Robert Weinberg - Weird Menace Classics 1-6

[dem bones]

Robert Weinberg (ed.) - Weird Menace Classics #1: The Corpse Factory (Robert Weinberg, 1977)

Editorial: Robert Weinberg

Arthur Leo Zagat - The Corpse Factory (Dime Mystery, May 1934)
Living derelicts, cast ruthlessly aside by the power that had maimed them, they formed in time an Army of the Damned!

Arthur J. Burks - The Canyon Of Missing Brides (Terror Tales, Nov. 1937)
Each girl who denied that evil legend must an­swer a weird, compelling call of the night ...

Frederick C. Davis - Goddess Of Evil Revelry (Dime Mystery, Dec. 1936)
It was a wine more potent by far than any vin­tage mere mortals should ever know - a wine only pagan gods could drink with impunity.

Mindret Lord - Beauty Born In Hell (Horror Stories, Aug. 1939)
He was watching a chorus of beautiful girls who stared like zombies - and who danced the last routine of his vanished wife!

Ray Cummings - House Of Horrible Laughter (Dime Mystery, May. 1937)
It was when we felt a strange, evil thrill coursing through our blood at the sight of those fiendishly tortured girls, that our feet began slipping over the brink of the lack Pit...

The first of Weinberg's classic 'shudder pulp' reprint series begins with a foreword by the great man, Chamber of Horrors in which he sums up the appeal of this bizarre and spicy fare.

"The key word is entertainment. These stories are not intended to be anything other than that. They are absolutely unbelievable - totally unrealistic - but they are fun. They require a total suspension of belief. The reader has to let the author take on a fantastic trip into a strange world of fast action and gruesome events."

Referring to the reader as "him" is probably deadly accurate: it's hard to imagine the shudder pulps having an enthusiastic female following as, in almost every case, the action centres around the abduction and torture of young women by bogus monsters in monster masks, sadistic carney freaks and depraved octogenarians.

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cover artwork: Steve Fabian

" There is considerable torture carried on in the latter day horror pulps and a great deal of fascination with pain. Deformities, maimings, disembowelings are all pre­sented in explicit, often loving detail. You'll have to take my word for this, since this is one genre I am refraining from quoting. Various civic pressures, and the real hor­rors of the new World War put an end to most of the horror pulps by the early '40's. Fortunately, unlike what has happened in the case of the relatively literate Weird Tales, none of the material from any of the weird menace pulps has been preserved in books or elsewhere, and the gruesome stuff is now as defunct as a mad doctor at :he end of a Dime Mystery novelette."

- Ron Goulart, Cheap Thrills: An Informal History Of The Pulp Magazines (Ace, September 1973)

Fair enough. Far be it from me to question the judgment of the man who penned the much loved Vampirella novelisations. Personally, i rate the Weird Menace pulps as the Hamlyn 'nasties' of their day , but then i'm a romantic. Luckily for us, Mr. Goulart's comment regarding the availability of this material wasn't strictly accurate in 1972, but Robert Weinberg and, later Sheldon Jaffrey and Tom Mason, sure helped things along and, thanks to Pulpgen, there's even a considerable amount of Red Circle material available online.

My brush with Cornell Woolrich's Graves For The Living has rekindled my enthusiasm for these 'Sex & Sadism' pulps, so the big plan is to post loads of boring lists and reviews of them while the fascination lasts. To begin, here's the full contents list for the rest of Mr. Weinberg's fab series. I can't comment on covers 2-4 as i don't have those issues, but if there's one flaw, for me it's in Steve Fabian's artwork which, excellent as it is, simply doesn't suit!

