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Post by dem bones on Nov 11, 2016 9:56:10 GMT
Peter Haining (ed.) - The Gaston Leroux Bedside Companion (Gollancz, 1980) Peter Haining - Introduction. The Master Of Grand Guignol
A Terrible Tale The Mystery Of The Four Husbands The Inn Of Terror The Woman With The Velvet Collar The Crime On Christmas Night In Letters Of Fire The Gold Axe The Waxwork Museum The Real Opera GhostA Terrible Tale: The garrulous old sea-dogs in the Toulon cafe are forever complaining that Captain Michel Alban has never taken his turn at spinning them a yarn, so he reluctantly obliges with the true story of how he came to lose his arm. Following the sinking of The Daphne, the surviving crew put to sea in a raft and braved the seas for a month before reaching safety. Fortunately, the ship's doctor saved his instruments and his mastery of amputation spared them the nightmare of drawing lots to decide who they would eat first, and all thirteen survived, albeit in seriously truncated form. But the experience has left them with a taste for human flesh, and every anniversary, they reunite at Captain Beauvisage's home to enjoy an abominable banquet. Captain Alban, who fancies Beauvisage's wife Madge, ill-advisedly gate-crashes the party. The Waxwork Museum: To prove he is a man without fear, Pierre accepts a wager to spend a night alone at the wax emporium. He is so assured of his natural heroism as to refuse the proprietor's offer of a lantern. It is an impressive chamber of horrors. All the great murderers are present and correct, to say nothing of row upon row of heads claimed by Madame Gullotine. Those ghastly yellow waxen faces! Pierre is forced to admit to himself that it is all a bit unnerving. The last place you'd wish to hear a nasty chuckle in the dark. The Woman With The Velvet Collar: The seadogs meet again at Toulon's Cafe of the Sea. This time it's Gobart's turn to spin a horrible yarn. From Vault Mk I Bonifacio, Corsica. Mayor Antonio Macci, forty, is an antique dealer with a passion for the paraphernalia of the Revolution. His pride and joy - second only to Angeluccia, his beautiful young wife of course! - is his most recent acquisition, a guillotine said to have been used by no less a monster than Samson the executioner! With the help of Giuseppe, the handsome cousin of Angeluccia and a skilful craftsman in his own right, he soon has it restored to working order. Cause for celebration indeed! The Macci's host the most lavish masked ball. To show off his prize to full effect, the Mayor suggests a dramatic reconstruction of Marie Antoinette's final hour. Angeluccia gleefully volunteers to play the doomed Queen, Giuseppe is imposed upon to act as her Samson. We begin to wonder if Mayor Macci is quite right in the head. Can it be that he has discovered his wife's infidelity? What happens next is inevitable, but the epilogue, man! The terrible epilogue!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 11, 2016 18:43:37 GMT
After all that heads-will-roll unpleasantness, a chance to gather our collective breath while some maudlin old drunk slurs out a gentle love story. Hugh Rankin The Crime On Christmas Night: ( Weird Tales, Dec. 1930). Back in Toulon with the ancient skippers. On this occasion the regulars are augmented by one John-Joseph, whose abilities as storyteller leave much to be desired. Long before he can get to the good bits all but one of the company have found somewhere else to be, and Bagatelle only hangs around on the promise of steamy love action (there isn't any). John-Joseph's grisly tale concerns two humble shop-workers, Monsieur and Madame Vincent who, despite their relative poverty, are the happiest, most loving couple in Paris! The reason? A beautiful baby son, Vincent Vincent, has arrived late in their marriage as if by some miracle! As the child grows, the doting parents save every penny in order to provide him a substantial nest-egg. Now, with Christmas but a few days away, comes the dreadful news that they have been ruined! The years of sacrifice, scrimping and saving have all been in vain. What rosy future now for sweet little Vincent? Out of sheer desperation, Madame Vincent devises a gruesome strategy .... The Gold Axe: ( Windsor Magazine, 1925). Alone in the world and cheated of her dowry, Elizabeth rushes into marriage. Herbert Gutmann is a kind but secretive man, prone to depression, who refuses to discuss his occupation. On the death of Gutmann senior, the newly-weds inherit a gloomy old mausoleum in the Black Forest. Herbert grows increasingly morose and agitated. He sets aside a room for his office and denies Elizabeth access, even though the sinister old housekeeper is allowed to come and go as she pleases. What can it all mean? When old Baschler, the despised moneylender, is brutally murdered with an axe, Elizabeth is terrified that she has wed a madman. With Herbert away "on business" she finally has opportunity to investigates the locked room ....
