The Problem-Solution Plot

 Copyright 2022 by Gary L. Pullman

In some horror movies, the plot is structured by attempting to solve a problem to no avail. Such plots have three parts: the problem, which is the film's inciting moment; the solution, its turning point; and the failure of the attempted solution, the denouement.

These are examples of films that have this three-part structure.

 

The Hunger (1983)

Problem: Beautiful vampire Miriam's husband John begins to age rapidly.

Solution: Miriam seeks a new lover.

What Goes Wrong: Miriam ages rapidly after a lover locks her inside a coffin.

Jennifer's Body (2009)

Problem: A ritual transforms Jennifer into a succubus who must devour men to survive.

Solution: Jennifer goes on a killing spree.

What Goes Wrong: During a fight Jennifer bites Needy, who then kills Jennifer but, assuming some of Jennifer's traits, Needy becomes a killer.

 

 

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

Problem: Witches seek the perfect man.

Solution: They find the devil, who poses as their dream come true.

What Goes Wrong: The witches attempt to control the devil through various magic spells.

Piranha 3D (2010):

Problem: Flesh-eating, prehistoric fish swarm Lake Victoria during spring break.

Solution: The fish feed on tourists.

What Goes Wrong: The piranha are killed, but they are only babies; the mature piranhas live, continuing the attacks.

Species (1995)

Problem: A female alien, Sil, needs to breed.

Solution: Sil kills men unsuitable mates.

What Goes Wrong: Although blasted with a shotgun, Sil mutates into a different, equally vicious, organism.

Nekromaniac (1987)

Problem: Rob, a street sweeper who cleans up after grisly accidents brings home a full corpse for him and his wife Betty to enjoy sexually.

Solution: Betty prefers the corpse over Rob.

What Goes Wrong: Rob commits suicide.

Psycho (1960)

Problem: Norman Bates's mother won't allow him to date.

Solution: Norman kills a woman to whom he is attracted.

What Goes Wrong: Norman, who dresses as his late “mother,” is arrested and jailed.

Describing Images of Horror: Part 2

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

At the end of the initial post about this topic, I ended with this poster promoting the 1981 film Possession and the idea that images, such as those depicted on movie posters, are open to several, if not to many, possible interpretations, each of which interpretations could give rise to a story, at least theoretically. In other words, a set of images could become the basis of two or more stories, rather than just one.

The Possession poster showcases the back of a topless brunette, whose sleek skin suggests that she is likely young, as does her luxuriant, shoulder-length hair. The very top of the cleavage of her buttocks shows within the “V” of a low-riding garment, the exact nature of which defies definite identification.

The background is black, suggesting night (or evil), and her head is surrounded by an eerie aura, from either side of which projects a pointed beam reminiscent of a horn. Hands lie upon her shoulders—her own, it seems, and yet, inexplicably, they look old, and they end in sharp claws, two of which puncture her flesh, just below her right shoulder, producing blood that trickles down her back.

Below the figure, blood-red letters spell “Possession”; the dot over the “i” is vaguely like a Valentine's heart.

Is the film about demonic possession, as indicated by the horns, the demon's hands, and the blood, or does the movie concern romantic possession, as suggested by the half-naked woman and the Valentine's heart? The caption, below the image of the woman, suggests that both views are correct: the picture shows “Inhuman ecstasy fulfilled.”

However, there are also other possibilities, the words, in white, above the female figure, suggest: "Is it desire? Or violation? Devotion? Or bondage? In any case, “our hidden fears will be aroused,” the text promises.

Probably, we will wonder who the woman is. Or, perhaps what she is. Some of the possibilities that might spring to mind are:

• Mother of the Antichrist

• Succubus

• Witch

We might also ask what “hidden fears” are tapped by the image of evil, of sensuality, of dark devotion, of deviltry, of sexuality, of seduction. Are we afraid of being seduced by darkness, by the devil, by our own improper carnal desires? Maybe all of the above?

By raising several possibilities, the poster makes viewers curious, but it also confuses, just as potent temptations and seduction and a variety of interpretations as to just what a woman represents (and what opportunities she presents) may make one feel confused, even afraid. One is overwhelmed by possibilities, some of which may be appealing and desirable, others of which may be disgusting and terrifying.

As is often the case, the poster's images are ambiguous, multivalent, even conflicting. Ultimately, they may be unsettling, alarming, and frightening.

