Pan Horror 21 - Scary Plastic Face

[Nightmare]

PAN #21 wasn't bad at all. I enjoyed Slowly, Cynthia and Charles, The Thug, Baby, Baby, Mumsy and Sonny, God, It Was Fun, and The Black Bedroom the most.

Could someone explain the ending of Cynthia and Charles to me? What did the woman's secret have to do with the story exactly?

Baby, Baby was good, but the ending seemed a bit disappointing.

I will never view Humpty Dumpty the same way again!

Mumsy and Sonny was a good story, but I thought there could have been more physical descriptions of the freaks.

[noose]

Nobody has mentioned that Ruth Cameron is the pen name used by Rosemary Timperley. 'Ruth' also had some stuff in the Armada's.

[Nightmare]

I read Mumsy and Sonny again. Unless I misunderstood the dialogue about the circus accident, is Mumsy actually....?


*Spoiler?*


The strongman from the act?

[Swampirella]

Nov 1, 2016 18:15:28 GMT Swampirella said:

Oct 25, 2007 8:53:28 GMT dem bones said:

Herbert Van Thal (ed) - 21st Pan Book Of Horror Stories (Pan, 1980)

Carl Schiffman - Throwback
Thomas Muirson - The Gibbet Inn
Ian C. Strachan - The Incident At Scanham
Fay Woolf - Slowly
Alex White - Cynthia And Charles
Rosemary Timperley - The Thug
Ruth Cameron - Dolly
Brian Mooney - Baby, Baby
Ken Johns - Mumsy And Sonny
Stephen King - Graveyard Shift
Stephen King - The Mangler
James McClure - God, It Was Fun!
Harry E. Turner - Flayed
Carolyn L. Bird - The Black Bedroom

I think they must've had a "they'll buy anything with Stephen King's name on it!" moment at the office. Fine stories, sure, but anyone who was remotely interested in the great man would already have had Graveyard Shift and The Mangler a zillion times over. Anyhow; The Alex White story is well handled, the Fay Woolf is suitably nasty and there's a horrible twist to Carolyn Bird's story. It's unlikely that Dolly and Baby, Baby will turn up in any Best Horror collections ...

Fay Woolf - Slowly: Little Darren is trapped beneath the rails after the collapse of the Big Dipper at the Happyland funfair. Calhoun and his crew try to save him from being transformed into a human torso ...

Alex White - Cynthia And Charles: Yes, it's exactly the same as every other Alex White story except this time the doomed heroine, Cynthia, recently divorced, heads off to Essex to spend a month with kindly Mrs. Castleton.

Unfortunately, the old girl has a nephew who Cynthia can't abide, and his nocturnal wanderings give her the creeps, especially as there have been a series of rape-murders in the area. To make matters worse, Mrs. C. has been called away to visit a sick friend ...

Rosemary Timperley - The Thug: A young woman can't help but notice a squat, lonely figure whenever she's out shopping. Despite being strangely frightened of him, she allows him to persuade her back to his house. He shows her a beautiful carpet and explains it's history - it's connected to thuggery and Kali worship. Annually, he is required to make a sacrifice ...

Brian Mooney - Baby, Baby: The boorish Tom makes the lives of his wife and father-in-law a misery. Eventually they turn on him with cleaver and knives. When the police arrive, they make a strange discovery regarding the tot the wife and her epileptic dad dote on.

Ruth Cameron (Rosemary Timperley) - Dolly: A circus ventriloquist uses his daughter as a doll, and she grows up to behave more like a dummy than a flesh and blood woman. Then she falls pregnant.

Carolyn L. Bird - The Black Bedroom: The scene is a "Gothic madhouse in Oxfordshire", home to the multi-millionaire Sheldrake and peopled for the weekend by his Old Harrovian and Etonion chums. The highlight of Sheldrake's programme is the shoot, but the narrator, Daniel, isn't much interested in decimating the local wildlife population and contents himself romping with the host's daughter, Nerissa.

Sheldrake then introduces Daniel to his menagerie: "Do you like my monkeys? Elsa, the hairless Javanese is on heat, but I can't get the other males to cover her. She tends to bite their throats out during copulation, and she's got venereal disease ..."
That night, Daniel is awoken in the pitch dark when something climbs on his bed and attempts to mount him ...

Thomas Muirson - The Gibbet Inn: The narrator arrives at a gloomy village inn at Manton and, on jokingly enquiring of the barmaid how the pub came by its grim name, learns that it was because they hung her father "across the way on the village green, you see."

Ellen, for that is her name, is soon joined by a bulbous, piggy-eyed wretch who cuffs her for talking to the stranger and orders him to leave. He wanders on until he arrives at the church where he learns that he's just encountered two spectres and the revenant of a long gone pub. The girl, Ellen, committed suicide by slashing her throat with a broken bottle in 1783 after her father, Jacob Farley, caved in the head of young Tom Reynolds with a stake when he learned of their affair. The villagers then hung him.

The priest consoles him by telling him that he's indeed fortunate he didn't see Reynolds ghost, as the three people who have all died shortly afterwards ...

Ken Johns - Mumsy And Sonny: A pair of circus freaks, their minds and bodies mangled in an accident caused by the Ringmaster's negligence, methodically decimate the troupe.

Carl Schiffman - Throwback: Richard Hargreaves, anorak, is playing with his metal detector when he discovers a coin. Digging deeper, his spade strikes a cylindrical object ... and he's thrown back in time to the 15th century. The villagers are the of the usual superstitious bent and Hargreaves is put on trial for witchcraft.

