Danse Macabre Read online

  Mimic: Guillermo del Toro's first American film, and a work of brilliance and complexity. It plays on our fear of dark places, environmental mutation, science out of control . . . and killer insects that can look like people. Perversely believable, with great FX and great performances by Charles S. Dutton and Mira Sorvino.

  Event Horizon: Basically a Lovecraftian terror tale in outer space with a The Quartermass Xperiment vibe, done by the Brits. The plot's messy, but the visuals are stunning and there's an authentic sense of horrors too great to comprehend just beyond the eponymous (I always knew I'd eventually get to use that word) event horizon.

  Pi: Made on a shoestring by director Darren Aronofsky, this film about a theoretical mathematician descending into madness (he thinks he has found a 216-digit number that can somehow make him a fortune on the stock market) is a clear precursor of The Blair Witch Project. I left the theater not entirely sure of what I'd seen, but filled with feelings of deep unease. This one gets inside you.

  Bride of Chucky: Naah! Just kidding!

  Deep Blue Sea: Directed by the ever-popular Renny Harlin, who could probably turn Heidi into an action flick ("Give up the secret formula or the goat dies!"), this movie about genetically engineered sharks, you could say, isn't up to very much . . . until, at the most unexpected point of the film, one of the supermakos rears up and bites Samuel L. Jackson in half! Yessss! I screamed out loud, and I treasure any horror movie that can make me do that.

  Stir of Echoes: Writer/director David Koepp should be declared a national treasure. His adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1958 novel is an unsettling exploration of what happens when an ordinary blue-collar guy (Kevin Bacon) starts to see ghosts, thanks to a hypnotic suggestion.

  Final Destination: I love all these movies, with their elaborate Rube Goldberg setups--it's like watching R-rated splatter versions of those old Road Runner cartoons--but only the first is genuinely scary, with its grim insistence that you can't beat the Reaper; when your time is up, it's up.

  Jeepers Creepers: Victor Salva is a troubling, erratic director with a troubling, erratic history--including a conviction for sexual molestation of a child--but this tightly focused film about a brother and sister who run across a supernatural serial killer in northern Florida is relentlessly terrifying, playing as it does on our feelings of claustrophobia (the pipe scene is pure genius). If you haven't seen it, watch it. If you have, watch it again. But steer clear of the teenage-Spam-in-a-bus sequel. It's for shit.

  The Mothman Prophecies: Richard Gere adds weight and unease to this story of a reporter trying to recover from the loss of his wife (and trying to understand the strange drawings she made shortly before the tumor in her brain killed her). He is drawn to a West Virginia town where all sorts of strange phenomena have been reported, including sightings of an otherworldly being called the Mothman. Good scary movies sometimes work on us like those ominous dreams from which we wake just before they can plunge us into full-out nightmares. Gere's character never actually meets the Mothman, which isn't such a bad thing; he--or it--is scarier in the shadows. This movie reminded me of Val (Cat People) Lewton's best work.

  Eight-Legged Freaks: Not really so scary, but great fun. Giant spiders that run fast and kill everyone they can. The actors look like they're having as much fun as the audience. Probably should have been titled It Came from the Drive-in.

  28 Days Later: A furious (and sometimes infuriating) zombie film, shot on digital video in hey-look-at-me style by Danny Boyle, most notable for its opening sequences in an eerily deserted London after clueless animal rights activists have loosed a living-dead-type plague on the world. In its documentary feel, we can again see the influence of The Blair Witch Project.

  Shaun of the Dead: I know it's a send-up, but this Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright giggle fest has a few genuinely frightening moments (a few good gross-outs, too). The best sequence combines humor and horror in a pleasantly disgusting souffle as Shaun fails to notice the zombie uprising that has begun to happen all around him. We see it, but poor Shaun just keeps missing the guy who gets bitten while he's mowing his lawn, etc., etc.

