Re. Lovecraft and women: Stephen King (in Danse Macabre) comments on this, describing Lovecraft’s tentacled monsters as being some kind of fetishised substitution for femininity, their gelatinous nature a horror-struck and horrifying vaginal obscenity. It is interesting (if, ultimately, pointless) to wonder how Lovecraft might have reacted to the film ‘Alien’. It is also intriguing to consider whether Lovecraft, in his avoidance of female characters, wasn’t more self-aware a writer than Tolkien, who could write a female character about as well as a three-week-dead halibut. That argument depends, however, on Lovecraft being aware of his avoidance: is there any literature to suggest that he was?

Also, in regards to Mathew’s point above concerning sociopaths, the officer in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ seems to me to be fundamentally different from the ‘popular’ sociopaths of film (Anthony Hopkins’s ‘Hannibal Lector’, for example, or Heath Ledger’s ‘Joker’). The point of departure between these characters seems to be on their level of engagement with the society in which they operate. The Spanish officer (and, to provide another parallel, Ralph Fiennes’s Auschwitz commandant in ‘Schindler’s List’) are repugnant because they seek to supplant the accepted society with one of their own devising. They are fundamentally irrelatable, firstly because they demonstrate a different psychology to the average viewer (their heads simply work differently), and secondly because they represent an imposition of their values on a society that will not willingly accept them: they are oppressors before they are sociopaths (at least in the viewer’s estimation). Lector and the Joker are different because they work *within* the society we know, not trying to change or destroy it. (Admittedly the Joker may lay some claim to attempting this, but the changes he tries to force are revelatory: he wants to show Gotham and its inhabitants what they’re really like. He is not altering society, merely stripping it of its self-delusion). While it is true on one level to say that Lector and Auschwitz’s commandant are presented as irredeemable, we have a sneaking suspicion that, while the commandant is always inhuman, Lector might somehow be a tolerable companion. Certainly we like him enough to keep going back to the cinema to see him. He is fascinating because we can fool ourselves into thinking he is somehow ‘just one of us’; the Spanish Officer, through his refusal to operate within our social structure, and his determination to destroy it and replace with a system antithetical to our values, will never be sympathetic: he represents too great a threat.

Furthermore, he and the commandant, unlike Lector or the Joker (particularly Jack Nicholson’s interpretation, but dimly visible in Ledger’s version too), possess no charm. This is more important than it may sound at first. Charm is an aspect of relatability: how we deal with these characters on a personal level is determined, to a large extent, by how we see them relating to other characters in the films. Charm suggests a collusion with social mores; its absence flies a red flag for us when we consider the threat they represent. Charm is one of the great disguises of the sociopath (before WWII, Hitler was considered by some to be excellent table company) but a sociopath who does not make use of it either does not understand it (making him or her, again, more difficult to relate to), or simply doesn’t care because the social mores to which it accedes are of no interest or relevence to him or her. In which case, beware…

Also, I think the question about some interesting characters actually being sociopaths seems a little strange to me in this field of fiction. Elaborate villains or antiheroes, for example, have always been an element of fascination, and I wouldn’t see why this should suddenly be regarded as improper or dangerous. They are not to be taken as a role model, of course. But if this was in regard to Pan’s Labyrinth – well, I think there was nothing remotely fascinating about the villain. It was repugnance in one of his purest forms.

Re. Mushroom dwellers: at least it beats “those King Squid are undoubtably Lovecraftian because they’ve, you know, got tentacles”.

Laird: Hope I didn’t come across as confrontational. I get what you’re saying. I continue to be amazed by the sense that HPL channelled a wholly misplaced horror of some aspects of modernity into creating such revolutionary Weird fiction, the utter strangeness that it was because of rather than in spite of a deeply messed up worldview. That’s why he’s so contentious.

I’m a bit more of a Clark Ashton Smith guy these days because I prefer my Weird in a secondary world and I’ve tired of Lovecraft’s sheer po-facedness. He’s important more for his legacy to speculative fiction than he is as an individual or perhaps indeed as an author.