Ethical and Metaphysical Implications of Supernatural Villains

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

 Twisted Tales series. Source: Amazon

Like all other genres of fiction, the literature of horror, a type of fantasy, expresses philosophical implications about the way its characters view the world, even if their Weltanschauung is not altogether clear to them.

 Witches' Sabbath by Francisco Goya. Source: Wikipedia.

The existence of a supernatural antagonist, or villain, posits the existence of  supernatural, or spiritual, dimension of existence as well as a natural order of being, both a supernatural world and a natural world.

 God as Architect by anonymous. Source: Wikipedia

In a story in which such a dualistic metaphysics exists, a supernatural villain is, by origin or nature, as its powers or abilities confirm, linked to a realm that transcends the natural world. Such beings are beyond the universe, outside nature. Therefore, they are also beyond human ken, outside human knowledge and understanding. Supernatural entities are mysterious, which tends to heighten our fear of them; the unknown is always especially frightening when it appears to have a threatening aspect, as, of course, villains, human or otherwise, do.

 

 St. Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent by Francisco Goya. Source: Wikipedia

The question arises as to whether an audience whose members disbelieve in the existence of a supernatural order (and, therefore, of course, supernatural antagonists) can experience fear while watching a movie such as, say, The Exorcist, the villain of which is a demon (or, maybe, the devil himself), A Nightmare on Elm Street, which features a supernatural bogeyman, or Poltergeist, the antagonist of which is a not-so-friendly ghost. Of course, the same question also applies to any movie that posits the existence of a vampire, a werewolf, a witch, or any other supernatural villain.

 Source: Gallup.

As far as I know, no one has conducted a study, or even a poll, concerning this particular question, although, in 2005, Gallp conducted a few polls concerning whether or not Americans believe in various supernatural (and paranormal) beings, with the results well under half. (However, the poll seems flawed, since it includes "aliens," which, should they be discovered to exist, would be entirely natural beings, not supernatural entities, since "nature" constitutes the entire universe and everything in it, which is why we say that God, a supernatural being, for example, is transcendent to, or beyond, nature and, in fact, in many religious traditions, created the universe.)

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. Source: Wikipedia Commons 

However, based on a thoughtful thread of posts on Religious Forums, materialists (those who believe that the universe and all things in it are material and that spirits, souls, and the like do not exist except as imaginary or metaphorical constructs) are likely to experience a continuum of feelings, from a lack of fear altogether to terror, when they come across a villain the likes of the devil, Freddy Krueger, or a poltergeist, whether or they believe such villains exist--or can exist.

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Source: ardhendude.blogspot.com

 For example, Mister Silver seems to employ the strategy of "a willing suspension of disbelief" suggested by the great English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, accepting the existence of the supernatural in a horror story or movie simply for the sake of enjoying the fiction: "Through my materialism I can understand the difference between fantasy and reality enough for me to enjoy the fantasy for that which it is; merely fantasy created for the purpose of entertainment."

Zener cards. Source: Wikipedia

Jumi follows a tactic that is more prevalent among today's skeptical materialists: "You're in luck, materialism itself doesn't rule out strange phenomenon from existing. It just doesn't actively promote these ideas. The materialistic Soviet Union had multiple researchers study paranormal phenomena in hopes of finding something useful to further the materialist dialectic.

The problem with this approach, in general, is that it is often based on a confusion of the supernatural with the paranormal. Materialism, by definition, does rule out the supernatural. The universe is nature; therefore, anything that is held to transcend nature, to be "outside" the universe (e. g., God, angels, demons) or wields supernatural power (e. g., performs miracles or magic or otherwise defies natural [or, as we call them today, scientific laws]) would be supernatural and, therefore, in materialists' view, impossible, because nonexistent. However, paranormal phenomena are possible, perhaps, if, by "paranormal," we mean simply natural beings, properties, or powers of natural origin that ares imply not known or understood through science or reason. For example, if extra-sensory perception does exist, but it is simply inexplicable in terms of present-day science or reason, then it is possible; it may even be actual. Until it can be explained, however, it remains merely a possibility, but a possibility, nonetheless. Jumi's statement, therefore, seems to be related more to the possibility of paranormal phenomena, rather than to the possibility of supernatural facts and events.

In either case, either Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" strategy or the more fashionable recognition of the possible existence of paranormal, but not supernatural, phenomena can allow materialists to enjoy, and even, perhaps, be scared by, the literature and drama of horror.

