by John Shirley
“You rash idiot!” The Master takes off his straw hat. “What a terrible waste…”
“We all know who is the master here, Mr. Montgomery,” says the Stranger. Gently, he sets down the sloth-child and follows the men. And I go with them.
The Master stitches my wounded scalp and sends me to sleep. Night falls, and the jungle is loud. The beast men claw at trees and stalk prey, battle, and breed in the dark. The Law is broken, and they want us to hear it.
The Master and the Stranger retire to the library to drink poison and talk. For a long time, the Master explains his great work, his failures and his triumphs. His dashed hopes and determination to go on. With fierce pride, he defends his studies. How the necessary pain of rebirth wipes away the animal memory, leaving a blank slate upon which to build a man. How vivisection and blood and tissue transplants led the way to this great mission, to uplift the animal kingdom into the brotherhood of man.
If only the Stranger could listen.
“Dr. Moreau, this place is an abomination. I beg you to reconsider my offer.”
“Even if it were so simple, Mr. Dixon, I could never walk away from this place, and you could never take it over. I fully recognize the ethical burden of my undertaking, but it is only in the name of science—”
“Science! Like Communism, the rationale for all modern inhumanity. Neither men nor animals should be tortured as you do.”
“To rear a child, one must flay away that which is animal, no? To be born is painful, and none of us asked for it. They are born anew, but they must be taught, like any new human. And my hand is not quick enough, sadly, to give them the gift of true humanity.”
“You’re a strange sort of parent, to turn your babes out into the wilderness! You gave up on them, but who has failed? Hard work and a little cleanliness, that’s what’s wanted here! Without constant hard work, discipline, and a little church, what men won’t backslide into savagery?”
The Stranger fills his glass and drinks it. He puts a paper stick in his mouth and lets the smoke out of his head.
“My coming here was not entirely an accident,” he says. “I believe it was destiny. You’ve had your say. Now listen to me.
“I was born in Chicago, but grew up on an apple farm in Kansas. My father … was a hardworking man, and he expected us to chip in. There was plenty of work for decent folks, but to make your way in the world, you had to have an idea. And you’d still have to work yourself half to death, just to end up with something worthwhile.
“But if you have a dream, then everyone and his brother is out to crush you. To steal your dream or just rip it to shreds and leave nothing behind. Believe me, Doctor, I know what it’s like to have your dreams taken away.”
He fills his glass again. “I had a dream, not so different from yours, in essence. I wanted to create life, and inspire wonder. I thought I could do it with films. I don’t suppose you know, but I’m somewhat well known in America as an animator.”
The Master and the Other share a look. Neither of them knows what it means.
“I make films using a series of drawings to simulate motion, life, emotion. We made the first cartoon with a full sound track. Our short cartoons were popular … so popular, in fact, that none of the studios would distribute them without taking away ownership of my most beloved character. They called my work primitive trash, but what they couldn’t buy or bully away from me, they simply stole. And they got the courts to back them up.
“Now, when I first landed on your island, I was shocked by what I saw, and horrified by your callous treatment of your creations. But when I look at these miserable, flea-bitten creatures, I feel certain that some good may still come of them. Their lives need not be nasty, brutish, and short.”
The Master politely says, “I do not take your meaning, sir.”
The Other barges in and cackles. He is very sick. “He’s making you an offer, Master! He wants to buy your sideshow.”
The Stranger sniffs. He is also sick. “Hollywood is not a sideshow, Montgomery. You’ve clearly abandoned their education. Consider it an extension of your experiment, if you will—”
“I think you should take him up on it, Guv.” The Other limbers up his whip. “They’re at the gate, rarin' to go, bags packed.”
The beasts have not forgotten all of the Master’s lessons. The walls of the compound are on fire.
“See what you’ve done!” the Master shoves the Stranger out onto the porch to see the flames and hear the cries of the beast-men. “Before you came, they were content—”
“You brought this on yourself, Doctor. I hope they will be more merciful to you than you were to them.”
“Don’t forget this one, Dixon.” The door to the laboratory flies open and the red woman splashes into the room.
