The Book of Lists: Horror
Page 34
I am a writer and an artist. Great art and music influence my work far more than any film, TV show, book, or short story, unless they suggest lingering images in my brain. I wish I could insert little photos of these paintings alongside each title, but hopefully my list will inspire others to seek out the art available to be viewed on the Web. And maybe you’ll feel a shiver just by reading about them here. And, of course, I have more than ten favorites. Other artists worth investigating include Leonardo da Vinci, James Ensor, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elihu Vedder, Arnold Böcklin, Alphonse Mucha, Hugo Simberg, Paul Gauguin, and Franz von Stuck.
1. Paul Delvaux
Most horrifying work: Le Village des Sirenes (The Village of the Sirens) (1942)
In this surrealistic painting, a row of enigmatic blonde white women sit on chairs, waiting. They are meekly dressed in high-necked, long-sleeved blue gowns. Are they prostitutes, or would-be nuns? Are those cells or cribs behind each woman, their dark doorways open? Are they waiting for something to happen, something to end, someone to arrive, or someone to leave? Their blank faces suggest emotion beyond mute terror. Have they accepted some horrible fate, or are they just lonely beyond belief?
2. Hieronymus Bosch
Most horrifying work: Tondal’s Vision
A vision of heaven or hell? Certainly of sin. The people trapped in this hell appear to be having a good time, until you look closely. An angel caressing a nude woman’s rear? A game or a dinner inside the open mouth of a monster appears to have ended with one man spewing blood or wine? Another feeds another companion blood or wine? Frog legs squirm under a table? Odd happenings with various other humans suggest punishments. Must be hell. In the distance, a castle goes up in flame. No hope lives here. Just sin and depravity.
3. Edvard Munch
Most horrifying work: The Scream (1893)
This painting has become so well-known and even parodied so much, it’s almost lost its ability to terrorize the viewer with its garish oranges, yellows, and turbulent blue-green sea. The screaming person is bald, yet could be male or female. Two shadowy figures approach on a bridge behind the screamer. It inspires uneasy laughter until you really think about it. Still, there are many more horrifying Munch masterpieces, including the chilling lithograph, Attraction (1896), in which two lovers stare into each other’s black-hole eyes. Munch was a master of chilling imagery; other works include The Vampire (1893), featuring two young girls in a scary embrace, and Madonna (1895–1902), with a demonic little embryonic creature lurking in the corner. His many dark artworks are always good for a shriek or two.
4. Vincent van Gogh
Most horrifying work: Wheat Field with Crows (1890)
Like Munch’s The Scream, this is an iconic painting that was completed during his last summer in Arles. Often thought to be his last painting, it was just one of several, but indicated the torment he was suffering. A murder of crows flies over a bright yellow field that’s parted in the middle by an ominous road. Will the viewer choose that path or another?
5. John Everett Millais
Most horrifying work: Ophelia (1851–1852)
An unforgettable Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece that rarely fails to invoke chills, it was inspired by the scene in Hamlet in which an insane Ophelia drowns herself after her lover murders her father. It has another added horror factor: The model is Lizzie Siddal, the fragile wife of Dante Rossetti, addicted to laudanum after a miscarriage. She was to overdose several years later. Her husband, another celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, exhumed her body years later to rescue some poetry he had failed to make copies of. Millais actually preferred more quiet, less upsetting themes, but this still rates as one of the most horrifying paintings I’ve ever seen.
6. Henri Rousseau
Most horrifying work: War (1894)
A demonic little girl with bright white teeth and wearing a ragged white gown brandishes a sword and a smoking firebrand as she runs barefoot alongside a black horse, jumping across corpses of naked civilians and one soldier still wearing his trousers. Carrion crows are already feasting on the bloody remains on this nightmarish battleground, backlit by a brilliant pink and blue sunset and enhanced by skeletal trees. Rousseau was also highly skilled in depicting savage but glorious jungle paintings, complete with animals devouring other creatures. His eerie masterpiece The Snake Charmer (1907) is also a bit unsettling. Will the summoned snake bite the charmer? Or will the jungle devour the listener?
7. Salvador Dalí
Most horrifying work: The Three Sphinxes of Bikini (1947)
The Persistence of Memory (1931), the one with the melting clock faces, certainly had a scary flavor, but the three heads in this painting create a more forbidding aspect. You can’t see the face, only that the featureless backs of the heads were inspired by the bombs dropped on Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and experimentally on Bikini. The middle head is made of a tree split almost in half; the other two heads, one in the foreground and one in the background, are gray clouds of doom, a mute warning. A pioneer of the surrealist movement, Dalí completed paintings that haunt and disturb, especially those depicting his controlling but beloved wife, Gala.
8. René Magritte
Most horrifying work: Two versions of The Rape (1934) and (1948)
Depicting a woman’s face, the mouth, eyes, and nose of which have been replaced by her sex organs, reducing a woman to her body parts, are two of Magritte’s most scary works. This often playful surrealist is best known for puzzling but uplifting imagery, such as floating mountains, magical landscapes infused with exquisite clouds, skies and birds, hats, pipes, and lovely portraits of his wife. But even one of his whimsical paintings, Golconde (1953), turned nightmarish for me when the imagery became animated in one of my recent dreams. Businessmen descending from the sky like bowler-hatted raindrops or bullets? Several other pieces invoke a shiver or two as well, due to the sheer enigmatic emotions that charge his work with an electric tension, which endures long after you turn away from them.
