"Here There Be Monsters," But There Needs to Be More

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

The short horror film “Here There Be Monsters,” directed by Australian filmmaker Drew MacDonald, tells a simple, straightforward story. Elki (Savannah Foran-McDaniel), a bullied girl, falls asleep on a school bus and awakens inside the vehicle after the driver parks in the bus lot at the end of her shift.

Elki finds herself locked inside the bus. She cannot open the doors, and the windows open only a few inches. She is trapped. Worse yet, she realizes, when she looks out the window, there is a monster in the otherwise abandoned lot. She hides, but the monster, undeterred by her tactic, breaks a rear window. The girl hides in place, behind a seat, watching the monster's cloven hooves approach her position.

As the beast, a shaggy figure reminiscent of a Minotaur, comes nearer, Elki removes a pair of scissors from her book bag. Finally, she takes flight, throwing her shoulder repeatedly into the door at the front of the bus. With the monster in hot pursuit, she manages, at the last moment, to force open the doors and to flee.

The monster pursues, trapping her in a dead end, between abandoned buses and stacks of debris. She tries to scale a chain-link fence, but is unable to do so. As the beast closes in on her, she holds her scissors. Finally, she screams her defiance, and the scene shifts to the house of one or Elki's tormentors.

The bully steps outside her house to smoke, only to encounter Elki, who has not only survived her encounter with the monster, but, armed with her scissors, also manages to take revenge upon her tormentor by killing the aggressor.

The film accomplishes a lot in its approximately thirteen minutes and eleven seconds (which doesn't count the credits). Although the plot is simple and predictable and the theme rather moralistic, production values are first rate, as is Foran-McDaniel's acting.

The script is dialogue free, and her role calls mostly for her to project fear, which she does masterfully through her expressions, gestures, sobbing, and emoting. She is very believable, both as a victim of bullying and as a monster's quarry. Her petite size helps to suggest vulnerability. At the end of the film, she also conveys aggression; her emotionless stare, especially after the tears and fear she displayed throughout the rest of the film, is chilling, indeed.

Foran-McDaniel is a talented actor who, in the right feature-length motion picture, should be a major player not only Down Under but in Hollywood as well. She just needs a film that does her justice.

“Here There Be Monsters” is not a bad film; in fact, there's a lot to like, including the camerawork, production values, and earnestness of the creative people both before and behind the camera. It's just not a vehicle for stardom. It might well open some doors for Foran-McDaniel, however, and her screen presence, her credibility, and her impressive talent deserve more.

Grade: B

Hungry Again: A Review of Sult, a Short Horror Film

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Sult (2018), a Norwegian short erotic horror film runs about seven minutes and thirty-six minutes (not counting the credits that roll as the end of the action). In English, the movie's title is Hunger. A brunette hairstylist, Vera (Sarah-Stephanie Skjoldevik) has an appetite for an aloof blonde, Suzanne (Marianne Lindbeck), but Vera's love, if not her passion, is unrequited. However, Suzanne does seem attracted to brunettes: the woman with whom she cheats on Vera is also a dark-haired beauty.

The film starts in the present. It's Friday, and Vera joins Suzanne in a booth in a bar. Suzanne wears the necklace that Vera gives her (in a flashback scene not yet shown). Suzanne does not look overjoyed to see Vera; in fact, Suzanne appears barely able to tolerate the brunette. Vera drinks a glass of wine on the rim of which is a split cherry. Then, Vera strokes Suzanne's cheek, throat, and chin, as Suzanne appears to put up with Vera's attentions, rather than to enjoy them. However, when Vera kisses Suzanne, the women exchange a series of additional kisses, during which Suzanne, becoming aroused, slips the tip of her tongue into Vera's mouth. Reaching behind her own back, Vera removes a pair of scissors from her waistband. Biting Suzanne's tongue, Vera snips the tip of it off with her scissors, and Suzanne falls back, against the seat in the booth, a bloody mess, in pain, disbelief, and horror.

During a flashback, Vera is at home. It's Tuesday, and she prepares for her date with Suzanne. Later, they play billiards, and Suzanne wins. Afterward, Vera gives Suzanne a necklace—the same one the blonde wears in the bar in the film's opening scene. However, Vera seems indifferent about the gift—she even rolls her eyes as Vera fastens it about her neck—and, indeed, Suzanne seems to care nothing for Vera's love for her. The next day, Vera visits Suzanne's modest apartment, where the brunette sees Suzanne kissing and caressing another woman, who is also a brunette. On Thursday, while styling a client's hair, Vera cuts her finger, which seems to suggest the revenge she takes upon Suzanne.

Back in the present, watching Suzanne bleed and shudder, Vera, now shows the same indifference toward Suzanne's pain and horror as Suzanne had earlier shown concerning Vera's gift. After retrieving the necklace she'd given Suzanne, Vera takes the tip of Suzanne's tongue from Suzanne's bloody hand, inserts the severed piece of the appendage into her own mouth, chews, and swallows, before abandoning Suzanne, who continues to bleed and shudder in the booth.

Sult is a revenge film, but there is a bit more to the interpersonal dynamics between Vera and Suzanne than simply courtship. When she meets Suzanne in the bar, Vera wears a black leather outfit that suggests a penchant on her part for BDSM. In a stereotype dating from pulp fiction lesbian erotica, Vera's hair color and dress characterize her as a dominant, or top, while Suzanne's contrasting blonde locks identify her as a submissive, or bottom. Throughout the film Vera displays her dominance over Suzanne. She makes Suzanne wait for her to arrive at the bar. Vera always initiates the action between them. Vera gazes upon Suzanne as though the blonde is a prized possession, rather than a person. Vera bestows a gift upon Suzanne, which identifies the blonde as the recipient of Vera's generosity.

