Modern Zorker's Guide to Getting Started Reading Horror, Part II: The Pre-Modern Era

Leave it to @darth-azrael to write a comment that gets me thinking about a whole new blog post. In my post about horror books I picked up recently, the Sith-y one stated that, having started with King, finding good horror novels is like finding good fantasy novels after you've started with Tolkien.

I can so sympathize.

If we can get all biological up in here for a minute (a phrase that never fails to make @effofex start breathing heavily), let's remember our taxonomic nomenclature of classifications. Using the mnemonic "Dope King Phil Came Over For Gratuitous Sex", it's easy to recall Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

'Horror' isn't a Domain or a Kingdom, but rather more an Order or Family from which extend dozens of different branches and options. So just as the mystery genre can be broken down into sub-categories like "locked room", "whodunnit", and "stories involving cats", so too can horror be broken down into sub-categories like "killer clowns", "splatterpunk", and "William W. Johnstone".

What's a new reader to do?

That's where I come in. Let's talk shop.

Let's talk about Horror.

(Pssst! If you missed Part I, go read that first!)

Part II: The Pre-Modern Era

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Horror is similar to pornography, in that it's difficult to define, but you know when you're reading it. You know...for the articles. Like @blewitt does.

In any case, the mid-twentieth century saw the rise of numerous authors and books which either dealt with awful situations outright, or beat around the bush a lot to make us think something weird was going on. A lot of what happened to the genre came from writers inspired by those who came before them, especially the suspense fiction of authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, published in 1938, almost single-handedly launched the Gothic market a few decades later in the 1960's, and while Gothics aren't exactly horror, they often deal with elements common to what we think of as horror today: ancient and foreboding architecture, a lone female 'final girl' protagonist, unexplained creepy phenomena, and insane asylums.

So. Many. Insane. Asylums.

But while Rebecca was inspiring writers to pen gothic fiction to appeal to housewives looking for something slightly lurid and fantastical they could keep on their nightstands, a new breed of fantastical storyteller was experimenting with ways to punch audiences in the face via abject fear. Chief among them was a reclusive young woman who began an illustrious, though short-lived, career with a single short story, then exploded on to the national scene with what many consider the finest ghost story of the twentieth century.

A Haunting Starting Point

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Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House was published in 1959, and the response was immediate and overwhelming. Penned after a lengthy process spent researching and reading notes and files left behind by a group of 19th-century psychic researchers, Jackson came away with the idea of a group of four disparate individuals coming together in the twentieth century to explore a house they believe might be haunted.

Coming from different backgrounds and walks of life, the four researchers decide to do what the current caretakers will not: spend the night in Hill House. The twist Jackson springs is that each person sees and reacts to different phenomena while in the house, but descriptions of what the characters actually see are often vague and contradictory, sometimes completely absent. The reader is left to fill in a number of the gaps about what characters may or may not have seen--Jackson's intention seems to have been to turn the reader into a sort of willing fifth guest along for the ride and free to make up his or her own mind about what, if anything, is actually happening.

The Haunting of Hill House was adapted to the screen twice, once in 1963 and once in 1999, both times simplifying the title to "The Haunting". If the only one you're familiar with is the 1999 CGI-fest with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, do yourself a favor and track down the '63 edition: it sticks much closer to the source material.

Come Out, Robert Neville

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If you're one of the many for whom Twilight has ruined vampires, then Richard Matheson's seminal, Stephen-King-inspiring, end-of-the-world apocalyptic story will restore your faith in...well, probably not humanity, but at least in one human's ability to write a mondo scenario pitting the last surviving human against an entire world of the undead, bloodsucking fiends.

When the book opens, we meet Robert Neville, a scientist who believes himself to be the last man on Earth. A plague swept across the United States, killing everyone it infected, only to later re-animate them as hideous mockeries of humanity. The victims of the plague are grossly allergic to sunlight, and thus operate only after the sun goes down. They are repelled by the scent of garlic. Their strength is magnified. They sustain themselves on blood. Bullets don't even slow them down.

Robert Neville is fighting a never-ending war of attrition against a horde of vampires. By day he roams the city, looking for supplies, combing through underground areas, and running stakes through the heart of every undead creature he finds, dragging them from their hiding places and leaving them to evaporate in the sun. By night, he holes up in his compound, a building he has fortified and sound-proofed which contains his lab equipment, a generator for power, and a copious supply of cigarettes and booze.

