A Monster Scale

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

One way to energize a genre of fiction is to introduce into it a hierarchy, or some other type of analytical or descriptive scheme, that is commonly used in a different type of narrative literature.

As Don Lincoln, author of Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos, observes, science fiction employs the scale “popularized” in J. Allen Hynek's “1972 book The UFO Experience,” which identifies three types, or “kinds,” of “close encounters” with extraterrestrial spacecraft or beings:

1st Kind: UFO sighting

2nd Kind: UFO sighting supported by "physical evidence"

 

3rd Kind: Encounter with alien beings

These original “kinds” of “close encounters” have been extended, says Lincoln, by four other types, although these additional levels “are “not universally accepted”:

4th Kind: Abduction with "retained memory"

 

5th Kind: "Regular conversations"

 6th Kind: "An encounter" resulting in a human's "death or injury"

7th Kind: Hybrid progeny resulting from human-monstrous mating

Although hybrid horror-science fiction narratives or dramas sometimes include extraterrestrial beings (e. g., Stephen King's Dreamcatcher and such films as Alien, The Thing from Another World, and Invaders from Mars), space aliens are primarily a staple of sci fi fiction. Monsters, on the other hand, are more often antagonists in horror fiction.

Hynek's scale, and its extension, provide a means of re-imagining monsters:

1st Kind: Monster sighting

2nd Kind: Monster sighting supported by "physical evidence"

3rd Kind: Encounter with monster(s)

4th Kind: Monster's abduction recalled (or recovered through the discovery of a lost film or video

5th Kind: Periodic communications with the monster, vocally or otherwise (e. g., through mental telepathy)

6th Kind: "An encounter” with the monster which results in a human's “death or injury”

7th Kind: Human/monster mating resulting in a hybrid progeny

Many of these types of “close encounters” with monsters have already been depicted in horror novels, short stories, or movies. There have been many sightings of monsters, as in Frank Peretti's 2006 novel Monster; encounters with monsters (as in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein), periodic communications with the monster (as in Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview with a Vampire), encounters with monsters that end in human's deaths (so many there's no need to cite an example), and even matings between women and monsters that result in births of hybrid human-monster children (as in Ira Levine's 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby).

However, an imaginative use of this extended scale of “close encounters” with monsters, rather than with aliens—which, it could be argued, represent simply another type of monster) can still introduce innovations into the horror genre. For example, the scale could be used to structure a novel or, for that matter a heptalogy, or series of seven works, each of which is inspired by one of the seven types of “close encounters” with monsters listed in the “monster scale” adapted from Hynek's hierarchy.

The Not-So-Gentle Sex

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Horace Walpole

Although Horace Walpole's 1764 novel of mistaken identities, The Castle of Otranto, is the first work of Gothic horror, women writers popularized the new genre.

Ann Radcliffe

Uncanny rather than marvelous, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1874) focuses on the attempt by her uncle to marry of the orphaned Emily St. Aubert to his friend, Count Morano, in a scheme to divest both his own wife and the count's bride of their property. Radcliffe (1764-1823) influenced several notable male authors, including Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).

Mary Shelley 

Not only did Mary Shelley (1797-1851) create a horror icon when she penned Frankenstein, or; The Modern Prometheus in 1818, but she may also have kept a part of the body of her late husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, as a memento. 

Charlotte Dacre

Charlotte Dacre (pen name of Charlotte Byrne) (c. 1771-1825) shocked the literary world of her day with the publication of her 1806 novel Zofloya; or, the Moor, a feminine version of Matthew Lewis's The Monk. Lewis's novel was regarded as salacious; it included a lusty monk and a cross dresser; Dacre's book, which was full of the adventures of harlots and courtesans, was even more scandalous.

Other volumes, as lascivious as Zofloya, followed, including The Libertine (1807) and The Passions (1811). The former was published under the pseudonym Rosa Matilda, a reference to a women who, seduced by Lewis's monk, became a seductress herself.

 
To read further about these authors of the not-so-gentle sex, check out the fascinating 2019 tome Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kroeger and Melanie R. Anderson.

Conveying Fear

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror posters are like the covers of horror novels, except the former's production quality is usually far superior to that of a paperback's cover art.

Extending the comparison, we could say that the movie's trailer is cinematic equivalent of the blurb on the inside flap of the dust cover or the back of a paperback. Both introduce the main character, the villain, and the conflict, the trailer in dramatic, audio-visual terms, the blurb in narrative, linguistic fashion. The former has immediacy; the latter, not so much.

Today, both posters and book covers often have only a marginal relationship to the story's plot. (Those of yesteryear seem to have been more closely associated with the story.) In general, the trailers and blurbs are more trustworthy indicators of what happens in the movie or the novel.

