Into the Obscuradrome Issue 3
Hello. I’m Bob Pastorella, co-host of the This Is Horror podcast, website manager for This Is Horror, and writer. I’m the author of Mojo Rising, They’re Watching (with Michael David Wilson), and have numerous short-stories and non-fiction online and in print in various publications.
Hello. I’m Bob Pastorella, co-host of the This Is Horror podcast, website manager for This Is Horror, and writer. I’m the author of Mojo Rising, They’re Watching (with Michael David Wilson), and have numerous short-stories and non-fiction online and in print in various publications.
Previous newsletters can be found here.
I’m still trying to figure out how to newsletter.
I’ve decided to call each newsletter an issue. Was thinking episode at first, then was thinking of calling it a chapter, but hell, if this is a tv series or a book, it’s either going to be really long or sporadically updated. Issue sounds better, makes more sense to me.
Before we get into the essay, a little update on some projects I’ve talked about on social media. First up, I’m working on rewrites for The Small Hours. The beta-reader feedback so far has been very encouraging, and I really think I’m on to something here. Think Suicide Kings meets Fright Night. If you’re unfamiliar with Suicide Kings, I highly recommend you find it and watch it. I first saw it many years ago when I still went to theaters. Me and my friends went in to see one film, but when I saw the poster for Suicide Kings—Christopher Walken tied to a chair surrounded by his captors—I talked my buds into checking out the film, going in to the film cold, then walking out later with our jaws dragging the ground. I call this kind of story the ‘sleeping giant’ … basically when someone completely underestimates their opponent, finding weakness in kindness, frailty in incapacitation. Walken’s captors have severely underestimated their opponent, foolishly believing they have the upper-hand, while Walken casually manipulates them, pulling their strings all while being tied to chair.
And you’ve had to have seen Fright Night by now, right?
Not the remake … the original.
It’s one of my all-time favorite films in any genre. So vicious, so dangerous, yet fun in its execution. It’s not just one of my favorite horror movies, it’s one of my favorite movies period. Fright Night is basically Dracula meets Rear Window, but it’s also self-aware of the lore, and extremely influential to the popular horror films that followed it.
And it has Roddy McDowall, and that’s really one of the best reasons to watch it.
My next project is in the beginning stages. I have a title, which I’m not sharing at the moment. It’s basically John Wick meets The Autopsy of Jane Doe, with a nasty-ass grindhouse feel to it. The soundtrack is mostly Rob Zombie and Beast Maker with some Kyuss and Johnny Cash thrown in for good measure. I’ve been working on some variation of this story for over ten years now, and I’ve started rewriting it more times than I care to count. Hopefully this time it’ll stick.
Your teeth are in my neck, again
Vampires are back, and they’re different now.
Translation: vampires have always been here, they just went underground for a while.
Nasty ass, decomposing, rotting flesh, monster vampires that crave only one thing: Your blood.
It took the sparkle for vampires to make it round trip. Tapping into the old folklore, this time digging deeper into it than ever before, vampires aren’t different now, they’re restored back to the top of the food-chain. They are the apex predator of horror, and possibly the only thing that can keep a slasher from coming back for a sequel, unless they become a vampire as well. (Actually, I just thought of an idea for a slasher!)
Creators have a wealth of folklore to determine how their vampires work. They set the rules of transmission—drink their blood, a bite, or both—and how to ultimately destroy the beast. Does sunlight harm them? Crosses, or holy water … abundant faith? Off with their heads or a stake through the heart? (Extra points if said stake is long enough to pin the vampire to the earth … dust to dust, ashes to ashes.) Mix them up or stay within the confines of the folklore, creators have hundreds of years of history to backup what makes their bloodsuckers tick.
The one thing that stands out about vampires now is they are dangerous again. Twilight gave audiences vampires they could relate to, in ways never really seen before. It humanized the beast, and for many, that humanization felt like a taming. Obviously, many readers and audiences like the film franchise, and I fully believe there is still room for that kind of vampire. But it’s not just that they’re dangerous now … it’s more about why they are dangerous. The last thing we need is more edgy vampires. True Blood gave us several seasons of that before finally exhausting itself. Because of years of market saturation and exposure, vampire characters today don’t need to be edgy or hip or cool. They’re free to be as human or inhuman as possible, and the vampire characters we relate to the most are those that see their condition as both a blessing and curse, simply because in these strange times most of us can see our lives in a very similar manner. We strive to find the coping mechanisms to just get through the day, and sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes it’s like pushing boulders uphill.
