Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part VIII

Fear causes us to regress into a childish mindset, and we have seen how this has been exploited in horror and the gothic. A social fear, such as an invasion or isolation from the modern world as seen in The Mist[1] scares the adult mind, causing us to regress back to childhood. Once we are trapped in that mental environment, we are assaulted by things that don’t scare us as adults, but did as children. This is seen in all the works studied, overgrown insects are present in The Mist, a spectral ghost that represents death in The Masque of The Red Death[2], and monsters in both Dagon[3] and The Call of The Cthulhu[4]. Although as mentioned previously, Lovecraft was criticised for his lack of characterisation, with the reasoning that a ‘good horror writer is a good character writer’[5], it is this lack of characterisation that makes the work of Poe and Lovecraft so timeless. It is easy for a contemporary reader to substitute themselves into the story at the expense of the narrator as they are given no defining characteristics. No traits or interests that would seem foreign to a reader in a hundred years are present, making them relatable no matter what year the reader is living in. Modern horror writers such as Stephen King retain this basic formula, but much like Roger Corman, are forced to improve characterisation in his novels to get the reader to invest in a story of that length. Interestingly King has written several collections of short stories, like Poe and Lovecraft before him. Only time will tell if these retain more horror for future generations than his novels.

The problem with analysing the cause of fear is that what scares us is unique to each individual. Studies can be done and theories can be made, but what frightens one may not frighten another. Artists who make their craft in the horror genre draw from popular fears when choosing what to implement in their work. Obscure phobias are seldom featured in the media, as this would narrow the target audience, limiting potential revenue, and revenue is the most important factor as far as contemporary publishers and production companies are concerned. Fortunately childhood and social fears have remained fairly constant throughout history, and are unlikely to change in the future. Timothy Evans stated that horror is ‘predicated upon feelings of insecurity brought about by cultural change, and that life as we know it is increasingly under assault by forces beyond our control’[6]. Man and technology continue to evolve, never staying still, meaning that every generation in existence will have felt this way. This enables those who create tales of horror to take these fears as a base for their stories, and simply substitute different settings and roots of fear into their stories to satisfy and terrify a contemporary market, as evidenced by the fact that Poe is still in print and influencing modern writers and film makers, over a century after his death.

 

We are left with the question of where horror artists of the 21^st century can find inspiration with which to create fear. We have seen that films don’t necessarily have the same staying power as literature. Modern cinema is too young however for us to truly assess how well films from the last fifty years will be regarded by future generations. Although even if these films are discarded in years to come, there are plenty of other places for us to get our fix of horror. Emerging forms of entertainment have embraced the genre, literature and film continue to produce horror, and it is even visible in music, with bands such as Black Sabbath and The Misfits drawing inspiration from the genre, basing their songs on horror films. Horror is also popular genre in the video game industry, with Silent Hill[7] and Resident Evil[8] being but two popular franchises that place the gamer directly into the role of the protagonist, causing them to experience the fear directly. If Lovecraft’s writing is prescient, there is nothing to say that any of the other texts discussed will become so in time. Some social fears may change, but most remain constant. Fear is a base emotion, and as a result what causes this fear is usually base too. Once we are reduced to the childish mindset fear causes, the horror artist can easily beset us with things we fear as children, as much like social fears, what scares a child is likely remain similar no matter how far into the future we go. Horror is timeless, as Lovecraft said, ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear’[9] (p. 2) and the horror tale will evolve side by side with the mediums we enjoy it on.

[1] The Mist (2007) Film. Directed by FRANK DARABONT. USA: Dimension Films.

[2] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 269-73

[3]H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 1-6

[4] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002) p. 139-69

[5] G.W. Thomas ‘Scare the heck out of your readers—and other horror-writing tips.’ Writer, 121, 4 (2008), p. 15

[6] Timothy H. Evans, ‘A Last Defense against the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft’. Journal of Folklore Research, 42, 1 (2005), p. 100

[7] Silent Hill (1999) Video Game. Japan: Konami

[8] Resident Evil (1996) Video Game. Japan: Capcom

[9] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 2

 

