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Episode 539 - The Man Upstairs (Patreon)

Published:
2021-03-11 22:16:19
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Everybody climb into the Draculator: we're visiting The Man Upstairs by Ray Bradbury!

Special thanks to reader Erik Peabody! Check out Viking Guitar Productions for all of your audio needs!

Next up: The Transfer by Algernon Blackwood featuring guest Ken Hite!

Comments

Anonymous

The Wodehouse vampire story writes itself

Anonymous

The straw hat Mr. Koberman is wearing when he shows up may be a nod to Stoker's Dracula who, in Chapter 24, appears all in black except for a straw hat which does not suit "him or the time."

Anonymous

I've mentioned before that Bradbury is very hit or miss for me. This story? This is a *hit.*

Ben Gilbert

Dandelion Wine in an alternate universe.

Anonymous

I wasn't expecting to be overtly Weirded out this month because draculas, by and large, are so familiar and accustomed. Bradbury's writing and C&C's discussion of it proved me wrong. Holy giblets, dude. This story is WEIRD.

Anonymous

That tooth gap detail explains a lot of the mysterious whistling noises I hear in this podcast.

Anonymous
>>55416995

I agree. This is a far cry from his "entitled writer engages in navel gazing" stuff.

Anonymous

Don’t be embarrassed of the tooth gap Chad, when I was a kid I had one I could fit my pinky finger through. Turns out there was a piece of fibrous fissure growing in my gums between the two front teeth that was driving them apart and making them go crooked and I had to get it removed. I used to be embarrassed about it and to this day I still don’t like smiling with my teeth.

Anonymous

I would like to believe that the title of this story - The Man Upstairs - refers to God. Rather than a vampire story, then, this is a dissection of religion in the Nietzschen sense. God is dead. We saw him for what he was. We killed him. We stitched him up with some pieces of silver and now . . . well, now we've got the horror of working out our own purpose. Granted, I know that's not what Bradbury had in mind. But, look, the guy has Brad and bury in his name. That's got to mean something. Right? Granted, I know that doesn't have to mean anything. But it ought to. And the Man Upstairs ought to be God. And, er, that's all I have to say about that.

Lord Rancid

Man, Blowtorch was one of my fav Action Force (our de-Americanised version of G I Joe) figures back then... Those colours, those lurid lurid colours.....

Anonymous

I think it's obvious what happened here: An overexcited kid mistook a heavy sleeper (probably an opium addict or some such) for a non-Euclidian monstrosity and murdered him. The community then humored the poor deranged boy and hushed it all up out of mercy.

Ben Gilbert

It’s a new straw that he only bought to “fit in”.

Anonymous

My understanding is that The Ray Bradbury Theater, during its initial two season run on HBO (1985-86), was filmed in the US, but ironically when it switched to the USA Network for the next four additional seasons (1988 to 1992) it was filmed in France as a cost-cutting measure. I haven't been every episode but "The Man Upstairs" is certainly not the only episode relocated to France. Also the description of Mr. Koberman, including his "horribly new straw hat," reminded me of Stoker's description of Dracula in Chapter 24: "A tall man, thin and pale, with high nose and teeth so white, and eyes that seem to be burning. That he be all in black, except that he have a hat of straw which suit not him or the time." I'm surprise that you guys didn't remember that considering how much you mocked Dracula for his hat.

Anonymous
>>55470153

...Wait, this *isn't* a joke? I completely forgot about the straw hat!

Anonymous

This is such a good example of how to execute Lovecraft’s rules for supernatural horror. This story works on two levels; the biggest part of course is a story about a young boy and a vampire. The other of course is that slight doubt; is the boy a serial killer justifying his actions? Did he kill the woman as well as an innocent boarder who works nights. I can see in my minds eye the boy pretending to hit the drum to wake the man up, just moving his mouth when he calls out to see if the man will wake... Again the largest part is that “conventional” story but just enough to wonder if this is a Dahmer in the making. We’ve all met those really creepy kids (not just Goth) but truly creepy and evil. P.S. I remember looking for an apartment years ago in Somerville ( Boston MA area) and at every apartment someone was there asleep during the day. Really struck me how different lives people can lead. Either that or lots of vampires.

