Something's Wrong!

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Something’s wrong with. . . . Well, just about everything. We fear that something is not quite right. That something is wide of the mark. That something is improper. Something’s wrong with the baby! That could be the tagline for Rosemary’s Baby.

 

Something’s wrong with the dog! That could be the tagline for Cujo.

 

Something’s wrong with the house! That could be the tagline for The Amityville Horror.

 

Something could go wrong with virtually anything--or anyone. Including me. . . . or you.

 

There’s something wrong with my nurse! Couldn’t that be the tagline for Misery?

 

There’s something wrong with my husband! That could be the tagline for The Shining.

 

What could go wrong? Again, almost anything. The baby could be the spawn of Satan, a true devil’s child. The dog could have rabies. The house could be haunted. The nurse and, for that matter, one’s husband could be psychotic and violent, even murderous.

 

Whatever could go wrong might go wrong. Horror stories are often about things (and people) that go wrong. They suffer a mechanical, an electrical, or a nervous breakdown. They go awry or insane. They fly off the handle, hit the roof, lose it, flip their lids, lose their heads.

 

The things that go wrong or, sometimes, the things that make other things go wrong, are the monsters or their human equivalents, most of which are symbolic of other, actual dangers: demons (weaknesses and appetites), ghosts (past traumas or guilt or fears that both haunt and drive the emotions of the haunted), giants (seemingly insurmountable, irresistible, or invincible situations), ogres (natural catastrophes or technological terrors), vampires (depression or sexual lust or perversions), werewolves (the animal within), witches (women in league with forces beyond human understanding), and zombies (the brain damaged, the psychotic, and the mesmerized).

 

Look up synonyms for some of these terms, and their real-world equivalents will appear. “Haunted,” for example, suggests haunted “troubled,” “preoccupied,” “worried,” “disturbed,” “anxious,” or “obsessed.”

  

Horror stories are also about what happens after things (and people) go wrong. Such fiction is about survival and recovery. Novels and short stories in this genre are about restoration and rebirth. In seeing what protagonists and other characters do in the face of extreme danger, menaced by natural, paranormal, or supernatural forces as irresistible and as powerful as they are relentless, we readers can learn how to survive and recover. We can learn how to be restored and how to be reborn. We can also learn the nature of the monster, whether it takes the form of a charismatic man or a beautiful woman, a seemingly innocent child with a shy smile, or a leader who promises things for which we’ve longed all our lives or have clutched to our breasts only in our dreams, and we can avoid the menace or neutralize or kill it.

 

Of course, we can always say that there is nothing wrong, that everything is all right, that there’s no cause for alarm. Life gives us that choice; horror fiction often doesn’t.

When the Center Does Not Hold

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were
vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

In “The Shopping Mall as Sacred Space,” Ira Zepp, Jr., states his belief that shopping malls represent contemporary and secularized “sacred spaces” that energize human beings. Although his thesis may strike one as highly unlikely, he does mention several points that are worth considering, taking them, for the most part, from the ideas of Mircea Eliade Paul Wheatley. One of these ideas is that human architecture features centers--town squares, or “parks, groves, or recreational centers”--that reflect their archetypal “heavenly counterpart.”

These mystic centers, often circular in design, are separate from the ordinary world surrounding them and are, therefore, potentially sacred, integrating “space at several significant levels,” including “global (cosmic), state (political), capital (ceremonial), and temple (ritual).”

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Jerusalem is an example: “The heavenly Jerusalem, the historical Jerusalem, and the coming Jerusalem are all reflections of a city already found in the mind of God.”

When religious faith declines, religious centers are replaced by secular surrogates, a point made by Zepp in his quotation of Eliade: “To the degree that ancient holy places. . . lose their religious efficacy, people discover and apply other geometric architecture or iconographic formulas.” In the larger community, that of the nation, such surrogate centers include Washington, D. C., the political center, New York City’s Wall Street, the economic center, and New York City’s Broadway and Los Angeles’ Hollywood, as prominent cultural centers.

In addition, various other centers, universities, sports arenas, national and state parks, military bases, state capitals, town halls, railway stations--are scattered, as it were, around the country, at regional, state, and local levels. Many of these serve the general public, but some are more or less the exclusive provinces of those who work in them or frequent them--trucks stops, shopping centers, research laboratories, factories. Zepp lists several such centers in his essay, identifying facilities for conferences, civics, medicine, agriculture, shopping, senior citizens, recreation, and students, all of which incorporate the term “center” as part of their designations.

Horror fiction and other genres of literature, especially those which feature an element of the supernatural or the fantastic, frequently contains such centers, which may be narrative or thematic or both, so it is illuminating to discern what attacks these centers and how and why they are attacked. The enemy without (or within) tells us much about both that which a society holds to be sacred and that which it sees as threats against what it values most as the focus and center of communal life.

Much of Stephen King’s fiction takes place in American small towns. In some of these towns, the church is still active as a sacred center. In Needful Things, ‘Salem’s Lot, and The Cycle of the Werewolf, the church, in its Catholic or Protestant version (or both versions) is active, if relatively ineffective. The Catholic and Protestant churches in Needful Things are both unable to resist the temptations of the devil, as he appears in the person of Leland Gaunt, and, in fact, literally take arms against one another in a riot of violence, death, and gore. In ‘Salem’s Lot, Father Callahan’s religious faith is so weak that the priest is easily overcome by the vampire Barlow, who transforms him into one of his followers, a member of the brotherhood of the evil undead, and, in The Cycle of the Werewolf, the local Baptist pastor, Reverend Lester Lowe, is the story’s antagonist from the very beginning of the story.

In other of King’s stories, the church, if there is one in the town in which the tale takes place, is not mentioned at all. Instead, other places have taken upon themselves the function that such sacred places served in previous, more religious times. However, places that have, in mainstream society, typically taken the place of the church, the temple, the synagogue, and other religious centers, seem to be defunct. Groves, recreational centers, universities, sports arenas, national, state and city parks, military bases, state capitals, town halls, railway stations, trucks stops, shopping centers, research laboratories, and factories may exist, but there is nothing set apart, or “sacred,” about them.

Indeed, as in Bentley Little’s University, The Resort, The Academy, The Store, and similar works of horror, such secular surrogates for sacred objects which have lost their holiness are apt themselves to be centers for demonic or chaotic forces rather than for divine and healing powers. If the sacred center does not hold, neither, horror writers suggest, will their secular surrogates.

King, like Dean Koontz, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, and other contemporary horror writers, tends to relocate the sacred center not in surrogate places, but rather in the solitary holy individual or the consecrated few. In some cases, these individuals are not religious in the traditional sense; other times, they are. In Desperation, David Carver is the religious protagonist whose faith carries the day against the demo n Tak. In Koontz’s The Taking, Molly Sloan and her husband Neil fend of the onslaught of Satan and his minions. In Simmons’ Summer of Night, altar boy Mike O’Rourke leads his peers against the ancient evil that attacks his hometown. In William Peter Blatty, Father Damian Karras exorcises the legion of demons who have possessed pre-pubescent Regan MacNeil. These characters are more or less religious in the traditional sense.

In other novels, however, the holy one is him- or herself secular in nature and outlook, although he or she occupies the novels’ surrogate sacred centers and drive the action forward against the evil figures or forces which menace their society, sometimes despite the presence of an active, if ineffective, institutional church. Father Callahan of ‘Salem’s Lot, Sheriff Alan Pangborn of Needful Things, and writer Bill Denbrough of are the secular leaders who lead the forces of a secular society against the menaces that threaten to annihilate them; their religious counterparts prove as ineffective against the antagonists as the churches that they lead.

