Thank you very much. My review essays tend to get the least views, on account of the generally obscure subject matter, but it’s always nice to hear positive feedback.
I used to be terrified of Greys when I was kid. Anything even remotely resembling a stereotypical alien would leave me in shambles for weeks. I can only imagine the reaction I would've had if I stumbled across this film. The 80s just seemed to have had a knack for making bizarre movies.
if you like scary stuff, check out a novel I wrote last year... about a demon who floats on the foul stench of the Staten Island dump and takes posession of the weak willed
Had to add, THIS is my version of that Communion scene for Librarian. I saw this as a kid and I never got over it. N E V E R. I was terrified to open blinds on my bedroom window, or really anywhere, because of this scene. All time great!
The Twilight Zone movie was hit or miss, but that scene really worked extremely well. John Lithgow- that is a character actor, I would say up there with Gary Oldman. I also liked the brief scene in the beginning with Dan Ackroyd, who also has some interesting connections with paranormal stuff. He might have played a good Whitley Strieber, come to think of it.
Warning: lengthy and some would say pretentious. Once more unto the breach!
I like the theme of monster-horror movies for the exact reason you say makes them less scary: the monster is bound by some kind of measurable and understandable parameters, be they supernatural ones or not.
That makes the meta-story one parallell the development of mankind: from frightened of what we do not understand to mastering it by knowledge, will and toil. Consider 'Predator'; as the story progress, they come to understand at least a basic set of principles under which the Predator (voluntarily, obviously) operates.
Contrast this with 'Alien' and 'Aliens' (and ignore the rest of the movie-franchise, though the Black Horse-comics were quite good, if uneven); the monster's parameters are never voluntary, it displays no intellect or sapience. It is an automaton - no more thinking than a robot. This makes it easy prey once the initial horror has been conquered, if the humans do what humans do best - create and use tools, and bury their egos and any social structure not based in demonstraed ability; witness how Gorman automatically defers to Ripley from her rescue of the marines, despite being formally in charge along with Burke (one of film history's best villains in my opinion).
Now, put the above next to 'Videodrome', 'Hellraiser' and 'Hardware'. (Or Cronenberg's "Apocalypse trilogy.)
In the first one, we witness... what? Perception becoming actual reality? Perception creating reality in a feedbackloop? We don't know, we aren't told (something modern day film-makers should take note of: don't explain to the audience, what the characters doesn't know or cannot figure out!) and our only source is as unreliable as you can be. To me, 'Videodrome' represents very much the death of the mind, making physical death a mercy to be hoped for (the phrase "Death is not the end. Long live the new flesh!" only underscores the terror, that your mind will live on as a perception-reception loop in a virtual eternity of chaotic torment).
'Hellraiser', apart from the gore, has a lot of themes that aren't focused upon for a variety of reasons, from time-constraints to being beside the point of the story: "careful what you wish for, you might get it". It is very much Promethean in that regard - Frank gets what he bargained for and discovers he doesn't like it. That is echoed in Julia and her coldness to her husband, stepdaughter and pretty much everything around her. The only times we see her happy, exited or aroused is when she is with Frank or kills for Frank. And she too discovers that getting what she wanted- being penetrated by Frank - wasn't what she hoped for, as said penetration is done with his knife, after which he devours her.
And the box returns to where we started, the story we saw now part of it. A closed system without escape, fitting given what we learn of Frank from Larry and Julia when they arrive at their house.
'Hardware' is not only a simple "Frankenstein's monster as a robot-story"; the background events tells the real story. Earth is ravaged by wars and disasters. Daily rad-count is part of the weather-forecast. There are abandoned zones, deserts, full of equally abandoned machinery and technology, which can be scavenged and sold - all of it not only implying but showing that civilisation has fallen, that it is post-apocalypse. Yet, there is embers of it remaining. Spaceflight is apparently common for those with the means. There is still art and entertainment and some order and structure, for those with the power to take it.