Contemporary movie posters (more than present-day novels' cover art) seek to tap into their viewers' emotions. Whether the movie's an action-adventure film, a comedy, a detective movie, a fantasy, a horror film, a mystery, a romance, sci-fi, a western, or some other genre or a hybrid of some sort, its poster will tap into such feelings as awe, delight, wonder, fear, and bewilderment, suggesting that the film that the poster advertises will immerse viewers in such emotional experiences.

Huckleberry Finn, which is undoubtedly one of the great comedy masterpieces of American—or world—literature usually features an image of the adolescent hero rafting along the Mississippi River; Sherlock Holmes anthologies usually confront us with a close-up of the detective in his deerstalker cap, smoking his pipe; romance novels depict glamorous fashionistas being swept off their feet by bare-chested macho men; many a Western novel portrays a gunman of some sort or a solitary rider shown in silhouette against a dusky sky. In some cases, the cover art suggests emotion. Movie posters almost always do.

Find out how a movie poster suggests fear—and what type of fear it suggests—and you are well on the way to knowing how to convey such fears yourself in the stories you write.

Selecting a poster that implies a story is helpful, but, of course, the story it suggests has to be appropriate for the larger story you're telling, the larger narrative of which it, as a scene, would be a part.

Let's try a couple examples.

Here is a movie poster for The Conjuring (2013). What type of emotion does it convey? How does it convey this emotion? In other words, what artistic or rhetorical techniques are employed to convey this emotion? These are my responses to these questions. (Yours may differ.)

Emotion = fear of the unknown

Techniques: symbolism, color, contrast

Using this analysis, write a descriptive paragraph, of 150 words or fewer, that accomplishes what the poster achieves. (In writing, description is the counterpart to the movie camera.) Then, you may want to break the paragraph into shorter ones. Here is one possibility:

The white flame burns brightly, lighting the darkness and the face of the frightened woman holding the match. Framed by her blonde tresses, her face is tense.

Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, as she stares into the darkness beyond the faint light, straining to see, as she strains to hear.

Between her forefinger and her thumb, the match quivers, its reduced flame flickering. Its faint light is all that stands between her and the unknown.

Soon, it will go out, and the darkness will swallow her again, and the thing for which she searches, lost in the gloom—will it lunge? Fall upon her? Rip, rend, and tear her?

Already, the flame is small and unsteady. Her hand shakes.

The darkness and the thing in the darkness wait. (131 words)

Here's a poster for the intended Halloween Returns film, which “was cancelled when Dimension Films lost the rights to the Halloween franchise.” Although the movie was never made, the poster suggests a scene that could fit into an original story. Since an original story couldn't use the characters from the Halloween series, the Laurie Strode character and the Michael Myers figure would have to be generic or fashioned after the characters of one's own story. This time, our description is a bit longer and more detailed.

Emotion =apprehension, anxiety

Techniques: juxtaposition, colors (“lighting”), contrast

She wore a blue sweater, not only because it was cool, but also, and more importantly, because the color had a calming effect on her. Her therapist, Ms. Phillips, had recommended pink, telling her that prison walls had been painted this color because of its proven soothing effect. But Jamie associated pink with femininity, and she linked femininity to helplessness. After all, His victims had all been women.

She slipped the point of the blade into the thick skin of the pumpkin. (If only her own shin were as thick!) She slid the blade deeper (just as He had done), and, with a twist of her wrist, cut across the surface of the orange orb. Pulp (like the deep tissues of her body) and juice (like the blood that had flowed from her that night) showed inside the squash.

Carving the pumpkins was supposed, like the pink blue sweater, to calm her. “Using a knife,” she had challenged her therapist, “to carve up pumpkins is supposed to have a calming effect?” “Yes,” Ms. Phillips had reassured her. (Therapists, Jamie had learned, were most reassuring.)

The top of the table at which she sat, carving pumpkins, was littered with seeds, with bits of pumpkin flesh, and with ornaments: ghosts and pumpkin heads (or headless pumpkins), and spiders' webs. “You have to get back into the holiday,” Ms. Phillips had suggested. “Make it yours again, instead of His.”

Spluttering candles were her only light. Behind and beside her, her house was dark. The light was enough to see by, enough to carve by. She Wasn't Afraid Of The Dark. That's what the candlelight proclaimed.

This was her third pumpkin. She'd carved traditional faces in them: big triangular eyes, a smaller upside-down triangle for a nose, and a grinning mouth missing all but two upper and a lower tooth. They were pumpkin-children old enough to lose their baby teeth in favor of the adult teeth to come. Innocent pumpkin faces, like her own was once, a long time ago, before He had returned home, not cured, no, but different. Worse. Much worse.

