A Literary Critic Offers Some Tips for Writing Powerful Horror Stories

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, Jason Zinoman offers some interesting, although rather dated, observations: the book was published in 2011. Many of his observations could serve as guidelines to apprentices who are interested in writing a horror novel (or movie).

Jason Zinoman

For instance, Zinoman, in discussing Rosemary's Baby, points out that the film is “about issues that people could relate to—the nervousness of entering the real estate market; struggling in a faltering, sexless marriage; and the yearning, desperate search for fame (11-12). In fact, he says, the movie is “about the perils of domesticity” (14).

In addition, Zinoman declares, Roman Polanski “made the movie strictly from Rosemary's perspective and maintained that it must always be possible for “all the supernatural elements on it to be a series of coincidences” (21), so that “the suspense hinges on finding out whether the bizarre things happening . . . are real or the product of delusion” (21).

Throughout Shock Value, Zinoman insists that the cause of the bizarre incidents is best left unexplained and emphasizes the unseen, offstage incident as preferable to the seen, onstage incident in maintaining suspense. In fact, “in addition to the virtue of the unknown, the setting of an indistinct mood, and . . . rooting the magical or supernatural in a palpable realism” are “powerful ideas” (63).

Initially, horror movies were viewed as providing the audience with a catharsis (76), which 'assumes the audience identifies with the victims,” but Alfred Hitchcock helped to revolutionize this accepted view of the nature of horror films when he put “the audience on side of the killer in Psycho and repeatedly in the position of the voyeur.”

This twist causes the audience to identify “with killers,” rather than with their victims. As a result, it has been argued, this shift in perspective no longer allowed a catharsis for viewers; instead, it allowed “audiences to express their repressed sinful thoughts through the monster” (77). The monster became a surrogate scapegoat upon whom viewers could project their own lusts for violence, blood, murder, and mayhem. The movies, once masochistic, became sadistic (77).

Due to his upbringing in a home in which a strict evangelical faith was practiced, Wes Craven was more sensitive to “the allure of self-sacrifice” than many other filmmakers, Zinoman suggests. Craven understood that churchgoers went to church “not merely” to escape “pain,” but also to heroically “confront it,” which provided them a sense of “triumph” over evil (77). A horror movie could provide the same sort of experience, vicariously, for “a secular audience looking for the pleasure of masochism” (77).

Zinoman cites several films that accomplish just this task. Writing of The Last House on the Left, he states:

In a godless world without redemption [this film] . . . includes no struggle with faith. instead, senseless evil inspires just more senseless evil, adding up to a nihilism that invites no happy endings (79).

Religion and horror are alike, the author suggests: both induce feelings of “awe” as people are “shocked by their own helplessness,” but religion and horror differ by how they handle people's experience of awe: “religion helps you cope with this feeling. Horror exploits it” (92)

From Zinoman's observations, we can derive these story-writing tips:

• Make sure that the readers (or audience) can relate to the “issues” with which the story is concerned.
• Tell the story (or film the movie) from the main character's point of view.
• Maintain the possibility of both a natural and a supernatural explanation for the “bizarre” incidents that occur in the story.
• If a story is intended to evoke readers' or viewers' masochistic interests, focus on the main character's point of view; if the story is meant to arouse readers' or viewers' sadistic impulses, focus on the monster's perspective.
• After challenging the protagonist's faith, a religious story is apt to restore it through self-sacrifice that leads to redemption; a secular story is likely to end in nihilism, represented by anarchy and chaos.
• Whether a story is religious or secular in nature, it should maintain the possibility of either a natural interpretation or a supernatural explanation.

Zinoman also has some intriguing insights concerning John Carpenter's Halloween, but we'll save them for a future post.

Sources of Incongruity as Inspirations for Horror Plots

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

I've written about movie misconceptions, bizarre explosions, Viking inventions and innovations, disciplined photojournalists, horrific acts that are legal in some countries, the first Christmas card, strange phenomena that have stumped experts, famous writers' accounts of public executions, strange and mysterious islands, Halloween pranks gone awry, an innovations coming soon to a mall near you, among many other topics.