Most horrifying is however, that M.A.R.K. 13 is combat robot prototype, capable of self-repair. That in itself is scary enough, but in the background we get snippets of information about that what remains of govrnement (US or NWO or UN we don't know) is announcing that a newer model will be put into service, the agenda being total depopulation outside safe zones, beginning with Africa. Mankind destroying itself, and holding the capability to do so up to itself as an ideal and a virtue, and a utopian hope of a new better future. I find 'Hardware' a much scarier movie today as an "adult+" than I did when it came out, given how much of what is shown is becoming real.
And that last line is the gnarly root of true horror; when the events on the silver screen echoes and mimics reality, not after the fact but as prophecy becoming real. 'Videodrome' and social media. 'Hellraiser' and the pursuit of experience at all costs. 'Hardware' and the belief in a heavy metal-messiah.
You are correct that the monsters you describe work well narratively as villains in that they present a comprehensible obstacle for the heroes to overcome, and part of the fun of watching a movie is seeing the mystery resolved and a final defeat of the inhuman force. For my part, though, I was never really scared that Predator was going to actually abduct me from my home. There was a clear line between fiction and reality in a movie like Hellraiser that was not present in Communion, and that ambiguity, coupled with the overall creepiness of the film, is what made it terrifying to me as a kid.
Your comments are always both insightful and thorough. You really ought to publish them as full essays. Feel free to quote and reference me.
Ambiguity I do not really find frightening, only annoying or frustrating, whether in real life or fiction. Uncertainty or unknowable I have no problem with (as in 'The Mouth of Madness' f.e.), but ambiguity has to me always felt as a cop-out or like the old-timey cliffhanger gypping.
Heh, speaking of fearing the monster - after I first saw 'Alien' (age 9ish) I had recurring nightmares, small wonder.
What I did was, I took a big pair of cable cutters from mom's toolbox and hid it under my mattress. Then, one night about a week or so after having watched 'Alien' I wake from hearing a door creak open. Awake inside a thousand of a second it felt like. Without thinking, I grab the pair of cutters and hurl them using my entire upper body at the closet door which is slowly swinging open, it being the source of the creaking noise.
Wham, crack - the cutters get stuck through the door. I go to retrieve them and go back to sleep. No more nightmares.
People study encounters with the paranormal in scientific/empirical terms, but I think the most profound and important element is the emotional impact such events have, primarily and secondarily as the stories become a part of cultural lore. Seraphim Rose talks a great deal about it in the book I mentioned in my last post, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future.
I eventually did see the movie, but even reading the book was enough to give me related nightmares. I read at least one later book, but…. I think the experiences broke him or something because it became the usual “we’re here to save you from yourselves” twaddle but creepy.
Also, I grew up quite comfortable walking through the New England woods at night when camping for scouting another similar events. Nevertheless, there are patches that just don’t feel right. Spent about a year living on a lake shore as an adult that was absolutely beautiful, but never wanted to be or felt comfortable being outside at night. Later found out that region was locally known for “UFO” activity.
I joke that I always understood why lovecraft set many of his stories in New England.
This one and Fire In The Sky are two I refuse to watch for the reasons you’ve elucidated. Though apparently Travis Walton’s experience wasn’t nearly as bad in (his) retrospect.
Great article! Communion's book cover and movie were truly terrifying to me as a child. The stories contained in Budd Hopkins' book and subsequent movie: "Intruders" do eclipse Communion as the most terrifying from my childhood. Intruders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9Wqw6mCJ0 Enjoy!
I almost made this essay about Communion, Intruders, and the Mothman Prophecies, but I thought it would be too long. Intruders also scared the crap out of me as a kid- absolutely terrifying for a miniseries.
I remember listening to Streiber on Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Then, for a while, he had his own web show, "Dreamland."
Yes, he turned the Grey into the standard Alien, but before him, they were always described as Reptilian, Nordic, and Wearers of Black, and the descriptions were truly frightening to someone listening in on AM radio, complete with the atmospheric dropouts, the side band hisses, the squeals, and fade-outs.
I read communion, and it was an okay read. Streiber still had a lot of work to do. I always found Close Encounters to be more nightmare-inducing. Aliens that nobody understands, taking people throughout history for who knows what and only returning them in exchange for more human Guinea pigs to experiment on.