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part VII

The Masque of the Red Death is a 1964 film starring Vincent Price as the evil Prince Prospero. The Poe story is a mere five pages long, so expanding that into a ninety minute film required the writer of the screen play to insert some new elements into the narrative. The narrative here is interpolated, the new material required to make a film of the master narrative joins seamlessly with the information we are given by Poe. The vast majority of this additional material focuses on Prospero and portrays him as a truly evil Devil worshipper. Played by the ‘suavely menacing’[1] Vincent Price, from the opening, Prospero is portrayed as a despicable person. Roger Corman makes his adaptation of Poe’s tale a commentary for the purpose of film. Corman has to alter the narrative to give us a protagonist in order to keep the story interesting for the audience. In the short story, Poe refrains from passing judgement on the Prince. Although the idea of isolating yourself from your people in order to survive while they suffer would seem evil, Poe does not imply this is the case. Nor does he state the opposite, saying only that Prospero gathers a thousand people from his court and ‘retired to the deep seclusion of one of the castellated abbeys.’ (p. 269). The opening scene sees him ride into a village neighbouring his castle, and threatening to kill two of the villagers that oppose him, before ordering for the entire village to be ‘burnt to the ground’ after discovering someone suffering from the red death. Prospero offers no sanctuary to the villagers and simply leaves them to burn in their own homes. This is one area in which the film betters the book. Lovecraft said ‘Poe excels in incidents and broad narrative effects rather than in character drawing.’[2] Vincent Price makes Prince Prospero his own, creating a truly horrible character that creates emotion in the audience. When he finally gets what he deserves, the audience cheers his demise. As the credits roll however, the audience is challenged to ‘look inside himself,’[3] recalling a technique visible in Poe’s prose, leaving an uncomfortable feeling in the audience as they leave the cinema.

One of the main tactics used by the director to create fear is to carefully choose the characters which are placed in danger. Throughout the film, it is women and children who are placed in danger more frequently than their male counterparts. It is usually the scorn of Prospero himself that is the cause of their anguish. When Prospero learns that his wife has betrayed him he orders one of his trained hawks to attack her until she bleeds to death in front of the congregation at the party. This is just one of many scenes where Prospero is built up to be seen as evil as possible. Although it is argued ‘discerning writers often evoke the fear response through the power of suggestion rather than with graphic descriptions’[4], this is difficult to pull off on the big screen, and the violence committed against Prospero’s wife is certainly graphic. However it works to great effect in this instance as it is the only real scene of violence in the film, and contrasted to the other graphically tame crimes in the film it leaves a lasting impression. This results in the audience feeling ‘drawn into the violence, we want it to be over because it lingers too long.’[5] However the scene does not last forever; and herein lies one of the problems with horror on screen ‘to see, to endure, such a shocking spectacle of violence enables us to overcome the horror, to enjoy it and expel it in a moral sense’[6]. Actually seeing these events is scary at the time, but films have helped us become desensitised to such horrors. Coming at the start of the final act of the film, it raises the fear level amongst the viewer as they know events are building to a crescendo.

 

Suspense is used to great effect at the end of the film. The Red Death appears at Prospero’s masquerade ball, and after a lengthy scene of the prince trying to catch up with him, they have a confrontation in the black room. Prospero is lead to believe that he is the only one who will survive by the personified Red Death, however when he is told that he too shall perish, he panics. Not knowing the face of death becomes too much for Prospero, and he rips the mask off his tormentor, only to reveal his own face. This is an interesting technique, as though it is not used in the hypotext, it runs with the common theme of Poe’s work that forces the audience to look at themselves and their own reactions to the narrative.

 

Film has a tendency of aging quicker than literature. Prose creates an individual image in each of our own minds. Film has to rely on special effects, cinematic techniques and even the quality of the print to create an image. The Masque of the Red Death has unfortunately aged faster on film than it ever could in print. Though The Mist is relatively young compared to the aforementioned, it is hard not to imagine it also ageing to its detriment in decades to come. There is nothing stopping either film from being enjoyed decades after release, movies such as The Exorcist[7] and The Shining[8] are still regarded by some as scary despite being released over thirty years ago. Yet social fears change over time, and as image in film is definitive, it is harder to reapply changing fears to the same text. As popular as Vincent Price was in the horror genre, his acting, whilst remaining sinister at points, has an exaggerated style that could garner more laughter than fear from a modern audience. The same can be said of the special effects in The Mist. These effects will not be as advanced in decades to come, and may look unrealistic to an audience in future decades. Again this would result in the audience failing to take them seriously. Both films use techniques popular in horror; the isolation of the shoppers and Propsero’s revellers, and the threat of something which we have no control over and little understanding of. However the fear created by these texts can be taken away over time a lot quicker than the fear instilled in us by writers such as Poe, Lovecraft and King.

