Things Vampiric...

 

“Deep in the heart of Germany

Lucy clutched her breast in fear;

She heard a beat of her lover's heart,

For weeks she raved; in dreams he appeared,

From far off Transylvania.

Only a woman can break his spell

Pure in heart who will offer herself

To Nosferatu…”

-“Nosferatu” by Blue Öyster Cult

With the release of Robert Eggers’ do-over of the classic film “Nosferatu” I thought I’d take a stroll backwards through the lore and see the derivation of things. I’ve already heard anecdotes about how excited some people are to see the remake of “that Dracula film with Keanu Reeves!” so I thought I would attempt to get the history straight, at least in my own head. As well, my horror book reading group has just waded through Bram Stoker’s Dracula, so it seems apropos that we (bat)wing our way through the material. Let’s go back to the source…

Bram Stoker, Dracula, Archibald Constable & Co., London, 1897.

…Except that it’s not really the source. Stoker was a dedicated picker-up of unconsidered trifles and spent serious time on his research before starting to pen this work. It’s an epistolary text which means that it’s comprised of many documents supposedly assembled from a diverse array of sources – diary entries; ship’s logs; telegrams – all placed in chronological order to reveal the events which caused them to be written. There was a false start when he began writing – the short story “Dracula’s Guest”, which was originally meant to be the start of the book but which was excised by the publisher to keep things short – but it rips along at a steady pace once he gets going. As a writer with a theatre background, Stoker pays close attention to the spoken vernacular of various characters within the book and sometimes this gets in the way of clarity, especially when we’re reading the contributions of Abraham van Helsing – this is one of the book’s only real shortcomings. Otherwise, by bringing together all the folklore concerning vampires that he could find and building on the works which had gone before – “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan LeFanu; “Varney the Vampire” by Thomas Rymer; “The Vampire” by John Polidori – Stoker was able to create a body of canon lore that would work to underline what we know of vampires right up until today. What Dracula is, is a synthesis of folkloric and literary tradition, and a demonstration of how such a creature might work in reality. And it rocks (despite the incoherent ramblings of van Helsing!).

Upon release, the book was largely ignored, mainly because it was not “worthy” but also because there was something else available that had caught the public’s attention: this was The Beetle by Richard Marsh – a turgid and shocking page-turner that spoke of ancient Egyptian magic and revenge by bloodthirsty cults. Compared to Dracula, this is an exercise in excess: it’s vague, it doesn’t follow any sort of internal logic and the author uses the word “naked” as often as he can to ramp up the sauciness. It’s the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. It’s easy to see that it was a bad book – Dracula is still being printed today and the character of Count Dracula has been called the most depicted character in our culture, beating even Sherlock Holmes; on the other hand, who has even heard of The Beetle (outside of this blog)? Dracula was always considered a non-starter – even the publishers weren’t convinced and thought that giving it a bright yellow binding might be a catchpenny move. Sadly, the colour was instantly associated with the Aesthetic Movement – led by the disgraced Oscar Wilde – and the Symbolists of Europe, and it put the workaday readership on high alert about the possible dubiousness of the contents. Dracula was almost a stillbirth. It’s easy to see, therefore, why F.W. Murnau and Co., thought that they might be able to get away with ripping it off for their movie.

For our present purposes, we’ll consider this offering our core text. Every person or agency who has come afterwards goes back to this well for inspiration in some form or other. The narrative as presented in Dracula remains a core manifestation of the canon lore; even when a creator changes the features of the literary landscape, the tentpoles of the canon remain fixed and can be seen as the pentimento beneath the colours. Without Dracula, there is no body of vampiric literature.

*****

F.W. Murnau (Dir.), “Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens” (“Nosferatu – A Symphony of Terror”), Prana Film/Film Arts Guild, Germany, 1922.

“He screamed in fear he'd stayed too long in her room;

The morning sun had come too soon.

The spell was broken with a kiss of doom,

He vanished into dust left her all alone”

-“Nosferatu” by Blue Öyster Cult

The translation of the book version of Dracula into film is an interesting tale in and of itself. The head of Prana Film – who bankrolled the movie – was one Albin Grau, an artist and occultist who was a member of the mystical order Fraternitas Saturni; it was he who created the look of the final film and who added many mystical overtones to the final product. As the production designer of “Nosferatu”, Grau contributed much to the film’s final aesthetic, including the emaciated Count Orlok and the weird contract and other documents that appear in the movie, which are all written in the Enochian alphabet and are laced with hermetic symbols. Grau constructed many fanciful tales around the movie many of which cannot be substantiated or verified; he claimed that the idea for making the film came from his encounter with a farmer during World War One who told Grau that his father had been a vampire. Grau intended that Prana Films would go on to make many more occult movies, but the bankrupting of the production house after the Stoker injunction put paid to all that.

Murnau was a less mystically colourful individual than Grau, but regardless, much of the occult atmosphere of the film gets laid at his door. He was a World War One aviator who survived many crashes, finally being forced to ditch in Switzerland where he sat out the War in an internment camp. Establishing himself as a cinematographer thereafter, he gravitated towards Grau and his occult shenanigans and bent to the making of “Nosferatu”. Murnau was an inspirational director and went on to create other masterpieces of the silent era including his take on “Faust” (1926) and “Sunrise” (1927), nowadays considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. Murnau was killed after being thrown from a car during an accident outside Hollywood and his body was later exhumed to be taken to Germany and re-buried. Greta Garbo had a death mask made of his face which she kept on her desk for the rest of her life; in 2015, his grave was pillaged by satanists who stole his skull for mystical purposes – it’s still missing.

The film “Nosferatu – a Symphony of Terror” retains all of the hallmarks of the Dracula narrative, but, allegedly, changes were made in order to skate past any copyright issues stemming from the Stoker estate. I say “allegedly” because, while many have assumed that this was the reason the alterations came about, some cinema historians have noted that the movie itself makes no bones about its origins. An early intertitle card in German clearly states that the movie is based upon Stoker’s book; further, Prana Films never intended to distribute the movie outside of Germany and always meant the movie to be reserved exclusively for a mystical German audience. Nevertheless, Stoker’s descendants were outraged and the issue went to court. The final ruling was that Prana Films had infringed copyright and that all copies of the film were to be destroyed – this was done in a lacklustre fashion, with a few prints escaping, including one which had been shipped to America and from which the movie was finally restored. Prana Films sued for bankruptcy and Grau’s vision of an occult movie industry went south.