My writing has been eclectic, to say the least, although most of my articles have been, like many of my novels and short stories, concerned with the bizarre, the grotesque, and the exceptional. In fact, the site for which I wrote most of my articles specifically requests such fare. To sell, I worked out an approach, listing sources of incongruity from which to draw ideas for such stories.

It's occurred to me that these same sources of incongruity can help writers of horror fiction develop premises for novels and short stories. Here, without further ado, is the list of my sources for incongruity, together with, by way of example, a few of the titles of the articles I derived from them.

Polarity Pendulum: going from one extreme to another: passengers who became pilots midair, lost and found objects, disasters that sparked new safety regulations. 

Prediction Regarding Everyday Life:  futuristic visions of everyday places

Recent Discovery: recently discovered animal species, recently discovered secret caches

Secrets: secret laboratories, secret caches

Incongruous Placement of Objects or Event Location: bodies at the bottoms of wells, objects found in porta potties, underwater rescues, creatures living in people's ears

Ridiculous + Sublime: elaborate gingerbread houses

Great Waste: government boodoggles

Unusal Purpose: objects made from human skulls, dioramas, dollhouses that aren't for play, items made from human corpses

Bizarre Role: bizarre positions in royal courts, stained-glass windows (with various unusual purposes)

Mysterious Phenomena: mystifying mountains, occultists, bizarre skeletons

Sophisticated Early Technology: early special effects, antique prostheses

Precursors: cabinets of curiosity (precursor to museums)

Misrepresentations: deliberate historical errors and misrepresentations, deliberate map errors, accidental map errors

Confusion of Categories: insect imposters

Irony: a hospital stay can make you sicker

Threats to Safety: snake invasions

By categorizing the types of incongruity, a writer can tap a number of sources, ensuring that his or her writing doesn't bog down with only one or two such sources, becoming predictable and less interesting than it could (and should) be. Simply select one of the above categories as your inspiration and develop a story along the lines the selected category suggests.



 

Adaptation and Survival: The Selection of Heroic Traits

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Laurie Strode, of the Halloween franchise, survived several times against her supernatural adversary Michael Myers (aka “The Shape”). As a final girl, she represents a character who possesses the fitness to adapt to her environment and, therefore, survive to pass her genes to her offspring (unlike those of her peers whose genetic inheritance wasn't sufficient to ensure their own survival). The question arises, What traits helped Laurie to survive against Myers? What was, in the Darwinian sense, special about her?

Her older sister Judith, the first of Myers's victims, was stabbed to death when Laurie was but a young girl. (At the time, Judith was in her teens, and Myers, her older brother, was six years old.) In January 1965, her parents were killed in a car accident, and four-year-old Laurie was adopted by Morgan and Pamela Strode, who changed her last name to theirs. The governor of Illinois ordered that the adoption records be sealed so that Myers would not be able to connect Laurie Strode to his surviving sister. Eventually, Laurie no longer recalled her original family.

By 1978, Laurie had developed into a shy, introverted, 17-year-old girl who preferred books to boys. The Strodes owned the Myers house, in which Laurie grew up, and Morgan asked her to return the keys to the house. On her way to do so, she spotted a male stranger who seemed to be shadowing her. She learned that one of her friends, Lynda, has also been followed by a mysterious man.

While babysitting Tommy Doyle, the son of neighbors, Laurie was visited by her fellow babysitter, Annie Brackett, who asked Laurie to babysit her charge, Linsdey Wallace, so Annie could be with her boyfriend, Paul Freedman. Reluctantly, Laurie agreed, after Annie promised to break the date she'd arranged, without Laurie's knowledge or consent, between Laurie and Bennett Tramer, a boy in whom Laurie was interested. 

 

When Laurie visited the Wallaces' house to check on Annie, Laurie discovered the bodies of Annie, Lynda Van Der Klok, and Lynda's boyfriend, Bob Simms, positioned throughout the house. Myers, who'd returned to Laurie's (and his own) hometown, Haddonfield, Illinois—he'd been the mysterious figure Laurie had spied following her—attacked Laurie, slicing her arm with his knife. Laurie fell off the second-story landing and down the stairs, fracturing her ankle. She managed to limp to the Doyles' house, calling for the children to admit her. When Tommy did so, she entered the house and locked the door. Myers slipped through a window, attacking Laurie again. 

