Demon Theory

by Stephen Graham Jones

  240 The cheapest way in 1966 to make Leanord Nimoy look alien (a sharp-eared look [and half-breed status] already proven popular in the SubMariner comic books).

  241 The Scrooge of Dr. Seuss’s 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas, played by Jim Carrey in 2000 (his second role in green since 1994’s The Mask, the other being of course 1995’s Batman Forever, where he got to wear the Riddler tights).

  242 a.k.a. “Tiny Tim,”† from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (December 17, 1843). In Bill Murray’s 1988 version (Scrooged), Tiny Tim is played by Mary Lou Retton, presumably for reasons of voice, not acrobatic ability.

  243 The Sherman Bros.’ (Richard B. and Robert M.) Disney song “It’s a Small World After All” premiered at the 1956 World’s Fair. They also wrote the songs for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Mary Poppins (1964), The Parent Trap (1961), etc.

  244 near-death-experience.

  245 The expositional device of 1993’s Beyond Bedlam (hidden on the horror shelves as Nightscare) is more or less similar: a woman (Elizabeth Hurley) must knit her disturbing dreams together into a recognizable narrative before the antagonist of that narrative finds/kills her (which itself isn’t all that dissimilar to the following year’s Blink, in which Madeleine Stowe must work against the clock to “recover” and put together a series of images/scenes, just as Cassandra had to eight years earlier, in Cassandra [see n 33†]).

  246 Of the lifesaving, Sleeping Beauty (Disney, 1959)–kind,† like Trinity gave Neo in The Matrix. A fairy-tale staple.

  247 One of the many character classes/types available to role-play in D&D (b. 1974) and AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), the others being barbarian, ranger, wizard, etc., and both likely and unlikely combinations of all of them.

  248 Heterocephalus glaber, also called “sand puppy.” A eusocial burrowing rodent, native both to east Africa and to Disney’s animated Kim Possible series (2002–).

  249 And famous for uncrossing her legs for an unbrief moment. Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 Basic Instinct—his second picture with Stone.

  250 Mary Lambert’s 1989 adaption of the 1983 Stephen King novel.

  251 The eventual (Achilles tendon) slasher of Pet Sematary.

  252 One of the many things Julianne Moore’s character suffers from in Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995), billed as a “horror movie of the soul.”

  253 Not a line from Hansel and Gretel (originally recorded by the Grimm brothers, one of whom [Wilhelm] would marry the Cassel woman [Dortchen Wild] who relayed it to them), Hansel and Gretel likely owes its basic story to either Charles Perrault’s “Le petit Poucet” (1697) or Madame d’Aulnoy’s “Finette Cendron” (1698), though of course the 1893 Engelbert Humperdinck† opera is what really popularized it.

  254 The 1810 version of the rhyme (“Humpty Dumpty”) reads: “Threescore men and threescore more / cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before”).

  255 Real Life’s 1989 hit, often covered by the Pet Shop Boys and just as often mistakenly heard as “simian angel”; the important lyric here is of course the “right now” which follows and somewhat qualifies the request. Not to be confused with the Scorpions’s “Send Me an Angel” (off their 1991 Crazy World), which itself shouldn’t be confused with their 1984 “Rock You Like a Hurricane” anthem (the former has the lyric “Here I am / Will you send me an angel,” while the latter has “Here I am Rock you like a hurricane”), or with Bonnie Tyler’s anthematic track off the Footloose (1984) soundtrack, “I Need a Hero,” which is the opposite of Tina TurnerAuntie Entity’s complaint on the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack (1985), “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Of note with “Send Me an Angel” is that, as Philip K. Dick pointed out in VALIS (published in 1978, experienced in 1974), contrasting “God is now here” against “God is nowhere,” with one less space, the request can read “send mean angel.”

  256 Intoned by a choir for the first time—as “Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!”†—in 1816 in a midnight mass at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. Written by the assistant pastor there, Fr. Joseph Mohr, who, as the organ was down, provided accompaniment with his guitar, presumably ignoring the exclamation points in the title of the song, as, in tablature, they would at least be “f”—(forte, loud)—if not “fff”: (very very loud).

  257 Dickens’s A Christmas Carol again.

  258 The last chorus, not sung that often anymore: “I got a ball peen hammer and a two-by-four / Gonna whip the hell out o’ Cotton-eyed Joe.”

