Stephen Jones (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Robinson, 1994)
Luis Rey
Mary W. Shelley - Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Ramsey Campbell - A New Life
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Creator
Basil Copper - Better Dead
Nancy Kilpatrick - Creature Comforts
Robert Bloch - Mannikins Of Horror
Daniel Fox - El Sueno De La Razon
Manly Wade Wellman - Pithecanthropus Rejectus
John Brunner - Tantamount To Murder
Guy N. Smith - Last Train
Peter Tremayne - The Hound Of Frankenstein
Graham Masterton - Mother Of Invention
Adrian Cole - The Frankenstein Legacy
Dennis Etchison - The Dead Line
Lisa Morton - Poppi’s Monster
Karl Edward Wagner - Undertow
Roberta Lannes - A Complete Woman
David J. Schow - Last Call For The Sons Of Shock
Brian Mooney - Chandira
Kim Newman - Completist Heaven
Paul J. McAuley - The Temptation Of Dr Stein
Michael Marshall Smith - To Receive Is Better
David Case - The Dead End
Jo Fletcher - Frankenstein [verse] Peter Tremayne - The Hound Of Frankenstein: Bosbradoe, Cornish coast. It begins with a terrified man being chased across the Bodmin moor by a massive hound, then cuts to a coach travelling the same route two nights later. The occupants of the carriage are Dr. Brian Shaw - a bloody Londoner, what with their fancy ways and all - and Ms. Helen Trevaskis who is on the verge of swooning because the pissed up driver is taking it so fast. Turns out he's terrified because strange things happen on these here moors - things some jumped-up Jessie from the smoke couldn't hope to comprehend - and this being Halloween night, too.
They arrive unmolested at
The Morvoren Inn where gloomy landlord Noall breaks the news that her father, Dr. Talbot Trevaskis, has gone missing and the villagers are too busy being superstitious to arrange a search party! Dr. Shaw happens to be Dr. T's new assistant, so he decides to go off and try to find him as this is as good a way as any to impress his new boss and, especially, Helen, who has already taken a shine to him. Learning from Noall
!!! that the doctor was last seen making his way toward 'the foreigner's place', Brian sets off. Reaching the secluded estate he's attacked by a grotesque, slobbering, bug-eyed, bow-legged hunchback and looks set to be strangled until the intervention of a tall, whip-wielding gent in black who calls the monster off. The stranger introduces himself as Baron Victor Frankenberg and explains that the misshapen fellow is Hugo, his servant, who moonlights as his guard dog ....
When next Brian meets them it's at the
The Morvoren Inn when Hugo comes in on an errand for his master. The locals get the poor brute drunk and make him dance for them. Hugo topples over next to Brian and Helen, who promptly faints. When she revives, she explains to the doctor that she'd recognised Hugo's mermaid tattoo.
The hunchback has her father's arm!. What can it all mean?
A mysterious stranger; a deformed assistant: hideous experiments and body-parts in jars: a dashing young hero and feckless heroine: hostile villagers: an alcoholic Priest; a 'Hound of the Baskervilles' clone ... in short, all your favourite
Frankenstein cliches recycled over a 60 page novel that reads like a comic strip. And it's brilliant.
Guy N. Smith - Last Train: Jeremy, 21 is the sheltered son of aged farming parents and his never having had a woman is beginning to drive him mad. Finally, he buys a ticket for an exhibition at Smithfield, an act of rebellion which damn near kills his mother. "London's no place for a boy on his own. Nor a woman. Nor anyone. It's full of drug addicts, muggers, murderers and ..." Well, if the word "prostitutes" is what she can't bring herself to say, she's thinking on the right lines as getting off with a streetwalker is Jeremy's solitary reason for making the journey. Trouble is, when he strikes lucky down an alley, he can't get it up and the tart waltzes off with his tenner. Gutted, and with his mother's dire warnings ringing around his head, Jeremy gets it into his head that he's being followed and runs to catch the last train, not even bothering where it's going as he's forgotten the name of his hotel. He's sharing a carriage with a weird guy and his two weirder women who ogle the protrusion in his trousers. "Copulation is the strongest urge known to mankind. Greater even than the will to survive.
Stronger than death. I have proved it unequivocally!" declares the gent, as you would to a complete stranger. He then offers Jeremy a freebie with his two nympho Brides Of Frankenstein then and there! Soon the gals are going at it hammer and tongs, but their mad doctor of a pimp got his "copulation" calculation all wrong. There is an even stronger urge, and he and Jeremy are about to learn it to their cost.
Ramsey Campbell - A New Life: A man drowns in the Danube while attempting to rescue a little girl. He awakens on a slab in a darkened cell, bandaged from head to toe and discovers to his horror that his mind no longer has any control over his body. Two men enter the room, the first a young, sad looking fellow, the second, a hunchback, cowled and brandishing a torch. The man on the slab learns that he has been the donor in an unsuccessful brain-transplant operation. Baron Frankenstein mopes over another failure.
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Creator:
"That goat was a good friend to me ..."Unemployed Charlie puts the skills he's learned as an apprentice butcher and petrol pump attendant to good use when he decides to create a modern Frankenstein monster. He turfs his grandad out of his coffin on the eve of his funeral, decapitates a goat, pinches the wheels off a go-cart and, after much burning of the midnight oil, unleashes 'Oscar' on an unsuspecting Uncle George and Aunt Matilda ("It's all this television. Sets the young a bad example. What with
Z Cars and that awful bald-headed man who will ruin his teeth with lollipops, it's a wonder we aren't all murdered in our beds.") .... whereupon RCH seems to have run out of ideas what to do with the story.
Kim Newman - Completist Heaven: The narrator, quite possibly the most obsessive horror film buff in history, blows his redundancy on a satellite that can pick up every programme ever transmitted and - in the case of Channel 1818 - films that only exist in the viewer's imagination. As he desperately tries to fill index cards for all these new monster movies they're showing - a particular favourite is the "lost" Isla,
Frankenstein Meets The She-Wolf Of The SS. Best Globeswatch moment: "Dyanne Thorne, a couple of melons down the front of her SS major's uniform, tortures someone in black and white ... It's definitely Dyanne Thorne (once seen, those melons are unmistakable)" - his biscuit supply (sole means of sustenance) is exhausted, he stinks of excrement and is doubtless dying of thirst, but he can never leave the room for fear of missing something.
David J. Schow - Last Call For The Sons Of Shock: The studios spat them out once they'd revived the industry and now we catch up with Blank Frank, belting out the Cramps and Bauhaus tracks at the Un/ Dead club as he awaits the arrival of his old friends, The Count and Larry. It can be a painful business, this reminiscing on past glories while trying to pretend everything's rosy in the here and now, but even though the reunion ends prematurely, at least Blank Frank has settled on a plan of action.
Schow's writing is, as ever, very rock 'n roll, but even The Haunted's
D.O.A. can't drown out the poignancy to this one.
If you want more, read Steve's far better reviews on the old forum
HERE.