 

She fended him off, stabbing him in the neck with a knitting needle, before running upstairs. Myers pursued her, cornering her in a bedroom closet. Although he attempted to stab her with his knife, Laurie straightened a clothes hanger, using it to jab Myers in the eye, and he dropped his knife. Laurie picked up the weapon, stabbing Myers in the stomach. He fell to the floor, and Laurie assumed she'd killed him. Leaving the closet, she ordered the children to flee the house. Soon thereafter, Myers began to strangle her, but Laurie pulled his mask away, exposing his face. Myers's former psychiatrist, Doctor Samuel Loomis, arrived and shot Myers six times, each bullet driving him backward, through the bedroom window, and he fell from the balcony. Loomis looked, but Myers was nowhere in sight.

Biographies of the victims in the original Halloween movie (Annie Brackett, Lynda Van Der Klok, and Lynda's boyfriend, Bob Simms) suggest that they have mostly negative traits which advance their needs and desires at the expense of the welfare of others, while the survivor, Laurie Strode's personality traits, which are mostly positive, tend to favor both her own welfare and that of others. As such, Laurie's characteristics allow her to unite with others against a common enemy (as she does in later films of the franchise or to act in support of both her own welfare and that of others, as she does throughout the franchise).

Laurie Strode (Final Girl)	Traits (Green + socially sanctioned; red = socially condemned; uncolored = socially neutral)
	Kindness Shyness Introversion Studiousness Defiance Responsibility Persistence Courage Inventiveness
Annie Brackett (Victim)	Deceptive Sarcastic Hasty Exhibitionistic Impertinent Aggressive Presumptuous Defiant Manipulative Irresponsible Promiscuous
Lynda Van Der Klok (Victim)	Disorganized and unfocused Gregarious Extroverted Social Unscholarly Loud Annoying Promiscuous Brash Defiant Teasing Titillating
Bob Simms (Victim)	Athletic Intelligent Deceptive Irresponsible Defiant Rash

Laurie's positive values are those endorsed by her society and culture, the values of secular humanism, or what the philosopher Friedrich Nietsche calls (and condemns as) “herd morality.” According to Nietsche,

Herd morality is a development of the original slave morality which inherits most of its content, including a reinterpretation of various traits: impotence becomes goodness of heart, craven fear becomes humility, submission becomes ‘obedience’, [sic] cowardice and being forced to wait become patience, the inability to take revenge becomes forgiveness, the desire for revenge becomes a desire for justice, a hatred of one’s enemy becomes a hatred of injustice (Genealogy of Morals).

He condemns herd morality, because, he says,

‘Well-being’ in herd morality limits human beings, promoting people who are modest, submissive and conforming . And so it opposes the development of higher people, it slanders their will to power and labels them evil. Belief in its values limits people who could become higher people, leading them to self-doubt and self-loathing ( Genealogy of Morals).

If Laurie, the final girl, the survivor not only of the original Halloween movie, but also of the entire franchise to date, adheres to herd morality, the victims, those who fail to survive, must represent the opposing morality that Nietsche characterizes as a position “beyond good and evil,” the amoral stance of the superman, which reverses the tenets of the herd morality and could, thus be characterized as its opposite, an amoral position opposed to herd morality and to the original slave morality from which herd morality developed, based on the ideas that—

Heroic Amorality	Herd Morality
Goodness of heart	Impotence
Craven fear	Humility
Submission	Obedience
Cowardice and being forced to wait	Patience
The inability to take revenge	Forgiveness
The desire for revenge	Justice
Hatred of one's enemy	Hatred of injustice

If we list Myers's personality traits, as they are presented or suggested by his behavior, we see a predator motivated by impulses that are considered, as Dr. Loomis later describes them, “pure evil.” In other words, Myers is everything civilized society condemns:

Michael Myers (Predator)	Traits (Green + socially sanctioned; red = socially condemned; uncolored = socially neutral)
	Irrational Sociopathic Amoral Emotionless Evil Murderous Schizophrenic Vengeful Predatory Voyeuristic Violent Persistent Thieving Duplicitous Superhuman stealth, strength, endurance, durability, survivability

For Nietzsche, the opposite of the herd is the “Superman,” a “superior man [who] would not be a product of long evolution; rather, he would emerge when any man with superior potential completely masters himself and strikes off conventional Christian 'herd morality' to create his own values, which are completely rooted in life on this earth. Nietzsche was not forecasting the brutal superman of the German Nazis, for his goal was a “Caesar with Christ’s soul.”

