The website is PlaceIt.
You start with a template that allows you to create a tagline, a
caption, a film title, credits, a logo, and a release date. The
template also lets you upload an image from your computer or use one
of the ones already available on the template.
What the template doesn't do is offer
tips on design; that's up to you.
However, by studying online images of
actual horror posters, you can see how the pros design theirs.
Chillers and Thrillers
also provides the following tips.
In
the West, viewers, like readers, “read” (view) from left to
right and top to bottom, in a “Z” pattern.
The
focal point (almost always an image) is near (never at) the center
of the poster, and the it stands out because it is the largest or
brightest or most colorful (or, perhaps, the only colored) image in
the poster.
The
tagline may address the movie's theme, but it also often evokes an
emotion appropriate to the film. Since the film we are addressing is
a horror movie, the emotion would be anxiety, confusion, despair,
doubt, fear, shock, or some other such emotion.
Often,
a figure represents a menace of some sort: he or she might
possess a weapon, might be stalking the other figure, might be lying
in ambush to attack, might be grinning malevolently or madly.
Often,
the setting is suggested, ans the background is frequently dark,
even black. Settings tend to be remote. Sometimes, settings also
suggest uncertain or precarious states, such as abandonment,
helplessness, captivity, or isolation. (An abandoned house, for
example, can evoke the sense of a character's having been abandoned
or feeling abandoned.)
The
caption may be a key to “unlock” the significance of the
poster's imagery.
Artists
often use metaphors, allusions, personifications, symbols, and other
figures of speech, usually visually represented in images, to relate
the situation shown in the poster to something that is both terrible
and abstract, such as evil, madness, or death.
Color
often both unifies the other elements of the poster (tagline,
caption, film title, credits, logo, and a release date) while also
leading the viewer's eye movement across and down the poster.
The
poster should suggest the genre of the movie that the poster
promotes: the viewer should be able to tell, instantly and clearly,
that a horror movie poster refers to a horror movie, not a thriller
of a science fiction or a fantasy movie (unless, of course, the
poster refers to a film that is a hybrid of two or more genres, such
as Alien, which is
part-horror, part-science fiction).
These
guidelines are enough to get you started, if you want to put them—and
the Placeittemplate to work, creating your
own horror movie poster, just for fun.
To use
a blank template instead of replacing the text and images of the
sample with your own and then downloading the completed result, you
will have to sign up for a free account.
In the 1980s, Ghanaian
entrepreneurs seized upon their country's recent importation of VCRs
to show movies to members of neighborhood
video clubs. Local artists who went by their first names or
pseudonyms, including Leonardo, Heavy J, Farkira, Salvation, and
Magasco, to name only a few, likewise benefited from these new
enterprises, since club owners commissioned them to create original
posters to advertise the films.
Using flour sacks for
their canvasses, the painters offered their own garish
interpretations of their subjects. Often combining violence and gore
with bizarre interpretations of both Ghanaian movies and foreign
films, including Hollywood blockbusters, the artists' work generated
excitement about the movies, and the video clubs became huge hits.
Simple in design and
execution, the outrageous hand-painted Ghana posters look nothing
like the slick, mass-produced lobby cards seen in traditional movie
theaters. Instead, the Ghana movie posters are truly one of a kind,
offering those who may be unfamiliar with the nation's culture a
window into the nature of Ghana's entertainment business, its local
art, and the innovative nature of its entrepreneurs.
Cujo
Although Ghana posters
advertise all film genres, many of the most shocking examples promote
horror movies. Surprisingly, though, even movies that are designed to
horrify are not always imagined as horrific by the Ghanaian artists
who paint them, usually with little or no knowledge of the plots of
the movies the posters are supposed to promote.
For Cujo,
Lewis Teague's 1983 cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's 1981 novel
of the same name, which pits a rabid St. Bernard against an isolated
family, the theatrical release poster shows an isolated house under a
dark, threatening sky; the neglected white picket fence in front of
the distant residence bears, in dripping, blood-red paint, the
warning, “Now there's a new name for terror: Cujo.”
By contrast, the Ghanaian
poster shows an adult female figure standing behind a male child.
The sky is blue. An oversize dog, more closely resembling a Basset
hound than a St. Bernard, lies across the bottom of the poster, the
very picture of harmless calm—except for the blood slathering the
canine's muzzle. Despite the blood, which appears almost an
afterthought, the poster conveys more a sense of serenity and
domestic bliss than it does an aura of dread and danger.
The reason for the
differences in the theatrical release poster and its hand-painted
counterpart is suggested by a question raised by writer Peter
Shadbolt: “How would you design a movie poster for a Hollywood
blockbuster you’d never seen, filled with characters you knew
nothing about and actors you’d never heard of?” The Ghanaian Cujo
poster is one answer to this question.