  Red Lights (Feux rouges): In this French import, an alcoholic husband (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and his long-suffering wife (Carole Bouquet) have a fight and split up while driving back from the summer camp where they left their kids. What follows on a darkened country road is a kind of double horror movie, as fascinating to watch as Spielberg's Duel.

  Saw: You know about this, but watch it again and you'll see that it also works as a really superior mystery story. The same is true of Saw II.

  The Jacket: Adrien Brody is terrific (those long-suffering eyes!) in this story of a war veteran who becomes the subject of a mad doctor's experiments. He's locked in a morgue drawer and catapulted fifteen years into the future. This movie has a remarkable, chilly intensity and a sense of impending tragedy.

  Pan's Labyrinth: Ofelia's harsh reality (the Spanish Civil War) and her retreat into a fantasy world populated by fauns and monsters are perfectly blended in Guillermo del Toro's exceptional movie. Once you see it, you never forget the pale, eyeless creature (every kid's nightmare) that almost catches Ofelia and eats her before she's able to escape back--for a while, anyway--into the real world.

  The Descent: If I were to pick another movie to analyze closely, it would be this remarkable story of six women who go on a caving expedition and encounter a race of subhumans (who resemble del Toro's Pale Man, now that I think about it). What gives the movie its resonance is how the women play against each other--their very real resentments (and secrets) allow us to believe the monsters in a way that most horror movies do not. I never tire of saying this: In successful creepshows, it's not the FX, and mostly not even the monsters, that scare us. If we invest in the people, we invest in the movie . . . and in our own essential decency.

  Snakes on a Plane: Just my opinion, but if you didn't love this movie, what the hell are you doing reading this?

  The Hitcher (2007): Rutger Hauer in the original will never be topped, but this is that rarity, a reimagining that actually works. And Sean Bean is great in the role Hauer originated. Do we really need this film? No. But it's great to have it, and the existential theme of many great horror films--terrible things can happen to good people, and at any time--has never been so clearly stated.

  1408: John Cusack gives a bravura performance as a cynical debunker of the supernatural who discovers there really is an invisible world out there, one full of horrors beyond imagining. As a one-man depiction of madness, it stands alone. And Room 1408 in the fictional Dolphin Hotel is scarier than all the rooms of Stanley Kubrick's Overlook put together. In overlooking Cusack's performance, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences once more proved that great work is almost never rewarded if it's done in a horror movie. Kathy Bates in Misery is the exception that proves the rule.

  The Mist: The ending will tear your heart out . . . but so will life, in the end. Frank Darabont's vision of hell is completely uncompromising. If you want sweet, the Hollywood establishment will be pleased to serve you at the cineplex, believe me, but if you want something that feels real, come here. Darabont could have made a higher-budget film if he'd added a cheerful "It's all OK, kiddies" ending, but he refused. His integrity and courage shine in every scene.

  Funny Games: Already discussed, but if you love the genre and haven't seen this, you should--for the simple reason that it turns the genre on its head. When things don't go according to the psycho bad guys' plans, one of them just . . . well, see for yourself. Suffice it to say that it outrages the rules of reality, and that's always a good thing.

  The Ruins: The Scott B. Smith-scripted adaptation of his novel isn't quite as creepy as the book, but the sense of dismay and disquiet grows as the viewer begins to sense that no one's going to get away. With its cast of mostly unknowns, this would play well on a double Halloween bill with Snyder's Dawn remake.

  The Strangers: An orchestration of growing disquiet and horror as a y
oung couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) are set upon by a trio of masked psychotics. It starts slowly and builds from unease to terror to horror. In the same class as Jeepers Creepers, but a little more existential: Why is this happening? Just because it is. Like cancer, stroke, or someone going the wrong way on the turnpike at 110 miles an hour.

  These may not be your favorites, because none of us have quite the same fear receptors. What I'm trying to say--and to show by example--is that cinematic horror is a potent art form, and there's a lot more going on under the surface than immediately meets the eye. Therein lies its many dark pleasures. And the next time your parents or your significant other ask you why you want to go and see that crap, tell them this: Stephen King sent me. He told me to look for the good ones, because they're the ones that speak to what's good in the human heart.

