Witches & Warlocks “Doll-Baby,” C. H. Sherman; “Emma’s Daughter,” Alan Rodgers; “Lorelei,” Wilhelm Ruland; “The Magic Egg,” Frank R. Stockton; “Sanguinarius,” Ray Russell; “Seeing Them,” Darrell Schweitzer; “St. John’s Eve,” Nikolai Gogol; “The Witch,” Isaac Bashevis Singer.
13 Plays of Ghosts and the Supernatural “Dinny and the Witches,” William Gibson; “Madam, Will You Walk?,” Sidney Howard; “The Passion of Dracula,” Bob Hall and David Richmond; “Teibele and Her Demon,” Isaac Bashevis Singer and Eve Friedman.
Haunted America “Dumb Supper,” Henderson Starke; “Gibbler’s Ghost,” William F. Nolan; “The Glove,” Fritz Leiber Jr.; “The Girl with the Beckoning Eyes,” Bernhardt J. Hurwood; “The Return of the Moresbys,” Henry Slesar; “The Rider on the Pale Horse,” Helen Eustis; “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” Henry James; “Slaughter House,” Richard Matheson; “The White Old Maid,” Nathaniel Hawthorne.
2. Selected Prose
It would be an act of hubris to attempt to enumerate all fiction relevant to the theme of Lovers & Other Monsters. The following is merely a list of some of my favorite novels and a few key shorter tales.
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, a gently understated shocker, is a justly famous short story about a sexual perversion that most horror writers still consider taboo. It is curiously similar in intent to John Steinbeck’s Johnny Bear (q.v.).
The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions is a classic novella of ghostly possession that has influenced, consciously or unconsciously, the plots of many modern fantasy tales, especially Parke Godwin’s award-winning The Fire When It Comes and Richard Matheson’s Slaughter House (which appeared in my earlier collection, Haunted America).
Burning Bright, one of John Steinbeck’s least familiar novels (it also exists in play form), is a tale of love, sacrifice and wholly justifiable marital infidelity. Admittedly not one of Steinbeck’s most significant works, it still has an undeniable, if somewhat soap opera-ish, fascination. Also worth noting are two tales in this author’s short story collection, The Long Valley: “The Snake,” a singularly unpleasant exercise in morbid sexuality, and “Johnny Bear,” which is reminiscent of William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, mentioned above.
Darker Places by Parke Godwin is a nightmarish novel of sadomasochistic murder and revenge. Also worth noting is the same author’s above-cited novella, The Fire When It Comes, a superb life-affirming ghost story.
The Disappearance by Philip Wylie is a grim sociological science-fiction novel. The inability of modern man and woman to communicate leads to a dimensional rift in which all men are stranded on a world without women and vice versa.
Donovan’s Brain by Curt Siodmak is a well-crafted science-fiction novel about the telepathic possession of a scientist by the living brain of a ruthless tycoon, a takeover that incidentally includes the protagonist’s beloved.
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton’s stark tragedy of frustrated love on a New England farm, is a once-read, never-forgotten masterpiece.
Four-Sided Triangle by William F. Temple is a novel-length conte cruelle about two scientists so in love with the same Woman that they clone her, in the mistaken assumption that all four of them can live happily ever after.
How Love Came to Professor Guildea by Robert Hichens is an acclaimed “thinking person’s” horror story about the nasty results of a familiarlike entity’s adoration of the titular professor.
The Hunger by Charles Beaumont is perhaps the most famous short story by this lamentedly short-lived author. It depicts the gruesome psychological linkage between a rapist and his victim, a theme that is also explored in Ray Bradbury’s The Whole Town’s Sleeping and Michel de Ghelderode’s Lord Halewijn (both cited below).
Implosion by D. F. Jones is a “doomsday” science-fiction novel in which a minor world power creates a biological weapon capable of destroying the male reproductive system.
The Magus by John Fowles is the ultimate novel of psychological manipulation, in which the protagonist is spiritually and emotionally raped “for his own good.” The cynical amorality of Fowles’ “godgame” perhaps led the author to rewrite The Magus. The revised edition is a more compassionate, emotionally satisfying composition.
