"The Last Halloween":

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

The synopsis for The Last Halloween (2014), a short horror film based on the comic book of the same title by Mark Thibodeau, got me: “As they go from house to house, four young trick-or-treaters collect strange treats that could signal the end of Halloween.”

What are the “strange treats”? Why are they given? What do they signify? Why might they “signal the end of Halloween”?

We are introduced to the four trick-or-treaters, a ghost (Jake Goodman), a witch (Zoe Fraser), the Grim Reaper (Drew Davis), and the devil (Brebdan Heard), as they visit the first of the three houses shown in the short.

A knock at the front door of the first house summons a woman in a pink knit cap (Angela Besharah). Without disengaging the chain-lock, she opens her door a crack, peering warily through the gap. “Wait here,” she orders, returning a moment later with the child's “treat”: a can of pet food. “You be careful out there,” the woman cautions her visitor. The ghost accepts the item without protest, and the group of children move on.

At this point, there is only a few hints that something is wrong: the woman's odd behavior, her strange “treat,” and the cheapness of the ghost's costume—a dirty sheet.

Other clues emerge as the film progresses. There are no streetlights. The next house the children visit, a dark, boarded-up ramshackle affair, looks abandoned. Why would the trick-or-treaters waste their time stopping at such a house? Perhaps they are about to play a “trick”?

Only two of the children, Sam the devil and Janet the witch, appear bold enough to knock at the door; both the ghost and the Grim Reaper wait on the sidewalk in front of the property. The face of the homeowner (Julian Richings), a man with pustules on his face, appears in a gap between planks covering the doorway. “Aren't you a little late to be out this young?” he asks, his inverted syntax another clue, as is the condition of his residence, that all is not well in the suburbs. “Especially with the—” he breaks off his thought, gesturing instead, and disappears inside his house, saying he will see what he can find.

Returning, he admits, “It's not much, I'm afraid,” and drops a plastic bat into the devil's plastic pail. Once again, the offering is accepted without complaint. The man tells Sam that he should “manage more than anyone,” since he is “the devil. Lucifer, Beelzebub, The Horned One.” He cackles as his visitors depart.

The adults whom the children visit seem increasingly disturbed. The woman appeared wary, if not paranoid, and her “treat,” a can of pet food, is bizarre, to say the least. However, she is dressed in ordinary attire, the lights are on in her house, and the house itself appears to be in good repair. She is concerned about the children's safety, bidding them to “be careful.”

The second adult has suffered physical harm, and he seems much less mentally stable than the woman. He lives in an abandoned, boarded-up house, without lights, and offers a plastic bat as a “treat.” His speech includes inverted syntax. He alludes to some mysterious incident, and seems to mistake Sam for the actual devil, calling him “Lucifer.” “Beelzebub,” and “The Horned One.”

However, something is off about the children as well. They are not disturbed by the bizarre “treats” they are given, and they are not afraid of visiting a dark, boarded-up, seemingly abandoned house. They accept the odd behavior of the adults as though neither the adults' odd conduct nor their strange gifts are all that unusual.

The third scene is the longest and most detailed. This time, the trick-or-treaters, passing a sign labeled “EVACUATION ZONE,” visit a house behind a tall wrought-iron fence. A bank of floodlights illuminates as their approach to the property activates a motion sensor.

On the wall above a fireplace, rifles are mounted. A fire burns in the fireplace. A made-up cot stands before the fireplace. A man observes images of the children that are delivered to his computer through a closed-circuit television camera. Outside, his own image appears on a monitor, as he tells the children to “go away.” One of the children, her image appearing on his own monitor, responds, “trick or treat.”

A young woman inside the house looks at a bassinet; it is empty except for a teddy bear. The man tells his visitors to leave, warning them that “bad things happen to trespassers.” The woman inside the house looks down, from a second-story, through a lattice of boards; outside, the trick-or-treaters see her watching them. Downstairs, the man, armed, now, with a rifle, calls to the woman, “Kate! Get down here!”

 
The children have not left; they continue to cry “trick or treat,” and the man continues to tell them to leave. Carrying a lantern and coughing into a handkerchief, the woman descends a flight of stairs; calling the man “Jack,” she says that maybe they should admit the children, as they could need help or might be hungry. Watching the monitor, he sees the children depart and tells the woman, Kate (Emily Alatalo), his wife, that they seem to be leaving. She coughs more, showing her husband the bruise on her neck.

Jack (Ron Basch) says they can't take any more chances, as it is not safe to “open the door to anyone anymore.” He argues, further, that the kids “could be infected” or “crazy,” pointing out that “they think it's Halloween.” Kate's reply, “I think it is Halloween,” suggests that it may be either Jake and the kids or Kate who is deluded. Kate, showing Jack the bruise on her neck, implies that nothing can protect them.

Jake checks the monitor; when he turns around, Kate is gone. The front door slams. The ghost trick-or-treater appears in the room, behind Jack. Arming himself with his rifle, which he had set aside, Jack demands to know what the ghost has done with his wife. When the child does not answer, Jack tells him to take food and leave, but the ghost says, “It's too late, Jaaaccckkk.”

Approaching the trick-or-treater, Jack pulls the sheet off the child, only to discover that, beneath it, is an actual ghost (Ali Adatia). The other children, now adults, appear, repeating, “It's too late, Jack.” The child in the devil costume becomes an actual devil (Adrian G. Griffiths), and the other two trick-or-treaters also transform into the figures represented by their respective costumes, those of the Grim Reaper (Alastair Forbes) and the witch (Kristina Uranowski).

As they surround him, the front door opens, and Jack sees Kate, kneeling on the porch. After a moment, she vanishes, Surrounding him, the monsters move in on him, and the Grim Reaper embraces him. “Happy Halloween,” it says.

