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Post by dem bones on Jan 22, 2009 22:56:30 GMT
Hugh B. Cave - Murgunstrumm And Others (Carcosa, 1977) Illustrations: Lee Brown Coye Some of the most grisly and chilling horror stories ever to appear in the pulps are collected here. Haunted houses, ravenous vampires, slobbering monsters, fiends human and inhuman, nights dark and stormy, corpses fresh and rotting. - Fantastic FictionForeword
Murgunstrumm The Watcher In The Green Room The Strange Death Of Ivan Gromleigh The Affair Of The Clutching Hand The Strange Case Of Number 7 The Isle Of Dark Magic The Whisperers Horror In Wax Prey Of The Nightborn The Ghoul Gallery The Cult Of The White Ape Maxon's Mistress Dead Man's Belt Boomerang The Crawling Curse Purr Of A Cat Tomorrow Is Forever The Brotherhood Of Blood The Door Of Doom The Death Watch The Caverns Of Time Ladies In Waiting Stragella Many Happy Returns The Grisly Death The Prophecy. Pure, unashamed pulp primarily culled from Cave's work for Weird Tales in the 'thirties with a smattering of his 'shudder pulps' to spice things up. As he explains in his foreword, Cave (1910-2004) commendably resisted the temptation to revise, clean up or otherwise interfere with the stories, so what you get are the warts-and-all originals in all their hideous glory. I first became a Murgunstrummpet when I picked up a copy of Peter Haining's Terror! A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines (Sphere, 1978) and was captivated by the John Newton Howitt covers for Horror Stories, Terror Tales etc. If these were depicting scenes from the actual stories, what on earth must such gems as Death Calls From The Madhouse and Thirst Of The Ancients be like to read? The answer, when I eventually found out, was that they're pretty much the equivalent of the video nasty: shocking in their day, but nothing much to trouble the censors in 2006. Murgunstrumm is perhaps a little heavy on vampire stories - but that ain't the whole deal by any means. Murgunstrumm: 'The Gray Toad inn is home to the ghoul Murgunstrumm and partner Marionaire - a vampire - who are renowned do away with any young woman they get their claws and fangs into. Only Paul and his fiance Ruth have ever escaped their clutches, but were each placed in an asylum when they told of their terrifying experiences. Paul is now on the run and has lured the psychiatrists who committed him to the Inn so that they can experience the horrors of the place first hand. Meanwhile, Ruth has affected her own escape and is heading for the same destination ... Prey Of The Nightborn: Peter Marabeck's wife, Jane, dies through the ravages of Morgu the vampire, thus becoming one of the undead. When Morgu then turns her attentions to Peter, Jane assumes the shape of a white wolf to protect him. Morgu isn't one to give up and bewitches Marabeck who accompanies her to the cavern under the abandoned quarry where her clan are gathered, one of them drinking the blood of a chained girl. Jane again comes to the rescue, this time brandishing a burning cross. They flee to the cemetery where, at his wife's request, Peter drives a silver knife into her breast and then plunges it into his own. As he lies dying, who should reappear but the gloating Morgu .... The Watcher In The Green Room: Anthony Kolitt has been on a five-day drunk since his wife left him. For some reason he’s started talking to a large bureau in his room and neighbour Bellini, a psychic, warns him against his morbid obsession lest he thinks what he fears into reality. We already suspect that Kolitt knows more about his wife’s disappearance than he’s letting on but still nothing quite prepares us for the gruesome apparition and bloody, mindless carnage that ensues. Stragella: A corpse-festooned lifeboat is adrift in the Indian Ocean. Miggs and Yancy, the only survivors of the tramp ship Cardigan are dying of thirst. Salvation seems at hand when they cross a fog-bound ship, The Golconda, but it proves to be derelict save for the skeletons of the crew ... until nightfall, and the arrival of Stragella, a beautiful Serbian vampire, and her undead accomplices Papa Bocito and Serannis. Miggs is soon drained of his blood but Yancy survives thanks to his tattoo ... The Cavern Out Of Time: John Grayson, a reporter, follows a tip off to visit Endonville, Kentucky and set up an interview with the Jules family for This America. An old hag grudgingly agrees to take him to them. On their way they meet a young girl, Judie. At sight of her, the crone leaps from the cart, sets about her with a whip and bundles her aboard. It transpires that she is one of the Jules clan attempting to escape. When they reach the colony, Judie is made to kneel with her wrists suspended from the ceiling while two women lash her (they really go in for whips in the shudder pulps). This time Grayson intervenes and is obliged to wed the girl for his trouble. These weirdoes are big on customs. After the ceremony, the girl is obliged to lie with 'the master', after which she and Grayson are expected not to make any fuss about being executed.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 20, 2009 22:38:19 GMT
The Strange Death Of Ivan Gromleigh: (Spicy Mystery, March 1937).
