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Post by jamesdoig on Jun 23, 2010 21:25:07 GMT
Well, I'll be damned, you're dead right! Charlotte Hunt, The Lotus Vellum, Ace 1970. First it was The Circle of Ra* Then it was The Thanatos Society** In each case, it was a structure designed to bilk the gullible for the personal gain of Dr Manfred Blackton - practitioner of the black arts, high priest of black magic, panderer to the emotional needs of the weak. Only one man could identify the many faces of Manfred Blackton: Dr Paul Holton, his long time adversary. It was inevitable that the two should clash again - this time for possession of the Lotus Vellum, that ancient occult writing that, fallen into the wrong hand, could certainly destroy the world. And as his ace in the hole in this deadly game, the insidious Dr Blackton was gambling on the sanity - and eventually the life - of a young and helpless girl. And so, once again, two strong men stood face to face in a superhuman contest of Good vs Evil. their weapons were faith on one side, and witchcraft on the other. And as Paul Holton knew it must, Good triumphed over evil...or did it?... * The Gilded Sarcophagus ** The Cup of Thanatos - both titles in Ace editions.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 24, 2010 6:42:33 GMT
I'm starting to think all sorts now : conspiracy theory, key to the universe, golden rule, Solomon's Temple, the ark, 42. Why is that single window lit? Is it always the upstairs window? If so, I've a feeling that could be the....bedroom.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 24, 2010 12:03:25 GMT
Here are two more: Sadly this artist didn´t get the principle *g*
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 24, 2010 14:01:23 GMT
Here are another two Sadly this artist didn´t get the principle *g* I think you'll find he might have. Unless I'm mistaken in the bottom picture the top light (possible bedroom/attic) is lit but the others are reflecting the sky.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 24, 2010 15:33:06 GMT
Is it always the upstairs window? If so, I've a feeling that could be the....bedroom. My feeling is it represents the room where the insane relative (or a similar secret) is hidden away.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 24, 2010 16:20:27 GMT
Ace books - generous to a fault ... ... but little wonder Five Star didn't last long ...
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 24, 2010 17:06:46 GMT
Is it always the upstairs window? If so, I've a feeling that could be the....bedroom. My feeling is it represents the room where the insane relative (or a similar secret) is hidden away. It's the taboo region certainly. We need a list from the plots illicit affair incest pregnancy religious conversion insane relative crippled relative black magic
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Post by shonokin on Jun 24, 2010 19:41:40 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Jun 25, 2010 10:48:43 GMT
ups, wrong scan. .You are of course right. It is the sky. I wanted to take this here I have to confess that Gothics are a kind of guilty pleasure for me. (says the man who read 90% of Shaun Hutson ) So I read a couple of dozens, and at the begining I was really surprised how far ranged plots are. For every heiress in love and in danger in that old plantation house there was a more sound book, often rather well-written. It seems to have been a genre where you had this stable of pros who did lots of them under x names but also this enormous amount of guys or girls who wrote only one or two. Compared with Horror the Gothics is a category which will always remain unchartered territory. Like the western it fell out of favor - you could argue that the current paranormal romance has its origin in the gothic -, and I don´t think there are even enough witnesses left who could offer some insights about the heydays of its success. It is funny, you can get more information about the more obscure niches of genre-publishing like those so-called smut novels of the 50s and 60s than about Gothics. Kind of sad if you ask me.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Jun 29, 2010 19:14:13 GMT
Yes, they have, and it's excellent. It's more a three person audio drama, with Frid returning as Barnabas, John Karlen resuming his role as Willie Loomis, and Barbara Steele - 60s horror star, and regular in the 1991 'Dark Shadows' - as a woman from Barnabas's distant past. Frid's well into his eighties, but his voice is still totally commanding, while John Karlen still sounds like he did in 1971 when the TV series ended. To carry on this thread's theme about the single lit window, I've found an old gothic romance on my shelves (rescued when my ex-missus brought home boxes of old library books). It's 'Madness at the Castle' - 'A chilling novel of macabre love in the great tradition of Gothic romance' - by Susan Claudia (published by Panther in 1966). There's the heroine in her fetching blue nightie, there's the castle turret with a single lit window! All the necessary ingredients! The cave's darkness was wrapped around her like a black velvet shroud. She awoke not knowing how she got there - or for what terrible reason a knife lay beside her hand...'Diane Cooper, secretly in love with Dr. Paul Manetti, accepts his invitation for a prolonged visit to his home. On arrival she receives a puzzling welcome from his sister Maria, who greets her as 'another pf Paul's experiments'... Dismayed by the dismal castle, chilled by a foreboding atmosphere and the strange hostility of the household, Diane falls prey to a nocturnal terror. Again and again she awakes to a nightmare... a nightmare where she is cast in a murderous role... a nightmare where only Paul's arms can pull her back from the pit-edge of destruction...'
