While The Wolfman (2010) is hardly what I’d call an animal-friendly film – or even a good film – I found this exchange between two “gypsy” women (Irish Travellers?), tending to an injured man in the wake of a werewolf attack, rather insightful (if unintentionally so):

Daughter: Once he is bitten by the beast, there is no cure. You should let him die.

Maleva: That would make me a sinner.

Daughter: There is no sin in killing a beast.

Maleva: Is there not?

What of killing a man? Where does one begin and the other end?

Elsewhere in the movie, villagers are shown tying up a moose and using him as “bait” with which to catch the werewolf who had been terrorizing their village (happily, the moose escapes unscathed). Additionally, the traveling gypsy clan owns a “dancing” bear who is initially blamed for the “animal attacks.” While the bear appears to be computer generated, his captivity still makes for depressing viewing. Last but not least, the bulk of the story’s plot involves the hunting of a werewolf, which could quite possibly be construed as a matter of self-defense, as said wolfman primarily preys on his human kin.

Possibly there’s a more nuanced discussion to be had on the animal ethics of The Wolfman; if so, I’m not feeling it. In one word: yawn.

“Once upon a time,” said Abraham Setrakian’s grandmother, “there was a giant.”

Young Abraham’s eyes brightened, and immediately the cabbage borscht in the wooden bowl got tastier, or at least less garlicky. He was a pale boy, underweight and sickly. His grandmother, intent on fattening him, sat across from him while he ate his soup, entertaining him by spinning him a yarn.

A bubbeh meiseh, a “grandmother’s story.” A fairy tale. A legend.

“He was the son of a Polish nobleman. And his name was Jusef Sardu. Master Sardu stood taller than any other man. Taller than any roof in the village. He had to bow deeply to enter any door. But his great height, it was a burden. A disease of birth, not a blessing. The young man suffered. His muscles lacked the strength to support his long, heavy bones. At times it was a struggle for him just to walk. He used a cane, a tall stick – taller than you – with a silver handle carved into the shape of a wolf’s head, which was the family crest.”

“Yes, Bubbeh?” said Abraham, between spoonfuls.

“This was his lot in life, and it taught him humility, which is a rare thing indeed for a nobleman to possess. He had so much compassion – for the poor, for the hardworking, for the sick. He was especially dear to the children of the village, and his great, deep pockets – the size of turnip sacks – bulged with trinkets and sweets. He had not much of a childhood himself, matching his father’s height at the age of eight, and surpassing him by a head at age nine. His frailty and great size were a secret source of shame to his father. But Master Sardu truly was a gentle giant, and much beloved by his people. It was said of him that Master Sardu looked down on everyone, yet looked down on no one.” (pp. 1-2)

Spoiler warning: minor plot details discussed below.

So begins The Strain, a 2009 vampire novel co-authored by filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) and novelist Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves: A Novel). Set in present-day New York City, the story follows Ephraim Goodweather – an epidemiologist with the CDC – as he races to stop the spread of an virus that essentially hijacks its host body, transforming human to vampire. (Nonhuman animals appear not to be affected, though this doesn’t preclude their consumption by vampires. Spoiler warning: the dog gets it!)

Transmitted via the exchange of bodily fluids (usually in the form of a “brutal” feeding frenzy as opposed to a more sophisticated and sexy neck bite), the virus is as old as the seven vampires – the Ancients – who are spread out among the “Old” and “New” Worlds. Kept under wraps by a tenuous truce between the Ancients for centuries, the virus is about to be unleashed upon humanity by a renegade vampire – the Dark One, Master, Sardu, The Thing – with the help of one especially evil, ambitious and self-involved human. (A billionaire, natch.)

Our hero “Eph” is accompanied by fellow CDC scientist Nora Martinez, along with a rag-tag team of unlikely experts, namely: Vasily Fet, an exterminator working for the City of New York and Abraham Setrakian, an elderly pawnshop owner and Holocaust survivor who has spent much of his life in pursuit of the Dark One.

