Pan Horror 19: Blue Face

[dem]

Robert Holdstock - The Quiet Girl: As selected by Robert McCammon for Dark Voices: The Best Of The Pan Book Of Horror Stories. Methwick, a sleepy law-abiding community on the outskirts of Aberdeen. Its been three nights since James Gray brought home the begrimed and bloody girl he found abandoned by the roadside at Tarston, and still she's neither eaten, drank, slept or spoken a word. As if life hasn't dealt him enough cruel blows - he recently lost his wife and daughter in a car smash - now the problem of what to do with "Elizabeth." So her turns to his wise old friend, Dr. James Taggard. Once he's wiped away the dirt, the Doctor is shocked at the extent of the mystery girl's injuries. It's clear that "Elizabeth" has been cruelly beaten, and the wounds around the cluster of moles on her back suggest she's been pricked for the Devil's mark! Tarston has recently been in the news on account of a series of grave desecrations, and Taggard is of a mind that there must be a connection. His subsequent investigation leads him to suspect that 'Elizabeth' and Matilda Reid - hanged at sixteen as as a witch in 1639 - are one and the same entity. But why, when Matilda was posthumously pardoned and reburied in consecrated ground, has she come back?

Burkism, grave-robbing , witchcraft and vampirism - Eli 'The Specialist' Podgram would have enjoyed sinking his teeth into this one.

Which is pretty much it for #19. May yet revisit the stories in initial post at a later date. This rematch cheered me up so much that there's nothing else for it but to revisit the immediate predecessor.

[andydecker]

So here is Pan 19.

I truly dislike the cover. It is like an omen of things to come, all those awful genre covers of today.

Dulcie Gray – The Spectre

An EC like story. Nothing wrong with that. But compared to earlier "Dulcie Gray" this has aged not very well and is rather weak. The idea was done in comics beforehand – the collector gets killed by his collection. I seem to remember even an Atlas comic like that. So the ending was not a big surprise.

Chris Morgan – Eric and I
On the fence with this one. What‘s not to like with a voyeur in training and an epic plot. Didn‘t see the obsession/werewolf angle at the end coming. Well executed ending. But I didn‘t believe the crucial plot-twist. The parents know that the "time" is due and leave on vacation, give their son to the nurse for keeping? Nah. This could have been handled better.

David Case – Neighbours
By now we know that the writers of the time liked to portray their contemporaries as unsympathetic and mostly racist assholes. Insofar nothing new here. But the story has not aged well. The moment the missing dog is mentioned it is clear what is bubbling in the kitchen, so no surprises here. A weak Chase story.

James Hallums – A trip of the maps
And after a story about an unsympathetic racist cow a story about an unsympathtetic racist American. Sometimes van Thal was a bit lazy. Currently one is so focused on folk horror with its typical ending that it is a nice surprise to see a twist. Still the protagonist is too much of a carricature to take this seriusly and the story is too long. The jokey tone also didn't help. I wonder if this had more punch if taken more earnestly.

Norman P. Kaufman – Lady on Display
He seldom disappoints. Again a shame that Kaufman never got his collection. Excellent story. I would drink in that pub.

Guy Delaway – Wild Bees, Golden Honey

Reminded me of a Laurence James Gringos novel. The savage west, mexican tragedy with a big T. It hits all the right buttons and drips with atmosphere, still it left me rather cold.

Tbc

[andydecker]

The rest ...

Edwin Brown – The brother
A few pages of psychotic behaivior. As a Pan reader you wait for the usual twist when Stella – or her jealous brute of a husband Charles – lands in the woodchipper, but the ending is unexpected. Not the best story ever published in a Pan, but not the worst one either.

Dorothy K. Haynes – Zelma, my sister-in-law
A weird tale and not a horror story, the dependable Haynes delivers again. Considering the date this was written it is for once really timeless. It is a sad and tragic tale, with no heroes but no villains either. Even without a drop of blood spilled this may be the most memorable story of the edition.

Rosemary Timperley – The Power Cut
And another murderer who kills his ex gets a vengeance from beyond the grave. I am not a rabid fan of Timperley‘s work in the last Pan‘s, and this reads terribly by the numbers. The protagonist is clearly disturbed from the first sentence, and frankly the question how he got the girlfriend in the first place – which of course isn‘t answered – would be more interesting than the whole narrative. Everything is very contrived, and the story is, well, boring. The elements don't mesh well.

Diana Forster – Give the dog a Bone
And the next nagging wife gets dispatched. Yawn. The admittedly nice and macabre tone of the story suffers under the not very original plot. This just can end one way, and it surely does. Another writer – or pseudonym – which was only used once.

Philip Dell Creed – The sinister nursemaid
Colonial tales have fallen from grace, but the writer – another one-off – packs a lot of twists in such a short tale. I like the setting and the atmosphere. And while you could argue if this is really material for Pan – it would not have been out of place in the original WT, maybe it was even that old, who knows, there was a vibe of this being written much earlier - it is entertaining. It is a novel idea to have a cobra as a kind of guardian dog, and the many twists right down to the end make this suspenseful.

Guy Delaway – The boy who was afraid to die

A conte cruel for want of a better description, as this story is pretty pointless. Helpless villagers gets massacred, then the lone survivor gets raped and killed too by the evil invader. End of story. I don't get it. What indeed is the point?

Van Thal had a strange preference for pairing similar themed stories, after a story of India we get a story of India. Wouldn't it have been better to put some other material between similar themed contributions?

Simon Wash – The inquisitor
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! So here is a tale of the inquisition, torture, murder and the usual hypocrisy. What is not to like? Still thought it rather blah. Here it is more the writing which is entertaining than the plot itself. In its context the twist is not very believable, which kind of kills the ending.

Robert Holdstock – The quit girl
At the time Holdstock had quite a few novels published, so expectations were high. And he did deliver. It is a nice British Witchcraft tale. Maybe a bit too complicated for its own good, I am not sure I understood everything correctly, but it was an entertaining read whith some convincing set pieces.

To summarize, I found Pan 19 uneven. Stories which didn't work for me were in the majority. But there was still a lot to like. Kaufman, Morgan, Holdstock and Haynes delivered, a lot of the rest which I didn't like are arguably a matter of taste. In hindsight Pan 19 can't shake the impression that the content couldn't match the changing times. But again I hasten to add that this is a deeply personal impression, reading this 45 years later for the first time.

[dem]

Mar 13, 2023 9:47:38 GMT andydecker said:

To summarize, I found Pan 19 uneven. Stories which didn't work for me were in the majority. But there was still a lot to like. Kaufman, Morgan, Holdstock and Haynes delivered, a lot of the rest which I didn't like are arguably a matter of taste. In hindsight Pan 19 can't shake the impression that the content couldn't match the changing times. But again I hasten to add that this is a deeply personal impression, reading this 45 years later for the first time.

Rereading this a few years back, I liked it so much more than first time around, found it a much-needed improvement on the mediocre-but-for-a-few-highlights #17 & #18 though I agree, some stories have aged badly (Cases's Neighbours only works, if at all, in the context of a controversial alleged comedy series of the day) and others (The Power Cut, The Boy Who Was Afraid To Die were nothing much to begin with). I thought Wild Bees, Golden Honey worked well.