“MEMORIES ARE FILMS ABOUT GHOSTS”: Some responses to my abortion-in-horror piece.

I’ll note one thing I couldn’t fit in to the piece itself: Horror is so often concerned with the return of the repressed, the intrusion of the denied and terrifying past into the complacent present. Sometimes it works to convince us not to disturb the Old Ones; sometimes it argues that the past isn’t dead, it’s just waiting to rise from the grave and eat your brains. Abortion is an attempt to return to status quo ante. Of course there’s abortion-horror. Pregnancy can often seem like memory in flesh–for better and very much for worse–and horror is the most obvious genre where memory can be either laid to rest or reawakened.

That said, reactions from readers:
Theodore:

In PREDATOR 2, the monster detects a woman’s pregnancy, and spares her.

a reader:

Here’s another example of the “haunting” sub-genre of abortion-related horror: the first two episodes of the anime Mononoke. A pregnant, desperate young woman spends a night in a room that was once the abortion chamber of a brothel. …It’s noteworthy also for its art, which suggests ukiyo-e crossed with Yellow Submarine.

a different reader:

You mentioned that stories of aborted ghosts returning for revenge are “almost exclusively in short stories and independent comics.” Well, I can give you an example of a mainstream movie with that very premise. The title is Impakto; it came out in the Philippines a little over ten years ago.

(Eve adds: Wow. The ensuing description of the movie suggests that it’s very hard to watch… though not as much so as our next entry.)

Jeremy Biltz:

Speaking of abortion in horror, have you seen Imprint, which is Miike’s contribution to the Masters of Horror series? It was so disturbing that they didn’t air it, but it was released on DVD. It’s got some strong abortion themes, among other grotesqueries.

I’m thinking it’s not for the faint-hearted.