Etienne Aubin - The Terror Of The Seven Crypts

[dem bones]

Etienne Aubin - The Terror Of The Seven Crypts (Nel, April 1974)

"Did you actually believe I would trust my secret to trash like you? Fool! Not even scheming Marat ... not the pious Robespierre could keep me from what is rightfully mine! MINE - do you hear?

It was my plan to loot the churches, the palaces, the places of art. My idea to make it appear as if the rabble had destroyed everything in the fervour of their precious revolution ... All of this belongs to me now. Marcel Fournier! Not to France as the pigs thought."

At the tail end of the Revolution, Fournier has his ill-gotten treasure trove carted off to the deserted Chateau Deveraux. On his orders Jauvin has poisoned all the workmen who carted the loot through the woods and dumped their bodies in one of the seven vaults. Jauvin has underestimate just how greedy, cruel and insane Fournier really is and winds up buried in a second chamber.
All is going to plan until Fournier's horse breaks a leg as he rides back to the city (like any sadist worth his salt he leaves it to die in agony by the roadside) and he's forced to pass through the slums on foot. A young prostitute emerges from a doorway and tries to entice him inside, but after slapping her tits about for a time he gets bored and goes on his way. His pleasure wasn't on the house. The girl gives a whistle and a mob appears from the shadows. Fournier goes down, the peasants beat him to a pulp and get one of his eyes out and everything.

Bloody Hell! Chapter two has got plenty to live up to.

****

Can this really be the same version of 'Etienne Aubin' who wrote the execrable (if must have) [iDracula And The Virgins Of The Undead[/i][/url]? This one even has a plot!

A group of Royalist fugitives and their servants have taken up refuge in the Chateau, but somebody in a cloak is prowling around. One lady has already been abducted and crushed to death under a spiked grid and all the signs are that a number of minor characters will join her in meeting a grisly end.

Later

The single good eye spat forth its venom. Its hatred for normality.

I've finished it now (all 101 pages) and I have to admit, this is without doubt one of my favourite NEL's.

After the death of Madame Oudry (the aristo who got spiked), dashing Jacques Rolande, gallant officer of the King's Guard, assumes leadership of the small group. Beautiful young Royalist Derie Planchard (whose "magnificent breasts" get themselves into enough trouble to keep the Globeswatch committee occupied for hours) takes a shine to him and is already planning their futures together when a second member of their party is annihilated. It transpires that in the secret tunnel beneath the Chateau the seven crypts have been booby-trapped and the villain needs bodies to spring each one before he can get to the lovely loot! 'The Devil Of Paris' (for it is he) may owe much to the Phantom of the Opera, but he's a marvellous maniac from the Tod Slaughter school,, an "evilly monstrous" madman, all swishing cape and gloating chuckles. Sure, the dialogue is sub-Jules De Grandin and you know what's going to happen a few pages before it does, but this would probably make my list of indispensable NEL's without breaking sweat.

Its a pity that nobody at Hammer or possibly even Tigon had the wherewithal to film it. Costume drama, plenty of inventive-ish deaths, heaving bosoms - it could've been one of the greats!

The cover illo had earlier appeared on the front of Kurt Singer's Ghost Omnibus (Four Square, Nov. 1967)

[andydecker]

After getting it finally in a affordable copy I read this on a long train voyage.

Well, the verdict is so-so.

One could argue that this is horror light, more an quickly written historical with some tame exploitation thrown in. This is rather tame. Not even close on the violence level of say ... The Vikings or The Witches.

But it is quite entertaining if you like grand guignol and would have made a good movie at the time.

Of course you don´t dare to think half a minute about the plot because than this get´s rather silly. Too much reliance on abstruse coincidences.

Best bit was the pit with the crocodiles. We all know that these decadent nobles never spared any expense so crocs in revolutionary France, why not? But shouldn´t they be - well - dead after a few years of no food? But the timeframe here is rather wonky. The parts doesn´t make a lot sense if you see them as a whole.

And no way this was written by the writer of "Dracula and ..." Too coherent. Much too coherent.

[dem bones]

I've only just seen this, andy and have to agree with you about .... well, everything, really. Either 'Etienne Aubin' was one of the most versatile authors on the Nel roster or ... Seven Crypts was written by someone other than the fiend responsible for Dracula And The Virgins Of The Undead.

And thanks for the reminder about the crocs!

More Terror Of The Seven Crypt's comment from June-July 2006 on Vault mk. I (hence reference to Peter Haining still being with us).

Killercrab

Wow ! It's sounds massively pulpy - thanks for the tour Dem - excellent work examining Horror series no.1 !

Me want !!!

KC

Franklin Marsh

Sounds tops. But not in the same insane league as DATVOTU?? I'll have to look this one up.

pulphack

Been a while since I read this... sadly, think it may even have gone walkabout (moral: don't lend books unless you implant a tracking device in the spine).

According to Steve Holland in PPC3, both DVOTU and this are by Richard Allen. I haven't read the former, but I do remember this being full of great dialogue and atmosphere, and bugger all pace. Which doesn't strike me as very Moffat-like. Maybe it's the lack of obvious right wings ravings that threw me(!). Damn' fine little p/b though, and as I'm sure you're aware, any villain like Tod Slaughter is alright by me...

Meanwhile, back at Etienne St Aubin: I wonder if they really were by Moffat, or whether there has been some confusion, which would be understandable given his numerous pseudonyms and his propensity for drink? You've read it recently, and don't think it likely; I recall being surprised as it has the opposite literary values (I apologise for the foul language) to the usual Moffat.

So who would be the contenders?

demonik

Ha! I love a mystery!

I don't think there's too much doubt about Virgins of the Undead being a genuine Moffat. References to the wonders of a certain Canadian tipple every other sentence - "Heaven was a glass containing Hundred Pipers gently passing back and forth under my nose", etc. - are something of a giveaway.

I've not read that much by the man, but .... Seven Crypts is so different to any of the others ....

Maybe Justin could torture the truth out of Peter Haining over one of their cream cake sessions or whatever it is they get up to.