Psycho

The story of Psycho is one I’ve long been familiar with due to Hitchcock’s excellent, groundbreaking film, but it wasn’t until recently that I was privileged enough to read the seminal Robert Bloch novel of the same name on which it was based.

This is a great book, hands down. The story itself is intriguing, the characterization near flawless, the prose itself is tight, the pace is relentless and we are left wanting for nothing at the end of the tale. In fact, the genius of this novel is in its sparsity, and in the decided minimum of gory spectacle that we now associate with the horror genre.

Consider the famous “shower scene” that spawned a thousand copy cats in literature and film alike and made me personally afraid to draw the curtain all the way. In Bloch’s book, the scene is only four paragraphs long, and short paragraphs at that. This doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the scene but rather it intensifies it. Here’s why: It’s not what we “see” or read here that makes this particular passage so terrifying. It’s what we don’t. It’s the fact that Bloch gives us only certain relevant facts and leaves the rest to our imagination. We don’t need more to be revolted.

Beyond the novel’s highly effective leanness, the characterization of Norman Bates is impeccable, and one of the first glimpses into the mind of a “psychopath” in the literary canon. Bloch does a masterful job both in depicting Norman and making us sympathize with him. As someone working in a closely related genre, I paid especial attention to all the ways in which Bloch provided us with just enough background that we found Norman’s horrific acts understandable, i.e. the description of the overly domineering mother and his meekness up until and right after each murder.

Unlike the legions of “serial killers” and “psychopaths” that populate much of contemporary horror fiction, Norman Bates isn’t a traditional sociopath. His emotions aren’t at all divorced from the act of killing, and he views each murder with a sense of expediency. After all, Mary does the unthinkable, she titillates Norman and she questions his behavior. He isn’t emotionally capable of dealing with either. His subsequent murder of Milton Arbogast he also views as necessary and in fact downright unavoidable.

If I have any beef with this novel, it’s that Bloch does such a terrific job with the character of Norman Bates and his dysfunctional relationship with his mother that the supporting characters and situations seem one dimensional and insipid by comparison. Mary’s relationship with Sam seems to exist only as a plot device and at the conclusion of Psycho, one is left wondering if Sam has exchanged Mary’s memory for her sister Lila’s obviously more animated attentions. Mary’s initial theft which necessitates her flight from Texas also seems like merely a means of getting her to the Bates Motel and not like the act of a particularly rational or intelligent person.

In short, I very much enjoyed this novel, and found it to be a textbook example of how to write about sympathetic psychopaths, which is a technique I attempt to employ in my own work.

Snow

I was “meh” about this book. There was a lot of it I liked, but there was an equal amount that left me cold, pun intended.

Let’s start with the characters. They were both believable and well developed. I understood their motivations, and I think Malfi did a dynamic job in giving each of them a plausible back story that made us root for them. Who can’t empathize/sympathize with a guy like Todd, whose made mistakes and desperately wants to atone for them, but who gets trapped in the blizzard and all the subsequent madness that ensues. I felt similarly about Kate. Speaking of Todd and Kate, thank you Mr. Malfi for not having these two screw like bunnies in the midst of a life threatening crisis. I can think of a few other horror writers who should’ve take a similar tack in their respective works. Other characters I found equally endearing, even if I didn’t get as invested in their fates.

The story was a good one, well plotted and well paced. The tension built slowly but not too slowly. The conflicts were clear and well defined. The progression of events was logical. As we’ve often discussed in this course, suspension of disbelief is paramount particularly in “monster” horror fiction, and I had no issues with the same as I read this book.

The settings were masterfully detailed. I could easily picture the events that transpired, and I had no difficulty imagining the characters as they were well fleshed out.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what I didn’t like about this book, since thus far all I’ve done is sing its praises. Well, in short, the monsters – in this case the skin suits and what I’d guess you’d call the snow beasts – weren’t scary. In fact, I found the notion of them latching on to human beings and walking them around like puppets to be, well, ludicrous to the point of comic. That’s right, the very idea made me laugh. And while it’s good to laugh when you’re reading horror fiction, it’s probably not ideal if you do so when you’re reading about a monster attack.

I’m not sure exactly what kept the monsters from being at all frightening. There were scary moments in this book, but on the whole they involved humans. The creepiest scenes in the whole book, in my view, were the ones that took place in the church when Todd and Kate encounter Chris and Meg. The image of Chris as a Lord of the Flies-esque dictator dressed in holy vestments was terrifying. The thought of a gigantic snow worm I found far less frightening.