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Post by dem bones on Nov 12, 2016 13:35:23 GMT
Hugh Rankin Chilling chuckles with the seadogs take IV. Zinzin's turn under the spotlight with a spot-the-murderer extravaganza. The Mystery of the Four Husbands: ( Weird Tales, Dec. 1929). Forget all the other most beautiful girls in the world we've met on this page. They can none of them hold a candle to Olympe, the lost love of Zinzin's life. Although her family were not particularly wealthy, Olympe did not lack for suitors. But how is a girl to choose between twelve eligible bachelors? Easy. "If I marry I'll take M. Delphin first, then M. Hubert, then M. Sabin, then my little Zinzin, then M. Jacobin ..." and so on through the entire doting dozen (pity the fellow who is the twelfth). As it turns out, her semi-joke backfires when husbands one, two and three meet with suspicious deaths in quick succession. Although nothing is proved against either Olympe (who grows more devastatingly beautiful with each bereavement) or her faithful old servant, Palmire, (quite the reverse), the rumour-mill quickly establishes that one or both of them are poisoners! Much as he adores her, dare Zinzin risk his chances with this most desirable of black widows? Hugh Rankin
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Post by dem bones on Nov 12, 2016 14:08:20 GMT
Hugh Rankin The Inn Of Terror: ( Weird Tales, Aug. 1929). "Not a memorable story." - Robert Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story, Fax, 1977. Cafe of the Old Wet-Dock, Toulon. Tonight it falls to Captain Chaulieus to provide morbid amusement. Mr. Weinberg thinks otherwise, but for my money the skip rises to the challenge. The inn situated near the top of the Wesseinstein in the French-Swiss Alps, gained overnight notoriety due to the antics of it's proprietors, Jean and Annette Weisbach, and their psychotic general factotum, Daniel. Over a period of several years the terrible trio robbed, torture-murdered and ate several guests, disposing of the bones down a well. The crimes were only discovered after the three had gone to their graves rich and happy. Some years later Chaulieus and Maria-Luce are all loved up on their honeymoon when they arrive at the infamous hostelry. The new landlord, Scheffer, is an enterprising fellow and, alert to his establishment's potential as ghoulish tourist attraction has renamed it "The Inn of Blood." His wife, Annette, is a squint-eyed horror with the build of a wrestler, very much the evil twin of the foul sadist Madame Weisbach. A hunchbacked manservant, 'Daniel' after the original, completes the tribute act. At no extra cost, guests are herded on a guided tour of the dungeon, kitchen, and murder room (now the bridal suite) while landlord and monster-wife regale them with the grisly backstory of each horrible torture implement. Imitation is the sincerest form of a flattery, but when an Italian couple vanish mysteriously never to be heard from again, the Captain and his terrified bride have cause to wonder if Scheffer has taken things way too far. There are obvious comparisons to Wilkie Collins Adventure Of The Terribly Strange Bed, though LeRoux name-checks a much earlier story as inspiration, Paul-Louis Courier's A Tale Of Terror (c.1820). It is not beyond the realms of possibility that The Inn Of Terror provided Hugh B. Cave with the germ for Murgunstrumm.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 13, 2016 10:13:53 GMT
C. C. Senf In Letters Of Fire: ( Weird Tales, March 1930: The Strand, June 1908). The usual stormy night drives four travellers to seek shelter at the usual inhospitable house in the middle of nowhere. Their host has good cause to be miserable. Sixty years ago, as a broke and suicidal eighteen year old, he inadvertently struck a pact with the Devil - his soul in exchange for a life-long winning streak at the gaming table. To cure the poor madman of his mania, the travellers propose a game of cards. He is dealt such a lousy hand it seems impossible for to win. O beloved strangers! Can it be that the curse has been lifted? All things considered, Mystére, the dog with the silent bark, could not have chosen a worse moment to belatedly rediscover his mojo .... The Real Opera Ghost: LeRoux's research into historical events of thirty years ago concerning the disappearance of Christine Daaé, lead him to believe that the 'Phantom' was no myth. He has even located "Erik"'s skeleton. Non-fiction. Obviously!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 30, 2016 21:34:20 GMT
Gaston Le Roux - The Phantom Of The Opera (Dell, 1943) Inside cover: The Scene of This Story is the Mammoth PARIS OPERA HOUSE built in the 1870's, with a foundation deep enough to admit a scene 50 ft. high to be lowered onto it. The grand stairway had steps of white marble with antique red marble balusters.On the floor below were 30 marble columns. A chandelier with 170 gas burners lighted the immense looking-glasses covering the back wall of the foyer. The opera employed 70 to 110 supernumeraries, 100 choristers, 80 musicians and scores of other persons. Horses were hoisted on stage by elevators. The huge stage permitted extravagant water and fire effects. The building contained 2, 531 doors with 7,593 keys, 14 furnaces, 9 reservoirs and dressing-room space for 538 persons.
