Tentacles, of Themselves, Do Not a Horror Movie Make

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Tentacles are creepy. They’re not arms, not exactly--not as we think of arms, anyway--but they’re like no other limbs, either--and they’re equipped with suckers! They have a longer reach than the law, too. And they writhe. Anything that writhes is creepy.

They can create suction. They can grip. They can wind and entwine.

They squeeze.

Although some women might suppose we’re talking about their last blind date, tentacles belong mostly to the denizens of the deep. That’s how strange they are.

Most land animals have refused to evolve them--and, no, an elephant’s trunk doesn‘t count. It doesn‘t even have suckers.

Octopi have eight of the damned things! Eight! That’s not just wasteful; that’s ludicrous. What in the hell could an organism want with eight tentacles? Eight tentacles do not encourage trust. The other organisms, besides octopi, that are equipped with tentacles are just as strange and repugnant, if not more so: cuttlefish, for example--there’s nothing cuddly about them--or krakens.

Tentacles are big in Asian horror, especially the comic strip variety, such as that of Manga and anime, in which these snake-like appendages are, quite frankly, phallic substitutes. These comics’ stories center upon rape--and, well, yes, an element of bestiality. In these comics, the rapists are not men--or not men per se--but monsters. Therefore, their assaults against female victims are supposed--by the comics’ publishers, if no one else--to be politically and socially acceptable, if scientifically dubious.

Since monsters equipped with tentacles are mostly maritime, they tend to threaten ships at sea, but, on a few occasions, they come near enough to the shore to menace bathing beauties. Occasionally, on the way in, they might take out a bridge or two, just to impress the ladies and to show that they aren’t monsters with which to be trifled. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the plot of such movies. They revolve around the question as to whether a ship or a submarine or a bridge or a bathing beauty or two can survive the attack of a sea monster with tentacles. (Usually, no, they can’t.)

Now, a movie in which the beast with the tentacles could lose some of its appendages only to have the severed or ripped loose tentacle itself become another beast with tentacles--that would be worth watching.

Or not.

Probably not.

Nothing Gets Between a Monster and Its Genes

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Why did you throw the jack of hearts away? It was the only card in the deck I had left to play.

-- The Doors

As far as I know, it was Stan Lee of Marvel Comics who introduced comic book readers to the idea of genetic mutation as the cause of superhuman traits that could convert an otherwise normal human being into a godlike character who could use his or her powers for good or evil. In doing so, Lee inserted a joker into the deck of fate. (Actually, since quite a few of the superhuman powers of Marvel’s superheroes and villains were the results of such mutations, Lee inserted almost as many jokers into the deck as there were regular, or “normal” cards.) Since there have been a rash of motion pictures based upon Marvel Comics (and, for that matter DC Comics) of late, many of the characters in which possess powers courtesy of various genetic mutations, it seems unnecessary to review these powers. For those who are unfamiliar with how the Marvel Comics’ powers-by-genetic-mutation technique works, a brief summary is in order. According to Marvel, the Celestials, an extraterrestrial race, visited the Earth a million or so years ago for the express purpose of monk eying with human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), implanting a substance, the X-Gene, which facilitated beneficial genetic mutations in the implanted hosts, resulting, in more extreme cases, in such characters as those who swelled the ranks of the The Uncanny X-Men (the first issue of which appeared in (1963) and the Brotherhood of Mutants. For years, this was Marvel Comics’ favorite explanation for superheroes’ and villains’ great powers, explaining the abilities of such characters as Apocalypse, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, Marvel Girl, Professor X, Storm, Wolverine, and many others. Collectively, such characters, in the Marvel universe, are also known as homo superior.

What have they done to the Earth? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and but her, Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn, Tied her with fences and dragged her down. . . .

-- The Doors

Even before Lee introduced genetic mutations as a cause of characters’ special effects, so to speak, horror fiction monsters were spawned, as it were, as a result of genetic mutations. (Most appeared in decidedly bad--no, make that terrible--B films.) Among such creatures are the sea monsters of The Horror of Party Beach (1964) (human skeletons radiated by atomic waste that leaks from an undersea drum, a peril of humans’ disdain for ecological purity); the monster of Godzilla (1954) (an undersea creature that had an origin identical to the monsters of Party Beach); The Being (1983) (a monster who was spawned by the wastes in a disposal dump); Creatures from the Abyss (1994) (teen love makers, whose decision to make out aboard an abandoned yacht equipped with a bio lab causes them to become infected with radioactive plankton); C.H.U.D. (1984) (people become monsters as a result of toxic waste dumped in the Big Apple’s sewers); It’s Alive (1974) (a mutant baby is sought by the authorities, who don’t intend to nurture it); and many others.

When the still sea conspires an armor And her sullen and aborted Currents breed tiny monsters True sailing is dead.

--The Doors

Why the popularity of genetic mutations as an explanation for the acquisition of superhuman or monstrous abilities? There seem to be several reasons:

• When horror films and Marvel Comics introduced the idea, genetic mutation as the result of changes to an organism’s DNA was relatively new, or cutting edge, as was the idea for genetic engineering. However, eugenics was already a well-known concept and attempts at engineering an ideal race were tried by mad scientists during the years of Nazi Germany. (The concept of what constitutes such a race--and, indeed, the very idea of a “master race”--is, or can be, in itself a monstrous notion and involves the same hubris that was demonstrated by Victor von Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau in earlier times.) Writers are always looking for new ideas because new ideas, in and of themselves, are intriguing.
• The origins of good and evil tend to be limited to such causes as divine creation, demonic possession or manipulation of human beings, madness, improper behavior (sin, crime, or anti-social conduct), birth defects, extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs, scientific and technological manipulations of nature and human nature, and the like. When a new cause for good or evil (and not just abilities) is unearthed, it’s apt to be popular and persistent among authors, especially of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, including writers of comic books that involve or are based upon such genres.
• Genetic mutations are real! They actually happen in nature and can be engineered in scientific labs by real-life “mad scientists.” Of course, any scientist worth his or her weight in neutronium will tell one that such mutations, rather than benefiting an organism, are more likely to have a negative, or even fatal, effect upon it. That’s a small detail often overlooked by comic book, fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers, although some do capitalize upon this fact, using genetic mutations as a way of effecting madness or physical deformity that, in return, has monstrous results.
• Genetic mutations that result from scientific and technological manipulations of nature replace miracles as a means of effecting changes to DNA and, therefore, to human nature and behavior, allowing human beings, in their arrogance, to wrest creation from the creator, putting people in charge of a world they never made but one that they are hot to remake in their own image and likeness. From a religious point of view, such arrogance, or pride, is blasphemous and can be expected to result is sure punishment. From a secular point of view, such hubris is presumptuous and, perhaps, premature, and will likely bring about, in its results, its own penalty, for, after all, it’s nice to fool with Mother Nature and it’s even worse to fool around with her.

He was a monster, dressed in black leather; She was a princess, Queen of the highway. -- The Doors

Sources

Don Markstein’s Toonopedia

Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Sexing It Up, Part II

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

With few exceptions, horror fiction has a reputation for being puerile and jejune. One might add that this reputation, hard won, is well deserved. However, the same charge may be leveled accurately at any other genre of fiction and, indeed, has been leveled at many classics in mainstream fiction as well by the critics and contemporary authors of the day in which these literary classics made their debuts. It may be interesting to some to review the plots of a few of the more brazenly irrelevant examples of what might be termed erotic films. In doing so, it should be apparent to any that the flimsiest excuse for a model or an actress to doff her clothing was regarded as reason enough for her to do so. What is good for the goose of the sexploitation movie, one may argue further, should be good for the gander of the horror story. Violence and, indeed, gore needs no more persuasive or socially redeeming reason for being than erotica disguised as--well, let’s look at the rationales, suggested or stated directly, for the sexploitation films of the past and see just what reasons they do offer for their existence.

2069: A Sex Odyssey: Venus’ females (who, as it turns out, resemble the most beautiful women that planet Earth has to offer) visit our planet to fornicate with men so as to preserve their own species. Reason for being: Species survival.


The Beautiful, The Bloody, and the Bare: Behind Closed Doors: A nude photographer--no, he’s not nude; his models are--takes fine glamour shots unless the color red appears. The color of blood drives him to lust--for blood--and, therefore, to murder. Reason for being: Art for art’s sake.


Philosophy of a Knife: A documentary (kind of) concerning the Japanese version of Nazi Germany’s Dr. Mengele. (Okay, so this one does have a little real reason for its gratuitous displays of nudity, which make such displays no longer gratuitous, just nude.) Reason for being: Documentary of human villainy.


Bikini Airways: Sexy stewardesses find a way to earn their pay after their airlines seems to be going belly up financially: they rent their aircraft as a flying forum for wild bachelor parties. Reason for being: Financial survival.


Brigitta: Swingers’ fantasies about swinging. Reason for being: Uh, Brigitta?