Thus, we see that, although Myers may have some of the traits of the Nietzschean superman, Myers, lacking “Christ's soul,” is not such a figure, nor is he a type of Caesar, for Caesar conquered nations; he did not waste his life murdering individuals for no apparent motive, nor were his foes, for the most part, teenagers, women, children, and helpless men, as were Myers's victims.

If anything, he is a rogue figure, without any redeeming qualities, something neither human nor superhuman, but subhuman. Unless one is a Caesar, the herd is needed to resist such a creature, a herd energized by the traits that make up the final girl, Laurie Strode's character, although she might be better off with the defiance exhibited in her smoking marijuana, a substance which, at the time she used it, was illegal, set apart by society as forbidden and dangerous. (It does no good to argue that, today, the recreational use of marijuana is tolerated, if not accepted, by most of the population, as, ordinarily, a character must be judged by the moral standards—and, indeed, by the laws—of the society of the time; although an act or an institution—whether the smoking of marijuana or slavery—may be reckoned as having been right or wrong by later generations, it is a rare person who transcends a contemporary understanding of right and wrong during his or her own lifetime.)

Darwinian Horror

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Frankly, no, I've never wondered what's in a Navy SEAL's survival kit until I saw Time's online article, “You're a SEAL Stranded in Hostile Territory: What's in Your Survival Kit?”

If you're a Navy SEAL, this is what's in your survival kit (contents change on occasion):

• Mini-multi tool
• Button compass
• lED squeeze light
• Fire-starting kit
• Water-storage device
• Water-purification tablets
• Electrolyte tablets
• Signal mirror
• Thermal blanket
• Kevlar line
• safety pins
• P-38 can opener
• Stainless-steel wire
• Duct tape
• Fresbel magnifying glass
• Waterproof notepaper
• Ink pen
• Broad-spectrum antibiotic ointment
• Cotton pad
• Hacksaw blade
• Ceramic razor blade
• Moleskin adhesive patch
• Kevlar thread
• Fishing leader and downrigger cable
• Suspended navigation magnet
• ferro cerium rod
• Cotton ball
• Bobby pins
• Handcuff shim (pick)
• Universal handcuff key

Of course, each item must conform to Navy specifications. To give you an idea of the nature of such specifications, here are the ones for a few of the items listed above:

Mini-multi Tool

• Stainless-steel mini-multi tool that can function as pliers, wire cutters, a file, or an awl in a rattle-proof package.
• A quality AA, 14-millimeter, liquid-dampened button compass with at least eight hours of luminous capability.
• LED squeeze light equipped with a red lens and a switch that allows selection between continuous and momentary use.
• A fire-starting kit which includes a ferro cerium rod no longer than three inches and no wider than eight millimeters packaged in a reclosing bag.
• A two-inch by three-inch signaling mirror with an aiming hole, the non-mirrored side of which is covered with an infrared-reflective material and the mirror side of which is protected against scratches; the mirror's protective cover must be removable with one hand.

What goes into a survival kit depends on what sort of enemy, terrain, or other type of threat the kit's carrier is expected to encounter. Although the Navy SEALs' survival kits are doubtlessly helpful in assisting them in surviving the threats they are likely to encounter in the performance of their missions, the contents of their kits wouldn't probably be much aid for, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Instead her survival kit would likely contain such items as the nineteenth-century vampire kits that really did (and, in some cases, still do) exist. Although the contents varied somewhat from one kit to another, these items would have appeared in a fully stocked kit:

• Wooden stakes
• Mallet
• Crucifix (for Roman Catholic vampires)
• Cross (for Protestant vampires)
• Bible
• Derringer
• Vials of garlic
• Vials of holy water (again, for Roman Catholic vampires)
• Knife or sword (presumably for beheading vampires)

Buffy, although as dutiful as any Navy SEAL, is sometimes lax in keeping rules, so, instead of a vampire kit, she often makes do only with a wooden stake or two, carried in her purse, or with whatever weapon she happens upon, conventional or not, during the course of a fight, and, instead of using a mallet, she simply stabs her prey, driving the stake into its heart with nothing more than her own superhuman strength. She is, after all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (The stabbing tactic didn't work too well, at first, against Kakistos, though.)

