Basic Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Plots

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

My analysis of a number of horror novels, short stories, and movies has turned up no fewer than two dozen plots that are routinely used in horror, fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other genres of popular fiction. Don’t be surprised if they pop up in a few classic literary texts, too.

Invasion: An outside threat attacks a community. The community may be idealized, as a near-perfect place to live. Many residents are likely to be introduced. The reader is apt to like or sympathize with many of them. A few may be unlikable because they are arrogant, condescending, cruel, obscene, racist, or unfaithful. Some of these may become victims of the entity or force that attacks the community. Although the community may be a total institution, such as a hospice, a hotel, a nursing home, a private school, or a prison, it is often an entire town. A community, to some extent, may be regarded as an extension of one's home, as the term "hometown" suggests; therefore, one's neighbors may be regarded as one's extended family. In attacking a community, the invader is attacking one's home and family, both immediate and extended. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Invasion plot are Invaders From Mars, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Relic, ‘Salem’s Lot, It, Desperation, The Regulators, Summer of Night, The Taking, and Stinger. A non-fantasy/horror/science fiction story that is based on the Invasion plot is Taps, in which the students at a military academy repel an attempt by the police to shut down the school (to allow its conversion into a condominium complex) and, ultimately, take on the National Guard. Prototype: Satan’s invasion of the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

Fools Rush In: Characters enter the monster’s lair: To conduct a rescue, to neutralize a threat, to capture an unusual animal, to gather plants that may be the source for a new miracle drug, to conduct scientific research, or for a number of other (sometimes foolish) reasons, a character or, more often, a team of characters, enters the place in which a dangerous entity or force resides or is located, and the entity or force protects its territory with disastrous results for the character or team that has entered its lair. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Fools Rush In plot include Alien, Predator, King Kong, Anaconda, Subterranean, and Descent.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: Characters seek to capture, kill, or otherwise abuse or exploit a monster: This plot is a subtype of the fools rush in plot in which a character or team of characters enters the territory of an unusual organism specifically to capture it or to kill it. The reason for wanting to capture it varies. The capture may be for the purpose of displaying the organism, studying it, or neutralizing it. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Let Sleeping Dogs Lie plot are King Kong, Anaconda, and Predator.

Serendipity: A chance discovery leads to mayhem. The Thing, Alien, and Rendezvous With Rama are based on the Serendipity plot. Prototype: Pandora’s Box।

Hubris: Pride goes before a fall: (Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, The Island of Dr. Moreau). Prototype: Satan’s rebellion against God in Paradise Lost, which is suggested, but not dramatized, in the Bible.

Deliverance: A hero or a company of heroes seeks to slay or otherwise get rid of a monster: Often, this plot, although it can stand alone, is an extension of the Invasion plot. Once the invader has invaded, one or more characters seek to deliver the community by evicting the invader. Occasionally, the character or characters may travel from one location to another in pursuit of the invader, driving him, her, or it from one invaded community after another. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Deliverance plot are Beowulf, The Exorcist, It, Summer of Night, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Taking. Examples of non-fantasy/horror/science fiction stories that are based on the Deliverance plot are Have Gun, Will Travel, The A Team, and Pale Rider. In Have Gun, Will Travel, a gunfighter offers his services for hire, sometimes in the deliverance of a town that is being run by corrupt officials and their hired guns. The A Team is a group of four Vietnam veterans, framed for a crime they didn't commit, who help the innocent while on the run from the military; often, their help consists of ridding a town or a group of people of a bully. In Pale Rider, a gunfighter poses as a preacher for a group of gold prospectors, delivering them from local gunmen when he seeks revenge for having been shot and whipped by the gunmen and their leader. Prototype: Moses’ deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage in Exodus.

Call To Duty: A prophecy must be fulfilled, a quest must be undertaken, or a mission must be accomplished: Often the call to duty has worldwide, or even cosmic, implications and long-lasting, or even eternal, consequences and may involve supernatural entities and forces, including God and his angels or Satan and his demons. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Call to Duty plot are Excalibur!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Dark Crystal, Star Wars, It, and Summer of Night. Prototype: Abraham’s call to become the “father of many nations,” which was preceded, on a smaller scale, by God’s call to Noah to build the ark that saves a remnant of humanity (Noah and his family) from the universal flood of God’s wrath against sin.

Need To Feed: A monster is hungry; people are its food: To survive, characters must figure out a way to outsmart or circumvent the monster. The Need To Feed plot may be regarded as the Freudian oral stage of psychosexual development out of control. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Need To Feed plot are Tremors, Jaws, and Dracula.

Need To Breed: A monster needs to reproduce, but, to do so, it requires a human mate: A search, with a series of fatalities, may be needed before the monster can find the right mate with which to breed, and the breeding itself may have fatal consequences to the human partner. Sometimes, the Need To Breed takes a technological rather than a biological form, as in Rejuvenator and Demon Seed. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Need To Feed plot are Species, Rosemary‘s Baby, and Demon Seed.

Something To Prove: The main character has something to prove--courage, innocence, judgment: Jurassic Park is, in part, based on the Something To Prove plot.

Too Good To Be True: Beware a bargain! The main character makes a deal, usually with the devil, only to find that the price that he or she must pay far outweighs the benefits, power, or gift that he or she receives in exchange: (“What profits a man who gains the world and loses his own soul?”) Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Too Good To Be True plot are Faust, The Amityville Horror, Needful Things, and The Devil’s Apprentice.

Redemption or Assuaged Guilt: A character attempts to redeem him- or herself or someone else (a family member or a friend) for a past misdeed: Usually, the past misdeeds will be monstrous--far greater wrongs than are done by most other people (matricide, patricide, the killing of a sibling, rape, perjury that results in another person’s imprisonment or execution)-- and, consequently, the redemption, if it comes at all, will be a laborious and protracted process. Often, the character will doubt that he or she can ever be pardoned or forgiven and that, for him or her, the whole process is futile; nevertheless, out of a guilt and a sense, perhaps, of moral responsibility, if not hope for ultimate redemption, the tortured character will persist in performing his or her penance. Example of stories that are based on the Assuaged Guilt plot are The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Angel. Prototype: The redemption of humanity in Christ, as told in the Gospels.

