Mysterious animal deaths sparked mass hysteria on the small island of Puerto Rico. In 1992, Puerto Rican newspapers reported a series of strange killings had taken place, of a variety of animals including birds, horses and especially goats. The killings occurred around the village of Moca, and the local people believed a mythical creature called El Vampiro de Moca was responsible.
Over a period of six months the slaughter became more widespread, causing mass panic and hysteria. Researchers coined the term “Chupacabra” meaning “Goatsucker” in Spanish. The name related to the puncture wounds and lack of blood found on the victims. The reports of Chupacabra activity then began to spread into the Americas and for the last decade sightings have been reported as far north as Carolina, USA and as far south as Chile.
The Chupacabra grew from a village vampire to an international phenomenon. El Chupacabra became a merchandising dream with t-shirts, toys and even a song being produced. By the end of the 1990s the hysteria died away and less sightings were reported.
Unexplained animal killings still continue on Puerto Rico and the locals are left with a real mystery to whom or what is killing their animals.
Sightings and video of the alleged creature continue. As the new video above indicates, some residents of Texas think the creature has been killed in their neighborhood, even while animal control offers are skeptical, yet open minded. The animals in the new video and photograph look similar to animals on videotape from Texas in the past (see below). As officials await DNA testing on what appears to be at least a diseased or mutant form of dog, our continued fascination with monsters and cryptozoology is evident. And for someone like me who has a lifelong interest in cryptozoology, and who has a personality that is a combination of The X-Files‘ Mulder with a little bit of Scully’s skepticism, this is intriguing, even if in all likelihood it is not the legendary beast.
A perusal of the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble last week was rewarded with the find of Make-Up Artist magazine, Number 85 (July/August 2010). Two articles were of special interest to me. The first is related to the first photo accompanying this post of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Creature is is one of the monsters featured in the forthcoming comedy short, United Monster Talent Agency, produced by KNB EFX Group. With this short film project KNB EFX draws upon a retro style of a “’50’s-era commercial for Universal Studios.” The storyline as described in Make-Up Artist:
The idea became perfectly clear–there would be an agency that handled real monsters as talent, and once they cornered the market on Universal Studios, they would want to gorge into the future and open a new wing, developing creatures and monsters for future films.
The film has wrapped production and updates on the film’s release can be found at the KNB EFX Group website.
The second item of interest in the magazine comes in the form of an article titled “A Way with Clay,” which provides a little textual background on the sculpting work of artist Mike Hill, and beautiful photographs of some of his work. The photo of Boris Karloff with the Frankenstein creature makeup on in this post is an example of Hill’s work. No, that’s not a photo of Karloff behind the scenes, that is a stunning example of Hill’s work. The essay also includes a photo of Lon Chaney, Jr. as the troubled Larry Talbot and as the Wolfman, as well as Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Fans of classic Universal Studios horror films will find these elements of Make-Up Artist worth securing for their magazine collection.
My contribution to Cinefantastique Online‘s 50th anniversary reviews and retrospectives from films of 1960 is now available as I look at House of Usher (alternatively The Fall of the House of Usher). This film was a pleasure to revisit as one of my favorites growing up. Roger Corman excelled with a series of horror films based upon the works of Edgar Allen Poe. All but one of them starred Vincent Price, who turns in a wonderful performance in this atmospheric film. From my review:
HOUSE OF USHER, and the other series of Poe films directed by Corman, have the distinction of being part of the brief revival of American gothic horror that had been fueled by television broadcasts of the Universal Studios horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the fresh interpretations of these classics by Britain’s Hammer Films. While this classification has some merit, HOUSE OF USHER may also be understood as a hybrid in keeping with another trend in horror from the period. HOUSE OF USHER is in a sense Gothic, in that it takes place against the backdrop of a mansion that appears at first glance to be a haunted house; however, it is not haunted in typical supernatural fashion by ghosts or poltergeists. Instead, the haunting of the Usher House takes place through the troubled psyches of the homeowners who wrestle with their family legacy. In this sense it is similar to another classic of 1960 cinema, PSYCHO, which signaled a shift from supernatural horror in the 1930s and 1940s, and the science-fiction-horror of the 1950s, to an internalization of horror (horror is not the supernatural other; it is us) that would later take a quantum leap forward with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
House of Usher can be purchased through the TheoFantastique Store at this link, or it can be viewed online via Amazon’s Video on Demand.