Behind her, in the gloom, a silent Figure moved as quietly as a black cat. Wearing a white mask that seemed to glow, even in the faint light of the candles, only His face—His mask—was visible. His dark clothing made Him part of the room's darkness. Only His mask, which hid His face, and the blade of the butcher's knife He held in His right fist, at His side, ready, were visible.

Halloween had come, and He'd come with it, to do a bit of carving of His own.

Amid the pain, He was going to make her smile; He was going to make her grin . . . again. (458 words)

Such exercises might raise the hair on the nape of your neck and your arms; they might send chills along your spine; they might inspire a story or enhance one you're already writing.

A Monster Scale

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, author of Good with a Gun

One way to energize a genre of fiction is to introduce into it a hierarchy, or some other type of analytical or descriptive scheme, that is commonly used in a different type of narrative literature.

As Don Lincoln, author of Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos, observes, science fiction employs the scale “popularized” in J. Allen Hynek's “1972 book The UFO Experience,” which identifies three types, or “kinds,” of “close encounters” with extraterrestrial spacecraft or beings:

1st Kind	2nd Kind	3rd Kind
UFO sighting	UFO sighting supported by “physical evidence”	Encounter with alien beings

These original “kinds” of “close encounters” have been extended, says Lincoln, by four other types, although these additional levels “are “not universally accepted”:

4th Kind	5th Kind	6th Kind	7th Kind
“Abduction with retained memory”	“Regular conversations”	“An encounter” resulting in a human's “death or injury”	“Human/extraterrestrial mating that produces an offspring, often called a 'star child'”

Although hybrid horror-science fiction narratives or dramas sometimes include extraterrestrial beings (e. g., Stephen King's Dreamcatcher and such films as Alien, The Thing from Another World, and Invaders from Mars), space aliens are primarily a staple of sci fi fiction. Monsters, on the other hand, are more often antagonists in horror fiction. Hynek's scale, and its extension, provide a means of re-imagining monsters:

1st Kind	2nd Kind	3rd Kind
Monster sighting	Monster sighting supported by “physical evidence”	Encounter with monster(s)

4th Kind	5th Kind	6th Kind	7th Kind
Monster's abduction recalled (or recovered through the discovery of a lost film or video)	Periodic communications with the monster, vocally or otherwise (e. g., through mental telepathy)	“An encounter” with the monster which results in a human's “death or injury”	Human/monster mating resulting in a hybrid progeny

Many of these types of “close encounters” with monsters have already been depicted in horror novels, short stories, or movies. There have been many sightings of monsters, as in Frank Peretti's 2006 novel Monster; encounters with monsters (as in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein), periodic communications with the monster (as in Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview with a Vampire), encounters with monsters that end in human's deaths (so many there's no need to cite an example), and even matings between women and monsters that result in births of hybrid human-monster children (as in Ira Levine's 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby).

However, an imaginative use of this extended scale of “close encounters” with monsters, rather than with aliens—which, it could be argued, represented simply another type of monster) can still introduce innovations into the horror genre. For example, the scale could be used to structure a novel or, for that matter a heptalogy, or series of seven works, each of which is inspired by one of the seven types of “close encounters” with monsters listed in the “monster scale” adapted from Hynek's hierarchy.

Horror Fiction: Myths and Monsters

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

During a freshman-level course in composition, I had my students write an essay analyzing a print advertisement, such as they could find in a popular magazine or online. I included movie posters among print advertisements, giving them the option of writing about them if they wanted to do so. Many chose the magazine ads, but some opted for the posters. Among the latter group was a student who chose a poster advertising Steven Spielberg's E. T. the Extraterrestrial (1982), starring Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, and Drew Barrymore.

The poster shows E. T.'s fingertip making contact with Elliot's fingertip. At the point of connection, a star of light forms inside a purple circle. The poster's background shows the universe bedecked with stars and galaxies. Below, part of the Earth's globe displays Africa and points east. The title of the poster is “His Adventure on Earth.” The oceans, like the heavens, are black. Below the hands of alien and earthling, between heaven and earth, the poster's text reads:

He is afraid.

He is totally alone.

He is 3,000,000 million light years from home.

After the student shared his thoughts about the poster's design and the ideas and feelings communicated by its images and text, I mentioned to him the poster's allusion to the scene Michelangelo had painted on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. My student was unaware of both the allusion and its referent, the painting itself, so I suggested his research of his topic should include this material.

