Michael Sissons - In The Dead Of Night

[dem bones]

Michael Sissons (ed.) - In The Dead Of Night (Panther, April 1962)

Charles Beaumont - The Hunger
J. B. Priestly - The Grey Ones
Nigel Balchin - The Master
John Gloag - Lady Without Appetite
Evelyn Waugh - Mr. Loveday's little Outing
Ray Bradbury - The Small Assassin
John Collier - Little Memento
Wilbur Daniel Steele - Blue Murder
Margery Sharp - The Portrait
Marc Brandel - Cast The First Shadow
Gerald Bullett - Dearth's Farm
James Webb - The Curt Little Mouth In The Brain
John Moore - The Proof
Richard Matheson - Crickets
V. C. Pritchett - A Story Of Don Juan
Margaret Irwin - The Book
C. S. Forester - The Turn Of The Tide

Great Sawney Beane cover illustration - uncredited, as per - and a neat selection including several lesser-known gems.

Charles Beaumont - The Hunger: Julie, plain, lonely, frustrated and 38 is obsessed with sex-killer Robert Oakes who's struck three times in as many weeks at Burlington since his escape from an asylum. Julie sneaks out at night in her best dress, and it's only when she's confronted by the crazed rapist she realises the reason for her actions. Harrowing and maybe Beaumont's finest horror story.

Richard Matheson - Crickets: "Listen', he said. 'They aren't just making indiscriminate noises when they rub their wings together ... They're sending messages."

John Morgan confides his fears to vacationing Hal and Jean Galloway who are too polite to send the paranoid old fool packing. Morgan is convinced that he's deciphered the code of the crickets and far from going chirrup ... chirrup for the Hell of it, they're actually reciting the names of the dead - who are planning to return from the grave en masse! And now, they're onto him!

John Gloag - Lady Without Appetite: The beautiful, gregarious Julia Hugo wreaks havoc among the passengers of the ocean liner Avalon. As the ship nears Trinidad, Dr. Youngman finally confronts her after a man is found to be suffering from pernicious anaemia - and she is seen to have bloodstains on her white silk wrap.

Gerald Bullett - Dearth's Farm: 'Bailey', a down and out, visits his cousin Monica and her husband James Dearth at their isolated Norfolk farm. Dearth dotes on his white horse, Dandy and Bailey can't help but notice the startling facial similarity between the pair. It soon becomes apparent that the Dearth's despise each other and Monica confesses to being frightened of her husband's uncanny power over Dandy who has recently tried to trample her. It transpires that Dearth is able to leave his body and take possession of the horse at will. And now he suspects Bailey and his wife of conducting an affair ....

John Metcalfe - The Smoking Leg: in a moment of drunken madness Geoghan, a doctor, inserts a magic jewel into the kneecap of lascar Abdullah Jan with a holy amulet to keep it's powers in check. Things get very out of hand when, back home in England, the patient tries to have both gem and amulet removed ...

Margaret Irwin - The Book: Mr. Corbett, a mild-mannered stockbroker, inherits his late uncle's library. Among its contents, a hand-written Latin manuscript which, on translation, proves to be a DIY black magic manual. His career prospers even as he loses his grip, alienating his family and colleagues. As the book takes over, it demands more and more of him, to the point where it orders him to murder the baby.

Marc Brandel - Cast The First Shadow: Ernie and Christine are outcasts on account of them neither having a shadow. When they meet each other, their lives are complete ... until the night Ernie, frustrated at always hiding for fear of being treated like a freak, insists they visit a nightclub. "Ernie was delighted by the loud, bad music and the tawdry glamour. It was just what he had longed for all his life." Their relationship comes to an abrupt end when, gazing in the mirror, Ernie learns that his miserable two-bit, creepshow girlfriend also lacks a reflection.

Evelyn Waugh - Mr. Loveday's little Outing: Despite a terrible crime in his youth - he throttled a woman cyclist - Mr. Loveday has been a model patient at the County Asylum, so much so that Angela takes him for a member of staff when first she meets him(he's been acting as her father, Lord Moping's secretary, his Lordship having attempted to hang himself with his braces rather than attend Lady Moping's garden party). Angela campaigns on the old boy's behalf and secures his release ...

V. S. Pritchett - A Story Of Don Juan: Quintero, heartily sick of his legendary guest bragging of his conquests, decides to give him the room haunted by his dead wife’s ghost to teach him a lesson. He reckons without Don Juan’s indifference to whether or not his lovers possess a pulse.

