Showing posts with label breasts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breasts. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Telling Images: Horror Movie Poster Tropes

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Although they are not to everyone's taste, perhaps, horror movie posters are works of art.

To promote their films, such posters use a variety of visual and linguistic techniques. The latter often include the movie's title, a caption, a pun or another type of play on words, an allusion, a symbol, or a metaphor. The former exclude almost nothing.

Today's post focuses on horror movie posters' use of body parts. Specifically, we're concerned with eyes, mouths, breasts, buttocks, hands, and female genitals. (Ears, noses, feet, and phalli don't appear to play much, if any, part in horror movie poster art.)

Perhaps, in a future post, we'll consider heads (decapitated, of course), arms and legs (dismembered, naturally), and internal organs (eviscerated, obviously).

Let's start at the top and work our way down.

The Eyes Have It

Eyes are featured in quite a few horror movie posters.



Such posters feature wide eyes suggestive of shock or terror; reptilian eyes with slit pupils (Beneath Loch Ness); the whites of eyes, sans irises (The Return); and an eye in which fire (and a fiery cross) burns (The Visitation).




In some such posters, eyes are replaced with such substitutes as screaming mouths (One Missed Call), hands (Oculus), and treetops (Cabin Fever).



Live creatures or objects exit some eyes: a hand (The Eye) and blood (The Eye). In other images, something enters the eye or is about to do so: the edge of a single-edge razor blade (Would You Rather?) and a yellow jacket (Candyman).


Eyes are displaced (relocated) to incongruous sites in still other horror movie posters (one peeks out between the lips of a mouth in the poster for The Theater Bizarre, or are equipped with the body parts of another species (a gigantic eye becomes a tentacled monster in the poster promoting The Crawling Eye).



As mirrors, eyes reflect the threat or a victim that a character (perhaps him- or herself a potential victim) sees, thus allowing the audience a glimpse at the menace as well: Hipnoz, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Eye, The Skeleton Key.


Five-pointed stars, or pentagrams, are carved into the case of a victim in the Starry Eyes movie poster—right over her eyes.

There are as many ways to include images of eyes in horror movie posters as there are ways to imagine such use, but such devices as spotlighting, substitution, the egress and ingress of foreign objects, displacement, reflection, and mutilation are certainly some of the horrific techniques that make the eyes emblems of fear, especially in movies that feature body horror.

Getting Mouthy




A straight-jacketed corpse is shows inside a screaming mouth (In the Mouth of Madness). Bestial lips frame drooling teeth and fangs in The Funhouse movie poster. At the end of a bent wrist, a hand claws its way through a gaping mouth in the poster for The Possession. A girl's mouth is missing in Silent Hill's poster, and a woman's mouth is obstructed by a locked metal band in another of Silent Scream's posters.

Like eyes, which provide the capability of sight, mouths are useful to our survival. They help us to eat and to communicate; they also allow us to sound the alarm, to scream—unless they are missing or muffled with a gag.

Keeping Abreast of Things

Most horror movie posters eschew nudity. Instead, breasts, buttocks, and genitals are partially revealed (and, thus, partially concealed). Nevertheless, an emphasis on them, whether as a result of partial nudity or otherwise, makes them the center of attention in the poster and in the viewers' perceptions.


Bikinis are revealing, and their brief tops expose quite a bit of cleavage in Blood Night's poster—so much so that viewers, especially males, might not see the hatchet in her right hand and the decapitated man's head that she holds by its hair in her right hand as she trudges through a forest of leafless trees.


A rare pair of bare breasts do appear in the poster for Hostel II''s poster, but they aren't enough to deflect attention from the decapitated head the topless woman holds, which is, perhaps, her own: she is not shown above the neck.


The Machete Kills poster displays one of the more creative uses of breasts. The woman it features (actress Sophia Vergara as Desdemona) has twin machine guns strapped to her chest, the domes from which the firing barrels protrude covering her breasts.

A number of other horror movie posters feature breasts. Apart from those in the Machete Kills poster, though, most of these particular body parts, ironically enough, seem to have the purpose of either attracting attention to themselves or of deflecting attention away from something or someone else b, well, drawing attention to themselves.

Bottoms Up

Sexologist Alfred Kinsey suggests that women's buttocks, not their beasts, are mainly what attract the male of the species, and some social scientists claim that men's obsession with breasts stems from the resemblance of breasts to buttocks. Be that as it may, more horror movie posters seem to feature breasts than buttocks.

Still, such posters do present posteriors as well. The poster for Peelers, which shows a woman in high heels and thong panties lying on her right side, facing forward, away from the viewer, is an example. So arresting is the image that many might not see her severed leg hanging from the pole she was apparently dancing around (or hanging from) before she lost her gam. If so, it would seem that the buttocks, in this poster, serves the same purpose that the bare breasts exhibited in the Hostel II poster fulfills, diverting viewers' attention from the horrific image of the severed leg by focusing their attention, initially, at least, on the erotic image of the woman's naked bottom.