What about the forces of darkness themselves which attack these surrogate and secular “sacred centers”? What do their natures tell us about the forces which contemporary horror writers view as threatening contemporary secular society? Desperation’s demon, Tak, threatens the community by tempting people to sin and by attempting to destroy their faith in the true God. Therefore, Tak is a threat to the righteousness that results from obedience to the divine will and a threat to faith itself. ‘Salem’s Lot’s Barlow sows seeds of fear and distrust among the small town to which he, an ancient European evil, comes, causing mother to turn against son, wife against husband, and neighbor against neighbor. He is a menace to the moral values and brotherly love that makes a community of a town’s populace, instead of their remaining nothing more than a collection of suspicious and uncooperative residents. Needful Things’ Leland Gaunt likewise pits neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, family member against family member, and lover against lover, disrupting the tie that binds, whether the tie is one of love, friendship, or faith and fellowship. As a man of the cloth turned bestial, Cycle of the Werewolf’s Reverend Lowe is literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing, violating the trust of the flock over which he has been assigned the responsibility for the welfare of their souls. In King’s fiction, as in that of Koontz and many others who mine fiction’s horror lode, the major threat of antagonists, human, monster, and otherwise, is to the community and its individual members and to the spiritual and social glue, so to speak, that hold them together--their faith, respect, concern for moral goodness, personal sacrifice, and romantic and brotherly love.

To discern the nature of the threats in other horror writers’ fiction, first ask what the “sacred center” is that brings the characters together, that unites them, that makes them care for one another, and then ask yourself what is the nature of the beast that attacks this center. Everyone seeks a center to his or her life, as do villages, towns, cities, states, nations, and the world, and, although these centers differ somewhat from time to time and place to place, the ties that bind them are often the same, even if the monsters also sometimes change.

A Certain Slant of Light

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Audiences who watched An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, or even earlier werewolf movies were treated (if such a word may be rightly used in such a context) to the sights (and sounds) of men and women being transformed into wolves--or, rather, bipedal werewolves. The shapes of their skulls changed radically, noses elongating into snouts; mouths enlarging into gaping maws full of sharp, jagged teeth; and ears popping up from their heads. The pupils in their eyes became vertical slits inside yellow irises. Their bodies bulked up like those of athletes on steroids, hands and feet stretching into long paws, tails sprouting from their backs, and fur covering every square inch of their bodies. It wasn’t a pretty sight. In fact, it was pretty appalling.

Other, equally horrific transformations have also been captured on celluloid. In The Fly, a scientist inventing a teleportation device that disassembles one’s molecules at Point A to reassemble them, at light speed, at Point B, is transformed into a fly when one of these insects’ DNA is accidentally mixed with the scientist’s own genetic material, just as the teleportation process gets underway. In The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, alien pods replicate people, producing doppelgangers left and right, which is bad enough in itself--who needs two Paris Hiltons or Lindsay Lohans?--but it’s even worse when a man and his dog are merged during one such transformation, resulting in a truly bizarre creature consisting of a dog’s body with his master’s head--and face.

Even before horror (and science fiction), there were such transformations, of course. Quite a few of them took place in ancient myths. Ovid wrote of many in his poem, Metamorphoses, in which a statue becomes a woman, girls pursued by would-be rapists are turned into trees, and people are changed into such animals as magpies, deer, a bear, a wolf, and spiders. Even in the Bible, a few such metamorphoses occur, as when God turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt or Moses (and pharaoh’s magicians) transform sticks into serpents.

In reality, metamorphoses also occur. Women, becoming pregnant, for example, change shape rather drastically over a relatively short period of time. Living bodies become corpses. Men sometimes develop womanly breasts (a condition known as gynecomastia) and may even lactate, whereas a few women grow mustaches, beards, and thicker-than-usual body hair. Before science could explain such apparently miraculous occurrences, myth-makers made up myths to account for such extraordinary, unusual, or extreme transformations. Today, writers in such genres as fantasy, horror, and science fiction continue to do so, creating monstrosities that, one may suppose, would warm the hearts of editors and publishers at DC and Marvel Comics.

Before science, the world was full of divinities and demons, and, often, it was the activity of such spirits that caused the wonders of the world, including the metamorphoses through which rocks, plants, animals, and people sometimes went. In “The Growth of Explanatory Transformation Myth,” Professor Andrew Dickson White lists several of the many ways in which myth was used to explain--or to explain away--the oddities and seeming wonders of the world, such as “mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced.” Many of these were the missiles, he says, of warring gods. In the Middle East, Christian or Muslim religion explains the odd appearance or unlikely locations of these natural objects, just as, in Asia, Buddhism accounts for the strange rock formations and “in Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is found, there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or Christian, to account for it.”

Of course, more than just the appearance and location of rocks and mountains--or of even the lay of the land in general--is explained by etiological (explanatory) myths, and the explanations deal with the “why” as well as the “how” of things, answering such fundamental questions as why people die, why people have skins of various colors, why animals have certain features, why this ruler rules, or why this rite is practiced.

The College of Siskiyous (yes, it does exist; it’s a community college in Weed, California (yes, it does sound like a joke), near Mt. Shasta) offers a (a rather oddly written) summary of the role of the etiological myth, differentiating it, at the same time, from science’s similar role in explaining the whys and wherefores of the world:

While science might [?] say the sky is blue due to excited nitrogen and refractive dust particles, myth is more likely to explain [that] the blue is due to a giant bird’s blue feathers or the cold breath of an ancient god.

The same site challenges visitors to create their own etiological myth, offering several examples and these useful guidelines:

Your etiological narrative can be either a myth or a folktale. It can recount the creation of a well-known geographical feature (Mt Shasta, Lake Tahoe), specific animal traits (why dogs bark, why ants work together), taboos (why incest is wrong), customs (why people are buried underground). Please be descriptive. You may use dialogue, figurative language, or any other rhetorical device you wish. Try to imagine you are a member of an ancient culture, a pre-scientific culture, and myth is your vehicle of explanation. Indicate in the title whether your narrative is an etiological myth or an etiological folktale.

Writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror may want to employ a similar strategy in creating fantasy worlds, scientific marvels, or monsters. Forget the scientific explanation as to how and why something is what it is or does what it does. Instead, recapture the spirit, so to speak, of our ancient ancestors, looking at the world anew, or see it as young children see it, fresh and vivid. Ask yourself, How? Ask yourself, Why? (a child’s favorite question, as every parent knows). Be creative. As a result, you’re apt to infuse your fiction with excitement, glamour, chills, and thrills.

At Chillers and Thrillers, we don’t denigrate science. In fact, we appreciate and admire it. Besides, since many horror stories involve mad scientists and their attempts to transform, if not dominate, the world, we find the principles and theories of the sciences to be very useful. Nevertheless, from a mystical point of view, such as was common among pre-scientific societies, science seems to have demystified the world, depleting it of its deities and its demons, as Edgar Allan Poe observes in his “Sonnet--To Science” (written when he was but a lad of twenty years):

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

In “Intimations of Immortality,” William Wordsworth laments a similar loss of the magic and mystery of nature, as it appears through the eyes of a child, capturing, at the same time, a sense of the very “glory” the passing of which he mourns:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. . . .

As long as we persist in seeing a snake only as science defines it--as “a legless reptile of the sub-order Serpentes with a long, thin body and a fork-shaped tongue,” (Allwords.com)--rather than as Emily Dickinson’s “narrow fellow in the grass” or D. H. Lawrence’s “king,” it shall never appear to us with the vividness--or the sheer presence--as Dickinson’s serpent:

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

Nor shall we see this “legless reptile” as Lawrence saw it:

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

All good fiction, whatever its genre, immerses its readers in the world, in sensory perceptions, in experience, bringing to life again that which was dead, and presenting to the attention that which is taken for granted, forgotten, or ignored. Intensity of presence, like the quality of mystery, is a hallmark of superior writing, especially in regard to imaginative prose or poetry.

However, as we have said before, horror is horror, not romance (or, for that matter, fantasy or science fiction or any other genre, although horror fiction may contain elements of any of these, and other, types of literature). Horror fiction has its own bent, its own interest, its own passionate concern. For horror, this focus is the dreadful, the horrific, the appalling. Horror fiction is, first and foremost, after all, the fiction of fear. It is fear that is the “certain slant of light” with which horror fiction is concerned, to borrow a phrase from another of Dickinson’s poems, one that has a peculiar suitability to chillers and thrillers:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air--
When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

We discuss this “Heavenly Hurt” to which Dickinson alludes in a more detailed, if less poetic, fashion in “Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear,” our blog’s inaugural post:

Horror fiction provides us with a way of exercising and of exorcising our inner demons, but it also reminds us that life is short, and it suggests to us that we should be grateful to be alive, that we should appreciate what we have, and that we should take nothing for granted--not life, limb, mind, health, loved ones, or anything else. Horror fiction is a literary memento mori, or reminder of death.

