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shadowkat[I may kill my lj, html coding in this thing is making me crazy, sorry for all the edits and weird cut-tagging.
I'm bored and procrastinating doing things that well I'd rather not go into. So am writing a lengthy post on The Horror Genre, in celebration of Halloween. Please note that I've left out anime, graphic novels, and a lot of TV shows and focused mainly on films and books. Because otherwise this would have been twenty pages long.]
I have what best can be described as long-term love/hate relationship with the Horror Genre. As a small child, I adored being scared and Halloween was my favorite holiday, not just for the treats and the joy of dressing up, but the scary. My mother has pictures of me as a small child retreating under the kitchen table in a farmer costume she’d made – while other kids on our block got their costumes from stores, my mother made ours. At any rate, my parents tell me that when Halloween arrived, I loved to go to the door and get scared by the trick-treaters – older kids in monster out-fits. And I remember begging my parents to take me through numerous haunted houses or to horror films. At school, to celebrate the holiday, teachers often would tell ghost stories. Or we'd have sleep-overs at friends houses - and tell creepy tales, do séances, the "light as a feather/stiff as a board" trick, or just find new and delightful ways to terrify one another. If we were lucky a parent of the kid having the sleep-over, would tell us one. Growing up - we lived next to what amounted to a forest, trees so thick you could not see the highway that sat at the top of the hill. A thick woods heightens the fear factor, you don't know what lies in wait behind those trees. Tunnels also helped, loads and loads of twisty tunnels of different shapes and sizes.
As an adult, I find myself retreating from all three - the treats (most contain additives that I’m now either allergic or highly sensitive to), the costumes, and the scary. Although this Halloween, I toured a real-life haunted house in the Washington Square Park area by candlelight, so perhaps not completely backed away? And those who know me well – know that when I say I’m not a fan of horror, I’m not exactly being truthful so much as moody and just bemoaning what the current options are or my low gore threshold is getting in the way.
A few years ago, when my mother caught me one Thanksgiving watching a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon, her initial comment was - " But I thought you hated horror?" No, I said, just *some* horror. My mother was perplexed, she actually sort of likes horror, but then mother has a high gore threshold and isn't scared by much - the only thing that really terrifies her is "heights" - so a horror movie? Nah, it's not real. My father is the opposite, heights don’t bug him but he hates blood and guts. I honestly think one's appreciation of the genre as a whole - has a lot to do with two things: gore threshold and the scary. It also has to do with your own experiences. This may be a generalization, but I've come to realize people who've seen true evil tend to be less interested in horror films. As the people last night stated, I don't need to go to the movies or a haunted house to see a man attack a girl in her bedroom, I can watch the nightly news. As a child, we could go trick-treating in our own neighborhood, candy wasn't searched, apples were allowed - in fact I remember when it changed, I was maybe 12 or 13 at the time, it was 1982 at the dawn of the Regan era, when my mother began to restrict which houses we could visit - had to be people we knew. And she searched the bag before we were allowed to indulge for anything remotely suspicious. This was when the Razor Blade in the apple happened, and the poisoned candy. They were, as it turned out isolated incidents, and uncommon, but the fact that several had happened at once, changed the practice of Halloween forever.
Of course, it is possible to write a horror novel that is not meant to be scary, Ann Rice wrote quite a few, you can even do one as a send-up of the genre. Just as it is possible to develop a TV series that winks at the genre but is not meant to *really* scare you. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an example. It was so humorous and romantic at times, that people often forgot it was meant to be horror. Love at First Bite, The Lost Boys, Shaun of the Dead, and Tremors are also examples of horror meant more as comedy than scary. Taken too far – horror comedies can become “cheesy” or “campy” and are often derided by horror aficionados. Quite a few of my friends, for example, who adored *scary* shows such as the X-Files, found the concept of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" merely silly.
Then there are shows that don't consider themselves "horror" per se - such as mystery/thriller, suspense, super-hero, science fiction, or fantasy. Heroes the breakout hit of the new television season is not written as a horror series, nor is The 4400. Yet both contain elements of horror and are scary. I've watched both between my fingers. But if you were to ask a fan of either - they'd say no, not horror, not scary. Same is true for Bones, Criminal Minds and even CSI - all of which contain graphic images of death and elements of horror -in some respects I find these shows scarier than a show like Buffy or Angel or even Tales from The Crypt. Why? Ah, because the elements of horror depicted within them are more realistic, more likely to happen to me. While the elements depicted in Buffy, Angel or Tales are clearly from the imagination, make-believe. The razor in the apple story, after all, is far scarier than any Halloween costume someone might dream up.
Through "Horror" - other genres, such as science fiction and fantasy, have been able to reach a broader audience. I have friends who have no patience for most sci-fantasy books, tv shows, or movies but love anything with a zombie, monster, or the scary inside of it. One friend scoffs at a show with elves, fairies or spaceships, but hey if there are zombies - she's there. She’d never sit through “Lord of the Rings” but she adored “28 Days” and “Night of the Living Dead”. For a long time, I thought Science Fiction was basically no different than Horror - it contained monsters and was merely a sub-grouping of the other genre. My paternal grandfather in fact adored horror and watched all the old sci-fi movies that came out – most involved a monster from outer space. I shied away from it. That is until Star Wars popped up on the big screen and I realized mid-way through the film that there wasn't a monster in sight outside of Darth Vader, who was many things, but scary wasn't one of them. It wasn't gory. Same deal with Fantasy - at first I thought Fantasy only contained vampires, evil dwarves, werewolves, bats, and monster spiders, but no, that was not the case. It was a favorite Aunt, who had no children of her own and worked as a grade school librarian, who introduced me to true fantasy – worlds of dwarves, elves, wizards, witches, and magic.
