Fright Night: 1980s + vampires=fun

You won't see Fright Night, a semi-obscure, fun little vampire flick from 1986, on many "best of" horror movie lists. Nevertheless, it's one of my personal favorites. Fright Night packs into it all the elements I ask of a good horror film: A decent plot, some reasonable acting, a little mayhem, some monsters, a handful of nice visual effects, and a little bit of skin. On all these requirements, Fright Night delivers.

You can tell that writer/director Tom Holland is a horror fan. The film is very much an homage to Hammer Horror, a UK-based series of classic monster films that ran from roughly the late 1950's to the early 1970's whose line included such memorable titles as Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein. Fright Night is also a love-letter to the once-prevalent late-night horror celebrity-hosted movie shows such as Elvira Movie Macabre and Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs. In fact, the movie derives its name from a fictional and self-referential B-horror television program.

The basic plot of Fright Night is as follows: Main character Charlie Brewster is up late watching Fright Night while making out with his girlfriend Amy (pretty much a perfect horror movie beginning). Glancing out his window, Charlie sees two men carrying a coffin into the basement of a vacant house next door. The next day, a stream of gorgeous prostitutes begin to show up at the house, followed shortly by evening news reports of a series of murders.

Charlie begins to spy on the going-on at the house, and late one night he sees his new neighbor, Jerry Dandrige, kissing a beautiful woman in the window. Dandridge leans in to kiss her neck and opens his mouth wide--to reveal a set of wicked fangs. He's just about to bite the woman when he looks up and sees Charlie watching, wide-eyed. Dandridge pulls down the shade to complete his feast.

Convinced Dandridge is a vampire and behind the string of murders, Charlie seeks out the services of Peter Vincent, Vampire Killer and host of Fright Night (and an obvious 1:1 correlation to Hammer Horror's Peter Cushing). Vincent has just been fired from Fright Night, which has fallen sharply in the ratings due to the public's current thirst for "psychotic ski masked killers." But Vincent, thinking that Charlie is just a crazy kid, refuses his appeal for help.

Desperate, Charlie decides to sneak next door and drive a stake into Dandridge's heart. Amy and Charlie's friend Ed Thompson (another horror fan appropriately nicknamed Evil), don't believe Charlie's claims that Dandridge is a vampire, but in order to stop him from committing murder they recruit Vincent to perform a phony "vampire testing" ceremony on Dandridge. "Just like in Orgy of the Dead!" says Evil. Dandridge drinks holy water (tap water) supplied by Vincent and passes the "test." But Vincent, exiting the house, notices in a handmirror that Dandridge casts no reflection. The action really picks up from there.

Some of my favorite elements from Fright Night include the following:

Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandridge. Dandridge must have done some film study of the 1979 film Dracula when prepping for his role, as he reminds me of a funnier, more self-deprecating Frank Langella. Dandridge is not in the mold of a frightening Nosferatu, a-la Kurt Barlow from Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. Rather, he's a handsome seducer and pours on the sex appeal to charm his way into his victim's lives.

Dandridge is introduced in a great scene that starts when Evil tells Charlie that a vampire cannot enter someone's house unless he is invited inside by its rightful owner. That night when nailing his bedroom window shut Charlie's mother calls him downstairs. "I had someone over I'd like you to meet," she says. The look on Charlie's face when he sees Dandridge reclining in his living room easy chair is priceless.

Classic vampires--with a twist. Fright Night has all the standard vampire trappings I like: An aversion to crosses and holy water, sleeping in coffins, avoiding daylight, inhuman strength, shape-shifting ability, etc. I don't like stories that mess too much with the old tropes. But Fright Night makes subtle tweaks to the formula that work. For example, instead of a broken down, Gothic-style home or a haunted Transylvanian castle, Dandridge lives in a not too out of the ordinary home in the heart of a suburban neighborhood.

Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent. McDowall is the best actor in the film and his transformation from a phony, self-absorbed small TV star to real-life heroic vampire killer is a joy to watch.

1980's nostalgia. Fright Night is very much a period piece and has all the trappings (the distinct clothes and hairstyles, even a cheesy nightclub with synthesizer music) that those who grew up the decade know and love.

Fright Night isn't without its flaws. One subplot in particular (Dandridge is drawn to Amy, Charlie's girlfriend, because she looks like a woman he used to love ages ago) is not at all developed and wholly unnecessary. But overall it's another film that, along with The Lair of the White Worm and An American Werewolf in London, treads the horror and humor line just perfectly. It's certainly given me great enjoyment over the years and has held up to multiple October viewings.

An American Werewolf in London: Lycanthropy has never been so fun

"Stay on the road, keep clear of the moors... beware the moon, lads."

--Unnamed patron of the Slaughtered Lamb, from An American Werewolf in London

In his non-fiction study of the horror genre, Danse Macabre, Stephen King lays out the case that evil in fiction can be broken out into three archetypes--the Vampire, the Werewolf, and the Thing Without a Name. According to King, the Werewolf archetype includes stories that explore the evil lurking within mankind, "something vicious in the human makeup that has not yet been bred out."

But when it comes to actual on-screen depictions of the beasts themselves, werewolves have received a middle child's neglect--or worse, outright abuse (see most of The Howling series, the miserable An American Werewolf in Paris, etc.). One of the few and notable celluloid exceptions is the terrific 1981 film An American Werewolf in London, for my money still the best werewolf film of all time and a true standout in the horror genre.

An American Werewolf in London opens with sweeping views of the moors of Northern England. The sinister and mist-shrouded landscape is ringed with steep hills that seem to conceal something terrible, a hungry creature watching the land for potential victims. There is nowhere to hide or to run. Civilization (such as it can be called) consists of small towns huddled in vales, points of light in the darkness.

Over this opening visual sequence comes the song "Blue Moon" (with its ominous line, "Now I'm no longer alone.") This juxtaposition of light-hearted music and dread-filled imagery sets the tone for the remainder of this underappreciated horror classic. Director John Landis' skillful balancing of comedy and horror is in large part what makes An American Werewolf in London so enduring and memorable.

As the film opens, Jack and David (played by actor David Naughton), two young American travelers hiking their way across europe on an ill-fated vacation, are hitchiking on the back of a farm truck with a load of sheep, and are unceremoniously dumped at an intersection in the heart of the moors. The two walk into a small village and, seeking comfort from the cold, enter an inn ominously named The Slaughtered Lamb. Jack makes the mistake of asking about a pentagram on the wall and the mood in the inn immediately turns hostile and sour. Finding themselves unwanted, Jack and David prepare to leave into the moonlit light. As they depart a local issues an ominous warning: "Stay on the road, keep clear of the moors... beware the moon, lads."

In a terrifyingly effective sequence, David and Jack are stalked on the moors and savagely attacked by a werewolf. Jack suffers a horrible death and David is left wounded and bleeding... to himself become a werewolf at the next full moon. While recouperating in a London hospital, David and his nurse, Alex, become romantically involved. But their idyllic romance is interrupted by David's horrible dreams, which include sequences of himself running nude through the woods, transforming into something monstrous, as well as visions of wanton destruction inflicted on those he loves. This is the lycanthrope lurking inside David, dark porents of the horror he will soon unwillingly inflict on the people of London.

Once again Landis injects levity back into the story with the reappearance of Jack. Though he's now undead, and horribly mauled to boot, Jack retains his wisecracking, self-deprecating personality (in fact, the two chat about Jack's funeral service back in the United States, with Jack complaining about his grief-stricken girlfriend finding solace in the bed of another man). Jack tells David that the only way the curse of lycanthropy can be broken--and Jack's soul laid to rest--is to end the werewolf's bloodline, of which David is now the inheritor. "Take your life David. Kill yourself--before you kill others," Jack urges.

Like the voice of David's conscience, Jack returns again and again throughout the film, his visage growing worse and worse with each appearance due to the onset of rot, each time imploring David to take his own life. By the end of the film all the flesh has fallen away from Jack's face, leaving a grinning skull. In a memorable scene, David meets the heavily-decayed Jack in a sleazy adult movie theatre along with six other victims of his first murderous rampage in London. Their mauled corpses offer suggestions as to how David can best kill himself as the grunts and sighs of a porno flick drone on in the background.

