Futura Horror 1981-90

[dem bones]

Futura Horror 1981-1990

Don't get me wrong - there are a number of titles included here that I've enjoyed - but somehow couldn't get quite as enthused about compiling this listing as previous ones. Maybe I'm just sulking 'cause I don't have copies of the four that look like they'd be of most interest - Devour, Demon, Mantis and Claw. Whatever, the trend for flabbier, four-hundred-pages-and-the-rest novels is much in evidence with King and the vampire extravaganza's of Rice and Somtow. Ray Garton's sleazy Live Girls - just stick it through this here peep-hole, Sir, and you'll be in for a jolly surprise - is a filthy, fun read and seem to remember McGill's Stallion contains moments of extreme unpleasantness. Think we've name-checked all the anthologies elsewhere - not a bad haul by any means with welcome UK releases for Casper & Dozios' cash-in on the Ripper centenary and J. N. Williamson's patchy but often brilliant Masques.

Paul Adams - Devour (1981)
Owen Brookes - The Touch (1981)
Stephen King - Firestarter (1981)
Stephen King - Danse macabre (1981) * King's non-fiction celebration of, indeed, all things horror in book, comic, television and film.
Stephen King - Cujo (1982)
Drew Lamark - The Snake Orchards (1982)
Ivor Watkins - Demon (1983)
Jay Campbell [Ramsey Campbell] - Claw (1983)
Drew Lamark - The Medusa Horror (1983)
Sephen King - Different Seasons (1983)
Gordon McGill - Omen IV: Armageddon 2000 (1983)
Stephen King - The Dead Zone (1984)
Gordon McGill - Amityville 3-D (1984)
Gordon McGill - Omen IV: The Final Conflict (1985)
Hans Holzer - The Secret of Amityville (1985)
Owen Brookes - Deadly Communion (1985)
SP Somtow - Vampire Junction (1985)
Gordon McGill - Omen V: The Abomination (1985)

Charles L Grant - The Pet (1985)
Owen Brookes - The Gatherer (1985)
Stephen King's - Skeleton Crew (1986)
Anne Rice - The Vampire Lestat (1986)
Ray Garton - Live Girls (1987)
Dennis Etchison (ed.) - Cutting Edge (1987)
Lisa Tuttle - Megan's Story (1987)
Jeffrey Cooper - The Nightmares on Elm Street parts 1, 2 & 3: The Continuing Story (1987)
Susan Casper and Gardner Dozois (eds.) - Jack The Ripper (1988)
Ray Garton - Crucifax (1988)
JN Williamson (ed.) - Masques (1988)
Charles L Grant - Tales From the Nightside (1988)
Charles L Grant - For Fear Of The Night (1988)
Dennis Etchison - The Dark Country (1988)
Dennis Etchison - Red Dreams (1988)
Gordon McGill - Stallion (1989)
Hugh Lamb - Gaslit Nightmares : An Anthology of Victorian Tales of Terror (1988) [Gaslit Nightmares II followed in 1991)
JN Williamson (ed.) - Masques II (1989)
Thomas Tessier - Rapture (1989)
Joseph Locke - The Nightmares on Elm Street parts 4 & 5: The Dream Master & The Dream Child (1989)
Marc Olden - Poe Must Die (1989)
E. M. Stanbaugh - Mantis (1989)
Charles L Grant - The Orchard (1989)
David J. Schow - The Kill Riff (1990)
Nancy A. Collins - Sunglasses After Dark (1990)
Anne Rice - The Queen Of The Damned (1990)

[erebus]

Seeing that MASQUES cover hurts as I always used to see it around and never picked it up. Now its nowhere to be seen.
And Skeleton Crew is well worth a buy for the excellent tale THE MIST.

[dem bones]

Yeah, the Masques books certainly have their ghastly moments. I like Williamson's thoughtful introductory notes to each story which give the books an almost magazine-y feel. There's more dirt on the early collections here.

Masques
Masques 2
Best of Masques

.... and a handful of comments on Skeleton Crew

[dem bones]

Man, I've got to get me one of these! Don't suppose anyone can provide a cover scan, pretty please?

Ann Stubbington - The Devil's Dress (Futura, 1984: originally Piatkus, 1982)

It looked like a rather ordinary, drab old dress. Anyone else would have passed it by, left it to rot in the antique shop. But when Cass touched it, unfamiliar sensations rushed out to intrigue her - feelings, memories, sounds of another time and a different, distant place. She had to have it. Graham had always respected his wife's strange psychic gifts, her visions of the past. But then Cass began to wear the dress every day. And as her fascination with Psyche, the first owner of the dress, grew into an obsession where Psyche's life seemed so much more interesting than her won, Graham's awed acceptance turned into a terrible, helpless fear ....

