Halfway to Halloween

Only six months (as the bat flies) away from the great day!

The Gothicism of American Gothic: "Learning to Crawl"

[For the previous entry, click here.]

Despite being set primarily in a weathered cabin in the woods, "Learning to Crawl" is hardly the most Gothic installment of American Gothic.  The episode does begin, though, with an instance of the sudden eruption of horror within everyday life, when Caleb is accidentally electrocuted and nearly killed while doing mundane chores down at the Sheriff's Station.

Once Caleb survives the scare, Sheriff Lucas Buck takes the boy on a bass-fishing trip.   On the drive to the isolated cabin (located on the outskirts of a "ghost town"), Lucas entertains Caleb with a spook story about a monstrous cat haunting the Simpsonville woods.  According to the yarning sheriff, the beast has never been seen, and is known only by the savage claw marks it has scored into trees.

The father-and-son team, however, run across a more natural nemesis upon arrival.  The cabin has been occupied by a trio of Capote-esque criminals who are holding a tobacco-company executive for ransom (and who end up killing the hostage in cold blood).  These are ruthless folks, for sure, but they meet more than their match in Lucas, who calmly employs his devilish skills to manipulate the situation.

At one point during the standoff with the criminals, Lucas teaches Caleb a "visualization" technique.  Caleb proceeds to imagine an outcome in which Jeri reunites with her brother-in-law Ted (with whom she's been having an affair), but when the adulteress moves to embrace her lover she ends up kissing the bloody-mouthed corpse of her late husband Cody (whom she has recently gunned down).  Subsequently, in an attempt to prey on Jeri's fears, Caleb uses his nascent powers to terrorize her with the approach of the cat-monster from Lucas's story.  A scene of eerily lit woods (that seems to hearken back to the 1989 film Pet Sematary) ends with Jeri's cheek clawed gorily open.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of "Learning to Crawl" is that the episode dramatizes the deepening bond between Lucas and Caleb and shows the former's increasing tutelage of the latter.  As the season-long run of American Gothic draws to a close, the storyline has started arcing towards what portends to be a dark climax.

Raven Variations

Well, the new movie The Raven starring John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe has been panned by critics (as I suspected it would be after watching the trailer), which means I won't be going to see it in theaters.  This one will have to be a wait-for-the-Netflix-DVD.  So instead of a film review today, I offer the following video clip in which the legendary Vincent Price brings Poe's most famous poem to life:





Also, for a modern, American Gothic riff on "The Raven," be sure to check out my story "Midnights Drearier" (available as an ebook from Damnation Books).  Here are the opening paragraphs of the piece:

Clad black as tonight’s moonless vault, Deadeye Eddie shimmies his way up into the denuded tree.  His slung rifle taps his shoulder as he climbs, while the scales of bark sloughing from the barrel-wide trunk further remind him of the task at hand.  Without investing especial significance in the fact, Eddie recalls that the plague on Eldon Richter’s farm started with this very oak.

The story circulating through Allanton all week has old Eldon ambling out onto his porch early last Friday morning, then stopping to crack the night’s sleep out of his back as he surveys his property.  But even before his bespectacled eyes can adjust to the dawn, Eldon senses something wrong.  Something different about this same vista he’s studied every morning for the past twenty-seven years.  He steps off his porch for a much-needed closer view, and soon fixes upon the great oak rooted about twenty-five yards in front of the house.  The crinkled foliage overhead looks absolutely leeched of chlorophyll, reminding Eldon of those old horror movies where some terrible shock whitens a character’s hair.  Seasonal change couldn’t possibly be the culprit here, only a week into September.  Also, Eldon’s seen trees die before and knows the process is gradual at best, not something that occurs overnight.  As he stands there groping for explanation, a blast of wind reaches the tree—and disintegrates the former greenery.  The leaves crumble like the skin of a desiccated corpse; seconds later only the brown-branched skeleton remains.  Damnedest thing he’s ever seen, Eldon swears, unaware that he’ll have to revise that assessment repeatedly in the coming days.

For a whole week now, the weird happenings out at the Richter place have seasoned Allanton’s otherwise bland existence.   But tonight—Thursday melding once more into Friday—Deadeye Eddie plans to put an end to the whole mad mystery.  Come midnight, the blight upon Eldon’s land is going to be blasted right out of the raven sky.