 

[1] Peter B. Flint, ‘Vincent Price, Noted Actor Of Dark Roles, Dies at 82’. New York Times, 27, 10 (1993), p. 23

[2] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 23

[3] Richard Badenhausen, ‘Fear and Trembling in Literature’. Studies in Short Fiction, 29, 4 (1992), p. 491

[4] John Edward Ames, ‘The art of terror: Tap into readers’ fears with 5 techniques for an emotionally rich story’. Writer, 123, 5 (2010), p.22

[5] Fred Botting, ‘Future Horror (the Redundancy of Gothic)’. Gothic Studies, 1, 2 (1999), p. 147

[6] Ibid.

[7] The Exorcist (1973) Film. Directed by WILLIAM FRIEDKIN, USA: Warner Bros. Pictures

[8] The Shining (1980) Film. Directed by STANLEY KUBRICK, USA: Warner Bros. Pictures

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part IV

Poe’s stories focus on realistic fears all humans have. HP Lovecraft said ‘Poe…worked with an analytical knowledge of terror’s true sources which doubled the force of his narratives’[1]. This is shown in the previous two stories. We are all vulnerable to disease, and the older we get the more some of us will worry about losing our sanity due to our advancing age. Poe’s frequent use of the uncanny in his literature helps to exaggerate these fears and elevate their reality within the mind of the reader. Poe largely neglects his characters; instead he ‘excels in incidents and broad narrative effects,’[2] this is the strength of his work. The reader can easily place themselves in the story in the narrators place. This allows them to almost experience the fears first hand. Poe’s stories have infiltrated pop culture, the television show The Simpsons[3] adapted his poem The Raven as part of a Halloween special, and they have also referenced his other works in various episodes. A film is to be released this year entitled The Raven[4] but featuring Poe himself as a character forced to help the police when a serial killer starts copying his work. Poe’s techniques have made his literature timeless. The grounded fears he uses to inspire terror are however, in contrast to a big admirer of Poe’s work; HP Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is a divisive figure in the literary world. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction[5] omits all mention of an American writer who shaped the world of gothic and horror as we know it today. In stark contrast to this, Stephen King claims that Lovecraft ‘Opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me.’[6]

Lovecraft’s fiction is most widely known for his Cthulhu mythos. The mythos is a collection of stories concerning monsters of unimaginable size, described by some scholars (but never Lovecraft himself) as ‘Elder Gods’. The mere sight of these creatures is enough to drive anyone who beholds them to madness. However this mythology is a product of the media, one that S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz describe as an ‘anti-mythology’ in the H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. They go on to state that

the careful readers of his mythology will realise that it is no mythology at all, but a cycle of events intended to be perceived by only the more primitive or impressionable characters as real in the context of fiction[7]

 

Lovecraft’s fiction consisted mostly of short stories published in pulp magazines. These stories explore the human condition, with five key themes central to his work: madness, isolation, unfathomable horror, human insignificance, and the question of whether we can fully accept the story being told to us by a narrator who has first-hand experience of one or more of the previous four themes. Through an exploration of two of his most famous works, it will become apparent how Lovecraft effectively creates fear.

Madness rears its ugly head throughout the works of Lovecraft. The unfortunate narrator of each of his tales usually has experienced an inexplicable horror that has stolen away his sanity, leaving him to pen a cautionary tale warning the reader not to follow in his footsteps. The first-hand recollection that we are given as a reader makes the story more personal. Instead of hearing a narrative from a third person perspective where the audience is distanced from the action, the first person style makes it appear as though the protagonist is writing a letter directly to the reader. This direct address immediately forges a connection between reader and protagonist. The first person narrative used by Lovecraft gives his protagonist a direct passage to the reader, forcing them to empathise with the protagonist as they are seeing the narrative from his perspective.

The question of just how much of what we read can be believed recurs frequently with Lovecraft. His tales are so extravagant, to the point that his narrators have gone insane. This raises some doubt as to whether the protagonists have experienced these events first hand, or whether the stories are merely a product of their madness. In Dagon[8] potential seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of our protagonist are placed immediately, with him writing ‘I am writing this under appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more’ (p. 1). It is quickly revealed to the reader that our unfortunate narrator has been on medication to help him cope with the horror he is about to reveal to us, and he has exhausted his supply. This instantly tells the reader that we are not dealing with someone in a healthy mental condition, subtly raising doubt about what we are about to be told, a technique also used by Lovecraft in The Music of Erich Zann[9] . Lovecraft then proceeds to tell the story of what happened from the viewpoint of the narrator. This structure is extremely common in Lovecraft; an introduction from our narrator hinting at what is to come, the story itself, and finally it is revealed how these events have negatively impacted the protagonists’ life.

