Scream Subtly

A quartet of recent films and books is a reminder that horror doesn’t have to terrorize us in order to be scary.

By Bill Marx
Originally published October 30, 2003

Culture gurus cried ‘murder most foul’ when Stephen King was chosen to receive this year’s National Book Awards Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters. Amid the cries deploring falling standards, none pointed out how damaging King’s elephantine prose has been to horror writing and films. His bloated novels raise the hyperbolic ante in a genre that has taken subtler and more complex forms. A quartet of recent films and books is a reminder that horror doesn’t have to terrorize us in order to be scary.

King Kino has released a superb video version of 1928’s “The Man Who Laughs,” an unsung silent masterwork from German director Paul Leni, best known for “Waxworks.” This lush adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel was Universal Pictures’ follow-up to its hit version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Set in 17th century England, the plot revolves around the son of a disgraced nobleman, Gwynplain, who, by the order of the King, is disfigured by “comprachicos,” butchers who traffic in selling these children to freak shows or into servitude. His face carved into a permanent rictus, Gwynplain served as the inspiration for Bob Kane’s Joker in “Batman” as well as for the psycho in Joseph Ellroy’s “The Black Dahlia.”

Leni makes effective use of mutilation as a metaphor for child abuse and social injustice: Gwynplain’s plight is a sardonic image of the insincere smiles fixed on the faces of the powerless. The film’s expressionistic photography is gorgeously garish, especially a hellish snowscape in which Gwynplain (well-played by Conrad Veidt) is left to die. This edition boasts a crisp print and some valuable special features; my only reservation is its use of the ham-fisted original musical soundtrack. When “The Man Who Laughs” was screened at Cambridge’s Sanders Theater in 1999, the experience was enriched by Octuro De France’s deft playing of Gabriel Thibaudeau’s score.

More silent horror is available tomorrow night at the Harvard Film Archive, which will host a rare screening of “The Blackbird,” a 1926 film by the masters of the macabre, Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. I haven’t seen it, but if this movie is as bizarre as the duo’s “The Unknown,” in which Chaney’s character has his arms amputated for the love of a woman, it will offer plenty of queasy terror.

As for fiction, “The Jinx” is a recently translated, sleek treasure of 19th century horror penned by French writer Theophile Gautier. Paul d’Aspremont goes to Naples to visit his fianc?But the populace shuns him, claiming he has the ‘Jettatura,’ the evil eye. Gautier is neutral about the hex: Does Paul sport the look that kills? Or is he the kind of man who can be convinced he has that power? “The Jinx” also features a memorably strange duel. In the ruins of Pompeii, Paul fights with a rival for the hand of his intended. But because Paul doesn’t want to take advantage of his supernatural punch, both sword-wielding combatants are blindfolded.

Finally, “The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark” gathers tales about ghouls who bring a wry sense of humor to their haunting. “The Executor” features an author who, from beyond the grave, taunts an opportunistic relative to complete a book the writer left unfinished. In “The Leaf-Sweeper,” a man confronts his own ghost. A single Spark sentence in “The Portobello Road” kicks more chills up the spine than 300 pages of Stephen King: “He looked as if he would murder me and he did.”

Think Again

By Bill Marx

Click here to read Bill Marx’s full interview with Michael Wood.

During our ice age of earnestness a few critics keep the faith, celebrating fiction as a sweaty mix of the playfully serious and the seriously playful. So it was a treat to talk to one of these true believers, Michael Wood, when was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his criticism, Wood treats fiction as a space reserved for spinning antic speculations, for indulging in exuberant linguistic horseplay. And he thinks our culture’s current demand for right-minded composure means a clampdown on the “life and liberty” of the imagination.

A professor of literature at Princeton who, in his criticism, eschews jargon and mandarin posturing, Wood earned my admiration in a succession of books fascinated by ambiguity in language, “in how language can seem to mean one thing and really mean another. Or can seem to be absolutely clear, but turn out to be ambiguous.” Wood’s study of Vladimir Nabokov, “The Magician’s Doubts,” expertly dissects the artfully conceived, yet humane, enigmas of the master. His latest splendid volume, “The Road to Delphi,” examines the equivocations of oracles throughout history, from the real life predictions at Delphi and daily horoscopes to the tricky prophecies handed to Oedipus and Macbeth. “This book is all about the longing for certainty,” Wood says. “Sometimes we long for it because we want it, and sometimes we don’t really want it. Or don’t like it when we get it.”

