11/22/07

These are the films, books, and magazines that inspired the author to become a fictional writer.

Famous Monsters of Filmland - Published from 1958 to 1983 one of C. N. Eagle's earliest horror inspirations.

Stephen King
Do I really need to say it? He is my hero, my idol. Probably no single human being has given me so many hours of enjoyment. I first read "Carrie" in paperback when the movie came out in the late 1970s and went on to pick up everything he penned as fast as it could be published. "'Salem's Lot" was next followed by "The Shining" which impressed me so that I wrote a poorly-written but rave review of it for The Lion's Roar, our high school newspaper. I swear by everything he's authored, but "Firestarter" likely influenced my desire to mix the genres of horror-fantasy and action in my own work all these years later. I'll never forget the Wind Sucker!

Graham Masterton
Following the success of "The Exorcist" and Stephen King in the '70s there was a tidal wave of horror-type fiction on the publishing scene which is still pretty much going to this day. I picked up Masterton's "The Manitou" probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s and found everything I liked in a good horrorshow---it was hip, it was bloody, and it was frigthtening as hell. Plus, it involved Native American mysticism---I was very into the Indian movement at that time (see "Billy Jack" elsewhere on these pages). Graham followed up with a series of successful paranormal horror novels with titles such as "The Djinn" and "Charnel House". They were all totally scary with heaping helpings of sex and plenty of gore, popularly known as Grand Guignol. Certain of the more splatter-filled scenes in my book were directly inspired by Graham. Anyone who loves the really terrifying Stephen King stories, or Dean Koontz, or Clive Barker, should definitely check this guy out.

Dean R. Koontz
I read Dean's early novels for years before "Whispers" in the mid-1980s really kinocked my socks off. I found that tale's mix of terror, sexuality and sweaty violence extremely different, and the pitiable and truly frightening villain was fleshed out like I had seldom seen before. But his "Watchers" probably influenced me more than any other of his many works. The book's seamless blending of heart-breaking sentiment, horror, and action in the story of a former anti-terrorist battling monsters and serial killers for the love of a woman and a dog has rightly earned the devotion of myself and millions more, which no completely messed-up movie adaptation could ever tarnish.

Real Early Stuff
From when I was very young I wanted to be a writer and one of my first projects that I remember was the story of a dragon that befriended a little boy at Tecumseh Elementary School In Xenia, Ohio. I drew cartoons to go along with the story and I can still picture the dragon's green tail waving above the school's smokestack. I was into these children's books about a talking pig named Freddie who could dress up in a little sailor suit and pass himself off as a human boy and that gave me the idea of making my dragon, whose name I do not recall, into a series of novels like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. In those years I watched a lot of movies, and the ones with fantastic visuals made me want to describe those images in my own writing. That's how I came to "novel-ize" "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" and "20 Million Miles To Earth" and "Mighty Joe Young" and my favorite of all time, the original "King Kong". I was tickled in 2001 reading "Stephen King's On Writing" that he, too, as a youngster exercised his writing muscles in the exact same fashion! A little girl in my class who read my Kong adaptation and looked at me and said, "So he really loved the girl didn't he?" is one of my earliest memories. I must have at least gotten the point of the picture across. I also recall translating at least one of my favorite comic books into a short story. I don't remember the name of the writer but the artist may have been Neal Adams---it was an issue of "The Brave & The Bold" teaming Batman with Aquaman, who used a cool golden minisub called the Double Dolphin.

Gargoyles
Around 1971 this TV movie about monsters running around in the desert made one hell of an impression on myself and most of my adolescent male schoolmates. Breathlessly I put pen to paper and authored my own adaptation of the film while the memories were still fresh---mind you, these were the days long before VCRs. The creatures were all stuntmen in rubber suits and facemasks adorned with teeth and hair, filmed in slo-mo to give their superhuman feats of strength that little bit of extra paranormal kick. It doesn't sound like much now but it really was a terrific movie and we of a certain age remember it fondly. Marshall Thompson I believe was in it, and Bernie Casey played a bat-winged gargoyle prince. But the person leaving the most vivid impression was actress Jennifer Salt, mouth-watering in a halter top and hiphugging slacks, and her lovely brown skin had all us guys giggling like idiots as we compared notes in the schoolyard the next morning. Faithfully transcribing her attempted seduction by the winged gargoyle was my first pulse-racing taste of describing sexuality in my writing (not counting the much more Freudian yearnings in Kong). All I can say is, writing about sex was a lot less complicated back then, and probably more fun to boot.