Suzanne maintains a relationship with Vera, but it is a superficial one. She tolerates Vera, but she does not love her. She waits for her. She endures Vera's kisses and caresses, but she never initiates the intimacy between them, and she does not appear to treasure the gift of the necklace. She accepts it the same was that she tolerates Vera, with aloofness, with coolness, with indifference. She even expresses her disdain by rolling her eyes as Vera fastens the clasp of the necklace about her lover's neck. There is the suggestion, in Vera's large, luxurious apartment, in her clothing, in her gift, and in her bearing, of a woman who has money, but she is a controlled, as well as a controlling, mistress: she wears tight, restrictive clothing—the leather outfit and the corset into which she laces herself quite tightly as she prepares for her date with Suzanne.

It is because of Vera's money, rather than for Vera herself, perhaps, that Suzanne unenthusiastically tolerates Vera and her romantic inclinations. It is clear, though, that Suzanne does not love Vera, despite the occasional passion that Vera's lovemaking ignites in Suzanne.

Certainly, Vera is not Suzanne's only paramour. Suzanne embraces, kisses, and caresses the woman in her own apartment, and, although Vera later watches Suzanne grope and be groped by another woman—a brunette, like Vera herself—and pleasures herself, it is clear that Vera does not like sharing Suzanne with someone else.

Suzanne's intimate interaction with the other woman also suggests that Suzanne is not exclusively submissive, for, in these interactions, Suzanne not only takes the lead, but she treats her lover in a manner similar to the one in which Vera treats Suzanne herself: Suzanne, in these interactions, is the dominant person. With Vera, she reverses this role, albeit reluctantly. Suzanne, like Vera, appears to be a naturally dominant person. If such is the case, she may well resent submitting to Vera, which could explain Suzanne's reluctance and indifference to her playing the role of the submissive participant in her relationship with Vera.

It is when Vera accidentally cuts herself while styling another woman's hair—and a blonde woman, like Suzanne, at that—that Vera conceives her plan to cut off the tip of Suzanne's tongue. She will punish Suzanne's infidelity. She will hurt Suzanne, as Vera has just hurt herself. Indeed, the same pair of scissors with which she accidentally cut her own finger become the instrument with which she severs Suzanne's tongue.

The tongue is an instrument of taste. It is an instrument of communication, helping to form words. The lips resemble the labia, and, in lesbian lovemaking, the lips are often a primary instrument in providing pleasure for one's lover—in Suzanne's case, Vera. However, Suzanne has betrayed Vera with her lips and her tongue, kissing other women, women with whom Suzanne takes the lead, acting as the initiator, conducting herself in an aggressive, dominant manner.

By cutting off the tip of Suzanne's tongue, Vera mutilates her, degrading Suzanne's beauty while eliminating or severely reducing Suzanne's ability to provide erotic pleasure to other lovers. In a sense, by this act, Vera claims Suzanne as her own. However, she does so only to abandon her, to leave her moaning in horror and pain, shuddering and bloody. Henceforth, if she survives, Suzanne will be less beautiful and less able to attract and please other women.

The “hunger” that Vera feels for Suzanne is sexual, but it is also psychological. Vera wants Suzanne both physically and emotionally. Vera wants to dominate Suzanne, body and soul, When Suzanne refuses to give Vera what she wants most—her autonomy, her freedom, her will, her very existence—Vera takes it. Courtship becomes assault, physical, sexual, and emotional.

 

In certain societies, consuming part of a vanquished enemy's body—usually, the heart—indicates that the consumer has ingested the foe's courage, literally taking it into himself, so that the enemy's attribute becomes an attribute of the vanquishing hero himself. By eating the tip of Suzanne's tongue, Vera symbolically takes into herself Suzanne's own beauty and passion; Suzanne's characteristics become Vera's own. It is the final act of dominance, of control, of possession.

The question is, Does the cannibalistic act satisfy Vera's hunger? Can such a hunger ever be satisfied? Will Vera, at some time in the future, become hungry again?

H. G. Wells: The Art of "The Cone"

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

H. G. Wells's masterful short story, “The Cone,” tells a simple, straightforward tale of vengeance and horror. During his stay with Horrocks, who manages the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the artist Raut, who is making a study of the ironworks, has an affair with Horrocks's wife, talk of which the manager overhears, including his wife's confession of her love for Raut.

During the lovers' conversation, Horrocks's wife insults and denigrates her husband as unimaginative and insensitive and praises Raut for the love and beauty he has brought into her dull, drab life. Like Raut, she has an aesthetic appreciation of life, whereas, she tells Raut, her husband “thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel,” having “no imagination, no poetry.” Horrocks also overhears his wife's mockery of him, before he enters the room and offers to take Raut for a tour of the ironworks so the artist can get a better view of its aesthetic effects.

As the men tour the ironworks, Horrocks points out its “effects,” as he leads the artist along, gripping his arm so firmly that it hurts Raut. On their way through the industrial landscape, Horrocks explains how cones have been added to block the throats of the furnaces so fire doesn't “flare out” of them like “pillars of cloud by day . . . and pillars of fire by night.” Despite the cones, however, occasionally a furnace does belch “a burst of fire and smoke.”

A sign warns, “Beware of the Trains.” As a train approaches, Horrocks shoves Raut into its path, pulling him back at the last moment, so that the artist narrowly escapes death. As they resume the tour, Raut wonders whether Horrocks is aware of his affair with his wife and whether, as a result, he had “just been within an ace of being murdered.”

Continuing the tour, Horrocks points out additional effects, such as the canal. “You've never seen it? Fancy that! You've spent too many of your evenings philandering,” Horrocks tells Raut.

They take an elevator to a “narrow rail” overhanging a furnace seventy feet below. “That's the cone I've been telling you of,” shouts Horrocks, “and, below that, sixty feet of molten metal, with the air of the blast frothing through it like gas in soda-water.” He adds that the cone's “top side” is 300 degrees, which is hot enough to “boil the blood out of you in no time.” Raut tries to escape, struggling with Horrocks, who detains him, and Raut plunges into “empty air.” Although his lower body makes contact with the “hot cone,” Raut manages to cling to the chain from which the furnace's cone is suspended, the tremendous heat singeing his hands and causing “intense pain” to assail “him at the knees.” Raut tries to ascend the chain, but Horrocks flings coal at him, shouting, “Fizzle you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women! You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!”