 

Just What I Needed: Another Exercise!

 Copyright 2021 by Gary Pullman

 

We not only learn new skills but hone old ones by pausing in plotting, writing, and revision to practice our skill at plotting, writing, and revision. (In my opinion, a writer can always improve by practicing, until he or she reaches perfection like William Shakespeare.)

The exercises should be challenging; they should also be something we can crosscheck with the results established writers might have produced had they performed the same exercises. Oh, yes! They should also relate to horror stories or to horror movies. Here are three.

 

I. You Are What You Do

1. List several personality traits for your protagonist. Then, explain what your protagonist does, based on one or more of these traits, in a specific situation. For example, perhaps your protagonist wants to start life anew with her boyfriend, who refuses to marry her until he's paid off his debts.

2. Instead of explaining that a protagonist is in love with another particular character, show the protagonist being in love with this other character.

 

II. Do What You Will

Briefly identify a motive for each of these actions: (1) following a monster's trail; (2) exploring an allegedly haunted castle; and (3) spying on neighbors.

 

III. Defiance Punished

Identify three interdictions that, defied, result in a character’s suffering or death:

1.

2.

3.

 

Here's How They Did It

  

I. You Are What You Do

 

1. Asked to deposit a real estate client's cash down payment for a house he is buying his daughter, Marion Crane instead steals the money from her boss and runs away to meet her boyfriend (Joseph Stefano, Psycho screenwriter).

 

 

2. Scottie stared at Madeliene, as she sat across the room, unaware of him. An image of a painting flashed in his mind. The lady's portrait's contours fit those of the woman before him; it was a perfect likeness of her, he thought. Later, when he entered a florist's shop with her at his side, she seemed ethereal, more fantasy than reality, and the light was as luminous as the flowers were bright and beautiful, their fragrance an embodiment of the very scent of the woman herself. It was as if they alone existed and as if the shop were a sunlit garden, a paradise created for them alone (Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, Vertigo).

 

II. Do What You Will

 

 

1. following a monster's trail: to rescue a woman captured by the monster (James Creelman and Ruth Rose, King Kong)

 

 

2.    exploring an allegedly haunted castle: to prove that the castle is not haunted (“The Red Room” by H. G. Wells)

 

 

3. spying on neighbors: to pass the time while recuperating from a broken leg (John Michael Hayes, Rear Window).

 

III. Defiance Punished

 

1. Glen Lantz  is told not to go to sleep; when he does, he is killed (Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street)

 

 

2. Caroline Ellis is told not to enter a locked room; after she does, she is paralyzed and her body is possessed by a hoodoo practitioner (Ehren Kruger, Skeleton Key)

 

3. A character is told not to enter a closed area of a national park; when he does so, he is killed by a bear, and the animal then pursues his girlfriend (Adam MacDonald, Backcountry)

 

Suburban Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

During the 1800s and the 1900s, as railroads developed enough to provide dependable, relatively inexpensive travel for many, suburbs began to appear. In England, members of the nascent middle class, having improved their fortunes through industrialization, purchased homes in the environs of densely populated, polluted cities in which the factories and other industries that had, ironically, made them rich were located. The development of subways and bus routes accelerated this exodus from urban to suburban communities. Following World War I, such suburban developments as those at Kingsbury Garden Village, Wembley Park, Cecil Park and Grange Estate, and the Cedars Estate were built by the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited, located in London.

In the United States, suburbs appeared in Boston and New York. In the latter state, on Long Island, the planned community Levittown was constructed after the end of World War II, becoming a model for other such developments. Its five styles of the ranch house were replicated thousands of times. By the twentieth century, there were suburbs in most of America's big cites. Their existence encouraged the construction of shopping malls, the development of roadways, and the spread of chain stores.

Although, in time, commentators began to criticize these planned communities for their architectural conformity and the “bland” lifestyles they promoted, many residents of suburbia found their environments to be pleasant, serene, safe, and comfortable. These qualities, of course, make suburbs ideal settings for horror, for, in novels and movies in this genre, terror and disgust often follow a period of calm or happy existence which, until the horror begins, was the standard, everyday ambiance and milieu.

In Ginger Snaps (2001), horror comes to Bailey Downs, a suburbs in Alberta, Canada, in the form of a beast that's more lupine than canine. Attracted by the scent of redhead Ginger Fitzgerald's menstrual blood, the animal attacks, but it's beaten back by Ginger's brunette sister, Brigitte, before being struck by a van as it crosses a road through the forest upon resuming its pursuit of the sisters. 

