Early story (Severity **)

Proving that I had a taste for body horror even as a pre-teen, here is a short (unfinished) story from when I was that age.  It is simply titled ‘Nightmare’.

There was something very odd about my dad.  Every night, after supper, he went down to the old cellar, and never allowed me or my mum to come and see what he was doing.

One night, he rushed downstairs to the cellar.  A moment later, he dashed back up again.  “Where’s your rabbit?” said my dad hastily.

“He’s up in my bedroom,” I said, “but what do you want him for?”

“He’s the last ingredient for my experiment,” shouted my dad.  Puzzled, I and my mum followed him.  We saw him pick up my rabbit.

“You can’t take him,” I said.

“Oh yes I can,” he said, running back down to the cellar.

I was determined to find out what he was doing, and I sprinted down after him.  I turned the handle – and saw that it was a huge laboratory.  Tubes and containers filled the room, and bloody limbs, heads and legs lay strewn on the floor.

“You’re not allowed in here!” thundered my dad.

I stood my ground, and said firmly, “where is my rabbit?”

“He’s here,” said my dad, holding up a blob of foul red ooze; a rabbit’s head was just visible underneath the disgusting stuff.

“You can’t do that!” I shouted.

“I can,” he said calmly.  “It’s simple – all you need is a jellyfish, a rabbit, and blood.”

I was about to go insane; but I decided to hide behind a table to watch him.  My dad flung my now hideous rabbit into a machine.  It whirred for a moment

Seriously dark dream (Severity *****)

This is the most unpleasant dream-film I have ever experienced.  I never fail to enjoy the memory of my visions, but this one genuinely stunned me.  I had it while napping one early afternoon about a year ago, just after watching scenes from the early Eighties horror film The Keep (1) on YouTube.  The Keep has the interesting premise of having a bunch of Nazis encounter a manifestation of ultimate evil – a demon, imprisoned in the Romanian keep of the title which they are occupying.  The dream was only partially influenced by this film, however; it seemed to have more to do with the 80s sci-fi adventure Salute of the Jugger, which I had also watched recently at that time.  Salute of the Jugger (2) is set in a post apocalyptic desert world, in which teams of warriors known as ‘Juggers’ battle for goods and prestige by playing games of what is essentially a debased and highly violent version of American football.  The dream was also heavily resonant of that most downright bizarre of body horror movies Society (3).  In its final act our hero discovers that his entire life as an LA rich kid has been a build up to becoming something worse than a meal for the shape shifting moneyed classes of Beverly Hills.

~

The VHS box art for the film is misleading.  It correctly locates the film in the desert, but the presence of a giant warrior robot on the cover is at best only partially accurate.   The story concerns a barbaric society living in a post apocalyptic desert world, ruled by a savage, priest-like aristocracy.  The film’s protagonist has been captured by this eminently cruel band and remains imprisoned inside the walls of their desert compound for the best part of the film, wherein he is tormented by threats of a horrible fate!  Meanwhile there are some frighteningly intense scenes as the youth of the aristocracy perform their initiation rites by way of sporting feats.  They wear huge baroque suits of armour, in which they resemble manga style robots (which is as close to actual robots as the film gets) (4).

As I watch the film I become aware that I have seen it before.  Indeed I am familiar with it – right up, that is, till just before the very last scene.  If I have watched this scene I have done so only once.  Hazy half memories of intensely harrowing and horrible imagery have led me to avoid it ever since.  Now, without quite knowing why, I am going to sit it through!

It is night-time in the desert.  Surrounded by his relations and other members of the ruling caste, the chief of the society stands on the ramparts of the compound, facing inward.  He is going to open up a portal to the ‘Other World’, and thus precipitate the destruction of the hero (and presumably great ill for the rest of the world!).  The ritual involves an act of obscene transformation.  The head of the chief gorges madly with blood and turns a liver red.  It distends and the boggling eyes, vividly white by contrast and with no irises, protrude halfway out of the distorted face (5).  Inexorably the swelling continues and as it does so the crown of the head expands toweringly out of all proportion (6).  Before the gathered ensemble the portal begins to open – a disc of dancing primary colours.  But something is wrong with the chief!  He cannot sustain the transformation and the portal is wavering.  The last shot I see is a close-up of his face.  The balloon of his head has sagged completely and flattened out, so that his features are now over twice as wide as before.  Bathed in the fading light of the portal and wreathed in wisps of sickly smoke (7), his now livid and ghostly visage is disintegrating into folds of skin.  The eyes have shrunken into pearly red orbs, glowing dimly before they fade like dying embers.

