HALLOWEEN IS OVER BUT THE HORROR REMAINS

I’m a fan of horror.

I love horror stories, no matter how they’re told and I know I’m not the only one.

Stories in their entirety allow us to be entertained but to explore facets of ourselves and understand all of the elements that make us human. We can see tales of what it means to be human in situations of wonder, of love and family, but when the terror begins to build, the light we shine on ourselves is brightest and can expose realities we may never have considered.

Horror is a big genre but it’s far too easy to be dismissive of it as nothing more than tales of the oogidy boogidy man meant to keep children in line but there’s a vast continuum of ways to scare and unnerve. Gothic horror of the likes of Dracula are very different tales to examples of Body horror, think The Fly. Zombie hoards or slasher stories, alien attack and psychological horror all show us our fears but in different ways.

Are we scared of the ways that our body can break down or be corrupted? Of a very real violent murder? What would we do if aliens landed tomorrow? Would they be benevolent or subjugating?

One of my favourite films is Hellraiser and the character of Pinhead, or Hell Priest as was originally intended, was such an interesting monster. Well spoken with an educated mind, this creature wasn’t being evil just because. He wasn’t being evil at all. He was just showing others that which he so loved and allowing them to REALLY go beyond their limits. He was more than a revenge killer or a religious character. He wasn’t a generic demon out doing demon-y things, he had more depth to explore and you knew that you couldn’t write him off as one dimensional.

I first saw the film when I was in my early teens and it scared me a whole heap but I also read the book that it was based on, The Hellbound Heart, and that scared me even more. And I read it in my thirties!

Horror explores the darker reaches of who we are and gives us a good chance to explore those things without putting us in real danger. Films and books can terrify us but horror is everywhere if we’re willing to give other options a chance.

Watch all of these.

Long may the horror continue.

SCAREDY CAT

It’s almost Halloween again and yet again, people all over the world are gearing up to do all they can to scare each other and they look for ways that any trick or treaters can be greeted by monsters and the like to embrace all things nasty. I love getting dressed up in odd costumes at this time of year to bring terror anywhere I can and exploring nasty characters was the corner stone of my collections of short stories, Tall Tales for Dark Nights, and Answers From The Darkness.

But why?

Why do we seem to be so enamoured with the grotesque?

Freddy Krueger. Michael Myers. Leatherface. Pinhead.

These are amazing characters from modern films and books who brutalize and destroy anyone who is unlucky enough to cross their paths and they’re the undoubted stars of the piece but surely the point of these stories shouldn’t be to lionize the killer. Stories through the ages dealt with the monster / killer / bad guy killing everything in sight but then being overcome by the hero so the evil is defeated but if the monster’s dead, there’s no chance of making any further films or indeed, money. If they can keep coming back, making more and more attempts to slaughter and corrupt, then the interest can be maintained.

But this isn’t a new phenomenon thanks to the power of Hollywood.

Dracula always comes back. Frankenstein’s monster disappears on a raft into the mist so isn’t definitively gone. In religious texts, the devil is never really defeated because without someone or something to overcome, you get left with a huge hole in the narrative.

Do we love the idea of the monster as being an on-going reminder that we have tasks in our lives to overcome? Do we enjoy the idea of seeing the purest evil imaginable being defeated by the white hatted hero? Or do we secretly wish that those monsters of fiction, the all manner of nasty or terrifying ideas brought to life, actually represent a beautifully clear view of wish fulfilment? We see that darkest corner of our own minds brought to life on the page and we can only wish that we too could unleash that kind of horror.

Looking at the darkest aspects of the human mind or exploring brutality will always form a major part of what stories are there to do but having the chance to get dressed up as any creature imaginable to send shivers up the spine of anyone we can find should never be over looked as the exciting trip it can be.

Now get ready to be afraid.