Erotic Horror, Japanese Style

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Japanese horror films include themes that, foreign to American audiences, seem not only original and daring in concept, but also bizarre in their presentations of such themes.

It may be that, in some cases, the originality of themes and the grotesque imagery in which these themes find expression stem, in part, from Japanese erotica, which is, from a Western standpoint, also seen as being unusually creative and outlandish. Not only does Japanese erotica include “tentacle sex” between sea creatures and women, which is often, but not always, non-consensual in nature and contains an element of bestiality, but sex between men and women is apt to include practices with which Westerners are more or less unfamiliar, the depictions of some of which have resulted in criminal prosecutions in the United States (Violence Against Women in Pornography by Walter DeKeseredy and Marilyn Corsianos, 33).

One Japanese erotic horror film, Empire of the Senses (1976), is based on the “true story of Sada Abe,” whose sadomasochistic relationship with Kichizo Isgida, a married man, reached its climax with “his death and castration during sex.” Perhaps Sada might have gotten away with the murder had she not been so unwise as to carry her victim's severed “penis in her kimono sash,” a practice which resulted in her arrest (Introduction to Japanese Horror Film by Colette Balman, 22).

Paradoxically, although Japanese erotica also excludes any depiction of pubic hair, genitals, or sexual penetration (70), it is much less concerned about the exhibition of semen. According to Balman, Japanese horror films are as likely to feature male victims as these movies are to feature female victims. She offers, as an example, Entrails of a Virgin (1986), in which Asaoka, “pursued by the enraged Kazuyo, is choked to death as a large hook wielded by the monster lifts him into the air and copious amounts of viscous fluid—the monster's semen—gush into the water nearby” (159).

Thematically, tentacled monsters were a theme in painting before they became a theme on film. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, an 1814 erotic woodcut by Hokusai, shows a supine woman receiving oral sex from an octopus while one of its tentacles probes her mouth. Text that accompanies the woodcut indicates that the woman enjoys the octopus's aggressive behavior and its use of the suction cups on its eight arms.

The tentacles of a cuttlefish, jellyfish, octopus, squid, and other tentacled creatures of the deep are strange by virtue of their possession of multiple arms, the better with which to please their human lovers. These appendages are long, strong, flexible, and equipped with suckers that are capable of rotating “in any direction”; lengthening, or elongating, “to twice . . . [their] normal length,” experiencing intense “touch sensitivity” and walking “an item along an arm simply by moving the sucker.”

As Hokusai's woodcut clearly shows, tentacles are also capable of probing cavities, oral and otherwise. A tentacled creature, in fact, can perform several sexual acts simultaneously, a fact which might make them desirable partners, despite their hideous appearance.

There is, of course, also the element of taboo. Bestiality is a practice that is generally condemned by most societies. Engaging in sex with a tentacled marine monster violates this taboo, adding the spice of performing a forbidden act to the erotic nature of the behavior itself.

Several American horror movies have also included tentacled menaces:

• It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus)
• Tentacles (1977) (octopus)
• The Beast (1996) (squid)
• Octopus (2000) (octopus)
• Octopus 2 (2001) (octopus)
• Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) (kraken)
• Monster (2008) (octopus)
• Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) (octopus)
• Grabbers (2012) (alien)
• The Creature Below (2016) (octopus)

What eliminates the threat posed by these tentacled terrors?

• It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus): torpedo (technology)
• Tentacles (1977) (octopus): killer whales (natural predators)
• The Beast (1996) (squid): fuel explosion (technology)
• Octopus (2000) (octopus) (nothing)
• Octopus 2 (2001) (octopus)
• Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) (kraken) (shot with machine gun) (technology)
• Monster (2008) (octopus) (?)
• Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) (octopus) (shark)
• Grabbers (2012) (alien) (explosives) (technology)
• The Creature Below (2016) (octopus)
  
  

Although these films don't have overt sexual imagery, the subtext created by Hokusai's woodcut and by the works of other artists whose work has featured tentacle erotica is certainly a subtext in some of them. Perhaps one reason for the appeal of tentacle monsters, whether in an erotic subtext or otherwise, is their symbolic significance, as phallic symbols.

