Welcome to my Nightmare

It’s ironic that the scariest thought I’ve had watching scary movies lately is that none of it scares me. Forgive me if that seems a bit contrived, but it is true. I’ve become jaded. Nothing gets under my skin anymore like it used to. After more than two decades of watching just about any film that you’ve been warned against, I’ve somehow become immune to the charms and thrills of a genre that has always held a strange hold on my heart.

This is not a rant against the new stuff that’s being put out: I actually think movies like An American Haunting and the remake of The Amityville Horror are well-made and pretty entertaining. But they’re just not scary. Really.

This is not nostalgia either. Revisiting old classics like Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or even The Exorcist leaves one with the impression that they’re museum exhibits. You can recognize their virtues and their place in history but nothing ever trespasses the barrier of the screen – you are left barely moved, unscathed. Gore as well loses its luster quite quickly. Perhaps as a last-ditch attempt I dug up possibly one of sickest films in my video collection.

Nekromantic (1988) is the story of a mortuary worker who brings home body parts from unclaimed accident victims. His marriage is cold and lifeless and he decides to bring home a stiff corpse to heat things up with the wife. Trouble starts when it turns out that the missus likes the other fella better. (Well, I think it’s male – she uses what looks like a broom handle to proxy for the missing member.) Some of the horrors featured include (and I quote The Aurum Film Encyclopedia of Horror): "The real killing and skinning of a rabbit… a Romero-esque decapitation with the head severed above the lowered lip rather than the more usual neck, clips from a sado-porn snuff movie, an eyeball licked out of its socket, much fondling of internal organs, the murder of a cat, the hero coming blood from a fake penis as he disembowels himself, and a droning synthesizer score." (Italics mine.)

Seeing it again, I was dismayed. Its own makers describe it as "corpse-f**king Art" and although there was plenty of the former it could’ve disposed of any attempt of the latter. Artsy touches like Freudian-damaged dream sequences and slow-motion frolics through a green landscape outweigh any shock value of the nasty bits, rather like Un Chien Andalou remade by Ron Howard. (Same thing happens when an otherwise brilliant album of brutal riffage is broken by a requisite power ballad. Ugh!) For someone who loves the genre (and gratuitous cinematic violence), it truly unsettled me that I was bothered by the details – roughly the equivalent of not being able to get off on a pin-up because the styling of the model’s hair was not right. But aside from the flippant, this development did not bode well.

Although I’m not that much of a fan of Shakespeare, I certainly appreciate lines like the following from Macbeth: "I am in blood/Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,/ Returning were as tedious as go o’er." Judging from recent Hollywood offerings like Eli Roth’s Hostel and George Romero’s Land of the Dead, the mainstream is opening its doors – much like the elevator in Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel – to the bloodbath. Indeed, these are savage new times… and – horror of horrors! – I can only greet it with a snide remark and a yawn. What’s wrong with me?

Hanging out with my friend Rhea at the Fully Booked store in Rockwell’s Power Plant where she works, I asked her to name a scary book. She demurred, finally answering, "I don’t read that stuff." Chiding her, I took it upon myself to show her the plethora of material on their very shelves. "It’s Halloween," I told her, "It’s just wrong if you don’t even try to spook yourself even just for a bit.

"Plus, I don’t think that someone who does marketing for a bookstore should be ignorant of what’s on its shelves that’s just perfect for the season."

With a groan and a last bite out of her crêpe at the Press Café, she followed me back to Fully Booked’s fiction section and I introduced her to a rogue’s gallery of authors and books. She was still resistant at first but then she became a more willing victim as I talked about several works and writers like Clive Barker (Damnation Game, the Books of Blood series), Robert Bloch (Psycho) and Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, Stir of Echoes). But that was the only introduction I gave her and with my best Vincent Price impression I produced a cape and led her deeper into the bowels of… the store. Just like a lamb to the slaughter.

