I adore my wife.
Marilyn is everything a man could want in a life partner and I am grateful every day to have spent the past 26 years in her company. Not least of her charms is her willingness — nay, eagerness — to not merely indulge the eccentricities of a frontier-obsessed scribbler and woodsrunner, but to actively encourage them.
The least I can do is to return the favor — no matter how batty a particular eccentricity may be…
There’s a bat in our kitchen…
Marilyn is possessed of an exceptional enthusiasm for bats. This becomes particularly acute in this season, because bats are such a fundamental part of the iconography of Halloween, mostly thanks to the Dracula legend. More on that in a moment.
She finds the critters compelling and kind of adorable. I get the first part of that equation more than the second part, but mileage varies, right? Neither Ceili nor I will ever let her live down an incident at the Oregon Zoo a few years ago, where she loudly and excitedly pointed out that one of the bats in the Zoo’s fine exhibit was assiduously grooming its nether regions. We do not know why she was compelled to point this out with obvious delight, discomfiting a large and nicely-dressed Latino family who appeared to be out for an afternoon’s outing after church and were not necessarily prepared for the narration of the Bat Lady:
“Look, he’s licking his penis! Oh, my gawd! He’s SOOOOO cute!”
The episode has entered Clan legend.
It’s one of the little cruelties of fate that when we visited Austin back in 2015, Marilyn got skunked on the Congress Avenue Bridge bat extravaganza, while the next night Ceili and I took the boat trip while Marilyn was at a business dinner and we caught ’em in full swarm. Maybe Marilyn and I should visit Captain Schwertfeger and give it another try.
Anyhoo…
On Saturday, the Deschutes National Forest hosted their annual Batacular! event in Bend. As part of Bat Week conservation education, the Forest Service throws the event featuring a variety of activity stations and information on how the Forest Service works to protect and enhance bat habitat, which is under threat from excessive human activity. We will be installing our bat box at our new home.
And we are engaging in our annual tradition of enjoying two Halloween movies that carry themes of dark frontiers — and bats: Tim Burton’s 1999 Sleepy Hollow and 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
*
The historical Vlad Tepes (1431-1476) was a badass Marcher Lord on the dangerous and brutal frontier between Christian Europe and the powerful and voracious Islamic Caliphate of the Ottoman Turks. The scion of the House of the Dragon (Dracul), Vlad ruled intermittently over the disputed frontier principality of Wallachia, now in southern Romania. He was a bloody bastard among bloody bastards, a virulently violent man in an age of virulent violence.
The Turks made frequent inroads into the Balkans, where they had established a substantial foothold that they would retain until 1912. They probed in force into the rugged mountains, where Vlad reigned.
Poenari Fortress commanded the rugged approaches to Wallachia — a frontier fortress of great strategic value.
Vlad was not always hostile to the Turks — as usual, political expediency and personal power were more important than religious fervor. But regardless of diplomatic maneuvering, he always ended up turning back to the sword.
Vlad was a warrior prince and probably a genuine psychopath, notorious for impaling thousands of his political enemies. He died in battle against the Turk. If he died…
*
Bram Stoker mined this bloody Balkan frontier history for his Gothic tale, Dracula. Stoker, who had met Buffalo Bill Cody, also threw a bit of Victorian era frontier flavor into Dracula with his Bowie knife-wielding Texan Quincy P. Morris.
Quincey P. Morris.
It was ol’ Quincy who would forever tie the vampire Dracula to the image of the bat, regaling his vampire-hunting compadres with a tale from his sojourn on the plains of South America:
“I have not seen anything pulled down so quick since I was on the Pampas and had a mare … One of those big bats that they call ‘vampires’ had got at her during the night and … there wasn’t enough blood in her to let her stand up.”
Ride, Quincey, ride!
Now, a naturalist will tell you that vampire bats are actually tiny critters, but Quincy was dealing with an entirely different breed…
*
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is really Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, came out in 1992, when Marilyn and I were dating. We both loved it immoderately, which is the only way you can love it. It’s an immoderate movie, from Anthony Hopkins’ scenery-chewing turn as Abraham Van Helsing to the ridiculously beautiful Winona Ryder’s erotically-charged plea, “Take me away from all this death!” Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker offers a mushy London accent and the emotive range of a block of wood. We can presume he had the life sucked out of him by Monica Belucci’s Bride of Dracula, poor fellow. Gary Oldham blows everyone else off the screen in with lurid relish.