Yet, whenever I got with a group of people who adored science fiction and fantasy, sooner or later they'd start asking what "horror" films I'd seen. What books I'd read. As if it were a forgone conclusion that if you liked sci-fi, you adored Horror as well. And Horror and Sci-Fi at times became interchangeable.
It's not that I don't like horror; I do, in small doses. I’m just very picky about it. And I have a very low "gore" threshold. A little blood goes a long way for me. I also scare easily – due to a vivid imagination, the ability to remember just about any story and embellish it, and great visual memory – I can still for example picture in perfect detail a scene from Nightmare on Elm Street that I have only watched once - for those who've seen this classic, it was the incredible meat grinder scene, aka the death of Johnny Depp, which makes one wish afterwards they'd never bit into that sausage and pepperonie pizza. I tend to prefer psychological horror to blood and guts splatter horror like you might see in a Rob Zombie or Wes Craven film.
Yet, and this may seem strange after you've read the above, I still collect horror novels and stories. Even wrote one. I know more about this genre than you would guess at the outset. In college, I studied and collected urban horror legends and ghost stories, analyzed them and wrote not one but two papers on the tales. For anyone interested in Urban Horror Legends – follow the link above, or watch Supernatural and the following films that have referenced them: I Know What You Did Last Summer and Candy Man.
I think there is something freeing about facing our fears in a safe medium, whether it be a book, a film or a tv show. Even more freeing when the hero or heroine we identify with conquers what frightens us, exposes it, and lives to fight another day. As a small child, the cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? thrilled me, because at the end of each mystery the scarey monster was exposed as nothing more than a silly man or woman after money. Same was true with other horror television shows and movies - until that is the 1980s when the monsters started to become unkillable and the survivors, were in short supply. Almost as if the thing we feared won. Noir horror cinema. John Carpenter was one of the forerunners of it with Halloween and Wes Craven followed with the un-killable Freddy Krueger. When this happened, the horror film began to strike too close to home.
It was no longer so much about hero slaying the demon as outrunning and escaping from it. A concept, that Craven attempted to change with the Scream triology, and Joss Whedon subverted with Buffy. The question remains, though which version was the most real? Horror, the stuff that keeps you awake at night, and scares the daylights out you, is usually what you can't quite shake, can't be slayed with a stake through the heart or an exorcism spell, you know it's out there. You know you can't kill it or erase it. The best you can do is find a way to live alongside it, and not let your fear of it paralyze or handicap or change you.
Categorizing the Horror Genre (assuming of course, we can do such a thing?)
1. Popular Horror - Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz - the popular authors. OR HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe.
When you ask the man on the street or the kid in the comic book store about horror? They'll tell you about these folks. Usually the book contains two brothers, a man and a boy, a girl in danger or the girl is the villain/monster, usually the villain - actually the series Supernatural falls within this category - it is "traditional" horror - utilizing urban legends and stories that most of us are familiar with. As did Koljack the Night Stalker. In traditional horror - the protagonist is usually a guy, he usually has a problem - be it alcohol, drugs, a missing or dead wife or mother - and they are searching for the monster that acts in many ways as a metaphor for that problem. King was a master at stories dealing with the "addiction demon" or “demon alcohol, his best was The Shining. Straub focused on tales about running away from things - grief/death, lost or unrequited love, and handling the guilt surrounding it as detailed in Ghost Story. Koontz dealt with rage, vengeance, the idea of getting back at what hurt you and his monsters are often of the human variety as one sees in the book about the secret society, The Hellfire Club. Most of these novels have graphic violence, detailed descriptions of bodies rotting away. The authors clearly fans of the classic writers of the genre – HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, who allegedly wrote the first mystery novela. And in some ways, Koontz, Straub and King are Lovecraft and Poe’s inheritors.
2. Classical Horror or Gothic - Mary Stewart, Henry James, Bram Stoker, Edith Wharton, Joyce Carol Oats, and Ann Rice are the writers of this brand. Anne Rice follows in their footsteps. Movies and TV shows that follow the classical or gothic? The British series Hex, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula and the soap opera Dark Shadows. Other's in this list include Night of the Living Dead and The Howling. Also Tim Burton’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” – of today’s horror film auteurs, Burton has played with the Gothic Horror category the most with classics such as “Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Corspe Bride”, “Sleepy Hollow”, “Edward Scissorhands and the upcoming Sweeny Todd.
Usually under the classical category - the horror is taken seriously, it's not comedic. The monsters are vampires, ghouls, Frankenstein, and zombies. The woman is most likely the victim. The man the monster who devours her. Occasionally it's the opposite. Also at times the Gothic and Popular sort of meld. That’s the thing about categorizing – things do not like stay in one spot, they like to mingle.
Zombies According to wiki, the first book on Zombies was The Magic Island by W.B Seabrook. (Good to have a name to blame it on), but HP Lovecraft also loved writing about them. In it we have auteurs like George A. Romero and his Night of The Living Dead, and films such as Dawn of the Dead, I Walked With A Zombie, Resident Evil, and the modern classic 28 Days Later - about a disease that turns people into zombies. Look up Zombie on wiki and you can probably get a list. I'm not a fan of this subgenre. And tend to skip them. Sam Rami liked to make fun of the genre with Evil Dead and its sequels. There's even a musical now, Evil Dead: The Musical. Other classic send-ups of the Zombie genre include the before-mentioned Shaun of the Dead.
Vampires - I could write an essay on this genre in of itself. Basically the classic work was written by Bram Stoker - Dracula. I Am Legend by Richard Mattheison is about vampires but affected George A Romero and gave him the idea to do Night of the Living Dead. It also resulted in the film starring Charleton Heston Omega Man. Bela Lugosi is the best known film actor to portray Dracula. There were others of course, including one originally named William Pratt, but that we know as Boris Karloff. One of the best and most unnerving vampire novels I've read is actually a psychological novel written by Jonathan Carroll entitled The Marriage of Sticks - it is not your typical vampire novel. Still haunts me.