In the shadow of death, we appreciate and enjoy the fullness of life.No one ever wrote a horror story about a man who stubbed his toe or a woman who broke a nail. Horror fiction's themes are bigger; they're more important. They're as vast and profound as the most critically important and most highly valued of all things. Horror fiction, by threatening us with the loss of that which is really important, shows us what truly matters. As such, it's a guide, implicitly, to the good life.Horror fiction also shows us, sometimes, at least, that no matter how bad things are, we can survive our losses. We can regroup, individually or collectively, subjectively or objectively, and we can continue to fight the good fight.

It is this “slant of light” of which Dickinson writes, or something very much like it, to which H. P. Lovecraft refers in “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction”:

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. I choose weird tories because they suit my inclination best--one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. These stories frequently emphasise the element of horror because fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying illusions. Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or "outsideness" without laying stress on the emotion of fear. The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe. Conflict with time seems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression.

In setting aside the explanations of science and delving, once more, into that deep reservoir of what science might characterize as superstition, but what others might call faith, and seeing the world anew, as our ancient ancestors did or as young children still do, we reconnect with the mystery (and the dread, or awe) of life, immersing ourselves in the experience of Rudolph Otto’s numinous, the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” that inspires faith in powers “wholly other” than, and greater than, our own, some of which may be friendly and helpful and some of which may be fiends and monsters. The numinous is neither exclusively divine nor exclusively demonic; rather, it is a quality of the mind or of an experience, which, in the Bible (and in the work of Soren Kierkegaard), is sometimes described as one of “fear and trembling.” In The Idea of the Holy, Otto describes the numinous, in part, as:

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its "profane," non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strongest excitments, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering (12-13).

As Otto defines the term, the numinous is awful (that is, it fills one with awe), overpowering, urgent, fascinating, and completely alien to human experience.

In our “Why Monsters? Why Metaphors?” post, we identified the use of the monstrous, or grotesque, as having a purpose similar to that which Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor, each in his or her own way, seeks to accomplish in his or her respective fiction; it seeks to grasp, to seize, and to awaken one to the presence of the depth and mystery of existence. We might also characterize this purpose as being to recover a perception of the holy, or the numinous. We said that monsters are often used as metaphors in horror fiction because monsters “they have presence”:

What do I mean by “presence”? Walker Percy illustrates the idea well in his novel The Moviegoer. His protagonist, Binx Bolling, a soldier at this time in the story, has been injured in a battle. As he lies upon the battlefield, he catches sight of a dung beetle. Normally, he probably wouldn’t have seen the insect and, if he had, he wouldn’t have been likely to devote careful study to it. However, he is not operating under normal circumstances, and he is astonished to see the beetle, in all its glorious detail. It has presence for him; it has become visible. In doing so, it has shed the malaise of everydayness and become real. Here’s the way that Percy describes the scene:

. . . I remembered the first time the search occurred to me. I came to myself under a chindolea bush. . . . Six inches from my nose a dung beetle was scratching around under the leaves. As I watched there awoke within me an immense curiosity. I was onto something.

Later, a similar experience happens to Binx:

. . . This morning, as I got up, I dressed as usual and began as usual to put my belongings into my pockets: wallet, notebook. . . pencil, keys, handkerchief, slide rule. . . . They looked both unfamiliar and at the same time full of clues. . . . What was unfamiliar about them was that I could see them. They might have belonged to someone else. A man can look at this little pile on his bureau for thirty years and never once see it. It is as invisible as his own hand. Once I saw it, however, the search became possible. . . .

We can all remember the times, usually as a child, during which we could lose ourselves in the contemplation of everyday objects such as a daisy or a drop of dew. We could see each grain of pollen, every glistening color of the rainbow that seemed to emanate from within the clear drop of early morning dew as it shimmered upon a green leaf. All the world was present in a grain of sand.Then, as we grew older, things changed--or we changed. Saddled with responsibilities and governed by social expectations and conventions, our priorities changed. Eventually, we changed. We no longer had time to appreciate, admire, and embrace the world around us. We became alienated from our environment and estranged from or surroundings. We took for granted the wonders and enchantments of nature. More and more, the world began to disappear as we took birds and brooks, sun and moon, mountains and beaches, and pine trees and breezes for granted. The malaise of everydayness spread until we were nearly blind and deaf to the world around us. Things and people alike began to lack presence. Occasionally, something happens, and we see again. We hear again. The world becomes present to us again, as the dung beetle became present for Binx. We recover the world or, perhaps, only a tiny portion of the world--maybe nothing more than a dung beetle. But it’s a start. If we can see an insect today, maybe someday we can see a forest or, looking into a looking-glass, even ourselves. Monsters make us sit up and take notice. They grab our attention. They have immediate and intense presence, even in a world devoid of detail and force. Like a snake, a monster’s hard to miss. Emily Dickinson suggests this quality when she describes a hiker crossing a serpent’s path. . . . The monster, likewise, is noticeable, immediately. That’s one reason that horror writers employ the monstrous. Monsters have presence. They’re bold font, italics, exclamation points, underlining.

Flannery O’Connor, asked why her fiction contains so many grotesque characters--physically, emotionally, or spiritually deformed characters (monsters, of a sort, really)--implied that she wrote for a “hostile audience“ and explained that, “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large, startling figures.”

In “Creating Mood in Horror Fiction,”our review of Bram Stoker’s short story, “Dracula’s Guest,” we showed how a great writer in the horror genre creates a sense of the numinous by the way that he describes the various incidents which occur in the narrative and his protagonist’s experiences and perceptions. The techniques that Stoker uses to accomplish this feat are many and varied, as we point out in our review, but we want to recall a couple that seem especially relevant to our present discussion:

. . . The coachman’s account of the abandoned village gives the Englishman a definite destination, and he undertakes a hike into the valley, in search of the site of the deserted town. From a distance, the valley seemed enchanting, pleasant, and inviting, but, as he enters the basin, its appearance changes--or seems to change--becoming “desolation itself.” He pauses to rest, and the cold winter’s night and the gathering of high storm clouds cause him to realize that a blizzard is approaching. As he resumes his trek, the countryside appears “more picturesque,” and he becomes lost to time as he enjoys the “charm of [its] beauty” until, at length, “deepening twilight” turns his thoughts to finding his way back “home.” Stoker adds a discordant note to the “picaresque” scene, as, again, the Englishman hears the sound of a wolf. In this description of the woods, as in others to come, Stoker masterfully suggests that there may be some unseen power, acting behind the scenes, to manipulate and control the protagonist’s perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Readers are apt to get a strong impression that the valley, including its woods, is truly enchanted--that is, magical--and that the environment has cast a spell upon the traveler, seeming now desolate, now charming, and making him forget both himself and the time of day as he hikes farther and farther on his way to his “unholy” destination, Walpurgis Night fast approaching.

