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Horror is all around us, waiting to be seen, waiting to be discovered in the most banal of circumstances. In the walk down the old stairs to the basement where the washing machine and dryer squat side-by-side, mouths closed…for now. That silence into which the drip-drip of fluid sounds…where is it coming from? Is it blood? No, it’s a leak from the water heater, in it the knowledge that the warm ablutions are no more until treasure has been spent, until the moldering body of the old heater has been dragged out into the forest to be buried secretly before dawn.
The odd silence on the third floor grows thicker as the minutes pass. The heaviness of it weighs down the soul, and soon memories of past transgressions, of deeds left undone, consume the spirit and force a bitter review of the doors closed to redemption. Who knew how many clothes remained unfolded, away from their proper places?
Let me listen to the howl carried on the wind rather than the speeches made by souls sold for power…too soon? Let’s move on.
Not just blood, not just fear lie in wait for the wary. Our lives proceed down neat paths until the way is overcome with putrid vegetation and the unending tasks of the damned. April is coming, and we know why it is the cruelest month.
Stay with February, Women in Horror Month. Come join us to relish in the power of horror, in the particular force of the female perception of what makes us scream. See what we have for you at #wihm8.
Join us.
The ongoing respiratory junk I’ve been fighting has gone nuclear. I now sound like an out-of-work air raid siren and am coughing billions of germs throughout the house. Of course, the rest of the family is doing so as well. Pestilence has become the way of the world. So today I’m posting pictures for you to peruse while I continue to get caught up with the coughing I’ve suppressed to write these deathless words. Gack.
I first saw The Wolf Man as a kid, watching it on one of Denver’s TV channels, probably presented as a “Fright Night” special. The story is basic, about a man newly returned to his British home, at odds with his father, the lord of the manor. Lon Chaney, Jr., son of silent movie acting sensation, Lon Chaney, plays the son, Larry Talbot, as a sad outsider who soon falls victim to a nasty malady in the county: a werewolf bites him and thereafter he is forced to terrorize the area each month in search of blood. He searches for information–from the doctor, from the villagers, including the old Romani woman who finally tells him the truth. He is now a werewolf and there is no cure but death. His personal horror at what he’s become is what I best recalled from my early viewing of the film. He fights to avoid hurting anyone, particularly the young woman who’s interested in him. He can’t connect with his father, leaving him alone with his terrible secret. It was that existential loneliness I remembered, heightened by its being filmed in black and white. Though the special effects were low-tech, the movie continues to have an emotional impact on me to this day.
So, emotional horror as opposed to physical horror…There’s a place for both, no doubt, but I was struck, as I compared the two films, at how much more affected I was by the old black and white movie over the shiny, bloody one. I’m sure it says something about my esthetic state, but I’m damned if I know what. Both films are worth watching, especially during the month of Halloween.
So today I’ll remind you of one of the very best of the frightening standalone episodes the series had: “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” about a psychic whose gift is the ability to see how people will die. The late Peter Boyle played this character with grace and melancholy, and the writing and directon by Darin Morgan and David Nutter are both creepy and morbidly humorous. It remains one of the most human of the series episodes–what, after all, is more human than death?