Here's a mini-list of gothic novels: Zombie by Joyce Carol Oats, Sister Wolf by Anne Arenberg, and Sunshine by Robin McKinley.
For Ghosts: Haunted by Joyce Carol Oats and The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Most ghost stories tend to fall under the psychological horror category.
3. : Mad Science or The Horror in Sci-Fi - This category is huge and encompasses most of the films in the field that concern "science" whether they be monsters created by nuclear fallout, chemicals, landing from outer-space, or disease.
HG Wells probably started it all with War of the Worlds, the Island of Doctor Moreau (which I find more frightening actually), and The Invisible Man. Although Robert Louis Stevenson deserves kudos for Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Mary Shelley for Frankenstein. Ray Bradbury also tends to fall here, although he came much later. Some Bradbury’s contributions include the short story The Veldt and Something Wicked This Way Comes - which fits under the gothic category a bit better – but that’s the problem with categorizing art or anything else it likes to fall out of it’s selected hole and into another one.
"Body Horror of the Biological Horror Film" : This category unnerves me - wiki describes it as something being wrong with the Body, although they include Alien and Rosemary's Baby on their list, and I'm not sure I'd put them here. The best example of a biological horror film is the William Hurt film, written by Paddy Chafesky entitled Altered States, which is based on a true account and horrific in how far someone might go in favor of curiousity. Other films that fall into this category include David Croenberg's The Fly based on the original starring Vincent Price. We also have ExisTenze by Croenberg. Most if not all of Croenberg's film fall within this category. Slither is listed as Body horror - although I'd put it under the thing that came from outter space. Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis is literary version of the body horror, an examination of how man handles turning into a huge cockroach. Clive Barker has also played with the idea of biological horror. Another excellent "body horror" sci-fi novel is by Michael Faber, entitled Under The Skin - unnerved me so much, just by its descriptions in the introduction that I have yet to read it all the way through.
My favorite film of this group is Croenberg film entitled Dead Ringers - about two twin brothers who create monsterous gynecological instruments. The one that gave me nightmares is the Michale York film The Island of Dr. Moreau based on Wells' novel of the same name, which may in turn be somewhat based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Usually it involves mad scientists, but occassionally you have aliens from outter space arriving as irksome parasites.
The Biological Parasite that Came From Outer Space - which will creep me out like nobody's business. And may explain why I've avoided Slither. Jack Finney's classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Heinlein's The Puppet Masters both play with the concept and both may in some respects be more of an allegory about the political climate of the 1950 McCarthy Hearings.
Other parasite movies include The Thing or at least John Carpenter's version of it. Cabin Fever - where a parasitic disease turns humans into exploding disease carrying zombies. Dreamcatcher and the minimalist film The Andromeda Strain .Andromeda Strain - a bare bones film directed by Robert Wise (yes the same Robert Wise involved with West Side Story and who I'll mention later in association with another fantastic horror film) was about a potential viral outbreak. This book pre-dates Stephan King's somewhat melodramatic The Stand and is by far the more frigthening. Especially if you read it back to back with a true case history: The Hot Zone by Robert Preston which is a true account of an investigation into an outbreak of the Elboa Virus. (The Stand and Hot Zone, are disease science fiction not parasites from outter space, but they borrow heavily in some ways from Crichton's Andromeda Strain.) Another alien parasite movie is Ridley Scott's classic Alien which may have one of the most disturbing birth sequences in film history next to Croenberg's The Fly.
Alien invaders These are usually books or films that aliens invading and hurting the human race. Some are more political allegories such as "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and not really horror films, others are frightening morality tales about war such as The War of the Worlds. The Man Who Fell To Earth - a cult classic starring David Bowie fits in this area, as does Independence Day, the tv series V, The X-Files and others of that nature. Some focus more on our own government's duplicitious nature. It also includes the thing that came from outter space - such as The Blob.
Monsters and Horror found in Outer Space - there's three films in this category that I can think of off the top of my head: Event Horizon - a film that works better conceptually than in actuality - it is basically Clive Barkers, HellRaiser in Space, complete with Sam Neil becoming PinHead. Alien and all the sequels - about a monster that invades a ship. Pitch Black - an alien species that destroys all life on the planet whenever there is an eclisp. Books - Day of the Triffids - based on a novel of the same name about poisonous ambulatory plants, Mystery Island, The Children - in which a school-bus filled with kids goes through a nuclear cloud and they come back the equivalent of zombies. Disturbing film.
Nature Gone Wonky - these are films in which animals for no reason we can come up with have decided to declare war on the human race. They include The Bees, the Hitchcock classic based on a Daphne Du Maurie short story The Birds, The Naked Jungle starring Charleton Heston about killer ants, in turn based on a short story called Leningen vs. The Ants by Carl Stephenson. We also have films called "The Locusts", and "The Bats". There's "Ghost in The Darkness" a historical account about two rogue lions that prayed on a village until they were killed.
The better films have at their heart a possible truth. Science Fiction can be fiction written by scientists with researched scientific theories imbedded in them, or fiction written by laypeople like myself about our fears - regarding science. I've read both. HG Wells was a scientist and a socialist. So to some extent were Adolus Huxley and Michael Crichton. Alfred Bester on the other hand was not. Neither for that matter was Robert Heinlein - who did do some training in the field, but was actually a military man and engineer. Horror only occassionally entered these guys works.
