Snow

Snow
by Ronald Malfi

Snow is the tale of a small group of survivors trying to fight off an invasion from unknown creatures that appear to be made of snow. The plot is something of a standard (almost a cliche), but the unique monster made this worth reading.

The monsters of Snow come in a few different shapes and sizes. At first, the creatures appear as nothing more than swirls of snow, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the storm. The only way to spot them is to look for patches of snow moving against the wind or try to spot the silver filaments at the center of the creatures. At times, the snow solidifies to create bladed arms, which are then used primarily as weapons. The snow monster is weak against fire. When exposed to fire, the creatures take on a solid form which is described as rubbery, pale, thin (its bones press against its skin visibly) and having only a single eye. In some sequences, the overall shape is described as resembling a manta ray. The creatures are capable of flight, and can join together to form a giant worm-like creature.

But apparently all that neat, unique, interesting stuff wasn't enough, so they threw in a horde of zombies too. I know, I know. I'm supposed to be the zombie fan, and I am. The sequence at the beginning of part two, where Shawna fights her way up the stairs, only to meet a horde of them at the top was an great chapter. Excellent zombie scene. But it didn't belong in a snow monster story. Neither, for that matter, do the strange no-face children.

A further word on the no-face children. I cannot quite fathom how, or why, the children's faces disappear, or why the monsters keep infesting children even after they learn they won't be able to eat in that form (which is supposedly the goal of the whole affair). The given explanation doesn't really provide any indication of how the children grow extra skin - and none of the other creatures endure any physical change as a result of the possession. It was a creepy visual, certainly - but every time it was mentioned I got pulled out of the story wondering how that could physically occur.

The setting was well described and even though it was playing with a familiar trope in the 'rag tag group of survivors' genre, the writing was well done and carried me into the story well. I read this early in the semester, and again before posting, and both times it was a fairly quick read. The zombies were more of an issue the second go-around, but both times I liked the natural progression of the story and rooted for the protagonist, despite his faults. This is the first title I read by Malfi - I recently purchased and read 'After the Fade', a novella he published in 2012. In it, strange monsters invade a small town and turn the population into zombies. Go figure.

Relic

Relic
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Before I get too far into this post, a confession. I am absolutely infatuated with Special Agent Aloysious X. L. Pendergast. I love his funereal suits, excessive list of preternatural abilities, and the delightful deep southern style. That said, this is not my favorite book to feature him (although it is the first) - that honor belongs to Still Life with Crows, which I heartily recommend. Brimstone is a close second. But they're all good and everyone should go read them.

Now then.

Relic is something of a convoluted tale with a simple premise - monster runs amok in museum. The convolutions come about as a way to get the monster there in the first place. The museum of natural history is a great setting and I love the way it is featured in the book, but the authors have to go to great lengths to explain how the creature came to be in NYC to begin with. These narrative gyrations came across as heavy handed to me, particularly in the final chapter where Dr. Frock summarizes everything for a roomful of people who already know what he is talking about. The epilogue, though it contained new information and was largely a teaser for the sequel, was guilty of the same.

The monster of the piece, Mbwun, is gradually revealed to be the results of mutation caused to an explorer by ingesting a virus-infected plant. The creature has a mix of ape and lizard DNA and is described as having a very foul odor, three claws on the forelegs and five on the back, and a simian face. The creature is said to have human intelligence (explained later in the novel by the fact that it was once human), but poor eyesight and superior smell and hearing.

Mbwun was an effective monster in most of the important ways - it stalks through the museum and picks people off at a steady rate, and its later appearances during the exhibition fiasco was suitably dramatic. The creature is extremely dangerous and difficult to kill - almost comically so. A greater part of its invulnerability is the fact that no one believes it's real, a factor which gradually became less and less believable. The trope of the creature's odor giving away its location worked reasonably well, although it did get repetitive. But it was a clever enough creature to keep things interesting, and the way it played off of the museum setting and the Superstition exhibit made for a good combo.

The setting plays a big role in this novel, and for good reason. The Museum is pretty much a character in its own right, and it is the perfect backdrop for this creature out of legend and history. The story just wouldn't be the same if it took place in an abandoned steel mill or an old railway station. The only downside of the setting (and the characters necessary to populate it) was that there were a number of scenes that seemed to serve no function beyond saying "look how smart we are". It reminded me of CSI in that respect.