9. Henry Fuseli
Most horrifying work: The Nightmare (1781)
The name of the artist might not be familiar, but the painting has been reproduced many times. A goblin sits on a female dreamer who appears to be falling from her bed, arms extended, hair a tumble of curls. Night demons have never been so exquisitely expressed. Has the goblin sucked her life force dry? Is she just sleeping?
10. Frida Kahlo
Most horrifying work: Mi Nana y Yo (My Nanny and I) (1937)
This outstanding Mexican surrealist was influenced by Diego Rivera, who she married and divorced. She painted many exquisite and exotic self-portraits. They read like graphic messages from her soul, charting an artistic journey that was unflinchingly honest if sometimes horrifying. Described as a “ribbon around a bomb” by surrealist André Breton, this selfportrait depicts Frida being nursed by a massive woman wearing a dark, enigmatic mask. Frida’s adult head is attached to a tiny child’s body clad in white gown similar to a First Communion dress. The breast she’s sucking from is either poisoning or nourishing her. Frida was severely injured in a streetcar accident when she was only fifteen, and endured many futile operations. She tried but was unable to bear children, and this painting reflects her agony with excruciating intensity. Other outstanding works—among many—include Roots (1943) and Self-Portrait with Thorn and Hummingbird (1940).
JASON AARON’S SIX FAVORITE
COMIC BOOK DEMONS AND DEVILS
Alabama-born Jason Aaron is the current writer of the ongoing Ghost Rider series from Marvel Comics. His other comic-book writing credits include Scalped and The Other Side for Vertigo, and Friday the 13th for Wildstorm. He is also collaborating (with The Book of Lists: Horror coauthor Scott Bradley) on the literary biography of author Gustav Hasford. Jason lives near Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife and children.
1. Son of Satan (Marvel Comics): His father is the Devil. His mother is an unsuspecting innocent. Meet Ira Levin’s Rose
mary’s Baby, all grown up and with an attitude. He’s half human, half fallen angel. The pompous and savage heir to Hell. Satan’s only begotten son. But like a lot of other college-age youngsters, Daimon Hellstrom (yes, that’s Hellstrom, not Hellstorm, as he was later called) winds up defying his domineering dad, preferring instead to go his own way. In Daimon’s case, that just happens to mean thwarting biblical prophecy by refusing to become the Antichrist. Instead, he sets up shop as an exorcist, opposing his father at every turn. Only problem: Daimon deeply despises humanity, seeing it as beneath him, and he usually threatens the life of any poor human who dares defy him. After first appearing in 1973’s Ghost Rider #2, Daimon later headlined Marvel Spotlight under the title “The Son of Satan,” before spinning off into his own short-lived series, the last issue of which shipped in 1977. In 1993, an updated version of Daimon starred in Hellstorm: Prince of Lies, but this recasting of Satan’s son in a grim and gritty role only stripped away the last bits of mad flair and wild irreverence that had made the original character so memorable. For my money, Daimon was at his high point when written by Steve Gerber in the pages of Marvel Spotlight: red cape flowing, pentagram emblazoned on his bare chest, wielding a trident of “psycho-sensitive Netheranium,” riding a fiery chariot pulled by flying demon-horses, spouting exclamations like “By the Seven Circles!” and “By the Hadean Chimes!” his cover blurbs promising “Exorcism! Excitement! In the eerie Marvel manner!”
2. Ghost Rider (Marvel Comics): The thoroughly lame Nicolas Cage flick aside, ol’ flamehead is still the most badass supernatural superhero to ever straddle a chopper. As his origin goes, stunt cyclist Johnny Blaze made a deal with the devil to try and save a sickly loved one. To the surprise of no one but Johnny, the deal didn’t work out as planned, and instead, he ended up possessed by a demonic spirit of vengeance, forced to ride the city streets by night, dishing out beat-downs to evildoers. Think Faust on a motorcycle, with a flaming skull for a head. Since his first appearance in 1972, Blaze has headlined several different titles, joined the short-lived, Los Angeles–based superteam the Champions, and at one point wielded a shotgun that spewed hellfire, while playing second fiddle to his long-lost brother, Danny Ketch. These days Blaze is back in the driver’s seat, and after kicking the devil’s ass once again, he has his sights set on an all-new enemy: the renegade angel Zadkiel.
3. The Demon (DC Comics): When you got a name like Jason Blood, chances are your life’s gonna be less than rosy. Created in 1972 by comics legend Jack Kirby during one of his most wildly imaginative periods, Jason Blood is a demonologist who’s been permanently bonded with an honest-to-God demon. By reciting the words, “Gone, gone the form of man, rise the demon Etrigan,” Blood goes all Jekyll and Hyde, transforming into a yellowskinned demon who’s pretty savage and cool, in spite of his cape and little red booties. It was some time after his first appearance that Etrigan began speaking all in rhymes, which has since become his trademark, and was eventually explained to be a requirement of his current ranking among the hierarchy of hell.