All in all, this is one of my all-time favorite horror films and one that I find myself returning to annually each Halloween.

I won't spoil the ending, but I'd be remiss if didn't mention at least a few other of my favorite scenes/elements from the film:

The werewolf transformation sequence. Done prior to the advent of CGI, this is a masterpiece of latex, fake hair, and camera tricks that, 27 years later, remains the best werewolf transformation ever put to film. Naughton does a great job of conveying the agony of changing into a werewolf as his body is wracked with unnatural growths, including lengthening leg bones, a snout bursting through his face, and hands and feet that stretch and sprout claws.

David's attempt to get arrested. When David discovers to his horror that he is a werewolf and responsible the murders of six London civilians, he attempts to get arrested and thrown behind bars to prevent himself from killing again. He runs up to a policeman and begs to be taken to jail ("I want you to arrest me you asshole!"). When the officer refuses, he shouts at the growing crowd, "Queen Elizabeth is a man, Prince Charles is a faggot, Winston Churchill was full of shit, Shakespeare was French!" This is laugh-out-loud funny.

The subway scene. In his werewolf form David pursues a businessman in the subway tunnels beneath London. Landis wisely takes a cue from Jaws and keeps the werewolf largely off-screen, which proves very effective: Its deep, bestial growl echoing in the cavernous mouth of the subway tunnel is terrifying, as are the few glimpses we get of hate-filed eyes and gray fur. In the businessman's panicked looks over his shoulder we can see the approach of his own horrible death (I note that when Landis does show the werewolf in the full light of the London streetlamps at the end of the film, it's not nearly as scary).

I also have to give props to the soundtrack, which includes the aforementioned "Blue Moon," as well as other appropriate werewolf songs (Van Morrison's "Moondance" and "Bad Moon Rising" by CCR).

The perverse underbelly of horror: A review of The Lair of the White Worm

Note: I have a weakness for horror films of all types--good and bad, classic and B-grade, you name it--that the approach of Halloween always brings out. The following is the first review of a couple of lesser-known horror films that also happen to be among my favorites.

Funny, gruesome, sexy, campy, hallucinogenic, uneven, and twisted are just a few of the adjectives I'd use to describe The Lair of the White Worm. Directed by Ken Russell, this 1988 horror film is supposedly based on a Bram Stoker novel of the same name, and I say supposedly because, although I've never read Stoker's novel, the plot summaries I've reviewed bear almost no resemblance to the movie.

The basic plot summary is as follows: A visiting student archeologist (Angus Flint) uncovers the skull of an enormous snake while excavating the buried remains of an ancient Roman temple in the quiet, pastoral village of Derbyshire. His find lends weight to the old Derbyshire folklore that a knight named John D'Ampton slew a great man-eating-worm/wyrm (i.e., dragon) that terrorized the countryside centuries before.

Angus is staying in the home of two comely lasses named Mary and Eve, whose parents disappeared a year earlier while walking along a wooded path near the home of the mysterious Lady Sylvia. Sylvia is soon revealed to be a vampiric snake-woman and worshipper of the ancient snake god Dionan. Sylvia later captures Eve as a living sacrifice for Dionan, and it's up to Angus, Mary, and James D'Ampton--the many-times great-grandson of the legendary hero John D'Ampton--to stop Sylvia and destroy the ancient evil dwelling in the dark caverns overlooking Derbyshire.

I strongly urge highly religious people (and, in particular, devout Catholics) to steer clear of The Lair of the White Worm since it contains some sadistic, fever-dream flashbacks of cruelty, murder, and worse inflicted on nuns and other religious symbols/personages. But if you can overlook these elements, and a couple of other bizarre and mostly nonsensical cut-scenes/dream sequences (which include an erotically-charged lesbian wrestling match in the interior of a Concorde jet), The Lair of the White Worm has a lot to offer.

For all its faults, I find The Lair of the White Worm compulsively watchable and enjoyable. Here are some of the reasons why:

The Lovecraftian vibe. The Lair of the White Worm has a strong "Thing that should not be," mythic, elder-evil feel to it, starting with the opening credits, red letters superimposed over a menacing cave mouth that portends something evil lurking within. Russell smartly and humorously inserts snake-like imagery and serpentine allusions into the film, building up to the "big reveal" at the end. He also succeeds in infusing the action with the dark history of Derbyshire, a small town that nearly two millennia ago was the site of a Roman-era cult dedicated to the worship of the snake-god Dionin. You could run a great (albeit half-slapstick) Call of Cthulhu game following this script.

Amanda Donohoe. To say that Donohoe (Lady Sylvia) chews scenery in this film is an understatement. She is absolutely stunning and sexy--and plays a wonderfully wicked vampiric snake woman to boot. Donohoe also manages to display a lot of flesh, which is definitely part of the film's appeal.

Hugh Grant. I liked Grant in this, even more so because the actor who went on to star in safe, family comedies like Nine Months doubtless would like to forget ever being in this film.

The camp. For all its gore and scary scenes, you're not supposed to take The Lair of the White Worm seriously. Russell lays on the campiness pretty thick--and it works. One of my favorite scenes has D'Ampton telling Angus about the legend of the D'Ampton worm as the latter shoves forkfuls of pickled earthworms into his mouth while attempting to talk with his mouth absolutely overflowing.

The biblical allusions. These are at times a bit ham-fisted but they do add another dimension to the film. We have Eve, the pure and virginal maiden, kidnapped by Sylvia, the serpent, who seduces her from a tree a-la the Garden of Eden. James D'Ampton is in the middle of the conflict, drawn to the sluttish Sylvia by his lust and to the chaste Eve by his heart. This tension is drawn out in a truly bizarre dream sequence/lesbian wrestling match I alluded to previously.

The bad effects. Most of the "special effects" in this film aren't so special, but I like them all the better for it. One of my favorites is a scene in which James D'Ampton cuts a snake-woman in half with a sword, leaving her legs and upper body writhing a pool of blood. Only it's painfully obvious that the two halves were created with two actors sticking up their legs and upper body through the floor of the set. It's a scene that's sure to bring to a smile to fans of schlock horror.

To read more about this fine (?) film, I recommend this Web site: http://www.geocities.com/lairof/frame.htm

Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard: A review

The echoes of Robert E. Howard's life can be found in the places where he best lived it--in his copious amount of fiction and verse. And while that is a good place to start forming a complete picture of Howard, eventually the Lone Star State will rear its ungainly head and bellow, "Well, what about me?" You can always take the man out of Texas, but it's impossible to take Texas out of the man.

--Mark Finn, Blood and Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard

It's hard for me to compare Mark Finn's Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard, with any other biography of Howard, for the simple fact that it's the first full-length treatment of Howard's life that I've read. But over the years I've picked up a lot of detritus on the life of the man who brought us larger than life, pulp heroes like Conan of Cimmeria and Solomon Kane, gathering enough scattered bits of information to form what I thought was a pretty accurate picture of one of my favorite writers: Immensely talented, yet socially malajusted, overly dependent on his mother, with paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies.

Fortunately, Finn has set the record straight on Howard's character with Blood & Thunder, presenting an alternative view that brings Howard into focus as a colorful and misunderstood young man who took his own life largely due to circumstances beyond his control. Finn admittedly wrote his book as a counterpoint to the only other full-length biography of Howard, L. Sprague de Camp's Dark Valley Destiny, which according to Finn is responsible for many of the inaccurate myths surrounding Howard's life. "I tried to think of everything that I didn't like about de Camp's effort, and then I tried very hard not to do that," writes Finn. This is both admirable and, in a few places, limiting.

Blood & Thunder's strength to me is its claim that Howard was very much a product of his environment. The creator of Conan of Cimmeria and Kull the Conqueror was born and raised in early 20th century Texas, one of the last vestiges of American frontier life. Howard's father, a physician, moved Robert and his mother from small town to small town, following work that spilled over from the boom-and-bust cycles of oil speculation. These small towns were wild and violent places, Finn writes, and Howard the elder's services were needed to stitch men back together. Into this potent mix of brawling, wealth-chasing men, towns that knew untapped wealth and crushing poverty in a span of days, and the wide open plains of sand and scrub of rural Texas, Howard's career as a writer was born.

