FRIGHTENING FLIX BY KBATZ: British Horror Documentaries!

British Horror Documentaries, Brilliant! By Kristin Battestella

This quartet of documentaries and informative programming has plagues, queens, holidays, and witches – all with a little across the pond flair.

The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague – Purdue Medieval Literature Professor Dorsey Armstrong hosts this 2016 twenty-four episode lecture series from The Great Courses Signature Channel, beginning with early feudal nobles versus peasants, religious society and church control, and urban growth in the medieval warm period before a changed Europe in 1348 with plague reducing the population from 150 million to 70 million. Onscreen maps, notations, and timelines supplement the disturbing first-hand accounts, despairing eye witness testimonies, and Old English translations of outbreak terrors – focusing on the human response to pestilence while dispelling misnomers on The Black Death’s name and symptoms. Some victims writhed in long-suffering agony while others died within a day, drowning in their own blood thanks to bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic bacterium. Ebola virus comparisons are specific and gruesome alongside scientific theories on bacillus causes, tuberculosis similarities, Blue Sickness inconsistencies, and Anthrax possibilities. Prior Justinian outbreaks, Asian beginnings in Kaffa, and Italian trade route migration spread plague while fleas, rats, and gerbils transmission, weather patterns, and even extraterrestrial origins are debated. Entire villages were ravaged with hemorrhagic fever contributing to the scourge’s spread on poor, crowded, malnourished people fearing the judgment of God, wearing creepy masks, and carrying fragrant herbs to curb the smell of mass shallow graves and dog-mauled bodies. Despite illiteracy, wills and documentation accumulate – although journals have blank spaces and abrupt ends because the writers died. Vacancies increase while religious orders decrease since those ministering to the sick die, yet crime declines as thieves won’t even enter a wealthy but plagued home. Avignon pilgrimages bring devastation and Walking Dead comparisons as Florence’s valuable textiles are burned. Prostitutes are often cast out – not for transmission worries, but to purge sin from a city. Orphans and widows become dependent on the patriarchal society, and artistic guild become charitable necessities. Flagellant movements fill the religious gap while England’s unexposed island population leaves London with no place left to put the dead. When only the 103 heads of households are marked dead in the census, one can conservatively deduce the number of dead was probably quadruple that 103. In a town of 1,000, what if the average household number was seven? Ghost ships arrive in Norway, and grim reaper folklore expresses Scandinavian fears amid whispers of children being buried alive to appease angry gods. Primitive remedies and bloodletting rise, as do tales of monks and nuns going out in style with debauchery and hedonism or gasp, dancing in town-wide festivals. An entire episode is dedicated to antisemitism and Jewish persecutions, a depressing and violent response on top of the plague, and the callous church using the pestilence as an opportunity to remind people it was their sinful fault may have helped spur later reformations. Of course, lack of clergy meant the church accepted anyone for ordination, leaving priests who didn’t know what they were doing when the faithful public needed help most. Outside of nobles losing their privileged status, most classes were ironically better off post-plague with memento mori artwork and danse macabre murals flourishing amid literary masterpieces and dramatic analysis inspiring the early renaissance and the likes of Chaucer. Economic booms re-establish trade as the aristocracy marries into the merchant class and peasants revolt for more power, changing the world for centuries to come. While lengthy for the classroom itself, these half hours are jammed packed with information, documentation, and statistics keeping viewers curious to learn more. This is a fine accompaniment or a la carte for independent study – an academic approach rather than the in your face, sensationalized documentary formats permeating television today. The Great Courses Channel is worth the streaming add-on for a variety of informative videos, and this macabre selection is perfect for fans of horror history.

