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Home , 2005 in home video, American Gothic (novel), Born of Man and Woman, Colonial Street, Come Along with Me, David Koepp

Notes

Introduction: Welcome to Disturbia

1. Siddons, p.212. 2. Clapson, p.2. 3. Beuka, p.23. 4. Clapson, p.14. 5. Chafe, p.111. 6. Ibid., p.120. 7. Patterson, p.331. 8. Rome, p.16. 9. Patterson, pp.336–8. 10. Keats cited in Donaldson, p.7. 11. Keats, p.7. 12. Donaldson, p.122. 13. Donaldson, The Suburban Myth (1969). 14. Cited in Garreau, p.268. 15. Kenneth Jackson, 1985, pp.244–5. 16. Fiedler, p.144. 17. Matheson, Stir of Echoes, p.106. 18. Clapson; Beuka, p.1.

1 The House Down the Street: The in and

1. Joshi, p.63. Indeed, King’s 1979 novel Salem’s Lot – in which a European invades small town Maine – vigorously and effectively dramatises this notion, as do many of his subsequent narratives. 2. Garreau, p.267. 3. Skal, p.201. 4. Dziemianowicz. 5. Cover notes, Richard Matheson, , (1954: 1999). 6. Jancovich, p.131. 7. Friedman, p.132. 8. Hereafter referred to as Road. 9. Friedman, p.132. 10. Hall, Joan Wylie, in Murphy, 2005, pp.23–34. 11. Ibid., p.236. 12. Oppenheimer, p.16. 13. Mumford, p.451. 14. Donaldson, p.24. 15. Clapson, p.1.

201 202 Notes

16. Ibid., p.22. 17. Shirley Jackson, The Road Through the Wall, p.5. 18. Friedman, p.79. 19. Shirley Jackson, Road, p.5. 20. Anti-Semitism in a suburban setting also plays a part in Anne Rivers Siddon’s The House Next Door and, possibly, in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (in which the notably Aryan hero fends off his vampiric next-door neighbour with a copy of the Torah). 21. Shirley Jackson, Road, p.43. 22. Friedman, p.84. 23. As we shall see, the suburban community as lynch mob is a common trope in the Suburban Gothic. 24. Jackson, Road, p.206. 25. Ibid., p.213. 26. Oppenheimer, p.17. 27. Ibid., p.16. 28. Quoted in Oppenheimer, p.125. 29. Oppenheimer, p.125. 30. As is obvious in her later novels, physical boundaries such as walls and gates frequently isolate the Jackson protagonist from the real world, and find reflection in the psychological containment and self-obsession of her characters. 31. Oppenheimer, p.18. 32. Joan Wylie Hall’s ‘Fallen Eden in Shirley Jackson’s The Road Through the Wall’ (in Murphy, 2005) furthers this contention by claiming that Road contributes to a prominent theme of much Californian literature: the loss of innocence in the Eden of the final American frontier. 33. Wharton, p.106. 34. ‘Richard Matheson’ The Encyclopaedia, (London: Orbit, 1993) p.585. 35. Winter, p.40. 36. Hereafter shortened to Legend. 37. Interestingly, ’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955) was also set in 1976, although, as in Matheson’s novel, the future still seems very like the 1950s. As to the reasons why this year was chosen as the setting for two of the decade’s seminal sci-fi/horror novels it seems likely that since 1976 marked the 200th anniversary of the founding of the United States (the bicen- tennial) it represented a useful milestone for nightmarish narratives such as these. 38. Oakes, p.105. 39. Ibid., p.45. 40. ‘Houses for the Atomic Age!’ The Golden Age of Advertising: The 50s (Taschen, 2004) p.55. 41. Newman, p.66. 42. Zicree, pp.90–2. 43. Fox Television, Episode 2F11. Original US airdate 5 February 1995. 44. The low-budget Right at Your Door (2006), provided a interestingly post 9/11 variation on this theme, as the detonation of several so-called Notes 203

‘dirty bombs’ in downtown forces a slacker suburban husband to seal up his home with duct tape and wood. He spends much of the film denying access to his pleading wife, who had been dangerously close to the bombs when they went off, and is therefore, according to official broadcasts, one of the ‘contaminated’. In an ironic twist, at the climax of the film it is revealed that by remaining inside, he is the one who has become irradiated, not her, and in a scenario reminiscent of that seen at the climax of films such as Romero’s The Crazies (1973), ’s Rabid (1977) and the 2007 Spanish movie [REC] he is sealed in forever by the military and left to die. 45. Matheson, Legend, p.8. 46. Jancovich, p.149. 47. Matheson, Legend, p.44. 48. Ibid., p.13. 49. Ibid., p.110. 50. Winter, p.40. 51. Matheson, Legend, p.10. 52. Avila, 2004. 53. Ibid., p.35. 54. Matheson, Legend, p.23. 55. Ibid., pp.26–7. 56. Ibid., p.30. 57. Ibid., p.53. 58. Ibid., p.153. 59. Ibid., p.157. 60. Ibid., p.160. 61. Ibid., p.160. 62. Matheson, The Shrinking Man. Hereafter shortened to Shrinking Man. 63. Matheson, Shrinking Man, p.175. 64. Ibid., p.186. 65. Hereafter referred to as Stir for convenience sake. 66. Though overshadowed by the release of the similarly themed The Sixth Sense in the same year, the 1999 movie adaptation of Stir of Echoes (starring ) is actually a surprisingly effective and engaging movie which intelli- gently updates Matheson’s original text. The middle-class, suburban setting of the original has been replaced however by a distinctly urban, blue-collar setting, and Tom Wallace is now a working-class telephone repairman rather than a young executive type. 67. Matheson, Stir of Echoes, p.69. 68. Ibid., p.106. 69. Ibid., p.43. 70. Ibid., p.43. 71. Ibid., p.104. 72. Ibid., p.44. 73. Ibid., p.48. 74. Ibid., p.49. 75. Ibid., p.121. 76. Ibid., p.180. 204 Notes

2 Conjure Wife: The Suburban Witch

1. Sharon Russell, p.115. 2. Ibid., p.116. 3. Karlsen, p.xii. 4. Rosenthal, p.3. 5. Hoffer, p.xv. 6. Rosenthal, p.2. 7. Creed, p.76. In an interesting discussion indebted to Russell’s earlier arti- cle, Creed briefly traces the depiction of the witch in film as a prelude to her discussion of ’s 1976 horror movie Carrie. The ‘witch as housewife’ trope is mentioned only in passing. 8. Sharon Russell, p.117. 9. Ibid., p.121. 10. Ibid., p.121. 11. Klaits, p.119. 12. Filmed as Weird Woman (1944), Burn, Witch Burn! (1962: Also known as ) and Witches’ Brew (1980). 13. Smug male academics also play an important role in Jack’s Wife. 14. Leiber, p.9. 15. Ibid., p.5. 16. Ibid., p.12. 17. Ibid., p.17. 18. Ibid., p.23. 19. Ibid., p.61. 20. Ibid., p.63. 21. Ibid., p.124. 22. J. Pilato, (Tapestry Press, 2004). 23. Reprinted in The First Mayflower Book of Black Magic Stories, (ed.) Michael Parry (Frogmore: Mayflower, 1974). 24. Beaumont, p.132. 25. Season 6, Episode 15. First shown on 7 March 1999. 26. In an interesting contrast to her role in Bewitched, Montgomery would later play the lead role in the made-for-television movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975) based on the case of nineteenth-century New England’s most famous alleged murderess. 27. Gerard Jones, p.174. 28. Marc, p.107. 29. Ibid., p.109. 30. Shirley Jackson also resided in Westport with her husband and young family from 1949–59, before moving to the Vermont town of North Bennington, where she lived for the rest of her life. 31. See also the television show Mad Men (2007–) which is similarly about the relationship between a work-obsessed ad man and his frustrated wife. 32. Gerard Jones, pp.178–9. 33. Ibid., p.77. 34. Chafe, p.123. 35. Clapson, p.125. 36. Skolnick, p.57. Notes 205

