Tag Archives: Occult

Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Cornell Woolrich | Ballantine | 1983 (first published 1945) | 304 pages

A dark prophecy of death sends a man and his daughter into a downward spiral of despair in this supernaturally-tinged noir from the famed author of Rear Window.

While strolling along the riverside late one night, off-duty detective Tom Shawn comes across a distraught young woman standing upon the raised embankment, seemingly in contemplation of jumping to her death. Talking her down from the ledge, Shawn escorts her to a nearby diner, where she confides her fatalistic story of a foretold death.

The book is split roughly into thematic halves, with the first recounting the series of successful prognostications leading Jean Reid and her father, Harlan, to become convinced of the veracity of a psychic’s visions of the future. The predictions culminate in a very precise foretelling of Harlan’s death three days hence at midnight.

Even the means of death, simply described by the psychic as death by lion, becomes somehow less absurd when a pair of lions escapes from a local traveling sideshow. 

The second half of the book is less satisfying, describing Shawn’s attempts at stopping the prophecy and saving Harlan’s life. Even considering that Shawn is calling in a personal favor from his superior on the police force, the sheer number of officers pulled into an extensive investigation and protection operation—based on a nominal threat described in a psychic vision—is almost as comical as the purported means of death.

Harlan’s rapid descent from self-confident businessman to sniveling coward in the light of the fatal prediction also deflates much of the interest in seeing Shawn triumph in saving his life. By the time a wasted Harlan begs not to be left alone while watching the clock tick down to midnight, many readers will probably wish that Shawn would drag the defeated wretch down to the zoo and toss him headfirst in the lion’s den himself.

The final dinner party, characterized by Shawn and Jean’s forced cheerfulness in order to distract Harlan’s broodings, goes on much too long, with several instances of conversational near-blunders referencing time or tomorrow. Even playing records isn’t safe, with unexpected lyrics mentioning destiny threatened to send Harlan deeper into a fully self-absorbed despair. Intended as a suspenseful, against-the-clock countdown, the scene just drags along, not helped by the latent romantic undercurrent of Shawn and Jean’s banter.

However, the overall mood is effectively dark, with a fatalistic, downbeat atmosphere for characters to squirm around inside while fighting against their destinies. Although the conclusion casts the nature of the predictions themselves in an ambiguous light, the inevitable outcome clearly suggests the futility of struggling against one’s own fate.

***

SPOILER ALERT: Fraud or not, the psychic was—strictly speaking—not wrong about the lion!

The Dain Curse

The Dain Curse
Dashiell Hammett | Vintage Books | 1978 (first published 1929) | 213 pages

The unnamed operative from San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency returns in The Dain Curse, a novel–like its predecessor, Red Harvest–originally serialized in the pulp crime magazine, Black Mask.

A diamond theft from the home of scientist Edgar Leggett triggers a series of connected cases revolving around his daughter, Gabrielle. The young woman becomes convinced that she is the focus of a family curse passed down from her mother, Alice Dain, that fatally targets those in her intimate circle. Violent deaths indeed seem to follow, beginning with her father, whose apparent suicide reveals a dark family history. 

Fleeing from this personal tragedy, Gabrielle seeks to find refuge in the Temple of the Holy Grail, a religious cult run by Joseph and Aaronia Haldorn. For Gabrielle, sanctuary from the outside world also includes a growing morphine addiction. A shocking murder eventually drives Gabrielle away again, eloping in Reno with her fiance, Eric Collinson. 

The cult temple provides an appropriately sinister location, replete with its white marble altar locked behind a decorated iron door, and a golden ceremonial dagger that doubles as a murder weapon. Cults here already seem to occupy a place in the perceived landscape of California (and San Francisco, in particular), playing an outsized role in the imagined geography of the state.

The couple’s honeymoon proves short-lived, however, as Eric is mysteriously killed outside the couple’s remote coastal cottage. Gabrielle is missing, presumed kidnapped by unknown persons. The Continental Op bounces from client to client, stubbornly persistent in continuing his investigations and debunking the curse. The cottage’s isolated location, surrounded by sheer drops and hidden coves, provides an appealing backdrop for the unfolding crimes.