Burlesque Massacre's poster shows a woman from the rear. She wears a black thong and black high heels. Her legs are spread. Her left hand rests upon her left hip. Her left hand is on her right hip, but, while the thumb and fingers of her left hand hold her left hip, her right hand lies along her right hip, its fingers curled around the handle of the bloody sword she holds. Like the figure in Peelers, this woman is also an erotic dancer. Although no pole is shown, the caption makes her vocation clear: “Dance. Strip. Die.”

In general, bare buttocks seem to accomplish the same tasks as bare or partially bare breasts, either diverting attention away from something or someone else or focusing attention on themselves. By being presented first with the erotic and then with the horrific, the latter is enhanced, seeming all the more horrid than it might have appeared had it not been preceded by images associated with lust, rather than with horror.

Hands Down




The fingers of a gigantic hand curl toward the silhouette of a male figure standing on its palm (The Hand). A man stares at his raised hands, the fingers of which curl inward (The Hands of Orlac). A hand reaches out from the soil of a grave marked with a headstone bearing a word of advice to the viewer: “Before you are covered with the last shovelful of dirt . . . Be sure you are really dead” (Mortuary). Hands growing out of a woman's face replace the eyes they would have covered, were they not already gone (Oculus). A zombie approaches the viewer, right hand raised and ready; right hand extended, as if to seize a victim—the viewer him- or herself.

The hand or hands appear in plenty of other horror movie posters, too, but most of them are variations of the images cited, suggesting menace or escape—or an escaping menace.

Private Parts

Posters for Teeth, a comedy-horror movie featuring a young woman with a vagina dentata (a vagina with teeth—and sharp ones, at that) never show the female sexual organ itself—this seems taboo even for the horror genre, but, instead, suggests the vagina various creative ways, through the use of symbolic cover-ups.



One poster shows an X-ray photograph of a human torso. Located where the patient's sex would be are the two letters, mirror images of “E,” the horizontal bars of which end in sharp points, resembling fangs. Together, the facing letters are supposed to represent the vagina and its teeth.


In another poster for this film, a woman lies supine in a bathtub, her legs parted. Rose petals float on the sudsy water. Below the surface, in swirling, blood-red water, a rose is shown from above, the white thorns among its soft petals suggesting the teeth with which the rose (symbolizing the vagina) is armed.


A third poster for this movie shows a young woman standing, her left leg turned in against her right leg. She wears a yellow short with orange bands around its neck and the ends of its short sleeves. The short bears a message: “WARNING: Sex changes everything.” Wide-eyes, lower lip askew, she stares at the viewer, as if shocked. Her pubic lower abdomen, pubic area, and upper thighs are covered with a scalloped-edge circle identifying the film's producer.

Much as the fig leaf has come to represent the censorship of phalli in painting and sculpture, the letters, the rose, and a scallop-edge circle fulfill the same function in these posters. However, by concealing the vagina, these cover ups also tend to focus viewers' attention on the very private part they conceal.

In analyzing what additional meanings eyes, mouths, breasts, buttocks, hands, and female genitals may have, it is necessary to investigate, identify, and evaluate the cultural significance of such body parts. To start, a dream dictionary might impart some suggestions. For example, concerning the mouth's symbolic significance, according to one source,

Your mouth is a fundamental part of life. It takes things in such as food, pleasure or even pain. Basically the mouth is a pleasure area, but it is also the way you express pleasure or pain, as with smiling, crying or grimacing. So the mouth is a way you communicate as well as satisfy yourself or gain your needs.  As an organ of expression the mouth can also give thanks for life and utters beauty in words or sounds. This is a way you can uplift the dark things in you and transform them.



Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Sources of Incongruity as Inspirations for Horror Plots

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman



I've written about movie misconceptions, bizarre explosions, Viking inventions and innovations, disciplined photojournalists, horrific acts that are legal in some countries, the first Christmas card, strange phenomena that have stumped experts, famous writers' accounts of public executions, strange and mysterious islands, Halloween pranks gone awry, an innovations coming soon to a mall near you, among many other topics.


My writing has been eclectic, to say the least, although most of my articles have been, like many of my novels and short stories, concerned with the bizarre, the grotesque, and the exceptional. In fact, the site for which I wrote most of my articles specifically requests such fare. To sell, I worked out an approach, listing sources of incongruity from which to draw ideas for such stories.


It's occurred to me that these same sources of incongruity can help writers of horror fiction develop premises for novels and short stories. Here, without further ado, is the list of my sources for incongruity, together with, by way of example, a few of the titles of the articles I derived from them.


Polarity Pendulum: going from one extreme to another: passengers who became pilots midair, lost and found objects, disasters that sparked new safety regulations. 


