Friday, August 31, 2018

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Feel Safe

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


One of the basic needs to which advertisements often appeal, according to communications professor Jib Fowles, is the need to feel safe. “We naturally want to do whatever it takes to stave off threats to our well-being, and to our families,'” he points out. Like many of the other basic needs, this one, involving the “instinct of self-preservation,” can take several forms. Advertisements based upon this appeal may address concerns about financial security, product durability, and personal health. Of course, the need to feel safe is also one of horror fiction's primary appeals.





But, if we read carefully what Fowles has written, we see that he speaks (or writes) not of the need to be safe, but of the need to feel safe. There is quite a difference between the two. In reality, no matter how much we may prepare, there is no way to be 100 percent safe 100 percent of the time—or any time at all. Even as I am writing this or you are reading this, one or both of us could be struck down by anything from a stray bullet to a falling meteorite or an errant bolt of lightning.





More mundane causes of death and destruction are always at hand, too, such as bacteria, viruses, and plagues. The real world may not throw vampires and werewolves at us, and we probably don't really need to worry about voodoo and magic, but, even without such monsters and forces, ours is a truly dangerous world at all times.





One reason we forget about the dangers that abound is that we have erected fairly reliable defenses against many of them. We employ military and police forces; meteorologists and astronomers watch the skies; scientists and researchers, as well as doctors and nurses (and the good folk at the Centers for Disease Control), wage war against dangerous microbes. Firefighters and emergency medical technicians rescue us from infernos and repair the injuries we suffer from car crashes. I could go on (and on), but I think we'd all agree that, as a society, we've done a good job of shoring up our defenses.



English: Vampire killing kit at Mercer Museum, PA.
Русский: Набор для убийства вампиров (Музей Мерсера, Пенсильвания, США)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vampire_killing_kit_(Mercer_Museum).jpg


Generally, that's as true in horror fiction as it is in life (or in life as we like to imagine it, at least). In horror fiction, there are remedies against vampires (crucifixes, garlic, holy water, and wooden stakes) and werewolves (silver bullets). If witches practice black magic, other sorcerers defend against their hexes with white magic: Dormammu may exist, but so does Dr. Strange. No matter the type or the power of evil, there is a more powerful force for good.





An early movie, part science fiction and part horror, offers one of the most memorable examples of the appeal to the need to feel safe. Released in 1933, King Kong shows us that, whether among island natives or due to the technology of the early 20th century, there were means of not only feeling safe, but of being safe against a 30-foot-tall gorilla.





On Skull Island, the villagers erected a tall, sturdy wall (think of Fowles's observations about product durability) to keep Kong out of their village, and, to placate him, they periodically provide a sacrifice for him. (It seems the wall protects them from Kong, but, as viewers soon discover, the perception of safety is unfounded. Still, the wall makes the natives feel safe.)



When actress Ann Darrow is abducted by the big ape, she's rescued by the intrepid crew of the Venture, who manage, at the cost of the lives of several of their number, to best both a Stegosaurus and a Brontosaurus before rescuing Ann. (To be fair, Kong also does his share to protect Ann, killing both a Tyrannosaurus and a Pteranodon, before pursuing Ann's rescuers back through the jungle to the villager's compound).





Empowered by his feelings for Ann, perhaps, Kong breaks through the gate in the wall surrounding the village, but he is brought down with a gas bomb hurled at him by filmmaker Carl Denham. Technology to the rescue!

In New York City, Kong escapes from a Broadway theater, where Denham has put him on display as “the Eighth Wonder of the World.” Ann is present, but, removed to a room on an upper floor of a hotel, she is safe from the beast—or so everyone believes.




Kong climbs the exterior of the building, seizing Ann, and flees, wrecking havoc along the way. He seeks high ground, as it were, by scaling the Empire State Building, where, technology to the rescue again, he is killed by gunfire from attacking airplanes.

Denham remarks, “It was Beauty killed the Beast.” In fact, however, the audience's need to feel safe is likely the reason that Kong succumbs to the defenses humanity has erected against the various kinds of potential calamity.

King Kong fails to destroy humanity (although he directly or indirectly kills his fair share of us). Like many threats, he is an external one. Edgar Allan Poe made the internal monster, the psychotic killer, a popular villain of horror fiction, who remains a force with which to reckoned as much today as he or she was in Poe's time. For such villains, Psycho (1960) is probably the quintessential horror film.





Norman Bates, who, like Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Buffalo Bill of The Silence of the Lambs, is based upon grave robber and murderer Ed Gein, manages an out-of the-way motel. He lives with his mother, who finds women to be contemptible, sordid creatures and wants her son to have nothing to do with them. When Norman is attracted to Marion Crane, a secretary who absconds with her employer's money, Mother swings into action, wielding a knife as Marion showers in her room at the Bates Motel.

Mother is Norman's alter ego, as it turns out, and, when he is arrested, Mother is no longer a threat. Unfortunately, by then, “she” has killed both Marion and Private investigator Milton Arbogast, who comes to the motel (and visits Norman's house, which overlooks the motor lodge), seeking Marion after she goes on the lam.