Structurally, the book reflects its original serialized format from the pulps. Summaries of varying length follow each individual mystery, with the Continental Op explaining all the details of the complicated crimes to his novelist friend, Owen Fitzstephan. Although appearing to weave together all the loose ends of the separate crimes, the Op remains troubled. He argues to Fitzstephan that a single, unresolved thread connects everything together.

Although occupying the center of the spiraling violence, Gabrielle spends much of her time drugged, incapacitated, or self-recriminating, an unlikely focus of all the other characters and their (romantic and otherwise) obsessions. That such a passive figure generates equally passionate levels of love and hate is as much a mystery as the murders themselves. Never descending into a blatant romantic interest in Gabrielle, the heavy-set, middle-aged Op nevertheless appears to be somewhat charmed. The final chapters of the book break from deduction to detail his intimate efforts to break the girl’s drug habit.

The Continental Op serves as a foundational hard-boiled gumshoe, doggedly pursuing the case at hand. His somewhat brutish physique reflects his determination and underscores his singular identity as the detective. Readers are never privy to his emotions, personal backstory, nor even his name. Interestingly, all the names of the Op’s colleagues are revealed, with the exception of the head of the agency—referred to simply as “The Old Man.”

One of the other operatives does make a tossed-off reference to the previous novel, Red Harvest, by drawing a parallel between Gabrielle and another woman placed under the Op’s protection—a woman brutally murdered on his watch.

The book speeds along at a rapid pace, twisting the Op through the many convoluted individual story segments. He encounters an ever-growing roster of colorful characters along the way, including charlatans, cultists, and crooked cops. Bodies disappear, bombs explode, evidence is planted, and ghostly apparitions manifest themselves as the Continental Op struggles to unpack all the evidence relating to Gabrielle’s purported curse.

The final reveal becomes a bit long-winded, but delivers on the Op’s promise to expose the buried thread entwining all the cases.

The Three Imposters

The Three Imposters
Arthur Machen | Ballantine | 1972 (first published 1895) | 194 pages

A chance encounter on the streets of London plunges Mr. Dyson and his associate into a netherworld of intrigue revolving around the titular trio and their pursuit of an infamous Roman coin.

Dyson, a self-proclaimed man of letters, along with Mr. Phillips, his friend who leans more toward the scientific than the literary, are something of a low-rent, bohemian Holmes and Watson. Although possessing none of the great detective’s deductive skills, Dyson is fascinated in the world hidden beneath the superficially buzzing streets. When he unexpectedly bumps into “the young man with spectacles” and accidentally comes into possession of the Gold Tiberius coin, that netherworld becomes much closer–in the dangerous form of Mr. Davies, Mr. Richmond, and a woman simply referred to as Helen.

Told as a series of interconnected short stories whose contents can stand alone but also tie into the greater events, the overall structure is that of a series of nesting boxes. One account frequently contains another, and this second account often holds another internal note or related correspondence. The tales themselves tend toward the fantastic, although arguably all serve only as disingenuous ruses by those three in pursuit of “the young man with spectacles” and his coin. These anecdotes seem told only to obfuscate their true motivations.

The three imposters assume a number of guises as their paths repeatedly interweave with Dyson and Phillipps, spinning out more weird and horrifying accounts with each encounter.

Novel of the Black Seal relates the story of a professor of ethnology who attempts to discover the truth behind the folktales surrounding the fae people of legend, only to meet a fate and tentacled horror rivaling a later H.P. Lovecraft tale.

Novel of the Dark Valley shifts the narrative to the American west, as an outlaw gang engages in occult ritual before the local townspeople take frontier justice into their own hands.

Novel of the White Powder lurches into full-blown body horror, as a pharmacological substance induces a hideous transformation. This uncanny narcotic surpasses the addictive bug powder in Naked Lunch in terms of its metamorphic possibilities.

The identity of the “young man with the spectacles” shifts in all of these weird tales, as does the identity of the storyteller. Dyson and Phillips grow more incredulous, but equally less enlightened, as the various stories assemble themselves. They sense a sinister undercurrent to events, but resolution remains elusive.

