julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Mar 31, 2011 16:45:43 GMT
I won't get booed out of town for adding a bit more personality to the "victims" will I?
I've debated whether they tend to be so annoyingly dull because it was the time period (most heroes and heroines were incredibly bland) or whether it was deliberate, since it's much easier to revel in someone's misfortune and torture if they're too dull to feel sorry for. (Like in Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses)
I have a sort of plot in mind - something leaning towards The Most Dangerous Game.... ;D
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 31, 2011 18:09:59 GMT
So reading the above thread put me in mind to try my hand at "shudder pulp". So I'm hoping the folks here will help me sort out the common cliches, themes, character types, etc., that are common in this genre. hi julie; as a kick-start, Robert Kenneth Jones lists eight recurring themes, but i reckon he's over-complicating the issue. it's true that 'supernaturalism', 'curses & spells' and 'the evil crone' put in sporadic appearances, but most of the supposedly uncanny goings-on are eventually rationalised when the kindly mayor or some other pillar of the community is unmasked as the insane genius pulling the strings. i think we can narrow it down some. first, there's the basic setting, familiar from hundreds of horror stories but essential to the weird menace. the young couple, preferably on honeymoon, break down in some remote spot next to a desolate mansion/ abandoned mine/ lunatic asylum/ mist-shrouded graveyard. SOMETHING comes at them out of the trees. the granite-jawed hero is socked over the head and his voluptuous wife of two hours carried off to a mad scientist's laboratory/ torture chamber or similar den of iniquity. now, to my way of thinking, the single absolute MUST of a weird menace is our voluptuous young woman in peril. it doesn't matter who or what is providing the peril - demented circus freaks, septuagenarian sex maniacs, bogus satanists, trad zombies, octopus-men, her loving husband (see below), a blow-torch gang or woman hating surgeons - let 'em all loose, the more the merrier. in fact, the thoughtful hacks knew to provide at least three VYW's because, even it was mandatory for the hero to eventually rescue his own gal, he could hardly be expected to save the others from a fate worse than a fate worse than death. usually he'd been injected with the VIRUS OF IDIOCY or some other neat drug and it would take a time to wear off. Now and again, the roles were reversed and the girls got to have all the fun, but i guess this was frowned upon as just plain perverted as it didn't happen too often. so, the above, a back-story providing the bad guy with at least some semblance of motive (callous rejection by a VYW is a favourite), and the much admired Scoobie Doo ending. what am i leaving out? Straiight to the nub Dem.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 31, 2011 19:46:06 GMT
I won't get booed out of town for adding a bit more personality to the "victims" will I? I've debated whether they tend to be so annoyingly dull because it was the time period (most heroes and heroines were incredibly bland) or whether it was deliberate, since it's much easier to revel in someone's misfortune and torture if they're too dull to feel sorry for. (Like in Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses) I have a sort of plot in mind - something leaning towards The Most Dangerous Game.... ;D In all honesty, I've yet to meet the author whose head didn't swell to millennium dome proportions at the prospect of someone adapting their work, so if I were you, I'd tweak, flesh out, do whatever you can to improve upon the raw material - I guess the trick is to come up with something original that is still recognisably weird menace. That whole The Most Dangerous Game framework suits itself well to the shudder pulp treatment - we've mentioned a few 'sex & sadism' variations on the theme: John Wallace's Terror Is Cupid's Mate for one, but there are more. Very best of luck with this, Julie. I am genuinely looking forward to hearing the results!
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julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Apr 4, 2011 1:19:50 GMT
I wrote it, and popped the entire script down int he workshop area, under "Jule's Shudder pulp Script". Comments are very welcome!
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Post by dem bones on Apr 30, 2023 6:28:34 GMT
So, twelve years on from JoJo's initial post, I landed a cheap copy. Arthur Leo Zagat - The Man From Hell (Black Dog Books, 2010) Cargo For Hell Graveyard Honeymoon Her Demon Lover Goat Girl of Lussac Hell's Anteroom The Sharp Teeth of Satan The Man From Hell
Bonus stories
By Subway To Hell The Horror In the Crib.
Appendix Tom Roberts - A Bibliography of Written Works by Arthur Leo Zagat Blurb: A corpse thrust forth from its grave...a bewitching Lolita who steals an artist's soul... lovers reincarnated after centuries to resume their forbidden affair... a strange coffin aboard a honeymoon cruise.... These are but a few of the weird mysteries prowling forth from their sepulchral gloom in THE MAN FROM HELL. Intangible horrors lurk in this collection of tales by Master of the Macabre Arthur Leo Zagat .... horrors sure to erode reason, skew morals and rip apart sanity. These tales of unrestrained terror are destined to shock you.... Partake if we dare! Having now read three, The Man From Hell has yet to click, but we persevere. Commentary to follow ....
