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Post by Steve on Oct 15, 2009 23:47:34 GMT
Witches in Fact and Fantasy by Lauran Paine NEL Paperback Edition November 1976 First published in Great Britain by Robert Hale & Co. Ltd 1971Jacket design by Terry Griffiths Not sure if we've had this one before or not. I don't remember it but then again I can't believe any '70s NEL about witches with a naked woman on the cover could've slipped under the Vault radar for so long. I don't know about Lauran Paine's credentials apropos of the Left-Hand Path. Born 1916 and still with us as far as I know, Paine spent the first couple of decades of his writing career notching up countless westerns under a slew of different names. Then in the early '70s he quite unaccountably produced a run of 'non-fiction' supernatural titles; Gaggle of Ghosts (1971), this one, The Hierarchy of Hell & Sex in Witchcraft (both 1972), and Witchcraft and the Mysteries (1974) - most, if not all, originally published by Taplinger in the states and over here in hardback by Robert Hale. I believe Witches in Fact and Fantasy was the only one subsequently picked up by NEL for a paperback edition (why they opted for this one rather than Sex in Witchcraft I wouldn't know). After that it was back to the wide open prairie and other man stuff. All of which may lead one to believe that Witches in Fact and Fantasy was just another 'Satanic '70s' hack job, which it may well have been, but at nearly 200 pages and with a proper index Paine does seem to have put a fair amount of effort into researching his subject. I'm not saying it's a definitve work but, perhaps even a little disappointingly, it doesn't appear to be merely a quickie exploitation number either. Now where have I seen that naked woman before?
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Post by Steve on Oct 15, 2009 18:38:34 GMT
The Droop by Ian Rosse, An NEL original, 1972 The price of permissiveness - a mysterious and terrible plague The setting of this incredible novel is Britain in the immediate future - a nation gripped by an epidemic that makes sex impossible for 95% of its male population. Result: females famished for erotic satisfaction, hunting frantically for the few men still able to service them. Sarah Tuck, M.P., takes to a male prostitute who can provide what her husband John lacks. Gillian Overton, John's one-time mistress, sets out to seduce John's son Robert, a celibate priest who has escaped the Droop. And young Dominic Tuck, a sensitive boy with unharmed sexual powers, is finally annihilated by the frustrated desires of his famous mother and nubile sister.
'Ian Rosse' hides the identity of a well-known author who explores these stricken love affairs with brilliant insight. He has written the most fascinating sociological novel about impotence since Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES.Can't really be sure how serious the writer of this blurb (Laurence James? Mark Howell?) was in comparing The Droop to Hemingway but one suspects he may have been having something of a laugh. I'm not saying this book has no redeeming sociological value, I'm just saying that the second paragraph begins with the phrase "His loins jerked angrily". The "hides the identity of a well-known author" business was a fairly popular ploy at the time. In this case, 'Ian Rosse' hides the identity of John Foster Straker (1904-1987) who, while maybe not especially "well-known" these days, at least managed to notch up a couple of dozen novels between the mid-fifties and the mid-eighties. How succesful he was I'm not entirely sure but at the time of writing The Droop he was still working as a headmaster and maths teacher, which may go some way to explaining why he chose to adopt a pseudonym in this particular instance. As J.F. Straker he wrote mainly mysteries, sometimes featuring his private detective, Johnny Inch. As with Brian Ball and others, thanks to Ulverscroft's Linford Mystery Library some of Straker's work is back in (large) print. Personally I like the look of The Goat, the fourth of the Johnny Inch books featuring "Murder and black magic at an English country house". Not least because of the cover which graced the original hardback. Harrap, 1972
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Post by Steve on Oct 12, 2009 7:18:55 GMT
I can't get anywhere near my books right now on account of half the flat has been demolished (don't ask ...), so perhaps the answer is in Derleth's introduction, but just how much of the Heald, Bishop and Eddy stories are Heald, Bishop and Eddy and how much is Lovecraft? It seems unlikely, for example, that Lovecraft, who, from what we read, doesn't appear to have had much, if any interest in sex would dream up the story of a randy corpse-lover. I don't have any reference material to hand at the moment (I'm half demolished) but I think, as these stories are all rewrites or ghostwriting jobs, we can safely assume that in each case the original ideas came from other writers rather than Lovecraft himself. Having said that, it's an interesting point you raise about Lovecraft's, shall we say, proclivities in regard to 'The Loved Dead'. Given when the story was written, we can't really expect anything too explicit but, even so, it's always struck me as a curiously asexual approach to necrophilia. Granted, the narrator does get extremely physically excited in close proximity to the dearly departed but it all seems to stem from some rather deep-seated repression. Of course we can only speculate, just for the sake of outrageous slander, what form the conversation took on Lovecraft and Eddy's regular nightly walks through the cemeteries of Providence. As regards how much input other writers had in the actual writing of these stories, it seems to have varied considerably. Apparently the synopsis that Zealia Bishop submitted to Lovecraft for 'her' story, 'The Mound', went something like; "There's this mound. And a ghost. or something."