The individual nature of the stories causes the entirety to meander, the sum meaning of the parts remaining stubbornly vague. Long lonely walks lead to unexpected encounters with medieval torture devices, and seemingly casual friendships struck in the reading rooms of libraries eventually drive unsuspecting victims into the fatal clutches of hedonistic cults.

Several stories could easily stand on their own merits without compartmentalizing them inside the context of an overall novel [some were actually published separately in different collections]. However, the telescoping framework, along with the sanguine menace provided by the three imposters, succeeds in suggesting the existence of strange and dangerous undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of an unsuspecting society.

However, any nebulous mood derived from the novel’s structure violently dissipates with a brutal conclusion that inevitably delivers on the course set down by the prologue, even as it reduces our would-be detectives to bystanders and relegates the Gold Tiberius to a MacGuffin.

In a Glass Darkly

In a Glass Darkly
J. Sheridan Le Fanu | Wordsworth | 2007 (first published 1872) | 272 pages

Considered a classic of gothic horror, In a Glass Darkly is a collection of short stories told through the papers of Dr. Hesselius, an occult detective, compiled by an assistant many years after his death. Yet, Hesselius himself plays little part beyond documenting the cases, which are mostly dull affairs peppered with an occasional eerie or macabre moment. However uneven the stories, the inclusion of the iconic vampire tale, Carmilla, ultimately cements its classic status.

Green Tea

A literal exploration of the idiom, “Get the monkey off my back.” 

Dr. Hesselius encounters the strange case of Reverend Jennings, a vicar who has fallen victim to an increasingly malevolent presence. The vicar’s direct account of his affliction, characterized by a phantom black monkey with glowing eyes, is creepy and compelling. In desperation, Jennings reaches out for consultation, trying to determine whether the cause is simple insanity, or something altogether more demonic.

Hesselius wraps up the affair with a monumental thud, providing a quackery-infused (yet altogether deadpan) medical summation that points an accusatory finger at the victim’s high consumption of the titular brewed beverage.

The Familiar

Captain Barton is haunted by a strange stalker in this slow moving and uneventful tale. The overall structural conceit of the story being retold through Hesselius’ notes, which themselves document a third-party account, adds a crippling layer of cruft to an already boring exercise in non-suspense. Barton’s inexplicable descent into madness follows a number of incidents that fail to escalate much beyond mysterious footsteps and grotesque visages, and the unwelcome epilogue simply extends the suffering. At least the protagonist in Green Tea was stalked by a satanic f*****g monkey!

Mr. Justice Harbottle

This tale of judicial revenge initially teased as a haunted house story was so dreadfully boring it repeatedly raised the question, “Should I just skip ahead and read Carmilla?”

The Room in the Dragon Volant

Richard Beckett, a young Englishman traveling through France following the Napoleonic Wars, becomes infatuated with the young wife of an elderly count. Although possessing a modest fortune, Beckett is intimated to be something of a grifter and a gambler, but his plans are put on hold in pursuit of his new romantic obsession.

A masked ball at Versailles, a mysterious fortune-teller, moonlight trysts, and several tales of mysterious disappearances all add to a richly gothic atmosphere. The twist may be apparent before all the elements come together, but Beckett’s fate is a macabre finale worthy of Poe. Unlike Poe, however, Le Fanu lacks the determination to see the story through to its grim conclusion, providing a convenient rescue to prevent the otherwise inevitable–and much darker–destiny from unfolding.

Carmilla

Adoration mixes with abhorrence for Laura, a young girl living with her ailing father in a remote castle, as an accidental carriage crash brings a mysterious companion into her isolated life. 

Although the relationship between Laura and Carmilla has provided a wealth of contemporary readings through the lens of queer studies, their intimacy arguably describes a more fundamental bond, the languid–and undeniably erotic–pleasure between vampire and victim. The fates of the other victims of the vampire in the surrounding countryside are short and brutal, driven by need, but Laura’s doom is slow and drawn out. Her condition gradually worsens as Carmilla luxuriates in the draining life of so emotionally close a companion.