Curse of the Erotic Tiki: A talisman sold at a bikini shop causes whoever wears it to lose her sexual inhibitions. Reason for being: Magic and enchantment.

Okay, now that we’ve taken a squint at some of the lamer sexploitation flicks and their reasons for being, let’s look at a few horror movie plots to see whether the excuses that they offer for their existence are any less lame.


Species: An alien female mates with Earthmen to avoid her species’ extinction. Reason for being: Species survival.


The Picture of Dorian Gray: Due to his sins, Dorian’s portrait ages while he stays young. Reason for being: Art for art’s sake.


Ed Gein: A transvestite killer wants his mom back--from the grave. Reason for being: Documentary of human villainy.


Hostel: An entrepreneur’s inn of supposed pleasure turns out to be a not-so-public house of pain. Reason for being: Financial survival.


The Abominable Dr. Phibes: The doctor is a rabbi, maybe, who uses the same sort of amulet that Moses apparently used to stir up the plagues in ancient Egypt, because he’s doing the same thing now, in modern America, using a set of his own similar charms. Reason for being: Magic and enchantment.

Wow! It looks like a tie, proving that other film genres--in this case, sexploitation films--offer excuses for their existence that are just as flimsy--in fact, identical at times--as those of the weak excuses that horror films advance for their existence. In fact, at times, it’s hard to tell the two genres apart, since many horror films are made to exploit the adolescent crowd, as are sexploitation films. Sex and violence both sell, and, with the former, as with the latter, there is often the added bonus of bikini-clad girls or actual nudity. What does a little prurience matter, along with the puerility or a little jiggle along with the jejunity? It’s all harmless fun until someone gets an eye poked out.

Bases for Fear, Part III

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in this post, we continue to ask of life, “How do I fear thee? Let me count the ways.”




Rats. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re rodents. Oops. That’s circular reasoning. Okay. Try this. Rats are furtive. They hide, and they slink. They have beady eyes, and they’ll eat almost anything, from garbage to a newborn baby. They carry disease. They infected Europe with the bubonic plague that decimated a quarter of the continent’s population--or the fleas on them did. That’s right; rats have fleas, which is another reason they’re feared and detested. They eat crops. They have a reputation for cowardice and opportunism, which may or may not be deserved--attributing human characteristics to animals, even rats, is risky business except for figurative purposes. For all these reasons, and because they have sharp claws and teeth, and are fast on their feet, rats are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases of fear.




Snakes. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. Snakes are in a class by themselves when it comes to objects of fear. They seem utterly alien, having neither limbs nor wings nor horns nor tusks nor even ears or snouts, and their eyes are, to borrow an apt phrase from William Butler Yeats, “as blank and pitiless as the sun.” Their gaze looks evil. It is penetrating, and it lacks not only humanity but any sort of emotion. A cat or a dog can express sentiments, but not a snake. Its vocabulary is limited to hissing, just as its locomotion is restricted to slithering. It lives in the ground, hidden, and conceals itself in swamps or grasslands, where, unseen, it may strike, embedding its fangs in the foot or leg of an unsuspecting traveler. Many are poisonous, and most have painful bites. Serpents have presence. Their very existence, and even their graceful, sinuous movements, seems to embody evil. The absolutely alien, glaring-eyed snake is, in horror fiction, as in life, bases of fear.




Tarantulas. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re spiders. Oops. Another tautology. Spiders are hideous in appearance. What’s with all those legs, and why would an innocent creature need to have compound eyes or spin webs to catch unwary insects, wrapping them in silk cocoons for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks? They spin, and they wait, wary, silent predators, to take the unwary by surprise, ambushing them or trapping them for food. Tarantulas are BIG spiders, as big as a man’s fist. The damned things are furry, too--and poisonous! Their gigantic statures multiplies the spider traits that people fear, making tarantulas, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.


Underground places. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re underground. And they’re dark. Most likely, they’re also clammy. They may be inhabited by creepy creeping things: spiders and lizards and snakes. A tunnel may swarm with bats or rats. A cavern may be haunted by a ghost or a monster or a whole subhuman species of nasty cannibals, headhunters, or mutant thingamajigs. Caverns can be mazes, too. Finding one’s way out may be much more difficult than finding one’s way in--in fact, it might be downright impossible (which could account for the occasional human skull or skeleton one passes along the way through these dark, subterranean labyrinths). Catacombs are creepy and ghastly, because they’re full of skeletal remains, some clothed, others dressed in rags, and still others--the majority, perhaps--naked bones. There are men, women, and, alas, children. Some sleep upon low, narrow berths, others sit slumped in corners or along tunnel walls, and still others are used as decorations, their skulls adorning the arch of a doorway. Think of yourself in an ancient Egyptian pyramid, with all those massive tons of tomb overhead. If that doesn’t make you claustrophobic, you’re ready to join the pharaoh in his or her sarcophagus. Underground places are reminders, too, of graves and tombs, and are, therefore, mementos mori. Because underground places are close, dark, isolated, and damp, and they remind us of our eventual final resting places, they are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.

Vultures. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They eat the dead. As children, when we chanced to spot vultures, we’d lie still on the ground, with our eyes open. The ungainly birds would start circling, descending with each revolution of their narrowing and narrowing gyre. When they’d descended to a height of about 20 feet, their salivary glands no doubt activated by what the birds hoped would be a feast, we’d leap to our feet and frighten these carrion feeders away. What a turn we must have given them! They’d thought we were dead, which is to say, from their perspective, food. Instead, they could have become our food (not that we ever wanted a snack bad enough to eat these particular eaters of the dead). Vultures have a reputation of being unclean (probably because of their fondness for road kill). They’re clumsy, and, let’s face it, these fowl are ugly. Because of their appearance and their eating habits, vultures are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.


Witches. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re in league with the devil himself, who empowers them to do his bidding. They are also his paramours. Medieval literature and Inquisition trials transcripts report witches--or women, at least, who were accused of being witches--as having testified that demon semen is ice cold and chilling to the very marrow of the bone. Demon seed causes bizarre offspring, too, legends claim. Some of the children of demons are feral; others are true imps. Rosemary’s baby had hooves and a tail and horns, and the union of a mortal woman with the devil is supposed to result, by some accounts, in the birth of the antichrist, who may or may not already be in our midst, waiting to usher in Armageddon. Because witches are the sexual and spiritual paramours of demons, they are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.

Zombies. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They are dead men walking, the living dead, the recipients of a curse much like that which was laid upon the Wandering Jew of legend or the ancient mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s celebrated poem. Fleshly automatons, they are just going through the paces of living, much like many of the living during the weekdays from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm (or whenever these working stiffs work their shifts). They are people without souls. They are the spiritually dead. True, according to legend and cinema, they’re not too bright, especially for creatures whose only sustenance is human brains, and they’re more than a little slow, both mentally and physically, and a whole lot clumsy. Still, there are apt to be hundreds of them, as cemeteries are repositories of many corpses. Worse yet, some among their hordes might have been a friend or a family member before they turned zombie creep. Zombies symbolize spiritual death, and they suggest that such a soulless state is possible for anyone--stranger, friend, family member, or, God forbid, even oneself; for these reasons, zombies, in horror fiction, are, as in life, bases of fear.

'Ere we part, let’s summarize our findings with regard to the nine bases of fear that were listed in this post:

• For many reasons, but especially because they have sharp claws and teeth and are fast on their feet, rats are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases of fear.
• The absolutely alien, glaring-eyed snake is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis of fear.
• Gigantic stature multiplies the spider traits that people fear, making tarantulas, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.
• Because underground places are close, dark, isolated, damp, and remind us of our eventual final resting places, they are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.
• Because of their appearance and the eating habits, vultures are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.
• Because witches are the sexual and spiritual paramours of demons, they are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.
• Zombies symbolize spiritual death, and they suggest that such a soulless state is possible for anyone--stranger, friend, family member, or, God forbid, even oneself; for these reasons, zombies, in horror fiction, are, as in life, bases of fear.

Source of photographs: U.S. Government Photos and Graphics

Verizon’s Version of Horror: The Dead Zone Advertisements

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Advertisers are a creative bunch. They use all sorts of persons, places, and things to sell us everything from aardvarks to zoo trips. Well, maybe not aardvarks. Not yet, anyway. More-or-less captured audiences hate most “commercial breaks,” although they are somewhat fond of a select few “messages from our sponsors.” One commercial that is apt to be tolerable, if not actually fun, for horror fans is Verizon’s latest series of advertisements that feature areas of poor or non-existent cellular telephone transmission and reception, known, in the commercials, as “dead zones.”

In one such ad, as a man heads from his apartment to the laundry room in his building, basket in hand, walking along a dimly lit hallway, a pair of young boys, dressed in nineteenth-century-style suits, speak in an eerie monotone: “Hey, mister, are you going to the laundry room?"

Looking hesitant, he replies, "I was."

The boys then say, "It’s a dead zone. Reception is terrible."

