A while ago, I finished Thomas Ligotti’s short story collection “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World“, and I’ve now read one and a half of the three “Tales of corporate horror” in the collection of novellas “My Work is not Yet Done“, and I’m starting to feel like I’m ready to say something on the subject.

Ligotti’s been called “philosophical horror”, and although the most obvious comparison is to Lovecraft, although there are apparently also comparisons to Borges, William S. Burroughs, and Kafka. That’s impressive praise, and since I deeply love both Lovecraft and Burroughs, and very much respect and enjoy both Borges and Kafka, I figured I would at least like Ligotti’s writing.

But I don’t. Not much, anyway. He has the occasional flash of an interesting idea, but this is basically a whole literary career built on social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder as the ultimate horror, and that’s honestly a bit laughable, and not at all scary. Most of the “horror” derives either from problems with relating to other people, or from badly defined feeling that there’s something wrong with the world.

The prose is not particularly good either, it’s exceptionally repetitive in a way that for some reason makes my entire body itch with impatience, the language in general is uninteresting, and it feels like it really wants to be good, without knowing how, like it’s written by a precocious 16-year-old with bad social skills and a badly-thought-through nihilistic worldview. If these stories were written by a 16-year-old, I’d be quite impressed, and expect the author to do something really good some day, but Ligotti’s born in 1953, so it’s probably hopeless to expect improvement now (although “My Work is not Yet Done” is newer, and noticably better, than most of the stories collected in “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World“).

There seems to be an elitism inherent in many reviews of Ligotti’s work. Lovecraft scholar T.S. Joshi seems to love him and consider him superior to most modern horror, for instance, and tends to blame the readers for preferring stuff like Stephen King and Anne Rice. Now, Stephen King is not a great author, he’s a craftsman with good horror ideas, and Anne Rice is fun when you’re 16, but I can’t see how Ligotti’s any better, he’s just more pretentious, and his writing is bad in a different (and, I suppose, artier) way. There’s a tendency to pedantry, with an accompanying overuse of pretentious vocabulary, for instance, in My Work is not Yet Done, the narrator berates another character for not pronouncing “lackadaisical” correctly, and the word is used at least six or seven times afterwards in the relatively short story.

Also, there’s the major problem of Ligotti’s writing not being particularly scary at all. There’s a moment or two when you think “well, that’s kind of a creepy idea, let’s see where it goes”, but the answer is invaribly nowhere. What horror there is is understated to the point of fading into the wallpaper, and, as I mentioned before, is generally based on things people with severe social anxieties feel are terrifying, such as being an outsider to etiquette and opaque codes of behaviour, be it in corporations (My Work is not Yet Done), queer little villages (The Last Feast of Harlequin), or in an art gallery (The Bungalow House). According to Wikipedia, Ligotti suffers from anxiety, so to him, this might be terrifying, I’m sure, but to the rest of us, it’s mostly tedious. The second major motif is a vaguely gnostic idea of the fundamental evilness of all of creation, which is hidden to most, but glimpsed by some, who invariably go slowly and boringly insane or indifferent to the world because of their knowledge. The characters so afflicted often end up joining Ligotti’s idea of horror in fading into the wallpaper as if they were never there.

As you can tell, I’m not liking this much. I think I’ll stop here, since I think it’s clear how profoundly unsatisfying I find Thomas Ligotti’s writings, both as horror fiction/weird tales, and as literature in general. I’ll just mention as a footnote that both Ligotti books are horribly, horribly ugly editions, no doubt at least partially a result of them being published by smaller publishers. The Shadow at the Bottom of the World in particular is horrid, seeminly set in Times New Roman and laid out in and old version of MS Word, the kerning all screwed up (or non-existent), tracking varying wildly, the margins tiny. In addition, there seems to be an annoying lack of proofreading, since typos abound. That, compared with my misgivings about the text itself, is enough to drive me up the wall.

In short, Thomas Ligotti makes me itch.

A strange thought struck me out of nowhere today. I was thinking about The Terminator, and how it was in many ways not typical science fiction. And then I realized: It’s actually almost as much a slasher movie as it is an SF movie. Or possibly a “monster movie”, those and slasher movies have blurry genre boundaries.

