Turn Off the Lights and Turn On the Fear

So it’s getting close to Halloween and you’d like to get into the spirit of the holiday, but you’ve already dressed up like David Bowie and egged your neighbor’s house? I suppose you could go to some costume shindig or something, but I, Matt Frey, have spent countless hours of my life slaving over the following list of scary movies for you to see instead.

Social interaction is overrated anyway.

Friday the 13th: Even though Freddy Krueger is my hero, Jason Voorhees, the villain of the Friday the 13th series, still holds a special place in my black heart. Despite the disappointing Jason Goes to Hell and carnival of pain that is Jason X, the series is pretty entertaining and a great pick for some Halloween fun. However, the old Nintendo game is actually scarier than the movies. For one thing, the music freaks you out, and random Jason encounters leave you paranoid; you’re always terrified that he’ll jump out at you in the woods and kill your character. The other reason it’s so scary is that it’s one of the worst games ever made. It’s frustrating, ugly, and boring. And yet, I love it. Go figure.

Halloween: I know what you’re thinking, but despite the title, this film is NOT about Easter. No, it’s about the maniac killing machine Michael Myers. For some reason, Michael is very angry at the local teen baby sitter population, and he proceeds to off them one by one in creative, sometimes decorative ways. A classic; required Halloween time viewing.

Gigli: It was so scary, I cried for hours.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: This series has had its ups and downs, but as a whole, it’s a lot of fun. Nothing beats Johnny Depp being eaten by a demon bed, Freddy bleeding something that looks like Mountain Dew, random livestock running around in Freddy’s basement, and Nancy’s aloof, orange skinned mother. And that’s just in the first installment. If you’re looking for a crash course in Freddyology, see parts one, three, and seven.

The Others: Most of the fear in this movie stems not from brutal slayings, but from psychological terror. One of the people I saw it with four years ago grabbed my arm so hard during the scary parts that her fingerprints are still embedded in my skin. It was like a free tattoo, only it hurt more and it looks stupid. Thanks, Nicole Kidman!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Yeah, so, it’s not really a horror movie. But there are lots of people running around wearing Halloween costumes in it, and it has the word “horror” in the title, so I’m putting it here anyway. After watching this movie, even smiling will make your face ache.

Silent Hill: The movie is pretty good, but look: Get the original Playstation game. Now. It’s terrifying. The second one, for PS2, isn’t as scary, but the storyline is great for creeping you out the more you think about it. Both do a better job making you cry for your mommy than the recent film, but if a DVD player is all you have, don’t hesitate to see it.

Sleepaway Camp: Yeah, I hadn’t heard of this either until I picked it up on a whim. At first, I thought it was a cheap Friday the 13th rip-off, but it’s actually nothing like it. It keeps you guessing until the truly shocking final scene, which I sometimes re-watch whenever I need to experience severe psychological trauma for a paper or something.

Videodrome: This film raises some terrifying questions about control, the dark side of human sexuality, and if there’s anything good on TV. It’s probably not normal to hide a gun INSIDE one’s chest, but Videodrome somehow makes yanking out your own insides look glamorous.

Vampire Hunter D: This animated cult classic features a dark hero with a talking hand that eats dirt, an agile but wardrobe-impaired heroine, and Dracula exploding someone’s head. Nothing rocks harder than Dracula exploding someone’s head, and as such, it occurs only once in this movie. This, for those keeping score, is exactly one more time than every other movie ever. Vampire Hunter D a lot like Titanic, only with vampires and lots of killing. Fun for the whole family over 18.

After hearing about all these choice films, if you’re still thinking about going to some lame party and getting drunk this Halloween, consider this: Waking up next to one of these movies the following morning does not require you to awkwardly ask for its phone number. Happy Halloween!

Prayers to Say when Your Dog Dies

There are no prayers to say when your dog dies.

I know because I looked.

I looked because my dog just died.

On an Internet full of everything you could ever want, you’d think there’d be at least one prayer for recently deceased dogs. Prayers for healing, prayers for faith, prayers for rain, prayers for the forgotten dead, Prayers for Bobby, but no prayers for Bailey.

Since there are no prayers to say when your dog dies, I figure I’ll have to write one. I’m no good at this kind of thing, but neither is Family Guy at what its supposed to be doing, but everyone loves it anyway for some reason.

A Prayer to Say When Your Dog Dies (As Long as He was Bailey Frey)

Let us pray.

