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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 13, 2011 9:31:21 GMT
The Man Who Knew Women. The only story in this collection not taken from Weird Tales (it's from The Saint Mystery Magazine) and it's a little bit of a clunker, frankly, not least because of its groan-inducing ending. Short, balding Luis Manuel masquerades as womanising Lou Manning, who specialises in marrying "middle-aged old bags" and murdering them once he's sure he's got their money. His latest, Bessie pegs it from an overdose of digitalis, but Luis has reckoned without her brother Bert and gets his come-uppance via the man's rather unexpeceted nightclub act.
"Lizzie Borden Took An Axe..." ...because she was possessed by something nebulous dark and evil in her old farmhouse, according to this, which does boast a few axe murders (Bloch did rather like using axes in his stories, almost as much as dime store psychology). Neat ending, too.
The Devil's Ticket. Now we're cooking again. Cape-wearing down on his luck artist Hector Vane takes his latest work to the pawn shop only to be greeted by the devil who strikes a bargain with him - paint the best portrait he can, one that captures the subject's soul, and come back with it within 90 days or the devil's going to keep Hector's. "Oh," says the devil "and watch out for women - they work for me, you know". And it's that that provides the rather awkward twist at the end of this one, but it's still a nice, very Amicus - feeling story.
The Bogey Man Will Get You. See Mr D's notes above. This was adapted for Darkroom and hasn't really lost anything in the translation.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 18, 2011 10:28:38 GMT
I found an okay priced copy and lucked out with a very nice copy.
I read half of the stories,. Started with the Marquis of course and couldn´t help thinking how utterly different this story would be written today. This is really the children´s version of the Marquis. It works fine, no doubt, but it is so hard nowadays to conjure up DeSade as this evil mythological beast of terror. This guy is an extreme case of where the shadow of the mouse got as big as the Everest. I have just ordered a bio to read him up.
This was really a more innocent era. But I liked how good Bloch summoned up his bio in a few words.
Tailor was also a lot of fun and had so much more edge than the movie version Always astounding how much they softened the stuff for the movies.
But the most mature and well written story for me was the Devil´s Ticket. For such a basically predictible plot there were a lot of good twists, also some sharp observations on life.
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Post by David A. Riley on Feb 18, 2011 10:47:03 GMT
Started with the Marquis of course and couldn´t help thinking how utterly different this story would be written today. This is really the children´s version of the Marquis. It works fine, no doubt, but it is so hard nowadays to conjure up DeSade as this evil mythological beast of terror. This guy is an extreme case of where the shadow of the mouse got as big as the Everest. I have just ordered a bio to read him up. This was really a more innocent era. But I liked how good Bloch summoned up his bio in a few words. I loved that disregard for the full factual details of de Sade and his sexual obsessions, though it does make you wonder what kind of a film this story would have made if he hadn't.
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 18, 2011 12:20:08 GMT
it is so hard nowadays to conjure up DeSade as this evil mythological beast of terror. This guy is an extreme case of where the shadow of the mouse got as big as the Everest. I have just ordered a bio to read him up. I can recommend Philip Kaufman's film Quills if you want to see a more sympathetic view of de Sade (played brilliantly by Geoffrey Rush).
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Post by andydecker on Feb 19, 2011 11:00:39 GMT
I can recommend Philip Kaufman's film Quills if you want to see a more sympathetic view of de Sade (played brilliantly by Geoffrey Rush). This I missed as it was on tv. It had a really good cast. I only saw Marquis de Sade aka Dark Prince with Nick Mancuso and Janet Gunn of all people, which wasn´t very good.