"She was breathing hard and her arrogant breasts swelled and collapsed, swelled and collapsed as if worked with a bellows ...."
That's Ellen, the beautiful young wife of Phillip Oden, an illustrator of horror paperbacks, who has just been pursued home from the Spiritualist meeting by an invisible being. Oden tries to persuade her that these 'spook meetings' are preying on her nerves, but neglects to mention that he too has heard phantom footsteps all around the house and, earlier that same night, he'd seen an ugly, twisted face leering in at him through the window!
Philip has been busy on the illustrations for Ivan Gromleigh's The Ghastly Thing (his method is create hideous figures in clay and photograph the results), a variation on Jekyll & Hyde featuring a maniac who undresses and slobbers over captive woman until he tires of the game and tears them to pieces. Gromleigh knows of what he writes as, when he's not composing his sex & sadism novels, he's an eminent psychiatrist. Indeed, so convincing is The Ghastly Thing Oden wonders if the story hasn't been taken from first-hand experience!
While Ellen sportingly slips off her wet clothes and steps in the tub to give Spicy Mystery readers what they pay for, the original of Oden's grotesque model bursts into the house, batters Phillip to the floor and ambles upstairs for the bathing beauty ....
"He was not frightened - not yet - but maggots of uneasiness crawled in his brain ..."
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Post by fullbreakfast on Aug 10, 2009 20:49:31 GMT
I got hold of this some time ago - mainly because I wanted to have something from Karl Edward Wagner's Carcosa imprint on my shelf - without knowing much about Hugh B. Cave.
I've been reading the odd story from it when the mood takes me and "pure, unashamed pulp" is damn right. I've really enjoyed what I've read so far - the writing is not always too sophisticated, but the stories really deliver! Partly this is to do with energy I think - the pace doesn't let up, and some of the stories, like Murgunstrumm itself, are so manic that I could imagine Sam Raimi filming them (in proper Evil Dead 2 / Drag Me To Hell nutzo horror mode).
The other thing is that he's a very visual writer and the scenes he depicts often have (to me) a kind of exaggerated, hyper-saturated presence - like some weird Expressionist cartoon, full of lurid neon colours and angular shadows that jump out at you.
He's not like anyone else, that's for certain. I'm hoping the rest of the stories are equally OTT.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 24, 2009 11:56:31 GMT
I've been reading the odd story from it when the mood takes me I think that's the best approach to Murgunstrumm, a special treat every once in a while, rather than trying to plough right through it. He's certainly different, even his stuff for the weird menace magazines makes an attempt at a coherent plot, though have yet to get a copy of his other collection, Death Stalks The Night, which includes stuff like: John Newton Howitt Some more from Murgenstrumm: The Whisperers: Newlyweds Peter and Annie Winslow buy the old Prentiss Place, blissfully unaware of the community who live beyond the cellar wall - whispering. Soon Peter learns of the tragedy that befell the previous family: Jim Callister, initially a cheerful, robust fellow, grew haggard, pale, hairy and mad after spending too much time in that cellar until his wife was forced to poison him - and now the same thing is happening to Peter! The werewolves' whispers get inside a man's head until he's driven to provide them with female flesh. Callister's little daughter is Peter's first contribution: next up - Annie! Meanwhile, Doc Everett Digby ("the hand he offered me was like a wet rubber glove"), has rounded up the villagers for an attack on the evil premises ... Ladies In Waiting: New England. The first time they viewed the vacant Creighton place, Linda ran screaming into the night having "seen something", so husband Norm - who himself hated it on sight - can't think why his young bride would keep insisting they give it a second look. The house is haunted by half-glimpsed things in the shadows, one of which slips down the zipper of the modest Linda's dress without her even noticing, and soon the couple are lured to separate rooms. Norm can hear his wife's familiar gasps of ecstasy through the walls but - well, lots of couples are swingers, might as well lay back and enjoy a treat from his own nocturnal visitor ..... After the Second World War Hugh B. Cave moved on from Weird Tales, Strange Tales, the shudder pulps & Co., to concentrate on the more respectable (and better paying) the slicks, but fortunately Karl E. Wagner, David Drake and editor Schiff lured him back to the horror genre in the 'seventies. Ladies In Waiting, likely qualifies as a Cthulhu Mythos story although Cave doesn't bog it down in the usual cosmic codswallop. As a result, the Salem witches take centre-stage and they've never looked more spectacularly hideous! The Cult Of The White Ape: Matthew Betts, a representative of an important rubber company, arrives drunk at a village in the M'Boto hills