Truly, fangs ain't what they used to be
If you want proper occult action, forget the Twilight films. Go to the master himself Dennis Wheatley
o Kevin McKenna
o The Observer, Sunday 11 July 2010
In a secure corner of Girvan's municipal library in the 1970s, a collection of Dennis Wheatley's splendid black magic thrillers thrummed and pulsed balefully. The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil... a Daughter, Gateway to Hell they were all there and with them Wheatley's grim warning in his introductions: that though he personally had never dabbled in the occult, he knew enough to suggest that anyone tempted to do so risked being possessed by the Witch of Prague. Yet this was an alluring prospect for a teenager who had endured two sodden weeks of a caravan holiday in the jewel of South Ayrshire's Riviera. Indeed, a square-go with Satan himself would have been a release.
Wheatley's satanic oeuvre died with the author in the late 1970s; his books had become old before their time. The protagonists were patrician stalwarts of the British aristocracy who, moved by a sense of duty to empire and the old order, were intent on delivering civilisation from the Devil's icy fingers. They hatched their stratagems in London's gentlemen's clubs and could mix a daiquiri that would melt the elastic in a contessa's foundation garments.
The allegory was never subtle: the privileged classes had wisdom and goodness in abundance and alone possessed the tools to bash the Father of Lies and his acolytes, aka Harold Wilson and the socialists.
Wheatley, though, knew his subject and some of his chapters had a chilling authenticity that made you look for shadows in the doorway and ripples in the curtains. It was also clear that the author had previously failed to take his own advice about avoiding the black arts. To look at pictures of him in his red smoking jacket, his features taut and pale as an Albanian sepulchre, is to regard a man who has spent more than a few nights inside a pentangle with only black candles for company.
Forming an attachment in your formative years to Dennis Wheatley and his bestiary of bogles and goblins leaves an imprint on your soul and makes you susceptible to conspiracy theories everywhere. Never again can you take anything at face value. What sort of depraved rituals did Thatcher, Whitelaw, Prior and Carrington undergo to destroy old Labour and the unions? And was Scotland's failure to produce footballers who could neither trap a bag of cement nor hit a cow's arse with a banjo the result of some Latin-American voodoo curse on our first-born?
I am captivated by films that carry even a mere patina of the ethereal. I especially liked that one where Gabriel Byrne portrays Satan as a smooth-talking, fornicating devil, whose sudden appearance in modern downtown America presages the end of time
until Arnold Schwarzenegger neutralises him with a couple of dull ones. And what can you say about that scrofulous old scrote Jack Nicholson and his lubricious leading ladies in The Witches of Eastwick?
Perhaps that is why last week I chose to attend with my youngest son a screening of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the latest in one of those vampire chic flick franchises. Hadn't the trailers promised a veritable Valhalla of vampires, werewolves, fanged temptresses and an exploration of what it means to live for ever?
Of course I ought to have known better, but I couldn't help myself. The first sign that all would not be well came within a few minutes of the start and showed the leader of a family of "good" vampires cooing into the ear of a comely, all-American midwestern girl in a cornfield.
It's at this point that you think: "Oh good, he's about to sink his teeth into her neck and turn her into one of the undead, cursed to walk the Earth for ever, looking for the blood of innocents."
But no. Instead, this good vampire, who looks like his face was painted by Leo Sayer's make-up woman, brushes her hair tenderly and tells her that everything will be all right. In broad daylight.
It got worse. For does the prince of the good vampires not also have a love rival who turns out to be a "good" werewolf? Indeed, when he and his tribe adopt their vulpine form they look so cuddly that you find yourself checking to see if they are carrying little casks of brandy underneath their collars.
At last, though, we encountered a pack of real vampires who, thankfully, had not forgotten their responsibilities as they decapitated and eviscerated their way across the state only to be vanquished by an unholy alliance of the benevolent undead and their furry friends. The legendary Count Dracula would have been appalled and would have violated their inhuman rights, one and all.
This film and the books that inspired it epitomise the disturbing recent trend in society that seeks to remove any hint of danger and risk in the lives of our young people. You know the game is up for our cocooned youth when we cauterise their vampires and make them as aggressive as Smurfs.
It can only be a matter of time before a shadow will fall upon the sacred canon of Rabbie Burns and, in particular, "Tam o'Shanter". The current poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, will be asked to "recalibrate" Tam and bring him into the orbit of our sensitive young people. In this version, Tam and his chinas are howling with Bacardi Breezers and Buckfast tonic wine.
Dangerously drunk, they ride out to Alloway Kirk, where a troupe of benign witches and warlocks is holding a whist drive for the church repair fund. Tam and his pals surround the kirk and taunt the innocent undead within using vile and sexist imprecations such as: "Weel done Cutty sark." The traumatised demons flee and have to receive counselling for days afterwards.
Tam is shocked by his behaviour, becomes teetotal and qualifies as an alcohol and marriage guidance officer. The SNP will then adopt the new poem as the basis of their next attempt to ban cheap alcohol and to encourage ideas of inclusiveness.
Truly, fangs ain't what they used to be | Kevin McKenna | Comment is free | The Observer
Truly, fangs ain't what they used to be
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