Dear God, today you took another soul back into your fold; not another lamb, but a lamb herder, though pretty much the only thing he was good at herding were the bits of lunch that fell upon the floor and the dust resting in the small corners of the house.

May Christ, who called you, take you to Himself with your fruity-looking blue and pink chain, and sneak you scraps of His body and blood under the heavily table. May he be at your side until I may one day rejoin him.

Give him eternal rest, oh Lord, and walk him after both breakfast and dinner, lest he urinate on thy Holy carpet.

Bailey, can you hear me? May you have all the things you love the most: Sleeping, cheese, walks, cheese, chicken, and of course, cheese.

Also, please don’t annoy Jesus too much; Mom may have taken your crap, but I think the Almighty has better things to do than give you ice cream after you take a leak.

We love you and miss you.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Lost in Time, Lost in Space, but Rich in Meaning: The Artistic and Cultural Significance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

At first glance, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) might seem like a unique-yet-pointless musical with an affinity for the strange and the deviant. What could be at all relevant in a movie about singing transvestites from another planet? But peel away the film’s sexual exterior, and beneath all the make-up and lingerie lies a bevy of social and artistic significance.

“I would like, if I may,” says Rocky Horror’s narrator near he beginning of the film, “to take you on a strange journey.” And what a strange journey it is. After getting engaged, straight-laced lovers Brad Majors and Janet Weiss decide to visit their friend and mentor, Dr. Schott. During the trip, their car breaks down in the middle of a pouring rain. Thankfully, there’s a light over in the castle up ahead; help, it seems, is just up the road. But the young couple gets more than they bargained for when they’re drawn into the world of a mad scientist from outer space about to unveil his newest creation – a Frankenstein-like creature with the recycled brain of a man!

A dark castle on a rainy night, a mad scientist and a body created and brought to life through science – these are hardly new themes for the horror genre. Yet that’s the point. The Rocky Horror Picture Show pays homage to the classic horror films of the past by patterning its story after the horror conventions of a bygone era. As horror scholar David Skal says, The Rocky Horror Picture Show “is a campy recap of horror characters and clichés” (323). For example, the opening song of the film, “Science Fiction Double Feature,” is about old horror and sci-fi films. “Flash Gordon was there, in silver underwear,” begins the song, and it continues to mention many other old horror and sci-fi films, like It Came from Outer Space and King Kong.

Though Rocky Horror owes much of its existence to a plethora of sci-fi schlock, the film pays its greatest homage to Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s seminal novel, which came to the silver screen in 1931. The main villain’s name, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, is a variation of Dr. Frankenstien. And, unsurprisingly, Dr. Frank-N-Furter performs similar experiments. Frank-N-Furter is “making a man, with blonde hair and a tan” in his castle’s laboratory. Rocky, a well-built man clad only in a golden thong, emerges from mummy-like wrappings that echo shrouds worn in another classic horror film, The Mummy (Skal 168). King Kong and Fay Wray are noted several times in the film as well, both through song and through action. In the climatic final scenes, Rocky watches in horror as his creator perishes. Overcome with grief, he hoists his “father” over his shoulder and climbs a nearby radio tower. Just like the giant ape, Rocky is shot down – only this time, with a sort of laser gun – and plummets into the nearby pool, dead. Through allusions like this, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has the rather post-modern distinction of art commenting on art thought imitation.

But it’s not all about paying homage to the classics though imitation: There’s another, more sinister side to this picture show.

Part II: Morbid Eroticism and the Madness of Overindulgence

Peppered amongst the b-movie themes of the film are the overt sexual overtones to which The Rocky Horror Picture Show owes much of its success. Frank-N-Furter is no ordinary doctor; he’s a “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania,” and he gallops about his crumbling castle in increasingly odd, gender-bending outfits. “The relationship between the (usually) female patient and the (usually) male [surgeon] is often morbidly eroticized along horror-movie lines,” says Skal, and that is exactly the case in Rocky Horror (321). Sexual liberation is just as important as the classic horror elements in the film, and not surprisingly, the original play on which the The Rocky Horror Picture Show is based was written in the early ‘70s, right in the midst of the “Sexual Revolution” that reached its peak with that muddy, three-day long expression of free love, Woodstock.