Mary Queen of Scots: The Red Queen – Scottish castles, ruinous abbeys, and highland scenery anchor this 2014 documentary on that other devout catholic Mary thorn in protestant Elizabeth’s side. The narration admits the similar names are confusing, but the voiceover meanders with unnecessary time on Mary’s parents James V and his French wife Mary of Guise amid Henry VIII marital turmoil, perilous successions, and religious switches. Opera arias interfere further as we stray into Mary Mary quite contrary rhymes, earlier Robert the Bruce connections, Tudor rivalries, French alliances, and the possible poisoning of infant Stuart sons before finally getting to Mary being crowned at nine months old in defiance of male inheritance laws. Rough Wooing tensions and early betrothal plans with Edward VI lead to isolation at Stirling Castle before a pleasant childhood at the French court, but a princess education and marriage to the Dauphin in 1558 ultimately send the young widow back to Scotland as regent in 1561. Catholic unrest always leaves Mary on unfriendly terms with Bess alongside John Knox reformations at home, misogynist rhetoric, and a nasty marriage to her first cousin Henry Stuart. The need for an heir, murdered lovers, adulterous pregnancies, revenge – loyal nobles take sides as the Catholic baptism of the future James VI divides public opinion. Men with syphilis, suspicious gunpowder accidents, marital traps, and final meetings with her year-old son begat possible kidnappings, a new marriage to the Earl of Bothwell, revolts, imprisonment at Loch Leven, abdication, and rumors of stillborn twins with unknown fathers. It might have been interesting to see scholars contrasting bad girl Mary with her marriages and male interference versus Elizabeth The Virgin Queen rather than the all over the place narrative. Bess holds Mary captive in various English castles for eighteen years until religious coups, forged letters, an absentee trial, and the final treasonous Babington Plot. Mary goes out in style with symbolic red despite her botched beheading, with an ironic final resting place at Westminster Abbey beside Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. This rambling hour confuses itself and repeats anecdotes in what should have been a tighter, more informative focus. However, such superficial storyteller basics can actually be a good classroom compliment with additional materials.

Witches: A Century of Murder – Historian Suzannah Lipscomb hosts this two-part 2015 special chronicling the seventeenth century persecutions and torture run rampant as witchcraft hysteria spread from James I in the late fifteen hundreds through Charles I and the English Civil War. 1589 Europe has burn at the stake fever thanks to the Malleus Maleficarum belief that witches were in league with the devil, and contemporaneous sources, books, and confessions help recount violent techniques and sexual aspects that may not be classroom-friendly. Innocent birthmarks or moles on maids and midwives were used and misconstrued until naming names and pointing fingers snowballed into deplorable jail conditions, hangings, and conspiracy. Postulating on why the innocent would confess is addressed alongside the details from the North Berwick Witch Trials – including garroting and even the smell of burning human fat. James I’s own Daemonologie becomes a license to hunt witches as the 1645 then-normal rationale that witches have sex with the devil escalates to extreme Puritan paranoia. Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins takes the law into his own hands via body searches, sleep deprivation, and agonizing deaths while unknown medicinal ills or causes were conveniently mistaken as evidence for witchcraft accusations. Names and faces are put to the exorbitant number of accused while on location scenery from Scotland to Oxford, Essex, and Denmark add to the prison tours and suspenseful trial re-enactments. Here specific facts and detailed information happen early and often rather than any hollow paranormal herky-jerky in your face design. Community fears, social cleansing frenzy, and things done in the name of good and God against evil and the Devil at work accent the timeline of how and why this prosecution became persecution run amok. Instead of broad, repetitive sensationalism or the same old Salem talk, this is a mature and well presented narrative on the erroneous impetus of the witchcraft hysteria.

You Make the Call, Addicts!