No adequate consideration of American cultural celebrations for the month of July would be complete without a mention of Roswell, New Mexico. In July 1947 on a rancher’s land near the small city of Roswell, an event took place that would give birth to one of the greatest mysteries which would fuel UFO mythology and controversy for decades to come. As Christopher Partridge, editor of UFO Religions (Routledge, 2003), describes:
Within just a few weeks of the [Kenneth] Arnold sighting [near Mount Rainier in Washington], the most famous alleged UFO incident occurred at Roswell, New Mexico. More significant in terms of its cultural impact than in terms of its scientific verifiability, this event, perhaps more than any other UFO event, has spawned a whole body of literature, numerous television documentaries, various movements, a network of conspiracy theories, and many fictional works (e.g., The X-Files, Roswell High and Independence Day).
The event in question involved a farmer finding metallic fragments on his property which he investigated after hearing an explosion. The military soon appeared on the scene to gather the fragments, eventually claiming that the pieces in question were part of a weather balloon. Over the years alleged testimony of those involved in the cleanup would claim that in reality a crashed UFO complete with alien bodies was retrieved which remains in the custody of the military. The conflicting accounts have fueled not only one of the greatest debates in American history, as well as an annual celebration that put Roswell on the national map, but this has also developed into a phenomenon that has taken on religious dimensions at times. Returning again to Partridge:
Roswell is now firmly established as what might be described as a key ufological ‘sacred site’. That is to say, whilst of course many ufologists would not interpret the significance of Roswell religiously, it does tend to inspire the same sort of behaviours as religion. In other words, it inspires implicitly religious attitudes and actions.
So while Americans clean up their streets, driveways, and parks after Independence Day celebrations, let’s not forget the annual anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident. For some, it’s downright sacred.
In the near future I will be interacting with the authors or editors of several books. To begin this process, I have mentioned this book in the past but am slow to finally read the volume. I have just begun Stephen Asma’s On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears (Oxford University Press, 2009):
Monsters. Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, they have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. They attract and repel us, intrigue and terrify us, and in the process reveal something deeply important about the darker recesses of our collective psyche.
Stephen Asma’s On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters–how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Asma begins with a letter from Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. detailing an encounter in India with an “enormous beast–larger than an elephant three ominous horns on its forehead.” From there the monsters come fast and furious–Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, the leopard-bear-lion beast of Revelation, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory just beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, pamphlets, films, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era’s fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated.
Asma suggests that how we handle monsters reflects how we handle uncertainty, ambiguity, insecurity. And in a world that is daily becoming less secure and more ambiguous, he shows how we might learn to better live with monsters–and thereby avoid becoming one.
Music in Horror Film is a collection of essays that examine the effects of music and its ability to provoke or intensify fear in this particular genre of film. Frightening images and ideas can be made even more intense when accompanied with frightening musical sounds, and music in horror film frequently makes its audience feel threatened and uncomfortable through its sudden stinger chords and other shock effects. The essays in this collection address the presence of music in horror films and their potency within them. With contributions from scholars across the disciplines of music and film studies, these essays delve into blockbusters like The Exorcist, The Shining, and The Sixth Sense together with lesser known but still important films like Carnival of Souls and The Last House on the Left. By leading us with the ear to hear these films in new ways, these essays allow us to see horror films with fresh eyes.
With a legacy stretching back into legend and folklore, the vampire in all its guises haunts the film and fiction of the twentieth century and remains the most enduring of all the monstrous threats that roam the landscapes of horror. In The Living and the Undead, Gregory A. Waller shows why this creature continues to fascinate us and why every generation reshapes the story of the violent confrontation between the living and the undead to fit new times.
Examining a broad range of novels, stories, plays, films, and made-for-television movies, Waller focuses upon a series of interrelated texts: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); several film adaptations of Stoker’s novel; F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922); Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954); Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot (1975); Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979); and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1979). All of these works, Waller argues, speak to our understanding and fear of evil and chaos, of desire and egotism, of slavish dependence and masterful control. This paperback edition of The Living and the Undead features a new preface in which Waller positions his analysis in relation to the explosion of vampire and zombie films, fiction, and criticism in the past twenty-five years.
Look for interviews with these folks and discussion of these volumes over the course of the near future.
Eclipse recently debuted in theaters, the latest installment in the Twilight series of romance-vampire films, and in connection with this I am pleased to present this video of fellow religion and pop culture scholar Joseph Laycock. He shares some thoughts on the history of the vampire, contemporary vampirism, and the Twilight phenomenon.
This article, by Charlie Jane Anders, introduces the subject matter with reference to three separate articles, the first by StephanieP, a Catholic, who argues in keeping with the title of her article that “Science fiction goes with the Christian life.” But if this is the case then why can’t more science fiction titles be found in Christian bookstores? Two other articles attempt to answer this question, both by Mike Duran, including his thoughts at Novel Journey as well as his personal blog.