Never saw this. Gonna check it out. Not sure it will have as much of an effect as it would for a kid but I'm still excited.
Inchoate evil is always the scariest. I recall Lynch didn't want to make the evil in the Twin Peaks series concrete, or even explain it at all (at least as early as he did) but the friggin' network forced it on him. Producers screw up more films than anyone realizes.
Another doozy was Gangs of New York where they foisted Cameron Diaz on Scorsese. Completely wrecked the film since her character was supposed to be integral to the story but she couldn't pull it off and that's why there's a hole in the middle of that film.
Communion is one of those things that I always seem to forget about, I suspect because it has always unsettled and disturbed me as much as it seems it has you. I remember going to the bookstore and seeing it in the new age/paranormal section and seeing it for the first time, and being filled with the same sense of wrongness about the cover for the same reasons you articulated. I wanted to turn the book around so I wouldn't have to see it, but I didn't even want to touch it. I also have to question the judgement of the employee who saw fit to have that cover, out of all the books they could have chosen, facing outward on display; was it a cruel joke? Or were they just not thinking? Regardless, the artwork is haunting in a way very little, if anything, I've encountered before or sense. Almost nauseating. That alone almost convinces me that there is some sort of inexplicable quality to it, like, it's so perfectly calculated to be upsetting that is really is some kind of representation of something very real and, I suspect, not exactly benevolent. I can remember trying to sleep and having it continually just appear in my mind's eye - and this was only several years ago once I tried to read the thing, after years of avoiding it. I never finished it, either. I have listened to a lot of podcasts that dissect Streiber's accounts detail by detail, and listened to several interviews with him, and there's a quality to him and his story - especially the post-Communion claims - that seem a little too fantastical, or they make just a little too much sense and contradict just how alien the original circumstances or events were. But, unlike other similar accounts of abduction that start off credible and then start veering into territory where the author finds out they have, like, alien-hybrid children, or something, or that they've been chosen as some sort of emissary to preach some sort of intergalactic gospel (two accounts that come to mind are Terry Lovelace and Truman Betherum, if you've ever heard of them), there's some quality to Streiber that I just can't pin-point that leaves me feeling that there's at least a grain of truth to his account.
I don't think Strieber is lying, or rather, I don't think he would have to be lying. What he claims to have experienced is both terrifying and in keeping with more traditional encounters with supernatural beings. The malevolence is apparent even in the art; the text of his works, as I noted, left me feeling so disturbed that I have not been able to finish any of them. For his part, Strieber claims to be a practicing Catholic, but I don't know if he has addressed the issue in theological terms, or if he has sought the advice of his priests.
I agree that the creatures are similar. And there are reports of beings and fictional aliens that have some of the traits (large head, big eyes, etc) But the Close Encounters aliens are, to me, much more human like and indeed child like, distinctly non-threatening. Note that the CE3K aliens have distinct pupils. To me, the grey of Strieber is very unique and unsettling.
I couldn’t find a picture online that wasn’t too dark for some reason, but here is some a collectible bust (which appears to be legit merchandise) of the alien. I wouldn’t necessarily call it definitive, but to my point, it looks much more human and baby like than Strieber’s. ET, another Spielberg creation, also had a large head and eyes, and similarly had an overall neotenous aesthetic. One finds similar creatures mentioned in UFO and related lore (Aleister Crowley claimed to have spoken to one) with large heads or eyes. But I would say it’s Strieber who got the ball rolling on the Grey as a real phenomenon, helped along by the X-Files.
"Walken is, well, Walken- the best character actor one can have if the character is meant to be Christopher Walken." hahaha this is so true!
But this whole article is fantastic; great analysis of a severely underrated film. Rewatching some of Communion gave me the heebie-jeebies again too!
Thank you very much. My review essays tend to get the least views, on account of the generally obscure subject matter, but it’s always nice to hear positive feedback.
I used to be terrified of Greys when I was kid. Anything even remotely resembling a stereotypical alien would leave me in shambles for weeks. I can only imagine the reaction I would've had if I stumbled across this film. The 80s just seemed to have had a knack for making bizarre movies.
Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack used to set me off in the same way as well.
Hey,
if you like scary stuff, check out a novel I wrote last year... about a demon who floats on the foul stench of the Staten Island dump and takes posession of the weak willed
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92KGWD2/
you mean the highest point on the eastern seaboard?
you know it
Had to add, THIS is my version of that Communion scene for Librarian. I saw this as a kid and I never got over it. N E V E R. I was terrified to open blinds on my bedroom window, or really anywhere, because of this scene. All time great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL6bQqg2B3E
The Twilight Zone movie was hit or miss, but that scene really worked extremely well. John Lithgow- that is a character actor, I would say up there with Gary Oldman. I also liked the brief scene in the beginning with Dan Ackroyd, who also has some interesting connections with paranormal stuff. He might have played a good Whitley Strieber, come to think of it.
Warning: lengthy and some would say pretentious. Once more unto the breach!
I like the theme of monster-horror movies for the exact reason you say makes them less scary: the monster is bound by some kind of measurable and understandable parameters, be they supernatural ones or not.
That makes the meta-story one parallell the development of mankind: from frightened of what we do not understand to mastering it by knowledge, will and toil. Consider 'Predator'; as the story progress, they come to understand at least a basic set of principles under which the Predator (voluntarily, obviously) operates.
Contrast this with 'Alien' and 'Aliens' (and ignore the rest of the movie-franchise, though the Black Horse-comics were quite good, if uneven); the monster's parameters are never voluntary, it displays no intellect or sapience. It is an automaton - no more thinking than a robot. This makes it easy prey once the initial horror has been conquered, if the humans do what humans do best - create and use tools, and bury their egos and any social structure not based in demonstraed ability; witness how Gorman automatically defers to Ripley from her rescue of the marines, despite being formally in charge along with Burke (one of film history's best villains in my opinion).
Now, put the above next to 'Videodrome', 'Hellraiser' and 'Hardware'. (Or Cronenberg's "Apocalypse trilogy.)
In the first one, we witness... what? Perception becoming actual reality? Perception creating reality in a feedbackloop? We don't know, we aren't told (something modern day film-makers should take note of: don't explain to the audience, what the characters doesn't know or cannot figure out!) and our only source is as unreliable as you can be. To me, 'Videodrome' represents very much the death of the mind, making physical death a mercy to be hoped for (the phrase "Death is not the end. Long live the new flesh!" only underscores the terror, that your mind will live on as a perception-reception loop in a virtual eternity of chaotic torment).
'Hellraiser', apart from the gore, has a lot of themes that aren't focused upon for a variety of reasons, from time-constraints to being beside the point of the story: "careful what you wish for, you might get it". It is very much Promethean in that regard - Frank gets what he bargained for and discovers he doesn't like it. That is echoed in Julia and her coldness to her husband, stepdaughter and pretty much everything around her. The only times we see her happy, exited or aroused is when she is with Frank or kills for Frank. And she too discovers that getting what she wanted- being penetrated by Frank - wasn't what she hoped for, as said penetration is done with his knife, after which he devours her.
And the box returns to where we started, the story we saw now part of it. A closed system without escape, fitting given what we learn of Frank from Larry and Julia when they arrive at their house.
'Hardware' is not only a simple "Frankenstein's monster as a robot-story"; the background events tells the real story. Earth is ravaged by wars and disasters. Daily rad-count is part of the weather-forecast. There are abandoned zones, deserts, full of equally abandoned machinery and technology, which can be scavenged and sold - all of it not only implying but showing that civilisation has fallen, that it is post-apocalypse. Yet, there is embers of it remaining. Spaceflight is apparently common for those with the means. There is still art and entertainment and some order and structure, for those with the power to take it.
Most horrifying is however, that M.A.R.K. 13 is combat robot prototype, capable of self-repair. That in itself is scary enough, but in the background we get snippets of information about that what remains of govrnement (US or NWO or UN we don't know) is announcing that a newer model will be put into service, the agenda being total depopulation outside safe zones, beginning with Africa. Mankind destroying itself, and holding the capability to do so up to itself as an ideal and a virtue, and a utopian hope of a new better future. I find 'Hardware' a much scarier movie today as an "adult+" than I did when it came out, given how much of what is shown is becoming real.
