The word comes down to us from the Old Roman, horrere, which means literally “to stand on end” (as in hair) or “to shiver,” whether from fear or cold – Ovid refers to the “chill-bearing breath” of the North Wind (Metamorphosis, I.65).

Halloween is a unique holiday, marked for the celebration of the chill bearing, when demons and witches are allowed to come out to play and scare the bejezzus out of us – or at least, that’s how it used to be.

Over the last decade or so, Halloween has become less about creep and more about camp; Dracula and Frankenstein costumes replaced by Octomom and Obama masks (OK, those are more scary). What I want to do here is help those who would like go old school this year, and have a truly frightful All Hallows’ Eve.

(First suggestion – avoid bars. Like St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s, Halloween brings out the amateur drinkers, a more loathsome species than any undead thing you may encounter. No, Halloween is best spent alone with someone special to snack on in the dark, with something scary to read, listen to, or watch.)

Film

For those in the movie mood (and who isn’t?), Halloween provides a dilemma – a horror-fest is definitely called for, but in no other genre is the crap/gold ration so heavily weighted towards the fecal. Rest easy – I have done the hard work for you, and watched hundreds of hours of horror, and can heartily recommend these selections:

The Ring, 2002 – Don’t let anyone tell you the Japanese original (Ringu) is better – Naomi Watts is perfect here in a classic ghost tale, an exquisite mixture of supernatural and technology – literally, ghost out of the machine. Gave me (me!) a nightmare.

Halloween, 1978 – Forget the atrocious recent Rob Zombie remakes and stick to the original low budget, John Carpenter-helmed masterpiece, about an escaped mental patient who comes back to torment his home town. Carpenter single-handedly invents the slasher genre; often imitated, never surpassed.

Salem’s Lot, 1979 – This adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, about a small New England town invaded by –  and then infested with – vampires, was directed by Tobe Hooper as a television mini-series. Constrained by network censors from going the blood and gore route, Hooper is forced to concentrate on atmosphere and character, with terrific, terrifying results. Among the best – and least appreciated – of modern horror films.

Rosemary’s Baby, 1968 – Featuring more than one Oscar-calibre performance, this claustrophobic tale of a diabolical plot has lost none of its paranoid power forty years later. (Note: For those who refuse to watch any of Polanski’s work out of principle, feel free to substitute The Exorcist for equally successful Satanic fun).

Let The Right One In, 2008 – Based on a 2004 Swedish novel of the same name, this award winning film of “romantic horror,” about a young boy who befriends an undead girl next door, has rightfully been described as one of the best vampire movies of all time. Touching, unnerving and gruesome, it is unlike anything you have ever seen.

Night of The Living Dead, 1968 – Best. Zombies. Ever. Period.

Music

So that should be more than enough to watch. But what to listen to, on Halloween?  Here a couple of spine-tingling tunes:

Katch 22 by Alien Sex Fiend – Mr. and Mrs Fiend usually serve up their unique blend of electronic horror-rock with a generous helping of winks and chuckles, but not this time; Katch 22 is a lumbering beast arisen form the sea, a booming prophesy of doom.

Cervix Couch by Christian Death – Cervix Couch comes in two versions; the original, from the album “Catastrophe Ballet,” is a sparse dirge evoking stone staircases and empty white beds. The second, an electronic remix titled the Spahn Ranch Mix, is completely different – but even more unsettling.

Double Dare by Bauhaus – This magisterial masterpiece lurches to life in fits and sputters, like some sulfurous submarine coming to life before plunging into the icy depths – with your soul. Peter Murphy rages against – well, everything, and for once, he seems dead serious. I dare you to listen.

Wolf Moon, by Type O Negative – The Brooklyn-based quartet delivers a beautiful, haunting paean to Werewolves, autumn, and the female reproductive cycle (yep) from their fantastically under-rated album “October Rust.”  Beware…the woods….at night.

(For those in a dancing mood, try Everyday Is Halloween by Ministry, and Now I’m Feeling Zombified by Alien Sex Fiend.)

Books

For those with the quaint passion for papyrus, since we have recently celebrated the bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, and this October marks the 160th anniversary of his death, selections from the master are more than fitting.

Poe’s famous tales, Masque of the Red Death, The Tell Tale Heart, etc. are all grand.  But I suggest Ligeia, his masterpiece and one of the more exquisitely wrought short stories in all the world – and strangely little known for all that.