Relic is a fusion of mystery and horror - it starts out as a whodunnit, with characters trying to piece together the cause of grisly murderers. A shift occurs in the middle of the book, once the characters discover that the murderer is actually an honest-to-goodness monster, and the book shifts gears into a horror survival story. It's an effective combination, and made for a compelling and enjoyable read.

The Thing

The Thing
1982

This was the first time in recent memory that I've actually sat down and watched this movie in its entirety. The Thing is the story of an ancient shape shifting alien that is discovered in Antarctica and lays waste to its discoverers. The Thing (arguably Things) assimilates and then copies life forms that it encounters, including humans. I enjoyed the film in spite of a few plot holes, but I'd like to focus here mostly on the Thing itself.

The Thing's motivations are left unclear, as the viewer never gets to hear its side of the story. All the speculation about its desires and goals are told through the mouthpiece of the humans who are trying to locate and kill it. While it is undoubtedly a violent creature, it is unclear whether the Thing is acting out of malevolence or is just trying to survive, either as an individual or as a species. All we know for sure is that the Thing seeks to escape via the ship which Blair constructs - but is it escaping only from the situation to spread into the rest of the planet, or trying to go home? The film doesn't really delve into this area, instead focusing on the climate of paranoia and suspicion that the Thing's presence creates.

One of the more interesting elements of the film is the frequency with which the audience gets to see the Thing transform. The transformation sequence in the dog kennel is the first of many instances where the Thing ballons into a disgusting pulpy mix of various animal and humanoid body parts - most consistently dog, squid, spider, and human. The cephalopod and arachnoid parts don't have any origin in the film (we never see the Thing interact with either directly) but frequently crop up in the mutation sequences either as weapons or ways to move the creature around. Conversely, the tentacles and segmented legs might be what the Thing actually looks like when not mimicking another creature. This is never made explicitly clear in the film. Carpenter departs here from the practice of many other horror films, which keep the monster in the shadows. I think it works to good effect in this film, because the monster's chameleon ability keeps the audience guessing about where (or what) it is. The on-screen mutation scenes become necessary as a way to show what is being hidden by that ability.

Another question the creature raises is how many of them there are. The 'first' Thing is exhumed from the ice by the Norwegian team, and is subsequently killed, but not before infecting at least one other creature. The process of infection is cellular - after a period of time, the host becomes a Thing. The question now is, is this a new Thing, or has the original one just extended itself into another body? Is there a hive mind through which the various Things communicate? The scene with the blood reacting to the hot wire implies that there is not - otherwise the blood could be instructed to allow itself to die as a way to ensure that the host stayed alive. Of course, it's just as plausible that one of the people who 'passed' the test did exactly that, and the one who failed sacrificed itself to protect the species.

I personally view the Thing as a virus - in which case there is no single "Thing", only instances of infection, each of which has a strong survival instinct of its own. The body dug up in the ice could plausibly be a creature from another planet who simply contracted the Thing, or the remains of a human infected that began shapeshifting.

The final aspect of the Thing that fascinated me the most was the skillful way in which the narrative left the audience guessing about who is and is not infected. The nature of the monster lends itself wonderfully to this kind of speculation. One theory posits that the hero, MacReady, is infected throughout and is ultimately responsible for the infection of both Blair and Childs by sharing infected drinks with them. Others suggest the opposite, that Childs is infected and ultimately wins. The fact that there is such widespread disagreement and discussion 30 years later is a great testament to the skill of the writers and filmmakers.

The Wolfman

The Wolfman
by Jonathan Maberry

This might be the first time I've ever read a tie-in book (a book based on the film rather than the other way around), and the 'hollywood'ization of the plot is pretty obvious from the start. Things in this book happen in a formulaic way - they have to, because that's the way it happens in big budget films. The novel retains many elements from the 1941 film of the same name, but goes into new territory with Lawrence's history of mental illness and Sir John's role.

The Wolfman (and the Werewolf) is the major villain of the piece, and it suffers in my opinion from a common disease amongst Hollywood monsters, similar to the effects of gamma radiation: the monster is unusually large, impossibly strong, uncontrollable, and invulnerable to conventional attack. All it needed was green fur to complete the look. Maybe I'm being a purist, but the werewolf monster is meant to combine the predatory skills of a wolf (speed, superior sense of smell and hearing, and natural weapons in the form of teeth) with the cunning and intelligence of a man. Making the wolfman 8 foot tall with sharp claws, hyper-senses, and super strength was a departure from the myth, and felt unnecessary. If they'd reigned it in a little, the wolfman would be more about stalking and trapping his victims, and less about violent mayhem, and that's what I was expecting.