Ian C Strachan - The Incidents At Scanham: Hopping vampires, toadstool-like in appearance, have plagued the quiet Nottingham village for centuries. Things come to a head over the months of March to May 1978 when the bodies of several people are found drained of blood. The grey and white terrors lay siege to a house until a farmer with a flame-thrower arrives at the scene. Great fun.

(Um. I think I maybe overstated the 'hopping toadstool' aspect. Its true that one eyewitness describes them as such, but he was probably in shock having just watched them use the bloodied corpses of his friends as bouncy castles down t' pit. Toward the end, they're still pogoing up and down, but now they have beady eyes and claws - not unlike the critter on the cover of Pan #3, in fact. And he/ she doesn't look much like a toadstool.

Great story, though. Reminds me of The Black Creator and Vortex Of Horror in that it reads like a 'thirties Not At Night job. But isn't. )

Harry E. Turner - Flayed: Trapelli, a ruthless NYC gangster, went off the rails aged 14 after his brutal father stamped on his pet squirrel and all its guts spilled out. years later, with the assistance of a Zulu, Trapelli exorcises the dreadful memory of the incident, having lured his father to Central Park after dark.

James McClure - God, It Was Fun: A seriously disgruntled wife kills eminent plastic surgeon Dr. Agostino and then customises his body. Sergeant O'Hare sums it up best: "Like I say, you ain't gonna believe it ... It looks - ever heard of Humpty Dumpty?"

Other than the pair from King - which I'm assuming we've all read at some time - that's it for #21 as far as I'm concerned. Except ...

Just ordered this, hoping for reasonably good things from it....
Nov. 18 - It just arrived; I'll be cracking it open in a short while
Nov. 19 - Read the first 8 stories; the first 6 were worth the price alone. Cynthia and Charles is really too realistic . The next two were good as well.

[Deleted]

Scary Plastic Face, maybe, but my what a wonderful set of gnashers.

[andydecker]

This Pan has more pseudonymous material by fewer writers. At the start three in a row by Ian C. Strachan, two by Rosemary Timperly and two by Stephen King. While King is obviously the attempt to jump on the bandwagon, the rest suggests not enough suitable material for the annual publication and waning self-confidence amidst steadily sinking numbers.


Carl Schiffman – Throwback
This is a bit baffling, one of those stories which just end when they should begin. It is like the first act of an tv-episode like The Twilight Zone. There are a few nice bits, but on a whole this doesn't work very well.

Thomas Muirson – The Gibbet Inn:
While the mysterious pub in the country as setting was a bit tired at the time, this is not bad. The ambiguous ending works well, but on the whole this story could have been published in every ghost stories anthology and is not exactly Pan material.

Ian C. Strachan – The incidents at Scanham
While it is amusing, this reads more like a movie treatment or an embellished summary of a monster movie than a story.

Fay Woolf – Slowly:
Another one which is a bit light on plot. But it has undoubtedly a nasty edge and is well written. Today it reminds one of movies like Final Destination with its mayhem.

Alex White – Cynthia and Charles
I had high expectations of Alex/Dulcie, but was a bit disappointed. Too long, too unfocused. Dull in places and often it just felt out of touch with its times. Which made the modern ending – in terms of terror - even more jarring. This would have made a good slasher movie a few years later.

Rosemary Timperly – The Thug
I was a bit critical with Rosemary Timperly's contributions to the last Pan's. This one was better. An original idea, consequently done, with a bit of well-researched history thrown in.

Ruth Cameron (Rosemary Timperly) – Dolly
This one, on the other hand, didn't work for me at all. The idea of the conditioned girl to behave as a doll was wasted, and the punch-line didn't made any sense. Not in the context of going to the hospital to deliver her child. Handled a bit more differently – and more dramatically -, this could have been a nice little horror story.

Brian Mooney – Baby, Baby
And here it is again, van Thal's habit to put two thematically identical stories one after the other. I liked it a lot at first, even if the ending was telegraphed much too early. But again in the context of the story the ending didn't made sense. We are to believe that brute and insensitive Tom indulges his crazy wife and allows her to keep the doll as a baby substitute? Still it was nicely written.

Ken Johns – Mumsy and Sonny
Circus stories do exactly nothing for me (the only exception of this is Vampire Circus), and this one couldn't convince me otherwise.

Stephen King – Graveyard Shift
Stephen King – The Mangler
Vintage King which I re-read over the years so I skipped them. Indeed its inclusion reeks of desperation. At least both stories are reminiscent of the old Pan style.

James McClure – God, it was Fun
I liked it. Well done punch-line, some nice atrocities. In places the writing could have been sharper, a few things remained a bit vague.

Harry E. Turner – Flayed
Harry E. Turner, God bless you. While it is not Turner's best story, there is a lot to like. A sadistic original Pan with some good twists and a nice cynical ending.

Carolyn L. Bird – The Black Bedroom
A change of gear from last years The Leather Ottoman. This time Carolyn Bird is pretty explicit, and what's not to love about Elsa the hairless monkey. The end is not the most convincing in the world, both the mix-up and the suicide, but it captures the Grand Guignol nicely.

Pan 21 is uneven. I didn't mind the many pseudonymous stories, you don't really notice without background information. But quite a few contributions lacked the old spark. There is the impression that Pan can't keep up with the changing times. The inclusion of some old and very pulpy King stories doesn't help. That is not only hindsight. This is the year of McCauley's Dark Forces or Grant's Shadows, and put in perspective even the highlights of #21 appear more nostalgic than contemporary. And the cover is not very good.