The Master has only begun to feed her the Needle and human blood—His blood—to change her mind. The Knife, however, has been busy. The freshly sculpted digits of her clawless paws drive her mad with agony. The cracked and reset pelvis betrays her when she tries to run on all fours.
But her broken mind and body are sound enough to choose between the two masters before her.
She pounces on Dr. Moreau.
Dixon shoots her in the flank. His hand shakes. He aims at the Master’s heart, and then his hand falls.
A rock smashes the window behind Montgomery, who looks the room over once and shouts, “Damn it all,” then flees.
With no claws, the puma-woman bats pitifully at the Master, but her teeth are still sharp. Her mouth closes on his forearm and snaps the bones. He howls for Montgomery.
She goes for his throat.
The Stranger closes his eyes and shoots. The red woman twirls in the air and trips on her insides, shrieks, and dies.
Without a word, the Stranger goes outside.
I come out from my hiding place. The Master orders me to leave him, and go to the surgery.
“Get all the alcohol … and douse my journals. My work must not fall into the wrong hands. And this man—”
“Please … Master….” Smoke pours in the windows. I will not need to fuel the fire. I try to move the Doctor, but he is too large, and he is ready to die.
“Go, Diogenes. You were a faithful assistant … and a good man.”
The burning roof crashes through the room. I turn and run on all fours.
Outside, the wall has collapsed, and the beasts rampage through the burning house, hair on fire, mad with poison and the end of the Law. I can barely carry my own head, but I must tear off my blue serge suit, or I will meet the same fate as Mr. Montgomery, the Other with the Whip. Down on the beach, between the launches, they crowd round his body to get at the scraps.
I hide in the icehouse, beneath a pile of cadavers. The celebration goes on until dawn, when there is nothing left unburned.
I come out from my hiding place to wade through ashes. The beasts are gathered on the beach. In their midst, Wilbur Dixon stands with a gun in his hand. He hasn’t enough bullets to kill them all, and they are far beneath even the reasoning of a loaded gun.
“I promised you a new life, without pain, with hope and the promise of becoming true men. I do not lie.”
He points the gun at the sky and fires. A red flower of fire blooms and fades in the rosy dawn light.
He sets fire to a stick and blows out smoke. The beasts are captivated by this, but only for so long. They begin to close in on him. The Sayer of the Law is dead, a victim of his own rigid faith, and the new Law. But some memory of the sacred remains, for they carry his head.
I know I must join them, if I will not be next. I climb over the smoking bones of the Master’s house.
I see it before the others.
It comes out of the fog at the mouth of the bay. A ship bigger than the compound.
When we see it, we fall down and moan. The Stranger sees me and smiles. He points the gun at me.
“His master’s voice,” he says.
DOCUMENT B
ADVERTISING CIRC
ULAR
(12/1/29)
WE'RE DRAFTING DOCTORS
Dixon Studios is hunting—for you!
Will Dixon’s Barnyard is growing so rapidly that we have a crying need for visionary, dedicated artists and scientists, men who dream of bringing the fantastic to life, but who never, ever sleep.
Thanks to Dixon’s patented animal cultivation techniques, there are amazing new opportunities in the film industry—both in financial and creative terms—for doctors, veterinarians, surgeons, chemists, anesthesiologists, chemists, biologists, animal trainers, nurses, and teachers. Apply today!
DOCUMENT C
H'WOOD REPORTER
(2/22/33)
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO STARRING MOXIE MONKEY, AN INT'L HIT; DIXON ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR FIRST FEATURE
After only four years, it’s almost impossible to recall what Hollywood was like without Will Dixon.
The soft-spoken King of Family Entertainment has changed almost every aspect of filmmaking with his revolutionary "humanimal" performers. His forty-seven live-action Animal Overtures and Barnyard Ballads one-reelers outdid the Keystone Kops and Laurel & Hardy at pratfall comedy to become the most sought-after bookings to open RKO features, while bringing moral hygiene and innocent fantasy back to the movies. “Monkey See, Monkey Do,” "Puss In Boots,” and "The Three Little Pigs" each won Short Subject Oscars in 1930, 1932, and this year.