The children leave the house, in their original costumes, as fires burn in the windows. After one of the fires in an upstairs window explodes, the camera pans up, showing that other houses, for miles around, are also on fire, as are high-rise buildings in the city beyond.

This short does a good job of introducing bizarre elements that become explicable over a period of time, as details accumulate which, when combined, provide a context for interpreting the whole situation of which the individual elements are each but a part. In other words, the introductions of these details are like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle (the film as a whole) that the audience (following the lead of director Marc Roussel) put together, incident by incident, until the whole picture is discernible and intelligible as a unified and coherent whole.

This initially piecemeal delivery of specific, isolated details also heightens the horrific tone of the film, its mystery, and its suspense. Each incident is disquieting in itself: the wary woman, the madman, and the housebound survivalist are each, in their own ways, disturbing.

As we move from house to house, the domiciles become worse and worse, as do the inhabitants. What appears abnormal (canned pet food for a Halloween “treat,” inverted syntax and facial injuries, a dead or abducted baby, and a young wife wasting away of some disease while her husband and protector slowly loses contact with reality) seems, in the world of the film, to be normal, while that which is normal (trick-or-treating, wearing traditional Halloween costumes, visiting neighborhood houses on Halloween) appears, increasingly, to be abnormal.

The world is upside-down and inside-out, and it's every man, woman, and child for him- or herself. At first, we have no idea what has happened to the suburbanites the children visit. Then, a clue: the “EVACUATION ZONE” sign. There has been an evacuation. Apparently, for whatever reason, the residents who remain in the suburbs have been left behind. Now, they are facing the consequences: paranoia, madness, self-isolation, distrust of others, sickness, and death.

The parallels to the coronoavirus pandemic are striking, although unintended. (The film was released in 2014; the pandemic began in 2020). Neighbors isolate themselves from everyone else, staying in their homes. They are wary, even paranoid. One couple takes extreme measures, hoarding food and taking refuge in their home. 

Not everyone survives: the bassinet is empty, as are many of the houses in the neighborhood. Food seems to be in short supply: the kids' “treats” include canned pet food and a plastic bat. The crisis is not local; it affects other communities, including at least one nearby city, and there has been an organized evacuation of the affected areas. These similarities, of course, make the short even eerier and more disturbing, even if they have no direct relationship to the coronaviruss pandemic.

Just as the coronavirus has brought out the worst in some people—those who hoard essential supplies, engage in price gouging, spit on produce, ignore government directives for minimizing health risks, boast of their luxurious accommodations, and complain about minor inconveniences—the catastrophe that has befallen the communities in The Last Halloween brings out the worst in some of the movie's cast of characters. Jack refuses to open his door to the trick-or-treaters, refuses to help them, refuses to share his horde of food with them, is prepared to kill them. 

The children themselves are transformed into monsters. They are unforgiving toward Jack. They have laid waste to the neighborhood and, the end of the film suggests, to others communities as well. Under the right—or the wrong—circumstances, anyone, the movie implies, could be a Jack, a ghost, a Grim Reaper, a witch, or a devil.

On a positive note, however, it is possible, also, to be generous, even if wary: the woman who gives the ghost a can of her pet food offers something from her larder that she could have eaten herself. The type of the item—pet food—suggests the desperation in which she finds herself: she is so hungry and so low on food supplies that she is willing to eat pet food. Despite such extremity, she is, nevertheless, willing to share what she can. Her act of self-sacrifice, although bizarre, is also heroic. She represents the opposite extreme of Jack, the alternative to his self-centeredness, which excludes any others, except his wife, whom, ironically, he is unable to save.

Supernatural Means of Inducing Impotence: A Study in the Human Imagination Inspired by Fear

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Assisted by demons and by magic, witches could perform wonders. They often produced such marvelous feats as changing women into men, although, it was said, they were unable to do the opposite, transforming men into women, because, as R. E. L. Masters observes in Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, “it is the method of nature to add rather than to take away” (128). Apparently, although demons are, by nature, supernatural, their powers are, nevertheless, constrained by the “methods” of nature.

According to Masters, witches frequently practiced “ligature or the production of impotence by magical means” (128-129). They used various means. They might make a woman appear so repulsive that her looks would quench her man's desire (129). (Think of the bathtub scene in The Shining.) More often, witches and demons left men's libido unchanged, so that their victims could the more greatly suffer, being unable to satisfy their lusts (130).

Demons could also prevent intercourse by placing themselves between a couple, thereby preventing any physical contact between the man and the woman; could “freeze” lust; and could either cause the penis to remain flaccid or to be unable to “perform” in its erect state, “closing . . . the seminary ducts” (131).

Another tactic available to demons and their witches was said to be the theft of the male genitals themselves, either actually or by means of inducing an illusion to this effect, although this method was hotly debated (131-132). Masters declares that he has tried, with some success, to reproduce the illusion through hypnosis: “I have so managed that the subject could neither see nor feel his sex organ” (132).

As an alternative to blocking the seminal ducts, demons and witches could desensitize the penile nerves, making the organ incapable of assuming its erect state; could cause the semen “to congeal and become hard as rock, so that it could not flow out of his urethra”; shrink the organ “to a mere shriveled shred of flesh”; close the vagina to prevent the introduction of the penis; or cause the penis to retract into the man's abdomen (134).

One of the chief means of inducing impotence in human males was the “tying [of ] a knot in a cord . . . . and there were at least half a hundred different knots, each inflicting a different degree or form of impotence or frigidity,” permanent or temporary in its duration(135).

The same ingenuity of imagination that devised this array of magical means for inducing impotence also suggested a variety of cures. God Himself might intervene on behalf of the impotent man or the frigid woman; magic spells might be reversed through “confession,” remorse, making “the sign of the cross, humility, meditation, and a pilgrimage to a holy and venerable shrine; or, by urinating through her wedding ring, a wife might “undo the ligature” (136).