Dagon follows the aforementioned structure. Once the story has been told, the writing style continues to be a stream of consciousness, with the writer hearing the sounds he heard on his terrible journey across the ocean, and ending on ‘The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!’ (p. 6) This chilling conclusion is extremely effective. We can assume the reader is horrified by the fact that the creature our narrator saw out in the middle of the ocean has made it to Lovecraft’s fictional American town of Arkham, however as this is the last sentence of the story, we are never quite sure what happens to our narrator. The narrator has experienced Burke’s sublime[10], he is unable to complete the story due to the fear he is experiencing. It is implied that he is to be killed in some terrible way by Dagon, but it is possible he managed to throw himself out of his window as planned. There is also the third possibility that his insanity got the better of him and he was unable to write anymore. However as he has stopped writing, rendered helpless by his emotions, drawing on Burke’s theory of the sublime, we will never know.

However, on further reflection, given what we have been told, and the fact that although based within a fictional town, the story takes place in contemporary America, doubts are raised about the authenticity of our narrators story. The withdrawal from heavy use of valium, coupled with the narrators’ previous allusions to having visions of the creature, presents the theory that he has imagined the creature at his door. His screams of ‘The window!’ could either mean that the creature has appeared at his window, or that he is trying to reach the window in order to plummet to his death. Whilst the creature is described as being ‘gigantic’ (p. 5) if he can see the creature at the window, the likelihood of him not noticing the creature until it was so close is slim. This enigmatic ending however only adds to the strength of the story.

Another point of note is that of course, if Dagon had appeared before him, our narrator would probably stop writing immediately. Rather than using this as an argument for his narrator’s insanity, I feel this is simply a literary method used to give his stories a powerful conclusion. As has been said of Lovecraft, he ‘would open the door…but only a crack,’[11] and this is a perfect example. The tale of Dagon raises more questions than it answers, leaving a terrifying image in the readers mind.

Isolation is also a prevalent theme within all of Lovecraft’s writings. Using this to create fear is a popular feature of horror since it began, dating to well before Lovecraft was writing, such as in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796)[12], where Ambrosio is left alone for six days until he dies at the conclusion of the novel. The use of this technique continues to this day. This taps into the human fear of being alone, something that affects us all on a base level. When isolated we are left helpless, with no one to help us should we fall ill or encounter danger. In Dagon our narrator finds himself isolated, and this could contribute to the narrators’ possible madness. At the beginning of the story, our narrator finds himself stranded out at sea, and after several days he ‘began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue.’ (p. 1) The narrator is made to feel insignificant by the expanse of the sea around him, relating to another theme of Lovecraft’s that is prominent in The Call of The Cthulhu. In The Call of The Cthulhu[13], Lovecraft writes, ‘We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.’ (p. 139) and this works as a metaphor for the narrator in Dagon. He has travelled the oceans further than he has meant to, and found himself adrift and despairing at his situation.

The horror that features in Lovecraft’s stories focus on horrors that are unfathomable to the human mind. Lovecraft consciously avoids too much description of what his characters witness, often stating that the narrator is unable to describe what he has seen or heard. This applies even when his stories are relatively grounded in reality. Lovecraft’s visions were ahead of their time. Today we have Godzilla (1954)[14] and the recently released Cloverfield (2008)[15] depicting giant monsters, yet even these pieces of cinema don’t come close to capturing the scale of horror Lovecraft tells of.

[1] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 20

[2] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 23

[3] The Simpsons (1990) Season 2, Episode 3, Treehouse of Horror. TV. FOX. 25^th October.

[4] The Raven (2012) Film. Directed by JAMES MCTEIGUE, USA: Intrepid Pictures

[5] Jerrold E. Hogle (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

[6] H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon, The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (London: Gollancz, 2008), sleeve.

[7] S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2001), p. 51

[8] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 1-6

[9] H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon, The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (London: Gollancz, 2008), p. 58-64

[10] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]

[11] Stephen King, Danse Macabre (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), p. 135

[12] Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

[13] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 139-69

[14] Godzilla (1954) Film. Directed by Ishirô Honda, Japan: Toho Film Co. Ltd.