Félicien Rops

Just as Hokusai's woodcut inspired a theme that appears in Japanese erotic horror films, it also inspired such other artists as Western painters Félicien Rops, Auguste Rodin, Louis Aucoc, Fernand Khnopff, Martin van Maele, and Pablo Picasso “Tentacles of love and death: from Hokusai to Picasso” by Ricard Bru, 55-71).

The Humor of Horror (Or Is It the Horror of Humor?), Part 1

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies often include a humorous scene or two, ostensibly as a means of relieving the tension that results from sustained, intensifying suspense. Frequently of the black humor type, such visual jokes are intended, perhaps, to refocus both the teller and the listener on the normal, the customary or traditional, the everyday, rather than on the abnormal, the non-traditional, or the extraordinary.

Alfred Hitchcock presents Psycho's audience with a humorous scene after Norman Bates kills Marion Crane. He has loaded her corpse and meager possessions into her car and pushed it into a lake to dispose of the evidence of his crime. As Norman looks on, the car begins to sink. It continues to slip deeper and deeper into the water, but, then, abruptly, it stops, only partly submerged, and Norman's expression, partly anticipation, partly glee, up to this point also suddenly changes, to one of not only worry but also panic.

Unless the car fully sinks, he himself (and his “mother”) will sink, as his charade is exposed and he is confined to a mental asylum or a prison for his “mother's” dastardly deed. At the last moment, the car does, in fact, completely submerge, and Norman looks relieved. He has gotten away with murder, after all, it seems. The television series Dirty Little Liars provides its audience with plenty of black humor, much of it through its allusions to such Hitchcock films as Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, and others.

Finding the humor amid horror is a difficult task. If done clumsily, the use of humor to alleviate tension can backfire on the author. In times of hyper-sensitivity and political correctness, it is especially important not to offend readers' sensibilities, even in horror fiction. However, looking to cartoonists whose work involves the macabre can offer some pointers for effective use of black humor, although writers should use them at their own risk.

One such cartoonist is Gahan Wilson, many of whose works appeared in Playboy magazine over a period of years. Most of them include a gruesome twist. For example, most of us do not fear optometrists. We go to them voluntarily, trusting ourselves to their care, believing them, as men and women of medicine, to have our welfare at heart and in mind. It is the violation of this trust by a mad doctor that underlies the ghoulish humor of this cartoon:

In reading the eye chart, we assume the role of the patient; we are trusting, unaware, and helpless as we read of the optometrist's intention to kill us. As we read the chart, the letters tend to blur, reminding those of us whose vision isn't perfect (many of us, alas, who are of the patient's age), suggesting the additional horror that, even with our fate spelled out for us, unable to read the writing on the wall, we are in danger of being killed where we sit, unaware of our fate until it is too late.

This cartoon offers us a technique widely used in horror movies (and, less often, in novels): have the viewer (or the reader) assume (or, more often, identify with) the role of the helpless victim.

In this cartoon, Wilson shows the absurdity of a popular pastime, a supposed “sport” in which armed men kill animals that have no chance against their killers. In the cartoon, the hunter's hubris has led him to kill every animal he and his friend have encountered, as the presence of blood-splattered snow and the friend's ironic comment suggest: “Congratulations, Baer—I think you've wiped out the species!”

Naming the shooter Baer doubles the cartoon's irony, since the name sounds like “bear.” Like a bear, Baer is a predator. Unlike a bear, however, Baer kills for “sport,” not survival, killing every animal he encounters. His smug, slightly crazed look suggests that he is insane, which, in turn, suggests that hunting, at least the way he practices it, is also insane.

This cartoon's technique is to exaggerate a commonplace activity to reveal the absurdity of the pastime and those who participate in it.

Many horror movie plots, novels, and short stories take place in isolated settings. This cartoon is also set in such a locale. A small eatery in the middle of nowhere, near a two-lane blacktop next to bare mountains possibly in Alaska or the Yukon, judging by the aurora borealis seen in the night sky, bears bright signs on its rooftop and exterior walls: “EAT.” As a gigantic monster of vague, gelatin-like form, crawls over a ridge, toward the roadside cafe, one employee, the cook, possibly, says to another, the waiter, perhaps, “My God—do you suppose it can read?”