Avengers, Assemble!: A wronged person seeks revenge (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The X-Men). Non-fantasy/horror/science fiction movies that are based on the Avengers, Assemble! plot are Sudden Impact, in which the sister of a woman whose gang rape caused her to become catatonic becomes a vigilante, avenging her sister by tracking down and killing her assailants; Rolling Thunder, in which a war hero seeks revenge against the thugs who, in stealing silver dollars from him, kill his wife and son and destroy his hand; and the Death Wish series, in which A New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad against those who have killed his wife, his daughter, and other innocent people.

The Devil Made Me Do It: A character does evil because he or she is possessed by the devil or a demon or is the literal or figurative child of Satan: Examples of novels and movies that are based on The Devil Made Me Do It plot are The Exorcist, The Omen, Faust, The Regulators, Desperation, and The Devil‘s Advocate). Prototype: Satan’s tempting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

Greed: Greed outweighs common sense and decency; as a result, someone is usually maimed or killed: In part, King Kong, Jaws, and Poltergeist are based on the Greed plot.

People Are Such Animals!: Men and women turn into beasts: Such transformation stories tap into the sometimes-fine line between the human and the bestial, suggesting that, despite art, culture, and civilization, human beings are closer to the so-called lower animals than they’d care to admit and may act on the same instincts as those upon which animals act, especially on the need to feed and the need to breed. Usually, the only way to end the nightmare is to kill the beast. Examples of novels and films that are based on the People Are Such Animals! Plot are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wolfman, The Howling, and Silver Bullet.

Experiment Goes Awry: A mad scientist’s research runs amuck: This is often a subtype of the Hubris plot, the scientist’s arrogance leading to his or her manipulation of nature with disastrous, unforeseen effects. Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Invasion plot are Frankenstein, The Fly, The Island of Dr, Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The Food of the Gods.

Cannibals: Human monsters enjoy gourmet food--people: Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Cannibals plot are Soylent Green, The Silence of the Lambs, The Hills Have Eyes, and Ravenous.

Wrong Turn: A simple mistake or a purposeful cover up has fatal consequences: Wrong Turn and I Know What You Did Last Summer are based on the Wrong Turn plot.

Ragnarok: Something or someone is trying to end the world, often as a prelude to establishing a world of its own: This plot differs from the Invasion plot because the antagonist’s threat is not merely occupation but the annihilation of the invaded community, and the community is not merely a total institution or a town, but the entire world (although the annihilation may begin on a local scale). Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Ragnarok plot are War of the Worlds, Invaders From Mars, and The Taking. Prototypes: Revelation in the Bible, Ragnarok (in Norse mythology).

Starting Over: Having survived an apocalyptic catastrophe, natural or man-made, such as a universal flood, a nuclear holocaust, or a plague, a remnant of humanity overcomes extreme hardship and dangers as they rebuild their lost civilization. This plot requires a vast setting and many characters. Often, several small groups will compete against one another for dominance or to become the sole survival, Examples of novels and movies that are based on the Post-apocalyptic Starting Over plot are Damnation Alley, The Stand, Swan’s Song, A Boy and His Dog, The Omega Man, and Road Warrior (a. k. a. Mad Max II).

Dystopia: The world has gone to hell, without the hand basket: The dystopian world is the opposite of a utopia, or heaven on earth, in which, frequently, human beings have been reduced to slavery and are ruled by a ruthless, often barbaric, elite. George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World are non-horror examples, as is Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Do or Die: A heroic character must complete a series of tasks or he or someone he loves will be killed; sometimes, a clock is ticking: An examples of a story that is based on the Do or Die plot is Dean Koontz's Velocity. Prototype: The 12 Labors of Hercules.

Copycat Killers: Crimes (usually murder) are based on urban legends or are copied from other, previous crimes. Often, in committing these crimes, the perpetrator seeks to share the notoriety of the original criminal (Urban Legends).

Building Up the Plot

The 24 basic plots identified above may be too simple, by themselves, to keep readers or moviegoers interested in the story. However, they provide the foundation for building a more complex plot that will keep readers or audience members’ interest. These are some ways that writers build from the 24 simple plots to more complex plots:

Outer and Inner: Relate the basic plot’s outer (natural or social) conflict to the protagonist’s inner (psychological) conflict: For example, in The Exorcist, the battle is between the priest and the devil, but it is also a struggle between the priest and himself, as he tries to hold on to the tattered remnants of his faith, which was shattered by his mother’s protracted suffering and death (a concrete example of the philosophical concern for the so-called problem of evil).

Bigger Is Better: Relate the basic plot’s outer conflict to an area of human concern (religion, politics, art, science) that is bigger than the protagonist and his or her immediate concerns: In Pale Rider, the protagonist avenges himself against sadistic men who shot and beat him; in the process, he prevents similar men from expelling gold prospectors from their goldfield and the denial of the better life that they hope to create for their families with the gold that they find. The individual, while serving his own needs, serves those of the community (or the world).

Fantastic Reality: The basic plot’s outer plot, especially if it is fantastic, can be related to a realistic psychological, social, or other outer struggle: In King Kong, the film producer who captures the giant ape hopes that, by displaying it for admission, he can avert the financial ruin that threatens him during the Great Depression.

Metaphorical Monsters: Make the monster a metaphor for a real-life problem that the protagonist faces (neglect, ostracism, drug addiction, spousal abuse); by vanquishing the monster (if vanquish it he or she does), the main character finds acceptance, self-acceptance, or freedom: In “Dead Man’s Party,” Buffy Summers attacks zombies which, as her friend Xander Harris informs her (and the viewer), are symbolic of thoughts, attitudes, and emotions that she has sought to repress: “You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back up to get you.”

Social Commentary: Like Huckleberry Finn, fantasy/science fiction/and horror novels and movies can provide social commentary about current events or eternal questions, examining such topics as dehumanization, euthanasia, interracial marriage, poverty, racism, religious intolerance, or repression of free speech, or war: The Regulators examines the negative effect of children’s television, particularly its violent content, on children’s thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Children of the Corn shows the murderous and suicidal results of an unquestioned devotion to religious doctrine. ‘Salem’s Lot and Needful Things shows the conformity, hypocrisy, corruption, and greed that often underlies the ideal image of the American small town.