When making a film from a literary source, those in charge usually try – especially if funds are tight – to minimise the number of actors required. In a nifty move here, the characters of Jonathan Harker’s employer and Renfield the lunatic are conflated in the character “Knock”. Harker himself undergoes a name-change to “Thomas Hutter” and his new wife becomes “Ellen”. Thomas’s best mate is a shipbuilding magnate named “Harding” who has a wife named “Ruth”. The wealthy Harding is a parallel of the character of Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, from Dracula, while the two women are flip-flopped – Ellen is the excitable Lucy Westenra while Ruth is based upon the steadfast Mina. Dr. Seward becomes “Dr. Sievers” in the film while Abraham van Helsing is portrayed as “Professor Bulwer”. The rest of the cast are the ship’s captain and some knife-holding crew members.

The action moves from fictional Wisborg in Germany to Transylvania and back. We see some bucolic scenery and some fearful peasants as Hutter gets closer to the Count’s castle and then we return to the land of milkmaids and gingerbread shortly before plague breaks out and everything goes to Hell.

(I need to point out that modern sensibilities crash somewhat upon the shore of this movie. The jerky, sped-up movement that surrounds Orlok seems laughable to us in the Twenty-first Century but it was distinctly unnerving to viewers in the 1920s. I know I'm not the only one who has the "Benny Hill Theme Song" running through my head while Orlok tosses around caskets in his castle forecourt, but I try to make allowances for it.)

The character of Count Orlok is a subtle reimagining. His appearance is definitely weird: his eyes are staring and his ears are pointed and fluffy; he moves in a stiff and uncomfortable fashion and he has rodent-like teeth. Much of his performance is transmitted by his hands which are large and taloned. In fact, if you read the description of Count Dracula in Stoker’s book, this depiction is very close to the source. We are told that Orlok craves a modern world and that he needs to move to a more enlightened society; upon seeing Ellen’s painted miniature portrait he becomes infatuated and decides that Hutter is suddenly excess to requirements. Whereas Dracula kept Harker around for reasons of business, Orlok decides that Hutter is an inconsequence. Hutter is forced to escape precipitately after spotting Orlok in his grave and he jumps from the castle walls into a river to do so.

Once Orlok’s obsessive nature is focussed upon Ellen, she starts to have vivid dreams that plague her, along with bouts of sleepwalking. These are a compounding of the prophetic misgivings which she voiced about Hutter’s journey to the east. As her fits become wilder, first Sievers and then Bulwer are called upon to help her. Predictably, Bulwer begins to cite some supernatural doggerel about ‘beauty catching the beast’ and Ellen decides that it’s up to her to deal with the dreaded Nosferatu. As this is all happening, the doomed ship has washed up in Wisborg and rats have poured out of the hold. The captain is found tied to the wheel and his log recounts the steady diminishing of his crew. Orlok and Knock are united and the rule of Death is instituted.

Given the time that this film was made, there were some technological restrictions that impinged upon the narrative; nevertheless, these are all charmingly and innovatively resolved using the skills and ideas of the day. Orlok effortlessly carries his boxes of dirt, because Max Schreck was hauling plywood props filled with air; filmic dissolves remove the need for Orlok to open pesky doors; the use of shadows enables the audience to feel Orlok’s pervasive ability to infiltrate supposedly safe sanctuaries both physically and psychologically. The shadow motif is especially effective and obviously informed Carl Theodor Dreyer’s imaginative use of them in his 1932 film “Vampyr”. Talking about influence, there’s a moment here where we’re shown a strange looking canid lurking near some grave statuary: this is a Striped Hyena which – while weird-looking – would not have been native to Transylvania. It put me in mind of Todd Browning’s 1931 version of “Dracula” which shows a brace of Opossums and some Armadillos at various points. I guess ‘weird’ is just whatever you choose to throw at your project…

The resolution of all this comes down to the single innovation that the movie brings to the body of vampiric lore – the notion that vampires are destroyed by sunlight. In Stoker’s work, Dracula happily wanders about during the daylight hours; we are specifically told that his many supernatural powers are quelled during the day but, other than this, he suffers no particular disability. What we get with Murnau’s take is the complete destruction of the Undead by sunlight. Ellen lets Orlok in and offers herself to him; he spends the whole night draining her, like some kind of effete gourmet, and by the time the first rooster crows, he realises that he’s overstayed his welcome. A shaft of sunlight strikes him and he undergoes a cinematic dissolve from the movie frame. It’s quite nifty really, that the first movie vampire should be undone by means of a filmic trick.

*****

Werner Herzog (Dir.), “Nosferatu: Phantom du Nacht” (“Nosferatu the Vampyre”), Werner Herzog Film Produktion/Gaumont/Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Germany, 1979.

“So chaste, so calm, she gave herself

To the pleasure of the dreaded master;

He sucked her precious drops of life

Throughout the long and cold dark night.

Only a woman can break his spell,

Pure in heart who will offer herself.”

-“Nosferatu” by Blue Öyster Cult

Werner Herzog is a great fan of F.W. Murnau and has been quoted as saying that “Nosferatu” is one of the greatest movies to come out of Germany. Accordingly, he decided that he would do a remake. He arranged things so that the release of his version of the film in 1979 coincided with the emergence of Stoker’s novel into the public domain and thus, the film was issued using the original names of the characters from the text (which shows that this version was obviously the inspiration for the Blue Öyster Cult song that I’ve been quoting throughout this piece). The film was shot so that every scene was filmed twice – once with German dialogue and again with English. Given that this is a Herzog movie, there is a heavy use of subtext and allegorical meaning: Herzog has said that the movie depicts a bourgeois capitalist society yielding to the pressures of uncontrollable outside forces; I leave that for individual viewers to decide.

Compared to the original version, this film is slow almost to the point of motionlessness. It’s a very listless interpretation and – along with Klaus Kinski’s bloodless performance – makes for very dull viewing. The cast is stellar, including Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan, but everything is washed in the same dreamy, enervated palette and the audience gets to feel every last tick of the clock. Kinski, on top of it all, looks as though he’d rather be somewhere else.

Herzog made an effort to film the piece in the town in which it was set by Murnau – Wismar, although Murnau called it Wisborg – but was unable to do so; it was actually filmed in and around Delft in the Netherlands with parts of Czechoslovakia standing in for Transylvania (Ceaucescu’s regime would not let the film be shot there). As well, Herzog faithfully recreates shots taken by Murnau, where possible, using the same locations and angles. Patently though, there are moments where important plot developments were not scripted and these are filmed in the town square as static shots with the characters moving like puppets and telling rather than showing the necessary narrative beats. It looks clunky and badly thought out, which, I’m guessing, it was.

The one thing that really captured my interest in this version was an opening sequence that Herzog shot in Mexico. The footage shows a collection of mummified bodies, exhumed for lack of space from a cemetery and awaiting reburial. The still footage of a seemingly endless array of dead faces and bodies is mesmerising and amounts to the only thing creepy about the movie as a whole.