QuickList: The Best Quips in Stiff

Mary Roach's 2003 book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a fascinating and incredibly informative study of the multifarious uses to which dead human bodies are put. It's also a masterpiece of sardonic
humor, as Roach uses her considerable journalistic wit to turn the subject matter into a surprisingly fun read.  Here are a dozen quick excerpts from Stiff, perfect examples of a writing style that could transform even a corpse's rictus into a grin:


"The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship.  Most of your time is spent lying on your back.  The brain has shut down.  The flesh begins to soften.  Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you" (9).


"Nowadays, enlightened medical schools will hire a 'pelvic educator,' a sort of professional vagina who allows the students to practice on her and offers personalized feedback and is, in my book anyway, a nominee for sainthood" (31).


"'Smell's not that bad today,' he says.  His 'not that bad' has that hollow, over-upbeat tone one hears when spouses back over flowerbeds or home hair coloring goes awry" (63).


"The difference is that when we're alive we expel that gas.  The dead, lacking workable stomach muscles and sphincters and bedmates to annoy, do not" (66).


"'Try the winch?'  Deb loops a canvas strap under his arms and presses a button that raises a ceiling-mounted motor winch.  The cadaver shrugs, slowly, and holds it, like a Borscht Belt comedian" (102).


"In the Powder River Expedition of 1876, he had been decorated for gallantry in confronting tribes of hostile Sioux.  La Garde had led the charge against Chief Dull Knife, whose name, we can only assume, was no reflection on his intellectual and military acumen or the quality and upkeep of his armaments" (131).


"According to the Kind & Knox Web site, other products made with cow-bone-and-pigskin-based gelatin include marshmallows, nougat-type candy bar fillings, liquorice, Gummi Bears, caramels, sports drinks, butter, ice cream, vitamin gel caps, suppositories, and that distasteful whitish peel on the outside of salamis.  What I am getting at here is that if you are going to worry about mad cow disease, you probably have more to worry about than you thought.  And if there is any danger, which I like to think there isn't, we're all doomed, so relax and have another Snickers" (139).


"Surrogates are preferable not only because tests involving land mines are ethically (and probably literally) sticky, but because cadavers aren't uniform.  The older they are, the thinner their bones and the less elastic their tissue.  In the case of land mine work, the ages are an especially poor match, with the average land mine clearer in his twenties and the average donated cadaver in his sixties.  It's like market-testing Kid Rock singles on a roomful of Perry Como fans" (151-152).


"The ability to perform brain surgery while traveling full tilt on a cobblestone street is a testament to the steadiness of Laborde's hand and/or the craftsmanship of nineteenth-century broughams.  Had the vehicle's manufacturers known, they might have crafted a persuasive ad campaign, a la the diamond cutter in the backseat of the smooth-riding Oldsmobile" (204).


"Spracher unbolts the hatch and raises the lid.  I don't smell anything, and am emboldened to lean my head over the vat [containing the remains of tissue digestion] and peer inside.  Now I smell something.  It is a large, assertive smell, unappetizing and unfamiliar.  Gordon Kaye refers to the smell as 'soaplike,' leading one to wonder where he buys his toiletries" (256).


"On the way out, a photographer asks us to pose with Helsing and a couple of the other [mortuary] executives for the company Web page.  We stand with one foot and shoulder forward, arranged in facing columns, like doo-wop backup singers in unusually drab costumes" (276).


"Most assuredly, a lab cadaver occupies the thoughts and dreams of its dissectors.  The problem, for me, is that while a skeleton is ageless and aesthetically pleasing, an eighty-year-old corpse is withered and dead.  The thought of young people gazing in horror and repulsion at my sagging flesh and atrophied limbs does not hold strong appeal.  I'm forty-three, and already they're doing it" (282).


Work Cited

Roach, Mary.  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Return of the Lovecraft S.A.T.

[For previous test questions, click here.]


Do you have what it takes to get into Miskatonic U.?


