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Post by andydecker on Aug 29, 2017 8:46:56 GMT
Interesting to reflect on that, Dem. What I recall of the conversation is that her change of mind about Wheatley had to do with religious concerns, but racist language might have led to a more visceral level of distaste. She was only a few years older than myself and I always reacted with disgust to displays of race hatred and animadversion. I was in the first generation, I think, to attend desegregated schools, starting 1st grade in 1964. I was looking at Wheatley's Wikipedia entry just now to see if there was any sign of his involvement in some of the British Nationalist parties or groups of mid 20th century. I didn't see that, although there is an anti-socialist "letter to posterity" quoted. The views expressed echo those of Simon Raven, which he expressed frequently in his novels. It states that Haunting of Toby Jugg was filmed in 2006 under the title The Haunted Airman; first I recalling having heard of this. H. I had to re-read parts of TDRO for an article I did recently. I was a bit astonished how much Wheatley mixed mythologies here. It is not just catholic doctrine, especially in his cheeky deus ex machina ending with his Lord of Light riding to the rescue form the Hidden Valley. And he really seemed to have done his homework. Among the lumbering prose are interesting tidbits.
His author's note of course is still brillant marketing. His solemn warning about satanism sure will have give his readers goosebumps in 1934.
But mostly I thought that his style of writing is a nice antidote for today's boring writing school thrillers. His characters may be insufferabe snobs, even more so for british readers, I guess. But as heroes they work nicely.
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 29, 2017 9:48:38 GMT
Just remembered, I haven't been very complimentary to Wheatley myself on here in the past - vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/3121/wheatley-hatersGlad I found that thread again - I think I will need to re-read The House of Lost Souls , especially since I can't remember anything about the ending now (one of the few benefits of the ageing process, I suppose).
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Post by helrunar on Aug 29, 2017 15:22:01 GMT
I was interested to see somewhere yesterday that he wrote a whole series of books about the Duke de Richleau. Apparently only a couple of the books had occult themes. Christopher Lee played the part so well in the film.
My favorite thing about that movie is Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (who was a legend in the world of British theatre) showing up as a cigar-smoking Satanist Countess. I love the scene where she tries to run over the heroes in her sporty roadster. I tend to laugh a lot, in a good way, when I watch that film.
H.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 29, 2017 19:13:15 GMT
I was interested to see somewhere yesterday that he wrote a whole series of books about the Duke de Richleau. Apparently only a couple of the books had occult themes. I think it's only The Devil Rides Out, Strange Conflict and Gateway To Hell? It's true that the Duc de Richleau & entourage saw the lions share of the action versus Black Sorcery types, but occasionally Wheatley would allow his other series characters a piece of the action. In The Irish Witch Roger Brook takes time out from scuppering Napoleon Bonaparte's designs to rescue daughter Susan from The Hell fire Club MK. II. Also Gregory Sallust, upper crust man of violence, joined forces with a powerful Jewish Satanist (!) to bring down Hitler Nazi's in They Used Dark Forces. It's quite likely there are other examples. Did the insufferable "Conkey Bill" appear in any other novels prior to/ after To The Devil - A Daughter? BTW. The Haunted Airman. Don't even go there.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 29, 2017 19:39:44 GMT
Thanks for the warning, Dem. I looked at a clip of Haunted Airman on Youtube... Robert Pattinson's eyelashes appeared to be an integral feature to the story, such as it was...
I might get a copy of To the Devil, a daughter for my October bus trip visit to my woodworking friend. I always enjoy reading something sensational on the bus--or the train.
cheers, H.
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Post by andydecker on Aug 29, 2017 21:51:28 GMT
Helrunar, if you are interested - and it is surely already mentioned somewhere at the Vault - denniswheatley.info has all the forewords of the Library of the Occult. You have to click the covers to read them. Some are interesting and quite frank in Mr. W opinions. Especially vol 19 "Voodoo" is quite a rant, but vol 22 "The Winged Pharao" is also quite outspoken.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 29, 2017 22:03:08 GMT
Thanks for letting me know, Andy. Sounds interesting.
Best, H.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 29, 2017 22:14:50 GMT
"... for the very poor, the only pleasures available are music, dancing and copulation."
Unlike the game lads down at the local who know that a really decent night out involves a game of darts, a rousing discussion of the latest test match, and lots of good English ale.
The joys of civilisation...