Although she's been scratched by the predator, Ginger decides not to seek medical attention, since her wounds close quickly. Ginger's subsequent transformations, both physical and mental, make it clear that the animal that had clawed her was a werewolf, which is what Ginger herself has become.

As might be expected, violence, sex, and death ensue. In the process, Bailey Downs is changed forever, its residents suffering tremendously at the jaws and paws of Ginger, who pummels Trina Sinclair, the school bully; kills a neighbor's dog; turns boyfriend Jason McCardy into a werewolf by having unprotected sex with him; murders her high school's guidance counselor and janitor; and breaks drug dealer Sam Miller's arm before killing him. The suburbs proves to be anything but the sanctuary it seems at the movie's start.

It might seem as though a new house in the suburbs would be a safe place, but appearances, of course, can be deceiving. As Travis Newton observes in an article on his blog, “The wonderful thing about living in a new suburban house is that there are no ghosts in it. Right? Wrong. Paranormal Activity took the security and safety of a new, modern home and tossed it right out the window.”

As Newton further points out, one of the scariest things about Paranormal Activity (2007) is the fact that the paranormal phenomena occur not “in some old castle or space station or haunted forest. It takes place in the kind of house your neighbors could live in. The kind of house that maybe you live in.”

Katie Featherstone and Micah Sloat have just bought a new home in San Diego, California. Afraid of the demon that has been harassing her for as long as she can remember, Katie prompts Micah to set up a camera to record any paranormal activity that may occur in the house while they're asleep or away from home.

The camera does record some disturbing incidents: flickering lights, doors moving by themselves, a planchette moving under its own power over a Ouija board, and strange creaking sounds. When the activity intensifies, the couple asks Dr. Fredrichs, a demonologist, to investigate, but, too, afraid to remain in the house, he deserts them.

The demon bites Katie, transforming her into a fiend, and the camera records her, in her demonic aspect, grinning as she crawls toward Micah's body after he's been hurled across the bedroom. At the end of the film, on-screen text informs the audience that police discovered Micah's corpse, but Katie is nowhere to be found.

Some time ago in a suburban community, Nancy Thompson and her friends battled a nightmarish dream figure, Freddy Krueger, who attacked them in their sleep. His motive for doing so—and his supernatural nature—are explained on the Fandom site devoted to the movie franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street, of which he is the central antagonist:

A family man on the surface, Krueger was actually the serial killer known as the “Springwood Slasher.” When he was caught and subsequently released on a technicality, the parents of his victims chased him to a shack out back of the power plant he once worked at and burned him alive. Rather than succumb to death, Krueger was offered the chance to continue his killing spree after death, becoming a Dream Demon that could enter his victims' dreams and kill them in the dream world, which would thus cause their death in the physical world and absorb their souls afterwards.

The murders he commits take place in two worlds: that of the dream in which he appears and the actual, “physical world.” The Fandom site does a good job of comparing and contrasting the two as it summarizes the details of the respective incidents. Here, for example, is the account of the death—or deaths—of Tina Gray, which occurs in the franchise's original, 1984 film:

Dream World description

Physical World description

Tina awakens to the sound of a stone, tapping on her window, breaking the contact area. Puzzled, Tina goes outside to hear Freddy Krueger calling her name. She walks out further. Just then, a trash can lid rolls in front of her making a startling noise. Then, Freddy's shadow appears around the corner, Freddy emerges. Tina says "Please God" and Freddy moves his claws threateningly saying "This... is God." He chases her down the alley. Tina turns back, he is gone. Just then he jumps from behind a tree and makes her watch as her cuts off his finger and it squirts green ooze. She runs, he chases her up the stairs, knocking her off and rolling around on the floor with her. She grabs his face which proceeds to tear off, he laughs.

Tina rolls all over her bed, her chest is slit with his claws, she floats up to the ceiling after being spun around in mid-air. Cutting continues until her bloody, lifeless body falls to the floor.

As a demon, Freddy is able to shift shape, and he has adopted a variety of forms, some human, others inanimate, including those of a hall guard; a telephone; a snake; a marionette; television talk show host Dick Cavett; a television set; a nurse named Marcie; Nancy Thompson's father, Donald; a model inside a water bed; a motorcycle; a video game character; a medical doctor, Christine Heffner; camp counselors; Jason Vorhees's mother, Pamela; and a caterpillar. Anything can happen in a dream, right?