Werewolves occupy unique territory for me. The idea of a werewolf is compelling, particularly when it is not realized in the direct terms of wolf and man. I'm thinking of Jekyll and Hyde, or Norman Bates and his mother. A man and a monster occupying the same body. There's a lot of fertile ground there. Once the fur and fangs come in, though, it is easy to descend into the basic werewolf formula: unbeliever is bitten, transforms, becomes a believer, tries to kill a loved one, and dies.

One of the things that surprised me when I read this book was the character descriptions. I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to, so I had no idea that Sir John, described as  "tall and imposing", was played by Anthony Hopkins. Sir Anthony is 5'9" - hardly an imposing height. I was picturing someone more along the lines of Ian McKellan, or Peter O'Toole. And likewise to think that the "brutally handsome" Lawrence was portrayed by this man. It's amazing how even in a tie-in novel, the characters can seem vastly different in the reader's head than in the author's.

And may I also say, Maberry missed a real opportunity in that section by not describing Lawrence's hair as perfect.

Maberry has skill with description, setting and dialogue, but I think this particular book was severely hampered by the script he had to use. They hired a good writer to try to make a novel from an unwieldy plot. Consider Chapter 42, where Sir John appears in Lawrence's cell and explains away several questions about what has happened so far. A common tactic in films (I refer to it as "A Visit from the Department of Backstory"), but it comes off as an info dump in a novel. The love interest was forced and hollow - the two characters hardly exchange any dialogue before they inexplicably hook up.

Bottom line, I would have enjoyed seeing this story naturally develop in the hands of a skilled author without having to hold to the expectations of a blockbuster. I suspect it would have turned out much differently.

Alien

Alien
1979

Ridley Scott's masterpiece blends science fiction and horror, with an all star cast and some of the most stunning visuals presented in film. Though the titular monster deserves much of the praise for the film's success and eventual sequels and spinoffs, I think the setting is where this one really shines. Between the amazing set design by H.R. Giger and Jerry Goldsmith's haunting score this movie establishes and maintains a brilliant level of tension.

The alien itself was brazenly meant to represent sexual violence - specifically male rape, something that is not often touched on by the media. The image for the Alien was chosen from Giger's work for its sexual connotations, and its primary method of attack is overtly phallic. There are three stages to the alien life form (mirroring the life stages of some forms of insects): the face hugger, the chestburster, and the adult. Both the facehugger and the egg were designed to mirror the vagina - in fact, the egg had to be redesigned because it looked too much like one when it opened. 

The alien has no eyes - this was intentional, as the filmmakers thought it made it scarier to not know where it was looking. It also made it extraordinarily difficult for the actor in the alien suit to perform (interesting aside: the costume for Big Bird has the same problem. It uses a camera system and has a monitor in the stomach for the actor to 'see' out of). Part of what makes the alien work so well as a monster (beyond the pants-fouling terror of the whole concept) is that we hardly ever see it, even when it's in the shot. The scene at the end, with Ripley reaching for a something only to discover part of the wall is in fact the alien's head was amazing - we all knew it was in the room, and even after multiple viewings I forget where the arm is going to come from. 

I mentioned that the setting is one of my favorite parts of this movie, and that's because it's brilliant. The alien ship they find really tried to make the aliens seem otherworldly. The ship models were made from a mixture of organic and inorganic materials, and the result was something that's honestly difficult to describe. It doesn't look like something man made, but it is obviously something constructed. It hits just the right notes to seem functional, but extraterrestrial. The Nostromo, although it doesn't have the same wonderful architecture, got just as much attention. Although I am probably not the first to wonder why the intergalactic spaceship was 2/3 massive basement, it worked. The chains dangling from the ceiling, the tall shaft where water inexplicably fell constantly, the utterly delightful computer control room - it was all mysterious and strange, and none of the actors reacted to it at all and that made it work. It was normal for them.

I've rambled quite a bit, but I do want to end with a few notes about the sequels. Oh, the sequels. Aliens (1986) is probably the only of the three direct sequels I would advise anyone to watch. Alien 3 is notable only for having the alien hatch out of a dog instead of a person, and Resurrection is a pure popcorn flick. But my favorite spinoff isn't actually a movie. It's a comic book.

Superman versus Alien.

