The Criteria: Horror Stripped of Humour

So, thinking more about the criteria of these films. In order to reduce the near endless possibilities, I immediately excluded any horror movies that leaned too heavily on humour. Not because I believe humour is inappropriate in horror films—in fact, I've often said there's a direct kinship between the two emotions, laughter and terror, both of them allied in the release of tension, both so reliant on mood and timing, and both at heart so utterly serious—but because humour by its nature will leach away some of the more disturbing elements I'm attempting to privilege here.

Think of it like this: the horror/humour/jump scare alliance is akin to the funhouse at the carnival, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's your goal at the time, in the moment. Everyone loves the carny. But the movies I'm trying to find a common thread for here belong in the killing field, the charnel house, the autopsy room, the psych ward, the torture chamber, the impromptu pit dug by a human freak—real places breeding with infection and immersed in dread. I want disquiet, distress, despair, wretchedness, the bleak certainty of approaching desolation. Horror, in other words. Unadorned, pure, essential horror. Yet somehow artful or honest, at least. Even beautiful on occasion. Certainly something that stays with you, that you worry at, and turn over in your mind like some arcane puzzle. 

Sadly, the no-humour criteria immediately eliminates some of my favourites in the genre, including "the original Evil Dead films; the incredible, insane Reanimator; zombie parodies as tenuously related as Return of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead; and the stone-cold classic, An American Werewolf in London," as I put it in my inaugural Facebook post on this (albeit without the more grammatically pleasing semicolons). And many more besides. 

Anyway, let's get started. I'll post around four capsules at a time, beginning at number 40, and try to include clips and images as I go. Feel free to comment if you stumble on any of this in your travels through the brackish backwaters of the interwebs, but it's okay if you don't, as I'm doing this primarily for myself, to freeze in time a very personal, even idiosyncratic sensibility I don't expect a single other human to share, quite honestly.

Forty Shades of Terror

A few weeks ago, mainly for idle fun born of a misguided sense that my opinion even matters in an overcrowded world, I began to post a sporadic list of my forty favourite horror movies on my Facebook timeline. And not simply horror movies, but a specific kind of horror movie: one that stays under your skin or burrows inside your psyche and won't leave, one that truly disturbs, unsettles or frightens you... or, more accurately (since it's my list), me. I also wanted these films to burst, blur, and mock genre boundaries, somewhat. To be controversial in at least one sense or another.

After a while it occurred to me that this list, as fun and provocative as it was, would end up scrolling off and eventually become lost in the corporate purgatory of Facebook's dodgy, disposable theology. So I grabbed these little capsule reviews and impressionistic thumbnails with a view to reproducing and even building on them right here on my blog where, in theory, they will live a longer and more fulfilling life, even after their teeth wear down or fall from their drooling mouths.

But wait. This is a writing blog, not a movie blog, I hear you grouse. And not unfairly, either. Okay, somewhat lamely, I will justify it by arguing that if—by my writing—I can highlight and illuminate these cinematic gems for others, then the holy act of writing will have played its part in the greater scheme of sacred artistic endeavour. Or something. Look, it's a symbiotic thing, kind of like something you might encounter in the frigid interstellar void that crawls within your very DNA and begins to slowly chew and tear its way back out again...

So anyway, watch this space. You know, the one where no one can hear you scream. (See what I did there? Shut up.)

My Own Private Cannery Row

© Tracy Prescott MacGregor

Rarely do I write poetry. Even more rarely do I allow it exposure. Not entirely sure why. I revere great poetry, but I find it to be a rare species: elusive and golden, hiding in shadows or, occasionally, in plain sight.

So here's a poem, no more fanfare than that.

My Own Private Cannery Row

"Accept loss forever." — Jack Kerouac

Here I endure my own private cannery row.

It crackles and breeds in

the dark parts of

an unruly heart—corrugated sheets layered over 

smoky post-afternoons, 

heavy enough with loss

and the memory of loss

and the fear of its return

and traffic

and iron

dragging gull

flocks in slick patterns against a volcano sun.

Twenty-first century. Under a bridge,

five slow crawdaddies move

in murky shallows 

sluggishly annihilating an 

immense fish head, 

while Steinbeck sleeps

and, worse, will never again wake.

Makeshift guido, cursed on a contrary shore, 

adrift off a refugee coast, face

boasting reflected orange 

yet

this smudged collar's powder-blue and new-sewn

with my fugitive name (upset) in gold below it:

Beloved. 

Strong. 

Among.

The Woods.

Say it. Woods await those

who fear themselves

lost, and lost 

indeed

is my new locale.

I might even call it

sorrowhood.

Plus this:

Names are potent, yet

the cogent grain of twilight welcomes smut,

refracting it for such long

drawn-out breathless

prayer flag horizons.