Laura and Carmilla’s relationship is described in terms of love and possesses an intimate closeness, with Laura briefly speculating that Carmilla could be a male suitor in disguise, but lacks an explicit romanticism. Readers anticipating the titillation of a Hammer Studios exploitation film will certainly be disappointed.

However, the overall atmosphere is almost decadently described and positively saturated with all the elements of gothic horror. Nightmarish visions of nocturnal visitors, decaying castles, ominous masquerade balls, hidden family crypts, and undead corpses bathed in blood inform the backdrop to Laura’s account of her illness, told at a remove of some ten years. 

Only the epilogue offers a slight letdown, indulging in the extra opportunity to expound and explain some of the aspects of the vampire’s existence.

The Mummy

The Mummy
Riccardo Stephens | Valancourt Books | 2016 (first published 1912) | 246 pages

Its straightforward title may suggest a monster rampage, but Riccardo Stephen’s 1912 novel is instead a supernaturally flavored parlor mystery.

Curmudgeonly bachelor Dr. Armiston (lamenting his old age at 50!) is brought into consultation regarding a pair of strange deaths, whose common feature is the presence of a sarcophagus containing the mummy of an Egyptian sorceress. The mummy was acquired on a trip to Egypt by Professor Maundeville, a scientist and scholar of the arcane arts, who upon his return to England, related tales of its rumored curse to members of his gentlemen’s club. 

Fascinated by Maundeville’s story of the mummy, the club members agree to rotate the possession of the sarcophagus among them in a casually flippant defiance of the curse. Playing cards are randomly dealt among the group, with the recipient of the ace of spades to host the mummy for two weeks. However, the first two members to take possession of the mummy both end up dead, their fates seemingly the result of natural causes. The fate of the others, who agree to continue with their fatal lottery, ultimately rests in the hands of Dr. Armiston.

Armiston is a grumpy, but appealing protagonist, a doctor of only modest success who seeks out the mystery surrounding the mummy to add adventure to a life he regards as unremarkable. The atmosphere of his habitat is effectively portrayed, from the meetings of secret social clubs to the overstuffed chairs of smoking rooms where gentlemen enjoy their cigars before the fire. 

Maundeville’s personal obsession with youth and prolonging life also introduces some weird science into the proceedings. Armiston himself is drawn into the experiment, allowing a series of hypodermic injections intended to restore youthful vigor, but which may color his judgment of some of the strange events that unfold around the mummy. This becomes of particular importance when–of course–Armiston eventually draws the ace of spades.

The story slows a bit after the third death, as Armiston feigns courtship to Nora O’Hagan, the club’s only female member, in order to flush out a suspect in the deaths. A latent romantic triangle (rectangle? pentagon?) involving Nora and her potential suitors at the club offers some important motivational foundation, but also allows more time for Armiston to bemoan his own growing age and lack of status.

The book does briefly include some bluntly racist language characteristic of its era, but the occurrences of strange deaths, illicit drugs, sailors of dubious character, immortality treatments, and ancient curses make for an engaging and slightly pulpy read. 

Although certainly no Sherlock Holmes (Dr. Watson is the obvious comparison), it is perhaps unfortunate that Dr. Armiston did not return in a series of adventures similar to Arthur Conan’s Doyle’s detective. Armiston, along with his faithful servant Mudge, could easily be envisaged in pursuit of additional supernatural cases around the landscape of Edwardian London, while indulging in self-reproach rather than a seven-percent solution.

The Devil’s Bride

The Devil’s Bride
Seabury Quinn | Warner Books | 1976 (first published 1932) | 254 pages

On the eve of her wedding, nervous young bride-to-be Alice Hume is so stricken by an unsettling experience that she consults with occult detective Jules de Grandin. While attempting to engage with a Ouija board, Alice repeatedly receives the same cryptic, but insistent, message: “Alice come home.”

Proceeding with the wedding the next day, Alice mysteriously disappears from the ceremony. The unusual circumstances of her vanishing appear to be something of a locked-door mystery, until de Grandin finds the residue of a strange narcotic powder on the windowsill of the church. This clue is the thread that leads the uncanny detective to a cabal of satanists that are intent upon destroying organized religion and overthrowing the governments of the world.