There was some criticism after the release about the treatment of animals during the filming: Herzog was only able to obtain white rats for the filming and insisted that they all be dyed grey, much against the on set animal handler’s protests. Given that most of the rats died on the way to the set due to poor logistics options, the remainder either perished while being dyed or were poisoned afterwards while trying to lick themselves clean. The animal handler also made veiled critical remarks about the way in which other animals on the set were handled too, although no specific instances were cited.

A sequel to this film was made which was done some years later in 1988 with Kinski again as Dracula, although this time it was shot in Venice. Whereas Kinski was relatively sedate on the set of “Nosferatu”, he was thought difficult to work with in this “not a sequel” sequel. Maybe, without the constant threat of murder at the hands of Herzog, he allowed himself space for bad behaviour.

In the final analysis, besides giving the finger to the Stoker estate by reinstating the original names of the characters, this version does nothing at all to add to the canon in any way. It’s soporific, overly self-important and feels very much like it was filmed as an afterthought. If you’ve already seen the original version, feel free to switch this off after the dead bodies at the start.

*****

E. Elias Merhige (Dir.), “Shadow of the Vampire”, BBC Films/Saturn Films/Metrodome Distribution/Lions Gate Films, Luxembourg/UK/USA, 2000.

“One last goodbye (goodbye!) He was blinded by love;

One last goodbye (goodbye!) He was blinded by love.

Blinded by love…”

-“Nosferatu” by Blue Öyster Cult

The single conceit which gave rise to this film is as follows: what if the weird-looking vampire in “Nosferatu” was actually a real vampire? Once you take this concept on board, the narrative looks ready for all kinds of high-jinks. Take the original film, the setting and period, the behind-the-scenes ambience of a film crew in the throes of production, then it almost writes itself. Almost.

This movie takes “Nosferatu” as its starting point but it owes a bigger debt to something like “The Producers” (1967 & 2005) than it does to F.W. Murnau. The set-up is pure Hollywood, with a visionary and self-involved director, a long-suffering producer, grumbling financiers, acerbic camera operators, vapid and vain actors and a harried film crew hustling to do their dogsbody best amidst a haze of sexual and pharmacological misadventures. In actual fact, none of the real creators of the original film fit easily into these stereotypes (with the possible exception of the real-life Grau) so right off the – ahem! – bat, any notion that this will be a documentary examination on some level goes right out the window.

All that being said, this is a hoot. John Malkovich and Willem Defoe are great as the director and the vampire that he’s vainly trying to control, and Udo Kier works well – not as Albin Grau, because he patently isn’t – as the put-upon producer. Everyone here is having a fun time and, until the final few scenes, it’s eminently enjoyable. Sadly, everything goes suddenly from high-concept comedy to tragic conclusion right at the finish and the end result firstly, doesn’t square with reality, and secondly, doesn’t pay off satisfactorily. It’s still fun though and, well worth watching if you’ve seen any of the iterations of “Nosferatu”. In fact, despite using Murnau’s lost masterpiece as its springboard, this is actually a film about Herzog and Kinski and their indulgent entry into the canon. It works even better when you look at it through this lens…

*****

André Øvredal (Dir.), “The Last Voyage of the Demeter”, DreamWorks Pictures/Reliance Pictures/Storyworks Productions/Studio Babelsberg/Phoenix Pictures/Universal Pictures, USA, 2023.

“The ship pulled in without a sound,

The faithful captain long since cold;

He kept his log 'til the bloody end,

Last entry read: ‘Rats in the hold

My crew is dead, I fear the plague’."

-“Nosferatu” by Blue Öyster Cult

I’ve thrown this film in here as well for a few reasons: first, it’s based upon the original text, essentially filling in the blanks about the sea voyage that Dracula makes to England on board the Demeter; secondly, while it’s not particularly coy about being Dracula-related material, it never uses his name outside of the title sequence; third, it uses tropes introduced by the Nosferatu films; and lastly, it’s a vehicle which takes Stoker-generated characters and presents them as canon without direct authorisation (not that it’s needed these days, of course). It’s a difficult entry into the vampire landscape. It’s rather like Murnau and his “Nosferatu” in that it tries to play fast-and-loose with the source material, but obviously some producer or marketer somewhere insisted that the ‘D’ word got dropped into the title and the effect was simply to gum up the machinery.

[Also, when looking for this in order to watch it, I was told by IMDb and other sources that the title of the film was “The Last Voyage of the Demeter”. When you begin watching the film however, the title is different – “Dracula: The Voyage of the Demeter”. Confusion reigns.]

The main problem with this film is as follows: the audience knows (or at least they should know) – from canon – that no-one survives the voyage; that the Captain and his logbook wash up on the rocks at Whitby with all hands dead. That means the end is a foregone conclusion. The task for the writers and director therefore is to do something else – defy expectations or stick the course and do something unexpected en route. Unfortunately, throwing the word 'Dracula' into the title means that they were committed.

This is a case of those in charge wanting their cake and getting to eat it as well. They want the Dracula connexion because it shortcuts a bunch of explanation to the audience (with the HUGE caveat that the audience has actually read the book). Then they go and break canon. Yes, folks – spoiler alert! – there are survivors. At the end of the voyage ship’s doctor, Clemens, gets away with the Romany girl Anna (although she dies later), after untying the Captain from the wheel! At the movie’s end, we see Clemens trailing the vampire through London, Hell-bent on seeing justice done as he tracks his quarry inevitably to Carfax Abbey…

Now, I’m left asking, what happens next? Because Clemens isn’t seen at Dracula’s demise in the book. Does he try to kill the vampire and fail somehow? Is this a set-up for a sequel? Again, there are cakes and there is the eating of them. If this was just a story about a vampire aboard a ship it would be fine; but because it’s Dracula aboard a ship it’s a different situation altogether and one that has to be wrestled with.

Other iterations of this trend try to put their own stamp on the proceedings either by introducing a new wrinkle to vampiric existence (such as the vampire turning to dust when the sun hits) or by emphasising to a greater or lesser degree something that is already established. Here, it’s bats. Dracula spends a huge amount of time winging around the ship and loitering in the rigging. There’s nothing to not like here – the character and creature design are awesome – and while it dominates the bulk of the third act, it’s not unwarranted or overused. The other thing they do is to take the “Nosferatu” ‘dies at dawn’ trope and dial it up to maximum, a la “30 Days of Night”: when the sun hits, these vamps explode.

All in all, this is okay, for something that was hamstrung from the beginning. The director’s heart must have sunk when they got the gig – a movie where everyone knows the outcome going in? Gee, thanks. It’s very pretty to look at, the acting is great, there are some nice musings on the lives of the Carpathian denizens, and it’s a beautiful ship. They sail a little close to the wind in terms of canon, leaving all sorts of questions in their wake, but nevertheless it’s a good romp.