At the end of the movie, a psychiatrist reassures the audience that, although Norman is certainly frightening and dangerous, his particular problem—he has an alternate personality—is not a mystery, but a known and understood condition. Although Mother is now in complete control of Norman, he can be confined and treated. Psychiatry, aided by the criminal justice system, can protect the public. Knowledge confers the power needed to prevent Mother from ever harming anyone again. It is not technology, this time, but epistemology (and a prison or a mental institution) that comes to the rescue of society.

Indeed, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the holy book of psychology and psychiatry, has charted the depths of this condition; the signs and symptoms are well established, although the causes and the means of treatment of the disorder are not (yet) as well defined. Nevertheless, the DSM-5's clinical language, like its claims of knowledge and understanding, are enough, perhaps, to calm the fears of those who want to feel safe.

Psychology and psychiatry may not be as certain as medicine, but they're better than nothing. Maybe. Without them, we'd have about as much protection from the menace of mad killers as Prince Prospero and his guests enjoyed in Poe's short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” and, as we may recall, their walled abbey, their desperate drinking, their wild dancing, and their fevered merriment did not stand between them and their demise, courtesy of The Red Death.




Saturday, August 25, 2018

Lawrence Block and the "Biter Bit" Plot

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


Lawrence Block, who started his career as an author by writing erotic pulp fiction novels under such pen names as Jill Emerson, Paul Kavanagh, Sheldon Lord, Andrew Shaw, Don Holliday, Lesley Evans, Lee Duncan, Anne Campbell Clark, and Ben Christopher, wrote, on average, one of these “sex novels,” as they're known in the trade, per month. He's also written many short stories, typically completing one in a single evening or, sometimes, over a weekend, for which reason he calls one collection of his short stories and “novelettes” One Night Stands and Lost Weekends. The anthology contains 25 “one night stands” and three “lost weekends. Most of them are thrillers, but the book also includes a science fiction story, “Nor Iron Bars a Cage.”




The majority of the stories in this collection are of the so-called “biter bit” variety, which involve a form of poetic justice in which the tables are turned on the antagonist or, sometimes, since Block's fiction is often populated with anti-heroes, the protagonist. The formula is discernible fairly early on, but the stories remain suspenseful because readers wonder how Lawrence will bring about the ironic reversal which ends a particular tale. To say that he's innovative in effecting his resolutions is an understatement. 

Here are a few examples:

“The Bad Night”: Robbers and would-be killers, Benny and Zeke, are subdued and bound by their intended victim, an aging war veteran named Dan.

The Badger Game”: Dick Baron, a con man, misreads a lonely woman's invitation to have sex with her as a con game, assuming that her husband will arrive to rob him, but Sally English is sincere; when her husband discovers them together, Baron knocks him unconscious before having sex with Sally. Later, Baron is shocked when her husband, having beaten Sally until she'd told him Baron's name, which the husband then used in a bribe paid to the hotel's desk clerk in exchange for Baron's room number, knocks at the con man's door. Forcing his way into Baron's room at gunpoint, the husband shoots and kills him. 

“Bargain in Blood”: At Rita's insistence, Benny Dix, a callow youth, murders her boyfriend, Moe, to win her heart, only to learn, too late, that Rita is aroused by murder, and she stabs Benny to death with the same knife he'd used to kill Moe.

“Bride of Violence”: After saving his girlfriend Rita from a rapist, Jim rapes her himself, despite his knowledge that she was preserving her virginity for their wedding night.

“The Burning Fury”: A woman promises to make a lumberjack “happy,” but, after they leave the bar in which they meet to go to his place, she discovers, too late, that there's only one way to make him happy: he's a sadist.

“The Dope”: A mentally challenged man is astonished that Charlie remains friends with him, even though Charlie served a one-year sentence for the crimes they committed (robbery and manslaughter), while he himself serves a 10-year sentence.

“A Fire at Night”: An arsonist regrets the death of Joe Darkin, a firefighter who'd risked his life seeking to rescue Mrs. Pelton, an obese woman, from the tenement that the arsonist—and the late firefighter's fellow fireman—set earlier that night.

“Frozen Stiff”: Brad Malden, a terminally ill man, decides to commit suicide by shutting himself inside the freezer at his butcher's shop. When his wife Vicki shows up in the company of another man named Jay, Malden realizes they're having an affair. To deny Vicki the double indemnity his life insurance includes for accidental death, Malden rigs a side of lamb with a meat cleaver so that, when he gives the lamb's carcass a swing, the cleaver cuts his throat, making it look as though he were murdered, confident that Vicki's fingerprints, which are “all over the cold-bin door,” will incriminate her.

“Hate Goes Courting”: John murders his older brother Brad after the latter's endless taunts escalate and Brad rapes John's fiance, Margie.

“I Don't Fool Around”: To avenge the murder of criminal Johnny Blue, a veteran cop shoots and kills the murderer, Frank Calder, making it look as though the shooting had been in self-defense. The cop hopes his junior partner, Fischer, who's bothered by the legally unjustified killing, will ask for a new partner.

“Just Window Shopping”: A woman, catching a voyeur peeping at her, invites him into her house, at gunpoint, to have sex with her. When she won't take no for an answer, he shoots her, killing her with her gun, which she'd set aside as she'd pressed herself upon him. Police try to beat a confession out of him, but he refuses to confess to a rape he did not commit.