This anecdote makes a point: all of us are unaware of one thing or another; what is common knowledge to one is new to another. As the author of Cultural Literacy observes, our understanding is based, to a large degree, upon our knowledge of our culture, which, in the Western world, includes the history and literature of the ancient, medieval, and modern nations and peoples upon which our own contemporary culture is founded: Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, and others. To the extent that we lack such knowledge, our understanding is diminished. As Marcus Mosiah-Garvey, Jr., says, “A people without a knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”

Without an awareness of, and a familiarity with, Michelangelo's painting of God's creation of man, the E. T. movie poster's allusion to this earlier work and the meaning it conveys would have been lost on my student. His understanding and appreciation of the poster's own artistry would, as a result, have been reduced, as would his insight into the linguistic and cultural “layers” of the poster and of the film it represents.

One of the basic mediums of expression among ancient peoples is myth. A myth is a story that encapsulates a human experience in timeless and widespread, if not universal, significance. Such a story can be applied to various situations across time. For example, the myth involving Pygmalion and Galatea, in which the sculptor attempts to create the “Perfect Woman”—or, rather, his idea of the Perfect Woman—is given new significance by George Bernard Shaw. In his play, Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins transforms Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl with a Cockney accent, into a lady by teaching her elocution, outfitting her in fashionable attire, and instructing her in the manners of polite society. Class, his play suggests, is more a matter of appearance and behavior than of lineage. (His play is also the basis of the movie of the same title, starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller; the musical My Fair Lady starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn; and the teen comedy She's All That, starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., and Rachael Leigh Cook ).

Not only has the Pygmalion and Ganymede myth inspired several movies, but it could also be applied to the fashion industry. Most designers are men, but they create clothing for women, suggesting, thereby, what the “perfect” (or, at lest, the fashionable) lady wears. Of course, the “look” changes periodically; otherwise, there would be no need for the fashion industry. Such changes are no problem: models, like mannequins and the clothing both wear, can be replaced at will, just as the ideal woman, as fashion designers shape her, changes, the flat-chested “flapper” giving way to the hourglass woman with conical breasts, who, in turn, was replaced by the slender, statuesque version of perfect womanhood years later. In fashion, woman's name is not only vanity, but also mutability.

Over the years, the social status of the Perfect Woman changes as well, as do the roles she plays. Until 1920, American women were not allowed to vote. During World War II, for the first time, it was acceptable for women to work full-time outside the home and to perform labor that their husbands did, before the men went away to war. In 2015, women were allowed to serve in military occupational specialties directly related to combat. Galatea, the Perfect Woman, couldn't vote; then, she could and did; next, she was allowed into the workplace; most recently, she has become eligible to fight alongside men on the battlefield. The Perfect Woman is as changeable socially as she is aesthetically.

The Perfect Woman has also changed sexually. Once, she was seen as a dangerous and amoral temptress, a siren, and as a cruel, vindictive monster, a harpy; later, she was cast as a virgin for the protection of whose honor chivalrous male champions would gladly fight and die. Still later, she regained her sexuality, becoming a pitiless, cruel, but beautiful and desirable, belle dame sans merci, or vamp. Now, she is the equal of men, both socially and sexually, able to take as many lovers as she wishes and to terminate any pregnancy she deems undesirable. As men's concepts of womanhood changes, the Perfect Woman changes, and other, lesser, flesh-and-blood women emulate her example.

Like the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, all other myths are likewise timeless templates upon which contemporary examples may be constructed. While each reiteration may bear the stamp of its own particular innovation, it also remains a work based on the original mold.

Like most other genres of literature, horror fiction is often inspired by myths. As the subtitle of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, suggests, her protagonist is not truly a Pygmalion figure; rather, he is “The Modern Prometheus.” The mythical Prometheus, a Titan, created man from clay. Then, defying the will of the gods, he stole fire, giving it to mankind, for which offense he was punished. Bound to a rock, he endured the agony of having Zeus, in the form of an eagle, consume his liver, the seat of the emotions (or what, now, in this sense, we'd call the heart). Overnight, Prometheus's liver would be renewed, and the eagle would descend again to devour the organ. In one version of the story, the Titan's punishment is eternal, whereas, in another version, he is eventually rescued by Herakles (Roman, Hercules).

Unlike Prometheus, however, Frankenstein is not much of a creator. His “man” is far from perfect. Comprised of bits and pieces of revitalized, sewn-together corpses, the creature is more of a monstrous parody of men. (The fact that the monster is more sensitive and humane than his creator suggests Frankenstein's own comparatively inferior sensitivity and humanity.) The “fire” that Prometheus bestowed upon mankind becomes, in Shelley's novel, the lightning by which life is imparted to the body stitched together from the parts of human corpses. Whereas Prometheus endures torment as a result of his hubris, Frankenstein pays for his “ambition” with his life and the loss, forever, of his suicidal monster. Not all gifts are acceptable to the gods—or to God.

