Se7en

A few of my classmates have opined that Red Dragon, the novel, and Silence of the Lambs, the film, were major influences on their decisions to become horror/suspense writers/readers. This was the case with me and the movie Se7en. This film, coupled with a tour of the Jack the Ripper kill spots I embarked on about six months before I saw this film the first couple of times, had a tremendous impact on me and was a pivotal influence on my own decision to write about serial killers. I really love this movie, so much so that I jumped ahead in the syllabus to have the opportunity to revisit it. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Stay tuned for my thoughts on this week’s ACTUAL assigned reading, which I am currently reading as if my life depends on it. It sort of does. But, back to Se7en.)

Perhaps what I love most about Se7en is its intensity, its succession of “OMG, that’s just horrible” scenes, each progressively more grotesque. Each of the murder sites are depicted in sickening detail so vivid they stay with you hours, days, even years after seeing them. It’s in your face shocking and it haunts you. The first time I saw this movie, when it came out in the theaters, my date nearly jumped in my lap during the “Sloth” scene. Roughly sixteen years later, my “date” has a lot less hair but basically had the same reaction. (If you’re sensing a trend, it’s just this film is so disturbing I refuse to watch it alone. This is saying a lot when you consider that in my writing space there are two framed prints of the corpse of Mary Kelly directly in my line of vision at all times.) Just when you think John Doe’s crimes can’t get any more horrific, they do just that.

And while John Doe’s victims’ deaths are orgies of almost unimaginable cruelty and violence, they are not senseless. Far from it, in fact. John Doe is a very smart killer, as evidenced by both his elaborate crimes and his ability to avoid detection long enough to carry out his mission of murdering people according to the Seven Deadly Sins. This premise, that Doe’s victims have each violated one of the Seven Deadly Sins and therefore must die accordingly, is a relatively simple one but it’s genius. Religion or more accurately fanaticism is a motive for murder in real life and in fiction, and even though I find what goes on in John Doe’s head prior to and during each murder extremely alarming, I do understand his rationale. He really believes he is doing the Lord’s work and his commitment to his mission is clear.

It almost goes without saying that the acting in this film is superb but I’ll say it anyway. It greatly increased my respect for Brad Pitt and only advanced my esteem for Morgan Freeman. Kevin Spacey is perhaps the creepiest actor working in Hollywood now or then, and he was a prime choice to play John Doe. Even the bit parts were filled by fantastic actors. The West Wing junkie in me squeed a little to see Richard Schiff as Doe’s attorney, this of course several years before West Wing first aired. I did find Gwyneth Paltrow’s portrayal of Tracy Mills to be extremely whiny and was honestly happy when she died, but that’s my only beef with the casting.

In a nutshell, this is the best film about a serial killer I’ve ever seen, it had a tremendous influence on my own writing and interests, and I would definitely consider it required viewing for anyone working in the serial killer genre.

Misery

When you call yourself a “fan” of an author, and that same author is prolific, it’s inevitable they’re going to write a novel that isn’t to your taste. It’s less likely they’ll write a novel you’ll outright hate, but while I call myself a Stephen King fan and have read most of his books and seen most of the screen adaptations of his works? I despise Misery. I hated it when I read it for the first time circa 1993, and I hated it even more (if such a thing was possible) reading it again for this course. Finishing it the first time was laborious, but this latest instance was – frankly – torturous.

Having said all that, Misery isn’t a bad book, quite the contrary. It’s got a compelling, well woven story and memorable characters, two of the hallmarks that define King’s writing style. Say what you will about King, he’s a master storyteller. No, my personal revulsion aside, Misery has a distinct and well deserved place in the canon of horror literature.

We talked a lot in recent weeks about how Red Dragon and then Silence of the Lambs (or the inverse, in my opinion) were revolutionary works in that they introduced the horror genre to a wide variety of readers, particularly readers who had previously disdained horror books, stories and films. This is no less true of Misery. When the big screen adaptation of this novel was released, once again Oscar came calling and Kathy Bates – a phenomenal actress in all respects – lent the character of Annie Wilkes a persona that was both terrifying and intriguing. The general public fell in love, just as they would fall in love with Dr. Lecter not long thereafter, with this unpredictable female psychopath, and it could be opined this particular character – Annie Wilkes – was the mother of what I’ll call the crazy bitch genre.

And the crazy bitch genre, a subset of the psychos genre we’re studying this term, contributed greatly to improving the overall public sentiment toward and respect for horror fiction in the 1980s and 90s, much as haunted places and people did in the 60s and 70s and as zombies, werewolves and vampires are doing for it now.