The suburbs are no safer in Elm Street than they are in Ginger Snaps, Paranormal Activity, or several other horror movies with such settings. The franchise plays upon parents' concerns for their children's welfare, crimes against minors, physical and emotional abuse, psychological trauma, object permanence, the sometimes-fine line between fantasy and reality, the potential dangers of isolation and of in loco parentis, the effects of vigilantism and vengeance, and other unsettling themes. Apparently, if we are to believe horror movie directors, suburban life is far more dangerous and lawless than many might have imagined.

But it's not just moviemakers who suggest the suburbs may be the deaths of suburbanites. A number of novelists have also implied that such communities, in themselves neither urban nor rural, might well be the deaths of us: Stephen King in The Regulators, Bentley Little in The Association, and Ira Levin in The Stepford Wives venture forth into the forbidden lanes and cul-de-sacs of American suburbia, each offering a cautionary tale about the supposedly good life that's lived there.

Several of my own Sinister Stories (available at Amazon Books) also contain tales of terror associated with the suburbs.

Inference and Implication as the Language of Film

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

A rule of thumb is that one page of a screenplay equals one minute of screen time. The cost of filming is expensive, so, ideally, each foot of film is vital to the story. It helps to set the scene, establishes the mood, introduces a character, presents a significant conflict, symbolizes or underscores the theme, or otherwise advances the plot or the movie's overall purpose.

Of course, the opening scene* of a motion picture also bears the burden of “hooking” the audience, of capturing their interest, of making them want to see the rest of the movie.

The primary language of film is imagery, the organized sequences of pictures that appear on the screen. Imagery is often supplemented and complemented by sound, including dialogue. The language of film is rich and powerful, primal and rousing, but it is also limited. Written language can tap more than sight and sound; it can get inside readers' minds, evoke (or represent) thought, reflection, and consensus or disagreement between characters (or between characters and readers), as well as characters' and readers' emotions. Although movies may occasionally awaken the mind, motion pictures mostly elicit feelings. They're directed, first and foremost, at the heart.

The language of film—image and sound—is limited in another way as well. It relies almost entirely upon suggestion, or implication. Unless a director resorts to a rather heavy-handed use of exposition, telling audiences, rather than showing them, what something means or how action should be understood, all a movie can do is to show images, have actors comment upon events, and leave it to audiences to put two and two together (and to read between the lines, so to speak) in order to infer the meanings of the images and sounds presented to them. Written narratives can and do use exposition (although they do so less frequently today than in the past). Sometimes exposition is provided for pages at a time. By this means, omniscient narrators go directly inside characters' heads or explain the meanings of incidents, scenes, or, in some cases, entire short stories or novels.

It's important to remember that the language of film requires directors to imply and audiences to infer. With this in mind, let's take a look at the opening scene of a well-known slasher flick.

First, we describe the action shown to us by the camera. Then, in blue font, we provide an inference or two to represent those which are likely to be made by audiences who see and hear each sequence of images. In our examples, viewers mostly see, rather than hear, what follows.
 

Halloween (approximately five minutes of screen time)

As our eyes travel from left to right across the front of a porch, we see the white wall of the front of a clapboard suburban house, the front door, vague human shapes moving behind a window curtain, and a Jack-o-lantern on a porch rail, among dense, dark foliage. The foliage ends, its leaves casting shadows upon the house's wall.

It's Halloween. Who are the people inside the house? What are they doing? Are they residents? Home invaders? Cat burglars?

Inside the house, through the window, we see a young couple. The girl is seated on a couch, the boy sitting beside her. She holds him around the waist, as he kisses her, his hands holding the sides of her head. Hearing something, they pause and listen. The boy lifts a mask to his face, pressing it into the girl's face as he kisses her. She shoves him away, and he removes the mask, grinning at her. We have become—or have been made to become—voyeurs. We watch the young couple make out on the couch.

Whose house are they in? Probably hers. What have they heard? Despite having heard something, their playfulness suggests they're unconcerned about the sound or noise they heard a moment ago.

They embrace, kiss again, and the boy leaps to his feet. The girl joins him, and they leave the room, dashing upstairs together.

The couple probably plan to make love.

Outside, the porch flashes past, from left to right. We see the Jack-o-lantern on the porch rail among dense, dark foliage, the white wall of the front of the clapboard suburban house, two windows fronting the porch—our gaze rises; above the eaves, we see a pair of lit windows on the right; the pair on the left are dark. The light in the windows on the right go out. We are not the only voyeurs. The point of view, resumed a second time, as the observer retraces his or her steps, indicates that there is a watcher present.