The Face of Another By Kobo Abe

At the very start of the main fiction section of Fully Booked, there’s a group of books by cult author Kobo Abe. Frequently branded as Japan’s answer to Franz Kafka, Abe employs conventions in literary genres such as science fiction and mystery but distinguishes it with an intellectual weight that transcends its pulp origins. He is most famous for his 1962 novel Woman in the Dunes (and its lyrical film adaptation) that can be described as an existential tragedy. The Face of Another (1964) is his closest effort (available in English at least) to a purer form of horror. Losing his face in a laboratory accident, a scientist decides to construct a life-like mask for his keloid-scarred skin. After it’s completed, he sets out to seduce his wife but without revealing who he really is. Ultimately, the conclusion is the greatest horror of them all.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs By Agatha Christie

No doubt the quintessential English mystery writer, Agatha Christie is responsible for creating icons in the genre like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. In my opinion, her best literary creation was the husband-and-wife tandem of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. They appeared in five novels by Christie and they were the British equivalent of Dashiel Hammett’s popular sleuthing couple Nick and Nora Charles (from The Thin Man). Visiting Tommy’s senile Aunt Ada at a nursing home, the already retired couple encounters an eccentric old lady who disappears weeks later, leaving no clue to her whereabouts but for a painting of a house near a bridge. Tracking it down, Tuppence stumbles upon an unsolved chain of child murders that somehow is linked by the house. Fans of Christie agree that this novel is somewhat of a departure, inclined towards the gothic and the sinister. Comfy, armchair horror.

The Cellar By Richard Laymon

If there’s one author that inspires much divisiveness but not much debate in horror fiction, it’s the late Richard Laymon. Far too often, one reads blurbs on paperback covers claiming that the accompanying novel goes "for the jugular." Hardly has any book with this claim ever managed to cut deep enough through the layers of fat that clutch my neck. Laymon does – and The Cellar slices all the way through. Labeled as depraved and morally reprehensible, Laymon’s tale concerns a small town tourist spot called Beast House in Malcasa Point – famous for several unsolved grisly murders. Donna has just found out that her abusive husband Roy has been released from prison and decides to flee into nowhere with their daughter – his favorite victim. She falls in love with a mercenary named Judgment who has a job to kill whatever is in the Beast House. Chapters that vividly chronicle Roy’s criminal acts like murder and rape seem written to set up the theme that "evil in the human heart is worse than anything the supernatural can come up with." The Cellar isn’t smug in that regard – Laymon agrees with Lovecraft: the universe is a far stranger place than we give it credit for. Only one thing seems certain – it’s out to f**k you over. The Cellar is stark, brutal and poignant, like something Hemingway would’ve written if he were writing for pulps like Weird Tales.

Museum of Terror By Junji Ito

Comics have a rich tradition of horror. From the infamous EC comics to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, the medium is actually second only to the cinema in propagating our most disturbing myths. Manga is Japan’s term for the form and it is not surprising that – given the trademark brilliance and innovation of its artists – it produces such a wayward talent like Junji Ito. Primarily popular in the West for his series Uzumaki, Ito made his name in Japan with a serial about an immortal Lolita called Tomie – from whose name the series takes its title. The premise is simple enough: she is so beautiful that she drives men to do her bidding and, ultimately, kill her; and no matter what, she will always return. However, despite adhering to that given formula, Ito’s tales compiled in this omnibus paperback remain unpredictable to the very end – even if it is a foregone conclusion. To appropriate Henry James, Ito can be relied upon in each story to give yet another "turn of the screw." My co-chair at the Neil Gaiman/FullyBooked Graphic/Fiction awards and one of the country’s foremost comics scholars, Ramon de Veyra, has commented that Ito’s work is probably the only comic that’s made him physically recoil with dread while reading. Trust me, a guy with that hair to manage and groom in the morning ain’t easily frightened.

Ultimately, Rhea seemed convinced when I told her the store might consider acquiring my services as a sort of walking tour guide through the Rockwell branch. She acquiesced, with a laugh, that I was indeed talking sense. "I’m glad you’re happy," I told her while picking up and flipping through the pages of Colin Wilson’s Mysteries, the sequel to his paranormal study The Occult. "Now, about my fee…" For the nth time this afternoon, the look my words elicited was one of true horror, as if a sliver of ice had slipped into the base of her skull. Dejected, I could only slink away as if standing on a dolly track with the tender voice of my favorite singer Champ in my head, singing another pop-rock classic that I imagine is like the sound of the abyss burping.