Arabella Randolph - The Vampire Tapes (Futura 1978)
If there's such a thing as a vampire novel equivalent of
Plan 9 From Outer Space then, chances are, this is it!
The story begins with a mass-murder at a Long Island mansion where earlier six people had gathered to hear the last will and testament of the reclusive Violet Court. All but one of those present are found hideously mutilated within the blazing building. The finger of guilt points toward Brigette Hoffman, Ms. Court's housekeeper, who is picked up wandering aimlessly near the scene of the slaughter in a state of catatonia. A cassette tape found in her pocket gives some indication as to how she got that way.
It transpires that, at the 'late' Violet Court's request, her benefactors were required to endure three tapes relating "a four hundred year saga of rape, revenge and black magic". To leave the room at any time during her exciting revelations means instant disinheritance, so the gold-diggers have no option but to sit through the lot. As our heroine was born Angela de Couer in sixteenth century England, there's a fair bit of catching up to do. We learn that, after her father came to grief at the hands of an Anti-Catholic lynch mob, Angela fled to France and hung around Paris for a few hundred years, over-seeing the Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon. She also conducted a fairly active social life, being abducted, inveigled into a Satanic cult, vampirised, tortured, etc, until she settled on an acting career. Returning to England after 350 plus years, she helps Stoker write
Dracula for a time, gets bored, so captures and kills Jack the Ripper instead. Finally, having decamped to America, she arranges her final gesture - the Will - as "an assault on mediocrity". It certainly is that!
This all sounds relatively sensible, I grant you, but that's just me being unable to do it justice. There is MUCH to recommend
The Vampire Tapes. From the middle onward, the book is all over the map. Bizarre lapses in logic and an entirely skewed time-line are definite plus points, but these pale against the entirely gratuitous rip-off of Poe's
M. Valdemar, and the outrageous climax to the will-reading. Characters are introduced for the solitary purpose of having somebody to destroy in the next paragraph; Angela/ Violet seems to adopt an entirely new personality ever page: And then, of course, there's the famous exclamation mark overkill to remind you how horrible it all is.
"There are sounds of human agony that should never be heard! The wrenching bellows that Soma emitted belong to a place beyond nightmares. His head immediately burst into a torch! The splattered kerosene blossomed on every spot it touched. In a wink, he was a roaring flame from head to foot. He lurched and screamed and crashed his way across the room!" 255 pages of this, and I read it in one sitting. Is there higher praise?
'Arabella Randolph' seems a bit too appropriate a name and indeed, the novel is copyrighted
Jack Younger, 1977, so if anybody has details on him I'd be grateful.
There are other contenders for the title of most ridiculous vampire novel. Greg Cox, writing in his annotated bibliography
The Transylvanian Library (Borgo, 1993), notes that this, Ken Johnson's novelisation of
Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula and John Nicolson's 1937 effort,
Fingers Of Fear all made the top 13 worst Horror books of all time as voted by
Twilight Zone readers. I've not yet had the pleasure of Nicolson's magnum opus, but I can vouch for
Zoltan being fairly terrible, although bad as it unquestionably is, it isn't particularly entertaining. They also overlooked Sydney Horler's
The Curse Of Doon which has the most stupid denouement of, possibly, any book, ever. And shouldn't Etiene Aubin have gotten a look in?
It will take something incredible of
Finger ... to take the place of
The Vampire Tapes in my heart. Highly recommended.
*******
According to
Ultimate Vampire List 'Arabella Randolph' is indeed none other than ... Jack Younger! But that doesn't help us much! Who
is Jack Younger and what other crimes against literature is he responsible for
The only Jack Younger I can find is a minor actor who starred in something called
Dinosaurus. It could be the same guy as the novel's dedication is:
To my favourite director - and drinking partner, Terence Fisher. God Bless.