Although Charles Darwin never used the term—Herbert Spencer introduced it, based on Darwinian concepts—“survival of the fittest” has been used to summarize the gist of evolution as it pertains to the continuance of species competing with one another for survival. Just as clarification concerning who originated the phrase is often needed, so is the definition of the phrase itself: “Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean ONLY the physically or mentally strongest survive. It means the organism with traits most fit for survival in a given environment survives, thrives, and procreates regardless of what trait makes it most fit.” (Notice the phrase “traits most fir for survival in a given environment”? This is a key qualification; upon it are many horror movies based, even if some of the filmmakers themselves were unaware of the Darwinian basis of their films. By definition, a film concerns itself with only one type of antagonist and with one dominant setting; these elements often determine the type of threat to which the hero or heroine is exposed, the type of threat that tests the survivability of his or her traits.)

Survivors survive against a specific type of threat—in horror fiction, usually this threat takes the form (or formlessness, as the case may be) of a monster. This threat tests the survivor's fitness; if the hero or heroine is fit enough, he or she survives; if not,

well . . . .

Laurie Strode,  Halloween's final girl

In many horror movies, though, survivors don't have any ready-to-hand weapons except those which nature or nature's God (depending upon one's point of view) equipped him or her or traits and skills he or she acquired along the way: brains, brawn, courage, decency, loyalty, and so forth. In such cases, fitness, Darwin's sole prerequisite for survival, is a matter of physical, intellectual, and emotional suitability. One character, in particular, has what it takes to survive against monsters and pretty much all other odds, even without ready-to-hand weapons or survival kits: the final girl.

The good girl (and other horror movie survivors) makes it possible to analyze and evaluate horror movies from a Darwinian point of view. These movies' settings and the monsters who originate or dwell therein represent the environments that test the hero's or heroine's traits, determining whether the traits are such as would survive in such an environment.

Note: just because a survivor is shown to possess the traits that enable him or her to survive against the threats of one environment does not necessarily mean that he or she would survive in another horror movie's environment. Take Buffy, for instance. She does well in Sunnydale, against the minions of the Hellmouth, but how would she make out against Pennywise, the dreaded Dormammu, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Anti-Monitor, Doomsday, or Mister Mxyzptlk?)

With mixed results, scientists can use computer models to test hypotheses when it's impractical or impossible to test them through actual experiments. It's too bad that human experience is too complex to be tested in the same way. The best we can do, perhaps, at present, is to envision situations, characters, and settings which, at least in theory, allow us to see which traits might sustain us in struggles to survive against specific, albeit fictional, threats in a variety of particular environments. One of the problems with such an approach was pointed out by Edgar Allan Poe, in a different context, well over a century ago: by definition, fiction's plots are inescapably tautological, their beginnings predetermined by their ends, which, we might add, is not at all how evolution works. Do we see because we have eyes, or do we have eyes because we see? Which is cause, and which is effect?

This article lists some of horror movie characters who have survived against all odds; each is a version of the final girl.

Just as the Navy SEALs' and the nineteenth-century vampire hunters' kits (and Buffy's wooden stakes) give their owners tools and abilities they don't have naturally, so does human culture, with its emphases on such traits as brains, brawn, courage, decency, loyalty, and so forth. By nurturing these traits, by emphasizing them with role models (may of whom are fictitious), and awarding their expression, we, as a society, seek to ensure their survival, because they have helped to ensure our own. With human beings, humanity itself has become a factor in evolution, human and otherwise, because we have learned that our actions influence our fate. If we are not yet fully masters of our own destiny, we are members of a crew sailing upon the cosmic sea in which our survival as a species is determined not only by the blind forces of evolution but by the contributions we make to the direction these forces may take. Nature or nature's God has given us a part to play in the cosmic play unfolding before us each moment, every day.

