Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (3 page)

But when considering Derleth’s influence, one single fact remains all-important—he championed the revival of interest in Lovecraft’s work. After Donald Wandrei’s service in World War II his Arkham House activity was largely limited to editing Lovecraft’s letters, eventually published in five volumes. Derleth, however, continued to keep the stories in print, reissuing portions of the original collections under other titles. When fantasy anthologies began to flourish, he sold one-time reprint rights to various stories, including those in public domain, and until his death in 1961 he claimed control of the literary estate. As early as 1945 he compiled a paperback Lovecraft collection for an Armed Services edition. Its unexpected popularity with a wide readership encouraged later reprinting efforts by other paperback publishers here and abroad. Gradually this continued exposure led to the formation of a new fandom, enthusiasts interested in every aspect of the man and the work. Following recognition on the part of foreign critics, Lovecraft—like his predecessor, Edgar Allan Poe—finally came to the attention of the American literary establishment.

Shortly after L. Frank Baum began writing, certain guardians of young minds and morals instigated a campaign to keep his Oz books off public library shelves. Today it is evident that this ban-the-Baum movement has failed. That it did so is in no small part due to the success of the 1939 film
The Wizard of Oz
. But although a number of Lovecraft’s stories have been adapted for television and motion pictures, no first-rate film has yet seen release. As a result, Cthulhu is scarcely a household word.

Nevertheless, the writing of theses and serious critiques increases with each passing year. Lovecraft has been the subject of several book-length biographies and memoirs, plus innumerable scholarly disquisitions. His books are on the library shelves. There is a Lovecraft Collection at Brown University in Providence. The prose, verse, and a significant portion of his letters are in print and seem destined to remain so, while recognition and reputation continues to soar. The fame that eluded him in his lifetime has come to Lovecraft almost half a century after his death.

Why did interest in horror fiction lay dormant for so long a time? And what brought about its present popularity?

Perhaps the answer lies buried in Lovecraft’s own work. Great Cthulhu and the Elder Gods never truly died, but they could be aroused from their slumbers only when “the stars were right.” And what Lovecraft described as the oldest and strongest kind of fear—fear of the unknown—lay deathless but dormant in the years following his birth.

The age of materialism had dawned and science was hailed as a savior, freeing the world from those ancient fears of the unknown. Even those who still believed in the supernatural now engaged in psychic research to explain such phenomena on a scientific basis.

Emphasis on rationality dominated the fiction of the day. Dr. Jekyll’s transformation was the result of laboratory chemicals rather than demonic possession. And even if a few creatures like Dracula existed, they could be detected and defeated by scientists like Van Helsing.

The few horror stories approved by the literary establishment dealt almost exclusively with polite antiquarians and retired English gentlemen encountering a ghost. Fear was an isolated phenomenon born of some unusual individual experience.

World War I changed that concept. Catastrophe became common property, horror invaded the daily lives—and deaths—of millions. Rationalists sought to combat fear by denying those deaths; interest in spiritualism and psychic investigation became a popular preoccupation in the next decade.

But the depiction of legendary dread was another matter; such vulgarities were relegated to the pages of obscure publications such as
Weird Tales
. At the time Lovecraft penned his stories, no self-styled sophisticate dared presume to take them seriously, either as literature or as a metaphor for contemporary reality.

During the same period the printed page faced growing competition from film and radio. With the advent of sound in cinema the mass audience shifted allegiance to the new form.

In the economic and social upheaval following the war, German studios produced a number of supernatural fantasy films that reflected the doubts and fears obsessing European audiences. Americans, in the boom years of expansion and material prosperity, spurned such subject matter. Their mystery movies and the horror pictures of Lon Chaney offered realistic explanations.

