In the new Fox horror series The Following, Joe Carroll, played by James Purefoy, is both a serial killer and a novelist, two things that have been romanticized and mythologized all out of proportion. (A perfect example of the mythologized writer is Carroll’s idol, Edgar Allan Poe.) Carroll is the villain of the series, and the reason people will keep coming back. Kevin Bacon’s damaged FBI agent Ryan Hardy and all the other characters are really just window dressing. Let’s be honest — this might as well be called The Joe Carroll Show.
Carroll is a serial killer with groupies. Maybe it would be more accurate to call them disciples because they carry out his orders while he plots and schemes in prison. While the first episode of The Following was not ideal viewing for dog lovers (if you saw it, you know what I mean), it’s off to a good start. It’s well written, has a fine cast, and overall, it’s a beautiful production. It occurred to me while I watched the show, sitting stiffly on my couch during a tense moment, that serial killers are the new vampires.
Not too long ago, the vampire was a scary predator. That was before, as Craig Ferguson puts it, they got sensitive and started sparkling and expressing themselves through their rippling abs. The vampire is now Fabio — a figure of airbrushed romance and teen angst. He’s dark, but in much the same way those teenagers who hang out at Hot Topic are dark — and if you’re fond of the vampire of old, just as annoying. In fiction, it’s hard to successfully dress up the vampire as a scary predator anymore, and the same thing is rapidly happening to the werewolf. If you do, you’ll inevitably hear from some upset female readers who will proclaim, “Your vampires (or werewolves) are scary! I don’t like that!”
The position the vampire once held in the horror genre is now held by the serial killer. He is the new boogeyman in horror. But it’s the position that’s new, not the serial killer. He’s been around in horror movies and fiction for decades. Serial killer movies have been popular for a long time. One swept the Oscars more than twenty years ago. Now there are even serial killer comedies. But now he’s come into our homes. First there was Dexter, which has been running since 2006, now The Following, and coming soon are primetime series about Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates. When there are enough serial killer shows on TV for people to have a favorite TV serial killer, you know the serial killer has gone fully mainstream. I’m waiting for a serial killer sitcom. (In fact, I have a pretty good idea for one — if you have any pull in the TV biz, message me.) We Americans love our serial killers. And we should — we’ve produced some of the very best. Along with porn and guns, serial killers are one of the few things we still make, and make well.
The vampire of old could manipulate people with hypnosis and/or telepathy. He could turn into a bat, or a wolf, or a creeping mist, and he had superhuman strength. He was, of course, a dead man resurrected. Undead. He drank his victims’ blood to survive, it sustained him. Traditionally, his only weaknesses were sunlight, garlic, and the trappings of Christianity, but those came and went depending on the movie or novel. The vampire usually looked like a human being, but he was a monster with supernatural powers. There was an air of romance about him, but it was dwarfed by his menace.
But he is no more. Not really. He used to make women scream, but ever since Anne Rice started writing vampire novels, he’s had to turn swooning women away due to his own exhaustion and bloat, and because, even when you live forever, there just isn't enough time in a day. In other words, he has a new career, his dance card is full and he doesn't have time to be scary anymore.
The serial killer is a human being, a mortal who can be killed. He has no supernatural powers. But ... he might as well. Just as the vampire must drink blood, the mythological serial killer must kill. It is his outlet, his meditation, his happy place, and it sustains him. He is brilliant, a seductive genius whose razor-sharp powers of perception keep him one step ahead of everyone else. Chances are, if you analyze any fictional serial killer story, you’ll probably conclude that he does have supernatural powers, which would be a requirement to do the things most fictional serial killers do. But we don’t think about that much as viewers or readers because we’ve come to expect it. That’s what fictional serial killers are, that’s what they do.
Real serial killers are different animals altogether. They are deeply dysfunctional people who always have in their background some combination of abuse — physical, sexual, psychological, or all three — personality disorders, and mental illness, a deadly brew that leaves him with deadly, bloody desires and no conscience. The one who came closest to being a seductive genius was Ted Bundy, and he was just a bright, handsome guy who also happened to be a monster. He fooled a lot of people for a while, but he wasn’t manipulating them like chess pieces on a board. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re not talking about real serial killers. We’re talking about the boogeyman.
Some people don’t think serial killer stories qualify as horror because of the absence of the supernatural. I disagree for the reasons above. We have imbued the fictional serial killer with ersatz supernatural powers because the real serial killer scares the hot, steaming shit out of us precisely because he is not supernatural. He’s just one of us. It’s never possible to recognize him for what he is, we only learn about it later, after it’s too late for his victims. Sometimes he’s an odd, quiet loner and sometimes he’s active in local politics and entertains local children by playing a clown. And sometimes he’s a mass killer who walks into a mall or school and opens fire. He is impossible to spot or predict. Because he’s one of us.
The vampire grew out of ignorance and superstition. There was a time when people were sometimes buried a little too early, and if they managed to get out of the grave, they probably didn’t look so good. Imagine happening to see someone crawl out of a grave and stagger away looking dirty and sinister. It’s the kind of thing that would stick with you, the kind of thing you’d tell others. There was never a real vampire, of course, but there was a time when the fear of vampires was very real.
The fictional serial killer is scary, but he’s scary in the way a movie or novel or TV show is scary — he’s safe. We’ve made him that way. We’ve distanced him from ourselves, made him different. He’s a seductive genius who reads people like cereal boxes and basks in his own evil. We can enjoy the gruesome chills of a Hannibal Lecter movie because he is clearly what we want him to be — not us.