Questioning Politically Correct Assumptions: Some fantasy/science fiction/and horror novels and movies question politically correct assumptions, one of which is that xenophobia is unnecessary and bigoted: Since it is directed at anyone who is a stranger, xenophobia is the most general form of bigotry, indiscriminate in its prejudice. One should welcome, not fear, strangers, critics of xenophobia contend. Such novels and movies as Childhood’s End challenge the truth of the politically correct assumptions behind xenophobia’s critics’ contentions. Offering friendship to strangers, these stories suggest, could get a person--or an entire people--or the whole human race--destroyed.

This Is That: This treatment of the basic plot is similar to that of the Bigger Is Better and the Metaphorical Monster treatment: In fact, it is a combination, of sorts, of these two treatments in which one state of affairs is a metaphor or an analogy for another, greater state of affairs that is similar to it. An example is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which some critics contend, is, paradoxically, simultaneously both “an allegory for the loss of personal autonomy under Communism and as a satire of McCarthyist paranoia about Communism” (Wikipedia article on “Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film)”). A non-fantasy/science fiction/horror story that uses a This Is That plot treatment is Animal Farm, in which the farm represents a Communist society (Soviet Russia) ruled by an elite (the Communist Party, headed by Vladimir Lenin.)

Strength In Numbers: This treatment suggests the importance of community or at least cooperation among individuals, for it demonstrates that by such means, a group may vanquish a threat that individuals alone could not hope to conquer: Examples of this treatment abound and include It, Summer of Night, ‘Salem’s Lot, Desperation, The Regulators, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Excalibur!, The X-Men, Tremors, and many others.

New World Exploration: Another way to build a simple plot into a more complex one is to set the action in an undiscovered or new world. This treatment is especially appropriate for fantasy and science fiction novels. Even in novels set in the everyday world, a fresh perspective on a familiar environment can make the familiar seem unusual or bizarre. (Situation comedies often use this technique, making the main character or characters new kids on the block or fish out of water, as it were.) By displacing them from a familiar to a strange environment, writers broaden these characters’ experience; at the same time, writers can depict the new environment as it is seen by the displaced person. James Rollins frequently employs this technique in his novels, as do the writers of The Beverly Hillbillies television series.

How To Create Monstrous Monsters

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

How to create monstrous monsters is a question that pretty much all horror writers will face, usually sooner than later. It’s one of the many challenges that sets us apart from writers of say, romance fiction (unless the leading man is really, really undesirable).

So how do we create monstrous monsters?

One effective way is to follow the lead of our ancient predecessors, the makers of myth who lived, as Edgar Allan Poe might say, “many and many a year ago,” although not necessarily “in a kingdom by the sea.”

In an early attempt to demythologize mythical beasts, the basilisk was once thought to have resulted from a misshapen egg laid by a cock--that’s right, the rooster, not the hen (the beast was also known as a cockatrice). Mistaking the odd egg for one of its own, a maternal cobra hatched it, it was said. Even at the time, however, a detractor found this explanation more incredible than the mythical beast itself.

Since then, explanations have become more believable.

Scientists think that some mythical creatures (many of which are monsters) are based upon real-life counterparts.

Some, they say, are based on misinterpretations of fossilized dinosaur bones.

According to their view, the ancients, believing the skeletons were the remains of animals that had died later rather than sooner (and having no idea that the earth was millions of years old), mistook these giant skeletons for creatures who’d gasped their last gasp relatively recently. If there was one such creature, the early mythmakers believed, there were likely to have been--and might still be--others lurking nearby.

As the American Museum of Natural History’s “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids” points out, the notion of the one-eyed Cyclops could have derived from the discovery of a wooly mammoth’s skull, its more-or-less centralized nasal cavity mistaken for the socket of the creature’s single eye.

Likewise, the museum’s article observes, the griffin might have been based upon the skeletal remains of a Protoceratops, and the roc might have been inspired by the discovery of the fossilized bones of the gigantic, prehistoric Aepyornis, native to Madagascar, which attained a height of 10 feet and tipped the scales at about half a ton--and from the Mongol emperor Kubla Khan’s mistaking a palm frond for a feather of the fabled bird.

Other mythological monsters are thought to have derived from similar real-life lineages. Centaurs are believed to have been fanciful descriptions of nomad horsemen, the likes of whom ancient Greeks had never seen before. The many-headed hydra that Hercules, with a little--all right, a lot--of help from his nephew Iolaus, killed could have been a personification of an unruly river delta that the Greeks were able, finally, to bring under their control. The Gorgons, Ms. Medusa included, are thought to be based upon images of a snake-headed woman’s stone face. A likeness of this mask was carved into warriors’ shields.

Live Science’s “The Surprising Realities of Mythical Beasts” offers similar origins for several of the monsters of myth. Mermaids may have been born of sailors’ loneliness and longing for the womenfolk they’d left at home and a little wishful thinking that allowed them to mistake sea creatures for facsimiles of their lady loves. No less an adventurer than Christopher Columbus mistook a trio of scantily clad manatees for mermaids, albeit a rather unattractive and manly sort of maids. From a distance, they might have looked inviting enough--to a sailor far from shore--but, closer, they were “not as pretty,” the mariner complained, and “somehow in the face," the bewhiskered sea beasts resembled men.

In a related article, “Top 10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth,” the same website explains the origin of the dragon. This mythical monster is based upon actual reptiles such as alligators, lizards (frilled dragons, bearded dragons, flying dragons, Komodo dragons, megalania prisca, pterosaurs, seahorse-like sea dragons), and a snake (the python). Additionally, comets, with their long tails, flashing across the nighttime skies, may have been interpreted as dragons in flight.

So, how does one create monstrous monsters? The same way the ancients did. Look at something that seems as if it could be frightening if it were to be misunderstood as being something else, far more threatening. See it anew. Misinterpret it, and, in the process, envision it as wild, antisocial, powerful, threatening, and, most likely, as having bad breath. Ask yourself, for example, what kind of monster California freeways might make or imagine a not-so-innocent dust mite a thousand times its normally microscopic size. Viola! You’ve created a monster!