The Master of the Day of Judgment by Leo Perutz, a neglected masterpiece, is a labyrinthine maze of sexual obsession and Hellish guilt.
The Moon Pool by A. Merritt is a fantasy novel about a fearful god whose victims suffer in an endless state of mingled ecstasy and horror.
Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo’s scathing novel of social injustice (better known as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”), is rife with love—perverse, unrequited, profane. The crippled bell ringer Quasimodo heads a cast of grotesque, yet sympathetic downtrodden victimized by the corrupt aristocracy and clergy of fifteenth-century France.
The Pledge by Friedrich Duerrenmatt, filmed as It Happened in Broad Daylight, is a short novel about a policeman whose vow to avenge a young woman’s rape-murder engages him in a quest nearly as repugnant as the crime itself.
Some of Your Blood, a novel by Theodore Sturgeon, attempts to evoke sympathy for consenting participants of a sadomasochistic love affair. Ted Sturgeon is always eminently readable, but variations of this idea have been more skillfully handled by several other authors, including Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Tennessee Williams and, especially, Guy Endore (see below).
The Sorcerer’s Lady by Paula Volsky is a fantasy novel that rings refreshing changes on the old damsel-forced-to-wed plot. Enforced marriage is the medium by which the heroine, like Thackeray’s Glencora Palliser, grows in vision and wisdom. The Sorcerer’s Heir and The Sorcerer’s Curse continue this witty but essentially tragic trilogy.
Washington Square by Henry James, the tale of a young woman torn between her domineering father and the fortune hunter she falls in love with, was the basis for an excellent play and film, The Heiress.
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore is to lycanthropic literature what Bram Stoker’s Dracula is to the vampire novel. Its vulpine protagonist is ultimately victim of a society riddled with lecherous priests, inhuman scientists and savage soldiery.
The Whole Town’s Sleeping by Ray Bradbury is a short story about a rapist known only as The Lonely One. After its initial publications in McCall’s and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the tale was integrated into Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine, with a brief epilogue that purports to tell “what happened next”—a sequential episode that contradicts Bradbury’s own superior sequel, At Midnight, in the Month of June, included in his recent story collection, The Toynbee Convector.
3. Selected Drama
Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton, a suspenseful melodrama about a vicious murderer trying to drive his wife mad, was the basis for the twice-filmed thriller Gaslight.
Before Breakfast, a one-act play by Eugene O’Neill, is a tour de force monologue of a discontented wife whose vicious nagging prompts her husband to commit suicide.
Dance of Death by August Strindberg is actually two plays that span several years of a marriage whose partners both love and loathe one another. Another savage love-hate relationship is depicted in the same author’s The Father.
The Dybbuk by the pseudonymous S. Anski is the great Jewish poetic tragedy about a young woman possessed by the spirit of a dead scholar whom she loved. A fascinating, unfortunately scarce Polish film circa 1938 is well worth seeing; reportedly, only 16mm prints of it exist in this country.
Edwina Black by William Dinner and William Morum is an atmospheric study of suspicion and guilt engineered by a dead woman to destroy her husband’s future romantic happiness.
Francesca da Rimini by George Henry Boker is an important early American tragedy based on the legend of Paola and Francesca, doomed lovers who figure importantly in one of the earlier cantos of Dante’s Inferno.
Hamlet, King of Denmark is a remarkable tetralogy by Percy MacKaye that, beginning thirty years before Shakespeare’s Hamlet, develo
ps the love triangle between King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude and Claudius.
Happv Days by Samuel Beckett is a bleak absurdist depiction of the sad final years of a marriage. In the first act, Winnie, the wife, is buried waist-high in sand. Her neglectful mate rarely communicates with her until late in the play, when the symbolic sand has nearly engulfed her.
The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco is a long absurdist one-act comedy that equates tutoring with rape-murder. (An educational TV version exists; it features a splendid performance by Fred Gwynne.) Also worth noting is Ionesco’s Amedee, in which a dying marriage is represented by a corpse that grows to colossal size.
Lord Halewijn by Michel de Ghelderode is a series of scenes of mounting tension about a nobleman who wants to kill a neighboring princess. In spite of her family’s protection and her own common sense, the princess is inexorably drawn to meet the murderer, with unexpected results.