H.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Aug 31, 2017 20:30:43 GMT
Did the insufferable "Conkey Bill" appear in any other novels prior to/ after To The Devil - A Daughter? BTW. The Haunted Airman. Don't even go there. Everyone's favourite proboscis takes centre stage in Den's 'The Satanist', a Black Magic novel in which the Prince Of Darkness infiltrates those Commie Trade Unions. I've become more enamoured of The Haunted Airman, as long as it's thought of as a stand alone story and absolutely nothing to do with The Haunting Of Toby Jugg. Hel, have you ever seen the Hammer film of Dennis Wheatley's The Lost Continent? I'm not saying it's the greatest film ever made but it's ****ing close.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 1, 2017 5:10:28 GMT
Did the insufferable "Conkey Bill" appear in any other novels prior to/ after To The Devil - A Daughter? BTW. The Haunted Airman. Don't even go there. Everyone's favourite proboscis takes centre stage in Den's 'The Satanist', a Black Magic novel in which the Prince Of Darkness infiltrates those Commie Trade Unions. Smart. To think I revisited The Satanist over and over during tragic "serious v*mp*re researcher" incarnation. Too much fixating on Molly Fountain's nylons, not enough attention to the tedious bits, that's my trouble. I seem to recall he took a pop at the Trade Unions in (at least) one of the De Richeleau's, too, equating Socialists with "fledgling traitors." FM, if you've not already done so, you might like to watch this episode of Clive Barker's A-Z of Horror featuring interviews with Wheatley, Stan Nichols, Sir C. Lee, and Gregory Pendennis celebrity fan Bob 'The Duke' Rothwell. Part V: A Fate Worse Than Death.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 1, 2017 13:50:21 GMT
Wow, Dem. That Clive Barker thing about Wheatley is really... something else!
Thanks for the link! Interesting to see actual film of DW holding court at his manor house.
cheers, H.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jan 24, 2023 10:51:29 GMT
D. K. Broster, "Couching at the Door" -- John Keir Cross states in the introduction that this tale was originally published in 1933. It is something of an homage to the culte for the Black Mass and Satanic reveries of the "Decadents" of the 1880s and 1890s. At times the story reads like a pastiche of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray or Huysmans' La-bas (a chapter of which is the finale to this volume). The central character, a gentleman I personally found hard to take seriously, presents the spectacle of black magic as the exotic flower of a rather tiresomely fetishistic narcissism. The "spook" has a Jamesian flavor to it but I'm not sure that Rosemary Pardoe would regard the author as among the ranks of those worthy of consideration under the mantle of the Master. I did enjoy the story very much. And to revert again to the theme of the Seventies, it would have made a good episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery series. H. Couching at the Door by D K Broster“…Art has nothing whatever to do with what is called ‘morality’; happily we know that at last!” This is an intensely creepy work, evolving from a piece of fluff or “nothing now but a drenched smear swirling round the nymphs of Thetis!” to, I infer, a feather boa worn by the two ladies in Prague and Paris whom the writer (Augustine Marchant now at the more innocently countrified Abbot’s Medding) once met now being reconfigured in his so-called poetic work that his neighbours know little about, and then to a gigantic cobra, all three visions of such frightful realities threaded through with various images of the Garden of Eden, and, from a different point of view, we gain a glimpse of the same story as seen by the young callow illustrator who is to do the book’s artwork for Augustine’s writing and who is somehow palmed off by Augustine with this frightful furry familiar! Leaving Augustine free of it? A work of hiding one’s art, guilt at one’s art, even absolving oneself of whatever dark creativity one does… and even writing such stuff myself and now reading, then openly reviewing this story being equivalent to my own guilty secret, but now no longer a secret as it is thus palmed off on you?! There are some wondrous passages describing the horrific ‘familiar’, but by by calling them ‘wondrous’, what is it do we do? The warmth of our snuggling up to the familiar in bed just being one thing here deployed. I discern, to help his own self-exorcism, the older man’s grooming of the illustrator was effectively set in motion by an elbow trigger: “In the shaded rosy candle-light, his elbows on the table among trails of flowers he, who was not even a neophyte, listened like a man learning for the first time of some spell of spring which will make him more than mortal.” And each reader of this work will wrestle with their own vision of how this prose is couched. And maybe there will rear false aunt sallies to hide the actual nature of the serpent embedded in its tale? “For his own art was of infinitely more importance than the subservient, the parasitic art of an illustrator.” Part of my review of the whole WOMEN’S WEIRD (Handheld Press) here’: dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/womens-weird-strange-stories-1890-1940/
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Post by helrunar on Jan 24, 2023 12:57:49 GMT
Interesting response (which I don't really follow or comprehend) to this story. I recall neither the tale nor the author's name now at this distance of five or six years so it was quite disconcerting to peruse my own somewhat over-egged notice of it.
Hel.
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Post by weirdmonger on Jan 24, 2023 13:11:56 GMT
Interesting response (which I don't really follow or comprehend) to this story. I recall neither the tale nor the author's name now at this distance of five or six years so it was quite disconcerting to peruse my own somewhat over-egged notice of it. Hel. Your review, of D.K. Broster’s COUCHING AT THE DOOR (that I read after completing my own review of it) I found interesting and instructive. For example, I had not realised the Dorian Gray connection.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 24, 2023 13:19:03 GMT
Glad you enjoyed it, Des! I've been re-reading this thread. Lots of fun.
Semi-amnesia when one is in one's mid Sixties at least means one doesn't have to roam too far afield for ready entertainment.
Still haven't cracked a Wheatley novel, nor have I yet seen the Hammer film of The Lost Continent--but I think I can view both it and The Dark Song, an Irish film also referenced here, on a streaming service to which I subscribed last year.
Saluting, Steve.
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