Halloween: Feast of the Dying Sun – This recent documentary hour intends to set the holiday straight with the Celtic origins of season, adding sunsets, cemeteries, Samhain bonfires, and end of the harvest celebrations to the spooky voiceover for heaps of atmosphere. From Scottish identity guessing games and the belief that the dead visit the living to trick or treating as beggars pleading door to door and souling for small cakes, tales of how our Halloween customs came together are detailed with banshees, hidden fairylands, and ghost sightings. It’s great to see Druid practices, pre-Tolkien fantasy ideals, and Victorian fairy beliefs rooted in daily culture rather than Halloween as we know it as October 31 and done. Brief reenactments add creepy alongside authoritative, folklorist interviews, but the campfire storytelling narrative is often too abstract, meandering from one spooky specter to another with only vague, basic minutes on Celtic arrivals in Britain, early sacrificial offerings, standing stones, and ancient sites. The facts jump from 4,000-year-old yew trees to otherworldly portals and fairies capturing mortals for liberating dance rituals – crowding intriguing details on the special power of nine or magic number three and church absorption of pagan practices. The generic Celtic talk drifts away from Samhain specifically, as if today’s generation needs hand-holding explanations on witch hunts, the origins of bobbing for apples, and the medieval transition toward All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day. The rough timeline tosses in New World changes, Victorian gothic literature, and horror cinema fodder as we both laud Halloween with parades and an American commercial revival yet continue to misconstrue witchcraft and occult hallmarks of the season. This can be spooky fun for folks who don’t know a lot about the history of Halloween, however, it will be too swift and superficial for expert viewers. It’s easy to zone out thanks to the random storytelling style, and the intended pagan history would be better served with a longer or specific, multipart documentary. Except for some wanton fairy queen sexy talk, as is this is neat for a teen sleepover or party background where rather than attempted academic, the tall tales can be casual fun.

March Madness: The Splits by MV Clark

In honor of March Madness month, MV Clark has shared with us an excerpt of her novel, The Splits.

Can you keep out The Splits, or is it already inside you?

A global zombie plague known as ‘The Splits’ is kept under fragile control, but nobody feels safe.

Anna, a young journalist, fears she’s infected. She learns all she can about the disease, which brings her to the attention of Lupe – a maverick scientist working on an unconventional cure. As Anna discovers the secrets of the disease, her world begins to fall apart.

Meanwhile, what is going on with Anna’s sister Claire, and her strange little boy Michael?

“[The Splits] does all the things quality horror should do – builds suspense, delivers shocks and distorts everyday reality to great effect. And creates a creeping feeling that something is very very wrong.” Louise – amazon reviewer

“The story started with some grotesque and thrilling scenes, so I expected that it would be a clichéd zombie survival horror at the beginning. But it wasn’t! It was a good mixture of Western and Japanese horror with psychological horror. I enjoyed it so much!” Yuuki, Goodreads reviewer

Enjoy this excerpt from The Splits

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2015 – Anna

I have a garden now, and often I sit there and think about how the plague began. The plants change from season to season – in spring there’s a mass of purple alliums, in summer there are dark red roses, in autumn, white anemones riot. But my favourite place is always on the weathered bench by the back wall, where the winter jasmine climbs. I sit and I recall 1969, the year the sickness started.

Patient zero was covered by the US section of the Sunday paper. Nobody realised who he was at the time. Schoolteacher Bites Pupil ran the headline, and the violent attack was given just one paragraph.

I didn’t pay much attention. It was just after my sister had her son Michael and whenever I saw them he was screaming. I was shocked by his perpetual misery and annoyed by Claire’s masochistic dedication. I wasn’t really concentrating on events overseas. I tossed the edition on a pile and forgot about it.

But the following week the paper devoted a whole page to the incident. According to the report, Mr Driscoll had been explaining genetic and chromosomal aberrations to his twelfth grade science class. Over the course of the lesson, an odd rash came up on his left eyelid. Mid-sentence, he tailed off and stared at the class as if he didn’t know where he was.

I did actually go to New York a while back, with Michael of all people, but in 1969 I’d never been. Thus, I tried to imagine what that day must have been like. It was February, so it would have been freezing outside. It might also have been raining – drumming on the glass, sluicing down the sidewalks. One of those dull, dark days when the light is just a tarnished silver trickle. Beautiful in its own way, but not much use when you’re in a school science lab, under that harsh fluorescent lighting so beloved of the education system, which makes everything look plastic.

The victim, a capable student called Tina Beneventi, asked Driscoll if he was okay. He looked frightened, “like he’d seen a ghost,” said students. Something startled him – not Tina – and he raised his arm as if warding off a blow.

But a moment later he lowered it, walked slowly out from behind his desk, and towards her. When he was close he cocked his head strangely. She described seeing ‘a bright light in his eye’.