*****

Robert Eggers (Dir.), “Nosferatu”, Maiden Voyage Pictures/Studio 8/Birch Hill Road Entertainment/Focus Features/Universal Pictures, USA, 2024.

“Mortal terror reigned!

Sickness now, then horrible death!

Only Lucy knew the truth

And at her window:

Nosferatu!”

-“Nosferatu” by Blue Öyster Cult

Robert Eggers began his movie career as a costume designer before moving to production design and then on to directing. This speaks to an incredible attention to detail and this aspect is a definite hallmark of his filmic creations. As in all his films things such as dialogue and set details, lighting, costume and every other conceivable element on the screen have a crafted feel which elevate them to a level far beyond mere entertainment. This is what strikes you about his “Nosferatu” – that it’s layered; built from the ground up. However, if you do your research (which is the implicit takeaway from this post) you can see the care and attention to detail that goes far beyond just fashion and dialogue.

The two things we know from Stoker’s Dracula is that the Count is revolting and that he is dead. Stoker’s description of Dracula is grotesque, from pointy ears to hairy palms, but this gets jettisoned the moment that cinema steps up to interpret the work, with the exception of the “Nosferatu” movies which embrace the look as canon. ‘Dracula’ (whether Vlad Dracul or Count Orlok) is always festy and weird-looking in these films. Todd Browning dressed the vampire up in 1931 as someone the audience would be more familiar with – Fantômas, the gentleman robber of French potboiler fame – in order to communicate a sense of suavité for the character and this has been the stereotype that has been adopted wholesale for vampires ever since. But this is wrong: a vampire is a corpse, forced into motion by supernatural agencies, and any social capability it once had is lost forever. Max Schreck took pains to convey these notions in his 1922 portrayal of count Orlok; Bill Skarsgård absolutely belts it out of the park in his turn. At the cinema where I saw this film, the row behind me was filled with sparkly goths all in their sexy leather, pungent cologne and cute fangs; I think they all slunk out of the building afterwards with much to muse upon...

The vampire concept is often played as a metaphor for sexual permissiveness and coded as a campfire warning against the transmission of sexual disease. Consequently the ‘sexiness’ of the vampire is what gets pushed to the fore, leaving the reality that such beings are actually walking corpses far behind. Not so here: this Count Orlok is palpably dead. His lungs don’t work; he talks haltingly; his skin is sloughing off and he has trouble keeping control. We can feel the disgust dripping off those around him. This is vampires as they should be, not twinkly Stephenie Myers pretty boys, or pouty Anne Rice boy-band wannabes.

Rather than simply enact a do-over of the first “Nosferatu” film (in the manner of Herzog), Eggers seems intent on creating a version of the narrative which contains all of the best elements of the project. To this end he works with the aesthetic qualities of the original movie in combination with the other iterations, using Stoker’s original novel and a laser-fine understanding of the 1830s period to paper over any cracks that had appeared during past translations. His goal would seem to be to fashion an über-model of the “Nosferatu” tale, cherry-picking all the best bits for an ultimate – and tonally, very bleak - distillation.

Eggers is focussed upon recreating the 1922 film, but he’s not averse to mining Stoker and Murnau and Herzog for any further details that would pay off onscreen. In the book there are bats; there aren’t any in “Nosferatu”. Therefore, we have no bats in Eggers’ movie. We have wolves (standing in for the Striped Hyena of Murnau’s take and lending real menace to the proceedings) and the lengthening and mysterious shadows. There are also rats; a disturbing amount of them, and I’m confident that there was no repeat performance of Herzog’s nastiness here, given Eggers’ animal rights cred from previous films.

But he also takes time to add his own refinements. In previous versions, the reason why Orlok is coming to Germany is glossed over. Why Wisborg? ‘Why not?’, we’re tacitly informed. Here, we’re told that the reason is that Ellen invited him to come. Alone as a young woman, plagued by psychic visions and somnambulism, she calls out rashly to the spiritual world and asks for companionship, only to be answered by the Seed of Belial, Count Orlok, vampire. This notion falls in line with ideas of demonic possession and obsession that have held sway in the public consciousness since Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1973) in which demoniac forces must be invited in before they can begin their mischief. There is also the belief that vampires must be invited into buildings before they can begin their assaults.

Eggers has done his research on vampiric lore. While among the Romany tribes in Transylvania, Thomas sees a strange procession by night, wherein a virgin seated upon a white horse leads the villagers to the resting place of an undead entity. This creature is dug up and despatched, in line with reports from the earliest works of vampiric lore. Here again, we see Eggers’ painstaking attention to historical accuracy in play.

The mash-up continues: in Murnau’s vision, Thomas Hutter is relatively impotent against the vampire’s incursions; in Stoker’s book, Jonathan Harker – after the outrage of his first encounter with Dracula – tools up to motivate the hunters with righteous anger. Murnau’s Ellen Hutter is a docile sacrifice to pacify the beast; Herzog’s Lucy and Eggers’ Ellen are determined aggressors against the creature’s defilement, taking their cue from Stoker’s dauntless Mina Harker. Stoker’s van Helsing is an avuncular (although incoherent) stalwart against the undead; Murnau’s Bulwer and Herzog’s van Helsing are patently useless; while Eggers’ Albin Eberhardt von Franz is a crazed and cranky also-ran with vested interests, making for a fresh and illuminating take on the character.

As to the monster itself, past iterations toss around the notion that Orlok is in love with Mina/Ellen/Lucy: does he love her? Does she yearn for him? Will they, or won’t they? Eggers dispenses with all of this tediousness in a clever and satisfying way – Ellen is his way into this new world of bloody possibilities; he is simply an unquenchable appetite loosed upon the world and he must devour her first in order to begin his despoliation. It’s a smooth and chilling move, and I applaud it.

It’s true that Murnau’s version of Dracula arrived ensconced within an ideal of German Cinema which explored certain established concepts and tropes – along with the mystic overtones thrust upon it by Albin Grau: there are deeper meanings and themes to explore along with the entertaining narrative. Herzog’s version is arguably ponderous, held down by the baggage of implicit meaning and political theorising, along with a stated aim of obliterating an interregnum of artistic emptiness in the wake of Nazi excess. What does Eggers bring? Well, nothing more than what you see on the screen in the final analysis, but this is still more than simply a pretty entertainment. Eggers’ take is a distressing and harrowing amalgam of all the best bits of what has gone before, alongside his own deftly handled vision of how all the parts of the Swiss watch can sing together. If there’s a subtext, then it’s what Murnau was saying; it’s what Stoker was saying; it’s possibly also a bit of what Herzog was saying. Eggers has simply perfected the delivery system.

Caveat Emptor...

Here’s a thing. Way back in the day, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society came up with a cute t-shirt concept. Essentially, it’s an American high school shirt design that looks like a typical garment worn by high school children declaiming their adherence to some kind of activity or other. This one identified the wearer as part of the school’s swimming team. That’s not particularly funny until you clock the high school, which is in Innsmouth. Of course, being part of that swim team says an awful lot about the wearer – for those in the know.