Lie Back and Enjoy It”: After an armed woman is raped by the motorist who'd picked her up hitchhiking, she shoots and kills him with a revolver she carries in her purse, telling him that, until he'd raped her, she'd intended only to steal his car and to leave him stranded with “a little money to get home on.” 

“Look Death in the Eye”: A beautiful woman is picked up in a bar by one of the three men she notices are interested in her. At his apartment, she stabs him to death, cuts out his “bright eyes,” and takes them home to keep in a box with others she's collected in the same way.

“Man with a Passion”: Jacob Falch, a blackmailer, is on vacation after having extorted money from a mayor whose wife Falch photographed in various “compromising positions.” Now, Falch encounters Saralee Marshall, a young woman hoping to escape her small-town life by becoming a model. She agrees to pose nude for him in his motel room, where Falch plies her with liquor and has sex with her, only to discover, later, that her boyfriend, Tom Larson, who was hidden in the closet, has photographed them. Informing Falch that Saralee is only seventeen, Larson tells Falch that paying him to suppress the photographs “is going to cost . . . plenty.”

“Murder Is My Business”: A woman invites a hit man to her apartment after hiring him to kill her husband, and they have sex. Afterward, a man hires the hit man to kill someone at a particular address. Now, the hit man has two people to kill on the same night. He kills both of his clients: the man is the husband who's hired the hit man to kill his wife; the woman is the wife who's hired the hit man to kill her husband.

Nor Iron Bars a Cage”: Two Althean guards discuss their planet's first prison: a 130-foot-tall tower with a cell at its top and sides that slope in, preventing anyone from escaping by climbing down it. Food is delivered by a pneumatic tube, and the prisoner tosses discarded items from the cell's balcony. The guards leave the key to the prisoner's shackles in his cell and wait until he throws them to the ground. Then, the prisoner flaps his wings and flies away, escaping. 

“One Night of Death”: A condemned man's son ties his ex-girlfriend, Betty, to Dan Bookspan, the son of his father's dishonest business partner, for whose murder his own father is being executed at midnight in San Quentin's gas chamber. Then, the condemned man's son turns on the gas jets in his victims' apartment at the same time that his father is being executed in California. In doing so, he obtains revenge on Dan for his having stolen Betty after his own father had killed the elder Bookspan.

“Package Deal”: John Harper, a local banker, hires Castle, a “professional killer,” to murder four small-time criminals who have taken over the seedy activities of Arlington, Ohio. Castle kills all his targets, and then notifies a man in Chicago, who responds, “We'll be down tomorrow.” The implication is that the Chicago party is a mobster. Either Castle has double-crossed Harper, notifying the Chicago gangster that the local competition has been eliminated and that Arlington is now ripe, as it were, for the picking or he has actually been working for the Chicago mobster, rather than for Harper. In either case, a double cross has occurred, a device that gets considerable play in Lawrence's short stories and novels.

“Professional Killer”: Professional killer Harry Varden receives a telephone call from a woman who, without knowing his name, hires him to kill her husband, saying he's boring and she's met another, more exciting man. By killing her husband, she will receive his life insurance and be able to marry her lover. When Harry collects the slip of paper from his post office box, along with his client's payment in full, in cash, he is angry as he learns the name of his target. He calls Pete, another hit man, hiring him to kill his own client, his wife, who has unknowingly hired Harry, her own husband, to kill himself.

“Pseudo Identity”: After renting an apartment in which to spend the nights he works late as a copywriter, bored and boring Howard Jordan gradually assumes an alter ego, that of Roy Baker, a hip, fun-loving guy who is popular with the in-crowd. When he sees his wife, Carolyn, with another man, he poses as her boyfriend, and sets her up, telling her to come to his apartment, where, dressed as Ray Baker, he kills her. In doing so, he realizes, he has also destroyed the life of his alter ego, as he can never again be Ray Baker without risking arrest and trial for Carolyn's murder. His is stuck with Jordan's lackluster, responsible identity and life.

“Ride a White Horse”: Andy Hart's daily routine is disrupted when his favorite bar is forced to close for two weeks for having sold alcohol to a minor. After he eats at the diner he typically frequents, he tries another bar in the neighborhood, the White Horse, where a 24-year-old blonde invites him home with her, and they become a couple, living together as if they were married, buts she doesn't talk about her past, and Andy isn't sure how she can pay her bills without working. The woman, Sara Malone, asks him to pick up a package for her at the local library. He does so, picking up additional packages at the library and elsewhere. He unwraps one and discovers it contains a white powder, which Sara identifies as heroin. Andy quits his job and works full-time for Sara, a pusher, and becomes addicted to heroin, losing interest in Sara. He wants to expand their operation, and, when Sara is hesitant, he stabs her to death.

“A Shroud for the Damned”: An aged mother knits shrouds. When her son becomes a thief to feed them and begins to associate with criminals, she stabs him to death after he dons the shroud. She is confident that the shroud won't only keep him warm on cold nights, but that it will also “keep the evil spirits from him.”

“Sweet Little Racket”: After losing his business, a liquor store, to a chain of stores, an unemployed entrepreneur decides to demand protection money from wealthy businessmen, threatening to kill their children if they don't pay him $50 per week. When he attempts to extort a fifth victim, Alfred Sanders, Sanders tape-records him threatening to harm his son, Jerry. When Jerry is killed by someone who drives a car similar to that of the extortionist, the criminal realizes that Sanders's tape recording will send him to prison.

