Tony Goodstone - The Pulps

[dem bones]

Tony Goodstone - The Pulps: Fifty Years Of American Pop Culture (Chelsea House, 1970)

Tony Goodstone - Nickel Heroes, Dime Novels

Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw
Edgar Wallace - The Green Poropulos
Carrington North - Wisdom (verse)
Richard Le Gallienne - A Plea For The Old Music (verse)
Paul W. Gallico - The Yellow Twin
Harry Irving Shumway - A Place For Everything (verse)
Max Brand - The Ghost
Luke Short - Tough Enough
Dashiell Hammett - One Hour
T. T. Flynn - The Deadly Orchid
MacKinlay Kantor - The Torture Pool
Ray Bradbury - Wake For The Living
H. P. Lovecraft - The Gardens Of Yin (verse)
Russ West - Hot Rompers
Clement Wood - Enter The Vampire (verse)
Robert E. Howard - The Purple Heart Of Erlik
Robert Leslie Bellem - Labyrinth Of Monsters
Tennessee Williams - The Vengeance Of Nitocris
Page Cooper - Incantation
Mary Elizabeth Counselman - The Green Window
H. P. Lovecraft - Continuity (verse)
Harl Vincent - Wanderers Of Infinity


"Through the gauzy thinness of the pajamas, Travis Brant could see the girls heaving, panting breasts, twin ripe half-melons of cream white flesh that strained at her pajama jacket like swelling mounds of enchantment" etc.

These belong to Anne Barnard, who has just witnessed the bizarre murder of a Chinese girl in the adjoining building.

"There .. there was something ... clinging to her breast. At first I thought it was an infant. And then ... and then I saw ... "
Anne Barnard's voice quivered and gurgled into a low-pitched moan of sheer horror.
"The thing at the Chinese girl's breast was not an infant. It was ... something else. Something foul - Horrible - Impossible! It's talons were fastened in her b-breasts; its fangs were at her throat. It was drinking her blood!"
"God!" Travis rasped. "What was it? What was the thing?"
"I don't know" the brown haired Anne Barnard wailed shrilly. "It was horrible hairy ... all over! It was tiny, and white ... and its face was dripping with the Chinese girl's blood. It had no legs ... and four long arms!"

So begins Robert Leslie Bellem's classic mad scientist outing Labyrinth Of Monsters (Spicy Mystery, 1937). It's impossible for me to say for certain that this is typical of his style, but from the three other treasured Bellem's in my collection - The Dark Tower, I Am A Monster and Princess Of Dreams - there's a fair chance that this may be the case.

Brant ( who also stars in Princess Of Dreams), Miss Barnard and patrolman Mahony investigate "the spooky house on the cliff ", the residence of the mysterious Dr. Zenarro and his hulking servant, Gorrill. Hardly are they through the door when Brant is once again distracted by Anne's ripe half-melons. Fortunately for him;

She returned his kiss, ardently, warmly, thrillingly. Brant felt the fluttering tip of her moist little tongue and lancing shivers of desire coursed through him. His hand crept to the front of her pajama-jacket, unfastening it, exploring tentatively within the silken-gauzy garment.

Dr. Zenarro is a bit of a card himself. While Anne readies herself to undergo the token gratuitous whipping, the evil mastermind addresses Brant;

"I will explain, since you seem interested. You may recall the case of a fellow named Modescu, a Rumanian miner in the Pennsylvania coalfields. The newspapers gave it much publicity at the time. This Modescu's wife gave birth to a monster infant - a nightmare horror, abominably deformed. Modescu went mad, killed his wife and the new born child. He was incarcerated in an asylum - but later he escaped. Well, my friend, that same Modescu is none other than my servant, whom I have re-named Gorrill - after the gorilla, you understand."

There's a neat selection of Spicy Mystery covers (and others) at: Just For Fun

For me, the other highlight of this excellent collection is Ray Bradbury's ghoulish Wake For The Living which is about as EC as it gets. Old Charles Brayling, knowing himself to be dying, builds a coffin twenty feet long and five feet thick with a transparent lid. When he dies, his idle sot of a brother has him buried in a cheap box, certain that if Charles' invention was patented it would be worth a fortune; but first he'd best work out what the old fool was up to. So, he climbs inside, lies down, and ...