Witches might also provide methods of preventing such curses. Using “pagan amulets and charms” might do (that is, undo) the trick, and there were several from which to choose, including “phallic symbols” (an “upright knife and broomstick”); “bisexual symbols” (“a horse's skull, a goblin's foot and a pentagram”); or “vulva symbols” (“horseshoes and hag stones, or rocks with holes bored through them” (136). “A love potion or philtre” might overcome impotence or frigidity, or a witch might “restore” an impotent man's manhood after he agreed to “copulate with her.”

There was a limit to the powers of demons and witches to impose impotence and frigidity, however, set by God Himself, according to Johann Klein, and a reason for this limitation. As Masters summarizes the divine motive: “God in all his divine love and mercy would never allow such universal impotence or permit his beloved children to perish by so odious a means” (137).

This chapter, “Sexual magic,” of Masters's intriguing book shows, once again, how inventive the human imagination can become when a woman is threatened with or (monstrously, to be sure) subjected to torture until she “confesses” what her tormentors want to hear and the sexual repression of both the victims and the victimizers seek release through any means possible.

Certainly, no writer would or should subject him- or herself to such extremes, but imagining that the same fate could await one as thousands of women (and a relatively few men) suffered at the hands of the Inquisition during the Middle Ages could produce similarly imaginative and horrific “accounts” of supernatural activity, whether related to human sexuality, psychopathology, or some other sphere of human experience as it is represented in fantastic fiction, including the horror genre, which, unfortunately, is too often rife with “torture porn” misogyny, and sadomasochism.

The threat and fear of imminent death seems to have been a strong muse, indeed, for both women accused of witchcraft and for Scheherazade, the author of The One Thousand and One Nights.

"Eros and Evil": A Review of Medieval Beliefs about the Sex Lives of Witches and Demons

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 In Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, R. E. L. Masters supplies a focused historical account of what he describes as "the sex lore of witchcraft" (146). Such lore, he declares, contains "all the elements usually found in the pornographic and obscene work of literature" (147). The topics that Masters covers in his intriguing, frequently shocking, book testify to the accuracy of his assertion.

Detail of a drawing by Mark Blanton

Without going into detail, the first part of the 322-page volume reviews, among other topics, "the origins of incubi and succubi," demons who have sex with women and men, respectively; "the anatomy of the devil" and "the semen of the demon," which indicate that both demon penises and semen have decidedly strange, sometimes contradictory, properties; "offspring of demonality," among whom, Masters, naming names, reports, are included Plato, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne's daughter, and Martin Luther. Other topics are just as interesting--and bizarre.

The second part of the book seeks explanations for the strange beliefs about and the alleged practices of medieval witches and demons. Masters suggests that alcohol and drugs, blind faith, delusion, hallucinations, mass hysteria, mental illness, sexual repression, and superstition—and the torture inflicted upon suspected witches by members of the Inquisition—can account for these phenomena. Witches and demons need not apply. (Possibly, he should have included politics as well.)

Published in 1962, the psychological sources the author taps may be outdated, as are some of the concepts associated with that field of human endeavor; however, in general, his explanations as to the possible causes of the "witch craze" are, for the most part, credible and convincing, and Eros and Evil makes very interesting reading.

Detail of a drawing by Javier Gil

The book also gives readers and writers of supernatural horror a glimpse into the mad, mad world of the medieval mindset. It was (and is), in many ways, an unfamiliar, fantastic world in which witches and demons not only copulate and otherwise engage in a variety of sexual acts, many of which would at the time have been considered unnatural, perverse, and sinful, but the volume also acquaints its readers with such particulars as the anatomical nature of the damned and the ingenious solutions they developed to such problems as how to obtain and deposit semen (since, according to some theologians, demons could not supply this substance themselves). Such details can fire the imagination of writers of supernatural fiction.

 
Whether Ira Levin read Eros and Evil before he wrote Rosemary's Baby is unknown, to me, at least, but Masters's book would definitely have been a great resource for Levin's novel. It would be an equally invaluable source for other writers who want to be accurate as well as lascivious in describing the sex lives of witches and demons. It would also be a good read for artists who depict such shenanigans in illustrations, paintings, sculptures, or other visual or plastic media. For those who are interested in such art, Mark Blanton and Javier Gil are highly recommended (but be forewarned: their art is both "demonic" and lascivious!)

The Etymology of Horror

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

The Online Etymology Dictionary is not only interesting in itself, but it is also a reminder of the beliefs, attitudes, and, yes, fears (among other influences) that inspire words associated with language and, in the case of the topic for this post, horror.

 

“Troll,” for example, originally alluded to a “supernatural being in Scandinavian mythology and folklore and derived from the Old Norse troll, referring to a “giant being not of the human race, evil spirit, monster.” Its first recorded use, the Online Etymology Dictionary states, was in a court document concerning a case associated with witchcraft and sorcery. Allegedly, “a certain [witch named] Catherine” witnessed trolls rise from a churchyard in Hildiswick.” First conceived as giants, they were later believed to be “dwarfs and imps supposed to live in caves or under the ground.” Moreover, these formerly fierce beings became “obliging and neighbourly; freely lending and borrowing, and elsewise keeping up a friendly intercourse with mankind,” their thieving ways notwithstanding.

The dictionary's entry concerning the werewolf indicates that belief in these creatures, as people “'with the power to turn into a wolf' . . . . was widespread in the Middle Ages.” Apparently, it was also widely believed in Persia, where present-day Iran's ancestors named the October Varkazana, or the month of the “Wolf-Men.” 