Fright
Night
Such adjectives as
“simple,” “unsophisticated,” “cartoonish,” “gaudy,”
and “lurid” are often used to describe the strikingly original
artwork displayed in Ghanaian movie posters. They were not intended
to be masterpieces. Instead, they were commissioned with but one
purpose. The artists paid to paint the posters were given much the
same instruction as Frank Armah, who “began painting posters for
Ghanaian movie theaters in the mid-1980s”; the goal of his posters
was simple: “Sell as many tickets as possible.” The way to
accomplish this objective was also simple: exaggerate. “If the
movie was gory, the poster should be gorier (skulls, blood, skulls
dripping blood). If it was sexy, make the poster sexier (breasts,
lots of them, ideally at least watermelon-sized).”
During the 1980s and
1990s, the posters sold the movies. Today, they are sold to
collectors for as much as $2000 each and grace the walls of American
and European art
galleries. In addition, the “cult following” of the artists'
fans keep the painters busy creating copies of the original posters
for sale to eager customers.
The fact that the posters
so little depict the contents of the films they promote is the reason
that they are in such demand as collectibles, art dealer Ernie Wolfe
believes. “These posters appeal to people because [they] invite
this really incredible dialogue—a comparison between what you know
of a film and how the painter imagined it. And they’re also just
really good art.”
The Ghanaian poster for
Fright Night (1985),
directed by Tom Holland, is a good example of this poster-movie
disconnect. The theatrical release poster shows a group of ghastly
apparitions hovering over a house. Inside, framed by the residence's
only illuminated window, the silhouette of a standing man is visible.
Apparently, the resident is oblivious to the presence of the maniacal
spirits raging above his house. The darkness of the night sky,
illuminated only by stars and a full moon, the darkness of the man's
silhouette, and the darkness of the shadowy lawn in front of the
isolated house reinforce the poster's caption: “There are some good
reasons to be afraid of the dark.”
One Ghanaian
version shows neither apparitions, house, occupant, night sky,
nor dark lawn. Instead, it depicts a winged serpent in a blue
business suit, complete with bloodstained necktie. The creature's
pair of scaly human hands, one red, the other orange, reach toward a
blonde; the tip of its tongue, between her lips, drools blood. The
claws of the scaly orange hand reach inside the woman's mouth. Her
brow, face, and neck are lacerated and bleeding, and the flesh of her
upper right arm is torn. A young man's head rests against her side.
The movie's title appears above the man's head. There is no
darkness—at least no literal darkness—of which to be afraid, and
the woman looks more exhausted than horrified, despite her wounds.
Rituals
During the 1980s, the
video clubs showed mostly imported movies (horror and splatter movies
from the U. S., kung fu pictures from Hong Kong, cannibal films from
Italy and France, and Bollywood comedy productions from India), but,
beginning in the next decade, especially in Nigeria, the clubs
included both Ghanaian and Nigerian films, with the establishment of
the Ghallywood and Nollywood film industries.
This more local fare
sometimes reflected historical conflicts between Christianity and
local religions in which, often, the former displaced the latter.
These movies had a proselytizing mission. To convert their audiences
from “the natural religions,” the films depicted the spirits of
the local religions as “evil forces,” such as demons, or “pagan”
forces, such as those of voodoo, which were overcome by God or a
Christian priest. Often, the churches themselves financed these
films.
Other themes include human
sacrifice; cannibalism; and evil deeds involving children as victims,
“perpetrators,” and witches. One of the posters promoting
Rituals, a Nollywood
movie (director unknown) that includes references to human sacrifice,
is typical of the sensationalism of the Ghanaian horror movie
posters. The poster depicts a semi-nude man, bandoleers crossed over
his chest, setting a large bowl containing a bloody, decapitated
man's head on a table occupied by six human skulls and a human bone.
No caption provides any hints as to the situation; the sole clue that
viewers receive is that which is supplied by the film's title: the
head, skulls, and bone, are involved in “rituals” of some sort.
Only a reference, external to the poster itself, relates these
rituals to human sacrifices.
Jurassic
Park
While Ghanaian movie
posters do not always depict the actual contents of the films they
promote, this discrepancy is not considered a flaw among art
collectors and experts. “They're not just film posters,” says
Karun Thakar, the curator of the African Gazeexhibition in London, England. The exhibition
showcased over a hundred posters that, along roads and in markets and
other “public spaces,” advertised screenings of Bollywood,
Nollywood, Ghallywood, and Hollywood films by “mobile video clubs.”
Like others of their kind,
these Ghanaian
movie posters were “gruesome and gaudy,” and they usually did
not have much to do with the actual plots of the movies they
promoted. They also zeroed in on films' minor elements rather than
key features of the movies if such elements were provocative. For
example, the poster promoting Paul Verhoeven’s Total
Recall (1990) focused on the prostitute with
three breasts who appears in only one short scene of the film.