In my supplement to their thoughts and this ongoing discussion we must first consider that science fiction is indeed “under represented” if not largely absent in the Christian subculture. This was driven home most dramatically for me in an article by James Herrick in Christianity Today magazine, arguable the flagship periodical for Protestant evangelicalism. The article was titled “Sci-Fi’s Brave New World,” which is largely a summary of Herrick’s book Scientific Mythologies (InterVarsity Press, 2008). The article, like the book, rightly recognizes the mythic significance of science fiction in Western culture today, but takes an unfortunately defensive posture for Christianity in response. As a result, Herrick misses the opportunity to have a deeper appreciation of the significance of myth and science fiction (as well as the related genres of fantasy and horror).
But why this reaction against science fiction? Several possibilities are possible. In 2007 Publishers Weekly commented on this subject stating:
“While mainstream fantasy and science fiction fill shelves in general-interest bookstores, the genre has yet to really take off in the Christian market industry…Suspicion of the books as too dark or occult, combined with a primary demographic that isn’t drawn to the edgy—white, evangelical American women of childbearing-to-empty-nest ages—make the books less than attractive to many Christian publishers and booksellers…”
I think PW recognizes the dynamics at work. At heart is a fear of foreign worldviews that are incompatible with Christianity, an emphasis of Herrick in his CT article mentioned above. But perhaps of more concern for many evangelicals is the alleged influence of “the occult” or Western esotericism. Fear of this element is even more blatant in evangelical concerns over fantasy and horror in popular culture. If we recall the flap over alleged Witchcraft in the Harry Potter books and films, and the current concern in some evangelical quarters over the alleged “Darkness of Twilight,” then we get a feel for the almost palpable evil and fear of spiritual contamination that evangelicals have for the fantastic in popular culture. These fears prevalent in the subculture account for the lack of science fiction in Christian circles to satisfy the small number of sci-fi enthusiasts, surely an aberrational comunity in the evangelical movement.
It will come as no surprise to my regular readers that I find such views troubling. In my opinion they result not only out of fear, but also as a result of a stunted theological imagination all too frequently found among evangelicals in regards to speculative fiction in literature, television, and film. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are evangelical heroes of science fiction and fantasy, but few are willing to go where they went in drawing upon aspects of “pagan” cultures in order to tell tales that capture the imagination and provide windows into transcendence. Surely this negative stance toward the fantastic will not inspire the next generation of Inklings to engage the West in its current journey toward re-enchantment.
I recently had an opportunity to watch The Wolfman (2010). It was a film I had been looking forward to seeing as a new version of a Universal Studios horror classic. I did not find it very satisfying, but it did include some interesting elements and food for thought.
Like the 1941 version of the film starring Lon Chaney, Jr., the current version tells the story of Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) who responds to the pleas of Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), his late brother’s fiancée, in returning to the family estate in England in an attempt to discover the cause of his brother’s brutal death. His return home brings Lawrence face to face with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), that he has not seen for years. As Lawrence investigates the strange and grisly circumstances surrounding his brother’s death he soon finds that it is connected to a vicious beast stalking the countryside, which may have a long connection to the Talbot family and Lawrence’s lifelong nightmares and tensions with his father.
When I first heard the announcement of this film’s production I was cautiously optimistic. It was good to hear of an attempted return to the iconic monsters of old and a move in horror away from our current fixations on “torture-porn” and slasher films, but with the current state of horror I was wary that a good film could be made, and one that would appeal to modern audiences. Sadly, my fears played out. On the positive side, The Wolfman includes some elements that I enjoyed, including a shift away from a contemporary setting to the “foreign” settings of horror in the days of Universal’s classics. The makeup effects under the leadership of Rick Baker were outstanding, as were some of the CGI effects in the recreation of nineteenth century England. But beyond this specific elements of the film were lacking, leading to an overall dissatisfaction withe project as a whole. The CGI effects related to the werewolf were not convincing, and more attention should have been paid to this key aspect of the film or it should have been abandoned in favor of makeup and prosthetic effects. I also found the concluding element of the story’s narrative disappointing in pitting werewolf-cursed father against son in a lycan battle to the death.
But even with an overall disappointment with this film I did find one element of particular interest. As Lawrence comes to terms with his curse he eventually comes to realize that his father shares it with him. Indeed, it was his father who killed his brother and mother, and bit Lawrence creating the next generation of the werewolf. As part of this unfolding revelation, in one scene Sir John shows Lawrence a room which includes a restraining chair and a memorial to his wife. Sir John explains that he was driven by guilt over his curse and the murder of his wife to restrain himself with each full moon so that he could not go on killing sprees. But eventually, Sir John came to embrace his curse and the violence that goes with it. He hopes that his son, struggling with the reality of his uncontrollable violent nature, will as well. As he says to Lawrence, “The beast will have its day. The beast will out.”