[Steve]

Feb 11, 2009 13:23:58 GMT dem bones said:

Graham had always respected his wife's strange psychic gifts, her visions of the past. But then Cass began to wear the dress every day. And as her fascination with Psyche, the first owner of the dress, grew into an obsession...

Sounds alright, yeah, but I can't help thinking that the chances of this one becoming a Vault classic would be improved immeasurably if it was Graham who'd taken to wearing The Devil's Dress.

[dem bones]

Three stragglers of a they-don't-really-belong-here-but-somehow-they-so-do nature .... **

Peter Graham Scott - Into The Labyrinth (1981)

Blurb:
Down through time the battle has raged - the dark forces have always sought victory. But the power of the mysterious Nidus has proved too great and has held the balance for the white sorcerer Rothgo - until the day it is stolen by the witch of evil, Belor.
And when Terry, Helen and Phil are drawn into the caves where Rothgo lies imprisoned, they find themselves sent into the labyrinth of perilous journeys through time in search of the magic Nidus -journeys which will span thousands of years in the history of man.

Into the Labyrinth with... RON MOODY as "Rothgo", PAMELA SALEM as "Belor", SIMON BEAL as Phil, SIMON HENDERSON as Terry, LISA TURNER as Helen. With TONY WRIGHT, PATRICIA DRISCOLL, EWEN SOLON, CONRAD PHILLIPS, PAUL-LAVERS, JUNE BARRIE, EDWINA FORD, JEREMY ARNOLD, JOHN ABINERI, PHILIP MANIKUM, TIM BANNERMAN, DERRICK BRANCHE, DAVID TREVENA, SIMEON ANDREWS.
Devised by Bob Baker and Peter Graham Scott. Written by Bob Baker, Ray Jenkins, Andrew Payne and Anthony Read. Produced and Directed by Peter Graham Scott Executive Producer Patrick Dromgoole

Children's TV tie-in. Think I only saw one episode of this, but it looked exciting enough. Rothgo was sent back to the time of the French Revolution and his arm went a mouldy green or blue because he had plague and was running out of time?

Ed & Lorraine Warren - Ghost Hunters (1990)

Yes, just double checked and it really does read 'Futura Publications - Non-fiction' on the back cover ....


Samuel Klinger - Graveyard Laughter (Futura, 1980)

Blurb:

The fruit of 30 years of labour in the graveyards of the world. A unique collection of humorous epitaphs inscribed on gravestones in fond — or not so fond — memory of the dear departed.

Inscriptions like this dreadful warning ...
'HERE I LIE WITH MY THREE DAUGHTERS WHO DIED DRINKING CHELTENHAM WATERS.
IF WE HAD STUCK TO EPSOM SALT, WE SHOULD NOT SLEEP IN THIS COLD VAULT.'

Or in relieved memory (and dread) of a fearsome wife ...
'HERE LIES, THANK GOD, A WOMAN WHO
QUARRELLED AND STORMED HER WHOLE LIFE THROUGH:
TREAD GENTLY O'ER HER MOULDERING FORM,
OR ELSE YOU'LL CAUSE ANOTHER STORM.'

A fascinating and hilarious compilation of laughter from the grave.

I think it was Fritz Spiegl who popularised the 'hilarious headstones' sub-genre with his tombstone-shaped A Small Book of Grave Humour (1971) and Dead Funny: Another Book Of Grave Humour (1982) for Pan. You need only know that Peter Haining jumped in under his 'Richard De'Ath' alias and bashed out four similar titles in quick succession to realise it was a happening bandwagon for a time.

** After posting this, realised Graveyard Laughter doubly doesn't really belong here because it's published in 1980, but like I'm gonna re-edit this crap just for that.

[allthingshorror]

Futura (1983)

In the reeking dark of London's sewers, Man's most ancient enemy, the rat, lives and breeds, competing savagely for the scraps from the human table. Only an unrelenting campaign waged with ever more sophisticated poisons maintains a precarious balance.

But what happens when council parsimony and adverse weather conditions swing the battle the rats' way? When they breed without check? When their food supply is cut off? When in their starving millions they are forced to emerge onto the streets in search of food - any food?

NIGHTMARE. STARK, SHUDDERING NIGHTMARE.