Ah, what the hell… it works! Despite its manifest shortcomings, Coppola’s “erotic dream” is just dandy to watch with your batty sweetie on a chilly October night.
Abraham Van Helsing.
The lovely Mina Harker.
Turning… and wielding a Winchester Yellow Boy.
Erotic dream…
…And nightmare…
*
“Follow the Indian trail to where the sun dies. To the Tree of the Dead.”
Thus spoke a hideous witch to Johnny Depp’s Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton’s dreamlike Sleepy Hollow — just after she sliced the head off a bat and turned its blood into purple smoke in some obscene conjuring (sorry Marilyn).
Sleepy Hollow is our favorite cinematic tale of the season. The signature Tim Burton aesthetic is rich and spooky and atmospheric, and, unlike Dracula, the performances are uniformly excellent. (Note: Coppola was an exec producer on this one). As Marilyn says, it’s in the wheelhouse.
The year is 1799, and the new American Republic is charging into a new century, led by the burgeoning metropolis of New York, where science is supplanting superstition and commerce reigns supreme. Upstate, it’s a different story. Only a couple of days’ carriage ride north of the City, Sleepy Hollow is yet an isolated vale, a farming community perpetually shrouded in mist and fog. The fashions of the mostly Dutch settlers there are some 50 years behind the times, and the legacy of the American Revolution is still very much… alive… in the form of a Headless Horseman, the deadly, broadsword-and-ax-wielding spectre of a savage Hessian mercenary officer who fell in the West Woods back in ’79.
He’s back.
Sleepy Hollow is still the frontier. Log blockhouses are manned by settlers armed with an array of aged muskets. One virile young man, Brom Van Brunt, seems to have upgraded his with an 18th Century reflex sight — which is only one of the proto-Steampunk optical devices on display.
Others are of uncertain pedigree, but surely the offspring of the ubiquitous Brown Bess…
I may be putting more weight on this than the tale needs to carry, but I like it that the legacy of the Revolutionary War is a dark and forbidding presence. We tend to look back on that conflict through a gauzy veil of civic piety, forgetting that it was often a dirty and mean business. In New York, as it was in the southern backcountry, the Revolution was a civil war, and it was a nasty affair. Just a ways upriver from Sleepy Hollow, dark deeds were done in both the Revolution and the French and Indian War. Surely there are many unlaid ghosts from those sanguinary days.
Many a strange tale could come out of those dark forests…
••••••••••
Speaking of dark tales and the lasting legacy of war…
Deuce Richardson scouted up a spooky podcast featuring a veteran of an Iraq War Small Kill Team that is well worth the listen…
When Dallas Sanchez was stationed in Iraq, he saw danger every single day. But one night on patrol, when his small kill team took over a house in Baghdad, an unseen force had a message for them: Get. Out.
Check it out here.
Paul McNamee says
At dusk one evening I spotted a bat here and there. I was watching one do its acrobatics when something large and grey flew out doing the craziest flight pattern. It was a Cooper’s hawk, chasing the bat, and trying to follow all the bat’s crazy sonar-guided flight moves and turns.
I did a websearch and learned that in some places, hawks will just wait for easy pickin’s near a cave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x_8C9di0Yg
I need to re-watch SLEEPY HOLLOW.
Happy Halloween!
JimC says
And to you, my friend!
Owls will also prey on bats.
Craig Rullman says
I have them in the barn. One stuck himself to a fly strip recently. Weird critters.
Cort Horner says
If Monica Belucci were stuck to that fly strip too, it would be understandable. 🙂
Cort Horner says
I had no idea your better half shares a fascination with bats (though, to be fair I am not as prone to spontaneous outbursts about Chiroptera’s genitalia) – Happy Halloween to you and yours, Amigo.
JimC says
Back at ya!
