Take, for example, the field of fine art. In Hans Baldung’s The Three Ages of Man and Death (1539), the youthful maiden, nubile and naked, stands beside the shriveled skeleton of decay and old age, demonstrating the recognition that one must inevitably give way to the other. In William Etty’s painting, Hero and Leander (1828), two lovers lie naked on a sandy beach, arms curled round each other in a sensual embrace - though both are corpses; Leander from drowning, and Hero from hurling herself from a great height upon learning of her lover’s death. Paul Delvaux’s Venus Asleep (1944) depicts a nude and sleeping Venus, over whom Death Himself stands, watching and conversing. Not by accident do the works of Bosch, Giulio Romano, and their ilk depict the condemned souls sprawling naked in the pits of Hell. The examples of painting alone, of which we present only a handful here, pass well beyond the scope of this article.

Such works of art assault the sensibilities where many are most vulnerable: in the realms of sex and death. All who live come from one and pass, eventually, into the other; it is the one experience which all human beings hold completely in common. Images that encompass both ends of this particular human spectrum affect the consciousness in powerful ways.

Popular folklore tells us that medieval man considered ejaculation to be the "little death" that saps the strength and "essence" of the male. Religious taboo still abounds, even in the modern age, about masturbation -- the squandering of the seed of life for the sake of transitory personal pleasure.

While modern horror cinema rarely rises to the level of fine art, it nonetheless continues these traditions, refining them for modern sensibilities. The "teenage slasher" film, whether it aspires to a greater archetype or not, nevertheless tears a page from these age-old books - like Baldung’s The Three Ages of Man and Death, Youth and Death look away from each other, but stand close together - both they and audience know that one is never far from the other. Moreover, like Hero and Leander, the fruits of passion are often poisonous - the sexual consummation between young lovers represents a rite of passage, a departure from the innocence of youth that gives way to adulthood, and thence to death. As in Eden, the fruit of the tree of knowledge is most often lethal.

In Part 1, we discussed Clive Barker’s "beast of appetite" and the Victorian "creature within." which often represent a form of sexual repression or frustration, which then manifests itself in violent fashions - like the psycho-sexual killer of The Invisible Maniac, the unabashed and uncontrolled Dr. Jekyll, or the like. In such cases, in modern slasher films especially, the Freudian undertones of the knife, spear, or other sharp implement cannot be ignored, nor the nubile and oft-underclothed female victim who receives such penetration at the cost of her life. Whether such events in cinema deliberately hearken to a deeper unconscious meaning in order to horrify the viewer, or whether they intend merely to titillate with "squalid porno-violence" (as King puts it), is a matter for personal speculation.

Beyond the violence of sexual aggression and the "beast of appetite," however, lies another facet of sexuality and death in horror cinema; the issue of vulnerability. The tradition in horror film is to attack the viewer where he or she feels most vulnerable; thus, the victims of any particular "horror" often meet their ends in places where they cannot easily defend themselves: in the shower (Psycho, Arachnophobia, numerous Friday the 13^th ), in bed (Nightmare on Elm Street, Dreamscape, Shocker), on the toilet (the highly forgettable Ghoulies), and so on. Not by accident do the hapless protagonists of a given horror story so often meet their ends while barefoot, weaponless, and / or half-clothed. The strength of the horror movie lies in how vulnerable it can make us feel.

Take, for example, Alien, one of horror cinema’s only truly Lovecraftian films. The primary scenes of Alien are well familiar even to those who have not seen the movie - the alien "face-hugger," whose birth cycle ends with the death of its host on the Nostromo’s kitchen table; the tense alien hunt through the air ducts, and the final apocalyptic showdown wherein the entire ship is blown up in a vain attempt to stop the alien menace.

Ripley, Alien’s main protagonist, spends much of the movie chasing down, or running from, the alien, with flamethrower or charge stick in hand. Through the tense final scenes, she never confronts the alien directly (not until the sequel, at least) - and for the alien’s part, it does not strike until Ripley is weaponless, barefoot, and half-naked - without defense. Alien, like so many horror movies, is guilty of a certain chauvinism - male protagonists rarely have so much trouble keeping their clothes on - but the result is nonetheless effective; facing down an alien in full body armor with pulse rifle in hand is much different from facing down the alien while barefoot and clad in underwear.