They also put the kibosh on the once-popular fledgling field of animated cartoons, which Will Dixon helped pioneer, before abandoning it after returning from the South Pacific with a miraculous discovery—which he has patented and steadfastly refuses to comment upon—that led to the first of his remarkable "humanimal" creations.
“My early work in animation was, sadly, a great big boondoggle,” he admits. “The major studios were too eager to own the rights to my films and the characters, and they killed the Golden Goose. I was naïve, not wise to the ways of ancillary merchandising or the fine print in contracts, and it cost me plenty. But now, I’ve had the last laugh, as it were, because the expense of animated films has kept it from getting a foothold. And, frankly, the sad truth is, people just don’t enjoy them. Why should they settle for a blinkered, diminished sketch of reality, when we have the tools to bring the fantastic to living, breathing life?”
Mr. Dixon has certainly learned from his early mistakes. The young studio mogul keeps a private army to watch over the hundred-acre Burbank laboratory-studio he still calls the Barnyard, and the neighboring "farm" where his curious menagerie of trained human-animal hybrids lives. When they are not singing and slinging pies in front of the cameras, Moxie Monkey, Darn Old Duck, Algy Gator, the Three Little Pigs and all the rest are as pampered as any stars, even if you’ll never see them at Musso & Frank’s without a phalanx of guards and trainers.
Dixon is not unaware of the controversy among some circles his creations have stirred up. To religious leaders who have lodged accusations of blasphemy, Dixon points out that farmers have been selectively breeding and changing farm animals to suit human usage. “Our humanimals are like my own children,” he adds. “We’re a big happy family.”
The question labor leaders raise is harder to dismiss, however. “Dixon has created monsters with no legal status to replace human actors,” Herb Rosenfeld, spokesman for the Screen Technicians Guild, said from his hospital bed at Temple Hospital, where he is recovering from injuries incurred during a recent Barnyard strike. “From there, it’s a short leap to breeding an army of subhuman serfs to do his bidding, instead of paying a living wage to professional, fully human workers.”
Only time will tell how this brewing dispute will shake out, but Dixon is single-mindedly fixed on the future … namely, on this Christmas, when his first three-reel feature will bow on every screen in the Paramount theater chain. Banjo, the story of a lonely little circus elephant with a unique gift, will be like nothing ever seen before, he promises. “I can’t wait for the world’s children to meet Gene, our little humanimal prodigy who will play the title role. And I know he can’t wait to meet them.”
DOCUMENT D
DIXON STUDIOS INTEROFFICE MEMO: CLASSIFIED
(5/16/36)
It has come to our attention that subversives posing as animal rights advocates have infiltrated our happy family at Dixon’s Barnyard. Mr. Dixon has always considered his employees and animal performers a big happy family, so it is with reluctance that we clarify our position, in re: the legal status of our Barnyard children.
The humanimals are, like the patented process that made them, wholly owned intellectual property of Will Dixon Productions and Noxid Enterprises. Like any pets, they feel, love, and dream, and we will jealously guard them against any strangers who wish to do them harm. The notion that they are slaves entitled to the rights of United States citizens is slanderous and punishable by immediate termination and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.
DOCUMENT E
FROM LOOK MAGAZINE
(5/12/43)
The Patriotism of Will Dixon: When Hollywood Goes to War
General Eisenhower predicted that it would be impossible to mount an invasion of France without the loss of tens of thousands of American lives, but he never reckoned on the shy civilian super-patriot from Hollywood. “I just did what anyone who loved this country would do, which was everything I could. And my Barnyard children did the same.”
Will Dixon has always jealously guarded his patented "humanimal" process, because he feared it falling into the wrong hands. “I speak for my humanimal family, and they speak for me. I can guarantee these unique creatures will never be abused or mistreated, but I could never accept the burden of letting them out into the wider world, where they would be at the mercy of men with less compassion in their hearts.”
