13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2009: Night #12 The Crow

The night before Hallowe'en is infamously known as Devil's Night and is a time of trouble ranging from the annoying to the destructive to the violent. In some places, like Detroit, Devil's Night was known for its record number of arson cases. The Crow is one of the few movies about the night, which is somewhat understandable with Hallowe'en being a much juicier target. The Crow isn't necessarily a horror movie even though it is in the vein. It's more of a dark action movie. It is also one of those rare movies where the star met with an untimely death on the set with the accident that took Brandon Lee's life. The filmmakers turned the movie into something of an homage to this young talent. They also did an excellent job of completing the film in his absence.

When I first saw The Crow at the theatre I was left with two impressions. The first was that this was a very special movie. The second, during the viewing, was that it pulled in a lot of ideas from different places and had that feeling of reusing bits of others films. What is odd about this second impression is that it very quickly faded. Whatever movies I felt The Crow borrowed from were quickly subsumed by the movie and I quickly could not recall any of them, those elements, themes, and scenes now belong to The Crow. Put together with the rest of the movie they no longer belong to the original sources in any kind of important way, as odd as that sounds. As for The Crow's original graphic novels I only know what I've heard in the DVD extras plus a little from additional bits in the TV series.

Mood: mellow.

Music: Dead Souls by Nine Inch Nails off of The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Anatomy of a Horror Setting #4-8: Industrial Phantasmagoria

Victorian Age horror is rife not only with the supernatural but also the mechanical and the scientific.  Steam locomotives had been in use for quite some time.  Photography came about as the age began.  Gas lighting became widespread.  The London sewer system was built. People were working on and produced motorised vehicles.  The tail end was witness to engineering feats like the Brooklyn Bridge, and modern innovations like the incandescent light and phonograph.  On the science front Darwin published his "On the Origin of Species", and Faraday laid the groundwork for understanding the connection between electricity, magnetism, and light.  Medical breakthroughs brought about surgery with anaesthesia, the creation of vaccines, and the first use of X-rays scans.

These wild and exotic innovations provide great twisting points for horror.  They start at a basic level with the mundane.  The industrialisation of the textile industry, the spread of mining, and the rise of tenements and slums provided hellish environments with dangerous and desperate conditions.  Child labour was an all too common occurrence.  Any of these could be the basis of revenge from beyond the grave or from the living.  As marvellous as the phonograph was there was also much fear over what it implied, which was compounded by later attempts to combine it with spiritualism ideas to build devices that could communicate with the dead.  Such merging of spirits and science owes its due back to Doctor Frankenstein galvanising the dead back to life.

Mad scientists also followed in the perverted footprints of Frankenstein, but with their eyes open, intent on creating monstrosity and working toward world domination--since Britain showed it could be done.  What kind of scientific perversity are they into though?  The process of Eugenics can be used to make super men and women bringing about a master race.  Hybridisation mixes different animals together or men with animals.  Mechanisation is another route.  Tear a subject apart, amputate limbs, remove organs and create openings.  Fill those voids with gears and mechanical assemblies and replace limbs with faster and stronger motor driven parts of cold hard steel.  All of them could ultimately be combined even, with a supernatural element added for extra terrifying potential.

Mood: relieved.

Music: Haunted by Evanescence and March Of The Pigs by Nine Inch Nails.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #2-19: Spelling Horror

Let’s talk about some actual spells now. Rather than retread the usual ones how about something a little more original? First up, what villain hasn’t wanted to flay someone alive? It needs to be little more interesting though. Some ancient, angry, master of the arcane decided that it would be better instead to have a spell that caused his enemy’s skin to pull away from their muscles and stretch but not to tear open anywhere. The result was beyond painful and continuous. It led to a long agonising death due to internal bleeding. It had two added benefits dealing with the increased fear it caused. No ordinary man could achieve such a bizarre thing; it had to be the work of dark magic. It also looked really terrible, especially as the space between skin and flesh filled with blood.

Curses are popular. There’s endless itching, having no reflection, and permanent bad luck. A vengeful Mayombe (evil voodoo priest) decided to make an enemy’s life an actual living nightmare. He set upon this man a powerful curse to make him forever see everything as if it were dead and rotting. This extended to the man’s senses of touch, smell, and taste. Things that don’t exist capered and leered threateningly from nowhere and circled around in the man’s peripheral vision. Voices whispered constantly, saying terrible things and inviting the man to do terrible acts. The last bit was the worst. It constantly ate at the edges of the man’s sanity and tried to drive him to visit evil upon others. It caused the man great guilt long before he gave in to the voices.

Here is a twist on an old stand by. There is a powerful spell used to turn people into slavering, violent, monsters. However, a great and powerful being from another realm of existence, who was capable of great guile and viciousness, had a better idea. This nameless being came up with an alternative. It cast the spell upon some random man, who upon touching his beloved wife changed her. That night the man was awakened to see his wife change into a monster and run off into the night. He went after her, but the local villagers caught her slaughtering the neighbours. The husband found his wife just as the villagers moved to destroy the monster. The man had to chose to die with his beloved or to fight his friends and neighbours, even as true to the spell’s form she attacked them.

Mood: excitable.
Music: Losfer Words (Big 'Orra) by Iron Maiden and Silver Wings by Bruce Dickinson.

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