Earlier in the story, the coachman predicted the advent of a snowstorm, and the gathering clouds support Johann’s forecast. Now, when a blizzard begins, the storm seems natural enough. Indeed, it is expected. At the same time, however, because of the way that Stoker has described the woodland valley, readers are apt to wonder whether the occult power that seems to control the landscape may also be controlling the weather, for the blizzard begins at a most convenient moment, just as the traveler glimpses, through the trees, what appears to be a building and thinks that he has likely discovered the long-abandoned village that has become the object of his quest. This possibility is strengthened by the chorus of wolves’ howls he hears at this same moment and by the way in which the cypress trees form an “alley” that leads to the site. The storm, the wolves, and the “alley” of cypresses all seem to conspire, as it were, to guide and direct the Englishman to the same location. The sense that nature itself is being manipulated and controlled by an unseen power is strong, as is the sense that this same power (or another) is secretly observing the Englishman. These techniques increase the story’s suspense by multiplying the power of the narrative’s unseen protagonist, for whoever or whatever can control nature must be not only supernatural but also extremely powerful. The fact that the adversary is unseen is unnerving as well, because, obviously, one cannot defend oneself against an enemy that he or she cannot see. The invisibility of the adversary also lends it a certain majesty, suggesting, again, that it is beyond human ken. However, Stoker also leaves open the narrow possibility--and the possibility seems to become narrower all the time--that perhaps all is normal, except for the Englishman himself. Perhaps the protagonist merely believes that these incidents have a greater significance than they actually have. So far, there has been no definitive reason to suspect that the apparently supernatural force operating behind the scenes is supernatural or, in fact, that it exists at all. . . .

By using similar techniques, we argued, in “Horror By the Slice,” our review of “The Lurking Fear,” Lovecraft also succeeds in creating the impression of a mysterious, unseen power operating, as it were, behind the scenes, or, in other words, he likewise captures a sense of the numinous:

In the first part of the story, Lovecraft hints at several possible identities for his story’s antagonist or--he is not clear even as to their number--antagonists. The villain could be a ghost, a demon, or some sort of monster with fangs and claws. He is ambiguous as to the creature’s origin as well. Local residents believe that it is associated with the Martense mansion atop Tempest Mountain. However, the narrator of the story, who is also the narrative’s protagonist, suggests that it may be linked to the weather--particularly, to the thunder. (The mansion and the weather, in fact, may themselves be connected in some way, as the house’s location, atop a mountain that takes its very name from a storm, or “tempest,” suggests.) Lovecraft’s multiplication of these possibilities is only one instance of such multiplications to be found in “The Lurking Fear.” On one occasion, the protagonist is certain that the creature is “organic,” or corporeal, but, later, he is just as sure that it is incorporeal. Obviously, it cannot be both, so which is it, tangible or intangible?

Another way by which Lovecraft multiplies possibilities (and therefore promotes ambiguity) in his tale is by suggesting several possibilities as to the creature’s point of origin. It is said to dwell in “some secret place.” Is it located in the house, in Jan Martense’s grave, in an underground tunnel, in the “odd mounds and hummocks of the region,” or elsewhere? Indeed, at times, it seems to drop out of the sky. Is it of an aerial nature? Neither the protagonist nor his companions, George Bennett and William Tobey, staying overnight in the mansion, know whether to expect the ghost, the demon, or the clawed monster to attack them from within or from without the house, so they are careful to suspend three rope-ladders from the ledge on the wall outside the room, one for each of them, in the event that the monster’s assault is from outside rather from inside the house. When the creature abducts Bennett and Tobey, it’s as if the men simply ceased to exist: they are simply gone, leaving “no trace, not even of a struggle,” and are “never heard of again.” Repeatedly, the reader wonders just what sort of threat it is that the protagonist faces. There are clues aplenty as to its possible identity, but none of them add up. All is confused and ambiguous. Therefore, and thereby, the story’s horror is increased, and its terror mounts.

As do Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, James Rollins, and other masters of the horror genre, past and present, Lovecraft both captures the sense of the numinous described by Otto and suggests the “Heavenly Hurt” spoken of by Dickinson--two characteristics that are, as much as the madness, monsters, mayhem, and terror, the hallmarks of horror fiction, representing “the certain slant of light” that illuminates the interests of its writers, readers, critics, and aficionados. In the pages (or upon the screen) of horror fiction, we are in the presence, often, of a “wholly other” force that is overpowering, urgent, and fascinating. Of course, it also happens, more often than not, to be destructive and deadly. It may be a horrible fate to encounter a demon after all, and, as Jonathan Edwards (and, less directly, Stephen King), warns us, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," to be sure.

Buffy: More than Pastiche

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a pastiche, as executive producer Marti Noxon freely admits in a comment on the series’ third season compact disc (CD). Most viewers believe the series was far superior during its first three seasons than it was thereafter. One reason for this, perhaps, is that the show based many of its earlier episodes upon classic horror monsters, offering Buffy’s take on them. If “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” as Charles Caleb Cotton said, Buffy is positively sycophantic toward such artists and movies as:

• Cat People (“The Pack”)
• The Terminator, and (if only in the title) Tarzan the Ape Man (“I Robot, You Jane”)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (“Nightmares”)
• H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (“Out of Sight, Out of Mind”)
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (“Some Assembly Required”)
• The Mummy (“Inca Mummy Girl”)
• The Terminator (“Ted”)
• Werewolf films and folklore (“Phases” and others)
• The Creature from the Black Lagoon (“Go Fish”)
• Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, Night of the Living Dead and the Gorgons (Greek mythology) (“Dead Man’s Party”)
• Hansel and Gretel (“Gingerbread”)
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (“Primeval” and other episodes featuring Adam)
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula (“Buffy vs. Dracula”)
• Ground Hog Day (“Life Serial”)
• Tremors (“Beneath You”)

It’s fine to be “inspired” by other writers and their works, as long as other writers’ ideas are treated differently in one’s own work--as long as, to paraphrase Noxon, one makes the other’s creature feature one’s own. Just by relating classic horror monsters to contemporary teens and the problems and issues that they face in their daily lives, Buffy goes a long way in doing this. Of course, the characters, the setting, the conflicts, the themes, and pretty much every other dramatic element also differs as a result of bringing the monsters into a new arena, just as these elements are drastically different in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as compared to Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, despite the fact that both stories feature vampires.

It may be instructive to examine Buffy’s treatment of a couple of the classic horror monsters, so, in this post, we’ll take a look at the show’s use of three in the same episode: Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, Night of the Living Dead and the Gorgons of Greek mythology, all of which inform the plot of “Dead Man’s Party,” and at werewolf lore, which is developed in “Phases” and several of the series’ other episodes.

In “Dead Man’s Party,” Buffy Summers has just returned home to Sunnydale after running away to Los Angeles, where she’d been living in a motel and working as a waitress in Helen’s Kitchen (an allusion to New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen), calling herself by her middle name, Anne. Now that she’s returned, her friends and her mother, Joyce, insist upon throwing her a welcome-home party. Unfortunately, Buffy is still struggling with the “fallout” from her “love life,” as she characterizes her problematic relationship with Angel in “I Only Have Eyes for You”: in the episode previous to “Anne,” Buffy had to dispatch Angel to hell in order to prevent him from sucking the world into the same dimension, and, in an argument with her mother, who forbade her to leave the house, Joyce told Buffy not to come back if she left the house. Buffy’s attempts to repress her feelings are not working.

After Joyce, the owner of an art gallery, hangs a Nigerian mask on her bedroom wall, she announces to Buffy that she is hosting Buffy’s welcome-home party, and sends Buffy to the basement to retrieve their better dishes. As she does so, Buffy discovers the cadaver of a cat, which mother and daughter bury in the back yard. That night, the mask glows, and the cat is resurrected. The next day, it returns to the Summers’ house, shocking Buffy and Joyce, who call Buffy’s watcher (mentor), Rupert Giles, the high school librarian. Giles traps the animal in a cage and takes it to the library to study. The resurrection of the dead, buried cat is an allusion to Stephen King’s novel, Pet Sematary, in which a beloved pet is buried after being killed and returns (as, later, a dead child, buried in the same cemetery, does, as well).

During the party, it’s clear that Buffy is not coping well with her difficulties. She seems to have been avoiding her best friend and confidante, Willow Rosenberg. Xander, on the other hand, is too busy spending time with Cordelia Chase, his newfound girlfriend, to pay Buffy much attention. Buffy overhears Joyce confide in a friend as to how difficult it is for her to have Buffy back home again. Meanwhile, Buffy is surrounded by strangers who have crashed her party. Feeling alienated and alone, she packs her bags to run away again, but she’s caught by Joyce and Willow. In a confrontation between mother and daughter, in front of her friends and the other partygoers, Buffy is humiliated. Xander also confronts her, telling her that she must deal with her problems rather than trying to repress them: “You can’t just bury things, Buffy. They’ll come right back to get you.” They do just this, in the form of zombies.