Robert Weinberg (ed.) Weird Menace #2: Satan's Roadhouse (Robert Weinberg, 1977)

Editorial: Robert Weinberg

Hugh Cave - Satan's Mistress (Dime Mystery, June 1935)
Carl Jacob' - Satan's Roadhouse (Terror Tales, Oct. 1934)
Frederick C. Davis - Festival of the Bloodless Dead (Dime Mystery, Jan 1937)
Gabrielle Wilson - Mistress of the Black Pool (Horror Stories, June-July 1936)

Robert Weinberg (ed.) Weird Menace #3: The Chair Where Terror Sat (Robert Weinberg, 1977)

Editorial: Robert Weinberg

Paul Ernst - Brides of the Dust Demon (Dime Mystery, Dec 1936)
Arthur Leo Zagat - Satan Calls His Children (Dime Mystery, May 1937)
Nat Schachner - Death Unmasks at Midnight (Horror Stories, June-July 1936)
Arthur J. Burks - The Chair Where Terror Sat (Horror Stories, June-July 1936)

Robert Weinberg (ed.) Weird Menace #4: Devils In The Dark (Robert Weinberg, 1979)

Editorial: Robert Weinberg

Wyatt Blassingame - Models For Madness (Terror Tales, Dec. 1935)
Hugh B.Cave - Devils In The Dark (Dime Mystery, June 1934)
Frederick C Davis - The Coming of the Mad Ones (Dime Mystery, Sept. 1936)

Robert Weinberg (ed.) Weird Menace #5: Slaves To The Blood Wolves (Robert Weinberg, 1979)

Editorial by Robert Weinberg:

Arthur J. Burks - Slaves To The Blood Wolves (Terror Tales, Dec. 1935)
Wyatt Blassingame - Satan Sends A Woman (Terror Tales, Jan. 1936)
Norvell Page - The Red Eyes Of Rin Po Che (Dime Mystery , Nov. 1939)
Arthur Leo Zagat - Girl Of The Goat-God (Dime Mystery, Nov. 1935)

Robert Weinberg (ed.) Weird Menace #6: Dance Of The Skeletons (Robert Weinberg, 1980)

Editorial by Robert Weinberg:

Norvell Page - Dance Of The Skeletons (Dime Mystery , Oct. 1933)
Arthur J. Burks - Tiger Pit (1936)
Hugh B. Cave - Daughter Of The Plague (Terror Tales, Jan 1936)

[cauldronbrewer]

Oct 9, 2009 16:17:16 GMT dem bones said:

To begin, here's the full contents list for the rest of Mr. Weinberg's fab series.

Wildside Press has reprinted some of these, complete with original covers. I just read #1; it's exactly what one would expect. For some reason, Frederick C. Davis's "Goddess of Evil Revelry," which features the least subtle alcoholism metaphor I've ever seen, stands out for me.

[dem bones]

Mindret Lord - Beauty Born In Hell: (Horror Stories, Aug. 1937)

Henry C. Kiefer

"You were wondering how it happens that my girls are so similar in body and face. Plastic surgery is the simple answer. An ugly nose, eyes that are too small, an unpleasant chin line - all are easily corrected. Even easier, is a case like that of your wife whose defect is merely that her breasts are somewhat too large."

Shortly after the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Marjorie, a burlesque dancer turned teacher, Jeff Ellwood reports on the new sensation at Feldman's Royal Palace Theatre for his newspaper, The Times-Tribune. 'The Devil's Darlings,' a 24-strong proto-Pans People, are billed as "the World's greatest precision dance group," and Jeff can only agree that they are remarkable, if zombie-like, performers. Turns out that Feldman and his evil cohort 'The Doctor' are abducting young women, subjecting them to sadism and surgery, thereby reducing their resistance to mesmerism. Goes without saying that many a wealthy, senile old pervert is happy to pay Feldman's asking price for a ringside seat at the torture sessions.

In the Shudder Pulp scheme of things, Lord's story introduces two significant departures from the Scooby-script. We never learn the Mephistophelian Doctor's true identity - it wasn't the Mayor dressed up - and, months after his death, Marjorie remains a slave to his hypnotic spell.