37. Patterson, p.361. 38. Ibid., p.363. 39. Chafe, p.123. 40. Degler, p.418. 41. Ibid., p.418. 42. Chafe, p.125. 43. Ibid., p.123. 44. Patterson, p.368. 45. Degler, p.423. 46. Ibid., p.430. 47. Ibid., p.430. 48. Skolnick, p.102. 49. Gerard Jones, p.177. 50. Marc, p.113. 51. Gerard Jones, p.179. 52. Skolnick, p.51. 53. Ibid., p.52. 54. Indeed, I have come across just two critical discussions of the film, the better of which is that by Tony Williams in his excellent book The Cinema of George A. Romero; the other by John Muir in his encyclopaedic Horror Movies of the , pp.123–4. 55. These scenes feature the unmistakable stereotype of the 1970s suburban cocktail party – cheesy music, kaftans, stiff drinks, big hair, and innuendo- laden chit chat – also seen in contemporary texts such as The House Next Door, , and The Exorcist, but also in nostalgic novels such as Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm. 56. Rather more recently, the ‘ as drug’ metaphor also became the basis for an episode of (‘Wrecked’, Season 6, Episode 10), in which Willow becomes hopelessly addicted to the energies generated by forbidden magical practices. 57. John Muir, Horror Movies of the 1970s, p.124. 58. In an interesting paper on Jack’s Wife delivered at the 2007 International Gothic Association Conference in Aix-en-Provence, France, Christophe Chambost provided a rather more optimistic reading of the film in which he noted that the final scenes featured no men at all, and suggested that Joan has actually attained freedom and independence after all, and that her actions would inspire other women to subvert social norms. However, I would argue that the terrible blankness seen in Joan’s eyes in the final shot contradicts this interpretation. 59. Clapson, p.26. 60. Ibid., p.26. 61. Cited in Clapson, p.27. 62. Skolnick, p.115. 63. Purkiss, p.8. 64. Bartel, p.xiv. 65. Purkiss, p.39. 66. Ibid., p.39. 67. As it happens, the heroine (a young witch played by Nicole Kidman) ends up in LA, and accidentally lands the role of the Samantha character in a new TV 206 Notes

version of the actual Bewitched show, only to find herself falling hopelessly in love with her arrogant, pampered on-screen husband (Will Ferrell). As in the similarly dire Kidman-starring remake of The Stepford Wives, it is clear that the writers, having failed to find a satisfactory way to update a premise that was very much a product of its original time, settled for irony and clunky self- consciousness. Needless to say, it was not a box-office success. Kidman has also starred in a poorly received update of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers entitled The Invasion (2007). 68. For more on the cultural and commercial ramifications of the ‘teenage witch’ phenomenon of the late 1990s, see Denise Cush’s article ‘Consumer Witchcraft: Are Teenage Witches the Creation of Commercial Interests?’ in Journal of Beliefs and Values, Vol. 28, No.1, April 2007, pp.45–53. 69. In addition, in a move which aroused some controversy amongst local res- idents, a bronze statue of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stevens was erected in Salem by a television company in 2005. 70. ‘The Craft’, Stephen Holden, The Times, 3 May 1996. 71. Sue Short, p.93. 72. Ibid., p.38.

3 Aliens, Androids and : Dehumanisation and the Suburban Gothic

1. Donaldson, p.viii. 2. Mumford, p.353. 3. Shirley Jackson, ‘The Beautiful Stranger’ in , p.59. 4. Ibid., p.60. 5. Ibid., p.64. 6. Ibid., p.50. 7. Ibid., p.65. 8. Dominic Bourget and Laurie Whitehurst (2004) ‘Capgras Syndrome: A Review of the Neuropsychological Correlates and Presenting Physical Features in Cases Involving Physical Violence’, The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 49, No.11. pp.719–25. 9. Blakeslee and Ramachandran, p.159. 10. Ibid., p.159. 11. Streatfield, p.253. 12. Marling, p.253. 13. Ibid., p.253. 14. Ibid., p.253. 15. Quoted in Donaldson, p.10. 16. Kenneth Jackson, p.239. 17. Kenneth Jackson, pp.239–40. 18. Gans, p.49. 19. Shentin and Sobin, p.38. 20. Sobchack, p.121. 21. Ibid., p.20. 22. For an amusing discussion of the suggestive similarities between Body Snatchers and , see Robert Rodriguez’s tongue-in-cheek Notes 207

1998 horror/science fiction film The Faculty. More recently, the 2005 com- edy/horror film Slither relies on much the same premise, this time set in yet another small town. 23. In 1978, Philip Kaufman’s excellent updated remake/sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Donald Sutherland as Bennell (this time a city health inspector rather than a doctor), was released. Set in , the film’s considerable effectiveness is derived from the air of burgeoning unease and urban alienation that Kaufman establishes from the very outset. Whereas the original film pivoted upon the manner in which familiar and everyday peo- ple and places suddenly seem to have changed, the remake instead focuses upon the isolation of urban living. The movie deserves to be considered as one of the best of the paranoid thrillers which were so popular during this time. , who here plays untrustworthy pop psychiatrist Manny Kaufmann, also played an alien spokesman in 1958’s The Brain Eaters. Body Snatchers was also remade in the 1990s by Abel Ferrara, who set the film on an army base. Though inferior to both previous versions, the choice of setting and Ferrara’s highlighting of the regimented, repetitive and orderly nature of both military housing and of army life in general, is interesting, and does fit in well with the ethos of the source novel. The most recent remake, The Invasion (2007) situated the takeover in Washington DC and made frequent reference to the ongoing ‘war on terror’. 24. Finney, p.5. 25. Whyte, p.269. 26. Finney, p.10. 27. Ibid., p.13. 28. Ibid., p.16. 29. Ibid., p.31. 30. Jancovich, p.64. 31. Richard Gid Powers, quoted in , Danse , 1981, p.360. 32. Finney, pp.38–9. 33. Whyte, p.272. 34. Finney, p.54. 35. Ibid., p.70. 36. Ibid., p.80. 37. Ibid., p.97. 38. Sobchack, p.125. 39. King, p.362. 40. The 1956 film version famously had two endings, neither of which followed events as laid out in the original novel. The first ended with a bleak, more thematically fitting scene in which a desperate, hysterical Miles (here played by Kevin McCarthy) escapes Santa Mira and runs towards the highway, screaming about what has taken place in his little town, (which, naturally enough, makes him look like a madman). At the studio’s insistence, a slightly more optimistic frame narrative was added to the beginning and the end of the film, concluding with the news that the FBI are on their way, and that Miles’s unlikely story has finally been believed: once the feds are involved, the script seems to suggest, the alien invaders don’t have a chance. The 1978 version once again reinstates a suitably bleak ending, whereas the 2007 version sees the status quo restored by the end of the narrative. 208 Notes

41. Finney, p.170. 42. Jancovich, p.73. 43. Ibid., p.72. 44. James, ‘New York Revisited’ in The American Scene, p.85. 45. Finney, p.10. 46. Jamie Russell, p.69. 47. Whitfield, p.71. 48. Gans, p.vii. 49. Chafe, p.114. 50. Patterson, p.334. 51. Ibid., p.334. 52. Avila, p.31. 53. Williams, p.91. 54. Beuka, p.174. 55. Knight, p.118. 56. Ibid., p.118. 57. Friedan, p.264. 58. Ibid., p.265. 59. The de Beauvoir quotation is as follows: ‘Today the combat takes a differ- ent shape; instead of wishing to put man in a prison, woman endeavours to escape from one; she no longer seeks to drag him into the realms of immanence but to emerge, herself, into the light of transcendence. Now the attitude of males creates a new conflict: it is with bad grace that the male lets her go’. The Second Sex, p.675. 60. , The Stepford Wives, p.6. 61. Paula Prentiss also came to a sticky end in another classic paranoid thriller of the 1970s: Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974). 62. Levin, p.1. 63. Ibid., p.16. 64. Ibid., p.40. 65. Texts which make overt the idea that suburbia is a stage or an artificial con- struct include Philip K. Dick’s 1959 novel Time Out of Joint, in which a 1950s suburban everyman who has the uncanny ability to win his local newspa- per’s ‘spot the ball’ competition every time he enters begins to realise that all is not as it seems; and more recently, The Truman Show, which depicts the idyllic suburban town of ‘Seaview’ as a giant film set built around another unwitting everyman, the revealingly named ‘Truman Burbank’ (played by Jim Carrey). Dick’s novel was also discussed at some length by Fredric Jame- son in the essay ‘Nostalgia for the Present’ in Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, pp.279–96. 66. Levin, p.41. 67. See also ’s It’s Alive trilogy (about a generation of infants mutated by environmental pollutants) and 1970s such as Grizzly, Prophecy and Piranha. 68. Levin, p.53. 69. Ibid., p.54. 70. Ibid., p.63. 71. The link between Stepford and the advertising industry was ironically rein- forced by the fact that director Brian Forbes’ wife, Nanette Newman, who Notes 209

played Carol Van Sant, was from 1981–91 the public face of Fairy Liquid detergent in a series of television advertisements which informed women that ‘hands that do dishes can be soft as your face’. 72. Knight, p.122. 73. Friedan, p.202. 74. Avila, p.113. 75. Baudrillard, p.14. 76. Beuka, p.177. 77. Profound suburban alienation in a European setting has perhaps best been captured in recent times by Austrian director Michael Haneke in films such as Funny Games (1997) (later remade as an American film), Benny’s Video (1992), Hidden (2005) and perhaps most strikingly in The Seventh Continent (1989), in which a middle-class family becomes so disenchanted by their meaningless, materialistic lives that they decide to commit suicide. 78. Since Safe, Moore has become the first lady of cinematic suburban alien- ation. She later returned to the soulless San Fernando valley for ’s sprawling 1999 epic Magnolia (in which she featured as a deeply unhappy, pill-popping trophy wife), and reunited with Haynes to make Far From Heaven (2002), a sumptuous, knowing homage to the work of 1950s melodramatists like Douglas Sirk, in which she played a much-envied 1950s housewife whose apparently perfect life is shattered by the revelation that her husband is gay. In the same year, Moore also played a (by now unsur- prisingly) suicidal 1950s suburbanite in the Academy Award-winning film The Hours. 79. Beuka, p.183.