The man replies, “I have the Verizon network,” whereupon a host of the company’s employees appears behind the man, one assuring their customer, “You’re good.”

The boys exchange an uneasy look before turning, they walk away, down the corridor.

The text, “Don’t Be Afraid of DEAD ZONES” appears over the backs of the retreating boys.

The scene is reminiscent of The Shining, and its use of the phrase “dead zone” recalls another of Stephen King’s novels, The Dead Zone.

The host of Verizon company’s employees plays on the idea of there being safety in numbers. Their service neutralizes the threat of “dead zones.” Who wouldn’t want such heroes around in such a threatening environment?

A number of similar ads, using horror themes or allusions to horror movies, appear as installments in the series. A family moves into a creepy neighborhood, only to be warned by their neighbor (a woman who looks as if she’s just stepped out of her coffin) that they’ve moved into a “dead zone.” The last occupants of their new house, she warns them, “went crazy trying to find a signal there.” The Verizon team appears, and she looks frightened. All she can warn them against, now, is the crabgrass growing in their yard.

The ads are designed, it seems, to resemble theatrical trailers, which certainly gets television viewers’ interest, especially if such audience members also happen to enjoy horror movies.

Sex, it has long been established, sells. So, apparently, does horror.

Kudos to a company for creating ads that are both eerie and enjoyable.

Explanations For Evil

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Iniquity is a mystery.

Despite penis envy, the Oedipus complex, phallic women, and Rorschach inkblots, we really don’t know what makes people do evil.

A lot of theories have been advanced over the years: ignorance, sin, indifference, emotional instability or mental illness resulting from childhood trauma or abuse, genetic abnormalities, birth defects, and even the devil. Although these theories have shed some light on the mystery of iniquity, wickedness remains inscrutable.

Nevertheless, authors of horror stories, whether the stories appear in print or on film, must offer at least a plausible explanation for the evil that occurs in their narratives. We live in a cause-and-effect universe, after all (or so, at least, we want to believe). Therefore, there must be a cause of--an explanation for--all events, situations, and behaviors, including--and maybe especially--those that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

The explanations don’t have to hold water. Not well, anyway. They do have to fall this side of “impossible” on the plausibility continuum, though. They have to be believable if not provable, credible if not verifiable, acceptable if not certifiable. Since horror stories begin with bizarre incidents or situations that, at some point in the narrative (usually just before the turning point), must be explained in some way, the explanations are important, and audiences expect to read or hear something that doesn’t insult their intelligence.

Sure, they know that, should they examine the explanation carefully, it’s likely to explain away more than to explain, but, as long as it doesn’t sound too far-fetched at the moment it’s trotted out, they’ll be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s only when the explanation is vague and shifty and half-hearted (as in the otherwise-superb novels of Bentley Little) or inane (as in Night Shyamalan’s latest film, The Happening, that audiences will wonder why they ever plunked down their hard-earned money to read or see something so idiotic.

So the explanations may be just this side of ridiculous, as long as they’re there and don’t actually insult the audience’s intelligence, but they must also fit the bizarre situations or series of incidents that are supposedly their effects. There must be some discernable logic--or even emotional relationship--among the cause and its effects. There must be a sense, on the part of the readers or moviegoers, that the cause “fits” the effects, either logically or emotionally (or, ideally, both).

If the author can set up one explanation that seems both plausible and rationally or emotionally satisfying, only to replace it with a second, better (or, at least, not worse) explanation that accounts for everything, so mush the better. Dean Koontz does this in The Taking. The bizarre series of events that is initially suspected to result from an advance party of invading aliens’ attempts to reverse-terraform the earth so that its atmosphere and environment are friendly to the attacking species turns out to be the result of an attack upon the planet by none other than Satan and his demons--and, yes, Koontz manages to bring this rather incredible plot twist off.

The-devil-made-me-do-it is a popular explanation for the evil deeds of characters in horror stories, of course, and has been since the books of Genesis and Job. The devil stirs up trouble in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Stephen King’s Desperation and The Regulators, and such movies as The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. Aliens are other popular sources of the madness and mayhem in horror movies, as Alien and its sequels and many other horror movies, from Invaders from Mars, The Blob, and The Thing From Another World to Independence Day, and The War of the Worlds indicates. Vampires, witches, mummies, ghosts, werewolves, and zombies are other popular explanations for the occurrence of the horrific incidents and situations of horror stories.

Horror maestro Stephen King

One way to consider a lot of the explanations horror fiction has put forth for the evils that this genre of fiction depicts (and sometimes celebrates) is to consider some of the major novels of Stephen King (stories with identical causes are excluded, as are those for which no more than a mere mention is given on King’s website:

What makes one explanation for the bizarre incidents and situations in a horror story acceptable to an audience while another explanation for such happenings is not? Here are a few possibilities:

• Magical Thinking. No, we don’t live in a pre-scientific age during which magical thinking is part and parcel of one’s worldview, but, were we to be honest, we’d have to admit that, even in the twenty-first century, after having put a man on the moon, we still believe in magic, at least on a gut level. How else do we explain such notions as penis envy, the Oedipus complex, phallic women, and Rorschach inkblots? How else do we understand the way television signal transmissions and receptions operate or gravity or thermodynamics? The scientists among us may be able to answer some of the questions we have concerning the universe and our place in it, but they also admit that many of their statements are analogical or metaphorical, rather than literal, meaning that, beyond a certain level, they have no idea what they’re talking about. As Sir William Frazier points out in The Golden Bough, there are basically two types of magic: sympathetic, or imitative, magic and the magic of correspondence. Both rely upon magical thinking--the belief that non-scientific relationships among phenomena can be of such a nature that one somehow (mysteriously) affects or controls another. Sympathetic magic rests upon the premise that one can obtain the results that he or she imitates. Want to cause someone to suffer a heart attack? Stick a pin into voodoo doll’s chest. Correspondence rests upon the premise that one can influence what occurs to one person, place, or thing by manipulating another person, place, or thing to which the former is somehow related. Astrology (“as above, so below”) is a perfect example: the positions of heavenly bodies affect and determine one’s fate. According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary, sympathetic magic is probably behind such beliefs as those pertaining to “most forms of divination. . . voodoo. . . psychometry. . . psychic detectives. . . graphologists. . . karma. . . synchronicity. . . homeopathy” and, of course, magic itself. This list indicates that, pre-scientific age or not, ours is still one in which there are a great many believers in magic and the thinking that underlies it.
• Recognition. Emotion, rather than logic, can be sufficient grounds for many of us to accept an explanation as appropriate and satisfying. To be emotionally acceptable to us, the explanation for the horror story’s uncanny events must suggest that the truth that the main character learns about him- or herself and/or the world, including others, is a natural, even inevitable, consequence of his or her experience. In other words, given what has happened to him or her, the protagonist has no other alternative but to draw the conclusions that he or she draws concerning the cause of these events--and the cause will have to do with his or her own behavior. Carrie’s explanation for the bizarre incidents that take place in the novel (and the movie based upon the novel) is acceptable to its readers (and viewers) because Stephen King ties the incidents to the existential and psychological states of the protagonist whose telekinesis, in service to her damaged emotions, self-image, and thinking, causes the murder and mayhem that she unleashes upon her tormentors, almost as an afterthought, once she realizes that, despite appearances to the contrary, nothing has changed, and she is still the target of other people’s prejudices and hatred.
• Tradition, or Familiarity. Once a type of monster gains acceptance from the general public, usually as a result of its traditional use, its reference as the cause of the story’s eerie events is accepted for the sake of the narrative, even if (as is likely) it is rejected on the rational level. In other words, readers and viewers are willing to suspend their disbelief. This tendency on the part of readers and moviegoers to accept traditional monsters as the causes of bizarre incidents is the basis for the use of demons, ghosts, mummies, vampires, werewolves, and the like as causal agents in horror stories. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also generate a grudging acceptance of causality which, otherwise, would be summarily dismissed. “Oh, it’s a werewolf. Okay, then.”
• Analogy. To be persuasive as a cause of the horror story’s horrific events, an explanation must be detailed. There must be a series of correspondences between the alleged cause and the alleged effects. In other words, one must be able to infer, on the basis of the similarities between two things that these same two things are alike in yet other ways (“A” is like “B.” “B” has property “C.” Therefore, “A” has property “C.”) Analogies are notoriously unreliable and often fallacious, but that doesn’t stop them from being persuasive to many, and, in fiction, what counts is their persuasiveness as causes. Writers of fiction are not especially concerned at all points (or maybe at any point) as to whether statements are true; they’re concerned with entertaining their audience, and, to this end, with whether their audience will “buy” a particular explanation of their action’s incidents and situations, bizarre and uncanny or otherwise.
• Integrality. The explanation, whatever it is, must not be haphazard. It must not be tacked on, seemingly at the last minute, simply to explain (or to explain away) the story’s eerie occurrences. Instead, the explanation must be essential. Without the explanation, the series of odd incidents and situations would make no sense (not that they need to make a whole lot of sense, necessarily, even with the explanation in place). For the explanation to be acceptable or plausible, the writer must give hints early and often as to the nature of the cause behind the effects. In The Taking, Dean Koontz, early on, plants the idea that the bizarre actions in his novel may be the effect of Satan’s return to earth, and this possibility is repeated in the thoughts of the protagonist concerning her sorrow for past moral offenses she’s committed and her hope for forgiveness and reconciliation and by the narrative’s end, in which she becomes a new Eve, carrying within her womb the first of humanity’s new humanity. At the same time, however, the possibility that the novel’s bizarre events are the effects of reverse-terraforming by an advance party of invading aliens purposely detracts from this, the actual, cause. By contrast, in The Resort, Bentley Little merely mentions an older resort near the one in which his story’s action take place and implies, without ever saying exactly how, that the former resort is somehow associated with the contemporary one. There are no specific correspondences, no detailed links, between the two (the older one of which, in fact, has burned down). There is only the suggestion, without a supporting context supplied by a pertinent back story or other means of exposition. The result is the deux ex machina that Aristotle so much abhorred and rejects in his Poetics as emotionally and dramatically unconvincing.
  

