Frightening Reads With a Supernatural Bent

[Barthheart]

Good, Bison. You? Can you believe some the un-read heathens on this board?  ???

[Bison]

Surprising really.  I know.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

OK wait - it came out after the movie...it was not the book the movie was based on?

Not sure what you mean.

The novelization of the original movie, Alien, was written by Alan Dean Foster.
http://www.amazon.com/Alien-The-Official-Movie-Novelization/dp/1783290153

Foster also wrote the novelizations of Aliens and Alien 3. Someone else did Alien Resurrection. Can't remember whom.

That's a name I have not come across in a long time. That guy could write. I should look up his other works.

[JasonPratt]

I don't know if I'd find Salem's Lot] all that frightening today, but I did as a teen. It's still my favorite King book by a solid edge: plenty of characteristic small-town-supernatural-disaster detail, but significantly unbloated. Also, up to the point I stopped reading him (sometime after It, though I enjoyed that, too), I can't think of a King book that's as perfectly Halloweenish in atmosphere and proceedings. Anyone who hasn't read it, looking for a seasonal treat, should find it aptly worth your time.

For a classic from about the same time which hasn't been mentioned yet, may I suggest Whitley Streiber's Wolfen? It's a fast-paced read which, for me, pulls off the nearly impossible trick of making the wolfen a suspenseful threat in the human chapters, and sympathetic characters in the wolfen chapters.

[Gusington]

^Wolfen...they made a movie based on that didn't they?

[Steelgrave]

^Wolfen...they made a movie based on that didn't they?

Yeah, but the book was better. Frankly, I didn't find either to be all that scary, but the book was a bit deeper and seeing things from the wolfen point of view was a great addition.

[Toonces]

Alright, I'm going to jump into The Dark Tower series.  I quit about halfway through book 2, but I'm willing to give it another shot in honor of the season and all.  Besides, I already own the damn book.   ::)

[GDS_Starfury]

Im into the early 30's of Mirth's biography.

holy fuck is he a twisted unholy satanist.  :o
it never occurred to me to use zip ties and mayonnaise that way.  its both brilliant and repulsive at the same time.

[mirth]

Im into the early 30's of Mirth's biography.

holy fuck is he a twisted unholy satanist.  :o
it never occurred to me to use zip ties and mayonnaise that way.  its both brilliant and repulsive at the same time.

My 30s were a time great of innovation.

[GDS_Starfury]

credit where credit is due.

[Gusington]

Was that dude in Seven who killed the hooker with the bladed strap on based on mirth?

[Steelgrave]

Was that dude in Seven who killed the hooker with the bladed strap on based on mirth?

That's pretty much the assumption I think.....  8)

[JasonPratt]

^Wolfen...they made a movie based on that didn't they?

Yeah, but the book was better. Frankly, I didn't find either to be all that scary, but the book was a bit deeper and seeing things from the wolfen point of view was a great addition.

The movie is... odd... but it definitely has its moments.

* The plot is more political, with the wolves being treated as terrorists (because, in a way, they are).

* Yaphet Kotto, around the time of Alien, dies messily as a badass ex-Ton Ton Macoute thug.

*The first relatively big movie for James Horner to write music for, from which he would later crib quite a bit of his signature Aliens score.

* Also, some of his characteristic instruments actually show up in the film as wind-chimes in a park! -- in a wolfen-stalking sequence no less!

* Gregory Hines goes straight from being a comedy relief cop sidekick in this to being a less-doomed comedy-team cop (and less of a sidekick) in the underrated Running Scared.

* Michael Wadleigh directed this film after directing Woodstock, and THE EXPERIENCE (of trying to deal with the ways studios work) KILLED HIS FILM CAREER -- so hard that he's currently a bus driver in Los Angeles if I recall correctly. But he doesn't suck, it's a really well-shot film -- I showed it to one of my teachers in college (where I was getting a broadcast communications degree) and said, "Is it just me or does this movie use literally every physical shot composition you've been telling us about in class? The whole list?" AND IT DOES!! -- she screened it for us as a test to find and mark shot compositions!

* First major film to use steady-cam, especially for wolfen p-o-v shots.

* First major film to use an electronic solarizer, also for the wolfen p-o-v night-vision shots.

* Man, the locational shots in this film -- I would love to hear a commentary track, because there have to be a ton of different wacky stories, and some of them would have to be about how the 2nd unit guys went out of their way to find the most ruined parts of New York, the parts no one ever films, which in that day were being slowly knocked down... which becomes a heavy topical plot point, since doing so is reducing the wolfen hunting ground. DECAYING NEW YORK BOROUGHS ARE TREATED LIKE CANADIAN OR AMAZONIAN RAINFOREST!!

* The underlying plot that drives the movie is basically the same as Darkman. With the wolfen == Darkman. Let that concept wash over you.

* The three most frightening moments in the film, are jump scares where literally nothing happens. This tickled the teacher who screened it for us as a test, too. (And they work; the other kids with me in class jumped HARD all three times.)

* Admiral Adama from the Battlestar Galactic reboot (Edward James Olmos), has a significant amount of screentime as an Iroquois steel worker who likes to run around naked on an abandoned beach pretending to be a wolf. (He was a lot younger then.)