Even when the posters
deigned to feature the movie's protagonist, the main character was
often illustrated as performing an action that is unrelated to the
movie's plot, and the scene frequently differs drastically from the
images in the film itself. The Ghanaian poster for Steven Spielberg's
Jurassic Park (1993)
is a good example. The poster “features a freakish dinosaur,”
resembling a hybrid Tyrannosaurus Rex-brontosaurus—“gobbling up a
man and a person playing golf, indicating that the artists painting
these posters might not have seen the films.”
Mandy
Brian Chankin, the
proprietor of a video rental store in Chicago, Illinois, is a fan of
Ghanaian
movie posters. He not only collects and sells them, but he has
also commissioned quite a few original paintings by noted Ghanaian
movie poster painters. Chankin tours the United States, showing his
collections from the mobile art gallery he operates. In addition, he
partners with Ghana artists who make “huge tattoo flash paintings
in the same style as the movie posters.”
Although the movie posters
themselves seldom reflect what the films they advertise show, that's
not an issue for fans, nor are the posters' occasional “misspellings
and plot inconsistencies.” What counts, for admirers and
collectors, is the posters' “eye-catching” qualities.
Proceeds from the sales of
the shop's prints of original art and a book, Deadly
Prey, featuring photographs of the “earliest
commission paintings” and essays by Chankin, commission agent
Robert Kofi, and Terry Zwigoff, director of Ghost
World, Bad Santa,
and other horror films, support “artists in Ghana.”
In the Ghanaian
poster for Panos Cosmatos'sMandy
(2018), the man with the amputated right arm,
the slashed left arm holding a decapitated head, and the slashed left
leg who flees a chainsaw-wielding killer and a man with a knife does
not look exactly like Nicholas Cage. However, the poster otherwise
succeeds in conveying at least the essence of the horror movie it
promotes.
The film concerns a
couple, Red Miller and Mandy Bloom, who are living alone in a forest
when they are attacked by a cult of hippies and demonic bikers. The
sadistic attacks motivate Red to strike back, and his vengeance is
predictably terrible, violent, and bloody. Red's wounds, cult member
Marlene's decapitated head, Brother Klopek and his chainsaw, and
Klopek's accomplice and his knife, like the sliced head and the woman
with the gaping hole in the center of her abdomen, suggest the orgy
of violence that the movie presents, and, although the action is
compacted in the collection of images, as if they occur
simultaneously, rather than successively, the poster is mostly true
to the picture's plot, a relative rarity among Ghanaian movie
posters.
Night
of the Demons 3
The studios in which
Ghanaian artists worked were simple by the standards of the countries
in which the films were produced that were shown by the video clubs,
as were the facilities the entrepreneurs used to exhibit the imported
pictures. A 2005 photograph of a Ghanaian artist known as Leonardo
shows the painter seated in a plastic chair, cans of paints and other
supplies on a shelf behind him or stacked against the wall below the
shelf, in crates, a galvanized steel tub, and plastic trash bags.
Wearing only overalls and flip-flops, he sweats in the heat of the
day inside concrete walls decorated with words in red, blue, and
green paint. His tools—a hammer, brushes, cans, and large
rectangular cuts of cotton for use as his canvases—are visible
among the other stored items.
In another photograph, one
of Leonardo's colleagues, Heavy J., stands beside his poster for Jim
Kaufman's Night of the Demons 3 (1997).
In his vision of the movie, a male lamia, or snake man, is wound
around a kneeling woman who frantically tries to remove the monster's
coils. The creature holds its arms up, as if it is about to claw an
attacker. The poster is displayed at the front of one of the video
club's theaters, advising audiences that the movie is scheduled to be
shown at “6:30 PM.” The single bench shown in the photograph
suggests the nature of the theater's seating, which is confirmed by
other photographs apparently typical of the arrangements of seats.
In another photograph, a
showing of a movie is seen in progress in Tema, Ghana. An audience of
nine are present. Two stand, their hands raised overhead; the others
sit, one or two to a bench, several with their hands raised as well,
and all watch the television set on a high shelf inside a cabinet.
Although plenty of seats remain along the six half-empty benches
visible in the photograph, those in attendance seem to be enjoying
the picture.
The Ernie Wolfe Gallery is
an online exhibition hall on which “Golden Age Hand-Painted Movie
Posters from Ghana” are on perpetual display. The collections show
a variety of film genres, including horror, which seems as popular
with Ghanaian audiences as it is with other moviegoers across the
globe. Since the artists typically painted the posters of the movies
to be presented before the films were actually shown to video clubs’
audiences, their art is almost always strikingly different than the
actual movies the posters supposedly represent, offering viewers
fresh perspectives on the films themselves. Although often lurid, the
art is also highly imaginative.