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Post by markus1986 on Jun 24, 2011 18:30:39 GMT
The Skull, The Deadly Bees, Torture Garden, Asylum and The House That Dripped Blood are all available on DVD. The Psychopath has not been released in the UK or the USA. The DVD version of The Skull is a pretty good copy. The wires aren't that noticeable
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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 3, 2016 14:58:42 GMT
Recently watched a decent version of the film The Skull. It is slow, but the cast and the dreamlike atmos are terrific. Then was able to read Robert Bloch's original. Most enjoyable, and did he originate Milton's beloved Maitland? Marco is as described, nice to see original dialogue used and the dream sequence had a bit more oomph than the film. Good job they didn't have the skull climbing bedsheets in the motion picture.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 3, 2016 16:01:30 GMT
Most enjoyable, and did he originate Milton's beloved Maitland? It looks that way to me, even if Victor Rousseau's 'Francis Maitland' predates Bloch's unfortunate grim relic fetishist. See The Maitland File.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 4, 2016 8:28:11 GMT
Hee! Thanks Dem. Just started The Man Who Collected Poe. Am I correct in thinking this is also a parody/homage of/to Edgar Allan's style?
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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 4, 2016 19:40:37 GMT
I think so. Good story too. The film version is faithful. Enjoyed the storm.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 4, 2016 20:00:35 GMT
Hee! Thanks Dem. Just started The Man Who Collected Poe. Am I correct in thinking this is also a parody/homage of/to Edgar Allan's style? Most definitely. There's another along the same lines by Michael Avallone, The Man Who Thought He Was Poe, in that Sam Moskwitz anthology, A Man Called Poe. Given his prodigious output, surely Gregory Pendennis must have featured a Maitland in one of his black Sorcery novels?
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Post by bobby on Oct 5, 2016 22:40:08 GMT
I've got two volumes of the Citadel / Twilight 'Complete Robert Bloch' (Vols 1 & 3 were all I could find so far) but I did hear that these aren't actually complete at all. Someone really does need to put together a proper exhaustive collection of his stuff, patchy stuff and all! By my reckoning the three volume Complete Stories ... resurrect ninety-seven of his shorts between them so, nice books to have but Citadel's claims of completism are way premature. Underwood-Miller, the original publishers of the series, told it like it is with their title, The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch. It would likely take at least another four/ five volumes to do the trick. Bloch complains about the retitling to "Complete" in his introduction to The Early Fears, and points out that none of the stories in The Early Fears are in those three volumes. There's only one story from the 1930's, then it skips ahead to 1943. Most of the stories are from the mid-1940's through the late 1970's. Since Bloch's death, six volumes of uncollected stories have been published (three volumes of The Lost Bloch, two volumes of The Reader's Bloch, and the Arkham House collection Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies), but there are still uncollected/unreprinted stories. Most of the "Lefty Feep" stories have never been reprinted, nor have most of his stories from the 1990's. (His final story, "Maternal Instinct", has only been published in an expensive small press anthology, Mondo Zombie.) One problem with trying to determine how many of his stories have been reprinted in collections is the duplication in his collections from the 1960's and 1970's. I have "Lucy Comes To Stay" in three of his collections (as well as three different anthologies). "The Cloak" seems to have been reprinted a lot as well.
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Post by bobby on Oct 5, 2016 22:44:45 GMT
I think the David Schow hardcover volumes were 'The Lost Bloch' and collected obscure and more minor Bloch pieces Oh, I thought it was more mainstream and biografical. I seem to remember reading that Schow became a good pal of Bloch in his last years and tried to feature his work whenever he could. I think the three volumes of The Lost Bloch were novella-length stories (and also non-fiction), while the two volumes of The Reader's Bloch were shorter stories.
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Post by bobby on Oct 5, 2016 22:48:19 GMT
The Skull, The Deadly Bees, Torture Garden, Asylum and The House That Dripped Blood are all available on DVD. The Psychopath has not been released in the UK or the USA. The DVD version of The Skull is a pretty good copy. The wires aren't that noticeable I have a "homemade" DVD of The Psychopath, but the print is so faded that at first I thought it was black & white!
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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 6, 2016 12:17:26 GMT
Have just begun Mannikins Of Horror. Top stuff. Dr Starr too. I know hordes of people dislike the Amicus version but I've a lot of time for it.
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