“The Way to Power”: A corrupt police chief takes one of his cop's advice when the cop, Joe, suggests they frame Lucci, a freelancing bookie, for the murder of a tramp. Joe volunteers to kill the tramp. Instead, he has Lucci come to the chief's house, shoots the chief, then shoots Lucci, and tells the investigating officer Lucci shot the chief for “cracking down on him” and Joe killed Lucci. Joe wonders whether the chief's widow is still awake, commenting to the reader, “I felt powerful as hell.”

Shared or Recurring Element
Stories Featuring Shared or Recurring Element
Robbers
The Bad Night,” “The Dope”
Con men, blackmailers, and extortionists
The Badger Game,” “Man with a Passion,” “Sweet Little Racket”
Rapists
Bride of Violence,” “Hate Goes Courting,” “Lie Back and Enjoy It”
Hit men and other killers
The Dope,” “A Fire at Night,” “Hate Goes Courting,” “I Don't Fool Around,” “Just Window Shopping,” “”Lie Back and Enjoy It,” “Look Death in the Eye,” “Murder Is My Business,” “One Night of Death,” “Package Deal,”Professional Killer,” “Pseudo Identity” “Ride a White Horse.” “A Shroud for the Damned,” “Sweet Little Racket,” “The Way to Power”
Sadists
The Blinding Fury,” “Bargain in Blood,” “Look Death in the Eye”
Sex perverts
Bargain in Blood,” “The Burning Fury,” “Just Window Shopping”
Female character named Rita
Bargain in Blood,” “Bride of Violence”
Double crosses
Package Deal,” “Sweet Little Racket,” “The Way to Power”
Fornication, lust, paraphernalia, rape, or seduction
The Badger Game” (adultery), “Bargain in Blood” (sexual sadism), “Bride of Violence” (rape), “Frozen Stiff” (adultery), “Hate Goes Courting” (sex), “Just Window Shopping” (voyeurism), “Lie Back and Enjoy It” (rape), “Man with a Passion” (statutory rape), “Murder Is My Business” (adultery), “Ride a White Horse” (fornication)

As the table above indicates, in addition to the common “biter bit” plots, these stories share certain types of characters (robbers, con men, rapists, hit men and other killers, sadists, sexual perverts, and lonely men and women); in one case, two stories both feature a woman named Rita. Although some characters are naive, most are wise to the ways of the world, sometimes behaving in a cynical, even cruel, fashion. For example, sex is easily available and, generally, tawdry. The protagonist of “Murder Is My Business” callously murders the same woman with whom, earlier, he'd had sex, and the main character in “Bride of Violence” rapes his own fiancee after having saved her from another rapist.



In having written several, sometimes many, short stories which contain the same elements, Block developed themes and characters that he would later use in series of novels. His hit men become the precursors of his series about “professional killer” Keller, the anti-hero-protagonist of Hit Man, Hit List, Hit Parade, Hit and Run, Hit Me, and Keller's Fedora. Block's style captures the gritty underworld of the big cities in which his stories often take place, and his plots exhibit his familiarity with the vices and crimes committed by those who live in such cities. However, his tales are not limited to big cities; the action in “Lie Back and Enjoy It” seems to take place in the middle of nowhere, while the action in “Man with a Passion,” like that of “A Bad Night,” occurs in or outside small towns.


Structurally, many of Block's stories tend to follow Aristotle's narrative divisions of plot into three parts: beginning, middle, and end:
“Lie Back and Enjoy It”


Beginning: A driver picks up a young woman who's hitchhiking.


Middle: The driver rapes the hitchhiker.

End: The hitchhiker steals the driver's car and kills him.



“Look Death in the Eye”

Beginning: A beautiful woman in a bar waits for one of three admirers to make a pass at her.

Middle: One (“Mr. Bright Eyes”) picks her up.


End: In his apartment, the woman kills him, cuts out his eyes, and leaves with them, adding them to her collection at home.

“Just Window Shopping”


Beginning: A voyeur watches a woman in a shower.

Middle: The woman confronts the voyeur with a gun, inviting him into her home.



End: When the woman, demanding sex, refuses to take no for an answer, the voyeur kills her.

Although Block himself has admitted he's not at his best in creating titles for his stories, those in One Night Stands and Lost Weekends are effective. They're not only eye-catching, but they also tend, in many cases, to hint at, or even to summarize, their stories' plots, especially once it's recognized that he often employs the “biter bit” formula:

“The Burning Fury” suggests the lumberjack's motive for savagely beating a woman he's never met before.

“The Dope” suggests why the mentally challenged robber and killer is easily controlled by his partner in crime and why he continues to regard his “buddy” as a friend, despite the other man's harsh treatment and manipulation of him.

“Frozen Stiff” alludes to a dead body (a “stiff”) and the manner of death (“frozen”), suggesting that the "stiff" froze to death.

“Just Window Shopping” suggests that the voyeur is not interested in “buying” (i. e., in having sex); he's just looking, or “window shopping,” a critical insight into why he refuses the woman's demand for sex and why, despite being beaten by the police, he refuses to confess to rape, a crime he did not (and, indeed, might not have been able to) commit, for it appears that he is probably psychologically impotent.

