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Post by blackmonk on Jan 30, 2012 21:03:08 GMT
...I distinctly remember one where the guys eyes had been gouged out with a trowel. It may well have been one with a kids party where they played pass the murdered parts of the body - this is an eye this is his liver etcetera - bearded fellow. I would be about ten then. Scared me senseless for which i am eternally grateful. Couldn't get enough of it. I, too, recall this. It was an episode of Late Night Horror from the late 60s. It was titled The Corpse Can't Play based on John Burke's short story Party Games. I recall it in particular because I was so shocked by the conclusion - the lights come on and all the party guests see that they have real body parts in their hands - that I threw up as I went to bed! "That's the last time you watch anything like that," shouted my mum. Of course, it was only the beginning! John Burke would give me nightmares again when I saved up enough spends to buy More Tales of Unease with that hideous child ascending the stairs on the cover.
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Post by blackmonk on Jan 29, 2012 14:12:07 GMT
I don’t think it was books that started me off. I was a Christmas gift off an uncle and it was the Aurora monster kit of The Mummy. This was in the 60s so it was the long slim rectangular box, not the later reissues in the square box and with luminous plastic. I was awe struck. My parents were pissed off because I shoved the expensive gift they’d got me aside and stared at the Aurora box. I even got excited reading the assembly instructions especially when they warned of the cursed symbols on one of the parts! Over the following years I avidly sought out other kits which were available in most toy shops in those days - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Forgotten Prisoner, Hunchback, Wolfman and I even got the working Guillotine! Other great brain-altering moments included being handed a Heironymous Bosch coffee table book by my auntie while I waited for her in the local library where she worked. Getting Denis Gifford’s Movie Monsters – the studio vista/Dutton pictureback as a birthday present – still have it. Offering to do the house chores in exchange for staying up and watching the Universal double bills that regularly played on tv. I recall being in trouble for not cleaning the shit out of my guinea pigs’ hutch and as punishment I wasn’t allowed to watch The Trollenberg Terror. I sulked and moaned and stamped my feet on each stair as I was sent up to bed. A true low point in my life, especially when all my mates gloated about its brilliance at primary school the following day. It sounded like the greatest horror movie ever, and I’d missed it! I also saw a few episodes of Mystery and Imagination which scared the crap out of me especially one about a leper and another (I think) featuring a deaths head moth. I’m pretty sure when it came to fiction it was The Execution of Damiens in The Third Pan Book of Horror Stories that I snuck a look at when a neighbour let my dad borrow it. Nothing has changed apart from the fact that I can watch whatever films I want these days!
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Post by blackmonk on Oct 22, 2011 19:23:53 GMT
Nice bunch of finds there, Johnny! The only one I have is The Widderburn Horror. It was made into a film in 1965 with various titles - The House of Black Death, Blood of the Man Beast and Blood of the Man Devil. As it is public domain you can watch it here - Blood of the Man Devil to save reading the book!
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Post by blackmonk on Sept 25, 2011 10:58:37 GMT
John Burke's Party Games was adapted for the BBC's 1968 series Late Night Horror under the title The Corpse Can't Play. It seems that all episodes have long been destroyed, however, the intro does exist. Pretty creepy it is too!
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Post by blackmonk on Sept 5, 2011 9:22:08 GMT
Andy and June, a holidaying couple, discover what appears to be a disused military base on the Suffolk coast. Partially buried objects they find indicate there was once an established community on the site. Being journalists, they are intrigued and think there may be a story in it. They ask the landlord of the pub in a nearby village about the place but he insists no such place exists. He tells them he has run the pub for a few years but dated photos the couple see in the premises show he has been there for decades. Later they visit a library to view Ordnance Survey maps of the location and discover that the spot has been edited out with the words “obliterated by order of the Home Office” stamped across it. All maps prove to be the same. The librarian is also intrigued and offers to assist in investigating further suggesting his brother will be able to help so they arrange to meet at a later date. Driving from the library Andy and June are involved in an accident that would have certainly been fatal had it not been for Andy’s quick reflexes. The driver of the Rolls Royce that struck them was clearly at fault yet the police allow him to leave the scene and question Andy and June at length. They are compensated for the loss of their car and holiday but instructed not to pursue the story of the base any further.
