Updatery: Fic, The Night Stalker, and Angel the Wolf Man

[thedeadlyhook]

So I've been out of touch as usual for the usual and unusual string of reasons - writing my seasonal_spuffy story took up a chunk of these week, and thanks so much to everyone who read and commented! (I'm still working on the epilogue, after which I finish, I will finally be able to sit down and replies. In the meantime *big smooches*!)

And now, fic recs!

shapinglight's

Comments

[petzipellepingo]

And doesn't that give you pause for thought as to whether at some point Angel will have to do a Becoming Part 2 Buffy on Nina and blow her away...

[thedeadlyhook]

I would love to see that story. Nina was one of those characters I thought had great potential, but she got downgraded to colorless girlfriend too quickly. What if Angel had to be the one in Buffy's shoes, of having the person he's in a relationship with suddenly turn out to be a killer? The ensuing crisis could be pretty darn interesting, if only for the irony.

[fishsanwitt]

I *loved* The Night Stalker and Darrin McGavin!

Thank you for the review :)

[fishsanwitt]

Oops! Darren :)

[thedeadlyhook]

I totally enjoyed writing it! (Damn, I need a Kolchak icon.) It was really interesting to revisit those films, because I was so young when they were new - I honestly don't have any memory at all of seeing the original film ( I was way too young for my parents to have let me watch it on first broadcast, although I suppose I could've seen a reshowing), but I did remember bit of the Night Strangler and the TV series. And it's so revealing, to realize how much the police cliches have changed - in one scene, the coroner essentially offers what amounts to a killer psych profile, trying to explain that some people do suffer from the illusion that they are vampires and drink blood, and the police chief responds with, "I don't care what kind of nut he is!" (boggles)

[toysdream]

Thanks for jotting down all these cool Kolchak thoughts! Night Strangler really was pretty awesome - by the tail end I was thinking how much it reminded me of a Dario Argento movie, with its crazy lighting and the hero busting into the boarded-up undercity to confront an immortal alchemist. Obviously there's a strong connection here to Argento's Inferno, but also to Deep Red, especially with the bantering teamwork of the male and female leads.

Kolchak definitely does end up being the Boy Whose Job Is Crying Wolf, which seems rather appropriate. If the Big Bad Wolf lies at the very bottom of every horror-movie monster archetype, as we've discussed, then perhaps the various types of horror hero can be likewise classified based on their reactions to the wolf. We have the Kolchaks who expose the wolf, the Larry Talbots who are the wolf, the Beowulfs who slay the wolves that nobody else can or will, and so on and so forth. (In this case, I guess Buffy is a Beowulf and Angel is a Larry Talbot

[thedeadlyhook]

I note that the TV series, in which Kolchak becomes something of a monster specialist, doesn't seem to have any Matheson involvement.

Yes, and the amazing coincidence of him running across supernatural cases all the time became just as hard a sell after awhile as Scully being an eternal skeptic. ; )

There's one detail, however, in which Fox Mulder differs from Carl Kolchak. Mulder is someone who wants to believe--he's predisposed to seek supernatural or esoteric explanations, and one gets the feeling he'd be pretty disappointed if they ever had a case where Scully was able to solve everything with rational, mundane explanations.

Very true! And corrrect me if I'm wrong, but I think the series eventually forgot to address what he actually planned to DO with proof if he got it, whereas Kolchak's one goal is to get the news out. I think that's a lot of where The X-Files lost me, when it began to show Evol Gov't Agents and aliens every week, and Mulder doesn't ever go "okay, that's it" and just start publishing. As Carl would say, this

[toysdream]

I think Mulder is probably in the wrong line of work. For all the access that his FBI badge brings him, any hard "evidence" he could ever hope to secure would just end up being warehoused in a crate next to the Ark of the Covenant. Maybe the idea was that he'd leak it to the Lone Gunmen so they could put it in their crummy little mimeographed fanzine, and I'm sure that would really make all the Muggles sit up and take notice. Or perhaps he'd drop it off at the New York Times offices a la the ending of Firestarter. Ah, such an innocent age...

I think history has shown that the only foolproof method for Getting The Word Out is a symbiotic partnership between a Crusading Journalist and a Sympathetic Insider Who Leaks Like A Sieve. Since The X-Files only had half that equation, Mulder's quest was probably doomed from the outset. And if he'd actually had an ally in the press, Mulder himself would have been almost redundant, since Deep Throat and Mister X could just feed their scoops directly to the reporter in question. I guess in the

[thedeadlyhook]

I guess in the long run, it might have made sense for Mulder to either succeed Throat and X as the leaking insider, or drop out of the Bureau and become a crusading crank reporter.

I am now wishing that I'd had a computer at that point, so I could've gotten into XF fandom. There must have been fic written about something like this.

I think history has shown that the only foolproof method for Getting The Word Out is a symbiotic partnership between a Crusading Journalist and a Sympathetic Insider Who Leaks Like A Sieve

Bwah! Also, the reverse is sometimes seen - the hero, and the journalist who keeps their secrets, ala Matt Murdock and Ben Urich.

[shapinglight]

Thanks very much for the rec. I must read those stories on seasonal_spuffy. I love Miss Murchison's fics to pieces.

[thedeadlyhook]

You're very welcome - I love that story. And Miss Murchison's fic is such an enjoyable romp - I could live, very happily, in her version of S6 in that tale. So fun!

[ludditerobot]

I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, Angel is the werewolf vampire. Except, y'know, the wolf is hungry and feral, but it isn't conniving. But Stephen King lumps the Wolfman and Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde (not a slash pairing I care for, actually B) ) together, as they're variations on the same theme.

And of course, there's gypsies. The werewolf thing starts from a gypsy curse. Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright. But that's not the defining arc of Angel, really. But yeah, ironic. And makes me wish for more Angel/Nina fic.

[thedeadlyhook]

Not the defining arc, no, but there's defninitely a type at work - I'd agree with you that King's assessment of the Wolf Man and Jekyll/Hyde is a little off, which is why I'd go with Angel the Wolf Man in the final analysis rather than Jekyl/Hyde... for the earliest version of the character. When we see Angel get turned, it's portrayed as not really his fault, and something he has no real control over. Jekyll/Hyde is a volitional transformation, like Dorian Gray. Later Angel, say, S5 Angel, I think you could make a case for some Dorian Gray.

I think the most revealing thing about the Wolf Man movie was that Larry Talbot was already a sort of "wolf," in the ladykiller sense, even before the curse, using a telescope to peek at pretty girls. One gets the sense that this is the type of "wolf" every man is thought to have the potential to be. ; )

[ludditerobot]

S5 Angel is Michael Corleone. Yes, that means he's drawn in by the darkness and is transformed into it. I don't see humanity having a dog in the race for "NFA", really. It was taking care of family business. But that's not an archetypal horror figure, is it?

[thedeadlyhook]

Hm. I'm not sure I see a really strong Godfather parallel. The personal ambitions there feel of a different type, although I might feel different if I watched that movie again and looked for the connections - it's been awhile since I've seen it.

And not really a horror archetype, no, although that's not really important - what does strike me is that the Godfather is actually a good symbol for God, period, or at least how a lot of god-based magic works, traditionally. You do Him a favor (sacrifice, prayer, etc.), He does you a favor....