Romero and Hooper

In barely over a month we’ve lost two directors who changed horror filmmaking: George Romero and Tobe Hooper. Romero’s Dead trilogy, particularly the first two films, is arguably the most influential piece of horror filmmaking since the original Dracula and Frankenstein films, and Hooper’s first film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, introduced the icon Leatherface and his deranged family to unsuspecting moviegoers and inspired nightmares for years to come. Shot in black and white, the original Night of the Living Dead had a cinéma vérité feel that Hooper would extend to color in TCM; both movies feel almost like documentaries and capture the vibrations of their time as starkly as any piece of pop art from the era.

They are also the two scariest movies I’ve ever seen.

Now, such a reaction is of course personal and subjective. How scared a film makes you depends not just on how you are wired, but how old you are when you first view the film, the context in which you encounter the film, and any number of unique circumstances. I recently watched Night of the Living Dead with my 14-year old daughter, who is just starting to explore horror films, and while she was fascinated, she wasn’t particularly scared. When I saw it for the first time, I was 11 years old and alone in the house while my parents were gone for the weekend. We lived on a farm, and my grandparents had a trailer on the farm also. The plan was for me to stay alone in the house that weekend and join my grandparents for meals. Instead I ended up spending the night in their guest room. I would later repeat—almost to the letter!—this experience with Dawn of the Dead, though this time I was a couple of years older and forced myself to stay in the house alone overnight. But I didn’t sleep. No, I sure didn’t…

Frightening—and enlightening!—as these experiences were, it’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre that has always chased me in my dreams and is still the scariest of all time for me. I was older when I saw TCM—17—and while I was alone, it was a sunny afternoon at my sister’s apartment. TCM is shot almost entirely in daylight, one of the rare classic horror films to not draw its power from the dark. I remember being pleasantly chilled while watching it, but not unduly disturbed. And yet I started having dreams about being chased by a Leatherface-type figure with a chainsaw. Funny (or not) thing is, these dreams have never gone away. I still get them at least a few times a year, sometimes much more frequently. I’ve only had a few zombie dreams, but let me tell you, I’ve had hundreds of chainsaw pursuit dreams. The details change, but I’m always being menaced with a chainsaw. I laugh about it in the daylight, typing this now…but I don’t sound so cocky when the sun goes down. Especially if I’m alone.

Both directors had up and down careers. Romero has a wealth of underrated films just begging for rediscovery—Martin (the best vampire film ever), The Crazies, Season of the Witch (uneven but rewarding), Knightriders (not a horror film but maybe his most personal film and certainly one that demonstrates there was so much more to him than zombies), Monkey Shines, The Dark Half. Not all of these are great, but each one is at least interesting. Hooper had a far more uneven career…and in fact you could argue he never made another good film after TCM. Poltergeist is hard to rate since it will forever be up for debate how much Hooper directed and how much Spielberg did; the film is not a personal touchstone for me as it is for so many but it’s impossible not to acknowledge its influence. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 traded in horror for comedy and buckets of gore; it’s entertaining enough if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing but it doesn’t even live in the same universe as the original. Eaten Alive and The Funhouse—both made between the original TCM and Poltergeist—have their moments but are mostly footnotes. Beyond that, I’ll admit I didn’t follow his career (though I’ve always wanted to see Lifeforce and I intend to do so soon) but even in horror circles the opinion of his later work seems to be pretty low. And if you are remaking The Toolbox Murders, it’s pretty hard not to argue you have gone, as M. Gira once sang, as low as low can go.

But regardless of any such missteps, both will forever be remembered for their contributions to horror cinema and the horror field in general. Romero’s influence is unavoidable (having grown beyond the horror corner to infiltrate pop culture in general), Hooper’s is less visible but no more debatable. R.I.P. to both gentlemen. We were lucky to have them.

birdsong

What did you say after my heart stopped beating? Ocean roar engulfed me; the tunnel black. When the light came back, I was looking at you and me. You bent over me, kissing my forehead, holding my hand. I cannot feel these actions. I can see the tears on your face but I cannot hear you weep. I hear only the ocean roar, which grows fainter by the second. How long before the blackness returns? I want to know what you said. I want to hear the words. I have no way to ask.

How beautiful the gardens were that summer. All I wanted to do was trace the line of your naked curves with my fingers. You can watch poetry but you can never translate it to an action that is anything less than sordid and awkward. I never stopped trembling when I touched you, and you never held it against me. Surer hands than mine should have held you, hands that could have given you the gifts you deserved. Stars and birdsong. How beautiful the gardens were, yet I could barely be troubled to look at them, my eyes never leaving you. No garden compares, no star, no birdsong.

So many things I wish I could say to you, but cannot: How beautiful you are. How I wish we could lie in bed and trace the lines on our bodies. How I long to see you in candlelight again.

Naked I sang a bridge for you. Naked you walked across it. Let us lie down here, you said, and I will write the birdsong on your back so that you will never see it and carry it with you always. What of mirrors, I asked, and ice and clear surfaces? They will not reflect the song, you said, it is for us alone. I have practiced this calligraphy since I first held a pen. Gently you pushed me facedown into the grass and began to write.

Do you believe in endless summers?

Alone I trace your lines in the air. I feel the weight of the birdsong. I cannot find you and I cannot see the birdsong. I tremble and wish for your hands.

We do not need to name the planets, you told me, it is enough that they are there. I lay my head against your chest and listened to your heart. It is enough that it is there. Your fingers stroked my hair. We could be statues and this feeling could last forever. We could be planets. We will never need names.

Alone, the birdsong and my bones gone. Alone, with nothing left to carry.

vague

The taste of fear is aluminum. The taste of sadness is tart strawberry. The taste of joy is almond lavender. It is the taste of vagueness I do not know.

I sit on a hard wall of concrete, my butt aching, and think of how many times I have awakened from sleep in my life. Such a number exists, but I cannot not reliably state it. Nor could anyone else. It is as unknowable as the amount of times I have left in my life to wake from sleep. I shift my butt, trying to distribute the ache across a wider plain. It's a wide enough horizon, for sure. I smile at this joke I've made to myself, the silly image it brings to mind, and wonder how many smiles I have left. Everything has a number. Nothing is infinite.

I should sit somewhere more comfortable, but the air here, despite its humidity, tastes fresh. I look at my shape: flabby moving parts, living cells, a shape whose beauty is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Form without definition--is such a thing possible? The very idea of form suggests there must be definition, even if we can't see its borders, sense its shape. When I leave, there will be no memory of my shape on this concrete. I can't recreate the uniqueness of any moment of my existence.

Perhaps vagueness has no taste. Perhaps we simply can't recognize it.