But let’s get back to what I hated so much about this book. Like any other work of literature, or film, or visual media, the audience (or, in my case, the reader) brings a lot of baggage with them – roughly akin to how much I pack for SHU res – when they read/watch/observe a work. Their personal experiences play a role, whether or not they’re conscious of the same. This was the case with me and Misery.

Simply put, I’m not a big fan of captivity stories; there’s a reason this blog is named “Any bird out of a cage” and the idea of being trapped like Paul Sheldon leaves me feeling downright queasy. Then, there’s the matter of the drug dependence Paul develops after Annie essentially force feeds him opiates. I know a little about opiate addiction, having myself developed and kicked a dependence on Vicodin after a particularly nasty tumble down a flight of stairs that landed me in the hospital and left me unable to walk for two months. So, I’ve been Paul Sheldon, and it ain’t fun, and reading this just took me back to a couple of places I’d rather not go.

Finally, throw in all the torture and sensory deprivation in this novel, and I just had a very unpleasant, visceral reaction that left me with little love for this book.

Silence of the Lambs

Last week I opined that Red Dragon, while a good novel, was not a great novel as asserted by many of my classmates, and there were strong, well stated reactions to my beliefs that Red Dragon was full of stereotypes, cookie cutter characters and tired plot devices. I want to clarify my position a little before I move onto the film version of the second book in the Hannibal Lector series, Silence of the Lambs. I very much enjoyed Red Dragon, and I thought it was revolutionary for its time. I just thought it failed to live up to its incredible potential.

Silence of the Lambs – both the print and film versions – did more than live up to its potential; it exceeded it. Further, the film version – much more so than the original print version of Red Dragon – arguably launched the serial killer/forensics/cold case craze that now dominates much of cinema/television and a rather large section of your local bookstore.

About now you must be thinking I’m a nutjob, or at the very least an idiot, for the preceding statement. I can’t seriously be crediting a film that came out more than a decade AFTER Red Dragon was first published with being more groundbreaking than it’s a predecessor, can I? I am. Here’s why:

The film version of Silence of the Lambs was such a critical and commercial success that it introduced the “criminal horror” genre to two different but vitally important groups: Oscar voters, as well as their ilk, and the Great Unwashed. Both groups had virtually ignored the genre up to this point. When the film came out in 1991, it swept the Academy Awards for that year and had the effect of making the American moviegoer do the unthinkable: pick up a book and read. Yes, they devoured Harris’s second novel in the Hannibal Lecter series then followed that up by revisiting Red Dragon. They clamored for a third book, then a fourth. (For the record, I loathed Hannibal Rising and refuse to apologize for saying so.) And they set out to read/watch every similarly themed book/movie they could get their grubby little hands on. The release of the film Silence of the Lambs did far more than its literary predecessor Red Dragon did to inspire and incite the criminal horror craze.

In my view, Silence of the Lambs was a hit for a host of reasons, chief among them it’s simply a superb film. The acting is marvelous. There’s no question Foster and Hopkins deserved their Oscar wins. Hopkins especially made the role of Hannibal Lecter his own, and I’ll never be able to read any of novels in the series without picturing his face (and voice and overall creepy demeanor). Speaking as someone who was roughly thirteen when this film came out, I can assure you half the girls at my middle school wanted to grow up to be Clarisse Starling as portrayed by Jodie Foster, and I think that Foster’s performance as a strong, capable female advanced the very cause of feminism.

The film’s storyline is very engrossing and the villains – both Lecter and Buffalo Bill – never fail to terrify me. Lecter is my favorite character in the Harris series and this particular story seems to be more about him than when we first meet him in Red Dragon (the book). Here is a serial killer I admire, even if I find his dietary habits reprehensible. He’s smart, articulate, educated – what Stephen Dobyns might call a “professional man” – not to mention downright likable when he’s not murdering people in bizarre ways and consuming their flesh along with “a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

In conclusion, I very much enjoyed this film the first and last twenty plus times I’ve seen it. It’s one of those films I consider a classic and enjoy having the chance to revisit on occasion.

Red Dragon

I mentioned to a friend of mine last night that I had recently re-read Red Dragon and had to blog about it today, and his response was “Red Dragon? That’s a great book.” I found his reply noteworthy only because he’s not much of a reader, so when he mentions having really liked a book, I pay attention. I was thinking about his response earlier today, thinking of how I’d spin it into a blog entry on how Red Dragon was a book so great even “non-readers” sang its praises. I read some of my classmates’ blogs, all of whom seemed to also feel Red Dragon was a “great book”. Their entries listed, quite cogently, all the reasons the novel is considered so compelling by so many, as well as addressed the fact that it is an iconic work, groundbreaking for its time.

I won’t argue with Red Dragon’s icon status, but I will posit that it’s not actually a great book.