He reached out and stroked her shoulder, which was bare. She flinched. He smiled, as if to reassure her. There was silence in the classroom.

Then, with the speed and precision of a striking snake, he seized her arm and bit it.

The other students, shocked into action, surged at the pair and pulled Driscoll away. One boy raised his arm ready to land a punch. At that moment, Driscoll’s left eye began to bulge and, to his pupils’ abject horror, the eyeball shot out of its socket, not unlike a champagne cork. It sat on his cheek for a moment, suspended by the optic nerve, then fell to the floor where it rolled under a cabinet.

Curiously, this seemed to snap him out of it. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and, spitting blood, mumbled an apology.

I was captivated, especially by the phrase ‘a bright light in his eye’. I cut the page out, retrieved the shorter piece from the previous week, and put them in a folder. But I won’t go over how I chose each cutting. I know the story so well I prefer to run through it in my own way rather than follow the zigzag of dawning comprehension that was my actual experience.

At first Tina displayed her usual resilience, but within hours she became agitated and took to her bed. Her parents assumed it was shock, a reaction to the trauma of being attacked by a trusted adult. When she complained about hard, numb patches on her hands and feet, they thought it was a side issue.

Driscoll was let out on bail with a bandage over his eye. He hired a prostitute, brought her back to his apartment and attacked her. They made so much noise a neighbour called the cops, but by the time they arrived the woman was dead. Back then the cause of death was considered unusual – he had buried his head in her stomach and eaten her organs. When they broke down the door they saw his head was caked with blood. The bandage was long gone and where the eye had been was just a black pit.

But there was something even grimmer. The infection had spread to the rest of his body and patches of raised, purplish skin were peeling away like bark, leaving angry red lesions. These gashes were weeping vast quantities of fluid – the floor was sticky with it. The rapid dehydration made him gaunt to the point of emaciation, and yet his strength was almost superhuman. It took ten officers to subdue him, two for each limb and two for his head.

There was concern for the state of the officers, but nobody expected the hooker to reanimate and murder a member of the forensics team. She gained entry to another apartment and killed the tenant, tearing out his stomach right in front of his girlfriend. The papers did not even try to explain it. Mystery of Injured Spree-Killer read one headline.

A day later the girlfriend was found feasting on a young intern in a bathroom cubicle at her place of work, the New York Bank of Ambrose. The alarm was raised but it was too late to stop the bizarre syndrome sweeping the building.

The police were first to respond. They quickly discovered nothing could stop the infected except a gunshot to the head. Even this was not completely reliable and often several rounds were required, but using this method they were eventually able to secure the area. By the time the crisis was contained seventy people had been taken away in body bags.

New York grieved for the wound inflicted on its oldest bank. Ambrose offered to fund six months of therapy for surviving staff, and after a while business resumed.

City, state and federal experts worked to determine the cause of the violence. Their initial finding was that it was down to a new kind of infectious illness outside all existing categories. One newsroom launched a serious investigation into the possibility that it came from outer space.

The attacks began again, all over the city now, carried out by the Beneventi family and by the same police and forensic staff that had dealt with Driscoll and the prostitute. This time there were nine separate clusters and that was it – before long there was a fully fledged epidemic. Throughout the summer it spread down the East Coast, through the Carolinas and Georgia and into the South.

I live in London, always have done. At the time I was working for a local newspaper, The Haringey Tribune. I was twenty-three and a senior reporter. I went to court cases, council meetings, road accidents and police briefings. I knocked everywhere from the huge gated mansions of Bishop’s Avenue – Millionaire’s Row as it was known – to the flimsy modular front doors of Broadwater Farm, a high-rise housing estate inspired by utopian ideas about ‘streets in the sky’. I liked the job. My mind was quick and my work was appreciated.

The tiny salary allowed me to rent a studio flat on the ladder roads near Harringay Green Lanes, an area at that time notable for its Greek Cypriots. The room came with a worn-out brown sofa bed, a surprisingly deep and comfortable armchair, also brown, a grimy kitchenette and a shared bathroom. I did my best to beautify it with pot plants and ornaments from jumble sales. I had read somewhere that peacock feathers were bad luck, but I put three in an empty wine bottle and stood them on the sideboard.