Only after Raut, still clinging to the chain, has been immolated does Horrocks's anger pass and “a deadly sickness [comes] upon him.” as he smells “the heavy odour of burning flesh . . . . his sanity” returning.

From “below was the sound of voices and running steps. The clangour of rolling in the shed ceased abruptly.”

* * *

The plot of Wells's story is itself a thing of beauty. Tight, unified, and artistically executed, with every detail leading to the final effect, it's a tale of terror worthy of Edgar Allan Poe.

Beyond the plot itself, Wells's story is a masterpiece of literary excellence because of its style. A tale of vengeance against an artist, the story is rendered as if Raut himself might have painted it, as a series of images, some impressionistic, others surreal. Wells's protagonist doesn't only speak of the aesthetic effects of his workplace, but the omniscient narrator's artistic descriptions of these effects is like detailed verbal paintings, as these few samples indicate:

The night was hot and overcast, the sky red, rimmed with the lingering sunset of mid-summer. . . . The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railway signal against the lowering sky.

* * *

Horrocks pointed to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the furnaces. The hot water that cooled the tuyeres [“a nozzle through which air is forced into a smelter, furnace, or forge”] came into it, some fifty yards up—a tumultuous, almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping damply about them, an incessant succession of ghosts coming up from the black and red eddies, a white uprising that made the head swim.

* * *

They went . . . through the rolling-mills [“a factory or machine for rolling steel or other metal into sheets”], where amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black, half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels. . . . They went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left the eye blinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went to the lift . . . .

These descriptions support Horrocks's view of the ironworks as itself an artistic setting as well as a technological marvel. Unlike Raut and his own wife, Horrocks is able to see the beauty of technology and industry. It is ironic that such beauty, as Horrocks perceives it and the narrator describes it, should be the background to the artist's demise at the hands of Horrocks and the technology of the ironworks itself.

But Wells achieves yet more through the figures of speeches, allusions, and point of view his omniscient narrator employs in describing what, to Horrocks, is a work of art and what is to his victim, “Gehenna,” “a place of burning, torment, or misery.” From Horrocks's point of view, the ironworks is described as a work of art; the furnace is personified as Horrocks's “pet” (“I packed him myself, and he's boiled away cheerfully with iron in his guts for five long years. I have a particular fancy for him”); and the water of the steaming canal is described with an allusion to “sin” and “death,” just as the “flames” that once erupted from the “throats” of the furnaces looked like God, as He revealed Himself to Moses and the Israelites, as “pillars of cloud by day . . . and pillars of fire by night” (Exodus 13:21-22) as they journeyed through the wilderness.

Wells's descriptions are dynamic, not static; they move and act, as if the ironworks is itself a conscious entity, a willing instrument of its manager's revenge. The movement prevents the plot from slowing, keeps up the pace of the action, and is perfectly suited to the tour of his workplace that Horrocks conducts. The descriptions heighten and underscore the unity between Horrocks and his beloved ironworks, emphasizing the relationship that exists between him, as a man, and the industry and technology of the works he manages.

Horrocks's appreciation of the beauty of the ironworks also suggests that both the artist Raut and Horrocks's wife underestimate his sensitivity, intelligence, and imagination. It is not that he lacks the ability to appreciate beauty, but that the type of beauty he appreciates differs from that of Raut and Horrocks's wife. They are detached from the material world, thinking in terms of “effects” and of romantic passion; a man of the earth, a “Titan,” Horrocks is immersed in the physical world of labor and sweat, of industry and technology. To him, the ironworks is a place of beauty, whereas, to Raut, it is a “Gehenna,” a blot upon the beauty of the countryside, and, to Horrocks's wife, it is a stifling, suffocating place devoid of beauty and love. The story suggests that it is the illicit lovers who are unable to appreciate beauty—at least the beauty that Horrocks is able to see.

The characters live in different worlds, which results in a conflict of aesthetics, passion, and love that ends in horrible death for Raut, a realization of the darkness within him for Horrocks, and the end of an affair that Horrocks's wife said opened “a world of love” to her. The story suggests that life, like the setting in which it is experienced, may be a place of beauty which suggests the presence of God, as the ironworks does for Horrocks, or a “Gehenna” of torment and anguish suggestive of hell for those who cannot fathom the beauty and majesty of the place. The story also suggests the significance and power of aesthetics, for it is both the appreciation of the ironworks's beauty, on Horrocks's part, and the failure to appreciate the beauty of such a place, on Raut's and Horrocks's wife's part, that leads to adultery, betrayal, vengeance, and murder and to the horrific death of the artist at the hand of the ironmaster:

His human likeness departed from him. When the momentary red had passed, Horrocks saw a charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain, and writhing in agony—a cindery animal, an inhuman, monstrous creature that began a sobbing intermittent shriek.

Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster's anger passed. A deadly sickness came upon him. The heavy odour of flesh came drifting up to his nostrils. His sanity returned to him.

“God have mercy upon me!” he cried. “O God! what have I done?”

He knew the thing below him, save that it moved and felt, was already a dead man—that the blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in his veins. An intense realisation of that agony came to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. For a moment he stood irresolute, and then, turning to the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the struggling thing that had once been a man. The mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and a boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came rushing up towards him. As it passed, he saw the cone clear again.

"Teeth" and the Horrors of Sexual Repression

 Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although on a literal level, Teeth, a movie about a teenage girl with a toothed vagina, or a vagina dentata, is—there's no polite way to say it—imbecilic, on a figurative level, the film, despite its sophomoric plot, offers more than its mixture of horror and comedy: it has something significant to say about the effects of sexual repression on teenage girls. 

It's difficult for young male moviegoers to envision, much less to appreciate, the social and psychological pressures teenage girls are under. By virtue of their having been born female, rather than male, they're subject to social expectations concerning sex that do not apply to males. Girls, after all, can become pregnant; males cannot. Therefore, women are encouraged to avoid sexual intercourse until they're married, when, having wed, they've acquired a potentially secure means of providing for the welfare of their children. Indeed, unmarried women, especially teens, are discouraged from participating even in non-procreative sexual behaviors, which could lead to sexual intercourse.