I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, so I won’t go any further into plot details than this. One rave featured on the back cover describes it as “Bram Stoker meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton”; I don’t know about Crichton, but if you’re a fan of Stephen King and/or modern-day vampire stories, you’ll love The Strain. Nor can I offer a comprehensive look at what I’ll call the story’s “animal ethics,” as The Strain is the first part of a trilogy. (I’m still waiting for a copy of The Fall to become available at my public library, and Eternal Night won’t be released for several more months.) I would, however, like to discuss several specific passages and plot details.

1. You and me baby, ain’t nothing but mammals.

One odd piece of minutiae involves Eph’s craving for cow’s milk. A recovering alcoholic, Eph has “replaced” his addiction to liquor with a whole milk habit. Given that he’s now hunting a creature who also drinks animal fluids, this juxtaposition leads to an interesting realization for Eph:

The third-floor office door was open when they got there, and Barnes was conferring with a plainclothes man who identified himself as an FBI special agent. “Everett,” said Eph, relieved to find him personally involved. “Your timing is perfect. Just the man I wanted to see.” He moved to a small refrigerator near the door. Test tubes clinked as he reached for a quart of whole milk, uncapping it and drinking it down fast. He needed the calcium the same way he had once needed booze. We trade our dependencies, he realized. For instance, just last week Eph had been fully dependent upon the laws of science and nature. Now his fix was silver swords and ultraviolet light.

He brought the half-empty bottle away from his lips with the realization that he had just slaked his thirst with the product of another mammal. (pp. 269-270)

(Nevermind that the calcium-milk-bone density linkage is so much misleading propaganda perpetuated by the dairy industry.)

In a happier tale, the above passage might represent Eph’s vegan lightbulb moment – but no such luck here (at least not in Book One, anyway). Eph is shown chugging down cow’s milk several times throughout the book, both before and after this excerpt. As far as I know, neither Del Toro nor Hogan are vegan or vegetarian; this, coupled with the fact that the theme of animal exploitation is not revisited throughout the rest of The Strain, makes the recognition of these parallel oppressions rather strange and out of place indeed.

Actually, no, not parallel – not perfectly so, anyway. Whereas the vampires require human blood in order to survive, the enslavement, torture, murder and consumption of nonhuman animals for their flesh and secretions by humans is primarily driven by want as opposed to need. It is a choice, a luxury, a convenience and preference. For many humans, the exploitation of nonhumans is not a matter of survival. (In fact, quite the opposite: our treatment of nonumans is destroying planet earth, our home. In whole or part, animal exploitation will be humanity’s downfall. That is, unless the vampires get us first!) In this way, we are worse – more “savage” and murderous – than the vampiric villains of The Strain. (Although, it should be noted, the planned spread of the vampire virus – and the exponential violence in which it results – represents a choice freely made by vampire and man.)

2. Nazi Vampires from the Pit of Hell!

I mentioned earlier that Abraham Setrakian and the Dark One have a bit of a “history.” Abraham first encountered the vampire when he was an eighteen-year-old young man – a prisoner in the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka. Under the cover of night, the Dark One would visit the camp, feasting on the dying bodies of the sick and elderly prisoners, of which there were many. Come morning, the deaths would be attributed to age or disease; the corpses, already numerous, were simply tossed into fiery pits without a second glance. Perpetrated by humans, the horrors of the Holocaust allowed the Dark One to carry on unnoticed.

Except by Abraham, who woke one night to find the Dark One consuming a fellow captive. Though he was powerless to stop the atrocities wrought by his Nazi oppressors, Abraham vowed to slay the vampire. For weeks, he slowly crafted a silver-tipped spear which he kept hidden behind his bed; biding his time, he observed the Dark One, noting his habits and routines. On many occasions, Abraham silently watched as the vampire drained the life from his fellow inmates; his friends and kin.

When his chance finally did come, Abraham was defeated by the ancient vampire:

Setrakian made his move then, but the silver tip of the stake made a tiny scraping noise, revealing its presence a mere instant before it flew toward The Thing’s heart.

But that instant was enough. The Thing uncoiled its claw and stopped the weapon an inch from its own chest. [...]

“Abraham Setrakian,” it purred. “A name so soft, so sweet, for a boy so full of spirit…” It moved close to his face. “But why destroy me, boy? Why am I so deserving of your wrath, when around you you find even more death in my absence. I am not the monster here. It is God. Your God and mine, the absent Father who left us all so long ago…In your eyes I see what you fear most, young Abraham, and it is not me…it is the pit. So now you shall see what happens when I feed you to it and God does nothing to stop it.”