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Post by Steve on Oct 11, 2009 17:29:28 GMT
Are the contents of the withdrawn Wordsworth the same as Horror In The Museum or did they add/ subtract anything? Here's what you got for your £2.99; The Green Meadow Poetry and the Gods The Crawling Chaos The Loved Dead The Horror at Martin's Beach (AKA The Invisible Monster) Imprisoned with the Pharaohs The Last Test Two Black Bottles The Thing in the Moonlight The Curse of Yig The Mound Medusa's Coil The Trap The Man of Stone Out of the Aeons The Disinterment The Diary Of Alonzo Typer Within the Walls of Eryx The Night Ocean By my reckoning that's just over half of the stories from the original Arkham House edition of The Horror in the Museum with a couple more that appeared in later revised editions, plus a few additional bits and pieces from elsewhere. Well it's certainly always had Eddy's name attached to it as far as I'm aware. I think this may be where the Wordsworth collection has run into a few problems - the fact that, while the contributions to each story made by other writers are mentioned in a fairly extensive introduction, the stories themselves are all credited solely to Lovecraft (in as much as nobody else gets a mention in the body of the book or on the cover). Maybe this takes the assumption of Lovecraft's 'authorship' of the tales in question - even if many of them are substantially his work - just a step too far? Here's what M. J. Elliott has to say about 'The Loved Dead' in his introduction; "Credited to Houdini's booking agent Clifford Martin Eddy, The Loved Dead is perhaps the most controversial of Lovecraft's career. At this stage in his life, HPL had already undertaken numerous ghost-writing assignments and had rewritten several of Eddy's stories... The two men shared a love of the macabre, and would often take night-time strolls through the cemeteries in their home town of Providence... The narrator's background, described in [ The Loved Dead's] opening paragraphs, is clearly Lovecraft's own work, since it mirrors his own childhood so closely"
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Post by Steve on Oct 11, 2009 7:38:38 GMT
I was about to recommend Wordsworth's recent The Loved Dead collection to anyone looking for a nice reasonably-priced selection of Lovecraft's revisions and ghost-written stuff, but just came across the statement below on a certain online shopping site;
"**Publisher's Note: This collection has been withdrawn, as it inadvertently, but incorrectly, attributed the story 'The Loved Dead' to H.P.Lovecraft, rather than the true author C.M.Eddy. A revised collection is in the course of preparation**"
Shame that. As I understand it, there's long been a certain amount of contention concerning the proper attribution of 'The Loved Dead'. I also seem to remember a website which had made most of Lovecraft's fiction available online getting the 'cease and desist' treatment from Eddy's estate or representatives. The suggestion being that not only was the story all Eddy's own work but that it was also not, at that time, in the public domain. Whatever the truth of it 'The Loved Dead' is a transgressive little gem which really deserves to remain widely available.
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Post by Steve on Oct 11, 2009 6:39:36 GMT
Nice to see Vault embracing its softer, more feminine, side - I mean, let's be honest, who here hasn't dreamt at one time or another about being taken roughly by a tall, dark handsome stranger?
I'm thinking - given that, as Robinson quite rightly point out, "Paranormal romance is currently the fastest-growing new fiction genre" - that now might be a good time to revive my writing 'career'. Obviously I'll need a new nom de pulp - what do you think about Lovinya Bodice?
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Post by Steve on Oct 4, 2009 12:39:00 GMT
Chuff me! There's one name on there I never expected to see. Obviously he doesn't deserve it...