I'm not going to say much about this other than that you should go read it and that I'm going to spoil the end (Superman wins), but here's a brief synopsis: Superman hears the language of Krypton (which he would have no reason to recognize, since he was raised on Earth) and flies into outer space to investigate. He finds a planet full of Kryptonians (who shouldn't exist, because Krypton was destroyed) who are fighting a war with the Aliens. Superman is depowered because the sun for this planet is the wrong color (Science!) but, in spite of the fact that he's now just a buff dude facing the galaxy's most ruthless rapemurder machines, he still refuses to kill. Except when he fights with a queen alien and he has to eject it from the air lock, which is the only proven way to kill an alien.

Except the queen is still in his chest. And Superman is his own space ship. So when I say blow it out the airlock, I mean . . .

World War Z

World War Z: An oral history of the zombie war
by Max Brooks

I first read World War Z when it came out, and re-reading it for class was a pleasure. I love this book. I loved the Zombie Survival Guide too, for that matter. I've said before in this class that zombies are a personal favorite of mine, and this book illustrates a lot of the reasons why.

Zombies can be anywhere. They're in the swamps, in the deserts, under the ocean. They're in the streets, in your house, all over the world and in every country. I'm amazed one didn't end up on the space station. The plague of zombies spread quickly, not so much because of the rate of infection, but because people refused to believe it was happening. Governments and hospitals were unprepared. The military was helpless (the battle of Yonkers is one of my favorite scenes because it seemed so very much like what would really happen). I loved how there really was no 'safe' place, not anywhere. Heck, even without a zombie on the ISS, the astronauts still came to a bad end because of the plague.

The zombies were pretty classic, George Romero types - slow moving cannibals that can only be killed by destroying the brain. The horror is two-fold: first off, the creatures attacking you used to be your friends, neighbors, and family; and secondly, once you get past them, there are like a million more waiting outside. One of my favorite details about the zombies is the different names given to them by different nationalities - zombies, ghouls, Gs, zedheads, zack. It was realistic (there's no reason to think they wouldn't get different nicknames) and a simple way to make the narrative seem more real.

Other blogs have talked about the fact that the book is more about people than it is about zombies, and I agree. But that's part of the fun, at least for me. I like this book partially because the humans actually win - which again seems realistic. Once people accepted that this was happening, they dealt with it, and that's probably what would happen. The fact that this book ended on a positive note was probably my favorite thing about it. Sure, awful things happened and lots of people died, but the world moves on. It was a hopeful message - at least, more hopeful than it could have been.

There were a lot of great characters in this book - a few favorites are Todd Waino, the 'average Joe' soldier, Darnell Hackworth and the K-9 units, the infamous Paul Redeker (side note: the version I got on my kindle had the footnotes messed up, and it wasn't until I googled Redeker to see if he was in the film version that I found out the guy who hugs him is Nelson Mandela), and Tomonaga and his shield society. Honestly, just about all the sections were exceptional in their own way. Given that he doesn't spend much time on any single character or setting, Brooks does an excellent job bringing people to life.

One last point I want to make about this book is that it is a stretch to call it just a horror book. I don't think this is a title that can be put into a single genre - too much happens, there are too many blends of ideas and concepts. I've read a lot recently in how-to books about horror genre vs. literary fiction, and this book illustrates that sometimes there's no simple distinction. You can have a horror setting and still get a "literary" novel.

The Yattering and Jack

The Yattering and Jack
by Clive Barker

The Yattering, essentially a poltergeist but described variously in the text as a demon and as a fury, is a small, invisible, demon sent from hell to drive Jack Polo insane. He fails.

Like Rawhead Rex, this story suffers a bit from character POV switching - in my opinion, the end effect is more problematic here than it was in Rawhead. Letting the reader know that Jack is aware of his antagonist and is ignoring him is amusing, but it is revealed far too early in the text. The second reveal, when the Yattering finally figures it out, is robbed of impact because Jack is no longer a 'victim'. He's been playing with the demon (and the lives of his family) all along. It'd have been funnier to save that for the end.

The Yattering itself is a low-level demon, presumably with limited powers. His situation reminded me strongly of the set-up in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, in which an older middle-management demon mentors his nephew. The idea of Hell as a bureaucracy is a fitting one - it is something most people will have to interact with at some point, and it will never be a pleasant experience. And we can all relate to the feelings of helplessness and the sense that we've been given an impossible task.

