Subliminal blood, sublime blood

I might have mentioned (once or twice) how much I love the Nightstalker series. I grew up watching it on broadcast TV, sometimes on the big set in my parents room, sometimes in my own room with the lights off and the bedsheets in my hand ready to be pulled over my head if things got too intense. I think a person gets a lot out of a childhood with the right amount of fear of the boogyman.

Now that technology has progressed to the point where a person can have more movies and shows available than would have fit in an entire house of VHS tapes, I like to indulge myself once in a while. The short, single season of Carl Kolchak's exploration of his own dark world is one of those indulgences.

There's one episode, Chopper, that I saw recently. An updated version of the story of the headless horseman, its first death comes with the roar of a motorcycle engine and the cold chime of polished steel. Highlander fans take note of the type of sword used to collect heads and its distinctive white grip. This was more than a decade before anyone heard of Connor MacLeod.

But we don't see the blood. The engine sound cuts out and we hear the sword ring. We get a brief, frame-frozen shot of the blade and the neck, and an instant later we see and hear the anguish of an innocent bystander who bore witness.

We don't see the blood, but we believe in it. The same part of our brains that helped small children watch painted herd animals come alive on cave walls lit by flickering firelight gives us the experience of seeing blood everywhere when we don't see it with our eyes. We have faith in the blood. Can I get an Amen?

Remember Psycho? Marion Crane, nude and oblivious, taking a nice, relaxing shower to ease the sting of realizing that love doesn't really conquer all? Just as she's about to settle into a life containing a little less faith, dear Mother arrives to provide a religious conversion on the edge of a butcher knife. After that movie was shown, there were people that swore Hitchcock had pulled a Wizard of Oz style effect and filmed the blood in color. People were as certain they saw crimson running down that shower drain as they were of their own names. In their heart of hearts, they believed it.

Hitchcock used chocolate syrup for that scene, liking the way it looked on film. Children all across the U.S. add the blood of Marion Crane to milk every day, and they guzzle it down with smiles on their sweet, innocent faces. I have some in my refrigerator right now.

I've known that scene used chocolate syrup for a while now, and a short time ago I had the pleasure of introducing my two nephews to Psycho. (You want a challenge? Try keeping a straight face while people you know are debating whether the killer is Norman or his mother) Sitting there and seeing a story play out that I already knew, it didn't make a difference. When I looked at watery chocolate syrup, I could feel Marion Crane dying, right there in front of me in black and white.

Now suppose someone is working with words and not pictures, and they want to make believers out of their readers . How do they cast that same spell?

Well, let's look at the tools we have, and at what we need to do. We need to convey a set of sensations, and we have every word in the English language and its competitors, and we also have all those fears our readers carry around with them. We have their dreads, as Mister Barker once put it. Those special kinds of fears that people think about and plan to avoid even when there's no source for them around. Most of those comes from old instincts that are buried so deep they're written in the language of nerve endings, sounds, and smells.

Feel: something sharp drags across the skin of your throat, and then the front of your shirt is wet.

Hear: the voice of a strong person who you respect for their intelligence, babbling in that tired, frustrated way that we automatically connect with someone suffering from Alzheimer's, or a non-fatal head wound.

Smell: that thick, wet, sweetness that sticks on someone's skin and hair when they get near a dead body lying out in the hot sun. That smell you can taste and feel.

Back to puppies and kittens. Please take your barf bags with you when you leave.

Important point: this medicine, like all others, only works when given in the correct dosage. Too much and we overload the system, numbing the reader. Too little and defensive reactions kick in, like denial. We end up with an audience that we've vaccinated against us. Curses, foiled again.

That's a rather complicated set of circumstances. How do we keep track of everything? By keeping our goal in mind. We want to tell a good story.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's good to be back, writing.

Buried treasure, on Netflix and everywhere else.

Think about the concept of buried treasure for a minute.  You have something valuable, be it gold coins, untraceable bearer bonds, (coupons attached) working prototypes of Apple's next three widgits, or a dozen copies of the Vanessa Williams issue of Penthouse in mint condition.  You have them in your hands, you have them where you can pour over them and just speculate about everything that you could do with them, and then you go dig a hole in the sand, drop them in, and cover them up.
What the hell are you thinking?
I haven't researched the reality of this concept, so for all I know, there might have been sane reasons for people once doing this.  Maybe Long John Silver and his crew were worried about the heat coming down on them from their last heist and decided to ditch the stuff on a nameless island and then just feign innocence when they were boarded by angry sailors who wanted their issues of Penthouse back.  Maybe.  But tell me that if you buried something  like that someplace where you couldn't keep an eye on it, that you wouldn't break out in a cold sweat from time to time at just the thought of someone coming along and saying, 'Hey!  See where the dirt's disturbed?  Let's dig right there!'  Then tell me and try to keep a straight face.
I've been a fan of the old ' The Nightstalker' series since I was a kid.  I can't remember the first episode that I saw, but I remember the series coming on late at night, and damn near my whole day would be spent in anticipation.  What would the monster be?  What would it look like?  Would it be one of my favorites, or was there a chance I would discover a new favorite?  Each time the series came to it's end I would feel like a bit of beauty had left the world, and each time when it was put back on the air I would regain a bit of the hope that I once had.  As time wore on, some episodes became favorites, and some just became parts of an incredibly cool TV series.
The other night when I couldn't sleep, again, I turned on the Blue-ray player that a friend got us for Christmas and connected it to Netflix.  This is the first Blue-ray device my wife and I own, because we like to be dragged into the modern world one step at time.  Browsing through the horror offerings, I stumbled upon an old friend.  When I ran through the episodes by title, one didn't ring a bell.  Getting more info, I couldn't believe it.  Here was an episode, 'Firefall,' that I had never seen before.  Somehow in all the times I had faithfully watched the series on broadcast TV, I had missed this one.
Watching it brought back all the reasons that I love 'The Nightstalker.'  Darren McGavin was THE smart-ass reporter.  He feigned cynicism, but when it came down to it, he always stuck his own neck out to do the right thing, usually falling on his ass sometime in the process.  His editor, long-suffering Tony Vincenzo, was every person who has ever stuck his head in the sand or turned his head away rather than look an ugly truth in the face, which was why he had to suffer.  Watching that episode and others, you see all the attention that went in to each one.  The scene where the rich older woman quickly raises her car window, only to lower it right back down at a gesture from Richard Kiel.  The fact that in 'The Vampire,' the title woman never says a word.  The flames that dance behind the doppelganger as he taps on the windows of the church.  There was also that creepy, soul-rending music that would go right into your spinal cord if you were watching this stuff late at night with no one else in the house.
That's treasure.  Makes me feel kind of silly to have never sat down and gone through the whole series before now.
Today my lady love and I went down to the Alamo Drafthouse and saw Joss Whedon's 'Cabin in the woods.'  I thought I had an idea of what it was about from the trailers.  It turns out that my idea was superficial at best, and the film was damn good.  Definitely worth seeing.

Edit:  Since I used Darren McGavin's real name, I should probably give Simon Oakland his due for perfectly playing Kolchak's editor/foil.