This cartoon turns the tables on humanity. It's all right to be a carnivore, Wilson seems to suggest, as long as we are the carnivores. To be the eater rather than the eaten is all well and good, but if the roles are reversed, the horror of the eat-or-be-eaten world is exposed. With apologies to Socrates, in some cases, it seems, the unexamined life may be worth living.

Role reversal is another way that cartoonists like Wilson reveal the horror inherent in everyday practices that we take for granted.

A study of other Wilson cartoons reveals other techniques for showing the horror in everyday situations and practices, but, in our next post, let's take a look at the work of Charles Addams, another artist known for disclosing the humorous within the horrific.

Writing Blurbs That Sell

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

According to Tomasz Opasinski, a fifteen-year veteran of movie poster design, a movie poster focuses “on the movie's main plot twist.”

In developing summaries designed to sell their books, writers can do the same thing. Indeed, they should follow Hollywood's example and point their readers toward their own story's “main plot twist” because Hollywood spends considerable money in testing the effectiveness of this approach.

As Opasinski points out, “Poster design is increasingly driven by empirical research, not artistic intuition.” This research involves tagging “the tone and content of posters with keywords” and then tracking which keywords “performed well in the past on similar movies.”

Most writers don't have the financial resources to hire social scientists to conduct original research, so how can writers learn what keywords work for their genre? The solution is simple and effective, but entails a bit of “research” on the writer's part.

Using a web image browser (I like Bing myself), type something like “horror movie posters” (you might also include a time frame, such as “2020” or “2010 through 2020,”) You can also enhance your search term by specifying a subgenre or a particular theme: “horror movie posters 2020 forest setting.” Results are apt to be a bit general, despite the use of such qualifying terms, but it's a start.

Now, a pad and pen beside you (or an open word processing program before you), keep track of words in the movie posters' taglines that are used more than once (and preferably several times). Your resulting list should give you the keywords that researchers have blessed as effective. Use as many of these keywords as possible (and as relevant) in your own story's blurb. (You might practice on familiar movies, writing new [and improved] blurbs for classics such as Frankenstein or The Mummy.)

A poster, Opasinski says must sell a movie within “one or two seconds.” For that reason, in addition to pointing potential audience members toward the film's “major twist,” leaving “them wanting more” and using research-validated keywords, Opasinski says, poster designers also focus on a single “icon” and the use of conflict, both visual and emotional.

Although Opasinski doesn't define “icon,” presumably he uses it in its traditional, denotative sense, as “a sign whose form directly reflects the thing it signifies.” For him, it appears, the leaning bridge over which Tom Cruise, as Jack Harper, walks in the poster Opasinski designed is the “icon” he selected to sell the film. Its meaning is intended to symbolize the protagonist's survival of the catastrophe represented by the “ruined bridge.” It is this moment, presumably, that Opasinski sees as the movie's “first major twist.” He relies on it to sell potential audience members on seeing the film; his poster has led them here, leaving “them wanting more.”

Opasinski says studios provide the keywords that appear on the poster, so we may assume that the copywriter employed them in the poster's tagline, “Earth is a memory worth fighting for.” Earth is home to everyone; the word “memory” suggests that it is of the past. If it has not ended altogether (which, the poster suggests, it has not), it is in some way significantly altered. Perhaps it is to the memory of the Earth as it was, before the catastrophic event, that the tagline alludes, although it's unclear how such a state of existence, now lost, can be “fought for,” unless such fighting involves revenge.

From Opasiniski's observations about his art, we learn several principles to keep in mind as we develop the blurb to sell our own stories:

1. Select a “single icon” that represents the story's “main plot twist” and the protagonist's emotional conflict.
2. Keep the blurb as short as possible, and do the targeted readers' thinking for them. (The summary should suggest the theme of the story.)
3. Use research-based keywords to describe the book's plot.