Ignoring the advice, later in the week Andy and June return to the area to take photos and see that it has been cleaned up, the road hidden and a new fence has been erected. They return to the pub but the landlord denies ever having spoken to them before. The photos, too, have disappeared. Checking back with the librarian, to their horror, they discover that both he and his brother are now dead having lost their lives in a house fire.
Andy relates the story to his publisher, Mikki. Mikki thinks he’s on to a big thing and encourages Andy to dig deeper. Miki’s contacts discover that a village called Abberley once occupied the cordoned-off area. Andy and June take the items they picked up from the site to a scientist friend to see if he can date them. While they are waiting for results Miki contacts Andy and insists he drop the story and orders him never to contact him again. The scientist warns the couple to the fact that the items they have been carrying around are highly radioactive and they too are likely contaminated. The authorities have to be alerted and Andy and June are taken away to a private hospital to be decontaminated. Following prolonged cleansing they meet the hospital director and learn the truth about what happened at Abberley.
From here on in the novel switches tack to the history of Abberley up to the Second World War and the infiltration of two German spies into the community. In Germany a psychotic SS commander has devised an insane plot on how to overthrow England. He has learned of the new discovery German scientists have made; they have developed the world’s first radioactive source. Experiments on Poles and Jews have revealed how powerful the radiation is. He puts his plan to Hitler and is given approval to go ahead. Bahrer sets about recruiting a team in a manner similar to plot of The Dirty Dozen. Visiting a hospital Bahrer eyes a potential recruit –
“He had the classic Aryan appearance – blond hair, blue eyes, and a gaze of pure steel. There was something right about him. ‘What was your injury?’ Bahrer asked. ‘My penis was shot off, Herr General!’ the reply was shouted. ‘By whom?’ ‘The English, Herr General!’ ‘Get dressed. You are herby promoted to SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer.’”
Men are tested by being ordered to shoot themselves in the leg, crawl through filth and barbed wire coils, fight comrades to the death or, as in the case of the female doctor instructed to shoot one of her dying patients in the head.
Construction of a small U-Boat is commissioned and after its completion all those who worked on it are murdered by Bahrer’s crew. When they retrieve the radioactive object from the underground science lab all those present are likewise killed. Despite warnings from the scientist Bahrer deems the lead box that contains the source too heavy for the sub and naively orders crew member Krodel to remove metallic ostrich egg-sized object and carry it aboard the boat.
It is during the undersea journey to England that the crew begin to suffer the effects of the radiation. And dreadful effects they certainly are! Krodel is the first to show signs. A red rash on his chest and hands soon start to necrotise leaving him with exposed ribs and fleshless skeleton hands. Over time similar wounds affect the rest of the crew.
“Sonja snipped away Sucher’s shirt so that Bahrer could see the extent of the wound. Sucher’s back was a mass of boiling red. At Sonja’s touch an entire section of his flesh came away and exposed his ribcage and lungs. Bahrer heaved but forced back his self-control before the vomit reached his mouth. He had never seen anything so gruesome… ‘Patch him up,’ he ordered. ‘With what!’ demanded Sonja. ‘I have used every bandage we have on board.’ ‘Sticking plaster will suffice, Herr Reichsfuhrer,’ Sucher said standing to attention, whereupon his lungs oozed their way through the gaps in his ribcage. The tissue seemed to disintegrate into tiny pieces, as if just waiting the command. The look of shocked surprise on Sucher’s face when he felt the remains of his lungs slip over his buttocks was a look even Bahrer didn’t want to see again.
Sucher dropped where he was, stone dead, and as his form hit the floor plates it splashed what was left of his lungs on Bahrer’s trousers… Endel was blistered from his chest to his knees and his groin was no more than a horrible red lump. What had been his penis and reproductive organs were now akin to a bloody sponge. The tops of his thighs were peeling away like saturated wallpaper and his left kneecap was exposed, grinning like a small skull… Kampfe’s thighs no longer resemble thighs. An angry wound travelled between the vale of his buttocks and into his anus, giving his flesh the appearance of a maggot-infested rabbit corpse.”