Dean Koontz and Trixie

A horror story stands or falls, to a large extent, by its explanation for the evil, bizarre events and situations that occur during much of the story. The explanation may not pass scientific muster, but it must at least pass the emotional and dramatic smell tests of the audience if it is to be satisfying and, therefore, successful. In the final analysis, the inexplicable must be explained, if only in theory.

The Feminization of Horror: The Horror! The Horror!

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Traditionally, the monsters of horror stories have had masculine character traits--or, at least, more masculine than feminine characteristics. The monster was aggressive, dominant, forceful, strong, self-reliant, tough, daring, competitive, and, in its own way, athletic and courageous. Today’s monsters, however, following the contemporary trend in which males seem, more and more, to be undergoing feminization, are also adopting more and more of the traits that have been associated, traditionally, with women.

Often, before killing its prey, the predatory monster will stalk it. Whether the intended victim is male or (as is more commonly the case) female, the audience (or reader) will identify with the human, over the monster. Therefore, since the victim is seen through the eyes of the monster-as-stalker, the audience, despite the gender of the individual moviegoer or reader, will identify with the victim, seeing him- or herself in this role. Whether the victim has traditional feminine traits per se, he or she will be defined in opposition to the monster’s hyper-masculinity and will be seen as weak, vulnerable, defenseless, helpless, imperiled. In short, the victim, regardless of his or her gender, will be a damsel, as it were, in distress.

Not only does the feminization of the victim, regardless of his or her gender, result from the threat of the hyper-masculine monster, but the larger community is characterized as feminine as well in many contemporary horror stories. The lone hero of Beowulf seldom makes an appearance to take on the monster in single combat. Instead, the monster is defeated by committee. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a community to kill a monster. Traditionally, the characteristics that make community cooperation--like cooperation itself--possible are labeled feminine: unselfishness; sympathy; the affinity for establishing and maintaining interpersonal, familial, and communal relationships; yielding to others; helpfulness; loyalty; reliability; and sensitivity. Even such traditionally feminine qualities as secretiveness and understanding can help in the community’s cooperative effort to protect its members and to destroy the monster.


Although the monster itself retains many of the characteristics that, traditionally, are counted as masculine, it has also begun to be characterized, in some ways, as being feminine. In other words, it becomes a bestial sort of phallic woman. As such, it is often the antagonist of an equally hyper-masculinized phallic woman protagonist. Traditionally, the male body is considered to be normative. The female body has been labeled as not only derivative (Eve, after all is created from a rib taken from Adam), but also deviant: it is a deviation from the norm of the masculine physique. Possibly for this reason, some of the deviance of femininity is associated with the monster, as in Dracula’s ruby lips, the menstrual-like lunar cycles characteristic of the werewolf, and the wearing of feminine clothing by Norman Bates and even of female body parts and skin by The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill. Moreover, the monster is often a disguised phallic woman in the sense that it is intent upon emasculating the male characters, by forcing male audience members to adopt the feminine role of exhibitionistic victim rather than the male role of voyeuristic stalker and by, sometimes literally, castrating them (that is, by dismembering them). When, instead of a community's cooperating to kill the monster, it is a woman, such as Lieutenant Ripley, in Alien and its sequels, Xena the Warrior Princess, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who takes upon herself such a duty, the feminization of the male is complete, for not only are the male members of the audience forced to adopt a feminine role and a feminine point of view as potential victims of a hyper-masculine monster, but their rescuer is female, rather than male, inverting the traditional polarities of the masculine-feminine continuum by positing phallic women as the protectors and rescuers of feminized males.


In horror fiction, women have been the traditional victims of the hyper-masculine monster. Some remain such. More and more often, however, their ranks are increased by male characters. While female characters, by definition as well as by reference to the traditional traits of femininity, are female, males as victims are not. Their being cast, as it were, into this role, therefore, constitutes a feminization of them and not merely a role reversal. They retain the male physique, but psychologically they are transformed. They become, as it were, women trapped in men’s bodies, or psychological hermaphrodites, or transsexuals.


By feminizing both male audience members-as-victims, their larger communities, and the monster itself (as well as, occasionally, the slayer of the monster), contemporary horror movies are part of the ongoing feminization of American (and, indeed, international) culture. Although some may find such a metamorphosis to be desirable, many others find it--in a word--horrific. It seems that all is grist for the mill, after all. Hence, the feminization of the contemporary male is another of the many themes and topics that writers of horror have adopted recently, as such television series as Xena, Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and such movies as Psycho, Dressed To Kill, Alien and its sequels, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (starring none other than Renee Zellweger!), The Silence of the Lambs, Species, Sleepaway Camp, The Descent, and others suggest.

Endings: How Would You Finish The Story?

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In a previous post, “Beginnings: How Would You Finish the Story?,” we reminded you that a story, after presenting background information, begins with an inciting moment--an incident that sparks the action that follows (the story proper). Following this moment, the story’s conflict is complicated as increasingly difficult obstacles are thrown into the protagonist’s path until a turning point is reached and the story starts in the opposite direction, ending in a resolution (comedy) or a catastrophe (tragedy). Then, we provided summaries of the way that three well-known horror stories begin and invited you to create your own middles and endings for these stories, alternative to the actual ones that the writers of these stories wrote. We suggested that you then consult an Internet source to see how the actual stories developed their middles and endings. The stories are Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Stephen King’s Needful Things, and The Thing From Another World. In “Middles: How Would You Finish the Story?,” we summarized the ways in which the writers of these stories actually did develop the stories’ middle portions. In this post, we summarize how these writers ended their stories and offer a few comments concerning these endings. We invite you to consider how you might have ended them, reminding you that alternate endings actually are filmed for some motion pictures, which shows that there is more than one effective way to bring one’s narrative to a close.

Toward the end of the middle of Psycho, Marion Crane’s sister Lila has rented a room with Marion’s boyfriend, Sam, to investigate Marion’s disappearance, and, while Sam distracts Norman, Lila enters the fruit cellar in Norman’s house, which overlooks the motel, and discovers Norman’s secret: the mother with whom he converses--and argues--is actually a half-rotten, mummified corpse! After knocking Sam unconscious, Norman, wearing his mother’s clothes and wielding a knife and calling himself “Norma,” attacks Lila with a knife, but Sam, having recovered, saves Lila.

Let’s see how the writers ended their story:

The end of the story explains the bizarre incidents which have taken place in the middle of the story. After Sam disarms Norman, he is arrested. A psychiatrist, having examined Norman, explains that he has a split personality, and that the dominant one, that of his deceased mother, Norma, has taken over completely. Besides the murder of Marion and the detective who came to the Bates Motel in search of her, Norman is likely responsible for the murders of two additional missing women. His identity crisis began, the doctor says, ten years ago. Norman was already seriously disturbed. When his father died, he was left alone with only his mother. They two developed an unusually close relationship. When Norma met another man, Norman felt as if she had rejected him in favor of her newfound suitor. He reacted by killing them both. His guilt at having killed his mother caused him to resurrect her, first by stealing her body from its grave and using his knowledge of taxidermy to preserve it as much as possible and by transforming himself--or part of himself--into her. He also assumed that his mother was as jealous of him as she was of her. He forbade himself from becoming intimate with any other woman, and, when he was attracted to Marion, his mother killed her. Norman covered up his mother’s crime.

The film ends with Norma, thinking her private thoughts. She had no alternative, she tells herself, except to tell the truth about her son’s murder of the women and the
detective. She thinks that the police and psychiatrist may still suspect her of having killed the victims, so she intends to sit quietly, even after a fly lands on her nose. That way, they will see that she is incapable of hurting even a fly.

As she thinks these thoughts, her smile becomes the grin of his mother’s corpse and Marion’s car, containing Marion’s corpse and other incriminating evidence, is pulled from the swamp.

