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Post by dem bones on Mar 26, 2023 14:03:50 GMT
Harry Steeger [ed.] - Terror Tales: November 1934 (Steeger Properties, 2023) Arthur Leo Zagat - Thirst of the Living Dead
G. T. Fleming-Roberts - Madman's Mate
Wyatt Blassingame - River of Pain
John Flanders [Jean Ray] - If Thy Right Hand Offend Thee
Nat Schachner - Monsters of the Pit
Laurence Donovan - The Corpse Carver
George Edson [Paul Ernst] - Food for the Devil This being the centenary, I was fearing a plague of Weird Tales cash-ins but if anything, there seems more activity on the Weird Menace front. Steeger recently published the three earliest issues of Terror Tales in decent facsimile.  Amos Sewell: Bill Bruce smiled at the curse on the Flat Head bones... until grinning death walked the night, and his own skull was a tightening, fiery thing.Archaeologist Bill Bruce perseveres in his excavation of the Indian burial mound despite the horrible death of a hired hand and self-styled Flat-head Wade Martin's warning; "touch one of those bodies and the destruction will fall on you!" His is no idle threat. Those who disturb the dead endure persecution from a rifle-toting skeleton bent on deforming human skulls. Bruce don't care so much for himself, but he's wary of bringing down the curse on Mary Marshall, a local schoolteacher who shares his passion for relics. This being an early Terror Tales, Mary gets off comparatively lightly - the invasion of slobbering perverts and flagellants was two-three years away - and River of Pain doesn't quite get going until its last four pages (of twenty), when suddenly it became the greatest thing I ever read.  Amos Sewell: Death in the muskeg would have been better than the terrors which awaited them, in that bottomless hell that spawned its ancient tortures. See The Devil's Nightclub & Other Stories.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 28, 2023 18:00:37 GMT
 Amos Sewell: What sinister horror lurked behind the high-walled mansion of the Loups? Pay dirt! Frank Loup, missing, presumed blown to pieces in battle, returns to Ogden with half a face, a hideously dislodged eye, and murder in his heart on discovery that he's been cuckolded by his own brother! While Frank was lying low in Italy, John wrote him with the sad news of his wife, Mary's death. Today, Frank caught sight of her - looking none the worse for wear - in John's house! Fearful that he will fall victim to the family curse (the clues in the surname) and tear apart his brother, Frank implores the Deputy Sheriff to jail him overnight. Tom Atwood obliges, before paying a call on the old Loup house, if only to discredit Frank's ravings. The lawman knows Mary's dead. He attended the funeral. So who is that all propped up and looking lovely in John Lupe's bed? {Spoiler}"You see, she was so beautiful," John Loup went on. "I could not bear to think of her in the cold vault, in the realm of the worm. So I brought her to my bed. You can't be jealous now, Frank. Embalmers' pencil-painted lips are cold — cold — cold..." John Flanders - If Thy Right Hand Offend Thee... : From nowhere came the hand-bringing with it a lingering death. Gumpelmeyer, a wealthy jeweller on Central avenue, is tormented to madness by a ragged, mangled blob of flesh. Fearful of thieves and beggars, Gumpelmeyer had slammed down the shop's steel shutter when its owner poked an arm through the window, effectively guillotining his or her hand at the wrist. Eventually, the money man's own right paw succumbs to stinking gangrenous decay .... |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 30, 2023 9:50:29 GMT
 Amos Sewell: Bloody footsteps led Mark Conrad on to undreamed horrors. Professor de la Roque invites newly-wed Mark and Linda Conrad and two young friends to his Caloosahatchee mansion on the pretext of a tarpan fishing weekend. That night, Mark wakes from a nightmare to find his wife missing and a bloody trail leading from her bed! What can it all mean? Following the tortured screams, Mark arrives at a barred window looking down upon a fully equip operating theatre, a sheeted woman lying comatose on a slab. The Professor assures Mark "You are privileged to behold the hands of a genius" as be prepares for work. His demands are straightforward. Either Mark pay up $1m, or de la Roque will dissect Linda alive. To prove he's not bluffing — CHOP! — look! Here's her arm! |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 1, 2023 12:04:48 GMT
 Amos Sewell: The dark shadow of the Swamp Beast hung over them, a threat to every living creature in that house of haunted souls. By the terms of Old Cyrus Randall's will, his nieces, Elsa and Janet, and their cousin, John Moreau, will inherit a vast fortune if they last out a week at his decrepit swampland mansion. Fail to do so, and his riches pass to the sinister housekeeper, Miss Galt. Bad enough the trio should have to endure her sadistic presence for or seven days, let alone the company of Mose, the help/ token slobbering degenerate, and Luther Smith, conniving live-in secretary to the deceased. Worse still, there's a killer something loose on the marshland, sworn to feed living persons to the stinking ooze on a regular basis. "It's a creature that's half human and half beast. It stands upright — like a man. But it has the head of a huge wolf. Not dark. White, pure white. With gleaming eyes and great fangs. They say it's an obscene hybrid. Really half man and half wolf. And it has roamed that swamp for over two hundred years." Within the opening chapter, the horror does for Elsa as it did her uncle, and now Moreau, too, is missing, presumed drowned. Even Smith looks to have been attacked. Who or what is this terrible swamp fiend? Can Janet's two-fisted action fiancé, Dick Grant, destroy the creature before it kills them both? |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 7, 2023 10:33:23 GMT
 Amos Sewell: On storm-tossed Oldun Island Ralph Dean fought for his body and his soul — fought the angry gods of a long-dead race, and the thirsting Things that crept through the night in search of warm red human blood! Can recently bereaved Ralph Dean rescue his two-year old son from Mongo, the mad Iroquoian, and the bloodsucking drowned dead of Lake Wanda? Or will his beloved wife Myrtle and fellow vampire, Anton Walder — his best friend — feast on little Billy in their Skull Cove butcher's lair. No fancy dress parties this time, and the killer's motivation is something other than greed. The improbably long-lived Mongo is the last of a family sworn to protect Oldun Island from the Paleface. Lacking an heir, he plans to raise Billy as his own, on a diet of his secret elixir and the blood of white men. Longest story of an exciting issue, way, way over the top with abundance of corpse action. Personal favourites; Madman's Mate and the outrageous conclusion to River of Pain. |
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