And then, with a brutal cracking noise, The Thing shattered the bones in the hands of young Abraham. (p. 179)

A skilled carpenter, Abraham “earned” his continued existence through manual labor at Treblinka. With broken hands, Abraham was as good as dead. And yet, the vampire only destroyed hands – a cruel and heartless act, to be sure – but it was at the hands of men that Abraham’s life would be – was, in many ways – destroyed.

Nonhuman animals who commit acts of violence against humans are oftentimes sentenced to death for their “sins,” even as we dismiss them as mindless beasts, acting out of pure instinct and nothing more. Meanwhile, we slaughter them (and one another) by the billions, and chalk it up to God, nature, or the economy; “might makes right,” “the cycle of life,” and all that jazz. In the animal kingdom, it is humans who are the beasts. The Thing needed human blood to survive; the Nazis gave him a river, gushing red with hatred, intolerance and oppression.

3. Rest in Peace, Gertie and Pap. You deserved better.

The dog people in the audience will be especially disturbed by the story of Gertie and Pap. Granted, this is kind of the point – many horror stories begin with the slaughter of a lovable “pet” or other cute and fuzzy wuzzy animal; when playing to an audience of self-proclaimed “animal lovers,” is there any surer way to score a such a visceral reaction? – but I’m referring to their lives as well as to the gruesome manner of their deaths.

“Belonging” to one of the “first generation” vampires, Ansel Barbour, these Saint Bernard dogs were devoured by their “owner” as he desperately fought the process of “turning” (i.e., into a full-blown vampire, as evidenced by the virus’s complete control of its host body). It’s a sad and disgusting scene, but one which any horror aficionado will see coming from a mile away.

Prior to consuming Gertie and Pap, Ansel sent his wife Ann-Marie away with their children. Afterward, he cleaned himself and the house up as best he could and then promptly locked himself in the shed so that he’d be unable to similarly attack and kill his human family. Using an extra dog collar and leash, Ansel chained himself to a pole set into a bed of concrete in the shed, which he’d erected several years prior in order to prevent Gertie and Pap from wandering out of the yard at night. That’s right, folks: rather than fence in their yard or bring the dogs into the house at night (or preferably both), Ansel and Ann-Marie opted to chain them up in a shed. In New York state. Presumably, in the winter as well as summer seasons.

Despite this cruelty, husband and wife are depicted as loving, devoted “pet owners.” At one point, the narration indicates that Ann-Marie considered the dogs “part of the family” (I’m paraphrasing; past tense because it’s postmortem). After killing Gertie and Pap, Ansel mourns their deaths in his moments of lucidity. Ann-Marie takes it upon herself to bury Gertie and Pap in the backyard, and it’s all she can do to keep from breaking down when passing by their graves.

When a cranky, nosy neighbor comes to inquire about the strange noises emanating from the shed – assuming that one or both of the dogs is ill and should be “put down” and/or disciplined for misbehaving – Ann-Marie snaps. The man’s reference to “sparing the rod” reminds Ann-Marie of a recent incident wherein the dogs escaped from the yard and returned with what looked like switch marks all over their bodies. Realizing that the neighbor most likely whipped her trusting, loving, goofy dogs, Ann-Marie invites him to have a look in the shed for himself. The stick he pulls from a nearby tree is little defense against Ansel, now fully turned and starving. She locks the two – human and vampire, prey and predator – into the shabby little building together, and lets nature take its course.

Revenge should taste sweet, and yet this is but an only partially satisfying scene. Had they truly loved their furkids, Ann-Marie and Ansel would have brought dear Gertie and Pap into the comfort and safety of the family home when they still had the chance, particularly after the dogs fell prey to an abuser. If an unidentified neighbor beats your dogs, you don’t leave them outside at night, chained up, alone, and defenseless; you bring them in the house, asap. Maybe you install some cameras in your yard, but you certainly fence it in, possibly with privacy fencing and iron spikes. You never let them outside unattended. You sure as hell call the fucking cops.

Failing this, you deserve to be mauled by a vampire too.