4 ‘You Son of a Bitch! You Only Moved the Headstones!’ Haunted Suburbia

1. Matheson, Stir of Echoes, p.106. 2. Bergland, p.60. 3. Goddu, p.4. 4. Anderson, p.9. 5. Davenport-Hines, p.267. 6. Franks, p.7. 7. Faulkner, p.8. 8. O’Connor, p.17. 9. Ibid., p.7. 10. Malin, p.79. 11. Bailey, p.71. 12. King’s alter ego Richard Bachman has set a novel in a suburban setting: The Regulators (1996), in which the peaceful, family-centred neighbourhood of Poplar Street, Ohio suddenly erupts into chaos when the violent imaginings of a demon-possessed autistic child come to life. The premise owes much to Jerome Bixby’s classic SF/horror story ‘It’s a Good Life’ (1953). 13. A statement which ignores the fact that The Exorcist was based upon a real- life case as well. 14. Thomas, p.596. 210 Notes

15. For more on these allegations, see Rick Moran, ‘Amityville Revisited’, in Fortean Times (190: 32–7, December 2004). 16. King, p.163. 17. Anson, p.14. 18. Ibid., p.17. 19. See Amityville 1992: It’s About Time. 20. Bailey, p.66. 21. Michaels, ‘Romance and Real Estate’, p.89. 22. Ibid., p.89. 23. Skolnick, p.136. 24. Cited in Skolnick, p.138. 25. Skolnick, p.138. 26. King, p.168. 27. Skolnick, p.35. 28. Chafe, p.465. 29. Anson, p.30. 30. Ibid., p.68. 31. Ibid., p.36. 32. Ibid., p.105. 33. Ibid., p.80. 34. Ibid., p.80. 35. Or the overgrown garden of an antiquarian book dealer, in Joseph Payne Brennan’s famous story “Canavan’s Back Yard” (1958). For more on suburban entrances to hell, see Chapter 6. 36. Anson, p.128. 37. Bergland, p.66. 38. Ibid., p.9. 39. Anson, p.139. 40. Ibid., p.184. 41. Siddons, 1978. 42. Siddons, cited in , p.306. 43. Siddons, p.9. 44. Holland-Toll, p.166. 45. Bourdieu, p.77. 46. Ibid., p.77. 47. Siddons, p.18. 48. Ibid., p.21. 49. Ibid., p.21. 50. Ibid., p.42. 51. Ibid., p.42. 52. Ibid., p.52. 53. Ibid., p.90. 54. Ibid., p.94. 55. Ibid., p.96. 56. Ibid., p.132. 57. Ibid., p.140. 58. Ibid., p.162. 59. Bailey, p.80. 60. Siddons, p.170. Notes 211

61. Ibid., p.212. 62. Bailey, p.81. 63. Holland-Toll, p.33. 64. Siddons, p.333. 65. Ibid., p.340. 66. Holland-Toll, p.170. 67. King, p.308 68. Bailey, p.83. 69. Skolnick, p.130. 70. The suburb’s Spanish name is a reminder of the fact that white history in Southern California was preceded by an earlier, Hispanic phase of develop- ment (as was Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and therefore foreshad- ows revelation of the fact that the new housing development is built on land with a prior history of its own. 71. Nixon, pp.217–26. 72. Newman, p.329. 73. Stephen Spielberg was executive producer of , and also contributed to the story: as a result, some critics long suggested that the film’s more saccharine, child-related elements may have more to do with him than with the actual director, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s . As Newman has noted, ‘Spielberg’s amused tolerance of suburban triviality jostles with Hooper’s grouchy view of city slickers treading on the countryside’ (p.170). 74. Bailey, p.81. 75. Clover, p.196. 76. Burseh, ‘The Electronic Cyclops: Fifties Television’ in The Making of American Audiences, From Stage to Television, 1750–1990, p.248. 77. Coontz, p.28. 78. Burseh, p.255. 79. Ibid., pp.262, 263. 80. Clover, p.73. 81. Poltergeist 3, set this time in a shiny new city apartment block, and directed by the once-promising Gary Sherman (who helmed classic London under- ground shocker Deathline and the interesting small-town horror movie Dead and Buried) is notable mainly for the tragic fact that 12-year-old Heather O’Rourke (Carole Anne) died during the production. This, along with the fact that (Dana) was murdered shortly after the release of the original film, led some to speculate that a curse hung over the Poltergeist films. This didn’t prevent a largely unconnected and uninspiring television spin-off series (Poltergeist: The Legacy) from appearing in the 1990s with no apparent harm coming to either the cast or the crew. 82. Michaels, p.90. 83. See Rome, 2001. 84. Botting and Townsend, p.338. 85. The scene is virtually identical to one found in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). 86. Barber, p.143. 87. Indeed, many of the people to whom I have mentioned the film are under the impression that the Freeling house was built on an Indian burial ground, rather than a much more recent rural cemetery (a fact attested to by the fact 212 Notes

that the corpses wear wristwatches and pearls and recognisably twentieth- century dress). A recent episode of furthered this misconception in the episode ‘Petergeist’, a witty spoof of the movie in which idiotic sub- urbanite Peter Griffith deeply disrespects of an Indian chief and brings Poltergeist-style retribution into his home: his large-headed and freak- ishly intelligent infant son Stewie serves as surprisingly credible Carole Anne stand-in. 88. Rogin, p.134 cited in Clover, 1973.

5 Don’t Go Down to the Basement! Serial Murder, Family Values and the Suburban Horror

1. I would like to thank Dr Elizabeth McCarthy for her helpful suggestions in relation to this chapter. 2. Winter, p.27. 3. Ibid., p.202. 4. Phillips, p.65. 5. Ibid., p.72. 6. Ibid., p.4. 7. Skal, p.378. 8. Newman, 1989, p.90. 9. Muir, 2002, p.538. 10. , ‘E is for Escape’ in ’s A–Z of Horror, pp.64–5. 11. Newman, p.143. 12. Quoted in Jones, p.65. 13. Muir, The of , p.78. 14. Worland, p.238. 15. The name ‘Loomis’ is of course another wry nod to , and the fact that Marion’s boyfriend is named Sam Loomis. 16. Philips, p.141. 17. Sue Short, 2006, p.53. 18. Newman, p.55. 19. The premise also owes much to ’s 1943 story ‘They Bite’. 20. Muir, 2002, p.65. 21. Ibid., p.66. 22. Wheatley, p.1. 23. See Chapter 4 for more on television in the Suburban Gothic. 24. Peach, p.113. 25. School janitors are often depicted as alcoholics or potential child abusers in American popular culture: see also Lucas Cross (Arthur Kennedy) in Peyton Place or even Groundskeeper Willie in . The implication is that a working-class male who spends his days in a school must be up to no good. 26. Williams, p.228. 27. See the 2008 film Mum and Dad for a notably English variation upon many of the themes and scenarios depicted in The People Under the Stairs. 28. Bachelard, p.18. 29. Briefel and Nagai, pp.70–91. 30. Ibid., p.71. Notes 213

31. The name ‘Loomis’ of course evokes Sam Loomis in Psycho and Dr Loomis in . 32. The film has inspired some interesting knock-offs, such as a second-season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (‘Ted’), and bizarrely, the famous story arc in Coronation Street in which single mother Gail Platt married a briefcase- carrying psychopath named Richard Hillman whose obsessive, controlling and ultimately murderous behaviour bore more than a slight resemblance to that of O’Quinn’s character. 33. Patricia Brett Erens, ‘The Stepfather: Father as in the Contemporary ’, in Grant 1996, pp.352–63. 34. Ibid., p.353. 35. Jerry’s hobby brings to mind one of the running gags in the big screen ver- sion of (1995): the fact that every building architect Mike Brady designs looks just like his own family home. 36. And indeed, the similarities didn’t go unnoticed by the rights holders of Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 story ‘It Had To Be Murder’ (basis for Rear Window), who decided to sue the producers of Disturbia (including Stephen Spielberg) in mid 2008. 37. This element of the film evokes the real-life case of prolific serial killer Gacy, who used the crawlspace of his suburban home to conceal the bodies of 27 boys and young men. 38. The film, which features many lurid shots of various meats, purposely evokes the garish and, to modern eyes, often nauseatingly vivid aesthetic of 1950s cookbooks and advertisements. 39. It’s the most disturbing dinner-table scene since that in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. 40. The ill-fated juror is played by Patricia Hearst, no stranger herself to media attention and high profile court cases. 41. Ballard, p.1.