For verse, you of course can’t go wrong with The Raven, but check out the lesser known but still beautiful Gothic chimes Ulalume, The Haunted Palace, and The Valley of Unrest – you will be well rewarded.

H.P. Lovecraft was Poe’s disciple – and not quite his equal – but  who nevertheless wrote some very effective horror/sci-fi fiction. For me, the much-vaunted Cthulhu mythos is far less effective than his shorter, stand alone tales. My favorites include the ekphrastic duo The Music of Erich Zann and Pickman’s Model, both of which can be devoured in a single sitting.

And of course, it doesn’t get any scarier than the Great Bard’s Macbeth. It is amazing how feverish and focused this allegedly cursed play reads – the cackle of the witches can still be heard long after the book is shut and the lights go out.

There you have it, kiddies, some chill-bearing fun to put the fright back into your All Hallows’ night. Now go forth, and reclaim Halloween for all the goblins and ghouls – remember, on this night, even the devil deserves his due.

Happy Halloween!

Dear Chairman Landesman:

With all this fuss on Big Hollywood.com, Big Government.com and elsewhere over the NEA’s government-funded forays into partisan political propaganda, I thought maybe we could help each other out. 

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Right now, you probably want to support some art that addresses vital current issues from a right-wing perspective in order to demonstrate your impartiality (ha ha!), and I just want to cash in your organization’s evident willingness to spend good tax money on any kind of nonsense that can be passed-off as “art” (ca-ching!)   

Well, I am uniquely suited to provide you with just what you’re looking for!  As a college student, I got a “B” in my Visual Arts 1 class for dressing up a juniper bush in one of my Hawaiian shirts to draw attention to man’s essential oneness with nature while providing a stinging critique of America’s consumerist culture.  Sure, my black-clad, Bauhaus-loving classmates protested that I was a fraud who was more concerned with collecting four easy credits than internalizing our professor’s commie insights about how expressionism equals imperialism, but hey – aren’t all great artists rebels?   Or, at least, weren’t they before last January 20th?

Just kidding, dude!  Anyway, as your organization’s visual arts mission statement says:

Grants in the visual arts support projects undertaken by organizations that encourage individual artistic development, experimentation, and dialogue between artists and the public through exhibitions, residencies, publications, commissions, public art works, conservation, documentation, services to the field, and public programs.

Sounds awesome!  Now, I went to the NEA’s grant application site and there’s a long complicated process for getting grants that seems to involve me becoming a federal contractor.  Nothing like the government for taking something simple – like you writing me a fat check – and turning it into a bureaucratic death march!  Can’t wait until you folks take over health care! 

Anyhow, instead I think I’ll just cut to the chase and sketch out my proposed projects for you here.  You can fund the one – or ones! – that you like best:

1) My first proposed project is an interpretive dance piece to be performed on the streets of Greenwich Village titled “The Cry of the Employed.”

This innovative performance involves me using motion and song to tell the story of a beleaguered taxpayer forced to subsidize the ridiculous indulgences of pseudo-intellectual no-talents who try to pass off their pretentious junk as art.  Dressed in business suit and button-down shirt with a sensible tie, I will confront passing goateed hipsters and pierced bohos, acting out the story of a man who works hard only to have his money siphoned off support the antics of a bunch of pompous deadbeats.  My choreography will draw from the traditions of ballet, kabuki and Appalachian folk dance while incorporating maracas and jazz hands.  And yes, there will be krumping.

2) My second proposed project is a performance art piece that was going to be called Chocolate Thunder until I Googled it and found that this is the title of a very , very specialized series of erotic videos.  Instead, my piece will be called Suburban Fudge.  Out of an abundance of caution, I have not Googled this title.

In the tradition of pioneering NEA grant recipient Karen Finley, who famously covered herself in chocolate to demonstrate the corrosive effects of patriarchal hegemony, I plan to slather myself in rich, creamy Hershey’s to demonstrate the glory of corporate America.  This act will reaffirm my allegiance to Big Chocolate and underscore my belief that the best hope for American progress is a vigorous, lightly-regulated private sector.  Using my body, I will also form a Laffer Curve then engage in some dramatic readings from Milton Friedman’s Free To Choose.  And I will personally keep any profits from the performance, an act which itself is central to the integrity of the piece.

3) My third proposed project is an installation that takes Andres Serrano’s infamous Piss Christ, the crucifix in a jar of the artist’s urine, to the next level.  I call it Pee Health Care Reform Bill.