  And, of course, to what isn't. Because those are the things you have to look out for.

  Forenote to the Original Edition

  This book is in your hands as the result of a telephone call made to me in November of 1978. I was at that time teaching creative writing and a couple of literature courses at the University of Maine at Orono and working, in whatever spare time I could find, on the final draft of a novel, Firestarter, which will have been published by now. The call was from Bill Thompson, who had edited my first five books (Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Night Shift, and The Stand) in the years 1974-1978. More important than that, Bill Thompson, then an editor at Doubleday, was the first person connected with the New York publishing establishment to read my earlier, unpublished work with sympathetic interest. He was that all-important first contact that new writers wait and wish for . . . and so seldom find.

  Doubleday and I came to a parting of the ways following The Stand, and Bill also moved on--he became the senior editor at Everest House. Because we had become friends as well as colleagues over the years of our association, we stayed in touch, had the occasional lunch together . . . and the occasional drinking bout as well. The best one was maybe during the All-Star baseball game in July of 1978, which we watched on a big-screen TV over innumerable beers in an Irish pub somewhere in New York. There was a sign over the backbar which advertised an EARLY BIRD HAPPY HOUR, 8-10 A.M. with all drinks priced at fifty cents. When I asked the barkeep what sort of clientele wandered in at 8:15 A.M. for a rum collins or a gin rickey, he fixed me with a baleful smile, wiped his hands on his apron, and said: "College boys . . . like you."

  But on this November night not long after Halloween, Bill called me and said, "Why don't you do a book about the entire horror phenomenon as you see it? Books, movies, radio, TV, the whole thing. We'll do it together, if you want."

  The concept intrigued and frightened me at the same time. Intrigued because I've been asked time and time again why I write that stuff, why people want to read it or go to the flicks to see it--the paradox seeming to be, why are people willing to pay good money to be made extremely uncomfortable? I had spoken to enough groups on the subject and written enough words on the subject (including a rather lengthy foreword to my collection of short stories, Night Shift) to make the idea of a Final Statement on the subject an attractive one. Forever after, I thought, I could choke off the subject by saying: if you want to know what I think about horror, there's this book I wrote on the subject. Read that. It's my Final Statement on the clockwork of the horror tale.

  It frightened me because I could see the work stretching out over years, decades, centuries. If one were to begin with Grendel and Grendel's mum and work up from there, even the Reader's Digest Condensed Book version would encompass four volumes.

  Bill's counter was that I should restrict myself to the last thirty years or so, with a few side trips to explore the roots of the genre. I told him I would think about it, and I did. I thought about it hard and long. I had never attempted a book-length nonfiction project, and the idea was intimidating. The thought of having to tell the truth was intimidating. Fiction, after all, is lies and more lies . . . which is why the Puritans could never really get behind it and go with the flow. In a work of fiction, if you get stuck you can always just make something up or back up a few pages and change something around. With nonfiction, there's all that bothersome business of making sure your facts are straight, that the dates jibe, that the names are spelled right . . . and worst of all, it means being out front. A novelist, after all, is a hidden creature; unlike the musician or the actor, he may pass on any street unremarked. His Punch-and-Judy creations strut across the stage while he himself remains unseen. The writer of nonfiction is all too visible.

  Still, the idea had its attractions. I began to understand how the loonies who preach in Hyde Park ("the nutters," as our British cousins call them) must feel as they drag their soapboxes into position and prepare to mount them. I thought of having pages and pages in which to ride all my hobbyhorses--"And to be paid for it!" he cried, rubbing his hands together and cackling madly. I thought of a lit class I would be teaching the following semester titled Themes in Supernatural Literature. But most of all I thought that here was an opportunity to talk about a genre I love, an opportunity few plain writers of popular fiction are ever offered.