The real serial killer is not different from us. He is us. He is somebody’s son, somebody’s friend, maybe somebody’s brother, maybe even somebody’s spouse. Yes, he’s a monster, but he’s a monster who’s also one of us.
We had to turn the serial killer into a supernatural boogeyman. The reality is just too horrifying.
25th Anniversary
2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Live Girls. It was my fourth book, and I’ve written a lot more since, but it’s still the most well known of all my work. I’m often asked if, after all the work I've done in the years since, it’s irritating that my fourth book is still getting so much attention. Absolutely not!
In fact, I’m pretty astonished and quite thrilled that a book I began writing 26 years ago on a spare typewriter in the offices of Pinnacle Books right after an inspiring visit to a Times Square peep show is still being read and enjoyed. If you’d told me back then that the book would still be selling in 2012, I wouldn’t have believed you. And if you’d told me that all these years later, I’d be working on another book set in the Live Girls universe and featuring some of the same characters from that book, I wouldn’t have believed you.
No matter how many books I write, knowing that people are still enjoying this one could never be irritating. So happy anniversary, sexy New York vampires!
Overkill
When I was a boy, my mother took me into a new book store in town owned by a friend of hers, a woman named Jean with whom Mom had worked as a nurse. (I didn’t know it at the time, but she was also the cousin of the father of the woman I would later marry.) Jean said to me, “I have something for you.” She took a book off the shelf and handed it to me, saying, “You can have this one.” She added with a chuckle, “But then you’ll have to come back and buy the trilogy.” She gave me The Hobbit. I burned through it quickly and loved every second of it. I was not as fond of the trilogy. While The Hobbit is a light, quick tale of adventure, a children’s book, the trilogy is a much more dense epic fantasy that takes itself far more seriously. I read it and enjoyed it, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as The Hobbit. While everyone else was waiting for movie adaptations of the trilogy, I was waiting for a movie adaptation of The Hobbit.
Be careful what you wish for.
Making a trilogy of movies based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy makes perfect sense, of course. Making a trilogy of three-hour movies out of The Hobbit makes sense only if all you care about is the buttloads of money you can wring out of it. A trilogy will give us plenty of time to get intimately familiar with every detail of the hobbits’ lives, right down to their personal possessions, each of which will be marketed as collectibles. The Hobbit toothbrush! Hobbit kitchen sponges! I’m kind of surprised there isn’t a trilogy of movie novelizations, as well. Some people have told me the first movie is good. That’s not the point. Saying the first of three three-hour-long movies of The Hobbit is good is like filling a stadium with hot oil to deep fry a turkey and then saying, “But the turkey is delicious!”
Peter Jackson is a wonderful director and I’ve enjoyed his work in the past, but I’ll sit this one out, thanks.
Shadowland
I’m rereading Peter Straub’s Shadowland right now. I first read the book when it was published in 1980. I was in high school at the time, a Seventh-day Adventist boarding academy, so I had to hide the book. It was contraband. It disrupted my life because I didn’t want to put it down. When I picked it up again recently, I expected to be disappointed. So often the books we read in our youth don’t hold up in our adulthood.
This one is better now than it was back then. I’m not sure why — maybe simply because I’m older and more mature and no longer a teenager — but I’m appreciating the book a lot more this time, seeing more in it than I did before. If you’ve never read it, I strongly recommend it. I recommend anything by Straub, but this one really stands out and has never gotten the recognition it deserves.
WTF TV?
For the past couple of months, we’ve been getting IFC (Independent Film Channel) for free. We have one of those cheap, crappy packages that doesn’t include IFC, and I’ve missed it. I tuned in after not having access to it for almost two years to find a marathon of Star Trek movies. Wait ... Star Trek movies? Are they independent films? I think not. Neither were any of the movies I've been seeing on IFC, which includes a Christmas time marathon of Jason movies.
What the hell is going on with TV?
Remember when the History Channel featured programming about history? Those days are gone. Now it offers Ax Men, American Pickers, Pawn Stars, and just in case you can’t get enough of that last one, Cajun Pawn Stars. Once in a great while, it will air something about history, but only if it has Nazis in it. The History Channel just loves its Nazis. And aliens.
Remember the Sci-Fi Channel? They had to change it to “SyFy” because its original sci-fi programming became so polluted with wrestling and pranks and “reality” shows in which bullshit artists run around in the dark hunting for ghosts.
The Food Network used to feature cooking shows. Now it’s nothing but overproduced, repetitious cooking competitions to see just how whiny and nasty and unpleasant people can get over a goddamned cupcake contest.
TLC used to be The Learning Channel. It was founded as the Appalachian Community Service Network by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and NASA as an educational channel that was distributed for free by NASA satellite. It was privatized in 1980 and became The Learning Channel, or TLC. Its programming was made up of documentary content about everything from nature and science to cooking, from current events to history, and it did a better job of it than its rival, The Discovery Channel. By 1991, the Financial News Network (FNN) and Infotechnology Inc. owned 51% of TLC, but FNN went into bankruptcy that year (there are several jokes there, but I’ll let you come up with them yourself). The Discovery Channel bought up the TLC shares held by FNN and Infotech, and that’s when the channel’s crapward spiral began. Now it has come to provide what people used to have to go to the circus to see — little people, fat people, polygamists, a two-headed woman, preacher’s wives, brides from hell, virgins, hoarders, people who can’t seem to stop having babies, and, of course, Honey Boo Boo. (Let that be a lesson to us — when something, anything, is privatized, its original goals and intent immediately take a backseat to profit at any cost.) Now TLC stands for TLC and nothing more. Move along, nothing to learn here.
