MONSTER! Isn't just about film or tv
shows that feature creatures... first and foremost it should to be the written word. No chicken and the egg argument here. Films a can be such an easy fix, a quick cerebral shot of visual
stimuli. Sitting down and reading a good book (or a bad book
for that matter, will tend to engage me on a wholly different
level as much as the thought-provoking ones do) is hardcore
monster-loving. Growing up as I did, with a home full of weird shit
(I kid you not) getting hooked on all things rooted in the supernatural was not an
option. My mother, bless her current state of insanity, read to us as
kids and filled my noggin with tales of Oz (from the original large hardcover editions), Blue and Green and yellow
and Purple fairies, Hercules and The Greek Gods, Madeleine L'Engle, Wind in the Willows, Uncle Wiggly,
Raggedy Anne and Andy, and all the creatures that came with those
stories. Mom was also good at letting us watch any monster movies or
TV shows that came on, just as long as we did our homework and played
outside with the other kids from time to time. Early memories of family get-togethers
crowded around the small TV set to watch “Dark Shadows” during
the week and monster movies on the weekends are still the most vivid
parts of my childhood.
There have always been movies, and
there have always been books.
Monsters have always been with me
where ever I look.
The Screaming Skull and The Outer
Limits furor,
The spectral unease of cinematic horror.
But the thing under the bed
Was always there after I read
High strangeness with Bradbury, Lovecraft, and dread.
Okay, dumb one-off improvisational bit of poetry there.
Just popped into my head as I jotted the first sprawling two paragraphs
on my iBook G4. But it was added to make a point that, as benign as they may
be, Monsters have always been a very important part of my life.
And this was true no matter how much I was terrified of them. You would
think growing up down the street from Oberlin's graveyard would have
steeled me for such encounters. Nope. was scared shitless of ghoulies and ghosties, and there are times in my adulthood where I still get the willies when I'm out and about, at night... in the graveyard (or my creepy basement). Never seen a ghost or anything
I would call supernatural; so why am I obsessed with the monsters and
their seemingly important aspect of my well being? To my way of
thinking, such improbable entities are essential for me to keep this waffer
thin grasp on what I consider sanity.
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| Series of 1970s hardback books available by subscription. |
Monsters in all their variety forms and
manifestations are my religion. Seemingly the only one that I can
relate to. They are my faith. I have faith that there maybe some such critters out
there... be they mummies shuffling after folks, piecemeal Frankenstein
monsters forever looking for solace in their sole existence, giant kaiju stomping cities, or Naag and demons from Hindu mythology
that attempt to co-exist with humanity. These are all my wants and
desires. To see these things. To experience them. All forms both
literately and cinematic.
Most of what I have written about in my
magazines and on this blog has been movie oriented. Which is not a
bad thing. The visual element of accepting monsters into my life has
been there since I was a toddler. I have posted a few entries about
books that influenced me, one about “The Monster Times”and
another about Vernon Grant's “A Monster Is Loose In Tokyo”. Both
made me what I am today. Recently, though, I have had the pleasure of
purchasing a few tomes of knowledge that I have found immensely
entertaining.
Let me share one with you.
I was in the middle of authoring
another installment about the Indian/West Bengali Nag “Snake
Goddesses” movies when I happened to dump coffee all over the VCD
and DVDs. In the past I would have immediately cursed my bad luck and
stomped around my office bellowing and getting all shades of pissed
off. Instead, I shrugged my shoulders, cleaned up the mess and set
the soaked VCD and DVD sleeves aside to dry. They're just movies. Now
had I done that with one of my new books, that would have sucked.
Especially David D. Gilmore's “Monsters, Evil Beings, Mythical
Beasts, and all Manner of Imaginary Terrors”.
I had only recently discovered
Gilmore's 2003 tome, published by University of Pennsylvania Press,
whilst researching an article on Indian horror films. The review I
read so intrigued me that I had to order it (thank you, half.com).