Teenage boys rarely face such taboos, although, in the interests of sexual equality and political correctness, lip service may be given to the importance of their committing to abstinence until marriage as well, as they are encouraged to do in Teeth. It's obvious, however, that the boys don't take their vows very seriously, and most of them seek to have sex whenever possible. 

These prohibitions against premarital sexual intercourse are represented in the movie by the protagonist's devotion to her vow to abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage. Dawn O'Keefe doesn't merely commit to this goal, but she champions it in speeches to her abstinence group, The Promise.

Unlike other girls, Dawn is equipped with a sharp set of teeth in her nether region. They seem sentient enough to know when their territory, so to speak, is threatened with invasion. As a toddler, her future stepbrother Brad's curiosity gets out of hand while he's seated in a wading pool, next to Dawn, and her teeth bite off the tip of the forefinger he's inserted into her vagina.

Despite her sincere devotion to her ideals, teenage Dawn's resolve is tested. With Tobey, a boy to whom she is attracted, Dawn goes to a cave in which teenagers often retreat to have sex. Although she returns Tobey's kisses, she refuses to have sexual intercourse with him. Angry, he becomes aggressive. When he tries to rape her, Dawn struggles, and her head strikes the ground, dazing her. Tobey rapes her. Recovering, Dawn fights back, and her teeth bite off Tobey's penis. Horrified, Dawn flees the scene.

Feeling guilty and depressed at having succumbed to temptation, Dawn, nevertheless, addresses The Promise, but the pastor seems to see that she has been sexually active and ushers her away from the group. Returning to the swimming hole near the cave in which she involuntarily lost her virginity, Dawn throws her Promise ring, a symbol of her vow to preserve her virginity until marriage, into the water. She sees a crab crawling on Tobey's severed penis, and the horrible sight inspires her to research her condition.

Realizing she may be in possession of the legendary vagina dentata, she visits a gynecologist, asking him to examine her to determine whether there is anything inside her. When her gynecologist slips his bare hand into her during a pelvic examination, her teeth bite off his fingers. Terrified, Dawn flees the clinic on her bicycle.  

Her coy demeanor during her first visit to a gynecologist—and a male one, at that—; her nakedness under the hospital gown she's made to don for the occasion; her humiliating position on the examination table, with her feet in the stirrups and her legs spread wide; her having to follow the doctor's repeated instructions to “scoot down”; and the cold, barren, antiseptic, clinical setting dehumanize and objectify her while, at the same time, they emphasize her sexuality. The scene brings home the way women, especially young women, are made to feel alien and “other.” Their sex even requires them to have a medical doctor who specializes in problems and issues related strictly to women. 

Horrified, Dawn flees on her bicycle from the scene of carnage, only to see a police officer driving Tobey's car. She returns to the swimming hole, where she sees police retrieving Tobey's corpse from the water. He appears to have died of shock and blood loss as a result of his injury. Her sexual repression has led her to take a boy's life, just as, indirectly, sexual repression may have prompted Tobey to commit rape, although, of course, ultimately, from a legal and societal point of view, both Dawn and Tobey are responsible for their own actions, despite the pressures, social, psychological, and sexual, under which the teenagers find themselves.

At home, Dawn is further traumatized by her discovery that her mother, who is seriously ill and has collapsed on the floor, must be rushed to the hospital. This incident, like Dawn's first, forced sexual experience, marks the end of her childhood. Her mother is unavailable, which means that her experience and wisdom as an adult female is also unavailable to Dawn. The daughter becomes entirely responsible for herself, at least as a female, which puts even more pressure on her to act responsibly. 

The boy's half-hearted “devotion” to their vows of abstinence (and, therefore, their relative freedom from the social and psychological, if not the sexual, pressures placed upon them) is highlighted by the behavior of Ryan, who pretends to befriend Dawn, only to take advantage of her when the opportunity arises. She goes to him, disturbed by Tobey's death, the gynecologist's dismemberment, and her mother's condition. Although he pretends to sympathize with her and to comfort her, Ryan offers her a tranquilizer only so he's able to masturbate her with a dildo while she's in an acquiescent state of mind. Relaxed, Dawn's vagina dentata do not defend her as she engages in quasi-consensual sex.

When they have intercourse the next morning, the couple is interrupted by a telephone call from one of Ryan's male friends, and Dawn learns that the boys had placed a bet as to whether Ryan would be able to “score” with Dawn. In her anger, she bites off Ryan's penis with her vagina, leaving him to seek help from his mother. 

After her mother dies, Dawn learns that Brad continued to have sexual intercourse with his girlfriend Melanie at the O'Keefe family's house, instructing Melanie not to go to the aid of Dawn's mother after she had collapsed at home. (Brad is the son of Bill, who marries Dawn's mother.) Bent on revenge, she seduces Brad (who had previously tried to seduce her), bites off his penis with her vagina dentata, and leaves him, presumably to die of shock and blood loss, as Tobey had done. The previous times during which Dawn used her vaginal teeth to kill or maim, she'd been attacked, humiliated, or insulted; this time, she acts with premeditation, so this incident marks a wholly voluntary, conscious, and deliberate act, not an instinctive or reflexive reaction to sexual, physical, or emotional trauma. With this act, Dawn has crossed a moral line. She is no longer innocent; she has become as monstrous as those who have committed crimes against her. She is definitely now a criminal. 

After leaving home, Dawn is picked up while hitchhiking. Exhausted, she sleeps, awakening after nightfall. When she tries to get out of the driver's vehicle, the old man repeatedly locks the doors. He looks at her, licking his lips, and she, understanding his intentions, smiles seductively at him, implying that she intends to commit another murder.

Despite its comic elements, this seemingly simple horror movie is disturbing because it indicates how rigid expectations of sexual repression, reinforced by societal, parental, and religious support, can create psychologically pressures that can be dangerous to oneself and others. The movie does a good job of showing how a teenage girl, in particular, is affected, emotionally and otherwise, by such taboos. 