The poster
for William Friedkin's The Guardian
(1990), features a personified tree that attacks adults and children
alike. One victim hangs from a branch. Another struggles to free
himself from the mouth in the tree's trunk. A third, armed with a
chainsaw, the blade of which is smeared with blood from one of the
tree's uncanny roots, is entangled in a looped branch, from which the
party's fourth victim, while lying on the ground, wound in the coils
of another branch, seeks to free him. The poster suggests that the
movie is about an animated and malevolent forest. In reality,
although a somewhat similar scene occurs in the film, the picture is
about a nanny whom a young couple hire to care for their newborn
baby—a nanny who is also a goddess intent upon protecting her
domain.
Braindead
Besides the fact that
Ghanaian artists often did not know, in any detail, if at all, what a
movie actually showed, they were also handicapped by the facts that
they did not have access to the foreign studios' posters for the
movies or to reproductions of the original posters, since Ghana's
“military rulers restricted the import of printing presses.”
To get prospective
audiences into the buildings and tents in which the video clubs'
cinematic offerings would be shown, local artists were instructed to
pull out all the stops. They did so, starting with the dimensions of
the paintings.
Like the style of the art itself, the “canvases” the artists cut
from flour sacks were larger than life, measuring “40 to 50 inches
in width, and 55 to 70 inches in height.”
The artists were so
successful in selling the movies that, “by the 1990s, the height of
the movie club business, several dozen artists were employed to
produce the posters.” By the 2000s, the demand for video clubs
began to disappear, since “home viewing became more widespread and
printing became more practical than commissioning original artworks.”
During the heyday of
Ghanaian movie poster production, however, some truly fantastic, if
bizarre, works were created, including artist Salvation’s poster
for Braindead (1992),
directed by Peter Jackson, which suggests the bloodbath that ensues
when a woman who dies, after having been bitten by a Sumatran monkey,
returns to life to feed on both animals and people, including her
former friends and neighbors.
Salvation's poster
features a Lon Chaney look-alike with fangs and a missing eye, a pale
ghoul spewing green bile, a beast that resembles a cross between a
dog and a monkey, and a gang of vampires in pursuit of a brawny man
wielding a sword. With no reference to the movie's plot in the
artist's picture, potential viewers would likely have plenty of
questions about the scene Salvation depicts, which is just what the
video club owners would have wanted in commissioning the work.
Species
How might Roger
Donaldson's Species
(1995) be interpreted by an artist who had not seen the film? Thanks
to the survival of the Ghanaian movie poster for this movie, we do
not have to wonder.
Although there is no
evidence that the poster's painter knew of Rene Magritte's surreal
paintings, the poster for Species
resembles Magritte's oil painting The Harvest
(1943). Just as Magritte paints the figure of his reclining female
nude in several colors, with arms of different hues, a head of a tint
that matches no other part of the figure's body, and legs of
mismatched shades, the body of the Ghanaian artist's blonde-haired
female alien is various shades of blue, green, and peach.
The painting's surreal
quality is also evident in the inclusion of the naked man who
crawls on his knees, eating one rat as he wraps his impossibly long,
slender tongue around a second rodent. Although the poster's art has
virtually nothing to do with the plot of the film it promotes, the
warning presented by its caption, “Men cannot resist her; mankind
cannot survive her,” is probably true enough.
Cannibal
Terror
A largely panned French
contribution to the fare the video clubs showed was the 1981 film
Cannibal Terror directed
by Alain Deruelle. The plot is simple. After their kidnapping goes
awry, two inept kidnappers, Mario and Roberto, hole up in a friend's
house in the jungle. In the process, Mario rapes the friend's wife.
(With friends like these, who needs enemies, right?) Afterward, the
criminals encounter a tribe of hungry cannibals.
The plot doesn't seem to
have given the artist much with which to work, but the painter made
the most of what he had, showing one of the criminals lying on the
ground, on his back, as three members of the tribe, seated beneath
the tree, dig in. One munches on the victim's calf; another devours
his left forearm; and the third chows down on a length of intestines
that he pulls from the gaping cavity carved into the dead man's
abdomen. It's a bloody feast, and the rapist's vital fluid dribbles
down his severed limbs, his slit-open belly, the stump of his
amputated left leg, and the chests of those who make a meal of him.
Despite the movie’s meager plot, the film rewards its audiences
with plenty of blood and gore, according to the poster, at least.
Ghanaian movie poster artists (left to right):Salvation, Heavy J, Mr, Nana Agyq, Fakira, and Stoger
Unfortunately, the artists
who created these lurid
masterpieces of tasteless, often violent and gory art, were
probably underpaid, since their work took them as many as three days,
“depending on the subject matter and what the artist could find out
about the movie.” To expedite the painting process, artists relied
on such “well-worn tropes [as] snake women, skeletons, zombies,
witchcraft, and even the occasional giant fish” and sometimes mixed
images from one movie with those of another film.