Tagline Terror

Copyright 2020 by Gary  L. Pullman

Tag line (n).: a catchphrase or slogan, especially as used in advertising.

Taglines.

Some may not read them.

Hell, some may not even see them.

What draws the eye in a movie poster is the art, after all. The images. The depictions of gruesome spectacles. Representations of mysterious events. Portraits of helpless victims. Pictures of pursuing monsters. Illustrations of dark, tight places in the middle of nowhere.

And, yet, posters' taglines can be quite suggestive—and quite terrifying—in their own right and in their own way.

They have a way of getting at the very heart of a story. For writers in search of ideas, taglines can also suggest stories; they can be muses. In addition, they can point to the roots of fear, to the sources of horror, to the bare bones beneath the flesh of fear. Look, here! This is what frightens—and here! This is why it scares.

Some fans love you to death (13 Fanboy [2020])

Former scream queens from the Friday the 13th series are hunted by a real[-]life killer who doesn't understand that it's all make believe (IMDb).

The tagline suggests how a popular saying can inspire the idea for a movie—and, perhaps, even much of its plot.

They look just like us (Freaks [2018[)

A bold girl discovers a bizarre, threatening, and mysterious new world beyond her front door after she escapes her father's protective and paranoid control (IMDb).

 

The tagline suggests that those who are regarded by “us” as being somehow “other” than we are differ from “us” not only in their behavior (which is, most likely, violent and threatening), but also in their appearance, making them easily recognizable. When such an assumption proves to be false, fear is heightened: we are being menaced by “others” from whom we cannot differentiate ourselves: we cannot tell the good guys (“us”) from the bad guys (“them”). Therefore, someone who looks like “us” could be a violent, threatening “other,” intent upon harming or killing “us.” Our situation, already desperate, has become much more dire!

Seven miles below

the ocean surface

a crew is trapped

and being hunted

 

(Underwater [2020[).

A crew of aquatic researchers work to get to safety after an earthquake devastates their subterranean laboratory. But the crew has more than the ocean seabed to fear (IMDb).

The tagline occupies four successive lines, breaking the thought it conveys into four fragments, breaks which emphasize each part: distance, location, dangerous situation, heightened danger. The tagline calls our attention to the desperate nature of the characters' predicament. It's bad to be seven miles below the surface of the sea; it's worse to be trapped, and its worse yet to be hunted while one is trapped in an isolated, hard-to-reach location. The tagline taps universal fears: the fear of being alone (monophobia), the fear of being trapped (claustrophobia), and the fear of being hunted (anatidaephobia). If the tagline applied to a novel, rather than to a movie, it would seem to condense several chapters into succinct, terrifying phrases. The tagline also implies several questions, arousing suspense: Will the characters escape their hunters? Will they escape their trap? Will they be able to return to the surface? Will they make it home again, alive and whole?

Evil knows your name (Impervious [2015).

Katie recently moved to a new house. In the basement, she finds old photos of a family who lived in the house and were all murdered. When she starts to investigate their story, frightening things begin to happen (IMDb).

We often think, That couldn't happen to me. We tell ourselves, Bad things only happen to other people. In other words, we lie to ourselves. We fib to protect ourselves from the truth that terrible things could happen to us. We prevaricate to defend ourselves from the knowledge that bad things happen to everyone, the “good” and the “bad” alike. Being “good” is no protection, just as being “bad” doesn't necessarily (and certainly doesn't always) cause bad things to happen to bad people. Sometimes, crime does pay. We also like to believe that the odds against something like that (whatever “that” may be) happening to us are astronomical. (That's what young people are saying now about dying from a coronavirus infection.) When it comes to evil, to suffering, to death, we don't take things personally; we prefer abstractions—statistics can be comforting; news reports about “others,” about “them,” can be reassuring. But what if evil knew your name? No my name. Not any name. Your name. What if evil developed a personal interest in you, specifically? What if evil targeted you, individually? What if evil hunted you, personally? The lies die. Truth survives. And the truth is that you are in danger. You may be targeted. Evil know your name!

Movie poster taglines. Don't overlook them.