It is “Children of Silence,” Wood’s 1998 essay collection which examines an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction writers, I find the most inspiring. For Wood, literature is a fragile site for the construction of possibilities, ground reserved for the roads not taken. Speaking at the American Academy ceremony, Wood argued for the importance of imaginative ruminations because “being interested in the way things are and the way things could be are not alternatives. In fact, they need each other — there is no point in being interested in the way they could be if you aren’t interested in how they are.” This doctrine of mutually assured existence should be obvious but, in our pragmatic times, it remains exotic, even threatening. The authors Wood admires in “Children of Silence,” including Italo Calvino, Milan Kundera, Renaldo Arenas, and Jeanette Winterson, write meta-fictional or postmodern fiction, stories that are self-conscious, unrealistic, and not moralistic.

For many, including critic James Wood, whom the other Wood calls “a wonderful critic and friend,” that kind of fictional mucking around has had its day, thankfully. “James believes there is a kind of maturity in great realist fiction,” insists Michael Wood, “and he doesn’t like play and irony as much as I do. It is good to celebrate realist fiction if you think it is threatened by trendy, flashy stuff, but I don’t believe in this maturity business. Maturity is a kind of bullying word. It is not more mature to be miserable. It is not more mature to foreclose possibility, to narrow options to ‘what’s real is what’s real and if you don’t play around you are more mature.’”

The diminishment of fictional possibility is evident. “When was the last time you read an experimental story in the “New Yorker?” asks Wood. “Once, Donald Barthelme was the quintessential “New Yorker” writer. But if he submitted a story to the magazine today, it would be rejected.” When growing up is reduced to choosing the real over the possible, art’s potential to refresh the soul by shaking up language and thought languishes. Wood stands as one of the few critics whose writing resonates with the real mission of fiction, which is the art of making us think again.

Fats on a Diet

By Bill Marx

Isn’t it about time that scores for musicals didn’t have to be systematically homogenized, neutered for the safety of mainstream audiences? As theatergoers become younger it makes less sense to serve up prefab approximations of musical styles, either pseudo rock or anemic swing, rather than something that approximates the real thing. It wouldn’t take more money, just a dedication to spirit rather than acceptability.

These thoughts floated through my head while sitting through three Boston-area musicals: the Fats Waller revue, “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” at the Huntington Theatre Company,” “Memphis,” which is receiving its world premiere at the North Shore Music Theatre, and “When Pigs Fly” at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston. Back in the late ’70s, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” was a Broadway hit. “Memphis” would like to make it on the Great White Way; the show imitates the formula (rock music and social message) that turned “Hairspray” into a monster success. “When Pigs Fly,” a mega-campy pastiche of Broadway and cabaret that first played at the Lyric Stage back in 1999, reflects the Queer Eye, off-Broadway sensibility of the late Howard Crabtree.

Of the three, “When Pigs Fly” generates the most fun and is truest to its musical roots, perhaps because it proudly admits to using the peroxide of schlock. The show hangs on a feeble autobiographical hook: a high school guidance councilor tells Howard Crabtree his dream of writing, directing, and designing the costumes for musicals will happen “when pigs fly.” The show is Howard’s low budget, outr?affy response: five guys, dressed in drag or outrageous costumes (flying pigs, make-up tables etc) perform Howard’s songs, which range from send-ups of musicals to love odes to Dick Cheney. The piece doesn’t have the zip of four years ago, but the five singers warble wild, performing music that is satirically true to its source: Broadway banality.

“Memphis” attempts a more ambitious homage to music that made America great. The musical is based on the true story of Dewey Phillips, a Southern white DJ who, back in the ’50s, played rhythm and blues. The battle to popularize African-American music is a good subject, but Bon Jovi pianist David Bryan, who wrote the “Memphis” score, doesn’t include examples of the music the show is ostensibly celebrating. Perhaps he figures that Broadway likes its rock made of plastic. Rather than containing the songs Phillips would have played on the radio, sung by the likes of Ruth Brown or Muddy Waters, “Memphis” is filled with ’70s rock and power ballads. With only a small effort, such as including snatches of the real rhythm and blues, the show would have been more authentic and much more pleasurable.

Along with a non-salute to early rock there’s a jazz show without much jazz. “Ain’t Misbehavin’” includes the songs that made Fats Waller one of the great entertainers of the last century. But the HTC’s likeable production proves that these lively tunes, as well as a quartet of talented singers, aren’t enough. Some things can’t be duplicated: Fat’s impish patter, which could turn a rotten song into a comic delight, and his thundering stride piano. But where is jazz’s improvisational energy? The orchestral or piano solos? A sense of subversive wit? Waller was a roiling fount of raucousness. “Ain’t Misbehavin” is a tame supper club, each tune served up, mildly spiced, in a coffin of mellowness. In this day and age, why does Fats have to go on a diet?