Think about it. A relentless, unstoppable killer slays his way through a bunch of people, mostly young. Although most are killed with guns (uncommon for slasher movies), one has his heart ripped out in an extended sequence complete with slasher style “I’m making a surprised face at this unexpected and incredibly painful bodily mutilation”. In another scene, a young couple has sex, the boyfriend leaves the room and is killed outside, the girl doesn’t notice, and is herself killed moments later. The final survivor who must defeat the killer is a woman whose boyfriend just sacrificed himself to try to save her.

There are a few things that don’t match up with slasher movie conventions, of course. The use of guns is one, another obviously notable one is the “final girl”’s lack of virginity. In fact, her having sex is a key plot point. On the other hand, the killer could be said to be punishing her for having sex, just as is common in slasher movies, after all, his goal is to prevent her son from being born.

That’s today’s unstructured random thought. Carry on.

A young woman was killed by an umbrella tip to the eye in Rome’s subway Thursday. Paging Lucio Fulci, a sharp implement to the eye he hadn’t, as far as I know, thought of. If horror and slasher movies really did influence people to imitate them, this sort of thing should be commonplace in Italy… Along with people being pulled through window panes head first, then stabbed in the heart, then thrown through a skylight and hung, the shards of glass killing some other people who happened to be standing under the skylight. Not to mention the seeing-eye dog attacks.

Did you ever scoff at the idea of being driven insane with fear at the sight of Cthulhu? “A humanoid with tentacles on its face, that’s ridiculous”, that sort of thing? Well, Lovecraft’s description can be interpreted in lots of ways. Some are pretty scary.

And some are downright terrifying (click the mostly dark second image to see it in full detail).

Sweet dreams. (Via Monster Brains)

I came across this rather bizarre ad at the pharmacy today. It’s for a strong painkiller, which, according to the ad copy, “cuts off the strong pain”. The chainsaw as an instrument of pain relief. I think that’s a first.

Oh, I know I’ve been away for a long while. I’ve been very busy, big things are afoot. More about that later.

This small essay was inspired by the convergence of several random things. Warren Ellis, whose blog is always worth reading, posted a short rumination about “the semiotics of shades”, as a comment to a YouTube clip showing a CSI character putting on sunglasses in a whole bunch of episodes. I thought it was interesting in itself, but also as an example of how you can learn interesting things by focusing on a small detail that seems to repeat itself a lot, and try to figure out what it means.

Then there was some reading my old blog, which turned up a few interesting quotes, and then Sean T. Collins posted about a new Chris Cunningham music video called “Sheena Is A Parasite”, which is very typical Chris Cunningham, and very cool. Have a look.

Now, this video has several occurrences of what I wanted to talk about, namely erratic head movements. Once you start looking for them, they’re surprisingly common in horror narratives. The earliest I’ve been able to find is from the Montague Summers edition of the Compendium Maleficarum, a 1608 text on demonology and witchcraft, which has a lot of eye witness accounts of supernatural goings on. The (somewhat long) passage in question goes:

At Luthz at the foot of the Vosges Mountains in May 1589 the villagers were celebrating a pagan festival. Claude Cothéze was returning in the evening from that village to the next, which is called Wisembach, and had already climbed a good part of the hill which separates the two villages, when he was suddenly caught in a whirlwind and stood looking about him in amazement to see if he could find any cause for such an unusual occurrence, for the air was most calm and still everywhere else. Then he saw in a sheltered place six witch women dancing round a table sumptuously decked with gold and silver, tossing their heads about like people afflicted with madness; and near them was a man like a black bull watching them as if he were a casual passer by. He therefore stood still for a while collecting himself and making sure that he saw quite clearly; and when he had done so, they all suddenly vanished from his sigh. Recovering from his fright he then started on his road again and had already passed the top of the hill when behold, those women were following him from behind, throwing their heads about as before and keeping a deep silence, while before them went a man with a black face and hands curved like talons, with which he would have clawed his forehead if he had not turned and opposed him with his drawn sword; but then the man ceased to threaten him and vanished as if in fear of his life. The women showed themselves yet again, and with them the man like a bull, who, as I have said, was looking on at their dances. Cothéze now felt more confident towards this man, and went up to him, saying: “Are you not my friend Desirée Gazéte?” (for so he was named). “I beg you to protect me if you can; for I promise you that I will tell no one anything of what I have seen.” Hardly had he said this when he was encompassed by a fresh whirlwind or cloud, and when he had come out of it as soon as he could, he went home.