In his research, Giles learns the secret of the Nigerian mask that Joyce has hung on her bedroom wall, and rushes to the Summers house to warn Joyce and Buffy, but, on the way, he’s attacked by the zombies.

As Joyce and Xander confront Buffy, the zombies crash Buffy’s party, attacking and killing guests in a scene reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead.

One drags Joyce’s friend, Pat, down a hallway. Buffy, Joyce, Xander, and Willow take refuge in Joyce’s bedroom, where they find Pat lying on the floor, while Willow’s boyfriend, Oz, and Cordelia hide in a closet downstairs. Checking her pulse, Willow confirms their fears: Pat is dead.
As Oz and Cordelia step out of the closet, they encounter Giles, who’s just arrived, and he explains that Joyce’s mask is imbued with the power of a zombie demon, Ovu Monabi, or Evil Eye. The zombies have come to retrieve it. Whoever dons the mask becomes the demon.

Pat shocks everyone by recovering. She was dead, but, now, she lives. She’s also wearing the mask, having become the zombie demon. In a fight with Buffy, the slayer knocks the demon through Joyce’s bedroom window, and both combatants tumble off the roof, to land in the yard below. During the fight, Buffy learns that the demon can paralyze people, after the fashion of Medusa and the other Gorgons of Greek mythology, whose look could turn their victims into stone. When Oz distracts the demon, it paralyzes him, giving Buffy the chance she needs to attack the monster, and she shoves a shovel into its eyes, blinding it. Defenseless, the demon (and the body of Pat) vanishes, and those who were paralyzed recover.

The episode ends with Buffy and Willow bonding as life returns to as-close-to-normal as it gets in Sunnydale.

This episode fuses elements of the plots of King’s Pet Sematary, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and the Greek myth of the Gorgons. However, these elements are synthesized in a way that makes them unique to the demands of Buffy’s continuing storyline. The resurrection of the dead cat foreshadows Pat’s resurrection, both of which are accomplished by virtue of the power of the mask; the zombies are associated with the mask, but they also represent the powerful negative emotions that Buffy has sought to repress, or bury; and the power of unresolved emotional trauma, represented by the demonic mask and the demon’s power to paralyze its victims, represents Buffy’s alienation, her inability to cope, and the destructiveness to others of her unwillingness to communicate. In using these elements, the Buffy writers have made them their own, as Noxon says, and, in doing so, have transformed them rather than simply copied them off from other writers and stories.

“Phases,” “Wild at Heart,” and other Buffy episodes use werewolf legends and folklore in a similar way to develop the TV show’s continuing storylines and themes.

There hasn’t been a definitive story about werewolves the way there has been, with Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, a definitive story about vampires. The closest that the literature of horror has come in distilling the legends and folklore regarding the hirsute horror is, perhaps, The Wolfman, starring Lon Chaney. For the most part, however, the stories concerning werewolves remains fragmented and diverse, lacking a center. In the episodes of Buffy that concern the werewolf as an antagonist, the series provides a center, if not a definitive one, for this character, as it appears in the Buffy mythos.

The show’s writers cleverly play upon the idea that the creature is a monster only on the night preceding a full moon, on the night of the full moon, and on the night following the full moon, or three days out of a month. (Traditionally, a werewolf is a werewolf only on the night of the full moon, but the show’s writers wanted to suggests that their three-day period is equivalent to a woman’s menstrual period, as Willow tells her boyfriend, Oz, the show‘s sometime-werewolf, “Three days out of the month, I’m not much fun to be around, either.”)

Willow, Buffy, Giles, and the other members of their clique protect Oz from a poacher whose specialty is werewolves. (He makes necklaces of their teeth and sells their pelts.) To protect Oz and those whom he might kill and devour were he allowed to run free during his “period,” Oz is locked inside the library’s rare books cage. In another departure from most werewolf lore, Oz suffers guilt, in “Beauty and the Beasts,” when he escapes from the cage and believes that he may be responsible for the death of a human being. In the same episode, he says, after having devoured part of the actual killer after a fight with him, which Oz, in his werewolf avatar, wins, he says, that, oddly enough, he feels full although he hasn’t eaten. Oz doesn’t recall his actions as a werewolf when he reverts to human form. Such forgetfulness is in keeping with traditional werewolf lore. However, this will change, he is assured by a fellow werewolf, Veruca, whom he meets in “Wild at Heart.” Veruca has been a werewolf longer than Oz, and, after they are intimate as werewolves (if such creatures can in any real sense of the word be intimate), she tells him that she can recall some of her experiences as a werewolf, and relishes them, as he will do as well, eventually. The prospect horrifies Oz rather than delighting him.

When Veruca approaches Oz the next night, he locks her inside the library book cage with him, and Willow finds their naked bodies, there, the next morning. Later, Veruca attacks Willow, but is saved by Oz, who, in his werewolf state, attacks and kills Veruca. Next, he turns on Willow, but Buffy’s arrival saves the witch, and, the next day, distraught at the thought that he may have killed Willow, Oz leaves Sunnydale to seek a cure for his lycanthropy.

When he finds the cure, Oz returns, finding that Willow has become enamored of another woman, her fellow college student, Tara Maclay. Enraged, he reverts to his vampire self, and attacks Tara, but he is subdued by a military platoon led by Buffy’s new boyfriend, Riley Finn. When Oz escapes, he leaves Sunnydale for good, accepting the fact that Willow loves Tara rather than him.

The romantic relationship that Oz has with Willow is another departure from traditional werewolf lore. One reason that the legends concerning this monster may remain fragmented and diverse rather than having acquired coherence and a more cohesive structure is that the beast, rather than the human, aspects of the monster have been highlighted historically. When the protagonist is more animal than man, character development is unlikely. One of Buffy’s more creative innovations with regard to the show’s use of werewolf folklore is to reverse this treatment, showing the humanity of the monster rather than the bestiality of the human. Because Oz is allowed to be not only a beast but a man, the writers can more fully develop both his character and the tradition out of which it, in part, comes. After all, werewolf is motivated, primarily, by instincts, but a person, being far more complex, is motivated by many impulses, instinctive, emotional, rational, and otherwise. The show’s use of the werewolf motif, like its use of the zombie motif, is complex, but it is also unique, because it makes it serve its own narrative and dramatic purposes. In so doing, the show makes these classic monsters its own, rather than simply using them as the monster of the week or the creature feature of the moment.

The Monster as the Mirror of the Protagonist’s Soul

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Monsters are often metaphors, as we saw in the “Metaphorical Monsters” post. However, monsters are often also foils to horror stories’ main characters. As Robert Louis Stevenson showed us, in The Strange Adventures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the monster is, or can be, just an alter ego of oneself, one’s bitter half, rather than one’s better half. In Jungian terms, the monster is the shadow archetype, comprised of the collection of those aspects of oneself that an individual represses.

As a foil, the monster’s character traits are opposite to those of the monster’s attributes. They illuminate by contrast, showing readers or viewers more clearly what the main character is like. Usually, there is only a single foil, but there may be more than one. For example, in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith, the rogue slayer, is a foil to Buffy, and, because of Faith’s irresponsibility, we better discern Buffy’s reliability and trustworthiness; Faith’s narcissism allows us to better see Buffy’ altruism; Faith’s amorality lets us better perceive Buffy’s morality. Although Buffy is spontaneous and independent, she is not, like Faith, rash and reckless--well, not as a rule. The only other slayer whom viewers observe over several episodes, Kendra, is a foil to Buffy as well, although she’s not a monster, as Faith, at times, in a way, tends to be. Kendra contrasts sharply with Buffy in several ways, among which are:
Buffy is spontaneous; Kendra is inhibited.

• Buffy is affable; Kendra is reserved.


• Buffy lives with her mother; Kendra was removed from her parents’ home shortly after she was born and does not remember her parents.


• Buffy has a boyfriend; Kendra is not allowed to date and is unsure even how she should act around members of the opposite sex.