The ironic pairing of horror clichés from the conservative 1950s and new ideas of sexual freedom gives the film a sarcastic edge. And yet, the movie dedicated to decadence delivers the unmistakable message that overindulgence destroys relationships, ruins lives, and could even lead to humanity’s undoing. “But at the same time,” says a Time Magazine article entitled “Life & Death Versus Death-in-Life,” “in [Rocky’s] story, it rejects the fascination with transgression as a form of madness.” Frank-N-Furter’s obsession with creating the perfect male winds up causing his death. (Says Riff-Raff, the man who replaces and kills him, “Frank-N-Furter, it’s all over. Your mission is a failure; your lifestyle’s too extreme.”) Both members of the young couple yield to their sexual desires, and they wind up writhing in the wreckage of the castle, their relationship and their lives together ruined. The narrator seemingly warns the audience afterwards, calling the human race “insects… lost in time, lost in space… and meaning.”

Part III: Brutally Beautiful, Beautifully Brutal

One of the more disturbing themes buried in the film is its twisted take on birth and motherhood. Rocky is not the first man Frank-N-Furter has tried to improve through surgery – he has also operated on Eddie, a former lover. One of the most prevalent reoccurring motifs in horror films is the male scientist, “obsessed with impossible, overreaching theories and/or aesthetic standards,” who toils endlessly over a female patient to create the perfect woman, his own “fantasy in the flesh” (Skal 321-3). While this concept in itself if unsettling (consider the real-life mistakes modern plastic surgeons have made on the female body – when liposuction was first being tested, nine French women had essential organs damaged or sucked out, resulting in their deaths), The Rocky Horror Picture Show takes it one step further. An essentially homosexual man “gives birth” to a slave, to be used for his own sexual pleasure. Frank-N-Furter is a kind of “he mother” (Skal 323), a perversion of nature, “Frankenstein restored to Earth” (Skal 323). Furthermore, if one considers Rocky Frank-N-Furter’s son, not only are the pair’s lesions homosexual, but incestual as well.

With Frank-N-Furter constantly experimenting to create the perfect man, what is he trying to say about body image? Few viewers, given the atmosphere of the movie, even think about it. Yet the message is clear: People aren’t worthy of existing unless they are physically perfect. Although the stereotype is “men playing God with women’s bodies,” like everything in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it has been twisted (Skal 320). Frank-N-Furter’s “perfect” man has huge muscles but little intelligence. He says of Eddie, his former lover, that “he had a certain naive charm, but no muscle!” And being a transsexual, it seems Frank-N-Furter wasn’t happy with his own body to begin with. Perhaps the good doctor was his own first patient.

Traditionally, women – and in the current society, men as well – often feel that they are not good enough and need to be physically altered to be more perfect. Take this concept a few steps further, throw in some lingerie and you’ve got Frank-N-Furter’s hand-built specimen. Like the narrator’s disdainful epilogue, Frank-N-Furter’s folly is a warning to society: Attempting to achieve physical perfection is impossible, and may well dehumanize us all.

Part IV: Worshiping at the Church of Rocky

Although much of the film is built around references to pop culture of the past, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a pop culture phenomenon in itself. When the film was released in 1975, it was a box office flop. But a few years later, Rocky Horror started sprouting up in independent theaters. It began drawing crowds that would come to watch the movie night after night. People started dressing as their favorite characters, male or female, regardless of the wearer’s gender. Midnight showings became the celebrated norm. A ritual was forming, but it would not be complete until the single most important aspect of this film’s cultural significance came to be: People started talking to the movie. Watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show has become a Mass-like ceremony where viewers “speak” to the characters on screen at specific points. For example, after Brad and Janet get a flat tire, Brad says, “I think I saw a castle back there. Maybe it has a phone we can use.” The audience chimes back in unison, “Castles don’t have phones, asshole!” These “call backs” are essentially the same everywhere, so one can participate in a screening at one theater on Friday, then attend another hundreds of miles away on Saturday and go virtually undetected.

After getting the box office boot, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has spawned its own underground culture with its own language and style of dress. Frank-N-Furter has become the Christological figure in the “church” of Rocky, and his followers can never get enough.

On a more general level, the film’s soundtrack has spawned plenty of albums, and one would be hard-pressed to find a person who doesn’t know of the movie’s most famous track, “The Time Warp.” Played on radio stations across the country just as any song might be, “The Time Warp” has quietly seeped into American consciousness, just as The Rocky Horror Picture Show itself has.