The Yattering is described as being fairly small, but also strong - he fantasizes about crushing Jack's head between his hands, which indicates that if he were able to touch people he could do some damage. The extent of his supernatural abilities isn't clear, but they include invisibility and telekinesis, and he doesn't seem limited in touching his environment. He is able to animate dead things, and can torture other living creatures. In a nod to Faust, he is surprised when Jack doesn't ask him to perform the same miracles as Mephistopheles - leading me to think he has considerably more power than he was able to use against Jack. He is cruel - three cats are slaughtered with increasing violence, the fish get boiled, and one of the daughters has her mind essentially broken. But with those strengths are key weaknesses - he is unable to touch Jack physically, and unable to leave the house. However, he breaks both rules, which leaves me to wonder if he could do so again and break away from his new master.

The Yattering wasn't terribly scary. The story plays him to a comedic effect rather than straight horror, and Jack ignoring almost all of it detracted from what would be terrifying if it actually happened. I wanted to sympathize with the Yattering but he was too cruel for me to really feel bad about the situation - if I felt bad for anyone, it was the two daughters. They've got nothing at stake and no idea what's going on. If Jack was any sort of a decent parent he'd have gone to their house for Christmas where they'd be safe - he knew the Yattering couldn't follow him. Then he and the Yattering could duke it out on New Years or something.

Besides which, the Yattering wasted a perfectly good turkey dinner. And it had bacon on it. BACON.

30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night
by Steve Niles
Illustrated by Ben Templesmith

30 Days of Night had a brilliant concept. After reading it I did some research on the author and the storyline, and found out that it started life as a screenplay - and I think that shows in the final product. It felt more like a story-board for a longer piece than a complete novel. Length is a factor - it is short enough that I re-read it on my lunch break - but the pacing is also extraordinarily fast. The month of darkness flies by, and the reader misses out on a lot of the tension and dread that could have been built up in a longer piece or a different medium.

I have conflicting opinions about the artwork - it was difficult to make out what was meant to be happening, and there was so much black on each page. At the same time, the ephemeral style suited the wintery setting, and there were some really well done individual panels. The style of the artwork left things very murky and undefined - there weren’t a lot of hard edges or obvious features. The pit of burnt cell phones, for example, has only six cell phone shapes in it, and only three are clearly phones. Faces were often obscured. Teeth and noses were really some of the only well defined features. Periodically small print words would appear in the images, which I found distracting and borderline annoying - the page introducing Vincente and his two assistants naming each with small text hovering over their heads, for example, or the page when vampire-Eben has the words "badass time" hovering behind him. It gave those panels a rough draft feel, like it was an artist’s conception for what the finished page would look like instead of the final product itself.

The vampires of 30 Days of Night are stereotypical in some ways - superior strength and speed, invulnerability except a weakness to sunlight. They are much more brutal than some other vampire depictions. Their facial structure is unique - the black eyes and rows of teeth bring to mind human sharks, with snake tongues. The strength of these monsters is such that they effectively control the town from the moment they arrive. The scares come mainly from gore, perhaps at the cost of building tension. I think the things that would frighten me the most about this type of monster come from empathizing with the survivors - the constant hiding, the shock of seeing attacks on others, the unending tension from knowing you couldn’t win a direct conflict. This was absent from this book because of the length and pacing. Everything happens so fast you don’t get to read the day to day survival. The whole siege of Barrow may as well have happened in a single day. Then again, focusing on a gradual build up of tension can push the monsters into the background, which was a problem in I am Legend and Breeding Ground. I’d like to think there’s some sort of happy medium somewhere.

There is a minor plothole with the end of the story - Eben is able to undergo his transformation without losing his humanity, but another survivor who is turned immediately becomes a bloodthirsty monster. I wouldn’t have questioned it if not for the scene with the other survivor - I’d be willing to believe the vampires in Barrow are the ones who really enjoy being vampires and get off on the ultra-violence, whereas the quiet, contemplative vampires probably stayed home. But the scene where Ted turns and instantly becomes bloodthirsty and crazed implies the vampires have no control over this - which in turn contradicts Vincente’s apparent restraint and Eben keeping his humanity. It made the vampires more akin to zombies, and not necessarily in a good way. Part of the appeal of these monsters is that they are just as cunning and clever as the humans are.

Those things aside, this concept was well done and the overall plot was totally believable for me - vampires come out of hiding for a bit of debauchery and murder because it’s the only place and time they could possibly get away with it. The subplot with the helicopter is obviously only there to set up a sequel, which I have not yet read. I am hoping that it will be a little longer and a little bit slower paced. I’m also looking forward to seeing how the story was changed for the film version, which is next on my netflix queue.

Rawhead Rex

Rawhead Rex
by Clive Barker

Saturday night I read the short story Rawhead Rex, and Sunday morning I surfed around a little and found/watched the 1986 film by the same name. Both left me with the same question.

