The Hog's Head » Horror Stories

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

revgeorge — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:02:51 +0000

Just a quick shout out on one of my favorite poems. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe was first published with his name attributed to it on this day in 1845. Very haunting and very Gothic. Anyway, if you’d like to read it, go here. If reading isn’t your thing, you can find a recording on Librivox here. If you want to see a video of Vincent Price reading The Raven, go down to the bottom of the wikipedia page on the poem and you’ll find it under external links/video. He does a dramatic reading of the poem, not literal, but hey it’s Vincent Price! And if you want to see the best adaptation of The Raven ever, go here for The Simpson’s Halloween special version. So, if you like really depressing, gothic poems, enjoy!!

The Furnished Room

Travis Prinzi — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:37:19 +0000

A guest post by Red Rocker!

Do you like ghost stories?

The very first ghost story I ever read was The Whistling Room by William Hope Hodgson. It’s about a room where a very bad thing happened, a long time ago. Perhaps because it was the first ghost story I’d ever read, haunted house stories have been my favorites ever since. All I need to see is mention of a cold spot without a corresponding draft, a shadow standing in the window of a deserted room, a door which will not stay shut – or open – and I’m hooked. Let the haunting begin.

I have forgotten most of the haunted house stories I’ve read – they may raise goosebumps at the moment, but there is nothing in them that returns to make me uneasy the day after. A few images do stay with me: I’ve never forgotten the long black hairs caught up in the coat buttons of Maupassant’s protagonist in A Ghost. I’ve always wondered about who was knocking on the walls in Shirley Jackson’s Hill House: old Miss Crain? Eleanor’s mother? Something not dead because it was never alive? And of course every time I stay in a hotel room I check the picture frames to make sure they are exactly plumb. Curse you Stephen King and room 1408.

Most ghost stories are in the horror genre: they are predicated on a bad thing that happened, a vengeful spirit scaring the bejeezus out of anyone foolish enough to return to the scene of the crime. They are predicated on fear. But every so often we encounter another kind of ghost.

William Sidney Porter (better known under his pen name, O Henry) wrote short stories at the end of the 19^th century. He is most famous for the plot twist that comes at the end of the story – which he might be said to have invented. But he is more than that: he can capture a person, a place or a city in a handful of words. He can make you laugh – one of the funniest stories ever is The Ransom of Red Chief. But underlying the laughter is the recognition of the sadness and tragedy of the human condition. He did not usually write ghost stories, but he did write one or two. Here is his explanation of why:

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.

The line is taken from the short story The Furnished Room. This story is not predicated on murder or an act of violence, or horror or fear. The ghost in this story – if there can even be said to be a ghost – is an unusual ghost. It won’t scare the bejeezus out of you. But it won’t leave you unmoved. The “thousand lives” Porter writes of were not easy lives, and this is not an easy tale. I offer you a Hallowe’en story for grown ups.

You can read The Furnished Room here

And listen to it here.

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Stephen King to Help Pen New Vampire Comic

revgeorge — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:56:57 +0000

According to this story, Stephen King is going to try his hand at comic books. He’s contributed five issues to a new comic called American Vampire, which reimagines the vampire in an American setting. Here’s a brief blurb from the article on what they’re planning to do with the story:

“The series twists the well-trod vampire legend by allowing the creatures to evolve into a distinctly American creature and will follow the adventures of Skinner Sweet, a sociopathic outlaw in the Wild West who becomes the first American vampire. Unlike European vamps, Skinner is powered by the sun and, true to his native environment, has rattlesnake fangs. Each cycle, consisting of five individual comic issues, will take place in a different period of time in American history, tracing Skinner’s descendants, with Skinner himself as a recurring character.”

Thoughts?

History of the Vampire

revgeorge — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:06:27 +0000

Discovery Channel News had a nice, short commentary from Katherine Ramsland, the author of The Science of Vampires. It’s only about 2 and a half minutes long. Lots of still images, some from Nosferatu. So, if you don’t want to watch the Nosferatu movie, you can at least see how they imagined Count Orlok. It’s a pretty interesting commentary and speaks to some of what we’ve recently discussed on vampires. I invite you to check it out and share your thoughts.

H.P. Lovecraft and Zombies

Travis Prinzi — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:06:32 +0000

For our final week of A Hog’s Head Halloween 2009, we return to the godfather of modern horror, H.P. Lovecraft. If you’re not yet familiar with the master of fear, read Amy H. Sturgis’s helpful post from last year, “Getting into the Lovecraft Zone.”