I saw it at their website; I laughed; I appreciated the subtlety of the gag; I bought one. Here it is:

Later on, they discontinued this design, despite it being one of their most popular products. There was a brief moment when it was brought back, but it soon vanished once more. I should have bought one then but other things got in the way and I missed my chance.

Years later, my girlfriend went to the site and saw that the design had been resurrected – in a somewhat different form from the original – and was now being issued through the ‘Society’s new Redbubble t-shirt store. She decided to buy me one as a gift and I was delighted. There’s a problem though – this is what it looks like now:

I’ve had this shirt for about 18 months now and the design – as you can clearly see – has almost completely worn away. I haven’t been wearing this shirt on high rotation and it hasn’t been brutally washed or mistreated in any way: just normal wear-and-tear. The shirt at the top of this post has been worn so much that it’s almost threadbare – I like it a lot – but I don’t wear it anymore. That being said, it is 18 years old.

The difference in quality is astounding.

I’m not warning people to stay away from either the HPLHS or Redbubble – far from it. All I’m saying is that quality counts and maybe it’s worth shopping around before you buy your piece of Lovecraft-related tat. I remember that the HPLHS once declared that all of their merch was produced in-house; maybe it’s cheaper nowadays for them to go through someone like Redbubble, but maybe, as buyers, we should pay greater attention to the notion that cheaper prices can usually mean cheaper quality.

Or maybe I should just lower my expectations and not expect my Cthulhu-flavoured t-shirts to last over two decades!

Fhtagn!

The Father of Cryptozoology...

I am still hip deep in cataloguing a bunch of books for a colleague who’s going to the Sydney Rare Book Fair at the end of October. Working my way through the material I unearthed this gem and immediately had some X-Files flashbacks.

Bernard Heuvelmans (Introduction by Gerald Durrell; Richard Garnett, trans.; Monique Watteau, illus.), On the Track of Unknown Animals, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1959.

Second impression: octavo; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 558pp., top edges dyed black, with a monochrome frontispiece, 30 plates and many illustrations likewise. Minor wear; a little shaken; text block edges spotted, top edge dusted; offset to the endpapers; spotting to the preliminaries and around the plates. Price-clipped dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn with a few marks; spine panel sunned and extremities lightly chipped; now professionally protected by non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good.

Bernard Heuvelmans is considered to be the “Father of Cryptozoology” due mostly to the release of this book. It’s a loose piece of wishful thinking that establishes itself on the premise that, if we can re-discover some creatures that were thought extinct, then might there not be more such critters out there that we haven’t spotted yet? He then takes the next step – taking a line from Charles Fort – that perhaps we are seeing relict animals in the wild, it’s just that tales about them are taken as myths, or folklore, and are being discredited out of hand by the scientific community. At the time of his writing, the Coelacanth had been found and the Komodo Dragon had just been identified, so Heuvelmans decided that a wholesale revision of the animal kingdom’s catalogue was warranted.

What follows between these covers is part truth and part pixie-dust. Heuvelmans roams the planet creating ‘what if…?’ scenarios to address a range of beasts, and their possible survival, with whimsical drawings and dreamy prose. He examines giant humanoids, sea serpents, riverine monsters, mermaids, and a whole slew of the cryptid animalia which populates the tabloid newspaper realm. Here’s a particularly relevant section concerning the Mythos:

Other plates show the infamous yeti scalp of the Pangboche Monastery which has been repeatedly debunked as being stitched together from yak remains, but I’m particularly enamoured of the sketch that introduces this section. While claiming to be a “reconstruction based upon all available evidence”, it displays more storytime drama and whimsy than it does scientific accuracy. Wherever photographic detail is not available, Heuvelmans turns to this type of fantasy to push his ideas.

And sometimes he tries to sell the reader an outright fake. The frontispiece of the text contains the following image:

It’s not clear whether Heuvelmans was behind this faked image or if he’s been duped along with many others. The issue here is that this is not a man-sized anthropoid photographed after being shot by big game hunters in the jungle. It is in fact a spider monkey, propped up on a footlocker by means of a twig and relying on an absence of scale references to sell the picture as some kind of Bigfoot creature. The original, uncropped, image can be found floating about and clearly shows that this poor mishandled beast was probably only two-feet tall at best, when seen with its slayers standing nearby. Heuvelmans – to give him the benefit of the doubt – obviously believed that the image was real, or he wouldn’t have been so brazen as to stick it at the start of his book; the fact that he got someone of the standing of Gerald Durrell to pen an Introduction to the work shows that maybe he wasn’t alone in having been fooled. Unless, of course, he did know and just didn’t care – a lot of shonkery was possible in pre-Internet days.

In the final analysis, this book shows that, in the 1950s through to the 1980s, a lot of pseudo-scientific publishing appeared and much of it was coming from Europe. It seems that, having been translated from French or German, such works developed a kind of legitimate sheen for the English-speaking market: ‘Well, golly! If they took the trouble to translate it, it must be real!’ This is the case with Erich von Däniken, Marcel F. Homet and, whether by accident or design, Bernard Heuvelmans. This phenomenon isn’t new: in Victorian days, evangelical Creationist preachers and astrological doomsayers used to gain credence simply by putting their assertions into print; the ‘translation cachet’ (if we can call it that) is simply the extension of an old game. In the final analysis, what we’re seeing here are publishers making bank, not any kind of scientific rigour.

And certainly, Heuvelmans wasn’t afraid of raking in cash, given that he released a sequel soon afterwards:

Bernard Heuvelmans (Richard Garnett, trans.; Alika Watteau, illus.), In the Wake of Sea-Serpents, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1968.

First English edition: octavo; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 645pp., with 32 monochrome plates, maps and many illustrations likewise. Minor wear; a little shaken; text block edges spotted with some minor marks; top edge dusted; light offset to the endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn with a few minor marks; now professionally protected by non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good.

In this follow-up, he narrows his focus to marine cryptids and lake monsters, combing through the available legendry and fuzzy photos while berating the scientific community for trampling the evidence in their haste to disprove what everyone obviously – obviously! – knows to be true. It’s a subtle and slightly bewildering little mental two-step process that’s as fascinating to read as it is infuriating.

*****

Copies of both these works are available, print-on-demand, through all the usual outlets, and occasionally a diligent rummager might turn up a secondhand version. If you are interested in either of the two volumes presented here, get in touch and I will point you in the direction of my colleague who has them for sale.

Alexander Wilson on the Whippoorwill

“In the spring after this event Old Whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to chirp under his window at night. He seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at Osborn’s that he thought his time had almost come.