The idiom used as the title of “Lie Back and Enjoy It” supposedly originates with the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who allegedly said, “If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.” Certainly a callous and sexist bit of advice, to say the least, the expression introduces the crux of Block's story, which concerns a hitchhiking woman who is raped by a supposedly good Samaritan, the motorist who stops to give her a ride. The phrase also indicates the rapist's indifference to his victim's well-being; when she uses the same idiom, as she is about to shoot and kill the man who has raped her, the irony of her words underscores the poetic (street) justice she's about to deliver. This narrative's title shows how much information and meaning can be implied by the well-chosen name of a story.

By studying these stories, anyone who aspires to writing thrillers, especially of the noir type, can learn the craft.



Friday, August 24, 2018

Horror Fiction: The Appeal to the Need to Escape

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


In advertisements, the need to escape, Jib Fowles informs the readers of Mass Advertising as Social Forecast, is often figurative, referring to the need to get away from it all for a bit of rest and relaxation. For this reason, the need to escape is often associated with pleasure, and it need not be “solitary.” Two or more people can “escape together into the mountaintops” or to a resort, or a couple may escape on a romantic getaway designed for just the two of them.


Of course, an escape can be literal, too. One can seek to escape from physical danger or incarceration. The type of escape in horror fiction may start with the former type of escape, as it does in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), and turn into the latter type of escape, or it may begin with a trapped or imprisoned character seeking to escape from his or her confines, as in Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), Hide and Seek (2005), or the series of Saw (2004-present) movies. In horror, after all, the theme is loss. In the case of horror fiction that appeals to the need for escape, escape is difficult or impossible, and it is likely to be denied altogether, although, in rare cases, escape may be permitted.


The Pit and the Pendulum”: Poe's short story was inspired by his reading of an account of Napoleon Bonaparte's general, Antoine Charles Louis, Comte de Lasalle's, visit to the Palace of the Inquisition in Toledo, Spain, after his entry into the city. As Kevin J. Hayes points out in The Annotated Poe, Poe alters the sequence of events as they were reported in his source, “Anecdote towards the History of the Spanish Inquisition,” having the general arrive after his own story's protagonist has been sentenced to death, so that the Inquisition's enemy can rescue the condemned prisoner just before he is killed, thereby preserving his narrative's “tension and terror.” Poe's story is a relatively rare example of a protagonist who escapes his horrific fate, thanks to the intervention of another.


Hide and Seek: After the suicide of his wife, Allison, psychologist David Callaway takes his nine-year-old daughter Emily to upstate New York, hoping the change of scenery will help Emily recover from the loss of her mother. Instead, Emily is placed in extreme danger: David has developed dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder. He now has both his own personality and that of the murderous “Charlie,” who emerged to murder Allison after David witnessed her being unfaithful to him during a New year's Eve party. He himself has blocked the memory of Charlie's murder of Allison and truly believes she drowned herself in their bathroom.

When David discovers he has never unpacked the boxes in the study of the house he is renting, despite having been in the room on multiple previous occasions, he realizes he has another personality. By now, he has killed again, having pushed a local woman, Elizabeth, from his daughter's bedroom window, and he kills a third time when the local sheriff questions him about Elizabeth's disappearance. His family friend, Dr. Katherine Carson, also a psychologist, pays a visit, but David shoves her down the basement stairs, where she sees the sheriff's body. David then initiates a game of hide and seek with Emily, who escapes from her bedroom, and hides in the cave in which she first encountered Charlie.


Taking the sheriff's firearm, Katherine forces her way out of the basement and discovers David hunting for Emily. After Emily distracts David, Katherine shoots him, thereby rescuing Emily. The movie provides four alternate endings. In the first, which is used in the version of the film shown to United States audiences, Emily, living with Katherine, seems well adjusted, despite the horrific trauma she has suffered. However, when she leaves the table, where she has been drawing while eating her breakfast, to accompany Katherine to school, the camera shows that she has drawn herself with two heads, suggesting that, like her father, Emily has developed multiple personality disorder, in which case she may have escaped her ordeal physically, but she has not escaped the experience mentally. In another possible ending,


Emily's drawing of herself shows her with only one head, implying that she does not have multiple personality disorder.

Like the ending shown to U. S. Audiences, alternates three, four, and five suggest that Emily has developed multiple personality disorder.


The third ending shows Emily in a bedroom. As Katherine tucks her in, she assures Emily that she loves her. As Katherine leaves the room, Emily asks her to leave the light on, but Katherine says she cannot do so. She shuts the door, which contains a screened window, and locks it from outside, revealing the bedroom's location as that of a psychiatric hospital. Emily gets out of bed, starts to count, and enters the bedroom closet, and grins at her reflection in the mirror.

The fourth alternate ending is identical to the third, except that, in this version, Emily does not count.

The fifth possibility starts the same way as the third, but the bedroom is in Emily's new home, not in a psychiatric ward. After Katherine tucks Emily into bed and reassures her that she loves her, Emily gets out of bed to play Hide and Seek with her reflection.

Although one of the five endings suggests that Emily has escaped, both physically and psychologically, from her father's murder of her mother and two other adults and his attempted murder of her, the existence of the four alternative endings imply that she is psychologically damaged and may well have developed multiple personality disorder. If, on the basis alone of the number of possible endings, we calculate the odds that Emily did, in fact, psychologically escape her ordeal, her chance of having done so is only twenty percent—not very good odds.