Anonymous

Fine story, but I kept thinking through the whole ep about the comments at the beginning about secret vampires in PG Wodehouse's stories. I'm pretty sure Bertie Wooster calls his aunt Agatha a vampire at least once, but most interesting is the fact that Jeeves himself has the ability to noiselessly "float" or "shimmer" into a room avoiding all notice until he's suddenly at one's elbow. Since there is a way to insert all great fictional duos into the Bertie and Jeeves milieu, I can't think of a better match than Bertie as Renfield and Jeeves as Drac, which is a charming reversal of station.

Erik Sieurin

I don't know if he wrote anything about vampires, but Woodhouse produced a few pieces of weird fiction among his humoresques; some weird science, including one about a super-serum, and not one but TWO stories about places haunted not by ghosts, but by... presences that change people who live there.

Thunk
>>55508452

Might have been one of those waves of vampirism that rise up from time to time

Steve

You were right about the kid. He seems never to have acted again. In fact he has such an unusual name, it's not hard to find him.

Anonymous

One of the Xipehuz snuck into Rockwellian America.

Thunk

So he's full of baby toys?

Anonymous
>>55426808

My Sister had the exact same issue. The Dentist snipped the tissue and no more gap.

Anonymous

There are jerks, then there are jerks. Mr. Koberman is a lot is higher up on the jerk ladder because the boarding house serves food, which he eats! That's just greedy. His eyes looking open through blue glass makes me wonder if he can look through his eyelids...is at that moment looking at and watching the kid. It's a story beat that causes my intestines to retract up into my nasal cavities every time. Brrrrrr! Where did the vampire came from? The part of the story that talks about worlds upon worlds, all next to each other like colored glass in a stained glass window, suggests he's from another dimension. The weird internal...organs? puts me in mind of an android (or as The Toddling Chaos says, a walking toy box). But staying alive despite the removal of all his internal modern art? His clothes melting away when the kid can see inside? (meaning they're probably part of his body--protective coloration.) He's a fresh take.

Anonymous

The part about different colored glass made me think of a game I've grown interested in as of late called The Room (original title I know). The premise of the game is that you're solving these complex puzzles and contraptions that are all connected to an esoteric material called The Null which allows for funky stuff like going into spaces that don't fit the dimensions they are contained in and to interact with them the MC has a special eye glass with colored lenses that lets them see and physically interact with the stuff. I highly suggest checking it out as it fits quite well in the Yogsothery sort of non-sense we all love and know https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3AISiWybyWcxS1mwuPA0HcZ67-rHWw9a A good play through to demonstrate the game

Anonymous

So Ray would sometimes get tired of the whole staring at an Autumn sunset in order to figure out we are all going to die and so decide to mash up Huck Finn meets monster squad. Well better than nothing I suppose. The one thing this story did was remind me of some 1950s or 1960s short story, post nuclear apocalypse where the big horror reveal is a woman giving birth to triangle. She cradles it in her arms (somehow) while hubby runs screaming. Can’t remember the writer but certainly a Bradbury contemporary.

Ben Gilbert
>>55623278

Ray Bradbury's Tomorrow's Child has the blue pyramid but the father doesn't run screaming. Sometimes I confuse it with Judith Merril's Only a Mother.

Anonymous

In defense of Stephanie Meyer, the difference between her vampires and Anne Rice's is the difference of being 13 years old and 17 years old. I'm not a twilight fan but also I'm not supposed to be. Also I like some really stupid stuff.

Anonymous

In Meyers' defense, she did take a step back to monstrous vampires; Edward was a creepy stalker.

Anonymous
>>55435359

Oooh, stuffed him with 40 pieces of silver...except I don't think that works out numerically. Still, I reiterate, oooh!

Anonymous

I don't find the kid creepy, does that make me creepy? I see him as one of those people that could go either way based on the people around him. His Grandpa seems to understand him a bit, and doesn't hate on him for it. Also, he saves everyone. The conversation at the table showed Mr. Koberman was a threat. He doesn't ask anyone else, or show him to anyone else though, which is odd unless you consider how his Grandmother didn't listen to him about the window.