Francisco Goya's painting, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, suggests that terrible consequences can spring from irrationality. Teeth suggests that it is irrational, perhaps unnatural, to fetter young adults, particularly teenage girls, with ironclad expectations that, difficult to meet, place unbearable pressure on the young. It might be hyperbolic to suggest, as this movie does, that the result of sexual repression could transform a normal, “nice,” or “good” girl into a monstrous killer, but hyperbole gets attention, especially when the girl involved in the nightmarish situation is as likable, appealing, and familiar as the schoolgirl played by Jess Weixler, who, despite a silly script, does a good job of portraying the girl next door. The movie's theme saves it from being the clunker it would have been without the depth the movie receives from its explorations of vows of abstinence, sexual repression, on one hand, and underage, premarital sex in a permissive society on the other.

The First Three Closing Paragraphs in “Gideon’s Sword”: A Study in Motivation

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

An earlier series of posts examined Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s use of opening chapters in their latest Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast novel, Fever Dream. In this series, I will take a look at the authors’ use of the first three closing paragraphs in their first Gideon Crew novel, Gideon’s Sword. Since I won’t be providing more than the most cursory and pointed chapter synopses, readers who are interested in how this thriller arrives at these closing paragraphs will have to read the book, which is unlikely to be the best thing that ever happened to them, but will likely be a fairly satisfying experience.

Here’s the closing paragraph of chapter 1:

“Dad!” he screamed into the grass, trying to claw back to his feet as the weight of the world piled up on his shoulders, but he’d seen those feet move, his father was alive, he would wake up and all would be well (7).

At this point in the novel, Gideon is twelve years old; he has just seen his father shot, numerous times--has seen him, in effect, assassinated by soldiers as he sought to surrender, hands up, having released his hostage. His screaming of “Dad” reinforces the father-son relationship that the chapter established earlier, and young Gideon is portrayed almost as though he is an animal: he is belly down, in the “grass,” screaming as he seeks to “claw” his way “back to his feet.” A pitiful figure, the boy is made even more so by his hope (vain hope, readers will surmise) that his father, who has been shot multiple times, will survive. This paragraph brings the chapter’s action to a climax and motivates readers to read on. It also characterizes Gideon, showing his love for his father, his desperation, and his naiveté.

As chapter 1 ends with the dying of Gideon’s father, chapter 2 concludes with the demise of his mother, who has extracted from her son, who is now twenty-two years old, the promise that Gideon will avenge his father’s murder:

Those were her last words, words that would resonate endlessly in his mind. You’ll figure out a way (13).

Her words, reiterated by the omniscient narrator in italics, become important to the authors’ characterization of Gideon as a young man who can and does perform the impossible, not only in avenging his father’s murder, but also in saving the world--or, at least, the United States. His love for his parents motivates him to plan, to scheme, to strategize, long-term and on the fly, persevering against all odds until he succeeds in attaining his objective. The deaths of his parents, whom he loves, fuels his resourcefulness, his perseverance, and his occasional ruthlessness.

Chapter 3 ends with a single-sentence conclusion:

There was only one way to find out (17).

Gideon has developed a specialized search engine that tracks hits concerning the classified document that his father had written for the government, and, during this chapter, he discovers that a hit has occurred “in a table of contents released to the National Security Archives at George Washington University” concerning his father’s “still-classified” report, “A Critique of the Thresher Discrete Logarithm Encryption Standard EVP-4: A Theoretical Back-Door Cryptanalysis Attack Strategy Using a Group of y-Torsion Points of an Elliptic Curve Characteristic y.” To most readers, myself included, this title is apt to sound impressive, despite its unintelligibility, and this effect, perhaps, is all that Preston and Child intend. For his part, despite his own mathematical aptitude, Gideon is unable to understand all of the document, although he realizes that “this [may] be the memo that General Tucker had supposedly destroyed” and the one that his father had been authored in criticism of the “Thresher” logarithm that got him killed. Given the motivations of his love for his parents and his desire to honor his mother by avenging his father’s murder, readers are likely to be convinced that Gideon will do whatever he needs to do to accomplish his mission now that he has what may be the lead he has long sought. If there is “only one way to find out” whether this is the “brass ring” he’s been seeking, readers will likely believe that Gideon will do it, whatever it is.

Note: To further strengthen Gideon’s motivation to serve his country, even after he has avenged his father’s murder, he is informed that he has but one year left to live, for he is dying of a “vein of Galen aneurismal malformation,” or “an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins in the brain involving the great cerebral vein of Galen,” a “usually congenital and usually asymptomatic” condition which is both inoperable and fatal, usually within a year or two (72-73). Given this veritable death sentence, Gideon is told, he can either “spend your last year amusing yourself, living life to the fullest, cramming it in till the end” or “working for your country” (75). That Gideon chooses the latter alternative ennobles him to readers and reinforces his motivation to do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals and to serve his country.

Sex and Horror, Part 4

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The werewolf doesn’t figure large in Jason Colavito’s Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge, and the Development of the Horror Genre, in part, perhaps, because, as a horror icon, the werewolf was never as popular as such other monsters as vampires, witches, demons, and ghosts. In most werewolf fiction, the beast’s origins are seldom explained except to say that his existence is said to be due to a person’s having been bitten by a werewolf. Where the first werewolf came from, no one seems to know for sure or, if someone does, he or she isn’t saying.

The very mystery of the wolf is itself intriguing, for, often, the less we know concerning a person, place, or thing, the more interesting he, she, or it seems to us. The lore of the werewolf is sparse. A bite transforms someone into the monster. The beast transforms at the onset of the full moon (and, indeed, perhaps is transformed by this moon). It prowls by night, seeking whom it shall devour. Only silver bullets are fatal to it. Some werewolves have been the servants, but never the pets, of vampires.

Colavito makes reference to vampires’ keeping of werewolves as servants, as is the case in The Return of the Vampire, a 1944 film in which Bella Lugosi plays “a vampire” who “holds sway over a servant he has turned into a vampire”:

The vampire is Armand Tesla, who was once an eighteenth-century scientist but whose mastery o science led him to become an undead vampire. . . . Tesla re-enslaves his werewolf and uses his powers to stalk the family of Lady Jane Ainsley. . . .