Yeah, I said it; it’s not a great book. Sure, it’s a good story, fast paced, full of vaguely interesting characters and downright creepy in parts. It’s well written and clearly well researched. However, it’s also full of stereotypes, cookie cutter characters and tired plot devices.

Let’s start with the circumstances in which we first encounter Will Graham. The man’s had a fairly serious mental breakdown and nearly died at the hands of Hannibal Lecter (or rather, Dr. Lecter’s linoleum knife) and now he’s just trying to live a nice, quiet life with his wife and stepson. I don’t buy that Jack Crawford would find it expeditious or wise to involve Graham in the manhunt for the “Tooth Fairy”, nor do I believe Graham would accept Crawford’s challenge with as little reluctance as he does. Now, I realize much of the horror canon – books and film – is precipitated on the “Don’t go in the house alone” syndrome, but I just found it incredibly hard to stomach the notion that Graham would get back in the ring, so to speak, with such haste and so little thought. So, there’s that.

Then there’s our bad guy, Mr. Dolarhyde, who frightens me about as much as Casper the Friendly Ghost. He is the Everyman of serial killers: he’s deformed, his parents abandoned him, his fellow orphans tormented him, and his grandmother abused him. Stop me if you’ve heard this tune before. Very Norman Bates, as one of my classmates pointed out in their blog entry. (That was Jen Loring, I think.) His crimes are horrific, true enough, and I’ll be forever haunted by the scene in which he kills Freddy Lounds, the tabloid reporter, but compared to other fictional and/or real accounts of serial murders, Dolarhyde’s actions seem almost tame. I did like the idea of his falling in love with Reba and wanting to “reform” for her sake compelling, though. I may have to use that one in a book of my own some day.

Finally, the book is incredibly dated, though this doesn’t detract from the fact that, for it’s time, it WAS revolutionary. The twenty-five plus intervening years haven’t been kind to some of the plot details. Think about Dolarhyde’s day job, the means through which he selects his victims. Nobody sends film away to be processed anymore. Now, it can be argued that his job was only a minor detail and thoroughly interchangeable, that he could have had any job and the book would have been largely the same.

And that’s the rub, this whole book is interchangeable. It reads like every other novel about a serial killer and the police working feverishly around the clock to stop him that I’ve ever had occasion to read. It’s a premise that’s just been done to death.

The Church of Dead Girls

Occasionally I have the opportunity read a novel so complex and multilayered that I want to thank the person who recommended it to me. Stephen Dobyns' The Church of Dead Girls is one of those books. I was hooked from page one, and at the thrilling conclusion, I was genuinely sorry the experience of reading it had come to an end.

First off, I strongly identified with many of the characters. I live in a town like Aurelius, and I have met all these people. On a personal note, I felt the strongest kinship to Franklin, the small town newspaper editor. By way of background, I was Editor in Chief of a small monthly newsmagazine for half a decade that covered stories much like the ones Franklin wrote and published in his newspaper. When he described the joy it brought him to showcase the extraordinary endeavors of rather ordinary people, it was spot on and so similar to my own experiences that it moved me tremendously.

It occurred to me after some reflection on this subject that I’m probably not alone in my reaction. There was something – or rather someone – in The Church of Dead Girls for everyone. No profession seemed to be unrepresented.

The narration in TCODG was masterfully done, and Dobyns’ choice to use the closeted high school biology teacher as the point of view character was a good one. He was just close enough to the action to react to it without being so close that he intruded on the story he was telling.

This wasn’t a terrifying tale, though any book that begins with the discovery of three dead teenage girls in an attic deserves the label “chilling.” I felt the murders were secondary to what I considered the real plot of how hysteria invades and pervades small town life, and how in desperate situations everyone is suspect and civil liberties go out the window. The mob mentality Dobyns describes in this novel – particularly the controversy that surrounds the Inquiries Into The Right discussion group – very much reminded me of one of my champion causes, the West Memphis Three, a real life situation that seems to parallel in many ways the situation in TCODG. Here’s a link if anybody wants more info: www.wm3.org

The prose itself was tight and well crafted. Dobyns did a fantastic job of marrying all of the different side stories and back stories in the novel and of bringing them all to one rich conclusion.

As far as the reveal of “whodunit” when we learn who the killer is, I have to say by the end of the novel, I was so wrapped up in the various subplots and so invested in many of the characters that I didn’t really care. In many cases, that would have been detrimental to my enjoyment of a work, but not in this one. Once we learned who the killer was and he described his motivations, however, I have to admit a chill ran down my spine.

I will read this book again. I will recommend it to my friends. I will go so far as to say that of all the readings I’ve been assigned for the horror genre readings course, this was and is my favorite.

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.