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Post by dem bones on May 1, 2023 18:10:44 GMT
Zagat's eight Spicy Mysteries and both Thrilling Mysteries collected in one slim, 130+ page volume. The spicies were first published as by 'Morgan LaFey.' Her Demon Lover: ( Spicy Mystery, July 1936; as by Morgan La Fey). She was a simple mountain girl, starved of love, slave to a brutal master. Then she meets the man from the city, and an old hag's curse comes to answer her dreams ... Bald Top Mountain, Vermont. "In the Hill Country, a wife belongs to her husband as his dog belongs to him." Maylinn Court's one innocent pleasure in life is sneaking out the General Store in her one decent dress on mornings husband Dal is sleeping off a drunk. One evil morning her luck runs out; before she reaches the cabin, he's up and battering Gram Hooker, the crone from Toad Hollow, who everyone fears as a witch. On catching sight of his wife, Dal forgets the old woman, drags Maylinn inside and beats her bloody, before retiring to his still. A sympathetic Gram cleans Maylinn's wounds and gives her something real nice to drink. Something that makes her feel so good, she dashes naked into the wood, where her fantasy lover awaits ... The final dénouement, par for the course, is terrible, though I can't find it in me to begrudge Maylinn her happy ending. Jayem Wilcox Arthur Leo Zagat - By Subway To Hell ( Thrilling Mystery Stories, Feb. 1936). A Horde of Fiery Fiends Pursue Marion [sic] Rolph in Stygian Darkness! A Complete Novelette of a Sinister Secret. "It was a visage of supernal horror. It was a doughy lump of granulated red flesh out of which a single scarlet orb glared; a formless mass of lurid putrescence gashed by a blank, writhing aperture that might have been a mouth." We join Marian Rolph, riding the late train home when the lights cut out and the carriage comes under attack from luminous green monsters with misshapen heads and knob-ended boneless tentacles! As a gang of putrid things that once were men set about the passengers, a second party disengages the last car and diverts it to the fiery pit of Hell! Moments before the head is ripped from his shoulders, the passenger opposite hands Marian a note which he urges her to read, memorise and destroy; under no circumstances must she relay the contents to anyone other than a 'Warner Thor.' Marion duly swallows the paper before she is seized by the ghouls, stripped, and forced to witness a young couple torched. It will be her turn next — unless she betrays a stranger's trust and reveals what these horrors are so desperate to know ... Horrors are ultimately "rationised" - the lengths these arch-villains are prepared to go! - and story justifies its existence as warning against sending men to work a Quicksilver mine with neither prior inoculation nor protective clothing.
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Post by dem bones on May 6, 2023 11:56:28 GMT
A Dracula "tribute" and a black magic melodrama, both as by 'Morgan LeFay.'
Cargo For Hell: (Spicy Mystery Stories, Feb. 1936). "The Dead-alive has taken him. It will take us one by one, and sail the Taio to Luduo alone."
Captain Dan Thorne accepts a huge bribe from a stranger to interrupt his South Sea honeymoon voyage, take a slight detour to deliver a crate to Luduo, an island of evil repute. The Samoan crew don't like it — a woman and a coffin aboard ship bodes ill - and Alma, his virgin bride of ten minutes, is also set against the idea. Can't he forget work, pay his wife some attention on their wedding night?
With the coming of darkness, Sinyo the helmsman goes AWOL at the wheel. Thorne crowbars open the coffin to find the missing seaman with his throat all mangled. So it's true! There's a vampire aboard! Thorne reasons the best way to find the culprit is to have the entire crew horsewhipped until they confess!
Alma retires to bed. Dan evidently has everything back under control as soon she is "pulsing against his throbbing body." Wait! That's not Dan!
"Keep your dirty tongue off my wife!"
The Man from Hell: (Spicy Mystery Stories, April 1938). Hugh Blake, bestselling author (The Seven Who Slept, etc.) leaves wife Alice in the care of best friend Dick while he acquaints himself with Dismal Swamp, near South Mills, N. Carolina, the proposed setting for his next novel. Is their trust in one other misplaced? Has Alice been awaiting just such an opportunity to get her hands on Dick and vice versa? Is Hugh himself liable to go off half-cocked when the first nude, fiery-eyed snake woman crosses his path?
The rare example of an unashamed spicy supernatural horror story, though relative lack of raunch suggests it may have been originally intended for Weird Tales?
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Post by dem bones on May 11, 2023 10:44:54 GMT
the Horror in the Crib: ( Thrilling Mystery, Nov. 1939). Beset by Apparitions from Beyond, Neila Randall is the Victim of Unutterable Terror that Strikes to the Roots of Her Soul! With Jim dead in an accident, young Neila and baby Ralph have little option but to endure the hospitality of mother-in-law Lucretia and her ancient, sour-faced companion, Miss Priscilla Slade. Lucretia Randall is still seething that her son "married beneath him," but at least Neila has given her a lovely grandson to cherish. The terror begins when Neila drops the bombshell that she and Ralph will be moving out just as soon as she's found them lodgings elsewhere. Henceforth, the young widow is tormented by all manner of spectral fiend, including an animated skeleton, a malodorous shrouded ghoul, and a simian-headed horror in the baby's cot. And all the while, Jim's mournful voice urging her, "Kill it! Kill it!" A case for Zangar, radio star, phantom buster, the greatest stage magician of his generation! Thrilling Mystery was arguable the tamest of the weird menaces, seemingly written for those who preferred their shudder pulps minus the sex & sadism. Writing in Horror of the 20th Century, Robert Weinberg observes that "although TM lasted nearly ten years, it was never considered a major market for horror writers, as stories always had to have non-supernatural endings." To be honest, this was also the case with the Popular and Marvel titles, although occasionally an authentic haunting would slip through the net. Thrilling Mystery eventually metamorphosized into a defective detective pulp.
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