Unfortunately for Alice, her ancestor married a refugee from a group of satanic worshippers in Kurdistan, and now the cultists want her back for a ritual ceremony to cast her in the role of…The Devil’s Bride!

The character of Jules de Grandin (referred to as “the occult Hercule Poirot” on the book cover) was featured in nearly one-hundred short stories in Weird Tales magazine beginning in the 1920s. As his only full-length novel, The Devil’s Bride still contains all the elements of a pulp serial, if perhaps lacking some of the narrative punch due to its longer length.

The twisty trail of clues leads de Grandin through a tale featuring disappearances, strange murders, ritual ceremonies, psychotronic drugs, hypnosis, secret messages left in Morse Code, and attacks by a pack of white wolves. Although perhaps appropriate for a fight against a world-threatening evil, the novel lacks the focus of the short stories, leaving de Grandin to contend with an expanding cast of supporting characters: Dr. Trowbridge, de Grandin’s own version of Dr. Watson; Renouard, a French policeman and old friend; Ingraham, an English inspector who joins the group following a parallel case; Costello, a tough street cop; and eventually John Davisson, Alice’s fiancé.

De Grandin also encounters some rather shockingly graphic scenes of violence while pursuing the missing Alice Hume. A woman is crucified in a churchyard, a young witness is savagely mutilated and left for dead, and several kidnapped children are horrifically slain on the altar of the cultists. A culprit is eventually put to death in the electric chair, and De Grandin himself later dishes out a gruesome revenge with his sword cane–before his party of armed men commence with a mass execution of satanists.

No doubt a product of its time, the book contains some dubious theories on a host of subjects, including race and the role of English imperialism in Africa. After some feral wolves are released from their captivity, the police surmise that only the insane would feel an aversion to caged animals. Although the drug is not specifically mentioned by name, marijuania is–of course–implied to be the tool of the devil to seduce the unsuspecting into a path of wanton evil.

A collection of his short stories would be a better starting point into the adventures of Jules de Grandin, but there is more than enough pulpy goodness in this full-length novel to leave you (figuratively) twisting the tip of your pointy little mustache and exclaiming, “Pardieu!”

Chain Letter

Chain Letter
Ruby Jean Jensen | Zebra Books | 1987 | 382 pages

Suburban kids Brian, Abby, and Shelly follow a lost dog* into an abandoned nursing home, where they discover a cursed missive that unleashes a string of misfortune and death.

*Sorry, Babs, we hardly knew ye. It’s not a spoiler alert to understand that you would fall victim to the genre trope of using dogs to elevate early tension.

Young protagonists are a hallmark of eighties horror fiction, and they are reasonably well drawn here, stashing their bikes in the woods and sneaking into forbidden areas with their parents or guardians none the wiser. Admittedly much paler in comparison to the group of friends on their mission quest in The Body (from Stephen King’s Different Seasons), the kids in Chain Letter at least fall short of crossing into the comic strip territory of their counterparts in The Goonies.

The chain letter itself is not the only source of horror, although once set in motion, its copies waste little time in unleashing violence in the small community. A strange, shadowy man seems to manipulate the action from the boarded up nursing home and haunt the characters. Abby, in particular, experiences some alarming changes in temperament. Her malicious attack on another friend is one of the more viscerally shocking events in the story.

Overall, Chain Letter is not overly explicit in its horrors, relying instead on the creepy atmosphere of the abandoned nursing home and the unsettling appearance of the apparitions of lost friends. The book would probably serve best as a spooky, young-adult tale for Halloween, although not particularly set in the season.

A late twist involving the content of a torn portion of the letter, and the ultimate identity of its shadowy author, mostly falls flat.

The Zebra paperback edition has become highly collectible due to its fantastic cover art by David Mann, whose skeletal postal worker and bloody correspondence (like so many other Zebra covers) arguably suggests a more compelling story than the one contained within its pages.

