Bacon is NOT the same thing as ham

Okay everyone, have a seat and get out a pencil and a piece of paper. Write down this formula: Something horrific = horror. Now is that right? It does look like it, I'll admit. 'Something' could be anything, and 'horrific' even contains most of the letters of horror. But I hope everyone here has the same feeling in their gut that I do, that there's more to it than that.

Straight up, in-your-face horror only scares us so briefly that the length of time might not be measurable unless you use one of those branches of math that's built on unreal and irrational numbers. The kind of horror that makes us feel better when it's over contains a measured amount of ambiguity and a measured amount of certainty, in the right proportions and added at the right time. To use a cooking analogy, something I'm just as qualified to use as I am to repair Model T's, the dish isn't dependent on the meat as much as it is on the spices and the preparation.

Let's compare two dishes. They both contain the same meat but follow two different recipes, and end up with two very different results. The meat we'll use will be something solid for this genre: the slow, agonizing death of a child.

The recipe in one story is from a movie my wife told me about that starts off with an exceptionally gruesome scene. An innocent little girl is trapped in a small space, and the space is flooded with wet cement. She screams for her daddy the whole time, and the scene cuts just before we see her die. She could be anyone's child, yours or mine.

I watched the whole movie, Walled In, and while the girl's death is mentioned later, there's no direct relevance. She isn't the only one to die that way, and that was the only scene that the young actress has. That whole gut-wrenching event was a throw-away.

The other recipe comes from the Japanese movie 'Ringu,' and its American remake. In this example, we see a little girl thrown into a well and left to die of exposure. Though the death is later explained to be slow and terrible, we're only given a few seconds of the attack and seeing her fall.

This little girl has supernatural powers, and those powers make life hell for the people around her. Her death isn't revealed until we're halfway through the movie, and the person who kills her is a family member driven to the act out of desperation. She's a central character and the protagonists spend the movie trying to find out just what happened to her. One item to note is that in the Japanese version, it's hinted that she might be of non-human origin, (and in a horror movie that kind of hint is pretty reliable) and that she kills a man with her abilities even before she becomes a vengeful ghost. This makes her something alien to us, and even though we cringe at seeing her killed, we can move on.

So set these two entree's on the table next to each other and compare them side by side. One has the meat dropped on top where it's the first thing you'll taste when you bite into it, and the other has it further in. Why does this matter?

In real life, the death of a child horrifies us, as it should. Whether we read about it in the news or hear about it in a conversation at the water-cooler, it means something to us. Using that connection when you tell a story, either on film or in print, is like using explosives to blast a tunnel through a mountain. You damn well better know what you're doing, or this shit will go off in your face. The meat needs to blend in with the rest of the dish.

The silly thing is that the throw-away wasn't needed in Walled In. The movie was good, with what I would call solid acting and a fairly good story. I'll guess that the girl's death was put in to shock us right off the bat. Well, it does that, but it makes the whole rest of the movie seem like it's waiting for the real action to begin. When you get the spiciest part in the first bite, the rest can't help but seem bland.

I loved The Ring. It's a good, well-paced ghost story that pushes the right buttons. It has the meat mixed in with the spices, and things blend. It leaves us wanting more of the same taste.

That's why we cook.

That's why I write.

A necessary step?

Ask your standard Joe on the street what horror is sometime. I'm willing to bet that A: He or she gives examples rather than a definition, and B: Most of those examples are movies, and they include things like Dracula, Friday the Thirteenth, and Halloween, if they're my age. If they're not, well, hopefully it's American Horror Story or even Paranormal Activity. Just please not Twilight, because it really isn't horror.

Now I need to veer a bit to one side here. Hold on to the rail, please. While I'm distrustful of those who say one genre or another has a 'purpose' or function,' I do think that some types of fiction (printed or filmed) have effects on people. One effect that horror can have, depending on how your head is wired, is to help you deal with the 'real' things that you're afraid of. You watch Roddy McDowall triumph over a murderous, psychotic ghost, then you don't think having to ask your grouchy boss for some vacation time is as bad as you thought it could be. A girl survives (mostly) an encounter with a crazed family who kill all her friends with meathooks and chainsaws, so you can survive doing your taxes. A young doctor finds his true love and saves her from the vampirous reincarnation of her distant ancestor, so I can get over the disappointment of rejection and send more of my work out. We can tell all those motivational gurus that they're full of it, but those poor fools whose only sin was to take a wrong turn? Heck, that was us just last week.

Now here's my question, how far off the path of reality do we need to go? With the success of the Saw and Hostel series of movies, I'd be hard pressed to say that those films don't offer their audiences something. But I wonder if it's the same as the ones with a supernatural element. I know that there's nothing overtly supernatural in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so maybe my second example isn't the best, but the sheer craziness of the Leatherface family keeps it from being torture porn. Even one of my favorite directors, Takashi Miike, filmed 'Audition,' and had a cameo in one of the Hostel movies (brief tangent, I saw Audition, and it creeped me out like nothing else since when I saw Night of the Living Dead, at about age ten).

Does it make the horror easier to deal with, if it's about something unreal? I'm not going to address people's beliefs on ghosts, etc here, because for this discussion it isn't rellevant. Do we come away better armored for having watched The Exorcist, or The Last House on the Left?

What, you think I know? I'm asking the question. What's your answer?

Sadly, the bit in the second paragraph about rejection is true to life. Amazon shot down Roja based on the pitch alone, and Gray Matter Press declined on Dirty. Oh well.

I'm still writing.