The ending neatly ties up the loose ends of the plot and explains the cause of the bizarre incidents that occurred during the middle of the story, maintaining the logic of the storyline and satisfying the audience’s curiosity as to what lies behind the chain of events they’ve witnessed. The psychiatrist’s explanation reassures the audience that reason can explain even the irrational and that sanity, therefore, is able to comprehend insanity. All may not be right with the world, but human rationality can at least explain, making the mysterious knowable. In addition, of course, justice triumphs, and Norma’s incarceration will protect society from her jealousy and rage. Norman himself is no longer a threat, for he has ceased to exist (in the framework of this story, at least--he makes a reappearance, supposedly cured, in subsequent sequels that Alfred Hitchcock, now deceased, did not direct).

Stephen King’s novel, Needful Things, ends with a showdown between Castle Rock’s sheriff, Alan Pangborn, and Leland Gaunt, the proprietor of the curiosity shop, Needful Things, whose wares have caused so much murder and mayhem:

In their final confrontation, Alan forces Leland to leave town, much as the frontier marshal often compels gunfighters to do, Leland’s car transforming itself into a nineteenth-century wagon, such as those that snake oil salesmen used in traveling from one Western town to another. On the side of the wagon, the cautionary declaration as that which was displayed in Leleand’s shop warns, “Caveat Emptor."

At the outset of the novel, a first-person narrator welcomed the reader, as a newcomer, to Castle Rock, Maine, drawing his or her attention to a new store, Needful Things. Now, far away from Castle Rock, Maine, in Junction City, Iowa, the narrator, again welcoming a new resident, points out a store that has just opened--Answered Prayers. Leland has apparently opened a new shop, in a new location, under a new name. One suspects, however, that he will conduct business as usual.:

The ends of stories are often the places in which their themes are made explicit or are given a more forceful suggestion. As we observed in the previous post, King says that this novel was inspired by the greed he saw in the behavior of televangelist Jim Bakker and his late ex-wife Tammy Faye Messner. In the end of his novel, he offers a remedy for such greed. Instead of an avaricious drive to secure for oneself those material goods that one considers “needful things” or “answered prayers,” one should value others, acting out of love, as the novel’s sheriff does in protecting society and caring for his girlfriend. In loving others and acting for the welfare of the community, King implies, one will have, as the sheriff tells Leland, all that he or she needs.

In the middle of The Thing From Another World, a scientist, Dr. Carrington, suggested that the vegetative humanoid creature they’d recovered from a block of ice near their arctic research laboratory was able to communicate with them. The Air Force personnel at the outpost disagreed. Having escaped from the greenhouse in which it had been trapped, the thing from another world, attacking the compound, now puts these conflicting theories to the test as the story comes to an end:

The scientists and airmen lured the creature into the facility’s generator shack, where they ambush it with high-voltage electricity. Twice, Dr. Carrington tries to save the creature. First, he turns of the electricity. When the current is restored, he rushes forward, trying to reason with the monster. The creature knocks him aside, but it--and the seedlings that grow from its body--are electrocuted. The journalist among the team wires the story, warning radio listeners to “watch the skies!”

Obviously (Barack Obama, take notice!), the airmen’s theory proves to have been the true one. Either the creature was unable or unwilling to communicate with the humans and, perhaps driven by its hunger for blood, remained intent upon attacking and killing them. The situation, as the military mind had anticipated, came down to one of killing or being killed. This story, incidentally, also makes use of a convention that is common in horror fiction, but effective, nevertheless--the isolated setting in which characters are cut off from the rest of society, from culture, and, indeed, from civilization itself and are stranded to survive (or not) on their own.

Xenophobia reigns, with foreigners (represented by the humanoid plant-thing) are hostile and intent upon murder and mayhem. Only by banding together can society (represented by the scientists--Dr. Carrington excepted--and airmen) triumph against an invasion from beyond. As we pointed out in the previous post, the isolation of the remote arctic outpost cuts the team off from society at large, from civilization, and from culture, forcing them to act on their own in the interest of their survival. It’s up to them, and them alone, whether they live or die. The impulse to communicate, to reach out, to establish a relationship of some kind with the stranger is shown to be counterproductive; it could have been the deaths of all concerned. “Watch the skies!” the reporter warns the movie’s 1950’s audience. A threat--perhaps in the form of Soviet missiles, armed with nuclear warheads rather than flying saucers manned with extraterrestrial plant-creatures--might appear at any time. The monster seems to have been a stand-in for Americans’ real fear of the Soviet Union and its ongoing, ever-present threat of the annihilation of society, civilization, and culture. This story ends in the same way that King’s Needful Things concludes, by suggesting more strongly the theme.

Middles: How Would You Finish The Story?

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In a previous post, “Beginnings: How Would You Finish the Story?,” we reminded you that a story, after presenting background information, begins with an inciting moment--an incident that sparks the action that follows (the story proper). Following this moment, the story’s conflict is complicated as increasingly difficult obstacles are thrown into the protagonist’s path until a turning point is reached and the story starts in the opposite direction, ending in a resolution (comedy) or a catastrophe (tragedy). Then, we provided summaries of the way that three well-known horror stories begin and invited you to create your own middles and endings for these stories, alternative to the actual ones that the writers of these stories wrote. We suggested that you then consult an Internet source to see how the actual stories developed their middles and endings. The stories are Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Stephen King’s Needful Things, and The Thing From Another World.

Since you may not remember, in detail, how these stories developed their middles and endings, even after consulting an online summary of them, we’ll summarize their middles in this post and offer some comments upon them. In a later post, we’ll do the same with regard to these stories’ endings.

Let’s start with Psycho:

Norman panics upon discovering Marion’s bloody corpse. However, he manages to wrap her body inside the shower curtain and cleans up the mess. Placing her body and all her belongings, including the stolen money, which Marion had hidden in a folded newspaper, into the trunk of her car, he pushes it down a slope, into a swamp.

Marion’s sister, Lila, worried that Marion is missing, contacts her lover, Sam, as does a private detective, Milton Arbogast, whom Mr. Lowery has hired to recover the money Marion has stolen. The detective suspects that Lila or Sam knows Marion’s whereabouts. Tracing Marion to the Bates Motel, Milton questions Norman and insists upon interviewing his mother, which Norman forbids. The detective calls Lila, telling her that Norman is not being truthful. Milton then sneaks into Norman’s house, but he is pushed down the stairs, backward, as he climbs them toward the second floor. To finish him off, he’s stabbed to death.

When Lila alerts the local deputy sheriff, Al Chambers, of Milton’s claim to have seen Norman’s mother, the lawman is baffled: the woman was buried 10 years ago, after she’d poisoned herself and her lover.

At home, Norman confronts his mother, urging her to hide out in the house’s fruit cellar to prevent herself from being discovered by those who are hunting for the missing woman, Marion, whom Mrs. Bates has murdered. She refuses to do so, irate as she recalls Norman’s having persuaded her to stay there previously, for a long time. Nevertheless, Norman carries her there, against her will, as she screams, “Put me down! I can walk!”

Sam and Lila conduct an undercover operation of their own. Pretending to be married, they rent a room at the Bates Motel. Norman is careful to assign them to one that is far from the one he’d rented to Marion, but they sneak into Marion’s former room and discover that the shower curtain is missing. Peering into the toilet bowl, Lila notices a bit of paper on the edge, with “$40,000” written on it--proof that her sister had been a guest at the Bates Motel.

Lila sneaks into Norman’s house to talk to Norman’s mother while Sam distracts him in the motel office by accusing Norman of having murdered Marion for the money she’d stolen. However, soon after they begin to argue, Norman discovers that Lila is absent. He knocks Sam out and flees to his house, but Lila, seeing his approach, takes refuge in the fruit cellar, where she finds Norman’s mother. She is horrified to learn that Mrs. Bates is a mummified corpse.

Wearing his mother's clothes and a wig, Norman bursts into the cellar, armed with a knife, identifying himself as his mother, Norma. Sam, having regained consciousness, disarms Norman, tearing his dress in the process.

Let’s see how the screenwriters, Joseph Stefano and Samuel A. Taylor (unaccredited), developed the middle of this story.

The middle of the story deals with the aftereffects of Norman’s murder of Marion. This portion of the story includes his murder of several other victims, and the revelation of his secret identity as his deceased mother (and thus his severe mental illness), which is accompanied by his cross dressing. It ends with Norman’s being disarmed by Sam as he attacks Lila, dressed as his mother, Norma. In other words, the middle of the story is logically connected to the beginning and explains the bizarre incidents that were suggested at the outset of the movie more than they were shown. The middle of the story also transitions to the ending, which we’ll look at in a later post. In the process, additional characters are introduced (often victims) as the initial conflict is complicated and the story moves toward its climax, or turning point. This approach is typical to horror story plots. After describing a number of bizarre incidents, the plot explains the cause or reason for these incidents as the main character discovers why such odd things are afoot. This knowledge allows him or her to solve the problem represented by these incidents and to restore order or the status quo, which takes place at the end of the story.