And that last line is the gnarly root of true horror; when the events on the silver screen echoes and mimics reality, not after the fact but as prophecy becoming real. 'Videodrome' and social media. 'Hellraiser' and the pursuit of experience at all costs. 'Hardware' and the belief in a heavy metal-messiah.
You are correct that the monsters you describe work well narratively as villains in that they present a comprehensible obstacle for the heroes to overcome, and part of the fun of watching a movie is seeing the mystery resolved and a final defeat of the inhuman force. For my part, though, I was never really scared that Predator was going to actually abduct me from my home. There was a clear line between fiction and reality in a movie like Hellraiser that was not present in Communion, and that ambiguity, coupled with the overall creepiness of the film, is what made it terrifying to me as a kid.
Your comments are always both insightful and thorough. You really ought to publish them as full essays. Feel free to quote and reference me.
Well, thank you!
Ambiguity I do not really find frightening, only annoying or frustrating, whether in real life or fiction. Uncertainty or unknowable I have no problem with (as in 'The Mouth of Madness' f.e.), but ambiguity has to me always felt as a cop-out or like the old-timey cliffhanger gypping.
Heh, speaking of fearing the monster - after I first saw 'Alien' (age 9ish) I had recurring nightmares, small wonder.
What I did was, I took a big pair of cable cutters from mom's toolbox and hid it under my mattress. Then, one night about a week or so after having watched 'Alien' I wake from hearing a door creak open. Awake inside a thousand of a second it felt like. Without thinking, I grab the pair of cutters and hurl them using my entire upper body at the closet door which is slowly swinging open, it being the source of the creaking noise.
Wham, crack - the cutters get stuck through the door. I go to retrieve them and go back to sleep. No more nightmares.
Mom was "less than pleased" though.
Thank you for doing a most difficult job of sharing an ineffable experience.
People study encounters with the paranormal in scientific/empirical terms, but I think the most profound and important element is the emotional impact such events have, primarily and secondarily as the stories become a part of cultural lore. Seraphim Rose talks a great deal about it in the book I mentioned in my last post, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future.
I eventually did see the movie, but even reading the book was enough to give me related nightmares. I read at least one later book, but…. I think the experiences broke him or something because it became the usual “we’re here to save you from yourselves” twaddle but creepy.
Also, I grew up quite comfortable walking through the New England woods at night when camping for scouting another similar events. Nevertheless, there are patches that just don’t feel right. Spent about a year living on a lake shore as an adult that was absolutely beautiful, but never wanted to be or felt comfortable being outside at night. Later found out that region was locally known for “UFO” activity.
I joke that I always understood why lovecraft set many of his stories in New England.
This one and Fire In The Sky are two I refuse to watch for the reasons you’ve elucidated. Though apparently Travis Walton’s experience wasn’t nearly as bad in (his) retrospect.
Great article! Communion's book cover and movie were truly terrifying to me as a child. The stories contained in Budd Hopkins' book and subsequent movie: "Intruders" do eclipse Communion as the most terrifying from my childhood. Intruders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9Wqw6mCJ0 Enjoy!
I almost made this essay about Communion, Intruders, and the Mothman Prophecies, but I thought it would be too long. Intruders also scared the crap out of me as a kid- absolutely terrifying for a miniseries.
So guess I'm watching Communion tonight then!
Growing up, I literally have all the same reference points you mentioned, and yet I've managed to miss this film.
What did you think of it? Are you glad you watched it?
I more of less saw it by accidents (my parents were watching it when I was young) but I would say I at least learned something.
I remember listening to Streiber on Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Then, for a while, he had his own web show, "Dreamland."
Yes, he turned the Grey into the standard Alien, but before him, they were always described as Reptilian, Nordic, and Wearers of Black, and the descriptions were truly frightening to someone listening in on AM radio, complete with the atmospheric dropouts, the side band hisses, the squeals, and fade-outs.