Since we haven’t talked about zombies yet this month, we’ll make the featured story for this week Lovecraft’s very short “In the Vault.” (HT to Amy, once again, for reminding me of zombies and this story at her blog today).

There’s lots of Lovecraft material already here at The Hog’s Head, since we’ve read 10 of his stories together over the past 2 years. We were smart enough to tag some of it, so you can find a lot of material here. For more, use the search bar on the right!

Nosferatu: The Symphony of Horror

revgeorge — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:26:01 +0000

Nosferatu, The Symphony of Horror (How’s that for a catchy name?) was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is, as far as I can tell from a brief research, one of the earliest adaptations of Dracula. Directed by F.W. Murnau and released in 1922, the film attempted to get around the problem of not having the rights to the Stoker story by changing the setting from London to the fictional German city of Wisborg and also changing all the names of the characters. Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok, Harker becomes Thomas Hutter, Renfield becomes Knock, and so on. Minus the ending, though, the story is essentially the same as Dracula.

Which is undoubtedly why, when Florence Stoker, Bram’s widow, sued Prana Film, the producers, for copyright infringement she won very handily. Prana Film declared bankruptcy in order to avoid paying a settlement to Florence. The court also declared that all prints of Nosferatu should be destroyed, but fortunately this was impossible since the film had already been distributed around the world. The film is not copyrighted in the USA and so various versions of it may be found, including online. Most versions nowadays restore the original names from Dracula to the film. You may find versions here and here.

Nosferatu comes out of the German Expressionism movement, which is itself a sub-genre of the Expressionism movement. Expressionism was a response to Positivism. Now, if all this sounds complicated, don’t worry…it is. Needless to say, my brief explanation won’t do justice to any of these movements, so I refer you to the applicable Wikipedia pages.

Positivism “…holds that the only authentic knowledge is that which is based on actual sense experience. Metaphysical speculation is avoided.” Expressionism “…sought to express the meaning of ‘being alive’ and emotional experience rather than physical reality. It is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form.” As the Wikipedia article goes on to explain, Expressionism used very intense emotions to convey a sense of drama and horror. Thus, in film, the mood, the setting, the symbolism employed, and the emotive actions of the actors, both facially and in body language, drive this emotional depth.

Another interesting fact, the screenwriter of Nosferatu, Henrik Galeen, had specialized in Dark Romanticism, which took a very pessimistic view of human nature, once again in response to another genre that had gone before. Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Emily Dickinson are considered to be exampes of Dark Romantic writers. Dark Romanticism also has some similarities to Gothic fiction, which we’ve discussed much on this site. This quote, though, I think sums up the differences between the two genres: “In general, with common elements of darkness and the supernatural, and featuring characters like maniacs and vampires, Gothic fiction is more about sheer terror than Dark Romanticism’s themes of dark mystery and skepticism regarding man. Still, the genre came to influence later Dark Romantic works, particularly some of those produced by Poe.”

I think it’s fascinating how all these various genres influence one another and how they play out for us throughout the centuries. We’ve talked on the Gothic elements of Harry Potter and how Rowling shapes them to her own effect. Nosferatu and the German Expressionism out of which it rose also drank heavily of Gothic and Dark Romantic influence, and German Expressionism also went on to influence future genres such as horror and film noir.

So, I encourage you to watch Nosferatu. It’s only about an hour and twenty-four minutes long. Certainly it will take a bit of mental readjusting to watch. It’s black and white and silent. Except for the music score that accompanies it, which is also all about setting the mood. Just thinking about a recent post Dave the Long-Winded did on Paranormal Activity, I can already see a few tie-ins with Nosferatu. So, watch the movie and post your thoughts here. Looking forward to them all!

Paranormal Activity and Fear

Dave the Longwinded — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:55:42 +0000

Like a lot of the general movie-going public, Jamie and I plunked down some change to check out Paranormal Activity Friday night. First, my quick review: very, very good. The story is simple, and the audience is really supposed to focus on the characters as they sink ever deeper into their fear over what is in their home. The film’s style is much like that of The Blair Witch Project from ten years ago. But, I didn’t find that movie at all engaging, much less frightening. Part of the issue for me was the migraine I left the theater with after enduring nearly an hour and a half of people who couldn’t hold a camera steady. Paranormal Activity solves both of those problems. In short, if you enjoy thrills and confronting your own fears, you need to go see this film.

Movies don’t frighten me very often. In fact, I’ve tried to remember the last film that really unnerved me when I saw it in the theater, but I came up empty.** Paranormal Activity actually left me rather shaken. It is frightening in a way I have never experienced with a film.