4. Blue Devil (DC Comics): Dan Cassidy is a stuntman playing the role of a blue-skinned, devil-horned monster, but when his film shoot accidentally unleashes the demon Nebiros, Cassidy gets zapped and fused to his costume, leaving him stuck as a real-life Blue Devil. Running for thirty issues in the late eighties, Cassidy’s adventures in the pages of Blue Devil were high on laughs, including battles with bumbling aliens, second-rate supervillains, and even a cartoon goose. At one point, he even got his own teenage sidekick, dubbed Kid Devil. In the years after his series cancellation, Blue Devil returned as a member of the Justice League and today appears in the pages of Shadowpact alongside other offbeat supernatural characters.
5. Hellboy (Dark Horse Comics): He’s a demon conjured by Nazis whose oversized fist, dubbed the “Right Hand of Doom,” is supposed to bring about the apocalypse, but instead he keeps his horns filed off and works as a paranormal investigator for the U.S. government. As drawn by creator Mike Mignola, his tales are some of the most gorgeously rendered comics of the modern age.
6. Lucifer (Vertigo Comics): What does the devil do when he gets tired of ruling the underworld? He gives up the keys to hell and moves to Earth to open a piano bar. Or at least that’s what happened in the pages of Neil Gaiman’s landmark Sandman series, and later, the character spun off into his own title, which lasted seventy-five issues and was published by Vertigo, the mature-reader imprint of DC Comics. Think Milton’s Paradise Lost starring David Bowie. Brooding and navel-gazing never seemed so hipster.
WARREN MARTENSE’S TEN THINGS H. P. LOVECRAFT
NEVER ASKED FOR IN A BAR
Warren Martense is a leading figure in horror fiction’s underground. He hails from the Catskill Mountains, where his complex love-hate relationship with his family inspired his controversial novel Stormy Monday.
1. A large bourbon.
2. A prawn sandwich.
3. The barmaid’s phone number.
4. A bottle of Thunderbird.
5. The name of the sax player on the jukebox.
6. Kosher snacks.
7. A Budweiser from the fridge.
8. Directions to the local whorehouse.
9. Whatever Hemingway drank.
10. One more for the road.
TEN HORROR COCKTAILS
(AND HOW TO MAKE THEM)
1. BLOODY M A RY
1½–2oz. vodka
3 oz. tomato juice
1 dash lemon juice
½ tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2–3 drops Tabasco sauce
salt and pepper to taste
Mix all ingredients, shake with ice, and strain into glass over ice cubes. A wedge of lime may be added.
(In his short story “The Chymist,” author Thomas Ligotti offers up a disturbing variant called “the Sweet and Sour Bloody Mary,” which consists of “high-test vodka, sugar, a lemon slice, and ketchup.”)
—Source: Mr. Boston Official Bartender’s and Party Guide
2. VAMPIRE
1 oz. vodka
1 oz. chambord
1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. cranberry juice
Fill a shaker half-full with ice cubes. Pour all ingredients into shaker and shake well. Strain drink into a cocktail glass.
—Source: www.whattodrink.com
3. ZOMBIE
2 oz. light Puerto Rican rum
1 oz. dark Jamaican rum
½ oz. 151-proof Demerara rum
1 oz. curaçao
1 tsp. Pernod or Herbsaint
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. pineapple juice
½ oz. papaya or guava juice (optional)
¼ oz. grenadine
½ oz. orgeat syrup or sugar syrup to taste
mint sprig (optional)
pineapple stick
Mix all ingredients, except mint and pineapple stick, with cracked ice in a blender and pour into a tall, chilled collins glass. Garnish with mint sprig and pineapple stick. (Note: This is a re-creation of the original Zombie recipe by Don the Beachcomber.)
—Source: The New American Bartender’s Guide
4. WEREWOLF
1½ oz. Jack Daniel’s
1½ oz. Drambuie
Shake with ice and strain into a lowball glass.
—Source: www.nextrecipe.com
5. FRANKENSTEIN
½ oz. blackberry liqueur
½ oz. melon liqueur
1 oz. pineapple juice
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with a few ice cubes. Shake and strain into a 2 oz. shot glass, and serve.
—Source: www.idrink.com
6. EXORCIST
1½ oz. Tequila
¾ oz. blue curaçao liqueur
¾ oz. lime juice
Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.
—Source: www.drinksmixer.com
7. MUMMY
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br /> 2 oz. vodka
1 oz. orange liqueur
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. club soda
Mix vodka, orange liqueur, and lemon juice in an old-fashioned glass half-filled with ice. Top off with club soda. Stir.
—Source: www.1001cocktails.com
8. DEVIL’S TAIL
1½ oz. gold rum
½ oz. vodka
½ oz. apricot liqueur
½ oz. lime juice
½ tsp. grenadine
lime peel
Mix all ingredients except lime peel with cracked ice in a blender and pour into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lime peel over drink and drop into glass.
—Source: The New American Bartender’s Guide
9. THE HEMORRHAGING BRAIN
1 shot of peach schnapps