3. -Psychological Horror - my favorite category, which recently made a come-back with the Japanese ghost films - The Ring or Ringu, Ju-Duho or The Grudge. Shirly Jackson specialized in psychological horror, as did Ira Levin, and on the film side - the great Alfred Hitchock.
This genre tends to be minimalist, with few fancy special effects. Often ghosts or demons will be in it but not always. It also includes the occult.
Occult or Pagans gone Wacky:Thomas Tyron, an actor turned author specialized in this area of horror with the following novels: Harvest Home - later turned into an NBC mini-series starring Bette Davis in 1978. He also wrote The Other. Harvest Home is similar to another film, recently remade, entitled The Wicker Man and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.
Am I crazy or is something playing with me? Shirley Jackson specialized in the mental instability field - with stories that played with one's mind: The Haunting of Hill House (turned into a Robert Wise film - The Haunting, then a BBC film on PBS, and finally the overblown Speilberg version. Skip Speilberg's and rent the Wise film.), We Have Always Lived in the Castle and of course The Lottery. Henry James also played with it in The Turn of the Screw later made into the Deborah Kerr film, The Innocents.
Hitchcock did it with films such as Psycho, Rear Window, Veritigo, Spellbound, Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt. Then there's the film-maker Roman Polanski - with The Tenant and Rosemary's Baby based in turn on Ira Levin's book of the same name. A film similar to Polanski's the Tenant is a 1977 film called The Sentinel, with Chris Sarandon. All three films, Tenant, Baby, and Sentinel are about strange happenings in tenement buildings. The Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie thriller about a couple grieving over the loss of child, only to see someone who looks just like her wandering about Venice - is Don't Look Now. Perhaps one of the most disturbing films I've seen. Plus the classic Charles Boyer/Ingrid Bergman film Gaslight - which we’ve seen copied in such films as Diabiolique. Hide and Seek starring Robert Deniro is another example of this genre. So is The Omen - which has a great deal in common with Rosemary’s Baby - the better of two, and of course, The Exorcist.
M. Night Shyalaman has also played with psychological horror in films such as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village, Signs and The LAdy in the Water - all of which also can fall in other categories. But mostly they play with the characters and the audience's perception of reality - is this real? or is something playing with me?
Psychological horror if done well will stay with you longer than a Stephen King novel or a zombie film. Because it is more real. It deals with what we are really afraid of. Newer films include: What Lies Beneath, Silent Hill, Dark Water, The Skeleton Key (which I highly recommend - about hoodue and belief) - it in some ways reminds me of a Wes Craven film called The Serpent and The Rainbow, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting and Ghostika with Halle Berry. Sarah Michelle Gellar's The Grudge films also fall within this category.
4. The Slasher Horror Flick or what we mostly see in the theaters today. Won't say too much about this, since I'm getting tired. And this is far longer than I intended. Horror is a huge genre. Novel that fit in this category tend to be by people such as Thomas Harris - Hannibal Lector series, or Dean Koontz. Basically the books about serial killers on the loose, which is pretty much every other mystery written nowadays.
The best of the bunch - book and film wise, may well be The Silence of The Lambs. But others have shown up and should be noted.
*The rednecks or backwoods crazies: Texas Chainsaw Massacre films more or less originated this subgrouping. But Deliverance may in fact be the best of the bunch - starring Ned Beatty and Burt Reynolds. Southern Comfort by Walter Hill starring Keith Carradine and Powers Booth borrowed heavily from it. Rob Zombie has these guys to thank for his films - House of a 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. As does Wes Craven - with The Hills Have Eyes and The People Under the Stairs. The most recent film in this category, features a group of women, a nice change of pace - usually they are men or a men and women, rarely all strong women - descending into a cave - it's called The Descent. Critics have been comparing it to Deliverance. And of course, Wolf Creek - an Australian film that deals with the outback and people being picked off one by one.
*the insane lunatic/psychopath who wears a mask: you can thank John Carpenter for this category -who came up with it first(incidentally if you are interested in what influenced Joss Whedon, the guys who write Supernatural and other current horror filmmakers, you might want to rent a few John Carpenter films), in the classic 1978 film Halloween. I'm not positive, but pretty certain - Friday the 13th came shortly afterwards, along with the Wes Craven Freddy Krueger films: Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween influenced my generation (which is basically the generation creating tv shows and films at the moment) - we discussed it in school. I remember an art teacher analyzing how the monster in Halloween was created in depth. This was in Junior High by the way.
* Insane Lunatic decides to Torture People: This is a recent idea, and I think it came about first with The SAW films – indie thrillers made for little money that reaped more than expected. Although Craven and Carpenter may have played with the concept before that. I tend to veer clear of these and am hoping that they will die out soon. I'm not certain - but it might be a reaction to the current political environment - horror films often represent a society's fears and repressed desires. We act them out in the safe arena of film. Horrified, sure. But still safe. Hostel - a recent film by Quentin Tartintino plays is another example of this genre, as is the most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre film and to a degree both Wolf Creek and The Descent.
See, I say I hate horror, yet I clearly have paid attention to it. I don't think you can avoid it. It permeates many genres. And in some ways permeates our lives. And of the genres, it may be the most varied. Certainly the hottest seller – of the writers who end up on the best seller list, Stephen King has ruled the roost the most, as have Crichton, and others of their ilk.