I Still Know What You Did last Summer: After Julie James accompanies her friends to an island resort, the holiday retreat loses power as a hurricane advances toward the island. Later, their only remaining means of communication, a two-way radio, is destroyed, and they are left alone with a killer, a fisherman named Ben whom Julie and some of her friends had thrown into a lake last summer. They'd thought they'd killed him when their vehicle, the driver of which was drunk, struck him on a mountain road.


One by one, Julie's friends are killed. Only three survive: Julie, her boyfriend Ray, who joined the party late, after evading an earlier attempt on his life, and Karla, Julie's Boston roommate. The Coast Guard rescues them, and Julie marries Ray. While he brushes his teeth, the bathroom door is shut and locked. Julie, seated on the bed in their bedroom, sees Ben under the bed. She screams, as he grabs her with the hook that replaces a long-lost limb, and she is hauled beneath the bed, her fate remaining a mystery.

Did Julie escape her past? Although she goes to the island retreat hoping to forget the painful memories and nightmares associated with her participation in the events of last summer, Julie encounters Ben again, as she and her friends are stalked, and Ben kills several of them. Julie is almost killed herself, but Ray rescues her. The Coast Guard takes them back to the mainland, and they escape the island and the hurricane.

Although she seeks happiness, marrying Ray, Julie is captured again at the end of the movie by her nemesis, and her husband and protector is locked in the bathroom. Audience members are not shown Julie's fate, but it seems she may not have escaped her past, after all. A year after he was left to die in the lake, Ben has returned to avenge himself, and he kills again, as he had a year ago. Now that he has captured Julie, it seems unlikely she will escape the doggedly persistent serial killer.


Saw series: The Saw series of horror movies focus on the lengths to which captive men and women will go to escape. “John Kramer, also called the 'Jigsaw Killer' or simply 'Jigsaw' . . . . was introduced briefly in Saw and developed in more detail in Saw II. Rather than killing his victims outright, Jigsaw traps them in situations that he calls 'tests' or 'games' to test their will to live through physical or psychological torture and believes if they survive, they will be rehabilitated.”

Ordered to kill his fellow prisoner, Adam Stanheight, by six o'clock or have his wife and daughter killed instead, Dr. Lawrence Gordon saws off his own foot to escape. After cauterizing his wound with a steam pipe, Gordon leaves Stanheight in a bathroom as he goes to save his family and obtain assistance for Stanheight, and Kramer makes Gordon his apprentice as a sort of perverse reward for having survived the test. In Saw III, flashbacks reveal that another of Gordon's apprentices, Amanda Young, kidnapped Stanheight and murdered him to put him out of his misery.

Other sequels subject other victims to a variety of other mechanical traps invented by Kramer. Kramer carves out a jigsaw-shape of flesh from subjects who failed to escape his tests to show that they lacked the “survival instinct,” a practice which led the media to refer to him as the “Jigsaw Killer.” To date, there are eight movies in the series.


Due to its gory effects, the Saw series has been severely criticized, with detractors referring to it as “torture porn.” The series certainly appeals to the need for escape in an extreme fashion, and it's not for everyone. It does suggest that the “survival instinct” is such, in some individuals, at least, that a captive subjected to physical and psychological torment will do anything to escape, but it also shows that others will not. Gordon, for example, cuts off his own foot rather than killing Stanheight and then seeks help for the man he was ordered to kill.

It appears that Kramer admires Gordon's courage, if not his altruism, because he “rewards” the doctor for defying the command he was given and finding an alternative way to escape without sacrificing either Stanheight or his own family. Perhaps it was Gordon's intelligence, as much as his courage, that Kramer admired. In any case, the fact that Kramer would “reward” Gordon shows that, despite his own cruelty and monstrous capacity for evil, there remains the ability, at least, to appreciate certain attributes of human nature that transcend those of base instincts.

It's not surprising that the horror genre would include appeals to the need to escape. What may surprise is its examination of the effects of callous behavior on surviving victims. These effects include the development of mental disorders; lifelong guilt, fear, distrust, and misery; and death, but, on occasion, they also reflect courage, compassion, and a regard for others that's greater than one's own need to escape. Horror fiction is about loss, but, as horrific as its losses are, they are not always complete, and there is the chance that victims may not only survive, but eventually live at least a semblance of normal life.

But first, of course, they have to escape.

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need for Autonomy

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


The need for autonomy is the need for personal independence, the need to direct one's own path, the need to take charge of one's own life, the need to be in charge of one's own destiny. As with the other fourteen “basic needs” Jib Fowles addresses in Mass Advertising as Social Forecast, advertisers (or horror writers) can appeal to the need for autonomy either by showing characters who are autonomous or “by invoking the loss of independence or self-regard.”

Probably one of the clearest examples horror fiction's tapping into readers' need for autonomy is Stephen King's first novel, Carrie (1974). It recounts the difficult childhood of adolescent Carietta (“Carrie”) White. Her mother, Margaret, is a fanatical Christian fundamentalist who projects her own personal and sexual insecurities onto her daughter, referring to Carrie's breasts as “dirty pillows” and suggesting Carrie is a slut because of her interest in boys. Margaret says Carrie is a hell-bound sinner certain to be damned if she doesn't watch her ways and reinforces her own dictates as to her own dictates with physical abuse. At school, Carrie, who is unpopular, is often treated cruelly and with contempt.