[sean]

admin said:

Charles Beaumont - The Hunger: Julie, plain, lonely, frustrated and 38 is obsessed with sex-killer Robert Oakes who's struck three times in as many weeks at Burlington since his escape from an asylum. Julie sneaks out at night in her best dress, and it's only when she's confronted by the crazed rapist she realises the reason for her actions. Harrowing and maybe Beaumont's finest horror story.

Certainly one of his best, on par with the chilling 'Miss Gentilbelle'.

[Calenture]

sean said:

admin said:

Charles Beaumont - The Hunger: Julie, plain, lonely, frustrated and 38 is obsessed with sex-killer Robert Oakes who's struck three times in as many weeks at Burlington since his escape from an asylum. Julie sneaks out at night in her best dress, and it's only when she's confronted by the crazed rapist she realises the reason for her actions. Harrowing and maybe Beaumont's finest horror story.

Certainly one of his best, on par with the chilling 'Miss Gentilbelle'.

There's a more recent story by T L Parkinson that I read in Slung's I Shudder at Your Touch, which I thought similar to the Beaumont story (though it's a long time since I read that one).

This review of the Parkinson story has been copied from Read For Pleasure

The Tiger Returns to the Mountain by T.L. Parkinson, 1991

Slung compares this story to Beauty and the Beast, but the fairytale is altered in almost every respect. Most versions of the story alter the atmosphere but not the structure of the fairytale; Jean Cocteau's prince is beastly in instincts but still leads a life of privilege--and he's still constrained by the need to win the beauty's love. The Tiger Returns twists male/female power disturbingly. The Tiger Man is far from privileged; he's a prison escapee. He doesn't woo; he kidnaps and forces. On the face of it the Tiger Man possesses all the power in the relationship, and Molly can only take back her power negatively, by acquiescing to her own rape.

[dem bones]

Michael Sissons (ed.) - Masque Of The Red Death(Panther, 1964)

Edgar Allan Poe - The Masque Of The Red Death
J B Priestly - The Other Place
William Link & Richard Levinson - Child’s Play
Ray Bradbury - The Whole Town’s Sleeping
Fitz-James O’Brien - What Was It?
A E Coppard - Silver Circus
Daphne Du Maurier - Kiss Me Again, Stranger
John Metcalfe - The Smoking Leg
Conrad Aiken - Silent Snow, Secret Snow
Richard Matheson - The Children Of Noah
Margaret Irwin - The Earlier Service
C S Forester - The Man Who Didn’t Ask Why
Eric Linklater - Sealskin Trousers

It's a shame Michael Sissons wasn't given an extended run as an anthologist as his Panther pair were a joy. Masque ... was evidently intended as a movie tie-in (Elsie Lee's novelisation for Lancer [1964] is also a delight and one of v. first second-hand books i ever bought). In The Dead Of Night is perhaps the more generous in terms of oddities you don't often find elsewhere, but Masque ... sure has its moments, the John Metcalfe for starters. And yet another pre-Columbo offering from Link & Levinson.

Picked this up from a stall on Sclater Street at Brick Lane market yesterday for 25p and felt proper blessed.

[dem bones]

William Link & Richard Levinson - Child’s Play: Some boys aren't cut out for the joys of summer camp and the surly Arnold is such a one. His Mom is ignoring his urgent demands that she bring him home and that creep Bobby Thompson has been picking on him since the day he arrived. The situation calls for drastic measures.

C S Forester - The Man Who Didn’t Ask Why: Carpmael is the world's most successful gambler, hardly surprising as he can see into the future and read racing results and stock exchange prices a week in advance. Morbid curiosity gets the better of him and he has to know how he will meet his death. He sees himself fifty-one weeks on, a blind, paralysed vegetable on a hospital bed. So he takes a gun, puts it to his head, and ....

Eric Linklater - Sealskin Trousers: "I am the only seal-man who has ever become a Master of Arts of Edinburgh University ... I am the unique and solitary example of a sophisticated seal-man." Roger Fairfield has come out of the ocean on a fact-finding mission - he's filing a report on mankind (it's unlikely to be favourable). Young social-climber Elizabeth Barford, engaged to be married to Charles Sellin, discovers his secret. Fairfield can't allow her to return to her kind so he makes her as him. Sellin, witnessing the outcome, winds up in the madhouse.

Nothing as yet to rival The Smoking Leg in my affections. Child's Play is standard Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine material - you can tell where it originated without even checking the credit. Sealskin Trousers is more quiet fantasy than horror (otherwise i guess it would have been AKA The Curse Of The Were-seal). C. S. Forester provides a welcome shot of short 'n nasty fiendishness which had me thinking Robert Bloch in his more deadpan moments.