. . . But Lady Jane uses psychology to reason with the werewolf, whom she rescued from lycanthropy once before. When a Nazi bomb knocks out Tesla, the werewolf drags the body into the sunlight, where the vampire melts away, freeing him from Tesla’s control (210-211).

Although Colavito doesn’t discuss the symbolic significance of this monster, it’s a fairly safe bet that the werewolf represents the animal nature of human beings. He is the beast within all of us, the animal that struggles to be free. From a scientific point of view, human beings are, after all, themselves animals of a higher order, perhaps, than the so-called lesser animals, the lions and tigers and bears, oh, my, and werewolves, like lamia, centaurs, minotaurs, sphinxes, mermaids, and other human-animal hybrids, represent the connection that human beings share with other predators.

Christians may accept the existence of demons, witches, and even ghosts, but most would be likely to draw the line at accepting the existence of werewolves. Such creatures, they would probably argue, are merely imaginary.

At best, werewolves represent a secular depiction of the animal instincts and impulses that human beings are said, from an evolutionary point of view, to have more or less repressed in the interests of civilization, culture, and society. They embody, in their shaggy forms, passions unrestrained, and may suggest an abandonment of the spiritual in pursuit of an unadulterated indulgence of the fleshly appetites, and, therefore, a denial, implicit or otherwise, of the soul

Moreover, werewolves are predators. They embody “nature red in tooth and claw,” suggesting that the world really is a jungle wherein species survive only if they are the fittest of their kind. As animals, werewolves are powerful and fierce and hard to beat. However, as humans, werewolves, one might be tempted to suppose, leave a lot to be desired. Aren’t they all but brainless, with fetid breath, terrible table manners, and worse etiquette? Aren’t they but brutes, pure and simple, reminders of what, perhaps, our forebears were, millennia ago, and what we may, should we devolve, be once again? So might men and women, as higher animals, suppose, but human beings are not allowed even this conceit, for, as The Return of the Vampire makes clear, these beast-men can reason, act in their own best interests, and even exact revenge against their cruel, but supposed, betters. Stronger, with greater stamina, and ferocious, werewolves are also capable of thinking and of forming beneficial relationships with others while punishing adversaries.

For Christians, there is no such animal. Instead, the equivalent might be an animated corpse--not a zombie per se, nor a mummy, nor a vampire--but someone more akin to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ancient mariner or Adam after the fall, a person who is spiritually dead. In other words, someone very like modern men and women, more dead than alive and completely without tail or fangs or fur.

But a werewolf? For Christians, there’s no such animal. Or is there?

According to some accounts, God Himself might punish sinners by transforming them into wolves, and some of those whom the church excommunicated were believed to become werewolves. Likewise, saints could curse men and women, transforming them into werewolves (“Werewolf,” Wikipedia). However, such accounts are relatively sparse. For the most part, werewolves are and remain secular creatures more akin to evolutionary theory than to theological doctrine.

If, in psychoanalysis, the superego substitutes for the moral commandments of God (or, alternatively, for heaven or righteousness), the ego for the free will exercised by human beings (or, alternatively, earth or corrupted virtue) , and the id for the devil (or, alternatively, hell or sin), the fate of those whom God curses by transforming them into werewolves seems to represent, in a Freudian reading, a psychotic obsession with sex and death, or eros and thanatos, the life instinct and the death instinct. The werewolf is a creature that is immersed in his or her own animal nature, in his or her own id, in his or her own sexuality. He or she is a figure half alive and half dead, just as he or she is a figure half human and half animal.

In the Christian reading of the same figure, the werewolf is a figure of the damned sinner, whom God has cast into the hell of him- or herself, cursed forever to remain the beastly, unrepentant sinner he or she has become, most likely long before God placed the lycanthropic curse upon his dying soul.


Note: In Part 5 of “Sex and Horror,” I will consider another icon of the genre, that of the witch.

Quick Tip: Monstrous Motivations

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

To start, let’s list a dozen horror stories and the antagonists, or monsters, which each of them features. No, on second thought, let’s make that a baker’s dozen; thirteen seems a more appropriate number for horror:
Now, let’s list the motivation of each monster.

Wait a minute! you say. Monsters aren’t human (well, at least not all of them are); they don’t reason; they don’t have objectives; they don’t act upon emotions. They’re monsters!

You may have a point, logically speaking, but fiction isn’t logical--at least, not entirely. Sure, there’s a cause-and-effect relationship among the incidents that comprise a plot, but causes need not be reasons, any more than motives must be rational. Motives can be rational, but, in the broad sense, they can also be emotional or, for that matter, even instinctive or reflexive. So, yes, monsters do have motives.

Ergo, let’s list the motivation of each monster on our list:

As we’ve seen, monsters, even non-human ones, do have motives. Why? For dramatic, more than for realistic, purposes.

In reality, it is unlikely that creatures such as bogeymen, aliens, trolls, dragons, demons, vampires, gorillas, and ghosts have motives (other than, in the case of gorillas or other animal antagonists) that can be known or even surmised with anything approaching certainty. But, like a jury who is expected to convict a defendant who risks a life sentence or execution, readers want to know not only the who?, what?, when?, and where?, but, above all, the why?, before they’re willing to believe in the monster and to want its imprisonment or execution.

Besides, motivating a monster, even a non-human one, makes the monstrous antagonist at least somewhat understandable to the reader (or moviegoer). It’s hard to believe in an antagonist that is so alien from us that we cannot comprehend why it wants to spindle, fold, and mutilate the human characters in the story.

So, here’s the upshot of this “quick tip”: motivate your monster.

The Monster’s Lair: Setting As Psychology

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

The monster’s lair is the antithesis of home sweet home. It is the home turned inside out and upside down. For most people, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. A refuge from the callous indifference of others, from petty tyrants with petty agendas, from malicious coworkers who will do anything to get ahead (as they conceive the climbing of corporate and social ladders to represent), and a place where one can, without apology or pretense, be one’s true self, unmasked and undressed, home has long been the closest thing to paradise left on earth. The monster’s lair destroys all that is home, concerting it into a hell on earth wherein monsters, not loved ones, dwell.