[15] Cloverfield (2008) Film. Directed by MATT REEVES, USA: Paramount Pictures

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part III

In The Black Cat our narrator ‘refuses even to acknowledge a disengagement from the human race’[1] This is the source of terror in the tale, the detachment our narrator shows throughout does not affect our opinion on events. Lovecraft claims the best horror authors are ‘always acting as a vivid and detached chronicler rather than as a teacher, sympathiser, or vendor of opinion.’[2] Poe clearly understood this, and extended that detachment to the narrator. When writing from a first person perspective it is difficult not to create a character whose views and characteristics affect the readers’ mind-set. The opening describes how as a child our narrator’s ‘tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions.’ (p. 223), and later he claims ‘I blush, I burn, I shudder’ (p. 224), as he writes of gouging out Pluto’s eye. The ‘fear of damaging or losing one’s eyes is a terrible fear of childhood’[3], and this plays into this story with the narrator depriving his first cat Pluto of one of his eyes. The fact that atrocity is committed to a domesticated animal increases the horror created in the mind of the reader. However as the narrator’s mental health diminishes in the narrative, so does the amount of guilt he shows for his deeds. By the time he buries an axe in his wife’s skull, he gives very little input regarding his feelings as he reflects on the horror he has been through going as far to say ‘I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul’ (p. 229) with no sense of remorse.

This story is the perfect example of Poe refusing to blame evil on an outside force but instead placing responsibility on man. The protagonist of the story commits murder for no reason other than an irrational hatred for his victim. There is a definite air of insanity surrounding the murderer, something that is also a big theme in the work of Lovecraft. It has been said that Poe’s tales, ‘characteristically short and impatient, tend to plunge into the dreamscape straight away’[4] and this story is a perfect example. Poe’s narrator holds up the black cat as a source of external evil, causing us to empathise with the narrator, before finally at the conclusion ‘the trapped reader finally must face himself in the same way as the imprisoned and condemned narrator.’[5] We have been sympathetic throughout, convinced that this cat is evil, when in fact it is not. Our narrator is insane, and there is ‘no externally influential force, no abstract definition of evil to direct the characters.’[6]

The insanity of our narrator is clear as ‘fear is comprised of tangible worries, like the fear of death, which rational creatures can distance through various strategies and thus remain sane’[7], and by placing the focus of his fear onto the cat that troubles him so much in the story, he is projecting his fears onto a household pet which is not distanced from him at all. His inability to cope with this grows larger as the story goes on, to the point that he later projects his fear onto another cat after he has disposed of the first. His inability to rationalise what it is he is so scared of causes him to lose his sanity, and leads to the terrible events in the story, and his casual attitude to the atrocities he has committed as he retells the story to the reader. It is in part this attitude that makes the story seem so real. Indeed that is part of the appeal of Poe. His writing displays the quality of ‘the Fantastic made Real, instead of being accepted simply as fantastic.’[8]

Poe uses the uncanny to great effect throughout the story, focusing mainly on the cats. After the narrator murders the first cat, and burns his home to the ground he is confronted with a horrible image left on one of the walls. On this wall our narrator sees ‘as if graven in bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat.’ (p. 225) His italicisation of the word cat emphasises the fear caused by this image and helps pass that fear onto the reader. The image of the cat is familiar, yet unfamiliar because of its size, and this use of the uncanny allows the reader to experience the same fear of the cat that the narrator felt whenever he witnessed it. Later in the story a second black cat enters the life of the narrator. This cat is almost identical to the previous, even deprived of one of its eyes like Pluto before it. However this cat has ‘a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast.’ (p. 226) Whereas Pluto was black all over. The uncanny element of the cat is introduced here, but Poe increases the terror related to this second cat as the white splotch begins to resemble ‘the GALLOWS!’ (p. 227), and it is the combination of the uncanny and the imagery conjured up by a cat with gallows on its breast that causes the reader to empathise with our narrator, and fear an innocent cat.

[1] Richard Badenhausen, ‘Fear and Trembling in Literature’. Studies in Short Fiction, 29, 4 (1992), p. 490

[2] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 20

[3] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p. 7

[4] Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film (USA: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), p. 217

[5] Richard Badenhausen, ‘Fear and Trembling in Literature’. Studies in Short Fiction, 29, 4 (1992), p. 497

[6] Chuck Miller and Tim Underwood (eds), Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror With Stephen King (New York: Warner Books, 1989), p. 7

[7] Richard Badenhausen, ‘Fear and Trembling in Literature’. Studies in Short Fiction, 29, 4 (1992), p. 492

[8] Chuck Miller and Tim Underwood (eds), Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror With Stephen King (New York: Warner Books, 1989), p. 11

