Listen to me reading my Diana Poole short story, “The Talking Dead”.

Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe and Claire Trevor as Mrs. Helen Grayle (Velma Valento) in “Murder, My Sweet” (1944)

I never liked Halloween. I think it’s because my childhood was one long Halloween night. However, I did love being a witch. When playing games of pretend I was glad to play the part of the “bad” person. The villain. I instinctively knew where the power lay.

This was made clear to me last week when a newscaster, trolling in a costume store, was interviewing children about what they wanted to be for Halloween. They all gave the usual answers from princess to Spiderman. But one little boy said, “ A monster!” And he meant it. The newscaster, taken aback by his vehemence, asked in that cloying adult voice of a woman who has never raised a child, “Why do you want to be a monster?” The little boy said, “Because it’s my turn to scare the adults.” “Why do want to scare the adults?” “Because they get to scare me all year long.”

To not be scared is to be in control, to not be dominated. So one night of the year this little boy will feel what that is like. Only a child can turn a scary monster into a positive, at least for one night. So can the mystery writer.

We depend on monsters. They propel our stories. We’d be out of business without them. If not for the villains, our protagonist would have nothing to fight, to fear, to triumph over. Like all evil doers they come in various shapes, sizes, and sex. And we have an ambivalent admiration for many of them.

I would rather watch Richard the Third connive, deceive, and kill than wait for Hamlet to make up his mind while he bumbles around the castle creating havoc. When Richard screams, “My kingdom for a horse!”, I’ve always longed for a stray steed to lope by so he could leap on it, and ride away to deceive for another day.

Greta Garbo was in the selected audience for the screening of Jean Cocteau’s film, The Beauty and The Beast. After the beast turned into the prince and the movie ended, it is said that Garbo’s low sultry voice could be heard in the still dark room moaning, “I vant my beast back.” The raging dangerous beast was more seductive than the perfect prince.

Richard had a hump and the prince was imprisoned in his furry animal body. But these qualities, some might say infirmities, makes them more human and more threatening. I think Richard M. Nixon had an invisible hump.

One of my favorite villains is Veda Pierce in the novel, Mildred Pierce. I must apologize because I read it many years ago and I’m afraid the movie (a must see) and the book have merged in my mind. Mildred has two daughters. The good one dies, the evil one lives. Veda is as conniving as Richard the Third. In the movie she kills, in the book she doesn’t. Her ruthlessness is captivating; a young woman without a conscience. In the novel she goes on to live her cruel life, in the movie she is arrested. Veda is completely free of principle and shame. She’s the monster we might want to be for one Halloween night.

Another villain is Waldo Lydecker in Vera Caspary’s novel, Laura. Again the book and movie blur. I remember him as a fat obsessive lurking antique dealer in the book. It is the villain acted by Clifton Webb in the film that I think is the best. He is urbane, loathingly honest, and brilliant in his brutal wit. A man who prides himself on the best and the perfect, except he makes one very human mistake and falls in love. Wanting to obliterate his love object, and with her all his human emotions, he kills the wrong woman. Another controlling monster disguised as a seductive charmer.

As villains go I find Gutman more interesting than “Miss Wonderly” in The Maltese Falcon. She’s clever in an instinctive ruthless way, but he is sophisticated and knowledgeable. I’m a pushover for a villain who is philosophical about what he has to do to get what he wants.

Hannibal Lecter is one of the best villains ever. He has all the characteristics I’ve already mentioned and more. He is King Richard The Third on steroids. It is also his relationship with the protagonist Clarice Starling that gives him a human dimension. Without these two beautifully drawn characters The Silence of the Lambs would just be another good serial killer novel. And I never would have read it.

The villains in Chandler’s work don’t stand out to me in any grand way, except for Moose and Velma in Farewell, My Lovely. Moose is the exact opposite of the brilliant witty villains. He is an animal. He only knows how to get what he wants by being a brute; yet in that enormous frame is a heart and it yearns for Velma. He has to find her. Again, love for a woman is his downfall. Moose is a poignant thug. Velma is the epitome of the villainous woman of Chandler’s time. “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

Velma is running from her past and is struggling to keep her position as a wealthy man’s wife. Even in Los Angeles you can’t change who you are completely. There is always somebody to search you out. Together Velma and Moose make one fascinating villain.

There are so many good evil characters I could on and on, and I’m sure you all have your favorites.

If you’re a new struggling writer having trouble with your plot take a good hard look at your villain. See what he wants (villains are very goal- directed), figure out why he wants it, and how he can get it. Your plot will begin to gel. Remember, the villain moves the story.

The actress Yvette Vickers has died. She starred in two 1950s horror cult films: “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leaches.” She was a Playboy Playmate, had an affair with Cary Grant and a 15-year relationship with Jim Hutton, who played Ellery Queen in the TV series of the same name.

“Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” is one of those movies that is so terrible it’s perversely good. Vickers played the town slut seducing a married man. The jealous wife somehow gets tangled up with an alien from outer space who immediately turns her into a fifty-foot woman wearing a very skimpy outfit. The giant of a wife can now seek revenge and does. Vickers dies in the movie. The same exact scenario happens in “Attack of the Giant Leaches”, except she’s killed by enormous bloodsuckers.

In the Los Angeles Times obituary of Vickers, she is quoted as saying, “I did want to play other kinds of parts and to go on into bigger pictures . . . but these things just eluded me.”

A neighbor, Susan Savage, also an actress, found Yvette Vickers’ mummified body in her Benedict Canyon home. The space heater was still on and she may have been dead for as long as a year. According to the obituary, Savage noticed that Vickers’ “mailbox [was] filled with old letters.” Savage went on to say, “She kept to herself, had friends and seemed like an independent spirit. To the end, she still got cards and letters from all over the world requesting photos.” Other residents on the street said they had not seen Vickers since last summer.

In an email to the Los Angeles Times, Alan K. Rode, film historian, wrote that Vickers “proved to have the perfect look for a 1950s drive-in films, along with episodic television.”

According to the obit, “Vickers was married at least twice and had no immediate survivors.”

This is one of the best obituaries I have read in a long time. It unintentionally captures the perfect Hollywood story. Yes, this sad, even humiliating plot has been told many times, but it still fascinates me. Little gems abound. Vickers was found in a mummified state. She ended as she began in the horror genre. Her next-door neighbor is also an actress who refers to Vickers, in a very Hollywood way, as a “free spirit.” Meaning she was a lonely old woman and nobody thought enough about the woman to check on her until a year later.

The obituary writer states, “ . . . but for a time she was better know for her 15-year relationship with Jim Hutton and her affair with Cary Grant.” Stardom did not rub off on her. The men she did marry are not named in her obituary probably because they were not famous.

The film historian tromps in and puts Vickers right back where she never wanted to be in the first place: “ . . . she had the perfect look for 1950s drive-in films . . .”

I was teenager when I first saw “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman.” And I remember giggling with my girlfriends during the movie. But the image of a woman, played by Allison Hayes, who could be so powerful and threatening stayed with me. Yvette Vickers, who played the home wrecker (there were many such roles in the 1950s), didn’t.

Listing what Vickers might think were her failures, this obit is riddled with Hollywood cruelty. Yvette Vickers’ mummified body, warmed by a space heater, is an example of how quickly they forget.