Upon pouring through this wonderfully breezy yet scholarly work I am
glad that I had only begun to write something very similar earlier
this year. Gilmore successfully put my take on the idea and
importance of monsters in culture to bed with a glass of water and a
pat on the head. It's that good.
Apparently a huge fan of the cinematic
approach to monsters, Gilmore delves far deeper into mankind's psyche
than mere fiction. With a delight I can totally relate to, he
gleefully discusses the dark places of the human psyche as well many
of the historical “facts” of a variety of monsters. As a reader I
was lead through ten chapters of information-laden but thoroughly
entertaining chapters covering all aspects of monsterdom the world
over. In particular, chapters “The Ritual Monster” and “Our
Monsters, Ourselves” struck me as being both very personal for the
author as well as the reader (me).
My only regret is the sparsity of
plates illustrating the book. If Gilmore ever thought of expanding
this work, it would make an enthralling coffee table edition.
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| Not my photo: my copy of this essential kids book no long has its dust jacket. |
As an endnote, may I suggest a few
other books that fall into this Monsters as Myths and Monsters as
Entities. Early in my life as a tot, I was fascinated with sea, and especially the Jacques Cousteau/Rod Serling TV specials were my fantasy fodder as a kid in the 60s. I KNEW sea serpents where down THERE in the
ocean. Sure, cinema and TV gave me Godzilla, The Creature, Gorgo, and
the rest of the gang. But it was books that helped fill my
imaginative void …. and scare the crap out of me at the same time.
When I was five my mother bought me Lois and Louis Darling''s “The Sea Serpents Around Us”. A children's book
that covered the life and times of sea and lake (and loch) monsters
that I knew where out there. The book, written and illustrated by the Darlings, filled me with wonder and dread.
I also read copious editions of Famous
Monster of Filmland, Castle of Frankenstein, and just about any other
magazine I could get my hands on. Luckily we Paxton's are a literary
lot and always had stacks of books and magazines piled everywhere. TV wasn't always encouraged, even tho movies have always been a big deal in our family, we had to find other way to entertain ourselves when the "idiot box" was showing non-monstrous material. I grew up
in the 1960's and 70's: prehistoric days of before the
video tape boom, cable TV (at least in Oberlin) and our town only had one movie house. The public library did have 8mm movies we could borrow …
which we did A LOT … but as kids we had to make due with what was
on the tube and what we read in magazines and books. Comics were fine for us and I devoured Charlton ghost titles, as well as Marvel's Frankenstein series (well, the Mike Ploog classics) and the reprints of early creature features in series like “Where Monsters Dwell”.
In fourth grade I stumbled across the
1959 book of famous ghost and goblin tales called “The Thing At The
Foot Of The Bed and Other Scary Tales”. I bought it at a
“discarded” book sale at the local library. Already unnerved by
the prospect of seeing a ghost by watching films
such as
THE SCREAMING SKULL,
THE HAUNTING,
TURN OF
THE SCREW, and even Bert I. Gordon's
TORMENTED, I was
introduced to additional
imagined terrors from being able to see a ghost by
“peering at them from between a dog's ears”. The book is long out
of print and was originally a collection of tales from various
sources such as “The California Folklore Quarterly”, Stith
Thompson's “Motif Index of Folk Literature”, and so forth.
By the time I was in Junior High School
I had acquired a “real job” of delivering newspapers and had
money to buy more books and magazines. I was very eager to read fictional and as
well as account of “real” monsters. Oberlin had a wonderful
college bookstore, and as a mail order junkie (John Smith Catalog,
Littleton Stamp and Coin Approvals, and others), I also ordered
discounted books by the bulk thru the post (currently
Edward R. Hamilton offers such a service), and was part of the Science Fiction Book Club. I loaded up on
Bradbury, Lovecraft, Burrough's Mars series, the Jim Wynorski edited
“They Came From Outer Space”, and more. Fiction was fairly easy
to obtain.
I wanted the “fact” stuff. The hard
stuff. Monster porn.
The scary books on monsters was harder
to come by cheaply, at least at a paper boys “salary”.