A number of other horror novels and movies are based on the eternal ideas communicated through various myths, and some of these works, in turn, suggest later ones based on similar themes.

The Monster as Sexual Menace

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

On one level, most horror fiction is about sex. Monsters are rapists. Monsters are penises. Monsters are sperm. Monsters assault, force their way in, invade. Their victims are vaginas, wombs, and ova, disguised as men and women or, less often, children. Because monsters are often of or related to body parts or their secretions—saliva, mucus, semen, blood—they themselves often produce visceral reactions and such dark emotions as fear and loathing, disgust and repulsion.

What is the Frankenstein monster but the womb bypassed? It is the embodiment of technological, rather than natural, reproduction and the denial and the dismissal of woman as a necessary participant in and contributor to the replenishment of the human species.

The vampire is an embodiment of non-procreative sex or, more specifically, oral sex. It's love bites represent its sex life. There is need for neither vagina nor penis, ovary nor testicle, ovum nor sperm. The end served by the vampire is not new life, however, but the end of life; it is death.

In some stories, such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the monster as sexual threat is merely suggested in its seeking out of female victims. In others, such as Species, the message is explicit and direct: the monster (whether male, as in Lagoon, or female, as in Species) is out to kill us, and its modus operandi is sexual, whether the scriptwriter is circumspect or in our faces about it.

It helps, in writing (and reading) horror fiction to remember the lesson of Freud: everything is sexual, because there are two forces, eros and thanatos, in conflict with one another, with human beings their battleground, no matter the shape and the name the monster, in its present disguise, takes, and whether the story being told is classic or contemporary, literary or popular. Such text (or subtext, as the case may be) enriches horror fiction, just as it grounds it in both the human anatomy and human experience.

Monsters: A(lpha) to Z(eta)

copyright 2013 by Gary L. Pullman

Traditionally, monsters in horror movies have been coded as masculine; indeed, many are male. Once upon a time, among men, there were alpha males, on one hand, and, on the other, everyone else.

Sociologists are fond of pointing out that men tend to organize themselves into hierarchies with an alpha male as top dog, whereas women tend to organize themselves into a more communal, or familial, decentralized group wherein power is not passed down but is, rather, shared. Sometimes, situations are best handled by the top-dog, top-down approach; other times, situations are better handled by the partnership approach.

However, recently, types of masculinity have been re-conceived, with more categories allowing for greater and more meaningful representation of the several, varied types of masculinity. Now, in addition to the alpha male, there are not only beta males (the alpha male's lieutenants), but also

• delta males (the everyman)
• gamma males (no, the Incredible Hulk is not included; gammas are flattering sycophants)
• lambda males (gay guys)
• sigma males (lone wolves, who would be alphas had early trauma not caused them to channel their masculinity toward the survival of the fittest—themselves)
• omega males (immature, irresponsible losers), and
• zeta males (men who insist upon the right to determine their own identities as males, whatever such an identity may prove to be).

Such types are exemplified by such characters as pretty much any ever played by John Wayne, by Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk, and by Superman (alpha males); by superhero sidekicks, such as Batman's Robin theBoy Wonder, Flash's Kid Flash, Captain America's BuckyBarnes, or Green Arrow's Speedy (beta males); by Peter Parker and by Clark Kent (as opposed to Spider-man and Superman, respectively) (delta males); by Toad (of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and by Othello's Iago (gamma males); by Lamar Latrell (lambda male); by Dirty Harry, by the Deathwish series' Paul Kersey, by the X-Men's Wolverine, and by Cool Hand Luke's Lucas Jackson (omega males); and by The Crying Game's Dil, by Porky's Tim Cavanaugh, and, to a large degree, by The Crying Game's Fergus (zeta males).

Since, as we have observed, monsters in horror movies have been coded as masculine and many, indeed, are male, these fantastic creatures can be classified in the same terms, as alpha, beta, delta, gamma, lambda, sigma, omega, and zeta:

Alpha monsters are the dominant (and, often, domineering) leaders of their kind. The Sayer of the Law (The Island of Dr. Moreau), Skull Island's King Kong, and Big Daddy, the zombie leader in Land of the Dead, qualify as examples of the alpha monster. The alpha monster's lieutenants, or sidekicks, are beta monsters, whose ranks include television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Spike, the former protege to Angel, and, indeed, Angel himself, when he was a lieutenant for the Master. Amilyn, the toady to the vampire lord Lothos in the original Buffy movie, and Igor, the sycophantic assistant to Victor Frankenstein, are delta monsters. Homosexual monsters are few and far between, but, according to some accounts, Psycho's Norman Bates may fill the bill, as may Count Dracula and, in a transgender sort of way, Sleepaway Camp's Angela Baker. (One might add most of the characters played by Vincent Price, too, perhaps.) There are many sigma monsters, because monsters, as outcasts, typically live and work alone; some examples are Beowulf's Grendel, The Creature of the Black Lagoon's Gill-man, the Predator (in The Predator), and the Yeti (in The Abominable Snowman). Monsters who insist upon defining their own manhood—or, rather, their own monstrosity—include, in a sense, the shape-shifting It of Stephen King's novel of the same name and Dr. Otto Octavius ("Doctor Octopus"), the sometime-villain in Spider-man 2.