Perhaps a novel that takes a similar approach would, transcending the merely possible by multiplying the possibilities of interpretation, would achieve artistic respect. Sometimes, rather than being taught a lesson, it might be better if we were taught that an experience, fictional or dramatic, might reflect actual life experiences which, likewise, are open to several interpretations. 

Life, such a work might teach readers or moviegoers, is complicated and, often, mysterious or ambiguous, if not meaningless and full of angst. Such fiction is horrible, indeed, like some of the situations real people actually do face in their everyday lives.

Religious and Scientific Accounts of Sex Demons

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Eros and Evil, R. E. L. Masters theorizes that the accounts of sex with demons that women often provided during medieval witchcraft trials, frequently while they were undergoing torture, included sexual practices that, until fairly recently, were considered unnatural and perverse. Indeed, Masters further suggests, contemporary pornography provides a release by which many of today's sexually repressed readers find release for their own pent-up passions.

For writers who enjoy offering their readers a choice as to whether the supposedly supernatural events in their stories actually are supernatural or are really nothing more than unusual natural events, science offers some ideas as to how some apparently supernatural events may be explained in rational, natural, or scientific terms; at the same time, however, readers who believe that there may be a supernatural order of existence transcendent to this world (or universe) also have recourse to the supernatural explanation of the same events.

For example, sex demons appear in several films and in a few written works (poems, short stories, and novels) as well. Incubi (singular “incubus”) are male demons who have sex with human females (or who could do so, at least); succubi or succubae (singular “succubus”) are female demons who have sex with human males (or who could do so, at least).

In The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, Barbara G. Walker traces the origin of incubi to the feminization of the demonic among ancient Greeks, suggesting that incubi represent “men's fears of sexual inadequacy, since the demons were said to give [women] more pleasure than their husbands did” (241). Originally, incubi were “priests” who presided over the “womb chamber” with which each temple was equipped. By spending the night in this chamber, “people in search of enlightenment or healing could 'incubate' . . . in anticipation of a spiritual rebirth or vision.” When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Middle East and elsewhere, these priests were transformed into “incubi,” or “demons who seduced women” (260).

A well-known example of an incubus is the entity, who appears in The Entity.

A familiar instance of a succubus is the woman whom Jack Torrance (The Shining) sees in a suite of the Overlook Hotel. However, many other films and books include sex demons, especially those of the succubus type. (Hollie Horror lists many movies featuring sex demons of both varieties, complete with posters, plot summaries, and trailers.)

Mark Blanton's art often depicts incubi, in the form known to ancient Greeks as satyrs, engaged in activities with mortal women of a nature that, in today's parlance, would definitely be considered not safe for work (NSFW).

Lilith

The Greek myths of satyrs, he said, were examples of incubi. Such sex demons can be considered to be fallen angels who mate with mortal women. This view might have developed from an account of such a creature in The Epic of Gilgamesh and from the Biblical reference to “giants in the earth,” who were thought, by St. Augustine, to have been the offspring of incubi (the fallen “sons of God”) and mortal women (“the daughters of men”). Also, in Jewish folklore, Adam's first wife, Lilith, became a succubus after leaving Adam, and then had intercourse with the archangel Samael. “The daughters of Lilith,” Walker says, were “interpreted as demonic succubae.”

Thomas Aquinas and Augustine

St. Thomas Aquinas, however, disagrees with Augustine on this point, holding that such sex demons merely “assumed” bodies and used sperm that they had collected from men with whom they'd previously had intercourse as incubi to fertilize women to whom they appeared as succubi. (Yes, demon sex is complicated!)

Science offers a different explanation for such sex demons. Both the incubi and the succubi, according to the scientific view, might be caused by sleep paralysis, and, in men, nocturnal emissions may suggest the sexual component of the delusion.

The Skeptic's Dictionary offers a summary of sleep paralysis and how the condition might inspire a belief in one's having been visited by a sex demon (or, for that matter, extraterrestrials):

The condition is characterized by being unable to move or speak. It is often associated with a feeling that there is some sort of presence, a feeling which often arouses fear but is also accompanied by an inability to cry out. The paralysis may last only a few seconds. The experience may involve visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations. The description of the symptoms of sleep paralysis is similar to the description many alien abductees give in recounting their abduction experiences. Sleep paralysis is thought by some to account for not only many alien abduction delusions, but also ghost sightings and delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences (e. g., incubus and succubus).

