The Destruction of Horror

There is plenty about the horror genre that works. Even in the visual format, horror has lasted long in movies and television, even though it relies on more extreme content to tell its story that some just can't stomach. Up until about the 1960s, the favorite subject of the genre was in ancient legends and myths, torn out of the pages of Grimm, the Bible, and ancient history. It was a way to link the modern age to the old. As shown last week, when horror stories try, they can easily match up with the masters. It's a genre that sticks around for a reason.

However, sometime in the 1960s, creators decided it was time to be "original", subvert legends, and explain that everything their ancestors thought up was either wrong, mistaken, or completely inept, as these new creators wrote stories of the power of evil, the death of God, and how modern political theories and new age beliefs were good enough to replace the superstitious old ways. Everything we knew for centuries was now wrong.

Needless to say, none of this has aged well in the slightest. Where Hammer's horror movies could have easily come out decades earlier in black and white, and the stories in Weird Tales could have been printed in a fairy tale book, these new "horror" stories were dated before the decade even ended. They certainly are hard to go back to now.

All one needs to do is look at the trinity of popular horror from this era to see how they hold up despite past acclaim. Rosemary's Baby, once seen as a classic, is no longer talked about as its relevance died five seconds after its release. The Omen is remembered more as a wacky series of escalating insanity than as any kind of chiller. Only The Exorcist retains any power, and that is because it used modern film techniques to tell a traditional tale with themes that have always resonated. This era shows how being "modern" is a good way to make an irrelevant work dated quick.

But while horror movies went through a renaissance in the 1980s, horror novels were at a bit of a crossroads. It might be the most unsure era in the genre's history, with writers not knowing if they should connect with the past, or create something out of whole cloth, unaware if they should attempt to scare the audience with shock or existential revelations. As a result, reading horror from this era is a bit like shooting ducks with a slingshot: you can hit them, but will it do any damage?

From my experience, it is a very uneven era for the genre. I've reviewed two books, one that was great, and one that was merely okay with editing issues holding it back. These both showed potential in the time period, and the hope that it might match where cinema was at the time. After all, 2 out of 2 is a good ratio. I hadn't read anything that turned me off of reading more horror from the 1980s.

Until now. You can bring that ratio down to 2 out of 3.

As stated before, I've been diving into an era I was too young to experience back in the day with 1980s horror books. Paperbacks from Hell and its description of the pulp-inspired covers and premises made me want to check them out and see just what I might have missed. In Nightblood, it showed me how written horror from the time could be just as powerful as the visual horror from the era. In Ghost Train, it showed me that great ideas and plotting could be mashed up and harmed by OldPub's insistence to hit a word limit. Both were worth reading, so I didn't have much reason to doubt my inclination to read further. This is why I went for one of the most popular books from the time, The Keep by F. Paul Wilson, the author's first work, and one that was advertised by horror aficionados as one of the best from its time period. I disagree, but we will get to that.

The set up to the book is simple, and it has potential. Near the beginning of World War II, a group of German soldiers are stationed at a keep in the mountains of Romania. Men start ending up dead and some SS officers show up to cause conflict with both the locals and other German soldiers that dislike their arrival. They call in a Jewish scholar and his daughter to help find out the cause of this problem, and that is when we are off to the races.

As mentioned, this is a very promising set up with enough conflict to buoy a story on its own. Slowly as the book goes on, the monster reveals itself as something straight out of the legends of old, and a lone warrior appears in order to combat this being. It has all the hallmarks of classic horror, and being that this came out in 1981 it looked as if it would fulfill the anticipation I had for such an era. This set up and the early chapters work hard to establish a Gothic atmosphere. Every piece on the board is a good one.

And then the book reveals it was actually written in the 1970s.

The reason I say that is because of what unfurls next. All of that set up I mentioned? It goes entirely wasted, and the book slides downhill before an ending more predictable than an after school special caps it all off in an unsatisfying manner. But that's not even the worst part of the book. But we'll get to that a bit later.

We should start with the characters. It should be easy because there are only six actual characters in 400 pages of story.

The most interesting characters in The Keep are the two Germans. Woermann is a World War I veteran, unimpressed with the state of his country and at odds with the higher ups. He is an older man with much experience in war and has the potential to be the lead character and take charge during a bad situation. Spoilers: he's not the lead, nor does he take charge.

The second German is Kaempffer, an SS officer who detests Woermann because he saw his cowardly side during the Great War. He comes to the keep after casualties are reported and is put in charge of the operation, refusing to budge even as men are killed. He's a vicious man with enough wrinkles to make a compelling secondary villain or reluctant ally in the unfolding horror. Spoilers: he is neither.