Love from a Stranger, a romantic thriller by Frank Vosper based on an Agatha Christie tale, is an example of the suspect-your-mate school of suspense. Despite its age, it still has effective moments and an ingenious climax.
Murder in the Red Barn, also known as The Murder of Maria Marten, is an anonymous “barnstormer” folk drama that, along with George Dibdin Pitt’s Sweeney Todd, represents the pinnacle of nineteenth-century melodrama. There is an effective English film version starring the aptly named Todd Slaughter, who also did a British movie of Pitt’s Sweeney Todd in 1936.
Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams, twice filmed, is the strangely poetic portrait of a homicidal maniac with a talent for making women who ought to know better fall in love with him.
Salome, a one-act drama by Oscar Wilde that inspired the libretto of Richard Strauss’ opera, is a sensuous, sensual study in lust and corruption.
The Shrike by Joseph Kramm was, after Cyrano, one of Jose Ferrer’s most impressive earlier “legit” acting vehicles. This Strindbergian tale of a wife whose tenacious love drives her husband to a nervous breakdown was effectively filmed in 1955 with June Allyson in a change-of-image role as the wife. Though its ending is watered down, the film is culturally significant as one of the first American movie that featured (and publicized) a scene in which a man (Ferrer) cries.
Summer and Smoke is Tennessee Williams’ ironic view of physical and spiritual love and their essential incompatibility. The excellent 1961 film stars Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey.
4. Selected Films
A Safe Place (1971), the first film directed by Henry Jaglom, is a pictorially and emotionally overwhelming stream-of-consciousness fantasy of a young woman (Tuesday Weld) serially betrayed by lovers and ersatz father (Orson Welles, in one of his most appealing performances). Despite its dismissal by America’s critical establishment, A Safe Place has deservedly become a collegiate cult classic.
The Black Cat (1934), the first teaming of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, contains strong hints of sexual perversion.
Blood and Roses (1961) is loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampiric Carmilla. Though mostly just another Roger Vadim mishmash, the film’s climactic “dream” sequence is (arguably) effective enough to make the rest of the picture worth enduring.
The Blue Angel (1930), starring Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich, is a masterpiece of sexual domination and humiliation.
The Company of Wolves (1984) is a lycanthropic fantasy with heavily erotic under(and over-)tones. Though too convoluted, and despite a predictable “wimpy” windup, it is still one of the best werewolf films of recent memory, light years ahead of such juvenilia as The Howling.
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), first and best of the three “creature” movies, features subtly erotic underwater sequences (originally released in 3-D).
Daughters of Darkness (1971), with its heavy burden of homosexuality and sadistic murder, may be the kinkiest vampire film ever made. Yet, far from being exploitational, it boasts a literate script, excellent acting and cinematography. In spite of its hasty, conventional ending, it deserves a high place in the subgenre of serious adult cinema horror.
Dead Ringers (1988) is a shocker that wisely substitutes psychosexual horror for director David Cronenberg’s more usual physical gruesomeness. The tale of twin doctors who descend into madness, it is curiously reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966). I agree with film critic Andrew Sarris, who once told me that if the film community had not discounted Dead Ringers as “a mere horror movie,” Jeremy Irons might have won an Oscar for his dual portrayal of the tormented physicians.
Diabolique (1955), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (sometimes called “France’s Alfred Hitchcock,” though Hitch’s darkness seems comparatively healthy compared with Clouzot), is the justly famous tale of two women who plot and kill their respective husband and lover... or did they? A good theatrical version, Monique, was adapted from the same novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also jointly wrote the book Hitchcock filmed as Vertigo.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been filmed several times, always with unsettling sexual content. The restored 1932 version that won Fredric March an Academy Award for Best Actor is especially effective.
Eye of the Needle (1981), based on Ken Follett’s best-selling spy novel, is Follett’s first and perhaps best mixture of espionage and politically expedient carnality.
Freaks (1932) is a bizarre tale that stresses the loving familial instincts of a troupe of circus freaks, yet also depicts them as capable of inflicting a grotesque (and totally unbelievable) revenge on a beautiful woman one of them unwisely falls in love with. Yet in spite of its unresolvable thematic contradictions, it is still an engrossing film with a frightening climax reminiscent of German cinematic horror.