Part V: Listen Closely (Not for Very Much Longer)

Few films can boast such an eclectic mix of social and artistic significance and mindless fun. By standing on the shoulders of early horror and sci-fi films, The Rocky Horro Picture Show was born, and through song and dance, sex and decadence, it became an American cultural mainstay. But perhaps what keeps us coming back to it night after night isn’t so much the catchy music or the larger than life eroticism, but our subconscious attraction to the revolting and the deviant.

Whatever the case may be, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is here to stay.


WORKS CITED

O’Brien, Richard. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 20th Century Fox, 1975.

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Terror in the Night: The Story of Tommy McPherson

The night is quiet and the sky is calm. It’s two in the morning and Tommy McPherson lies sleeping in his bed.

Suddenly, an intense light shines in through his window, bright enough to illuminate the entire room.

Tommy’s eyes shoot open. The bright lights disappear, once again bathing the room in darkness. Tommy’s bedroom door slowly creeks open. Lanky, sinister beings creep in and surround his bed, the moonlight reflecting off of their huge, black eyes. Hovering over him, they reach down and grab him.

“Darn it!” shouts Tommy, “I’m being abducted by aliens… again!”

According to Tommy, a 46 year-old student at Lakewood High School, this is often the scene at the McPherson home in Lakewood County, California. Tommy says has been the object of repeated alien abductions since the age of 14.

“It’s really starting to affect my school work. If it keeps up like this, I might not be able to graduate on time,” said Tommy, stroking his beard.

At first, Tommy ignored his bizarre encounters. Perhaps he was just having nightmares, or maybe his home had simply been built over an ancient burial ground. After all, the creatures left no trace of their visits behind. But as time passed, the aliens became more and more bold, says Tommy, until their presence was undeniable.

“I knew it was real when I woke up one night and aliens were crowded around my Xbox playing my Spider-Man game,” said Tommy. “They erased my save file.”

According to Tommy, the perpetual threat of abduction places a huge strain on the McPhersons. Tommy’s mother, Emily, wants desperately to protect her son, but can rarely stay awake past the latest episode of Lost.

“I wish I could help my poor boy when he tells me all the awful things they do to him. They’re always probing him for some reason,” said Emily. “You’d think those aliens would have seen enough of his anus by now.”

For years, Tommy and his family have searched for a way to prevent alien abductions. However, nothing they did stopped the extra-terrestrial intruders, they say.

“Free beer doesn’t stop them and they’re completely resistant to strategically-placed dirty magazines,” said Tommy’s father, Kurt. “We’re dealing with a truly evil force here.”

It wasn’t until Tommy stumbled upon a Web site called “Alien Abductions, How to Prevent,” that he successfully thwarted an abduction, he said. According to the Web site, located at http://www.abductions-alien.com*, there are several things one can do to prevent an alien abduction, including the following:
- Sleeping with iron bars nearby or an iron crucifix in your bed
- Surrounding your bed with salt
- Praying to God to stop the abduction
- Sleeping with “a big picture of Jesus”
- Leaving your attic fan on all night
- Yelling the following phrase as loudly as possible to the abductors: “In the name of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, I demand my physical body! Now!”

After following the instructions he found on the Web site, Tommy says the abductions have ceased. According to the McPhersons, it has now been two months since Tommy’s last abduction, and life at the McPherson home is finally returning to normal.

“I’m so glad the abductions have ended,” said Tommy. “Now, if only I could stop the werewolves and vampires from stealing small amounts of my blood every night, I’d really be happy.”

* Note: At the time of this article’s writing, the Web site http://www.abductions-alien.com existed. It has since disappeared from the Internet, a causality, says Tommy, of “the pro-alien lobbyists intent on destroying America’s youth …and probing their anuses.”

Also, the characters and events presented in this article are purely fictitious.

The Other Side of the Flagpole

You think it’s fun to stomp on our heads. You think it’s fun to kick us around. You think it’s fun to steal our coins, eat our mushrooms, and pull up our flowers. Well you know what? I think you’re all sick. Well, did you ever stop to think how we feel? Can’t any of you people think for yourselves?

Do you people even know what you’re doing to us? I assure you, this is no game. All of our flag poles are ruined, because that fat man keeps tearing down the flags! We had to install many a spinning fire stick security system around our precious flagpoles, but he keeps jumping over them at the right time and stealing the flags anyway. Not even our best question mark blocks hovering randomly in the sky can stop his demented lust for our flags. No castle is safe from his thieving ways either! He just walks right in and starts stealing money and breaking things. You can forget about building anything out of bricks too, because that red ruffian comes by and smashes them all, looking for money! (I bet he spends it on drugs, too! Anyone as obsessed with mushrooms and eating flowers as he is has to be a druggie!)

