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Post by dem bones on Oct 14, 2016 20:10:31 GMT
Norman Elwood Hammerstrom & R. F. Searight - The Brain In The Jar: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1924). Berlin, March 1919, Verne Eldridge of the American Intelligence Dept. investigates Dr. Jaeger, sadistic Nazi MAD SCIENTIST, long suspected of conducting chilling experiments at the crumbling old pile which now serves as a Hospital. Eldridge eventually locates Jaeger's secret laboratory. It is only too evident that the madman is far advanced in his work, as there, on a shelf, is the brain in the jar! The brain-plus- eyeballs are those of Jean Perrin, the famous French spy taken captive out of spite during the final hours of the great war. Via automatic writing, Perrin communicates the details of the ensuing operation, and we are all agreed that his ordeal has been a ghastly one. But, unbeknown to Jaeger and cronies, Perrin's brain has since developed extraordinary powers of telepathy and telekinesis, by which means he has already driven twenty-six of their number to murder, insanity and/ or suicide during the past week alone. That which was M. Perrin effortlessly takes control of Jaeger's will and invites Eldridge to witness his revenge on the fiend who condemned him to this most miserable existence. It is a suitably nasty one! Seems to have been their only contribution to Weird Tales bar a letter from Mr. Hammerstron (unseen) which featured in the Eyrie for January 1925. Guess they both realised you can't improve on perfection. Terence E. Hanley has written a typically enlightening feature on Norman Elwood Hammerstrom for Tellers Of Weird Tales
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Post by dem bones on Oct 16, 2016 18:24:31 GMT
Another corker from the terrific 'twenties. Heartless and cruel was the Physician, but he knew how to suffer. Andrew Brosnatch Gordon Philip England - The Acid In The Laboratory: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1925). "Friday night, Harley. Beware of Friday night!" Dr. Harley Denton Grimsby's only hope of landing Emily Lammerford is to get rid of that insufferable nuisance, George Hannington, the dizzy little madam having inexplicably taken a shine to him. Hannington is the head surgeon at Oaksden Hospital, "a heroic figure well calculated to fascinate such a woman as Emily, who was idealistic to the Nth degree." Grimsby disposes of his hated rival in an acid bath. Within six months of Hannington's baffling disappearance, Grimsby and Emily are wed, but it is soon obvious that the marriage can never work. Emily's heart still belongs to that stinker Hannington. Well if he means that much to her, she can join him!
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Post by dem bones on Oct 17, 2016 12:29:23 GMT
Ah, think I know where I'm heading with this now. A DIY alternative Not At Night selection, featuring stories Christine Campbell Thomson was almost certainly familiar with (the bulk of the anthologies' 170 having originated in Weird Tales) but, perhaps wisely, declined to revive in book form. Stuff like .... An unusual ghost story, involving a strange-colored automobile and a shocking murderQuindaro Lois Lane - The Purple Sedan: ( Weird Tales, Aug. 1929). The salesman at the Hobson Motor Co surely wasn't playing straight when he informed our heroine that there was "not a thing in the world" wrong with the flashy little number with the lilac upholstery, and, in any case, why would he let her have it in exchange for an old wreck? We know flappers are very charming, but even so, what's the catch, Buster? It's haunted, is what. By a dishevelled, grey-haired woman, horribly battered and bloody. Nobody likes a back seat driver, far less one as ghastly looking as Felicia Washburn Drennan! It transpires that, shortly before her headline grabbing mysterious disappearance, Mrs. Washburn, the widow of a fabulously rich soap manufacturer, got hitched to the jazz era equivalent of a toy boy. Jasper Drennan is suitably mortified that he's lost a widow and gained a humongousaurus of an inheritance - or so he makes out! Have no idea who Lois Lane was, but she pre-dates her famous namesake by a decade, and her solitary contribution to Weird Tales is a credible supernatural detection outing which brings out the best in illustrator, 'Quindaro.'
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Post by helrunar on Oct 17, 2016 14:35:21 GMT
Ace reporter Lois Lane scores in Weird Tales! What an awesome find!