Horror Movie Predators' Hunting Techniques: Chasing, Stalking, Ambushing, and Using Teamwork

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, Author

“Predator Facts” lays out four of the techniques many predators use to attack prey. Not surprisingly, human predators use these same methods, in both horror movies and in actual situations.

Many predators chase prey in an effort to capture or exhaust them. This technique has been used to good effect in many horror movies, one of which, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), contains a scene in which antagonist Ben Willis pursues Helen Shivers.

After Willis kills the police officer who's arrested Shivers, she seeks refuge in her sister's department store, evading the pursuing predator and leaping from a third-story widow, into a Dumpster, only to be killed, not far from the safety of a nearby crowd.

Since the audience identifies with the damsel in distress, rather than with the killer, moviegoers root for her; vicariously, her fear becomes that of the audience, who shares it. Her gruesome death shocks and saddens her well-wishers. Through her, the audience experiences the flight and fright of the prey that the ruthless killer's pursuit creates for Shivers—and for them.

Pursuing prey takes both “time and effort” and can require a good deal of energy. For predatory animals, the nutritional value of the prey must warrant the time, effort, and energy the predator must expend in pursuing its would-be meal. “This is one reason why the hawk tends to eat more rodents and birds than grasshoppers. Grasshoppers just don't provide enough food value to justify the effort it takes to catch them.”

Unless the pursuer is a cannibal (some are, but Willis is not among them), the “nutritional value” of the prey is apt to be emotional, rather than physical. The act of chasing and killing the victim must deliver emotional satisfaction superior to the time, effort, and energy, the killer uses to accomplish these tasks. (Wills must really have wanted Helen dead.) Otherwise, the antagonist is apt to use another means of attack, one requiring less time, effort, and energy.

Some predators stalk, rather than pursue, prey. By following prey at a distance or by remaining motionless and observing prey, a predator can lunge, at the right moment, and capture or kill its quarry. A stalker can also make do with smaller prey than a pursuer needs. Stalking has the advantage of conserving energy, but it requires time to effect.

Stalkers populate thrillers more often than horror films per se, as their appearances in such movies as Fatal Attraction (1987), The Crush (1993), The Fan (1996), and The Boy Next Door (2015), among others, show. However, stalkers also appear in full-fledged horror movies. Halloween (1978), Scream (1981), and Cyberstalker (2012) come to mind.

In Halloween, on October 31, 1963, twenty-one-year-old Michael Myers escapes from Smith's Grove Sanitarium in Warren County, Illinois, where he's been confined since killing his older sister Judith when he was six years old. Now, he returns to his hometown, Haddonfield, to stalk a high school student, Laurie Strode.

Scream combines a murder mystery of sorts with horror, as a stalker murders one victim after another and police seek to discover the murderer's identity. Is it Billy Loomis? Neil Prescott? Stu Macher? Randy Meeks? Cotton Weary? All of the above? None of the above?

As the audience is kept in the dark as to the question of the stalker's identity, which makes the situation all the more tense, the number of the gruesome murders continues to rise, along with the movie's suspense.

Cyberstalker capitalizes on a relatively new twist to stalking: the use of the Internet to hunt victims. Animals, of course, lack the capability of using technology to develop and extend their natural hunting abilities and must rely upon the physical senses and weapons, such as claws and teeth, with which God or nature has equipped them. (As William Blake's “Tyger” suggests, such weapons are formidable, indeed.) However, were lions and tigers and bears able to enhance their powers to hunt through technology, they'd be using the Internet to stalk their victims, too.

Human beings' ability to do this is another reason that we are the deadliest species by far. It is the increased ability to watch and follow his quarry, courtesy of the the Internet, that makes the stalker in this movie potentially deadly as well as highly disturbing.

Other predators rely upon their ability to ambush their prey. In the animal world, the alligator is one example of such predators. Ambush is the technique of choice in such movies as Wrong Turn (2003) and Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007).