Most of what passes for modern horror isn’t interesting. Slasher films that rely on the “gotcha” moment were too effectively skewered by the first Scream for me to give them credit. The torture film phenomenon of the last six or seven years has only baffled me. Gore for the sake of gore isn’t frightening — it’s just disgusting. The first-person, documentary-style of The Blair Witch Project never seems to be done very well for some reason. And ghost films have come to depend on computer generated imagery that works fantastically well for large, space-alien robots. But it never seems to create convincing ghosts.

And the latter has often left me scratching my head. I love a good ghost story, which makes Halloween my favorite time of year. I love to curl up under a blanket with all the television programs about monsters, myths, legends, ghosts, and the general “paranormal” stuff that overtakes the History Channel and its kin throughout October. Whatever you or I may think about its legitimacy, it sure makes for a dang good story. So, why has Hollywood had such a dismal record with ghost-themed movies since, well, Poltergeist?

I think I found one answer in Paranormal Activity. In case you don’t know, the film was reportedly made a couple of years ago in one week for about $12,000 dollars. As far as I could tell, there is virtually no computer generated special effects, except for possibly the last 3 or 4 minutes. Buying into a film technique well documented with movies like Jaws, PA leaves its monster off-screen. Unlike Jaws, that monster never actually appears at all. We see a shadow where one shouldn’t be. A door moves for no reason. Lights flip on and off with no explanation. The action escalates nicely throughout, well paced and efficient. While details can be passed off as coincidence or electrical problems at first, the lead the audience to eventually confront details that can’t be explained conventionally.

To put it another way, Paranormal Activity allows the mundane and commonplace to not just build up to the extraordinary, it makes the viewer rethink the mundane as extraordinary — right up until one character is pulled by the foot from her bed while she is sleeping. Watching this movie, I had a stark realization. I knew where the film was going. I was conscious that it was a piece of fiction, although it was shot so as to breach my suspension of disbelief. But in the last 25 minutes of this movie, I was terrified of what I was watching. I began to understand that I was matrixing the visual and auditory contents of relatively explainable sounds and events with my own experiences in my own home. I’ve heard things in my house that made the hair stand up on my neck. But Jamie and I also live in a house that is 55 years old — we hear things all the time (especially with 4 cats running around!).

Look at the shadow on the door on the left side. Simple, yet effective.

Paranormal Activity’s real genius is that it relies on the audience to substitute their own fears into the void left by simple sounds and shadows. And does so so very effectively that I could just imagine the terror and horror that awaits once one of the characters is pulled by her foot from her bed in the middle of the night by an unseen force. It’s the first film I’ve seen in a long while that really relied on the audience’s imagination, and it does so in creative and tension-filled ways. It made me confront MY fears in my own emotions and psyche, not the spectacle on screen. That is what I think makes for not only a good horror film, but for a great film, period. It wasn’t frightening in an intellectual sense. It was terrifying in a visceral sense. I’ve never felt tension and adrenaline in a movie like I did Friday night.

What are your thoughts, either about Paranormal Activity or about quality scary movies in general? What makes some work and others only mildly interesting exercises?

**I saw Pan’s Labyrinth in the home theater of a friend over a year after it was released in the US, and not in theatrical release. Very good and very unnerving — but that’s something for a later discussion!

Scary Movies Week

Travis Prinzi — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:22:01 +0000

As we continue our Hog’s Head Halloween 2009, we’ve come upon scary movies week. This week, we’ll look at effective Gothic and frightening elements in films, with particular focus on three movies: the 1922 Nosferatu, which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube, del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, and I’m guessing we’ll get a review of the recently released Paranormal Activity, which is getting a lot of attention right now.

That’s only three movies. I’m sure you have favorites. Talk about them in the comments!

Sendak Scaring Children

Travis Prinzi — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:22 +0000

“Most frightening to children is to dream their own figures of fear and find no analogue in anything they hear about or read. Children need to see their feelings, particularly the darkest ones, reflected in their stories. Mitigating the darkness of the fairy tale takes away their power to reassure children that they are not alone in their fearful imaginings, that they are shared and can be addressed.”

~ Maurice Sendak

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The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allen Poe

Travis Prinzi — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:36:10 +0000

We begin week two of A Hog’s Head Halloween with Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Masque of the Red Death.” It’s a short read – the text can be found here, and there’s a free audio of the story in the this collection at Librivox.

Begin discussion below, and we’ll have posts on Poe and this story later in the week!

Also, I intend to record a PubCast on Dracula soon.

The Hog's Head » Horror Stories

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

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The Furnished Room

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