Now, the draft health care bill is well over 1000 pages long, so I’m not sure I can personally handle the, uh, logistics of this project.  This is where the NEA comes in.  I plan to use my grant to buy a keg of frosty Dos Equis Lager for me and my buddies.  After we drink it we can, well, get “creative” Serrano-style!  We’ll also need limes, and some snacks would be nice too.  I think I could get you a final product for, say, $25,000.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my email – though I have to say that as a conservative I am horrified by the fact that there’s an Internet domain out there with the name of “arts.gov” since the only proper involvement of the government in the arts is not to have any role at all.  Well, guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that, right?

I sure hope you dig my personal vision enough to cut me a check – just don’t forget the second “h” in “Schlichter” on the payee line!  And remember, because I’m a heterosexual right-wing gun-owning veteran with a real job, you’ll be able to check several important diversity boxes for your organization for the first time in its illustrious history! 

I’m looking forward to seeing you at the premiere of Suburban Fudge, but don’t forget to bring a jacket – the first three rows will get wet! 

Best,

Kurt A. Schlichter
Future Performance Artist

The bats have left the bell tower, the victims have been bled… - Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”

Goth is dead.

Well, OK, maybe not.  But if it is not dead, exactly, Goth certainly isn’t what it once was.  In this, Goth is rather like conservatism – with which it shares much (more on that later) – a glorious 1980’s heyday, followed by a confused 1990’s…and a disastrous 2000’s. 

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True, some elements of Goth limp along in the new millennium, having been cannibalized by, and absorbed into, mainstream culture.  In some instances, co-opted bits of Goth have been so deracinated as to seem entirely anomalous – witness the black hair, black eyeliner, and black nail polish of the latest American Idol runner up; like claws on a cow, once dangerous and distinct trappings draped on an entirely neutered and non threatening pop singer.

But this is really an ephemeral sort of existence.  If Goth lives now, it is more in the manner of those dearly departed who live on in the habits, mannerisms and memories of the loved ones who survive them, rather than the corporeal beings they once were.

Why?  What happened to this strange movement?  Where did it come from?  For that matter, what the hell is ‘Goth’ anyway?

In this column, we will examine these questions, and attempt to ascertain the causes of both Goth’s origin and its decline. We will analyze the major elements and investigate the major practitioners. We will probe, remember, and lament; we will celebrate and categorize. We will be anthropologists and nostalgists.  It will perhaps be a useful endeavor – at the very least, some of us will have something in the way of explanation when our future children discover our old and tattered capes in the back of the closet.

But our investigation will not end there.  We will examine and explore the Gothic in all of its permutations, from the tribes who swept down from the Nordic north to shake the mighty Roman Empire, to the architecture of the High Middle Ages which soared to touch the face of God, to the castle-strewn romance novels of early modern Europe.  We will try to determine what, if anything, these phenomena have in common besides the not entirely helpful label “Gothic,” and what, if any, connection they have to the modern movement.

For Goth is indeed a many splintered thing.  It is an aesthetic. It is a music. It is a style of dress and a manner of speech. Like all subcultures, it is a way for people to organize their lives, a guide to relating to the world and its evanescent and mercurial inhabitants. In this sense, it performs some of the functions of religion, philosophy, and a neighborhood bridge night. It is a coping mechanism, a crutch, and a glorious release.

And yet Goth, and especially the music, has seldom been given the sort of serious attention bequeathed on other genres, in part because so much of it descended into the kind of cheap theatricality which is easily mocked and dismissed.  But make no mistake – the best Goth is some of the best music, and we will here give it, as well as its performers and fans, the consideration it deserves.

Because this column will be a labor of love and, therefore (as most such labors) impecunious, it will appear when it will.  I will post a chapter weekly when I can; monthly when I must.  But I will post, if you will read.

So step this way. Watch your head as we descend this creaky staircase into the dark. Don’t worry. I’ll hold your hand. I’ll lead the way. I’ve been down here before, you see.

Don’t mind the flitter and flutter about your head, the scurry and screeching about your feet. Close your nostrils to the must and dust. Let the cobwebs caress your face, as we approach the first vault, which opens onto Greenwich Village in the mid 1960’s, and a band that is about to be fired for playing a forbidden and luciferous tune…

They call themselves The Velvet Underground.

Next Time:  In The Beginning