Psycho

Psycho

by Robert Bloch

The story of Norman Bates is probably familiar to most readers. Psycho is about a man with what would now be called disassociative identity disorder, more familiarly called multiple personalities. While acting under the delusion that he is his dead mother, Norman kills a young woman, and later a private investigator. The character was inspired by real-life killer Ed Gein. In some ways, the novel fails. Almost two thirds of the penultimate chapter is a block of exposition, painfully delivered through once-removed dialogue. The majority of the characters are pretty flat. The portrayal of women is less than enlightened. But it works as a compelling story, and that's mainly due to the central character and antagonist.

Norman Bates is an unassuming man who, by all appearances, is perfectly normal. His appearance (an overweight, balding man in his forties -- it's interesting to speculate about why a much younger man was cast for the part in the film) is consistently contrasted with his inner mind -- something the author was intentionally playing with throughout the narrative. The same theme crops up with Mary. Her thievery reveals her inner self and conflicts with her outer veneer of normalcy.

Norman has a host of neurosis, many concerning sex and women in general, but his mother specifically. These are revealed gradually throughout the narrative -- for example, in chapter 5, he is drawn to looking at his mother’s thighs and breasts, but also recognizes that he should not do so. He owns pornography, but chastises himself for spying on Mary in the bathroom. This conflict was explored more fully in some of the film sequels, in which Norman’s character lashes out against any woman he feels attracted to.

One of the interesting things about re-reading Psycho was to catalog some of the things about Norman that were meant to imply or show that he was crazy. First time readers of the book (who somehow managed to avoid the cultural touchstones of the film) weren’t supposed to know just how far gone Norman was until the reveal in chapter fifteen. Some of the clues were obvious -- his behavior is certainly abnormal, particularly when drinking and spying on Mary in the bathroom. There are also strong hints in his conversations with Mother. At one point she even says that if she were to be committed to an institution, she wouldn’t go alone. But his hobbies also hint at madness. His taste in books and interest in the occult is seen as damning evidence. Similarly, his interest in taxidermy is considered odd, although more was made of this in the film than in the book. The fact that Norman lives alone and was a life-long bachelor is also cited.

Another interesting element is how Norman has ended up in the collective unconscious as a serial killer. In the book he is only responsible for four murders -- his mother and her lover, Mary, and Arbogast. There was no direct indication that he had killed other guests at the motel. But somehow it's easy to believe that he's been doing it for years. The neighbors and locals in the book soon suggest Norman is responsible for other murders, and in the film the psychiatrist suggests that Norman is responsible for a series of unsolved missing persons cases in the area. It's certainly more disturbing to think that this episode was simply the most recent one, and that Mary's theft is the only reason Norman got caught at all.

Norman is, in many ways, a sympathetic character. Even his almost-victim Lila feels sorry for him, and admits that he has probably suffered as much or more than his victims. He seems to have been molded into a psychopath instead of choosing to be one. The portrait of Norman that comes out casts his Mother as the villain. She is thought to be the one who drove him to the madness that eventually led to her death, and to his own insanity. But it’s too difficult to separate Norman from his Mother -- everything the reader knows about Mother comes through the filter of Norman. He blames her, but is she really responsible? After all, the Mother character is just his beliefs about what she was actually like.

In the end, it’s all him.

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.