  As for my Themes in Supernatural Literature course: on that November night Bill called, I was sitting at the kitchen table with a beer, trying to dope out a syllabus for it . . . and musing aloud to my wife that I was shortly going to be spending a lot of time in front of a lot of people talking about a subject in which I had previously only felt my way instinctively, like a blind man. Although many of the books and films discussed in the pages which follow are now taught routinely in colleges, I read the books, saw the films, and formed my conclusions pretty much on my own, with no texts or scholarly papers of any type to guide my thoughts. It seemed that very shortly I would get to see the true color of my thoughts for the first time.

  That may seem a strange phrase. Further along in this book I have written my belief that no one is exactly sure of what they mean on any given subject until they have written their thoughts down; I similarly believe that we have very little understanding of what we have thought until we have submitted those thoughts to others who are at least as intelligent as ourselves. So, yeah, I was nervous at the prospect of stepping into that Barrows Hall classroom, and I spent too much of an otherwise lovely vacation in St. Thomas that year agonizing over Stoker's use of humor in Dracula and the paranoia quotient of Jack Finney's Body Snatchers.

  In the days following Bill's call, I began to think more and more that if my series of talks (I don't quite have balls enough to call them lectures) on the horror-supernatural-gothic field seemed well received--by myself as well as by my students--then perhaps writing a book on the subject would complete the circle. Finally I called Bill and told him I would try to write the book. And as you can see, I did.

  All this is by way of acknowledging Bill Thompson, who created the concept of this book. The idea was and is a good one. If you like the book which follows, thank Bill, who thought it up. If you don't, blame the author, who screwed it up.

  It is also an acknowledgment of those one hundred Eh-90 students who listened patiently (and sometimes forgivingly) as I worked out my ideas. As a result of that class, many of these ideas cannot even be said to be my own, for they were modified during class discussions, challenged, and, in many cases, changed.

  During that class, an English professor at the University of Maine, Burton Hatlen, came in to lecture one day on Stoker's Dracula, and you will find that his insightful thoughts on horror as a potent part of a myth-pool in which we all bathe communally also form a part of this book's spine. So, thanks, Burt.

  My agent, Kirby McCauley, a fantasy/horror fan and unregenerate Minnesotan, also deserves thanks for reading this manuscript, pointing out errors of fact, arguing conclusions . . . and most of all for sitting up with me one fine drunk night in the U.N. Plaza Hotel in New York and helping me to make up the list of recommended horror films during the years 1950-1980 which forms Appe
ndix I of this book. I owe Kirby for more than that, much more, but for now that will have to do.

  I've also drawn upon a good many outside sources during the course of my work in Danse Macabre, and have tried as conscientiously as I can to acknowledge these on a pay-as-you-go basis, but I must mention a few that were invaluable: Carlos Clarens's seminal work on the horror film, An Illustrated History of the Horror Film; the careful episode-by-episode rundown of The Twilight Zone in Starlog; The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, edited by Peter Nicholls, which was particularly helpful in making sense (or trying to, anyway) of the works of Harlan Ellison and of the TV program The Outer Limits; and countless other odd byways that I happened to wander down.

  Lastly, thanks are due to the writers--Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Peter Straub, and Anne Rivers Siddons among them--who were kind enough to answer my letters of enquiry and to provide information about the genesis of the works discussed here. Their voices provide a dimension to this work which would otherwise be sadly lacking.

  I guess that's about it . . . except I wouldn't want to leave you with any idea whatsoever that I believe what follows even approaches perfection. I suspect plenty of errors still remain in spite of careful combing; I can only hope that they are not too serious or too many. If you find such errors, I hope you'll write to me and point them out, so I can make corrections in any future editions. And, you know, I hope you have some fun with this book. Nosh and nibble at the corners or read the mother straight through, but enjoy. That's what it's for, as much as any of the novels. Maybe there will be something here to make you think or make you laugh or just make you mad. Any of those reactions would please me. Boredom, however, would be a bummer.