excuse me, ghidorah

It’s our 2008 Halloween special, comparing classic and modern horrors and hearkening back to the glory days of monster fandom: the years when Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine could still be found on the magazine shelf at your local drugstore. God bless Uncle Forry, editor of FM, and Basil Gogos, frequent cover artist, both of whom are still with us so far as I know. (The image to the right here borrows from James Bama, I think, who did the art for the Aurora monster model kits.) I sort of trounce modern horror in this episode. Perhaps I should do a little more thinking about the subject, particularly the modern zombie film with reference to Kim Paffenroth’s book Gospel of the Living Dead and the essay collection The Undead and Philosophy edited by Green and Mohammad. Certainly the zombie has become the iconic monster of the late twentieth, early twenty-first century. Strange, though, that there is no particular actor celebrated for his or her performance as a zombie (isn’t that kind of strange?) as Karloff or Lugosi are still celebrated for their portrayals of the Frankenstein Monster and Dracula. It’s practically impossible to be a horror fan without a fave actor to hang your hat on — like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney, or even Angus Scrimm! Lord willing, a real horror revival will occur in years to come based on talented performers and directors.

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Linda Miller, a frequent participant over at the Universal Monster Army forum where people gather to discuss classic monster films and related subjects, recently passed away due to heart failure. I did not know Linda, but the various memorials left by her friends and fellow fans describe a wonderfully generous person. She was apparently yet another example of the Karloff Syndrome - that is, Forry Ackerman’s observation that monster fans have a tendency to be kind and gentle by nature. At least, that seems to hold true regarding the classic, spookier sort of monsters portrayed by Lugosi and Karloff and Chaney, rather than more recent creatures. At any rate, reading about Linda Miller introduced me to the fact that Linda Miller was quite a good artist, particularly regarding monsteriffic subjects. She worked in black and white acrylic washes. A gallery of her work can be found here. Linda Miller, rest in peace.

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This episode perplexes me. My intention was to try and explore Christian perspectives on suffering using The Mist as a sounding board — The Mist being a recent film adaptation of a Stephen King novella. Instead, I end up unpacking the religious “spin” to be found in the film, given religious weirdo Mrs. Carmody and humanist everyman hero David Drayton. I guess it’s difficult for me to talk about suffering when my family is having a tough time. Sort of like a sick man talking about nausea, or a man on a sailboat expounding on seasickness. Hmmmmm…. Anyhow, I’ll keep trying. CORRECTION: I said Nick Andros, a leader among the good guys in The Stand, was deaf and blind. That is incorrect. He is deaf and mute. He is blinded in one eye in the revised version of the book. My apologies - poor research on my part.

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SHOW NOTES

1. Intro - Celebrate suffering!

2. Stephen King bio

3. Was it timing?

4. Predecessors

4. “Encroachment”

5. Our brothers and sisters in pain

A new episode - only a few weeks since the previous new episode! What gives?

Another three parter, that’s what! This time we take a look at Stephen King, focusing in particular on the question which seems to haunt the pages of his novels, supernatural or otherwise.

The question is simply this: How bad can it get?

In our attempt to sneak past the dragon and reach the Father of Souls, surely the reality of suffering is the greatest stumbling block for many, many people. The horrors of the previous century alone were truly apocalyptic, worthy of an End Times scenario. How could anything be worse than Nazi Germany and its “final solution”? And yet, as society mulls over such advances as “therapeutic cloning” new horrors loom just over the horizon. Never heard of it? Well, let’s just say that therapeutic cloning is not therapeutic for the clone. In fact, he or she is grown, God knows where or how, so that his or her organs may be harvested systematically as ready-made transplants for those lucky people, the non-clones. So here you have genocide-of-the-future which involves creating the people targeted for mass murder.

At any rate, the stumbling block is obvious: how could you possibly trust a Father of Souls who permits such horrors? Why go to him at all?

Certainly, Stephen King is asking this question. Certainly, anyone who has seen the film The Mist has this question in mind as he clicks Stop on the remote. The film goes further down the road to nihilism than King did in the original novella, but it’s a logical progression based on all that came before — especially given the role religion plays in both film and novella. But I won’t spoil it for you. Except to say not since the original Night of the Living Dead has life been portrayed in such a stark, horrific light — the film is utterly tone deaf to the hope many of us have in God. But then The Mist is also somewhat tone deaf when it comes to humor. Perhaps there is a connection.

At any rate, we don’t get so heavy-handed in this first episode of our Stephen King retrospective. Instead, we sprint through his biography and touch a bit on the origins of King’s particular brand of spookiness and horror. Dig in!

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A listener kindly requested an alternative to the current m4a download for part two of the kitsch survey. So here it is. Meanwhile, I am working on part one of a Stephen King tribute which will also serve as a survey of suffering. Now, say that three times fast.

Also, I am using this post to update some settings at iTunes — so that the website link will take you to linthatcher.podbean.com. This will involve changing the upload settings, so those of you who are longtime listeners should update your iTunes subscription.

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