Sources Cited:

“Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids.” American Museum of Natural History.
“The Surprising Realities of Mythical Beasts.” Live Science.

G. K. Chesterton‘s “The Angry Street”: An Analysis

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

What is an altar but a table made sacred by convention and design?

The first-person narrator begins his story with a surprising statement: he is unable, he says, to recall “whether this tale is true or not”; he follows it with an even more remarkable declaration, stating that he believes that the incidents that he is about to commit to paper “happened to me before I was born.”

Having captured his readers’ attention with these statements, he next begins to relate the narrative proper, hinting at the fact that it involves “atmosphere.” A number of men, all of whom are in a hurry, are seated at lunch, each with one eye upon the clock. The narrator is among them, and, into their company enters another who is dressed as they are, in gentleman’s attire, but who, unlike the others, shows a reverence for the things about him, including his “long frock coat,” his top hat, the peg upon which he hangs his hat, “the wooden chair” in which he sits and the table at which he sits. As soon as he is seated across from the narrator, he begins a “monologue.” At first, the narrator considers him “ordinary,” but is soon disturbed by the other’s gaze, which he describes as that “of a maniac.”

The odd man’s odd manner and the odd thing that he next says continue to intrigue readers. “I thought,” he says, “that another of them had gone wrong,” by which, he clarifies, he means another street. For over forty years, he explains, he has traveled the same street, walking it in the same manner. It is not a long street, he observes; walking it takes him no more than “four and a half minutes.” However, he recently took his usual stroll and found it to be not only tiring but also to have taken him longer. The street also climbed a hill, which it had never done before. The curious gentleman guessed that he had perhaps “turned down the wrong” street, despite the many years during which he has made the same journey “like clockwork.” However, as he continued his walk, it became clear to him, by the landmarks he passed, that the street was, in fact, the one that he customarily traveled. As he continued his walk, the street, instead of turning, as it had always done before, veered steeply, “straight in front of” his “face,” ascending a sharp, long upward slope that caused him to nearly fall “on the pavement.” The street, he found, had “lifted itself like a single wave, and yet every speck and detail of it was the same.” At the very summit of the street, he was able to see the “name over” his “paper shop,” as if the sign were atop “an Alpine pass.”

Quite perplexed and more than a little frightened, the pedestrian was even more astonished when, peering through “the iron trap of a coal-hole” in the street, which had now assumed the aspect of “a long iron bridge into empty space,” he “saw empty space and the stars.” When he looked up again, he saw another man, who was “leaning over the railings,” staring at the hiker, to whom the man seemed to be “not of this world,” despite his “dark and ordinary” attire and the pedestrian’s sense that he had just come out of one of the “grey row of private houses” along the “nightmare road.” The sense of the stranger’s otherworldliness is intensified by the “stars behind his head,” which appear “larger and fiercer than ought to be endured by the eyes of men.”

Calling upon the stranger, whom the traveler supposes may be either an “kind angel” of a “wise devil,” to tell him what has become of the street, which, he identifies as “Bumpton Street, which “goes to Oldgate Station.” The stranger’s reply is bizarre (and, therefore, intriguing to the story’s readers): “It goes there sometimes, Just now, however, it is going to heaven” to seek justice for the traveler’s mistreatment of it. The neglect, the stranger informs the pedestrian, lies in the traveler’s ignoring of the street that he has used (and taken for granted) for over forty years: the street, he says, “has grown tired” of the traveler’s “insolence, and it is bucking and rearing its head toward heaven.”

The pedestrian expresses his opinion that the stranger’s talk is mad; it is “nonsense,” he argues, to imagine that a street should be offended or that it should go anywhere other than where it has always led before. To the stranger’s question as to whether the traveler has ever wondered whether the street has taken him for granted, supposing him to be a non-living thing among things, the traveler has no answer. However, he confides to the story’s narrator that he has “since. . . respected the things called inanimate!” and he bows “slightly to the mustard-pot” as he takes his leave of the restaurant.

This is a short-short story. It is an odd one, certainly, as well. Among younger readers, it is apt to seem not only strange but also absurd. Some older readers, however, will comprehend the story’s theme. Because they are created by men and women, objects of art and craft are, as artifacts of design and manufacture, each with an aesthetic or a utilitarian purpose, are invested with a significance beyond their importance as mere products of technology; they are imbued with the spirit of their manufacturers. They are humanized by virtue of the fact that they are made by men and women. In that sense, they have “souls,” a point that Chesterton makes in his essay “A Piece of Chalk” as well as in this story.

If one considers a coat, a hat, a chair, a table, a mustard-pot, or a street not as a simple coat or hat, table or chair, or mustard-pot, but as an artifact designed for service or aesthetic enrichment and as a work into which a man or a woman has poured not only his or her art and craft, knowledge and skill, experience and passion, as if he or she were fashioning a gift to others as well as an expression of his or her own heart, such seemingly commonplace objects would be regarded with the respect--indeed, the reverence--that the “kind angel” or “;wise demon” suggests that they should be accorded, rather than being taken for granted and ignored.

Were the things that people make for themselves and others rightly regarded, Chesterton suggests, in “A Piece of Chalk,” it would be possible to write a book of poetry, of epic length and grandeur, about the things that one finds in his pocket or her purse. This story, absurd on its face, uses the absurdity that it generates to skew everyday reality, as represented by the street and by the restaurant and the things that each contains, so that these ordinary, everyday places and objects take on strange appearances and become, as it were, visible to readers who, in the course of their own everyday lives, are apt to dismiss their surroundings and to take things for granted much as the pedestrian in “The Angry Street” does.

By making the ordinary appear, for a moment, extraordinary, Chesterton helps his readers to see the extraordinary quality and value of the ordinary and the remarkable nature of the commonplace. Such is no mean feat, and Chesterton’s accomplishment of it in “The Mean Street” makes this story remarkable, indeed.