1.Which of the following Lovecraft works does not include mention of the Necronomicon?
(A) "The Call of Cthulhu"
(B) "Dagon"
(C) "The Dunwich Horror"
(D) "The Dreams in the Witch-House"
(E) "The Whisperer in Darkness"

2.A frequent Lovecraft synonym for "scaly":
(A) cyclopean
(B) scalene
(C) rugose
(D) eczematous
(E) squamous

3."He"::New York City...
(A) "The Rats in the Walls"::Innsmouth
(B) "The Festival"::Kingsport
(C) "The Colour Out of Space"::Providence
(D) "Cool Air"::Arkham
(E) "The Shunned House"::Dunwich

4.The writer whose work Lovecraft does not discuss in Supernatural Horror in Literature:
(A) Edgar Allan Poe
(B) Charles Robert Maturin
(C) Fritz Leiber
(D) Arthur Machen
(E) Robert W. Chambers

Correct answers appear in the Comments section of this post.

The Cabin in the Woods (Movie Review)

The Cabin in the Woods (Lionsgate, 2012.  Directed by Drew Goddard; Screenplay by Goddard and Joss Whedon)

This meta-horror flick has generated plenty of pre-release buzz, but does The Cabin in the Woods ultimately deliver the goods?  To answer a question with a question: does a bear defecate in a commode?

Don't get me wrong, the film has a lot going for it.  The five protagonists
are eminently likable (particularly Fran Kranz as the Shaggy-ish stoner Marty), and never obtuse or obnoxious.  Their dialogue brims with Buffy-style wit--here of the R-rated variety.  The filmmakers poignantly juxtapose settings of dark, rural squalor and gleaming hi-tech (I don't think it's a terrible spoiler to note that the vacationers at the eponymous cabin are being unwittingly manipulated by figures in an underground laboratory).  There are fiendishly clever kill scenes; some will have viewers flinching while others will leave them chuckling.  Fan(goria) boys and girls will also have a wonderful time enumerating the various nods to other horror movies (especially in the film's carnage-filled climax).

On the down side, too much vital story is conveyed by info-dumping exposition, delivered to boot by fast-talking bureaucrats (No doubt Cabin is a film that warrants multiple viewings).  And surprisingly enough, the film falls short as postmodern satire.  Whereas in the original Scream the sense of genre self-awareness crescendos in the last act, here it seems to give way to a more straightforward foray into cosmic horror.

Indeed, Cabin's worst warts pop up in the ending.  This is the kind of film that hinges on its payoff--the answer to the question of why the protagonists have been subjected to such a bizarre experiment in the first place.  For all the attendant chaos, the given explanation is not terribly earth-shattering, and the grand "revelation" can be seen coming from a mile away by anyone moderately versed in Lovecraft.  The filmmakers attempt to pump up the conclusion by bringing in an unbilled star from stage left, and though apropos, this cameo appearance really doesn't make much use of the actor's talents.

The Cabin in the Woods is daring, original, and certainly entertaining.  What's disappointing to me is not that this isn't a good movie but that it fails (given its promising premise) to develop into the great movie it might have been.

Jonathan Frid, R.I.P.

Alas, the Dark Shadows star has passed away at the age of 87 (just weeks prior to the release of the new Tim Burton film version of the classic Gothic soap).  His fame, though, will be as undying as the vampire character he so wonderfully played.

In 1967, Frid's Barnabas arrived at Collinwood, and established a
permanent residence in the hearts of horror lovers:

Springsteenian Gothic

Bruce Springsteen's latest album, Wrecking Ball, is arguably his greatest (at least since Darkness on the Edge of Town), but what's really striking to me here is the darkness of the Boss's lyrics and his deployment of horrific tropes.  For instance, the title track--a defiant cry from a personified Giants Stadium on the eve of its demolition--presents a grim ("Here where the blood is spilled") and ghost-packed ("'Cause tonight the dead are all here") arena.  And the first single, "We Take Care of Our Own," is no more a patriotic anthem than "Born in the U.S.A." ever was, but rather an indictment of American callousness, of the dessication of charitable spirit ("I been stumbling on good hearts turned to stone / The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone") that is creating a national wasteland.