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Post by Steve on Sept 14, 2009 18:47:37 GMT
The John Elder scripts were left over from his time at Hammer by the way. Legend of the Werewolf had been on the cards as a follow up to Curse for years. This was one of the things I was wondering about, John – thanks for that. Do I take it that the script for The Ghoul had been knocking around for a while too? Don't forget Tigon - they made some good ones. There is a decent boxset of movies out there from Anchor Bay Check out Tigon's THE CREEPING FLESH if you can . Tigon do still seem to get unjustly overlooked to a large extent, although the Anchor Bay box set and the Tony Tenser book were very welcome. I’m probably as guilty of under-rating their output as anyone, as my first thought whenever I hear Tigon mentioned is Witchfinder General and Blood on Satan’s Claw – both cracking films but the company were involved in loads of other worthwhile films besides, The Creeping Flesh being just one of them (though I’m never quite sure which ones they actually produced and which ones they only distributed). The box set was a bit of a mixed bag and, while I was very happy to get to see Virgin Witch and Haunted House Of Horror (and even The Body Stealers come to that), I’m not sure that, compared to say the Amicus box, Tigon didn’t come out of it looking a bit ‘second-string’. Granted they were basically an exploitation outfit but they had a hand in some pretty good stuff along the way – the best of it easily being on a par with anything produced by Amicus or Hammer (and I’ve always had a real soft spot for The Blood Beast Terror! In fact, stuff like that and The Beast in the Cellar were just as much part of my formative horror experiences as any other film of that era you care to mention). Is The Creeping Flesh available on R2 DVD, KC? Haven’t seen it for years. Hammer didn't move with the times and just became outdated. I think Hammer was never a contemporary product. They were a very successful style ( in and of themselves). Hammer did try to move with the times though, didn’t they ( Dracula A.D. 1972, Satanic Rites)? They just weren’t particularly good at it. Maybe, as Ade suggests, they were so succesful in creating their own style that, at the time, they just couldn’t break out of it in spite of themselves. Interestingly though, Hammer House of Horror a few years later showed that they could actually do contemporary horror perfectly well. I think Tyburn were basically way late out of the gate and generally out of step with what audiences demanded trying to recapture the glory days of gothic horror from 20 years passed. True, but it’s interesting that interest in vampires, werewolves and mummies never seems to have really gone away. Indeed the market for monsters and anything a bit Gothic is probably as big now as it’s ever been. A few independent British producers may have survived the 70s knocking out low-budget (and often inspired) shockers but nothing approaching the kind of commercial success Hammer had enjoyed earlier. I wonder how much the Brit Gothic’s decline was due to a general decline in the British film industry as a whole?
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Post by Steve on Sept 13, 2009 17:16:17 GMT
I've been rediscovering the joys of British horror films from the late 50s to the mid 70s recently, holding my own personal Hammer retrospective in the plush, period surroundings of my bit of the house. All very enjoyable but, a change being as good as a rest and all that, last night I started watching 1975 Tyburn effort Legend of the Werewolf. I suppose this and The Ghoul, made by the same crew, were pretty much the last gasp for British gothic horror films, were they? This set me to wondering about the level of Hammer involvement in these Tyburns. Quite a few familiar names; you could say that director Freddie Francis was just as closely associated with Amicus as he was with Hammer by this stage, Peter Cushing was omnipresent, Harry Robertson, who did the music, also provided the score for many a Hammer horror, but it's the presence of Anthony Hinds (writing under his John Elder moniker), who's synonymous with Hammer films, that really seems significant. In the wake of The Exorcist, it seems Hammer had given up on any horror film that didn't have the words 'satanic' or 'devil' in the title (I think I'm right in saying that Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and Captain Kronos had actually been made around 1972 and shelved for a couple of years?). Was it only Kevin Francis/Tyburn who was willing to take a risk on 'old-fashioned' horror by the mid-70s?
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Post by Steve on Aug 26, 2009 17:03:01 GMT
Couple more suggestions for WWI/II-set horror, not books but I'm sure you're probably interested in films and comics too?
Deathwatch was a British horror film from about 5 years or so back, about some British soldiers who get lost and discover something unpleasant in the German trenches.
Probably not as 'pulpy' as you'd like - and not much in the way of "sparely dressed women" as I remember - but worth a watch if you're after a bit of trench-based nastiness.
I'd second Dr Strange's suggestion of The Keep as well, both book and film (if you can find it), I think you'd enjoy that.