6 ‘Ah, But Underneath ...’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer and

1. I would like to thank my colleague, Dr Jenny McDonnell, for providing many useful insights during our discussions regarding the Desperate Housewives section of this chapter. 2. It is also a sequence which has much in common with similar scenes in earlier Suburban Gothic texts such as Jack’s Wife and The Stepford Wives,in which the numbing routine of the middle-class housewife and mother is communicated through the depiction of everyday tasks. 3. Halper and Mezzio, p.543. 4. Hereafter abbreviated to BTVS. 5. Billson, p.44. 6. Wheatley, p.8. 7. Arson is a frequent occurrence in Desperate Housewives as well: in the pilot episode, accidentally burns down the home of her love rival , a favour which is returned in episode 2: 21 ‘’. ’s sons burn down a restaurant (in a bid to save their parents’ 214 Notes

marriage) during the fourth season episode ‘Hello, Little Girl’ (4: 13). A major character also commits arson in the fifth season episode ‘City on Fire’. Simi- larly, The House Next Door ends just as Colquitt and Walter Kennedy prepare to burn the malign home next to theirs to the ground, and in the third sea- son finale of Weeds, Nancy Botwin, as previously noted, sets fire to her own house. 8. Famously, an episode of animated rival accounted for the show’s unique narrative style by suggesting that Family Guy was in fact masterminded by trained manatees who chose storylines and joke topics at random. 9. Havens, p.21. 10. Boyd Tonkin, ‘Entropy as Demon: Buffy in Southern California’ in Kaveney, 2002, p.42. 11. Billson, p.69. 12. Ibid., p.66. 13. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/what-is-the-future-of- suburbia-a-freakonomics-quorum/ Accessed 12 August 2008. 14. Bernard Wieinraub, 2004. 15. Henry D. Thoreau, Walden. The quotation is directly referenced in the pilot, in the scene in which Susan recalls her philandering husband Karl saying ‘You know Susan, most men lead lives of quiet desperation’ when justifying an extramarital affair, to which she responds ‘Really? And what do most women lead? Lives of noisy fulfilment?’ 16. Rosalind Coward, ‘Still Desperate: Popular Television and the Female Zeitgeist’, in McCabe and Arkass, 2006, p.31. 17. Indeed, Rex Van De Kamp says all of the following to his wife Bree during the pilot: ‘You’re the one who’s always acting like she’s running for Mayor of Stepford!’; ‘I just can’t live in this detergent commercial anymore’; and ‘You’re this plastic suburban housewife.’ 18. Season 1, episode 8, first broadcast 28 November 2004. 19. Wheatley, p.3. 20. http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/backlot/street_colonial.shtml, Accessed 20 June 2008. 21. ‘A Walk Down ’ DVD Extra, Desperate Housewives: The First Season (Buena Visa Home Entertainment, 2005). 22. See, for example, Thomas, Evany, ‘The Good of the Group’ in Watson, 2006. 23. ‘Suburban Gothic’, , Arts: Television, 28 November 2004. 24. Putnam, p.210. 25. Donaldson, p.10. 26. Becky Nicolaides, ‘How Hell moved from the City to the Suburbs: Urban Scholars and Changing Perceptions of Authentic Community’ in Kruse and Sugrue, 2006, pp.80–99. 27. Ibid., p.97. 28. In a widely reported speech made at a White House Correspondents’ dinner in May 2005. Notes 215

Conclusion: The End of Suburbia?

1. Deffeyes, p.1. 2. Puentes and Warren, p.1. 3. Short, Hanlon and Vicino, pp.1–16. 4. Short, Hanlon and Vicino, p.6. For more on the decline of the first suburbs, see also Puentes and Warren. 5. See Puentes and Warren for more on the decline of the ‘first’ suburbs. 6. Kunstler, 2005, p.1. 7. Ibid., p.291. 8. Heiman, pp.213–26. 9. The peaking of oil production does not mean that oil is running out, per se; rather, it refers to the maximum oil production rate, which typically occurs after roughly half of the recoverable oil in an oil field has been produced. After this point, the remaining oil becomes increasingly difficult to recover and to process, and thus becomes all the more difficult to obtain, and correspondingly more expensive (Hirsch, 2005, p.2). 10. Hirsch, p.2. 11. On 11 July 2008. 12. ‘Stiff Petrol Prices Drain Wealth in US Suburbia’ Rich Miller and Matthew Benjamin, Business Report, 12 June 2008. 13. Gretchen Morgenson, ‘FAIR GAME; Home Loans: A Nightmare Grows Darker’. The New York Times, 8 April 2007. Accessed 15 August 2008. 14. ‘Dropping A Brick’, The Economist, 29 May 2008. 15. Rupert Cornwell, ‘The Ominous Sound of Jingle Mail: The Death of the American Suburbs’, The Independent, Monday, 4 August 2008. As Cornwell explains, homeowners in the United States are able to walk away due to a Depression-era law which makes it difficult for banks to chase borrowers for an unpaid mortgage loan. ‘The result is a temporary hit to their credit rating ...but in the end the slate is wiped clean’. 16. Lewicki, p.5. 17. Martin and Savoy, p.175. Bibliography

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American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999) The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979) The Amityville Horror (Andrew Douglas, 2005) Bell, Book and Candle (Richard Quine, 1958) Benny’s Video (Michael Haneke, 1992) Bewitched (Nora Ephron, 2005) The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myerick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999) Blue Velvet (, 1986) Body Snatchers (Abel Ferrara, 1994) The Brain Eaters (Bruno VeSota, 1958) The Brain from the Planet Arous (, 1957) The ’Burbs (Joe Dante, 1989) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Fran Rubel Kuzui, 1992) Burn Witch Burn (Sidney Hayers, 1962) Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) Chiller (, 1985) City of the Dead (John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960) The Craft (Andrew Fleming, 1996) The Crazies (George Romero, 1973) Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978) Dawn of the Dead (Zac Snyder, 2004) (George Romero, 1985) (Wes Craven, 1986) Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007) (, 1990) The Exorcist (, 1973) The Faculty (Robert Rodriguez, 1998) Fido (Andrew Currie, 2006) Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997) Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, 2000) Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) Halloween (Rob Zombie, 2007) The Hamiltons (Michael Altieri and Phil Flores, 2006) Head Case (Anthony Spadaccini, 2007) Hidden (Michael Haneke, 2005) (Wes Craven, 1977) I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence, 2007) I Married a Monster From Outer Space (Gene Fowler, 1958) I Married a Witch (Rene Clair, 1942) The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1963) Invaders From Mars (William Cameron Menzies, 1953) The Invasion (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2007) Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)

222 Filmography 223

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978) Invitation to Hell (Wes Craven, 1984) It Came from Outer Space (Jack Arnold, 1953) Jack’s Wife (George Romero, 1972) Land of the Dead (George Romero, 2005) The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972) The Last Man on Earth (Sidney Salkow and Ubaldo Ragona, 1964) Monster House (, 2006) (George Romero, 1968) A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984) (, 1971) Parents (Bob Balaban, 1989) The People Under the Stairs (Wes Craven, 1991) Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982) Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, 1998) Psycho (, 1960) Rabid (David Cronenberg, 1977) Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) [REC] (Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, 2007) Red Eye (Wes Craven, 2005) Revenge of the Stepford Wives (Robert Fuest, 1980) Right at Your Door (Chris Gorak, 2006) Rosemary’s Baby (, 1968) Safe (, 1995) (Wes Craven, 1996) Serial Mom (, 1994) The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke, 1989) (, 1980) Shocker (Wes Craven, 1989) The Silence of the Lambs (, 1991) Slither (John Axelrad, 2005) The Stepfather (Joseph Rubin, 1987) (Alan J. Levi, 1987) (Fred Walton, 1996) The Stepford Wives (Brian Forbes, 1975) The Stepford Wives (, 2004) Stir of Echoes (David Koepp, 1999) (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) Terror Tract (Lawrence W. Dreesen and Clint Hutchison, 2000) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) Weird Woman (Reginald Le Borg, 1944) Westworld (, 1973) Witches’ Brew (Richard Shorr and Herbert L. Strock, 1980) Index

Absalom, Absalom! 107, 162 penchant for excessive use of Abuse exclamation marks, 114 of children, 35, 126, 131, 151 Anti-Semitism, 22, 123–4, 202n20 of spouse, 189 Aorta, Mr, 104, 111 Academics, smug, 44, 59 Apocalypse Addams, Charles, 50 apocalyptic strain in American Addam’s Family, The,50 literary culture, 198 Adultery, 123, 171, 188 in BTVS 174, 184, 191, 213n7 Advertising, significance of in in I Am Legend,27 Desperate Housewives, 184 Apt Pupil, 167 The House Next Door, 158 ‘Arcadia’, 48 Mad Men, 171 Architects The Stepford Wives, 95–7, 99, 208n71 haunted, 120, 122, 125, 182 Arson, 170, 174, 184, 191, 213n7 Agrestic, CA, 169 Arthur Mervyn,10 AIDS Association, The,48 Safe as allegory for, 101 Atlanta, 117 Alcoholism, 30, 153 Austin, Steve, 91 Alienation, 209n77 Avila, Eric, 32, 203n52, 208n52, All That Heaven Allows,90 209n74 American Beauty, 13, 134, 167 American Dreamscape,12 Baby boom, 6, 116, 142 American Gothic: New Interventions in a Bachelard, Gaston, 155–6, 212n28 National Narrative,12 Bachman, Richard, 209n12 American gothic, the Bacon, Kevin, 203n60 adaptations from European gothic Bad Place (King), 109 tradition, 105–6 Bailey, Dale, 111, 209n11, 210n59, association with specific 211n62, n74 geographical regions, 10–11, 38 Bailey, Sarah, 66 early establishment and Baker, Dylan, 90 development, 9–10 Balaban, Bob, 160–1 focus upon the family as locus of Ballard, J.G. 165, 215n41 horror, 136 Bankruptcy, spectre of in Suburban new American gothic, 107–8 Gothic, 112–13 American Scene, The,84 Barber, Paul, 152, 211n84 Amityville Horror, The (book) 109–16 Bartel, Pauline, 205n64 as economic horror story, 110 ‘Bart’s Comet’, 29 verifiable facts of the case, 110 Basements, 155, 157, 163 Amityville Horror, The (film versions), as bomb shelter, 29 105, 110 burial ground, 38 Angel (TV show), 175, 177, 177–8 prison, 154 Anson, Jay, 13, 105, 116–32, Bates house, motel, 137–9 210n17–18, 210n29–37 Bates, Norman, 137–9, 164