In the first movie (in which stalking also occurs), college students Rick Stoker and Halley Smith are ambushed as they reach the top of a rock they're climbing.

In the sequel, a series of ambushes occur, as the family of cannibals who live in the West Virginia forest attack contestants during the live filming of a survivalist reality television show.

According to “Predator Facts,”

This method of hunting requires little effort, but chances of getting food are low. The cold-blooded alligator has minimal energy requirements. It can get by with infrequent meals.

Presumably, this technique works well for the cannibal family because, when they're not hunting, they seem to lie about their cabin much of the time, thereby conserving their energy. It appears that, like the alligator, they can get by on “infrequent meals.”

The fourth technique that predators use to hunt their prey, that of teamwork, is frequently used by human marauders in horror films as well. In the Wrong Turn movies, The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, cannibal families work together to locate, attack, and subdue or kill the victims they devour as their food. Hillbilly families also slay together in Mother's Day (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Backwoods (2008), House of 1,000 Corpses (2003), and others.

Although more food is needed to sustain those who routinely hunt in groups, this technique provides such benefits to the team as allowing them to “pursue larger and sometimes faster prey” while protecting their offspring “from other large predators.” Being hunted by a pack—or by a family—of merciless or crazed hunters with a need to feed or a simple taste for blood or human flesh makes a horror movie all the more horrific—and terrifying.

Horror, Past and Present

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

According to Jib Fowles, professor emeritus of communications at the University of Houston, three “stylistic features” influence the presentation of the fifteen “basic needs” he identifies in Mass Advertising as Social Forecast: “humor . . . celebrities . . . [and] time imagery, past and future.” History, traditions, and nostalgia, he says, are rich sources of such imagery, often tying in with such basic needs as the need to achieve, the need for guidance, the need for aesthetic sensations, and the need for guidance. This post discusses the use of past and future imagery in horror fiction.

Typically, imagery of the past and future are featured, mainly for two reasons.

Certain horror stories fit a five-part plot paradigm:

1. A relatively peaceful, sometimes pleasant, everyday setting is explored.
2. A series of bizarre incidents occur.
3. The protagonist learns the cause of these incidents.
4. Armed with this knowledge, he or she eliminates the source of the bizarre incidents.
5. The status quo returns.

In presenting images of the past and future, the relatively peaceful, sometimes pleasant, everyday setting of the present is explored. Stephen King adopts this approach in 'Salem's Lot, as readers follow a newspaper delivery boy through the town as he negotiates his route, the narrator offering comments upon the residents of the community. Not only does this approach describe the normal routines of everyday life in 'Salem's Lot, but it also allows King to introduce both his novel's setting and a good number of the characters who will appear in his story.

In motion pictures, novels, and short stories alike, as opposed to the still images which occur in print advertisements, time is fluid, rather than static. The present is always becoming the past, just as the future is always slipping into the present and then into the past. In movies, time is a stream, not a puddle.

In 'Salem's Lot, as the action is described, the scene occurs in the present, but, of course, as the story progresses, this opening scene has occurred in the past.

In addition to using past-future imagery to show the relatively peaceful, sometimes pleasant, everyday setting of the present, horror fiction also often uses imagery of the past and the future to imply cause-and-effect relationships between present and past events. This use of such imagery is widespread in horror novels and movies, as it is in every other narrative and dramatic genre.

Pyscho starts with imagery of the present, as the audience is introduced to Marion Crane, who, having absconded with her employer's money, is forced by a downpour to rent a room at the out-of-the-way Bates Motel. She attracts the attention of motel keeper Norman Bates, which arouses his mother's ire, and she stabs Crane to death as the motel guest takes a shower in her room. Bates cleans up the murder scene and disposes of Crane's body.

In a future scene, near the end of the movie, the audience learns that, in the past (i. e., before the events shown in the movie), Bates developed a split personality as a result of his mother's psychotic emotional manipulation of her son. She'd projected her own sexual insecurities onto her Bates, whom she punishes, even after her death, as a personality whom he's internalized to the point of dressing, speaking, and acting as she did, as, in his mind, he becomes her. In a sense, it's she who committed Crane's murder (and that of a detective investigating Crane's disappearance); Bates covers up “her' crimes, an accessory after the fact.