As is often the case with horror fiction, Beowulf, which, in many ways, is the prototypical horror story, provides a superb example of the monster’s lair as the antithesis of home sweet home. A foil, as it were, to the Danish warriors’ mead hall, Heorot, Grendel’s lair is remote. It is isolated. It occupies land that is inhospitable and undesirable. The Danes’ hall, on the other hand, is central to the community, a place of camaraderie, a place where each warrior is respected and accepted by his peers.

Grendel, a descendant of the exiled, murderous Cain, lives apart from human society. A monster who is sometimes described as a demon and sometimes as a troll, he is fierce, fearsome, fearless, and ferocious. He is quick and powerful, and he is motivated by his envy of the fellowship of the Danes, from which he and his kith and kin have been excluded. Ostracism and banishment have taken their toll upon his soul, and he seeks to avenge his having been denied even the possibility of society and friendship by taking from the Danes that which they (and God) have denied to him.

The Danes, on the other hand, live in a society that is based upon courage, strength, fellowship, kinship, and a sharing of the spoils of war taken in victorious battle. Headed by a king, the Danish society operates by sharing the wealth captured from defeated tribes; in return for a share of the spoils of war, the Danish warriors, or thanes, are loyal to their liege. Therefore, their society is as much based upon sharing wealth as it is upon the attributes of the warrior, a warriors’ code, and the bonds of family relationships and friendships. The sharing of the wealth allows all fighting men a stake in the fortunes and the affairs of their state and, as such, is a symbol of respect and honor extended by the king to his followers who make it possible for his kingdom to exist and for him to acquire booty through battle against neighboring, hostile tribes.

The characters’ beliefs and behaviors reflect their treatment by others. Grendel, who is ostracized, becomes vengeful and murderous; the Danes, who enjoy fellowship among themselves, are loyal and sociable and supportive--at least to one another. Exile is the basis of Grendel’s anti-social destructiveness; family and friendship are the bases of the Danes’ sociability, constructiveness, and culture.

The poem describes both Grendel’s lair and Heorot; the descriptions themselves demonstrate the vast differences in monstrous Grendel’s stark, barren haunt and the bright, warm hall of mead in which the Danes enjoy friendship and fellowship.


Grendel’s abode is described in the following lines of the poem, when Beowulf, having killed Grendel earlier, now enters the monster’s lair to fight his vanquished foe’s mother:

. . . They dwell apart
among wolves on the hills, on windswept crags
and treacherous keshes, where cold streams
pour down the mountain and disappear
under mist and moorland.

A few miles from here
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.
When wind blows up and stormy weather
makes clouds scud and the skies weep,
out of its depths a dirty surge
Is pitched towards the heavens. . . .

[Beowulf] . . . discovered the dismal wood.
mountain trees growing out at an
angle above gray stones: the bloodshot water
surged underneath. . . .

. . . The water was infested
with all kinds of reptiles. There were writhing sea-dragons
and monsters slouching on slopes by the cliff,
serpents and wild things such as those that often
surface at dawn to roam the sail-road
and doom the voyage. Down they plunged,
lashing in anger at the loud call
of the battle-bugle. An arrow from the bow
of the great Geat-chief got one of them
as he surged to the surface. . . .

. . . [Beowulf] dived into the heaving
depths of the lake. It was the best part of a day
before he could see the solid bottom.

. . . A bewildering horde
came at him from the depths, droves of sea-beasts
who attacked with tusks and tore at his chain-mail
in a ghastly onslaught. The gallant man
could see he had entered some hellish turn-hole
and yet the water there did not work against him
because the hall-roofing held off
the force of the current. . . .

The lair is also described in a prose version of the poem:

They occupy a secret land, wolf-haunted slopes, windswept crags, dangerous swamp tracks where the mountain stream passes downwards under the darkness of the crags, water under the earth. It is not far from here, measured in miles, that the lake stands; over it hang frost-covered groves, trees held fast by their roots overshadow the water. There each night may be seen a fearful wonder--fire on the flood. No one alive among the children of men is wise enough to know the bottom. Although the trong-antlered stag, roaming the heath, may seek out the forest when driven from the field, hard pressed by hounds, he will sooner yield up life and spirit than hide his head there. That is not a pleasant place! From it a surging wave rises up black to the clouds when the wind stirs up hostile storms, till the air grows dim, the skies
weep. . . .

Then the son of princes advanced over the steep rocky slopes by a narrow path, a constructed route where only one could pass at a time, an unfamiliar way, precipitous crags, many a lair of water-monsters. . . . Suddenly he found mountain trees leaning over a grey rock, a cheerless wood; below lay the water, gory and turbid.

The troop all sat down; they saw then upon the water many of the serpent race, strange sea-dragons exploring the deep, also water-monsters lying on the slopes of the crags, such as those that in the morning-time often attend a miserable journey on the sail-way, serpents and wild beasts. They fell away, fierce and swollen with rage; they understood the clear sound, the war-horn ringing. With an arrow from his bow the prince of the Geats parted one of them from life, from its battle with the waves, when a hard warshaft stuck in its vitals; it was slower swimming on the water when death carried it off.

. . . The water’s surge received the warrior. It was part of a day before he could catch sight of the level bottom.

. . . A vast host of weird creatures harried him in the deep; many a sea-beast tore at his battle-shirt; monsters pursued him. Then the hero realized he was in some sort of enemy hall, where no water could harm him at all, nor could the flood’s sudden grip touch him because of the vaulted hall. . . .

Terrible in itself, Grendel’s lair is made all the more appalling by its sharp contrast with the comfortable, well-lighted splendor of the Danes’ mead hall, Heorot, from whose walls the monster, his mother, and their kin are banned:

[King Hrothgar] handed down orders
for men to work on a great mead-hall
meant to be a wonder of the world forever;
it would be his throne-room
and there he would dispense
his God-given goods to young and old--
but not the common land or people’s lives.
Far and wide through the world, I have heard,
orders for work to adorn that wallstead
were sent to many peoples. And soon it stood there
finished and ready, in full view,
the hall of halls, Heorot was the name
he had settled on it, whose utterance was law.
Nor did he renege, but doled out rings
and torques at the table.
The hall towered.
its gables wide and high. . . .