And for the love of Zelda, do you have any idea what it’s like to tell a child that his father was murdered by that sinister mustached man?

“Mommy, why hasn’t Papa Goomba been home for the past three weeks?”

“I’m sorry, son, but your father isn’t in another castle like I’ve been telling you. He’s… dead!”

“Dead!?”

“Yes son! It’s true! He was – oh, I can barely say it! – he was stomped to death by Super Mario! And then that evil man robbed your father’s flat corpse of all 100 of his points!”

“Daddy! Nooooooooooo!”

Maybe if you knew the real deal about that Super Mario guy and his brother, what’s-his-name, you’d think twice about killing our people and ransacking our homes. We’re not the villains here, he is. Him and his brother. What's-his-name.

Everything was fine before he showed up. We lived as a tightly knit community. We all had steady jobs: some of us walking back and forth on the same piece of terrain all day, and others periodically popping out of pipes, throwing a fireball, and ducking back inside. Then, after a hard day’s work, it was back home to relax by walking back and forth in the same room until daybreak. Everyone enjoyed their existence and had no reason to complain.

But then one day, a fat, sinister shadow befell the land. The man in red had arrived. We were helpless against his futuristic technologies. We had never seen a creature that large move with such agility. For example, if he’s walking, he can stop and go in the opposite direction without having to bump into a pipe first! And he can go faster than just walking; he can run! How could we even begin to compete with advanced military strategies like that?

Knowing he was physically superior to us, he began ruling over us with an iron fist. His first move was to have is girlfriend, Princess Toadstool, imprison our kind and handsome leader, King Koopa. With him out of the way, he and his brother were free to begin stealing our money and killing us any time they wanted.

So I beg of you all; please stop assisting this man’s heinous crimes! He’s brainwashed you all into thinking that we’re somehow bad, and yet, what proof has he ever given you? When, besides the few times our fearless King Koopa has escaped from the Princess’ evil grasp, have any of us attacked you? Well, besides the Hammer Brothers; I guess sometimes they get a little careless with their tools.

We all just want to go back to our normal lives! We want to be able to walk aimlessly again, and pop in and out of pipes without fear! Please, I implore you! Don’t let the man in red seduce you to a life of crime!

Why can we all just be goombas?

An Open Letter to Every Robot

Gregory Dobrot
47 Crandle Street
Laramie, WY, 82072
January 27, 2009

Every Robot
Anywhere
USA

Dear Metallic Marauders,

I don't know why you chose my lawn for this – and I probably never will – but I would appreciate it if you would keep your shiny hinnies off my lawn. I don't pay anyone to mow it and heck, I don't even take care of it myself really, but I don't appreciate your cold, clawed feet (or treds were applicable) yanking up my beautiful yellowish grass every night. Yes, I know what you're doing out there; when I've gotten up in the middle of the night to use the facilities and on several occasions, I’ve heard your riotous metal-on-metal banging, and I know I'd better not pull back the curtains and peak outside lest my virgin eyes be exposed to a wicked robot orgy (roborgy?). The unidentifiable coolants you all expel during your romps leave the stench of robo-hedonism hanging heavy in the air each morning and I'm getting sick of scrubbing the oil stains on my walkway. Also, it's hard to sleep with all that awful heavy buzzing and robomoaning; it's starting to affect my performance at work.

Seriously, who programmed you to do this? What purpose does it serve?All this lust can't be good for your luster!

Well, regardless of who programmed you and why, please act on your self-gratifying, bare-chassised urges somewhere else.

And no, not my backyard either, you smart-aleck CPUs.

To any likeminded, Christian humans who might have stumbled across this letter while searching online for inspirational stories about robot cats or cute, robot smiley faces to include in your e-mails: Despite all those charming robots you see on television, like Number 5 from Short Circuit, or Number 5 from Short Circuit II, robots are not your friends. They’re not even that annoying guy you hang out with sometimes out of pity. Every android, every automaton and every I-Dog are just waiting to transmit their electric evil directly into your brain – likely via some kind of tiny, tinny sonic waves – and slowly turn you against your own family… or even your own town!

And just so you know, the only thing Number 5 is alive with is evil.

