Many of his works are very much Colonial Horror and feed right into that Witch Hunter ideal. You can see Sir Olivier's comments on the sidebar if you haven't already.
And now, an issue I've been wrestling with - designing and working with monsters. In honor of the upcoming Grand Tome of Adversaries, I’ll talk about the three archetypes for monsters that Stephen King talked about in Danse Macabre. According to King, monsters generally fall into one of three categories: The Vampire. The Werewolf. The Thing.
The Vampire
The vampire archetype of monster is basically the monster that can pass for a human. Part of what makes the vampire of myth and legend so frightening is that it is a creature that can appear as a friend, loved one, or seducer. This is evokes the classic terror of making the familiar unfamiliar. The idea that your very best friend or loved one could be a monster is quite disturbing to us.
Hannibal Lecter is a sort of a vampire. On the one hand, he’s very urbane and intellectual. On the other hand, he’s a killer and cannibal. In fact, with Lecter’s preference for flesh, he’s not very far removed from the vampire at all, which drinks blood instead of eating flesh to survive. In the same way, Lecter eats people for his own survival. Not the physical survival of his body, but for his own psychological survival, because it’s his deep psychosis which drives him to do these deeds.
Moreover, most serial killers in books and movies nowadays are really vampire archetypes, updated for modern tastes. Like the vampires of old, these modern monsters stalk the streets, looking to prey on victims. And what makes them so terrible is that they could be the friendly neighbor next door. There’s also the added fear that serial killers are real, while vampires are part of the realm of myth.
Interestingly enough, in Silence of the Lambs we almost want to like and respect Lecter, despite his sinister nature. This leads me to my next point, which is that vampire-archetype monsters often lead people to twisted power fantasies. It’s fun to read The Vampire Lestat or play the Vampire RPG because it’s fun to the be the bad guy. And it’s even more fun to play a bad guy that is at least somehow familiar to us. Something we can at least understand on some level.
The Werewolf
The werewolf monster is a creature in horror fiction which is tortured in some way. It can’t really help being what it is. But we, as society, can’t allow it to live, either.
There are numerous legends and tales about this sort of horror. The story of the Wampas Mask is a classic story of someone who has to essentially trade in their humanity to save their community. To save her community from a terrible monster, a woman has to don a mask that will frighten the people away, but it makes her an outcast to her society, for the mask turns her into a monster as well. The reason the story resonates with us, is that we recognize that tragic choice of having to choose between our own well-being and that of others.
Werewolf stories are not just horrific, but gut-wrenching. They usually involve the theme of looking too far into the Abyss and becoming what you fear the most. A great example of this would be Edgar Alan Poe’s The Black Cat. In this classic horror tale, the narrator increasingly becomes deranged, eventually harming his beloved pets and then murdering his wife. The slow transition of normal man into a creature of madness is truly terrifying for a profound reason. Basically, the werewolf story teaches us that within all of us there lies a beast, and that this evil can be awakened within each of us.
Side Note: I think that the most poignant moment of the film 28 Days Later is when the main character has to surrender his own humanity in order to defeat the soliders, who sort of fit into the vampire category. After all, the soliders invite the main characters into their home, feed them and offer them shelter, only to turn the tables and prey on their guests in the end.
The Thing
The final creature archetype is the Thing. The thing is a horror archetype that represents the unknowable Other. It represents that part of ourselves and the world that is mysterious and unknown.
Ripley’s Alien is a classic example of the thing archetype. We’re not exactly sure where the Alien comes from, or what it’s purpose is. We’re not sure if the Aliens are intelligent or animalistic. We’re not entirely sure what their motives are.
With the thing archetype, the creature is almost a force of nature. It cannot be reasoned with or bargained with. Unlike the vampire or werewolf, the thing cannot be empathized with. Indeed, the thing is so terrifying precisely because we cannot understand it. It is the manifestation of the fear of the unknown in a walking, crawling, or flying form.
A New Archetype?
That leads me to the zombie. The zombie is a curious monsters archetype to me. At first glance, the zombie really fits the thing archetype. You can’t reason with zombies. You can bargain with them. And even if you explain them with a virus or something like that, there is a definite mystery about them. Their very inhumanity makes them unknowable and horrifying.
However, tied up in this archetype of the thing is the archetype of the werewolf. There is the terrible fear in the zombie story of becoming a zombie – becoming the very thing you fear the most. So I’ll give zombies their own special category.
Maybe I’ll talk about that next.
Final Note
I think many monster can be different archetypes depending upon how they are view. The classic Grendel monster from Beowulf would certainly fit into the "thing" category. However, recent fiction about the creature casts him in the "werewolf" like. It's not about what the monster is or is not. It's about how the story is told.
All for now.
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