‘They whistle jest in tune with my breathin’ naow,’ he said, ‘an’ I guess they’re gittin’ ready to ketch my soul. They know it’s a-goin’ aout, an’ dun’t calc’late to miss it. Yew’ll know, boys, arter I’m gone, whether they git me er not. Ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singin’ an’ laffin’ till break o’ day. Ef they dun’t they'll kinder quiet daown like. I expeck them an’ the souls they hunts fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes.’

On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn’s in the village. He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stertorous breathing that told of an end not far off. The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural - too much, thought Dr Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call…”

I’m in the process of cataloguing a small but eminently desirable collection of antique books for a client and my eye was caught by a nice, three-volume set of Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology; or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, later amended by Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, and with the Notes and “Life of Wilson” by Sir William Jardine. This is the undated 1877 London edition, which can nevertheless be accurately dated by the publishing company’s name, which was changed in 1878. The catalogue description of the book is as follows:

Alexander Wilson & Charles Lucien Bonaparte, American Ornithology; or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, with The Illustrative Notes and Life of Wilson by William Jardine, in Three Volumes, Cassell Petter & Galpin, London, nd. (c.1877).

Three volumes, octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in black morocco and red cloth boards with gilt spine titles and decorations and black endpapers; 1,451pp. [408pp. + 495pp. + 540pp.] (+8pp. of adverts), mostly unopened, top edges gilt, with an engraved portrait frontispiece, 104 chromolithographic plates and some other monochrome engraved illustrations. Mild wear, somewhat rolled; boards a bit rubbed and shelfworn with some minor insect damage to the cloth; spines mildly sunned, extremities a little worn and the head of Volume III pulled slightly; text block edges lightly toned; lower hinge of Volume I cracked (but still strong); light offset to the preliminaries and light scattered foxing throughout; some minor offset to some of the plates. No dustwrappers. Very good.

While I was poring through this – counting plates; noting wear and tear – I thought to myself, I wonder what he has to say about Whippoorwills? Here in Australia, we have our own crepuscular avians to mimic these famous American avians, however ours don’t carry anywhere near the whiff of superstition and folklore that the American versions do. Those well-versed in HPL’s works know whippoorwills famously from “The Dunwich Horror”:

“…But speech gave place to gasps again, and Lavinia screamed at the way the whippoorwills followed the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final throaty rattle came. Dr Houghton drew shrunken lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled whilst the hill noises rumbled faintly.

‘They didn't git him,’ he muttered in his heavy bass voice…”

The prevailing superstitious notion is that these birds act as psychopomps, that is, entities which accompany the spirits of the dead and which guide them to their deserved afterlife. In some schools of thought, the whippoorwills seek to attack and consume the spirit in some fashion, forming a kind of gauntlet run to the hereafter. This is certainly the aspect which HPL highlights in his tale.

“…Armitage, hastening into some clothing and rushing across the street and lawn to the college buildings, saw that others were ahead of him; and heard the echoes of a burglar-alarm still shrilling from the library. An open window showed black and gaping in the moonlight. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the barking and the screaming, now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeded unmistakably from within. Some instinct warned Armitage that what was taking place was not a thing for unfortified eyes to see, so he brushed back the crowd with authority as he unlocked the vestibule door. Among the others he saw Professor Warren Rice and Dr Francis Morgan, men to whom he had told some of his conjectures and misgivings; and these two he motioned to accompany him inside. The inward sounds, except for a watchful, droning whine from the dog, had by this time quite subsided; but Armitage now perceived with a sudden start that a loud chorus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man…”

“…As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing, it began to mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr Armitage made no written record of its mouthings, but asserts confidently that nothing in English was uttered. At first the syllables defied all correlation with any speech of earth, but towards the last there came some disjointed fragments evidently taken from The Necronomicon, that monstrous blasphemy in quest of which the thing had perished. These fragments, as Armitage recalls them, ran something like ‘N'gai, n’gha’ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y’hah: Yog-Sothoth, Yog- Sothoth...’ They trailed off into nothingness as the whippoorwills shrieked in rhythmical crescendos of unholy anticipation.”

As we see in the story, old Wizard Whateley manages to elude the birds as he passes over. Wilbur Whateley, his monstrous grandson, is also sized up for predation:

“Then came a halt in the gasping, and the dog raised its head in a long, lugubrious howl. A change came over the yellow, goatish face of the prostrate thing, and the great black eyes fell in appallingly. Outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. Against the moon vast clouds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey…”

Obviously, in this instance they attempt to bite off more than they could comfortably choke down.

Alexander Wilson was a precursor of the better-known John James Audubon when it comes to American birdlife; however, Wilson was the original and best. His book is considered to be the first illustrated work of science published in the United States. It was later amended by Charles Bonaparte to include several new species that Wilson hadn’t spotted, and this edition contains useful emendations, along with Wilson’s biography, by Jardine. Here is the section pertinent to the Whippoorwill:

Wilson, along with other writers on avian subjects and pushing a sense of scientific credibility, is quick to distance his observations from any superstitious ideas doing the rounds. It would have been interesting to know exactly what “silly notions” had been retailed to him, but I guess that information has now been largely lost.

And that’s it. There’s a lot of detail here – probably more than any “Call of Cthulhu” game or Mythos story writer would ever need (or use), but it’s of interest, nonetheless. It’s intriguing to note that the folkloric qualities of the creature probably only survive in literary confections like “The Dunwich Horror”, in oral traditions among the various indigenous and regional tribes, and probably a few anthropological dissertations.

In the final analysis, the mention of crepuscular avians in HPL’s tale does little more that add a hint of flittering menace to the tale, but it also grounds the story in a folkloric tradition, lending a veracity to the narrative that it might otherwise lack. Literary packrat that he was, Lovecraft was very good at incorporating various scraps of local lore, general knowledge and scientific rigour to his fantastical notions, and this is what gives them all a solid foundation and a sense of distinct possibility. We get a sense that there is a wider reality beyond the writing, and it is implicit in everything he tells us, even if it is only glancingly referenced. This is high-quality storytelling at its best!

(NB: If anyone is at all interested in obtaining this copy of Wilson's "American Ornithology" drop me a line and I'll see what I can do...)

Review: "River"

 

Abi Morgan (Creator), “River”, Kudos/Shine International/BBC One/Netflix, 2015.

Convincing an audience that something fantastic is going on in your fictive work is a bit of a high-wire act. If your target demographic isn’t convinced of what you’re trying to sell, then the whole enterprise quickly falls apart. The easy solution would seem of course - in the case of a visual medium effort – to obtain the best actors, directors, cinematographers – what have you - that money can buy; in this instance, I think the creators have knocked it out of the park.