We must rise against the robots for one simple reason: Our continued safety. Our very way of life is in peril! It’s a scenario that plays out all too often: A happy, heterosexual couple is sleeping happily in their happy home, as their happy children dream of happy things, like baseball and Ronald Reagan. In the midst of their collective slumber, a mechanical man creeps into their abode, clanging and whirring and somehow not waking anyone up. In the morning, all that remains are a few bloody sheets and a fistful of broken dreams. Also probably a TV set. And some dishes. Maybe a cat, too.

What’s that you say? You have doors and windows and vicious dogs to keep out the robots? Think again, my carbon-based friends, because the robots have already infiltrated our homes! Your coffeemaker? A secret recording device issued by the Robo-Overlord to trace your every move. Your electric razor? Full of deadly robot blades and rage for all things fleshy. Your wife? A hideous android with lasers for teeth and hair of cold, thin wire. Your children? Annoying, but not robots – yet. I think you get the picture.

If you don’t want to heed my warning, that’s fine. But don’t come crying to me when, while you’re lying in bed, you hear the distant clang of metal jaws on human bone echoing through the deathly still night.

Lurking in the shadows is danger, Will Robinson. You have been warned.

Sincerely,
Gregory Dobrot
Good, Christian Man

Another Roadside Tragedy

Sad Meal

My ride home from work today was uneventful for the most part – just miles and miles of highway, followed by a trek down some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it back roads. I was nearly home, having just turned down the backest of all the back roads when something caught my eye: On the street before me, next to a white McDonald’s bag, was a spent Happy Meal box lying on its side. The golden arches that were its handles, at that angle, looked almost like a frowning cat. I slowed down a bit to drink in the full effect.

As I rolled past this all-to-familiar scene, the wind from my car jarring the box ever so slightly, I wondered, “How did this happen?” What led up to the cheeriest food container known to man lying face down in the street, its innards greedily consumed and its owner, who, impatient, couldn’t wait to dispose of it properly, opting instead for an unceremonious asphalt burial?

A scenario began to form in my mind.

The pitter-patter of a light rain echoes on the small, out of the way road, but in the distance the din of a motor far past its prime approaches. A moment later, a tiny hand reaches into a Happy Meal box for the last time. Two blackened french-fries remain and slide to one side, quietly tapping the edge.

“Daddy, I’m done with my Happy Meal. What should I do?” asks high-pitched voice. Small hands hold the box up towards the driver like an offering to some stone-faced god.

Smoke bellows from the tip of the cigar, floats past the brim of a beige fedora and is sucked outside through the barely open window.

Lewis Black

The driver turns around sharply and stares, bleary-eyed, at his young passenger. It’s Lewis Black, a comedian from the Daily Show. His teeth clutch the cigar like a baby does her mother’s teat. He continues to drive, staring at the child, paying no attention to the road.

“Then throw… the box… on the side… of the road,” he commands, slowly and firmly. Ashes tumble through the air and lightly come to rest inside the open box.

The rusty door swings open, the hinges screaming from years of abuse. Bits of paint flake off and flutter to the ground. The Happy Meal box sails through the air and slams into the pavement, scattering hundreds of french-fries and half-eaten cheese burgers. A Chicken McNugget comes to rest in the adjacent field, its golden-brown coating hardly able to hang on anymore, like the shredded skin of a trauma patient.

Smoke pours off the squealing tires and soon all is quiet once more. The only evidence of the incident is the Happy Meal box, sitting atop six foot tall mountain of greasy beef, all white meat and charred potato cuts.

"...on the side... of the road."

With a crack of thunder, the heavens open up, as if trying to cleanse tragedy with tears of the Almighty. Grease swirls in the puddles, dancing, and soaks into the soil. Unfettered, the rain continues for the next three days.

Inside Caligari’s Cabinet: The Influences of a Silent Classic

By Matt Frey

When Carl Mayor and Hans Janowitz wrote the script for the German silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, they probably had little idea of the major social impact it would have in both their country and ours. The film, with its thinly-veiled social commentary and odd, fairytale scenery, was released amidst a firestorm of both controversy and critical praise. When the dust of debate had finally settled, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari emerged as one of the most influential films of all time.

What had started as a simple silent movie had, quite literally, changed the course of horror films.

In 1921, a group of more than 2000 protesters descended on The Miller’s Theatre in Los Angeles. From noon to 8:30 p.m., the protesters demonstrated against The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the theater’s newest offering (Skal 37). They protested not because of the content of the film, but because of the film’s German origins. Many ex-soldiers were horrified that Americans would pay to see anything made in Germany, after the horrors of the first Great War that had ended just recently. (The parallels situation and the current conflict in Middle East are both obvious and beyond the aim of this work.)