“Nobody trusts anybody now. We’re all very tired.” isn’t just a quote from The Thing. It’s our mantra, our creed. It’s how we deal with life in this day and age, and it’s exactly why vampires are dangerous again. The stories don’t need the backdrop of a pandemic to drive that sentiment, it’s ingrained in our souls.
Today’s vampires care about themselves, their children, their families, their friends. And they will do whatever needs to be done to take care of them, even if it means damning them to an un-life they didn’t chose for survival.
That’s the key element, because it’s the key to our lives. Survival.
With so many vampire books, films, tv series, comics, etc., out now and coming around the bend, keeping track is a little overwhelming. Sorry, if you’re looking for a list, you won’t find it here, but I will recommend The Shed. It’s streaming on SHUDDER and is worth the rate. Check out Bliss, also on SHUDDER. Blood Red Sky on Netflix. The Transfiguration, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the recent Carmilla adaptation, okay … I’m kinda doing a list here. Megan Fox has a vampire movie releasing this month called Night Teeth.
I could go on and on.
Fiction wise, I recommend In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson, and Rovers by Richard Lange. Also check out T.E. Grau’s novella They Don’t Come Home Anymore. Television wise, I’m going to recommend something soon in this newsletter, but I’d be crazy not to mention What We Do in the Shadows. Confession: I’ve never seen the film or the series. I WILL be watching it soon because I’ve heard so many good things about it, so the fault is all mine, and it will remedied soon. Let the Right One In has been ordered to series over at Showtime, and there’s an Interview with the Vampire series in the works.
When the new horror boom began around 2015-2016 (probably a little before 2015 actually), it was the result of pushback of a global conservative regime still ongoing. (And that’s about as political as I’m going to get here, but please remember art itself is extremely political.) The horror trope trend then was ghosts and hauntings. All kinds of ghosts and hauntings. Creepy ghosts that like to hang out in the corner of your vision, ghosts so real you don’t know they’re dead, haunted houses that want you dead. Based on the storylines I’ve seen I’m beginning to believe my apartment is probably haunted. Or I need a really good electrician. What made these ghosts and haunting stories powerful were how the characters conveyed emotion organically to the story. Make us give a damn about a character and we feel everything they do: joy, sorrow, grief, anger, horror. Especially horror. And if there’s one thing prestige television has done over the past two decades is make us give a damn about characters we wouldn’t give a second glance in real life.
What we’re going to see with vampires is a return to their roots and their fight for survival at any cost, with human characters (victims) forced to contend with these creatures of the night while dealing with all the bullshit life has thrown in their path. We’re going to see some blending of genres, with comedy, romance, mystery, westerns, and science-fiction all wanting to play in the world of vampires. The post-apocalyptic angle has possibly played itself out, so we probably won’t see too many stories of a ruined, grey world with nomadic vampires stalking fallout survivors after the world turned to permanent midnight.
Speaking of which …
*[SPOILER WARNING! Beyond this point are spoilers … you have been warned!]*
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.
Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series Midnight Mass is about vampires.
I knew about the series, but purposely avoided all information with the exception of the trailer, which really didn’t show us anything at all about what the series was about, prior to watching. Went in as cold as possible. Clues show up in the first episode: mysterious creature flying over the island, large crate with dirt in it, poor kittehs washed ashore after a terrible storm with holes ripped in their necks (hey Netflix, how about adding animal death to your content warning, ya bastards!), and every single picket fence on the island looked like a stake used to kill a vampire.
When I saw these clues, I started getting a little excited. I’ve been talking up vampires on social media for a while now, because I’ve noticed the trend of vampire related properties being developed. I’ve felt they were about to blow up again based on the sheer volume of content. I’ve been a fan of Flanagan’s work for a while now, and he just keeps getting better and better. He’s the master at giving us characters we can give a damn about. They’re flawed and bent and twisted and occasionally emotional wrecks, but we can relate, and sometimes we actually like them, and they are always compelling and interesting. Flanagan knows what creeps us out, and as much as he says he doesn’t like ‘jump scares”, he is quite adept at making us jump out of our seats in ways we never see coming. So I knew what to expect with his characters in Midnight Mass.