Finn's insights in these chapters are unique and insightful, as its easy to write off that Howard's "weird tales" were entirely products of his own imagination, and sprang, fully formed, from the recesses of his mind. Writes Finn, "To ignore the presence of the Lone Star State in Robert E. Howard's life and writing invites, at the very least, a few wrongheaded conclusions, and at worst, abject character assassination."

However, I don't agree with all of Finn's conclusions, including one of his boldest: that Howard had no choice but to commit suicide. Finn posits that Howard's death by self-inflicted gunshot "was the one, the only, thing he could do, given his circumstances." Finn paints a grim picture of those circumstances, which included constant brushes with poverty (due to the Great Depression and the whim of the pulp magazine editors, who often went months without cutting Howard a check), an overbearing and terminally ill mother, and a nomadic upbringing that left Howard unable to make lasting relationships. But to say that suicide was the only thing Howard could do in his situation absolves him completely from blame. There's always a choice to soldier on, no matter how grim our circumstances. Surely better times were ahead for Howard, and now we can only sadly speculate on the great works that would have flowed from his pen in his middle years. But, as Finn does state, the only one who truly knows why Howard pulled the trigger was Howard himself.

But Blood & Thunder is much more than an analysis of the how and why of Howard's death. There's some well-researched biographical material here, including a review of some of the odd jobs Howard worked, a look at his friendships and his brief relationship with Novalyne Price, his fascination with boxing and physical conditioning, and an overview of his correspondence with famous horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. One of my favorite chapters is "Mythology," the last, which provides a great overview of the post-Howard years, including his resurgence in the Lancer paperback series of the 1960's and 70's, the "Conan the Barbarian" boom sparked by the comic books and the movie of the same name, and the growth of critical studies dedicated to Howard's works (unlike Finn I happen to think that Conan the Barbarian was a terrific swords-and-sorcery film, if nothing at all like Howard's character).

I was particularly intrigued by "the trunk,"a huge collection of unpublished miscellaneous material that lay largely unopened from Howard's death until 1950, as well as the early days of Howard publishing by the likes of Gnome Press. Much of this material was new to me.

Finn also spends some time in this chapter refuting the claims about Howard's character circulated by the likes of de Camp and Hoffman Reynolds Hays, the latter a reviewer for the New York Times. De Camp's assessment of Howard is a doozy: "The neurotic Howard suffered from Oedipean devotion to his mother and, though a big and powerful man like his heroes, from delusions of persecution. He took to carrying a pistol against his 'enemies' and, when his aged mother died, drove out into the desert and blew his brains out." This is certainly unfair and, as Finn points out, in many places simply inaccurate. I do think Finn is quick to dismiss all of Dark Valley Destiny, even the interviews it contains from people who knew Howard. Finn says that de Camp's interview questions were leading in nature and evoked the negative responses about Howard for which de Camp had come looking, and already believed to be true. This may be true, but I'd like to read Dark Valley Destiny and formulate my own opinion.

In the end, however, this is another strength of Finn's book: It opens up the wider world of Howard's books and other material about his life that may not be so widely known. After reading Blood & Thunder I feel inspired to go back and read more of the Howard I've overlooked, such as his boxing stories and his historic fiction. The now-defunct Amra, a small-press fanzine dedicated to Howard's life and writings, sounds particularly intriguing.

Finally, Blood & Thunder contains a glowing foreward by Joe Lansdale, an underrated and very talented horror/suspense writer. Lansdale is a Texas native and is highly complementary both of Howard and Finn's book. Like Finn, Lansdale states that Howard is an author of worth and deserves wider recognition for his considerable talents as a writer of visceral action, adventure, and atmosphere; I happen to agree strongly with both men.

In summary, Blood & Thunder is highly recommended for any Howard fan.

Some final thoughts on The Lord of the Rings

As I finish re-reading The Lord of the Rings, I'm reminded that, as an adult, I continue to enjoy this book as much as or even more than I did when I was a child. Rare is the book that you can pick up time and time again and find something new in its pages. But The Lord of the Rings seems to get better as I grow older, which speaks volumes for its breadth, depth, and multitude of meanings.

My first experience with Tolkien occured some 25 years ago when, as a fifth-grader, my teacher had us listen to the audio version of The Hobbit in class. I was hooked. Later I asked my mother to check out The Hobbit from its (misplaced) location in the adult section of the public library so I could read it again on my own.

It wasn't until I reached middle school that I graduated to The Lord of the Rings. I enjoyed it very much, although I remember skimming certain chapters and even skipping entire passages ("The Council of Elrond," "In the House of Tom Bombadil," the songs/poetry, the Appendices, etc.), since I was mostly interested in the adventure. So when I re-read The Lord of The Rings in high school it was like I was experiencing it for the first time. Although I missed many of its deeper themes during this second reading, I gained a greater appreciation for the world Tolkien had created, which seemed weightier and more real than the other fantasy I was reading at that time.

However, after high school I took a long (and not entirely voluntary) break from Tolkien. In college I became absorbed in my required English syllabus. Writers like Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Euripedes, etc., filled my time, and my "casual" reading suffered. My battered paperback copies of Tolkien sat on the shelf, and waited.

It was in 1996 or so, a span of 7-8 years from my last reading, when I finally returned to Middle-Earth. I had decided to change my path of becoming a high school teacher, a difficult decision that I reached during long, solitary walks through a town forest with Tolkien as my companion. Around this time I started to understand and appreciate the deeper meanings of "The Road," of which mine had certainly taken some unexpected turns.

Later, while working the third-shift as a security guard, I recall walking the grounds of an under-construction condominium on the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont with The Fellowship of the Ring tucked into my coat pocket, a chill wind blowing through the skeletal structure of the unfinished building. The courage and fortitude of the hobbits helped get me through that and another, equally awful job as an insurance salesman. Sam and Frodo's trek through Mordor made me realize that my lot in life wasn't so bad, and that, if I saw it through, something better would be waiting at the end.

During these and other rough times in my life, the escape and wisdom I found within The Lord of the Rings was a blessed salve. So too were its lessons. Here are a few:

• From Sam, I learned the value of sacrifice and loyalty. And how to face grim times with a smile and a sense of humor.
  
• From Frodo, I learned the importance of seeing your assigned tasks through to the end, disagreeable though they may be, and the virtue of self-effacing heroism.
  
• From Aragorn, I learned that assuming the crown of responsibility is required of grown-ups, and that retreat from obligation is dishonorable.
  
• From Theoden, I learned that dying on a battlefield to stave off the forces of darkness is preferable to wasting away in old age :).

Tolkien's intent in writing The Lord of the Rings was to construct a mythology for England, which suffered the dilution of its language and the loss of a great many of its foundational myths and stories during the Norman conquest of England. From my own perspective I can say that he succeeded. Middle-Earth has weight and authenticity, even if the characters and events in the tale are larger than life.

Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, once remarked that his famous barbarian "stalked full grown out of oblivion and set me at work recording the saga of his adventures." Likewise, Middle-Earth feels like a real place, and The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion historic texts. Instead of a creator of a fictitous universe, Tolkien to me seems to be a chronicler of some dim and remote, and yet actual, "once upon a time."

For although my head assures me that The Lord of the Rings is of course just fiction, and that Middle-Earth is a place that never was and never can be, my heart whispers that maybe, just maybe, Tolkien saw a glimpse of the truth, beyond the great gray rain-curtain of this world. And in a sense, he did.

"The Scouring of the Shire": Accounting for the price of victory

“There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?”

Gandalf did not answer.

--Frodo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is about the journey of four hobbits that go “there and back again.” But Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry are not the same after their journey, nor is the Shire to which they return unchanged. Although the four hobbits are in many ways grown up, and evil in the Third Age is defeated, it’s hard to weigh the changes wrought by their “victory." For much has also been lost.

There is no going home again. I hesitate to write that phrase, so clichéd has it become. Yet it is at the heart of The Lord of the Rings and is largely the point of the book, as demonstrated in the wonderful, penultimate chapter of the story, “The Scouring of the Shire.”