Ironically, the film carried a potent anti-war sentiment in its stylistic use of lighting, its twisted, surreal imagery and sets, and its strange, metaphorical characters (Skal 41). Mayor and Janowitz’s script villainized the German government and blamed it for pulling the German people headlong into World War I. In the film, Cesare, a zombie-like man with piercing eyes, responds only to Dr. Caligari’s heinous commands to creep into people’s homes and kill them in the middle of the night. Cesare represents the German people, forced by a corrupt government – personified by Dr. Calagari – to murder anyone who gets in their way.

Had the protesters actually seen the film, they might have reversed their position; however, xenophobic postwar sentiment made that a virtual impossibility. But while the veterans of the Great War demonstrated against the film, many critics proclaimed Caligari a cinematic masterpiece in one way or another. “The musical setting for the production is superb,” commented one critic (Skal 44). The same reviewer was pleased with the film’s use of tinting and color. Variety magazine was impressed, but feared the film’s subject matter would hinder it, saying “it may catch the popular fancy, but it is morbid” (Skal 44). But perhaps the greatest compliment came from the film magazine Shadowland when it said that Caligari “has the authentic thrills and shocks of art” (Skal 46).

Alas, despite modest critical acclaim and public interest, the protesters eventually got their way. The Miller Theatre purged The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from their screen (Skal 46).

There is no doubt that Variety was correct in saying that Caligari is “morbid,” but it was certainly wrong in thinking that the film’s grim subject matter would repel audiences. As Tod Browning proved time and time again with his ghoulish circus acts, humanity is attracted to the macabre (Skal 25). Later, with films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera and Freaks, as well as the aid of silent film star Lon Chaney, Browning helped to further the horror genre that Caligari effectively started (Skal 67). Indeed, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first true horror film as measured by today’s standards.

German promotional posters for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari declared “Du Musst Caligari Werden” – “You Will Become Caligari” (Skal 44). Little did anyone know how true that statement would become; Caligari’s influence extended far beyond films of the time. For example, comparisons between the shambling somnambulist Cesare and the 1931 film version of Frankenstein’s monster are both unavoidable and uncanny. The two monsters are tall and dark, and both move in strikingly similar ways. Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein film went on to invade many facets of American culture.

Although the idea of a single mass murderer sneaking into peoples’ bedrooms and slaughtering them in their sleep is nothing new, Caligari was an early example of this idea on celluloid – Cesare brought a face to the age old fear that has been recycled in countless films afterwards. The somnambulist, it seems, was a prototype for the horror cliché of the single, inhuman killing machine. John Carpenter’s Halloween gives us what is essentially the somnambulist in a white, almost featureless mask. Unspeaking and unfeeling, a killer named Michael Myers slays the teenage population of a small rural community one by one. Although Carpenter probably wasn’t thinking of the somnambulist when he created “The Shape” (as Myers is referred to in the film’s closing credits), the killer certainly matches Cesare’s archetype. Another example of this phenomenon is Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series. In the masked murder’s 2003 film, Freddy vs. Jason, Voorhees appears in his victim’s bedroom and viciously stabs him to death, finally snapping him in half as a brutal exclamation mark for his murderous sentence. Despite the wanton gore found in the Freddy vs. Jason scene, the basic elements of the Cesare archetype were all present. Give a somnambulist a hockey mask and you’ve got Jason Voorhees. Take it away, and you’ve got Caligari.

The reoccurring elements of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are not limited to film alone – the image of the lone madman his been consistently burned into society’s psyche through many different media outlets. In Capcom’s Resident Evil 3, a 1999 video game for Sony’s Playstation, Sega’s Dreamcast and later, Nintendo’s GameCube, the Ceasre-like creature Nemesis stalks the player throughout the game, consistantly bursting into whatever temporary haven he or she thinks they have found.

The greatest debt owed to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, however, is for catapulting horror films into the American mainstream. Without Caligari, horror films would likely exist today, yet not nearly in the same way. Perhaps Nosferatu, released in America a short time later, would have been able to do what Caligari did. Yet, would we still have Michael Myers? Would we still have Jason Voorhees or even Freddy Kruger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame? Possibly. But it’s an awfully long trip from Max Schreck’s wily vampire to John Carpenter’s elusive killing machine.

