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.