Teratology, once the study of monsters, is now the study of physical abnormalities, such as those resulting from birth defects and “reproductive and developmentally-mediated disorders.” Its previous subject matter provides some interesting and, indeed, surprising insights into the origin of the concept of the monster as a horrific figure. Originally, a monster was an omen, sent by God to warn humanity (or a nation) of his displeasure; if the people didn't repent of their wickedness, God would follow his warning with punishment. Thus, for example, a pair of conjoined twins or a hermaphrodite would be taken as an admonitory message to be ignored at a people's own peril. As the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for this term reads, in part, “monster” derives from “Latin monstrum,” referring to a 'divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign; abnormal shape; monster, monstrosity,' [and means a] figuratively 'repulsive character, object of dread, awful deed, [or] abomination.'” Writers and readers of contemporary horror fiction might do well to keep this history of the word's meaning in mind the next time they take up a copy of Frankenstein or The Island of Dr. Moreau. Couldn't the scientists' monsters have been warnings sent by God, through the labors of Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau?

The lamia first seems to have been envisioned as a mermaid-vampire hybrid, but was later envisioned as a half-woman, half-serpent vampiric creature. Interestingly, the transformation of the lamia from mermaid to serpent-woman might have been suggested by the word lamia's association with “swallowing,” just as her erotic charm might have been suggested by the word's original link to lechery and her sorcery to the term's original connection to sorcery: “female demon, late 14c., from Latin lamia [meaning] 'witch, sorceress, vampire,' from Greek lamia [meaning] 'female vampire, man-eating monster,' literally 'swallower, lecher,' from laimos 'throat, gullet.'” The snake-like form of the lamia might have been based upon the idea that she was something of a personified gullet, since a snake has such a form.

Alluring, the lamia enthralled men with her charms (and, perhaps, with a bit of witchery, but, when her beauty and magic were no longer strong enough an attraction, she would kill and devour him, as the following passage suggests:

Also kynde erreþ in som beestes wondirliche j-schape, as it fareþ in a beest þat hatte lamia, þat haþ an heed as a mayde & body as a grym fissche[;] whan þat best lamya may fynde ony man, first a flatereþ wiþ hym with a wommannes face and makeþ hym ligge by here while he may dure, & whanne he may noferþere suffice to here lecherye þanne he rendeþ hym and sleþ and eteþ hym. [Bartholomew Glanville, c. 1360, "De proprietatibus rerum," translated by John of Trevisa]

Translation: An error among some kinds of animals sometimes results in a wondrous shape, such as that of the lamia, which has a woman's head and the body of a horrible fish. When a lamia finds a man, it flatters him with its beauty and makes him linger beside her until her charms no longer enthrall him, whereupon she slays and eats him. [Bartholomew Glanville, c. 1360, the Property of Things, translated by John of Trevisa]

Many other words associated with horror fiction also have interesting origins and histories, some of which could suggest new takes on old topics or altogether new approaches to such fiction.

From Poster to Prologue to Sale?

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

I'm browsing horror movie posters again. This time, I'm checking out erotic horror movie posters. There are strong parallels between erotica and horror, after all, so movie posters that advertise a cross between the two are apt to be doubly erotic or horrific or both. That, at least, is my hypothesis.

But I'm also looking for originality, so if there are more than a couple erotic movie posters concerning the same theme—vampires, werewolves, or witches, say—I eliminate those based on this theme. Thus, the poster for Vampire Lesbos, which features a beautiful, topless brunette vampire drinking what appears to be a wineglass of blood, as her largely unseen lover embraces her from behind, ends up, as it were, on the cutting-room floor; so does An Erotic Werewolf in London, whose fanged female rips away her own blouse as she begins to undergo her transformation from woman into wolf.

One of the posters that remain is that for the movie Cadaver. The poster shows a nude female body being sliced, or mutilated, by a scalpel in the gloved hand of someone (presumably, a medical examiner). The surgical knife, instead of making the “Y” incision characteristic of autopsies, cuts through the front of the woman's right breast and down the same side of her abdomen.

Blood, rising from the wound, suggests she isn't dead, after all, because, of course, cadavers don't bleed. She's a victim, it seems, rather than a dead body.

Her ordeal begs the question, Why is she being treated in this manner? Is she being tortured? Did the medical examiner (if he is a medical examiner) mistake a condition or conditions which may mimic death—catatonia, perhaps, coupled with paralysis—for her apparent absence of life? The text, which frequently unlocks the implications of the images on movie posters is, this time, of no help: “The anatomy of evil, the pathology of curse.” The film itself provides an explanation for the bleeding body that potential moviegoers aren't apt to guess.

The movie poster for Hostel: Part II (2007) seems to have been inspired by Washington Irving's short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Instead of a headless horseman, though, the poster features the body of an apparently decapitated nude woman, shown from neck to knees, holding what seems to be her own head, the eyes of which are turned up, showing white, and the tongue of which lolls between its parted lips.

Hostel: Part II is nothing like the legend of the headless horseman, in either its American version (Irving's version) or any of its medieval variants. However, the apparent allusion to Irving's story (or, perhaps, more generally, to the legend of the headless horseman per se) may yet be intentional, a red herring, as it were, to imply a reference that doesn't exist and a context irrelevant to the movie's actual storyline. By suggesting parallels where there are none, the advertisers of the film may have intentionally misled potential viewers, the better to intrigue them while, at the same time, preventing them from guessing the movie's plot.

The Maniac (1980) movie poster shows what, at first glance, seems to be a naked young woman wearing a veil. She is beautiful of face and attractive in “all the right places,” as the euphemistic phrase states.

However, as one begins to look closer, it's clear that what seem to be the straps of a transparent bra and the lines of sheer panties are actually seams, and the blue-eyed blonde's staring, vacant gaze suggests there's nothing human behind her stare. She is, in fact, a mannequin—a mannequin that bleeds, for blood appears at her hairline and streams down her brow and the side of her face. (I must admit, I saw these details only after taking in other of the mannequin's features.) The smooth contours of her body, like her erect posture and her empty, glazed look make it clear she's a mannequin, which makes her bleeding all the eerier.