William Peter Blatty: Opening and Closing Sentences

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The Exorcist is destined to become a classic of horror fiction. Its theme--the love of God surpasses both the problem of evil and human knowledge, depending upon trust in God, or faith--and the execution of this theme in and through William Peter Blatty’s narrative make the novel a book not for its day only but for all time. Like most other books whose importance transcends its own time, The Exorcist also happens to be adroitly written, as just the opening and closing lines of each of its major divisions indicate; Blatty knows how to create, maintain, and heighten suspense, both by the use of situations, foreshadowing, and cliffhangers.

The structure of Blatty’s novel also suggests how he saw the configuration or makeup of the corrodible event--itself comprised of other horrible incidents--of which his book is ostensibly a record or account. As such, it is instructive for those who want to ensure that the structures of their own novels enhance the effect of the horrors their books narrate.

Prologue: Northern Iraq

The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them.

He hastened toward Mosul and his train, his heart encased in the icy conviction that soon he would face an ancient enemy.

I: The Beginning

One

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men’s eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.

What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night.

Two

He stood at the edge of the lonely subway platform, listening for the rumble of a train that would still the ache that was always with him.

He rushed for the seven-ten train back to Washington, carrying pain in a black valise.

Three

Early on the morning of April 11, Chris made a telephone call to her doctor in Los Angeles and asked him for a referral to a local psychiatrist for Regan.

There were no disturbances. That night.

Four

She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants.

The mattress of the bed was quivering violently back and forth.

II: The Edge

One

They brought her to an ending in a crowded cemetery where the gravestones cried for breath.

His orders were to “rest.”

Two

Regan lay on her back on Klein’s examination table, arms and legs bowed outwards.

No one noticed.

Three

The consulting neurologist pinned up the X-rays again and searched for indentations which would look as if the skull had been pounded like copper with a tiny hammer.

Wherever Sharon moved, Regan would follow.

Four

Friday, April 29. While Chris waited in the hall outside the bedroom, Dr. Klein and a noted neuropsychiatrist were examining Regan.

Burke Denning’s head was turned completely around, facing backward.

Five

Cupped in the warm, green hollow of the campus, Damien Karras jogged alone around an oval, loamy track in khaki shorts and a cotton T-shirt drenched with the cling of healing sweat.

She screamed until she fainted.

III: The Abyss

One

She was standing on the Key Bridge walkway, arms on the parapet, fidgeting, waiting, while homeward traffic stuttered thickly behind her, while drivers with everyday cares honked horns and bumpers nudged bumpers with scraping indifference.

“Perhaps we could now have a talk. . . .”

Two

Karras threaded tape to an empty reel in the office of the rotund, silver-haired director of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics.

He continued his farewells.

IV. “And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee. . . ”

One

In the breathing dark of his quiet office, Kindemann brooded above his desk.

The river flowed quiet again, reaching for a gentler shore.

Epilogue

Late June sunlight streamed through the window of Chris’s bedroom.

In forgetting, they were trying to remember.

“An Ordinary Day, with Peanuts”: Shirley Jackson on The Problem of Evil

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

One way to gain insight concerning horror writers’ fiction and the techniques that the writers of such literature employ is to study actual specimens of the genre. Chillers and Thrillers has already examined such stories in some detail, including H. G. Wells’ “The Red Room,” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing,” and Charles Dickens’ “The Signal-man.” In addition, Chillers and Thrillers has considered the film The Descent and Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome in thorough detail. As a result of these studies (and others that are note quite as detailed), much concerning the art of writing horror fiction has been learned and shared. Perhaps these studies have also suggested the critical tools, techniques, theories, and approaches that one can take, on his or her own, to better understand the tricks of the trade. Chillers and Thrillers will continue to “murder” these stories in order “to dissect” them, so that this blog’s faithful followers and occasional readers can gain and share whatever insights Chillers and Thrillers may offer, beginning with Shirley Jackson’s masterful tale, “An Ordinary Day, with Peanuts.”

Her story opens as the omniscient narrator introduces the unlikely protagonist, Mr. John Philip Johnson, sharing with the story’s readers Johnson’s view of the world. It is unduly optimistic--naively optimistic, one might suggest--like that of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, whose view of the universe as representing, despite its moral and ontological limitations, “the best of all possible worlds,” an optimism that is attacked, quite effectively, each in his own way, by writers as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown”), Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (Candide), and the Marquis de Sade.(Justine; or, The Misfortunes of Virtue). Leibnitz’s view of the world is assailed, again, in part, by Jackson, in “An Ordinary Day.”

Mr. Johnson’s view of the world is (or, at least seems to be) much like that of Voltaire. Johnson, like the philosopher who wrote “Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil,” apparently believes that this is “the best of all possible worlds” (although, as readers will soon learn, appearances of belief, as of appearances otherwise, can be deceiving). Jackson, through her narrator, supplies hints that her protagonist’s ostensible optimism may not be supported by the actual state of the world. For example, he has had to have his shoes resoled, and this “resoling” suggests that the universe is not the perfect place that it may, at times, appear to be, for the fact that Mr. Johnson’s soles have worn out, needing to be replaced, suggests that good things even as trivial as the soles of shoes--and, perhaps, as significant as the souls of men and women--can degrade. This intimation of entropy, of erosion, of gradual degradation, if not of evil, is reinforced by the narrator’s reference to the sidewalk upon which Mr. Johnson steps as he leaves home as being “dirty” and by the narrator’s observation that only “some” of the people at whom Mr. Johnson smiles bother to return his smile.

Although his kindness wins them over, at first, other characters are not nearly as trusting of Mr. Johnson as he seems to be of them. When he offers a child the carnation he has bought for his lapel, the baby’s mother studies him “for a minute” before smiling at him, as her innocent child has done, upon the receipt of the flower, suggesting that she, having experience of the world, does not, unlike her child, automatically trust strangers bearing gifts. This mother’s initial distrust of Mr. Johnson is mirrored, a few moments later, by another mother’s suspicion of him when he offers to watch her child for her while she tends to the men who are moving her furniture. (The rest of the small crowd gathered at the scene are more interested in inspecting her worn furniture than they are in lending her a hand.) Her suspicion--she “turned and glared at him distrustfully”--prompts him to add, “We'll sit right here on the steps.” The child, a boy, is allowed to go to Mr. Johnson, who offers the lad a “handful of peanuts” from his pocket. The boy initially refuses the offered peanuts because “his mother did not allow him to accept food from strangers.” While the mother supervises the movers, Mr. Johnson reassures the boy that he will like his new home in Vermont. As he goes about town, having chosen a random route (“he did not follow the same route every morning, but preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a man intent upon business”), Mr. Johnson does one good turn after another to all whom he encounters, including animals: he feeds a peanut to “a stray dog” he encounters on his way.