Then there is Cuza, the elderly crippled Jewish scholar, and his daughter Magda. Cuza's conflict between researching what is killing these men and what they are doing to his people is an interesting contrast. Unfortunately there isn't really any conflict there aside from one dimensional hate. His daughter, in contrast, might as well not even be in the story. She doesn't really do anything except fall in love, for some reason, with another character who doesn't do anything for over 90% of the story. There is a weird emphasis on her being uninterested in men and into playing music and studying the arts, but it falls away fairly fast, making one wonder why it was even there to begin with. She is the least interesting character, and does the least in the story. There is no reason whatsoever for her to be here. Spoilers: she's the protagonist of the story.

The villain is a "vampire" called Molasar. I put the phrase in quotes because he never says that's what he is, but gives off all the hints that he is one. For the first third of the book he is a nameless and shapeless force, striking from the distance and giving off vibes of ineffable darkness. When he reveals himself, however, he never stops talking and revealing information to the audience, thereby lessening his impact as a mysterious entity. In the final third he loses all characterization and becomes living cardboard, stripping him of all potential threat. This makes a later story turn have far less impact than the author desired. Spoilers: Molasar turns out to be the most evil being in all  of existence.

Finally, there is a red haired man named Glenn. He rides out of nowhere into the village, muscular and tough, and clearly meant to be the pulp-styled hero in this sort of movie. However, Glenn has a hidden past with Molasar, apparently part of an Order (I can't explain it better, since the book barely elaborates on it) that hunted his kind down over the centuries. Glenn is set up to be the secret trump card that will give all the answers. Spoilers: he is, but not in the way you'd think.

And those are the only real characters in the story. There are incidental characters with a line or two, but they don't end up mattering at all to the overall story, or have anything in the way of characterization. You follow these six people for most of the story, even when there is no reason to.

This deficiency in the cast becomes more and more noticeable as the story goes on, especially after the "twist" ends up derailing the entire book and making a third of the cast entirely irrelevant. One has to wonder why these characters were deemed worthy of a reader's attention.

So where does The Keep go wrong? I would say the story decays as it goes along, but falls completely to pieces at one specific moment which fails for more than one concrete reason. This single moment is symbolic of the failure of most modern horror to strike any sort of emotion in the audience aside from admiration over cleverness. What is this scene? It is the moment when we finally learn what Molasar actually is.

There are a few things a writer can do that can ruin a horror story. The horror can be substandard. The main characters can fail to carry the load. The pacing can be disjointed or broken. Technical problems can add up.

But one thing that can't be forgiven is when a story breaks its earlier promises to the reader and delivers a twist far less interesting than what a more straightforward story would deliver to them. This isn't a problem exclusive to horror, but it is a problem with the genre when you not only make the horror incredibly uninteresting as a result of the subversion, but are also oblivious to the the fact that you have done it. This is The Keep's fatal flaw and what makes it fail as not only a horror story, but as just a narrative.

There are going to be spoilers from here on. It's unavoidable. Should you want to read it yourself, then by all means. However, you are about to learn why I would not recommend this book to anyone, horror fan or not.

There's a reason this happens.

As stated before, the book starts off like a straightforward classic Gothic Horror. Germans arrive in keep, men start dying, Germans send for help, help arrives, help turns out to be unexpected, easy conflict is created. Character conflict is inevitable, as are the horrors to follow. In a normal horror story the characters must either surpass their faults and work together to defeat the threat, or they succumb from their inner conflict and get destroyed by the horror. These are really the only two ways a horror story like this can go to be remotely interesting as that is what the genre exists to do--enforce morality or show the consequence of breaking rules. Tense conflict between extremes is the hallmark of horror and what gives it the punch it has.

So, of course, neither of those things happen in The Keep. What happens is instead very limp and utterly flaccid.

Horror is about fear of the unknown, and learning more about the known in order to overcome it. What happens in The Keep is that about a third of the way through the book, the villain monologues all the backstory in an attempt to manipulate Cuza. This works on him, even though the audience is given no ambiguity and all mystique is drained from the villain. This is bad enough on its own.

Then about two thirds of the way in we learn that Molasar was lying about what he is to Cuza, for a really weak reason that is an excuse to lie to the audience. He isn't actually a Bram Stoker vampire--we're not allowed to have those in fiction anymore. Remember, this is post-Interview With a Vampire. No, he's far less interesting than a Stoker vampire. In fact, what he is ends up breaking the back of the worldbuilding and removes all potential horror from the story instead. This is when the book falls flat on his face, and reveals itself as a very dated modern genre fiction book that could only have been written in the decade it was written in.

Please be patient, because this is a lengthy issue to go through.