By allowing the possibility of a natural and a supernatural explanation for the same bizarre phenomenon and leaving it to their readers to decide on the explanation they prefer, horror writers can let their readers have their sex demon or their hallucination, as they see fit, and, at the same time, enrich the possibilities for their stories, resting assured that the sex demons (and their behavior) are both strange and horrific, whatever the explanation a reader adopts.

(By the way, Tzvetan Todorov offers an insightful discussion of these alternative sources of explanation, the scientific, or natural, and the supernatural, but uses the terms “uncanny” for phenomena that are explained scientifically and the term “marvelous for phenomena that are explained with recourse to the supernatural. Phenomena that cannot be resolved as either uncanny or marvelous, he says, remain “fantastic.”)

Demonic Aspects of Demon Art

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Okay, I admit it: I have never seen a demon.

Not a real one, not a demon in the flesh, as it were.

I know a couple of people who have seen demons--or claim that they have, at any rate. Their statements are somewhat like those who claim to have seen extraterrestrial spaceships: they tend to contradict one another. Of course, “seem” is the key word here. Perhaps they are not contradictory at all. There may be enough demons to warrant varying descriptions of them. In all probability, one would think, there would be as much variety, at least, among the infernal hordes as there are among any other creatures. I mean, who would believe that such a creature as a starfish could be real, if one didn’t know that they actually exist? Or a jellyfish? Or a chameleon? Each of these animals seems highly unlikely, and, certainly, they are all quite different in appearance and characteristics, yet they all exist. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, in nature as in anything else, demons, one might conclude, included.

In any case, what I’m more concerned with in this post are the aspects of demons--the characteristics that make the, well, demonic--that is, terrible, horrible, and just plain scary. As usual, one can discover quite a bit by simply taking a gander at artists’ conceptions of these infernal fiends, seeking, where possible, to identify similarities that suggest generalizations and differences which suggest differentiae.

The first thing I notice, in perusing pictures of fallen angels, is that most of them have human--or humanoid--faces. They have eyes, noses, ears, mouths--the usual--but these features are not typical of the ones a person would see in the mirror--well, hopefully not. For one thing, the complexion is likely to be of a most unusual color--yellow, red, green, perhaps--which is, of course, nothing like any skin tone that one is likely any time soon to encounter among human beings. Their features are also likely to be deformed in some way. They may have no irises, for example, the whole of their eyes being a glutinous white, or their pupils may be elongated and elliptical, like those of a serpent’s eyes. Some demons’ eyes actually glow like hot coals, if artists’ conceptions of the infernal folk are reliable guides. Demons’ ears may taper to points like the ears of a goat. Their teeth may include one or more sets of fangs. Their tongues may be forked like a snake’s tongue.

Besides the deformity of facial features, demons also sometimes come equipped, as it were, with attributes borrowed from animals: horns, scales, tails, cloven hooves, claws, that sort of thing. Those who have wings don’t, as a rule, have feathery pinions, but leathery, bat-like appendages. A few artists depict demons, usually of the female sort, with snakelike, Gorgon curls. The ancient Greeks’ satyrs (fauns in ancient Roman mythology) served as models for the more traditional type of demon familiar to many.

From Wolfman’s Gallery

However, more imaginative artists, including Hieronymus Bosch, H. R. Giger, and Javier Gil have rendered demons with more individuality and grotesquery.

Bosch’s demons tend to be anthropomorphic birds and beasts, often armed with weapons, or strange mixtures of several animals, hybrids of his fevered imagination. His The Temptation of St. Anthony and The Garden of Earthly Delights showcase some of Bosch’s more bizarre concepts of demonic creatures, each of which has a symbolic character that is now, alas, largely forgotten. In the vision of hell that is part of the Garden triptych, Bosch includes a demon--perhaps Satan himself, seated upon a chair that is a combination of throne and toilet. The demon, which wears an upside-down cauldron for a miter, and clerical garb, but has a transparent, insect-like abdomen, which projects downward, through the throne-toiler, devours men alive, defecating them into a round cistern below its seat. Not far from this demon of apostasy, there is a fiend whose hindquarters alone are shown, its upper body hidden in the cannibalistic demon’s flowing sash. It exhibits its buttocks to a naked woman who is seated against one of the legs of the popish demon’s throne-toilet. Instead of flesh, however, the kneeling demon’s posterior is a mirror in which the woman’s face is reflected. Straddled by the mirror-bottomed demon, whose legs end in antlers or barren tree branches, the seated woman is gripped from behind by an ass-headed fiend. A toad, symbolic of sexual lust, rests above her breasts. Her besetting sin appears to be vanity or, as psychologists would characterize her personality disorder today, narcissism.