In their journey the hobbits have experienced a wider world outside of the insular boundaries of the Shire. Their travels take them through the magic realms of elves and into dark pits of evil. Their eyes are opened to lands and peoples they likely would never have seen were it not for the War of the Ring.

On their long road back to the Shire the hobbits’ mood is gay, and rightly so. Sauron is defeated. The roads, once perilous for the unwary traveler, will soon be open to peaceful commerce. The King has returned to his rightful place on the throne of Gondor. Order is being restored to the land.

But with order comes other evils. Mobilizing for war can unite a country, but the expediency of victory can wreak havoc on the simple and the familiar. Old woods and fields, once fallow and beautiful, are torn up and furrowed to make way for crops. Familiar paths are paved over and widened into grey highways, and lazy mills are converted into busy factories belching smoke and producing weapons of steel.

And people pay the price. Increased regulations and restrictions result in curfews and rationing where there was once freedom and plenty. World War II had its brownouts and blackouts to hinder Nazi bombing raids; in “The Scouring of the Shire” hobbits are forbidden from lighting candles and fires after hours.

The hobbits soon discover the ill changes wrought by the long arm of war, which reaches all the back from the battle-scarred eastern front to the (seemingly) untouched western lands. Where once there was an open, inviting road to the Shire, gates and ugly barracks and suspicious guards now bar their way. Though more food is being produced, there is less to go around in the Shire’s sinister new reality of social engineering. Hob, a border guard, tells the hobbits that, “We grows a lot of food, but we don’t rightly know what becomes of it. It’s all these “gatherers” and “sharers,” I reckon, going round counting and measuring and taking off to storage. They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again.”

Once they pass through the gates the hobbits realize the full extent of the damage. The Shire itself is under siege. Trees are torn up, ancient homes and the old mill have been flattened, and ugly, modern, utilitarian structures have been raised in their place. And the Chief and his “Shiriffs” are in control.

A maturity bred in conflict…
War is a complicated matter for Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings. It breeds death and destruction and is the antithesis of mercy, which is so central to the story. Mechanization and loss of personal freedom are, as we’ve seen, its unfortunate by-products. But the stern trials and hard choices it forces on its participants can also bring out their best traits.

In “The Scouring of the Shire” its plain that war has made men out of Sam, Merry, and Pippin. They have grown from their experience, gaining strength and wisdom and surety of purpose. Without their experiences at Minas Tirith, could they have hoped to drive out Sharkey’s men? Not likely (as an aside, would Tolkien have ever written The Lord of the Rings were it not for his life altering experiences in World War I? I’m not so sure of that, either.)

At the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and the hobbits looked to Gandalf for help and guidance, like young sons clinging to the wisdom of their father. This is in marked contrast to their behavior after the War of the Ring. In “Homeward Bound,” chapter 7 of The Return of the King, Gandalf tells the hobbits that he must leave, and it is now their responsibility and duty to clean up the evil that has taken root in the Shire. But the hobbits do not indulge self-pity or beg Gandalf for his help. As boys they left from the Shire; back from war, they are men:

I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear for any of you.

Gandalf’s faith proves justified. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin firmly and decisively restore order, as they raise the hobbits and defeat Sharkey’s men decisively at the Battle of Bywater. In “The Scouring of the Shire” they display leadership and bravery hardly to be believed of the same timid hobbits that left the Shire on their long journey less than a year previous.

This is a good thing.

…and the terrible losses incurred by war
But “The Scouring of the Shire” is not a mere coda or a simple homecoming for heroes. If that was its only message, The Lord of the Rings would be a much simpler (and lesser) book.

Balanced against the assuredness and strength of Merry and Pippin is Frodo, whose wisdom serves as the moral compass of the story. Whereas Pippin and Merry are larger and stronger, Frodo is paler and thinner, the result of great wounds suffered from “knife, and sting, and tooth, and a long burden.”

When Frodo returns to the Shire he looks upon it with eyes that are no longer the same. Even the familiar has become strange to him; when Merry remarks that the events of the War of the Ring feel “like a dream that has slowly faded,” Frodo experiences the opposite reaction.

“Not to me,” said Frodo. “To me it feels more like falling asleep again.”

Wounded soldiers return with traumas seen and unseen, and this is evident in Frodo, who bears wounds that are deep indeed. Some essential part of him has been left on a foreign field, and his wounds are too grave to allow him to enjoy the peace he has so dearly bought:

I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.

This is the great sadness of The Lord of the Rings—there is home and hearth for some of the victors, but not all of them, and perhaps not even for most. When Frodo departs for the West it’s on a full ship: Gandalf, and Elrond, and Galadriel, and the main of Middle-Earth’s elves are sailing away, too. Magic has left the world. The great evil of the Third Age is defeated, but its void will be filled with other, more banal but equally sinister incarnations of evil. In the wake of the likes of the elves and of Gandalf (and yes, even Saruman and the Balrog and the orcs) comes the vagaries of men, and with them their propensity for both great good and unspeakable evil.

The Lord of the Rings ends on a beautiful but complicated note, joy and sadness together, and all tinged with melancholy, in a final line heavy with meaning:

“Well, I’m back,” says Sam.

And he is. Sam returns from the Gray Havens to yellow light and a fire and a meal waiting for him in Bag End. He has his Rosie and Eleanor, and a fulfilling life ahead of him. He will be mayor, and his name will be preserved in honor in the pages of the Red Book.

But all the same, his home at Bag End is a bit emptier. For it is bereft of Frodo, his best friend and master.

No more will Sam see Gandalf striding down the garden path on some great, mysterious errand. And never again will he catch a glimpse of the wonderful, grey shapes of elves flitting through the trees, nor hear their singing.

Was it worth it? Yes.

But is the victory and the end of the Third Age a cause for celebration, a black-and-white, simple happy ending as critics of The Lord of the Rings like to charge? That answer should also be fairly clear.

"And the joy of battle was upon me": My favorite moments from the battle of the Pelennor Fields

Peter Jackson once said that he agreed to make The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers solely for the opportunity to make The Return of the King. I can sympathize with that. In many respects, although I love the entirety of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King holds a special place in my heart.

My passion for this book is due in large part to the battle of the Pelennor Fields. There's so many poetic, inspiring sequences that occur during the battle that it's difficult to mention them all without simply re-typing entire chapters. I'll try to restrain myself and mention a few of my favorites:

Orcs flinging heads of slain Gondorians over the walls of the city. I liked this chilling touch by Tolkien as it adds an additional streak of unexpected cruelty to the orcs. "They were grim to look on; for though some were crushed and shapeless, and some had been cruelly hewn, yet many had features that could be told, and it seemed that they had died in pain; and all were branded with the foul token of the Lidless Eye." This reminded me of the old medieval battles in which corpses were pitched over city walls in an attempt to breed disease among the beseiged populace. Only here the heads are thrown to break Gondor's will.

The trenches of fire. Tolkien never explains how the orcs accomplished this feat ("though how it was kindled or fed, by art or devilry, none could see"), but its a great visual image and needs no explanation. Something about this detail reminds me of modern warfare, as the great flaming trenches are the ancient equivalent of shell-holes and the leaping flames of artillery blasts, perhaps.

Dread and despair of the Nazgul. Fear is the Nazgul's chief weapon. As a combat veteran, Tolkien understood that winning and losing in battle depends more on mastering your fear and hoping that your enemy's nerve breaks first, rather than inflicting huge casualties. His inclusion of the Nazgul, and Gandalf tirelessly walking the walls of Gondor rallying men from despair, captures this important truth.

The Prince of Dol Amroth. Imrahil is a late arrival on the scene and it's easy to see why Jackson cut him out from the films, but I did miss seeing him. Behind Aragorn he's arguably the best fighter on the field, and wherever he and his picked knights ride on the battlefield the enemy parts like water.

The Witch-King's confrontation with Gandalf at the gate. When the gates of Gondor are burst asunder in rides the Witch King, looking very much like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. All the defenders are stricken with fear and fly before him. All save one--Gandalf. I love the Witch-King's reaction to Gandalf, whom he treats with outright disdain:

"Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.