THE SCURRYING - THE TERRIFYING REALISATION OF MANKIND'S MOST PRIMEVAL DREAD.

[Johnlprobert]

Was that Wes Craven and Mary Whitehouse writing together at last do you think?

[noose]

Futura (1981)


JAWS WAS A GENTLE REMINDER. Now the real horror has begun...

Pike - freshwater sharks, one of Nature's perfect killing machines. Rapacious and remorseless hunters, they have no enemies - except man.

But now a strain of pike is loose in our rivers and streams - a ghastly mutant whose appetite for human flesh is unappeasable. And man becomes the hunted, the prey of a killer fish that nothing and no-one can stop.

[killercrab]

Had to log in to recommend this to all killer pike fans ! Each chapter sets up a character to get munched - I don't care to defend myself for enjoying this book either!

KC

[noose]

Bob Kershaw has went mental and he wants to kill his wife due to the fact that he blames her for making him impotent. His increasing paranoia about not being a 'mans man' has led him to excessive drinking and blaming his wife for killing something inside him.

Then his wife Annette has an affair and that is the killer blow - and along with the redundancy, Bob spirals into a mass of self pity and accusation. So to clear his head up he decides to kill her.

He takes her to some woods, incidentally the place they used to go to many years back when they first met. And as she says those killer lines 'But we still love each other, don't we?' Bob has the knife out ready to stab her in the back. She spins around and unable to believe what he's going to do can only ask why...

What follows next is six pages of carnage - he thinks he kills wife, is hurt himself in the process, only for the wife to do a Carrie and come back to drag her man down - and that's when Bob's life comes to an abrupt end, and it's all down to that pesky pike...

This book is what legends are made of, and chapter 2 sees us in the middle 14 year old Mark and his ever fighting parents - with them both having tit for tat affairs, and the poor lad has to hear everything that's said.

To get away from it all, Mark buggers off with his dog - over the fields and fences rips his leg on the barbed wire. As he's washing the injury off in the river, something bumps into him. It's the pike, and as the poor lad is turned into a 'mass of tortured, twisting pain' his last thoughts are that he's able to bring his mum and dad back together.

Doesn't work because the parents leave each other two months later, but that's fiction for you - and this book is turning out to be a treat and a half!

to be continued...

[noose]

DEVOUR cont.

We now come to our latest victims - Linda, a once man fearing carer of her cancer ravaged mother - but now set free by her death and twelve months on, married to the widower Tony who had been a gentleman towards her and she fell head over heels in love. Their honeymoon is to East Anglia, where unbeknownst to them the pike is doing its thing. And on the 5th day of the honeymoon (at least the author gives them five days of bliss...) Tony decides they should go fishing. After a small incident where she gashes her hand on a fishing hook, she puts it into the water to wash off, Tony has caught the pike and lands it in the boat. He tells Linda to put it in the basket, and as she tries to the pike gets the blood lust and chomps into Lindas arm. She stands up in fright, and then that's it, she falls into the water, her arm is reduced to a bloody stump and soon after Tony is a widow again!

Tony is now in the water trying to land his newly dead wife, and he gets dragged own, but he doesn't really mind...

Now we introduce Peter, who is the glue that this series of killings need to stick to, and he has been brought on by the police to figure out all of these deaths. He works at Cambridge Uni at the Institute of Ecological Studies. He has a daughter whom he worries about. He also is a widower and an ex alcoholic. He laughs at the suggestion that these people could be torn to shreds by fish...

But now its back to another chapter of carnage. Its the turn of Jane Morton who loses her virginity to the suave Brian after she's had too many shandys. When she wakes up the next morning, she's confronted by Brian's fiancee Lucinda, is called all the names under the sun and she flees. Now Jane is a very self concious, low esteemed kind of girl and this tips her over the edge into despair.

She goes to the river to tan her wrists, but as she does she imagines Lucinda and Brian laughing at her, so after she's done the first small cut she resolves to be strong and survive life. But then the pike attacks and is crunched into bits by the pike, and goes to her death knowing that everything is unfair...

Back to Pete who has seen the carnage on the latest victim (jane) and he definitely knows its a fish, and after some interference from some busybody from the Home Office, tells them that they are dealing with 'a long tradition of flesh eating bestiality' - (what kind of book am I reading here?) - and the only thing to do to find out what exactly is going on is to put the scuba gear on and dive into the lake.

Am rather enjoying this book, very nasty...