The beginning of Needful Things seems too slight for much development, but, as we mentioned in our previous post, Stephen King manages to get 792 pages out of it, and the movie based upon his novel has a running time of 120 minutes. How does King manage to get so much mileage out of the simple situation of a man with supernatural powers’ opening of a curiosity shop in small-town Castle Rock, Maine?

Let’s start by summarizing the middle of the story:

After the shop opens, the townspeople visit Needful Things, each to buy that which he or she wants more than anything else. Brian Rusk wants a Sandy Koufax baseball card on which the player has signed his (Brian’s) name; Danforth (“Buster“) Keeton wants a machine that forecasts the winners of horse races; others want things that have a special meaning for them. All agree to do a “favor” for the store’s kindly owner, Leland Gaunt, ignoring the warning, “Caveat emptor” (“Let the buyer beware”) posted in his shop. The favor is always a seemingly harmless, if sometimes mean-spirited, prank that is played upon a casual acquaintance. However, the pranks turn out to be anything but harmless, causing the townspeople to turn upon one another in an escalating series of violent acts that threatens to destroy the entire town.

The only person in town who is not susceptible to Leland’s powers, because he already has everything he needs, is Castle Rock’s sheriff, Alan Pangborn. During the course of the story, Alan suspects that the series of violent acts can all be attributed to the same source, or cause: Leland Gaunt. The story climaxes when Leland seduces the sheriff’s girlfriend, Polly, by presenting her with a necklace that relieves the pain she suffers as a result of her arthritic hands. Leland’s seduction of Polly forces a showdown between him and the sheriff.

King says that this novel was inspired by the greed he saw in the behavior of televangelist Jim Bakker and his late ex-wife Tammy Faye Messner.

The middle of the story is an outgrowth of its beginning, showing what many of the residents of Castle Rock value above all else and the consequences of their willingness to do harm to others to acquire these material objects. Therefore, it is a logical development of the story’s initial situation and, like Psycho’s middle, the middle of King’s novel also explains the cause of the bizarre incidents that occur in and around the town. Ironically, it is the man who values someone else, his girlfriend, above all merely material objects who can stand against Leland’s powers, and it is when Leland threatens the one whom Alan loves that the shopkeeper sets up the final showdown between the force of good and the force of evil that is played out at the end of the story. In the process, King also introduces more characters (mostly victims), and, by delving into the back stories of the many residents of Castle Rock who appear in this novel, King gives depth (and length) to the narrative. In addition, he provides the motives of, and insights into, his characters, making their choices of Leland’s wares and their willingness to harm others understandable if not always entirely believable.


Finally, we will summarize and comment upon the third story whose beginning we summarized in our previous post, The Thing From Another World, a 1951 science fiction classic film which qualifies as a horror flick, too, because of its chills and thrills:

A team of scientists at a remote arctic research laboratory, investigating a possible aircraft crash, find the wreckage of a flying saucer, covered in ice. Using explosives to free the ship, they accidentally destroy it, but they recover a body frozen in the ice.

As they return to their outpost, a major storm approaches, making communication with their headquarters in Anchorage problematic. Some scientists want to thaw out the creature, but the commanding officer, Air Force Captain Patrick Hendry forbids them from doing so until he receives orders from Anchorage.

Nervous in the presence of the alien body he guards, an airman uses an electric blanket to cover the ice block in which the extraterrestrial being reposes, causing the creature to thaw out, and it revives. Sled dogs attack the escaping alien, biting off one of its arms, which the scientists recover. As the limb warms, it absorbs the canine blood and returns to life. The scientists, examining the arm, conclude that, although the creature seems to be an animal of human-like appearance, it is actually a plant. (Yes, this twist stretches the willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.) Despite the creature’s obvious handicap to communication, one of the scientists (probably not a Nobel laureate) believes that they can reason with the creature. By contrast, the Air Force personnel do not believe that the plant can think or communicate with them, and they assume that it could be dangerous. (See, there is such a thing as military intelligence, on rare occasions.)

To survive, the plant-man attacks and kills other sled dogs, living upon their blood. When Dr. Carrington discovers a sled dog’s body, devoid of blood, hidden in the outpost’s greenhouse, he has volunteers among his team stand guard. The creature later kills several of them before it is lured into a trap inside the greenhouse.

Having determined that the creature needs human blood to reproduce, Dr. Carrington sneaks plasma from the base infirmary, using it to incubate the seeds he’s extracted from the creature’s severed arm.

The middle of this story is also logically connected to its opening situation, as the characters seek both to understand the nature of the creature they’ve recovered and to eliminate it as a threat after an Air Force guard inadvertently thaws the ice in which the creature reposes and it attacks sled dogs and humans. They learn the secret as to its true nature (a plant in human form) and the reason that it needs blood (to survive and to reproduce). Several characters become the monster’s victims. There is a conflict between a scientist’s desire to learn the secrets of nature, as represented by the alien plant-creature, and ordinary humans’ instinct for self-preservation, or survival. The former impulse is shown as being in opposition with the latter--at least when an extraterrestrial plant, capable of moving under its own power, is involved. The middle also transitions toward the story’s end, which we will consider in a later post. This story, incidentally, also makes use of a convention that is common in horror fiction, but effective, nevertheless--the isolated setting in which characters are cut off from the rest of society, from culture, and, indeed, from civilization itself and are stranded to survive (or not) on their own.

Beginnings: How Would You Finish The Story?

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

It’s relatively easy to start a story. More challenging than the beginning are the middle and the end. As we mentioned in previous posts, a story, after presenting background information, begins with an inciting moment--an incident that sparks the action that follows (the story proper). Following this moment, the story’s conflict is complicated as increasingly difficult obstacles are thrown into the protagonist’s path until a turning point is reached and the story starts in the opposite direction, ending in a resolution (comedy) or a catastrophe (tragedy).

In this post, we’re reviewing the beginnings of stories to provide an opportunity for aspiring writers to map out possible middles and endings for them.

Let’s start with a classic, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho:

Marion Crane has a problem. She wants to marry her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, but, in the wake of a divorce, he’s having financial problems. He’s paying alimony to his ex-wife while he pays his late father’s outstanding debts. Her employer, Mr. Lowery, a real estate agent, receives a cash payment from a wealthy client, Mr. Cassidy, who’s buying a house for his daughter’s wedding present. When Mr. Lowery asks her to deposit the money, she absconds with it instead, driving until she becomes exhausted. After a highway patrolman stops to check on her as she sleeps in her car, parked alongside the highway, taking note of her license plate, she trades in her car for another model. However, the patrolman witnesses the sale. Afraid that the patrolman will remember her once the theft is reported, Marion drives from Arizona into California, where Sam lives. However, as night deepens, a downpour occurs, and she is forced to rent a room in an out-of-the-way auto court, Bates Motel. Norman Bates, a shy, nervous young man, rents her a room. He offers to cook her a meal, but when he returns to the Victorian house on a hill overlooking the motel, Marion hears him argue with his mother, who forbids him to bring her into the house. He takes her a tray of food, which they share. She learns that his hobby is taxidermy; he enjoys stuffing dead animals, especially birds. Thereafter, Marion, who divulges her real name, goes to her room and hides the stolen money. She plans to return to Arizona the next day and make things right, if she can. After she leaves, Norman checks the motel register and sees that she has signed in under an assumed name. Ogling her through a peephole in his office, Norman watches Marion undress in her bathroom. The sight of her angers him, and he returns to the house atop the hill, sulking in the kitchen. As Marion showers, a woman, armed with a butcher’s knife, enters the motel room bathroom, and stabs her to death.

Let’s try another:

A new shop opens in Castle Rock, Maine, attracting local residents who seek “needful things”--merchandise that they want worse than anything else, merchandise for which they are willing to do anything.

Does this opening seem to slight for a full-fledged novel or motion picture? The novel is a whopping 792 pages, and the film runs 120 minutes!

And another:

Scientists at an arctic research outpost discover an extraterrestrial pilot frozen in a block of ice. Taking “The Thing From Another World” back to their laboratory, the alien is thawed out; wackiness ensues.

How do the writers of these stories flesh them out? In other words, how do they get from their beginnings to their middles and from their middles to their ends? To find out, simply read a good summary of each of them on a reliable Internet site: Psycho, Needful Things, and The Thing From Another World.

The ways in which these beginnings were developed are not the only ways they could have been developed. However, they do show the ways that several professional writers chose to develop them. If you took this exercise seriously, you should have created an alternate middle and end for each of these beginnings. Sometimes, movies are packaged with alternate endings so viewers who don’t like the “official” ending are free to select a different one.