Grond. What's not to love about a 100-foot long ram, with its great head carved to resemble a slavering wolf's head? This is a great image by Tolkien:

The drums rolled louder. Fires leaped up. Great engines crawled across the field; and in the midst was a huge ram, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet in length, swinging on mighty chains. Long had it been forging in the dark smithies of Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in the likeness of a ravening wolf; on it spells of ruin lay. Grond they named it, in memory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old. Great beasts drew it, orcs surrounded it, and behind walked mountain-trolls to wield it.

Theoden's speech.

Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!
Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

...which leads to...

The Ride of the Rohirrim. After Theoden gives his rousing speech, he blows such a loud blast that he bursts the great horn asunder. Then he charges, not caring who is following him. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young.

Who is Orome? Does it really matter? This is awesome stuff, as is the host of Rohan bursting into song, singing as they slew for the joy of battle. The charge is also my absolute favorite sequence from Jackson's film.

And Theoden does not stop after this initial charge. More foes begin to form up, including the men of the Haradrim, who rally around a standard of a black serpent upon scarlet. "The drawing of the scimitars of the Southrons was like a glitter of stars," writes Tolkien. But Theoden spurs his horse in again, heedless of his own safety:

Right through the press drove Theoden Thengel's son, and his spear was shivered as he threw down their chieftain. Out swept his sword, and he spurred to the standard, hewed staff and bearer; and the black serpent foundered.

What a great image; as I read this I can picture Theoden lancing the chieftain and impaling him/knocking him from his mount, tossing down his shattered lance shaft, then in one sword stroke hewing the thick wooden shaft of the standard and the poor fool holding it. Great stuff.

The Witch-King vs. Eowyn. Although I liked this sequence in the film I wish Jackson had retained more of the original dialogue, if for nothing else than for the fans like me who wanted to hear Miranda Otto say "dwimmerlaik:"

"Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!"

A cold voice answered: "Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in they turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and they shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."

Tolkien's description of Eowyn ("Maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel blade, fair yet terrible") is a joy to read, and Theoden's death is stirring. I felt a lump in my throat when Theoden tells Merry to think of him when he sits in peace with his pipe, "for never now shall I sit with you in Meduseld, as I promised, or listen to your herb-lore."

Eomer's fey mood/battle lust. Tolkien had a soft-spot for the pagans of old, the mighty Danish warrior-kings whose ultimate desire was to die not peacefully of old age while in bed, but on the battlefield clutching a sword. This is the Ragnarok spirit. Men in its grip cease to fear death even as it looms inevitable, for the joy of battle and of killing overtakes them. Their behavior is likened to that of a death-wish.

This exact spirit overtakes Eomer towards the end of the battle when all hope seems lost: His father and sister are both (apparently) slain, his men are scattered, the enemy is rallying, and to strike the final death-knell for the West, the black-sailed ships of the Corsairs of Umbar are coming down the river to bring yet more reinforcements to the enemy. Eomer's reaction when he sees the ships is not a wail of despair or a retreat behind the safety of the walls; instead he utters lines that could be taken straight out of Beowulf:

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people. And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.

Aragorn's arrival. Tolkien repeatedly pushes the characters and events of The Lord of the Rings to the brink of ruin, only to have some unexpected, last-second hope arrive to avert disaster. Aragorn coming up the Harlond on the black ships of Umbar with the Dunedain and the men of the south is a prime example, the "Return of the King" that changes the tide of battle. When Aragorn unfurls his standard of the White Tree and the seven stars and the high crown you can't help but cheer (well, at least I couldn't).

A review of Metal: A Headbanger's Journey

As a heavy metal fan I found it a real pleasure to watch Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. Sam Dunn's 2005 documentary is a fun, insightful look at my favorite genre of music and actually manages to do it justice. Dunn is not only a smart filmmaker but he's also a fan, and it shows in the final product.

Unlike the flawed Fargo Rock City, which focused exclusively on hair metal (e.g., Poison, Warrant, Motley Crue, etc.) and gave very short-shrift to real heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Slayer, and Black Sabbath, Metal: A Headbanger's Journey includes all sub-genres of heavy metal. Dunn spends a limited time on the overrated hair/glam period and far more on power, thrash, death, and the new wave of British heavy metal.

I actually found that the most compelling segment was the piece on Norweigan black metal. These bands actually (and terrifyingly) practice what they preach. Black metal bands were behind a string of church burnings in the early 1990s, and the lead singer of one band, Burzum, went so far as to murder a fellow band member. Dunn interviews two members of black metal bands and both coldly face the camera and state unhesitatingly that they support more church burnings and the downfall of Christianity.

Watching Dunn at work made me exceedingly jealous. He somehow managed to score interviews with the likes of Bruce Dickinson, Lemmy, Tom Araya, Rob Zombie, and Tony Iommi, all of which prove articulate and interesting. He gets to spend a night drinking with Lemmy and another day hanging out in the home of Ronnie James Dio, posing with Dio while the two brandish a pair of swords.

Dunn starts by tracing the rise of heavy metal, whose roots can be heard in bands like Led Zeppelin and Steppenwolf but was born with Black Sabbath's self-titled release. He discusses its classical and operatic roots, which give it its distinctive sound.

Two of the best interviews were by Zombie and Dickinson. Zombie offers up a memorable quote when he calls metal a "lifestyle music." "No one says, 'I was into Slayer--one summer. I've never met that guy," says Zombie. "I've only met the guy who has 'Slayer' carved across his chest." Dickinson says that metal provides its fans with an alternative universe through which they can vicariously live through the music. He also talks about how he approaches singing and showmanship. Good stuff here.

Dunn next travels to Wacken, Germany for the site of a massive annual outdoor metal festival. Here he has a memorable interview with the (very drunk) lead singer of Mayhem, who ends up telling Dunn and everyone else watching the interview to fuck off.

Next Dunn investigates the metal censorship era. Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider provides a retrospective on his testimony before Congress and Al and Tipper Gore in 1984. I had forgotten how badly the politicians underestimated Snider. It was fun to watch him knock a half-dozen holes in their case that metal was responsible for corrupting the youth of America and deserved censorship. Gore was a joke then (and remains one now).

Although it's been labeled by its detractors as obscene and suicidal, Dunn argues convincingly that metal is in fact the opposite. His claim that metal is empowering (anti-suicidal, in fact) and cathartic rings true. It gives its listeners a release from mundane life and allows them to enter worlds of fantasy, which is a huge part of its appeal for me.

My only complaint was that the film was too short: It could have been 2 1/2 hours instead of its brief 96 minutes of running time. I highly recommend it.

Samwise the Brave: Examining the central hero of The Lord of the Rings

I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.
--Sam Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings

You don’t have to squint to find heroes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Splashed across its pages are Aragorn, the uncrowned king in the wilderness, who walks the Paths of the Dead and claims his rightful position on the throne of Gondor; Gandalf, who bests the Balrog of Moria and confronts the Witch-King one-on-one; and Frodo, who suffers as the Ring’s bearer, carrying its weight into Mordor to liberate Middle-Earth from the darkness of Sauron. Theoden, Eowyn, and Faramir also spring immediately to mind. Aragorn and Frodo in particular can certainly be viewed and successfully argued as the central figure(s) in Tolkien’s tale.

But over the course of re-reading The Lord of the Rings I am more convinced than ever that its true hero is Sam Gamgee, without whom the quest to destroy the One Ring could not have succeeded. Though he’s no doughty man-at-arms like a Conan or Launcelot du Lake, by tale’s end Sam’s great deeds and noble sacrifices earn him a place of honor in the roll of great fantasy heroes.

Now, my line of thinking isn’t exactly original: Tolkien in one of his letters calls Sam “the chief hero” of the story, and many others have also made this connection. But certainly others have overlooked Sam because he doesn’t conform to traditional notions of heroism. He’s certainly not a great warrior who battles hordes of enemies, the archetype of the genre of fantasy known as sword and sorcery.