I have what best can be described as long-term love/hate relationship with the Horror Genre. As a small child, I adored being scared and Halloween was my favorite holiday, not just for the treats and the joy of dressing up, but the scary. My mother has pictures of me as a small child retreating under the kitchen table in a farmer costume she’d made – while other kids on our block got their costumes from stores, my mother made ours. At any rate, my parents tell me that when Halloween arrived, I loved to go to the door and get scared by the trick-treaters – older kids in monster out-fits. And I remember begging my parents to take me through numerous haunted houses or to horror films. At school, to celebrate the holiday, teachers often would tell ghost stories. Or we'd have sleep-overs at friends houses - and tell creepy tales, do séances, the "light as a feather/stiff as a board" trick, or just find new and delightful ways to terrify one another. If we were lucky a parent of the kid having the sleep-over, would tell us one. Growing up - we lived next to what amounted to a forest, trees so thick you could not see the highway that sat at the top of the hill. A thick woods heightens the fear factor, you don't know what lies in wait behind those trees. Tunnels also helped, loads and loads of twisty tunnels of different shapes and sizes.
As an adult, I find myself retreating from all three - the treats (most contain additives that I’m now either allergic or highly sensitive to), the costumes, and the scary. Although this Halloween, I toured a real-life haunted house in the Washington Square Park area by candlelight, so perhaps not completely backed away? And those who know me well – know that when I say I’m not a fan of horror, I’m not exactly being truthful so much as moody and just bemoaning what the current options are or my low gore threshold is getting in the way.
A few years ago, when my mother caught me one Thanksgiving watching a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon, her initial comment was - " But I thought you hated horror?" No, I said, just *some* horror. My mother was perplexed, she actually sort of likes horror, but then mother has a high gore threshold and isn't scared by much - the only thing that really terrifies her is "heights" - so a horror movie? Nah, it's not real. My father is the opposite, heights don’t bug him but he hates blood and guts. I honestly think one's appreciation of the genre as a whole - has a lot to do with two things: gore threshold and the scary. It also has to do with your own experiences. This may be a generalization, but I've come to realize people who've seen true evil tend to be less interested in horror films. As the people last night stated, I don't need to go to the movies or a haunted house to see a man attack a girl in her bedroom, I can watch the nightly news. As a child, we could go trick-treating in our own neighborhood, candy wasn't searched, apples were allowed - in fact I remember when it changed, I was maybe 12 or 13 at the time, it was 1982 at the dawn of the Regan era, when my mother began to restrict which houses we could visit - had to be people we knew. And she searched the bag before we were allowed to indulge for anything remotely suspicious. This was when the Razor Blade in the apple happened, and the poisoned candy. They were, as it turned out isolated incidents, and uncommon, but the fact that several had happened at once, changed the practice of Halloween forever.
Of course, it is possible to write a horror novel that is not meant to be scary, Ann Rice wrote quite a few, you can even do one as a send-up of the genre. Just as it is possible to develop a TV series that winks at the genre but is not meant to *really* scare you. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an example. It was so humorous and romantic at times, that people often forgot it was meant to be horror. Love at First Bite, The Lost Boys, Shaun of the Dead, and Tremors are also examples of horror meant more as comedy than scary. Taken too far – horror comedies can become “cheesy” or “campy” and are often derided by horror aficionados. Quite a few of my friends, for example, who adored *scary* shows such as the X-Files, found the concept of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" merely silly.
Then there are shows that don't consider themselves "horror" per se - such as mystery/thriller, suspense, super-hero, science fiction, or fantasy. Heroes the breakout hit of the new television season is not written as a horror series, nor is The 4400. Yet both contain elements of horror and are scary. I've watched both between my fingers. But if you were to ask a fan of either - they'd say no, not horror, not scary. Same is true for Bones, Criminal Minds and even CSI - all of which contain graphic images of death and elements of horror -in some respects I find these shows scarier than a show like Buffy or Angel or even Tales from The Crypt. Why? Ah, because the elements of horror depicted within them are more realistic, more likely to happen to me. While the elements depicted in Buffy, Angel or Tales are clearly from the imagination, make-believe. The razor in the apple story, after all, is far scarier than any Halloween costume someone might dream up.
Through "Horror" - other genres, such as science fiction and fantasy, have been able to reach a broader audience. I have friends who have no patience for most sci-fantasy books, tv shows, or movies but love anything with a zombie, monster, or the scary inside of it. One friend scoffs at a show with elves, fairies or spaceships, but hey if there are zombies - she's there. She’d never sit through “Lord of the Rings” but she adored “28 Days” and “Night of the Living Dead”. For a long time, I thought Science Fiction was basically no different than Horror - it contained monsters and was merely a sub-grouping of the other genre. My paternal grandfather in fact adored horror and watched all the old sci-fi movies that came out – most involved a monster from outer space. I shied away from it. That is until Star Wars popped up on the big screen and I realized mid-way through the film that there wasn't a monster in sight outside of Darth Vader, who was many things, but scary wasn't one of them. It wasn't gory. Same deal with Fantasy - at first I thought Fantasy only contained vampires, evil dwarves, werewolves, bats, and monster spiders, but no, that was not the case. It was a favorite Aunt, who had no children of her own and worked as a grade school librarian, who introduced me to true fantasy – worlds of dwarves, elves, wizards, witches, and magic.
Yet, whenever I got with a group of people who adored science fiction and fantasy, sooner or later they'd start asking what "horror" films I'd seen. What books I'd read. As if it were a forgone conclusion that if you liked sci-fi, you adored Horror as well. And Horror and Sci-Fi at times became interchangeable.
It's not that I don't like horror; I do, in small doses. I’m just very picky about it. And I have a very low "gore" threshold. A little blood goes a long way for me. I also scare easily – due to a vivid imagination, the ability to remember just about any story and embellish it, and great visual memory – I can still for example picture in perfect detail a scene from Nightmare on Elm Street that I have only watched once - for those who've seen this classic, it was the incredible meat grinder scene, aka the death of Johnny Depp, which makes one wish afterwards they'd never bit into that sausage and pepperonie pizza. I tend to prefer psychological horror to blood and guts splatter horror like you might see in a Rob Zombie or Wes Craven film.
