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Post by dem bones on Nov 25, 2007 9:16:48 GMT
Peter Haining (ed) - The Midnight People: Being Eighteen Terrifying and Bizarre Tales of Vampires (Leslie Frewin, 1968; Popular Library, 1970; Ensign, 1974; Everest, 1975) Introduction - Peter Haining
Montague Summers - Fritz Haarmann ‘The Hanover Vampire’ Augustus Hare - The Vampire of Croglin Grange John Polidori - The Vampyre Thomas Preskett Prest - The Storm Visitor Bram Stoker - Three Young Ladies M. R. James - An Episode of Cathedral History August Derleth - Bat’s Belfry E. F. Benson - ‘And No Bird Sings’ Sydney Horler - The Believer - ‘Stephen Grendon’ (August Derleth) - The Drifting Snow Manly Wade Wellman - When It Was Moonlight P. Schuyler Miller - Over the River Richard Matheson - Drink My Blood Ray Bradbury - Pillar of Fire Basil Copper - Dr Porthos Robert Bloch - The Living Dead Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes
Postcript - Montague SummersThe Montague Summers extracts are an account of a notorious murderer and cannibal and Summers’ thoughts on ‘real’ cases of supernatural vampirism which he believed to be “hushed up” by the authorities. Hare’s famous account of the Croglin case also claims to be factual. Read The Storm Visitor (wrongly attributed to Prest: it was actually written by James Malcolm Rymer), the opening chapter from Varney, the Vampyre, and you’ll notice some alarming similarities between the two. Stoker’s Three Young Ladies is another extract, this from Dracula, where-in Harker encounters the Vampire brides. Manly Wade Wellman - When It Was Moonlight: An episode in the life of Edgar Allan Poe: Eddie, investigating a reported case of premature burial in Philadelphia, encounters the woman who survived the ordeal, Elva Gauber. His ensuing efforts to get to the truth about the incident almost costs him his life, but it does give him the germ of the idea for The Black Cat. Basil Copper - Dr Porthos: Famously bonkers Gothic yarn owing much to Poe and Lovecraft. when Angelina falls ill, her husband suspects that the physician who tends her is in some way to blame. A midnight attack, which leaves the patient bleeding from the neck, hints strongly as to the nature of her assailant. Narrator’s grim determination to keep his journal up to date whatever the circumstances recalls the anti-hero of C. M. Eddy’s The Loved Dead, and leads to an (intentionally?) ludicrous climax . Copper devotes an entire chapter to his story in The Vampire: In Legend, Fact And Art, but it’s by no means as convincing as his The Knocker At The Portico, with which it shares an almost identical plot. Richard Matheson - Drink My Blood: Jules is obsessed with vampires. He tells of his ambition to become one in a composition which he reads aloud to his teacher and terrified classmates (it reads like the outro to the Mothers of Invention’s Who needs the Peace Corps? if Zappa had been targeting phony Goths as opposed to phony Hippies) : “I want to live forever and get even with everybody and make all the girls vampires. I want to smell of death … I want to have a foul breath that stinks of dead earth and crypts and sweet coffins”. Eventually he kidnaps a bat from the zoo, names it ‘The Count’ and nicks his finger to feed it blood. His devotion is ultimately rewarded. Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes: “There are vampires and vampires and the ones that suck blood aren’t the worst …”The lethal beauty at the centre of this acknowledged classic is the Monroe-like projection of man’s desires made flesh. Dave, her photographer, finally learns her secret when he ignores her warning never to follow her when she leaves the studio … Sydney Horler - The Believer: Two Roman Catholic priests discuss the case of a man of whom everyone seemed to have an “instinctive horror”. When a terrible murder is committed leaving the victim minus most of her throat, the shunned individual confesses to Father ——, who is powerless to pass on the information to the police. ‘Stephen Grendon’ (August Derleth) - The Drifting Snow: Aunt Mary insists the curtains remain drawn after sunset. When Henry decides to open them, he sees two beckoning figures outside. It transpires that a servant girl froze to death on the Western slope after being dismissed from the house during a snowstorm. Robert Bloch - The Living Dead: World War II. Erich Karon, an ex-actor in the Paris Grand Guignol, is a Nazi collaborator. To keep the villagers away from Chateau Barsac, where three radio operators are holed up, he masquerades as the district’s vampire count of legend. With the advance of the allies, he realises the game is up and makes to abscond. But … Ray Bradbury - Pillar Of Fire: In the year 2349, dead people have been abolished. The last cemetery - at Salem - is being excavated, the bodies fed into the incinerator, the pillar of fire, by order of the Government who have outlawed morbidity. Disturbed during the excavation is William Lantry (1898-1933). Reanimated by sheer hatred, he declares war on this dreadful, soulless