Prediction Regarding Everyday Life:  futuristic visions of everyday places


Recent Discovery: recently discovered animal species, recently discovered secret caches


Secrets: secret laboratories, secret caches



Incongruous Placement of Objects or Event Location: bodies at the bottoms of wells, objects found in porta potties, underwater rescues, creatures living in people's ears


Ridiculous + Sublime: elaborate gingerbread houses



Great Waste: government boodoggles


Unusal Purpose: objects made from human skulls, dioramas, dollhouses that aren't for play, items made from human corpses


Bizarre Role: bizarre positions in royal courts, stained-glass windows (with various unusual purposes)


Mysterious Phenomena: mystifying mountains, occultists, bizarre skeletons


Sophisticated Early Technology: early special effects, antique prostheses


Precursors: cabinets of curiosity (precursor to museums)


Misrepresentations: deliberate historical errors and misrepresentations, deliberate map errors, accidental map errors


Confusion of Categories: insect imposters


Irony: a hospital stay can make you sicker


Threats to Safety: snake invasions

By categorizing the types of incongruity, a writer can tap a number of sources, ensuring that his or her writing doesn't bog down with only one or two such sources, becoming predictable and less interesting than it could (and should) be. Simply select one of the above categories as your inspiration and develop a story along the lines the selected category suggests.



 

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Underscoring Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies aren't about stubbing one's toe. They're about life-and-death struggles, about suffering life-threatening injuries, about being driven insane.

But they can be about subtler, but equally horrific, experiences, although they seldom are.




In my own urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt, one scene is about some worm-like monster that consumes a woman from within, on her wedding day, as she stands at the altar, about to exchange vows with her husband-to-be. The subtext relates to a bride's anxiety about entering a lifelong relationship and her questions, largely unconscious, perhaps, about what could go wrong with such a union.

Every scene in a horror novel should have a deeper layer, a theme beyond the literal horror, that goes to the heart of being human in a hostile world. (For example, the scene previous to that which involves the bride on her day of days concerns a college student who feels guilty about not spending enough time with his younger brother; collecting for the newspaper from one of his kid brother's peskier customers is an attempt to rectify such neglect, but it doesn't go well.)

By coupling scenes of horror with existential situations and predicaments, writers give symbolic significance to such action scenes, thereby enriching the story. Stories, even horror stories, are about people (i. e., characters), after all, not about mere incidents in themselves.




In A Whole World Full of Hurt, the scene involving the worm-things came to me, from who-knows-where—my imagination, the stockpile of horrific imagery I've accumulated over the years, my own unconscious fears?—as I wrote the scene. I hadn't planned it. I had worked out the structure of the novel, knew who most of the characters were, and had the setting firmly in mind, but the monsters, the plot twists, and the thematic significance of various scenes presented themselves out of the ether, if you like.




That's often not the case with me and with many other writers. Ideas come from everywhere, bidden and unbidden. One source is news, especially, if you're a writer of dark fantasy or horror (if there's really a difference between the two) is bizarre news.

Here's an item, for example, that might easily suggest the basis for a novel of fear and trembling. Part of a headline in a Daily Mail newspaper proclaimed, “Women's breasts 'eat' themselves after they finish breastfeeding.” Remove the quotation marks from around the verb “eat,” and the word acquires a literal, rather than a figurative, meaning: breasts actually consume themselves. By “eating” cells “left over from . . . breastfeeding,” a process known as “phagocytosis ,” breasts revert from their engorged, milk-producing state to their “natural state in a matter of days,” undergoing a type of self-destruction, the article informs us.



Male anglerfish (circled) attached to female; he will atrophy to little more than parasitic testicles.


In itself, this process could make a remarkable short story, if not a novel, but it could also be extended to other anatomical parts that essentially commit suicide after they've completed the process for which they've evolved to perform: the completion of ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation could cause the ovaries, the uterus, or the testes to cannibalize themselves or to be cannibalized by the body. That's pretty much what happens with the male anglerfish.

Different stories would result according to whether a woman or a man knew, ahead of time, the fate that ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation would bring or remained ignorant of this effect until the process was complete. If a person knew in advance that her ovaries or uterus would self-destruct or his testicles would consume themselves or be consumed bu their bodies, what type of character would sacrifice this part of him- or herself and why? Who would refuse to accept this fate and why? What effects would the decision have, either way?




Other news items that might suggest equally bizarre horrors are the one reported under the eye-catching title “Tapeworm Removed From Woman's Breast 5 Years After She Swallowed Live Frogs.” What kind of woman swallows live frogs? A carnival sideshow performer? A starving woman who raids a frog farm (yes, there are such places)? An overweight woman on a tapeworm diet? What would possess a person to embrace such an extreme measure—besides entertaining a rather kinky audience of voyeurs, staving off starvation, or losing a few pounds of unwanted weight? Such a story cries out for psychological and sociological exploration.


The important thing, though, is to associate the horror of the story and its scenes with character and theme. That way, your short story of novel will have something to present besides blood and guts; you will underscore the horror of your story by making it symbolize something meaningful beyond itself. You will emphasize your terror by making it represent something about human beings (your characters) that most people didn't realize or, in rare cases, perhaps didn't know at all.




Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to Todorov:

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

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

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

My Cup of Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Popular Posts