It was not until this country faced its own financial depression that the supernatural finally found a degree of acceptance. Radio shows like
Lights Out
and
Inner Sanctum
gained popularity, largely with the young. And it was their response that insured success for the horror films that became regular fare in the thirties; their king was Kong, Count Dracula their dark and noble lord. Frankenstein’s monster served as surrogate for their own self-image as unwanted outcasts, victims of authority figures in a competitive society where their elders maintained rigid control.

But the majority of the audience still rejected such fantasies in favor of other forms of escapism; “screwball” comedies involving the exploits of “madcap heiresses” and wish-fulfillment sagas of lowly shop-girls or poor-but-honest young men who rose to riches. Even the gangster films catered to such visions; their anti-heroes shared the common goal of attaining fortune, even by unorthodox methods. The American Dream had yet to die, prosperity was just around the corner; individual effort, aided by scientific advances, would still bring success. Doubters and dissenters might read the new “proletarian literature” or even espouse the cause of communism, but they continued to believe in their own power to remold the world to their heart’s desire. Like the conservative upholders of the status quo, they continued to firmly reject the bogeymen and bugaboos of the supernatural.

World War II decimated American Dreamers and dissenters alike. Those who survived were faced with terrifying truths. Vast power
can
fall into evil hands—the world
can
be destroyed—science, armed with biological and nuclear weaponry of its own creation, is not our savior but an omnipresent enemy.

There was a growing distrust of every ideology in the age of “ism”—fascism, communism, militarism, sectarianism, McCarthyism, racism, terrorism, even misguided idealism, proved no protection against corrupt leadership. In the light of such attitudes the movie monsters of the thirties frightened no one in the forties. Even Abbott and Costello could easily outwit them. Their place was taken by mad scientists, prehistoric beasts, or creatures from outer space. Such menaces came in many forms, but with a choice of only two motivations—to take over the world or to destroy it.

Nevertheless, the hero usually managed to triumph in the end. The world could still be saved after all, and for a time this message was reassuring.

But revelations of personal insecurity continued to rise in the decades that followed. Depletion of natural resources, spiraling inflation, religious warfare, governmental and industrial corruption, political assassination, street crime, mass murder, and drug addiction grew and flourished. No heroes appeared on the scene to offer succor or solutions.

Like the turmoil and upheaval that preceded the return of the Great Old Ones in Lovecraft’s fiction, the world seemed to be preparing for its final fate now that “the stars were right.”

And it was then, in doubt, dismay, even in despair, that many turned to the one “ism” that still remained.

Exorcism.

Graffiti proclaimed, “God is dead.” And a television comedian capped the concept with an explanation for subsequent behavior patterns—“The Devil made me do it.”

Black humor, perhaps, but many a true word is spoken in jest. And when the book and film of
Rosemary’s Baby
appeared, heralding the literal rebirth of Satan on earth, its satirical thrust was blunted by recognition of a growing reality. Cults dedicated to witchcraft and Satanism had indeed become popular and the acknowledgement of Evil as a tangible presence gained adherents. Materialists still scoffed but some of them began decorating their cars with bumper stickers announcing that “Richard Nixon is Rosemary’s Baby.” Again, the avowed intent was humorous—but behind the jokes could be sensed a genuine desire to personify the source of man’s misfortunes. Satan became the scapegoat. And exorcism—that ancient, half-forgotten ritual to rid us of our demons—suddenly captured the imagination and attention of the masses.

Viewed in retrospect,
The Exorcist
was scarcely a literary landmark, and the film that followed was illogical and prolix. Few members of the audience could clearly explain the origin of the demon, why this entity took possession of a child, or exactly how it met its final fate. Nor was their interest a religious one. The spectacle of a little girl whose face was transformed by makeup into an unreasonable facsimile of Harpo Marx’s “gookie” grimace, spewing obscenities and green pea soup or rotating her head a full 360°, seemed the chief attraction.

Nevertheless, it was clearly stated that the Devil made her do it. And the statements of box-office receipts convinced both filmmakers and publishers that doing it was profitable. Hell had become a hot property.

