Exclusive: An Excerpt From Anya Stanley’s Lovecraft-Themed Contribution For SCARED SACRED: IDOLATRY, RELIGION AND WORSHIP IN THE HORROR FILM
Jonathan Barkan
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We are firm believers here at Dread Central that we should champion the works of our writers even if it’s not for us. That people take the time out of their day to write pieces that bolster our content and bring new and exciting viewpoints to you readers and the wider horror audience is still a humbling experience.
Take our own Anya Stanley, who challenges gender stereotypes with her Gender Bashing column, who has contributed a piece to the upcoming House of Leaves Publishing collection of writings Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film. Today, we are proud to present an excerpt from her chapter, which focuses on the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft within the horror genre.
We’re incredibly proud of the work that Anya has brought to Dread Central and we now take this opportunity to step aside and allow her to speak for herself about her work in Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film.
I love to talk horror. So much so, that the fine folks at Dread Central have allowed me to carve out a small space here to discuss deeper reads of the genre every month. The folks at House of Leaves Publishing have given me another fine opportunity by inviting me to contribute to their latest discussion of horror, in book form.
Due for an early 2019 release from House of Leaves Publishing, Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film dives into the relationship between religion and the supernatural in horror cinema. The book collects an array of essays by luminous voices in the horror community, from scholars to historians to film critics. Contributions include Valeska Griffiths’ “From the Stake to the Sanitarium: Taming the Unruly Feminine in Häxan (1922) and Antichrist (2009)”; Alexandra West’s “Onward Christian Soldiers: Eyes of Believers in The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016)”; and Dr. John Cussans’ “Smashing the Butterfly: Necropolitics, Racial Sovereignty and the Ecstasy of the Black Undead in Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess (1973)”, among others.
September 2018 brings a crowdfunding campaign for Scared Sacred featuring a tempting set of rewards, from Professor Douglas E. Cowan’s acclaimed book Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen to original artwork, including a series of four collectible posters crafted by illustrator John Sowder, each a mash-up based on two films from each themed section of the book. Even an overnight stay at one of the alleged most haunted houses in the UK, 30 East Drive in West Yorkshire is up for grabs. For more information and the full list of rewards, as well as to register to pre-order the book, please visit: holpublishing.com.
House of Leaves Publishing has joined up with Dread Central to offer a sneak preview of what lies within the pages of Scared Sacred. Complementing an exclusive reveal of the third limited edition themed poster from John Sowder, which fuses together works covered in Erin Thompson’s chapter on gender inequality, spiritual potential and the repentant religious in Onibaba (1964) and Nang Nak (1999), and my chapter on irreligious religion in H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, a preview of my contribution is below…
EXCERPT: Monstrous Realism: Irreligious Religion in Lovecraft’s Cosmic Horror
With the release of From Beyond (1986), director Stuart Gordon provided the standard Hollywood nip-and-tuck that accompanies any medium-crossing adaptation, but H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror still endures within. The fearful narrator has been excised from the film’s storyline, his metaphysical interpretations dispersed through the dialogue of Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), who is now a second-in-command scientist to one Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel). The film adaptation sees the duo aiming to unleash and document a sixth sense in the pineal gland through a powerful contraption they call the Resonator. The film opens with the Resonator seemingly killing its creator and driving his associate to madness. Tillinghast is believed to have murdered Pretorious, and is evaluated by psychiatrist Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) to ascertain whether he is psychologically able to stand trial. In the ensuing investigation, Tillinghast claims that the vibrations of the Resonator allow afflicted subjects to see into a hidden reality within our own continuum, containing hostile creatures. McMichaels orders a brain scan that reveals Tillinghast’s pineal gland to be enlarged. She decides to run with it and takes both him and a detective, Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree), back to the scene of the crime to find out what truly happened to Pretorius. They repair the Resonator and, upon turning it on, see the same wriggling creatures that Tillinghast claimed to see before. At this point, a horrifically disfigured Pretorius appears in the house and tells the three guests that he is “…not dead. Just passed beyond,” alluding to a world other than this one.
From Beyond demonstrates a core precept of cosmicism: a Faustian pact for otherworldly proficiency and power. The quest for enlightenment, whether by men of faith or men of science, is always met with brutal consequence. The formula aligns closely with Lovecraft’s own reason regarding the conceit of man’s attempts to fathom the unfathomable:
Human thought is (…) amusing because of its contradictions, and because of the pompousness with which its possessors try to analyze dogmatically an utterly unknown and unknowable cosmos in which all of mankind forms but a transient, negligible atom… (cited in Joshi, 2010, p. 44)
The hypervision that the doctors chase after works to underline two concepts central to Lovecraft’s work: it stresses science’s hand in revealing the greater magnificence of the universe (would the curtain between realities have ever been pulled if not for the Resonator?), and shows gods to be puny while maintaining a dreadful reverence for that same universe. Conventional faiths often headline their respective gods as most awesome, but From Beyond’s worm-like creatures, by the very revelation of their presence, underscore both the universe’s greater inaccessible profundity and man’s greater ignorance.
From Beyond’s greater ignorance is infused into its characters’ presumptuous search for a higher cognizance. Both Pretorius and McMichaels reference “seeing”. In the opening scenes, Pretorius demands to “…see more, more than any man has ever seen.” Similarly, McMichaels justifies succumbing to the Resonator’s dark appeal late in the film with the line, “I have to see more. Feel more.” Sight is inextricably linked to discovery in cosmic horror; seeing is believing.
However, knowledge doesn’t bring wisdom in Lovecraft’s world, just exposure and vulnerability. Suddenly, man is fragile. Man is small. Atheism itself doesn’t find anything fearful in that, but cosmicism has no pleasant way of dealing with such exposure. Instead, it drives the exposed to lunacy. As Lovecraft states in the opening lines of The Call of Cthulhu, “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents” (2002, p. 139). The scientists who dare to toy around with the Resonator are promptly given what they desire, to their detriment. From Beyond is certainly not the only film to draw from this well; haughty, power-hungry men have been put in their existential place as early as 1926’s Faust, while 1997’s Lovecraft-in-space horror Event Horizon took the theme literally and had its main character gouging out his own eyes, growling, “Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see.” The horror is not in seeing, it’s in the terrible revelations we become exposed to: we’re nothing, and no one will save us.
Man’s cavalier aspirations to godlike heights has long been a staple of storytelling both religious and secular, but cosmic horror puts a devious spin on the theme that takes the story from Grecian tragedy to grim odyssey. The motifs of external terrors, internal breakdowns, and naive skeptics are used to serve heavy themes of the desolation and hopelessness of humanity. It is a spoonful of salt in what Lovecraft considered to be a selfishly optimistic spiritual elixir.
Works cited:
Joshi, S. T. (2010). Against religion: The atheist writings of H.P. Lovecraft. New York, NY: Sporting Gentlemen, Incorporated.
Lovecraft, H. P. (2002) The call of Cthulhu. In S. T. Joshi (Ed.), The call of Cthulhu and other weird stories (pp. 139-169). London, England and New York, NY: Penguin Books.
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