There is a spooky premise to this show – a supernatural rationale – but I don’t want to let any cats out of their bags. Going in on these six episodes, I had no idea what to expect: I was looking for a gritty British police procedural to while away an evening’s ennui and I suddenly had just that, along with something completely unexpected and – dare I say? – delightful. Of course, the presence of Stellan Skarsgård and Nicola Walker meant that – had this been simply a stultifying home renovation program – I would still have watched the hell out of it; the supernatural aspects of this show were merely the excellent icing atop this wonderful cake.

The BBC is the spiritual home of the police drama. No-one else takes the sordid realities of the Street and boils them down to soul-crushing narratives in quite the same way. Take for example, the new show “The Responder” which is doing the rounds at the moment. I started watching this and had to stop. The grubby particulars of this show were almost too much to bear. I mean, there’s dark, and then there’s this: it’s like an exercise in pushing the envelope; there’s a gleefully iconoclastic edge to everything going on that actually starts to break the audience’s engagement due to its intensity. All that aside however, my main issue with it is that Martin Freeman – who I normally find eminently watchable - is completely miscast. There’s something about his performance and physical presence that is at odds with the material – maybe he was trying to prove that he too, could swan about like “Cracker” in a downbeat thug-fest, but I’m here to tell you that he can’t. No amount of withholding the razor and a good night’s sleep can knock the optimistic shine off Bilbo Baggins. There’s something quintessentially Home Counties about him that a bad haircut can’t disguise.

Now, if you had put Stellan Skarsgård in his shoes, then, you’d have something…

In “River”, my one issue is that the world – despite everything that comes out in the conclusion of this show – is a little too vanilla for the actors at hand. This is a plus and a minus: most of the drama here is internal with John River balancing his workload with his mental trauma, psychological scars which absolutely could not have been portrayed this well by any other thespian. Having witnessed his partner, and the person whom he had just begun to realise was the love of his life, gunned down brutally before him in the street, River starts tiptoeing around both his work colleagues and the enforced psychological review that he’s made to engage with, while simultaneously trying to solve the mystery of who his partner’s assailant was. That he hears – and responds to – voices unheard by those around him makes the knife-edge levels of his sanity more than apparent to everyone, including himself.

It's a testament to the writing that we don’t spot these voices until at least two-thirds of the way through the first episode. The writing allows the spookiness to slide right under the radar until the story deems it necessary to reveal the supernatural goings-on to the audience and it hits like a chill bucket of water to the face. I had been riding along with this show, enjoying the banter and the easy relationship of the two leads when suddenly I knew that I had something a bit extra to be getting on with. Right, I thought, this has taken a turn: I’d better strap in. Seriously though, with these two actors – plus the addition of a 70s disco soundtrack – if nothing at all had changed, I would have kept watching.

These supernatural elements are exquisitely handled. Everything occurs against the backdrop of John River’s mental disintegration and the plot becomes highly equivocal depending upon where you stand. The information that River receives from his spiritual sources is slippery and, at every stage, John, his co-workers, the suspects of his investigation, never know whether the information he’s working with is real or not, or whether it can be used in the chain of evidence. It’s a bravura performance from the writers and the actors and, because it’s all based upon a solid set of rules governing the spectral that the creators have set out clearly from the start, it works a treat. The scenes wherein John and his work-appointed psychologist play cat-and-mouse around the possibility of supernatural forces at play, are crafted to perfection and wonderful to observe.

The only real grizzle I have with the show is everything is a little too neat. The action takes place in a very enclosed world – every character leads to the next significant character and the narrative has a consequent hermetic feel to it. Essentially, the world of “River” is a very small one into which nothing of a wider reality intrudes. A key element of the investigation involves a shonky car-hire accompany and chauffeuring service, the name of which becomes a common refrain as things progress, flagging to the viewer the final destination of the mystery. In essence, all roads lead to Rome, and everyone has connexions to everyone else. It’s a little incestuous but, given one of the big reveals at the end, maybe that’s deliberate.

My biggest delight with this show is that, while it has everything that you’d want in a gritty police procedural, it’s also very human and incredibly sad, while at the same time being quite uplifting and inspiring, in the best tradition of such fare. As I said in the beginning, lesser thespians would not have made this work, but they run with it and elevate everything around them to build a fantastic – in all senses – piece of television drama.

Four Tentacled Horrors.

Review: Junji Ito's "Uzumaki"

Junji Ito, with Susan Daigle-Leach & Sam Elzway (Masumi Washington, ed.; Yuji Oniki, trans.), Uzumaki: Deluxe Edition, VIZ Media LLC., San Francisco CA, 2014.

As a seller of books, I am not a huge fan of manga. On the one hand, anything that gets the younger crowd to stick their nose into a book is great; on the other, because these things are pumped out in long series, few punters are willing to shell out for anything untried, and so, while the first volumes leap readily off the shelf, the subsequent tomes in any series languish unsold for unconscionably long periods of time. Many’s the time that a customer will ask “do you have issue number one?” and I grit my teeth while suggesting that they might start with number two and backtrack, all the while knowing that they absolutely won’t take that route. The other issue is that the readership is largely kids, and kids don’t have the ready cash to pay for an entire run of say, “Food Wars!”, or “Black Butler” – certainly not firsthand – and still, unlike a Marvel or DC trade paperback, will refuse to start a series without having read the first instalment. Finally, turnover in the world of manga is swift, and something that’s scorching hot one day, cools dramatically in a heartbeat. Grab your copies of “One Piece” while you can…

The other issue I have with these productions is a cultural one. In Japan, there is an understood commonality in place regarding who reads this material and how. Manga is largely targeted at young men; some manga is written for young women and other manga are intended for older readers: the idea is that every sector of the community has its specific ‘read’ and people tend to outgrow these pigeonholes as other necessities of life intrude. Of course, this is not written down as chapter and verse and is definitely not policed in any fashion, but there is an unspoken – and certainly unwritten – set of guidelines about how these “irresponsible pictures” proliferate throughout the Japanese-speaking world. Interest from outside of Japan has slowly changed how this material is disseminated and consumed, with the American market and its strategies affecting how manga is sold in the US, and European tastes influencing creation, translation and marketing in that global sector. The result is that overseas readers partake of things that are not “meant” to be read or evaluated by their age (or gender) group and such material is weighted inappropriately in those markets. Certainly, something like “Dragonball Z” was not to be considered high art, or lofty literature, but, amongst fans and collectors, it has almost attained this status. The Western equivalent is the prevailing notion that American comics are for children, when it is highly evident that only adults buy Marvel and DC comics and then discuss them in terms of university-level jargon.

So, in discussing Junji Ito’s “Uzumaki”, I feel that I’m not the target audience and that any kind of close dissection of the text is unwarranted and possibly unnecessary.