Still, I did have my sources of discounted hardback books thru the mail. We Paxtons love our catalogs. In the 70's I indulged myself with editions of
Montague Summers “The Werewolf” as well as the appallingly
gruesome “The Book of Werewolves” by the 19
th Century
author Sabine Baring-Gould, the fascinating “The Mystery and Lore
of Monsters” by C.J.S. Thompson, Jeffrey Burton Russell treaties on
The Devil; Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive
Christianity”, “The Supernatural” by Douglas Hill and Pat
Williams, and even pulpier material like
Robert and Frances Guenette's “The Mysterious
Monsters”, and Roy P. Mackal's “The Monster of Loch Ness”.
Oh, I bought a good deal more, but lost
a few boxes of books in two dreadful floods the past ten years.
Nevertheless, you get the idea of what I was searching for. I wanted
to know what monsters were. I had never seen one, but I wanted to. I
dearly desired the chill, no the THRILL of seeing something not the norm.
I even subscribed to a book service called "Out Of This World" which was my
first exposure to the writing of Charles Forte. Wow, there was some
guy like me. And he wrote about the unexplained. Not monsters per
say, but the unusual, the unexplained or unusual aspects of our
world. Monsters were hinted at in Forte's world.
As fiction was never far from my
shelves and I read all the pulpy novelizations of the DR. WHO series. Loved those Brit monsters. Other
horrors were read in vital collections such as “The Monster Book of
Monsters” edited by Michael O'Shaughnessy. Collecting the Pan or Arrow
horror anthologies that were published annually was also a treat.
As the 80s progressed I entered the
“zine” scene with my magazines “Video Voice”, “Naked!
Screaming! Terror!” and, of course, “Monster!” and in the 90s
with “Monster! International”. The advent of the internet
exposed me to even more monster films and TV shows. As readers of this
blog knows I buy A LOT of unknown creature features from the world
over. Anything with the slight chance of being something I've never
seen or experienced holds a spell over me. It could be a crap from
from West Bengali, but if there's a monster in it I AM THERE!
Which brings me back to David D.
Gilmore's book “Monsters”. Reading it pretty much confirmed what I
have always suspected, monsters are an essential aspect of human development. Some saw my fascination for things creature-filled as
alarming (after my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Ebihara, saw me drawing
nothing but monsters, she apparently was very adamant that my
parents take me to a therapist). Little did folks know that was
normal. Hell, most of my family was into the supernatural in one
form or another. My sister Kathryn.... she was obsessed with mice. That I just couldn't wrap my head around.
In conclusion, all I have to say is:
Monsters have always been an important element in my life,and
without their presence I would never have turned into the man I am
now.
Be that for good or not-so-good.
The Devil, Perceptions of Evil from
Antiquity to Primitive Christianity; Jeffery Burton Russell, Cornwell
Univeristy Press, 1977, 277 pages.
The Mystery and Lore of Monsters;
C.J.S. Thompson, The Bell Publishing Company, 1973, 255 pages.
The Monster Book of Monsters, Michael
O'Shaughnessy, Bonanza Books, 1988, 352 pages.
The Monsters of Loch Ness, Roy P.
Mackal, The Swallow Press, 1976, 401 pages.
The Supernatural, Douglas Hill and Pat
Williams, Hawthorn Books, 1965, 351 pages.
The Book of Werewolves, The Classic
Work On This Dreadful Subject, Sabine Baring-Gould, Causway Books,
1973, 266 pages.
The Werewolf, Montague Summers, The
Bell Publishing Company, 1975, 307 pages.
They Came From Outer Space, Jim
Wynorski, editor, Double Day & Company, 1980, 363 pages.
Supernatural Horror in Literature, H.P.
Lovecraft, Dover Publications, Inc., 1973, 112 pages.
The Thing At The Foot of the Bed and
Other Scary Tales, Maria Leach, The World Publishing Company, 1959,
124 pages (? my edition is missing some of last pages).
Monsters, Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts,
and all manner of Imaginary Terrors, David D. Gilemore, Univeristy of
Pennsylvania Press, 2003, 210 pages.