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part II

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is perhaps more a more critically acclaimed name than Lovecraft and despite both being considered the forefathers of modern horror literature, their writing styles are quite different. Lovecraft’s style is ‘wordy, profuse, yet capable of delivering a short sharp shock,’[1] whereas Poe’s is more poetic. Poe has a talent for bringing out the beauty present in even the direst situations. H.P. Lovecraft stated that in Poe’s work ‘we have an effect of lyrical phantasy almost narcotic in essence’[2]. It is Poe’s use of language that draws the reader into his dreamscapes so effectively, and once they are in there, he unleashes terror after terror on them. Lovecraft was a known admirer of Poe, but he is far from being the only one taken in by his poetic style, Indick says that Poe writes ‘in a florid and gorgeous tapestry of words so evocative of mood and place that in themselves they heighten the tension.’[3] With focus on two of his well-known tales, it will become apparent why Poe has gained this reputation. Like Lovecraft, there are several key themes which crop up in Poe’s works, one of which they have in common is madness, which will be explored in relation to The Black Cat[4], and much like we will see with Lovecraft, Poe wrote tales of horror relating to social fears of the time, as in his famous Masque of the Red Death[5].

Poe creates fear with the theme of realistic horror in The Masque of The Red Death, a story that personifies some of the diseases that affected his contemporary readers. However the very personification of a disease moves the story into a grey area of realism. Although the disease in the story bears a resemblance to tuberculosis, something that Poe had an ‘intimate acquaintance’[6] with having lost his mother and later his wife to the disease. Although the illness in the story is named in the title as the Red Death, Poe’s personal experiences with tuberculosis ‘surely contributed to Poe’s conceptualisation of the Red Death’[7]. However the fact that the disease was personified lifts the story out of the realms of possibility. It is worth considering that Poe’s reasons for doing so could have been to distance his story from the real tragedy that had occurred in his life. Poe’s personal experience aside, ‘plagues and pestilence have evoked fear and awe since time immemorial.’[8] (p. 1521) and this social fear provides the reader with a story that is scary no matter when it is read. Even in the 21^st century, we have witnessed mass panic over SARS[9] and Swine flu[10]. Although these diseases never resulted in an epidemic in the western world, the media coverage highlighted how much of a fear disease can be.

Poe describes the process of The Red Death early on; ‘the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.’(p. 269) This rapid spread shows that the Red Death is much swifter in claiming life than the contemporary diseases Poe would have experienced, such as tuberculosis or a ‘severe epidemic of Yellow Fever in 1841’[11] (p. 1522), given that The Masque of The Red Death was written in 1842, the social fear of disease would still be prevalent, and by highlighting just how quickly the Red Death kills you, as well as it’s ‘much higher death rate and communicability’[12] than those contemporary diseases, the reader was forced to imagine something worse than a very real horror they had lived through.

The name of the disease itself is important to the story. The Red Death instils horror on several levels. The use of a colour before the word death instantly brings to mind thoughts of the Black Death that ravaged so much of the world’s population, instantly making The Red Death terrifying by association. The colour red itself has strong connotations with violence and blood, and this is made further evident by Poe’s descriptions, saying of the disease ‘blood was its Avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of blood’ (p. 269), the repetition of the word blood and red, along with the capitalisation of ‘Avatar’ overload the reader with horrific imagery. This continues throughout the story, when describing the black room in Prince Prospero’s castle, the window panes are described as ‘scarlet – a deep blood colour’ (p. 270). The reinforcement of bloody imagery throughout the text maintains the tension, especially for contemporary readers who had to live with tuberculosis, like Poe himself. The story can almost be seen as a coping mechanism for Poe, allowing him to commit some of his feelings towards a disease that deprived him of ‘his mother (1811)…and his foster mother Frances Allan (1824)’[13] (p. 56). The constant repetition of red serves as a constant reminder for Poe and his readers of the blood that tuberculosis sufferers coughed up, and that ran from the mouth and nose of those inflicted with Yellow Fever.

The Red Death is undoubtedly triumphant at the conclusion of the tale. No hope is left for his readers, and they can only take comfort in the fact that it has taken the life of an evil prince. Prince Prospero is the first to succumb to the Red Death, ‘he is defeated in the quite literal face of death by giving into his own emotions of terror and hysteria.’[14] (p. 55) After his death, the remaining revellers siege upon the perpetrator of Prospero’s demise, only to find ‘which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.’ (p. 273) at this moment that the reader truly realises that the figure is the Red Death, and not just someone in disguise. As soon as the figure turns from something tangible and explainable into something the mind cannot comprehend the horror is ramped up. This relates with Freud’s theory on the Uncanny, suddenly, ‘everything that ought to have remained…hidden and secret has become visible’[15]. Often in the gothic something unexplainable is that way as soon as it enters the story, however here something completely rational is made irrational very quickly, and this contrast amplifies the terror caused by the presence in red.

