass case to prevent the demon (apparently Valak) from gaining its full power.  Annabelle Comes Home discusses this directly.  After the priest blesses the doll, Lorraine Warren says it’s not enough.  The evil has to be encased in another layer.  In this case, glass from “Trinity Church” which has, ironically, been torn down.

Watching the entire series, as it currently stands, Annabelle appears in four of the eight films and is named in a fifth.  Annabelle: Creation implies that the demon in the doll is Valak (a.k.a. “The Nun”), and she has her own movie as well.  In each case the demon has to be contained within a sacred space.  Once out, it manifests in corporeal form with the ability to harm, or even kill, human beings.  Now, I know this is movie magic.  I also know these movies have been carefully pieced together.  The corporeal/incorporeal question is a standard of seminary training.  While the topic of ghosts, and demons for that matter, was never raised in the curriculum, we did have to deal with God and angels and what it means for a being without a body to become incarnate in one.  These movies could use some seminary.

Is it like this?

In Holy Horror, and especially Nightmares with the Bible, I wrote quite a bit about The Conjuring and the universe it’s building.  I’ve seen demons physically attacking characters, and even taking on classic demon shape.  The viewers wants to see the monster.  If they’re truly incorporeal they can cross between glass cases, doors, windows, and walls.  Some of them do, when it suits their purpose.  Yet they can be quieted by being locked into a glass case, as long as it’s been blessed.  Of course, I’m trying to figure this out on my own.  There are entire fandom wikis out there based on the films and they probably have much more detail than I could ever find on my own.  But then, in a sense, information on the internet is, well, incorporeal.

Secret Formula

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When writing fiction, I’ve never tried a series.  Some, such as Harry Potter, can set a writer for life.  I’ve always had the sense that the Dark Shadows novels were more potboilers.  There was a built-in fan base, and somehow in the sixties and seventies we didn’t expect Rowling-level writing.   It was the entire package: the Gothic, the recurring characters, the moody setting of Collinwood.  And of course, Barnabas Collins.  These novels may be journeyman writing, but here at number 25 in the series, Barnabas, Quentin, and the Magic Potion, there are some signs of literary improvement.  They are slight, rather like the first tinging of leaves with yellow as August begins to settle in, but they are there.  The series is nearing its end for me (provided I can actually find the last few books), but maybe it’s getting better.

What’s my reason for such a burst of enthusiasm?  Well, in this episode we see some features of Quentin that are more in line with how I remember him.  First of all, Ross tries some misdirection.  Quentin is presented as a master of disguise in the series and here there’s some clever hinting that, if you’re trying to think it through, leads you to mis-guess early on.  Not only that, but there’s a more positive view of Quentin here.  He’s not the evil satanist that he is earlier in the series.  Perhaps Ross had figured out by now that if people liked the idea of a Barnabas who is a conflicted victim, the same might apply to Quentin.  He’s not evil, but when you’re a werewolf, well, what can you do?

The “magic potion” is just as contrived and sketchy as most of the plot devices in this series—Harry Potter this is not.  It’s just a get rich quick scheme for a reprehensible old man and serves to move the plot along without really adding anything to it.  Carolyn here discovers that Barnabas is a vampire and, it seems to me, some of the plot devices for the Tim Burton movie might’ve been picked up from this particular novelization.  Although still not belle lettres by any stretch, the story here seems to have made some progress over the previous 24.  As a child, of course, I didn’t read these in order.  I relied on what I found at the bin in Goodwill, when I could find them.  I never had the whole series.  While trying at times, reading them may be a worthy exercise as an adult.  Perhaps series too grow up.

Keeping Categories

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Writing books about movies with a limited budget presents some challenges.  Our subscription to Disney Plus doesn’t really help with the horror genre, but my wife insightfully added Hulu to the package.  Now Hulu isn’t known as a horror streaming hub, but they do have some movies on my viewing list.  The other day I noticed one of their offerings with a title I didn’t recognize.  I  tried searching it on IMDb and came up with nothing.  A bit more research revealed it was an episode of an original Hulu series, mixed in with the horror movies.  The eroding of categories bothers me a bit.  It’s not just Netflix and Hulu and Amazon with movies, but it’s across the board.  I grew up when movie and television were easily distinguished.  Now we live with hybrids.

The same is happening in publishing.  When I sit down to write a book I have a specific end-goal in mind.  Everyone knows what a book is, right?  Well, the future of publishing is all about breaking that down.  Already years ago you could purchase aggregates for classroom use.  These were custom-selected chapters from certain books (electronic, of course) that an instructor could bundle into a “textbook.”  You could mix in articles, blog posts, anything to which you had the rights.  Such a textbook is not a book.  Nobody set out to write it in that form.  It looks like things are moving more and more in that direction.  You’ll be able to purchase just a chapter, or even a paragraph, to use.  Even if the book only makes sense when taken as a whole.

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

The electronic era is all about breaking down what civilization took centuries to build up.  Not everything about civilization has been good, of course.  It has been patriarchal, treating women unfairly.  It has been supremacist, treating those less technically developed in horrendous ways.  It has been classist, favoring the rich and their interests over those of the vast majority.  Still, it has left us some good legacies—the book, the symphony, the movie.  Such things have made us better people.  It may be fine to break such things down—who knows?  Maybe it will create more fairness for more people.  It won’t help me, however, when I’m trying to write a book about movies.  You still have to know what counts for each category, even if you have to do so on a budget.