Why does Rawhead do what he does?

It isn’t necessarily that he lacked motivation. It was that the motivation was part and parcel of his existence. Rawhead’s only purpose in existing is to rape, kill, and destroy. In Barker's words: "He lived in the eternal present of his hunger and his strength, feeling only the crude territorial instinct that would sooner or later blossom into carnage." He’s not fulfilling needs by doing it. He defiles whatever he comes across, unless it is a lady having her lady-time.

More on that later.

The name for the creature seems to come from a figure in British folklore dating back to the early 1700s, which was used as a boogey man to frighten children. But the figure from the book has little in common with this incarnation - instead, Rawhead more closely resembles the giants from Welsh mythology. He is effectively immortal, hugely powerful, brutal, and eats children. Or, to be more accurate, he prefers children: he’ll eat anybody.

Rawhead is kind of unusual in that his lack of meaningful motivation is part of his character - it is intentional. There is an image that crops up for me in fantasy settings quite a lot. The evil king, sitting on his throne made of skulls, killing his lieutenants every so often and turning the countryside into a desert. What bugs me about that kind of character is that there’s never any reason to do those things - it’s just a way to show they are evil, like wearing black or having a spooky helmet. A basic thing about thinking creatures is that we all think what we’re doing is justified. Even if we’re doing something awful, we think deep down that it is the right thing to do in the circumstances. That’s why we do it. Those characters don’t have internally consistent motivations, and neither does Rawhead. But where I find it annoying in other circumstances, here it works. Rawhead doesn’t think in those terms because he’s a force of nature, not a rational creature. For this type of monster it doesn’t occur to ask “why am I breaking everything in the house? I could use some of this stuff”. He breaks it because it’s there.

Rawhead is sort of the ultimate monster - he’s a weird blend of animal and man with a totally foreign way of thinking. Presenting him is a balancing act - but it’s done well, and I think he is a compelling figure. Making him a figure out of the past helped enormously with distancing his thinking process from what we’d think of as ‘normal’.

Now that’s not to say the story was perfect. Making Rawhead afraid of menstruating women was an odd choice, at least to me. I understand Barker was setting up a parallel for women as ‘creators’ to be the opposite of Rawhead’s pure destruction, but it just seemed like a reach, considering his willingness to perform rape and his food of choice. I also objected strongly to the way some characters responded to Rawhead, particularly Declan. Setting Rawhead up as a figure that people would worship pulled me out of the story. It is an idea that comes up in many of the stories in Books of Blood, and each time I have been bothered by it. I can’t fathom of someone seeing a horrible monster and thinking the best course of action is to pray to it. Especially if that involves being peed on.

Interestingly, that scene was in the film version. I thought sure when I found out there was a movie they’d do something else to show the ‘baptism’ of Declan. And in a way, they did - the scene was shot in such a way that it looked more like Rawhead was . . . er . . . doing something else. I think it was mostly because of the noises the actor was making.

On the subject of the film, holy rusted metal, Batman. I don’t think there was a single scene with Rawhead’s face in it that didn’t make me laugh - he looked like a horse and a dog had a baby and dressed it up like a hell’s angel. The clearly fake rippling torso was just as bad. And they didn’t even try to make him seem bigger than a normal man. There were a few changes to the plot: family man Ron doesn’t save the day, his wife does (the statue is only effective if held by a woman - which actually made more sense than the story ending), and the priest played a much smaller role in the film. The story was thought provoking, but the same cannot be said of the movie.

Breeding Ground

This is what I choose to believe the widows look like

Breeding Ground
by Sarah Pinborough

Like many people, I responded to this book on a visceral, emotional level. Not because I liked the characters (I didn't), or because they were well drawn (they weren't).



This book scared me because I'm scared of spiders.

Parts of this book worked really well for me. The premise is horrifying. The monsters are dreadful. The scenes that the book opens with, where Chloe is transfigured and eventually killed, are deeply disturbing. I think the book raised interesting questions about pregnancy, disease and abortion.

Unfortunately, raising the questions was about as far as it got. Instead of pursuing any of those leads, the author gives us one of the cheesiest attempted explanations for monsters that I think I've ever come across. I can't even begin to wrap my head around how genetic modification of plant crops was meant to eventually connect up with spider monsters. Or the blood of the deaf. Or telepathy. Or abrupt climate change. I would go so far as to say that the explanation of the monsters undermined their terror for me (and considering how I feel about spiders, that's saying a lot). The book went from being a thought experiment about something horrible to being a commercial for whole foods. It was jarring, to say the least. But more than that, it failed utterly to do the monsters justice.

