Hollywood dominance argues that horror films should be filled with nubility. And that Asian filmmakers should scare us out of our skulls before their films are genially reprised. The Pinoy contribution to all this? Catholic guilt. Now that’s bone-chilling . . .

People everywhere love spine-tingling, hair-raising horror stories, which over the last century have been made even more enjoyable through the magic of the silver screen.

But film aficionados will notice there are differences in the horror films of different countries. Western films concentrate on the ghosts of humans wronged in life (usually rejected by women) who later come back, ever vengeful, with bloody, flesh-baring (emphasis on the latter) murder scenes. Occasionally, you do get tearjerker stuff like Ghost that capitalizes more on unrequited love, the need for a second  chance.

Then you have the “etceteras”: assorted vampires and werewolves resurrected from older tales for more contemporary urban settings and technologies. I love True Blood, where the vampires feast on synthetic Made-in-Japan blood. (What next? Made-in-China plasma substitutes with horror sequels coming out of shoddy manufacturing?)

Frankenstein films were popular, too, at one time, but have evolved, as well. The original was fabricated out of human parts, but his children in modern cinema have become cyborgs—half-human, half-machines. These have dislodged the supernatural as the source of horror, showing how the Western horror film is preeminently tongue-in-cheek, playing on our old fears and mixing them in with the new, including the ambivalence about technologies.

Shift now to our part of the world. East Asian films, notably from South Korea and Hong Kong, are gaining cult followings with films showing hungry ghosts. These are different from the chainsaw-massacre-type films of the Americans, but will match the gore, limb by limb, of the American B-movies. The hungry ghosts come out of East Asian (China, Japan, Korea) concepts of armies of ghosts who have been forgotten by the living. Traditionally, at least once a year, you’re supposed to offer the dead food, wine, cigarettes, and for good measure, fake money (cashable at the Bank of Hades), in case they want to go shopping or bar-hopping. Alas, there are poor creatures who the living have forgotten. So, every 7th lunar month (around August in the solar calendar), they’re let loose from the underworld to roam the earth, wreaking havoc, causing accidents and stock market crashes.

I suspect some future prime minister or head of the United Nations is growing up right now, under the tutelage of a Filipina yaya, learning about our aswang, as well as Darna.

There are variations on these tales, the Buddhist version being that these are souls of men and women who, in life, could never have enough. So, in death, they’re condemned to be forever hungry; I still remember one tale from a Buddhist nun about how these wretched creatures end up with bottomless guts: whatever they take in just goes out the other end, and so their hunger is never satiated, a perverse replication of their greed while living, except this time around, it causes bottomless misery.

Filipinos? Our horror menu is different from our neighbors. Christianity, unfortunately, put some limits on the dearly beloved departed. You die and you go on, preferably to heaven. Although there’s a theoretical possibility of Hell and Purgatory—the Vatican got rid of Limbo two years ago—no one but no one, even the most vile of politicians and business people, will end up there, thanks to the many novenas and indulgences and Mass cards that the dearly bereaved can cough up on their behalf.

That’s the Catholic way. The Protestants don’t have a Purgatory, but even those who are quite firm about fire and brimstone will be reluctant to admit a friend or relative might have been dispatched there.

Every town does still end up with a ghost or two, but usually they’re some hacendero missing the old ancestral home. Or, in the case of Baguio, former American administrators returning to their old, er, haunts.

Quezon City’s Balete Drive, Baguio’s Loakan Road, and other towns have their women in white, still weeping over an unfaithful husband or suitor. Gender relations are replicated even after death. Wait a few more years and we’ll hear stories of furious women ghosts returning, Maria Clara turned dominatrix, to torment their feckless husbands or boyfriends.

Generally, we’re comfortable with ghosts because we send them off to the next world with such long and elaborate wakes and funerals. (Mind you, though, in other Southeast Asian countries people will sometimes wait a year or two before cremating their dead, especially if they come from the aristocracy. A suitable cremation date has to be established, for the good not just of the family, but also of the entire community.)

Our ghost stories are benign, usually about the beloved dead returning and making their presence felt with that playful kalabit.  We humor them, although occasionally complain because when they hang around, they can cause illness, especially to children.

Our ghost stories tend to be limited, and I suspect that as cremation becomes more popular, we’ll hear less and less of the ghosts. There’s something about cemeteries that can’t quite be duplicated in the columbaria.

But, not to worry, from pre-colonial times, we have a strong sense of animism, defined by one anthropologist as: “When in doubt, it’s probably alive.” Everything probably has a spirit-in-residence, in addition to the traditional aswang, manananggal, tikbalang, kapre, engkanto, and impakto.    

We have an abundance of supernatural spirits, so much so we’re even exporting them now, courtesy of Filipino comic-book illustrators. I suspect, too, some future prime minister or head of the United Nations is growing up right now, under the tutelage of a Filipina yaya, learning about our aswang, as well as Darna.

Our horror films tend to be a potpourri, of ghosts as well as those other spirits I just named. The films have kept with the times, moving from more traditional creatures from folklore, but now tending to feature hybrids. Even our aswang are now mestizo, a combination of the more traditional manananggal and the Western vampire. The original aswang had long tongues that they shot out, like Spider-Man’s webs, to get into the victim’s liver. These days, the film versions have aswang flying around, like the originals did, but coming up sensually close to the victim and showing off their fangs before going for the jugular. I’m not complaining about the mutated versions. Don’t be surprised if you have future aswang talking on their cellphones while flying around.

The potentials are unlimited. My favorite mutations are the ghouls in Zsazsa Zaturnnah that inhabit the municipal cemetery, content with scaring the hell out of the occasional hapless victim who strays into their territory. But there is one scene in the movie where the ghouls turn on her boyfriend, a rather good-looking hunk. Instead of tearing him apart, the night creatures, all male, begin to strip him, and as he protests, we learn, oops, their idea about the carnal isn’t exactly what we used to hear about in traditional horror stories.