Although psychologists continue to debate the true nature of Bates's mental illness (as though he were a real person), the murderer upon whom he is based, Ed Gein, was described, by the psychologists and psychiatrists who examined Gein, as a “schizophrenic” and a “sexual psychopath” who suffered from an 'abnormally magnified attachment to his mother.” After his arrest, Gein was ruled “legally insane” and spent the rest of his life in mental institutions, first Wisconsin's Central State Hospital and then the Mendota Mental Institute in Madison.

Michael Myers, the “Shape” in the Halloween film franchise, is psychotic as well, claiming to hear voices which command him to “hate people.” He dreams of centuries-old incidents that took place during the Celtic feast of Samhain, during which “a disfigured fifteen-year-old boy named Enda who, after being rejected by his true love Deirdre, brutally murdered her . . . on what would later be called Halloween night.”

In the original movie's opening scene, as present events unfold, Myers murders his older sister, Judith, while she has sex with her boyfriend, Danny, instead of babysitting Michael.

Later, (i. e., in the future) his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, seems to believe that Michael is a sociopath full of “evil”:

I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left: no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this . . . six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and . . . the blackest eyes—the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply . . . evil.

The odd “diagnosis,” part psychological, part theological, and grounded in a strange mix of social science and religion, captures Loomis's own inability to account for the boy's murderous ways. In the case of Myers, the psychiatric expert, reviewing his patient's past, seems unable, in the present, to explain the nature or origin of Myers's psychopathology.

Some of the moviemakers associated with the franchise seem to have understood Myers better than Dr. Loomis. Daniel Farrands, who wrote The Curse of Michael Myers, regards the character as a sexually repressed, incestuous “deviant” who, in having killed Judith and in killing other women who resemble his older sister, seeks to murder her again and again. However, unable to stop at this point, because of Myers's seeming ability to return from the dead, Farrands also describes Myers as somehow “supernatural.”

Rob Zombie focused on the development of Myers's psychopathic personality disorder, including the boy's penchant for torturing animals, one of the three factors, according to psychiatrist J. M. Macdonald, indicate violent tendencies which could be related to repeated criminal offenses, such as serial murder. (The other two factors are arson and bedwetting, or enuresis.) When two or all three factors appear, Macdonald considers them to indicate such violent tendencies. However, Macdonald's theory is controversial, some researchers suggesting it is more indicative of past parental neglect or abuse, and John Carpenter, who created the Halloween franchise, directing the original, 1978 film.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the science fiction and horror genres were sometimes combined as gigantic insects, animals, monsters, or aliens threatened the earth. Scientists were the true heroes of these movies, because it was their knowledge that empowered the protagonists to hunt down and destroy or otherwise neutralize the menaces. In these movies, the present typically showed the predatory or invasive creatures' attacks. As the stories unfolded, however, these present moments became past incidents, as the “new” present showed how scientists discovered the origin or nature of the threat and the means to eliminate it. Armed with this knowledge, the movies' protagonists then defeated the attackers and saved the planet.

One example of such a film is The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. At the outset of the film, the audience learns that an experimental explosion of an atomic bomb north of the Arctic Circle has awakened a 200-foot-long carnivore, the Rhedosaurus. Scientists later speculate (i. e., in a subsequent, “future” scene) that the animal, moving south along the Canadian-US eastern seaboard, is returning to the site at which fossils of its species were first located. Army troops' attempts to kill the beast are ineffective, although a rocket burns a hole through the predator's throat, causing it to retreat into the ocean. During its flight into the sea, its blood infects the population of New York City with a deadly disease. Unable to kill the dinosaur with an explosion or by fire, without further spreading its disease, the military fires a radioactive isotope into its wound, and the poisoned Rhedosaurus dies.

The use of imagery of the past and present appeals to several of the basic needs Fowles identifies, including the need to satisfy curiosity, the need to escape, the need to feel safe, and the need for guidance. It seems highly likely that such appeals attract horror movie audiences and horror novel readers as much they do consumers who peruse the print advertisements in which these same appeals are evoked.