There are further wrinkles to all this. Because manga is pumped out in huge quantities as a disposable product for an endlessly thirsty readership, necessarily a bunch of tropes and other genre constructions start to become obvious after a short period of exposure. This is also visible in the field of anime – which developed from the manga substrate – and can be seen in other forms of Japanese popular entertainment as well. There is a type of cultural shorthand which permeates all of Japanese ‘pulp’, or ‘B-grade’ entertainment, and once you see it, it is very difficult to let go of it. Most of these notions can be seen in the way characters are established and constructed in relation to each other.

In most manga stories – and anime, and Japanese cinema – there is a girl and often there are two suitors for her affections. One of these suitors is level-headed, studious and determined while the other is generally excitable, dashing and “fun”. The female lead vacillates between the two trying to determine which is the best in terms of becoming a “life partner” and the narrative cut-and-thrust of this determination is what underscores everything else going on with the story. I say “most”, and it’s generally true throughout a majority of series, even when the purpose of the book is to undermine this trope, or to subvert narrative expectations: that is, when it’s not treading this path explicitly, it still references the guideline in some fashion. Whether it’s the original “Godzilla” movie, something goofy like “Project A-ko”, or horror fare like “Uzumaki”, this character template is readily apparent underneath the overt storyline.

For me, this lends a rubber stamp quality to most Japanese popular fare. It feels as though every “new” title has come into being partially pre-fabricated in some sense and that the bulk of the exercise is simply the ticking of boxes to an inevitable conclusion: here’s the girl; there’s the studious guy she feels sorry for; there’s the jock who’s determined to win her affections. It writes itself. For some series, this is deliberate: some titles are intended to go on indefinitely without resolving these interpersonal issues, since that’s the whole point of the exercise. In other titles, the set-up is abandoned after its inception and the narrative runs its own way to various conclusions. These hallmarks are quite clear in “Uzumaki” too.

What makes Junji Ito’s work a little different is that there is a creeping sense of dread that permeates the story. A golden rule of his oeuvre seems to be “don’t get attached”: characters get crunched down like corn chips at a roleplaying session, and “Uzumaki” is no exception. Still, the characters occupy certain set positions within the narrative format – potential boyfriend; rival in love; annoying unrequited crush – and lack a lot of depth or interiorality, the only difference is that here, they usually meet hideous ends.

The essential requirement for a horror tale is that it take place in an environment that is completely ordinary; the strangeness which the horror represents, therefore, is thrown into stark contrast, against the humdrum quality of the real world. Having “Uzumaki” spring from the standard manga set-up then, would seem to be a neat way of highlighting the horror to come. On balance, I would say that it’s a genius move on Ito’s part, except that it is the way that every manga narrative is established, which would seem to cut it off at the knees. As well, there is a fumbling quality to the way in which the series builds through its instalments that makes me wonder how completely planned the work was from the outset: as each episode falls into place, I had the sense that the story was being made up as it went along. There’s no doubt that the story had an endpoint predestined from its inception, but the steps along the way feel a bit clunky and bolted-on.

“Uzumaki” (“Spirals”) takes place in a seaside village which is nominally ‘cursed’. Our heroine is Kirie Goshima, the daughter of an artisanal potter, who is attending school in the village. Her best friend is Shuichi Saito, a scholar who lives at home with his parents and who attends a higher school in another village nearby: this commuter existence which he leads allows him to perceive that all is not quite well in their home village of Kurouzo-cho. After Shuichi’s parents both go mad and die horribly, after becoming obsessed by the idea of spiral formations manipulating the world around them, Shuichi comes to believe that spirals are the expression of the curse upon the place. As incident after incident unfolds, highlighted by the presence of spiralling phenomena, a trail of investigation leads our hapless pawns to the nightmare cosmic horror that dwells in caverns deep below the village pond. It ends messily. As I said: “don’t get attached”.

For most of the story, the manga framework guides the interactions of all the players: Kirie likes Shuichi, but he is focussed on his work and can’t afford to be distracted; Kirie attracts young male students keen for her attentions and she struggles to rebuff them without offending them; she encounters other girls, keen to steal Shuichi away from her. This is all textbook manga stuff and apart from the fact that Ito is ruthless in dealing out hideous comeuppance to the offending parties, it all goes rather by the numbers. On one hand, given that most characters in this tale end up in some kind of deadly body horror nightmare, it might be just as well that we don’t get to know the players better; on the other hand, we care less about what happens to characters that are broadly sketched on cardboard.

However, Ito is all about the horror. Some deeply unpleasant things take place between the covers of this book, and they are designed to make the reader feel as uncomfortable as possible. There are all flavours of nastiness here - body horror, splatterpunk, cosmic dread – and they all ratchet up to a fever pitch by the book’s conclusion. People turn into giant snails; people take sharp implements to themselves to extract offending organs; there are monstrous birth sequences of deeply unpleasant aspect; people are driven to cannibalism; others are transformed into boneless entities and forced to co-habit like spaghetti, packed into crude shelters. By the end of it all, it’s a relief to close the covers and walk away.

As I finished reading, I was left to wonder why all this was taking place. In terms of themes or larger concepts about the world at large, art speaking to nature, there seemed to be little on offer here. There’s a common Mythos thing associated with Hastur and Nyarlathotep whereby stuff happens, and people go mad, and it’s this going mad which seems to be the whole, singular point. What happens? People go mad! Ba-doom, tish! There’s no rationale or purpose and this – for some authors and their readers – is good enough. Not me. I want metaphor; I want internal logic; a universe with rules; a result that seems somehow deserved. It’s not the case here. Why is Kurouzo-cho cursed by spirals? Just ‘cause. What is “Uzumaki” trying to say? Nothing, and “Boo!”. Quite unsatisfying…

The upside to all of this – and its strongest aspect – is the artwork. The whole purpose of the comics medium is to interrogate reality and conjure vistas and visions which would be impossible to capture in any other medium. The scenery in this book is truly gobsmacking, especially by the end when the full cosmic nightmare is on display, and it does all the heavy lifting which the limping narrative structure fails to achieve. This is a case where the story is definitely flying on the coattails of the art, and it shows. I’m aware that more than a few people have had images of these panels tattooed upon their person and I get that: I don’t know personally that I’d enjoy having a image of a young girl with a hole spiralling through her head inked upon my bicep but then, what do I know?

In the final analysis, this is a good comics read propped up by the art which definitely delivers on the horror score, the various concepts leaving the reader alternately creeped-out, shocked, and awed. I was left feeling more than a little grubby by the conclusion. There is little in the way of characterisation and the set-ups and narrative beats are nothing new for readers of manga or fans of anime. There is too much dependence on there being no rationale for the mayhem (see also: “Ringu” and “Ju on: The Grudge” – there’s no explanation! Ooh! Spooky! Not.) which leaves the reader frustrated and which might just be the point – mileage will vary. For me, it’s not how I like my chills.

I’m giving this three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.