  259 Suggesting, of course, as Baigent and Brown & Co. would have it, the Magdalene, not the Madonna.

  260 Not to be confused with Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel† (1962), which also has livestock (sheep).

  261 Commonly known in her native France as la Pucelle (“the Maid”), Joan of Arc was a 15th-century military leader and heroine, who believed the voices she was hearing were divine. Canonized in 1920 after being burned at the stake in 1431, her “visions” have been compelling enough to filmmakers that her story was first adapted to the screen in 1895, then again in a ten-minute, 1899 version, then again, and again, until the latest version: The Messenger (Luc Besson, 1999), where Milla Jovovich played the title role, perhaps in preparation for the video-game-inspired Resident Evil (2002), which of course played with Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865) more than a little.

  262 Cyndi Lauper’s 1997 song, which also includes the lines “Well it’s [a] strange, strange time / all our friends dropping like flies.”

  263 Son of Tex Ritter.

  264 Of Three’s Company (1977–1984).

  265 According to the opening title-card of Albert Hughes’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell (2001), which documented and purported to solve the White Chapel murders of 1888 London (via Johnny Depp’s reprisal of his Ichabod Crane investigator role from 1999’s Sleepy Hollow), Jack the Ripper claimed that “One day men will look back and say that I gave birth to the twentieth century.”

  266 According to Fred Schepisi’s 1993 film adaptation of John Guare’s 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation, any two people are never more than six removes, or “degrees,” from each other.

  267 Or, after the third season, when the Ropers spun off to their own series (the ill-fated The Ropers), Mr. Furley (Don Knotts).

  268 Solving crimes and catching criminals for fifty-nine years in London before Jack the Ripper got started.

  269 Blake Edwards’s 1989 comedy about a drunken, womanizing writer; best-known for its “cock-fighting” scene—a Star Wars-inspired–swordfight in a dark bedroom, where the “light-sabers” are glow-in-the-dark condoms. They’re fully extended.

  270 From her Janet Leigh† Scream intro.

  271 Very nearly what Tom Bower’s custodian Marvin says to John McClane in Die Hard 2,† about the thoroughly destroyed satellite terminal: “I’ll be damned if I’m going to clean up this mess.”

  272 From 1994’s The Crow, his last movie, based on the James O’Barr comic book series† (screenplay by horror veteran David J. Schow). “Victims … aren’t we all?” is what he says just before his character Eric Draven (i.e., Eric d raven … Eric the raven …) stabs Tin-Tin.

  273 A Men in Black (1997) trick. Based on the Lowell Cunningham comic book series.

  274 Per id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D (1992), which became Doom† (1993), which became Quake, Halo,‡ etc.††

  275 Alien: Resurrection (1997), the fourth and presumed-final installment in the series,† in which Ripley is scrapped together again two hundred years after her last death, tougher than ever.

  276 Just like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century) and Run Lola Run (1998), 1999’s Go has to iterate three times before completing itself, much as rotary-combination locks require three full revolutions to open.

  277 How the Mbwun† (as it’s called in the 1996 novel: a monster of human origin) in The Relic (1997) covers ground. Ebert describes it as “twice the size of a raptor, looks like a cross between a kangaroo and Godzilla, has teeth the size of fen
ce pickets, and a long, red forked tongue … ”

  278 In David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker’s 1995 Se7en, the comparable line is “You spoil that child every chance you get.”

  279 “I think I can I think I can I think I can” is the little blue engine’s (tryptych) refrain in Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could (1930).

  280 How the Lycans move down halls in Underworld (2003; originally pitched as “a Romeo & Juliet for vampires and werewolves,”† much as Roddenberry originally pitched Star Trek as “a Gunsmoke in space” (when in fact it was an interstellar Gulliver’s Travels).

  281 Late-night disc jockey Stretch is the final girl in the 1986 over-the-top The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Tobe Hooper again).

  282 What Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes mentally notes is his “elapsed turnaround time” after Calvin attempts, once more, to avoid getting tackled at the front door (these “door attacks” are of course Bill Watterson’s answer to Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown, forever hopeful that Lucy isn’t going to again snatch away the football he’s about to kick).