The Discovery Channel is no better. Gone are the nature documentaries and shows about science and medicine. Now we’ve got Amish Mafia, Texas Car Wars, American Guns, Outlaw Empires, booze, bikers, fishermen, ghosthunters, competing gold miners, ancient aliens, conspiracy theories, and a guy who drinks his own urine while pretending to be stranded in the wilderness with a full crew and provisions.
Now IFC no longer focuses on independent movies. IFC could accurately be called the Portlandia Channel. Along with that show, it features something called Whisker Wars (I don't want to know, really, so please don't fill me in), reruns of Malcolm in the Middle and endless airings of Trapped in the Closet, along with lots of movies that couldn’t be further away from “independent.”
I don’t know what bothers me more — what I just described above or the fact that nobody really seems to notice or mind. This has made channel-surfing a kind of self-inflicted punishment, and it’s why I watch very little broadcast television these days.
Back in the 1980s, American television audiences loved watching the rich wallow in their wealth and flaunt their immorality. Millions faithfully followed the exploits of the Ewings and the Carringtons and lapped up all those big, beautiful homes, fully stocked limos and globe-hopping lifestyles. Shows like Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous took up a lot of network airtime. Now we watch shows about people who have jobs. Any jobs, it doesn’t matter. Truckers, bakers, fishermen, chefs, as long as they’re employed. Employment is the new porn.
Stop Apologizing!
Jon Stewart is still publicly apologizing for his performance in The Faculty, the 1998 movie directed by Robert Rodriguez. Am I the only person in the world who liked that movie? Most people seem to laugh or roll their eyes when it comes up in conversation. I thought it had a nice ‘50s monster movie vibe. You know what I mean — the kind of movie that has a silly premise, but makes it work and manages to suck you in no matter how silly you thought it sounded at first. For example, the idea of giant ants invading Los Angeles might make you chuckle, but Them! is a pretty damned good movie that makes you believe those ants. That’s what The Faculty was for me. It has some laughs and some solid chills, and a great cast of character actors like Piper Laurie, Christopher McDonald, Daniel von Bargen, Bebe Neuwirth — and yes, Jon Stewart, who plays Professor Edward Furlong. The Faculty is a rarity these days, in any genre, in that it entertains without making the assumption that its audience has sustained some kind of brain damage.
And yet, Jon Stewart is still apologizing for it! I don’t know why, because I thought he was pretty good. And no one should apologize for the movie, which is a fine piece of work. If Stewart wants to apologize for something, he can start with that Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy. Where’s my apology for that piece of shit, huh? I’ll never get that hour and a half back.
American Horror Story
I battle with insomnia, and Netflix streaming is the insomniac’s best friend. American Horror Story, on the other hand, is not. I’ve been watching the first season of this series, which airs on FX (yet another channel our crappy satellite package doesn’t include), and I can’t remember the last time I was this impressed with made-for-TV horror. The horror genre hasn’t always worked well on broadcast TV in the past because broadcast TV has tended to be family friendly, which has resulted in a lot of watered-down horror. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. This is a disturbing series that tells a different story each season. I’m almost finished with the first season and I love the way it has managed to tell a haunted house story that feels fresh and unpredictable.
The writing is outstanding and does a good job of messing with our heads. It’s not the show to watch if your goal is getting to sleep, though. It’s frightening and upsetting, and so far, there has been one moment when I slapped a hand over my eyes because I didn’t want to see something. The glimpse I got has stayed with me.
I'm not prepared to commit to this, but Jessica Lange may be scarier than Glenn Close. I haven't decided yet.
American Horror Story reminds me of the made-for-TV movies that aired on the networks from 1969 to 1975. Most were in the horror genre, but even those that weren’t told dark and unsettling stories in dark and unsettling ways, and they usually had downer endings. They had low budgets and added to the atmosphere and tension with unique, creepy music and bizarre camera work. I’m seeing some of those same techniques in American Horror Story, and I like it. I’m also enjoying the use of familiar music from horror movies. If I’d heard about that before seeing the show — that it used music from other genre sources — I probably would have said, “That’s just lazy.” But I have to admit, it’s done selectively and with excellent judgment, and it works.
Among the names in the opening credits is Jennifer Salt. I first noticed her in one of those creepy TV movies I referred to earlier, Gargoyles from 1972. She popped up in a lot of TV shows and movies and was always a welcome presence. I especially enjoyed her work in the sitcom Soap and the creepy-as-hell Brian de Palma movie Sisters. Her father, Hugo Salt, blacklisted in 1950, wrote movies like Day of the Locusts and Serpico, and won Oscars for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home. After walking away from acting, Jennifer took her father’s path and started writing for television in 1998. She began to produce as well during her years on Nip/Tuck, and now she’s doing both on what is maybe the best horror TV series I’ve ever seen. It’s been an interesting career to watch.
So Long, 2012!
For most of the people I know, 2012 has been a lousy year. It sure has sucked cosmic ass for Dawn and me. But things seem to be turning around. Dawn finally got a good job after two years of being unemployed, and I have a new publisher, so things are looking up.