224 Index 225

Battlestar Galactica, (original series), 91 Bomb shelters and suburbia, 28–30 Baudrillard, Jean, 98, 209n75 Book of the Dead,85 Baumgartner, M.P., 188 Boomburbs, 195 Baxendall, Elizabeth, 12 Borden, Lizzie, 204n26 Beane, Sawney, 148 Boreanaz, David, 177 Beards ‘Born of Man and Woman’, 17 growth of as sign of depression, 31 Botting, Fred, 211n84 of looming madness, 113–14 Boucher, Anthony, 212n19 Beaumont, Charles Boundaries, significance in Jackson, ‘Free Dirt’, 104 202n30 ‘The New People’, 47–8 Bourdieu, Pierre, 118 as writer for The Twilight Zone, 130 Bowling Alone, 118 ‘Beautiful Stranger, The’ 69, 71–2, Boy-next-door-turned-madman trope, 206n3–7 136, 139–41, 143, 146, 164 Bell, Book and Candle, 40, 43 Brackett, Sheriff, 145 Bennell, Miles, 77–85 Bradbury, Ray, 17, 28 Bergland, Renee, 115, 209n2, 210n37 Brady Bunch, The (film), 213n35 Berne, Suzanne, 152 Brady Bunch, The (TV Show), 157 Beuka, Robert, 3, 11–12, 15, 103, Brain Eaters, The,76 201n3, 208n45 Brain From the Planet Arous, The Bewitched, 11–12, 40, 43–57, 65, (1953), 76 67, 190 Brainwashing, 55, 73 conformity in, 50, 51, 55 Brecht, Kyle, 160 Cousin Serena, 56 Brennan, Joseph Payne, 210n35 film adaptation, 205n67 Briefel, Aviva, 156, 212n29–30 ‘I Darrin take this Witch’, 49 Brown, Charles Brockden, 10, 38, as ‘magic’ sitcom, 50 106–7, 165 original title, 50 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 173–81 ‘phoniness’ of, 54–5 academic interest in, 173 as racial allegory, 49 ‘Buffy vs Dracula’, 179 Big Love, 169 climax of series, 166–7 Billson, Anne, 168, 213n5, 214n11–12 economic realism, 180 Bionic Woman, The,91 European origins of supernatural Bixby, Jerome, 209n12 entities in show, 177–8 Blackwood, Merrricat, 22 film version, 174 Blair, Linda, 150 Hellmouth, 175, 178 Blair Witch Project, The, 42, 66 hybrid nature, 168–9 Blake, Jerry, 106, 157–8, 163 Mayor Wilkins, 176–7 Blakeslee, Sandra, 206n9–10 ‘Pangs’, 177 Blatty, William Peter, 108 ‘The Prom’, 179 Blind Ballots, The,9 Summers house as microcosm of Bloch, Robert, 137 Sunnydale 179–80 Bloodstains, suspicious, 47 teenage friendship in, 189 Blue Velvet, 42, 66 witchcraft in, 64, 66 Bodily functions and 1970s horror, Buffybot, 180 114, 124, 131 Bulldozer in the Countryside, The,4,131 Body-replacement narratives, 76 Bulldozers, 128, 131 Bogdanovich Peter, 13, 137, 139 Bullying, in The Road Through the Bogeymen, suburban, 146 Wall,22 226 Index

Burbs, The, 132–3, 135, 187 Close, Glen, 100 Burial grounds Clover, Carol J, 128–9, 174, in The Amityville Horror, 115 211n75, n80 in BTVS, 177 Cohen, Larry, 208n67 Indian, 104, 114, 125, 138 Cold War anxieties and the Suburban lack of in Desperate Housewives, 182 Gothic, 69, 73, 149 Poltergeist, 127, 131, 132 Collier’s Magazine, 199 Burlingame, CA, 19–21 Collingwood, John and Estelle, 147–8 Burnham, Lester, 134 Colonial-era rhetoric Burnt Offerings, 108–9, 120 applied to suburbia in Eisenhower Burton, Tim, 164 era, 10 Bush, George and Laura, 191 (Universal Studios Bush, George Senior, 154 back lot), 187 ‘Comfortable concentration camp, Cabrillo, San Francisco, 19 the’, 9 California, 19, 35, 100, 137, 167, 169 Commentary, critical, on suburbia, Cambridge Companion to Gothic see 2, 7–9, 15, 18, 25, 69, 190–1 Literature, The,12 Community relations ‘Canavan’s Back Yard’, 210n35 post-apocalyptic, 155 Candyman, 156, 86 Commuting patterns, 139, 141 Cannibalism Compton, 32 in Parents, 160–1 Coneheads, 164 The People Under the Stairs, 154–5 Conformity, 2, 7, 15, 50–1, 69, 83 Capgras syndrome, 72–3, 206n8 Conjure Wife, 12, 43–7, 49, 68 Carpenter, John, 11, 13, 137, 142–6 film adaptations, 204n12 Carrie, 203n7 Connecticut, 50, 109 Carter, Jimmy, 111–12 Connolly, Billy, 90 Catholicism Conspicuous consumption, 86–7, 161 in Jack’s Wife,60 Consumerism, mindless, 74 Chafe, William S. 53, 201n5, 204n34, Containment culture, 25 205n39, n42–3, 208n49 Coronation Street, 213n32 Chambost, Christophe, 205n58 Cortman, Ben, 30, 35 , 41, 63, 65–6, 127 Couch – mistaken delivery of as Cheever, John, 22, 172, 188 trigger for existential crisis, Cherry, Marc, 166, 182–3, 187–8 101, 166 Chihuahua’s head, no bigger than, 29 Country clubs: Children as entrance to hell, 20, 151 under threat, 2, 22–3, 112–13, Couples,9 133–14 Coven Chiller, 150–1 as female self-help group, 63 City in History, The,7,20 Crack in the Picture Window, The,7, City of the Dead,42 70, 74 Civil defence, 28 Craft, The, 41, 56, 66 Clapson, Mark, 5, 61, 201n2, n4, n15, Crane, Marion, 138–9 n18, 204n35, 205n59, 61 Craven, Wes, 2, 13, 51, 113, 146–57, Class in the Suburban Gothic, 22, 150–1, 160 118–19, 123, 125, 152, 155 Crawlspaces Clayton, Jack, 145 as repository for bodies, 133–4, 155, Clergy, 113–14, 130 213n37 Index 227

Crazies, The, 57, 203n44 Dick, Philip K., 91, 208n65 Creature-Features, 76 Dinner scenes, disturbing Creed, Barbara, 204n7 in Last House in the Left, 148 Crichton, Michael, 91 Parents, 213n39 Cronenberg, David, 202n44 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Cross, Marcia, 183 213n39 Cuesta Verde, 126, 131, 211n70 Dirt, graveyard, 44, 104 Currie, Andrew, 2, 89, 91 Disney, Walt, 98 Curtis, Jamie Lee, 144 Disneyland Cyborgs, in 1970s pop culture, 91 as simulation (Baudrillard), 98 Distinction, 118 Danse Macabre, 12, 82, 109 Disturbia Dante, Joe, 175 phrase coined by Gunther and Davenport, Richard Hines, 209n5 Gans, 1, 8 Dawn of the Dead, 86, 87 2007 film, 160, 165, 213n39 similarity to ending of The Stepford Disturbing Behaviour,99 Wives,88 DIY and the Suburban Gothic 2004 remake, 88–9 Amityville, 111 Day of the Dead,52 in I Am Legend,30 Day, Doris, 52 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?91 Dead and Buried, 211n81 Dogs Deathline, 211n81 deaths of in The House Next Door, De Beauvoir, Simone, 92, 208n59 120, Halloween, 145 DeFeo, Ronnie, 106, 110 vomiting canines, 114 Deffeyes, Kenneth, 193, 215n1 Domestic ideology Degler, Carl, 53–4, 205n45–7 media ‘collusion’ in creation Dehumanisation and the Suburban of, 53–4 Gothic, 69–104 on verge of collapse, 52–3 in Conjure Wife, 46, Donaldson, Scott, 9, 15, 20, 73, 75, Demographic changes caused by 201n10, n12, n18, 206n14, 15, 25 suburban expansion, 61 Donaldson, Todd, 23, 24 Demonic rituals, 60 Doppelgangers, 72, 185 Desmond, Caroline, 21, 24, 35 Doubles, dark, and witches, 56–7, 79 Desperate Housewives, 181–91 Dougherty, Kim, 120, 122, 125 academic interest in, 171, 173 Dracula, 11, 42 arson, extraordinarily common occurrence of in the show, 184, Draper, Don, 171 186–7, 213n7 Driscoll, Becky, 78 insularity in, 188 Drone, John and Mary, 7, 74, 76, 190 narration, 134 Drug dealing, 58, 169 pilot episode, 166 Dunne, Dominique, 211n81 Psycho connection, 137 Dystopian visions of suburbia, 199 ‘real life’ inspiration, 182 Dziemianowicz, Stefan, 201n4 relative avoidance of real-world issues, 191 Eagle State, 11 setting, 11, 13 Earthquakes soap opera tropes in, 168–9 in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, 175 Stepford references, 214n17 Eberhart, Joanna, Walter, 93, 94, , influence of, 184–5 99–102 228 Index

