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Post by dem bones on Nov 4, 2007 15:32:08 GMT
Herbert Van Thal - The 18th Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1977) Carolyne L. Bird - Meat Patricia Highsmith - The Bravest Rat in Venice Judith Eleanor Green - Quod erat Demonstrandum Jane Gregory - Belvedere’s Bride Myc Harrison - The Coffin Flies Norman P. Kaufman - Rest in Peace Monica Lee - Stevie Samantha Lee - The Island of the Seals Maureen O’Hara - The Atheist Alan Temperley - The Boy With Golden Eyes Charles Thornton - Double Puppet Rosemary Timperley - The Unknown Caller Barry Tonkin - The Fly-eater Harry E Turner - It’s HungryCarolyn L. Bird - Meat: Old Petrovsky has a variety of stories as to how he lost his arm. The version he tells a young Scottish lad concerns an encounter with a wolf-pack as he fled from the church he'd just looted. Well written, just not particularly scary IMO. Patricia Highsmith - The Bravest Rat in Venice: The vicious Mangoni boys capture and torture the rat, blinding it in one eye and cutting off two of it's legs. The rat escapes into the canal and we follow it's adventures until, several months and many scrapes later, it arrives back at the Mangoni house - where the same little lads take it prisoner again. This time the plucky rodent gets loose in the house. While the family are out gallivanting, their baby-sitter makes a horrible discovery ... Charles Thornton - Double Puppet: The tragic demise of veteran Music Hall ventriloquist Arthur Day and his doll, Boris. At least they go out on a career high. Norman P. Kaufman - Rest in Peace: You've finally retired from your soul destroying job. You're luxuriating in the sun when some selfish young woman has to spoil it all by getting herself mangled in a sports car. You're the only one who can save her. Or you could just say "sod it." Barry Tonkin - The Fly-eater: Writer of occult literature meets librarian who eats flies. That's it. Judith Eleanor Green - Quod erat Demonstrandum: An aspiring author encounters another unhelpful librarian. He's after a book that details the effect of a missile on the human cranium. Jane Gregory - Belvedere’s Bride: Cornwall. Clare, blind from birth, retains her sight shortly after her 18th birthday. The reclusive marine biologist Belvedere, who has sheltered her from the outside world for all these years, explains to her that she is "different" from everybody else and shows her a mirror to prove it. She is only too glad of his marriage proposal, very charitable in the circumstances. Harry E. Turner - It's Hungry: Ever since he returned from Borneo, Salaman has eaten compulsively - but he never puts on any weight. Between them, Doctors Turner and Fabrizzi solve the riddle of his condition. Can they save him? The best so far and some neat swipes at Harold Robbins paperbacks, but ... You've doubtless realised that, like #16, this one is dominated by the London Management crew. I think it's fair to say that it is not the high watermark of the series. Thanks Franklin
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 2, 2008 14:28:18 GMT
How about 'Stevie' by Monica Lee - very long but very very unpleasant. Contains one of the most evil characters created for a Pan story. Very decadent story too, loads of sex and seduction. No spoilers, but has a truly horrifying revelation towards the end!
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2008 21:59:58 GMT
My favourite from #18 (never got around to typing up the notes and now i've lost them ) is Alan Temperley's The Boy With Golden Eyes: It's a difficult one to tackle without ruining the shock, but there's a truly jaw-dropping moment when Mrs. Turnbull goes to give little Andy a kiss goodnight, he opens his eyes, and .... ... and now i'm gonna have to put Stevie on the impossible 'to read' list!
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 2, 2008 22:23:39 GMT
Ah yes, definitely please read 'Stevie' - maybe I have hyped it too much already (and it is a long one too) but it's really horrible, not so much in a gory sense, just very very twisted!
Could you put your views on here when you have read it, if that's OK?
Many thanks and all the best
Colin
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Post by dem bones on Sept 3, 2008 8:59:49 GMT
I've just reached Christmas and the pleasant surprise young James has prepared for the Stratton household, the little perisher! Many authors might have left it there, but there are still twenty pages to go. Monica Lee seemed to have a thing for these convoluted family histories (The Remains Of Reindeer). I like that her characters are so well drawn, even the relatively minor players like Aunt Lettice, embracing alcoholic oblivion in the squalor of her room and sending her nurse well down the same road. James is one creepy bastard. As his largely absent father puts it when the boy can only be around twelve: "Apparently our son is some kind of genius. I find him terrifying and macabre. I didn't know him before today - and now that I do, I will try to forget him". And off he promptly sets on another of his explorer jaunts!
Maybe some more once I've finished it but so far, so ghastly.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 3, 2008 12:01:36 GMT
I quite like Volume 18. 'Boy with the Golden Eyes' is superb but sadly led me to reading all of Mr Temperley's other series entries which were nowhere near on an imaginatory par with this one.
'It's Hungry' is another great Harry E Turner moment - giant tapeworm and all!
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Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 3, 2008 16:11:02 GMT
And I've only just realised - 'Jane Gregory' is old Harry as well!
I bet Johnny Allthingshorror already knew that.
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Post by benedictjjones on Sept 4, 2008 10:55:23 GMT
why do i know the name 'Patricia Highsmith'??
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Post by Dr Terror on Sept 4, 2008 20:48:18 GMT
Probably from The Talented Mr Ripley, Ben.