[dem bones]

Richard Salem - New Blood (Futura, 1981)

Blurb:
Theirs was a hideous secret. To keep it they needed new blood. Without it they would be lost. All of them. And so they set the trap.
The place was called Credence. A pleasant country town, set well away from, anyywhere. For Clay and Holly Ryan, in search of a new home away from the city, it was a dream come true. But then the stranger came with the haunting memories of black rivers of violent death. And for Clay and Holly, Credence suddenly becomes a whirlwind of blood and terror as the hunt is on - FOR NEW BLOOD.

Additions to listing: (any more gratefully received ...)

Richard Salem - New Blood (1981)
Anne Rice - Interview With The Vampire (1981)
Gordon McGill - Omen IV: Armageddon 2000 (1983, 1987)
Wes Whitehouse - The Scurrying (1983)
Kirby McCauley (ed.) - Dark Forces (1984, 1986)
Ann Stubbington - The Devil's Dress (1984)
Alan Dean Foster - Aliens (1986)
Owen Brookes - Forget Me Knots (1986)
Stephen King - The Eyes Of The Dragon (1988)
Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now (1988, 1991)
James Buxton - Subterranean (1989)
Charles L. Grant - Nightmare Seasons (1989)
Ramsey Campbell - Obsession (1990)

James Buxton - Subterranean (Futura, 1989)

Blurb;
The horror that rises from the Pit .....

Blackheath is a desirable area - a good place for flying kites and family picnics. But at its centre is a dark pool of water which holds no life. And something centuries old, terrifying evil, is buried in its filthy residue.

One summer's day, disturbed schoolboy Sebastian Lee calls from its depths the ancient evil, welcoming it into his body. And soon a chain of inexplicable carnage is unleashed on the area.

Only Cherie Simpson knows the truth, revealed to her in a horrifying dream. But she cannot believe that her nightmare is about to come true ....

[DemonSpawn]

I enjoyed that James Buxton a fair bit. Thought it was really good.

Live Girls by Ray Garton is ok.

Wes Whitehouse, Paul Adams, Richard Salem - I'd pick up any/all of those for the right price at the carboot sale or Border's Book (which generally has few books that would appeal to members of this here website for cheap)

[dem bones]

Three more for the Futura file. Other than a handful of the Tales From The Nightside, ain't read 'em yet, but somebody on here will have.

John Farris - The Fury (Futura, 1982: original Futura publication, 1977)

Blurb:
"John Farris is probably America's premier novelist of terror. When Farris turns it on, nobody.does it better." - STEPHEN KING

Robin and Gillian are 14 years old.
They were born with the power to speak without words -and kill
without contact ... They are THE FURY

Charles L. Grant - Tales From The Nightside (Futura, 1988)

Stephen King - Foreword

Tales From Oxrun Station
Coin Of The Realm
Old Friends
Home
If Damon Comes
Night Of Dark Intent

Tales From Hawthorne Street
The Gentle Passing Of A Hand
When all Children Call my Name
Needle Song
Something There Is

Tales From The Nightside
Come Dance With me On My Pony's Grave
The Thing Of Tens
Digging
The Key To English
From All The Fields Of Hail And Fire
White Wolf Calling

Blurb:
Hauntings and enchantments, elegies of the macabre, dim-lit excursions beyond the bounds of reality - here are fifteen subtle tales of terror.

A toll road lures wayfarers into another dimension .....
A mysterious white wolf appears as s a portent of doom .. An aged seamstress holds, in her needle, dominion over life and death ...

A bizarre world of dark fantasy awaits, strangely, horribly compelling. From the demon-cursed town of Oxrun Station to the terrifying byways of Hawthorne Street, prepare for fear as you enter the nightside ...

Charles L. Grant - Nightmare Seasons (Futura, 1989)

Blurb:
THE AIR WAS SHARP, AND THE STREETLAMPS WINKED ON DOUBLING THE SHADOWS AND MULTIPLYING THE GLOOM. THE AIR WAS SHARP AND IT DID NOT MOVE. A CAUGHT-BREATH SILENCE THAT WAITED FOR A SCREAM.

A new season, and the Grim Reaper smiles in anticipation of the harvest to come... No one is safe, no one can be trusted. The lovestruck office boy, the beautiful little girl clutching a posy of violets, the faceless motorcycle gang all seem harmless enough, and yet... Nameless fears stir uneasily, terror bubbles to the surface... and the nightmare is unleashed.
Enter the world of Oxrun Station, where evil lurks in unexpected corners, where nerves are stretched to breaking point, where every season brings a nightmare more blood-curdling than the last.