  283 More or less, the beginning of the James Cagney line from Raoul Walsh’s 1949 update of the 1926 (not 1934) White Heat, in which he screams, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!!” (often misquoted as “Look, Ma!” etc., in movies as distinct from one another as The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and The Chronicles of Riddick [2004]).

  284 A staple of both Saturday-morning cartoons and of horror, especially in the age of CGI effects—see The Frighteners (1996), The Relic, The Haunting, etc.—but done best perhaps in Scrooged,† with John Forsythe’s violent entrance, when he’s made up like the decomposing Jack in An American Werewolf in London (1981).

  285 Hank Williams, 1951.

  286 R.E.M., Out of Time again.

  287 Carol Anne Freeling. Poltergeist again. The Dakota Fanning† of her day.

  288 Disturbing character from Pet Sematary.

  289 The 1980 Ken Russell film that explores consciousness, evolution, and hallucinogens (based on dolphin researcher John Lilly’s experiments in his isolation tank with drugs, which Paddy [i.e., Sidney Aaron] Chayefsky based his novel on. He disowned the movie version).

  290 Thus confirming all our fifties-era fears about atomic warfare.

  291 A number of short action sequences, usually without dialogue. Like the montage except more sequential/less associative.

  292 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1888 novel, adapted to the screen nearly countless times in the early days of film, in no small part because it allowed makeup artists to stretch their abilities, directors to improvise camera angles and lighting, and actors to showcase their talent by playing dual/opposing roles.

  293 The dragons in Reign of Fire (2002) are able to fold themselves up like this as well. Like greyhounds, almost. For “folding-up” in straight horror, however, try the “Creeper” of Jeepers Creepers II or the “Tooth Fairy” of Darkness Falls, each from 2003.

  294 A common enough “escape tactic” in supernatural thrillers,† done most recently by Rachel Weisz in Constantine (2005), playing her lead character’s twin sister, Isabel.

  295 Golden Earring’s other hit, off of Cut (1983).† Seven minutes and fifty-four seconds. “Where am I to go now that I’ve gone too far?”

  DEMON THEORY 18

  296 World (Wide) Wrestling Federation, formed under controversial circumstances in 1963 as “WWWF” then reconsolidated in 2002 as WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).

  297 In late-sixties Birmingham (England), Black Sabbath was still either Polka Tulk Blues Band, or, later, Earth.

  298 Rob Reiner’s mock documentary, circa 1984. Full title: This Is Spinal Tap. Full explanation for “11” on the amps: “Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it?”

  299 A Clockwork Orange character.

  300 Though the doomed punks Terminator‡ opens with are numbered, not named, still, they’re once and forever Brad Reardon, Brian Thompson, and the leader, Bill Paxton† (in spite of being the “leader,” though, it’s Brian Thompson—who would go on to be a/the shape-shifting alien for X-Files—who gets to mutter the movie’s envoy: “What’s wrong with this picture?”).

  301 see n 133

  302 Francoise Auguste René Rodin (1840–1917), not to be confused with 1956’s Rodan, about a small town besieged by giant caterpillars. The sculpture being referenced here is the most popular bookend ever, probably: The Thinker (La Penseur—first cast small, in plaster, in 1880, then large, in bronze, in 1902).

  303 Again, Clint Eastwood’s eponymous character from Don Siegel’s 1971 movie.

  304 A tongue seen best, perhaps, in Detroit Rock City† (1999), where, for a few brief moments, a camera evidently in Gene Simmons’s throat pans the concert audience, his undulating tongue serving as the floor of the shot (a variation on a shot from A Chinese Ghost Story [1987], except, there, the tongue is at least sixty feet long, and not only prehensile, but able to “sense” and give chase to its victims as well).

  305 Served as president from 1969 until his resignation in 1974, after which he became a recurring character on Matt Groening’s short-lived Fox series Futurama. As for criminal types donning president masks, however—a recurrent motif in Hollywood—this likely stems from a famous photograph of William Burroughs in a Ronald Reagan mask, jumping on a trampoline.

  306 The “no contractions” diction is what Hank Azaria† uses to characterize The Simpsons’s Apu character, a jibe at the stereotype which perhaps goes twice as deep, as the voice Azaria is consciously emulating is Dr. Ahmed el Kabir’s, from Peter Sellers’s‡ The Millionairess (1960).