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Post by benedictjjones on Sept 4, 2008 21:08:39 GMT
^cheers!! it was bugging me all day once i asked the question.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 5, 2008 5:04:14 GMT
Finished Stevie and rate it very highly indeed! Sadly, you'd never know it from this deadly dull synopsis. The main problem is that, for all the sexual shenanigans and bizarre going's-on, it doesn't sound particularly horrible without explaining exactly what has happened to the little boy, so this tedious post is here purely to jog my memory in case I'm ever asked if I've read it. Just ignore and read something else! Monica Lee - Stevie: Chantry Hall on the Yorkshire Moors in late 1970 and two-year old Stevie has gone missing while the master of the house is off on one of his expeditions. The boys mother, Rosalie Stratton, her faithful retainer and sometime lover Amos Hawk and poor old Nanny Donnan are sick with worry, but James Stratton is taking it all in his stride. James is Stevies thirteen year old brother, an unschoolable child prodigy who prefers to educate himself via the vast family library. He counsels his mother that she ought to prepare for the worst, and he should know, having inside knowledge of the facts behind Stevie's disappearance ... Come Christmas and, by way of a nice surprise for his mum, James produces Stevie or, at least, some semblance of him, and Nanny's heart gives out on the spot. We've known about his hobby from early in the story but to reveal it here would be a spoiler too far. Incapable of handing the mad little bastard over to the Police, Rosalie resolves to wait for her husband Anthony to return home from his adventures as he'll know what to do and in the meantime she'll hire a tutor for James to stop the school governors sniffing around. So they hire Miss Lacey Dawson on the strength of her impeccable - albeit utterly bent - references. Miss Dawson is late of the Mount Averille Young Ladies Boarding School where her extracurricular activities included mounting an friendless, ugly teen heiress and getting her to part with a substantial cut of her fortune. When the unhappy girl obligingly commits suicide once Lacey dumps her, a neat flourish of her blackmailing skills sees to it that she's barely implicated in the ensuing scandal and the vacant situation at Chantry Hall suits her fine. James is well up for being seduced and soon the pair are conspiring versus the rest of the house. Rosalie and Amos want her out but James is having none of it: he's too busy sorting another of his special productions for Rosalie's birthday. Which is exactly when Anthony reappears on the scene ...
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 5, 2008 20:06:36 GMT
As Agent Dale Cooper might have said, were we currently residing in Twin Peaks, 'That's a Damn fine synopsis' - Stevie is an all time classic amongst the Pan 'epics' As those of you (all of you actually) who have been so kind and friendly and tolerated my incessant babbling since I joined up on here a mere three days ago will know, I am working my way through Pan 24 and doing a review thread separately. It's Friday night, just after 21.00 gmt, I've had a bottle of vino and a nice dinner, so I'm now going to settle down and read 'Love On The Farm' which is notorious aroundhere and is the only story I remeber from when I first read Pan 24 back in - but hey, that's for another thread.
Cheers, from Colin
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Post by Scott Wood on Sept 30, 2008 13:48:20 GMT
'Stevie' is my favorites in this collection, again, it is a perverted pleasure.
I didn't rate this collection over all though, I have to say...
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Post by Nightmare on Nov 18, 2012 14:32:57 GMT
I just finished reading this book and it was worth it.
I'll admit I purchased the book mostly for the Stevie story. It was a good tale, but the ending seemed a bit underwhelming.
The Boy With Golden Eyes happened to be another story I enjoyed due to the descriptions.
As for The Unknown Caller, I'm not quite sure what one character meant by ''twigging.''
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Post by charliegrenville on Jul 6, 2014 9:43:01 GMT
Just read STEVIE. For a story that long, it only took me about an hour to whip through.
I agree with previous comments- great plot, interesting concept, would have made a good film (Susan Hampshire or one of the Heilbron sisters in female lead maybe?) but peters out a bit towards the end, with a very prosaic final two paragraphs and some frankly unbelievable dialogue earlier that would be more at home in a Victorian tale. Oh, and a nice touch re the police asking "Are there any hippies nearby" when investigating a possible kidnapping. How times have changed...
The other Ms Lee, Samantha, also scrubs up nicely with an evocative tale of the Scots supernatural in ISLAND OF THE SEALS. I used to go out with somebody like the main female character...
THE FLY EATER, on the other hand, is very descriptively adept, but lacks anything to actually make it make sense. Bloke lives on his own, collects occult books, and for some never explained reason, has a massive tongue like Gene Simmons, and eats flies. And that's it.
BELVEDERE'S BRIDE also remains a resolutely gruesome and haunting piece of work, but even that strikes me as too derivative of Chetwynd Hayes' THE MONSTER. One gets the feeling that, despite the occasional flash of brilliance and inspiration, by the time Bertie got to this anthology (and its predecessor) enthusiasm was running out- he was, let's face it, 74 by now and presumably rather fed up. It was also 1977 and the likes of Herbert, King, Masterton and Smith had redrawn the horror map considerably. The pulp thrills that had ensnared a zillion playgrounds like some horror ancestor of Panini cards in the late 60s weren't so thrilling by the late 70s. I know it sounds ridiculous in today's 1000mph world, but in those days, a decade was a lifetime....
Yet, he persevered- and by the 19th, he'd hit top form again. So anything's possible...
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