Regardless of their increasing disabilities the decomposing Nazis succeed in reaching their goal and transferring the radioactive source to England where it is left in the woods to slowly take its effect on the residents of Abberley. British authorities have been monitoring the situation and soon uncover the plot and quickly discover the ‘egg’. Here the story takes on an even more sinister twist as it draws to its disturbing conclusion.
For the most part the novel is set aboard the U-Boat where we witness the slow disintegration of the crew’s bodies and minds but the first part of the novel put me in mind of an enjoyable though clichéd Brian Clemens Thriller episode. The transition between the two didn’t quite work for me. It seems to be the hospital director who is narrating the second part of the story to Andy and June but there is way too much detail, including dialogue between characters, for him to have possibly known. It would also seem a rather overlong and unnecessary explanation to give the couple particularly when one takes into account what becomes of them. It is better to read it as a historical flashback rather than a narrated explanation which is perhaps the author’s proper intention.
Despite a few plot holes that can be overlooked I have to say I really liked Kommando 55 and managed to get through it in two sittings. It has put me in a radiation burns/nuclear catastrophe mood so next on the reading list is Lawrence Huff’s Dome, or perhaps Hans Heinrich Ziemann’s The Explosion. Both NEL. Both 1980.
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Post by blackmonk on Aug 21, 2011 15:18:16 GMT
Kenneth Connor is actually reading The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories the front of which is pasted over with the fake cover of The Fiend of the Second Floor Flat.
I suppose the 'second floor' could be described as the 'second storey' so the title change isn't too far off the mark.
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Post by blackmonk on Jun 28, 2011 15:45:44 GMT
Could it have been an Edgar Wallace reprint? I've never read any of his work but sinister bogus monks often feature in the film adaptations of his novels. I also thought of Charles Bidmead's hard-to-find The Silent Men but doubt that ever made it into paperback.
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Post by blackmonk on Jun 7, 2011 9:46:30 GMT
My only copies of this brilliant film are spoiled by poor picture quality. I would love one day to get a decent copy of this film. Yes, it's a great movie. I saw it at the cinema on its first release! Still love it. Apparently, it's coming out on Blu-ray soon!
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Post by blackmonk on Jun 5, 2011 15:12:21 GMT
Found these titles in a charity shop this weekend. Pretty unusual to find anything worth picking up in the charities these days so was quite chuffed with these. 99p each but with a "buy 1 get 1 free" offer so £2 for the four! John Farris - The Uninvited - NEL - 1984"The man was naked. Naked and horribly familiar. She was staring at the stripped, perfect body of her former fiance Ned. Except that he was dead already. Had been tragically killed in a car crash a full year ago." William K Wells - Effigies - Granada - 1980"Unnatural things. Seances. Satanic rites. Accidents and unexplained deaths. Mutilations. A child's severed hand..." Russ Martin - Chains - Futura - 1979"The book of evil. A young girl learns its secrets and a devil does her bidding. Those around have no choice but to obey." Terrel Miedaner - The Soul of Anna Klane - NEL - 1979"A novel of life after death that will haunt you to the end of your days."
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Post by blackmonk on May 31, 2011 15:33:46 GMT
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Post by blackmonk on Apr 1, 2011 11:57:02 GMT
The dvd is listed in Centre Media's catalogue although the image used is clearly only a repro of the book cover. I've made email enquiries but had no replies. Does anyone know if the film has actually been released? In the process of reading the book at the moment!
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Post by blackmonk on Nov 25, 2010 10:50:39 GMT
Aha - I see the second cover is by John Holmes! It is rather good! The cover for the hard back is credited to Chris Yates.
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Post by blackmonk on Nov 25, 2010 10:35:53 GMT
The Bornless Keeper P. B. Yuill Macmillan 1974 Orbit/Futura 1975i140.photobucket.com/albums/r39/imagesds/vault of evil/born.jpg[/img] BlurbThe most haunting novel of terror since The Hound of the Baskervilles.
A drowsy summer afternoon on an island off the South coast of Britain. A faint rustling in the undergrowth, a glimpse of the grotesquely feathered head – and the slash of razor sharp talons on naked flesh.