Bierce's ideas are
original and intriguing. He also reveals aspects of horror that
aren't always apparent in seemingly ordinary, if sometimes also
terrible, incidents and situations.
I read this novel when I was twenty; then, I saw the movie. Both are first-rate excursions into terror. Blatty's literary art is discernible even in his metaphors.
Ray Bradbury: “Heavy-Set,”
“The Veldt,” “The Foghorn”
A poetic writer who is
especially adept at imagery and symbolism, Bradbury writes tales are
sometimes that are much “deeper” than they might sometimes first appear.
Kate Chopin:
“The Story of an Hour”
In the hands of a skilled writer, an imagined anecdote can be a powerful transmitter of both feminist angst and horror.
In teaching a lesson about respecting life, Coleridge also teaches readers about crafting a well-told horrific tale and shows, in the process, his own poetic genius.
Stephen Crane: “The Open Boat”
Crane's story reflects not only the traditional categories of narrative conflict, but also a fourth, “man vs. God,” which is echoed in Sir Winston Churchill's short story “Man Overboard.”
As inFrank Peretti's Monster and Dean Koontz's The Taking, God makes a cameo appearance in King's Desperation. (Other Christian authors on this list include Flannery O'Connor and William Peter Blatty.)
Dean Koontz: Phantoms,
The Taking
Is the horror of The Taking an account of an alien invasion or something even more sinister?
D. H. Lawrence: “The Snake” and “The Odour of Chrysanthemums”
In “The Snake,” we meet a god of the underworld; in reading “The Odour of Chrysanthemums,” I understood why the scent of roses reminds me of death.
Bentley Little: The Revelation,
Dominion
Although, like Stephen King's later fiction, Little's novels often fall apart at the end, the beginning and the middle are captivating and frequently alternate between frightening and being exceedingly eerie.
Lovecraft does not disappoint in this story or in most of his other work. He brought a new perspective to horror fiction, which is not an easy accomplishment.
Daphne du Maurier: “The Birds”
Any writer whose story Alfred Hitchcock picked as the basis of one of his movies has to be a master of suspense.
Robert McCammon: Swan Song,
Stinger
Although I later lost my taste for McCammon, his early novels are entertaining.
Saki (H. H. Munro): “The Open Window”
Like O. Henry, Saki sure knows how to twist a plot. In the process, he also reveals character concisely and very well.
Joyce Carol
Oates: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Reading this story is a bit like watching a music video featuring a psychopathic musician and his groupie victim.
Flannery
O'Connor: “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “A Good
Man Is Hard to Find”
Although she is not a horror writer per se, O'Connor, something of a Christian, female Edgar Allan Poe, “shouts” and “draws big pictures” for a reason.
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child:
Relic, Crimson
Shore
Relic is nothing less than a terrific, terrifying tour de force. Crimson Shore, intriguing for its setting, characters, and situation, is often more suspenseful than frightening, but it is also a fast read.
William Shakespeare: Titus
Andronicus, Hamlet,
King Lear
Critics are right: Titus Andronicus is certainly Shakespeare's worst play, but, hey, it's still Shakespeare (and it's truly horrific as well). Hamlet is unforgettable, and King Lear is part horrifying, part terrifying, and entirely tragic.
Dan
Simmons: Subterranean
This novel is simply harrowing.
Craig
Spector and John Skipp: The Light at the End
A Barlow-type creature of the night seems to have somehow slipped his way between the covers of John Godey's (Morton Freedgood's) 1973 thriller The Taking of Pelham 123. It's good fun, amid the splatter of blood and gore.
Bram Stoker: “The
Judge's House,” “The Burial of the Rats,” “Dracula's
Guest”
All of these short stories show, in miniature, the mastery of both writing and horror that are later exhibited more fully in Dracula.
Rabindranath Tagore: “The Hungry
Stones”
At first, puzzling, Tagore's exotic tale is finally downright spooky.
Mark Twain: “Mrs. McWilliams and the
Lightning,” “Mrs. McWilliams and the Burglar Alarm,” “The Invalid's Story”
No, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) is not a horror writer, but he could have been!
If you never fully appreciated Wells's artistry, both of these stories will show you that the man was the equivalent of an impressionistic painter who used words, instead of brushes, on pages, rather than on canvases. Wells is a true master!
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde's novel, like so many others, is far better than the movie adaptations of it. Everything complements everything else: plot, characters, setting, theme, and tone.
More suggestive than definitive, Yeats's poems are often intimations of terror that escapes even his mastery of the language; his poems haunt their readers--haunt them and, maybe, change them. (You have been warned!)
Q: What interests you in the super-short genre of flash fiction?