Perhaps it’s because I frequent a lot of Robert E. Howard and Dungeons and Dragons message boards, but it seems like larger than life heroes are the rage these days. Our current heroic archetypes include D&D with its player-characters as powerful supermen (4E, I'm looking at you), Harry Potter/The Belgariad and its ilk (seemingly normal people with great but latent magic powers), or sword and sorcery heroes inspired by Conan, mighty warriors capable of killing a half-dozen men in the afternoon and drinking the night away at the local tavern. Older archetypes include men like Achilles or Odysseus, men of action and martial prowess so extraordinary that they seem demigods among men.

Sam is a very different type of hero: a hobbit with no warrior skill who gets by solely on bravery and devotion to Frodo. Tolkien said his character was inspired by the British rank-and-file soldiers who served and fought and often gave their lives without fanfare in the trenches of World War I, expecting nothing and possessing only the hope of home at the end of it all (which is all Sam really wants). Said Tolkien in a letter, “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”

Certainly Sam can’t compare with a Conan or a Fafhrd in terms of skill-at-arms. Like all hobbits he’s small in stature, possesses no skill with a blade, and is much more at home in a garden than on a battlefield. But Sam possesses undaunted courage when pressed, optimism in the face of impossible odds, and above all else an unshakeable call to duty to serve his master. When he throws himself into the waters of Parth Galen (despite the fact he cannot swim) in order to join Frodo’s seemingly suicidal quest into Mordor and emerges spluttering and half-drowned but with his will unshaken, we are witness to devotion of the rarest kind:

‘But I am going to Mordor.’
‘I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I’m coming with you.’

The Lord of the Rings is very much a testament to the fact that even the greatest of men can’t solve all the world’s problems on their own. Galadriel’s comment that “hope remains while all the Company is true” (emphasis mine) is Tolkien’s belief writ large that alliances—not unilateral actions—are necessary for our long-term survival. Her words also prove to be prescient within the story: When the Fellowship fails and breaks up, Sam remains as Frodo’s only company on the long trek to Mordor. His presence, every bit as much as Frodo’s act of pity toward Gollum, allows the quest to succeed. It’s a difficult choice for Sam, especially after he peers into Galadriel’s mirror and sees the Shire being torn up and industrialized, and his father, his poor old gaffer, displaced. His decision to remain and sacrifice his personal desire to return home in order to serve the greater good (the destruction of the Ring) is the very essence of heroism.

Sam eventually is thrust into the hero’s role after the Fellowship breaks and he and Frodo trek to Mordor alone. I found myself cheering aloud (well, almost) when Gollum betrays Frodo to Shelob and attempts to kill Sam himself, and gets far more than he bargained for when Sam more or less kicks his ass:

Fury at the treachery, and desperation at the delay when his master was in deadly peril, gave to Sam a sudden violence and strength that was far beyond anything that Gollum had expected from this slow stupid hobbit, as he thought him. Not Gollum himself could have twisted more quickly or more fiercely.

But Sam’s real moment in the sun comes in Chapter 10 of The Two Towers, “The Choices of Master Samwise.” By all appearances Sam is too late to save his master who lies motionless, bound in cords, at the feet of Shelob—a huge, loathsome, horrifying creature from nightmare. But Sam does not pause, attacking the spider in a frenzy:

Then he charged. No onslaught more fierce was even seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.

My favorite part of this epic battle is when Sam invokes the name of the goddess of beauty and light (“Gilthoniel A Elbereth!”) staggers to his feet, and is “Samwise the hobbit, Hamfast’s son, again.” He issues a challenge that might have made Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name or Evil Dead’s Ash crack a smile:

“Now come, you filth!” he cried. “You’ve hurt my master, you brute, and you’ll pay for it. We’re going on; but we’ll settle with you first. Come on, and taste it again!”

Shelob, confronted with this three-and-a-half foot tall hobbit of the Shire, turns her ponderous, bloated body and heads for her hole, leaving a trail of fluid from the painful prick of the sword Sting.

But perhaps my favorite Sam moment is when he literally lifts Frodo on his back and carries him up Mount Doom:

‘I said I’d carry him, if it broke my back,’ he muttered, ‘and I will!’
‘Come Mr. Frodo!’ he cried. ‘I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well.’

There’s no mistaking Sam as hero here, as at the very end of his endurance he somehow finds the strength to carry the literal weight of Middle-Earth on his stout back. I thought Jackson’s film captured this scene magnificently.

Yet Sam is not perfect. Tolkien in his letters describes him as having “a mental myopia which is proud of itself, a smugness (in varying degrees) and cocksureness, and a readiness to measure and sum up all things from a limited experience, largely enshrined in sententious traditional ‘wisdom.’” Sam’s biggest failure is indeed his lack of wisdom; specifically, he fails to notice Gollum’s act of repentance when the latter was about to abandon his scheme to send the hobbits to their death in Shelob’s lair. With a little kindness from Sam, Gollum perhaps could have buried his evil half and become Smeagol once again, but Sam tragically failed to recognize it (of course, you can argue that without Gollum’s attack on Frodo at the crack of doom, the Ring would not have been destroyed).

Is Sam a “fated” hero?
Tying into my previous thoughts on “fate vs. free will”, Sam’s actions and the circumstances that surround him walk a tightrope between his own free will and the larger forces at work in Tolkien’s world. Is Sam a simple, loyal hobbit who makes tough choices out of the goodness of his heart? Or is he fated to become a hero? I believe the answer is both.

For example, in “The Choices of Master Samwise,” Sam makes the difficult choice to leave Frodo’s body and carry on the quest alone. It’s perhaps his bravest act of all. But even as he walks down the tunnel “something” tells him his choice to leave Frodo’s side was wrong. When the orcs find Frodo he realizes it: “He flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them. He knew now where his place was and had been: at his master’s side, though what he could do there was not clear.”

The implication here is that the orcs’ arrival was an act of fate, not chance, and that some higher power perhaps intervened on Sam’s behalf. Certainly the outcome of the story would have been far different had Sam soldiered on alone, for as we later see, no man or hobbit acting alone can willingly destroy the Ring.

I also wonder whether Sam was in fact chosen for his great task by Gandalf. Was fate at work in the seemingly chance act of Sam eavesdropping at Frodo’s window at Bag End and getting caught by Gandalf? Did Gandalf send Sam with Frodo only to punish him? Or did Gandalf send Sam because (as one of the Maiar) Gandalf knew at some level that Sam could play a vital role in the outcome of the quest?

Given what we know of both Gandalf and Middle-Earth's cosmology, the latter seems much more likely.

Sanitized fairy tales: News story exposes modern trend of bland safeness

The Boston Globe published a great article on Sunday that I felt compelled to share. The title of this piece by Joanna Weiss says it all:

Fear of fairy tales: The glossy, sanitized new versions of fairy tales leave out what matters: The scary parts.

Weiss' article lays out the case that something important is lost when a child's introduction to fairy tales comes in whitewashed form, and the old classic tales are denuded of anything mildly scary. Writes Weiss:

In toys, movies, and books, the old fairy tales are being systematically stripped of their darker complexities. Rapunzel has become a lobotomized girl in a pleasant tower playroom; Cinderella is another pretty lady in a ball gown, like some model on "Project Runway."

Weiss adds that what makes classic fairy stories timeless are the difficult and often dark elements they contain, which often provide instructive allegory or socially relevant commentary.

I couldn't agree more. As a father of two children I've seen a lot of these kid-friendly versions of the old tales, most of them by Disney. The new rage these days is Disney Princesses, which feature the classic princesses from fairy tales (Cinderella, Snow White, Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid, etc.) living together and spending their days overcoming safe, mundane, and rather trivial obstacles. The result is that kids are entertained, but not challenged. Meanwhile, Disney makes millions selling product-tie ins like costumes, vanity sets, and sanitized books and videos. Writes Weiss:

When the stories intersect with commerce these days--whether in children's books or the endless barrage of toys--they can quickly get reduced beyond recognition. It's easier to sell a Rapunzel playset, after all, as something entirely cheery and safe.

Some parents I suppose will argue that they don't want to expose their children to anything that might potentially scare or unsettle them. I won't argue with that; it's their choice. But the answer is not in stripping classic fairy tales of vitality and meaning. Let them watch Barney or Sesame Street instead. These are fine alternatives (well, Sesame Street is, Barney is Chinese water torture). Although I do think that children are given far too little credit for their ability to distinguish fact from fiction, and fantasy stories from reality. They're pretty smart. For decades and centuries kids grew up on these stories, and most of us turned out all right.