Clearly, not all monsters are alike, any more than all men are alike. The significance of these differences in monstrosity can suggest a variety of possibilities, but addressing them must, alas, wait for another time which is yet to come. . . .

Monsters of the New Depression

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

If critics are right about the times in which we live spawning the monsters who inhabit our waking nightmares, the horror stories which appear both in print and on film, then, considering the economic downturn in which we (and the rest of the world) find ourselves, which is of a near-Depression magnitude and promises to get even worse (the CEO of Walmart predicts runaway inflation in June, 2011), we can look to the 1930s for an idea as to what form the monsters of the near future may assume.

The Great Depression began in 1929 and lasted about ten years. The current one began about 2008 and has lasted, to date, about two years. Although politicians promise us that things will get better, largely because of the measures that the administrations of George W. Bush, in its final hours, and Barack Obama have taken, economists and other pundits are not so sure. Many experts advise us to fasten our seatbelts and hold on tightly, for we’re in for a long and extremely bumpy ride.

Many of the movie monsters of the 1930s are those which, today, we call “classic”: Dracula, Frankenstein’s “creature,” the mummy, freaks, King Kong,

Many of these movies were filmed in exotic lands (Transylvania, Egypt, Skull Island) that took moviegoers away, for an hour and a half or so, from their real-life, real-world troubles and immersed them in faraway fantasy worlds in which the struggle was not with the woeful economy but with celluloid menaces that, in the end, were almost always routed or destroyed.

The monsters, however, were also symbolic, almost subliminal, manifestations of the existential crises that audiences faced.

Dracula sucked blood, as the Depression drained one’s economic lifeblood.

Frankenstein, a mad scientist, was a stand-in of sorts, perhaps, for the economists, or financial wizards, who manipulated the nation, trying to revive the dying people as Frankenstein tried to bring to life an assortment of dead body parts. The economist had had about as much success, in the public’s eyes, as the fictional scientist, creating, instead of a revived and healthy financial people, a deformed and hideous parody of a prosperous citizenry.

The Tutankhamen Exhibition toured the world during the years of the Great Depression. According to the lore of the mummy, the Egyptologists who desecrated the tomb and stole the remains of the adolescent pharaoh brought down upon themselves an ancient curse. Brought back to life by the accidental recitation of a spell, the mummy seeks the reincarnation of his true love, but is, instead, reduced to ashes, the way that filmgoers’ hopes for a reunion with their once-economically secure lives were reduced to ashes by the failed economy.

Compared to the pre-Depression days of the Roaring Twenties, when life was (or, in retrospect, at least, seemed to have been) easy, with money in plentiful supply and booze flowing through speakeasies, the grim, poverty-ridden environment of the Depression seemed unreal or surreal, and men and women saw themselves as “freaks,” deformed in body and soul, in heart and mind, by the severely depressed economy. Chaos seemed to reign, within and without, as if they were human oddities who lived lives as bleak and shadowy and pathetic as those of the unfortunate “freaks” exhibited by carnival sideshows.

King Kong embodied a long-lost--indeed, a prehistoric--past never known to human beings other than the natives of Skull Island, where the great ape lived among dinosaurs in a land that time had forgotten. Spawned as much, perhaps, by Darwinian evolutionary theory as by hard times, the beast, nevertheless, was hunted down by filmmaker Carl Denham during the Depression, a point made more clear, perhaps in the 2005 remake directed by Peter Jackson. The hard times in which the characters live motivate them to take risks that, in better days, they might have passed on. Denham hopes the documentary he plans to film concerning the mysterious Skull Island will avert bankruptcy (as the 1933 film did for RKO Radio Pictures), and his ingénue Ann Darrow accompanies him on his quest because, an out-of-work aspiring actress, she has been forced to seek her sustenance among street vendors, stealing apples from their carts. Unfortunately, Denham’s scheme fails, as so many business ventures during the decade of the Great Depression failed, and his, Darrow’s, and his other associates’ financial welfare is left in doubt at the film’s end, as King Kong, shot full of holes by the nation’s fledgling Air Force, lies dead in the streets of new York City, having fallen from his precarious perch atop the Empire State Building, a symbol of the towering success of capitalism and democracy.