I read communion, and it was an okay read. Streiber still had a lot of work to do. I always found Close Encounters to be more nightmare-inducing. Aliens that nobody understands, taking people throughout history for who knows what and only returning them in exchange for more human Guinea pigs to experiment on.
Never saw this. Gonna check it out. Not sure it will have as much of an effect as it would for a kid but I'm still excited.
Inchoate evil is always the scariest. I recall Lynch didn't want to make the evil in the Twin Peaks series concrete, or even explain it at all (at least as early as he did) but the friggin' network forced it on him. Producers screw up more films than anyone realizes.
Another doozy was Gangs of New York where they foisted Cameron Diaz on Scorsese. Completely wrecked the film since her character was supposed to be integral to the story but she couldn't pull it off and that's why there's a hole in the middle of that film.
Communion is one of those things that I always seem to forget about, I suspect because it has always unsettled and disturbed me as much as it seems it has you. I remember going to the bookstore and seeing it in the new age/paranormal section and seeing it for the first time, and being filled with the same sense of wrongness about the cover for the same reasons you articulated. I wanted to turn the book around so I wouldn't have to see it, but I didn't even want to touch it. I also have to question the judgement of the employee who saw fit to have that cover, out of all the books they could have chosen, facing outward on display; was it a cruel joke? Or were they just not thinking? Regardless, the artwork is haunting in a way very little, if anything, I've encountered before or sense. Almost nauseating. That alone almost convinces me that there is some sort of inexplicable quality to it, like, it's so perfectly calculated to be upsetting that is really is some kind of representation of something very real and, I suspect, not exactly benevolent. I can remember trying to sleep and having it continually just appear in my mind's eye - and this was only several years ago once I tried to read the thing, after years of avoiding it. I never finished it, either. I have listened to a lot of podcasts that dissect Streiber's accounts detail by detail, and listened to several interviews with him, and there's a quality to him and his story - especially the post-Communion claims - that seem a little too fantastical, or they make just a little too much sense and contradict just how alien the original circumstances or events were. But, unlike other similar accounts of abduction that start off credible and then start veering into territory where the author finds out they have, like, alien-hybrid children, or something, or that they've been chosen as some sort of emissary to preach some sort of intergalactic gospel (two accounts that come to mind are Terry Lovelace and Truman Betherum, if you've ever heard of them), there's some quality to Streiber that I just can't pin-point that leaves me feeling that there's at least a grain of truth to his account.
I don't think Strieber is lying, or rather, I don't think he would have to be lying. What he claims to have experienced is both terrifying and in keeping with more traditional encounters with supernatural beings. The malevolence is apparent even in the art; the text of his works, as I noted, left me feeling so disturbed that I have not been able to finish any of them. For his part, Strieber claims to be a practicing Catholic, but I don't know if he has addressed the issue in theological terms, or if he has sought the advice of his priests.
I watched the scene. Very creepy! And for a ten year old!!!! I get the nightmares.
It’s amazing how an experience like that can seer itself into your soul when you’re young. Art is more powerful than most people realize.
I agree that the creatures are similar. And there are reports of beings and fictional aliens that have some of the traits (large head, big eyes, etc) But the Close Encounters aliens are, to me, much more human like and indeed child like, distinctly non-threatening. Note that the CE3K aliens have distinct pupils. To me, the grey of Strieber is very unique and unsettling.
I couldn’t find a picture online that wasn’t too dark for some reason, but here is some a collectible bust (which appears to be legit merchandise) of the alien. I wouldn’t necessarily call it definitive, but to my point, it looks much more human and baby like than Strieber’s. ET, another Spielberg creation, also had a large head and eyes, and similarly had an overall neotenous aesthetic. One finds similar creatures mentioned in UFO and related lore (Aleister Crowley claimed to have spoken to one) with large heads or eyes. But I would say it’s Strieber who got the ball rolling on the Grey as a real phenomenon, helped along by the X-Files.
https://www.cinemaquette.com/images/large/elite/ecc_close_encounters_bust_1.jpg