Jackson’s narrator frequently advises readers of how good Mr. Johnson himself feels, possibly as a result of his optimism and possibly as a result of the good deeds that he does. For example, as he sets out from home, at the beginning of the story, “Mr. John Philip Johnson shut his front door behind him and went down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn't the sun warm and good,” and, after he watches the woman’s son, he steps “happily. . . Feeling the warm sun on his back and on the top of his head.”

He matches two young people who are too much in a hurry and too concerned with work to live their lives, paying them for the day they will miss by going on a date, the expenses of which Mr. Johnson pays in advance. He continues to offer peanuts to those whom he meets--a gull, a panhandler, a bus driver--and advises a couple who are seeking an apartment to rent of the vacancy left by the mother and son who have moved to Vermont. (This act is especially helpful in such big cities as New York, in which finding any apartment is difficult.) His good deeds continue until it is time for him to return home:

After his lunch he rested; he walked into the nearest park and fed peanuts to the pigeons. It was late afternoon by the time he was ready to start back downtown, and he had refereed two checker games, and watched a small boy and girl whose mother had fallen asleep and awakened with surprise and fear that turned to amusement when she saw Mr. Johnson. He had given away almost all of his candy, and had fed all the rest of his peanuts to the pigeons; and it was time to go home. Although the late afternoon sun was pleasant, and his shoes were still entirely comfortable, he decided to take a taxi downtown.

On his way home, he saves a taxi driver from losing money on a horserace. After the driver agrees to take the money home to his wife that a fare had given him to bet on a horse, Mr. Johnson gives the driver another ten dollars to bet on a different horse on another day, convincing the driver that astrological signs are against the horse winning the race that the driver has been tipped about the horse’s winning.

Finally, arriving back at his apartment, Mr. Johnson is greeted by his wife. They enquire as to one another’s day. He tells her that his has not been difficult; hers, she says, has been only “so-so.” She then recites the incidents of her day: she “accused” a woman at a department store “of shoplifting,” “sent three dogs to the pound,” “quarreled” with a bus driver and complained about his conduct to his supervisors. Based upon Mr. Johnson’s kind and considerate behavior throughout the day, readers are apt to think that Mr. Johnson would be horrified by his wife’s conduct. Therefore, his reaction comes as something of a shock. “Fine,” he says, and then, observing that she looks “tired,” suggests that they “change over tomorrow”--in other words, she will play the angel to his devil.

The story ends upon the same sort of commonplace note with which it began, as Mr. Johnson, enquiring as to what is for dinner and told “veal cutlet,” replies, “Had it for lunch.” The ordinariness of the lives of this couple, each of whom does good or evil in the course of their daily lives and is able, by a mere act of the will, to alternate between these modes of conduct enhances the story’s horrific quality, for it suggests that anyone and everyone--people as seemingly normal and ordinary as Mr. Johnson and his wife--can be either good or evil, or, indeed, both, and the duality of all human beings as agents, simultaneously, of both good and evil is the message of Jackson’s story. Men and women, Jackson suggests, are capable of choosing to be good or evil--or, at least, to act in good or evil ways. They have free will.

Her story suggests how much good or evil can be done by seemingly insignificant acts of kindness or malice. Mr. Johnson’s matching of the young couple might result in a happy, lifelong marriage between a young woman and a young man who, before, were in much too great a rush to earn a living to appreciate life or, indeed, themselves or other people, just as Mrs. Johnson’s accusation (perhaps unfounded) of a shopper’s theft could become a lifelong impediment to the individual, should a conviction result, in seeking employment or retaining a position. Obviously, most people would agree that it is better to do good than to do evil, but, Jackson’s story also suggests that, given the choice of behaving one way or the other, most people choose to behave both ways, either simultaneously or alternately, and that those who are suspicious of other people’s seemingly good intentions may, therefore, have good reason, indeed, to be suspicious. To choose to do good only at times is to choose to do evil, for to truly choose to do good would mean to renounce evil entirely--something that people do not seem to want to do or, perhaps, to be capable of doing.

Readers may be reminded of the lesson that Goodman Brown learns in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown,” that all men and women are both good and evil; that sin is innate and inescapable; and that all human deeds, therefore, are, even when good, tainted with evil. It is this theme, the idea of original sin, that Leibnitz’s optimistic philosophy ignores and that Jackson’s story, like “Young Goodman Brown,” Candide, and Justine; or, The Misfortunes of Virtue ultimately underscores.

Guest Speaker: Tzvetan Todorov

The following are excerpt from Todorov's "The Uncanny and the Marvelous":

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the work belongs to another genre [than that of the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (Tzvetan Todorov, “The Uncanny and the Marvelous” in Literature of the Occult: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Peter B. Messent. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981. 17. Print).

Indeed, we generally distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the “uncanny”). . . and that of the supernatural accepted (the “marvelous”) (Todorov, 17). [By definition, Todorov views “the novels of Clara Reeves and Ann Radcliffe” as uncanny, but sees “the works of Horace Walpole, M. G. Lewis, and Maturin” as marvelous.]

. . . The marvelous corresponds to an unknown phenomenon, never seen as yet, still to come--hence to a future; in the uncanny, on the other hand, we refer the inexplicable to known facts, to a previous experience, and thereby to the past. As for the fantastic itself, the hesitation which characterizes it cannot be situated, by and large, except in the present (Todorov, 18).