Now the Devil popped up again, together with his deputy demons, in a spate of fiction and film;
The Exorcist
spawned a sequel,
The Omen
became a trilogy,
The Sentinel
and a score of others advanced the notion that the Evil One was alive and well and living in your local drive-in theater.

If the Devil lives, then it would seem that other evils flourish in his wake. And so they did. Vampires rose again to refresh themselves with a sanguinary nightcap; not to be outdone by the undead, the dead themselves awakened from their graves for a midnight snack of sheep intestines that convincingly substituted for human entrails. Hirsute werewolves followed suit and a seemingly psychotic mass murderer was solemnly identified by a psychiatrist as “the Bogeyman.” Ghosts, ghouls, succubi, and incubi infested earth, and even in outer space
The Alien
incubated in a human breast, emerging to create catastrophe for cat lovers on a spacecraft.

Explicit violence increased in a series of “spatter films” and the butcheries depicted in many horror novels could be described as hackwork in every sense of the word. Grand Guignol degenerated into not-so-grand gross-out.

All of which was a far cry—or shriek—from the perils presented in the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Or was it?

Consider the phenomenon of exorcism, this time from the viewpoint of the artist rather than the audience. Most writers who choose to work within the horror genre do so to exorcise their own fears by exposing and expressing them to an audience. In childhood such writers are usually gifted—or cursed—with a hyperactive imagination. As adults they translate early dread of pain, death, and the unknown into fictional form; what frightened them, they reason, will also frighten their readers. Drawing upon a common cultural heritage of myth, legend, and fairy tales, they employ a technique of conveying their visions in terms of convincing reality.

The success of such efforts depends upon learning ways to involve the reader emotionally and inducing what has been called “the temporary suspension of disbelief.” It is not easily attained, and the offerings of apprentice authors in the horror field tend to be derivative and overblown.

Lovecraft was no exception to the rule. In earlier tales he often relied on the excessive use of adjectives rather than the power of suggestion, with disastrous results. But gradually he learned the value of restraint and of a more realistic approach. Refining his style, he also refined his method.

Generally speaking, most fiction can be divided into two categories, both dependent upon establishing the credibility of the supposed narrator. In simple terms, that narrator is presented as either wiser or less knowledgeable than the reader.

In the first instance, the device is used to convince the reader that anyone as intelligent as the author must know what he’s talking about and is obviously telling the truth. Belief in the narrator leads to belief in the story.

The alternative approach is perhaps best illustrated in Ring Lardner’s story “Haircut.” Here the monologue of an ignorant small-town barber unwittingly reveals to the reader more than the narrator himself is aware of.

Lovecraft’s inspiration was to combine both of these techniques into one.

His narrators are usually scientists or scholars of a high intellectual order who address the reader with obvious authority. At the same time they exhibit an equally obvious flaw—not stupidity per se, but an overcautious tendency to voice unreasonable reservations regarding the fantastic facts they so convincingly and objectively present. As a result the reader soon becomes convinced that what they doubt is actually a dreadful reality. And when, at the end of the story, the narrator is forced to recognize the existence of what lurks behind his hints of horror, the reader shares the ultimate terror of truth.

The source of a writer’s personal fantasies is to a great extent colored by what he reads or views during his impressionable early years. Today’s fictioneers and filmmakers often come late to an acquaintance with literary traditions. Their youthful influences were more often the science fiction films and the comic books of the fifties and sixties. As a result, a great deal of what they present as horror relies on crude and explicit violence. Dwelling on gruesome detail in print and utilizing special effects for shock on the screen, they opt for the easy out of evoking nausea and revulsion instead of genuine fear. Even their lighter efforts, involving the renascence of “superheroes,” betray an intellectual dependency on the comics of their childhood. As such, their efforts find greatest favor with juvenile audiences today.

Lovecraft had a thorough grounding in the classics of the genre, presented in their original form. In this lies the enduring strength of his own work, and its continuing power to capture a mature following after a half-century of change and chaos.