Hearkening back to "Nebraska," the song "Easy Money" features a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde whose idea of going out on the town involves carrying a Smith and Wesson to rob and shoot those who cross their path.  "Shackled and Drawn," meanwhile, bespeaks economic imprisonment, a shadowed existence ("I'm trudging through the dark in a world gone wrong") where the dawn of a new morning only brings the poor working man "another day older, closer to the grave."  Lower-class angst saturates "Death to My Hometown," a damnation of Madoff-Age
"robber barons," who are depicted as both apocalyptic "marauders" ("They left our bodies on the plains / The vultures picked our bones") and cannibalistic ghouls ("The greedy thieves who came around / And ate the flesh of everything they found").

Nowhere, though, does Springsteen channel American Gothic better than in "We Are Alive," which plays like a musical version of Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology.  The song is set in a graveyard where "at night the dead come alive," speaking through "cold grave stones" to share their personal histories:

A voice cried I was killed in Maryland in 1877
When the railroad workers made their stand
I was killed in 1963
One Sunday morning in Birmingham
I died last year crossing the southern desert
My children left behind in San Pablo
Well they've left our bodies here to rot

"We Are Alive" ultimately emphasizes the persistence of the soul beyond physical death and decomposition, but for all the song's fighting spirit it also forwards some burial imagery worthy of Poe.  In one of the latter stanzas, the speaker relates the tale of his discovery that he is no longer a mere visitor to the graveyard:

Well I awoke last night in the dark and dreamy deep
From my head to my feet my body'd gone stone cold
There were worms crawling all around me
My fingers scratchin' at an earth
Black and six feet low

I don't want to give the impression that Wrecking Ball is a simply morose offering.  Certainly there are some slow and somber numbers (such as "This Depression"--a lover's plea from a pit of utter despair), but these are offset by sultry love songs ("You've Got It") and uplifting hymns ("Rocky Ground").  Even the songs that broach dark subjects ("Shackled and Drawn," "Death to My Hometown") are rhythmically upbeat, and the bonus track "American Land" (which concludes the Special Edition of the album) is so rousing it could make the comatose tap their toes.  With its combination of incredible music and haunting messages, Wrecking Ball delivers a terrific blow to listeners.

Gimme "Shelter"

There's been some seriously heavy weather hitting the heartland these days; let's hope the end times aren't at hand.  The news footage today of tornadoes touching down throughout the Midwest put me in mind of the movie Take Shelter--an engrossing drama starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain (who are both brilliant in their roles).  Curtis LaForche is an Everyman from Ohio who begins to experience disturbing dreams/
visions of apocalyptic disaster.  Has he grown direly prophetic, or simply paranoid schizophrenic (just like his mother did at his age)?  When Curtis decides to build a storm shelter in his backyard to protect his family from a perhaps-imminent Armageddon, he ends up creating unforeseen difficulties for both himself and his loved ones.  Take Shelter is a character-driven disaster movie for adults, and probably the best film I have watched in the past year.  Here's the trailer, for those who might have had this one slip past their macabre radar:

Universal Monsters in Our Midst

A glorious paradox: we love the Universal Monsters so much, they get under our skin...

The original inked monstrophiliac was none other than Jack Dracula (immortalized in a Diane Arbus photo essay that appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1961).  To learn more about the Arbus/Jack Dracula connection, check out David J. Skal's The Monster Show--a book that is an indisputable must-read for serious fans of the Universal Monsters.

The Gothicism of American Gothic: "Doctor Death Takes a Holiday"

[For the previous entry, click here.]

"This is kind of a strange town, you know?"

These words from Dr. Billy Peele--a recent arrival in Trinity--perfectly capture the vibe of American Gothic.  There's no shortage of intrigue and lurking horror to be found in the bucolic Southern town, as evidenced by the episode "Doctor Death Takes a Holiday."  When Judge Streeter declines to get involved in Lucas Buck's latest scheme against Dr. Matt Crower (who has been digging up past nastiness by investigating Merlyn Temple's death), the sheriff responds by using his devilish gifts to prey upon the gambling addiction of Streeter's spouse, Charlotte.  The desperate housewife (driven to attempt suicide) is discovered lying in a bloody bathtub by the judge after she loses big in a Lucas-influenced poker game.

Meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Angela has come to town, claiming to be Lucas's mother (she's actually a jilted ex-lover) and aiming to assassinate the sheriff.  When Dr. Matt jumps in to prevent the shooting, Angela is undeterred, working to manipulate the doctor into carrying out the deed himself.  She argues that Lucas is "pure, otherworldly evil," a supernatural equivalent of Hitler who needs to be snuffed out before he causes widespread suffering.  The moralistic Dr. Matt is slowly convinced that Angela is right, but when his attempt to shoot down the sheriff fails, he earns himself an extended stay in a staple Gothic setting--an insane asylum.

Angela is dying of brain cancer, and has been admitted to a room in the local hospital.  Conveniently enough, it's the same room where Caleb Temple's mom resided during the final days of her pregnancy.  Room 105 is "cursed" (as the nurse Sarah tells Dr. Matt), plagued by unexplainable cold spots and presumably haunted by Mrs. Temple's ghost.  The nurse also relates that just prior to giving birth to Caleb, the distraught woman raved that someone was trying to take her baby away.  Paging Ira Levin...

The episode also makes reference to one of the founding fathers of American Gothic fiction, Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Sitting with a book in hand in the boarding house parlor, Miss Holt tells Dr. Matt that she has chosen this particular author because reading Hawthorne is "like reading the human heart."  No doubt there's plenty of sin (secret, if not unpardonable) bound up in the hearts of Trinity's constituents, and nowhere more voluminously than in the town's duplicitous, corrupt(ing) law man.

Hangmany

[For the previous game of Hangmany, click here.]


Can you solve the following puzzle within 20 seconds, or are you going to choke?

CATEGORY: STORY TITLE

___  U  ___  ___  Y         ___  ___


___  ___  ___  D         ___  R  ___  ___  D

MISSES: C, H, L, T, W













HINT: no, not a recommendation for the Easter dinner menu






Answer appears in the Comments section of this post.

If You Want to Make a Macabre Omelette...

...You better get cracking with these beastly Easter eggs:

The images of these Grade A.G. eggs even got me in the holiday spirit:



Countdown: The 10 Most Grotesque Residents of Winesburg, Ohio--#1

[For a recap of the previous entries on this countdown, click here.]


#1.Elizabeth Willard

Long before Robert Bloch, Alfred Hitchcock, and the bloody mayhem at the Bates Motel, there was Sherwood Anderson's "Mother."  The story concerns Elizabeth Willard, a woman with an unusual relationship with her son George, and who is typically found seated at her bedroom
window, "perfectly still, listless.  Her long hands, white and bloodless, could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the chair."

Elizabeth is "tall and gaunt," her face "marked by smallpox scars."  Though only in her mid-forties, she has been prematurely aged by "some obscure disease."  She casts a "ghostly figure" whenever she moves through the gloomy, shabby corridors of the New Willard House.  Likely her current state is not just the result of corporeal illness, but the debilitating disheartenment that has followed from a "girlhood dream that had long ago died."  Elizabeth has vowed to return as a vengeful revenant should George ever follow in her unfortunate footsteps of unfulfillment:
"If I am dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come back."  So she is understandably appalled when she overhears George's father Tom urging the boy towards a bland career as a businessman.  She picks up a pair of sewing sheers, determined to wield them "like a dagger" against her detested husband:

The scene that was to take place in the office below began to grow in her mind.  No ghostly worn-out figure should confront Tom Willard, but something quite unexpected and startling.  Tall and with dusky cheeks and hair that fell in a mass from her shoulders, a figure should come striding down the stairway before the startled loungers in the hotel office.  The figure would be silent--it would be swift and terrible.  As a tigress whose cub had been threatened would she appear, coming out of the shadows, stealing noiselessly along and holding the long wicked scissors in her hand.

Elizabeth might steal noiselessly along, but it's hard not to imagine shrill violin music sounding as she makes her repeated stabs at her unsuspecting victim.  This "sick woman" is no doubt a psycho, even if the would-be murderess climactically decides to stay her hand (after learning that George doesn't plan to follow Tom's career advice). 