The unseen watcher is interested in the lit window of the room into which the young couple appear to have retreated to make love.

We see the porch sweep past, we turn a corner, and we spot the open back door. Entering the kitchen, we see shelves, cabinets, a mixer. A light comes on, and we see the stove; the sink; a vertical rack of dishtowels, an orange one at the front; the tile floor.

The observer has found an entrance to the house and entered the residence. He or she moves through the kitchen.

Because the camera represents the invader's point of view, in watching him or her, we accompany this person.

An arm clad in the sleeve of a camouflage shirt is extended; its hand grips the handle of a butcher's knife, removing it from the drawer. Decorative plates hang on the wall near the stove. To their left, a doorway leads into the dining room: table braced with chairs and set with a linen tablecloth and silver candlesticks bearing long, slender tapers; a side table; a silver tureen on the doily atop the side table; pictures on the wall above the side table. The invader, knife in hand, enters the dining room.

His or her targets are likely to be the young couple making love upstairs.

Another doorway leads into the living room: a television, a rocking chair, a pole lamp, a sofa, a painting on the wall—the same room in which the young couple were necking. 

The invader seems intent on following the path of the young couple. The knife he or she has acquired suggests harm is intended.

Another doorway leads into a hallway, where a staircase banister appears. There's a ceiling lamp, and, on the wall above the staircase, a painting. Near the top of the stairs, a boy, tugging a shirt down his naked torso. He bounds down the stairs—the same boy who was making out with the girl on the couch a few moments ago. At the front door, he pauses, looks back, says goodbye to someone—the girl, we assume. The door closes.

As the invader starts to enter the hallway, the teenage boy who was necking with the girl on the living room couch runs down the stairs, pulling on a shirt. He says goodbye before leaving.

He and the girl have finished making love. He's going home. The girl is alone in the house, unaware of the invader.

Into the hallway and up the stairs, past the painting, into the darkness. At the top of the stairs, a hallway. A right turn. A hand reaches into the hallway to pick up a toy. Clothes and a bag on a bed. The invader does not pursue the boy.

He or she is after the girl.

Our conclusion is borne out by the fact that he climbs the stairs.

At a vanity, the girl, naked but for her panties, brushes her hair. Her bed is rumpled. The girl, sensing she is not alone, turns, shocked and frightened. She covers her breasts, ducking away.

The half-naked girl is startled by the invader's arrival.

As the eye holes of a mask look into the room, at the girl, we see the room and the girl from the invader's point of view.

The intruder is masked.

A flashing knife stabs downward, again and again. The girl falls, lying still on her back.

He or she has killed the girl.

The eye holes look back and forth.

The killer searches the room.

The staircase. The front door, seen through the eye holes.

He or she is going downstairs.

The door opens. Darkness. Night.

The killer is intent upon escape.

A car's headlights. A dark car. A man and a woman exit the vehicle. The man lifts a mask from a boy dressed as a clown and holding a knife—the same knife as stabbed the girl. He blinks. The knife is bloody. The killer is unmasked; we see the action from an objective, omniscient point of view. The killer is a child, dressed as a clown.

As we've made clear, moviemakers are restricted to images and sound; with these tools, they must imply meanings, which audiences must then infer. Short story writers and novelists can describe sights and sounds, but they can also appeal to the senses of touch, smell, and taste. In addition, by using interior monologues and narrative exposition, among other techniques, short story writers and novelists can also directly represent characters' thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values, and other subjective states and qualities, without the need to have readers infer much of anything. What such writers gain is offset by the loss of the directness of communication typical of imagery and sound, which create the impression that events are actually transpiring before the audience's very eyes (and ears). There's always a distance between short story writers or novelists and their readers—the distance of the written word.

There are a few ways by which writers can approximate the directness with which movies communicate with their audiences:

Describe what a camera shows. The camera can be a video recorder, the source of “found footage,” as in The Blair Witch Project, or surveillance cameras that have recorded crimes or otherwise unsettling behavior or events, as in 13 Cameras. Such footage may also be provided by videos taken of vacation trips or by home movies.

Describe the images in a dream as the dream occurs. A Nightmare on Elm Street takes this approach, although, of course, the film shows the dream images directly, rather than describing them. 