Yet, and this may seem strange after you've read the above, I still collect horror novels and stories. Even wrote one. I know more about this genre than you would guess at the outset. In college, I studied and collected urban horror legends and ghost stories, analyzed them and wrote not one but two papers on the tales. For anyone interested in Urban Horror Legends – follow the link above, or watch Supernatural and the following films that have referenced them: I Know What You Did Last Summer and Candy Man.
I think there is something freeing about facing our fears in a safe medium, whether it be a book, a film or a tv show. Even more freeing when the hero or heroine we identify with conquers what frightens us, exposes it, and lives to fight another day. As a small child, the cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? thrilled me, because at the end of each mystery the scarey monster was exposed as nothing more than a silly man or woman after money. Same was true with other horror television shows and movies - until that is the 1980s when the monsters started to become unkillable and the survivors, were in short supply. Almost as if the thing we feared won. Noir horror cinema. John Carpenter was one of the forerunners of it with Halloween and Wes Craven followed with the un-killable Freddy Krueger. When this happened, the horror film began to strike too close to home.
It was no longer so much about hero slaying the demon as outrunning and escaping from it. A concept, that Craven attempted to change with the Scream triology, and Joss Whedon subverted with Buffy. The question remains, though which version was the most real? Horror, the stuff that keeps you awake at night, and scares the daylights out you, is usually what you can't quite shake, can't be slayed with a stake through the heart or an exorcism spell, you know it's out there. You know you can't kill it or erase it. The best you can do is find a way to live alongside it, and not let your fear of it paralyze or handicap or change you.
Categorizing the Horror Genre (assuming of course, we can do such a thing?)
1. Popular Horror - Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz - the popular authors. OR HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe.
When you ask the man on the street or the kid in the comic book store about horror? They'll tell you about these folks. Usually the book contains two brothers, a man and a boy, a girl in danger or the girl is the villain/monster, usually the villain - actually the series Supernatural falls within this category - it is "traditional" horror - utilizing urban legends and stories that most of us are familiar with. As did Koljack the Night Stalker. In traditional horror - the protagonist is usually a guy, he usually has a problem - be it alcohol, drugs, a missing or dead wife or mother - and they are searching for the monster that acts in many ways as a metaphor for that problem. King was a master at stories dealing with the "addiction demon" or “demon alcohol, his best was The Shining. Straub focused on tales about running away from things - grief/death, lost or unrequited love, and handling the guilt surrounding it as detailed in Ghost Story. Koontz dealt with rage, vengeance, the idea of getting back at what hurt you and his monsters are often of the human variety as one sees in the book about the secret society, The Hellfire Club. Most of these novels have graphic violence, detailed descriptions of bodies rotting away. The authors clearly fans of the classic writers of the genre – HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, who allegedly wrote the first mystery novela. And in some ways, Koontz, Straub and King are Lovecraft and Poe’s inheritors.
2. Classical Horror or Gothic - Mary Stewart, Henry James, Bram Stoker, Edith Wharton, Joyce Carol Oats, and Ann Rice are the writers of this brand. Anne Rice follows in their footsteps. Movies and TV shows that follow the classical or gothic? The British series Hex, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula and the soap opera Dark Shadows. Other's in this list include Night of the Living Dead and The Howling. Also Tim Burton’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” – of today’s horror film auteurs, Burton has played with the Gothic Horror category the most with classics such as “Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Corspe Bride”, “Sleepy Hollow”, “Edward Scissorhands and the upcoming Sweeny Todd.
Usually under the classical category - the horror is taken seriously, it's not comedic. The monsters are vampires, ghouls, Frankenstein, and zombies. The woman is most likely the victim. The man the monster who devours her. Occasionally it's the opposite. Also at times the Gothic and Popular sort of meld. That’s the thing about categorizing – things do not like stay in one spot, they like to mingle.
Zombies According to wiki, the first book on Zombies was The Magic Island by W.B Seabrook. (Good to have a name to blame it on), but HP Lovecraft also loved writing about them. In it we have auteurs like George A. Romero and his Night of The Living Dead, and films such as Dawn of the Dead, I Walked With A Zombie, Resident Evil, and the modern classic 28 Days Later - about a disease that turns people into zombies. Look up Zombie on wiki and you can probably get a list. I'm not a fan of this subgenre. And tend to skip them. Sam Rami liked to make fun of the genre with Evil Dead and its sequels. There's even a musical now, Evil Dead: The Musical. Other classic send-ups of the Zombie genre include the before-mentioned Shaun of the Dead.
Vampires - I could write an essay on this genre in of itself. Basically the classic work was written by Bram Stoker - Dracula. I Am Legend by Richard Mattheison is about vampires but affected George A Romero and gave him the idea to do Night of the Living Dead. It also resulted in the film starring Charleton Heston Omega Man. Bela Lugosi is the best known film actor to portray Dracula. There were others of course, including one originally named William Pratt, but that we know as Boris Karloff. One of the best and most unnerving vampire novels I've read is actually a psychological novel written by Jonathan Carroll entitled The Marriage of Sticks - it is not your typical vampire novel. Still haunts me.
Here's a mini-list of gothic novels: Zombie by Joyce Carol Oats, Sister Wolf by Anne Arenberg, and Sunshine by Robin McKinley.
For Ghosts: Haunted by Joyce Carol Oats and The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Most ghost stories tend to fall under the psychological horror category.
3. : Mad Science or The Horror in Sci-Fi - This category is huge and encompasses most of the films in the field that concern "science" whether they be monsters created by nuclear fallout, chemicals, landing from outer-space, or disease.