The Keeper vanished, the jays chattered on in the silver pine tops and a savagely mutilated corpse seeped blood under the ferns…Reviews“Gruesome, bewildering and very readable.” Sunday Express“Like The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Bornless Keeper has an age old curse and a mysterious horror… It is, in fact, even more frightening; and as horror closes in, you feel you are yourself running – panting – from the approaching claws.” Oxford Times“Really scarifying.” Yorkshire Post“Spinetingling tension.” Newcastle JournalA wealthy eccentric old woman, owner of Peacock Island dies in bed in her rambling castle. Rats mill about in her bed sheets, her face eaten to the bone by the rodents. A man from the mainland delivers groceries and discovers her corpse. Hastily returning to the boat something lumbers from the rhododendrons, a feathered thing, a clawed thing. It attacks and the man lies dead. The mystery of Peacock Island becomes the focus of the police and a television crew who sneak on to the island. But what is the Keeper? Speculation suggests a monstrous bird, a grotesque ape, an evil dwarf… An enjoyable read with some very creepy moments. The atmosphere of the island is well defined and effective with Yuill’s descriptions of the crumbling buildings, the sinister foliage through which the Keeper stalks and wildlife in particular the screaming peacocks and jays. If you enjoyed P. McCartney’s Who Sups with the Devil, I’m sure you’ll lap this one up. The author, P. B. Yuill is responsible for the crime novels and TV series Hazell. The flap on the dust jacket of the 1st edition states, “P. B. Yuill is a pseudonym. The author does not want his real identity disclosed.” Yuill is actually the combination of Gordon Williams ( The Siege of Trencher’s Farm/ Straw Dogs) and Terry Venables (yes, the footballer/ football manager).
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Post by blackmonk on Nov 17, 2010 11:13:14 GMT
Meltdown Ray Kytle Panther 1978The blurb: Someday – maybe quite soon – the terrifying contents of this book could really happen…
At the Sand Beach nuclear power-plant, head physicist Paul Hanson suspects that the supposedly fail-safe reactor system has a built-in flaw that could trigger off an ‘accidental’ atomic explosion. Torn between professional loyalty and the safety of thousands, Hanson realises that the cost of rectifying the lethal defect could mean commercial suicide for his company. But what neither Hanson nor his superiors know, is that one revenge-obsessed man with access to the reactor’s heart has lunatic designs of his own which – if not discovered in time – will wreak the worst devastation the world has seen since Hiroshima…
Compelling, shocking and totally plausible, Meltdown is a novel of high-voltage drama that reads like a blueprint for tomorrow’s potential disaster… The novel opens with the construction of the nuclear power-plant highlighting mistakes made in the rush to completion – stripped threads on pipework, incorrectly wired circuit boards, a poor mix of concrete. The mistakes go unnoticed and the plant goes on line. Over time the man in charge begins to doubt the plants safety and, meanwhile, an employee is seeking to destroy the reactor. He blames the plant for the deformity of his son, a “thrashing, screaming creature” with flippers instead of limbs. In a way I felt kind of cheated with this book after being grabbed by Chris Foss’ great cover art. It was interesting, particularly with the technicalities of a power-plant, and well written but it suddenly dawned on me that there were only a few pages to the end and the meltdown hadn’t happened. The novel is 188 pages and meltdown eventually occurs on page 182! It certainly wasn’t the apocalyptic catastrophe novel I was expecting, more a long preamble to a speedily-dealt-with incident. One curious aspect of the novel is that it shows, using diagrams, how to make a shaped-charge and "dry-seed" timing device! Handy, I suppose, for those readers wanting to indulge in a bit of sabotage! New English Library published two similar themed novels, The Explosion by Hans Heinrich Ziemann in 1978 and Dome, Lawrence Huff, in 1980. Perhaps they will come up with the goods.
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Post by blackmonk on Nov 16, 2010 8:51:04 GMT
...Apparently it did stir up something of a stink and questions were asked at Sphere as to how it got released considering the strong content. And it meant that censor-ship or editorial interference was introduced at Sphere to avoid a further hoo-hah... That's really interesting, Justin. What a turn-around by Sphere after bemoaning the fact that authors have been "restrained" by publishers and critics! The other title you mention is Alternative 3 by Leslie Watkins. A book based on the hoax documentary of the same name about the impending end of planet Earth and man's secret ongoing colonisation of Mars. Never read the book but saw the documentary when it first aired. Needless to say, in my impressionable years, I thought it true as indeed do many conspiracy theorists to this day!
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