RIP, Gertie and Pap. Your deaths were inevitable; your lives, regrettable.

Updated to add: I posted a proper review of The Strain on Amazon and Library Thing; if you enjoy them and are so inclined, please click on through and vote them as helpful, mkay?

Spoiler warning!

Earlier this year, I wrote a brief piece about George A. Romero’s 2007 zombie horror flick Diary of the Dead. While the film did not explicitly address our treatment of nonhuman animals, the ending depicted two hunters tormenting a female zombie for “sport,” her “death” (if, indeed, one can kill the undead) becoming for them a form of entertainment, as opposed to a matter of survival. The narrator’s final words posed a question that I oftentimes ask myself, particularly during monster movies in which the future of humanity’s existence is called into question:

Are we worth saving?

You tell me.

Survival of the Dead is Romero’s 2009 follow-up to Diary of the Dead. While similar in style and tone, I found its ending and implications to be far more disturbing than those of its predecessor.

Without going too much into plot detail – it’s mostly incidental – Survival of the Dead follows a band of ex-military mercenaries (seen briefly in Diary of the Dead) as they escape a U.S. mainland riddled with zombies for a seeming island oasis. Located off the coast of Delaware, Plum Island is controlled by two feuding Irish families: the O’Flynns and the Muldoons. While the O’Flynn clan and its allies work to save the island and its remaining human residents from an infestation of the undead by finding and slaying all of those infected, the Muldoon camp believes that it’s their familial duty to keep their zombie kin alive – but chained up and under control – until a cure can be found. Naturally, these two philosophies cause a further rift between the competing families; ultimately, the Muldoons prevail, and Patrick O’Flynn – family patriarch and head of the zombie-hunting posse – is banished from the island.

After some time, O’Flynn returns in the company of the mercenaries, only to find the zombies “chained up [...] in imitation of their previous lives – a mailman puts mail in a mailbox, a logger wields an axe on some wood, and so on,” as Wiki so aptly describes it. The remaining inhabitants have started to lose hope that a cure is forthcoming; instead, they’ve shifted goals, aiming to train the zombies to at least “act” human – and, more importantly, to crave and consume the flesh of nonhuman animals over that of their human kin.

Ultimately, a show-down between the two clans hinges upon Seamus Muldoon’s success in this endeavor. One of Patrick Muldoon’s daughters, the zombie Jane, is placed in a small corral with a horse, in whom she shows little interest. Instead, she bites the hand of her twin sister Janet, thus infecting her as well. A gunfight breaks out between the two warring factions, and in the chaos, a group of gathered zombies is set loose on the participants, most of whom are devoured by their undead relatives.

After the battle ends and the group disperses, Jane does attack the horse, biting a chunk of flesh from his body. Alas, the only witnesses to this “victory” are Janet and her father. As Janet rushes off to inform the departing group, Patrick shoots his infected daughter in the head; the secret now belongs to the ever-proud Patrick, and Patrick alone.

The Muldoons, it turns out, were right: zombies can be retrained to eat nonhuman animals. In the context of the film, this shift in consumptive preferences is presented as a “good” thing – progress, success, a triumph. But is it?

As a vegan, my answer is obvious. But one need not be an animal advocate to see the horrific moral calculations embodied in this message. As popularly imagined – and certainly, as presented in Romero’s films – zombies are…undead. Unfeeling. Immune to pain, of either the physical or psychological sort. Lacking in emotions. Incapable of anything but the most rudimentary, instinctive thought. Unable to bond with or even recognize friends and family members. But most of all, they are dead! They had and lived their one life and, while it may have ended prematurely, it is over.

And yet, we’re supposed to see the sacrifice of countless other lives in sustenance of the undead as a “win”? As compared to zombies, nonhuman animals are sentient; they are capable of feeling pain, and suffer immensely while consumed alive, piece by agonizing piece, whether by zombies or humans. They can think, fall in love, experience joy and sadness, and feel fear and longing. They have friends and families, daughters and sons, mothers and fathers. Their will to live is no less than our own.

Going far beyond the fucked up, speciesist morals and practices of existing human societies, Survival of the Dead imagines a world in which nonhumans animals aren’t just “less than” humans – but are also “less than” dead humans. Has-been humans. Once-were humans. Are no more-humans. At best, terminally ill and in need of swift, humane euthanasia. At worst, just this side of a rock.