Joseph Wambaugh
I think the first novel of this former LAPD detetctive I read was "The Choirboys", about an animal-fraternity of New York City cops. I laughed so hard I literally thought I was going to puke. Wambaugh's one of the funniest writers I've come across, but also drawing on his own memories of police work his descriptions of unimaginable acts of violence by human beings against their fellow human beings can make you squirm with horror. I was hooked. I quickly went on to "The New Centurions" "The Blue Knight" "The Black Marble" and his equally rivetting nonfiction, especially "The Onion Field". In my own writing I've time and again tried to emulate his stylish sense of humor and irony. But he's one of a kind.

Billy Jack
Few movies have earned so many equal parts love and enmity as Tom Laughlin's 1971 story of a half-Indian Green Beret and the woman and students he defends against bigoted establishment types. I first saw the sequel "The Trial of Billy Jack" when it was released in 1975 and immediately decided it was the greatest movie ever filmed. My opinion hasn't stood the test of time but I still love the flick and back then it thrilled me so much that I went back for multiple viewings and even got the theater manager to let me come in with a cassette recorder and tape the soundtrack. In short order I likewise recorded. usually at the drive-in, the soundtracks of "Billy Jack" (a masterpiece I say) and 1967's "Born Losers", BJ's very effective first screen appearance pitting him against a vicious outlaw biker gang. I collected books and record LPs and posters and anything else I could find on BJ while sitting down with my precious recordings to transcribe what I felt would be my novelization masterpiece, all three films adapted into a single mammoth volume which I put in a big three-ring binder after laboriously punching the ringholes out of every typewritten page. Tom Laughlin would no doubt throw me into a snake pit should he ever read this, but it was just for fun, was a gas to write, taught me a lot about the art, and it even got a couple of good reviews from my schoolmates. The mix of social commentary with contemporary western themes and martial arts left an impression on me that has never gone away and though none of the films' moral conscience found its way into my first novel, readers will no doubt see some of Billy in Frank Moore's character, and a great deal of inspiration in the throw-downs (Marabeth unzipping her boots is a direct and fully intended homage). Say what you want about the BJ films---but how many other people besides Laughlin can say they single-handedly created one of the greatest all-time screen tough guys? I've seen each movie so many times that I can just about remember every single cut and I've been a devoted follower of Tom's for all these years since. "I'm gonna take this right foot---"

David Morrell
I read "First Blood" in the early 1980s and was blown away. I was a fan of combat-vet-on-the-rampage movies (beforehand I'd loved not only the BJ films but also "The Exterminator", "Vigilante Force" "Rolling Thunder" "White Line Fever" and countless Chuck Norris flicks). I was thrilled to read later that Sylvester Stallone was going to star in the movie and my expectations were completely satisfied by the result (though Stallone's hero is quite a bit tamer than the 18-year-old traumatized killer in the book). Morrell's 1972 novel was meant to "bring the Vietnam war home" as I once heard the writer describe it in an interview and it delivers with extreme prejudice. I went on to catch other Morrell titles such as "Brotherhood of the Rose" and "The Fifth Profession." His stories (there are many I haven't gotten to yet) deal with government conspiracies, trained killers, elite military forces, and martial arts. His action scenes are breathtaking and inspired my own writing very much. Mr. Morrell is these days writing horror novels as well---"The Creepers"---a fact I've only recently become aware of. Needless to say I'll be checking those out.

