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!

Cycle of the Werewolf

I’ve never been much a comic book enthusiast. I’m not a huge fan of werewolves. (I know, you’re probably wondering at this point what monsters I actually like, and the answer to that would be: the ones that live next door.) So honestly, the only reason I’d ever read Cycle of the Werewolf was because it was a Stephen King novel. I wouldn’t count it among my top 20 favorite King works, and though he has quite a body of work, that says something.

Re-reading it for this assignment, however, altered my perception of it, and now I’m of two minds.

First, here is what I loved about this book. I really enjoyed the setting. When I first read this book 20 years ago, I had no idea places like Tarker Mills existed. Now I live in an equally small, clannish, backwater town, and I think King did a masterful job of capturing the essence of small town life. He does this in a lot of his work, of course, but the brevity of this work necessitated that he capture small town life in a nutshell, and I think he did a bang up job. I would even say this work is Hemingway-esque.

Getting back to what I said about liking monsters who live next door, I loved the fact that the Beast turned out to be a Baptist minister (I’m a recovering Southern Baptist, y’all). I thought the notion of the Beast being destroyed by a puny kid in a wheelchair and his bad boy uncle was delightful and ironic. However, I would have enjoyed more background on all three: Reverend Lowe, Marty Coslaw and Uncle Al. I thought the relationship between Marty and the rest of his family could have been fleshed out a lot more, and I was disappointed by the ambiguity.

Now, on to the Beast itself. He just didn’t do it for me. He didn’t scare me, and I wasn’t invested enough in any of his victims to care what he did to them. Some of this was due to the omniscient point of view. The same brevity that lent itself perfectly to capturing small town life in a nutshell worked against the attack scenes; they were too short and I think King could have gone a lot farther in both developing his victim characters and in describing their deaths. It was more like reading newspaper articles than reading a horror novel: just the facts, hold the gore. And let’s face it, people don’t read the newspaper for pleasure.

The illustrations that accompanied each attack scene I found cartoonish and not at all frightening. In fact, I would go so far as to say they made the work comic, pun intended. If the material itself had been more humorous, the illustrations would have been appropriate, but it really wasn’t.

In short, I found this to be a quick, engaging read, but I probably won’t read it again. Cycle of the Werewolf falls squarely in the “meh” category in my view.

Rawhead Rex

Okay, so we’ve got a vicious, bloodthirsty maniac roaming the English countryside, dismembering and disemboweling everyone he encounters? Win! Rawhead Rex reminded me of my own favorite bad boy, Jack the Ripper, down to Rawhead’s assertion on page 371 that “he’d slaughter their children and wear their infants’ bowels as necklaces.” Mr. Barker? You had me at page 362.

First things first. Let’s banish the notion that Rawhead Rex isn’t a sympathetic character. If you buried me alive, then left me to rot for thousands of years, I can assure you I’d come out of my crypt fighting mad. I’d want to eat you, your young, your livestock, whatever I could find to sink my teeth into. I’d want vengeance, plainly stated, and I don’t think we can cast aspersions at Rawhead for wanting his comeuppance. Having said that, I have to admit it doesn’t sound if he was a particularly sterling being prior to his untimely demise.

As to Rawhead’s monstrous qualities: I thought Barker did a terrific job of fleshing out, so to speak, Rawhead, and I had a very vivid image of him in my head as I read. However, he failed my litmus test for determining how scary a monster/concept is. When I went to bed shortly after I finished reading this, I didn’t find it necessary to leave a light on. It was well written enough, but it was overkill, pun intended. After the first few victims, the carnage started to lose impact and to some degree to become comedic. There wasn’t one specific killing that stood out in my imagination.

In fact, I found the scenes where Rawhead didn’t kill the characters immediately upon seeing them much more terrifying than the descriptions of him instantly slaughtering his victims. For example, on page 385, when Rawhead is urinating on Declan and Declan is happily bathing in the stream, that sent a chill down my spine. For that matter, Declan and his devotion to Rawhead was the creepiest aspect of this story, in my view.

Also in the same vein, the fact that Rawhead refuses to go near Gwen Nicholson because she’s menstruating I found disturbing, much as I found the concept that Rawhead and his brothers impregnated the village women all those years ago with babies that ripped them apart during birth ghastly and alarming.

Now that I’ve addressed the monster itself, I do want to speak to what I felt this story was really about. I believe Rawhead Rex was about the consequences of colonization. Barker alludes to this almost from the get go when he describes how Zeal has been basically invaded by the Sunday trippers. Replace “Zeal” with “Britannia” and Rawhead Rex is essentially the monstrous embodiment of the Celts and the Saxons, with the Sunday trippers being the Romans. Fast forward roughly a thousand years, and Rawhead Rex is Australia. I could go on making these comparisons in relation to England for hours; you get my point already, I’m sure.

In short, I found this to be a terrifically engaging work which I thoroughly enjoyed. I am eager to read more of Barker’s work.