world in which “the living are deader than dead ever was”. Lantry commits the first murders in 300 years and blows up several of the incinerators then heads for the morgue and attempts to resurrect the dead. In one touching scene, he visits the library and requests something by Poe, only to be told by the assistant: “there is a red mark on the file card. He was one of the great burning of 2265″. As with Poe, so with Lovecraft, Derleth, Bierce, Machen, and co. Bradbury would return to this theme - society destroying imagination - throughout his career in the novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and such stories as Usher II and The Exiles. The last word to William Lantry: “That is the worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him what to do. If you say there are no such things as vampires, by God, that man will try to be one just for spite”.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 2, 2008 12:02:54 GMT
The Warner edition, retitled Vampires At Midnight (1993) is supplemented by an introduction by C. Lee (the usual 'did I ever tell you I met M. R. James anecdote) but otherwise it's business as usual. For the Haining biblio freaks among us, this confirms that there was an earlier US edition. "Published in the United States (as Vampires At Midnight) in 1970 by Grosset & Dunlap" Thanks to nightreader for this one too!
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Post by Steve on Feb 2, 2008 12:52:50 GMT
For the Haining biblio freaks among us, this confirms that there was an earlier US edition. "Published in the United States (as Vampires At Midnight) in 1970 by Grosset & Dunlap" And this is what it looked like; i30.photobucket.com/albums/c341/horrorinmyhead/VampiresAtMidnight.jpgVampires At Midnight (Formerly titled The Midnight People) Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1970Classy cover.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 2, 2008 13:37:08 GMT
Thanks for posting that, Steve. What I'm wondering now is was Vampires At Midnight his first book to be published in the US?
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Post by Steve on Feb 2, 2008 14:10:52 GMT
What I'm wondering now is was Vampires At Midnight his first book to be published in the US? Apparently not. By some accounts The Gentlewomen of Evil was published in the US by Taplinger in 1967, which would be the same year Robert Hale published it here. Can't be sure though. Popular Library published US paperbacks of The Evil People, The Unspeakable People and, as mentioned at the top of this thread, The Midnight People under its original title. You've given a date of 1970, but I've found earlier dates mentioned (1968 for Evil and Midnight, 1969 for Unspeakable) although these could refer to their original publication in the UK. i30.photobucket.com/albums/c341/horrorinmyhead/evil-1.jpgThe Evil People, Popular Library, New York, 1968?Doubleday did The Witchcraft Reader in, I believe, 1970. Not sure if this was before or after Grosset & Dunlap's Vampires At Midnight. Also The Satanists was published in the US, by Taplinger again, around the same time. Taplinger actually put out quite a few of his books in the early 70s. This might suggest that the 1967 date for their Gentlewomen of Evil is suspiciously early, as you'd expect them to be grouped more closely together.
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Post by weirdmonger on Feb 2, 2008 14:58:10 GMT
Sorry for the interpolation, but are you the Steve I used to regularly meet among a group of people in a Colchester pub some years ago? PS: (edit) I just noticed I've become a Slime Beast! des
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Post by Steve on Feb 2, 2008 15:16:55 GMT
Sorry for the interpolation, but are you the Steve I used to regularly meet among a group of people in a Colchester pub some years ago? PS: (edit) I just noticed I've become a Slime Beast! des That's it, des... rub your newly acquired slime in my lowly Devil's Coach Horse face! As far as I recall, I've never been to Colchester - so, unless I was very, very drunk at the time, it must have been some other Steve. (phew, that was close! I thought for a minute he was going to ask me for all those drinks I owe him...)
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Post by weirdmonger on Feb 2, 2008 15:29:01 GMT
Sorry, Steve. Your wonderful knowledge seems to be great on certain matters that the other Steve was similarly knowledgeable about! And sorry, too, for bringing my slime beast up. des
PS: Sorry, too, to everyone else for not using the off topic thread for this exchange. I'll get my cat...
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Post by Steve on Feb 2, 2008 15:43:54 GMT
...sorry, too, for bringing my slime beast up. That's alright, as long as you're going to clean it up before Dem gets back. Slime Beast stains are a bugger to get out of the carpet... And I don't think there's enough room to swing a cat in here, des... so no need to be so hard on yourself (or the cat, for that matter). Cheers!