A:
Alfred Hitchcock once said that a movie shouldn’t be longer than the
capacity of the human bladder. I find I agree. Edgar Allan Poe
considered the effect of short fiction to be more intense than that of
longer works, such as novels or—my apologies to Hitch—full-length motion
pictures. I also tend to concur with Poe: shorter fiction can pack more
of an emotional wallop than longer forms. In our modern, fast-paced
world, I think shorter fiction is also more convenient for many. A lot
of people want complete stories without having to spend hours or days to
read them.
Q: It seems that you prefer fantastic to realistic stories. Why is that?
A:
Actually, I enjoy reading and writing all forms of fiction, but I think
that tales of the fantastic, marvelous, and uncanny--handy distinctions
that Tzvetan Todorov makes—add an element of magic to mundane
experience, the icing, so to speak, on the cake. I also believe that, as
Flannery O’Connor once said, a writer sometimes needs to use hyperbolic
techniques to communicate with readers, and the shock of the surreal,
the astonishment of the weird, the wonder of the otherworldly, the
supernatural, the occult, and the mystical provide these rhetorical
approaches.
Q: As the title of your book suggests, your tales are rather
“twisted.” I'm going to ask the question most writers hate to hear:
Where do you get your ideas?
A: I'm an eclectic reader. I enjoy
learning about a variety of subjects. I guess you could say I'm a
generalist. Sometimes, when the stars are in alignment, a remembered
fact here will meet up with a recalled fact there, and, out of this
connection of one thing and another, an idea will emerge. I might
combine one of Thomas Edison’s inventions with the spiritualistic belief
in the ability of the living to communicate with the dead, or I could
update an ancient myth or a modern horror movie. As Arthur Golding
wrote, in translating John Calvin, “All is grist for the mill.”
Q: I know you're something of a mariner. Does the sea ever feature in your stories?
A:
Not as often as I might expect, but, yes, there is a sea tale or two.
In one, the ocean solves a murder, which is rather a novel notion, I
think.
Q: By definition, according to the title of your series, Twisted
Tales, and by the titles of the books in the series, each of your flash
fiction narratives contains a plot twist. How do you think up so many of
them?
A: Usually, the story suggests one. However, I
also employ a couple of tricks, or techniques—three, actually. First,
when plotting a story such as those in Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, Tales with a Twist III, or Tales with a Twist IV, I keep in mind the idea that almost
everything has a direct opposite: new, old; lost, found; hero, villain;
reward, punishment; rich, poor; right, wrong. Then, I start with one
polarity and end with its opposite. The second way is more concrete. I
keep a list of the plot twists I see in novels, short stories, movies,
and TV series. Then, I adapt them to fit the situation or circumstances
of my own stories. My third technique is to remember that there is a
fine line not only between good and evil and right and wrong, but
between all such polar opposites. A person who is cautious may become
distrustful or even paranoid; a man who's strict can become controlling;
a woman who's concerned with her own health and that of others—a doctor
or a nurse, perhaps—can become a hypochondriac; a trusting person may
become gullible. Each of these possibilities is a source of plot twists.
Q: How many of your tales with a twist are autobiographical?
A:
Many of them are fantasies in which I explore how something might be if
a particular set of unusual circumstances were to apply. Many of my
stories are thought experiments, of a sort. I place a certain type of
character in a particular kind of environment and see whether he or she
adapts and, if the character does adapt, how he or she manages to do so.
Frequently, the environment is physical, but it need not be; some of my
stories' environments are philosophical, or moral, or psychological, or
political, or cultural, or otherwise. The autobiographical element,
when there is one, may be small—a detail here or there, the description
of a place I've been, desires I've experienced, wishes I may have wanted
to fulfill, thoughts or feelings or impressions I've had, that sort of
thing, embedded in the narration, the exposition, or the dialogue.
Q: Michael, you've done it again!
A: Shhh!
Q: Your latest Twisted Tales volume—I'd say they get better and better but, the truth is, they're all great reads.
A. My modesty forbids me from bragging, but thanks.
Q:
I don't know how you do it. This is Volume IV, and it and its
predecessors each contain at least thirty tales each. You've written
over 120 tales with a twist.
A. Bourbon is my muse.
Actually, I drink scotch. Or rum. Or tequila. Whatever's handy.
Seriously, though, there are so many folks and so much chicanery and
sheer madness in the world, my own included, that it's hard not to write
if you're an author who enjoys parody and satire. If Tales with a Twist (psst! TV producers, I'm making a pitch here) were a television series, it would be going into its eighth season.
Q: Your maritime adventures notwithstanding, is there going to be a Tales with a Twist V, Michael?
A: As soon as possible. I mean, maintaining a boat ain't cheap.
Note:
This post assumes that you have seen the movie The
Exorcist
(1973). If you have not, Wikipedia
offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the plot.