• Buffy is a modern, liberated young woman; Kendra is subservient to men.


• Buffy blows off research (and homework); Kendra is more a bookworm than Buffy’s watcher, Rupert Giles.


• Buffy is autonomous; Kendra is a follower.


• Buffy is independent; Kendra is dependent.


• Buffy is a fashion enthusiast; Kendra owns only one shirt.


• Buffy shares her secret identity with her friends; Kendra keeps her identity as a slayer secret.

We could go on (and on), but you get the picture: both Faith and Kendra are foils to Buffy.

However, we begin, with Kendra, to digress. Let’s resume our consideration of how monsters can be foils to a main character.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, does not employ a foil, per se, as much as it does a symbol.

In Wilde’s story (which is surely a study of hypocrisy and false appearances), the protagonist, Dorian Gray, remains young and handsome while his portrait is aged by the sins he commits. Gray claims to love an actress, Sybil Vane, but, when, lovesick for her suitor, she loses her ability to act, he jilts her, causing her to commit suicide. Thereafter, for nearly two decades, inspired by a “poisonous” novel he receives as a gift, Gray undertakes a career in debauchery. The portrait continues to age and to become more and more repulsive, reflecting Gray’s inner state. Enraged, Gray murders the artist, Basil Hallward, who painted his likeness (and who gave him the novel). He blackmails a friend into disposing of his victim’s corpse. After a close call during which Sybil’s brother, James, seeks to murder him to avenge his sister, but is subsequently killed himself in hunting accident, Gray repents, vowing to reform. Hoping to see a change in his portrait, he finds that it is uglier and more aged than ever, whereupon, in a newfound capacity for self-reflection, he wonders whether curiosity or vanity prompted him to check on his portrait’s appearance. He tries to confess his sins and change his ways, before it is too late to save his soul, but he hasn’t the will to do so, and, instead, he plunges a knife--the same weapon with which he’d earlier dispatched Hallward, and is found by his servants, aged and shriveled, it being necessary to examine the rings he wears in order to identify his remains. The portrait is the picture of youth and health that it was when Hallward had first unveiled it.

Gray’s portrait is limited as a means of illustrating the temptations Gray faces and their specific effects on his own life and the lives of those he encounters. For this reason, perhaps, Wilde shows his protagonist’s behavior and its consequences directly, using the portrait to symbolize the effects of his treacherous behavior and his dedicated debauchery upon the protagonist’s inner man. Outwardly, he remains young and handsome, but his portrait shows the true state of his soul. It also indicates, from time to time, his emotional state, as when the picture sneers after Gray has treated Sybil in an abusive manner, thereby showing the contempt that he feels for her but does not show in his actual behavior toward her--not until he jilts her, at any rate. There is only so much that can be accomplished through the use of an inanimate object, after all.

Stevenson’s novel divides the good self from the bad, with Dr. Jekyll’s creation a potion that transforms him into the hideous Mr. Hyde. The monstrous alter ego differs from its creator in several important ways and, thus, serves as a true, if limited, foil:

• Dr. Jekyll is moral; Mr. Hyde is without a conscience.


• Dr. Jeckyll is socially respectable; Mr. Hyde freely indulges his passions, including his sexual lusts.


• Dr. Jekyll is a cultivated man; Mr. Hyde is a little more than a wild animal.


• Dr. Jekyll is a man of reason; Mr. Hyde is a sociopath.


• Dr. Jekyll is law-abiding; Mr. Hyde is criminal.

However, the dichotomies aren’t really this simple, for, after all, it is Dr. Jekyll who invents the potion, and it is he who, of his own, free will, drinks it. Mr. Hyde is not another; as an adversary, he is not an external “other,” but the repressed aspects of Dr. Jekyll’s own personality. The conflict in Stevenson’s story is psychological and moral, not social (although the conflict does have social implications). Mr. Hyde is the self whom Dr. Jeckyll desperately wants to be, at intervals and for a time, at least; he is, in Jungian terms, Dr. Jekyll’s shadow, the repressed, largely unconscious part of his personality. In the end, Mr. Hyde takes over completely, killing himself and, as a result, Dr. Jekyll as well. Stevenson suggests that social norms and personal restraints, or morality and conscience, may not be sufficient, in the end, to control the beast within. When they are not, the result is not only crime and sin, but also death and destruction. The use of Mr. Hyde as a foil to Dr. Jekyll allows readers to see a greater, and, indeed, a hidden dimension of the protagonist, suggesting that, appearances to the contrary, Dr. Jekyll may not be as moral, respectable, cultivated, reasonable, and law-abiding as he seems, and, of course, he also allows Dr, Jekyll to discover this same truth about himself.

Other horror characters also have alter egos, or second selves. Count Dracula appears to be a cultivated, cosmopolitan, suave, and sophisticated man of refined tastes, capable of witty repartee and hospitality. He seems to be a well educated man of reason, and, in fact, he can be downright charming. However, he is also a vampire, and, as such, harbors all the attributes of the fiend that shares his body. He is parasitic, secretive, cunning, treacherous, deceitful, hypocritical, and narcissistic--all the things that, secretly, the count longs to be. The fact that man and demon inhabit the same body suggests that they are the same person, and that the vampire’s behavior represents the expression and enactment of temptations that the count normally represses. There is a fine line between the acceptable and the forbidden, at times, and the more political and economic power one has, the more opportunity he or she also has to do that which remains unthinkable to men and women who occupy lesser social positions. As a count, Dracula can be forgiven much more than a peasant would be forgiven.

He is a victim, however, of changing times, as another character, as his foil, suggests. Just as science and technology are beginning to replace religious faith and superstitious beliefs as the dominant worldview, so are nobles being replaced by a growing middle class, a member of which, Dr. Abraham van Helsing, a professor, summoned by his former student, a psychologist, proves to be the death of Dracula. The vampire’s supernatural power is no match against the professor’s use of hypnotism and medical science. Part philosopher and part “metaphysician,” van Helsing is also “one of the most advanced scientists of his day,” Steward informs the reader, and, as such, has one foot in the old, and the other in the new, world. He is a transitional figure. As such, he is a fitting antagonist and foil to the noble Count Dracula, whose world of monarchy and mysticism are coming to their ends. As with Buffy, whose foils are Kendra and Faith, Dracula has more than one opposite: the vampire is a foil to the count, just as is the professor.

Scientists have identified several possible origins for legends of werewolves, including the tendencies of some serial killers to engage in “cannibalism, mutilation, and cyclical attacks,” and have contended that the bizarre behavior of such wolf-men might have been caused by a variety of actual diseases, including “ergot poisoning” and “rabies, hypertrichosis. . . porphyria. . . . congenital erythropoietic porphria. . . . photosensitivity. . . . clinical lycanthropy” and “psychosis,” many of which conditions involve hallucinations and bizarre behavior. Be that as it may, werewolves represent another instance of a character with an alter ego, since, except during full moons, the wolf is a man (or a woman). However, this possibility for an innate, or built-in, foil that shows the opposite traits of the same character and represents a dichotomy within the same character’s personality hasn’t been well developed, probably because, although there is a long and voluminous body of folklore involving werewolves, there has been no definitive story about one, which integrates and centers the tradition on a single, well-developed, memorable character like Count Dracula, Dr. Jekyll, or Dorian Gray. However, since a foil has traits which are opposite to those of the protagonist (even when the main character and his or her foil are, in effect, the same character, as when the foil is an alter ego rather than a separate character), it would not be difficult to identify the characteristics that such a protagonist would possess, whenever he or she comes along. All one needs to do is to identify the traits of the werewolf and then list opposite attributes:

• The werewolf is bestial; the protagonist will be humane.


• The werewolf is fierce; the protagonist will be gentle.


• The werewolf is driven by its instincts; the protagonist will be cautious and deliberate.


• The werewolf is wild; the protagonist will be cultivated.


• The werewolf is destructive; the protagonist will be creative.


• The werewolf seeks sanctuary among the trees of the forest; the protagonist will find refuge in a society of his or her peers.