Nonhuman animals < zombies = a world I don't want to live in.

Is there a reason our undead families should snack on the flesh of nonhuman animals over that of humans? (After all, it is we who cannot accept their deaths.) Would we willingly offer our own bodies up to aid zombie dogs or undead polar bears in their own survival? (I think not.) And what happens, exactly, when the undead eat through all the nonhuman animal life forms on the planet? Humans are already devouring the planet’s resources at an alarming rate; earth simply would not survive an undead army of consumers for long. Ultimately, the Survival of the Dead would mean the demise of all – humans and nonhumans alike.

So.

Are we worth saving?

You tell me.

George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) is your standard, post-apocalyptic zombie fare. As the dead begin to reanimate, a group of film students and their professor flees down the East Coast in a rickety RV. The story is told from the vantage point of the students, in particular Jason, the aspiring documentarian of the group.

Nonhuman animals don’t make an appearance in Diary of the Dead – really, there’s not one guard dog or zombie cat to be found – and yet, the movie’s ending speaks to what I’ve been feeling with increasing urgency as of late. (Cue images of the “oil” spill in the Gulf Coast, complete with hand-wringing about oil-soaked pelicans, torched turtles belonging to endangered species – and the “livelihoods” of the “fishermen” who themselves eke out a living by slaughtering nonhuman animals by the millions. “RIP Gumbo,” indeed.)

The final scene, narrated by Jason’s girlfriend, Debra (who took up his cause after he was mauled to death by a zombie; no spoiler alert needed, as she refers to him in the past tense throughout the film’s voiceover), turns the camera’s lens inward, into the heart of humanity.

Click here to watch the movie’s ending (skip ahead to 6:50; sorry, embedding disabled!), or keep reading for a transcript.

Jason once said he thought he could help. Maybe even save some lives.

This is the last thing he downloaded before he died.

[Cue: homemade video footage, downloaded from the internet.]

A couple of hometown Joes who were now shooting targets.

[Two white, middle-aged men, dressed in flannel and hunting jackets, swigging on beers while brandishing handguns...]

That day they used people.

Dead people.

You know, just for fun.

[...laughingly shoot at reanimated humans, i.e., zombies.]

There was one target that different from the rest.

A woman, tied by her hair to the branch of a tree.

The boys had this one set up just for kicks.

They got out their favorite 12 gauge and…

[BOOM! A shotgun blast rips through the zombie woman's mouth, splitting her face in two. Her torso falls to the ground as her partially decapitated head continues to swing from the tree. Eyes, staring - accusatory in their blankness.]

Are we worth saving?

You tell me.

In a world in which it’s “Us” versus “Them” – “Us” and “The Other” – all manner of cruelties can be justified: Pigeon shoots. Canned hunts. Leghold traps. Farmed animals. Forced pregnancy and birth. Stolen milk, anemic babies, grieving mothers. Enslavement. Torture. An early and merciless death.

And that’s before the shit hits the fan.

Tell me: who will you become after the death of death?

Caution: Spoilers Galore!

As far as horror movies go, The Crazies is fairly standard stuff. A plane crash-lands in a remote marsh just a tick upstream of the rural farming town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. On board is a biological weapon, engineered by the U.S. government in order to “destabilize populations”; allegedly, it was en route to “an incinerator in Dallas,” having proven too dangerous for wide scale use. The plane’s payload slowly leaks into its watery tomb, where the contaminant is carried downstream, straight into Ogden Marsh’s water supply – and onto its citizens’ crops and into their bellies. In short order, the virus infects the town’s residents, transforming them from loving husbands and mild-mannered educators into violent, homicidal “crazies.” *

The federal government quickly moves in, quarantining the town and separating the townspeople into two groups – “infected” and “not” – ripping families apart in the process. Those who are thought to be sick are taken to the local high school (now set up as a makeshift hospital), strapped to hospital gurneys, and “treated.” (“Observed” is more like it. The viewer doesn’t get the feeling that there’s anything the doctors can do to help their patients.) The healthy residents are transported to a large gas station/truck stop/convenience store situated on the edge of town, ostensibly for eventual evacuation to nearby Sioux City. Of course, because this is a horror film and all, things do not go as planned; a riot breaks out at the high school, leading to the government’s evacuation (and eventual nuclear incineration, complete with cover-up) of Ogden Marsh. The events unfold within a 96-hour period (two days pre- and two days post-outbreak), during which the audience follows four heroes – the local sheriff and deputy; the sheriff’s wife, who’s also the town’s only doctor; and her teenage assistant – as they try to understand what’s happening to their fellow citizens and, later, escape to safety.