Economic anxieties and the Suburban Faulkner, William, 10, 38, 107, 117, Gothic, 109, 112, 115, 118, 128, 136, 162, 165, 209n7 141, 180, 197 Fembots, 55, 91 Eden, fallen in Road,26 Feminine Mystique, The, 9, 52, Edgar Huntly,10 on advertising industry, 97 Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, 12, as conspiracy theory, 97 92, 194 references to in Desperate Edward Scissorhands, 164 Housewives, 182 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 10, 28–9 use of metaphor, 93 Ellis Island, 84 Fences, white picket, 166 Ellison, Harlan, 145 FHA (Federal Housing Emge, David, 87 Administration), 32 End of Suburbia, The, 195 Fido, 2, 13, 70, 89–91, 160, Entrapment, financial, 33, 139, Fiedler, Leslie, 9, 201n16 154, 171 Final girls, 144–5, 153, 173–4 Environmental concerns and the Finney, Jack, 13, 46, 69, 76, 77, 85, Suburban Gothic, 4, 96, 131, 163, 207n24–9, n32, n34–7, 194, 198 208n41, n45 Ephron, Nora, 64 Flanders, Ned, 29 Erens, Patricia Brett, 159–60, Fleming, Andrew, 66 213n33–4 Floating Dragon, 109 Etiquette, breaches of, 121, 162 Forbes, Brian, 50, 208n71 Eugenidies, Jeffrey, 13 Ford, Richard, 15 European gothic, 10, 105 Foree, Ken, 87 Ewen, Elizabeth, 12 Forests, 148, 199 Exorcist, The, 67, 108, 113–14, 150, Fortress, suburban home as, 28, 168, 209n12 29, 155–6 Expanding Suburbia,12 , 18, 42, 164 Exurbs, 193 Franks, Fred S., 209n6 ‘Free Dirt’, 104 Faculty, The, 206n22 Freeling, Carole Anne, Dana, Diane, Faculty wives Robbie, Steve, 127–33 as witches in Conjure Wife, 45–7 Friedan, Betty, 9, 52, 62, 92–3, 99, 182, Fakery (fake bakery), 170 208n57–8, 209n73 Fairview Friedman, Lenemaja, 18, 201n7, n9, in Desperate Housewives and 202n22, n18 Psycho, 137 Fairy Liquid detergent, 208n71 Gacy, John Wayne, 213n37 ‘Fall of the House of Usher, The’, 106 Gali, Eva, 109 ‘Fallen Eden in Shirley Jackson’s The Gans, Herbert, 9, 12, 61, 75, 86, Road Through the Wall’, 202n32 206n18, 208n48 Family, claustrophobic focus on in Garreau, Joel, 12, 194, 201n14, Suburban Gothic, 105–6, 112–13, 201n1 136, 147 Gated suburbs, 91, 100 Family Guy; Poltergeist spoof, 214n8 Gein, Ed, 137, 142 Family values, conservative, 150, Gellar, Sarah Michelle, 174 158–9, 165 Generation of Vipers, A,52 Fantasy sitcoms of the , 50 Genovese, Kitty, 145 Far From Heaven, 89, 209n78 Geography of Nowhere, The, 194 Index 229

Geography and the Suburban Gothic, contrasted with ‘traditional’ 10–11, 172–3 haunted houses, 116 Ghosts, suburban, 35–7, 134, 116–35 economic factors contributing G.I. Bill, 5–6 to, 109 Ginger Snaps, 164 material consequences of, Goddu, Theresa, 209n3 115–16, 118 Gordon, Richard and Katharine, 8–9, media attention, 116–17 191, 198 and stolen land, 111, 115 Gossip, 124 1970s haunted houses, 116–27 Gothic, American, see ‘American Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 38, 42, gothic’ 106 Gothic, European, see ‘European Haynes, Todd, 13, 61, 100, 166, gothic’ 209n78 Gothic, Southern, see ‘Southern Head Case, 163, 165 gothic’ Hearst, Patricia, 213n40 Gothic, Suburban, definitions, see Hell House, 39, 116 ‘Suburban Gothic’ Hell mouths, suburban, 132, 151, Green zone in Fido, Baghdad, 91 167–8, 174–8 Greene, Gregory, 195 Hepburn, Katherine, 53 Guidance counsellors, doomed Hess, David, 147 in Parents, 162 Hidden (aka Cache), 209n77 in The Stepfather, 159, Hills Have Eyes, The, 148–9, 165 Gulf War, 1991, 154 Hispanic origins of Californian Gunther, Max, 8–9 suburbs, 176, 211n70 Hitchcock, Alfred, 135–7, 187 Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 150 Haddonfield, Illinois, 145, 176 Hoffman, Alice, 56, 63 Hall, Joan Wylie, 18–19, 202n32 Hogle, Jerome, 12 Halliburton, 90 Holland-Toll, Linda, 123–4, 126 Halliwell sisters (Charmed), 67 Holmes, A.M., 13 Halloween (1978), 11, 13, 135, 137, Homeland Security, 157 142, 150, 174, 190 Homosexuality, 121, 126 absence of adults in, 145 Hooper, Tobe, 211n73 setting, 143, 155 Horror and the everyday, 27–31 Halloween (2007), 142 Horror films, American, 136–65 Hamiltons, The, 164 Horror, post-war, 15–16, 27, 38–9, 47, Hamm, John, 171 109, 137, 141 Haneke, Michael, 209n77 Hours, The, 209n78 Hanks, Tom, 133 House Next Door, The, 1, 4, 11, 12, 13, Happiness, 167 35, 105, 114, 116–27, 144, 158, Hatcher, Teri, 184 176, 204n55 Hattenhauer, Darryl, 18 alternate interpretations of Hauer, Rutger, 174 narrative, 126 Haunting of Hill House, The, 17, 108, cause of haunting, 125, 134 120, 130 class and privilege in, 118–19 Hauntings, dubious (see also The as fictional analogue to Amityville, Amityville Horror) 118 Hauntings, suburban, 17, 26, narcissism in, 119 104–35, 190 social ostracism in, 124–5 230 Index

House Next Door, The – continued Jack’s Wife, 40, 57–63, 171, 205n58 social taboos in, 126–7 alternate titles, 57, 211n67 violation of etiquette, 121 as horror film, 61, 210n16, n26 House of the Seven Gables, The, 106 opening scenes, 59 Houses Safe comparison, 101 disputed ownership of, 111 Jackson, Kenneth, 9, 201n15, in the new American gothic, 107 206n16–17 rundown, 144 Jackson, Shirley, 10, 12, 42, 130, 136, standardised housing, 74 152, 202n17, n19, n21, n24, n25, Housewives, trapped, 62, 133, 171 206n3–7 Housework, 166 ‘The Beautiful Stranger’, 69 and perfectionism, 95–6 Californian origins, 20, 21 Hubbert, M. King, 196 The Haunting of Hill House,17 Hurt, Mary Beth, 160 Houses in Jackson’s work, 18, Hypnosis, 35–6 26, 108 Hysteria, mass, 79 ‘The Lottery’, 17 residence in Westport, CT, I Am Legend, (2007 film), 28, 33 204n30 I Am Legend (1954 novel), 2, 12, The Road Through the Wall, 15–27 27–35, 149, 156 The Sundial,19 beards in, 31 We Have Always Lived in the Castle, celibacy in, 30 18, 42 DIY, 50 Jacobs, Jane, 191 importance of routine in, 31 James, Henry, 108, 208n44 influence on Romero, 85 Jameson, Fredric, 208n65 misogyny in, 35 Jancovich, Mark, 17, 79, 83, 201n6, racial subtexts, 32–3 202n46, 208n42 I Dream of Jeannie,56 Janitors, school, 152, 212n25 I Married A Monster From Outer Jaws, 143 Space,76 ‘Jingle mail’, 197, 215n15 I Married A Witch, 40, 43 Jones, Gerard, 51, 56, 204n27, n29, Ice Storm, The, 167 n32 Illinois, 11, 142 Jones, January, 171 Incest, 155, 148–9 Joshi, S.T., 201n1 Indians, see also burial grounds Jurca, Catherine S., 15 Infantilism, 140 Just a Housewife,52 Innocents, The, 145 Insularity in the Suburban Gothic, 119, 123, 130, 188, 190 Karp, David, 9 Invaders From Mars,76 Karras, Fr. Damian, 113 Invasion, The, 207n23 Kaufman, Philip, 207n23 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 13, 46, Keats, John, 7, 12–13, 70, 74, 92, 190, 69, 77–85, 103, 202n37, 207n40 198, 201n10, n11 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 Kelly, Tim, 139 film), 207n23 Kennedy, Colquitt, Walter, 1, Invitation to Hell, 151, 175 117–28 IT, 109 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, It Came From Outer Space,76 assassination of, 141 It’s Alive!, 208n67 Khatchadourian, Kevin, 139 Index 231