Gate of Hell (1954) is a great Japanese film about lust and the shame that follows its fulfillment.
The Innocents (1961), still the best dramatization of Henry James’ ghost (?) story, The Turn of the Screw, contains an undertone of sexual frustration that, unlike Michael Winner’s inept 1972 prequel, The Nightcomers, is never prurient.
Laura (1944), Otto Preminger’s stylish film of obsessive passion and murder, still holds up well despite a few noticeable excisions necessitated by problems with the music rights.
Love Me or Leave Me (1955), a musical biofilm about singer Ruth Etting (Doris Day), is memorable for its performance by James Cagney of a love-crazed gangster.
Mad Love (1935) is distinguished by a wonderfully repellent “turn” by Peter Lorre as a perverted surgeon.
Monsieur Verdoux (1923) features Charlie Chaplin as a dapper French wife-murderer. Decades ahead of its time, this black comedy is still effective for its humorous moments, but is far more remarkable for its compassion and scathing tragic irony.
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) owes less to Poe than the expressionistic German masterpiece, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Though dated, it is still worth watching for Bela Lugosi’s mad scientist bent on mating a woman with his pet ape.
The Night Porter (1974) is an ugly film about a terminally compulsive love affair between an ex-Nazi (Dirk Bogarde) and a prisoner (Charlotte Rampling) he abused.
Nights of Cabiria (1957) is Federico Fellini’s award-winning film about a winsome prostitute (Giuletta Masina) who seeks love but always finds pain.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), Sergio Leone’s l-o-n-g but enjoyable “spaghetti western,” contains many gritty elements, including the heroine’s sexual coercion by a particularly loathsome villain (brilliantly portrayed by Henry Fonda).
One of My Wives Is Missing (1976), starring Elizabeth Ashley, James Franciscus and Jack Klugman, is a superb thriller-puzzler full of astonishing plot twists. This made-for-TV movie was almost proclaimed “year’s best” by the Mystery Writers of America, but was edged out by Helter-Skelter. For the record, I was one of the judges who wanted One of My Wives Is Missing to win. I felt that the factual Helter-Skelter did not belong in the same category as a fictional film.
Orpheus (1949) is Jean Cocteau
’s parable of a French poet who falls in love with personified death. Some of the special effects are now familiar because other filmmakers have copied them, yet a few are still startling.
Phantom of the Opera. The 1925 silent is still the recommended version of Gaston Leroux’s popular novel. Lon Chaney Sr.’s Erik surely intends to enjoy the intimate favors of heroine Mary Philbin, but in the 1943 color remake, phantom Claude Rains’ passion is more spiritual than fleshly.
Play Misty for Me (1971), Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, tells the harrowing tale of a disc jockey (Eastwood) stalked by a psychopathic exlover (Jessica Walter). The story is similar to 1987’s popular Fatal Attraction, but movie buffs generally consider Misty superior.
Robin and Marian (1976). In this bleak, moving epilogue to the Robin Hood-Maid Marian legend, James Goldman’s existential script is strikingly complemented by director Richard Lester’s sweeping landscapes that repeatedly dwarf the aging heroes. Magnificent performances by Robert Shaw, Sean Connery, Richard Harris, Audrey Hepburn and Nicol Williamson distinguish this splendidly autumnal film.
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), an early Ingmar Bergman film (also called The Naked Night), is a tale of infidelity set at a traveling circus. In a list of memorable moments of cinematic horror, Ivan Butler’s intelligent book The Horror Film (A. Zwemmer Ltd., London, 1967) properly includes the scene in which the circus owner is beaten in his own ring by his wife’s lover.
Scarface (1932). Time has scarcely blunted the fury of Paul Muni’s unnatural love for his own sister (Ann Dvorak) in this raw gangster feature.
Seven Beauties (1976) is notable for Giancarlo Giannini’s harrowing portrayal of a concentration camp prisoner determined to survive at any cost, even if it means becoming the lover of the grossly unappealing commandant.
Lovers and Other Monsters Page 58