My oldest daugher is six and I plan on reading her The Hobbit soon. Suffice to say that I won't be reading a safe, sanitized version in which Thorin doesn't die, or Gollum becomes a slapstick comic device instead of a slimy, corrupted creature eyeing Bilbo as a tasty meal.

Shelob: A frightening, ancient evil

He may not be Steven King or Edgar Allen Poe, but J.R.R. Tolkien manages to pack a couple scares into The Lord of the Rings. Two chapters in particular send a chill down my spine: One is the "Passage of the Marshes," which I discussed in a recent post, and the other is "Shelob's Lair."

Re-reading this latter chapter made me remember how loathsome a monster is Shelob. She is truly horrifying, a monster that makes Pennywise's true form in King's It seem like a daddy longlegs in comparison. She is old, old enough to darken Middle-Earth before Sauron arrived on the scene, and bloated from drinking the blood of Elves and Men. Tolkien says she cares not for wealth or power, but spends all her time brooding on her next feast. "For all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness," he writes. That's about as nasty and explicit as Tolkien gets.

More dreadful is the knowledge that Sauron knows of Shelob and feeds it with orcs and prisoners:

And sometimes as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better uses for: he would have them driven to her hole, and report brought back to him of the play she made.

"Play she made?" Jesus, I don't know what's worse--being paralyzed with poison and eaten alive by a monstrous, reeking, millenna old spider, or the thought of Sauron listening to such tales with glee.

Tolkien does a masterful job building up the horror in "Shelob's Lair," primarily by engaging other senses than sight in the reader, particularly smell. As Sam and Frodo approach Torech Ungol (Shelob's Lair), they catch scent of its foul reek, "as if filth unnameable were piled in the dark within." This is a rancid, foetid stench that can only belong to some great, millennia-old carnivore.

Inside Shelob's lair the air is still, stagnant, heavy, and any sounds Frodo and Sam make fall dead. It is pitch black, so dark you cannot see your hand though you hold it inches from your face. The evil and foulness are palpable, and Tolkien describes how a great fear and dread is upon the hobbits, though they do not know its origin. The oppression is so great that Sam and Frodo clasp hands in the darkness.

Our first encounter with Shelob not visual, but conveyed through her awful sounds, described by Tolkien as, "Startling and horrible in the heavy padded silence: a gurgling, bubbling noise, and a long venomous hiss." Then come the eyes, two great clusters of many windows. "Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape."

When Tolkien finally draws aside the curtain for the big reveal, Shelob is every bit as noisome as my mind had prepared her to be. I think there's something particularly hideous about spiders as a species, and Shelob is truly the worst:

Hardly had Sam hidden the light of the star-glass when she came. A little way ahead and to his left he saw suddenly, issuing from a black hole of shadow under the cliff, the mostly loathly shape that he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream. Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw.

Sam's confrontation with Shelob is also one of my favorite scenes, and it is here and in his actions subsequent to Frodo's poisoning and capture that he emerges as a great hero in the rolls of fantasy literature.

War and death come to Middle Earth

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

--Faramir, "The Two Towers"

Although regarded as high fantasy (and thus conflated with "escapism," often by those who should know better), J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is also a treatise on war. Books 3 and 4 of Tolkien's tale (The Two Towers) shift the focus of the story from that of the adventures of the Fellowship to a broader conflict brewing in Middle Earth. The company emerges from the dark pit of Moria and the bright woods of Lorien only to be swept up in the machinations of Saruman and the great battle at Helm's Deep.

In my re-reading of The Lord of the Rings I recently passed through the vast bogs and fens which lie between the Emyn Muil and Mordor. This wide stretch of trackless, treacherous land is home to the Dead Marshes, named for the spectral corpses of fallen men, elves, and orcs that lie beneath its muck and dark waters. At one time their bodies lay on the dry Dagorlad, the site of a great months-long battle of the second age of Middle Earth. In this battle the Last Alliance of elves, men, and dwarves fought Sauron's forces at the gates of Mordor. The forces of good prevailed as Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand, but only after tremendous loss of life on both sides. Gradually the swamp spread, covering the land and the bodies of the slain.

Tolkien wrote in a letter that he drew his inspiration for the landscape of the Dead Marshes from experiences in the Somme, but it's no great stretch to speculate that this terrible battle made an impact in other, more profound ways on The Lord of the Rings. In the first day of the Somme the British suffered their worst loss of men in a single day in British history; 57,000 casualites, including 19,000 young men whose lives were snuffed out like candles in a hail of German machine-gun fire and shrapnel. Among those to die in the Somme were Tolkien's good friends Rob Gilson and G.B. Smith (for a compelling and complete recounting of Tolkien's wartime years and its influence upon his writings, I heartily recommend Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth, by John Garth).

In the Dead Marshes Frodo, Sam, and Gollum come face-to-face with death as the great fear--that it is simply the end, and that there is no immortal soul. Our lives are simply snuffed out when our bodies fail or are destroyed. All men, good and evil alike, are mingled together in the common lot of corruption, the grave, where good deeds in life are not rewarded by the eternal hereafter--because there isn't one. The images of the dead in the pools reflect this horror, notes Frodo:

They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.

In another passage from The Two Towers that I had forgotten, Sam, Frodo, and Gollum manage to find a brief respite in the land of Ithilien, still fair and flowering even though it has fallen beneath the shadow. But this peace is only an illusion, a respite: When Sam leaves the path to examine the trees, he stumbles on a ring still scorched by fire, and in the midst of it finds a pile of charred and broken bones and skulls.

Tolkien witnessed too much of this senseless loss of young life in his experience during the Somme, which explains why death weighs heavily on his mind in The Lord of the Rings. Elves alone have the gift of immortality, but men are mortal and "doomed to die." As men dwindle from the greatness of their elder days so too are their lifespans reduced.

Yet The Lord of the Rings is also infused with heroic men and martial victories. Garth posits that Tolkien did not believe that the sacrifice of young men's lives was a waste, if given for the right reasons. Writes Garth: "It [The Lord of the Rings] examines how the individual's experience of war relates to those grand old abstractions; for example, it puts glory, honour, majesty, as well as courage, under such stress that they often fracture, but are not utterly destroyed."

Tolkien personified his feelings about concepts like glory, honour, and courage in the peoples of Rohan. Rohan is at constant war with the orcs and wild men, and like the Dunedain must remain ever alert, guarding against encroaching evil. They believe that death on the battlefield, while sorrowful, is never in vain as long as their acts are remembered. Thus the wistful (and my personal favorite) bit of Tolkien poetry, the Lament for Eorl the Young:

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

This piece captures Tolkien's ambivalent feelings about war. The poem on the one hand portrays the magnificence of Eorl, resplendent in his war gear and the full flower of his years, using the symbolic language of spring and harvests and growing corn. But the song also mourns his death, asking again and again "Where has he gone?" in a question that cannot be answered. Eorl's passing leaves no trace, like a whisp of smoke. For the living only his memories remain.

The Riders of Rohan remember their dead with songs like these and through the simbelmyne, a small white flower which grows on their graves and tombs. According to the Encyclopedia of Arda, "simbelmynë is translated as 'Evermind': a reference to the memories of the dead on whose tombs the flower grew."

Tolkien does not take war lightly and the men of Rohan, though portrayed in a sympathetic light, are not his ideal. That place is held by Faramir, Tolkien's portrayal of man at his best. Faramir sees war with a keen eye, and tells Sam and Frodo that the high men of Numenor, of which he is a descendant, have "fallen" and are becoming like the Rohirrim, loving valor for valor's sake: "Yet now, if the Rohirrim are grown in some ways more like to us, enhanced in arts and gentleness, we too have become more like to them, and can scarce claim any longer the title High...For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valor as things good in themselves, both a sport and an end."

Tolkien's clearest view on war is revealed in a famous passage in which Sam views the body of a dead soldier from the south, slain at his feet by arrows from Faramir's men in the woods of Ithilien:

He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.