Anonymous

There’s precious little written on The Man Upstairs as a vampire story – it’s not mentioned in any of the critical texts on vampire literature that I own. It’s interesting to consider how it fits into its time though, as there’s not a lot of vampire fiction published during WW2. In the comments to Vengeance by Proxy I mentioned how concerns prefiguring the ‘Red Scare’ and McCarthyism can be seen in that tale and this one - in the case of The Man Upstairs, particularly fears around foreign spies or agents. Though interestingly the story itself is set in 1927 in ‘happier times’ before the Great Depression and the war, perhaps to make the vampire more the focus of the horror than what was going on in the world at the time? ‘The Man Upstairs’ feels to me like it’s the fear of foreign espionage writ small; Koberman’s an outsider inveigling his way into Douglas’ home. There is coding of him as a foreigner - Koberman’s a German-sounding name and carries a hint of danger and threat, Koberman/Doberman. He’s repeatedly referred to as a stranger/strange - he moves stiffly, his language is stiff, he’s gray and thin, wooden and cold against the warmth, colour and liveliness of Douglas and his family. This vampire is someone who masquerades as one of us, but is in truth radically different and opposed to us. Koberman’s nature is inimical to ours, and he is coded in the same way an enemy might be in war – dehumanised, ungodly, other-than-us: Douglas watched, thinking about how that chicken had had two kinds of guts--God-made and Manmade. Well, how about *three* kinds of guts? Eh? Though Douglas’ Grandfather immediately makes the counterpoint that ‘the enemy’ aren’t inhuman monsters - ‘“They're people. People who do things. Yes, that's the way to put it: people who *do* things"’ – the ultimate reveal moves Douglas and the other boarders’ view to the fore. Douglas’ interaction with Koberman in his room is almost like the interrogation of a captured enemy agent: "Mr. Koberman, wake up!" No answer. "Mr. Koberman, where do you work at night? Mr. Koberman, where do you work?" A little breeze stirred the blue window shade. "In a red world or a green world or a yellow one, Mr. Koberman?" Over everything was a blue glass silence. "Wait there," said Douglas. BTW I did like Andrew Brown’s against-the-grain reading further up the comments that Douglas is the villain; Bradbury’s fond of murderous children in his stories, just in this case Douglas didn’t pick his parents as his victims - or did he? Is that why he’s living with his grandparents?!? Also in common with Vengeance by Proxy, there are a few call backs to Dracula in The Man Upstairs – a couple of commenters already mentioned the straw hat coming from Dracula, and the scene where Douglas finds Koberman immobile on his bed, but with the blue glass sees him staring at him hungrily, has echoes of Harker finding the Count in his coffin: There, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of newly dug earth, lay the Count! He was either dead or asleep, I could not say which—for the eyes were open and stony, but without the glassiness of death… I saw the dead eyes, and in them, dead though they were, such a look of hate The vampire’s discovery by being viewed through the coloured glass is also a twist on a familiar vampire weakness that first appeared in Dracula, with the vampire being revealed by the lack of reflection in the looking glass. And, as in Dracula, the vampire takes out the offending instrument in short order. All in all, I like this one – it’s much more ‘Draculas’ than Vengeance by Proxy, plus it’s a decent Bradbury story. One small, throwaway detail that I liked was that the vampire’s victim is left with “funny kinds of tattoos all over her” – I’m not sure if there’s anything behind that other than adding an extra touch of the weird, anyone any idea?

Anonymous

An idea for a bonus ep. I've just been watching Nosferatu for the first time in may. It is.... Fun.

Anonymous
>>55520807

Now I have to rewatch the old Jeeves & Wooster series with this assumption

Anonymous

Now I’m hoping for a Netflix series with this kid and the girl from the Saki story! He’s killing monsters and being creepy, she’s making up stories and messing with people. It’s a mix of Buffy, Dexter and ... Punk’d, maybe?

Anonymous
>>55574027

I can't help but wonder if the "organs" are the real Mr. Koberman--some predatory Thing from one of those other worlds--and the rest is just a human-shaped meat suit It wears to move about our society unmolested.

Anonymous
>>55742959

I'd also recommend the Werner Herzog version. Though be sure to grab the one labelled Phantom der Nacht, and not Der Vampyr.

Anonymous

I can't help but view this tale as a sort of companion piece to "The Refugee"--that great tale where the vapid socialite chomps down on juicy werewolf flesh. They're both tales set during (or near) WWII, with protagonists who seem much less capable than they really are, facing a spin on a traditional European monster that ultimately turns out to be the *prey* and not the predator.

Anonymous

The loved the "psychopathic kid vs. vampire" angle here, and good grief can Bradbury write some skeevy descriptions of guts. That being said, I don't think it's exactly cut and dried that the kid is "psychopathic" per se. Clinically, psychopathy is defined by a complex of many interconnected factors, and having no natural revulsion response to gore is only one of these. And it can be a valuable trait to have, for example that kid could make a great surgeon or scientist. Or a vampire slayer, of course.

Anonymous
>>55808956

Funny, It set off resonances with that story in my brain as well.