HG Wells probably started it all with War of the Worlds, the Island of Doctor Moreau (which I find more frightening actually), and The Invisible Man. Although Robert Louis Stevenson deserves kudos for Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Mary Shelley for Frankenstein. Ray Bradbury also tends to fall here, although he came much later. Some Bradbury’s contributions include the short story The Veldt and Something Wicked This Way Comes - which fits under the gothic category a bit better – but that’s the problem with categorizing art or anything else it likes to fall out of it’s selected hole and into another one.
"Body Horror of the Biological Horror Film" : This category unnerves me - wiki describes it as something being wrong with the Body, although they include Alien and Rosemary's Baby on their list, and I'm not sure I'd put them here. The best example of a biological horror film is the William Hurt film, written by Paddy Chafesky entitled Altered States, which is based on a true account and horrific in how far someone might go in favor of curiousity. Other films that fall into this category include David Croenberg's The Fly based on the original starring Vincent Price. We also have ExisTenze by Croenberg. Most if not all of Croenberg's film fall within this category. Slither is listed as Body horror - although I'd put it under the thing that came from outter space. Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis is literary version of the body horror, an examination of how man handles turning into a huge cockroach. Clive Barker has also played with the idea of biological horror. Another excellent "body horror" sci-fi novel is by Michael Faber, entitled Under The Skin - unnerved me so much, just by its descriptions in the introduction that I have yet to read it all the way through.
My favorite film of this group is Croenberg film entitled Dead Ringers - about two twin brothers who create monsterous gynecological instruments. The one that gave me nightmares is the Michale York film The Island of Dr. Moreau based on Wells' novel of the same name, which may in turn be somewhat based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Usually it involves mad scientists, but occassionally you have aliens from outter space arriving as irksome parasites.
The Biological Parasite that Came From Outer Space - which will creep me out like nobody's business. And may explain why I've avoided Slither. Jack Finney's classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Heinlein's The Puppet Masters both play with the concept and both may in some respects be more of an allegory about the political climate of the 1950 McCarthy Hearings.
Other parasite movies include The Thing or at least John Carpenter's version of it. Cabin Fever - where a parasitic disease turns humans into exploding disease carrying zombies. Dreamcatcher and the minimalist film The Andromeda Strain .Andromeda Strain - a bare bones film directed by Robert Wise (yes the same Robert Wise involved with West Side Story and who I'll mention later in association with another fantastic horror film) was about a potential viral outbreak. This book pre-dates Stephan King's somewhat melodramatic The Stand and is by far the more frigthening. Especially if you read it back to back with a true case history: The Hot Zone by Robert Preston which is a true account of an investigation into an outbreak of the Elboa Virus. (The Stand and Hot Zone, are disease science fiction not parasites from outter space, but they borrow heavily in some ways from Crichton's Andromeda Strain.) Another alien parasite movie is Ridley Scott's classic Alien which may have one of the most disturbing birth sequences in film history next to Croenberg's The Fly.
Alien invaders These are usually books or films that aliens invading and hurting the human race. Some are more political allegories such as "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and not really horror films, others are frightening morality tales about war such as The War of the Worlds. The Man Who Fell To Earth - a cult classic starring David Bowie fits in this area, as does Independence Day, the tv series V, The X-Files and others of that nature. Some focus more on our own government's duplicitious nature. It also includes the thing that came from outter space - such as The Blob.
Monsters and Horror found in Outer Space - there's three films in this category that I can think of off the top of my head: Event Horizon - a film that works better conceptually than in actuality - it is basically Clive Barkers, HellRaiser in Space, complete with Sam Neil becoming PinHead. Alien and all the sequels - about a monster that invades a ship. Pitch Black - an alien species that destroys all life on the planet whenever there is an eclisp. Books - Day of the Triffids - based on a novel of the same name about poisonous ambulatory plants, Mystery Island, The Children - in which a school-bus filled with kids goes through a nuclear cloud and they come back the equivalent of zombies. Disturbing film.
Nature Gone Wonky - these are films in which animals for no reason we can come up with have decided to declare war on the human race. They include The Bees, the Hitchcock classic based on a Daphne Du Maurie short story The Birds, The Naked Jungle starring Charleton Heston about killer ants, in turn based on a short story called Leningen vs. The Ants by Carl Stephenson. We also have films called "The Locusts", and "The Bats". There's "Ghost in The Darkness" a historical account about two rogue lions that prayed on a village until they were killed.
The better films have at their heart a possible truth. Science Fiction can be fiction written by scientists with researched scientific theories imbedded in them, or fiction written by laypeople like myself about our fears - regarding science. I've read both. HG Wells was a scientist and a socialist. So to some extent were Adolus Huxley and Michael Crichton. Alfred Bester on the other hand was not. Neither for that matter was Robert Heinlein - who did do some training in the field, but was actually a military man and engineer. Horror only occassionally entered these guys works.
3. -Psychological Horror - my favorite category, which recently made a come-back with the Japanese ghost films - The Ring or Ringu, Ju-Duho or The Grudge. Shirly Jackson specialized in psychological horror, as did Ira Levin, and on the film side - the great Alfred Hitchock.
This genre tends to be minimalist, with few fancy special effects. Often ghosts or demons will be in it but not always. It also includes the occult.
Occult or Pagans gone Wacky:Thomas Tyron, an actor turned author specialized in this area of horror with the following novels: Harvest Home - later turned into an NBC mini-series starring Bette Davis in 1978. He also wrote The Other. Harvest Home is similar to another film, recently remade, entitled The Wicker Man and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.
Am I crazy or is something playing with me? Shirley Jackson specialized in the mental instability field - with stories that played with one's mind: The Haunting of Hill House (turned into a Robert Wise film - The Haunting, then a BBC film on PBS, and finally the overblown Speilberg version. Skip Speilberg's and rent the Wise film.), We Have Always Lived in the Castle and of course The Lottery. Henry James also played with it in The Turn of the Screw later made into the Deborah Kerr film, The Innocents.