I want to thank my readers, who’ve kept buying my books while patiently waiting for a new one (it’s coming!). Also, thanks to the people on Facebook and Twitter who put up with my bizarre sense of humor between bouts of self-promotion. I hope 2013 is a better year for all of us.
There have been many charming movies featuring Santa Claus. Fortunately, all of them have been Christmas movies. It just wouldn’t work if Santa showed up in a movie about Valentine’s Day or Easter — although in a perfect world, Mel Gibson would have cast him as the guy who whipped Jesus to a bloody pulp in his gay BDSM Easter porn flick, The Passion of the Christ. Sure, there have been a few horror movies featuring someone posing as Santa Claus that would make appropriate Halloween viewing, but they’re not specifically Halloween movies. Santa mostly confines himself to secular Christmas movies featuring music written by Jewish people.
One of my favorite Santa Claus movies is Miracle on 34th Street from 1947. It’s the first live-action movie I remember seeing in which Santa was depicted as a real person. Edmund Gwenn, who was such a charming Kris Kringle, had a big influence on my idea of Santa as a small child.
We have the movie on DVD, but I haven’t watched it yet this year. A couple of days ago, I was happy to discover that it was playing on AMC. When I turned it on, I got a queasy feeling. Something was wrong. Everything was a sickening shade of pink, as if the movie had been shot through a thin filter of Pepto Bismol. Then I became aware of the problem: it was the colorized version.
I had almost forgotten about colorization. At least, I hadn’t thought about it in many years. The period of years during which I did not think about the colorization of black-and-white movies was a peaceful one. Because I did not think about the colorization of black-and-white movies.
When Ted Turner, owner of the MGM film library, announced back in the 1980s that he was going to colorize Citizen Kane, a genuine effort should have been made to have him committed. He later said it was a joke and he’d had no intention of colorizing the classic, and even though he never did, I didn't believe him at the time. But he colorized other classics. Movies shot in black and white were not meant to be shown in color. Otherwise, they would have been shot in color. Because Turner was incapable of grasping that nugget of logic, movie buffs had a great deal of hostility toward him back then. But the fad didn’t last long and, mercifully, it all faded away.
Before I turned on AMC the other day, decades had passed since I’d last thought about or seen a colorized movie. I don’t know if Ted Turner had anything to do with colorizing Miracle on 34th Street, but I blamed him, anyway. All that Ted Turner hostility came rushing back. I felt myself tensing up, clenching my teeth, wishing that all kinds of creatively horrible things would happen to Turner. (For those not familiar with it, this is very similar to the hostility felt by many fans toward Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on Batman’s suit — something else I haven’t thought about in a long time, so now I’ve just pissed myself off again, dammit.) Then I remembered that he’d been married to Jane Fonda for ten years and figured the poor son of a bitch has probably suffered enough.
John Favreau’s Elf is a more recent example of Santa being depicted as a real person, portrayed in this case by Lou Grant. Um, I’m sorry, I meant Edward Asner. But Santa is overshadowed by Buddy the elf, played by Will Ferrell. Your enjoyment of Elf will depend a great deal on your enjoyment of Will Ferrell. I know many people who think he's about as funny as a pilonidal cyst. He makes me laugh when he’s in the right role, and I think the role of Buddy fits him perfectly. My problem with the movie is another actor in the cast. Elf is a light holiday comedy, but casting James Caan as Buddy’s father transformed it into a light holiday comedy that could, at any moment, explode with brutal violence and bloodshed. Or, at the very least, a bunch of F-bombs.
This isn’t the only light comedy James Caan has been in, either, which is bizarre when you think about it. Ever see a 1982 romantic comedy called Kiss Me Goodbye? Sally Field plays Kay, a widow who’s about to marry Rupert, played by Jeff Bridges. So far, so good, right? The ghost of Kay’s dead husband, a light-hearted song-and-dance man named Jolly, comes back to prevent the marriage. James Caan plays Jolly. Did you get that? James Caan plays a dancer named Jolly — and that name is not meant to be ironic. He tap dances. No, really, I’m not kidding. Holy crap, that movie was exhausting! I kept waiting for Caan to drop the ruse and knock Sally Field’s teeth down her throat.
I once dated a woman who claimed to have lived with James Caan, and she said every time they had sex, when he came he would spit in her face. I later learned she was a pathological liar and that nothing she’d told me was true, but the point is that I believed it at the time. Because it was James Caan. He’s a scary guy. He is not light comedy material. And yet he starred in Neil Simon's Chapter Two.
But unlike Kiss Me Goodbye, I’ve seen Elf several times now, and I no longer flinch when it looks like Caan might be making a move to beat the shit out of Buddy. It’s a funny, amiable holiday movie.
I don’t mean to be a Grinch, but I have a problem with Santa movies — specifically those movies in which everyone learns that Santa really exists and really has a toy factory run by elves at the North Pole. These movies share a flaw that, as far as I know, has never been addressed. It doesn’t seem to bother people, and I imagine most haven’t even noticed it. But as a writer, I am annoyed by stories that contain a logical flaw and then try to ignore it by never mentioning it and just hoping nobody will notice. Elf is a perfect example.
Walter (Caan) and Emily (Mary Steenburgen) have a son named Michael (Daniel Tay) of about ten or eleven years of age. When Walter and Emily meet Buddy, Walter’s biological son, at first they think he’s a little goofy in the head because he insists he’s an elf from the North Pole. Later, when they learn he’s telling the truth, they also learn that he works in Santa’s workshop making toys to be delivered by Santa to all the children of the world at Christmas.
