Sep 24 2008
No Holds Barred on the Blood
My alter ego Chuck Stake would love this post. If he were here. He’s at work at his part-time job. In the floral department (don’t judge him–it’s just for a little extra cash). I figured I’d pay homage to him and his genitals, er…genre (I’m still shaking from the last time I caught him on my bed naked) by posting this article about the uncompromising concept of splatterpunk.
Honestly, I had to do some research on this one! I knew easily what the genre was all about, but I didn’t know how it began or exactly where the line stood between certain facets of, say, standard ‘classic’ suspense horror (ghost stories are a possible example for that) and, well, let’s say Clive Barker’s short story “The Midnight Meat Train” (which I’m now moderately interested in seeing the very recent film adaptation, even though it’ll probably ‘violate’ my insides just by watching it).
David J. Schow coined the term splatterpunk in the mid-80s while at the World Fantasy Convention held in Rhode Island. It refers to literature and film specifically characterized by its no-holds-barred graphicness and violence and infinite use of gore and the inexplicable. We’re talking very serious themes, things that can make our jaws drop, make us cringe, make us wonder if something like a woman being raped by an ice pick a few hundred times could actually happen on this Earth. It can. It probably has. That’s the chilling part of it all. Generally, splatterpunk was intended as an answer to all that ‘classic’ horror that saturated the genre (ghost stories, suspense stories, stuff like that). People, writers, everyone–I suppose they were looking for something to shock them.
Well known writers of splatterpunk include Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Jack Ketchum, Joe Lansdale, Richard Laymon, Richard Christian Matheson, Robert McCammon, John Skipp, Craig Spector (that name makes me smile a little) and David J. Schow himself.
I’m going to be honest when I say that the idea of splatterpunk actually made me sort of smile and giggle, specifically due to such films as “Dead Alive” (also known as “Braindead”). I suppose I was sort of ‘tainted’ by the concept and flavor of this film in the wrong way, maybe?
I watched the film about a decade ago, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was the most despicable, deplorable, desensitizing, disgusting, any-other-d-word-describing-something-disgusting film I had ever seen. And that was the whole point of it. Moreover, it made me laugh with its uncompromising nature. Just about every scene had some form of blood shower in it. A mutant rat bites an older mother, which turns the mother, essentially, into a zombie that begins eating other people, animals, stuff like that. There was a scene where two particular people who were ‘infected’ by the mother start having zombie sex (I’m not kidding), and then only minutes later, the ‘zombie’ woman gives birth(!) to a zombie baby. A very ugly zombie baby. So now we have a zombie baby running around, wanting to bite people and eat people and cats and dogs and just about anything else it can sink its sick, twisted, yellow teeth into (yes, it had teeth, even though it’s a NEWBORN!).
It gets worse. Closer to the ‘climax’ of the film (well, for lack of a better term, because quite frankly there was no ‘climax’ of the film), the main character takes a lawnmower, which apparently weighs like a feather, holds it up so the blades face perpendicular to the ground, and starts running around a room filled with zombies, effectively mowing down each zombie in a massive, majestic display of gore unlike anything I had ever seen. This was about the time that I stared into the TV, shocked, in awe at what I was watching. The scene lasted for a good ten minutes or so. Ten minutes! Blood showers. I felt dirty just watching it. And I had never seen blood that thick. It looked like freakin’ Ragu or Prego! And the poor main character became drenched in it as he strafed the horde of zombies with his featherweight lawnmower, gritting his teeth like a madman. Utterly funny.
Here, watch this trailer. This is the actual trailer to the film:
Now keep in mind something, though: I watched this film not knowing what to expect. I never saw a trailer, if I remember. It just happened to be on Expanded Cable at the time (Showtime, I believe, or HBO). Here’s the bottom line when it comes to this film, which obviously falls under the genre of splatterpunk–
I did not know that it was a comedy. It was actually MEANT to make people laugh. Seriously. Watching the trailer sort of proves it.
Watching that film when I did forced me to associate it with the concept of splatterpunk, which is why I gave birth (not literally, people) to the fun-loving ”Chuck Stake”. But after doing my research, I got confused: how can I literally associate Clive Barker with splatterpunk? How’s THAT possible? Well, it was. Research proved it.
For the longest time, I figured splatterpunk to be a gratuitous gorefest without any substance (except for blood and guts, of course) or depth to the story. All that thanks to “Dead Alive” (also known as “Braindead”).
After doing this research, it was easy to see that all the classic ‘zombie’ movies, most notably by George Romero, fell under the same category: splatterpunk. The “Saw” movies did as well. Quentin Tarantino’s “Hostel” and “From Dusk till Dawn” satisfied the genre. “The Hills Have Eyes” couldn’t have been more ’splatterpunk’ than it already was.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the splatterpunk genre did indeed have plenty of depth to it. There were salient points that resonated with humanity in these films and stories.
I’ve refused to even watch any of the “Saw” movies specifically because I know what they’re about–human frailty, the concept of being so close to death and not having any way out. It’s a profound experience to really feel it on the screen. It becomes very personal. Almost intimate. And that’s what’s so frightening about it. George Romero’s work was obvious, too–any film nut could tell you that each ‘zombie’ flick had a very distinct commercial and political message to it. Think about it. The consumerism and lifestyle obsession, the constant need for ’stuff’ and money and 401K’s and savings bonds and the best cell phones money can buy and a house at the Hamptons–we’re all ‘zombies’, mindless zombies, hungry for ‘flesh’. It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It’s so brilliant that even today, zombie films hold a certain flair and popularity (”28 Days Later”, “28 Weeks Later”, the “Resident Evil” movies).
What shocked me even more–the more I thought about it, my novel THE CAIN LETTERS also has elements of splatterpunk in it! The idea! I marveled at it. Most notably, my sequel CHIMERA FALLS also has even more characteristics leaning toward the genre.
The concept of uncompromising horror, no holds barred on the blood, really resonates with a deep fascination for the unspeakable. We can’t help but say in our minds this very simple question: “could this really happen?” That sentence alone makes us shiver. That’s an element of horror that doesn’t always exist, particularly due to the unique facets of horror already out there. The idea that something as horrifying as ‘Leatherface’ could actually exist…that the worst of humanity, the sickest desires and thoughts and weaknesses of our wicked minds, actually thrives out there in the world….
It reminds us just how important it is to be the best we can be as humans, how important it is to focus the most on our morals and nobility, to never fall away into that kind of darkness where we circle for eternity in some ethereal damnation, a perpetual state of sheer hellish ecstasy. It makes the genre of splatterpunk that much more relevant, I think. Don’t you? *Pierre’s eyes start glowing red like a vampire’s*
