Christian Realism

Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film by Darryl Jones. Let’s see… how to put this delicately… perhaps I wanted more out of the book than it was ever intended to give, but this book failed to deliver on almost every level.

Ostensibly it was an examination and history of several themes in horror literature (and film): the mad scientist; vampires; forbidden knowledge; pestilence / invasion motifs; diabolism; etc. In actuality, it seemed more like a polemic against the “video nasties” laws of the UK. Yeah, okay, I get it: The Exorcist was banned in England, and the author doesn’t like it. Point taken. Can we move on now?

The book was divided thematically; that much of the title was correct. And in the author’s defense, he seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of 20th-century horror films. Unfortunately, that was the part I was least interested in: I wanted to know more about the themes in literature and the history. And there, it was lacking. First, the history was rather weak, especially on the literary side. The section on vampires in literature, for example, seemed little more than an abridged version of Montague Summers Vampire: His Kith and Kin. In the section on cannibalism, the author talks at great length about Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, and I’m not sure he picked up on all of Swift’s irony. And the opening chapter, about Gothic literature (a reasonable place to being a discussion of horror literature), quickly devolved into a rant about how the English hated the Celts, and the Protestants hated the Catholics. This is how we got Gothic lit: no mention of similar themes appearing in French and German literature at the same time.

To make matters worse, the book was difficult to read. Britishisms aside, the flow was disjointed: paragraphs would go on for a page or more, then the text would jump to another subject without transition or explanation of the relationship. The sentences were long and discursive: things that should have been footnotes were crammed in as long parenthetical clauses, and some things that should have been parenthetical asides were relegated to annoying endnotes.

But I knew the author and I were in two completely different places when I read the following on page 45: Unquestionably the greatest of all cannibal movies, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is also, for my money, the greatest of all modern horror movies (as well as having what is undoubtedly the finest title of any film, ever, and featuring, in Marilyn Burn’s performance as Sally Hardesty, the greatest example of sustained screaming since Fay Wray in King Kong.)

At this point it was obvious we had complete mental disconnect. Or, as bluewoad would say, we had differing hermeneutics. To wit:

• The implicit assumption that there are numerous great cannibal movies to choose from.
  I don’t think there are.
• The claim that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great movie, much less the “greatest of all modern horror movies”.
  I don’t think it’s even a good movie… and you can interpret “good” on all its various levels.
• The screaming thing.
  If there is such a thing as a great scream, then Janet Leigh takes the prize.

So basically, the book was a disappointment. But the next one I plan to review was much better…