Three years after everyone else has read it, i finally catch up with
The Faculty Of Terror, crashing through it in two sittings and feeling far better for the experience! "A horror anthology film in print" is how the author describes it, which fortunately, renders any attempt of mine to nail it better as superfluous, so lets just wade straight into a plot outline and hope some insightful comments suggest themselves as i hack away.
Paul Dearden, recently discharged from hospital after an extended stay, is still deeply uncomfortable in the company of others and when he receives the invite to a dinner at his old University, his inclination is to ignore it to death. This doesn't work and, having somehow arrived punctually on the night, he is dumped upon the boorish Marcus Webster and his rather more palatable wife, Rosemary. Paul reckons he can handle the event just so long as he's not called upon to be a witty conversationalist. Luckily, Marcus won't let him get a word in edge-ways and, during his increasingly macabre monologue, reflects on the recent incident on the seventeenth floor of an otherwise unoccupied office block overlooking the campus. You must have read about it - made quite a splash in the papers. Having heard Marcus out, Paul finds himself seated for dinner alongside three jovial fellows, Dr. David Twombley, Derek Marley and Malcolm Upchurch, each of whom, coincidentally, have their own strange and horrible tales to tell. Even Professor Hayes begins his address with some fanciful yarn about haunted portraits. Finally, his confidence fortified somewhat by the fact that tonight hasn't quite turned into the social catastrophe he'd dreaded, Paul manfully addresses the crowd with his own sorry tale of misery, revenge and retribution ....
Overtime: Violent, nasty opener as the past finally catches up with the unlovely Patricia and Monica, the twin terrors of the typing pool. The ensuing bloodbath is a stroke of good fortune for potential
Apprentice candidate Emma Winguard. Who would have believed that she'd have a far better paid, interesting new career to wake up to in the morning? Notable for it's imaginative if improbable use of office supplies as instruments of torture,
Overtime would not be out of place in a mid-late period Van Thal
Pan Book Of Horror Stories.
Asphyx In Glass slows things down with the sad and relatively gentle tale of Simon Jefford who is haunted by a face seemingly trapped in the window of an abandoned warehouse where his father met his death.
A Family Affair, set in Calcutta, pits a ruthless English villain Guy Finch versus evil surgeon Dr. Rohault who manufactures cripples to order, deformed children making for by far the most profitable beggars. Finch wants Rohault to reconstruct his wife, Margaret's disfigured face as it was slashed to ribbons by his brother David when he found out the bit Guy had been seeing on the side happened to be his wife. With three sadistically inclined total bastards on the scene the potential for amputation fun and games is there for all too see and Mr. Probert isn't about to waste it. Horribly hilarious, and my favourite up to this point but we've still a way to go.
Much quieter, although equally nasty after its own grim fashion is
Set In Stone wherein twenty-somethings Rachel and Mark learn just why their lovely little cottage in the Wye Valley was available at such a ridiculously low cost when they find an ugly mural, hastily plastered over by a previous resident, disfigures the front room wall. Gradually we learn of an incident during the dissolution of the monasteries when a raid on nearby Langton Abbey revealed the atrocities of the degenerate Monks who'd been conducting inhuman experiments behind its doors for decades, eating dead folk too. For some bizarre reason, this one put me in mind of
Rosemary's Baby - just minus the kid and with a far more despondent ending.
The States Of The Art: And now we're across the border at Edinburgh's Robertson Gallery with Massene Henderson, Investigator of the Paranormal, and his plucky sidekick Samantha Jephcott (Mr. Probert's answer to
Francis St. Clare & Frederica Masters: I don't want to make too big a deal of the Chetwynd-Hayes comparisons as, judging by the response his name often evokes on here, that might not be such good news for JLP's sales, but it's fair to say that Mr. Monster Club's ghost certainly haunts these pages as surely as do those of Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg). Mass and Sam are hired to solve the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Jennifer Parsons and her daughter, Sophie, who, according to the testimony of Mr. Parsons, were dragged into a grotesque painting by one of the tentacled, pig-like monstrosities depicted on the canvas. Mr. Parsons is currently residing in a hospital bed, presumably under the influence of powerful sedatives, but we shouldn't read too much into that as he's telling the truth. This story, told by Professor Hayes, the Dean of the Faculty, is more whimsical than unpleasant but no less fun for that, 'specially Samantha's idle reminiscences on an ex- boyfriend with the Warrior Queen fixation and what happened to the costume ....
The Kreutzenberg Sonata: So, we finally get to hear the story of Paul's life and he's not so much everyman as everyloser. A gifted pianist, Paul fell in with the wrong crowd at University, although he didn't realise his fatal misjudgement until much later. Roger Tindall, Ballard Scott and Fergus Dunkley were sharp dressed bird pullers even then, success written all over their smug faces. He never really understood why they let him hang around with them, and bore their habitual sneers and insults with timidity as to stand up to them would likely see him cast out into the social wilderness. At least they let him play in their band, even used his songs although, as they never tired of reminding him, they were hopeless. But after that appalling night when matters came to a head and he'd blown his girlfriend and his degree, Paul took a knife to his wrists. Poor sod couldn't even do that properly. The surgeons performed heroics and, eventually, he was able to play again, bumming around all over the map until finally, he arrived home in England. So when a sassy girl in a pub, Amy, seemingly takes a shine to him and invites him to take her clubbing, he's happy to oblige even though he detests such places. F**king weird: how comes he recognises the number one record by manufactured pop Princess Kayleigh when he never listens to the charts? Hell, he
wrote those lyrics! Yes, Tindall, Scott and Dunkley, recent gatecrashers of the "40 richest people in Britain!" list, are currently enjoying obscene success as a music industry conglomerate - and all off the back of his "sh*t" songs.
Needless to say, all of Paul's anger and frustration curdles inside him and, in a creepy junk-shop presided over by a skeletal, frock-coated, wispy haired old relic by the name of Joseph Kreutzenberg, he secures the perfect medium for his revenge - but at what cost?
That's what he's going to tell you!
And after that - in the great tradition of
Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors and
Tales From The Crypt, the inevitable, thoroughly satisfying doom-laden finale. We leave the Dean pondering which hapless souls he should invite along next time ....