If the horror movie also involves science fiction, a person's consciousness, projected as images on a screen, through a brain-computer or other interface, could be described. (This may become an actual reality in the near future!)

Describe the imagery transmitted by a camera mounted on a drone.

Describe what a sniper sees as he or she trails a target through his or her weapon's scope.

None of these techniques will provide the directness that a motion picture camera provides; at best, each is merely an approximation of such directness. Nevertheless, such techniques are likely to make the communication between the writer (or his or her narrator) and readers more direct than it would be otherwise.

* * *

For Edgar Allan Poe, the short story's form is superior to that of the novel, because the former's compact structure, greater unity, and better coherence results in a greater emotional effect on readers than the latter's longer, less unified and less coherent development. In a short story, which, according to The Annotated Poe, Poe defines as taking no longer than an hour to read, all narrative elements contribute to the payoff at the end of the tale, making the story's conclusion, whether that of the comedy's denouement or that of the tragedy's catastrophe, seem inevitable, given what has transpired before it.

According to the Internet Movie database (IMDb), in 2010, feature-length films were, on the average, approximately 130 minutes long (Halloween is 129 minutes long), which is about 2.15 times longer than the optimum length Poe names for the 60-minute short story. Halloween's opening scene lasts about five minutes, which is about 3.9 percent of the movie's overall length. At the same ratio, the comparative length of time for a 60-minute short story would be about 2.34 minutes.

According to Forbes, reading speed increases with education and (presumably) experience, but the “average adult” reads at a rate of about 300 words per minute. In 2.34 minutes, therefore, the average adult reader reads about 702 words, or about 2.81 pages if each 6 x 9-inch printed page bears 250 words) or 2.55 pages (if each 6 x 9-inch printed page bears 275 words). In other words, if we base our calculations on 275 words per page, a short story writer or a novelist has about 2.55 pages, or 701 words, in which to accomplish the task that Halloween's director, John Carpenter, accomplishes in the five minutes of his film's opening scene.

*However, the film's opening scene does not comprise the whole of the movie's beginning, which is significantly longer and more complex. For a more accurate contrast of the differences between cinematographic and linguistic modes of communication, the actual beginning of the movie and the beginning of a short story or a novel should be considered in detail. As defined here, the beginning of a film, short story, or novel, using Gustav Freytag's model of dramatic structure, would consist of the first act, the exposition, which begins with the start of the story and ends with the inciting moment that initiates the rising action, or the second of the five acts of the story, during which the basic conflict is complicated.

For the movie Halloween, the beginning of the story runs to Michael Myers's escape from the sanitarium to which he was confined after stabbing his sister, Judith, to death. His escape, which occurs at about 10 minutes and 41 seconds, or about 8.5 percent, into the 129-minute film. (It is Judith whom he saw, as a boy, making out with her boyfriend in the living room of their home while his parents were away.) By comparison, 8.5 percent of the 166-page novel Halloween, which is based on the movie, equals about 14 pages.

Horror from the Mouths of Babes

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

One, two,

Freddy’s coming for you!
Three, four,
Better lock the door.
Five, six,
Get a crucifix.
Seven, eight,
Better stay up late.
Nine, ten,
Never sleep again. . . .

A Nightmare on Elm Street opens with innocent children singing this haunting rhyme as they skip rope.

Stephen King’s novel The Tommyknockers is based upon another poignant and horrific verse, the third and fourth lines of King himself wrote:

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.
I want to go out, don't know if I can,
'Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.

“Hush,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also features a nursery rhyme-like ditty:

These songs are eerie and unsettling, disturbing and creepy. One reason that they are distressing is that they are sung by children. In one case, the children are playing; they are skipping rope. Their play is a reminder of their youth. Their voices are high and sweet, pure and natural. However, the lyrics to the ditties they sing are anything but sweet and innocent; they are vile and wicked--or, at least, they refer to wicked acts, to someone who is stalking or hunting a victim, to the need to lock oneself behind a door, the need to seek divine assistance or protection, the need to maintain nightlong vigilance (A Nightmare on Elm Street); to remain at home rather than to go outside (The Tommyknockers); the need to remain silent, to lock oneself inside one’s house, and the need to say nothing even to one’s own mother, possibly lest “The Gentlemen,” who are “coming by,” likewise harm her (“The Gentlemen”). This juxtaposition of innocence and wickedness is itself alone troubling. However the inclusion of nursery rhymes concerning such brutal action as the verses describe is also unsettling for other reasons.