• The werewolf fears humans; the protagonist will be sociable and altruistic.

In such a fashion, we could go on, listing character traits and their opposites until we had the basis for constructing a protagonist for whom his or her werewolf avatar would be an appropriate and effective foil. Some day, a writer may pen the werewolf equivalent to Dracula. At such a time, the novel’s (or film’s) main character will most likely resemble the character we’ve delineated, for the monster is likely to be his foil and, thus, alert us to the hidden impulses and temptations within the protagonist whom he or she replaces whenever the monster within escapes the bounds of repression.

Free Horror Films, Part III

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The Internet Archive houses thousands of free items. They’re free because, their copyrights having expired, they’ve fallen into the public domain. Among the offerings are a number of classic horror films (descriptions are from the Internet Archives, where the authors are credited). (Click the title of the movie to visit its download site.)

Werewolf of Washington

A reporter who has had an affair with the daughter of the U.S. President is sent to Hungary. There he is bitten by a werewolf, and then gets transferred back to Washington, where he gets a job as press assistant to the President. Then bodies start turning up in D.C

Revolt of the Zombies

An expedition to Cambodia leads to the discovery of the process for creating zombie slaves.

Fall of the House of Usher

English dubs over French cards in this haunting version of Poe's classic tale. A stranger called Allan. . . goes to an inn and requests transportation to the House of Usher. The locals remain reluctant, but he gets a coach to transport him to the place. He is the sole friend of Roderick Usher. . . , who leaves in the eerie house with his sick wife Madeleine Usher. . . and her doctor.

Frankenstein

This is [Thomas] Edison’s COMPLETE 1910 silent Frankenstein film.

Killer Shrews

No summary available.

The Little Shop of Horrors

Roger Corman classic about a nerdy flower shop clerk who grows a giant, man-eating plant. Jack Nicholson makes his film debut as a dental patient who loves pain.

The Mad Monster

No summary available.

White Zombie

A young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiancée, but instead turns her into a zombie slave.

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter

Legendary outlaw of the Old West Jesse James, on the run from Marshal MacPhee, hides out in the castle of Baron Frankenstein's granddaughter Maria, who proceeds to transform Jesse's slow-witted pal Hank into a bald zombie, which she names Igor.

Black Dragons

It is prior to the commencement of World War II, and Japan's fiendish Black Dragon Society is hatching an evil plot with the Nazis. They instruct a brilliant scientist, Dr. Melcher, to travel to Japan on a secret mission. There he operates on six Japanese conspirators, transforming them to resemble six American leaders. The actual leaders are murdered and replaced with their likeness and Dr. Melcher is condemned to a lifetime of imprisonment so the secret may die with him.

The Phantom Ship

Also known as "The Mystery of the Marie Celeste". [sic]

Indestructible Man

No summary available.

The Corpse Vanishes

A newspaper reporter begins to investigate after a series of brides die suddenly during their wedding. Her quest leads her to the secret of eternal youth and almost gets her killed.

Teenage Zombies

Teenagers Reg, Skip, Julie and Pam go out for an afternoon of water skiing on a nice day. They come ashore on an island that is being used as a testing center for a scientist and agents from "an eastern power." They seek to turn the people of the United States into easily controlled zombie like creatures. The agents steal Reg's boat, stranding the teens on the island. The four friends are then held captive in cages able only to speculate on their fate.

Nightmare Castle

No summary available.

The Red House

Curiosity propels two teens, Meg and Nath. . . to explore an apparently abandoned house in the countryside. Of course they are warned to stay away from the secluded place.

Bluebeard

Young female models are being strangled inexplicably. Will law enforcement be able to stop the crime wave before more women become victims?

The Ghost Walks

No summary available.

The Terror

A young officer in Napoleon's army pursues a mysterious woman to the castle of an elderly Baron where he discovers that she is the pawn of an old witch bent on driving the Baron to suicide.

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

A team of astronauts crashes on the surface of Venus. Accompanied by their robot, they explore the surface and end up destroying the Venusian God. This film is also known as "The Gill Women" and "The Gill Women of Venus". This film began life as a Soviet-produced work. An American producer then added some new footage and changed the credits to hide the film's Soviet origin.

To download the movies:
After you find the title you want, using the categories and the search windows at the top of the homepage, click on the blue link to the film you want (it will usually be the title). Then, at the left of the screen, select FTP. (This way, if the download is interrupted, it will resume downloading at the point of interruption.) Right-click the link to open it in another window. Then, select from among the file types. Mpg (not the .mpeg) file is usually best. Right-click the selected file and click "Save Target As." The file will automatically download, but you can specify the directory that you want it to be saved in (or just let the computer determine the directory). The "My Videos" folder in the "My Documents" directory is a reasonable choice. Then, pop some corn, grab a soda, and enjoy!

(You can also watch the movies, cartoons, etc. without downloading them, although the screen area is rather small and you need high-speed Internet capability.)

Free Horror Films, Part II

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The Internet Archive houses thousands of free items. They’re free because, their copyrights having expired, they’ve fallen into the public domain. Among the offerings are a number of classic horror films (descriptions are from the Internet Archives, where the authors are credited). (Click the movie's title to visit the Archive's download page.)

Daughter of Horror

Also known as Dementia.

Midnight Manhunt

Reporter Sue Gallagher. . . finds an infamous gangster's corpse in a wax museum. Her desire for a scoop is hindered by a meddling rival. . . , the museum's goofy aintenance man. . . , and the ruthless killer.

The Monster Maker

[A] mad scientist injects his enemies with acromegaly virus, causing them to become hideously deformed.

The World Gone Mad

The World Gone Mad is a 1933 drama/horror film which pits the district attorney's office against crooks defrauding a corporation from within, unbeknownst to the company's owner.

Scared to Death

A woman tells the story of the events leading up to her death.

Mystery of the Wax Museum

In London, sculptor Ivan Igor. . . struggles in vain to prevent his partner Worth. . . from burning his wax museum. . . and his 'children.' Years later, Igor starts a new museum in New York, but his maimed hands confine him to directing lesser artists. People begin disappearing (including a corpse from the morgue); Igor takes a sinister interest in Charlotte Duncan. . . , fiancée of his assistant Ralph. . . , but arouses the suspicions of Charlotte's roommate.

The Devil’s Messenger

Lon Chaney stars as Satan in this three part story based on a collection of episodes from the never-aired TV series No. 13 Demon St. The Devil sends his reluctant messenger to the surface to recruit new souls. Once in Hell; the damned are instructed to prepare for the delivery of Satan's horrifying "final message" to earth.

The Rogue’s Tavern

No summary available.

Horrors of Spider Island

A plane crash leaves a dance troupe stranded on a deserted island where a mutant spider bite turns the troupe's leader into a monster.

Svengali

Svengali can control the actions of women through hypnotism and his telepathic rowers. When a pupil he has seduced announces she has left her husband for him, he uses his powers to cause her suicide and promptly forgets her. He meets a beautiful model, Trilby, and becomes infatuated with her, but she, in turn, falls for a young artist called Billee who also loves her.

The Sadist

This is believed to be the first feature film based on real life serial killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate. Mainstream Hollywood would not produce films inspired by the pair until a decade after this one.

Attack of the Giant Leeches

No summary available.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

John Barrymore stars in the renowned silent adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic about a Victorian scientist who turns himself into a murderous
abomination.

Bride of the Gorilla

No summary available.

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory

The new science teacher Dr. Julian Olcott. . . with a mysterious past arrives in an institutional boarding school for troublemaker girls. Along the night, the intern Mary Smith. . . , who is blackmailing another teacher--Sir Alfred Whiteman. . . --with some love letters, is slaughtered by a werewolf. The detective in charge of the investigation attributes the crime to a wolf, while her mate Priscilla. . . believes she was killed by Sir Alfred.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula

London in the 1970s, Scotland Yard police investigators think they have uncovered a case of vampirism. They call in an expert vampire researcher named Van Helsing (an ancestor of the great vampire-hunter himself, no less) to help them put a stop to these hideous crimes. It becomes apparent that the culprit is Count Dracula himself, disguised as a reclusive property developer, but secretly plotting to unleash a fatal virus upon the world.