Hieronymus Bosh, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Better known for his extraterrestrials (Alien, Species), H. R. Giger has also offered his own highly imaginative take on a ancient, albeit not particularly well understood, demon known as Baphomet. In his painting, a nude white woman--white not in the sense of Caucasian, but literally white, both of hair and of flesh--is suspended before a wheel, above and behind a bust of Baphomet, below whose head, upon the pillar which it tops are the heads of entwined serpents (or maybe birds with long necks; it’s hard to say which). The nude woman wears an inverted cross about her neck and brandishes, one in each hand, a pair of sharp-pointed objects that resemble the ends of a demon’s horns. Mounted upon the wheel, and facing in, toward her, are a series of hypodermic syringes whose needles appear to penetrate her outer thighs. The Baphomet head seems half dead: its ears are at half-mast, so to speak, its whiskers look wilted, and its eyes are half-closed, one showing only its whites, the other an iris that is rolling upward, into the skull. In lieu of a necklace, a hinge or metal plate resembling the end of a belt is fastened to the neck of the pillar, a buckle seeming to fasten it in place. The goat-head’s beard is tightly braided, one lock extending into a tail-like strand that ends in an arrowhead shape.

Two long, curving horns rise from the demon’s head, a third, smaller, straight horn ending in a bony crown, between them. The long horns frame the nude woman, and the crown atop the third horn rises between the woman’s spread thighs, occupying the space at which her sex would appear, were it not so obstructed. In viewing the placement of this decidedly phallic horn, one gets the impression that penetration is occurring, although it is not: the horn is in front, not inside, the woman’s sex. She seems both to be crucified and to float. Above her, in place of INRI, the acronym for the Latin phrase “Jesus Nazareth King Jews,” is the Roman numeral “XV.” There is no indication as to what the number signifies. It seems clear, however, that the nude woman is a demonic, probably satanic, priestess, possibly a temple prostitute, who worships the devil, mocking the sacred work of Christ by the inverted cross she wears as her necklace.

Although some moviegoers might not make the connection, supposing that the appearance of the beautiful woman who turns into an ugly old hag in Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of Stephen King’s The Shining is just another of Jack Torrance’s many hallucinations and is, as such, a manifestation of his madness, the temptress is a modern-day example of an ancient demon, the succubus, a female demon that was believed to have sex with men, usually in their sleep. (The male counterpart is the incubus.)

H. R. Giger, Baphomet

As I observe in my “Sex and Horror” series, sex, as it is depicted in horror fiction, is typically of a perverted sort that is intended to defy God’s commandment to humanity (through his directive to Adam and Eve) to “be fruitful and multiply” in order to “replenish the earth” with future generations of the human species. Anything that is not reproductive (and, by definition, therefore, heterosexual) is sinful, mainstream theologians argue. Indeed, non-reproductive sex between heterosexuals is also sinful, such thinkers contend. Javier Gil’s demonic art (i. e., his work which features demonic figures) typically portrays just such sexual activity--activity that is of a non-reproductive character, including orgies, homosexual unions, bestiality, and assorted perverse behavior. Most of his works of erotica which include demonic revelers are too pornographic for display in Chillers and Thrillers, but I offer the following picture as a milder representation of Gil’s demonic art.

Javier Gil, Untitled

What may we conclude from our examination of demons as they appear in artists’ conceptions of them? They resemble us, but they represent the worst aspects of ourselves, or of humanity: unbridled animality, sin, moral and sexual perversion, disobedience to God, an elevation of the fleshly aspects of human existence above the spiritual elements of human nature, blasphemous and sacrilegious communications, false religions or religious doctrines, and of a concern for pleasure without regard for propriety (or sanctity). These are the demonic aspects of human nature, reflected in artistic conceptions of demons as personifications of such impulses, conditions, and conduct. Writers of horror and fantasy fiction can take a clue or two from their more visual counterparts concerning what is evil and how it may be represented. (The article, “Demons,” in the online edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia has some interesting insights into the subject matter, too, especially concerning the positive and negative, or good and “sinister” senses of meaning that the word had in the original Greek usage!)