In past depictions of the werewolf the focus has been on human beings who lose control as they are transformed and consumed by an inner monstrousness. Little interest has been shown by the cursed individual in attempting to control the monster. But as time goes more more reflection has taken place on understanding the werewolf as a metaphor for our inner evil selves, and with it has come the occasional depiction of attempts to control this evil. For example, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer the character Oz (Seth Green) is a werewolf who locks himself away each cycle of the full moon so that he cannot harm others. Oz recognizes his inner beast but takes steps to control and contain it. In similar fashion, The Wolfman raises the specter of humanity’s inner beast and presents us with the choice of reveling in the beast’s ability to destroy, or taking whatever steps are necessary to control it.
News broadcasts demonstrate each day that our beasts roam all too freely. But films like The Wolfman remind us that we have a choice and we must constantly ask ourselves individually and collectively, must the beast have its day?
Science fiction is a twentieth-century invention. In it writers and readers try to imagine life in a context wider than our present — perhaps requiring as great a leap as members of a hunter-gatherer clan would have to make to comprehend a global, technological culture like our own. If science fiction is the literary exploration of the larger universe, religion is the body of beliefs and rituals that help to link the familiar worlds of human meaning and experience to that more sweeping and mysterious cosmos. Religion demands commitment to particular sets of stories about that world. Science fiction calls for a more self-conscious or ironic suspension of belief. The cause of religion has been served by great artists and saints (as well as villains); science fiction, so far, by rather few. Occasionally the two coalesce: what Manichaeism was, Scientology now is — deliberate fantastic structures devised by single artists and seized by the wider populace as devices to clear or cloud their heads. Other sects and cults arise by happenstance and the unforced agreement of many romantic minds gnosticism in the first century or the religion of Star Trek today. To consider the broader issues raised by science fiction and to explore, in particular, the relation of the genre to science and to theology, ten scholars, scientists, and writers gather in London on the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Last and First Men (1930), the first novel of the late writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950), and a book often regarded as one of the finest works of science fiction. As the Year 2000 is also the fiftieth anniversary of Stapledon’s death, the conclave becomes an occasion to celebrate the author’s life. A question to be explored in both private conversation and in a public discussion is the impact of the existence of the universe in which science fiction attempts to find a place for humankind, a world immensely older and at once grander and more forbidding than we usually care to contemplate, on traditional religion. Other matters of inquiry include whether the genre sometimes known as “possibility writing” has given us useful clues to what it will mean to be human in the next millennium, how science fiction and the experience of working scientists may affect each other, what sort of challenge the search for the holy, which science fiction writers often locate in the alien, may pose to familiar religious preoccupations with right behavior or secular interest in peace and prosperity, whether science fiction can, in any useful sense, prepare us for an eventual meeting with other sentient beings — and the relative value of technological gadgets and moral systems in pursuing dialogue with them. Alternately, what if all the searches for life beyond the borders of Earth ultimately fail? What implications might that have for theology? The probe for answers in the conversation in London takes place under the aegis of the John Templeton Foundation.
This conference’s connection to the John Templeton Foundation, which has done some interesting work helping to heal the breach between religion and science, is interesting if not somewhat surprising. If only we had such conferences in the U.S.
The recent release of THE BOOK OF ELI (2010) on DVD provides an opportunity for a reassessment of important elements within its story. Viewers with religious convictions have interpreted it in strongly positive and negative terms, but another reading is plausible that avoids these extremes. Taking into account its late modern Western and post-9/11 context, this film may be interpreted as one that urges caution in the use of religion by both its practitioners and the irreligious who variously objectify religion and justify violence in fundamentalist fashion while failing to live the message of religion, or recognize religion’s power as a form of social control and tool for oppression. This review will discuss these elements that appear to be missing in many other reviews of the movie.
The entire review can be read here. The trailer for THE BOOK OF ELI, along with many other clips of interest, can be found at the TheoFantastique YouTube Channel.
My contribution to Cinefantastique Online‘s 50th anniversary reviews and retrospectives from films of 1960 is now available as I look at 
No adequate consideration of American cultural celebrations for the month of July would be complete without a mention of Roswell, New Mexico. In July 1947 on a rancher’s land near the small city of Roswell, an event took place that would give birth to one of the greatest mysteries which would fuel UFO mythology and controversy for decades to come. As Christopher Partridge, editor of UFO Religions (Routledge, 2003), describes:
