Terror on Page 1!
By T.J. Tranchell
I miss the real fantastical supermarket tabloids. Those black and white papers screaming about someone who slept with Bigfoot and about alien abductions. And who could forget Bat Boy? I don’t know anything about the real people who wrote those “articles,” but I imagine them at typewriters, the last bastion of journalism that hadn’t given in to the computer age, fedoras tipped back on their heads and cigarettes dangling from their lips. It’s a horrible stereotypical image of old-school reporters and lacks the nuance of real newsrooms throughout journalism history. But we aren’t here for real history just like those tabloids didn’t exist for real news. We are here for sensational headlines that you — yes, YOU! — won’t believe.
Actually, we’re here today to talk about how fiction writers aren’t the only word jockeys to make it into horror films and TV. Sometimes, they are reporters for legitimate news sources and sometimes they are Richard Dees, the top reporter for Inside View.
Dees (not to be confused with disc jockey Rick Dees) has shown up in two Stephen King tales and the eventual adaptations of them. Dees infamously interviewed Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone (1979 novel, 1983 film). Neither appearance is long, but we did get a quick look at a sleazebag who’s out to exploit people with unusual experiences. Dees is one of those characters just interesting enough to warrant not just a reappearance but a starring role. In the short story “The Night Flier,” Dees is still at Inside View, and he’s still a scumbag. He gets wind of a possible serial killer (tabloids and serial killers went hand in hand in the 1980s) that turns out to be a vampire. In the 1997 film, Dees is played masterfully by Miguel Ferrer, who could ooze bastardliness better than almost any actor of his time. The movie is one of the most underrated King adaptations and Dees’ role as a journalist is played perfectly. It’s a tragedy, in a way, because that style of journalistic freedom has gone the way of the tabloids themselves: they are history.
Dees, in many ways, doesn’t exist without the more noble Carl Kolchak of the Independent News Service. An investigative reporter in Chicago, Kolchak deals with editors, law enforcement, relocation, and other employees. First airing in 1974, it’s easy to see the influences of the time that also inspired real journalism like that of All the President’s Men and the rise of “new journalism.” The American populace saw journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and news anchors like Walter Cronkite as personalities or even celebrities instead of just deliverers of the daily news. Darrin McGavin brought that gruffness and believability to an otherwise unbelievable situation — hunting a vampire. As the real news became more and more unbelievable, Kolchak began to seem more real. Kolchak: The Night Stalker not only inspired the unfortunate nickname of real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez but also The X-Files. The interplay between journalists and cops was unique in that previously and continually, the police or other law enforcement types were more often the central characters and the journalists showed up to be thorns in their sides. The journalists rarely got to be protagonists, let alone heroes.
There’s a good reason for this and it is rooted in journalistic ethics. We — and I do mean “we,” as I have been a professional journalist myself, with my own beat and everything — are never meant to become the story. We are supposed to remain unbiased and objective. We seek facts and speak truth to power. Journalists were meant to be trusted but not necessarily interesting people. Sometimes we get films with heroic reporters and illustrators such as Zodiac (2007) and sometimes we get imagination thrillers like The Ring (2002, American version).
The Ring fascinates me for a number of reasons today. The central action relies on two things that aren’t around much anymore, only 22 years later. Not only are VHS tapes obsolete technology but the paper that Naomi Watts’ character Rachel Keller works for, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (in The Ring Two, she works at the smaller paper The Daily Astorian in Oregon) ceased its print existence in 2009. Keller follows clues from a videotape to attempt to solve the mysterious death of her niece and other teens, ostensibly for a news story. The paper’s resources are evident, helping her achieve her aims. I always wonder… what the hell would her editor think of not just her expense report but the eventual story itself? It’s the kind of story better suited for Inside View and not the daily paper of a major American metropolis.
While that first image of a journalist is still with us, horror movies thankfully gave us more than just Rachel Keller to quell the gender bias. Geena Davis played Veronica Quaife in 1986’s The Fly and Dee Wallace portrayed Karen White in The Howling (1981). For the record, many of the best journalists I’ve known have been women (including my wife) and not those son of a bitch types like Richard Dees.
I’m surprised there are not more horror films with journalist protagonists. There are more not discussed here, but not enough. Why not place a character who lives to find the truth in situations that stretch the truth? If you can convince someone who lives to never take anything at face value, you should be able to convince any audience of your horror premise.
Hell, maybe I’ll write one myself. A handsome redhead with a wife who is not only smarter and better looking than him, but also better at the job that they both do. And ghosts. So many ghosts. 🩸
About
T.J. Tranchell was born on Halloween and grew up in Utah. He has published the novella Cry Down Dark and the collections Asleep in the Nightmare Room and The Private Lives of Nightmares with Blysster Press and Tell No Man, a novella with Last Days Books. In October 2020, The New York Times called Cry Down Dark the scariest book set in Utah. He holds a Master’s degree in Literature from Central Washington University and attended the Borderlands Press Writers Boot Camp in 2017. He currently lives in Washington State with his wife and son. Follow him at www.tjtranchell.net or on X @TJ_Tranchell.
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