You and me verses everyone else

I like horror. That probably doesn't come as a shock to you, but I need to start this piece with that fact.

I like reading it, watching it, talking about it, and boy do I enjoy writing it. I like good action, Sci Fi, and an occasional mystery, too. But that cold shiver that tickles all the nerve endings at once is my bread and butter, and my meat and potatoes. It's the syrup on my pancakes.

The other day I had an encounter that felt like a recurring dream. I've had it before, and I'll probably have it again. Each time I have it, I expect to get the same part of my brain 'pinged.'

Someone said to me, 'I don't read horror.' I nodded, and life went on. A few people who know me know that sometimes it takes me a little while to fully process the personal stuff.

About ninety-nine percent of the time, it isn't that it's said, it's the way that it's said. Like it's a claim of territory, or the way a recovering alcoholic will mention they don't drink any more. Most of the time, they don't say that they don't like it, or that they prefer something else, or that they've never read/seen anything that was worth their time. They say it, in my humble opinion, like they're better than that.

I've heard that same feeling expressed elsewhere. I think it was at a convention that I overheard someone saying that the reason Rachel Weisz didn't do the third mummy movie was because she felt she 'didn't have to do those kinds of films any more.' Note that this is the same feeling, coming from the other side of the fence. As true believers, (My apologies to Stan Lee) we feel that we have the good stuff, and all those other fools are living in ignorance. Now, I conducted extensive research to find out if Ms. Weisz actually said that, but IMDB and Yahoo Answers both denied it. With no definitive evidence, what do we believe? What we want to believe.

I don't read or watch romance, tear-jerkers, or comedy. I have watched each of these in the past, and ended up wanting my hour and a half back, and usually my money too. This is not the same thing as saying these genres are 'beneath' me, though. I don't get anything out of them, so I don't invest time in them.

I've heard some of the other genres talked about in the same way, too. Science fiction and fantasy often get lumped in with horror, as in 'I don't watch that stuff.' An odd attitude.

This post is a bit of a ramble, but there's nothing wrong with that. This is me thinking at my keyboard the way some people talk to their pets. But unlike Spot, the keyboard, and you, will remind me about this again someday, and we'll continue the discussion.

One last note, I have to think up some really horrible story to tell me wife. She bought a box of mint chocolate pocky the other day, and those damn things are evil. (and gone)

Still writing, obviously.

On Crap

If you read, watch, or listen to horror, you're going to discover a basic truth: There's a lot of crap out there. It's true for other genres as well, but we're talking about horror, so smear some vapor rub under your nose and put on your waders. It gets pretty deep in here.

I just watched a movie on Netflix that billed itself as horror, and it inspired the title of this piece. I debated for a while whether or not to tell the title of the film, and I've just decided to give the relevant details, and if you can figure out which one I'm talking about, well, you've earned the warning to avoid it.

Disclaimer: Have I written crap? Oh hell yes. Will you ever read it? Not if I can help it. If you've ever read anything of mine that was crap, please send me an e-mail and we can arrange to meet somewhere along a dark, deserted stretch of road. If you can bring your own duct tape, plastic bags, and hacksaw, that would be ideal.

Now just as crap is unavoidable, in producing as well as consuming, it has a function. When you write something that stinks and oozes, you better have the ability to recognize it, and either flush it and learn from the experience, or break it down to it's raw elements and start over. If you can't recognize it, rest assured someone out there can, and they will not be shy about informing you. When you read or watch crap, you can tell what it is pretty quickly. Then, if you have the itch, you start noticing specifics. In the movie, Daniel Baldwin does a good job acting, but his character is one dimensional. All he is, is a really sadistic murderer. That's it. Good villains, on the other hand, are worth watching because they're interesting. Jigsaw has a code he follows, and he's a murderous psycho because he lost his unborn child and was given a death sentence by brain cancer. Hannibal Lecter is smarter than we are, has those creepy abilities to manipulate other people and to accurately predict what they'll do in important situations, and lived through a horrific childhood. These plot points make us envy and empathize with the villains. We make up little details about them in our head that are never mentioned in the book/movie. We say to ourselves, 'If I had that ability, I know exactly what I'd do with it.' Our movie villain is a murderous bully, and he's lucky. He gives us no hint of being a genius, and he NEVER makes a mistake.

Watch your foot. I think my disbelief is going to fall there.

The two protagonists would have to have an extra hour of screentime, each, in order to work their way up to being one-dimensional. We have a jaded cop, and an optimistic shrink, and that's all that they are. The emphasis here is on the victims, and to be fair the women deliver decent performances. But when the credits rolled, I wanted my hour and a half back. There was no point. Almost nothing changed, and the only thing that did, only made matters worse. I will admit that the later 'Saw' movies have this same problem, too, so I can understand people who make a claim to them getting labeled as crap. But I dare you to stick that label on the original, and then defend that viewpoint.

That's the difference. Good writing, whether it ends up in print or on a screen, tells a story. There is progression, whether for good or ill, but it has a pace, and a plot. I can sum up this movie by saying, 'Sadistic murderer tortures and murders some pretty women.' Except for the gory details, that's the whole story, which is no story.

That's crap.

I finished 'Blood' on Wednesday, and on Friday I started 'A Room'. I'm really excited about the latter, as I've had it bouncing around in my head for a long time now.

I'm trying out a new technique for these entries, writing them on an Open Office document and copying and pasting them in. This way I'll have a record in case Google swallows my blog and refuses to spit it back up, and I can write these earlier if I get an idea. Hopefully, that will prevent me from being late again.

Still writing.