Now, having said that, the idea of a monster emerging from a natural element like snow was both original and intimidating. Really made me think of the snow shoveling I’ll inevitably do this coming winter in a new light.

So, let’s briefly recap: Good plot, well developed and likable characters, a clear conflict, check. Scary monsters that make me want to sleep with the lights on? Not so much.

The Thing

John Carpenter’s The Thing is probably my favorite horror movie of all time. We’ll get into why shortly but first let me tell you another short, personal story.

For the first year after I moved to Pennsylvania, I lived in what could charitably considered a two-story house with a backyard bordered by a cemetery. Creepy, no? A thousand plus dead people right in my backyard. Anyway, setting aside, circumstances dictated that we had no cable and thus no television. We also had no VCR but instead could only watch movies on the computer’s DVD player (this was 1999). We owned roughly six or seven movies, and among a lineup that included The Prince of Egypt and Conan the Barbarian was The Thing.

Point of this story? I watched The Thing probably 25 times that year, and that’s a conservative estimate. I never got tired of watching it, and I relished the opportunity to revisit it for this course.

First off, you’ve got a top notch, all star cast that includes the likes of Kurt Russell, possibly the manliest man alive, and Wilford Brimley, who plays a character very unlike any of his other roles. You’ve got an almost subterranean arctic landscape which lends the film an eerie quality in and of itself. You’ve got special effects that are groundbreaking for the film’s era and which stand the test of time. You’ve got the requisite creepy soundtrack very much like the one in the other film we’ve watched for this course, Alien. You’ve got a facility inhabited by a crew that doesn’t much trust each other from the get go, a situation that never improves and only gets worse. All of these factors combine to lend this film the isolationist quality that makes it work so well.

Throw into that mix the monster itself, a monster terrifying because it can assimilate into anyone or anything. When the dog first arrives at the station, it seems so harmless. By the time it’s discovered that the dog was in fact a “thing”, the tension is palpable and real, and we as the viewer immediately – like the crew – become distrustful of every man in the station.

Carpenter (and his cast) amp up the tension in every subsequent scene. When MacReady and Copper visit the deserted Norwegian station and stumble upon the space ship in the snow, we feel the dread that will soon infiltrate the American station, and we realize our heroes are doomed. From then on, the film is roughly akin to a roller coaster ride. Even at the end of the movie, when MacReady and Childs are the only survivors, we know they too are certain to die. There will be no happy ending; they will never make it to safety and in fact they shouldn’t for the sake of the rest of humanity.

In a nutshell, I very much enjoyed having the chance to watch this film again, and it’s no less terrifying on my 30th viewing than it was on my first.

The Wolfman

I wanted to like Jonathan Mayberry’s novelization of the film Wolfman. I really did. After all, it had so much potential. Creepy Victorian setting? Win. Jaded actor with a heart of gold? Win. Family secrets brought to light? Win. Monster ravaging the English countryside, much like in Rawhead Rex? Win. Detective from my own thesis novel (Aberline, even if his first name is wrong and his last name is spelled wrong; I get it, it's fiction.)? Win.

Having said that, this was the most horribly written book we’ve read so far in this course and considering that’s a group that includes Breeding Ground (which I loathed), that’s saying quite a bit.

Let’s start with the main character: Lawrence Talbot. I understand his motivation in returning to Blackmoor. After that, he loses me completely. First off, the tension between him and his father, Lord John, is ridiculous. Either you hate either other or you’re happy to see each other, guys, period. We go from prodigal feasts to angry accusations back to a Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker-esque confrontation, and at no point do I care about any of it.

Another beef about Lawrence Talbot: his sudden, all consuming infatuation with Gwen. Come on, man, this was your dead brother’s fiancée. Let a little time pass before you try to jump her bones; have just the tiniest bit of respect for the dead (and your own brother)! Also, the whole “Gwen was an angel compared to all those sluts back in London” bit was a tad much.

Speaking of Gwen and her Mary, Mother of God depiction: I don’t buy it. She was living with a man in his ancestral home prior to marriage (i.e. living in sin) during the Victorian Era, an era synonymous with over the top morality and sexual repression. Nope, Mr. Mayberry, I’m just not convinced.

