Time is a fine polisher. Take for example Charles L. Grant’s words from 1983 and the Introduction to Shadows 6: “There are Critters and there are critters.” (Wow, that was forty years ago!) He goes on to explain that Critters (large C) includes Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man. And these creatures no longer scare us. For non-visual readers long ago, this stuff was scary. But we got the movies and television. (This was before video games were the powerhouse they are today.) We aren’t scared by rubber suits anymore.
Not My Thing
CLG goes on to disparage John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982):
They don’t much work anymore, those Critters, and that’s amply proved by the botch John Carpenter made of John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” The director’s heart was in the right place, but he should have remembered (perhaps even re-viewed) Halloween or The Fog to see what made it all work the first time. It certainly wasn’t watching a husky turn itself inside out.
He says there is a bright side. We now have critters (small c). These are monsters that look like us until they strike. He pushes for more subtle horror, terror that creeps like shadows. (Yes, that is the series name, of course.) Shadows ran to eleven volumes of these small c critters tales so there was obviously a market. But his words got me thinking…
S. T. Joshi
First I recalled that S. T. Joshi was not a fan. (For that, go here.) And now it makes sense: if H. P. Lovecraft, monster maker, is your idol, then all this Critter/critter talk is going to put you off. Lovecraft loved Critters. Grant, I guess, did not. Which is a little weird because he wrote the trio of Vampire/Werewolf/Mummy novels inspired by the Universal movies. (I’ve only read the werewolf one and it’s a doozy!) In his intro to that series, he bemoans how poorly we treat our monsters today. Well…. Maybe part of that comes from all this Critter/critter business.
But this wasn’t really about Grant. He wrote his stuff, which I like well enough. It’s not even about how he didn’t like what I consider the best Horror film of the 1980s. The Thing is great. Was it terrifying? Not anymore or any less than an Alien film or Predator or The Terminator. These are all Critter films. And they are fun.
Wellsian Monster Factory
This is really about what do I want in a Horror story (reading or writing one). I usually worry about this when I am selecting a novel or a movie. I almost always prefer the Critter. The Day of the Triffids. The War of the Worlds. The Island of Doctor Moreau. The Time Machine. All H. G. Wells and followers, and all Science Fiction and Horror and all Critter stories. In the previous Monster Genre posts I wrote about how Wells is the wellspring (no pun intended) of many SF and Horror themes. Then I looked at the functions of monsters in the sequel piece. I even talked about the bottleneck, which is a picnic for a monster in another post. But what do I WANT from a Horror tale?
Grant says “…its only with fondness rather than a chill that many of us see Karloff twitching his hands on Colin Clive’s laboratory table…” referring to the film version of Frankenstein (1931). I can’t fault him here. Old horror films are rarely horrifying. But to say we watch only out of “fondness” isn’t right either. There is more here. More about Critters than merely being terrified.
Something Else…
If the fright factor was all: why did I go see 65 just to enjoy the dinosaurs? Why did I sit through The Rig, hoping for one good Lovecraftian squidgy instead of a lecture on global warming? Why do I see every King Kong, Godzilla, Triffids, War of the Worlds, etc remake? Am I a sucker for fondness? No. There is always a hope that this time….
A film like Annihilation. The Ruins. The Descent I and II. The Mist. There are successes. All Critter films. Plenty of failures too, but I won’t list the forgettable stuff. (Just go to Tubi.) But it doesn’t matter. A monster story (as opposed to a Horror story) has its own pleasures. Sure, I may not get too scared watching it, but I will enjoy it all the same. Why is that, if all I am doing is indulging in “fondness”?
Fantasy Connection
This becomes easier to see when I broaden the scope of fiction (and films) I like. In a Fantasy story there are monsters too. The purpose is not to frighten but to create wonder. This makes me remember that the Fantasy genre came out of fairy tales, back when the whole deal wasn’t literary at all. The audience expected giants, witches, evil goblins, etc. A little frightening, sure, but something else too. Because there were also good fairies, unicorns, dragons, etc. in those tales as well. (These last mentioned have become icons of another trend in publishing, Vanilla Fantasy, a sub-genre that focuses on the light, not the dark. I prefer Sword & Sorcery, that focuses on the dark more than the light.)