One by one the remaining members of the party expire, leaving The Red Death alone. The final sentence is as chilling as it is succinct, ‘And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all’ (p. 273). Every character mentioned in the tale is now dead at the hands of this illness. Although allegorical, ‘the truth in the story is existential, not moral.’[16] The grand palace Poe described is now scattered with corpses and this would have tapped into the very real social fears of the time that an epidemic would wipe out everyone. Poe discovered in life firsthand that death will take everyone eventually, even those closest to you. He does not shy away from that fact in this story, any ray of hope is extinguished in that final sentence; a sentence that to this day provokes an emotive response.

The Black Cat is a tale that helped Poe shift the focus of the gothic narrative. Ben P. Indick claims that ‘for the first time… The weird tale would not merely provide fear for the characters of the story, but would provide the reader the greater fear of self-identification.’[17] The events of this story in print show a man clearly insane who no right minded person would empathise with. This is the genius of Poe however, as the narrator ‘glosses over the spousal abuse’[18] (p. 97), and instead focuses on the ‘hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder’ (p. 230). Yet even when the narrator commits horrific cruelty upon his cat Pluto, and later another, similar cat, there is a restraint to the way Poe describes his narrators actions. This is part of what makes The Black Cat such a chilling tale, as ‘a closed door is a continuous source of fearful suspense only so long as it remains closed.’[19] By purposefully neglecting to go into detail when describing the narrator’s crimes, Poe is forcing the reader to look inside their own psyche for an image of the events that have unfolded, making each readers individual image a picture of what terrifies them.

[1] Glennis Byron and David Punter, The Gothic, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 144

[2] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 22

[3] Ben P. Indick , ‘King and the Literary Tradition of Horror and The Supernatural’, in Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Stephen King Updated Edition, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 2007), p. 8

[4] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 223-230

[5] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 269-73

[6] Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film (USA: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), p. 56

[7] Ibid.

[8] Sundaram V. Ramanan and Setu K. Vora, ‘Ebola-Poe: A Modern-Day Parallel of the Red Death?’ Emerging Infectious Diseases, 8, 12 (2002), p. 1521

[9] BBC NEWS (2004) Q & A: Sars. [WWW] BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2856735.stm [27/04/2012]

[10] BBC NEWS (2009) WHO Declares swine flu pandemic. [WWW] BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8094655.stm [27/04/2012]

[11] Sundaram V. Ramanan and Setu K. Vora, ‘Ebola-Poe: A Modern-Day Parallel of the Red Death?’ Emerging Infectious Diseases, 8, 12 (2002), p. 1522

[12] Ibid.

[13] Patricia H. Wheat, ‘The Mask of Indifference in “The Masque of the Red Death”’. Studies in Short Fiction, 19, 1 (1982), p.56

[14] Patricia H. Wheat, ‘The Mask of Indifference in “The Masque of the Red Death”’. Studies in Short Fiction, 19, 1 (1982), p.55

[15] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p. 4

[16] Patricia H. Wheat, ‘The Mask of Indifference in “The Masque of the Red Death”’. Studies in Short Fiction, 19, 1 (1982), p.56

[17] Ben P. Indick , ‘King and the Literary Tradition of Horror and The Supernatural’, in Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Stephen King Updated Edition, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 2007), p. 7

[18] Ann V. Bliss, ‘Household Horror: Domestic Masculinity in Poe’s The Black Cat’. Explicator, 67, 2 (2009), p. 97

[19] John Edward Ames, ‘The art of terror: Tap into readers’ fears with 5 techniques for an emotionally rich story’. Writer, 123, 5 (2010), p.23

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part 1

Fear is one of mankind’s strongest emotions. It is a natural instinct that allows us to protect ourselves from threats. As centuries have passed, fear has become something we no longer feel on an everyday basis, leading academics to reason that when we watch a horror film, or read a horror novel ‘we are hunting for the sensation of fear because we lack it in life’[1]. The world of entertainment has stepped in to provide us with a safe environment within which we can experience fear. Audiences continue to seek out this thrill, and although historically the horror genre is looked down upon and seen by many as being trash, with one critic going as far as to claim ‘ghost stories, or other horrible recitals of the same kind, are decidedly injurious under all circumstances’[2]. Despite this horror continues to make money and draw in a large audience. Being scared causes us to regress. Our senses heighten and we return to a primitive fight or flight mentality. Furthermore ‘there is something about fear that returns us to a state of childhood’[3]. Life is simpler as a child, and returning to that state through fear ironically takes us back to a time where instead of being scared by ‘social fears’[4] we are transported back to a time where we fear ‘monsters and the dark’[5]. Two things that are no longer unknown to us and that we can comfortably overcome.