The movie's plot clears up the mystery of the bleeding mannequin, and the explanation actually makes sense, in its own twisted way: the “maniac” implied by the movie's title is a particular type of madman, a man with a fetish for agalmatophilia, like Pygmalion.

By searching for erotic movie posters that don't depend on cliched themes, such as Vampirism, lycanthropy, and witchcraft, one is apt to find more unusual and creative possibilities for accounting for a story's erotic character or, at the very least, as in Cadaver, an innovative use of a rite theme.

But there's another use to which such approaches can be put in a horror novel (or film). A prologue or the opening scene of the story proper, can describe such a situation as a movie poster such as the one's we've considered, without presenting the explanation for its bizarre nature (or with an implied explanation which turns out, for a believable reason, to be false), thereby, like a movie poster or a movie trailer, hooking readers with the mystery of the horror and making them want to read on, even if it makes them buy the book. By the same token, such an approach might hook an editor, making him or her decide to commit to the purchase of the author's rights to his or her story.

What's So Monstrous About Monsters?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

What makes a creature monstrous?

That's a question with which artists and writers) have contended for centuries. As a result, there are quite a few visions, visual and literary, of the monstrous. In this post, we'll consider a few examples of the former, as we examine a few ancient, medieval, and modern examples of monsters, as artists have envisioned them.

Since ancient times, the unknown has been one source of the idea of the monstrous. Many of these monsters, the likenesses of which are passed down to us in pictures, sculptures, and poetry, from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere, are hybrids, mixing characteristics of both human beings and the so-called lower animals. Included among these creatures are such monsters as centaurs, hermaphrodites, lamia, minotaurs, and sirens, to mention but a few.

Other monsters are of gigantic scale, are missing an organ, an appendage, or another feature: the cyclops is a prime example, both of a gargantuan figure and of one who is missing an organ, having, as he or she does, only one eye. Another well-known specimen is the monopod, which was also known as the sciapod, skiapod, or skiapode, who appear in Aristophanes's The Birds (414 BC), in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (79), and St. Augustine's City of God (426).

In a few monsters, traits or organs were multiplied. Cerberus had three heads; hydra, many.

Often, ancient monsters inhabited remote places. The fact that they lived far away made an encounter with one of them unlikely, because long-distance travel was rare for ordinary people, except, in some cases, soldiers. For the same reason, oceans were often represented the homes of mysterious creatures, many of whom were of gigantic size and strange appearance. Examples include the the biblical Behemoth, the Norse Midgard Serpent, and Scylla and Charybdis.

Our brief survey of ancient monsters suggests many often exhibit these one or more of these characteristics:

• Mix human and animal characteristics
• Are gigantic in size
• Are missing one or more organs or traits
• Have one or more extra organs or traits
• Reside in distant locations

In Judaism and, later, in Christianity, monsters were no longer simply natural phenomena; they were created by God, for divine purposes. For example, hermaphrodites were tokens of his wrath; their births were warnings of God's fury concerning the conduct of particular communities and of the divine punishment that would occur if such behavior continued. Likewise, the gods of earlier religions were subsumed by Christianity, pagan deities becoming demons in Christian theology.

Throughout the Middle Ages, many monsters were drawn from the same sources: ancient and Christian accounts of these fascinating, terrible creatures, although, now, all familiar monsters were interpreted from the Christian perspective, with pagan monsters assuming demonic significance.

New additions to the ranks of the monstrous came from travels abroad or from pagan European tribes, before their conversions to the Christian faith. Of course, Christianity also supplied several monsters of its own, most significantly, Satan and the Antichrist.

Once Christianity became the religion of most, if not all, of the Western world, it united peoples from various tribes and cultures, becoming the unum round which e pluribus found its center. As polytheism gave way to monotheism and pagan faiths were replaced by one catholic, or universal faith (at least as the Western world is concerned), ideas about the nature of the monstrous changed, even as they merged under the authority and direction of Christian belief, authority, doctrine, and practice. Satan, demons, witches and sorcerers, heretics, and others who became victims of the Inquisition were the new monsters, common to all.

In modern times, the monstrous, as a concept, has taken on psychological significance, as the demons of hell become inner, or personal, demons, which is to say, personifications of individual human beings' unbridled impulses and animal instincts: aggression, lust, and the like. Especially in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the monstrous becomes primarily psychological, rather than cultural or theological per se. Alongside ancient and medieval monsters, we now have the narrator-protagonist of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the vengeance-minded jester of “Hop-Frog,” and the obsessive-compulsive protagonist of “Berenice.”

Monsters are of only two origins: natural or supernatural. (“Paranormal” is merely a term designating natural phenomena which are, as yet, scientifically inexplicable, and psychological monsters, like extraterrestrial monstrosities, are of natural origin.)

But what makes monsters monstrous?

There are a number of theories. Some say monsters are monstrous because they represent actual, existential threats. The werewolf, for example, symbolizes the beast within the human; the madman a person whose behavior is unrestrained by reason. Such monsters are the bane of the rationalist's existence (and aren't we all, at least occasionally, rationalists?) They suggest the Enlightenment, though it undoubtedly happened, might have occurred in vain.

Others contend that monsters are monstrous because they suggest the threat of the unknown and, perhaps, the unfathomable. According to this view, monsters are only monstrous as long as they origin or nature remains unknown. Once the nature of the creature in Ambrose Bierce's “The Damned Thing” is understood (it is of a color outside the range of human perception and, therefore, invisible), it is no longer monstrous (although it remains both terrible and dangerous). Such monsters are epistemological threats or, at least, insecurities. If knowledge is power, ignorance is impotence (and, often, impotence is helplessness).