Hitchcock did it with films such as Psycho, Rear Window, Veritigo, Spellbound, Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt. Then there's the film-maker Roman Polanski - with The Tenant and Rosemary's Baby based in turn on Ira Levin's book of the same name. A film similar to Polanski's the Tenant is a 1977 film called The Sentinel, with Chris Sarandon. All three films, Tenant, Baby, and Sentinel are about strange happenings in tenement buildings. The Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie thriller about a couple grieving over the loss of child, only to see someone who looks just like her wandering about Venice - is Don't Look Now. Perhaps one of the most disturbing films I've seen. Plus the classic Charles Boyer/Ingrid Bergman film Gaslight - which we’ve seen copied in such films as Diabiolique. Hide and Seek starring Robert Deniro is another example of this genre. So is The Omen - which has a great deal in common with Rosemary’s Baby - the better of two, and of course, The Exorcist.
M. Night Shyalaman has also played with psychological horror in films such as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village, Signs and The LAdy in the Water - all of which also can fall in other categories. But mostly they play with the characters and the audience's perception of reality - is this real? or is something playing with me?
Psychological horror if done well will stay with you longer than a Stephen King novel or a zombie film. Because it is more real. It deals with what we are really afraid of. Newer films include: What Lies Beneath, Silent Hill, Dark Water, The Skeleton Key (which I highly recommend - about hoodue and belief) - it in some ways reminds me of a Wes Craven film called The Serpent and The Rainbow, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting and Ghostika with Halle Berry. Sarah Michelle Gellar's The Grudge films also fall within this category.
4. The Slasher Horror Flick or what we mostly see in the theaters today. Won't say too much about this, since I'm getting tired. And this is far longer than I intended. Horror is a huge genre. Novel that fit in this category tend to be by people such as Thomas Harris - Hannibal Lector series, or Dean Koontz. Basically the books about serial killers on the loose, which is pretty much every other mystery written nowadays.
The best of the bunch - book and film wise, may well be The Silence of The Lambs. But others have shown up and should be noted.
*The rednecks or backwoods crazies: Texas Chainsaw Massacre films more or less originated this subgrouping. But Deliverance may in fact be the best of the bunch - starring Ned Beatty and Burt Reynolds. Southern Comfort by Walter Hill starring Keith Carradine and Powers Booth borrowed heavily from it. Rob Zombie has these guys to thank for his films - House of a 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. As does Wes Craven - with The Hills Have Eyes and The People Under the Stairs. The most recent film in this category, features a group of women, a nice change of pace - usually they are men or a men and women, rarely all strong women - descending into a cave - it's called The Descent. Critics have been comparing it to Deliverance. And of course, Wolf Creek - an Australian film that deals with the outback and people being picked off one by one.
*the insane lunatic/psychopath who wears a mask: you can thank John Carpenter for this category -who came up with it first(incidentally if you are interested in what influenced Joss Whedon, the guys who write Supernatural and other current horror filmmakers, you might want to rent a few John Carpenter films), in the classic 1978 film Halloween. I'm not positive, but pretty certain - Friday the 13th came shortly afterwards, along with the Wes Craven Freddy Krueger films: Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween influenced my generation (which is basically the generation creating tv shows and films at the moment) - we discussed it in school. I remember an art teacher analyzing how the monster in Halloween was created in depth. This was in Junior High by the way.
* Insane Lunatic decides to Torture People: This is a recent idea, and I think it came about first with The SAW films – indie thrillers made for little money that reaped more than expected. Although Craven and Carpenter may have played with the concept before that. I tend to veer clear of these and am hoping that they will die out soon. I'm not certain - but it might be a reaction to the current political environment - horror films often represent a society's fears and repressed desires. We act them out in the safe arena of film. Horrified, sure. But still safe. Hostel - a recent film by Quentin Tartintino plays is another example of this genre, as is the most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre film and to a degree both Wolf Creek and The Descent.
See, I say I hate horror, yet I clearly have paid attention to it. I don't think you can avoid it. It permeates many genres. And in some ways permeates our lives. And of the genres, it may be the most varied. Certainly the hottest seller – of the writers who end up on the best seller list, Stephen King has ruled the roost the most, as have Crichton, and others of their ilk.
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Date: 2006-10-30 04:47 am (UTC)I'm hoping that Joss Whedon gets to make 'Goners' before too long, I'm wondering if it will end up being a new take on the teen-age slasher film, or if he has something else in mind (I'm sure it will turn the genre on it's head, whatever he does).
Jonathan Carroll
Date: 2006-10-30 05:06 am (UTC)Lourdes
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Date: 2006-10-30 11:56 am (UTC)Rather than use the crude, bestial vampire of folklore as a basis for his story, Polidori based his character on Byron. Polidori named the character "Lord Ruthven" as a joke. The name was originally used in Lady Caroline Lamb's novel Glenarvon, in which a thinly-disguised Byron figure was also named Lord Ruthven.
Polidori's Lord Ruthven was not only the first vampire in English fiction, but was the first fictional vampire in the form we recognize today — an aristocratic fiend who preyed among high society.
As you can tell, I know far too much about this subject for my own good.
You did a great job classifying everything in this post. I'm putting it in my Memories for future consultation.
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Date: 2006-10-30 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-30 02:31 pm (UTC)I think you're right about people who've been in horror-filled situations not being as interested in horror movies as other people. When your dreams are horror movies, going to see more terror on the screen isn't quite as much fun. And when you come to understand the root of your own fears, horror movies just don't tap into the hidden core of fear inside you as vividly. Although I could be wrong about that.
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Date: 2006-10-30 07:07 pm (UTC)