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 24, 2011 13:37:53 GMT
To carry on this thread's theme about the single lit window I found it! So, to repeat myself from elsewhere, I just discovered that Mary Stewart's NINE COACHES WAITING (1958), an early example of the genre, actually has a scene exactly like that: Otherwise the novel is very boring.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 25, 2011 17:50:18 GMT
Actually, the standard template is: woman in nightgown fleeing from a house in which a single window is lit. www.bookscans.com/Oddities/gothicromance.htmThis webpage carries a couple of quotes from "Paperbacks USA" by Piet Schreuders that are worth recording - (1) Donald Wollheim apparently claimed that a single lit window could increase book sales by 5%, (2) I really liked the story in the final section of text - One popular Gothic author tells a wonderful story about the immutability of the Gothic Cover: "Once, just to see what would happen, I wrote a story set in a suburban ranch house in a densely-populated valley, with every single scene taking place in broad daylight; the heroine was a short-haired redhead who wore jeans throughout the entire book. But when the paperback came out, sure enough, there on the cover was a long-haired blonde in a flowing white dress, haring away from some frightening mansion at the top of a lonely hill in the dead of night!"
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Apr 8, 2016 17:24:12 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Jun 25, 2022 15:51:20 GMT
I found Barnabas, Quentin and the Mummy's Curse (published in April of 1970) in a delightful visit to the Green Hand bookshop in Portland, Maine this past Wednesday. I was in Portland visiting some friends. How delightful to find a stack of Dark Shadows paperbacks in a deliciously overstocked bookshop in Maine; the series was set in an isolated village on the rocky coast of Maine, near that infamous outcrop, Widow's Hill.
The Green Hand is really an enclave of Heaven on Earth. There are a few corners or corridors where the books rise steepling to such a monumental degree that one needs to walk sideways, or politely wait at one end of a path for another customer to slither through first. The horror section was epic. Yes, on an admittedly upper shelf I found an original Arkham House edition of Lovecraft's Beyond the Wall of Sleep, original dust jacket displaying a wonderful photo of some sculptures by Clark Ashton Smith. It was priced somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 but I was able to take it down from the shelf and peruse the vellum-soft pages. Why the owner doesn't keep such a volume in a locked case, I have no idea. That bookcase is located in a direct sightline from where she sits at the till but after all, even the most vigilant shopkeeper can't always be seated right at the till. Seeing and handling that book was a moment of true magic for this crusty old lover of classic horror.
Back cover blurb for Barnabas, Quentin and the Mummy's Curse:
When Professor Anthony Collins decides to catalog his Egyptian relics at Collinwood, he brings with him the mummy of King Rehotip [sic--this name would usually be translated as Ra-hotep, or Re-hotep], who "died" over 2000 years ago. Only the professor knows that Rehotip is really in a state of suspended animation. One night, the professor brings the mummy to life. Suddenly a young girl is killed. The police suspect Quentin Collins [the family werewolf, LOL]. Maggie Evans, certain the killer is the mummy, wants to warn the police. Professor Collins threatens to accuse Barnabas if she does. Frightened into silence, Maggie lives in terror, wondering if she will be the next victim.