Other movie monsters of the 1930s include Mr. Hyde, of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), the ghoul, the invisible man, the werewolf, the daughters of both Dracula and the devil, and the bride of Frankenstein’s creature.

The specific faces and forms of the horrors beings spawned by the contemporary economic depression are unlikely to be identical to those spawned by the Great Depression of the 1930s, but, if the Great Depression’s celluloid creatures exemplify the types of monsters we may expect to meet--parasitic bloodsuckers, cadaverous creatures, the walking dead, grotesquely deformed “freaks,” and primordial beasts--we are in for a rough time of it, to be sure!

The Fly in the Ointment of Being a Ghost in a Machine

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Monsters are degenerate. They represent deterioration or disintegration. As such, they are living object lessons, as it were, examples of what will happen to the rest of us if we pursue their course or “suffer the slings and arrows,” as William Shakespeare might put it, of their “outrageous fortune.” Potentially, we are all Frankenstein’s monster; any of us could be the creature of the Black Lagoon; you and I could both become the next werewolf, vampire, or zombie. Horror fiction is about the could-be versions of ourselves, and, often, these could-be versions are our lesser, degenerate selves.

The authors of horror fiction imply that another’s hubris can cause us to suffer, as arrogant Victor Frankenstein, in seeking to play God, makes his creature suffer. Frankenstein lusts after power and glory (or fame), and, like the novel’s author, Mary Shelley, other writers of horror fiction suggest that our lusts, sexual or otherwise, may bring about our downfall, just as the sexual desire of the creature of the Black Lagoon for Kay Lawrence and the infatuation of King Kong with Ann Darrow lead to these monsters’ downfalls and deaths. If we do not control the animal within, we may become a werewolf; if we parasitize others too freely, whether emotionally, financially, sexually, or otherwise, we may become vampires; if we are too passive and compliant (or indifferent), we may be transformed into zombies by those whom we serve (or, both history and politics show, even by those who supposedly serve us).


Often, monsters expose dangers to society and faults within a nation or a system, but they can also show us the perils of ourselves and others. In addition, horror stories show us that it is humans’ inhumanity to others that frequently creates monsters. Beowulf’s Grendel attacks the Danes because, ostracized by human society, he feels envious of the warriors’ camaraderie and fellowship. Grief-stricken, Grendel’s mother is also motivated by her passion: she seeks vengeance against the Geatish warrior, Beowulf, who killed her son. In the same epic poem, a dragon seeks to avenge the theft of gold that it guards--gold that it has itself stolen from the graves of dead warriors. Such stories suggest what is wrong with us as a group.

However, other monsters, such as Godzilla, the gigantic ants of the movie Them!, and the flora of M. Night Shyamalan’s abysmal film The Happening represent--indeed, embody--the dangers of environmental pollution, whereas such menaces as Frankenstein’s monster, the hybrid human-animal creatures of H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the gigantic plants and animals of Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods (and the movie based upon it), the human fly of David Cronenberg's movie The Fly, and the dinosaurs of Steven Spielberg's movie Jurassic Park (based upon the novel of the same title by Michael Crichton), represent, as do the antagonists of many other movies, the dangers of overreaching scientists who would manipulate and control nature, regardless of the potential risks involved in their experiments. Madmen as monsters are another type of this menace. Such characters appear in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” and in such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (based upon Robert Bloch’s novel of the same title) and Jonathan Demme’s film The Silence of the Lambs (based upon the novel, of the same title, by Thomas Harris). Such movies suggest what is wrong with our behavior as individuals.


Still other monsters, such as the blob (in Irvin Yeaworth's movie The Blob) or the cosmic forces and entities that appear in many of H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories suggest that the threat to humanity is an external force that is beyond our control; the menace comes from outside, infecting us or subjecting us to its will. Such stories imply that, despite our knowledge and our wit, we are but the pawns of fate.

In short, many of the monsters of horror fiction suggest that something is terribly wrong with us as a society or a species, or with our actions as individuals, or with the very cosmos in which we live. Evils, such movies, imply, are social, biological, or existential; they attack (and lay bare) our weaknesses as dualistic creatures whose structure is both physical and spiritual and who necessarily live in societies which are predicated upon and, indeed, result from, both aspects of our nature as ghosts, as it were, in the machines of our own material bodies.

Horror Trilogies: Not Quite Triptychs

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

A trilogy is a three-part series of novels, each of which tells a separate story, intelligible in itself, but which also, collectively, make up a longer, continuous narrative that is unified by various elements, such as the same cast of characters, the same settings, and the same or similar themes.

Perhaps one of the better known modern trilogies is J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast is also a well-known fantasy trilogy. Trilogies are relatively rare among horror novels.