Monsters who occupy a rung higher in The Great Chain of Being than our own rung on the celestial ladder are theological threats. God defeated Satan, casting him and his followers out of heaven, but, even if we are created in God's image, we don't have his omnipotence; our fight with the devil or with demons, as both The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose show us, is not an even match, nor is it one that we, by ourselves, without divine aid, are able to win.

Christianity, it seems, is in abeyance; its influence over the multitudes of the western world appears to have diminished. As a result, paganism has resurfaced, and with it, the old monsters are, once again, venturing out of the darkness to which they were banished by reason and faith, as the current popularity of vampires, witches, demons, and other such ancient monsters attests. Side by side with them, though, the monsters of Christian faith continue to exist. The psychological monster, the madman, in his (or her) various guises, including those of the serial killer (Ben Willis, of I Know What You Did Last Summer), the sadistic sociopath (Jigsaw, of the Saw franchise), the psychotic murderer (Norman Bates, of Psycho), the mad scientist (Dr. Moreau, of The Island of Dr. Moreau), and the overzealous fan (Annie Wilkes, of Misery) has, more recently, joined them.

What monsters might the future spawn? What fears will they embody? What means shall overcome them? These, alas, are questions only time will answer, if they turn out to be answerable at all.

Breasts as Emblems of Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Bare breasts are big in horror movies, which begs the question: what's so horrific about mammary glands? 

Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) devotes several pages to listing “Most Popular 'female-frontal-nudity,' Horror Feature Films.” There are a lot of them on the list: 665, in fact, to date. Perhaps these films may indicate why filmmakers consider women's breasts terrifying enough to feature prominently in the movies they make, if the exhibition of breasts is not merely gratuitous—in other words, presented only to sell tickets.

In TheShining, Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer who is earning money by taking care of a vast hotel that's closed for the off-season, sees a naked succubus. The female sex demon appears to be a beautiful young woman, but she soon reveals her true self, taking on her actual appearance as a withered old crone. Is Jack hallucinating, or has the succubus actually transformed, shedding her youth and beauty? Does her change in appearance have a psychological or a supernatural cause? In the words of Tzvetan Todorov, is she, respectively, a specimen of the uncanny or the marvelous?

In a sense, the succubus embodies the crux of the matter investigated by Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's novel. The producer believed in the possibility of the survival of death. His succubus suggests this state of existence in the presence of the sex demon. However, Kubrick leaves room for a psychological explanation of the female sex demon: maybe Jack is psychotic and she's merely an hallucination. Since the succubus can be understood in either natural or supernatural terms, depending on one's world view, her presence in the film is not gratuitous, but symbolic and thematic.

But what about her nudity? Must she be naked? Again, the answer to this question will be determined by the individual viewer's view of the nature of ultimate reality. If she is regarded as being of a supernatural origin, her nudity is not gratuitous, for it accords with the legend of the succubus, a female sex demon who invariably appears in the altogether as a temptress intent upon collecting human semen. Once successful, according to some stories, she assumes the form of a male sex demon, the incubus, appearing to women, usually during their sleep, to seduce and inseminate them—with the demon (or female sex demon) collected from human males in his (or her) previous incarnations as a succubus. (Demon sex is more complicated than we might have imagined.)

If she is a succubus, though, it is difficult to imagine why she gives herself away by transforming her appearance as a beautiful young woman into a shape that's not merely undesirable, but repulsive. As a succubus, she would be intent upon collecting Jack's seed in order to inseminate a woman. Assuming the appearance of someone who's undesirable doesn't help her to achieve her goals.

Perhaps, then, the succubus isn't a sex female demon, after all, except in Jack's own tormented mind. She is his version of a succubus, a demonic Galatea fashioned in his own image of a desirable woman. As such, she is far from the reality of womanhood embodied by his wife, Wendy, who is portrayed by Shelley Duvall, the same actress who played Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams's Popeye. Wendy is not undesirable as a woman—Jack married her and fathered a son by her, after all—but, in Jack's twisted mind, if the succubus is a hallucination, Wendy (and all women) becomes so: her transformation isn't real, but a projection of Jack's own thoughts about women, Wendy, perhaps, in particular. Seductive one moment, women can transform themselves (or be transformed by Jack's fears of women) into repulsive monsters—or female sex demon—the next instant. Woman, Jack's ambiguous thoughts about the opposite sex seem to suggest, thy name is mutability.

The scene in which the succubus makes her appearance suggests Jack's ambiguity concerning women, female nudity, and sex. His hand appears from the left, as he slowly opens a bathroom door. The slowness with which Jack opens the door highlights the moment, dramatizing the revelation that is now at hand. This slow movement, like the lighting during the first half of the scene, gives an ethereal quality to the picture, emphasizing the ideal way in which Jack views the nubile young woman.

As the door opens, Jack sees a bathtub and a half-drawn shower curtain. The tub occupies an arched niche at the rear of the bathroom, which, with the shower curtain, gives the alcove the appearance of being a theater, if not, indeed, an altar. Jack has entered a forbidden (or sacred) zone, symbolized by the closed, if not locked, door. He is about to see something half-hidden from his consciousness, as the half-drawn shower curtain suggests. His staring eyes and a close-up shot of his throat as he gulps, his Adam's apple rising and falling, shows his anxiety. The half-drawn shower curtain opens, as a beautiful young nude woman draws it aside. She is wet (with Freudian significance and otherwise), as her breasts are revealed. Again, the slowness with which the curtain is drawn aside focuses viewers on the revelatory aspect of the moment.

