The Church of Paranoia

Good horror to me is synonymous with atmosphere. It can be a physical atmosphere conjured up by such old standbys as full moons, darkness, graveyards, driving rain, Gothic mansions, isolated cabins, abandoned mental hospitals, lonely roads, and so on; or it can be a psychological atmosphere of fear, terror, doubt, suspicion, loneliness, and paranoia. In the latter case, the atmosphere is yet more effective when imposed over what amounts to a normal environment -- say, that of a small town.

True horror is not the radically different, but the everyday seen through frightened eyes. If it's 3 AM and pouring rain, and I have to take shelter in a rotting barn in the woods where 10 years ago, a heap of severed heads was discovered, that's supposed to be scary. If I live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, the discovery that there is a serial killer in my midst makes me realize that I don't know everyone else. Not at all. And that is horrifying in a much different sort of way; the feeling is not merely shock and horror but betrayal, because I'm not supposed to be scared here. The houses of my neighbors suddenly appear sinister to me, and the quirks and idiosyncrasies of those neighbors suddenly take on new and terrifying meanings. Nothing is as it seems, and I can't trust anyone. I've been robbed of that most precious of all small-town and suburban sensations: my feeling of security.

When I read The Church of Dead Girls, two things struck me. The first was that the atmosphere of paranoia reminded me strongly of such diverse but effective works as Tami Hoag's Night Sins, the movie The Thing (Carpenter's version), The Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, and even The Crucible. In each case a precipitating incident leads to ever-increasing paranoia among a group of people; in each case, small quirks of behavior, odd habits, even unusual hobbies are misinterpreted as having sinister significance. Friendships and even familial bonds are tested and often found wanting in the atmosphere of suspicion and fear. A witch hunt atmosphere prevails, and nobody is what they seem to be.

The second fact of Church to strike me was the idea, touched upon in Psycho, that "we're all a little crazy", and that our private lives act as a sort of curtain by which we can give vent to our insanity without being subjected to public scrutiny. Take, if you will, the idea of masturbation. In private it falls under the vast heading of "what goes on with the shades pulled down." In public it is a crime and considered indicitive of a sexual fetish at the best, and a sexual deviancy at the worst. Yet the difference is merely a matter of opening a door and walking a few feet. In a sense, a lot of "crazy" behavior is simply private behavior exhibited in a public forum -- talking to oneself, for example, is not unusual at home, but is considered "crazy" on the street. The difference is not in the act, but in the location -- behind or before the curtain. So long as we behave "normally", stay within the lines, so to speak, in public, we can be as crazy as we like behind closed doors. But 'closed doors' can be a metaphor for normal-seeming behavior as well as a literal interpretation.
An unspoken thought, however hideous, takes place behind an impenetrable curtain. And so long as we keep our more deviant thoughts and feelings in the realm of fantasies rather than actions, behind the impenetrable curtain of our skulls, we remain "normal."

To me, the fascination of the serial lays largely in two areas: the first is that his outstanding quality is not his insanity, but rather the fact that his insanity has progressed beyond fantasy to the realm of action. Many people dream of committing murder, rape, arson, etc. but very few people actually do it. The second is that a serial killer is often "normal" or close to normal in everyday life. He has mastered the art of walking between the lines in his daily routine. In slasher movies, the killer is an over-the-top madman, lurching about in a stylized mask and weilding a blood-sloppy chain saw. In real life he would be loose only a matter of hours before the police shot him down. But John Wayne Gacy was a crew-cut pillar in his community, even a member of the Chamber of Commerce. And what terrifies people is not so much the murders he committed but the fact he looked so normal. His normalcy was akin to a betrayal; certainly it was a challenge to their security. One can't walk down the street after a case like that without wondering what is going on behind the closed doors of the neat little houses next door. The strength of Church lies partially in its establishment of justified paranoia, but also in the discomfort it creates by reminding the reader that the distance between themselves and the serial killer is not quite as long as they think.

Fizko

When I was a kid, my site-translation of the word psycho was pronounced approximately "fiz-ko." I mention this because my reaction to Robert Bloch's novel was more or less approximate to this word-sound. It wasn't quite what it was supposed to be.

Now, let me preface any criticism of the book by saying that when you have seen the movie before reading the novel upon which it is based, you often ruin the experience of reading the novel. So it was here, and so it e'er shall be. Most of the "ah-ah" moments in Psycho were ruined by my placement of the cart before the horse, so it's impossible for me to give it a fair hearing. My only recourse is to analyze it from a technical standpoint.

Bloch has the gift of economic storytelling. This is really a novella, and a rather skimpy one at that. Yet it covers quite a bit of ground, and even throws in a fairish expository-backstory at the end. The character of Norman Bates is as well-developed as possible considering the necessity of withholding many vital facts about his past. Lila is also distinct as a character -- her impulsivity, her contemptuous big-city impatience with "hicks", her fierce concern for her sister. Likewise Arbogast, who epitomizes the relentless sort of Pinkerton-type detective of that era, and who reminded me vaguely of Javert from Les Miserables. And the creep factor in the early sequences is pretty high. It's an awkward thing to feel sympathy and understanding for a murderer, or even one who is presumably "only" covering up murder, but I did sympathize with Bates all the same. The shrieking, domineering mother-figure is easy to hate, and we've all known at least one poor SOB who called this sort of creature "mom."

Having said that, I did feel there was a disjointed quality to the proceedings. I get this is a "horror" novel, but I see it primarily as a thriller, and for a thriller to work, the hero(es) must be working toward the prevention of some particular, specific catastrophe. (This, I learned my first time 'round at SHU, is the principal difference between a mystery and a thriller.) Psycho stuttered a bit for me not only because seeing the movie crushed most of the suspense, but because Bloch shows his hand a bit too early in the goings for my taste. Once the Sheriff reveals to Sam that Norma Bates has been dead for 20 years, it becomes evident that Bates must be the killer and "Norma" only a figment of his twisted imagination. Likewise when Bates knocks Sam unconscious; his speech to Sam beforehand makes the final confrontation between Sam and Bates a letdown.

It's unfair to contrast the book with the film, but if we shove aside fair, I had to say that Hitchcock was more skillful with his sense of timing. Norman is clearly involved in the grisly doings at the Bates Hotel, but the fact that he is Norma Bates is the "ah-ha!" moment of the film -- indeed, the entire movie is constructed to lead us to that point, and at that time. Bloch's eagerness to show the afformentioned hand is, in a thriller, a fairly egregious sin. It's like tripping an ambush before the enemy is in the kill zone, or scaring away the deer before they are in range of your rifle. Patience is a tough skill to learn, but it's essential in a writer of this type of novel.

If I seem a bit too hard on Bloch I must repeat that seeing the movie, and fairly recently, at that (or part of it anyway, at a John Williams concert at the Hollywood Bowl) robbed the book of nearly all of its power and gave me a kind of 20/20 hindsight that I would definitely not have possessed otherwise. If Psycho fizzed for me, it's really no reflection on the author. Blame Alfred Hitchcock.