Kidman, Nicole ‘Lottery, The’ (1948) propensity for appearing in dire Love and Death in the American Novel,9 remakes, 206n67, see also Lovecraft, H.P., 10, 15, 27, 38 Bewitched, The Stepford Wives Lovely Bones, The, 13, 133–4, 152 and The Invasion Lutz, George and Kathy, 110–16, King, Stephen, 2, 10, 12–13, 15, 17, 118, 127 82, 109, 115, 207n31, n39 Lynch, David, 184–5 as Richard Bachman, 209n12 Lynch mobs in the Suburban Gothic, on The Amityville Horror, 110, 112 202n23, see also Vigilantes on The House Down the Street, 165 Kinkle, Harvey, 66 Mad Men, 171–2 Kiss Before Dying, A,91 Magazines Knight, Peter, 92, 97, 208n55–6, enforcing domestic ideology, 53, 98 209n72 Magic Knots Landing, 168 black, 48 as metaphor, 45, 58, 190, Korean War, 171 205n56 Krueger, Freddy, 152–3 use of by suburban witches, 45, Kunstler, James Howard, 8, 181, Magnolia, 209n78 194–8, 215n6, n7 Mai-Lai massacre, 147 Kuzui, Fran Rubel, 174 ‘Main Street USA’ (Disneyland), 9 Malin, Irving, 107, 209n11 Laemle, Nick, Lily and Michael, 160–1 Malls, establishment of in post-war Lake, Ricky, 162 era, 87, 98 Lake, Veronica, 43 Manhunter, 164 Land of the Dead,87 Manifest Destiny, 10 Landlords, evil, 153–4 Mann, George, 9 Lassie,89 Mansfield, Jane, 52 Last House on the Left, The (1972), 13, Manufactured obsolescence, 86 147–8, 165 Marasco, Robert, 108–9 Last Man on Earth, The, 28, 85 March, Fredric, 43 , 157–8 Markowe, Bobbie, 93–9 Leave Me Alone,9 Martinson, Tom, 12 Legend of Lizzie Borden, The, 204n26 Masculinity Leiber, Fritz, 12, 40, 43–4, 204n14–21 in crisis, 4, 30, 34–5, 134 Levin, Ira, 13, 46, 55, 70, 91–2, 99, Mass murder, 139–41 108, 180, 208n60, n63, n64, n66, Mass production and prefabrication n68–70 techniques, 6, 74 Levitt, William, 6 Massachusetts, 65, 124 Levittown, 6, 73 Massacres, family, 106, 110, 140, 158 Levittowners, The, 61, 75, 86 Materialism and the Suburban Gothic, Little, Bentley, 48 111, 115–16, 138, 170–1, 183 Little Children, 152 Matheson, Richard, 2, 10, 12, 15, 17, Long Emergency, The,8 27, 33, 39, 108, 130, 136–7, 156, Long Island, 108–9 188, 201n17, 202n45, 49, 51–64, as locale for suspiciously cheap n67–76 houses, 111 Matthews, Glenna, 40, 52 Longoria, Eva, 183 Mayer, Susan, 183 Loomis, Dr Sam, Billy, Mazzard, Ike, 98 Los Angeles, 28, 66, 174 McCarthy, Elizabeth, 212n1 232 Index

McCullers, Carson, 10, 38 Neighbours, indifferent McDonnell, Jenny, 213n1 in Halloween, 132, McLachlan, Kyle, 185 in Poltergeist, 146 Meat Loaf Mambo, 160 Neighbours, nosy, 49 Meet the Applegates, 164 Nelson, Craig T., 3 Menzies, William Cameron, 76 Neville, Robert, 27–34, 56, 82, 148 Mezzio, Douglas, 167, 213n3 New England, 1, 28, 41, 65, 105 Michasiw, Kim Ian, 12 Newman, Kim, 127, 141, 148, 202n41, Misanthropy, 25 211n72, 212n8 Misogyny Newman, Nanette, 208n71 in I Am Legend,35 Newness, and the Suburban Gothic, 1, in Stir of Echoes,37 10, 36, 128 in Matheson generally, 52 Nicolaides, Becky, 191, 214n26 Mitchell, Joan, 57–63 Night of the Living Dead, 28, 58, 85, 89, ‘Momism’, 52 136, 142 Monroe, Marilyn, 52 Nightmare on Elm Street, A, 13, 150–3, Monster House, 13, 133 155–6, 165, 176, 190 Montgomery, Elizabeth, 49, 56, Nimoy, Leonard, 207n23 204n26, 206n69 Moore, Julianne, 100 Oakes, Guy, 28, 203n38 as first lady of cinematic suburban Oates, Joyce Carol, 13 alienation, 209n78 O’Connor, Flannery, 10, 38, 107, 118, Moorhead, Agnes, 49 139, 209n8, n9 Mormonism, 169 Oil Mortgages cheap oil as an aid to suburban easy availability of in post-war era, 6 growth, 87 sub-prime mortgage crisis of crisis of the 1970s, 112, 138, 191, 2008–9, 197 196–7, 215n9 Moss, Carrie Anne, 90, 160 crisis of 2008, 193 Motels, 132, 137–9 peak oil, 193, 196–7 Mothers, single, 158–60, 179 Omega Man, The,28 Move to suburbia, 174, 94, 190 Oppenheimer, Judy, 25–6, 201n12, Mr Ed, 50, 158 202n28–9, n31 Muir, John, 61, 143, 149–50, 205n57 O’Quinn, Terry, 157 Mulder, Fox, 48, 178 Organisation Man, The, 22, 28, 70, 78–9 Mum and Dad, 212n27 Orlock, Byron, 139–41 Mumford, Lewis, 7–8, 12–13, 20, 70, O’Rourke, Heather, 211n81 92, 191, 198, 201n13, 206n2 Overlook Hotel, 109 Munsters, The, 50, 187 Oz, Frank, 100 Mutants, mutation, 17 My Mother the Car,50 Paedophiles and the Suburban Gothic, Myers, Michael, 135, 142–3, 151, 176 131, 151–3, 187, 190 Palmer, Laura, 184 Nagai, Sianna, 156 Paranoia, 78, 97 Narcissism, 116, 119, 127 , 113, 125, 130 Narration, from beyond the Parent/child relationships, 136–66 grave, 134–5 Parents, 13, 137, 157, 160–1, 163, 165 Neighbourhood rivalries Parker, Mary Louise, 169 in I Am Legend, 30–1 , 164 Index 233

