I was amazed in noticing that. . .

. . .I have blogged 75 times since starting back in March.  I guess I have a lot to say.  Speaking of blogging, we saw JULIE AND JULIA yesterday.  It's about a young woman who blogged for a year as she cooked her way through Julia Child's MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. I really liked it.  I think Linda loved it.  As usual, Meryl Streep was amazing.  What really amazed me was how tall she appeared to be in the movie, when Celebs.com, (that's a real site), says she's 5' 4 and 1/2".   They must have filmed her with a lot of really short people.  Amy Adams, as usual, was sweet and cute.  Quite short, too, I think.

I got off my metaphorical butt today, stopped worrying about rejection, and sent ARTHUR REDUX to Eldridge Publishing.  Enough whining on my part.

The great thunder and lightning storm that just passed, brought back to my memory something I've wanted to blog about for a couple of weeks.  When I mentioned my early attempt at novel writing, the horror non-classic THE FIELD, I was surprised at the number of people who commented about it, in a positive and interested way.  That reminded me of how much some people enjoy horror stories and movies and such.  This is not true of my wife, by the way. The only horror movies I ever get to see are on pay-per-view.

Last week when I visited with my English teacher friend John, we got to talking about books, and he told me that I had once said that Stephen King's CUJO was "pornographic."

John is positive that's what I said.  I suppose I was a lot younger and prone to overstatement, then, but I know what I meant.

I need for a moment to step back.  To get to where my train (or roller coaster) of thought is headed, I need to start by talking about the basic reason that people like horror stuff.  They like it because fright can be fun.  As has been pointed out hundred of times before, horror novels and movies are escapism.  We like them because they take us to a place that's scarier than our day to day world.  There, we get to watch folks being scared awfully.  We enjoy it, and we know the monsters aren't real like the real scary things in our real daily lives are. We also want these characters, with whom we sympathize in the story, to emerge triumphantly just like we want to emerge triumphantly from the IRS audit or the dentist or the boss's office in our real lives.

I believe for a horror novel or movie to be good, it must have a basically, happy ending.  Sure a few bodies are going to fall along the wayside, but at the end, most of the people you care about better well survive.  If not, then the story is cruel and twisted.  CUJO is not pornographic, but it is nasty, too.  If you have read it, you know that at the end the little boy, Tad, who we have rooted for throughout the novel, dies.  That is not escapism; that's meanness.  An often used metaphor for a work of horror is a ride on a roller coaster with its ups and downs and sometimes upside downs, its twists and turns and lots of screams.  We don't want our real-life roller coaster rides to end with the cars going off the track and crashing into a pile of twisted metal and maimed people; therefore, we don't want our metaphorical one to do that either.

What is ironic is that Stephen King recognized the nasty side of horror when  Stanley Kubrick made the movie version of THE SHINING.  He thought that Kubrick had made a movie that was design to hurt, and I agree with him.  Those who know and love the book, and I think it is King's finest work, were shocked and angered when Kubrick chose to kill the old cook Dick Halloran, (Scatman Crothers, in the movie), who also had the "shine" as soon as he arrives at the Overlook Hotel.  That old cook is supposed to save the day, dammit!  When you take our hero away, it's a painful, nasty punch in the stomach for the viewers.  Interesting how Kubrick had Jack kill the old man with an ax to the stomach.  Guess he knew what he was doing.  (I recently read that Kubrick contemplated killing all the main characters.  Wouldn't that have been deep!)

I remember reading in an interview early in Stephen King's career that he had yet to kill an important child character in any of his works, and he suggested, if I remember correctly, that it was because he so feared the death of one of his own kids, which is every parent's worst nightmare.  I wonder if he killed the little boy in CUJO, because he needed to face that fear as a writer.  It ruined the book for me.  I mean, I hate the book!  

You know the old saying, "what goes around, comes around."  Kubrick changed THE SHINING movie and made it nasty, while the movie CUJO ended with the little boy surviving, which at least made it bearable to watch.  I wonder if Stephen King was responsible for the change?

There are some horror novelists and filmmakers that believe it is their duty to kill everyone good in the end.  The author John Saul comes to mind.  Avoid him like a plague. . .of zombies.

I'm not talking about the really gross stuff that used to be called "splatter-punk."  There aren't any characters in those books that anyone would identify with so you don't care if they get put through a wood chopper.  Those books basically for people who get off on a lot of blood and guts.  The books of that type that rise above the sty are the ones that have senses of humor.  It's its sense of humor that makes SCREAM such a great movie.

For me horror films and novels must end with good triumphant over evil. Otherwise what's the purpose of reading or watching?  As I said earlier, why would I want my roller coaster to crash.  

There's only one thing worse than allowing evil to triumph.  That's not finishing the damn story.  There's nothing worse than when a novel ends something like this.  "The last of her guests had left as Marissa closed and locked the door.  What a fine party it had been.  All the terror and horror of the weeks before had passed.  This time the dead would stay dead.  No coming back.  Marissa sighed happily and leaned back against the door.  It was then she heard the footsteps coming slowly and lightly down the stairs. . ."

P.S.  I hope some of you choose to argue with me or agree with me or debate me or whatever!