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Post by dem bones on Feb 2, 2008 17:22:57 GMT
Taplinger actually put out quite a few of his books in the early 70s. This might suggest that the 1967 date for their Gentlewomen of Evil is suspiciously early, as you'd expect them to be grouped more closely together. Ok, Steve I'll see if I can find some more info on that. Taplinger published editions of Michel Parry and Hugh Lamb's anthologies too although, beyond the occasional cover scan, I don't think I've seen any copies.
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Post by justin on Feb 3, 2008 10:12:05 GMT
Beautiful Jeff Jones cover for that US edition. Once publishers stopped insisting Jones painted Frazetta knock-offs he really came into his own. His work always had a beauty and a feminine touch, as opposed to the bluster and balls of Frazetta.
Perhaps no surprise that a few years back he had a "gender realignment". Outside of this he has encountered money and mental health problems recently which shows that talent isn't always rewarded.
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Post by Calenture on Feb 3, 2008 13:42:01 GMT
Sorry, Steve. Your wonderful knowledge seems to be great on certain matters that the other Steve was similarly knowledgeable about! And sorry, too, for bringing my slime beast up. des PS: Sorry, too, to everyone else for not using the off topic thread for this exchange. I'll get my cat... Don't apologise to him; rub his nose in it.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 9, 2008 10:06:19 GMT
E. F. Benson - "... And No Birds Sing": Hugh Granger and wife Daisy live on the verge of a wood where-in lurks one of Benson's patented hairy, slug-like elementals. Although, as yet, no-one has seen this evil entity, Daisy and the dogs refuse to set foot beyond the edge of a particular clearing where the air hangs heavy with evil and no birds sing. Hugh confides to the narrator that every morning since he's lived there, he's had to clear away half-a-dozen tiny corpses from the knoll and "these rabbits have not been eaten. They've been drunk." The black slug doesn't restrict itself to these small-fry either, as his guest almost learns to his cost when he accompanies Hugh on a search and destroy mission and the thing extends a slimy protrusion: "There was something laid across my shoulder and neck which felt like an India rubber tube. The end of it fastened onto my neck like a snake, and I felt the skin rise beneath it .."
M. R. James - An Episode In Cathedral History: Mr. Worley, verger of Southminster Cathedral, narrates a terrible history that occurred back in his youth when a 15th Century tomb was discovered beneath the altar during unpopular renovations. Dr. Ayloff insists that he knows it is wrong to move the pulpit but, as in all things, Dean Burscough's will must be obeyed. Ayloff never returns to his beloved Cathedral and is among the early casualties that long hot summer when the disturbed inhabitant of the tomb preys upon the community with particular regard to members of the Choir.
A member of the local Antiquarian society visits the church to make sketches and almost loses her dress while passing too near the tomb while a friend of Worley's gets an unpleasant surprise when he slips a roll of sheet music under the slab only to retrieve it all covered in slime.
It's M. R. James so don't expect any kinky sex, torture by chainsaw or a breakneck pace, but this is an atmospheric, far creepier vampire tale than Count Magnus and well worthy of your patience. A classic of it's kind.
P. Schulyer Miller - Over The River: (Unknown, April 1941). Joe Labatie's family are cursed with the taint of vampirism and his wife rightly fears the worst when her loving husband goes missing on the mountains. Having kept himself alive on the blood of the owls, rabbits and deer he captures and tears apart, Joe finds his way home - and his woman goes the same way as the woodland creatures. Her brother and two companions discover the corpse and hunt Joe to the river which, of course, he cannot cross. The mist saps him of his strength and he stumbles into the water. The men approach, brandishing a stake and - this is the good bit - we get a vampire's eye view of the grisly business which follows.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 8, 2018 4:04:16 GMT
The Grosset and Dunlap cloth edition of this book, published under the title Vampires at Midnight, was one I think I received as a gift, possibly for a birthday. It would have been sometime in the early 1970s. I long ago lost possession of the book (it went with a bunch of others when my parents sold their house--I forget just why I was unable to go down and make some kind of attempt to bring away any books I might have wanted to keep). Life was rather peripatetic at the time so I think I just had to let the books go.
For a lark, I just acquired the original US paperback edition, dated on reverse t.p. 1968 but may have been '69 or '70--the 75 cent cover price leads me to suspect a post 1968 date.