And I reckon you'd love Fiends of the Eastern Front, which appeared in 2000 AD comic some years ago and has since, I'm fairly sure, been collected into book form. In fact, I seem to remember something about a series of spin off books but can't check that just now. Anybody?
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Post by Steve on Aug 25, 2009 17:59:05 GMT
"lively"? "useful"? surely they're two of the few crimes we can't be accused of? Maybe they're euphemisms? "That Vault lot's a bit 'lively'." "Yeah, I've heard one or two of them are quite 'useful'. Y'know, a bit 'handy'." It's almost like they were describing a roomful of belligerent drunks or something...
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Post by Steve on Aug 22, 2009 20:03:26 GMT
You know how something you haven't thought about for thirty-odd years will just suddenly pop into your head one day? Top Secret Picture Library, pretty sure that's what it was called. 1970s. Same format as those Commando comics, but spy/secret agent stuff. Anyone remember them or maybe have some in an box somewhere? I'd love to see some cover scans.
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Post by Steve on Aug 22, 2009 18:59:26 GMT
Plasmid is an interesting one. I have a copy but have never read it- up until now the only suggestion I'd heard was it was another Hutson hack job. I'm surprised it was Dr Christopher Evans... You should be - he died the year before Plasmid was published! Shall we start again? It wasn't Dr. Christopher Evans, the Mind at Bay/Mind in Chains bloke - that was just me making an assumption too far (or maybe believing something I'd seen on the internet, can't remember now). However, I'm still reasonably confident that 'Robert Knight', or whoever it was that was credited with writing the Plasmid novelisation, was Christopher Evans. Just not that Christopher Evans. This Christopher Evans is a British SF author, who's edited a few anthologies with Robert Holdstock and also did at least one other movie tie-in under another name. Most of his stuff from the '80s seems to have been published under various pseudonyms. Obviously, you know... I've been wrong before. Oh, and Eat Them Alive was definitely written by a 70 year old woman!
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Post by Steve on Aug 22, 2009 16:10:00 GMT
Both Plasmid and Slimer are Star books possibly the work of the same designer. Similar colours and use of tag lines as both design and to emphasize the titles. Be interesting to see if any more Star horrors fit the MO. KC Similar use of tag-lines on the Star editions of Shaun Hutson's Slug books; ("They slime, they ooze, they kill - Slugs", "The slugs have come back to their Breeding Ground"). Also on Graham Masterton ("When the dead walk beware – The Pariah") I suppose red and green are good horror colours, are they? Star seem to have agreed anyway - The 2nd Star Book of Horror also comes to mind and the tie-in for Michael Winner's The Sentinel. Although Plasmid has a disembodied hand, whoever was doing the Star horror covers in the '80s seemed to have a thing about eyes ('Slugs' again, 'Blowfly'). As far as I can remember the Plasmid screenplay was a collaboration between David McGillivray (House of Whipcord et al) and Stanley Long (Adventures of a Taxi Driver). It never made it to the screen, so all we have left is this pseudonymous novelisation. Was 'Jo Gannon', who gets the screenplay credit for Plasmid, a pseudonym? I was wondering if there's any mention of the film in the Stanley Long X-Rated biography?
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Post by Steve on Aug 21, 2009 19:30:40 GMT
Classic tale, legendary film. It was available on the continent for years but I read somewhere that Burgess had been given death threats and was reluctant for the film to be shown in the UK. I first saw A Clockwork Orange in the cinema in Italy in the mid-90s. The place I was living in, while classed as a city, was really just a quiet little town. Street crime was virtually non-existent and the only murder anyone could remember had been a crime of passion some years previously. The place was a maze of narrow, dimly-lit alleyways, a would-be mugger's paradise, and yet anybody could wander around at any time of the day or night and the most frightening thing that might have happened would've been bumping into me staggering home from a bar. In that sort of context, the film really could be seen as a rather high-spirited romp. People I spoke to who'd been to see the film, one of them a youngish lad who'd taken his girlfriend along as if it was some kind of 'date movie', all seemed to view it as just a bit of harmless fun. As a bit of a footnote: the first time I came back to Britain after that, I'd got off the ferry in Dover and had about an hour to kill before catching my train. Obviously I headed straight for a pub opposite the railway station and, on pushing open the doors, was immediately greeted by the sound of raised voices and shattering glass. Welcome home, son, and might I interest you in a swift kick in the yarbles?
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