Yet it would be wrong to claim that the fantastic can exist only in part of a work, for here are certain texts which sustain their ambiguity to the very end, i. e., even beyond the narrative itself. The book closed, the ambiguity persists. A remarkable example is supplied by Henry James’ tale “The Turn of the Screw,” which does not permit us to determine finally whether ghosts haunt the old estate, or whether we are confronted by hallucinations or a hysterical governess victimized by the disturbing atmosphere which surrounds her. In French literature, Merimee’s tale “La Venus d’Ille” affords a perfect example of this ambiguity. A statue seems to come alive and to kill the bridegroom; but we remain at the point of “seems,” and never reach certainty (Todorov, 19).

We find that. . . a transitory sub-genre appears: between the fantastic and the uncanny on the one hand, between the fantastic and the marvelous on the other[:]

. . . In. . . [the]. . . sub-genre [of the fantastic-uncanny] events that seem supernatural throughout a story receive a rational explanation at its end. . . . Criticism has described, and often condemned, this type under the label of “the supernatural explained” (Todorov, 20). [An example of the fantastic-uncanny sub-genre is The Saragossa Manuscript, in which the possibility of the supernatural as a cause of the events is slowly and continuously “eroded” in various ways, to wit:] first, accident or coincidence. . . ; next, dreams. . . ; then the influence of drugs. . . ; tricks and prearranged apparitions. . . ; illusion of the senses. . . ; and lastly madness (Todorov, 20-21).

. . . Indeed, the realistic solutions given in The Saragossa Manuscript or “Ines de las Sierras” are altogether improbable; supernatural solutions would have been, on the contrary, quite probable. . . . The probable is therefore not necessarily opposed to the fantastic: the former is a category that deals with internal coherence, with submission to the genre; the fantastic refers to an ambiguous perception shared by the reader and one of the characters. Within the genre of the fantastic, it is probable that “fantastic” reactions will occur (Todorov, 21).

. . . There also exists the uncanny in the pure state. In works that belong to this genre, events are related which may be readily accounted for by the laws of reason, but which are, in one way or another, incredible, extraordinary or unexpected, and which thereby provoke in the character and in the reader a reaction similar to that which works of the fantastic have made familiar. . . . The literature of horror in its pure state belongs to the uncanny--many examples from the stories of Ambrose Bierce could serve as examples here (Todorov, 22-23).

The uncanny realizes. . . only one of the conditions of the fantastic: the description of certain reactions, especially of fear. It is uniquely linked to the sentiments of the characters and not to a material event defying reason. (The marvelous, by way of contrast, may be characterized by the mere presence of supernatural events, without implicating the reaction they provoke in the characters) (Todorov, 22).

Poe’s tale “The Fall of the House of Usher” is an instance of the uncanny bordering on the fantastic (Todorov, 22).

Here [in “The Fall of the House of Usher”] the uncanny has two sources. The first is constituted by two coincidences (there are as many of these as in a work of the supernatural explained). Although the resurrection of Usher’s sister and the fall of the house after the death of the inhabitants may appear supernatural, Poe has not failed to supply quite rational explanations for both events [a fissure in the edifice and catalepsy, respectively] (Todorov, 23).

The other series of elements that provoke the sense of the uncanny is not linked to the fantastic but to what we might call “an experience of limits,” which characterizes the whole of Poe’s oeuvre. . . . In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” it is the extremely morbid condition of the brother and sister which disturbs the reader. In other tales, scenes of cruelty, delight in evil, and murder will provoke the same effect. The sentiment of the uncanny originates, then, in certain themes linked to more or less ancient taboos. If we grant that primeval experience is constituted by transgression, we can accept Freud’s theory as to the origin of the uncanny [as representing a resurfacing, or return, of the suppressed] (Todorov, 23).

Thus the fantastic is ultimately excluded from “The Fall of the House of Usher.” As a rule we do not find the fantastic in Poe’s works, in the strict sense, with the exception perhaps of “The Black Cat.” His tales almost all derive their effects from the uncanny, and several from the marvelous. Yet Poe remains very close to the authors of the fantastic both in his themes and in the techniques that he applies (Todorov, 29).

. . . It has often been remarked. . . that for the reading public, detective stories have in our time replaced ghost stories. Let us consider the nature of the relationship. The murder mystery, in which we try to discover the identity of the criminal, is constructed in the following manner: on the one hand there are several easy solutions, initially tempting but turning out, one after another, to be false; on the other, there is an entirely improbable solution disclosed only at the end and turning out to be the only right one. Here we see what brings the detective story close to the fantastic tale. . . . The fantastic narrative, too, involves two solutions, one probable and supernatural, the other improbable and rational.

It suffices, therefore, that in the detective story this second solution be so inaccessible as to “defy reason” for us to accept the existence of the supernatural rather than to rest with the absence of any explanation at all. A classic example of this situation is Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. [However, the detective story is an example of the uncanny, for] the detective story, once it is over, leaves no doubt as to the absence of supernatural events. The relationship, moreover, is valid only for a certain type of detective story (the “sealed room”) and a certain type of uncanny narrative (the ‘supernatural explained”). Further, the emphasis differs in the two genres: in the detective story, the emphasis is placed on the solution to the mystery; in the texts linked to the uncanny (as in the fantastic narrative), the emphasis is on the reactions which this mystery provokes (Todorov, 24).

. . . As a result of [the epilogue to John Dickson Carr’s detective novel] . . . The Burning Court [the novel] emerges from the class of detective stories that simply evoke the supernatural, to join the ranks of the fantastic. We see Marie once again, in her house, thinking over the case; and the fantastic re-emerges. Marie asserts once again (to the reader) that she is indeed the poisoner, that the detective was her in fact her friend (which is not untrue), and that he has provided the entire rational explanation in order to save her. . . (Todorov, 25-26).

[In The Burning Court] the world of the non-dead reclaims its rights, and the fantastic with it: we are thrown back on our hesitation as to which solution to choose. . . (Todorov, 26).

If we move to the other side of that median line we have called the fantastic, we find ourselves in the fantastic-marvelous, the class of narrative that are separated as fantastic and that end with an acceptance of the supernatural (Todorov, 26).

Gautier’ “La Morte Amoureuse” can serve as an example [of the fantastic-marvelous] (Todorov, 26).

