oozing pus and bleeding if ruptured. This is followed by some com- bination of blood vomiting, seizures, delirium and extreme pain caused by the skin’s premature decomposition. Some of the in- flicted will fall into a coma. Death occurs within two to seven days.
The suffering is immense. It’s horrifying to imagine, yet plagues have happened several times throughout
history, most devastatingly in the mid-1300s. Though there are no accurate figures on the number of dead – the job of recording deaths often fell to plague doctors, costumed physicians in beak masks that ministered to the infected (see p.19) – the Black Death is believed to have killed twenty to 25 million people in Europe alone, roughly one third of its population at the time, and as many as 75 million worldwide. This is why it’s so shocking that, despite providing such seemingly fertile fodder for horror, the period has largely been ignored in the genre. There have been a few no- table exceptions, namely 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, by Roger Corman. (See Classic Cut for more on the original story by Edgar Allan Poe.) There have been movies dealing with plagues and similar contagions, but they’ve
typically cropped up in the form of big-budget Hollywood action thrillers, such as Outbreak (1995) and Twelve Monkeys (1995), and mostly forgettable TV movies (1992’s Canadian-made Black Death, a.k.a. Quiet Killer), almost always set in mod- ern times, with the threat delivered in the form of bio-weapons, a research centre disaster/mistake or a third-world outbreak. When horror has approached the subject of plagues, they’ve typically been of the biblical, supernatural sort (The Reaping) or used as an explanation for marauding monsters and mutations, as in 28 Days Later, I Am Legend and Doomsday.
YMPTOMS APPEAR TWO TO FIVE DAYS AFTER EXPOSURE. It be- gins with chills, malaise, muscle pain, high fever and a severe headache. Next come the painful, swollen lymph nodes, known as buboes, which appear on the groin, neck and armpits,
Few horror movies have actually been set during the Black Death, yet two are
about to hit theatres. However, despite their shared period trappings and witch- hunting themes, they’re of a much different breed. First, there’s the Hollywood su- pernatural actioner, Season of the Witch, starring Nicolas Cage, which hits North American theatres on January 7. Then there’s Black Death (out February 4 on VOD and in theatres March 11 from Magnet Releasing), a British-German co-production that keeps the proceedings firmly grounded in the (superstitious) reality of the late Middle Ages. A time when the plague was seen as the work of God, or a punishment from Him, and thus anyone or anyplace free of it would naturally draw suspicion. The film, directed by Christopher Smith (Creep, Severance, Triangle), stars Eddie
Redmayne as Osmund, a young monk who experiences a crisis of faith when he finds himself torn between his love of God and the love he feels for his illicit girlfriend. After sending her away in an effort to spare her from the ravages of the plague, he prays for spiritual guidance. When a group of men, led by fundamentalist knight Ulric (Sean Bean: The Lord of the Rings trilogy), arrives at the monastery looking for a guide to lead them to a community that is allegedly free of the pestilence, which also just happens to be in the direction of Osmund’s village, he takes it as a sign from above and volunteers to join them. However, the group’s real mission is to hunt down the necromancer who heads up the village of plague-free (and hence godless) heathens, encase the culprit in their wagon-fitted torture device, then take him/her back to the city for judgement. Needless to say, when the Christian soldiers and pagan-esque townfolk meet, their opposing – yet startingly similar – ideologies clash spectacularly, propelling all towards a grim and violent fate, and one no less fraught with sickness. Black Death never shies away from the horrors of the disease, but just as deadly
are the paranoia, torture, witch hunts and cult sacrifice that arrive in its wake – making for a unique and unforgiving story. Rue Morgue got Smith on the phone from his home in England to spread the word that in Black Death the plague is just part of the sickness.
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