Why don’t Walter and Emily already know Santa exists? If he delivers toys to all the children of the world every Christmas, there should be something under the tree for Michael that was not put there by Walter and Emily. I think it would be pretty hard to miss an extra gift under the tree, especially if it was the toy Michael had been requesting from Santa. It seems like there would have to be some communication between Santa and parents. You wouldn't want to give your child the same toy Santa had brought, would you? Now that would be awkward. I would think that discovering that Santa is real — especially for parents — would create more questions than it answered.
I don’t know how the other Santa movie fathers would react to learning that Santa is real, but I can easily imagine how James Caan would react.
“What the hell is this? You’re real? I mean, you gotta toy factory up at the North Pole, the sleigh and the reindeer, the whole show, and you’re tellin’ me you deliver toys to all the children of the world at Christmas? Then where the fuck you been, huh? Huh? Where the fuck you been? What about all those Christmas Eves I spent tryin’ to figure out how to assemble the kid's fuckin’ toys until five in the morning? Huh? What was that? And then you get the credit for it? After I do all the work?”
Caan rushes the fat man, pulls out his piece, levels it with Santa’s forehead and says slowly, “I am the last guy in the world ... that you wanna fuck with. You ain’t been deliverin’ toys. Whatta you up to, huh? You runnin’ drugs? Weapons? Doin’ some human trafficking? ‘Cause I’ll tell ya what you’re not doin’. You’re not deliverin’ any fuckin’ toys!”
That’s how I imagine it, anyway.
If I were a parent and learned that Santa was real, I would be tempted to sue the lazy bastard. At the very least, I would ask, “Then what the hell have I been doing the last few years?” But that never happens in the movies. The parents always shed their skepticism and embrace the fact that this fat guy has been flying all over the world delivering toys, but for some reason, not to their house. And nobody says, "Oh, god, what else were my parents telling me the truth about?"
When you think about the relatively small period of time during which children believe in Santa Claus, it’s pretty amazing how much time, effort and money our culture puts into convincing them of his existence. Movies, TV shows, books, advertisements — they all conspire to maintain for children the belief that Santa Claus is a real, magical guy who has flying reindeer, and those childre will, very soon, figure out, or be told, the truth. It’s a short period of time, but it’s an important process, because in this way, we soften their brains for religion and politics.
Do you have a favorite movie Santa? Was there a movie Santa who didn’t work for you? One who frightened you? Let's talk Santa in the comments.
Earlier this week, a story first reported a little over a decade ago resurfaced. It seems that in the 1950s, during the Cold war, the U.S. considered detonating a nuclear bomb on the moon as an intimidating display of power to the Soviet Union. According to the man in charge of “Project A119,” physicist Leonard Reiffel, the project was scrapped for fear of endangering the people of earth and contaminating the moon with radioactivity.
"Thankfully, the thinking changed,” Reiffel said in a 2000 interview. “I am horrified that such a gesture to sway public opinion was ever considered."
Does that make sense to you? I mean, going to all the trouble of firing a nuclear bomb at the moon to spook the Soviets?
Look what we can do, ya damned commies! We can blow up the fuckin’ moon! So you’d better behave.
Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t compute. It sounds more like a cover story. But what could that story be covering up? What other reason could there possibly be for nuking the moon?
During WWII, the Nazis had a space program under the direction of General Hans Kammler. He and his team were working on flying saucers with which Hitler planned to bomb London and New York. They also wanted to conquer orbital space long before anyone else even had the chance to think about it. The program was quite successful. There are many eyewitness accounts of the Nazi flying saucers that bore the iron cross. When the war turned out differently than the Hitler had hoped, they used that space program to flee to the moon, where a base had been under construction since as early as 1942.
A lunar Nazi base is a much better reason to nuke the moon than the one we’ve been given, don’t you think? It certainly makes more sense. I mean, if there are Nazis on the moon, then of course you’re going to fire a nuclear bomb at it! Especially when you consider the fact that they’ve been monitoring us with their flying saucers all these many decades, waiting for the right moment to strike again. All those alien encounters you’ve heard about that involve anal probes? Probably Nazis.
The only problem, of course, is that I don’t believe any of this stuff.
I just read a book called Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. It’s about how the human mind works and suggests ways we can get it under control — because we don't control it as much as we think. Wilson stirred Timothy Leary, G.I. Gurdjieff, Alfred Korzybski, Aleister Crowley, and the disciplines of Yoga together in a big pot and came up with this book. It’s fascinating, funny, even enlightening, and each chapter ends with some exercises for the reader to do that will illustrate that chapter’s point and make it stick.
In the book, Wilson spends a lot of time discussing our “reality tunnels,” a term coined by Timothy Leary. A reality tunnel is how a person sees the world through the filters of his senses, personal experiences, conditioning and prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. We all have them, like it or not, and in Prometheus Rising, Wilson tries to make the reader aware of them and show how they can be changed.
Right now, we’re living in a time of colliding reality tunnels. There was a time when a person probably would spend his whole life in the same community, where everyone had reality tunnels that ranged from very similar to virtually identical. But the world has gotten a lot smaller, information travels a lot faster, and so do we. Conflicting reality tunnels are crashing into each other all over the place. When we encounter a conflicting reality tunnel, we’re often quick to conclude that the other person is just plain wrong or maybe even crazy. We reach these conclusions without giving any thought to the fact that the other person’s reality tunnel probably makes them see us the same way. And that person is probably no more aware of his reality tunnel than we are of ours. Wilson encourages us to approach these conflicts with understanding and openness rather than simply dismissing the other person as a nutjob.