Jack's expression changes from one of anxiety to one of enchanted. He smiles, Slowly, the woman rises. Jack's look of enchantment. changes to one of lust, as his gaze intensifies, Slowly, the woman steps out of the tub, one long leg advancing, the other, just as slowly, following. Jack's gaze is riveted. His smile broadens. The seductive woman advances, her gait slow, measured, as if she is walking in tandem with the wedding march. Her gaze is locked on Jack. Returning her stare, he seems transfixed, but then he walks, slowly, to meet her, as the camera turns slightly to view her from a three-quarters angle. Her breasts and pubes seem to fill the screen, as they do Jack's consciousness.

As they face one another, staring into one another's eyes, the woman's fingertips make contact with Jack's abdomen, gliding upward, across his chest. Her movement, as has been typical throughout the scene, is slow and deliberate. Her hands continue to glide, over Jack's shoulders and around his neck. He has not moved, but stands as if he were a statue. Then, he responds, encircling her waist with his hand. She turns this way and that, offering viewers a glimpse of her buttocks, before she kisses Jack, who now fully embraces her. Jack's eyes close. Theirs is a long kiss, an extended kiss, a passionate kiss.

Jack opens his eyes. They widen, as he sees something over her shoulder. The camera shares his view, in a mirror on the wall behind him: the body of the woman he holds in his arms, as revealed in the looking-glass, is scarred. Her upper left arm, her lower back, and her right buttock are marred by massive discolorations and hideous blemishes. Astonished and horrified, Jack begins to back away from the transformed woman.

For a moment, his shaken son Danny's discovery of a dead older woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, scabrous discolorations and blotches on her body, is interspersed.

Jack continues to retreat, his head shaking, just as Danny's head shook when he saw the drowned, older woman's corpse. As he backs through the doorway, the portal of revelation, the hideous crone follows, her arms parted, as if to embrace Jack.

The scene is interrupted again by Danny's sight of the drowned woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, her body displaying terrible scars and bruises.

Jack retreats down the steps, into the suite's living room, followed by the succubus.

Danny trembles, uncontrollably, as the dead woman's body sits up.

Outside the suite, Jack locks the door to the rooms, leaving the key in the lock, as he staggers backwards, down the hall, away from the rooms,leaving the scene of the revelation behind.

It seems apparent that the nude woman whom Jack encountered is the same one Danny encountered, but Jack saw the woman in her beautiful and desirable guise, whereas Danny saw her as an apparition of a drowned, older woman. For Jack, the woman was a female demon; for Danny, a ghost. Danny is too young to conceptualize women sexually; Jack is not. Therein lies the differences in their conscious understanding and their unconscious depictions of the opposite sex. Danny can see a woman in her physical aspect as a body which, despite the presence of breasts and genitalia, is primarily, or even exclusively, merely anatomical. Jack can see a woman as both physical and sexual, and it is to the latter image that he is anxious, while, at the same time, himself sexually responsive.

Essentially, Danny is frightened of death, a it is represented by the female corpse he encounters, whereas Jack is terrified of something other than death. Jack is horrified by female sexuality itself, which is alive with beauty and sex appeal, but, at the same time, diseased and repulsive because capable of transforming in various ways. A woman can become pregnant, deliver a baby, suckle an infant, and age. She seems to be in transition, as she undergoes transformations throughout her life. She is manifold in function and in appearance, seemingly unstable and mutable—in a word, from Jack's point of view, monstrous and demonic.

His encounter with the beautiful nude young woman shows Jack's feelings about women as desirable, but his attraction to them, as they are represented in particular by his wife Wendy, is contradicted by his revulsion of them. He seems to think that, beneath their apparent glamour, they are diseased and hideous.

The sexist dichotomy of women which separates them into virtuous and charming companions versus untrustworthy sluts is alive and well in Jack's subconscious mind. In the hotel, whether through supernatural or psychological influences, this unconscious view of women become conscious, at least until the locks the succubus in the hotel suite (his unconscious mind) by repressing the knowledge, which he finds too threatening to embrace, or accept. Therefore, his view of women, and of Wendy in particular, remains dualistic. At the same time, he sees them as beautiful and desirable, seductive temptresses and as hideous and unwelcome, destructive female sex demons.

In The Shining, as symbols of femininity, of female sexuality, of pregnancy, and of motherhood, breasts, as synecdoches of womanhood, are horrific for Jack because he is unable to come to terms with women as they are in themselves. Women are too complex for him, too changeable, too mysterious, too other. He can conceive of them only as beautiful seductresses or as monstrous female sex demons. Despite his marriage to Wendy, he is unable to view women, including his wife, as they are in and of themselves, as human beings, complex and, yes, in the final analysis, mysterious, as all life is ultimately mysterious.

For viewers, watching the movie through more objective eyes, Jack's behavior, stemming, as it does from his beliefs, is insane. However, from his own point of view, his delusions and hallucinations are real. From his perspective, he sees things as they are. When he acts upon his own understanding of reality, horror results. It is this horror, resulting from his monstrous ideas of women, his wife included, that the true horror of Kubrick's film arises.

Of course, plenty of other horror movies feature breasts as symbols of the particular horrors with which they are concerned. While such horror, in general, centers upon women, who sport these accouterments of femininity, the precise sorts of horror that breasts, as synecdoches of the physicality and sexuality of women, represent for other characters, in other movies, differ, because every man—and some women—are Pygmalions who fashion their ideas of women into psychological and, sometimes theological, representations of women. When those concepts of womanhood are irrational, horror can, and, unfortunately, often does, result. Future essays will consider the additional ways in which, in such movies, breasts are emblems of horror.

News You Can Use

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Newspapers may or may not be dying, but, until they do (if they do), one of them, USA Today, as I have indicated in previous posts, provides, in its “Across the USA” column, bite-size morsels of news that horror writers can use: these tidbits provide the imaginative horror writer plenty of food for thought. Of course, you have to be a bit twisted to add the right imaginative (and imaginary) twist to these items, transforming them from prosaic fillers into storylines with potential to frighten and repulse.