The Pine Deep Trilogy, by Jonathan Maberry, is such a series, however. It focuses upon the “Most Haunted Town in America,” the futuristic Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. The trilogy’s title volumes are Ghost Road Blues, devoted to the pursuit of serial killer Karl Ruger, who is attracted to Pine Deep by the ancient evil that resides thereabout; Dead Man’s Song (2007); and Bad Moon Rising (2008). The initial volume won the 2006 Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, the horror genre’s highest prize.

The plot?

Thirty years before the opening of the series’ present-day story, Oren Morse, a traveling field hand and blues musician whom the community’s children nickname the “Bone Man,” kills Ubel Griswold, a werewolf who’d been terrorizing Pine Deep. Local racists, blaming Morse for Griswold’s killings, murder Morse. Fifteen years later, Griswold’s spirit awakens, and, assisted by Vic Wingate, the werewolf seeks revenge upon Pine Deep.

Among those whom Morse saved was nine-year old Malcolm Crow, who now owns a craft store based upon a Halloween theme. His fiancé, Val Guthrie, is also a survivor of the original massacre. Their friend, Pine Deep’s mayor, Terry Wolfe, suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of his sister’s having been murdered (and his own near murder) by Griswold.

In Ghost Road Blues, Ruger attacks Val and her family again. Wingate’s adopted son, Mike Sweeney, who dreams of confronting various evils, is targeted by Tow-Truck Eddie after “God” tells Eddie that Mike is the antichrist. In reality, “God’s” voice is that of Griswold.

In Dead Man’s Song, Crow and local newsman Willard Fowler Newton, research the events of thirty years ago, while Wingate and Ruger assemble an army of the undead for Griswold to command during the “Red Wave,” a massive attack on Halloween night. While Crow and Newton visit Dark Hollow, where Griswold had both lived and died, one of Ruger’s companions, Boyd, becomes a vampire and Griswold’s ghost sets a trap for Crow, as Wingate sends Boyd after Val.

In Bad Moon Rising, Crow and his friends learn the truth concerning their foes, just as the Red Wave is about to get underway.

The formula for Maberry’s trilogy is simple, but effective:

1. An ancient evil returns.
2. The ancient evil repeats its atrocities.
3. Armed with knowledge concerning the ancient evil, the protagonist combats it.

Another trilogy by a well-known writer who has written horror fiction in the past and still dabbles in the genre on occasion is Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series: Prodigal Son, co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson (2004), City of Night, co-authored with Ed Gorman (2005), and Dead and Alive (2009). (Now we know, I guess, how "Koontz" manages to write so many novels so quickly; he has more help than just his handful of psuedonyms.)

Dead Souls (2010) launches a second trilogy on the same theme.

Koontz, whose plots are often recycled and derivative of his own previous work and the works of others, is at least making no bones about such redundancies in the writing and co-writing of these trilogies.

In Koontz’s Frankenstein update, Victor Frankenstein, now going by the name Victor Helios, has set up shop, so to speak, in New Orleans, where he uses synthetic biology to create a new race of androids as replacements for the human race, much to the chagrin of his nemeses, police detectives, Carson O’Connor and Michael Madison, and his original monster, who is now known as Deucalion. The new creatures’ personalities are downloaded directly into their brains through the wonders of computer technology.

The plot?

In Prodigal Son, O’Connor and Madison pursue a serial killer dubbed “The Surgeon.” Attracted by the killer’s serial murders, Frankenstein’s monster believes that his creator has somehow returned.

In City of Night, the detectives team up with the monster to stop Helios and the army of programmed android killers that Helios has unleashed upon New Orleans.

In Dead and Alive, the series’ grand finale takes place as Deucalion leads the hordes of his master’s creatures against Helios himself in a confrontation that is part showdown and part revenge. Koontz, however, hints at the sequel that is to launch his second Frankenstein series. After all, there’s gold in them thar monsters.

The formula for Koontz’s trilogy is simple, but effective:

1. An ancient evil returns.
2. The ancient evil repeats its atrocities.
3. Armed with knowledge concerning the ancient evil, the protagonist combats it.

The formula for both Maberry’s and Koontz’s trilogies suggest that Stephen King’s It could have been a trilogy; at over 1,000 pages, it is certainly long enough to have been broken into three installments, in which the first, the second, and the third, respectively, would present a plot in which--

1. An ancient evil returns.
2. The ancient evil repeats its atrocities.
3. Armed with knowledge concerning the ancient evil, the protagonist combats it.

Wait! Isn’t that also the plot of King’s Desperation? And of Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night? And of Bentley Little’s The Resort? And. . . .mmm. . . it seems we may be onto something here (maybe the reason there are comparatively so few horror novel trilogies).