[dem bones]

Edgar Allan Poe - The Masque of the Red Death: With the Red Death ravaging the land, Prince Prospero invites a thousand guests to his impregnable castle to orgy riotously until the disease passes. The festivities are strictly no holes barred but for one stipulation. No guest is allowed to masquerade as a red robed walking corpse. When the clock strikes midnight it transpires that one such person has flouted the dress code. Prospero is not pleased and gives the order that this joker be hung from the battlements at sunrise. Best of luck with that one, Mister about to die horrible of plague along with everyone else!

It's been so long since I first read this can no longer remember if it made any impression on me at all. Most likely it was disappointment on a Peggy Lee Is That All There Is? scale as I was expecting my fair quota of splayed guts and exposed intestine even then. But now?

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was be-sprinkled with the scarlet horror.

I mean, that is just beautiful.

For the American International movie, Roger Corman and/ or screenwriter R. Wright Campbell grafted Poe's Hop Frog onto the story to flesh it out some. Elsie Lee's novelization sticks faithfully to the results, so you get all that business with Prospero torching the peasant village, his mistress's dabbling in black sorcery and the colourful grim reaper's gliding lugubriously through the misty woods. It really is a wonderful melodrama.

Elsie Lee – The Masque Of The Red Death (Lancer, 1964)

HORROR BEYOND IMAGINING

PRINCE PROSPERO...who worshipped Evil, thought nothing of burning an entire village to the ground!
FRANCESCA ... the pure and innocent maiden, survived to become the Prince's next victim!
JULIANA ... Prospero's mysterious mistress, could warn Francesca of the horrors that lurked in his dark castle, but could not help her escape!
And outside ... THE RED DEATH WAITED!

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. Starring VIN­CENT PRICE, HAZEL COURT and JANE ASHER. Produced and directed by ROGER CORMAN. Associate Producer, GEORGE WILLOUGHBY. Screenplay by R. WRIGHT CAMPBELL based on the original story by EDGAR ALLAN POE

[oatcakeredux]

That front cover's one hell of a spoiler for the film version!

As for In The Dead Of Night...

Ray Bradbury - The Small Assassin

Another much-reprinted classic. "Very well, he thought to himself. I brought you into this world, and now I shall take you out of it."

If you're a fan of killer baby/child stories - and several here appear to be - then this is definitely for you. And another magnificent closing line...

"'Baby! - see, Baby! - I have a gift for you. Such a pretty thing - see how it shines...'

A scalpel."

[dem bones]

A. E. Coppard - Silver Circus: When his young wife, Mitzi, leaves him for that worthless cretin, Julius Damjancsics, fifty year old Hans Siebenhaar travels Europe intent on spilling his rival's blood. Arriving in Vienna, Hans falls in with the proprietors of a travelling circus who present him with a tempting proposition. If he agrees to be sewn into a tiger skin and perform at tonight's show, they will pay a massive two hundred shillings! The one tiny catch; they want him to pretend to fight a lion. Be assured, this is a docile, timid, friendly lion. Initially wary, Hans accepts when they raise the fee ....

[dem bones]

Picked up this later edition of In The Dead of Night at Sclater Street this morning, contents identical to the 1962 original. Excellent selection. Photo cover not a patch on the original 'subterranean cannibals' painting, mind (see above).

Michael Sissons [ed] - In The Dead of Night (Panther, 1964)

Charles Beaumont – The Hunger
J. B. Priestly – The Grey Ones
Nigel Balchin – The Master
John Gloag – Lady Without Appetite
Evelyn Waugh – Mr. Loveday’s little Outing
Ray Bradbury – The Small Assassin
John Collier – Little Memento
Wilbur Daniel Steele – Blue Murder
Margery Sharp – The Portrait
Marc Brandel – Cast The First Shadow
Gerald Bullett – Dearth’s Farm
James Webb – The Curt Little Mouth In The Brain
John Moore – The Proof
Richard Matheson – Crickets
V. C. Pritchett – A Story Of Don Juan
Margaret Irwin – The Book
C. S. Forester – The Turn Of The Tide

Blurb:

A SPINE-CHILLING COLLECTION OF THE EERIE THE SINISTER THE MACABRE
The most glittering array of names ever drawn together for such a sinister purpose - to frighten you out of your sleep with accounts of the fiendish and fantastic, the subtly beastly and the terrifyingly uncanny ...

[Swampirella]

I was intrigued by "Crickets" (not to mention many of the other stories) and found this:

www.sffaudio.com/reading-short-and-deep-095-crickets-by-richard-matheson/