I started the post by mentioning the characters. Ignoring the protagonist for the moment, just about every character is an archtype that can be described in a few words. The wise old man. The petite spunky girl. The creepy businessman. The friendly drunk. The wacky scientist. The withdrawn child. Some of them can best be described as non-descript (Dan. Mike. Jeff. I'll be honest, more than once I lost track who was who). Most of the characters never really rise above the conventions we expect from them. Nigel is consistently whiny and self important. George never loses his temper and always knows what to do.

The narrator was a major issue for me, as a voice and as a character. His responses to the situations he found himself in were immediate, but short-lived. Within days of his wife's death he has the hots for Katie. Within days of her suicide, he moves into bed with Rebecca. Minutes - literally minutes - after fleeing his former home, dead family, and the realization that spider monsters have killed nearly everyone else world wide, he sits down to "fresh coffee and a fry up."  The next line just sums up his whole character for me -  "If there was a morning for spoiling myself, then this was it." That's not just a guy being shallow - that's poor writing.

I've had a lot of negative things to say about this book (and I haven't even started in yet on the end of chapter sixteen, where for some reason the horror novel got mixed up with the penthouse forum). But in spite of these issues there was something about it that made me keep reading. I'm not sure if it was because of my arachnophobia, but I was frightened by these monsters. They were compelling, and the pacing of the novel made me want to finish reading it, in spite of how annoying parts of it became.

The Funeral

The Funeral was adapted as an episode of NBC's Night Gallery.
Joe Flynn (right) portrayed Morton Silkline.

The Funeral

by Richard Matheson
1955

Of all the short stories I've read by Matheson (I am midway through the second of three volumes in his collected works) this is the first one I've come across where he goes for outright comedy. I don't think it is his strongest outing, but for a course on Monsters it could hardly be ignored. Matheson summarized the piece in his commentary on it - "I just wanted to write a humorous funeral story." (Richard Matheson Collected Stories Vol. 2, edited by Stanley Wiater, pg. 273).

Matheson plays with several stereotypes in this piece - the Vampire, the Wolfman, the Hunchback, the Witch, and (briefly) the Alien. I found the werewolf character bothersome. Ullgate has only a single piece of dialogue, consisting of a single word. He is mentioned three times - in each he is described as "hairy handed" and twice as "hulking". I would argue, based on this characterization, that Matheson has combined the wolfman with the Hollywood Frankenstein monster - a strong, largely nonverbal brute.  I was disappointed with this, largely because it doesn't do justice to the werewolf mythos. There is a lot of fertile ground in the werewolf story (the role of gypsies in particular) that was ignored. The werewolf, typically, is depicted as a tragic figure who is horrified by what he becomes. This element is totally absent - Ullgate knows the change is imminent and insists that the funeral hurry up so he can change and presumably go eat someone. This depiction is wholly at odds with Lon Cheney's version and kind of annoyed me for not matching the other Hollywood monsters.

It's interesting to note that in the television adaptation of this piece (Night Gallery, season two, episode fifteen - available here from Hulu, starting at the 20 minute mark), the wolfman appears already in werewolf form (and his exit was one of the funnier scenes). This made considerably more sense and fit the tone of the piece a lot better.

On the subject of television, Matheson's inspirations for this piece seem to derive from film rather than literature. Consider Ygor. Shelley's novel had no such character - the stock "hunchback" character was originally called "Frits" or "Fritz" and was written for stage versions of Shelley's novel. The role of the assistant in these plays was to provide moral commentary and placate audiences who felt the material was blasphemous (see "In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity and Nineteenth Century Writing" by Chris Baldick for more about the origins of Hollywood's Frankenstein). The character was left in the script for 1931's Frankenstein film and became a mainstay afterward. It was fascinating to see him here as a "monster" - particularly given these origins.

The twist at the end was another departure, so far as the cast of monsters is concerned. Although the amorphous energy blob was fast becoming a staple villain of science fiction television, the description here made me think Lovecraftian Horror more than anything else.

As for the humor of the piece, most of it fell flat for me. The pacing was a little too fast for me to appreciate Silkline's comic reactions to the monsters (I didn't even see the line where he mourns for his rug until the second reading, because of the way it was formatted). It's worthwhile to watch the TV adaptation - a lot of the jokes come across better in that medium (for example, the "eternal restroom"). The end was amusing, but inevitable. The twist ending is a trope Matheson returns to again and again, certainly - but it isn't always so obvious.

