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Post by allthingshorror on Oct 18, 2009 17:58:49 GMT
I've been asked to write an essay for one of the national monthlies on the Pan Book of Horror Stories and one of the side boxes has to contain the top five goriest moments from all thirty books. It's all very well me putting my five pence worth in - but I thought if this was opened up to the esteemed Vault - we could see what people remember the most?
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Post by asmodeus on Oct 30, 2009 12:39:03 GMT
one that immediately springs to mind is the story where a vengeful husband places a live FEMALE earwig in his wife's lovers ear!!! she makes her frightful way thru the poor mans brain- dining on his grey matter as she goes - but the surviving man's relief is shattered when he realises she has laid EGGS in his brain!!!! Dont think horror stories come much better or gorier than that!! If i remember it correctly was entitled 'boomerang' and penned by oscar cooke and featured in the second pan book of horrors
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Post by mattofthespurs on Oct 30, 2009 13:52:02 GMT
one that immediately springs to mind is the story where a vengeful husband places a live FEMALE earwig in his wife's lovers ear!!! she makes her frightful way thru the poor mans brain- dining on his grey matter as she goes - but the surviving man's relief is shattered when he realises she has laid EGGS in his brain!!!! Dont think horror stories come much better or gorier than that!! If i remember it correctly was entitled 'boomerang' and penned by oscar cooke and featured in the second pan book of horrors And filmed as an episode of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery".
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 30, 2009 15:15:43 GMT
Remember that story vividly (perhaps because I must have read it about ten times and retold it in primary school to eager friends).
The denouement of Two Bottles of Relish' was utterly gory in an abstract way. Also goryish and terrifying was the one where the guy jumps in the swimming pool which has been filled with acid. But technically gory should have lots of blood in it...
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Post by bushwick on Oct 30, 2009 17:32:18 GMT
The one where the couple who've been abusing their kid go to see the Social Services? mid-period?
The one where the plastic surgeon gets turned into Humpty Dumpty?
The chimneysweep and his child assistant getting crushed in a chimney?
will think of more
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Post by asmodeus on Oct 30, 2009 19:25:43 GMT
"And filmed as an episode of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery". hey didnt know that! Is night gallery available on dvd? would love to see that episode.
just remembered the second edition in the wonderful pan series includes another gorefest by oscar cooke entitled 'piece meal'...which if i remember rightly centres on someone slowly being cooked and eaten! they just dont right them like that anymore lol.....
While my other favourite volume in the series - 14- also includes a couple of gory gems - alex white's the clinic where a stepdaughter is on the recieving end of some rather dubious 'treatment' from her stepfather and one from the legendary R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Entitled It Came To Dinner it tells the charming story of a vagrant who stumbles on what he thinks is an empty hoouse in the country.....only to find it populated by a family with some interesting eating habits!
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Post by mattofthespurs on Oct 30, 2009 20:20:20 GMT
"And filmed as an episode of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery". hey didnt know that! Is night gallery available on dvd? would love to see that episode. Not on region 2 but a box set of the first season, which includes the story, is available from America on region 1. Jolly good it is too.
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Post by asmodeus on Oct 31, 2009 0:24:51 GMT
hey cheers for that matt...think my player is multi-region... ....so will see if i can get hold of the box set somewhere
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Post by ripper on Oct 31, 2009 9:23:46 GMT
Some Night Gallery episodes are on Youtube. They are in 2 or 3 parts and I think that the one based on Boomerang is on there.
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Oct 31, 2009 11:41:37 GMT
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Post by asmodeus on Oct 31, 2009 13:16:26 GMT
many many thanks for that HP...............very much appreciated!!!
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Post by erebus on Nov 11, 2009 20:10:05 GMT
Pardon my ignorance. Not read my Pans in a while, but the one that struck me was the tale of the guy stuck under the fallen fairground ride. When the machinery is lifted he can see the lower half of his body squished beneath it. Which one was that.
Also wasnt there a gory one in Number 8 called Sugar and Spice. Some kid cuts up his dead Mum who has had a nasty fall and died springs to mind.
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Post by paulfinch on Nov 21, 2009 10:39:04 GMT
Pardon my ignorance. Not read my Pans in a while, but the one that struck me was the tale of the guy stuck under the fallen fairground ride. When the machinery is lifted he can see the lower half of his body squished beneath it. Which one was that. Also wasnt there a gory one in Number 8 called Sugar and Spice. Some kid cuts up his dead Mum who has had a nasty fall and died springs to mind. I think you may possibly be confusing two different stories there. I may be wrong, but in SUGAR AND SPICE didn't the naughtly boy try out his new handyman's kit by dissecting his little sister? Other gory stories also spring to mind. THE INN, by Guy Preston, had the aura of a classic horror story, but I seem to remember it having a particularly gruesome finale. Also - and the name of both this story and its author escape me - wasn't there a very grim tale about a shift-worker returning home early, finding his wife and best friend shagging, and tying them both to the nearby railway line? The next train that comes along severs both their limbs, but that isn't the end of the horror - rats then emerge from the tunnel and start gnawing on the stumps. Here's a question about a very grisly story. A bloke learns that, at birth, he absorbed his own twin. He thus tries to operate on himself and, if that isn't horrible enough, then discovers that his monstrous brother is still alive inside him. Was that a Pan story or a Fontana story? If anyone knows, please post its title and location - I'd love to track that tale down again.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2009 14:39:32 GMT
Pardon my ignorance. Not read my Pans in a while, but the one that struck me was the tale of the guy stuck under the fallen fairground ride. When the machinery is lifted he can see the lower half of his body squished beneath it. Which one was that. Sounds to me like this one is Fay Woolf's classic conte cruel Slowly from #21. Little Darren is trapped beneath the rails after the collapse of the Big Dipper at the Happyland funfair. Calhoun and his crew try to save him from being transformed into a human torso … Paul, the tied-to-the-railway-tracks story is Raymond Harvey's The Tunnel from Pan Horror #8. Not sure about the other one though it's ringing some unpleasant bells. And The Inn is a masterpiece!
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Nov 21, 2009 18:46:09 GMT
And The Inn is a masterpiece! Agreed there, dem. Found this online & wondered if Preston was inspired by reports of this for the 'Journey's End' pub sign? (entry from www.paranormaldatabase.com/reports/headless.php): Twelve Pallbearers Location: Ashford in the Water (Derbyshire) - Shady Lane, near Thornbridge Hall Type: Haunting Manifestation Date / Time: Unknown Further Comments: These twelve men carrying a coffin are said to be headless. The coffin is also empty, the space reserved for any witnesses to the spectral sight.
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