where he immediately upsets the natives by lashing out at their ancient witch-doctor, Kodagi. Lyle Varicks, a Belgian Government agent, tries to keep the peace, warning Betts that here in the Congo rain-belt, he cannot mistreat the natives, many of whom are members of the feared Bakanzenzi cannibal cult. Out of respect to Varicks, Kodagi lets Betts go unpunished until he wilfully desecrates a sacred woodland glade where the Bakanzenzi worship the Goddess Astarte, the punishment for which is death. Not nice death, but death by mauling at the claws of the white were-apes ... There's also a romantic sub-plot involving Varicks and Betts's wife, Lucilia ("slim, flower-faced and so very lovely ..."), who needless to say, spends much of the story either being beaten by her brutal swine of a husband, tied-up and left for gorilla meat, or fainting. The Affair Of The Clutching Hand. Surely as delightfully lunatic a story as HBC ever wrote - would even go so far as to say it's worthy of Bassett Morgan at her Island Of Doom best! 'The Turrets', West Sussex. Mad scientist Sir Gordon Null's obsession with the elixir of life is finally rewarded when he combines the secretions of a mad gorilla with a quantity of snake venom. Null invites Dr. Ronald Hale, his old friend from Cambridge days, to witness the results. First he injects the docile family dog, who bolts from the lab with a terrible shriek. Then he tries it on himself ..... In the dog's case, the serum kills the body but leaves the head horribly immortal and liable to tear to pieces anyone stupid enough to approach it. As to Sir Null, the title provides a clue as to the awful fate awaiting his housekeeper, beautiful daughter Margot and the inscrutable Oriental man-servant should he catch up with them!
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Post by fullbreakfast on Sept 25, 2009 14:15:24 GMT
Death Calls from the Madhouse, now that's what I call a proper pulp title!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 7, 2015 18:38:11 GMT
Hugh B Cave - Death Stalks The Night (Mystery House, 2014: originally Star Detective, August 1935) J. W. Scott Blurb The ghoulish deaths-head always followed upon the bitter-almond smell of hydrocyanic acid - and flesh bubbled horribly in the stew.Snagged a copy of this earlier. Sadly, not the collection of the same name but a stand alone reprint of the novella, "a combination of weird menace and super hero pulp formulas" according to Robert Kenneth Jones' The Shudder Pulps. All being well, that will be next read after Saliva and Catacombs Of Terror, then.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 12, 2016 21:05:04 GMT
Still not got around to Death Stalks The Night, but it will have to go some to beat this Cave weird menace classic. Death Calls From The Madhouse: ( Horror Stories, Sept. 1935). Ralph Carlson (?) "But my God, I could see, and the thing I saw filled me with a storm-wind rush of horror! My girl - my girl! - sitting there alone in a deserted solarium at night - partly naked, in a kind of hypnotic trance, with a surgeon's knife in her hand!"It begins when night nurse Deborah Corey, fiancée of Dr. Henry Phillips, plunges a pair of scissors into her breast. Miss Corey had recently resigned from her grim position at the Lakeman Hospital for the Insane, citing unsociable hours and fear of the psychotic patients. In her forged suicide note she confesses that one night, while on duty, she got drunk and was taken advantage of by a mystery man. Shortly before her suicide, Miss Corey contacted Dr. Peter Randall, informing him of her plans. Randall it is who walks in on the aftermath of her bloody demise. Suitably horrified, he rushes to the Hospital to inform Dr. Phillips, who vows that, staff or patient, the midnight seducer will pay with his life! Dr. Randall has never liked Phillips who is always crawling up to him. He suspects that, like Stanley Estes, the sadistic male nurse, Phillips secretly despises him. Even so, it's tough on him to lose his girl like this. All that blood! In the wake of Deborah's death, a suicide epidemic sweeps the city, and Dr. Randall realises the victims are all related to inmates of Dr. Leon Lakeman's asylum. Several of the patients are considerably richer as a consequence. Private patient Marie Lovell, is known as "the Death Woman" on account of her weekly lapses into catalepsy. Bloodless of lips, cold and clammy, her fellow lunatics believe she is Death incarnate. Marie is psychic and warns Dr. Randall that he and his sweetheart, Mildred Dickson, are in deadly peril from the creeping death. Randall is inclined to believe her, having already been set upon by, first a hooded ghoul, and then Lakeman's most dangerous inmate, Eric "the Executioner" Lecher. Marie also foretells a bloody revolt among the patients who are distraught that their loved ones have been compelled by sinister forces to end their lives. But who would stand to gain from such an evil conspiracy? All roads lead to the cellar of a derelict house on the swamp where the stooge of the brains behind the operation has constructed an impressive torture chamber. And tonight's 'guest' is Mildred!