Breeding Ground

I was afraid I was going to hate this book, and I was right. Still, I have to say I hated it for unexpected reasons.

I have a horror of spiders, in fact I would say that I’m a certified arachnophobiac, so it was with no small amount of dread that I began reading this book. Still, I didn’t really fear the “widows” as initially depicted. It was only when our band of survivors reached the military compound and mention was made of the legions of spiders in the trees that I started to find the spiders at all menacing.

I found the description of the humans mutating into spiders way more horrifying than the spiders themselves. I think this was because the author devoted significantly more time to fleshing out the description of Dave, Katie and even Neil’s respective mutations than she did to depicting the spiders. I believe this was a good decision on the author’s part; it was far creepier to think of humans transforming into spiders from within. It literally made my skin crawl.

Now that I’ve addressed what I felt made this book scary and therefore effective, I have to repeat: I hated this book. I thought the way every female in the book was depicted was misogynistic and revealed the author’s apparent distaste for her own gender.

Let’s start with Chloe. I realize she gets fat and give birth to a widow but while I find her transformation repugnant, I found Matt’s reaction to it to be more so. He closes off from her emotionally almost from the get go. While I can’t stress enough how much I sympathize with what he experiences, I found his lack of grief at the death of his wife to be appalling.

Further, like many of my fellow students in this course have posted, I found Matt’s willingness to hop into bed with every female of age he encountered reprehensible. You’d think after seeing what happened to Chloe, he’d have been more gun shy in regard to the so-called fairer sex, but he starts eyeballing and flirting with Katie almost upon meeting her and Jane. Then, even after Katie’s transformation and subsequent suicide, this on the heels of his own wife’s demise, he sees fit to fall in love/lust with Rebecca and impregnates her. What’s even more bizarre is when he finds out Rebecca is pregnant, he is happy about it! This blew my mind. You’d have thought he’d have been more concerned she’d give birth to a spider, too.

Women aside, I didn’t find any of the male characters in this novel to be particularly sympathetic or engaging. Nigel was obviously a prick and got exactly what he deserved; of course, the author reminded us of this at every turn. Other than Nigel, none of the male characters were very memorable.

In conclusion, this novel made my skin crawl which I suppose is a bit of a testament to the author’s prowess as a horror novelist, but for the most part I had to force myself to finish it. The story didn’t initially draw me in and nothing in the text as I kept reading redeemed this book for me. I can say with no small amount of conviction that I would never reread this book or suggest it to a friend.

The Funeral

Much as I opined last week about “Buried Talents”, I think Richard Matheson's “The Funeral” makes a fine companion piece to I am Legend. Ludwig Asper could very well have been Ben Cortman and vice versa. You’ve also got a motley gang of the undead wanting vindication and recognition in both pieces. One has to think Matheson knew what he was doing when he paired these works together; they complement each other very well.

I greatly enjoyed this story, and like many of my classmates I found the fact that it was so humorous the most engaging aspect of it. The other two areas in which I felt Matheson excelled were in his characterization and setting depiction.

In the first paragraph alone, I get a sense of who Morton Silkline is; he’s a fussy type he muses “over floral arrangements” and yet he is, almost ironically, the proprietor of an establishment called Clooney’s Cut-Rate Catafalque. These two facts are obviously incongruent and yet they seem perfectly matched as they set us up for the later revelations about Silkline’s dual nature.

Silkline’s dual nature is in fact that funniest part of this piece. Here’s a guy whose life is imperiled by catering to the rather unusual demands of monsters. His establishment is nearly burned down by the same. Still, he’s willing to take the risk of that happening again if the price is right. It’s the quintessential “sell your soul to the Devil” story, except in “The Funeral” the Devil is replaced by monsters. Silkline’s character never truly aroused my sympathy but I don’t think he was intended to be a sympathetic character. Rather, I think he was supposed to be representative of the guy we’ve all met in real life, the kind of man that can be bought. (There’s no shortage of them running around.)

The monsters themselves were all so comical that they weren’t really frightening, but this certainly didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this piece. As other students have posted, I felt Matheson intentionally depicted the monsters as stereotypical Beasts that Go Bump in the Night to add to the humor of the work, and his approach definitely worked for me.

I also posted last week that in I am Legend I could see the influence that would later guide Stephen King, and that’s no less true in “The Funeral”. Additionally, Matheson’s attention to detail in his description of setting is reminiscent of Lovecraft. This is high praise as I’m not a huge Lovecraft fan but I do feel he’s a master of setting. I can’t imagine Matheson not being influenced by his predecessor so I doubt this is coincidental. I’ve often heard it said that “good writers borrow and great writers steal” and in this piece I can see Matheson stealing from Lovecraft much in the manner King will later steal from him.

In summary, there wasn’t anything about this story that I didn’t like, and my esteem for Matheson continues to grow.