The Glow

The Glow
Brooks Stanwood | Fawcett | 1980 | 320 pages

Young New York couple Pete and Jackie Lawrence move into a too-good-to-be-true Upper East Side apartment, its amazingly low rent and spacious rooms offering a stark contrast to the cramped squalor of their previous home. In addition, the other residents of the building seem to function as an extended family of sorts, offering the couple an unexpected level of care and emotional support—and displaying an unusual interest in their physical fitness.

Although “The Twelvers”, as the residents of the building call themselves, are mostly a group of late-middle age couples, they communally share frequent work-outs and health food regimes. Pete is quickly indoctrinated into their lifestyle, joining the others in daily runs around Central Park Reservoir and surrendering some of his bad eating habits. Jackie, however, is more reluctant, not particularly trusting the motives of the Twelvers. She also is more resistant to the notion of giving up her personal vices of cocktails and cigarettes.

Jackie’s suspicions grow when the only other young couple in the building mysteriously disappears, fueling her mistrust of the Twelvers and causing her to take a deeper look at their history and true motivations.

The Glow lazily drifts in the pop-cultural wake of Rosemary’s Baby, attempting to deliver a similar atmosphere of paranoia, dread, and suspicion. Instead of an eccentric couple sneaking Tannis root into a chocolate mousse dessert, a powder-blue suited tracksuit brigade of senior citizens extols the virtues of vitamin-rich health food shakes. Ira Levin is even name checked in one passage, as Jackie reads an otherwise unnamed bestelling thriller. This brief, but overt, homage only distracts, serving to acknowledge The Glow’s position as a faded copy of the original.

Perhaps even more vexing than the reference to a better book is that her related reading fails to trigger any kind of breakthrough revelation. She never puts the Ira Levin book down and screams, even to herself, “Wait a minute! I’m Rosemary. I’M ROSEMARY!!”

The Twelver’s almost sanctimonious focus on advancing their exercise regime reflects the greater societal explosion of jogging and rise of gym culture in the era when the book was written. Healthy living seemingly presents an existential threat to the red-meat-and-potatoes world of a certain brand of success, and its advancement by the Twelvers signals their sinister intentions. However, it is the very notion of aging that is the implicit horror. The underlying sexism of the era is evident as well, most notably as the men of the group casually discuss how Jackie’s “derrière” looks in her tracksuit. 

It also doesn’t help that the Lawrences are not particularly empathetic characters. Pete is mostly ineffectual, easily falling prey to the whims of the group and its directives. The couple’s aspirations are those of the nascent yuppies, with an overemphasis on status and decor. Their focus on fabrics, furniture, and well-matched wines fails to elicit much of a rooting interest in their continued well-being.

Events play out much as expected with little to recommend beyond the inherent thrills derived from emulating classic urban horrors. The physical fitness twist on the story provides some distinction, but only really serves as a time-capsule view of late-seventies culture.

One valuable takeaway, however, is the newfound understanding of the powder-blue tracksuit: the uniform of … EVIL.

The Tulpa

The Tulpa
J.N. Williamson | Leisure Books | 1981 | 238 pages

Following a debilitating stroke, Charlie Kavanagh begins to experience a series of prophetic dreams. His son-in-law, Steve Neal, notices a few unsettling correlations between Charlie’s dreams and current newspaper headlines, and quickly surmises that something in the old man’s brain has transformed from his stroke, allowing him to predict future events.

Steve accepts the nature of Charlie’s gift in a remarkably speedy fashion. After spending a session in the library and perusing a reference book on the occult, Steve is convinced of Charlie’s precognition. In a stultifyingly boring academic exercise masquerading as dialogue, he also persuades his skeptical wife and children in short fashion. In what must be viewed as the greatest endorsement of the local library system, Steve’s borrowed books have allowed him to also arrive at definitive answers to questions of time and space, immortality, the nature of the soul, and the existence of free will.

Feeding on his own need to play a hero, Steve takes action to warn the potential victims against the visions Charlie experiences in his trance states. However, as he attempts to convince those in harm’s way of the legitimacy of his warnings, a dark shape begins to take form, an entity also called forth from Charlie’s altered brain.