Let’s talk about the monster(s) itself/himself/themselves: They were fairly intimidating, but again, over the top. The mass attack scene in the Gypsy camp left me reeling. It was the horror movie novelization equivalent of Dirty Harry shooting every man in the room; it was overkill, pure and simple. Also, I didn’t understand Lawerence’s motivations (again) in chasing after the werewolf after it’s basically attacked and killed every man, woman and child in the camp. Seems to me a smarter man would have bided his time and learned from the experience. Guess not.

Back to the writing: it was terrible. As a writer myself, there’s no phrase I detest more hearing or seeing in a critique than “show don’t tell.” I literally cringe when I see it; it’s the most overused, lazy comment you can make in a critique, in my view. Having said that, Mr. Mayberry? Show, don’t tell. And certainly don’t tell, tell, tell, and then tell some more. It was like he’d tell us a detail, then re-tell it three times after that. I get that Gwen has smoky blue eyes. Also, the fashion and food porn in this book was almost fetishistic; overdone to the point of nauseating.

Maybe it’s the fact that I generally detest movie novelizations that made me hate this book so much. Maybe it was just the fact that I kept wanting, on every page, to red ink it until the pages looked like they were themselves victims of the Wolfman because the prose was just so terrible. I’m not sure. I just know I had to force myself to finish this book, and now I’m not even sure I want to see the movie. And, that’s a shame because I think it had the potential to be a good story and just grossly missed the mark.

Alien

The year is 1979. In the thriving metropolis that was Memphis, Tennessee, a 20 year old woman leaves her two year old daughter in the care of a babysitter and accompanies her husband to the movies for a date night. She will leave the theater in near hysterics, having been so unnerved by the film that she can’t finish watching it.

The woman was then Karen Anderton, my mother, and the film was Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Fast forward roughly twenty years into the future, and I had the opportunity to see the film for the first time myself. All my life, my mother had told me this was the most frightening movie she’d ever seen. Now, admittedly, my mother is a bit of a wuss, but she’s a tough cookie and she isn’t easily intimidated.

I was prepared to be terrified the first time I saw this film, both as a result of my mother’s conditioning and the fact that I’d found at least two of the sequels to be fairly scary flicks. What I came away with was more of a feeling of “That was it?” That was the film I’d hesitated at watching because of my mother’s violent reaction to it, and I found it barely scary, more a work of science fiction than pure horror.

Still, aside from the fact that I managed to finish this film – unlike my mother – and didn’t have nightmares afterward (I rarely do, at least about fictional monsters), I have to say this movie was well done and I enjoyed it.

Part of that stems from my love of 1970s era cinema. Alien is a film like so many others of that same era. Visually, it very much resembles John Carpenter’s The Thing or Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, A Clockwork Orange and – later on – The Shining. It’s darkness to the point of surrealism.

Another reason I like this movie is because I love H. R. Geiger’s artwork. His hand is clearly visible in this film and not just in the set design and the alien itself. Just as Wikipedia says of Geiger’s work – “His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, described as "biomechanical" – there appear to be “cold, interconnected” relationships between most of the characters in the film. These are individuals who are just doing their job, and there aren’t a lot of strong loyalties among the ship’s crew members. That sense of isolation even in the midst of the group is another reason I believe this film works well. Even in near claustrophobic conditions, each man is essentially an island.

There’s little question who the true villains in this film are. I agree with some of my classmate’s assertions that the alien is an innocent if murderous bystander, and that the “real” monster is The Company, who have created the android Ash and put him on board the Nostromo to serve their horrifying, potentially catastrophic purposes.

In a nutshell, I’m glad I had a chance to revisit this film and to examine it more closely. While I think it stands the test of time, I think I at least may be too desensitized by having seen films that were so much more gruesome and over the top, including the subsequent films in the Alien franchise.

World War Z

I have a confession to make. I never considered myself much of a zombie fan. I thought zombies were quite literally the stupidest monster in the whole of the monster horror genre. I loathed them for their utter mindlessness. After all, I’m a self proclaimed elitist; I need my monsters to be smarter than me in order to truly touch me.

Or do I?

Maybe not, because I absolutely loved World War Z. Loved it from the get go, and fell more in love with it with every passing page. In fact, I’d go so far as to compare it to one of my favorite novels of all time, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I don’t have to go out on too much of a limb; the back cover blurb from USA Today said this book was “Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style, and everybody knows the movie Apocalypse Now was based on Heart of Darkness, right? Right?