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Norvell W. Page - Dance of the Skeletons: (Dime Mystery Magazine, Oct. 1933). They found him on the sidewalk, the man, who two short hours before, had set out to find the Flesh Destroyer. He had succeeded, for he himself was now a fleshless skeleton! A complete short novel.

A rookie detective's arrival in New York from his Indianapolis hometown coincides with the disappearance of Caspar 'Champ' Johnson, chairman of Corrugated Trust, whose share prices have inexplicably plunged on the stock market. Investigating a lead, the new boy, Wallis 'Wallie' Dean, is beaten unconscious by fanged, forehead-lacking men of short stature attired only in loincloths. On regaining his senses, Dean and his chief, Lieutenant Furstow, find a bleached skeleton, later identified as that of the missing money man, discarded in an alley. It's Johnson — the first victim of a new black-shrouded master-criminal known as the Flesh Destroyer! Several follow in quick succession. Johnson's secretary, snatched alongside his boss, escapes his captors by leaping into the Hudson, only to be stripped to meatless bone while recovering in hospital. Detective Dutton, pursuing a "a hot tip" is reduced to little more than a bag of bones and a police shield!

Lieutenant Furstow is no fan of the new boy, who in turn believes his superior may be in cahoots with the killers. When Furstow is kidnapped, and a second company director goes missing during a wild fluctuation in share prices, Dean is arrested. The rookie, however, persuades the arresting officer that he can nail the killer. Before his murder, Henderson, Johnson's secretary, revealed he'd been manhandled aboard a luxury yacht and forced to divulge the combination to "the Champ"s safe or be thrown into a pool of the mystery flesh-dissolving solution.

As lead story in Popular's first attempt at a crime horror hybrid, Dance of the Skeletons is widely regarded as the first weird menace story. The core components are already in place; a community threatened by a venal, sadistic, seemingly supernatural villain in ghoul drag; a two-fisted detective and nominal heroine in peril (Mary Johnson. She gets off comparatively lightly); bizarre, ghastly deaths; torture interludes, etc.

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Arthur J. Burks - Tiger Pit: (Thrilling Mystery, Nov. 1938). A human being with the eyes of a beast. Wenatchee, Washington. Horror under the big top. When yet another of aerialist Martha Spaeth's male admirers is gored and shredded, suspicion falls on Smudge Draper, the sinister, slit-eyed big cat tamer. Can it be that he trained Bessie the Bengal tigress to destroy a potential love rival? More horrible still; is Draper a were-tiger?

Hugh B. Cave - Daughter of the Plague: (Terror Tales, Jan. 1936). Through the black river of death to the Devil's Workshop, John Paine discovered the ghastly truth behind the madness that was striking down his employees.

Mass panic in Kelbourne as workers digging a new sewer vanish from site to return three days later, cadaverous, shrivelled, gibbering travesties of the men they once were! Now John Paine, the young outsider supervising the project, is accused of groping and tearing the dress of Miss Sara Lane in the abandoned library. He'd been warned against setting up base there, the building having been shut down following an outbreak of the same plague affecting his employees. Paine is mortified that Miss Lane should believe him capable of such a vile assault, let alone accuse him — he wasn't even present when it took place! Clearly, one or more of the town's money-men want Paine disgraced and the project scrapped, but who and why?

Esther Kenny, estranged daughter of one of Kelbourne's chief financiers and fiancée of Leon Benstrom, the brilliant young chemist, agrees that Paine is the victim of a conspiracy, and shows him a secret entrance to a network of long-disused drainage tunnels. The title suggests she may have a sinister ulterior motive. Chained in the lethal chemical plant at the mercy of the plague manufacturer, things look dicey for John and a now contrite Miss Lane until; "I am not sure what I did then or how I did it ...."

It's clear from his selections over the six volumes that Weinberg's preference was for stories from the shudder pulps' early, comparatively inoffensive pre-sex & sadism phase (loosely 1933-1937), hence lack of anything by the two names synonymous with the form; Donald Graham or Russell Gray.