The onset of menstruation is a terrifying to Carrie, who is unprepared for its occurrence, her mother having taught her nothing about puberty and its effects. Her classmates taunt her, throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at her in the communal shower following physical education class, when Carrie begins to menstruate, shouting at her to “plug it up!”

King says he based Carrie on two schoolgirls he knew during his high school years:

One was a timid epileptic with a voice that always gurgled with phlegm. Her fundamentalist mother kept a life-size crucifix in the living room, and it was clear to King that the thought of it followed her down the halls.

The second girl was a loner who wore the same outfit every day, which drew cruel taunts.


King says he wondered what it was like for the first girl to grow up in a home like hers.

Without parental guidance and ostracized by her classmates as a social pariah, Carrie has no guidance (one of Fowles's fifteen “basic needs”), but she has enough courage to attempt to escape her mother's domineering influence and her schoolmates' cruelty as she attempts to establish autonomy, especially after she discovers she possesses telekinetic abilities.



When one of her tormentors repents of her cruel treatment of Carrie, asking her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to escort Carrie to the prom, Carrie is overjoyed, despite her mother's insistence that going to the dance is a sinful “carnal” act, and she makes herself a red velvet dress. Margaret is afraid of her daughter, convinced that Carrie's telekinetic abilities prove that she is a witch. (Witchcraft, Margaret contends, runs in the family, appearing in every other generation.)

At first, things seem to go well at the prom, until one of Carrie's tormentors, Chris Hargensen, arranges with her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, to pour pigs' blood on Carrie and her date. In the process, Tommy is killed.

Humiliated, Carrie then launches her revenge, locking the students in the room, electrocuting several of them, and incinerating the rest. On her way home, she destroys much of her hometown, snapping power lines and destroying gas pumps to cause massive explosions.



At home, Margaret, believing her daughter to be possessed by the devil, attempts to stab Carrie to death, by Carrie thwarts her mother by stopping Margaret's heart. (in the film adaptation, Carrie kills Margaret by piercing her with knives in a parody of the crucifixion of Christ.) Thereafter, as she makes her way to the roadhouse at which she was conceived (according to Margaret, as the result of “marital rape”), Billy and Chris attempt to run over her with Billy's car, but she crashes their vehicle, killing her would-be murderers. Carrie dies of the mortal wound inflicted by her mother.

Sixteen-year-old Carrie, despite her mother's abusive treatment of her and her classmates' cruelty, attempts to gain independence, defying her mother as she adopts her own values and beliefs and to find acceptance at school by attending the prom with a popular boy. She also exchanges her drab attire for the red velvet dress she made especially for the occasion, a coming-out affair of sorts for the troubled teen. Despite Carrie's lack of parental guidance, the insecurities and fears her psychotic mother attempts to project onto her, and her schoolmates' ostracism and torment of her, Carrie sees that life is to be embraced, not feared, and she courageously attempts to exercise autonomy as she takes charge of herself and her own life.



King suggests that, despite such courage—and despite the paranormal powers Carrie possesses—his protagonist's efforts are in vain because several other “basic needs” have not been met, such as the need for affiliation, the need for nurture, and the need for guidance. Without the fulfillment of these needs, she is unable to satisfy the need for autonomy. By denying Carrie the fulfillment of her need for autonomy, King endorses the importance not only of this need but the others which support it.

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Horror Fiction: The Appeal to the Need for Attention

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Animal predators are attracted by sights, sounds, and scents.


Predators' eyes face forward, providing them with binocular vision. The view of one eye overlaps with that of the other eye, allowing a predator to judge the distance to prey and “how fast its prey is moving.” In predators equipped with more than one set of eyes—spiders, for example, which have “clusters of six to eight eyes”—use some of its eyes to “form the image” of its prey, other eyes to “estimate distance, and still others [of its eyes] to detect motion.” Nocturnal predators, both terrestrial and marine, are equipped with 'special mirror-like structures in the back[s] of their eyes,” which provide them with night vision.


Not only do predators have excellent sight, but they also possess superb hearing: “In mammals, external ear flaps can be swiveled forward or backward in order to pinpoint the direction of a sound. The ears of bats are often highly specialized, with strange shapes that help catch the echoes of the calls they make as they fly.” However, some predators don't have to have ears to hear their prey; they perceive vibrations by feeling them in their bodies.


Some predators can smell prey from a mile off, while others can sniff out buried food. Such predators may use their amazing sense of smell to track the prey they hunt.

Their extremely sharp senses of sight, hearing, and smell make predators formidable adversaries, but prey animals have evolved defenses against these hunters, including camouflage, toxic chemicals, and mimicry.


Animals that use chemical toxins are often brightly colored. Their brilliant hues warn other animals, including predators, that seeking to eat them could be a dangerous, perhaps fatal, mistake.


The “coloration, marking patterns,” or general appearance of a prey animal or insect can make them resemble something else, such camouflage lending them the appearance of a leaf or twig or another animal or insect, including toxic plants or animals. 


