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Post by nsturm451 on Jan 8, 2015 17:16:15 GMT
Mkay, it took awhile to get through this one due to the sheer number of stories + personal entanglements lately, but it was worth it.
"Man-Hunt" - 2/5 Williams' writing seems rather sloppy and amateurish, and the back cover gives away the ending, but I do at least appreciate his commitment to being vicious.
"The Fly" - 3/5 Another little slice of nastiness, rather well done; the drabness and misery of this couple come across well in only a few pages, and there's some nice gore at the end.
"Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch..." - 5/5 This almost made me physically ill. Not that it was overly graphic, it was just so horrible and depressing that I had trouble finishing the last couple pages. Between the emotional effect and the fact that it was well-written, I'd say it's one of the best and most memorable, but don't think I'll want to re-read it anytime soon.
"Strictly For the Birds" - 5/5 One of my favorites so far. Love the melodramatic opening narration and the absolutely disgusting nature of what's going on (even if there's no explanation for it). Reminds me of something Poe would have written.
"Bloodthirsty" - 4/5 Absolutely batshit crazy and quite hilarious. I get the impression that the Brain is not quite so unique as it likes to think.
"An Apparition at Noon" - 3/5 Interesting Weird-Tales-esque vignette; not all that much to it, but good sense of place and tension even for how short it is. And frankly the un-PC closing line is artistically appropriate for the setting, the character, and the situation, really.
"The Baby Machine" - 3/5 Could be a tad more developed, but the main character's selfishness seemed believable, and the ending is really quite disturbing (and accurate, actually - there was a Psych experiment awhile back in which baby monkeys raised by a combination of feeding machine and piece of metal with terrycloth on it regarded the latter as their "mother").
"The Best Teacher" - 3/5 So apparently we're terrible people for reading gory & sadistic stories, like this one? Har har. Still, the undercurrent of black humor and overwhelming gruesomeness made it entertaining enough.
"Stick With Me, Kid, and You'll Wear Diamonds" - 3/5 Basic but effective; it's hard to go wrong with one of those endings where the protagonist thinks crazily absurd thoughts while doing something with a corpse.
"The Happy Return" - 4/5 in general, or 5/5 for emotional effect Holy CRAP did this one ever disturb me. The quickie writing style leaves a bit to be desired (perhaps we could have gotten some description of what the helmet/mask looked like, for example), but the basic idea makes up for it. Just the though of a mother doing THAT to her own child is bad enough, but I had to stop myself from thinking too hard about what "THAT" entails (i.e. what the kid might have looked like while moaning "Daddy...") in order to get to sleep. Christ!
"Father Forgive Me" - 3/5 Again, Williams/Harvey does not know how to use a comma and in general writes like a ninth-grader who didn't pay attention in eighth-grade English class, but I'm giving this one a decent score simply for being one of the most vile, repugnant, loathsome stories I've ever read; I have to respect that.
"A Comedy of Terrors" - 4/5 More vileness, this time with a bit more technical flair. Quite enjoyed the sending-up of the film industry and found myself squirming as much over how nonchalant Robbie is about his little atrocities as over the atrocities themselves. Their idea for the new film, about the girl psychically linked to another girl who's buried alive without her skin, would have made a hell of a story itself.
"The Boy Who Neglected His Grass Snake" - 2/5 Compared to some of the other stuff in the book this seemed underwhelming, but the image of the HUGE snake-ghost at the end was pretty cool.
"Jolly Uncle" - 3/5 This one seems more black comedy to me; impressive that Stewart managed to make a story about a man plotting to kill a six-year-old seem funny. The ending was creepy but could have had more build-up. And yes, I caught the connection/reference to her previous story in this same volume.
"Mrs. Anstey's Scarecrow" - 2/5 I feel like I wanted to like this one since scarecrows are scary, but something about it - the tone and attitude of the author, the way small-town drama was inflated to Lovecraftian proportions, maybe - rubbed me the wrong way. Meh.
"Not Enough Poison" - 3/5 Another story that could have had more to it, but still pretty good; interesting how Sarah is too busy being a lazy, stuck-up tease to notice how dangerous things are getting, and how the drunken neighbor can't grasp what's going on.
"Old Feet" - 2/5 Not as good as Waddell's other bonkers contribution and the stream-of-consciousness writing is kinda overdone, but at least he laid on the disgusting imagery nice and thick.
