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Horrible Humor

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Humor is very useful in a tale of horror. Hitchcock was a master at creating a rollercoaster of humor & fear. Every chuckle lowered his audience’s defenses, softening them up before something scary jumped out and sealed their fate.

Horror stories, and movies, that are relentless — with scary chapter after scary chapter — are never as frightening as the stories that mix in some humor.

When I was a kid, I fell in love with the classic horror movies on TV. Some of the humor may have been unintentional — or simply the result of dated clichés — but for every ridiculous moment there was a shiver of real fear. That first moment when the Mummy comes to life, the bat outside the window, lightning on the moor… all those key scenes were heightened by whimsy, if not a full belly laugh of a joke.

By the time I found my way to classic horror parodies, I was primed for the laugh/shiver/laugh/shiver ride. I’m not saying that I was actually scared when I saw “Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein” (the Mummy, Jekyll & Hyde, etc.), but frantic physical comedy set up moments that went BOO!

“Love at First Bite” and my all time favorite film, Mel Brook’s masterpiece “Young Frankenstein” never aimed for that mix of fear and fun. They were steady humor machines. (I cannot even guess how many times I’ve seen “Young Frankenstein” but I’m happy to see it again and again and again…)

Lately I’ve been reading a variety of scary stories — full out horror, terror, mystery, suspense, romantic suspense, paranormal and more — and I’ve been studying the ones that have the greatest impact on me as a reader. The humor/fear mix is a winner and so is the frisson created by the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the outlandish. But I think the stories that create the most true fear in me — the stories I decided to read in daylight instead of at bedtime — are the ones that tickle with a feather light touch of humor (charm or whimsy) and then slither gently into the dark before the big reveal.

Wow! Now that’s scary! I’m working on it.

 

A Sense of Time & Place

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When I read, I really enjoy a clear sense of time and place. This goes for all genres. If your ghost story is set in a lonely mansion on the coast of Maine during WWII — make sure I believe the setting is truthful and I’ll believe that the ghost is real, too.

I’ve recently read fiction by two new authors — new friends from blogging, Twitter & LinkedIn — and I’m pleased to report that these two entirely different writers have both produced settings that were vivid and so real that the characters actions ring true.

As I don’t review books on this blog and don’t want to start. I’m not going to do full out reviews of “Such is Life” and “Vokhtah.” I will simply use both of these new books as examples of the best use of distinctive settings.

In her science fiction book  “Vokhtah” A. C. Flory invites the reader to a hostile planet “peopled” with creatures best described as winged sociopaths with Machiavellian motivations, a fully-realized cultural mythology, a hierarchic society and an unusual manner for procreation. Vokhtah is a brutal planet and survival of the fittest (shrewdest, most devious & cunning) code underpins all the characters interactions.

The sense of place is so clear and finely drawn that the actions of the characters flow as a consequence of where they are in geography and the rigid caste system of the planet. A less complete environment might have made the creatures a bit comical or, worse, two dimensional. A.C. Flory’s achievement is in creating a credible, incredible world.

Jeri Walker-Bickett didn’t have to create her lonely landscape — she found it in various locations here in the United States. Her hyper-realistic short story collection “Such is Life” is set in a range of places — a suffocating small town in Montana, New Orleans, a suburban community determined to protect their children from outside influences, etc. It’s America today.

In each story, the sense of time and place anchors the story. The story “Leaving Big Sky” begins in a laundromat. The protagonist is watching laundry tumble in a dryer because, unlike the laundromats in Butte, this one has no TV, magazines and coffee to keep people entertained. The sense of abject loneliness is so much a part of the environment that the author doesn’t have to tell the reader what John is feeling. We feel it with him. The squeaky clean town in the story entitled “Not Terribly Important” hides a cruel streak of bigotry beneath its family friendly veneer. For a moment I wanted to shake the protagonist’s shoulders and tell her that the writing was on the wall.

By inviting the reader into specific and coherent environments, both of these authors give their characters real places to come to life.

VOKHTAH on Amazon

Such is Life on Amazon

Hearing Voices

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In a city like New York, people live in close proximity and we develop the ability to “tune out” a lot of extraneous noises. This is not to say that New Yorkers don’t enjoy listening in on other people’s conversations, it’s just that in a noisy city, creating private space is sometimes a psychological game. I live in a quiet apartment. It’s truly quiet. It’s also a bit dark and in mid-winter I refer to it as my cave. Friends walk in and automatically start turning on lights. Oh well… I have quiet!