We could use a lot more of that in the United States these days. That’s why I read the book.
Some of the exercises encourage the reader to enter someone else’s reality tunnel, to believe the things that someone else believes for a little while, things that conflict with the reader’s reality tunnel. I did some of those exercises. One of the more extreme things I tried to believe for a little while was that there are Nazis on the moon. It was triggered by the story of our plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon.
I’m a fan of conspiracy theories, and one of the goofiest is that the Nazis established a base on the dark side of the moon during WWII. Yes, there are people who believe this. Google it. Search YouTube. You’ll see what I mean. There’s even a movie about it, a comedy called Iron Sky. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
I took a shot at believing in the moon Nazis. I tried. I want to be more understanding of other ways of thinking, I really do, but ... I’m sorry. After a few minutes of that, I concluded that I was nuttier than a Christmas cheese log and went back to my old reality tunnel. If you believe there are Nazis on the moon, your biggest problem is not Nazis.
I can, however, recommend Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising. And while we’re on the subject of Wilson and conspiracy theories, I also recommend the Illuminatus! trilogy written by Wilson and Robert Shea. In fact, I think it’s probably a good idea to read anything by Wilson, who will stretch your brain in the funniest and most entertaining ways.
I’m thankful that the founders of my country were wise enough to overcome their differences and set aside their personal beliefs to create a document as brilliant as the United States Constitution, which established a nation that embraces all of those differences — whether they’re differences in politics or religion, background or lifestyle, or anything else — and attempts to reach above them. I hope it keeps reaching.
I’m thankful to all the men and women who have risked and lost their lives to maintain and protect what those founders created.
I am thankful to all the scientists and researchers who devote their lives to improving ours by making us healthier and safer.
I am thankful to all the writers who have filled my life with drama and comedy, suspense and scares, information and wisdom, fantasy and humanity, and who have allowed me to have experiences and live lives that would have been impossible without them.
I am thankful to all the readers who've been kind enough to let me know they've enjoyed my work. They have no idea how much that means to me.
I am thankful to my wonderful wife Dawn for sharing her life with me for twenty-four years and for putting up with all my difficulties (writers and other creative types tend to have quite a collection of those).
And we are both thankful for our friends. Things have been tough for the last couple of years, and it’s during tough times that you find out who your friends are. Ours helped us through those times, and I hope to be able to do the same for them someday. They know who they are.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Today is the 165th birthday of a man who wrote 18 books in his lifetime, a dozen of which were novels, the fifth and most famous of which struck such a nerve that it’s still widely read today, and its influence is everywhere as it continues to inspire writers and artists all over the world. If you were to approach people at random on the street and ask them who Bram Stoker was, you might get some blank stares or rapid blinking. But ask who Dracula is and there will be no hesitation.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897. There have been at least three stage adaptations of the novel. Orson Welles launched The Mercury Theater on the Air in 1938 with a radio adaptation. More than 200 movies have been made that feature Count Dracula. And think of all the movies you’ve seen that don’t feature the count, but are about vampires — all of them exist because of the character Stoker created. And the books? The books are endless, with new ones coming out every year, and in multiple genres — romance, urban fantasy, and, of course, horror. I’ve written three of them, as well as some short stories. And then there are the comic books, animation and anime, the games — for crying out loud, there’s even a breakfast cereal! And thanks to Stoker, Transylvania has a thriving tourist industry. 115 years after its publication, the influence of Dracula is as pervasive and unstoppable as the insidious count himself.
I had a conversation with my agent recently about the popularity of vampires in fiction. It’s a conversation we have a couple of times a year, and each time, we agree that it can’t possibly go on much longer, that it must be taking its final breaths. We’ll probably have that conversation again sometime in the spring of 2013.
Whether it’s Count von Count on Sesame Street or Bunnicula the vegetable-sucking vampire bunny of children’s literature, whether it rips out its victim’s throat or sparkles in the sunlight, whether it’s sexy and sensitive or sadistic and brutal, whether it’s Max Schreck in Nosferatu or Al Lewis as Grampa in The Munsters, all are a part of Bram Stoker’s undying influence on our fears, fantasies, and culture.
It would be fascinating to hear Stoker’s reaction today to the longevity and power of that one novel in a dozen. But the widely accepted story is that he’s dead.
If you’ve enjoyed the novel Dracula or any of the many movie and TV adaptations, if you’ve ever enjoyed a story, novel, or movie about vampires, then sometime today, raise a glass of ... well, whatever you drink ... and toast the birthday of the man who couldn’t have had any idea what a powerful force he was unleashing on the world.
Happy birthday, Bram Stoker.
Ah, it’s that time of year again. You can smell it in the air — the decaying flesh of zombies, the fear of small children. The decorations are up, people are planning their costumes, and once again, I’ve been spending October watching some of my favorite horror movies.
I’ve made my way through the classic Universal Frankenstein films, the Hammer Dracula series, and waiting on the shelf are seasonal favorites like Halloween (the 1978 original, of course), Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, and the 2007 horror anthology Trick ‘r Treat. There are some movies, though, that don’t get the attention I think they deserve. I thought I’d recommend a few titles.