Elizabeth reappears briefly at book's end, in the story "Death."  In the final days of her illness, she yearns for surcease, and fantasizes of Death as a lover coming to embrace her.  Her last night on this earth, though, is spent pleading with the personified figure to hold off, at least until Elizabeth has the chance to inform George about the $800 she has kept hidden in the hotel since the time of her marriage.  But Elizabeth expires before ever revealing the existence of the secret stash (money that would have greatly aided George in his plans to leave town and venture into the wider world).  The morbidity and dark irony surrounding Elizabeth's fate only reinforces this mother's status as the most grotesque resident in Winesburg, Ohio.

Edge of Dark Water (Book Review)

Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland Books, 2012)

Lansdale returns to the territory of his Edgar-Award-winning The Bottoms in this latest novel--a Depression-era murder mystery/coming-of-age tale set along the banks of the Sabine River in East Texas.  When
beautiful May Lynn Baxter is dredged up from a watery grave, her friends decide to help the teenager posthumously realize her dream of making it to Hollywood.  The group secretly cremates the body, gathers up the ashes, and then lights out Twain-style by piloting a raft downriver.  So begins a picaresque odyssey that will forever change the lives of the sojourners.

Edge of Dark Water excels on numerous fronts.  The book sports dialogue so sharp, it makes razor wire seem dull as dental floss by comparison.  There are action scenes aplenty, both on the river and off across its shores.  Lansdale deftly weaves in social commentary, particularly in regards to Southern racism (one character recounts a story of lynching that's every bit as harrowing as James Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man").  The protagonists are opposed by some colorful never-do-wells, including the hardly-avuncular Uncle Gene (a man "fat as a hog, but without the personality") and the corrupt, cyclopean Constable Sy.  Most nefarious and unforgettable of all, though, is the legendary predator Skunk, who leaves a trail of butchery in his wake as he hunts down May Lynn's friends.

If Skunk reads like a cross between Injun Joe and Boo Radley, then the book's narrator Sue Ellen Wilson is the literary love child of Huckleberry Finn and Scout Finch.  She's a sardonic but good-hearted sixteen-year-old whose narrative voice (e.g. "As for his cousin Ronnie, I don't think Daddy cared for him one way or the other, and he often made fun of him and imitated him by pretending to bang into walls and slobber about.  Of course, when he was good and drunk, this wasn't an imitation, just a similarity.") sweeps readers up like a flash flood from the very first page.  This plucky tomboy might not be as naturally attractive as her mother, but she's a character with whom its impossible not to fall in love.

Perhaps the one critique that can be made of the novel is that the mystery element is not as strong as it is in The Bottoms.  Lansdale strews plenty of clues that make it fairly obvious who is implicated in May Lynn's death.  Still, many readers will be eager to flip right back to the first chapter after completing the last one--not necessarily to study how the author orchestrated his plot but simply to relish Lansdale's prose.  This is a book where the journey no doubt trumps the destination.

Longtime Lansdale fans are sure to rank Edge of Dark Water amongst his finest work.  And any newcomers (where have you been all this time?) will emerge determined to plunge straightaway into the author's other dark-yet-delightful volumes.

Creepy in Seattle

The question persists: who murdered Rosie Larsen?

AMC's The Killing has returned for a second-season run, and the show is as compelling as ever (Don't be misled about reports of diminished ratings for Sunday night's two-hour premiere: it was competing against Wrestlemania, after all.  Also, if petulant fans have tuned out after being forced to endure a season-one-ending cliffhanger [the horror!], then such foolishness is their problem.).  Homicide Detective Sarah Linden is back on the grisly case, which seems to have no shortage of suspects.  The series features characters whose motives and allegiances are as murky as the local weather.  A dark crime sheds light on a widespread conspiracy, and moral and political corruption appears to have saturated the Seattle scene.  Not the least of the show's strengths is the dread-heavy atmosphere it creates (Exhibit A from Sunday's premiere: the discovery of the dead girl's bloody backpack--left on her family's doorstep two weeks after the fact).  The producers of The Killing have promised that the mystery of Rosie's death will be solved by season's end, and until then this drama is must-see TV for fans of American Gothic.

Separated at Birth?

Or just fellow graduates of the Alice Cooper School of Makeup?

Monster Man's Cleve Hall

WWE Superstar The Undertaker