Here, as in other, similar, earlier posts, are my own takes on these tidbits. (First, the tidbit; from the September 12, 2011 issue, page 8A; then, the imaginary take on it.)

Item 1: Texas: Longview -- As children, their parents dressed them in identical outfits and for 18 years they shared a bedroom. The Kent quadruplets have turned into young women who are students at East Texas Baptist University. “I’m looking forward to just growing while I’m in college,” Kinsey Kent said. “Since we aren’t together as much, we have the opportunity to grow as individuals.”

Twist: This is an interesting idea. The main question, for me, is how will the four sisters change, now that they can become themselves? Will some change for the better and some for the worse? What type of horrible transformations are in the (Tarot?) cards for these young women? Witches? (That would be an ironic possibility, given their attendance at a mainstream Christian college!) Vampires? Werewolves? This tidbit is one a horror writer can--or should be able to--really sink his or her teeth into!

Item 2: Utah: Salt Lake City -- A West Valley City man has been sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for the beating death of his girlfriend. Third District Judge Judith Atherton handed down the sentence to Thomas Valdez, who was found guilty of first-degree murder in July. Police found Maralee Andreason dead on march 9, 2010, from blunt force trauma to the head.

Twist: So, he clubs her in the head, killing her, and he’s charged with murder in the first degree--and he gets off with 15 years to life--and the judge who hands down the sentence is herself a woman? Why did Thomas receive such a relatively puny sentence? What was his girlfriend like that would justify such treatment of her killer? I mean, there must have been some hellacious extenuating circumstances! Was she a witch? A vampire? A werewolf? (Probably neither of the latter two, because a club’s not going to kill a vampire or a werewolf all that easily, so the most likely scenario, of these three possibilities, is that she was a witch, but what did she do, put a curse on her boyfriend? If so, why?) There’s a story here, somewhere, and it could be a humdinger!

Item 3: Vermont: Stratton -- New York City area residents are gathering Tuesday for a fundraiser to benefit the Stratton Foundation’s Flood relief Fund. New York City escaped serious problems when Tropical Storm Irene came through, while Vermont was hit hard.

Twist: A politician should “never let a crisis go to waste,” the Democrats recently observed. What was Irene if not a crisis, if not for the Big Apple, for Vermont, at least? The fundraiser sounds noble, but when’s the last time a New Yorker was noble? Never! That suggests that New York City area residents may be raising money, but it’s probably to fund something dark and sinister. Maybe they are planning to build underground concentration camps in which to incarcerate--uh, I mean, house--pesky homeless people and are using Irene as an excuse to raise big bucks. They’ll give a smidgen of the money they raise to Vermont and keep the rest to improve the subway (by building subterranean homeless “shelters”).

Item 4: Washington: Spokane -- A 25-year-old man accused of murder was found dead in his jail cell. County Sherriff’s Sgt. David Reagan said deputies discovered Tristan Jordan on Saturday morning when they went to his cell to serve him breakfast. Cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner.

Twist: He’s locked in a cell. Let’s assume that he didn’t kill himself. What did? What could get into his locked jail cell, and how did it manage the feat? A demon? A monster that can take the form of solids, liquids, or gases, one that came through the ventilation system or the pipes, as a gas or as water, and then turned into a solid--solid steel, maybe?--and delivered a little brunt trauma to the prisoner’s head, maybe? There are other possibilities, too. Maybe he was poisoned by his jailers for some reason. Hey! I’m just saying. . . . I mean, weren’t they on their way “to his cell to serve him breakfast” when he was “found” dead?

Item 5: West Virginia: South Charleston -- State Police unveiled a 45-foot-long mobile command center that will help them manage special events and respond to disasters. It has satellite phone technology, weather radar systems, and a planning room. Its official rollout will be Oct. 15 at Bridge Day events at New River Gorge.

Twist: Are you freakin’ kidding me? A “45-foot-long mobile command center,” fully loaded with satellite technology, “weather radar systems, and a planning room”? This sucker has a mission other than the “official” one of supposedly lending a helping hand at “special events” and aiding “disaster” victims. It has “UFO Chaser” written all over it, that’s what I think. But nice try with the references to “special events” and “disasters.” The cops are hunting for spaceships and aliens--they just don’t want the state’s taxpayers to know what they’re really funding!

Item 6: Wyoming: Powell -- Weeks after Glenn French’s death, farmers gathered to harvest the fields he planted in the spring. “It’s a community effort of people who saw a need and filled it. And it’s a tribute to my brother,” Larry French said. “He was one of the kindest people I ever knew.”

Twist: What did Glenn plant, and how many acres of it is there? Is the crop marijuana, perhaps, or something more exotic, like seeds that fell out of the sky, on a meteorite that landed in the south forty a couple of years back? Maybe it’s a whole passel of man-eating plants like the one in the Little Shop of Horrors or flowers similar to H. G. Wells’ “strange orchid.” Whatever it is, it must be one hell of a crop to have managed to get the whole community to turn out, hoes in hand.

Item 7: U. S. territory: Guam -- Police arrested four men and two minors as part of an investigation into the stabbing death of three men. The adults are Benny Sam Robert, Osupwang Jery Muritok, Jeff Pedro, and Vimson Menisio.

Twist: What linked these four men (and two minors), and why did they stab three other men to death? What was in it for the killers? A common reward of some kind, or something different for each of them? Was it just money? Or maybe some deep, dark secret, maybe about the tire identities of the killers, that was best taken to the grave. Something about voodoo, maybe, or Satanism, or human sacrifice? The apocalypse is always a possibility, too, if all other ideas fail. Find the link between the killers or between the killers and their victims, and you find the story.