Can't even shout, can't even cry,
The Gentleman are coming by.
Looking in windows, knocking on doors,
They need to take seven and they might take yours.
Can't call mom, can't say the word,
You're going to die screaming but you won't be heard.

How is it that the children who sing such songs have an awareness of the atrocious deeds about which they warn their listeners? Were they victims? Do they know others who were victims? Were they eyewitnesses to the attacks and visitations they describe? Since these songs are not traditional nursery rhymes, they seem to imply first-hand or close secondhand knowledge.

The sings are creepy, too, because they seem to imply a deadly inevitability. Whether it’s Freddy who’s “coming for you” or the Tommyknockers who are “knocking at the door” or The Gentlemen who “need to take seven,” it seems that they are relentless, that they will keep coming, no matter what, and that, sooner or later (probably sooner), they will succeed. They will kill, mutilate, eviscerate. Nothing, these songs suggest, can stop them, whether it’s locking one’s windows and doors, arming oneself with a crucifix, staying awake all night, remaining home rather than venturing out, shouting, crying out, or calling one’s mother. Freddy, the Tommyknockers, and the Gentlemen will succeed in carrying out their violence and murder no matter what one does to thwart them.

Moreover, the words of these rhymes threaten the listener (and, therefore, the moviegoer or the reader him- or herself) directly, employing the second person: “Freddy’s coming for you” and “They need to take seven, and they may take yours.”

Almost as an afterthought, one realizes that these ditties also function on a practical level, advising the moviegoer of the movies’ basic storylines as the songs, at the same time, acquaint viewers with the film’s genre.

Reacting with Fear and Trembling

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror posters can be very instructive for writers. Take the one for Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. It shows the movie’s protagonist, Nancy Thompson, a teenage girl, lying in bed, presumably naked (the blanket is pulled up over her breasts, but her shoulders and upper arms, like her neck, are bare), staring wide-eyed; her wild hair is fanned out behind her, upon the pillow. Superimposed upon the headboard (the slats of which resemble prison bars) is a skull with bulging eyes and a bloody metallic hand, the fingers of which are knife- or razor-like blades. The caption reads, “If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”

Normally, one would suppose that to wake up screaming implies an unpleasant and undesirable experience--a nightmare--so the assertion that “she won’t wake up at all” unless she “wakes up screaming” is intriguing, just as the advertisers no doubt mean it to be. The poster is instructive for writers because it suggests a way by which irony can suggest a storyline in which it is, indeed, better to awaken than not to awaken at all. What’s worse than a nightmare? One from which the dreamer doesn’t awaken--one that kills.



A poster for Alien warns, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” A poster for the movie Anaconda bears a similar caution: “When you can’t breathe, you can’t scream.” Below this caption are a pair of yellow reptilian eyes and a suggestion of scales lost in surrounding darkness, followed by the film’s title and the promise, “It will take your breath away.” You won’t, therefore, be able to scream; your terror will squeeze the breath--and very possibly, it is implied--the life out of you, just as the gigantic snake of the film’s title will squeeze its onscreen victims to death.

The inability to get one’s breath is terrifying (as anyone who has ever choked, for example, certainly is aware), rendering one helpless, frantic, and unable to call for help. A story about such hopelessness is, like Anaconda, likely to be terrifying, and, of course, there are many ways to render a victim helpless besides having them squeezed by an anaconda.



“What do I see,” the Beatles once asked, “when I turn out the light?” Answer: darkness, and darkness is symbolic of the unknown, of evil, of death, and a slew of other unpleasant conditions and states of mind. What if the night were not just the result of an absence of light? What if it were alive? What if it had claws and fangs and could fly? What if it were a vampire ands sucked blood?

This is the premise suggested by the poster for Bats (the title is suspended, from the top edge of the poster, suggesting bats clinging to the ceiling of a cave or other sanctuary). Two luminous eyes appear in the night sky, above the suggestion of a head and leathery wings. Below the outstretched wings is a cluster of other dark, similar shapes and the silhouette of a leafless tree. To the right is a house, black but for the illuminated square of a window in its side. The roof seems to be lifting into sunset that stretches beneath the darkening sky above the red and gold clouds, as if into an invisible whirlwind. A closer look shows that what first appeared to roof tiles are, in fact, part of a flurry of bats. The congregation of bats represent the night itself and all that darkness symbolizes, as the poster’s caption makes clear: “Where do you hide when the dark is alive?”