Music, too.

Blue jazz in a wineglass, Hendrix, bluegrass,

pure smartass, rhythmic

tantric belligerence.

Hopper beckons, eyes downcast. Lonely as hell—

old, weird America, less 

permanent than it believes and now

utterly unnerved.

Primary. Planar. Endless

sunflower acres.

We've come so far.

A thick-framed window, sunlight

ambergold, pouring like

fresh-squeezed motor oil, dripping from a citrus sky, 

easing us toward some

inarticulate lie: Desolation row, go, desperation

ground, loud, discovery known, flown,

deception pass, past, passed

below, ago, just so...

We cutouts tacked as

silhouettes. Transfixed somehow

with the mundane interplay of 

pristine fonts on 

the Grocery Outlet sign, where

we value our view; our warm, fawn 

thriftstore pact.

But come, listen, lookit.

Gather the lambkins, reel in the nets,

trawl the depths and count up the lost, 

bake the bricks, haul away the lumber,

give your day the ending it awaits,

its fitting close. Stumble past those who

would erode you, layer by

sheet, skin by cover, yet

keep on walking,

stumbling aloud, 

humbled,

cowed.

Agog. Gaga.

And keep your finger on

the fuck you trigger.

Especially that. Especially that.

Let the soft burr of a charcoal evening

smear the essence of your face like an artist

learning shading, blurring, obscuring.

Rendering.

Recurring.

Sudden evening quiet. The warm preemptive air. Sacred. 

Birds play then mute and the colours pulse dark, anticipatory,

so loaded, and indeed so

goddamned holy.

Abandoned flea markets,

green shoots and street scene clarity,

murmurs, a caress of freaks,

waterfowl feeding.

Someone in a waterfront townhouse,

on some higher balcony, 

is picking a banjo; pure

vibrations in the wires

aching with backyard echoes, 

the sound a trojan horse for a

renewed assault of grief, 

while your final drama speaks 

of absent fathers, trembling hands, 

half-gleaned urges, mother throes, 

white-hot and contradictory and 

wholly lonely: these

secret 

desert

fires.

From Twitter To Storify

My first ever Twitter chat was a wash, as Twitter happened to choose that day—almost that exact time frame, in fact—for one of its warp core meldowns. Which was a shame, since it happened to be on September 12, one day after the anniversary of the event my little book is about. Everything about that book seems serendipitous. So, we rescheduled for Thursday the 26th instead and it went off without a technical hitch. It was an interesting process, one's responses to questions severely limited by the 140-characters rule, but having to answer so succinctly is an oddly satisfying challenge... a far cry from the interview I did with Richard Godwin a year ago. The contrast is almost funny. Yet both enjoyable in completely different ways.

Anyway, Kathy Meis of Bublish turned the whole thing into something chronologically followable on Storify, which you can read here if you're so inclined. Screenshot below.

The Lonely Room

Every Friday, JD "Dan" Mader opens his blog, Unemployed Imagination, to impromptu flash fiction writing, a generous gift to his fellow writers. Whether you participate or lurk outside admiring the entries, it's always a fun playground. This week, I started a piece and it kind of took over and, embarrassingly, it went way beyond the two minutes of allotted time. But it said something slightly different about something frightening and sad, in a way I hadn't captured before, so I thought I'd better reproduce it here, edited slightly, on this poor neglected blog of mine. So, here's "The Lonely Room":

It's like being trapped inside a dirty white room with only one door: the glare of the fluorescents scratches your corneas; the random, rhythmless drip of a tap somewhere keeps you from sleeping or even relaxing. The lights make dying electric sounds. There are things in the dim corners; terrible things. You wonder if the room will run out of oxygen. Your heart rate picks up, tethering itself to this new anxiety. But then it in turn goes away; you forget to be scared and wonder instead whether you're already dead. Then, there are the scenes on the stained walls, projected by a pitiless torturer known as nostalgia: happy scenes that feel like they could sever your aorta; once-shining things now like shards. They cut and you bleed. You are in this room every day. For weeks. Months. Bleeding, in appalling pain or feeling nothing at all. You must be dead, you think. Then, one day, of no particular calendrical significance, you stand and look through the single dirty pane of glass and see a small boy walking by and another child on a bicycle is riding like a neutrino in a collider toward the first child and you think some terrible cosmic catastrophe will occur, but the boy spies the bike and sidesteps it, and…. that is all. The threat is past, has passed. You once knew how to do that and now you know again; you know to ready yourself for the assaults, that they will be coming—of that you can be sure—but you can roll away, use their momentum, sidestep them, remove their sting, deflect the worst. At which point, astonished, you realize the door had never even been locked.