After winning a Best Screenplay Oscar for 1978's Midnight Express, Oliver Stone got a chance to direct his first movie for a major studio. He made The Hand, a horror movie based on Marc Brandell’s novel The Lizard’s Tail. It wasn’t his first dip in the horror well. His feature film directorial debut was 1974's Seizure, starring Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins in the old daytime horror soap Dark Shadows) and Martine Beswick (Prehistoric Women, From A Whisper to A Scream). I still haven’t seen that movie, but I like the fact that one of the most fascinating, unpredictable and respected careers in American cinema began in the horror genre.
Released in 1981, The Hand was met with hostility, derision, and dismal box office numbers. Critics hated it, and so did moviegoers. I did not agree with them. I didn’t know who Stone was back then, but I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. A few years ago, I watched it again for the first time in about twenty years. As so many other movies I’ve enjoyed in the past have done, I expected it to disappoint me. I expected to find that it didn’t hold up, that everyone had been right back in 1981, and I had simply been young and easy to please. But I was wrong about that. If anything, I liked the movie more. Now I’ve added it to my list of October movies.
Michael Caine plays Jon Lansdale, a successful artist with a popular syndicated comic strip. Lansdale is spoiled, self-centered, conceited, and seems unaware of the fact that his wife is unhappy and stifled in her job as caretaker and yes-woman to him. When she suggests that she pursue her own interests, he sees it as a threat. They have a heated discussion in the car while she’s driving, and in a subsequent car accident, Lansdale’s right hand is severed. The hand is never found. But as Lansdale sees his life unraveling, he does the same. The hand returns to dispatch those he sees as enemies, or at least as threats.
The movie explores the power struggle in relationships and the severed hand becomes a kind of Id monster. Lansdale wanted to keep an iron grip on his wife, as if she were a piece of property, but in addition to losing her, he loses his career because he can no longer draw. The hand lashes out, desperately trying to keep him from falling deeper into the hole he’s been digging for himself. Michael Caine gives a powerful performance, managing to make Lansdale somewhat sympathetic, even though he’s not very likeable. Caine makes him human. What Lansdale experiences could be seen as a nasty case of PTSD brought on by the accident in which he lost his hand — which, by the way, is a very brief, disturbing incident, beautifully shot, that haunts the rest of the movie. The Hand is my favorite kind of horror movie — is there really an evil hand crawling around, or is Jon Lansdale batshit-crazy?
Another such movie is 1957's Night of the Demon. The U.S. release was trimmed down from 95 minutes to 83 and retitled Curse of the Demon, but back in the 1980s, Columbia Pictures restored the footage while retaining the U.S. title (a DVD release has both versions). Based on M.R. James’s story “Casting of the Runes,” the movie follows Dr. John Holden, played by Dana Andrews, a skeptic who intends to expose black magic cult leader Julian Karswell (a cheerfully sinister Niall McGinnis). But things don’t work out quite as Holden expects. Director Jacques Tourneur planned to avoid directly showing the “demon” of the title, but the studio thought a monster would increase the film’s chances of commercial success and insisted it be shown. The result has been the subject of much debate. Would the movie be better without showing the demon? Yes, I think it would — but I like the damned monster! It scared the piss out of me when I was a boy. Even with that big ugly, we find ourselves wondering throughout the movie what is real and what has been created by the power of suggestion.
There’s not much suggestion in 1977's The Sentinel, adapted from Jeffrey Konvitz’s novel and directed by Michael Winner. It’s not a subtle movie. But I think it still packs a hell of a punch. Christina Raines plays fashion model Alison Parker, who wants to prove to herself — and to her lawyer boyfriend (Chris Sarandon) — that she’s capable of living on her own and taking care of herself. She moves into a building where she has some extremely bizarre neighbors. There’s Mr. Chazen (Burgess Meredith) and his cat, and a pair of exhibitionist lesbians (Sylvia Miles and Beverley D’Angelo), among others. On the top floor, seated at a window looking out over New York, is Alison’s quietest neighbor, Father Halliran, an old, blind priest played by horror veteran John Carradine. Haunted by a traumatic experience with her father and a subsequent suicide attempt, Alison is emotionally fragile and not entirely stable. When she complains about her noisy, weird neighbors, she’s told that, other than the priest, she is the only resident of the building. She has no neighbors. She begins to discover that she did not move into that building by chance, and she is there for a horrifying reason.
Whether or not The Sentinel works for you will depend on how you feel about religious horror. I’ve always had a soft spot for it. This is religious horror with a vengeance. I’ve seen it many, many times, and even now, as I approach my fiftieth birthday, there are scenes in this movie that make me want to hide under the bed, and I think they are among the greatest, most effective horror movie scenes ever shot. Director Winner did something that caused a great deal of controversy at the time, something that still makes the movie stand out all these years later. He cast as the denizens of hell real human oddities, people with shocking deformities. As controversial and politically incorrect as this was, it was effective as hell. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, this is a great time to watch it.
Director Tim Burton has Halloween in his genes. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that his head is full of pumpkin seeds and he shits candy corn. For me, his movies Beetlejuice and Sleepy Hollow are required viewing at Halloween time. Although his 1996 box office disappointment Mars Attacks! isn't a horror movie and doesn’t exactly spring to mind when you think of Halloween, I think it beautifully captures the spirit of the holiday of mischief. It’s an over-the-top spoof of 1950s science fiction movies. And it’s crazy. I’m always surprised when I talk to someone who dislikes the movie — I can’t take it seriously enough to dislike it. When you sit down to watch a movie that’s based on a series of Topps trading cards, that replaces Sarah Jessica Parker’s head with the head of a Chihuahua, and features Tom Jones singing “It’s Not Unusual” to woodland creatures, it seems kind of pointless to look for flaws.