Results of a 2009 Pew
Research Center survey
indicate that 33 percent of scientists believe in God; another 18 percent “believe
in a universal spirit or higher power.” However, 83 percent of the
American populace as a whole believes in God and 12 percent “believe
in a universal spirit or higher power.” As far as disbelief is
concerned, 41 percent of scientists do “not believe in God or a
higher power” and 4 percent of the general public share their view. (A 2017 poll places the number of Americans who "do not believe in any higher power/spiritual force" at 10 percent.)
Source: fanpop.com
According to some
evolutionary psychologists, faith developed like any other evolved
adaptation, or trait: it promotes human survival and reproduction.
Faith, proponents of this point of view argue, is comforting,
provides community cohesion, and offers a basis for ethics and
“higher moral values.” Others regard faith as a spandrel
or an expatation, that is, a “by-product of adaptations” that is
useful for reinforcing the authority and status of the clergy and for providing
emotional support for the faithful in times of trouble. As is true of
many of the arguments of evolutionary psychology, these claims are
controversial, keeping critics aplenty busy on both sides of the discussion.
Source: pinterest.com
The Exorcist
offers a concrete example of faith in action in Father Karras's
exorcism of the demon (or demons) who allegedly possess Regan
MacNeil.
Source: flickriver.com
The
priest's faith may provide some emotional comfort for him, but, it is
obvious to the movie's audiences, his faith does not extinguish his
feelings of guilt regarding his perceived neglect of his ailing
mother, and faith as such offers little immediate comfort or reassurance to any
of the other characters, with the possible exception of Father
Merrin, who is killed early in the movie.
Although
Karras's faith may hold the “community” of Regan's family
together, his life as a priest, although it may assist some members
of the wider world, seems to offer little benefit to his own life or
to that of the Church he serves.
Source: pinterest.com
Karras's
faith does seem to cause him to judge, condemn, and feel revulsion
toward the demons who allegedly possess Regan, and he frequently rebukes them, denouncing their behavior as impious, blasphemous, and
sacrilegious, without passing judgment on the girl herself: he hates
the sin, not the sinner.
Source: docuniverse.blogspot.com
Throughout
the movie, Karras experiences a crisis of faith. The ordeal that his
mother faced during her illness, his own callous treatment of his
mother (as he sees it); the apparent indifference and cruelty of
human beings for one another; the sins that he encounters daily, both
as a man and a priest; and the evil he witnesses as he seeks to
exorcise the demons that have possessed the child he seeks to deliver
suggest to him that, either he has lost his faith and, indeed, might
never have had a true basis for belief in and trust of God; God has
abandoned him; or, worst of all, God is “dead” or never existed
to begin with, except as a myth. In any case, faith does not appear
to have any true survival value—until Karras makes what Soren
Kierkegaarad calls “the leap of faith.”
Close
to despair, Karras does not despair. Close to renouncing his faith in
God, Karras remains faithful to God. He shows that he is, indeed, the
man of faith whom he has long professed to be. He has been
discouraged. He has had doubts. He has entertained disbelief.
However, to save Regan, he invites her demons into himself and then
leaps out of her bedroom window, falling to his death. In doing so,
he delivers her from the evil spirits that possessed her. But
Karras accomplishes more as well; he remains true to his own
beliefs, to his calling, to himself, to God.
Source: ft.com
According
to the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in Kierkegaard's thought,
“the choice
of faith is not made once and for all. It is essential that faith
be constantly renewed by means of repeated avowals of faith.”
Despite his doubts, Karras has constantly renewed his faith. Despite
his temptation to despair, Karras does not despair. Close to
renouncing his faith in God, Karras remains faithful to God. In each
of these decisions, he maintains his faith and, therefore,
himself.
As
Kierkegaard points out, “in order to maintain itself as a relation
which relates itself to itself, the self must constantly renew its
faith in 'the power which posited it.'” This “repetition” of
his faith sustains Karras, allowing him to deliver Regan. Initial appearances aside, the
priest's faith, as it turns out, has tremendous survival power, both
for Karras himself, who, in remaining true to his faith in God,
remains true to himself, and for Regan, whom he delivers from her
demons.
Source: listal.com
For
those who do believe in God, even if they represent a minority of the
populace as a whole, their faith delivers them (and, indeed, many
others whom they aid). Their faith makes them whole, even if they are
broken; sets them free, even if they are possessed; enables them to
reach—and even sometimes save—others, believers and disbelievers
alike, by their example. Even if their accomplishments were to be
attributed solely to their belief in belief, to their faith in faith,
and to their trust in trust, rather than to an objective, real, personal
God, these amazing and extraordinary accomplishments stand,
testaments to the assertion that the trait of faith has survival
value.
Note: This post
assumes that you have seen the movie Final Girl (2015). If you have not,
Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the plot.