(1) The Keep (1983)
(2) Salute of the Jugger (1989)
(3) Society (1989)
(4) A manga robot
(5) Concept art for the Vogons in the film version of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
(6) A real-life exceptionally serious facial deformity
(7) From the logo of the film Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Body Horror, the genre (Severity *)

David Cronenberg is probably the director you would associate most with body horror; in fact his output up until quite recently could be considered almost exclusively of this type. Famous examples include: The Fly (1986), featuring a disintegrating human-fly hybrid; Scanners (1981) – humans who can mentally control and manipulate the bodies of other people (occasionally to the extent of making their heads explode!); Existenz (1999), wherein people experience a virtual other world by umbilically plugging themselves into fleshy, organic consoles.

Other harrowing examples of the genre include: Society (1989), (in my opinion the most grotesque) in which the rich, as exemplified by the moneyed set of Beverly Hills, are revealed to be melding shape-shifters who keep their own gene pool healthy by ‘shunting’ (don’t ask) members of the lower classes; Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, in which the body a Tokyo salaryman, once a guinea pig for his own father’s unspeakable experimentations, sprouts phallic guns when goaded into a murderous rage by his estranged brother; Cat People (1982), which has the beautiful Nastassja Kinski (and Malcolm McDowell) undergoing hideous transformations as they periodically change into black panthers; From Beyond (1986), an adaptation of the short story by H.P. Lovecraft (himself a possible literary precursor of the genre), in which a deranged scientist shifts into a trans-dimensional state, becoming a hideous shape shifter in the process.

I rate, and even treasure, many of these films because unlike many examples of the so-called horror genre they actually tread the line between being casually entertaining and genuinely disturbing.

Innerspace (Type: Modification) (Severity ***)

In the 80s sci-fi film Innerspace a submersible and its pilot, played by Dennis Quaid, are miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of an unwitting stiff, played by Martin Short.  Meanwhile, rival villains are intent on destroying the hero and his craft (and by extension his host.  In one scene a henchman of the chief villain is placed inside a submersible robotic suit, so that once miniaturized he too can be injected and go after the hero in his submersible.

I dream a heavily modified version of this scene.  In it a huge notionally-human, but prodigiously mutated human creature lies on a couch in a bare, brightly lit room.  It has a long slug-shaped opalescent body, but no limbs.  Its head is almost identical to that of the cyclopean, tentacular one of the Dalek-human in the recent Doctor Who episode Evolution of the Daleks.  Its face is perhaps slightly flatter and pinker and moreover the corners of its mouth are pinned to the surface of a glinting metal headrest with rectangular prongs.  Far from being in pain or distress however the creature (which is clearly malign) seems to be enjoying its situation.

While it evokes the outsize suit from the original story by its sheer size, rather than being shrunk itself the creature is seemingly in the process of giving birth to a microscopic attacker.  Although this can hardly be too taxing a process for its huge body, it still arches dramatically in a manner that recalls the alien queen giving birth viviparously in Alien Resurrection.  As the birth occurs the ‘offspring’, whatever it is, is rescued in a small red container like a bucket.  This has been placed over the intersection at the creature’s ‘crotch’ of two long flaps of skin running down the length of its belly.  The positioning of the flaps on the body – together with the creature’s general attitude on the couch – is strongly reminiscent of a painting by H. R. Giger depicting another alien creature lolling in a bathtub.  Throughout the entire process the creature remains unambiguously male.

While still in the dream it occurs to me that this scene is a vivid expression of 80s ‘techno-fear’.  And, in and adjunct to the main narrative, I am using a still of the mutant’s head as part of the design for a CD compilation called So 80s it Hurts!