This poster reinforces the importance of the use of symbolism and metaphor in fiction. Such figures of speech communicate with readers on an unconscious, almost subliminal, level. Writers are well aware of the unconscious mind’s perception of such implied associations, and they use this tendency to good effect. Stephen King, for example, uses Cujo, his rabid St. Bernard, to symbolize the unfaithfulness of his novel’s protagonist, Donna Trenton, and the destructive effect her adultery has upon her son, her husband, and her marriage.

By picturing one’s story as a poster, complete with defining image and caption, a writer can clarify his or her theme and highlight the source of the story’s horror. Alternatively, by studying the posters that promote existing horror movies, an author can discover emotional links between image and text or between the “this” and the “that” of a metaphor, an antithesis, hyperbolic statement, metonymy, simile, and similar figures of speech.

We think by drawing relationships between perceptions and thoughts (or feelings), and by drawing such relationships indirectly and nonverbally, through associations of color, shape, direction, image, figures of speech, and rhetorical and visual devices, we can suggest the “this” of the ordinary may be associated with the “that” of the extraordinary, the “that” of the monstrous, the “that” of the supernatural, or the “that” of the horrific. The unconscious mind isn’t disturbed by incongruity or logical non-sequiturs. It operates on instinct and emotion, not reason, after all, and the suggestion that “this” is “that” is all the cue it needs to react with fear and trembling.

Toppers

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman 

We all have our ideas as to which movies are the best of their kind, which is fine, of course, as long as we’re able to give some indication as to why we hold these views (or, if you prefer, prejudices). Here are my picks, awarded one (terrible!) to five (great!) skulls, and the reasons behind them: 10. Tremors: Giant, burrowing worms? It’s campy. It’s funny. It also has it’s moments of sheer fear. Three stars. 9. It: The Terror from Beyond Space: A hungry alien aboard a spaceship is never seen--until it’s too late. The monster earns this one three stars. 8. Invaders from Mars: Sure, it’s sci fi, but anyone who thinks it’s not also horror hasn’t seen it. When even one’s parents can become something else--something alien--we’re in nightmare land, for sure. Three stars. 7. Halloween: There’s Jamie Lee Curtis. There’s also Michael Myers. Sibling rivalry stalks the silver screen, drenching us in the blood of teen victims. When her brother’s one of the undead and he has a yen for fratricide, what’s a poor girl to do? You can almost feel that oh-so-phallic knife as it rips and tears the maidens’ tender flesh. Babysitting’s overrated, but, at four skulls, this movie’s not. 6. A Nightmare on Elm Street: Some wouldn’t rate it as high, but I love the premise, which allows even the stupidest incidents, because, after all, anything’s possible in a dream. This movie conveys an honest, usually realistic sense of what it’s like to be trapped inside one’s own nightmare, and Freddy Kreuger’s a hoot. The protagonist, Nancy, is fetching, too, in a girl-next-door sort of way. Four skulls don’t seem too many. 5. The Thing (original): Sci fi, sure, but with a subtext of horror that’s not always submerged. Imagine being trapped inside a remote arctic outpost, far from the crowd’s maddening strife, with a thawed-out shape-shifter out for blood--your blood--and you get just the faintest impression of the claustrophobic terror this flick unleashes. James Arness makes a pretty good Thing, too. Four skulls. 4. King Kong (original): The werewolf writ large (and transformed into a gorilla). Besides, it’s beauty who kills the beast, not the other way around. The remake starring Naomi Watts has better special effects, but the original, although a bit campy, is superb for its time. It deserves four stars. 3. Psycho: Dated? Sure. But the shower scene! The creepy mansion. The fleabag motel. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Based, in part, at least, on America’s worst serial killer of all time, Ed Gein. These elements alone make this a great among horror movies and rates it five skulls. 2. The Exorcist: The special effects may not be quite so special anymore, but it’s hard to beat the plot. What parent hasn’t wondered, at least once, whether his or her child isn’t possessed by the devil? The revolving head and the pea soup vomit alone are worth a visit to the Georgetown residence where priests take on the adversary of God himself. Five skulls for sure! 1. Alien: Some might argue, quite reasonably, that this is really a sci fi pic. It is. But it’s also a horror movie, in a broader context, because of the spectacle of blood, guts, and gore. The constant escalation of suspense and outright terror also qualify this film as a horror movie. The monsters, based upon the artwork of H. R. Giger, don’t hurt, either. It’s definitely a pulse-pounder and worthy of five skulls.