Regardless of how a beginning is developed, one should be careful to ensure that there is a cause-and-effect relationship among the incidents of the plot so that everything that happens does so for a reason. To ensure such causal relationships, you might actually use such transitions in your summary of the plot as because, since, therefore, as a result, due to, and so forth.
One further warning: surprise your reader. Make sure your plot has lots of unexpected twists and turns. A plot can (and should be) both logical and unpredictable.

Purposeful, Frightening Scenes

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The largest part of a story is an act. Acts are made up of scenes. Scenes, in turn, are made up of incidents.

A good analogy is to think of an act as a chapter, a scene as a paragraph, and an incident as a sentence. Using this analogy, we can say that the first act of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film, Psycho, is comprised of the following scenes (our designation of the scenes is our own; the transcript of the screenplay we consulted as the basis for the summary does not divide the action into scenes):

1. In a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel room, during her lunch break, Marion Crane and Sam Loomis discuss their frustration at wanting to marry one another but being unable to do so because of the heavy financial drain caused by Sam’s alimony payments to his ex-wife and his payment of his deceased father’s outstanding debts.


2. Marion returns to work at Lowery Real Estate and learns that her employer, Mr. Lowery, is also late returning from lunch. As she chats with Caroline, a clerk, Mr. Lowery enters with a client, Mr. Cassidy, who’s had one drink too many. Mr. Lowery asks Marion to bring a deed into his office. Showing Marion a picture of his daughter, who’s to marry tomorrow, Cassidy makes a pass at Marion, but she deflects his flirtation. Then, he shows her the $40,000 in cash he’s brought to buy a house as his daughter’s wedding present. After Mr. Cassidy goes into his office, Mr. Lowery tells Marion to deposit the cash in the bank; he will get his client to write him a check for the money instead on Monday, when Mr. Cassidy is sober. Marion takes the deed into Mr. Lowery’s office and, complaining of a headache, asks permission to go home after depositing the money at the bank.


3. Instead of depositing the money, Marion has gone home, where, having packed a suitcase, she dresses. She steals the bank deposit.


4. As she drives through the city, she hears Sam’s voice greeting her upon her arrival and sees Mr. Lowery and Mr. Cassidy, exchanging waves with her befuddled employer.


5. She continues to drive until night falls. Tired, she pulls off the road to sleep. She is awakened by a highway patrolman, who makes note of her license plate number. After she returns to the road, the patrolman follows her.


6. Because the patrolman has her license plate number, she fears that he will connect her car with the money she’s stolen, once the theft is reported, so she trades in her car for a different model with different license plates.


7. As she drives away, Marion imagines the highway patrolman talking to California Charlie, the car salesman, about her. Because she has acted suspiciously, the patrolman is likely to want to examine the sales papers, she thinks. She then imagines conversations between Mr. Lowery and Caroline, between him and Marion’s sister, and between him and Mr. Lowery, in which they figure out that she has absconded with the bank deposit.


8. As a downpour begins, Marion sees a neon sign announcing “Bate’s Motel, Vacancy.” She stops to rent a room, but no one is tending the office. She sees a Victorian house atop a hill, in the front of an upstairs window of which the silhouette of a female figure moves past an illuminated window shade.


9. Returning to her car, she honks, and, a little later, a young man joins her. As they exchange small talk, Norman telling her that all the rooms are vacant, the new interstate having bypassed the motel. The motel is relatively isolated, the nearest town, Fairvale, being 15 miles away. Norman returns to the house atop the hill to prepare a dinner for them.


10. Marion hides the stolen money in a newspaper cradled in a magazine rack in her room. From the house on the hill, she hears Norman arguing with an elderly woman, who says, “I won’t have you bringing strange young girls in here for supper--by candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds!”


11. Norman brings a tray of food, suggesting that he and Marion share it in his office. The office is decorated with stuffed birds, a result of Norman’s hobby as a taxidermist. Norman tells Marion that he’s trapped by having to care for his aged mother, who’s mentally ill after her husband died when Norman was five and a lover (before suffering a violent death) talked her into building the motel. Marion’s suggestion that Norman commit his mother to an asylum angers him. After he calms down, Marion returns to her room, saying she’s driving back to Phoenix the next day to try to extract herself from “a private trap” she’d “stepped into” there. In parting, Marion slips, telling Norman her real name, and he sees that, on the register, she’s signed under the assumed name of “Marie Samuels.”


12. Norman peeps through a hole in the wall and sees Marion undressing in the bathroom.


13. He retreats to the house atop the hill, sulking in the kitchen.


14. In her room, Marion calculates the money she’s spent and will have to repay, flushes this potentially incriminating evidence down the toilet, and takes a shower. As she showers, a woman wielding a knife stabs her repeatedly, killing her.

According to our analysis, each of the above sentences is an incident of the story’s plot. Together, one or more of these incidents make up a scene. (Note: a scene involves conflict regarding at least one character--and usually two or more characters--and, often, dialogue, and it moves the story forward in a specific way, according to a predetermine purpose). In regard to horror stories, we might add that a scene also should scare the audience whenever possible.) Several scenes, in turn, make up an act.


As we indicated in a previous post, dramas (and other types of narratives, such as novels), often consist of five acts: (1) exposition, ending with an inciting moment that sets the (2) rising action in motion, leading to a (3) turning point, or climax, which gives way to the (4) falling action, which leads to (5) a resolution (if the story is a comedy) or to a catastrophe (if the story is a tragedy). (We won’t repeat our discussion of dramatic structure in detail in this post, but if you haven’t read it or don’t remember the details, you should refresh your memory by rereading “XXX.”)


As we have summarized the first act of Psycho, the first scene of this act consists of one incident:

In a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel room, during her lunch break, Marion Crane and Sam Loomis discuss their frustration at wanting to marry one another but being unable to do so because of the heavy financial drain caused by Sam’s alimony payments to his ex-wife and his payment of his deceased father’s outstanding debts.

The second scene of this act also consists of seven incidents:

Marion returns to work at Lowery Real Estate and learns that her employer, Mr. Lowery, is also late returning from lunch. As she chats with Caroline, a clerk, Mr. Lowery enters with a client, Mr. Cassidy, who’s had one drink too many. Mr. Lowery asks Marion to bring a deed into his office. Showing Marion a picture of his daughter, who’s to marry tomorrow, Cassidy makes a pass at Marion, but she deflects his flirtation. Then, he shows her the $40,000 in cash he’s brought to buy a house as his daughter’s wedding present. After Mr. Cassidy goes into his office, Mr. Lowery tells Marion to deposit the cash in the bank; he will get his client to write him a check for the money instead on Monday, when Mr. Cassidy is sober. Marion takes the deed into Mr. Lowery’s office and, complaining of a headache, asks permission to go home after depositing the money at the bank.

The third scene of this act is made up of one incident:

Instead of depositing the money, Marion has gone home, where, having packed a suitcase, she dresses. She steals the bank deposit.

Two incidents make up the fourth scene (each is underlined in its own color to better distinguish the two):

As she drives through the city, she hears Sam’s voice greeting her upon her arrival in California. She sees Mr. Lowery and Mr. Cassidy, exchanging waves with her befuddled employer.

The fifth scene is comprised of four incidents (each shown in a different color for emphasis):

She continues to drive until night falls. Tired, she pulls off the road to sleep. She is awakened by a highway patrolman, who makes note of her license plate number. After she returns to the road, the patrolman follows her.

Scene six consists of one incident:

Because the patrolman has her license plate number, she fears that he will connect her car with the money she’s stolen, once the theft is reported, so she trades in her car for a different model with different license plates.

The seventh scene is comprised of three incidents (each of which is underlined in a different color for emphasis):

As she drives away, Marion imagines the highway patrolman talking to California Charlie, the car salesman, about her. Because she has acted suspiciously, the patrolman is likely to want to examine the sales papers, she thinks. She then imagines conversations between Mr. Lowery and Caroline, between him and Marion’s sister, and between him and Mr. Lowery, in which they figure out that she has absconded with the bank deposit.

Three incidents make up scene eight (and are underlined in different colors to better distinguish each of them:

As a downpour begins, Marion sees a neon sign announcing “Bate’s Motel, Vacancy.” She stops to rent a room, but no one is tending the office. She sees a Victorian house atop a hill, in the front of an upstairs window of which the silhouette of a female figure moves past an illuminated window shade.

The ninth scene? Four incidents (again, each in its own color):

Returning to her car, she honks, and, a little later, a young man joins her. As they exchange small talk, Norman telling her that all the rooms are vacant, the new interstate having bypassed the motel. The motel is relatively isolated, the nearest town, Fairvale, being 15 miles away. Norman returns to the house atop the hill to prepare a dinner for them.

Scene 10 is made up of two incidents (colored individually):

Marion hides the stolen money in a newspaper cradled in a magazine rack in her room. From the house on the hill, she hears Norman arguing with an elderly woman, who says, “I won’t have you bringing strange young girls in here for supper--by candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds!”