In other words, war is terrible and of last resort, and slain foes are, in the end, just men--and therefore to be pitied. War is necessary when "destroyers" like Sauron or Hitler would impose their will on the free peoples of the world, but it is a duty to be carried out, not glorified. It brings with it too much death and sorrow. In his famous foreward to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote:

One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.

Tolkien never forgot the loss of Gilson and Smith, nor the Somme. At some level it fed into his passion for language and myth, providing fertile ground for a great tale. We have The Lord of the Rings to thank.

Run to the Hills: Bayley back in the news (for his hair)

Somewhere I can hear the singing, "I'm running out of my hair, I'm running out of it..."

I can't rank on Blaze Bayley too much, considering that the photo of his bald spot pre-treatment looks a lot like mine, only smaller. But this ad from Mojo Magazine was too good to pass up. Love the posed hands, as if he were about to invoke some sorcerous power.

Oh, and the sideburns too.

The Road: Exploring Tolkien's grand metaphor

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

As a kid one of the many things I loved about The Hobbit was its maps. The map of the Wilderland just inside the front cover of the book (see picture above) had a dotted line that crossed the Misty Mountains, followed the Old Forest Road, and, if you turned North when you reached the River Running, took you past the Long Lake and to the foot of the Lonely Mountain. I recall tracing the journey with my finger and at times letting it wander (not too far) into Mirkwood on either side.

I was fascinated with the idea that, when Bilbo left his small home in Bag End and set off with the dwarves, he was literally stepping onto the very same road that runs all the way to the Desolation of Smaug--and beyond. In The Lord of the Rings Frodo recalls Bilbo telling him that:

'He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river; its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?"'

I still love the thought of the Road as an actual track that you can follow from one end of Middle-Earth to the other. But now that I'm a little older I can also appreciate its metaphors as well.

The Road as life
Tolkien says that the Road can sweep you off your feet, implying that it has an element of wildness and chance about it. It can take you to places you never expected. You may face hardships and perils or death in a foreign land. You may find great wealth, or the last refuges of magic, in realms where time seems to stand still.

But the Road always starts with a simple choice, and that is the decision to set your foot upon it. It starts with humble beginnings, from a single door in Bilbo's case, but if you follow it long enough it will take you to an intersection of many paths and errands. This very much parallels the course of a life, in which a child has but a few options but eventually encounters the many freedoms (and perils) that come with adulthood.

In his walking song Bilbo cannot say where the Road eventually leads, because eventually choice intersects with chance. We can choose our own direction on the Road, for good or ill.

In my "normal" suburban life even I feel a tinge of fear and thrill of the unknown when I step onto the Road and leave my driveway on some long business trip, of which I typically take at least two a year. And I'm always amazed and relieved to find when, after boarding a jet plane and traveling 3,000 miles across the entire country and back again, I find myself once again at home with my family.

It may not be the Misty Mountains or Mordor but it's about all the excitement I can handle.

The Road as death
Of course, eventually we all must reach the end of the Road. Tolkien offers four versions of Bilbo's walking song in The Lord of the Rings; each time the teller (alternating between Bilbo and Frodo) is further along in the Road of his life.

The first time we hear Bilbo's song it's the quote I started with above, and it's full of energy and anticipation of the journey. The second time, Frodo sings the song and he has begun the long trek to Mordor. In place of "eager feet" we get "weary feet." He is feeling the weight of his great task, just as we feel the adult weight of jobs, responsibilities, and age.

In "Many Partings," we hear the song for a third time. Bilbo knows his traveling days are winding down when he sings:

The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

In The Road to Middle Earth, author Tom Shippey states that Bilbo here is equating the lighted inn with Rivendell, which is his literal next stop, but that he is also referring to his own death.

In "The Grey Havens," the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo sings Bilbo's old walking-song one last time, though the words have changed much:

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate;

And though I oft have passed them by,

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

In other words, there is a new Road to take at the end of our lives. It is a road hidden to mortal men, perhaps always under our noses ("oft have passed them by") but invisible to our senses. No living man (nor hobbit) has ever started down this road.

According to Tolkien's cosmology, Middle-Earth was once flat, and you could reach the Undying Lands if you sailed far enough out to sea. But the Numenoreans abused this opportunity, and as punishment the Creator gave Middle Earth its present round shape. The straight Road was lost, and now only the elves can find the Grey Havens.

Man has a different final Road to take than that of the elves, one that Tolkien hints in his cosmology may lead his soul, freed from his body, back to the Creator.

My own Road
I'm glad to say that, right now, my Road runs straight through Middle Earth (right now I'm listening to The Lord of the Rings as I drive Route 95/114 to work; hardly Bilbo's garden path or the East-West road running out of the Shire, but it will have to do). Middle-Earth is becoming a well-trodden and familar path but I never tire of taking the trip.

If there is an afterlife, I hope with all that's in me that I will awake at the end of my Road to find myself in Meduseld, the golden hall of Theoden, my current stop in my latest re-read of The Lord of the Rings. Even better, perhaps I may one day find myself enjoying a fine beer at The Prancing Pony, listening to the locals tell a queer tale about a hobbit from the Shire and his companions who fell in with a mysterious ranger from the North. Time will tell.

Pictures on the Web of forthcoming film version of The Road

I recently came across some pictures of the forthcoming film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. This is an excellent (albeit bleak and quite depressing) post-apocalyptic novel that I reviewed several months ago.

The pictures here look quite good and very much nailed the look I had pictured in my mind's eye while reading McCarthy's novel. Also, I like the choice of Viggo Mortensen for the role of the father. Check them out at Firstshowing.net:

• http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/08/07/six-new-photos-from-cormac-mccarthys-the-road/
• http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/05/27/first-look-viggo-mortensen-in-cormac-mccarthys-the-road/

Journey to the Center of the Earth: A review

In listening to Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, I was struck by how much modern films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure owe to this book. Although it was written way back in 1864, while the War Between the States was in full swing and the earth was a very different place, in many ways its thoroughly modern, at home alongside recent sci-fi novels like John Crichton's Jurassic Park.

In summary, Journey to the Center of the Earth is a fast-paced and lively pseudo science/exploration story that manages to be mostly interesting and entertaining. Unfortunately, it also crosses over into unbelievable territory about three-quarters of the way through and ends with a classic deux-ex-machina, but I found I can live with it.

Journey to the Center of the Earth takes aim at the theory that the earth grows hotter the nearer that you travel to its center. Verne posits the idea that the earth's core is inhabitable and houses massive cavities, caverns so huge that you cannot see their roof. At its center is a sea large enough that you can travel across it and lose sight of land all around. Science has of course since proven this idea impossible, but it makes for a fun story if you divorce it from reality.

Journey to the Center of Earth has a compelling opening that reminded me of The DaVinci Code--Professor Liedenbrock and his nephew Axel, the heroes of the story, find a coded note written in runes within the pages of an Icelandic saga. They puzzle through it and discover that it is a note written by Arne Saknussemm describing a passage he has found to the center of the earth. The opening is located in the interior of a dormant volcano in Iceland. Liedenbrock and Axel recruit an Icelandic guide and the three men embark on their journey.

I found Verne's descriptions of overland and sea travel to Iceland interesting, and the first scenes of the descent fascinating. Verne vividly portrays the vast depths and terrifying downward drops of the volcano shaft, and creates excitement and dread in two sequences in which Axel gets lost in the inky blackness and the three men nearly die of thirst.

Unfortunately I thought that the tale started to unravel once the men near the earth's center, which contains ice age creatures, dinosaurs, and even early men. If the story didn't literally jump a shark it certainly started to lose me once Liedenbrock and Axel's small boat passes very nearly over an Ichthyosaurus. I was also puzzled with the abrupt ending--Liedenbrock and Axel gain great fame from their expedition, while others treat their claims with skeptcism. But, inexplicably, no one ever bothers to re-trace their footsteps and verify their claims.

Still, you could do worse than pass the time by giving it the book a listen. It's also skillfully read by English-accented, professorial-sounding narrator Simon Prebble.

Note: This review is also posted on SFFaudio.com.