That was not the case this afternoon in the elevator. I was going out to the farmer’s market at Union Square in the middle of the day I needed a break from my keyboard and there is nothing like shopping for apples that is better for shaking up the brain. I stepped into the empty elevator. The door closed and a voice startled me.

“Your Con Edison account has now been approved for a special offer. Please press two and….”

I jumped out of my skull and dropped my empty shopping bag. Fortunately, it’s not a long way from the 4th floor to the lobby. It was just long enough for me to determine that the voice came from inside the new elevator’s operating system.

“Carlos, does the elevator talk?”

The doorman told me that the alarm button that automatically phones both the elevator company and the doorman’s desk gets a little crazy sometimes and “…makes phone calls. A woman came down from the sixth floor and wanted to know why she was hearing a commercial for a bank.”

Disembodied voices are a classic ploy in horror, ghost stories and, occasionally, in suspense novels. It also has a wide variety of interpretations throughout history. In some traditions, disembodied voices with important messages are declared communications from heaven — no doubt, no questions…. Joan of Arc was sure about that. So were Moses and Joseph Smith and many others. The religious implications of hearing voices only get confusing when you add modern psychiatric and neurological thoughts to the equation. Auditory hallucinations can be caused by brain tumors and other neurological disorders. Hearing voices is also a delusion associated with schizophrenia and other psychiatric diagnoses.

This is where WHAT the voices are saying becomes critical. “Press 2 for our special offer” is a whole lot less interesting (and less scary) than the instructions that the Son of Sam Killer got from the neighbor’s dog, which sent him on his killing spree in New York in the 1970s.

I’m really glad that the alarm inside the new elevator cab has the ability to call the elevator company. I just wish it didn’t also call the power company and banks — at least not when I’m on the way to the market. Now, will I write a story about a talking elevator? I think that’s almost inevitable.

Zombies Love ‘Em or Not

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Zombies are hot right now. Slow moving, fast moving, comic, scary, “Dawn of the Dead” style and stylishly dressed to kill — they seem to be everywhere I look.

But I just can’t get into zombies.

Recently, I’ve read a few zombie books and tried to get myself into the zombie fad but I’ve failed. I can’t wrap my head around the appeal of brain-eating, walking dead. Werewolves? Yea team! Vampires? No question.  Ghosts, demons, evil wizards — check, check, check — all good — but Zombies have zero appeal.

I remember that when I saw the original “Dawn of the Dead” I was frightened, but I was far from charmed. It seems that what I really like is a dash of charm with my chills. I love the sexy monsters of “True Blood” so by comparison any zombie, — classic or contemporary, slow or fast, dull or funny, even in a Jane Austen remix — is going to suffer in a comparison.

I have two questions today:

If you love zombies, please tell me why?

If you don’t, tell me why you don’t love ‘em?

Share your thoughts on Zombies!

Villains Villainy & a Villainess

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Not all villains are monstrous and not all monsters are villains, but there certainly is a great deal of overlap between these two worlds of evil characters.

I’m going to see Alan Cummings’s one-man Macbeth on Broadway (yes, he plays ALL the roles and it’s set in an asylum), so I’m rereading Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is one of the best characters of all time! She is both a tortured soul and the soul of unbridled ambition.

Lots of lessons to be learned from her ruthless, single-minded drive. But is she a monster? I’ve seen a few productions of the play, and movie versions too. Sometimes her outsized need is so gigantic that she comes across as an evil genius and other times she’s so out-of-control that she’s a werewolf with the full moon is rising. I’m looking forward to seeing how this great actor plays her — and her hubby too.

I’m also pondering what makes a villain a monster? Is it the size of the villainous ambitions? Is it the level of animal brutality? Is the monster in the blood lust of a vampire or the physical, animal power of the beast?

Who is YOUR favorite villain and is he or she a MONSTER?

 

Favorite Macbeths…

As of right now, my favorite Macbeth was Patrick Stewart. I saw him on Broadway with Kate Fleetwood as his Lady. The setting had 20th century Stalinist overtones with super scary witches dressed as nurses. There’s a video of the production. I think I’ll see it after the Alan Cumming’s show.

Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth

“Men of Respect” with John Turturro as a Macbeth-like hit man in a crime family, and a fabulous cast including Stanley Tucci, Peter Boyle and Dennis Farina. I get chills thinking about the actress Katherine Borowitz scrubbing the bathtub in a frenzy of guilt and fear. “Out, out…”

“Men of Respect”