Different colors indicate that scene 11 contains incidents:

Norman brings a tray of food, suggesting that he and Marion share it in his office. The office is decorated with stuffed birds, a result of Norman’s hobby as a taxidermist. Norman tells Marion that he’s trapped by having to care for his aged mother, who’s mentally ill after her husband died when Norman was five and a lover (before suffering a violent death) talked her into building the motel. Marion’s suggestion that Norman commit his mother to an asylum angers him. After he calms down, Marion returns to her room, saying she’s driving back to Phoenix the next day to try to extract herself from “a private trap” she’d “stepped into” there. In parting, Marion slips, telling Norman her real name, and he sees that, on the register, she’s signed under the assumed name of “Marie Samuels.”

Scene 12 = one incident:

Norman peeps through a hole in the wall and sees Marion undressing in the bathroom.

Scene 13 = one incident:

He retreats to the house atop the hill, sulking in the kitchen.

Scene 14 is made up of two incidents (shown, again, in distinguishing colors):

In her room, Marion calculates the money she’s spent and will have to repay, flushes this potentially incriminating evidence down the toilet, and takes a shower. As she
showers, a woman wielding a knife stabs her repeatedly, killing her.

We said that each scene should advance the story in some way, so let's see how each of the four opening scenes of Psycho do so:

1. In a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel room, during her lunch break, Marion Crane and Sam Loomis discuss their frustration at wanting to marry one another but being unable to do so because of the heavy financial drain caused by Sam’s alimony payments to his ex-wife and his payment of his deceased father’s outstanding debts. (This scene provides the antagonist’s motivation.)


2. Marion returns to work at Lowery Real Estate and learns that her employer, Mr. Lowery, is also late returning from lunch. As she chats with Caroline, a clerk, Mr. Lowery enters with a client, Mr. Cassidy, who’s had one drink too many. Mr. Lowery asks Marion to bring a deed into his office. Showing Marion a picture of his daughter, who’s to marry tomorrow, Cassidy makes a pass at Marion, but she deflects his flirtation. Then, he shows her the $40,000 in cash he’s brought to buy a house as his daughter’s wedding present. After Mr. Cassidy goes into his office, Mr. Lowery tells Marion to deposit the cash in the bank; he will get his client to write him a check for the money instead on Monday, when Mr. Cassidy is sober. Marion takes the deed into Mr. Lowery’s office and, complaining of a headache, asks permission to go home after depositing the money at the bank. (This scene sets up the next one, creating the situation that allows Marion to commit a crime.)


3. Instead of depositing the money, Marion has gone home, where, having packed a suitcase, she dresses. She steals the bank deposit. (This scene shows the antagonist perform an action--commit a crime; she forces herself, by her own behavior, to leave her job and her home, and to leave town, never to return; her crime makes her less sympathetic, or entirely unsympathetic, to audience.)


4. As she drives through the city, she hears Sam’s voice greeting her upon her arrival and sees Mr. Lowery and Mr. Cassidy, exchanging waves with her befuddled employer. (This scene restores some sympathy for Marion, showing her to have a conscience, but it also allows her a chance to reconsider her scheme and to forego stealing the money. When she goes through with the crime, the audience may feel that she is weak, rather than evil.)


5. Scenes 5, 6, and 7 force Marion’s hand, and her attempts to thwart justice also makes her even more unsympathetic to the audience: She continues to drive until night falls. Tired, she pulls off the road to sleep. She is awakened by a highway patrolman, who makes note of her license plate number. After she returns to the road, the patrolman follows her.


6. Because the patrolman has her license plate number, she fears that he will connect her car with the money she’s stolen, once the theft is reported, so she trades in her car for a different model with different license plates.


7. As she drives away, Marion imagines the highway patrolman talking to California Charlie, the car salesman, about her. Because she has acted suspiciously, the patrolman is likely to want to examine the sales papers, she thinks. She then imagines conversations between Mr. Lowery and Caroline, between him and Marion’s sister, and between him and Mr. Lowery, in which they figure out that she as absconded with the bank deposit.


8. As a downpour begins, Marion sees a neon sign announcing “Bate’s Motel, Vacancy.” She stops to rent a room, but no one is tending the office. She sees a Victorian house atop a hill, in the front of an upstairs window of which the silhouette of a female figure moves past an illuminated window shade. (This scene offers Marion a respite from the physical storm and from the storm of her emotions--the guilt and fear she feels--and introduces the idea that a woman lives in the house at the top of the hill that overlooks Bates Motel.)


9. Returning to her car, she honks, and, a little later, a young man joins her. As they exchange small talk, shy, awkward Norman telling her that all the rooms are vacant, the new interstate having bypassed the motel. The motel is relatively isolated, the nearest town, Fairvale, being 15 miles away. Norman returns to the house atop the hill to prepare a dinner for them. (This scene brings the movie’s antagonist face to face with its protagonist and shows Norman to be a shy and awkward young man who, although attracted to the opposite sex, is uncomfortable in the presence of women.)


10. Marion hides the stolen money in a newspaper cradled in a magazine rack in her room. From the house on the hill, she hears Norman arguing with an elderly woman, who says, “I won’t have you bringing strange young girls in here for supper--by candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds!” (This scene shows the conflict between Norman and his mother--up to this point, the audience has only heard of it, not overheard it.)


11. Norman brings a tray of food, suggesting that he and Marion share it in his office. The office is decorated with stuffed birds, a result of Norman’s hobby as a taxidermist. Norman tells Marion that he’s trapped by having to care for his aged mother, who’s mentally ill after her husband died when Norman was five and a lover (before suffering a violent death) talked her into building the motel. Marion’s suggestion that Norman commit his mother to an asylum angers him. After he calms down, Marion returns to her room, saying she’s driving back to Phoenix the next day to try to extract herself from “a private trap” she’d “stepped into” there. In parting, Marion slips, telling Norman her real name, and he sees that, on the register, she’s signed under the assumed name of “Marie Samuels.” (This scene provides the background information that Norman knows how to stuff dead bodies, further develops the conflict between Norman and his mother, further characterizes Norman--the audience sees him as strange, understands that he feels “trapped” by his circumstances, shows he’s quick to anger, suggests he has a psychologically unhealthy relationship with his mother--intimates that violence has occurred in the past--in the death of Norman’s mother’s lover--makes Marion somewhat more sympathetic--because she has decided to try to make matters right concerning her theft of the money--and allows Norman to see that his suspicion that Marion is running from something is accurate, since she has signed in under an assumed name.)


12. Norman peeps through a hole in the wall and sees Marion undressing in the bathroom. (This scene shows that Norman is a voyeur.)


13. He retreats to the house atop the hill, sulking in the kitchen. (This scene shows that Marion is conflicted concerning Marion and the sexuality that her nudity represents.)


14. In her room, Marion calculates the money she’s spent and will have to repay, flushes this potentially incriminating evidence down the toilet, and takes a shower. As she showers, a woman wielding a knife stabs her repeatedly, killing her. (This scene restores a large measure of the audience’s sympathy for Marion, showing her as repentant, but ends with the story’s inciting moment as the protagonist, Norman Bates, commits a crime that will result in his ultimate undoing.)

We said that, in a horror movie, scenes must also frighten whenever possible. What’s frightening about the four scenes we identified as making up the first act of this film?

Even when a scene accomplishes a definite, predetermined purpose--motivating a character, for example--it can, and should, in horror stories, frighten the audience. Therefore, a horror story writer must discern what is horrific, implicitly or explicitly, about each of our plot’s incidents. Not every scene, especially of the earlier ones, frightens viewers, but several do, the types of fears varying, as do their intensities, building toward the shower scene’s climactic terror:

• We fear that Marion may do something rash.
• When she does so, we fear that Marion may get caught.
• When she does not, we fear that Marion may get arrested.
• We fear that Norman may not be trustworthy and, in fact, may be mentally unstable.
• We fear that Marion may be raped.
• We fear that Marion will be killed (which, of course, she is).

Since this has been a fairly long post, let’s summarize its key points:

• The largest part of a story is an act. Acts are made up of scenes. Scenes, in turn, are made up of incidents.
• A scene involves conflict regarding at least one character--and usually two or more characters--and, often, dialogue, and it moves the story forward in a specific way, according to a predetermine purpose. In regard to horror stories, we might add that a scene also should scare the audience whenever possible.
• Various ways in which the scenes in Psycho move the story forward are to motivate characters; to set up subsequent scenes; to establish points of no return that force a character to continue to behave according to a specific course of action; to characterize the protagonist, the antagonist, or another character; to establish or heighten conflict within or between characters; and to provide background (expository) information about the story’s characters or situations.
• A drama often consists of five acts: (1) exposition, ending with an inciting moment that sets the (2) rising action in motion, leading to a (3) turning point, or climax, which gives way to the (4) falling action, which leads to (5) a resolution (if the story is a comedy) or to a catastrophe (if the story is a tragedy).

Note: The summary of Psycho is based upon the screenplay, available at Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.