So there we have not only an extremely early example of erratic head movement as a marker of demonic possession or other supernatural events, but it’s even explicitly compared to a symptom of mental illness. In fact, inhuman and “wrong” movement patterns in horror (Samara’s walk in the US Ring remake, the spider walk in the Exorcist rerelease, and so on) could be triggers for deep-down instinctive fears of the mentally or physically ill (evolutionary speaking, it makes sense to be afraid of the sick, it makes you stay away from them, so they can’t hurt you in their madness, or infect you with whatever they’ve got). It seems to work quite well.

Erratic head movement seems to be especially common amongst the abnormal movement patterns in horror, though. Especially, a lot of very classic horror movies seem to feature it. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is a good and well-known example, where those possessed by demons, in addition to levitating and moving spastically, have their heads loll about in a very disconcerting manner, as if their neck was broken. It might well be that that’s the reference here: The head movement suggests a broken neck, thus the body should not be alive and moving, but it is, so it’s in an intermediate state between living and dead, thus fitting into one of Noël Carrolls categories of monsters in The Philosophy of Horror.

Similar is the infamous 360 degree head turn in The Exorcist. It’s a highly abnormal head movement, of course, but specifically, it’s one that is impossible to voluntarily perform, and that would lead to death if induced. The fact that Regan remains alive and taunting after performing it again suggests something’s amiss (although we already knew that, of course).

One of my personal favourite scary movies is Adrian Lyne’s beautiful, unnerving 1990 masterpiece Jacob’s Ladder, in which a postal worker experiences a terrifying mix of Vietnam flashbacks, reality distortion, and demonic creatures besetting him on every side. There are lots of abnormal movement patterns in the various creatures and demons in this movie, but specifically, there are many demons displaying very erratic, high-speed head movements which seem to erase their faces, that is, if they had faces to begin with. The effect is very unsettling, and might suggest that erratic head movement frightens because it denies the spectator a clear view of the face. The brain is a pattern recognition machine, first and foremost, and what it’s best at recognizing are faces, so when we see something that’s clearly human or humanoid, but the face is hidden to us, it throws the very humanity of the creature into doubt.

There are many possibilities here, I just wanted to explore a few. I’m not convinced that any of my loose theories above are correct, but the facts of the matter are hardly in dispute: Erratic head movements creeps me the fuck out. I’d like to know why. Thoughts?

I’m on the Horror Roundtable over at The Horror Blog again this week. Go over and take a look.

Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film is an academic work, but a very light one, in a good way. Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror remains the definitive work in explaining and analyzing horror and its appeal, but Darryl Jones’ book is an excellent, more descriptive companion.

Breaking down themes in horror into chapters with names like “Hating others: Religion, nationhood and identity” and “Forbidden knowledge: Textuality, metafiction, and books”, Jones runs through an enormous corpus of works in a relatively compact volume. Each chapter starts out with the earliest literary examples of the themes, and usually ends up with modern horror movies that exemplify them, all the while running through possible symbolism and societal, political, and moral context for the themes. I don’t necessarily agree with every interpretation, but it’s still an excellent overview for people who are relatively new to the genre, and might think that horror is superficial and without deeper meaning.

Additionally, Jones has an entertaining writing style, full of dry wit, mixed with an obvious love of the horror genre. He repeatedly references the video nasties flap in his native UK, and lets no opportunity to dismiss this sort of hysteria pass him by. He’s no lover of just the “refined” in horror either, calling Abel Ferrara’s Basket Case “wonderfully grotty” in the chapter on body horror, as well as referring to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre his favourite horror film of all time. And then there are the repeated slams of Keanu Reeves…

All in all, highly recommended, both for the more academically minded, and for casual readers looking for an introduction to the themes and symbolism of horror. Personally, I’m passing this one on to my girlfriend, who’s had a somewhat negative opinion of horror, but was more interested once I started telling her about symbolism and horror as a representation of society’s fears.

This week’s horror roundtable over at The Horror Blog features me again, as well as a lot of other people, talking about movies that scared us when we were kids, but don’t anymore.

The time has come for the sequel to the craptastic Vacaciones de terror, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago.