BOOKS ARE WEAPONS. In a true democracy everyone may read what he likes. Books educate, inform, inspire: they also provide entertainment, bolster morale. This book has been manufactured in conformity with wartime restrictions — read it and pass on. Our armed forces especially need books — you may give them at your nearest U.S.O. office, leave them at your public library, or send them direct to Commanding General. 4th Corps Area Headquarters, Atlanta, Ga., marked "For Army Libraries."
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Post by pulphack on Dec 1, 2016 9:56:12 GMT
That's a lovely edition - I love those Dell mapbacks. I don't have any as they're ridiculously expensive, but there's a section on them, with repros, in Piet Schruders 'The Book Of The Paperbacks' (Virgin 1981). They're the work of an artist called Ruth Bellew, and were mostly on (unsurprisingly) whodunnits so that the reader could follow the interior action with a diagrammatic reference. Which is a great idea for that kind of mystery, and also looked wonderful.
LeRoux and The Phantom were also the subject of a question on The Chase this week, which the Beast got right (I'll do anything to avoid working some days)...
Oh, and I nearly forgot - back when I had the LOBBC's Sexton Blake library, they also had an almost complete run of Amalgamated's 'Thriller' paper, which ran several of LeRpoux's Cheri-Bibi stories. An anti-hero villain with a penchant for righting what he saw as wrongs, he was kind of a Saint for the Parisian Apache lover. They were a bit ripe and melodramatic, and also a little clunky (the latter might well have been poor translation, to be fair). I used to work with a guy from the Cameroon who was a mystery and whodunnit fan, and he read these in French - he reckons they were pretty good in the original if you liked that vintage. I'd say you'd have to be prepared for them to be dated more than you would than, say The Saint. They were more E Phillips Oppenheim than Charteris.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 1, 2016 20:36:50 GMT
That's a lovely edition - I love those Dell mapbacks. I don't have any as they're ridiculously expensive, but there's a section on them, with repros, in Piet Schruders 'The Book Of The Paperbacks' (Virgin 1981). They're the work of an artist called Ruth Bellew, and were mostly on (unsurprisingly) whodunnits so that the reader could follow the interior action with a diagrammatic reference. Which is a great idea for that kind of mystery, and also looked wonderful. "The mapbooks had three outstanding features; the scene of the crime depicted on the back cover; the capsule character descriptions preceding chapter one, which were often more vividly written than the books themselves; the teaser, which enticed you into reading further by dropping more red herrings in less space than had ever been done before or since." - Dilys Winn, Step To The Rear Of The Book, Murder Ink, 1977. Thank you for providing the artist's name, Mr. Hack. Wonder if she was also responsible for the striking cover painting? I got the Dell edition for £2 at the pulp fair. There were also a number of Armed Service editions to be had on the day, Anna Taborska landing a very lovely M.R. James Selected Ghost Stories. Am looking forward to a rematch with The Phantom Of The Opera. Previous encounter was in a paperback rushed out to cash in on Andrew Lloyd Ghastly's musical. Oh, and I nearly forgot - back when I had the LOBBC's Sexton Blake library, they also had an almost complete run of Amalgamated's 'Thriller' paper, which ran several of LeRpoux's Cheri-Bibi stories. An anti-hero villain with a penchant for righting what he saw as wrongs, he was kind of a Saint for the Parisian Apache lover. They were a bit ripe and melodramatic, and also a little clunky (the latter might well have been poor translation, to be fair). I used to work with a guy from the Cameroon who was a mystery and whodunnit fan, and he read these in French - he reckons they were pretty good in the original if you liked that vintage. I'd say you'd have to be prepared for them to be dated more than you would than, say The Saint. They were more E Phillips Oppenheim than Charteris. His melodramatic horror shorts are also very dated and I like them well enough - it's a huge part of their appeal.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 30, 2018 22:05:22 GMT
Seems there is no end to Peter Haining's mischief! According to Douglas A. Anderson of Wormwoodiana, The Waxwork Museum has nothing to do with Gaston LeRoux. Must say I'm not displeased by this revelation. Terrors has long eluded me, and I particularly wanted to read Andre de Lord's contribution. Every cloud. Sometimes.
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