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Post by dem bones on Jan 21, 2017 17:40:59 GMT
Back with Murgunstrumm; "You who love or ever have loved with an all-consuming tenderness - you will understand." C. C. Senf The Brotherhood Of Blood: ( Weird Tales, May 1932). "A sensational story of the undead - a beautiful vampire doomed to prey upon the living". If you love your Gothic horrors on the melodramatic side, you'll get on fine with this one. Paris, late seventeenth century. Armand Vernee, a twenty-eight year old master of black sorcery, is burnt at the stake for witchcraft. Unrepentant to the last, Vernee unleashes the curse of vampirism upon his family. Cut to the present day where Armand's last living descendant, the beautiful beyond compare Margot Vernee, is fast approaching that fatal twenty-eighth birthday and gloomily resigned to her fate. More out of hope than expectation she confides in Paul Munn, authority on the supernatural, who, needless to say, falls madly in love with her. But both soon realise nothing can save her. Worse - within the next twelve months Margot is doomed to leave the grave and prey upon the man she loves. After the funeral, Paul reflects that it is better to join Margot in undeath than live out his days in abject misery. Unfortunately for him, there is a particularly evil-minded fly in the ointment. Dr. Rojer Threng, the harshest critic of his occult writings, is fully aware of the situation. Years ago, he had a thing for Margot and will never forgive her for contemptuously spurning his odious advances. With revenge in mind, he converts a room at Harvard Uni into a vampire trap and baits it with his despised rival .... J. Allen St. John
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Post by dem bones on Jul 20, 2017 12:22:16 GMT
Hugh B. Cave - Death Stalks the Night (Fedogan & Bremer, 1995) cover illustration Alan M. Clark: photo: Peggy CaveHugh B. Cave - Foreword Karl Edward Wagner - Introduction
Modern Nero Death's Loving Arms The Crawling Ones The Pain Room The Flame Fiend Unholy Night! Dark Slaughter The Corpse Crypt Mistress of the Dead Terror Island Satan's Mistress Tomb for the Living Death Holds for Ransom My Pupil—The Idiot! Death Calls from the Madhouse Death's Door Death Stalks the Night If this doesn't get me back in the swing of things, nothing will. Murgunstrumm & Others seems to be the critics choice, but I'm guessing this collection is equally delightful, especially if My Pupil - The Idiot! & Co. are as barking as Death Calls From The Madhouse.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 20, 2017 12:40:23 GMT
If this doesn't get me back in the swing of things, nothing will. Murgunstrumm & Others seems to be the critics choice, but I'm guessing this collection is equally delightful, especially if My Pupil - The Idiot! & Co. are as barking as Death Calls From The Madhouse. I am not sure if it was "My Pupil---The Idiot!" or "Terror Island" which struck me as particularly insane, not to mention offensive, but it is an impressive collection.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 11, 2017 14:10:59 GMT
Three from the Fedogan & Bremer Death Stalks The Night, which you confuse with the Mystery House Death Stalks The Night at your peril. My Pupil - The Idiot!: ( Terror Tales, Sept-Oct 1937). When young Ellen Browning accepted the engagement and travelled to the remote tropical island it was on the understanding that she'd be educating a cute, NORMAL ten year old boy. But Old Gustave and Charlotte Cromwell have not played straight by her. Leo, the apple of their eye is a hulking, six foot, drooling MORON with a lust for female flesh! The imbecile keeps things simple where the ladies are concerned. Be nice to him and he'll let you live a while. Ellen's only hope is that a band of cowled vigilantes, sickened by Leo's continued evasion of justice due to his influential parents' wealth, finally take the law into their own hands. As if that will ever happen on this Island of Terror! Tomb For The Living: ( Spicy Mystery Stories, June 1937: as by 'Justin Case'). Professor Marniger, obligatory beautiful daughter Mary, and nine dangerous convicts board a super-sub for a voyage to beyond the bottom of the sea. Marniger is bent on taking a descent into a maelstrom in the Ross Sea, and, unfortunately for all concerned, he succeeds; the submarine is sucked into the vortex and pulled down, down, down into a murky domain of ape-like, flesh-eating monsters! Narrated by tough guy Stud Traynor, who lives up to his name by pulling both the heroine and a shape-changing gelatinous mass which briefly takes the form of a bosomy bombshell. Death's Door: ( Detective Short Stories, Nov. 1940). Colter needlessly shoots dead Old Bisbee the fence who always did right by him, and all for the sake of a $1000 necklace ... and a painting of zero monetary value but which has long fascinated him. The picture depicts a patchwork door slightly ajar. Colter wants to know what lies behind it?
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