"Don't Avoid the Rush Hour" - 4/5 (?) Unfortunately, my copy of the book was missing part of the last page - "Good Condition" my ass, Amazon seller - so I was unable to read some of it, but I liked what I did see; even for being brief it built up a lot of suspense, had some memorably horrid gore, and I did get the gist of the nasty, ironic ending.
"The Whispering Horror" - 4/5 The kind of thing that scares the crap out of kids, and frankly is still creepy to an adult. Good stuff. Some of the word-usage was a bit awkward but I see that Bertin isn't a native English speaker (or was this a translation?) so it's forgivable. In a volume full of eye-gouging and limb-sawing, it's interesting to read a story in which the horror mostly comes from a sound.
"Smile Please" - 4/5 Once again, not thrilled with the prose, but I actually liked this one quite a bit since it took its time developing poor Delorice (who's likeable even if not very smart) and gave us some memorable locations and images, and an interestingly elaborate death-setup.
"Compulsion" - 3/5 Another murderer story without anything truly standout, but well-told and fairly realistic in its psychology. As some of you mentioned, people could get away with murder more easily in times past.
"Crocodile Way" - 4/5 The subject matter is kinda odd for a "horror" collection, but the atmosphere and suspense packed into this little tiny story is pretty impressive. Then again, crocodiles and alligators scare the crap out of me anyway.
"The Green Umbilical Cord" - 3/5 By now we seem to have a lot of murdered spouses on our hands. So, the setup has lost some of its novelty, but the creepy imagery of the ivy growing EVERYWHERE and the black humor made for a pretty good read.
"Eustace" - 3/5 What the hell? Actually not a bad way of closing out the book, since it's memorable enough and doesn't waste time, but I think "what the hell?" sums it up.
All in all, a very good volume; I can see why a lot of you guys remember it so fondly, since it has some real gems and a relatively consistent "feel" across most of the stories, in addition to a level of depravity that might be almost unpublishable today. I recently saw a debate on the Horror Writers' Association's facebook page about how gore and disturbing content have fallen out of favor with some readers; the consensus seemed to be that complaining about horror being horrible is sort of like complaining about comedy being funny.
Onwards to Eight and Fourteen now...
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Post by nsturm451 on Jan 6, 2015 2:01:58 GMT
Indeed, I'm almost done with #9 now (been busy over the holidays) and #8 and #14 both arrived as well; I've read a couple stories in each of them so far. Story-by-story reviews will follow for each of them. In theory, #1 should also be on its way, but it seems awfully late; I'll have to check to see if the parcel is being tracked. Haha, yeah he doesn't appear to be the handsomest of men, but "terrifying" seems a bit much
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Post by nsturm451 on Dec 19, 2014 23:22:05 GMT
"Again" is seriously one of my half-dozen or so of all time. One of the relatively few stories I've read as an adult that actually scared the crap out of me, and ought to be a primer course in how to construct a horror story.
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Post by nsturm451 on Dec 19, 2014 23:11:41 GMT
Good article, it always irritates me when people who produce horror try to shrink from the label, though I'll allow that "dark fantasy" and "psychological thrillers" and "weird fiction" and certain types of science fiction can be their own things. Basically, though, if it's supposed to be scary, I say just call it "horror," and Wikipedia seems to agree with me.
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Post by nsturm451 on Dec 19, 2014 22:56:24 GMT
Ah ok, it does seem like all of the first four books are quite popular here. I'll have to read the 2nd and 3rd when I can find them for a reasonable price. And, interesting bit of trivia there. Ha, would be interesting if someone were to turn up a photo...
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Post by nsturm451 on Dec 16, 2014 20:43:13 GMT
Finally finished this one the other night; I'm a bit of a slow reader and have been busy getting ready for the holidays.
First of all, I have the older cover with the specters; being arachnophobic I think the other one is pretty effective too, but the specters are better.
"Various Temptations" - 2/5 I don't much care for Sansom's longwinded style, and the ending isn't hard to predict, but there are some interesting ideas in this one - Clara is so bored and lonely that she doesn't even care if Raikes is a killer.
"The Pale Boy" - 3/5 Seems a bit quaint and obvious, but fun and gets the job done.
"The Emissary" - 4/5 As usual, Bradbury's prose gives us a nice contrast between a sense of beauty and wonder, followed by horrific wrongness. Could be a bit scarier, but still very good.
"Lucy Comes to Stay" - 4/5 I saw the adaptation of this in Asylum prior to reading it so I knew what was going on, but still liked how Bloch doesn't come right out and tell us the twist, exactly, so that we end up going back and seeing how Lucy is a wishful-thinking projection.