Roger Ebert wrote of Mars Attacks!, “A movie like this should be a lot better, or a lot worse.” I agree with that to a certain extent. It has too much big-budget gloss to pull off the clunky charm of, say, Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, and the all-star cast doesn’t help. But still, how often do you get to see a stampeding herd of cattle in flames, or Slim Whitman’s singing saving the world? Instead of wishing it were something it’s not, I prefer to enjoy the hell out of what it is. For me, the movie is stolen by the martians themselves, who make sounds that never fail to crack me up. Whether or not you think the movie is successful in its attempt to spoof ‘50s sci-fi movies, it’s still full of tricks and treats, and it makes an ideal party movie.
The Universal horror movies of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and to some extent the ‘50s have provided much of what we now accept as the imagery of Halloween: Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolf Man, the Gill Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon. Those faces have become iconic and instantly recognizable even to those who aren’t horror movie fans. But my favorite Universal horror movie from that era usually gets passed over in discussions of the studio’s contributions to the genre. It has none of Jack Pierce’s memorable monster makeup, no mad scientists frantically adjusting the flashing, buzzing machinery in the lab. Instead, it focuses on the most diabolical, cruel, and bloodthirsty of monsters: human beings.
Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1934 movie The Black Cat claims to be based on the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name, but that was a white lie told to cash in on the late writer’s popularity. It has nothing to do with Poe. Instead, it’s about American newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop) Allison, who encounter Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) on a train while honeymooning in Hungary. Later, after a bus accident, the three end up taking refuge in the big and beautifully creepy mansion of architect and Satanic cult leader Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff).
Werdegast and Poelzig are old rivals. 18 years ago, Werdegast left his beloved wife to go off to war and has spent the last 15 years in a brutal prison camp. In his absence, Poelzig took Werdegast’s wife and daughter for his own, and now Werdegast has come back to claim them. Poelzig’s mansion has been built on the ruins of Fort Marmorus, which he commanded during the war, and which he accuses Werdegast of betraying to the Russians. They are more than rivals, they are bitter enemies. But they remain gentlemen and speak to one another in a kind of code while the smiling, young American newlyweds remain completely oblivious to just about everything around them. What they don’t know is that Poelzig plans to sacrifice Joan Allison in a Satanic ritual — and to be honest, the two Americans are so annoyingly stupid that it’s hard to care.
What we do care about is the struggle between Werdegast and Poelzig, and we care because Karloff and Lugosi practically glow with charisma throughout the movie. Both actors were enormously popular at the time, the masters of horror in American film. They were paired up in other movies, but never as effectively. Karloff is clearly the better actor, but both of them grab you by the throat when they’re on screen. Karloff’s wild appearance — his flattop haircut with that widow’s peak and his strange clothes — seems fitting in that weird art deco mansion. (When I was a boy, I wanted to live in that mansion someday!) The two horror stars tower over everyone and everything else in the movie. Even if the movie weren’t very good, Karloff and Lugosi would make it worth watching. But the movie isn’t just good — it’s great.
In Germany, Edgar G. Ulmer worked under F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, and in The Black Cat, it’s obvious that he learned a lot from them. He brought German expressionism to Hollywood and slathered it all over this movie. The Black Cat was made before the crazy Hayes Code brought its church lady sensibilities to American movies. Satanism, necrophilia, and a scene in which Werdegast skins Poelzig alive are still kind of shocking in a movie from 1934 — and they help make it memorable.
Among all of Universal’s monsters, mad scientists, and cobweb-filled castles, The Black Cat stands out like panther at a dog show. When I was a boy, those monsters were what I expected from horror movies, and I was always disappointed if they didn’t show up. I still love them, but as I’ve grown older, my tastes have shifted, and I find movies like The Black Cat more satisfying. And the movies of Val Lewton, for example.
Lewton was a writer who, under a long list of pseudonyms (his real name was Vladimir Leventon), wrote novels, magazine articles, and even pornography, and, while working in the MGM publicity office, novelizations of popular movies. That work has long been forgotten. But the horror movies he produced for RKO have, over the years, only gained more and more respect. While Universal Studios was keeping Jack Pierce busy coming up with one ghastly monster after another, Lewton looked inward for his horrors. From 1942 to 1946, he made a series of dream-like psychological horror movies, each of which began with a lurid title. Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, The Seventh Victim, Ghost Ship, Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead and Bedlam were the antithesis of the wildly popular horror movies being turned out by Universal at the time.
The titles assigned to Lewton and his team probably would have been shot quickly and forgotten by most producers. But Lewton wanted them to rise above their genre. Although his budgets were small, he wanted quality and intelligence in his horror movies. Producers at that time seldom if ever contributed to the creative process; they more commonly interfered with it and even stifled it. But Lewton had his hand in every aspect of production. The resulting movies look and feel different than any other genre pictures of that time. My favorite Lewton titles for October viewing are Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Seventh Victim. Every time I watch them, I wish Lewton were still around. It would be nice if horror movies were made with such care today.
If you can think of some good old horror movies that are typically neglected these days, tell me about them in the comments below. Happy Halloween!