But I didn’t expect vampires.
By the third episode, my brain exploded, because there was no doubt about what was going on. Sure, we still didn’t know the rules of transmission (drink the blood, get bitten, both?, no sunlight? stake through the heart? holy water and crucifixes?) at that point, but it didn’t matter because we learn that nice, young charismatic Father Paul was actually Monsignor Pruitt all along made young again by an angel (vampire).
Okay, here’s a sticky point, and many others have said as much: You mean to tell me there was no one on that whole fucking island who didn’t realize at any point near the end that they were dealing with vampires? No one? Not even one of the kids? Like one of them stoner altar boys should have had a clue, right?
No one?
Okay …
At this point, Flanagan asks a lot of his audience. He wants you to suspend belief, again. He wants you to believe that Pruitt, once old and struggling with the onset of Alzheimers, now made young and whole, decades wiped away in mere seconds, and all of this was made possible from the power of angel. What else could it be? It couldn’t be a vampire if a miracle occurred, right? Why, a vampire is the furtherest thing in his mind. The bible tells us many times we cannot fathom the idea of an angel, that we would think the very sight of an angel to be monstrous. This is why they appear as burning bushes in the bible. Blinded by his faith, Pruitt cannot believe such a maker of miracles could be malevolent.
No, this must be an angel.
And he will take it to his flock, to heal them. Heal them emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
I think this is where the series has its most polarizing effect. Some are not able to suspend that belief. Admittedly, it did pop in my head more than once while watching, but something told me that if presented so that some of the characters would believe that this is the way, the only way, to true enlightenment, salvation, and life everlasting, then some of the characters would also see it for the lie it was.
Just like the last four years.
Doug Murano, editor and owner of Bad Hand Books, mentioned this on social media. I’m surprised I didn’t see it myself while initially watching the series. Yeah, I know I said I wouldn’t get political again, but Midnight Mass is at its core an allegory about the last four years in America, how masses of people could push against the tide of evidence and put all their blind faith into someone obviously not qualified to lead, anyone, ever.
So yes, these people, their homes and lives devastated from a previous oil spill, feeling the relentless crunch of socio-economic burdens, faithless with no where to turn, would most definitely believe a charismatic priest who produced a bonafide miracle among them. They would see this miracle as good, from the power of God, and their faith would be renewed, all the while drinking the Kool-Aid (the blood of Christ) never realizing evil is thriving within them.
But I digress …
It’s obvious Flanagan loves Stephen King. I mean, that’s a given, right? Midnight Mass has so many similarities to ‘Salem’s Lot, but at the same time it’s completely different. Flanagan took his inspiration and created something new and very personal with this series, unabashedly wearing his influences on his shirt sleeves like a badge. And while we have a bloodsucking monster, the true villain is the soul-sucking Bev Keane. Loyal only to God and the church, everyone of us knows one of these religious zealots in real life, those holier-than-thou types who will always pray for you and bless you, then just as soon cuss you out trying to get out of the church parking lot. Peace be with you, indeed. Quick to interpret the bible as she sees fit while complaining about others cherry-picking the parts that show her in the wrong. I feel that Flanagan could have heavily downplayed the vampire angle of the story and pitted Bev against the townspeople, and ultimately Father Paul, and we’d still have a compelling series. King has his fair share of religious zealot characters, so it’s easy to see how that rubbed off on Flanagan. Fortunately, we learn God didn’t love Bev more, and she shows her true colors at the end, literally and figuratively trying to bury her head in the sand. Someone give Samantha Sloyan all the awards.
And Hamish Linklater. I’ve heard of him, but never saw him in action until this series, and he is a powerhouse. The man is on fire in every scene. Kudos to the rest of the cast as well, everyone delivered their A-game.
The series isn’t perfect, but nothing truly is. Its missteps are slight and insignificant in comparison to the thrilling story, the talented cast, and the quality production put into each episode. People worked hard to make this a success, and it shows.
I can’t wait to watch it again.
Midnight Mass, keeping its secrets as close to the chest as possible, slipped vampires back into the mainstream without even batting an eye, and we lapped it up like blood from the vein. So when I say vampires are back, I mean Vampires are back, Baby!
See ya next time as I use my own backyard as a creepy writing prompt.
Stay tuned …
peace&love
Bob
peace&love
Bob