First of all, credit where credit’s due, I guess. This movie is a much more successful and pure horror movie than the first one, but it’s still utter shit.

Julio, the guy who made out with himself in the mirror for the longest time, and used the anti-demonic amulet he found as a rear view mirror decoration, in the first movie, is now older and wiser, and passes his time as a paranormal investigator or something. He also wears a long black trenchcoat and a horrible mullet. He’s played, like the last time, by Pedrito Fernández, pictured to the left. He’s a very, very wooden actor, although he has some agility for the action scenes, which is useful when you’re going to be dodging magically flying and on fire plastic carved pumpkins. See, this is a Halloween movie. Aren’t you glad you asked?

Pedro Fernández is joined by another Mexican singer, Tatiana, who was a pop singer back when this movie was made, but shortly after switched to making music for children. She’s pictured on the right, and plays a girl who’s a successful pop singer, and also the daughter of a famous movie producer. You know, the kind of movie producer the people who produced this movie will never, ever become. She also has a little sister, who’s annoying, and will become important to the “plot”.

After a brief intro sequence that serves to introduce our two main characters to each other, and for Tatiana to invite Pedrito to her sister’s birthday party, which is on Halloween, and is to be held at the movie studios where their father makes his movies. When Tatiana leaves in the car with her little sister, Pedrito notices that the sister has a diabolical doll similar to the one from the first movie, and becomes worried. However, before he can do anything about it, he must confront a raving mad old man who warns him about the dangers of the doll, gives him magical stone seals that will protect him from evil, tells him about an ancient tome that will give him vital information, and then promptly runs out into the street and gets killed. I guess they hired that actor for just one day of shooting.

Pedrito, determined to get to the bottom of this, goes to the library to read the book. And there, in a typical Mexican library with cheap 70s metal shelving and all sorts of boring non-fiction books, he finds the ancient, crumbling tome of demonology. I think it’s right next to some sort of engineering textbook.

Skipping ahead a bit, at the party, Tatiana performs, the little sister cuts herself stupidly when trying to cut her birthday cake, causing blood to drip onto a witch figure on her cake, which is then eaten by the demonic doll, which sits under the cake. The doll transforms into some sort of lizard monster, kills a studio technician, and everyone runs off, except Pedrito, who stays behind to check things out. Oh, and the father gives the birthday girl seven silver coins.

Later, in the girls’ home, the little girl remembers she left the coins at the studio, so she and her older sister go to get them. In the middle of the night, to the place where someone was horribly murdered by an unknown perpetrator. And they seem to think it’ll be a fun adventure.

Once there, they run into Pedrito, the little girl has another attack of near-fatal stupidity, and gets grabbed by the monster, the silver coins get stuck to a wall and electrified, Tatiana disappears, but is somehow transformed into a sugar figure on the birthday cake, and Pedrito saves her by jumping into the burning cake (yes, it’s on fire) and sliding across it in his black trenchcoat, getting covered by frosting, which is gone in the next shot. The sugar figure transforms back into Tatiana, and now it turns out they must rescue the little girl before sunrise, or she’ll be gone forever.

In the meantime, a guard at the studio calls the producer father because Tatiana’s car is outside, and then gets killed by the monster. Producer dad gets out his revolver and sawed off shotgun, puts on a denim jacket, and goes off to the studio. Everyone runs around a lot, the monster flings burning magically flying plastic carved pumpkins at Pedrito, the father shows up, shoots the monster in the head, which has little effect, suspects and tries to beat up Pedrito, then finally realizes they need to do something else. They get the electrified silver coins out of the wall by splashing them with holy water from the studio Virgin of Guadalupe shrine, melt them down to make a seal that can kill the monster, and somehow free the little girl.

However, Tatiana is stabbed in the stomach by some sort of wood rod, and dies. Pedrito must face the monster, and after a lot of rolling around on the ground, he throws the seal into its chest, shuriken-style, which makes it catch fire, and Tatiana come back to life. Everyone’s happy, and the movie ends with not one freeze frame, but two (first one of Pedrito, then one of Tatiana).

God, this movie is horrible. But if you want to see mariachi singers and children’s musicians battle lizard monster witches (for some reason, they call the monster a witch), then you don’t have that many options, and this movie is for you.