The characters here are all uniformly one-dimensional. Charlie begins on a sympathetic note, falling ill at his wife’s funeral, but quickly becomes marginalized as little more than a sleeping prophet. Steve is primarily a schlub, a sportswriter whose profession allows a prosaic intrusion of sports talk into the narrative, and his family functions as a sounding board to his exposition dumps on the nature of precognition. The family interactions uniformly read as stilted and unconvincing.

Much is made of Steve’s strained relationship with his wife, who seems to spend much of her time in her negligee. They share a few cringe-inducing sex scenes that must be intended to ramp up the salacious content for a readership demanding some cheap titillation in a horror story. A casual acquaintance in a baseball office also turns out to be a comely witch, although her unlikely romantic advances toward Steve suggest something more akin to a succubus.

Just as quickly as Steve deduces precognition, he virtually shouts “Tulpa!” when strange sightings of shadows are reported in town. Another research session with some library books (remember when there was no internet?) tells Steve all he needs to know about this monster created by the mental power of intense concentration. The creature itself only appears late in the narrative, but its bloody rampage in a meeting of the local Sherlock Holmes society marks an almost absurdist highlight to the action.

Prefiguring the video game violence controversy surrounding Mortal Kombat by several years, the tulpa also pulls out a character’s spinal cord and uses it as a weapon.

Midnight

Midnight: A Novel of Terror
John Russo | Pocket Books | 1980 | 176 pages

The screenwriter of Night of the Living Dead delivers this novel about a runaway teen falling into the clutches of a psychopathic family practicing black magic and ritual sacrifice, but fails to deliver any real terror (despite the subtitle), or anything much more than an engulfing sense of unpleasantness.

After the abusive advances of her drunken stepfather, Nancy Johnson runs away from home, hitchhiking her way cross-country with a pair of college students on spring break. In the backwoods of West Virginia, the trio is ambushed by two murderous brothers from the Barnes family, a group of siblings continuing a family history of occult practice. Nancy is taken captive and locked in a dog kennel with another kidnapped girl. Unable to escape, the girls wait helplessly for their midnight appointment on the sacrificial altar.

Although some history is provided, the Barnes still seem like a shallow variation on the crazy backwoods family depicted in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Cynthia inherits some sort of occult magical power from her grandfather, while brothers Luke and Abraham are her psychopathic enablers. Cyrus rounds out the group of siblings, a large and simple-minded brute with a talent for building coffins. How this isolated brood was able to attract a following of willing acolytes is never satisfactorily explained.

Is Cynthia a witch, a satanist, a cultist, or just insane? We never really learn anything specific regarding the unholy acts she commits, or the purposes behind the rites and ritual murders. It all just reads as a lazy shorthand.

Nancy’s role as a protagonist collapses and ultimately breaks down. After being captured, she is reduced to the role of passive victim, unable to do much more than ineffectually pray in the corner of her cage. The other trapped girls have sketchily assembled back stories, but emerge as more active players in their attempts at escape. The whole story reads like a low-budget, exploitation movie screenplay, with cinematic descriptions of the unfolding action. An early hint at a greater worldview, with the related and intertwining evils of both witch and witch-hunter, is never fully explored.

Although much less explicit than the splatterpunk genre to emerge in the following decades, Midnight instills its narrative with a deep sense of nihilism and a cruelty towards its female victims that is more uncomfortably misogynistic and cringe-worthy than terrifying. Downbeat endings and pessimistic views on human nature are not out of place in the horror genre, but this narrative is more flatly depressing than suspenseful. The loutish stepfather and the leering Barnes brothers add to a generally repellent atmosphere, already sleaze heavy with kidnapped girls in their underwear locked in dog cages. A reference to victims of the Holocaust accepting their fate is offensive in this context.

A late-chapter attempt at a twist with Cynthia’s mother lands with an indifferent shrug, fully anticipated and yet completely incidental to the story. Perhaps all such attempts are doomed to fail in a post-Psycho universe. Once Hitchcock spun Mrs. Bates around in her chair—revealing her dead-empty eye sockets in the light of the overhead lamp—any subsequent tries for this kind of shock value simply seem palely derivative.

Not recommended.