What distinguishes the final girl of chillers
and thrillers from other characters in such films. Which of her “evolved
adaptations,” or traits, enables her to survive when many others in her
situation and in similar environments have not?
Source: YouTube
The movie’s protagonist, Veronica, benefits from twelve
years of martial arts training she receives from William, who takes her in after
her parents die, when she is five years old, and from drug-induced
hallucinations which result from the drugs William injects into her system so that
she can experience her greatest fear, which turns out to be her dread of failing
to accomplish her mission. As a result of William’s mentoring, Veronica learns both
that she is a “special” person and how to fight.
She accepts a date with one of William’s targets, Shane,
and Shane and his friends take her to a forest, where the seventeen-year-old
boys hunt her, as they have hunted—and killed—other girls on previous
occasions.
Source: regarder-films.net
Given a head start after tricking three of the four
hunters into drinking whiskey laced with a hallucinogen, she dispatches the
predators, one by one, as, thanks to the hallucinogen they have ingested, the
boys face their greatest fears, just as Veronica had, years ago.
So, what makes Veronica the film’s final girl?
In his article “Evolution,
Population Thinking and Essentialism,” Elliot Sober distinguishes between “adaptive
traits” and “adaptations.” The human appendix, for example, is an adaptation
that is no longer adaptive.
Sober also distinguishes between “phylogenetic
adaptations” and “ontogenetic adaptations.” The former “arise over evolutionary
time and impact the fitness of the organism,” whereas the latter are “any
behavior we learn in our lifetimes, [which] can be adaptive to the extent that an
organism benefits from them but they are not adaptations in the relevant sense.”
Clearly, the martial arts skills that Veronica learns from William are ontogenetic
adaptations. As is true in regard to many other claims, these assertions are
controversial and have met with several criticisms.
Source: earth.com
In providing concrete examples for their points,
evolutionary psychologists often refer to the morphological and physiological
traits of animals, such as “clutch size (in birds), schooling (in fish), leaf
arrangement, foraging strategies and all manner of traits.” This explanatory
method can help us to see how Veronica’s fighting skills, her self-image as
someone who is “special,” and her fear of failing at her mission promote her
survival as a final girl.
Source: reptilescove.com
As a World
Atlas article points out, “Mimicry is an evolved resemblance in
appearance or behavior between one organism and another.” Usually, a harmless
animal mimics a predator to protect itself from the attack of other, lesser
predators. For example, “non-venomous milk snakes appear brilliantly colored
like venomous coral snakes [to] deter predators from approaching.” Veronica
adopts this same strategy in reverse. A martial artist of the first rank, she
is a dangerous predator, but she pretends to be simply a harmless, vulnerable teenage
girl. Her attackers learn, too late, that they are the harmless snakes, as it were,
and she is the deadly predator, a tactic she has learned from William.
e: pinterest.com
Veronica is also predatory in other ways. She uses her
beauty and her sexuality to attract her victims, the way an orb-weaving spider lures
its victims (bees in search of nectar) with “web decorations” and the “spiders'
[own] bright body colorations.” Veronica’s beauty attracts the attention of
Shane and his friends, and, like the beauty of the orb-weaving spider, prove
their undoing. While her physical appearance is not a behavior, her use of it
as a lure certainly qualifies as an ontogenetic adaptation, or trait, which she
learns, again, from William.
Source: inaturalist.com
In giving her would-be victimizers whiskey laced with
a hallucinogen, Veronica adapts a defense mechanism used by certain animals, making it an offense tactic. The “large granular glands on the neck and limbs” of the Sonoran
desert toad (aka “psychedelic toad”) “secrete [a] thick, milky-white, neurotoxin venom called bufotenine,”
which is a “potent hallucinogen.” Although this compound is often fatal in dogs,
it can cause hallucinations in humans and, perhaps, in canines, since its
symptoms in dogs include a “drunken gait” and “confusion.” Obviously, since
William injected Veronica with a hallucinogenic substance so that she could
feel what her enemies would experience when she gave them the same
hallucinogen, her knowledge of its properties and use as a weapon result from his
training and is, therefore, an ontogenetic adaptation.
Source: 7esl.com
The nature
vs. nurture controversy is as important (and as controversial) to
evolutionary psychology as it is to other disciplines. The question of “what
matters more when it comes to personality, nature or nurture?” is important, although
it may, ultimately, prove unanswerable. As both Backcountry and Final
Girl suggest, we are products of both our genes and our surroundings, of
our nature and our nurture.
Source: the-other-view.com
Veronica survives for the same reason as Jen: she is
better adapted to her environment than the other characters. Her traits
(self-esteem, ruthlessness, and duplicity), coupled with her deadly martial arts
skills, make her, not her stalkers, the apex predator, just as her attacker’s
traits (sexism, misogyny, perfidy) make them her prey.
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’ Dictionarycontends 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.
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.