The Californian School
The long and short of this is that C. L. Grant may have been right. Horror fiction in the 1980s moved away from monster fiction towards Horror that used a different kind of metaphor. Because monsters are metaphors. The Shadows style Horror tale foregoes the beastie and makes its impact directly. (This wasn’t really new. Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan and the rest of the California school had been doing this since the 1950s.) Name one good Bradbury monster after his Weird Tales days? “The Fog Horn” dinosaur I suppose, but after that….
Remember Ray was the one who spoke about how if you have a ten foot monster, you think, geez, that looks smaller than I thought. It should have been twenty feet tall!) Bradbury works with and without creatures and boogies. A story like “October Game” is a good example. George Clayton Johnson’s “A Penny For Your Thoughts” is another. Robert Bloch made a similar transition after Weird Tales. There is a Pulpiness to monster stories that the modern writer may not want to embrace.
Prime Evil
The 1980s was a heydey for small press magazines of Horror. Some embraced Grant’s ideal and others did not. The Cthulhu Mythos grew in popularity at the same time as the subtle Horror tale. A collection like Douglas Winter’s Prime Evil (1988) has Stephen King’s vampire peeing in a bathroom (Critter) in “The Night Flyer” alongside critter tales like “Orange Is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity” by David Morrell. Grant’s own “Spinning Tales with the Dead” appeared there too. Of these tales, only King’s rather silly one has left any real impression on my mind. I remember thinking it a rather poor gathering. Perhaps I should go back and re-read it. But I fear only the King piece will give me Critter pleasure.
Paperbacks From Hell
The other thing that happened in the 1980s was the explosion in Stephen King style paperbacks. The publishing industry milked that cow so hard that by the 1990s Horror fans were ready for something else. This may be what is fueling Grant’s appeal for something more subtle. Think of all the Critter books from the 1970s and 80s. (If you can’t, check out Grady Hendrix’s masterpiece, Paperbacks From Hell (2017) Anytime I need a refresher in Critterology I flip through this history and marvel at the sheer monsterosity of it all. Possession, creepy children, animals, plants, etc. Monsters, monsters, monsters! This is Critter Valhalla for those who require a creature in their Horror.)
Conclusion
And then the vampires came back. And the zombies. The 21st Century has re-embraced the Critter. Things went back to normal. At least for me. I was never a Twilight fan but I watched a whole new generation eat it up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was more my thing.Or Supernatural in the early years. The Walking Dead also started well but eventually forgot what it was all about. (The Last of Us is poised to make the same mistake.) When you begin with monsters but move over into soap opera or social commentary, you become critter instead of Critter. And to my mind, that’s a mistake.
At last my ramble ends here: I land on The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling used both Critters and critters. What were the best episodes? A matter of opinion, of course, but the best remembered are often the Critter episodes. Think of the nurse with a face like a pig. The gremlin on the wing of the plane. The little boy who could change things with his mind. Richard Kiel and his alien cookbook. Sure, you also had Burgess Meredith ready to sit and read books after Armageddon but he breaks his only pair of glasses. Art Carney becomes Santa Claus. Roddy McDowell becomes an exhibit in a zoo. Serling was first and foremost about the idea, the twist. Sometimes this worked best with a prop or a Critter. Sometimes it wasn’t necessary. I should think C. L. Grant’s selections in Shadows had the same consideration. He chose the tales that did not need the Critter. It can work but I am glad we have both the small c and the large C.
Interesting, I only know Johnson and Nolan from their book Logan’s Run. I guess you could argue that in it the dystopian society is the monster.
Nolan in particular had a long career after Logan’s Run writing Horror fiction.