A similar example is to be found in Villiers de I’Isle-Adam’s “Vera.” Here again, throughout the tale, we may hesitate between believing in life-after-death or thinking that the count who so believes is mad. But at the end, the count discovers the key to Vera’s tomb, though he himself had flung it into the tomb; it must therefore be Vera, his dead wife, who has brought it to him (Todorov, 27).

There exists, finally, a form of the marvelous in the pure state. . . . It is not an attitude [on the part of either reader or character] toward the events described which characterizes the marvelous, but the nature of these events (28).

We generally link the genre of the marvelous to that of the fairy tale. But as a matter of fact, the fairy tale is only one of the varieties of the marvelous, and the supernatural events in fairy tales provoke no surprise. . . . What distinguishes the fairy tale is a certain kind of writing, not the status of the supernatural. Hoffman’s tales illustrate this difference perfectly: “The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King,” “The Strange Child,” and “The King’s Bride” belong, by stylistic properties, to the fairy tale. “The Choice of the Bride,” while preserving the same status with respect to the supernatural, is not a fairy tale at all. One would also have to characterize the Arabian Nights as marvelous tales rather than fairy tales. . . (Todorov, 28).

In order to delimit the marvelous in the pure state, it is convenient to isolate it from several types of narrative in which the supernatural is somewhat justified (Todorov, 28).

1. We may speak first of all of hyperbolic marvelous. In it, phenomena are supernatural only by virtue of their dimensions, which are superior to those that are familiar to us. Thus in the Arabian Nights Sinbad the Sailor declares he has seen “fish one hundred and even two hundred ells long” or “serpents so great and so long that there is not one which could not have swallowed an elephant” (Todorov, 28).

2. Quite close to this first type of the marvelous is the exotic marvelous. In this type, supernatural events are reported without being presented as such. The implicit reader is supposed to be ignorant of the regions where the events take place, and consequently he has no reason for calling them into question. Sinbad’s second voyage furnishes some excellent examples, such as the roc, a bird so tremendous that it concealed the sun and “one of whose legs. . . was as great as a great tree-trunk” (Todorov, 29).

3. A third type of the marvelous might be called the instrumental marvelous. Here we find the gadgets, technological developments unrealized in the period described but, after all, quite possible. In the “The Tale of Prince Ahmed” in the Arabian Nights, for instance, the marvelous instruments are, at the beginning: a flying carpet, an apple that cures diseases, and a “pipe” for seeing great distances; today, the helicopter, antibiotics, and binoculars, endowed with the same qualities, do not belong in any way to the marvelous (Todorov, 29).

4. The “instrumental marvelous” brings us very close to what in nineteenth-century France was called the scientific marvelous, which today we call science fiction. Here the supernatural is explained in a rational manner, but according to laws [of nature or science] that contemporary science does not acknowledge. In the high period of fantastic narratives, stories involving magnetism are characteristic of the scientific marvelous: magnetism “scientifically” explains supernatural events, yet magnetism itself belongs to the supernatural. Examples are Hoffman’s “Spectre Bridegroom” or “The Magnetizer,” and Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” or Maupassant’s “Un Fou?” Contemporary science fiction. When it does not slip into allegory, obeys the same mechanism: these narratives, starting from irrational premises, link the “facts” they contain in a perfectly logical manner (Todorov, 30).

[Todorov’s essay does not “consider” the marvelous itself, finding the marvelous to be “an anthropological phenomenon” that “:exceeds the context of a study limited to literary aspects” (30).]

A Dirty Little Secret About Horror Movies: They Hurt So Good!

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

We say that we fear death, disability, insensibility, insanity, incarceration, apathy or hatred, poverty, indignity, pain, disfigurement or ugliness, unbelief, and humiliation, but we do not. We fear what these conditions signify: we fear loss. Respectively, we fear the loss of life, of limb, of our senses, of our minds, of freedom, of love, of wealth, of dignity, of pleasure, of beauty (our own or beauty itself), of faith, and of pride.

Horror is about loss.

The threats to loss are the enemies, the monsters, that appear in horror stories to threaten and to seize, to destroy and to eliminate, to ruin and to pervert. The monsters are the creatures, conditions, situations, duties, fates, and other foes that attack us from within or from without--or, in some cases, from both within and from without.

Alternatively, loss can transform us into the monsters we fear. The loss of love or beauty can turn a heartsick woman or a grieving husband into a beast bent upon revenge, as in The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

Horror films that play upon--or prey upon--these fears of loss include Silver Bullet (1985) (paralyzed, wheelchair-bound Marty Coslaw is pursued by a werewolf); Jeepers Creepers (2001) (victims are blinded by the villain); Psycho (1960) (Norman Bates is psychotic); Prison (1988) (innocent, convicted murderer Charlie Forsythe is electrocuted, but returns to avenge himself by frying others); Carrie (1976) (Carrie White is bullied before, unleashing her telekinetic powers, she kills her hateful tormentors); Soylent Green (1973) (Soylent Green is people--the have-nots feed the haves--literally); Victim (2010) (first, the victim is stripped of his dignity; then, the pain begins); most of the Saw movies qualify as “torture porn,” in which pain is celebrated for what it is--pain--for no other reason than that pain makes an audience squirm; Darkman (1990) (burn victim--and scientist--Peyton Westlake is just one of the many disfigured characters who appear in a multitude of horror films); The Exorcist (1973) (Father Damien Karras battles his own unbelief as well as the demon who’s possessed preadolescent Regan MacNeil); Last House on the Left (1972) (two teenage girls are not only raped and tortured but humiliated); and, of course, countless horror movies delight in detailing graphic and gory death scenes. Many other such movies also present themes and images of the loss of life, of limb, of our senses, of our minds, of freedom, of love, of wealth, of dignity, of pleasure, of beauty (our own or beauty itself), of faith, and of pride.

We want wholeness. We want soundness. We want happiness. Instead, horror movies give us crippling, fragmenting, and grievous physical and psychological harm. We keep coming back for more, though. We are, on some level, both sadists and masochists. We are, in fact, sadomasochists: we want to inflict pain upon ourselves or others and want, at the same time, to experience the infliction of misery. That is one of the dirty little secrets of horror movies. Like the twisted love that John Mellencamp sings about, horror movies “hurt so good.”