Matheson was a versatile writer (the last few stories of his I've read went from ghost story to alien invader to honest-to-goodness western) so I can't say I'm surprised that he tried his hand at a humor piece. But it was disappointing to see so little characterization.

I am Legend

I am Legend
by Richard Matheson
1954

It is difficult to say in a single sentence what I am Legend is about. It is in a simple sense a book about a man fighting vampires. Arguably it is also a book about zombies. Certainly it is a book about loneliness. Alcoholism. Science and superstition. The dangers of atomic warfare (see page number . . . er . . . location . . . um . . . it’s in chapter six. Anybody else find it annoying the kindle app doesn’t do page numbers?) I think if I had to summarize how I feel about the book, I would say that Matheson makes some mistakes, but I am willing to forgive him for all of them because of the story.

I am Legend is a study in contradictions for me. Robert Neville is one of the best portrayals of loneliness I think I’ve ever come across. But right along side this brilliant character study are scientific explanations for vampirism that pull me right out of the story. Overall I think Matheson’s description work is amazing, but it is regularly bogged down by the Urge to Explain.

Part one, comprising Neville’s “frenzied” period, is easily my favorite part of the novel. It’s almost entirely description - Neville is a man driven to the brink, and in some ways far past it. The first and last chapters of part one end much the same - with Neville in his bed, mourning his lost wife. His character is static. His inability to explain what is happening is an accepted facet of the situation.

Yet in part two that life changes, somewhat dramatically, in favor of trying to understand what he is facing. The reader gets more and more information about his research and less and less interaction with the vampires. With that change, the menace of the vampires steadily diminishes. Cortman, the ringleader, becomes Oliver Hardy the clown. The vampire antagonists take a back seat to the new conflict - Neville the Scientist versus The Mystery of the Vampires.

Not to say there aren’t saving graces to part two - the flashbacks (the reveal of his former working relationship with Cortman is one of the highlights of the whole book) and the heartbreaking episode with the dog are two examples of Matheson hitting his stride again. The last line of chapter thirteen is one of the most powerful I’ve ever read.

Part three continues the trend, further distancing Neville from his beginnings and more deeply alienating him from his original circumstances. What was once a terrifying struggle for survival is now an almost monastic, peaceful, dull existence. Hunting Cortman is a pastime, not a struggle for survival. The vampires are no longer a threat. Neville has beat his curse, by apathy as much as by anything else. This is, in my opinion, the low-point of the novel - Ruth's character never develops, and Neville’s attitude toward her (particularly his constant assurance that he’s not attracted to her side by side with constant description of her womanly bits) is more annoying than anything.

So why does it work? Part four saves it. Neville only survives by killing the part of himself that made survival difficult, and Matheson makes that the focal point of the story - ironically by explaining it more explicitly than perhaps he needed to. Neville, in a very literal sense, becomes a monster by abandoning his humanity - we don't like him as much by this part of the story because he's the monster now. The vampires are even painted sympathetically - he has more in common with them than he does with the new society.

I've mentioned what I consider to be instances of over explanation - let’s look at some specific examples of what I am referring to. In chapter 8 Neville begins experimenting by driving the stakes into different parts of the vampires’ bodies. He finds one woman and the stake causes a “sudden dissolution”, reducing her to a pile of powder in moments. Initially it is explained away by the probable age of the vampire, and Neville ponders the dreadful implication that his own wife might look the same way in her coffin. All well and good - there is nice balance to the scene. The scene serves a purpose for the narrative and, taken on its own, does not leave me with any real questions about how or why it happened.

Skip to chapter 17, where Neville explains everything there is to know about vampires and revisits the scene. She dissolved, we discover, because air was introduced into the body via the insertion of the stake. The bacillus responsible for vampirism is a “facultative saprophyte” that creates impenetrable “body glue”, causes abnormal growth in the canines, and turns “violently parasitic” when exposed to air.

It’s worth noting that this and the various other explanations of vampire behavior takes up almost the entire chapter - it's far too much at once. Going into scientific detail at that level really just robs the monsters of their immediacy - I could no longer suspend disbelief. Instead of explaining away the lingering questions about the vampires in the story, he has drawn attention to them, and left me unsatisfied.

I think the moral of the story is that even great writers can be the source of their own undoing sometimes. If we learned anything from Alien and Jaws, it’s that sometimes it’s better if we leave the monster in the shadows. Resist the urge to explain.