The horror in Matheson's story initially comes from the reader's realization that Neville is fighting a war he cannot hope to win, and the way loneliness and a lack of human contact grind away at his sanity. Later on though, it comes from a completely different direction, one that explains the meaning of the book's title and forces us to re-examine Neville in relation to his actions and the creatures with whom he wars. It's a dark story, one that I won't spoil here and one you shouldn't spoil for yourself. It may feel a little dated, having been published in 1954, but Matheson's story is timeless, classic, and despite three separate film adaptations, nobody in Hollywood has managed to get it right. Even if you've seen Charlton Heston in 1971's The Omega Man, Vincent Price in 1964's The Last Man on Earth, or the 2007 Will Smith adaptation which kept the book's title, trust me, you've never experienced the real story.

Norman? Why, He Wouldn't Hurt A Fly...

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Plenty of stories from the post-WW2 era are responsible for inspiring later writers, but if one book and one writer from this time period stands above the rest for setting the stage for what was to come, it's the deadly combination of Psycho and Robert Bloch.

In November of 1957, a fifty-one year old man, living alone in his farmhouse in rural Wisconsin was arrested under suspicion involving the disappearance of the female proprietor of a local hardware store. When they searched his property, police found the woman's body in the barn, decapitated and gutted like a hunting trophy. A further search of the house turned up masks made of skin stripped from human faces, bowls fashioned from human skulls, an intact human heart, furniture fashioned from human bones, and clothing (including a corset and belt) made from flayed female skin and other anatomical bits.

The man's name was Ed Gein. When interrogated, Gein said it all started following the death of his mother. In his desire to feel close to her, he created literal skin suits that he could crawl inside and wear, along with her clothing. In this way, he could "become" her. Two years later in 1959, Robert Bloch published Psycho, featuring a middle-aged man named Norman Bates who is, shall we say, equally devoted to his dear, sweet mother and to helping her run the Motel which shares their name.

Bloch, at the time, was living just a few miles away from the town where Gein committed his crimes, though strangely enough he was unaware of Gein's arrest and trial until his novel was nearly finished. Frighteningly, Bloch's mother-obsessed antagonist, whom Bloch had conceived as "a monster unsuspected even in the gossip-ridden microcosm of small-town life" bore an uncanny resemblance to Gein and his activities. The story received added attention in 1960, with Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation, and it's remained in print pretty much ever since, serving as the sort of Ur-example of the serial killer genre. Countless literary and celluloid serial killers, from Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, were influenced by Ed Gein, but Bloch was the first to really open horror up to the idea that the man next door, though perfectly ordinary in his public activities, could house a heart filled with more darkness than even Joseph Conrad could have imagined.

Damien WHO?

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He might be the poster child for creepy kids thanks to the success of the 1976 film The Omen, but twenty years before nannies began hanging themselves in Damien Thorn's name, little Rhoda Penmark set the benchmark for murderous youngsters in this 1954 novel by William March.

March's story revolves around a mother facing a parent's worst fear: that there's something wrong with her little girl. After her father leaves on a business trip, one of her classmates drowns in the swimming pool. The death is ruled an unfortunate accident, with the only thing out of the ordinary being a series of crescent-shaped markings on the boy's face. While the rest of the children are clearly upset, Rhoda doesn't seem disturbed in the least. In fact, she's happy to receive the award for perfect penmanship now that the first-place winner has died.

It just gets worse from there, as Rhoda's mother starts to second-guess everything about her daughter, and reaches some startling conclusions. The only problem is that Rhoda's so sweet and adorable, the picture of what a perfect child should be, that it's impossible for anyone to believe she could have anything to do with the boy's death, or any of the other past incidents, including the death of an elderly neighbor and an accident involving the family dog, her mom is now questioning. But if Rhoda truly is committing such horrible acts, the question becomes not only why she's behaving that way, but how can her mother stop her from killing again?

The Bad Seed, like most other books written during this period, isn't exactly horror per se, but it's certainly based on a horrifying enough premise and concludes on such a downer note that it's impossible not to consider it such today. Rhoda's the template from which every other story revolving around killer kids, from the aforementioned The Omen and Stephen King's The Children of the Corn to the tykes from Village of the Damned and Macaulay Culkin's character Henry in The Good Son (a criminally underrated film in my opinion), was drawn.

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Have you read any of these? Do you have titles to recommend from this same period? Clearly I can't cover everything, so let me know in the comments, stab that upvote button, and make sure you hit 'Follow' so you don't miss Part III--there's a lot more where these came from, and until next time, let your Horror flag fly!