* Relatedly, the movie constantly plays with teasing the audience about whether human terrorists or human WEREWOLF TERRORISTS are responsible for the killings going on. Spoiler: it is not human werewolf terrorists. As the opening hunt/kill sequence makes pretty abundantly clear. But since the audience is clearly going to know that standard human terrorists are not the culprits during the initial investigations, it's a bit genius to throw the audience an idea that's much closer to what they'd be expecting from a movie which obviously seems to be about werewolves: werewolf terrorists.

* Due to budget and tech restrictions, the humanoid wolves of the book couldn't be used, so it's just regular (but very scary looking) black wolves (plus a white wolf queen or something. The black wolves show up in other movies of the period, too -- they're like character actors!) But they can still do things like climb around on buildings like Spider-man, and decapitate a guy by jumping at him. (The decapitation sfx is otherwise quite good, btw.) And in their final, full appearance someone in post adds electronic crayon effects to their eyes and mouths to make them look more menacing.

* Other horror: grouchy old white sloppy fat Albert Finney getting to bed the hot young anti-terrorist expert policewoman. This comes out of PLOT NOWHERE -- it doesn't even match up well with the (explicitly adulterous) relationship of the two cops in the book. It's like they thought audiences would expect it, and the movie is running out of time, and this seems like the last good place to put it, so... wait, didn't we cast Albert Finney in the mancop role?? TOO LATE, WRITHE AUDIENCES, WRIIIIITHHHEEE!!1 {mad cackling}

* The moral of the movie, and I am not even slightly exaggerating or making this up, is that it was perfectly okay and even morally beautiful for those wolves to be killing homeless people, because they weren't wanted anyway: if the wolves had only kept killing the desperately poor minority people instead of upscaling to the ultra-rich white guy, there would have been no problem at all!

Seriously. In a beautifully poignant finale, Finney makes peace with the wolfen by managing to communicate to them that he has no intention of continuing his prosecution of them: so they're safe and can go back to their way of life without fear of further interference from human authorities. It's a great scene, and leads out to a wistful ending monologue from Finney's character as the wolves gallop joyfully back through city streets in the early morning light, to the ruined church where they live, ending with another of the movie's signature 'wolfen-view' sequences (shot with that newfangled steady-cam thing and the electronic solarization effect) soaring through the church, up the stairs, into the attic where the sun shines through broken stained glass and doves fly out and around, to the strains of Horner's gorgeous and unique music. And everyone lives happily ever after, in union with nature! Except for the homeless people the wolves are killing for food.

I honestly don't know if this idea was really the filmmakers' intention, or if they just didn't see the Implied Holocaust implications (though that would be weird since the one black guy in the cast makes a few offhand remarks about it before he's removed from the plot), or if they were going for a pure camp satire of radical environmentalism -- the cast and the story structure/presentation plays all this perfectly straight, but that's what camp satire would also do.

Streiber in the book may be intentionally taking a more serious look at the dilemma of evolutionary morality, not criticizing against it but fatalistically accepting it and using a science-fiction framing to illustrate the tragic tension. (The story either way is more science-fiction than fantasy.) The book is very clear about presenting the two species at eternal odds with one another. There can't be peace between them, because evolutionarily they're in a life and death competition. Sure, the father of the pack may have a few liberal tendencies of pity and sympathy for the humans. Which are richly played for dramatic effect when he refuses to risk his family any further and mounts a final assault by himself to kill off the last humans who know what's going on: he firmly puts aside his nascent sympathy for the humans, and his distant wish that something more could be had between the two groups, and goes up the side of that skyscraper to do what needs to be done. Because that's just how things are, and they can't realistically be any different.

And in terms of the moral grounding underlying the story (whether book or movie), the book's father of the pack is exactly right. (There are dozens of more packs in the book, all over the world, some of them out in the woods.) It's a survival of the species situation. There can be no compromise, because the humans cannot and should not (despite the movie's 'Lost Aesop' ending) be expected to tolerate this kind of threat living among them -- even if that threat usually only goes after humans the other humans don't want around. Because there's no way to guarantee that the threat won't occasionally go after humans the other humans do want around (especially themselves!) instead.

The only other option is to just accept the sacrifice of undesirables, like the last of the Mohicans do in the movie -- even if you might be one of the undesirables yourself someday. (But, hey, keep your own head above water and maybe you won't be considered expendable prey! Otherwise, sucks to be you, but that's how it is.)

Anyway: if anyone has ever wanted to watch an arguably mainstream film that, in effect, ends with Simba and his fellow lions singing about the glory of "The Circle of Life" when the prey animals on the bottom end of that circle are homeless humans... NOW YOU CAN!  If I was the sort to write short stories, and if I was a little more evil, I'd run a parody homage with a pack of wolfen picking off stragglers for food at the fringes of the Woodstock concert. (Which, come to think of it, wouldn't have been far from the truth in some ways.)

[Steelgrave]

It's been many, many years since I've read the book or seen the movie....so many little tidbits you picked up that I had forgotten. Or not known at the time (i.e. Edward James Olmos). I remember liking the movie but not being blown away by it. Considering that it's on Netflix and you have now piqued my interest, it's going to be weekend viewing. Coolness.

Correction....looks like it's DVD plan only on Netflix. It is however available on Amazon streaming for $2.99. You would think a movie that old would be Amazon Prime.

[JasonPratt]

Those Who Stalk the Night - a very intelligent vampire book set in the late 1800s.  The protagonist is a guy who is a retired military spy for the UK.

...not at Amazon? Just did a search, found nothing by that title. Author?