After the Germans attempt to seize Glenn, after about half the book of said character doing nothing, he is thought to be shot to death and falls off a cliff. It should also be mentioned that this is the only thing the Germans have done plot-wise since the beginning of the story, but I digress. Glenn is rescued by Magda and she finds out he has supernatural abilities that he was hiding from her and everyone else. As he heals, he tells her the truth about what he and Molasar are . . . for around fifty pages of info-dumping as nothing else of note happens.

This comes right after a scene where Woermann, after pointlessly disappearing for near a third of the book, finds out the dead bodies of his men have disappeared. He is attacked in a dark hall and raises a cross and utters the name of Jesus Christ to repel the approaching vampire. That doesn't work and he is killed. 

The author certainly thought this was clever (the monster is smiling, of course), but there are several reasons why this is stupid.

What this scene means is that not only is the villain not a vampire for no real reason, but the character had no relevance to the story except to be fodder in a dumb twist. He dies accomplishing nothing and no one thinks about him afterwards. So why did we follow him for around half of the book?

Kaempffer also dies not long later in a very similar way, as do the rest of the Germans in the keep. Two of our six characters are dead, never having had a single impact on the plot except to get Glenn to monologue things he should have been telling people from his first appearance. In other words, there is no reason for this story to take place in the time period it does because the time period is irrelevant to everything that happens.

Then there is the monster reveal. This is what entirely breaks the story in half.

You see, Molasar is not a vampire. He is an agent from a vague force (it is not "evil", it's not that simple!) that's probably chaotic, I suppose. Maybe. We don't get much in the way of information. Glenn is actually named Glaeken and is an opposite from an opposing vague force (that force is not "good", it's not that black and white!) and that both sides are older than any religion. This makes them more important than any notion of Satan or some probably non-existent idea of God you might have in your non-Gnostic brain.

These forces aren't good and evil though, one force just gave Molasar power to be evil and slaughter innocents, and the other gave Glaeken power to stop him. But they aren't good and evil. It's not that simple. I guess. Oh, and they disappeared one day because they were bored with humanity, or something. In fact, all that folklore about crosses scaring the supernatural? They are actually scared, not because it's a cross, but because it reminds them of Glaeken's sword hilt. Aren't you silly thinking it has thousands of years of mythology, history, and religion, behind the legend. It's actually because it reminds them of one random sword some vague force gave an insignificant coward once who refuses to do his job and slay the not-evil genocidal maniac centuries ago. Molasar hides in a fortress covered in crosses because . . . you know what, I'm not sure anymore. The book gave at least five different convoluted reasons from tricking the Church, to the villagers, to Glaeken, to anyone trying to get in . . . it doesn't make sense no matter what it is. But I guess it fooled the audience into thinking Christianity so that's good enough.

That Mr. Wilson thought this twist was interesting in the slightest is absolutely baffling. This twist creates lore on the level of an Image Comic, not a horror "classic" that has sold millions. It doesn't hold together with even a few seconds of scrutiny.

While all the above is awful, what doesn't help are all the implications these reveals mean for the story and the world it is set in. These twists make it even worse.

Glaeken has refused to slay Molasar because he believes he will be erased from existence when he kills his opposing agent. He believes it because of some vague talk of balance he made up in his head. No one tells him this will happen, and he doesn't know if it will be happen, but this very unfounded fear is worth letting countless people be slaughtered over the centuries, including the ones in this story, because he won't tell anyone what Molasar actually is and never has bothered to try. And for some reason we are expected to get behind him when he finally decides to do his job (he has someone to have sex with now, so he has motivation to act) and disappears from existence in the final chapter, for a reason that isn't explained. Good riddance. He ends up killing Molasar in about two pages, anyway, really showing how worthless he is. Imagine if this would have happened ages ago?

The book ends with Magda crying after everyone is pointlessly killed from her father (who somehow broke away from Molasar's side despite literally attempting to decapitate his daughter mere seconds earlier) to every German in the keep to . . . you know what? We never learn what happens to anyone in the village. They could all be slaughtered, too. I guess it doesn't matter. The author doesn't care. Either way, the final chapter concludes with her alone and everyone else dead after an anti-climactic final battle.

Then the epilogue reveals Glaeken is alive, for some reason, and now mortal. We're in Highlander now, I guess. He gets up out of a pile of rocks and meets Magda. The end.

Forget being completely unearned, there is no build up to any of this. Whatever horror book existed at the start no longer remained by the end, and all I am left with is a vague attempt at mysticism, sword and sorcery, and Harlequin romance that never comes together. It's a bunch of scraps slapped together in an attempt to make a modern horror story.

I'm also left with that same feeling I get whenever I experience modern horror. That being the feeling that the author has no idea what is actually scary. Considering how vague the threat is in this book, and how weak the worldbuilding is, one cannot come to any conclusion other than nothing was thought out beyond the surface level. Just throwing together parts of something scary doesn't make it good or interesting. It makes it a jumbled, confused mess.