Dixon’s total control over the breeding and rearing of humanimals has also made him a very wealthy man. But when Uncle Sam came calling in the summer of 1940, Will Dixon never hesitated to meet the challenge.
And it was a big one. To raise an army of fierce, strapping human-animal hybrids that could be ready to storm the beaches in less than three years, Dixon was given a blank check to expand his Barnyard into a factory to rival Henry Ford’s. When California balked at the scope of the project, Dixon acquired 30,000 acres of Florida swampland and began work on the first of millions of cows and bulls donated by America’s dairy farmers and meatpackers. The "cowboys" made the most of their reprieve from the slaughterhouse, but they were only a humble beginning, as Dixon’s Florida "bioneers" began implanting specially treated humanimal eggs, and a little Dixon magic, into twenty thousand brave surrogate mother sows.
The rest, as they say, was history. Flying monkey scouts, gremlin saboteurs, centaur couriers and kamikaze "frogmen" invaded Europe in waves that reduced Fortress Europe to a barnyard in flames in less than two years. The real stars of the show were Dixon’s special gorilla-rhino infantrymen, who are a lot less lovable than their celebrated Tinseltown representative Private Lummox, but no less courageous. One of the lumbering berserkers’ biggest fans is General George S. Patton. “I don’t give a damn who made them, these are God’s perfect soldiers. They never grumble, they never give up, and they only bathe in kraut blood. I shudder to think what a cluster of fudge this war would’ve been, if we’d had to fight it with an army of snot-nosed, puny humans.”
One challenge Dixon had to overcome was the "savage" animal nature itself. Contrary to popular wisdom about the Law of the Jungle, when it comes to fighting, it turns out that humans are the only animals who don’t know when to stop. “Even wild predators have a natural ‘off' switch that kicks in to smooth raised hackles after besting a rival or running down prey. But we’ve fixed that.”
DOCUMENT F
PART TWO: THE HAPPIEST HELL ON EARTH
(Anaheim, 6/30/44)
The train emerges from the tunnel, and everybody cheers.
The sunlight comes down in rays of white gold on Moxie’s Main Street, a cobblestoned confec
tion recasting of Tivoli Gardens with the gambling, alcohol, and prostitution lovingly strained out. A mob of humanimals pours out of the quaint gingerbread storefronts to face the train, dancing and singing "When an Angel Gets His Wings,” the maudlin standard that rocketed to the top of the charts after its appearance in Banjo.
Will Dixon jabs me in the back and I stand and take a bow, tipping my top hat and unpinning my grotesquely huge ears. A giggling Senator’s daughter plays peek-a-boo with me. I hide my rheumy eyes with my trunk.
The humanimals who perform the tear-jerker tune sixty-eight times a day are fed molasses and Benzedrine to keep them in a constant state of frenetic joy. And so far, no awkward incidents with rutting or feces-flinging. The performing humanimals are all neutered and rigorously toilet-trained.
The Three Blind Mice, the Three Bears, and the Three Little Pigs form a pyramid. Snafu, Darn Old Duck, and Moxie Monkey race to plant Old Glory on the summit.
The Boss is hot to fade out the Three Little Pigs. Their short heyday was long ago, and the old vendetta has only grown more vicious with time. The set was a bloodbath. Nine Big Bad Wolves have been gassed since the original. The pigs are always under guard, but the wolf, trying to write his own ending, always goes for the third Little Pig, the bricklayer.
Keeping the internecine feud out of the press has required its own special team. Dixon wants to replace the wolf with a man in a suit for the park, but nothing drives a humanimal wilder than a man in an animal suit.
The train chugs on around Main Street and into another tunnel. “This next exhibit might be a little scary, so mothers, you might want to cover your little ones’ eyes.” Dixon delights in the children’s fearful looks, the uncertainty of the parents.
The sins of my fathers run deep.
The tunnel opens on the faint light through the dense canopy of the towering Black Forest. A low, ominous horn sounds. Demonic hounds with green flame for eyes race alongside the train, and their faceless horned master reins in his demon-horse to crack a whip over our cowering heads.