What’s particularly interesting about The Crazies from a vegan perspective is the way in which the town’s residents are portrayed, pre- and post-infection. Precipitating the sheriff’s hunt for and discovery of the downed plane is the discovery of its pilot – or rather, its pilot’s body – in the marsh by a group of (duck?) hunters, whom the sheriff scolds for illegal, off-season hunting.

Later on, during the first night of the viral outbreak, the sheriff and his companions stumble upon the same group of hunters while looking for a working vehicle along the town’s main street (which might very well be called Main Street). The hunters are infected, and have “graduated” from the recreational killing of nonhuman animals to hunting humans for fun. Hiding across the way, our heroes watch as the hunters gun down several fleeing people – and then load the dead bodies into the back of their pickup truck, the same way hunters do with deer corpses. As one of the men opens the truck’s tailgate, the viewer is treated to the image of a half dozen human bodies, freshly dead and still dripping blood, stacked one atop another, pyramid style. The grotesque, veiny zombie faces and city setting aside, the group – laughing, whooping, hollering – looks as though they could be chasing down deers or turkeys on a dusky Sunday morning.

The next night, the sheriff and his wife – now the only two survivors – run into the hunters again, this time at the now-abandoned convenience store. The hunters have taken up residence at the establishment; finding that the store’s roomy cooler makes for the perfect place to stash dead bodies, they have converted it into a meat locker – for human meat, that is. At one point, the protagonists are forced to hide among the corpses, “playing dead” in order to survive. A human body, swinging upside-down from a meat hook, provides lifesaving camouflage.

While it’s true that the bio-engineered virus turns all those infected into homicidal killers, the group of hunters are presented as an especially dangerous and menacing group. They are one of the first and last challenges the heroes must overcome in order to escape. Unlike many other sick townspeople, the hunters do not succumb during the first day of infection, either to the military or to other “crazies”; they not only survive, but thrive, banding together and hunting down “the others” in a somewhat organized and efficient fashion (even having the sense, in their diseased state, to keep their “meat” in cold storage). As far as “the crazies” go, the hunters are the “craziest” of the “crazy” – already thrilled by violence and death prior to the outbreak, their blood lust only escalates with sickness.

Additionally, the film also utilizes a few familiar symbols of animal exploitation – above and beyond the aforementioned hunting imagery – in order to emphasize just how horribly the townspeople have been treated by their government. For example, on the first night of the infection, the healthy individuals are ferried to the mega-convenience store in cattle trucks (slatted wood siding and all – just wide enough to poke an arm through in panic and plea), similar to those used to transport women (read: cattle) in The Handmaid’s Tale and humans (read: guinea pigs) in Terminator Salvation. Twenty-four hours later, the doctor comes across these same trucks, left abandoned in the store’s parking lot. Peering inside, she finds the bodies of her fellow citizens, gunned down where they stood. Herded, trapped, dispatched. “Like animals,” no doubt.

Of course, this isn’t to imply that the filmmakers intend this is as a commentary on our treatment of nonhuman animals. Instead, it’s much more likely that they’re simply appropriating the imagery of animal suffering and exploitation in order to further drive home the desperate plight of Ogden Marsh’s human residents. Even so, I find the linkage of oppressions both significant and heartening; as long as we condone and encourage the exploitation of some of us (no matter how “less”), we are all potential victims. Violence is a virus, and no one is immune.

* The title – a carry over from the 1973 flick The Crazies, of which this 2010 version is a remake – is both unimaginative and ableist. And I say the latter as a someone who 1) doesn’t usually take issue with “crazy” when used as slang, i.e., “my husband’s snoring drives me crazy” and 2) is herself, shall we say, “certifiable.”