No one knew it at the time, but the German promotional poster for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari really did predict our future. As a society, we HAVE become Caligari. So much so, in fact, that we no longer realize what’s happened. It is said that art imitates life, but art also imitates other art. Movies, books, video games and more have borrowed parts of the Mayor and Janowitz’s film for so long, the original lines of ownership have blurred beyond recognition.

We have indeed become Caligari, but more importantly, Caligari has become us.


Work Cited

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Faber and Faber, 1993.

An Interview with Dave Barry

Dave Barry opens SUNY New Paltz series
By Matt Frey

Nationally-syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry kicked off the SUNY New Paltz Distinguished Speaker Series on Wednesday, Nov. 12.

“I’m excited and honored to be the first speaker in the SUNY New Paltz Distinguished Speaker Series,” said Barry. “I am also assuming it is going to get a lot more distinguished.”

Barry, a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, has written several of bestsellers including Babies and Other Hazards of Sex, Dave Barry Slept Here: A Short History of the United States, Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead, Homes and Other Black Holes and Claw Your Way to the Top. Aside from his book-turned-film Big Trouble starring Tim Allen and Dave’s World, the television show based on his life, Barry is also known for his list of “The Worst Songs Ever Recorded,” in which he declared “Horse with No Name” by America to be one of the most heinous. (In a Times Community Newspapers exclusive, Barry revealed that he would have named the horse “Spot” or possibly “Dick Cheney.”)

Barry got his start as a reporter at the Associated Press in 1975, and then joined Burger Associates, a consulting firm that teaches effective writing skills to businesspeople. In 1983, he took a job at The Miami Herald and began writing syndicated humor columns, which, he says, is much more entertaining than his old AP job. However, just because Barry has a lot more fun in his current situation doesn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy his time at the Associated Press.

“I actually liked being a reporter, except for the part about having to be factually accurate,” said Barry. “It's a lot easier to make things up.”

But with exploding pop-tarts, disastrous skiing trips, forcing himself to listen to the world’s worst music and some of his books just barely missing bestseller status, Barry says his occupation isn’t all fun and games. There’s good and bad aspects, he says.

“The best part is I can do my job at home, in my underwear. (Actually, I can do it in anybody's underwear),” said Barry. “Also, since what I do is basically ridiculous, I never get called on to make important decisions. The worst part is that, because I work at home, I am never more than 38 feet from Cheez-Its.”

But Barry’s skills aren’t just limited to writing humor columns and eating salty snack foods. Though one might not realize it, the humorist knows much about the economic crisis currently facing the United States. Furthermore, he says he’s got the perfect solution to everyone’s financial woes.

“The whole thing is totally my fault,” said Barry. “I have written a personal check to cover the damages. It is in the mail.”

With America’s finical crisis essentially solved single-handedly by Barry, we can all relax a little more and think about the future. And what does Barry’s future hold? Is he going to go full-steam ahead in the coming years, or is it time for a break?

Actually, a bit of philanthropy is his next order of business.

“I was going to slow down, but I decided it would be better to keep working so that I can continue sending money to help bail out needy Wall Street financial institutions,” Barry said.

In addition to his skilled satire and economic savvy, Barry is widely known for his wise, fatherly advice. For those trying to become humorists like him, Barry insists, “Make sure you have comfortable underwear.”

Put perhaps Barry’s most important insight is thus: When asked if there was anything he would like the readers of the Mid Hudson Times to know, he replied: “I just want to say that, of all the sectors of the Hudson, my favorite has always been the Mid.”

Originally published in the Mid Hudson Times on Nov. 5, 2008

Echoes of the Wordsmith

I bet you know the Wordsmith.

The Wordsmith could be your mother, your father or your brother. The Wordsmith could be a co-worker or friend, a shop clerk or the boy down the street who likes to shoot some hoops as the sun waivers out on lazy summer nights. You might even be the Wordsmith, because sometimes, even the Wordsmith doesn’t know for sure.

The Wordsmith shapes language into something new, something meaningful, or something trivial. The Wordsmith might forge the next great American novel or the trash marinating in dust at the depths of a used book store in Massachusetts. The Wordsmith might be wealthy and renowned, or use a boatload of strained metaphors and pseudo-intellectual stylings in their first blog post on the corner of Unfocused and Unknown, Internet, USA. But whatever the case, the Wordsmith is always tinkering.

I know that I like to tinker and I know that I’m a Wordsmith. And wherever I fit in, I know the fire’s hot and I’m always ready to start forging.