Sex Demons: Incubi and Succubae

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In times during which sexual urges were repressed, those who had difficulty repressing such urges had to find a socially acceptable way for not doing so. The solution was as simple as it was ingenious: say the devil made one do it.

For the ladies, there were incubi; for gentlemen, succubae.
The Online Etymology Dictionary’s entry for “incubus” explains the term’s origin:

c.1205, from L.L. (Augustine), from L. incubo "nightmare, one who lies down on (the sleeper)," from incubare "to lie upon" (see incubate). Plural is incubi. In the Middle Ages, their existence was recognized by law.

According to the tales the sexually unrepressed told, these amorous, if not always sexy, demons would visit one during his or her sleep for purposes other than sleep. No, not for sex--well, okay, yes, for sex, but also to produce little incubi or succubae. These sex demons were also physical parasites of sorts, who, vampire-like, drained their human paramours of their vital energies. According to transcripts of Inquisition trials, victims of incubi reported the demon’s seed as being “ice cold,” presumably like its heart. Historians and other interested parties have explained (or explained away) such sex demons by attributing them to attempts to account for unsuccessful attempts at sexual repression, nocturnal emissions, and rapes by actual perpetrators, including clergymen.

Succubae are the female versions of such spirits.

Again, the Online Etymology Dictionary’s entry for “incubus” explains the term’s origin:

1387, alteration (after incubus) of L.L. succuba "strumpet," applied to a fiend in female form having intercourse with men in their sleep, from succubare "to lie under," from sub- "under" + cubare "to lie down" (see cubicle).

She had many of the same characteristics as her male counterpart, visiting men by night for sexual and procreative purposes, draining them of their vital energies, and providing an excuse for sexual behavior during a time period--the Middle Ages--known for its sexual repression and insistence upon conformity. Whereas incubi would impregnate their human partners directly, succubae would, instead, collect their victims’ semen, later using it to impregnate mortal women, who would thereafter bear their monstrous demon children, or cambions, a famous example of which is the magician Merlin. Their rather circuitous means of procreating was attributed to their alleged inability to reproduce naturally, having been considered infertile. Succubae were convenient scapegoats for nocturnal emissions and sexual molestations. According to Jewish folklore, Adam had a wife prior to Eve, known as Lilith, who is considered to have been (or to have become) a succubus. Possible modern equivalents are Brittany Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. Some succubae appeared as beautiful women, only to transform themselves into ugly or fearsome hags during the sex act, displaying horns, hooves, tails, and the like.

Incubi and succubae were frequent lovers of witches, according to Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) (a manual used by inquisitors) and other Medieval and Catholic texts.

Some so-called authorities consider incubi and succubae to be bisexual beings who change their sex in order to avail themselves, presumably as the spirit moves them, of either men or women.

Many know of the horror film Rosemary’s Baby, which turns out to have been fathered by Satan himself, but quite a few other horror stories, both in print and on film, have concerned themselves with incubi or succubae, including:

• “The Succubus” (short story) by Honoré de Balzac
• Descent Into Hell (novel) by Charles Williams
• The Crucible (play) by Arthur Miller
• “The Likeness of Julie” (short story) by Richard Matheson
• The Gunslinger (novel) by Stephen King
• Treasure Box (novel) by Orson Scott Card
• The Succubus (novel) by Kenneth Rayner Johnson
• Hell on Earth (series of novels) by Jackie Kessler
• Operation Chaos (novel) by Poul Anderson
• Succubus: Hellbent (movie)
• Succubus (movie)
• Succubi (novel) by Edward Lee
• Incubus (novel) by Edward Lee
  Incubus (movie) (1965)
• Incubus (movie) (2005)
• The Incubus (movie)

Bibliography

Carus, Paul (1900), The History of The Devil and The Idea of Evil From The Earliest Times to The Present Day
Lewis, James R., Oliver, Evelyn Dorothy, Sisung Kelle S. (Editor) (1996), Angels A to Z, Visible Ink Press
Malleus Maleficarum
Masello, Robert (2004), Fallen Angels and Spirits of The Dark, The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Ave. New York, NY
Russel, Jeffrey Burton (1972), Witchcraft in The Middle Ages, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London.
Siegmund Hurwitz, Lilith: The First Eve