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.