The drawing, at least, reminds me of this episode of the Hammer produced series Journey to the Unknown (circa 1968) in which American male ingenue Chad Everett takes a blithe trip through time to a raucous Gilded Age house party at a Twenties mansion in the country, with gruesome results. I only vaguely recall the plot but I *think* a vintage automobile he was driving for some reason or other was involved. No lilac upholstery, though.
H.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 18, 2016 6:50:07 GMT
Ace reporter Lois Lane scores in Weird Tales! What an awesome find! The drawing, at least, reminds me of this episode of the Hammer produced series Journey to the Unknown (circa 1968) in which American male ingenue Chad Everett takes a blithe trip through time to a raucous Gilded Age house party at a Twenties mansion in the country, with gruesome results. I only vaguely recall the plot but I *think* a vintage automobile he was driving for some reason or other was involved. No lilac upholstery, though. H. Only episode of Journey To The Unknown I've seen is Eve (thanks, Pulphack), but I think the one you are referring to is Poor Butterfly? It seems 'Quindaro's artwork was used very sparingly by Farnsworth-Wright, just the five illustrations in all according to ISFDB, including this one for Bassett Morgan's umpteenth brain-transplant story, Demon Doom Of N'Yeng Sen (Aug. 1929). Quindaro
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Post by pulphack on Oct 18, 2016 10:41:51 GMT
Dem, that DVD has the whole series on it, it's just that as it was a dodgy copy it has no menu so you have to start at the beginning and either watch them all in one binge or be very patient with the fast forward button (it has no bloody chapters on it, either!). So you should find that episode eventually (if you don't give up in frustration first - which is how you ended up with the disk, if I'm honest!).
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Post by dem bones on Oct 22, 2017 6:58:56 GMT
Her first husband lay at the bottom of a Swiss glacier - but why should a snow image in his likeness strike her with such eery terror?Artist uncredited Lorreta Burrough - The Snowman ( Weird Tales, Dec. 1938). "An isolated farming community like this - must have its quota of halfwits. It's someone's idea of fun." Recently remarried Nancy is persecuted by evil snowman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Spencer, her brutal and, happily, deceased first husband, right down to the clay pipe in its icy mouth. Spencer, a keen mountaineer, lost his life when he fell to the foot of a crevice in the Swiss Alps; Nancy remembers it well as it was her severed the climbing rope. Philip realises the mobile snowman is upsetting his wife and decapitates it with an axe, trampling the body to dust. But the following night the snowman returns .... Thanks to those lovely people at SFFAudio, you can read it Here.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 19, 2018 6:13:39 GMT
Heitman Mrs Chetwood Smith - An Egyptian Lotus: ( Weird Tales, May-June-July 1924): An Interesting Narrative of the Land of King Tut. Johnny Asher, amateur detective and reporter on a New England daily, is packed off to Luxor to report on the opening of King Tutankhamen's tomb. No sooner has he arrived than Asher falls for a beautiful girl who leads him a merry dance into the cavernous mummy pits. But what is this? His Cleopatra is revealed as an evil, festering old hag! A trap! Her armed accomplices, led by a hideous one-eyed beggar, emerge from the shadows. Asher is overcome by sheer numbers, robbed and left for dead with a sack tied over his head. Barbarity unprecedented! Meanwhile the beautiful girl in question, Miss Ethelbert Langshaw, realising her mischievous prank has backfired, summons assistance. To think her silly game may have led to the death of the man she loves!
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Post by helrunar on Sept 19, 2018 11:51:50 GMT
I'm smiling because it sounds as if Mrs Chetwood was a fan of Sax Rohmer in his Tales of Secret Egypt mood.Also I wonder if Ethelbert was one of those names that could be given to a boy or a girl. The American composer Ethelbert Nevin was a male.