"Guy Fawkes Night" - 4/5 This was one of the best-written stories in the book, however I feel that it went on a bit longer than need be for an ending that's easy to see coming. Do have to wonder what the hell they did with the original Guy, though.
"The Two Old Women" - 1/5 Probably the weakest story in the book; feels cheesy and badly dated, though the idea of a pit and altar in the basement was kind of cool.
"Moonlight Sonata" - 5/5 Loved it! Short and to the point (though still with some nice purple prose) and such a gleefully gruesome ending. I actually forgot that this one was also in that old Cerf & Wagner collection (and hadn't read it there yet).
"The Little Girl Eater" - 3/5 Nasty little story, in a good way. It's amazing how easily adults (especially misbehaving adults) forget that children can misinterpret things when they're still distinguishing fantasy from reality.
"Harry" - 4/5 Straightforward but creepy ghost story. I like how Timperley repeats the first few lines at the end, after we've been able to appreciate what she means by them.
"Sardonicus" - 4/5 This was actually one of the main reasons I bought the book; it was hard to resist the allure of a Gothic Horror send-up written by a Playboy editor. Russell actually emulated the 19th Century style quite successfully, and gave us an entertainingly overwrought piece of work. If anything, it could have used a bit more "horror", but still good stuff.
"Ringing the Changes" - 5/5 Wow. This one leaves me with more questions than answers, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The subtleties of character, the vivid setting, the creepy implications (what, exactly, did Phrynne step on when they were out on the beach?)... now I see why people regard Aickman as an underappreciated hero of the genre.
"Dulcie" - 3/5 Pretty good serial-killer yarn. Setting it during the Blitz was an interesting touch, and the descriptions of "Dulcie" rolling around in her bag were really quite unsettling. "The Importance of Remaining Earnest" - 4/5 This quite disturbed me, probably because I majored in Psych and always thought Ronald Reagan was a tool for shutting down so many of the U.S.'s asylums; however one has to wonder if those institutions were such a great place to begin with. The jet-black humor at the end sold me on this one.
"Slime" - 4/5 I get the impression that a LOT of monster-on-the-loose-in-a-small-town tales have been based on this. Brennan's prose gets a bit cheesy at times, but it's a fun story. Interesting how he begins by describing the creature's undersea habitat, and even gets inside its "head".
"The Ohio Love Sculpture" - 3/5 Good story for what it is. I almost feel like the perversity of it could have been elaborated a bit more (i.e., where did he get those girls from?), though.
"The Horsehair Trunk" - 4/5 I could nitpick little things about this one - there's no indication that Marius beats his wife until Jim says so (unless that was the point, and Mary Ann was just making it up?), for example - but both the main premise and the ending are clever and awesome. Thumbs up to the title being almost (but not quite) a red herring, and not describing exactly what happens after the end, so we're left to ponder it in all its unpleasantness.
"The Attic Express" - 3/5 I'm not very familiar with model trains so the lengthy descriptions of the set were a bit hard to follow at times, and the story seemed to go on longer than it needed to, but an amusing idea with an ending that seemed appropriately jarring after the almost light-hearted and fantasy-ish feel of the rest of the story.
"The Haunted Telephone" - 2/5 There's not much to this story, really, even if it did hold my interest reasonably well.
"The Elephant Man" - 4/5 An odd choice, but a good read. Interesting contrast between the horror of Merrick's appearance (I've seen photos of him, and the extent of his deformity is almost impossible to describe, but Treves comes pretty close) and the poignancy of his tragic situation and gentle personality.
Overall this is probably one of the better horror collections I've read, and would be one I'd consider giving to someone as a primer course in mid-20th Century horror fiction. I also like the variety on display - a lot of modern anthologies seem to restrict themselves to specific themes, which takes away some of the element of anticipation and surprise.
I'm also about a third of the way through the Ninth book and will do a write-up for that one next; the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth ought to be arriving in the mail soon as well.
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Post by nsturm451 on Dec 11, 2014 17:21:04 GMT
Thank god this board exists. I started doing more of my horror fiction homework last winter-spring and have been lurking here on and off for awhile, mostly reading about the Pan Books of Horror Stories; reading you guys' opinions has been helpful in knowing where to start. I've read most of the Fourth so far and have a few others on the way. Looking forward to talking about them and trying to add something new to the discussion.
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