Shotgun
In the late 1980s I picked up this action novel by William P. Wingate and could not put it down! The story of a mysterious loner who wanders into a small town and declares war on the vicious mobsters terrorizing the populace, told mostly through the eyes of a troubled teenage girl, touches on "Shane" and Clint Eastwood's "The Man With No Name". There's a scene in the book of the laconic hero sitting in a barber's chair and being confronted by a pair of thugs sent to run him out of town. Page after page is spent with him trying to quietly convince these hoods to back off and not force him to kill them---is he hiding a shotgun under the sheet or is he bluffing?---the tension increasing with each paragraph like a tightening spring coil. I tried hard to create that same sense of volcano-about-to-explode danger in my book, especially in Frank's two confrontations with the Hendersons. I don't think I quite pulled off what Wingate did but I sure tried. This was made into a horrible, horrible Burt Reynolds movie in 1987, best forgotten. The book---HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Andrew Vachss
In the early '90s I was reading a lot of Dark Horse Comics titles and heard of a writer whose crime fiction addressed the abuse of children. I picked up his newest at that time, "Sacrifice", and entered the hard-boiled and not-for-the-squeamish world of Andrew Vachss. The book follows Burke, a shadowy New York City PI on the trail of the monstrous abusers who turned a small child into a murderer. Early in the story Burke and one of his crew, a mute martial arts master named Max the Silent, throw a cabinet with a brutal pimp locked inside out of a building's upper-floor window, and I knew I'd found something remarkable. Vachss, an attorney with a background even more varied than that of his alter-ego, exclusively represents children and finances his work by writing his very successful novels. Burke is a child of the system (NYC orphanages and state prison), a scarred con man and thief who enjoys ripping off Nazi hate groups even more than rich fat cats. He lives below the radar with a slew of false identities and bogus addresses. His crew and only family is a tightknit group of society's left-behind who look out for each other above all else while running scams and putting money away for a better life. And also, with Burke taking the lead, they mete out bloody vengeance to those who prey on others, especially molesters and killers of children. Burke works with social workers (or against them) and with the same cops who are often trying to nail him for murder and other crimes. In using true-life cases from his own files as inspirations for his fiction, Vachss has said that he doesn't depict the very worst of the worst---"People would vomit after reading that stuff," he declares. Once as a guest on Oprah Winfrey he voiced his belief that "Child molesters are not sick. You can cure sick people." Married with no children, he says "I don't do this because I love children. I do it because I hate the adults who prey on them." He writes short stories and also nonfiction and his essays about his work and the laws regarding the protection of children make fantastic reading. My fovorites in the Burke series include "Flood", the first one, and "Blue Belle". The closest screen equivalent to Vachss would have to be the movie "Taxi Driver". Hollywood, let's get with the program here. Burke needs to be in the movies.

Without Remorse
Tom Clancy's Vietnam-era origin of CIA badass Mr. Clark (from the Jack Ryan novels) is at once a slam-bang action tale, a political thriller, and a relentless revenge story all in one. Clark has not really been given his due in the movies---he was played by Willem Dafoe and Liev Schrieber in a couple of the Ryan film adaptations---and a few years ago I was in anticipation of this book getting the Hollywood treatment with Gary Sinese in the title roll, which unfortunately never came to pass. John Clark is one of the very first Navy SEALs, a killer with a broken heart and a John Wayne-style sense of patriotism. WR introduces many of the characters familiar to Ryan fans, including Jack's own parents. Clark's a complex and powerful character you can't help but root for and it's fascinating seeing how he became the shadowy CIA legend. This book influenced me in a dozen different ways in its approaches to character, heroism, and revenge. And, I love Tom Clancy's action heroes who are also family men.

Fangoria Magazine
It must have been 1985 or '86, browsing the magazine rack at the local convenience store I was shocked and elated to find a letter I'd written in the Postal Zone of Fangoria magazine! My name was misprinted (due to my own crappy handwriting) as "Eaglo" but there it was! I'd sent a rave review of splatter-effects master Tom Savini's appearance on David Letterman---this was back when Dave was still on NBC. "Day of the Dead" had been released and Tom brought along some his great effects from that movie, including the shovel-lopped-off head with working eyeballs (David probed the gooshy insides with a finger and quipped, "Well---who wants jello?") and "Mister Jaws", the mouth-shotgunned zombie in shirt and tie with its tongue hanging out. Also present was Tom's great skeletal ghoul from "Creepshow" which Dave was shocked to discover was an actual human skeleton bought from a cadaver supply company ("Keep an eye on the loved ones, folks!"). Demonstrating his skill as a stuntman Tom then set Dave's arm on fire with a protective gel, but Dave howled that he was singed and complained "Is this the real guy!?" Fangoria magazine is the true heir to "Famous Monsters of Filmland" which I grew up on. If Mom had a poblem with FM no doubt she would have had me strait-jacketed as a youth had she spied the lurid and technicolor covers of Fango, which focused on the gore-drenched splatter features that began showing up in the '80s but also covered in-depth the horror films of past years and the people who produced them. It was a slick entertaining publication which I followed throught my four years in the Army and even when I was stationed in Germany. The readers of Fango were the greatest as well. In the letters pages they argued the merits of various low-budget horror films, railed against the creeping 1980s censorship laws and hawked anything new in the horror market from straight-to-video film productions to garage fanzines, all encouraged by the magazine's editors. In writing this I went through most of my dust-covered back issues looking for my printed letter, but could not find it. I know it's there somewhere!