Mimicry “is similar to camouflage, but in mimicry.” except that the model is generally a similar organism rather than a static part of the background environment.” The common types of mimicry are Batesian mimicry and Mullerian mimicry. In the former, “an edible mimic resembles” one that tastes foul or is poisonous.” in Mullerian mimicry, by contrast, “two (or more) distasteful or poisonous organisms resemble each other.” While only the mimic benefits from Batesian mimicry, “both species benefit” from the latter type of mimicry, “because a predator who learns to avoid one species will most likely avoid the other, too.”

Often, horror fiction appeals to the need for attention by either affirming this need (that is, by showing it as being satisfied) or (far more often) in a negative manner, by denying its satisfaction or by showing that its fulfillment leads to disastrous consequences.

In horror fiction, the need for attention takes many forms, but, no matter which form it takes, it typically leads to misfortune or death.


In many horror movies, the need for attention is exhibited (literally) in characters' shedding their clothes. Nudity certainly attracts attention, quickly and easily, especially if men are present. (Research shows that men tend to respond more strongly to visual, women to tactile, cues.)

Fowles distinguishes between nudity as an appeal to the need for sex and nudity as an appeal to the need for attention. Partly, the nature of the appeal is a matter of context. Who is naked, a man or a woman, and at whom is his or her nakedness directed, at the same or the opposite sex? In general, if a nude woman's image is directed at women, it is probably designed to appeal to the need for attention. However, if a nude female model appears in a sexual context, with a nude male model, the appeal is apt to be to the audience's need for sex. The same is true in reverse: if a nude man's image is directed at men, it is probably designed to appeal to the need for attention. However, if a nude male model appears in a sexual context, with a nude female model, the appeal is apt to be to the audience's need for sex: 



. . . the Jordache ads with the lithe, blouse-less female astride a similarly clad male is clearly an appeal to the audience's sexual drives, but the same cannot be said about Brooke Shields in the Calvin Klein commercials. Directed at young women and their credit-card carrying mothers, the image of Miss Shields instead invokes the need to be looked at. Buy Calvins and you'll be the center of much attention, just as Brooke is, the ads imply; they do not primarily inveigle their target audience's need for sexual intercourse.

In horror movies, nudity is sometimes a prelude to sex, but whether it is or not, disrobing (like sex) is likely to lead to something much less pleasant than romance—namely violence or death at the hands of the villain, who's frequently a psychopathic murderer (Psycho), a supernatural serial killer (Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street), or a monster or an alien (Species). In horror movies, a few moments of nudity also provide a distraction that, contrasting with the gore to come, makes violent death seem all the more horrific. (It's also apt to sell more movie tickets.) 

Although nudity is frequently featured in horror movies and is definitely related to the predator's sense of sight, it's not the only way characters seek attention, and, as in regard to the predator's sense of sight, some of the ways characters want to become the center of things align, ironically, with the predator's sense of smell or hearing.


According to vampire lore, the undead are able to smell blood even when it is inside a stopped bottle. In fact, vampire hunters sometimes turned this ability against the predators using a process known as “bottling.” According to
Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, blood was poured into a bottle, which was stopped with a cork, sealing wax, and a saint's picture. “Left where the vampire will be able to smell the blood,” the bottle lured the vampire into taking “its invisible form” and entering the bottle, whereupon it was corked and sealed with wax and a saint's image and flung into a fire. The bottle would shatter, releasing the vampire into the fire, which would destroy the vampire. In Anne Rice's novel, Interview with the Vampire, as in other works of such fiction, the undead likewise can smell blood. 


A Quiet Place is a contemporary horror movie that exposes the dangers posed by an extraterrestrial alien with phenomenally good hearing. When we are frightened by a predator, it's natural to scream so as to alert others of the presence of danger, either so that they can assist us or so that they can avoid the menace. However, this need for attention—or, more precisely, this need to draw attention—becomes, ironically, itself a danger. By sounding an alarm, we could attract the attention of the alien, which has hypersensitive hearing and respond to any sound or noise by attacking its source. Thus, to express, or to give voice to, the need for attention in this way is to invite violence, pain, and probable death. 


The movie poster for Alien also suggests that a need that usually facilitates survival can also endanger it. The poster's caption reads: “In space no one can hear you scream.” The unspoken subtext seems to be “scream all you want.” In space, one is not only isolated, cut off from the organizations and institutions that could aid one's survival—police, medical experts and practitioners, military personnel, fire and rescue teams—but one is also in a vacuum, through which sound waves cannot travel. As Jonathan Strickland explains:

Sound waves can travel only through matter. Since there's almost no matter in interstellar space, sound can't travel through it. The distance between particles is so great that they would never collide with each other. Even if you could get a front seat for the explosion of the [Star Wars] Death Star, you wouldn't hear anything at all.
 
As Fowles points out, advertisers appeal to the fifteen basic needs universal to all humankind in two ways, either positively, addressing or depicting their satisfaction, or negatively, by denying the satisfaction of such needs. In either case, an appeal is made to the need. Horror novels and movies do the same, evoking the need for attention either by showing it's satisfaction (by allowing villains [and audiences] a glimpse of bare flesh, for example), or by frustrating this need (by requiring its repression or by preventing it altogether, both on the penalty of death).


However the need for attention is addressed, this need is often one to which horror novels and movies, like other genres of popular fiction, appeals, and this appeal is another reason for its box office success.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than 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 (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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