Fun! Nice drawing, too.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Sept 19, 2018 17:04:17 GMT
I'm smiling because it sounds as if Mrs Chetwood was a fan of Sax Rohmer in his Tales of Secret Egypt mood.Also I wonder if Ethelbert was one of those names that could be given to a boy or a girl. The American composer Ethelbert Nevin was a male. Fun! Nice drawing, too. I think you're right. Rohmer lite, possibly by way of Conan Doyle's The New Catacombs. Heitman's illustration is positively vivacious by his standards. Personal DIY imaginary alt- Not At Night selection is shaping up. Have now decided to include only stories published in Weird Tales prior to October 1925 - i.e., before the first volume of Not At Night hit the railway stalls - so, alas, we bid a fond farewell to The Acid In The Laboratory, The Purple Sedan, and The Snowman. Thanks to the magnificent efforts of Jessie at SFF Audio, have since had opportunity to read the first three issues of WT and several of these stories conform to the Christine Campbell Thomson ethos - not exactly great "literature" (far from it in several instances: The Return of Paul Slavsky is arguably as gloriously terrible as The Purple Cincture) but bizarre, horrible and deliriously entertaining. Contenders to date (many sadistically spoilered on Best Of Weird Tales 1923 thread): Farnsworth Wright - The Closing Hand: ( Weird Tales, March 1923) Capt. George Warburton Lewis - The Return of Paul Slavsky:(March 1923) Victor Johns - The Hideous Face (April 1923) Francis D. Grierson - The Hall of the Dead (April 1923) Julian Kilman - The Affair of the Man in Scarlet (April 1923) M. Humphreys - The Floor Above (May 1923) G. W. Crane - An Eye For An Eye (May 1923) Julian Kilman - The Golden Caverns (May 1923) C. M. Eddy, Jr. - The Ghost-Eater: (April 1924) Mrs Chetwood Smith - An Egyptian Lotus: (May-June-July 1924). An outsider at this early stage because the ending is so disgustingly cheery. C. M. Eddy, Jr. - The Loved Dead: (May-June-July 1924). Because it's so quintessentially Not At Night I can't believe CCT overlooked it. Norman Elwood Hammerstrom & R. F. Searight - The Brain In The Jar: (Weird Tales, Nov. 1924) You're really glad you read this, aren't you? Call it a gift, but sometimes I can just tell.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 19, 2018 17:35:36 GMT
I know you don't have time, but what a fascinating project along the lines of the Advent calendar this would make. Not at Night Redivivus... (we'd have to come up with an appropriately "cute" title, of course).
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Sept 19, 2018 18:18:41 GMT
I know you don't have time, but what a fascinating project along the lines of the Advent calendar this would make. Not at Night Redivivus... (we'd have to come up with an appropriately "cute" title, of course). Not Your F**king Night gives the potential customer fair warning, because it certainly wouldn't be should anyone be misguided enough to let me loose on such a project. Better for entire world that I try exhume the 'Worst Of Vault Advent Calendar' from Limbo before committing any further atrocities.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 19, 2018 19:11:48 GMT
Kev, you're the best! Thanks for the laugh. I definitely needed it.
cheers, Steve
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Post by helrunar on Sept 19, 2018 19:12:56 GMT
I am going to be collecting stories I have been known to read at certain hours of the month or year. The provisional title will be The Brain in the Toilet.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Feb 19, 2019 7:24:23 GMT
"Did you ever see blood gush out of a dying heart, son? It's a gorgeous sight - and interesting! At first it shoots out thick and rich - like oil. It's a beautiful colour. Jerry's was especially fine. Then it wells up fitfully for a spell and finally eases off into a tiny trickle. I'd like for you to see it, son ..." Heitman C. Franklin Miller - The Hermit Of Ghost Mountain: ( Weird Tales, March 1924). This Uncanny Tale of Creeping Horror Will Hold You Spellbound. The hermit, a sprightly centenarian, shows a young reporter around the workshop where he mixes a "life-giving potion." "I call it the Morgue of Life" he explains to the ashen journalist .... I'm not so sure Miller's Weird Tales debut (the previous issue's supernatural sportsman story, The Ghost of Silent Smith) quite prepared the reader for this gleefully ghoulish shocker.
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