After so many films and discussions about killers like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, sometimes as horror fans we forget that there are real monsters out there. At times we even glorify famous serial killers. We collect their trading cards, buy their action figures, and watch their movies to the point they almost become fictional characters in our minds. Then, ever so often, someone like Jack Ketchum comes along to remind us that real monsters do exist, and they’re not wearing a hockey mask.
**What I’m referring to is the very true case of Sylvia Marie Likens, the basis for Ketchum’s book ‘The Girl Next Door.’ If you have not read the book, then do yourself a favor and get it immediately. It is one of the most disturbing novels I have ever read. I know you have heard that a thousand times, but in the case of this book, it’s actually true.
The real crime took place in Indianapolis in 1965, where the local police received a disturbing call about a dying girl, and instead found the emaciated body of a 16-year-old named Sylvia Marie Likens. She was discovered with cigarette burns on her body and the words: “I’M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT!” etched into her skin. What was even more disturbing was that the crimes were committed by a group of teenagers and children, some as young as 11 and 12, led by 37-year-old Gertrude Baniszewski. Sylvia and her younger sister, the 15-year-old disabled Jenny Fay Likenshad, were placed in Gertrude’s care after their parents had left them to peruse life as carnies.**
Ketchum says he decided to change the setting of the book to 1958 New Jersey, where he was born, because when he was growing up “[his] street was a dead-end street and every house was filled with war-babies. I could imagine her doing it there”. He changed it to that time period because “if you lived through the 1950s you know it’s dark side. All those nice comfy little buboes of secrecy and repression black and ripe and ready to burst. There was a perfect kind of isolation and built-in cast of characters I could shapeshift after the real ones.”
His book ‘The Girl Next Door’ is becoming a major motion picture (I always wanted to say that) sometime in 2007, directed by Gregory Wilson (Home Invaders) and written by Daniel Farrands (The Tooth Fairy)& Philip Nutman. It will follow his fictionalized version of the real life events, and not the actual events themselves. On the subject of the screenwriters, Ketchum says he “insisted as part of the deal with the producers that they use Nutman and Farrands’ script. There’s no way I could have produced a better one and wouldn’t have wanted to try.”
When asked why it took so long to make the book into a movie, he replied “Are you kidding? I’m amazed it ever got filmed at all! Given the subject matter, and that to get it right you needed to use child actors, it’s a pretty dodgy project. The script was shopped around for years by the screenwriters… and everybody said this is great! But no way….”
By any standard ‘The Girl next Door’ is a hard project to tackle. The outright violence committed by the kids against the girls includes rape, beatings, burnings and many other unspeakable acts. The book describes most of it very graphically. Reading the accounts of this violence is hard enough as it is, so one could imagine it would be even harder to swallow watching it on the big screen. Ketchum says because of this “the movie suggests more than it shows. There’s little overt nudity. But it’s still a pretty ballsy reading.” Which is probably a good thing.
In light of this, I figured a story like ‘The Girl Next Door’ might cause some controversy, and Ketchum agreed. “If it doesn’t cause some controversy either it hasn’t been released widely enough or the final cut screwed the pooch somehow. The violence is largely off screen — in the same way that the violence in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is mostly off screen if you look at it closely enough, but it’s certainly there in large enough doses to make an audience queasy as hell. Which is as it should be.”
But what is the purpose of a fictionalized book/movie based on the crimes committed against Sylvia Marie Likens? Is it entertainment in it’s most demented form, like a car wreck you can’t look away from, or is it educational, to inform people of the horrors that go on in the world? Or is it a little of both? When we asked Ketchum if the book and movie were purely a horror story he responded:
“I think both the book and the movie want to be a lot more than “purely a horror story.” They have larger ambitions. Which, among other things, include issues of guilt and redemption — or lack of it — secrets, mass behavior, self-loathing, and love.”
Ketchum also says he has seen a rough cut of the film but does not “know if it’s actually finished yet.” While he says the movie still needs a little tweaking, he seems happy with it so far. “I thought it was pretty damn good…the performances are very fine across the board and Greg’s direction and Bill’s camera-work give it a great look and feel.”
He also doesn’t seem to mind watching someone else interpret his material, well at least when the people behind it seem to be working hard to do a great job. When asked if it is difficult to watch someone else interpret your material, he responded by referencing another popular book of his ‘The Lost,’ which was made into a movie last year.
“In both this and THE LOST I’ve been quite lucky in that everyone concerned was trying really hard to be faithful to the source material. So given that fact it’s not difficult at all, quite the contrary. It’s been really gratifying to see two groups of really hard-working talented people bringing their own perceptions to something I dreampt up. Everybody’s enthusiasm really gets to you — it’s catching! and pretty exciting. And there were times watching Blythe, who plays Meg that were absolutely excruciating. Which of course is what you hope for from this one.”
Reading his thoughts on the film version of ‘The Girl Next Door’ puts one’s mind at ease. It’s comforting to know that one of the most terrifying and exciting books out there is in good hands. Time after time great novels are trashed at the cinema, and it would be a real shame if that happened with something as great as ‘The Girl Next Door’.
So what does the future hold for Jack Ketchum? Well, he is releasing a new book ‘Closing Time and Other Stories,’ which is a collection of 19 shorts that have never been published together before. These include ‘Closing Time’ (Ketchum’s Bram Stoker Award winning novella), hard-to-find recent stories, and one original, previously unpublished story, ‘Do You Love Your Wife?’ He says it’s “hard to say” if regular Ketchum fans will like this book or not. “My readers are a diverse lot. Many of the stories in CLOSING TIME AND OTHER STORIES are less horror-oriented than in PEACEABLE KINGDOM — they’re just stories, often dark comedy. But there are plenty of nasty bits here and there and certainly the centerpiece novella, CLOSING TIME, is one of my harsher offerings. For those of you out there who like to see now and then exactly how strong their stomachs are, you might try my new novella WEED SPECIES (Get a copy HERE). The damn thing makes me wince.” Sounds good to me.
*Info on Sylvia Likens was taken from Crime Library by Denise Noe