It is suggested that ‘we must judge a weird tale not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point,’[6] and this statement exemplifies why someone would read or watch something from within the horror genre; to experience fear. The works of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft are both popular in horror literature. The Masque of The Red Death[7] and The Black Cat[8] are two famous works by Poe with different subject matter that create fear in very different ways. The former deals with the timeless social fear of disease and epidemic, whereas the latter looks at madness and how irrational behaviour brought about by the illness can have a devastating effect. In contrast, Dagon[9] and The Call of The Cthulhu[10] share similar subject matter, yet their methods of creating fear are slightly different. The works of these two writers have inspired many over the years, including film makers. The Masque of The Red Death[11] is a 1964 work based on Poe’s short story of the same name, whereas The Mist (2007)[12] is a film not based on any particular story of Lovecraft’s, yet his influence is clear throughout. By studying these works of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, as well as the cinematic adaptations of their work, I will explore how fear has been created in the past, and how and why this has changed over time in accordance with new social cultural and historical contexts.

It would be naïve to suggest that what fills cinema audiences with dread today is the same thing that would terrify the theatre audiences and readers two centuries ago. The social and historical context that an audience is part of plays a huge part in constructing their fears and desires. This has been shown most effectively in cinema, as in the sixties horror focused on invasion and mind control, reflecting fears brought about by the cold war. In the 1970s America was horrified by killer Ed Gein and his collection of skeletal furnishings[13]. Suddenly the danger wasn’t across the ocean, but in your own neighbourhood. Hollywood latched onto this and filled the cinemas with films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)[14] and Halloween (1978)[15]. The different eras of horror cinema all come back to one thing though, no matter what form it takes, ‘we relish fear of the stranger – the mysterious murderer, the monster running untamed.’[16]. If the root of our fears can change that much in the space of ten years, how different would they have been several decades ago?

Sigmund Freud and Edmund Burke both published work on fear, looking into The Uncanny[17] and The Sublime[18] respectively. Freud defined the uncanny as ‘something that is familiar and old fashioned in the mind and which has become alienated from it through process of repression’[19]. The Uncanny is something familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time, and this is what causes fear. It is a technique used frequently in gothic literature and horror movies, and the same can be said of the sublime, which Burke described as similar to horror, but ‘the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.’[20] anything that can ‘excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.’[21]. The sublime is a fear that renders the person experiencing it frozen, unable to do anything but feel the terror running through them. Both of these techniques were discussed with a reference to literature, and they are visible in the writing of both Poe and Lovecraft. Since the theories were written they have also been applied to film, and any occurrences of these theories that arise in The Masque of The Red Death and The Mist will be discussed.

[1] Kate Williams, ‘Monsters Ink’. New Statesman, 141, 5088 (2012), p. 50

[2] Rendle, W. (1833) ‘On The Moral Education of Youth’ The Imperial Magazine, May, p. 219

[3] Kate Williams, ‘Monsters Ink’. New Statesman, 141, 5088 (2012), p. 51

[4] G.W. Thomas ‘Scare the heck out of your readers—and other horror-writing tips.’ Writer, 121, 4 (2008), p. 15

[5] Ibid.

[6] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p.4

[7] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 223-230

[8] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 269-73

[9] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 1-6

[10] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 139-69

[11] The Masque Of The Red Death (1964) Film. Directed by ROGER CORMAN. USA: Alta Vista Productions.

[12] The Mist (2007) Film. Directed by FRANK DARABONT. USA: Dimension Films.

[13] BBC NEWS (2007) Ed Gein – The Orignal American Psycho [WWW] BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-lancashire/plain/A21605636 [27/04/2012]

[14] The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Film. Directed by TOBE HOOPER, USA: Vortex

[15] Halloween (1978) Film. Direct by JOHN CARPENTER, USA: Compass International Pictures

[16] Kate Williams, ‘Monsters Ink’. New Statesman, 141, 5088 (2012), p. 50

[17] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p.363-4

[18] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]

[19] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p.363-4

[20] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]

[21] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]