Rick Schwertfeger says
Wonderfully entertaining piece!
* One has to wonder about me, as I’ve always been “a fan” of Vlad. Something about those fields of posts with impaled enemies, warning possible future attackers of their potential fates.
* Next, any mention of Monica Belucci causes me a great degree of distraction.
* Yes, yes, yes, of course we share the view of the mean and deadly nature of the American Revolution.
* And, should you decide to see the Austin bats again, we’ll throw out numerous welcome mats and roll out every red carpet we can find. Anytime, my friends, anytime.
JimC says
We will make the Aus…
Did you say Monica Belucci?
Jim Callow says
Actually I like the tale of the Turkish emissaries who came to see Vlad. He had a certain style all his own because when they didn’t remove their turbans in his presence, he had his guards nail the turbans to their heads. A man like that had a certain elan. From the sounds of events in his younger formative years, he learned to be ruthless because his family members (his uncle, or brother I ‘m not sure of which one it was) tried to have him bumped off by imprisoning him in a dungeon in one of those castles. That way there was a clear shot at the crown with no competition. So Vlad learned to be harsh and learned that trait well.
JimC says
You might say he nailed it.
Paul McNamee says
Internet win of the day!
JimC says
Well thanks!
H.P. @ Hillbilly Highways says
When I lived in Houston the bats would fly over our house every day at dusk to hunt along the bayou. I used to love to sit on a warm, darkening evening and watch them fly overhead with their distinctive flight pattern. I wanted to install a bat house on our home but my wife vetoed it (probably would have been bad for resale).
JimC says
Thought of you yesterday HP — got word that Whitey Morgan is coming to Bend in December.
Matthew says
I always thought it was unfair Quincy Morris was usually left out of the adaptions of Dracula. He plays a very important role in the book.
Breaker Morant says
Sometime in the 1990’s, I was combining soybeans at night in a field about 7 miles from home. It was a very black, dark night. I shut things down and climbed down the ladder. As I reached the last step a black lab (or as I think of him-a hound of hell) ran underneath my feet. It still kind of gives me the heeebie-jeebies-LOL
JimC says
“There’s a hellhound in the soybeans!”
Paul McNamee says
“Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier; that the Honfoglalas was completed there? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land; ay, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say, ‘water sleeps, and enemy is sleepless.’ Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the ‘bloody sword,’ or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent? Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! what good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohács, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys—and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains, and their swords—can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.”
Dracula regaling Harker in DRACULA.
Stoker did his homework!
JimC says
What do you want to bet that a certain young Texan reveled in that passage?
Paul McNamee says
Absolutely.
And now I see where Glen Cook found his title for WATER SLEEPS, perhaps.
JimC says
Wow — you’re right.
Greg Marshall says
Before retirement, I taught HS Physics. One of our local university profs generously gave numerous professional development sessions on bats. I wound up helping one of my better students build an acoustic tracker from some plans he gave me.
These PD sessions were a terrific opportunity for a physics guy to learn some biology, and vice versa. Good times.
Brock Fenton’s web page is here. Your wife might like to read some of his stuff.
https://www.uwo.ca/biology/directory/emeritus/fenton.html
Given my background, you can probably guess that I’m not really that big on the supernatural, but I do love me a good vampire flick!
JimC says
I’ll push that her way.
J.F. Bell says
I seldom see it mentioned out here in the wild, but in addition to the two pictures listed I usually throw Ravenous on the pile.
Because the Mexican-American War, the High Sierras in the dead of winter, and Alferd Packer help me stave off the looming depression of the holiday season.
JimC says
Cue inappropriate laughter…
J.F. Bell says
There’s another kind?
Ugly Hombre says
Papang was born on Halloween, in a veil, he said he had “powers”- sometimes it seemed like he did and sometimes it didn’t. A weird kind of a faculty.
Sleepy Hollow is super- a modern classic.!