Just as Conrad’s novel depicts a journey that culminates in significant truths about the darker side of human nature being revealed, World War Z is also a gripping, moving and very detailed illustration of what man is capable of when pitted against utter horror. Much as Captain Kurtz says near the conclusion of Heart of Darkness, oh, “the horror, the horror” of world infested with flesh eating zombies, but even more so “the horror” of what man resorts to when confronted with his own certain demise.

The section of this rollicking, riveting documentary style novel that worked best for me was Jesika Hendricks’s account, beginning on page 121. At first, the Hendricks seem to only be on an extended camping trip, but by the end of the story, we see they – along with other desperate survivors clinging to what remains of life – resort to cannibalism. By doing this, they essentially become no better than the zombies in that they too are flesh-eaters consuming their neighbors for sustenance. Wow, Mr. Brooks. Now that is deep.

There were a few sections that didn’t work for me; mainly, these were the ones that depicted actual warfare. The submarine scene didn’t particularly impress me, and most of the “battle” scenes fell flat for me, which is surprising considering I normally love epic battle scenes.

Don’t get me wrong. This novel was epic, battle scenes and all, and to an extent that was part of its charm. It went outside the box; it was global, even universal, in its scope. Were there some believability issues? Sure, but then again, I don’t believe in zombies in the first place, so once I suspended my disbelief enough initially to begin reading and getting engrossed in this book, I was fairly accepting of the unbelievable.

To address the question of “were the zombies scary monsters”, well, no, by and large I didn’t find them all that frightening. The tension in this work wasn’t achieved by hearing how the zombies consumed their victims but rather from hearing the accounts of how the survivors managed to stay alive. For me, the survivor’s tales of their flights from the cities and towns – zombies in hot pursuit – were what interested me most.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the point in my life when I have the opportunity to revisit it. Perhaps the highest praise of all is this: Tomorrow, I’ll be passing this on to my son.

The Yattering and Jack

I hope I’m not going to get in too much trouble for this, but I won’t be devoting much of this post to talking about the “monster” in Clive Barker’s “The Yattering and Jack”. I can’t. I don’t think there was one. Yeah, I know the “antagonist” was a demon, but I didn’t find him particularly antagonistic or frightening. I don’t think Barker intended for him to be either, which was part of what made this piece so engaging.

You can’t help but sympathize (and empathize) with both Jack and the demon who tries so hard to torment him. After all, the Yattering is just doing his job; he is more frustrated by his inability to faze Jack or ruffle his victim’s calm, patient demeanor than Jack is bothered by the Yattering’s horrifying and yet hilarious antics.

Oh, I loved this story for a veritable cornucopia of reasons. It’s funny and it’s deep, and the end of it warms my atheist’s heart.

First off, the humor: This piece is resplendent with it. Beginning on page 44, when Jack backs out of the bathroom so his adulterous wife can finish cuckolding him, I laughed heartily, and I found myself in stitches on every subsequent page. Jack’s response to his daughter’s announcement that she’s a lesbian was priceless. Other examples include Barker describing how the Yattering’s existence is so uneventful that he looks forward to the mailman coming, or the fact that the creature spends its day watching game shows and hoping to catch a glimpse of the neighbor woman walking around her house naked. Even the imagery of Jack pissing on the drowned cat was amusing, in its way.

Second, I loved this story because I really related to it. Some of my classmates in the genre readings course posted that they empathized with the Yattering’s plight in that they too have been up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles and subject to the demands of “Evil Overlords”, but I related more to Jack. I say this because I live with a Yattering; an honest-to-god crazy person who is prone to flip out on me at any given minute. Jack’s reaction to finding his cat floating in the toilet (or spontaneously combusted in the living room) is roughly akin, I suspect, to the frustration I often feel when I encounter the latest evidence that my roommate is batshit insane. I only wish I had Jack’s unflappable demeanor.

Speaking of his calm demeanor, I want to draw what I thought was an obvious comparison between Jack and Job of the Bible. “The Yattering and Jack” is near parallel the story of Job, when Satan torments Job with the loss/death of his wife and children, the ruination of his crops, and the wreck of his personal health, all in an attempt to make Job renounce God.

Speaking of God, I adore the fact that at the end of this piece, Jack acknowledges that although he now has control over the Yattering, his contact with and apparent condoning of the creature has, in fact, barred him from entering the so-called gates of “Heaven”. So, to an extent, the Yattering has (post-disgrace) served his purpose; he has kept Jack Polo from spending the afterlife in “paradise”.

Nicely done, Mr. Barker!