So times were pleasant for the people there. . . .Again, the same scene is described in the prose version of the poem:

[King Hrothgar] would instruct men to build a greater mead-hall than the children of men had ever heard of, and therein he would distribute to young and old everything which God had given him--except the public land and the lives of men. I have heard then how orders for the work were given to many peoples throughout this world to adorn the nation’s palace. So in time--rapidly as men reckon it--it came about that it was fully completed, the greatest of hall buildings. He who ruled widely with his words gave it the name Heorot. He did not neglect his vow; he distributed rings, treasures at the banquet. The hall rose up high, lofty and wide-gabled. . . .

If we are most at home in our homes, our homes reflect most completely and honestly who we are. However, a home is not built entirely by the homesteader. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a community to build a home. The motive for Grendel’s attack upon Heorot is clearly given in the poem:

Then, a powerful demon,
a prowler through the dark,
nursed a hard grievance.
It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall,
the harp being struck
and the clear song of the poet
telling with mastery
of man’s beginnings,
and how the Almighty had made the earth. . . .

Nor was that the first time
he [Grendel] had scouted the grounds of Hrothgar’s dwelling--
although never in this life, before or since,
did he find harder fortune or hall-defenders.
Spurned and joyless, he journeyed on ahead
And arrived at the bawn. . . .

--or, as the prose version phrases the same passage:

Then the powerful demon, he who abode in darkness, found it hard to endure this time of torment, when everyday he heard loud rejoicing in the hall. . . .

Then out of the wasteland came Grendel, advancing beneath the misty slopes; he carried the wrath of God. . . . That was not the first time he had sought out the home of Hrothgar. Never in all the days of his life, before nor since, did he have worse luck in meeting thanes in hall. . . .

The creature, bereft of joy, came on, making his way into the
hall. . . .

Exiled Grendel feels “spurned and joyless”; he envies the Danes their free and easy camaraderie. In addition, the poem suggests that it is God’s having exiled Cain, the ancestor of Grendel’s monstrous and demonic race, that has created them, perhaps as unwilling servants of the divine will:

He [Grendel] had dwelt for a time
in misery among the banished monsters,
Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed
and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel
the Eternal Lord had exacted a price:
Cain got no good from committing that murder
because the Almighty made him anathema
and out of the curse of his exile there sprang
ogres and elves and evil phantoms
and the giants too who strove with God
time and again until He gave them their reward.

--or, as the prose version phrases the same passage:

Unhappy creature, he lived for a time in the home of the monster race after God had condemned them as kin of Cain. . . . Providence drove him [Cain] away far away from mankind for that crime [the murder of his brother Abel]. Thence [i. e., from the exiled Cain] were born all evil broods: ogres and elves and goblins--likewise the giants who for a long time strove against God; he paid them their reward for that.

Jumping from the medieval world of Beowulf to that of the early twentieth-century world of Ed Gein, we see that the same principles apply, despite the passing of centuries and the crossing of hundreds of miles. Although Gein lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin, rather than in Denmark, centuries later than Grendel is alleged to have lived, Gein is as much a product and a reflection of his small town community’s indifference to him as Grendel is of the Danes’ disregard for Grendel. Their homes reflect their respective ostracism, as do their crimes against the very humanity that spurns them.


His house was as jumbled, cluttered, disorganized, and full of bizarre artifacts as his mind was full of muddled, confused, and insane thoughts and impulses. The disarray is so extreme as to be all but indescribable. Piled with magazines, boxes, crates, papers, litter, newspapers, garbage, and other materials, the house was also the repository of much grimmer and more gruesome artifacts: soup bowls carved from human skulls; chairs upholstered in human flesh; lampshades fashioned of human skin and (in, one case, at least) equipped with a pull-chain to which a pair of human lips were attached; boxes of noses and labia; women’s faces, stuffed and mounted, hung upon the wall as decorations, a “mammary vest,” complete with female breasts; human organs inside the kitchen’s refrigerator; and the decapitated head of Bernice Worden, whom Gein had murdered.

Gein murdered women. He robbed graves. He cut skin from the faces of the dead and, stuffing them with paper, hung them upon his walls, as decorations. He kept a collection of noses and a collection preserved labia. He dressed in his victims’ clothing--and in their faces, worn as masks, and in a costume of “mammary vest,” gloves, and leggings, all obtained from women’s corpses. He most likely cooked and ate some of his murdered victims’ organs. He would have had sex with the cadavers, he admitted, were it not for the repulsiveness of their stench. He did all these despicable acts and more, and, yet, so little did they know the fiend in their midst, that Gein’s neighbors and acquaintances regarded him as nothing more than an eccentric, perhaps slightly mentally handicapped loner who was, they said, a good laborer and handyman. One neighbor even entrusted her children to Ed to baby sit. Such disregard is not only monstrous in itself, but, it seems, it also succeeded in helping to create a monster. Had the community truly made an effort to befriend Gein, it may have been that he would never have felt the need to find a replacement for his domineering, fanatical mother, Augusta, after her passing. Gein had no friends, though, and even the few acquaintances he made had no genuine interest in him as a human being.

The same ostracism and disregard of the community for one of its own is evident in Stephen King’s Carrie (and most of his other works); in many of Dean Koontz’s novels, particularly with regard to his female protagonists; and in the novels of many other contemporary authors. In fact, as we have pointed out in previous posts, individual, social, and even cosmic indifference is a major theme in the contemporary horror fiction. Like the headlines of newspapers around the world, a callous disregard for others who are different, powerless, difficult, or even insane produces monsters at least as much as does the sleep of reason.

Disenfranchisement, whether on an individual or a social or a national basis, breeds monsters. The beast may live in his lair, but, more often than not, it was his community, his society, or his nation who both built his hellish abode and made the bed in which he lies, plotting his revenge. A home away from home is no home at all, and such a home--or monster’s lair--may be the place in which one hangs not his hat, but another’s head.