So many great Vampire movies- may I recommend.?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g4Sb2nLhes
“Thirst” a Korean Priest, becomes a Vampire, has a sexy side kick and raises hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXa5NmIj18k
“Mr Vampire” The Chinese version of vamps a chi thief who absorbs life force and blood. Mr V is a classic kung fu action/scare/ comedy super for beer drinking Halloween parties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRE_cqeEuM
And “Dracula And The Seven Golden Vampires” a eating errr meeting of the east and west. campy fun old school Hammer film horror stuffs
Happy Halloween!
JimC says
And to you Hombre!
Matthew says
Mr. Vampire is a fun movie. I’m pretty sure I saw on youtube when I was going through a kung fu movie craze.
It’s interesting how different Chinese vampires or hopping corpses are from European vampires. Of course, originally European vampires wore corpses with kind of odd habits like counting every grain of salt one throws at them. That doesn’t show up often in modern versions.
lane batot says
Whaaaaa? No mention by anyone of my now favorite version of Dracula, in the more recent film, “Dracula Untold”, where the main character is a tragic hero, rather than a monster?(although I love all the “monster” versions too–including the lavish Ford-Coppola one!) And boy howdy, did BATS(MASSES of them!) play a pivotal and unique role in “Untold”! I was very sorry they did not film a sequel to this version, as was planned, apparently, but never materialized–they certainly set it up for such with the ending!…..I. too, have always been fascinated with bats–they have always been fluttering above my head while outside during languid Southern twilights, and I was mesmerized by the squeaky vocals of fruit bats during African nights–to me always a friendly presence! I also got to help take care of a colony of vampire bats in our “Desert Dome” habitat at the zoo where I work–fed twice daily on cow’s blood acquired from nearby slaughterhouses, served in dishes on the artificial cave floor(and for the record, vampire bats LAP blood; they do NOT suck!). They were such shy, inoffensive little critters–nothing like their legendary literary counterparts! Of course they’re ability to transmit rabies makes them something to reckon with…..One of the neato factoids I learned about them is that colonies will share blood with it’s members–should some bats find successful hunting, they will regurgitate some of the blood they harvested with less fortunate bats back at their roost. And get this–if a vampire bat who has been successful hunting refuses to share with others, that bat will be ostracized and not shared with when it has an unsuccessful night! Honor and sharing among vampire bats!…..And as for bat houses–I have three of them up on my property!
JimC says
Oh, we like Untold fine… It just hasn’t seasoned enough to become canonical amongst the Clan.
Matthew says
My favorite version of Dracula besides the original is the anime Hellsing Ultimate. In it, instead of being destroyed, Dracula was bound into service to Van Helsings descendants who hunt vampires for the British government. This is a good thing when Nazi vampires in Zeppelins attack London. That’s the actual plot of the anime.
I should warn people that just because its a cartoon its not for kids. It has violence, gore and depravity at Blood Meridian levels. Literal rivers of blood flow.
RLT says
Both great flicks. The last time we re-watched “Dracula,” my wife and I realized that Anthony Hopkins plays the 15th-century priest in the opening scene, as well as Van Helsing in the rest of the movie. Somehow we’d missed that on our first four viewings, which was embarrassing but also kind of awesome when we figured it out.
JimC says
I never picked that up. Props to you.
deuce says
Coppola’s Dracula is flawed, but magnificent. I’m a fan of Belucci, but props for also giving Winona her due. IMO, she rates as one of the all-time Hollywood beauties. I can watch any scene with her in it.
Vlad did things that he shouldn’t have done. He also did things that needed done. There’s a reason he’s a hero to the Wallachians and his brother, Radu–who enjoyed a very, very close relationship to the the Padishah Sultan in Istanbul–is not.
JimC says
Truth. Nobody loves a collaborator.
tom says
while I can’t offer a particular fascination of my wife, I apparently, like you jim, made a lucky choice for many years of the holy matrimony. maybe it was the first gift she gave me way back in the early 1970’s. not a neck tie or a bottle of that rank cologne of the day (jade east) rather she bought me a buck knife……..and as that say in “the lingo” that’s a “keeper”!
JimC says
Yessir!
Kevin Kay says
Coincidental that I was ruminating on Vlad this very afternoon. My thought was that he was so ruthless and merciless that the West has folklorically turned him into a demon. A fun read today, thanks.
JimC says
Glad you enjoyed.