  307 A caliber popularized by Riggs in Lethal Weapon.

  308 The monster in Wes Craven’s 1982 The Swamp Thing, based on the Len Wein comic book, which had Alan Moore at the helm for a while. “Science transformed him† into a monster.”

  309 In the Jim Carrey movie Once Bitten† (1985), losing your virginity is the best defense against vampires,‡ and, as the virgin Reese had just established the year before in a motel room†† in The Terminator, it’s a pretty good defense against the future‡‡ as well.

  310 Standard fare both for urban legends and slasher movies, the Escaped Mental Patient finds his best expression perhaps in Nightscreams (1987, and not to be confused either with Nightscare [see n 245] or with Night School† [1981]), where not one but two disturbed killers break out of their asylum and into a high school party. Look for John Holmes playing on the television.

  311Sigmund Freud’s famous “Wolf-Man” (from his 1918 The History of an Infantile Neurosis) was a twenty-three-year-old Russian aristocrat, Sergei Pankejeff.

  312 i.e., the Rifleman, from the television series (1958–1963). No known relation to Sarah.

  313 Either Jason Voorhees or the “other” Jason, of the good ship Argo. Both have been to Hell, anyway†—an essential excursion for the hero of the monomyth‡—Jason Voorhees in 1993 (Friday the 13th IX: Jason Goes to Hell), the other Jason some three thousand years before, in verse.

  314 From his and Jim Steinman’s 1977 Bat out of Hell.

  315 Joel Schumacher’s 1987 rock ’n’ roll vampire movie, with both Coreys (Haim and Feldman). While not based on J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1902), the title is the name of Peter’s group of friends who stay in Neverland and never grow up (what Louis says to Claudia in Interview with the Vampire [1994], from the 1976 Anne Rice novel: “You will never grow old. You will never die”).

  316 Launched at the stroke of midnight, August 1, 1981, some eleven years into the Unix era—or, “365515201.”

  317 Mel Gibson’s breakthrough (1979) postapocalyptic hero, starring opposite a character named Nightrider. Three years later (i.e., one year after Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior), Knight Rider†—another “car-show”‡—would debut.

  318 Where Mad Max meets Tina Turner (1985).

  319 Again, Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which also draws all the “initiated” together for reasons th
ey can’t quite articulate. Twenty-six years later, the same “homing instinct” would be used in horror, in Identity, with significantly different effect.

  320 Marilyn Burns would also star in the possibly derivative Horror Hotel Massacre (1977). Not to be confused with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre parody, Motel Hell (1980; tagline, “Meat’s meat and a man’s gotta eat”).

  321 Published by the Medical Economic Co., Oradell, NJ. Now in its 28th edition. A bible for the medical community, wish list for the drug community.

  322 Second-most memorable scene from John Boorman’s Deliverance (both based on James Dickey’s 1970 novel and starring James Dickey), and hopefully the one imitated most often.

  323 Or, Star Trek II (1982). Ricardo Montalban, reprising his Khan role from the series’s 1966 episode “Space Seed.” And probably not wearing a prosthetic chest.

  324 Like in The Gate (1987), the ultimate environmentalist movie, where an uprooted tree opens onto hell.† Cutting-edge claymation. One sequel.

  325 As it does in any of the (three) Final Destinations†, all of which answer Lestat’s question in Anne Rice’s 1985 novel The Vampire Lestat: “Do you think we find our destiny somehow, no matter what?”

  326 Directed by John Hough,† 1980, and starring Bette Davis. Often, for good reason, listed as “too scary for kids.”

  327 “… Frankenstein,” the mad scientist† of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus‡ (first published anonymously on January 1, 1818, then again, cleaned up and overhauled [and credited to Mary Shelley], on Halloween 1831).

  328 From the “My Sharona” convenience store scene in 1994’s Reality Bites. An Oscar-worthy display of facial musculature.

  329 see n 143

  330 The unavoidable echo of any post-1959 “plan” is of course Ed Woods’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, which is the movie Seinfeld and crew are desperately trying to get to in “The Chinese Restaurant” episode (1991) and, in “The Postponement” (1995), finally do get to, only to get kicked out because Kramer gets caught with smuggled-in coffee.