Patterson, James, 201n7, 204n34, Ragona, Ubaldo, 85 205n37–8, n44, 208n50–1 Railroad suburbs, 20–1 Paxton, Bill, 169 Ray, K’Sun, 90 Peaceable Lane,9 Reagan, Ronald, 127–8 Peach, Linden, 152, 212n24 Realtors and the Suburban Gothic, People Under the Stairs, The,2,13, 110, 121, 128, 144 150, 165 Rear Window, 59, 160 Pepper Street, 18, 21, 25–6 [REC], 203n44 Perrota, Tom, 152 Red Dragon, 164 Peyton Place, 168 Red Eye, 157 Philadelphia, 38, 87, 89 Regulators, The, 209n12 Philips, Kendall, R., 138, 212n4 Revenge of the Stepford Wives Picture Windows,12 Rhode Island, 38, 63 Pigs, demonic, 110, 113 Right at Your Door, 202n44 Pilato, Herbie J., 204n22 Road Through the Wall, The, 12, 15–27, Pod People, 46, 76, 80–6 152, 202n17, n19, n21, n24–6 Poe, Edgar Allan, 107 bullying in, 23 Polanski, Roman, 49 geographical location in, 19 Police and the Suburban Gothic, 24, removal of wall, 20, 23, 119 147–8, 152, 155, 176 Rolfe, Marion, 108–9, 120 Polley, Sarah, 88 Rome, Adam, 4, 131, 201n8, 211n83 Poltergeist, 3, 11–13, 105, 127–33, 135, Romero, George, A., 13, 28, 40, 57, 70, 144, 158, 166, 182, 211n87 85–6, 89 Poltergeist 3, 211n81 Rosemary’s Baby, 42, 49, 91, 18 Portland Cement Association, 28 Ross, Gaylen, 87 Possession, demonic, 108 Routine, 166, 213n2 Post-war era, social and historical Russell, Jamie, 85–6, 208n46 contexts of, 6, 15 Russell, Rosalind, 53 Practical Magic 41, 56, 63 Russell, Sharon, 40, 42, Prentiss, Paula, 208n61 204n1–2, n8–10 Price, Vincent, 28 Property prices, in the Suburban Sabrina the Teenage Witch, 41, 56, 63, Gothic, 156 65–6, 168 Psychic ability, 34–6, 113 Sacrifices, human, 48 Psycho, 135–9, 141–5, 154, 156, Safe, 4, 13, 61, 70, 100–3, 171, 209n78 159, 187 Salem Witch Trials, 40–3 Puppet Masters, The,77 Salem’s Lot, 109, 166 Purkiss, Diane, 62–3, 205n63, n65–6 Salkow, Sidney, 85 Puritans, 38, 43, 65, 105–6, 131, 198 Salmon, Suzie, 134, 152 Putnam, Robert, 188, 214n24 ‘Sameness’ and the Suburban Gothic, 28, 69–70, 74–5, 77 Quaid, Randy, 160 San Fernando Valley, 100 Santa Mira, 77, 79 Rabbit Redux,9 Savoy, Eric, 12, 199, 215n17 Rabbit Run,9 Saylor, Norman, Tansy, 20–47, 67 Racism and the Suburban Gothic, 22, Scavo, Lynette, Tom, 184 91, 32–3, 123–4, 148, 153–4, Scooby-Doo, 168 156, 170 Scream trilogy, 150, 156, 162, 165 Radiation, cosmic, 89 Scully, Dana, 49, 17 234 Index

September 11, 191, 194 Stepford Wives, The, novel, 4, 13, 46, Serial killers, 136–65, 190 61, 70–1, 91–100, 168, 180 Serial Mom, 13, 137, 157, 162–3 1975 film, 99–100 Serling, Rod, 29 sequels and remake, 99–100 , 183 Stevens, Darren, Samantha, 11, 59–63 Sheridan, Nicolette, 168 Stewart, Jimmy, 43 Shining, The, 106, 109 (novel), Stir of Echoes, 10, 108, 122, 132, 113 (film) 149, 188 Shirley Jackson’s American Gothic,18 film, 203n68 Shocker, 150 , A, 150 Short, Sue, 66, 206n71–2 Straub, Peter, 109 Shrinking Man, The, 34–5, 149 Strode, Laurie, 144–5, 150, 152 Shriver, Lionel, 55, 139 Strong, Brenda, 184 Siddons, Anne Rivers, 1,11, 13, 35, Sub-prime mortgages, 197 105, 116–17, 122, 128, 176, Suburban Commando, 164 201n1, 210n41–3, n47–58, n60, Suburban Gothic 211n64–5, n69 American popular culture, place Siegel, Don, 79 in, 200 Silence of the Lambs, The, 137 critical neglect of, 12, 14 Simpsons, The, 11, 29, 172–3 definitions of, 1–5 Simulations and simulacra, 98–9 environmental anxieties, relation Sirk, Douglas, 89, 168, 183 to,4,198 Sitcoms, fantasy, 157, 162, 172 literary Suburban Gothic, relation Skal, David J., 15, 139, 201n3, 212n70 to, 13, 152 Skolnick, Arlene, 57, 62, 127, 204n36, mass suburbanisation, 38, 203n55 205n48, n52–3, n62, 210n37 in other countries, 5 Slasher films, 143, 156 persistence of key tropes, 191 Slither, 207n22 Post-war changes and anxieties, ‘Slumburbia’, 197 relation to, 5 Small towns, decline of, 77, 79, 80–2 universal nature of, 10–11, 34, 38 Snyder, Zack, 88–9 Suburban Myth, The, 74, Sobchack, Vivien, 82, 206n21–2, Suburbia 207n38 as ‘borderland’ space, 3–7, 20 Social gatherings which end in in ‘crisis’, 192 disaster, 24, 35, 47–8, 114, decline of the ‘first’ suburbs, 2, 120–1, 124 94, 193 Solis, Gabrielle, Carlos, 183 ‘end’ of suburbia, 145–6 ‘Some Stations of Suburban establishment and growth of, 18 Gothic’, 12 as form of colonisation, 106 Sopranos, The, 171, 183 as a safe place for children and South Park, 214n8 teenagers, 127, 152–3 , 10, 38, 107 2008 financial crisis and Spadaccini, Anthony, 163 suburbia, 197 Spielberg, Steven, 127, 211n73 SuburbiaNation, 11, 15 Split-Level Trap, The, 8–9, 70, 191, 200 Suicide, 166, 185 Stepfather, The, 157–8, 163 Summers, Buffy, 167–8, 170–3 Stepfathers, 112–13 Sundial, The 19, 108 Stepford Children, The,99 Sunnydale 11, 167, 174–81 Index 235

Supernatural and the Suburban Van De Kamp, Bree, 183 Gothic, 104–35, 114 Vance, Eleanor, 116 Sutpen, Beverley, 162 Vietnam War, 121, 140–2, 147, Sutpen, Thomas, 107, 162 161, 171 Swanson, Kirsty, 174 Vigilantes, suburban, 3, 26–7, 148, 151–3, 157, 164, 187 Tabitha,65 Virgin Spring, The, 147 Targets, 13, 137, 139–41, 143, 145, 165 Virgin Suicides, The, 167 Tate, Larry, 56 Visions of Suburbia, 12 Technology, as threat to small town Voyeurism; as precursor to violence, life, 79 160 Teenagers and the Suburban Gothic, 22, 58, 66, 128, 131, 145, 148–9, Wagner, Lindsay, 91 150–3, 158–60, 175–81 Walden, 214n15 Television Wallace, Tom, 10, 35, 122 and suburbia, 25, 167–9 Wanamaker, Frank, 35–6 as conduit to supernatural, 121, 128 War on terror, 157 television and the gothic, 185–6 Waters, John, 164 television movies, 150–1, 158 We Have Always Lived in the Castle, 18, Teller, Marshall, 175 19, 22, 42, 108 Terror Tract, 132, 135 We Need to Talk About Kevin, 55, 139 Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The, 136–7 Weeds, 169–70, 176, 183, 191 ‘They Bite’, 212n19 Weinraub, Bernard, 214n14 Thomas, Keith, 109, 209n14 Westport, CT, 50, 94, 204n30, 214n19 Thompson, Bobby, 139–41 Westworld, 91, Thoreau, Henry David, 182 Wheatley, Helen, 150, 169, 185–6 Time Out of Joint, 208n65 Whedon, Joss, 174 Tonkin, Boyd, 214n10 ‘Whimper of Whipped Dogs, ‘Transient, The’, 77, 80, 131 The’, 145 Trees, evil, 131 White, Carol, 101–3 Truman Show, The, 208n65 White Diaspora,15 Tucker’s Witch,65 Whitehurst, Laurie, 206n8 Tulpa, 48 Whitman, Charles, 139 Twilight Zone, The Whyte, William H., 22, 28, 68–9, 77, ‘Little Girl ’, 172 80, 92, 307n25, n33 ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Wieland, 10, 106, 136 Street’, 29 Wife-as-witch trope in the Suburban ‘The Shelter’, 29 Gothic, 12, 40–68, 64 ‘Terror at 30,000 Feet’, 172 Wife swapping, 48 Twin Peaks, 168, 184–5 Wilkins, Mayor Richard, 176 Williams, Tony, 153, 208n53 Universal Studios, horror movies of Winter, Douglas E., 202n35, 203n50, the 1930s, 42 212n2, n3 Updike, John, 9, 15, 63–4, 172 Wisteria Lane, 124, 181 Utopian visions of suburbia, 199 Witchcraft, 40–68, 115 Witches Vampires, 27–31, 40, 109, 164 New England origins, 44 Vampires, Burial and Death, 132 in popular culture, 42, 45 Vampirism, psychic, 109 Salem Witch Trials, 41–2 236 Index

Witches – continued Yeats, Richard, 9, 15, 172 in suburbia, 40–68 ‘Young Goodman Brown’, 42 W.I.T.C.H, 62 Young, Mary Alice, 134, 166, Witches of Eastwick, The, 63 171, 184 Wizard of Oz, The, 42, 56 Women and suburbia, 52–4, 61–2, 92, 102 Zicree, Mark Scott, 202n42 Wylie, Philip, 52 Zombie, Rob, 142 Zombies, 4, 12, 85–91, 97 Xenophobia, 133 Zombieville, 85, 97 X-Files, The, 48, 178 ZomCon, 90