The flat was no palace but two things redeemed it. First, its closeness to my sister Claire and her family – just a twenty minute walk.

Second, a big bay window overlooking the tree-lined road as it sloped down to Green Lanes. By late afternoon the sun would be at the perfect angle to throw gold squares on the walls, which shimmered and streamed as if the light had passed through deep waters. I loved to sit in my armchair with my feet up and gaze at the street while the glimmering parallelograms slid slowly across the room. At such moments, even on a cold day, the air in the flat would feel hot and still.

I remember vividly the moment I realised the disease was coming here. It was August and the flat was genuinely hot. I was sitting in the armchair drinking iced lime cordial. It was too early for the streaming squares of light and I’d pulled the blind halfway down to keep the sun out of my eyes. I picked up the newspaper and the front page story was the disappearance of Heathrow-bound BA502, which had crashed in the middle of the Atlantic after a crazed passenger went on the rampage.

It was obvious why the passenger was crazed. And if a sick person could board a plane to the UK once then they could again. Sooner or later the disease would arrive on our tiny, insignificant shores.

We had all seen an infected by then, in photos or on the TV. We knew how the sickness was transmitted and its appalling course. For a while after you were bitten – minutes or even hours – you might act fine, look fine, feel fine. But eventually you began to change. Nobody knew what it felt like from the inside because nobody had recovered to tell the story. There was only one end – a perpetual half-death, your mind gone and your body disintegrating as you hungered for the flesh of the living.

Yet despite months of investigations nobody knew what caused it. No new virus or bacteria had been isolated from any of the bodies.

I remember looking down into the street at the people walking past. An old man with a flat cap. Two girls with secretive smiles on their faces. A young guy with a barely there moustache. I shivered and uttered a silent prayer for them. I hoped they would do the same for me.

After that a restrained panic spread through the population. Sales of gas masks, knives and bludgeoning sticks soared, as did home security enhancements of all kinds. But nobody took to the streets. Nobody went on strike over something that was so obviously an act of God.

Then came a cold winter and the first attack on British soil. It took place at the 29 bus stop in Wood Green, a patch I reported on for The Trib. I wrote the following story:

Flesh-eating OAP Arrested

A woman was bitten on the face and neck as she waited for a bus.

Donald Carey, 72, of Lordship Lane, was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Katie Logan, 23, of Hewitt Avenue, who is in Chase Farm Hospital in a critical condition.

Charlie Coombes, 18, of Lyndhurst Road, rescued Miss Logan. He said: “I noticed [Carey] because he was swaying in the middle of the pavement and something was dripping down his legs.

“He was staring, then he went for her, making a horrible gargling noise. He was eating her. There was blood everywhere, I got covered in it. He was strong, after we got him off her we had to keep hold or he would have gone for us.”

Police say Miss Logan and Carey are unknown to each other. They are seeking to establish if Carey had recently been in the US. Doctors say Miss Logan will have permanent scars.

For the UK the infection started there, at the 29 bus stop in Wood Green. At first authorities used the vernacular US term for the disease – the Frenzy. Then it was called severe scleroderma desolati – ‘scleroderma’ for hardening of the tissues and ‘desolati’ for melting. Neither term caught on with the general public. In 1982 it was officially named Scott–Lapidot Disease after two US scientists who isolated the particle thought to cause it.

But the name most of us used took its inspiration from the leaking crevices that opened up in the skin as the infection took hold. It was homegrown and informal, and thoroughly British. The Splits.

 

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MV Clark grew up in London. She worked in journalism for 18 years. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian newspaper, and Museums Journal and Spirit and Destiny magazines. The Splits is her first novel. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and two children.

HorrorAddicts.net 112, Horror Addicts Guide to Life

Horror Addicts Episode# 112

Horror Hostess: Emerian Rich

Intro Music by: Valentine Wolfe

writer’s workshop winner | lacuna coil | frankenstein: the true story

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201 days till halloween

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