Professor Collins is your classic grade-A mad Egyptologist, a fanatical gleam in his ice blue eyes, forever raving about how he'll show those fools at the academy who dared to doubt his genius a thing or two.
Typical passage:
... suddenly, there came a faint sound of movement from the golden casket. A chill shot up Maggie's spine. Unbelievably, the eyes of King Rehotip had opened. The dark brown eyes gazed straight up at the ceiling and had a wild light in them. She was too staggered to speak.
Anthony Collins' lined face had taken on an expression of sheer wonder. He was frozen motionless as he stared at the coffin. A weird shriek came from the lips of the bronzed figure in the coffin and there was the sound of ripping cloth as King Rehotip broken the linen wrappings that bound him.
In the next instant he had sprung to his feet. Most of his wrappings still clung to him in mummy fashion, though his head and shoulders were uncovered and his arms and legs free. He moved towards Professor Anthony Collins with an insane gleam in his eyes. Again a weird, savage cry escaped his lips and his bronzed, sinewy hands seized the professor's throat.
Anthony Collins tried to fight off the creature from the tomb without any success. Rehotip's stern face showed a savage pleasure as he brought the professor to his knees. ....
The writing is often plodding, with a vocabulary so limited that one presumes these books were aimed at a "young adult" audience. And I read most of them between the ages of 10 and 13, so there you are. They are occasionally a bit of fun but best enjoyed in moderation, with long breaks in between.
Despite that proviso, I have to admit that I just ordered a copy of Barnabas Collins and the Gypsy Witch (five bucks on Abe) because of the blurb which is printed on the final page of the volume in hand:
It was Halloween night when Barnabas and his lovely distant cousin Roxanna decided to visit the Gypsy fortune-teller.
"What do you see in my future?" Roxanna asked nervously. In the shadowy tent, the ancient Gypsy was somehow frightening, and Roxanna was grateful that Barnabas was with her.
The Gypsy lowered her eyes to gaze into the crystal. "Your house is under a curse," she said at last. "The cold hand of death is over it. There will be sudden and violent deaths ... many of them!"
cheers, H.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 26, 2022 13:02:54 GMT
The Green Hand is really an enclave of Heaven on Earth. There are a few corners or corridors where the books rise steepling to such a monumental degree that one needs to walk sideways, or politely wait at one end of a path for another customer to slither through first. The horror section was epic. Yes, on an admittedly upper shelf I found an original Arkham House edition of Lovecraft's Beyond the Wall of Sleep, original dust jacket displaying a wonderful photo of some sculptures by Clark Ashton Smith. It was priced somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 but I was able to take it down from the shelf and peruse the vellum-soft pages. Why the owner doesn't keep such a volume in a locked case, I have no idea. That bookcase is located in a direct sightline from where she sits at the till but after all, even the most vigilant shopkeeper can't always be seated right at the till. Seeing and handling that book was a moment of true magic for this crusty old lover of classic horror. The writing is often plodding, with a vocabulary so limited that one presumes these books were aimed at a "young adult" audience. And I read most of them between the ages of 10 and 13, so there you are. They are occasionally a bit of fun but best enjoyed in moderation, with long breaks in between. Sound like a great book store. If I had something like that in my neighborhood, I guess I would move in. I don't think in 1970 publishers thought in terms like a "young adult" audience. Dark Shadows is a step up from Nancy Drew. I only read a few of Ross' Gothics, and while some Gothics are told in a dense style, a lot were not, which may explain his success in the field. In Europe Gothics were marketed for woman, the only German publisher doing an honest to God Gothics line for over a decade advertised them in 1972 as the "ideal lecture for ladies". I hasten to add that the term Gothics was unknown or deemed untranslatable at the time, it was nothing clear-cut like crime or western. They were called Romantic Thriller or Gaslicht-Roman (Gaslight novel) and most of them was published as abridged Heftromane. At least they kept the cover art concept.
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