Bloodlust

Two beautiful young girls...Defenseless against the deadly ancient crossbow!

Bad Taste

A team from the intergalactic fast food chain Crumb's Crunchy Delights descends on Earth, planning to make human flesh the newest taste sensation. After they wipe out the New Zealand town Kaihoro, the country's Astro-Investigation and Defense Service is called in to deal with the problem. Things are complicated due to Giles, an aid worker who comes to Kaihoro the same day.

Creature from the Haunted Sea

When a Carribean Island is engulfed by a revolution, one unscrupulous American mobster, Renzo Capeto plans to clean up with a get-rich-quick scheme. His diabolical plan is to provide refuge for the loyalists, and the contents of the government coffers, on his boat. He would then murder his passenger and escape with a fortune. Planning to blame their deaths on a mythical sea monster, no one is more surprised than Renzo, when the real monster appears with its own agenda.

King of the Zombies

A plane flying to the Bahamas gets blown off course and crashes on the island of the mysterious Dr. Sangare. Jefferson Jackson. . . tries to warn his fellow survivors that the island's haunted but they all soon learn there's more going on than they initially supposed.

The She Beast

A couple on their honeymoon in Transylvania crash their car into a lake-the same lake where a witch was drowned many years before. The witch takes over the wife's body and it's up to her husband and a descendent of Van Helsing to save her.

The Screaming Skull

A widower remarries and the couple move into the house he shared with his previous wife. Only the ghost of the last wife might still be hanging around.

Dead Men Walk

After being killed by his twin brother, Elwyn Clayton rises from the grave as a vampire intent on ruining his brother's life.

The Last Woman on Earth

No summary available.

To download the movies:

After you find the title you want, using the categories and the search windows at the top of the homepage, click on the blue link to the film you want (it will usually be the title). Then, at the left of the screen, select FTP. (This way, if the download is interrupted, it will resume downloading at the point of interruption.) Right-click the link to open it in another window. Then, select from among the file types. Mpg (not the .mpeg) file is usually best. Right-click the selected file and click "Save Target As." The file will automatically download, but you can specify the directory that you want it to be saved in (or just let the computer determine the directory). The "My Videos" folder in the "My Documents" directory is a reasonable choice. Then, pop some corn, grab a soda, and enjoy!

(You can also watch the movies, cartoons, etc. without downloading them, although the screen area is rather small and you need high-speed Internet capability.)

Free Horror Films, Part I

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The Internet Archive houses thousands of free items. They’re free because, their copyrights having expired, they’ve fallen into the public domain. Among the offerings are a number of classic horror films (descriptions are from the Internet Archives, where the authors are credited). (Click the movie's title to visit the Archive's download page.)

Night of the Living Dead

In this classic yet still creepy horror film, strangers hold up in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse and battle constant attacks from dead locals who have been brought back to life by mysterious radiation.

Nosferatu

F. W. Munarau's chilling and eerie adaption of Stoker's Dracula is a silent masterpiece of terror which to this day is the most striking and frightening portrayal of the legend.

The Last Man on Earth

Based on the chilling Richard Matheson science fiction Classic "I am Legend" [sic] and later remade as "The Omega Man" [sic] starring Charlton Heston. This classic features Vincent Price as scientist Robert Morgan in a post apocalyptic nightmare world. The world has been consumed by a ravenous plague that has transformed humanity into a race of bloodthirsty vampires. Only Morgan proves immune, and becomes the solitary vampire slayer.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

A man named Francis relates a story about his best friend Alan and his fiancée Jane. Alan takes him to a fair where they meet Dr. Caligari, who exhibits a somnambulist, Cesare, that can predict the future. When Alan asks how long he has to live, Cesare says he has until dawn.

The Phantom of the Opera

At the Opera of Paris, a mysterious phantom threatens a famous lyric singer, Carlotta and thus forces her to give up her role.

Lady Frankenstein

When Dr. Frankenstein is killed by a monster he created, his daughter and his lab assistant Marshall continue his experiments. The two fall in love and attempt to transplant Marshall's brain in to the muscular body of a retarded servant Stephen, in order to prolong the aging Marshall's life. Meanwhile, the first monster seeks revenge on the grave robbers who sold the body parts used in its creation to Dr. Frankenstein.

Carnival of Souls

Mary Henry is enjoying the day by riding around with two friends but everything goes wrong when challenged to a drag race and their car gets forced off of a bridge. The car sinks into the murky depths, and all three women are assumed drowned. Some time later Mary emerges unscathed from the river. She tries to start a new life by becoming a church organist but Mary finds herself haunted by a ghostly figure.

Bloody Pit of Horror

A group of models and cameramen go to a castle to shoot covers for horror novels where they're captured and tortured by the castle's owner, the Crimson Executioner.

The House on Haunted Hill

Vincent Price gives a stellar performance as the suavely malevolent host of a haunted house party" who offers his guests $10,000 if they can survive a night in the murderous mansion.

City of the Dead (Horror Hotel)

College student Nan Barlow visits the village of Whitewood as research for her paper on witchcraft in New England, particularly the case of Elizabeth Selwyn. Her tutor, Professor Alan Driscoll. . . , recommends the Raven's Inn, run by a Mrs. Newless. Rather unwisely, given the amount of low-hanging fog outside (and against the advice of Mrs. Newless), Nan takes an immediate interest in the basement.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die

See our commentary.

Blood Tide

James Earl Jones plays a treasure hunter who awakens a monster under a Greek island.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

A Fleet Street barber recounts the story of Sweeney Todd, a notorious barber who in the last century murdered many customers for their money.

The Wasp Woman

A beautiful woman by day - a lusting queen wasp by night.

Dementia 13

Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, this horror film depicts a strange family, complete with insanity and axe murders.

Teenagers from Outer Space

A young alien. . . falls for a pretty teenage Earth girl. . . and they team up to try to stop the plans of his invading cohorts.

Prehistoric Women

See the invention of fire! See the world's first swan dive! See the prehistoric beauties battle the giant caveman! See it all in the glory of beautiful Cinecolor!

Attack of the Killer Mushrooms

A masterpiece of Japanese [sic] cinema about an island, where the mushrooms are the rulers.

The Vampire Bat

The city of Kleinschloss is infected with a dark scourge from the past. A Legion of bloodsucking creatures who can assume human form have returned to prey upon the unsuspecting citizens. Detective Karl Brettschneider begins investigating numerous gory deaths at the request of the burgomaster. Despite the obvious evidence, he refuses to accept the existence of vampiric human bats, but soon their existence proves all too real.

Driller Killer

An artist slowly loses his mind as he and his two female friends scrape to pay the bills. The punk band downstairs increasingly agitates him, his art dealer is demanding that he complete his big canvas painting as promised, and he gets into fights with his girlfriends. When the dealer laughs at his canvas he snaps, and begins taking it out on the people responsible for his pain and random transients in the manner suggested by the title.

Atom Age Vampire

After a beauty is mangled in a car accident, a researcher uses a treatment he has created to restore her to her former self. However, the treatment comes with a high price.... This was originialy [sic] an Italian film titled "Seddok, l'erede di Satana" which was later dubbed into English and retitled "Atomic Age Vampire". [sic]

To download the movies:

After you find the title you want, using the categories and the search windows at the top of the homepage, click on the blue link to the film you want (it will usually be the title). Then, at the left of the screen, select FTP. (This way, if the download is interrupted, it will resume downloading at the point of interruption.) Right-click the link to open it in another window. Then, select from among the file types. Mpg (not the .mpeg) file is usually best. Right-click the selected file and click "Save Target As." The file will automatically download, but you can specify the directory that you want it to be saved in (or just let the computer determine the directory). The "My Videos" folder in the "My Documents" directory is a reasonable choice. Then, pop some corn, grab a soda, and enjoy!

(You can also watch the movies, cartoons, etc. without downloading them, although the screen area is rather small and you need high-speed Internet capability.)