For one specific example, let us go into what Molasar feeds on. We are told he doesn't feed on blood--he feeds on something far worse than that. He is sustained by fear and misery (but the force that gave him power isn't evil! Really!) and by vaguely making people upset and feel bummed out. He feeds on intangible, undefinable things.

This isn't worse than drinking blood. 

Blood drinking, besides being cannibalistic, is the act of draining life instead of giving it. It is saying that your victim's very existence doesn't matter and that you deserve their very life force for your own. It is also the opposite of Christ in that while He gives His blood to you for nourishment, the vampire takes it by force to sustain him and gain power. This is why he is an anti-Christ monster. He literally is against everything Christ, the Son of God Himself, is. This is why Christian symbols and objects, not vague things like "faith" or "belief" from hacky modern vampire stories, injure them. Intangible ideas like "feeding on misery" is not even close to as interesting, nor does it really mean much. It needs to be concrete to be scary. Vampires feed on something much worse than "ideas" or feelings.

Then there's the implication that all religions are wrong and that these two vague forces are older than everything, but that they're not good and evil. Questions then naturally arise from this sort of reveal. If God and Satan are inventions, then you need to fill in the holes in existence. You have to explain to me how good and evil exist. How is what Molasar doing bad? Based on what context? What moral code? Who decided it was bad? His opposing force doesn't even believe in God. Why is he doing this then? What motivation is there to stop his counterpart? Why does any of this matter if existence has no meaning? Why would those vague forces even bother doing this? Why is this conflict even here, and how is all this vague nonsense interesting? Spoilers: it's not.

You might have noticed I have said "vague" a lot, because that is the main theme of the book. There is nothing concrete in The Keep because the author has not set up a concrete view of good or evil or any sort of motivation for the characters. We are supposed to believe in characters that don't really have characteristics, because they are barely used or do anything, in a repetitive plot of going to the keep to the village to the keep to the village and back again, over and over. The Germans don't matter--this story could take place in 1863 and it wouldn't change anything, making their deaths as worthless as their role in the plot. Magda doesn't initiate anything in the story except to lose her virginity to a man she met a day ago and to be kicked around by her ungrateful father. The villain has no mystique and is always talking about nonsense, and Cuza is a puppet that has no ability for self-reflection or critical thinking. Then you get to the fact that the person we're supposed to root for in the final battle has just let innocent people die for thousands of years for such a monumentally stupid reason, and you complete the circle of pointlessness. Nothing really matters in The Keep.

To add insult to injury, one of the reasons Cuza refuses to ask Molasar to kill Kaempffer early in the story is because if the higher-ups learn their men were killed they would throw a fit and retaliate by sending high amounts of SS officers in revenge and scorching the area. This is mentioned as a big reason as to why they can't just kill their enemies. So what do you think will happen to the villagers or the innocents in the area after the events of The Keep when every German there is slaughtered? The author doesn't speculate on it. The story more or less forgot they were in the plot by this point.

Probably because it doesn't matter. None of this matters. Some vague force was defeated, I guess. That's enough story for today. Word limit hit. Go buy another paperback from Big Chain Bookstore and consume more books.

That is The Keep, a story about nothing, where nothing matters, and nothing gets accomplished that you care about.

And somehow this book became a bestseller and is looked at fondly by horror aficionados. For the life of me I cannot understand why. It's incredibly dated, its worldview is incomplete and not thought out in the slightest, and nothing interesting happens for its stock mass produced 400 page length. It's a clunker, and deserves to fall into obscurity. How Nightblood went forgotten for thirty years while this remained in print, and even got a film adaption by Michael Mann, is a mystery for the ages. There isn't even a comparison as to which succeeds better as a horror story.

But then, one was released in 1981, and the other in 1990. That might just explain the attention one received while the genre was a hot trend and the other while OldPub was trying to kill it off to be replaced with generic 400 page thriller books. Because if this book came out at any other time it would be as obscure as any other random '70s horror novel.

So, no, I do not recommend The Keep. Stay far away. Even though this was published in the '80s, it feels very '70s, and I mean that in all the worst ways. There are much better horror novels to occupy your time. Go read those and let this one fall into obscurity where it belongs. It isn't worth your time, not when there are so many better options out there.

The horror genre has taken a beating over the decades, but it is thankfully crawling away from the nihilistic influence of books like this and the rotten influence of the 1970s. NewPub is offering much that OldPub hasn't in ages, which means we don't have to settle for substandard material like this any longer. The new age is here!

Nonetheless, I will keep reading horror from this era. It's given me a lot to think about, and perhaps that is enough. That's more than I can say for the fading, dusty modern empire of OldPub, left to crumble like the keep in this story.

We've got better things to concern ourselves with.

Bring back classic horror with a Pulp Mindset!