As a teenager, I was unable to make any headway with Polidori's "The Vampyre," but I read it fairly rapidly today in bouts between taking care of various domestic chores. I was surprised to see a statement on the Internet Movie Database that a feature length version of this tale is scheduled for filming sometime this year. Presumably, the screenplay will bear only a passing resemblance--if that--to the original narrative, which is minimal and in outline, at this stage in the scheme of things, frankly banal. The main interest of the short story is historical. After a promising beginning, it quickly becomes obvious why Lord Byron made fun of the author's prose style to his face in front of his own friends. Lord Ruthven hardly exists as a character. The story shows a heavy influence from the "Gothic" style so popular during the late Georgian and Regency era. Nevertheless, despite what I have said, I did enjoy reading the story. It was really what started the whole vampire thing, and a major sub-genre of horror fiction. It's also interesting to observe that what there is of personality in Ruthven is apparently a projection of the author's love-hate homoerotic fixation on Byron. And evidently, Count Dracula in the 1897 novel is similarly a vividly realized projection of Bram Stoker's obsession with Henry Irving (his employer--as Lord Byron was of Dr Polidori). Makes one wonder why there have been so few gay vampire films (the ones I know about have been parodies or pastiches).
"Stephen Grendon" (August Derleth)'s "The Drifting Snow" is a workmanlike little tale. At times I felt as if I was reading a treatment for an episode of Boris Karloff's THRILLER series. There's one deftly noted touch of the sinister-sublime in the finale--mostly, it feels like writing produced under a deadline. The story in the book published under Derleth's own name could be described as pulp-camp, particularly when the ridiculously inept narrator finds a copy of the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth stowed away in the basement of his creepy old mansion. The ending shows a heavy debt to Lovecraft. But again--I enjoyed it. I don't bother writing about the ones I don't actually enjoy.
H.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Apr 9, 2018 12:36:09 GMT
E. F. Benson - "... And No Birds Sing": Hugh Granger and wife Daisy live on the verge of a wood where-in lurks one of Benson's patented hairy, slug-like elementals. Although, as yet, no-one has seen this evil entity, Daisy and the dogs refuse to set foot beyond the edge of a particular clearing where the air hangs heavy with evil and no birds sing. Hugh confides to the narrator that every morning since he's lived there, he's had to clear away half-a-dozen tiny corpses from the knoll and "these rabbits have not been eaten. They've been drunk." The black slug doesn't restrict itself to these small-fry either, as his guest almost learns to his cost when he accompanies Hugh on a search and destroy mission and the thing extends a slimy protrusion: "There was something laid across my shoulder and neck which felt like an India rubber tube. The end of it fastened onto my neck like a snake, and I felt the skin rise beneath it .." M. R. James - An Episode In Cathedral History: Mr. Worley, verger of Southminster Cathedral, narrates a terrible history that occurred back in his youth when a 15th Century tomb was discovered beneath the altar during unpopular renovations. Dr. Ayloff insists that he knows it is wrong to move the pulpit but, as in all things, Dean Burscough's will must be obeyed. Ayloff never returns to his beloved Cathedral and is among the early casualties that long hot summer when the disturbed inhabitant of the tomb preys upon the community with particular regard to members of the Choir. A member of the local Antiquarian society visits the church to make sketches and almost loses her dress while passing too near the tomb while a friend of Worley's gets an unpleasant surprise when he slips a roll of sheet music under the slab only to retrieve it all covered in slime. It's M. R. James so don't expect any kinky sex, torture by chainsaw or a breakneck pace, but this is an atmospheric, far creepier vampire tale than Count Magnus and well worthy of your patience. A classic of it's kind. P. Schulyer Miller - Over The River: ( Unknown, April 1941). Joe Labatie's family are cursed with the taint of vampirism and his wife rightly fears the worst when her loving husband goes missing on the mountains. Having kept himself alive on the blood of the owls, rabbits and deer he captures and tears apart, Joe finds his way home - and his woman goes the same way as the woodland creatures. Her brother and two companions discover the corpse and hunt Joe to the river which, of course, he cannot cross. The mist saps him of his strength and he stumbles into the water. The men approach, brandishing a stake and - this is the good bit - we get a vampire's eye view of the grisly business which follows. I first read "An Episode of Cathedral History" in The Midnight People. I clearly remember reading it in a bus when it was raining outside. I think it's M.R. James's best story by far. It's certainly his most substantial and eventful.
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