Mark Ronson - Ogre

[franklinmarsh]

Ogre - Mark Ronson. Hamlyn. 1980.

Hideous slaughter when man's oldest enemy awakes.

Death...mutilation...panic

The peace of a remote Cumbrian village is disturbed by a rash of unusual killings. At first suspicion falls on a newcomer, Richard Finlay, but then a notorious murderer nicknamed the Leopard Man is rumoured to be in the area. When he is caught the villagers believe their nightmare is over. But the disappearances continue. As Finlay pieces together the chilling evidence he becomes aware of unspeakable menace. For in the old mining tunnels far below, an age-old creature has awoken from its timeless slumber.

OGRE

The whole community is put in terrifying danger as it continues to satisfy its craving for human flesh...

The Abbe Mathias gives us a Latin quote, then we're into the prologue - young Marilyn wants to collect some frogspawn. Her mother gives her blessing as long as Maz doesn't go on Raven's land and is back in time for tea.

The little 'un dashes off to the tarn (periously close to Ravens Farm - empty since old Mr Calgarth snuffed it) and comes into contact with a shiny plasticy like substance...

Cut to a couple of Cockernee removal men helping Richard Finlay, almost successful photographer, move into Ravens. The fool returned early from an assignment in Bangladesh to find his wife starkers and her pal Robin hopping around in a crazed fandango as he attempted to don his underpants.

Marriage over, Rich bunks off to an hotel and decides that its solitude he needs. Fortunately an unmarried great-uncle has died and left him a farm near Greysike in Cumbria.

After the removers have gone, Richard moseys down to The Calgarth Arms in search of a pint and friendly conversation. All talking stops as he walks in, but resumes when he reaches the bar. A damp newspaper informs him about the search for the Leopard Man and tests on workers at Windscale Nuclear Facility.

Ruddy-cheeked, Kitchener-moustached, bottle-of-scotch-a-day landlord Ridley appears and pours him a lager. Then identifies him to the locals as the bloke that's taken over the Calgarth place - and was related to the previous owner.

'A reet booger' declares club-footed Clegg, village trouble-maker. An old codger lets slip Richard's great uncle imported women of pleasure from 'them temples of lust in the South'. Ridley confirms that he was something of a hermit.

Babycham slurping good-time girl Mrs Liz Jackson intervenes to tell of the missing girl, the village fears as the Leopard Man is 'worse than Jack The Ripper.'

After another drink Richard makes his excuses and leaves. The book assumes the POV of a watcher as Mrs Jackson exits the pub, is accosted by a boozed up Clegg, and agrees to a bit of fumbling in the churchyard. As the action hots up, Liz spots the watcher and Clegg withdraws to give him a good bashing. It's daft Tom 'you goggling booger.'

Tom recovers and later kidnaps Clegg's magnificent collie, Shep, and ties him up on the Great Fell. A mysterious mist envelops the pooch.

Next thing you know, Patricia Derbyshire's scarlet MG Midget shows up in the village. She's looking for Raven's Farm. Post mistress Hardcastle gives her directions, mentions sub-Post Office robbing maniac the Leopard man (but she's armed herself with a huge pepperpot), and that at school she learned that a vampire haunted the local graveyard.

Patricia arrives at the farm to get short shrift from Rich as she enquires about the large tower built on the farm.

She slips on the cobblestoned yard and Richard melts a little as he helps her inside. He cooks a meal, gets plastered and retires to bed, alone, much to the disappointment of Daft Tom, leering through the window.

Meanwhile, Liz has hooked up with Gitanes-smoking Frenchman Georges for a liaison in his Citroen. A gas pipeline is to be laid under Raven land and all manner of International navvies will be descending on the area.

Liz directs Georges to a secluded spot close to the Tarn, where they can penetrate and be penetrated. An aquaeous substance dribbles over the car...


More to follow.

[killercrab]

For in the old mining tunnels far below, an age-old creature has awoken from its timeless slumber. >>

Looking forward to what your final assessment is FM. It's very much my style of story in content and execution. I was pleasantly surprised after expecting a Tolkein type ogre roaming about. That said - maybe such a creature roaming a contemporary setting might of worked too.

ade

[dem]

Relieve to see you're coping so well with the Leopard Man and friends, FM, 'specially after Gareth James' rave review of Ghoul in Pieces Of Mary #5, 1987.

... A deluge of authors then followed, many destined to vanish from the bookshelves after their first novels. Notables in this 'post-Herbert' period were few and far between. Guy N Smith was heavily influenced by this time and launched his infamous Crabs series among others, the only one worth mentioning 'The Thirst. As many of the novels of this time were poor shock horror attempts in the 'terror by animals genre' they soon became obsolete. Mark Ronson, author of the incredibly bad The Ghoul also appeared at this stage and rather thankfully dug a pit for himself and jumped in it taking his third-rate tales with him ....

If I were Mr. Ronson, I'd insist my publisher ran that on the cover of my next 'Nasty'.

[Dr Terror]

Watch out for the man from the ministry and his comments on sci-fi novels.

[franklinmarsh]

Unfortunately been side tracked so the end may be a while in coming. Some good stuff in here even if Mr Ronson is the nasty equivalent of John Harvey with the Piccadilly Cowboys - shies away from the really explicit stuff, but you don't really need it - he's got so much going on there's ...erm....always something going on. Heavy referencing of Straw Dogs and The Quatermass Xperiment (to my oblique eyes).

NB Have tracked down a copy of Bloodthirst - now there's a Ronson! (Waits for Dem's jeers). Never was much on Ghoul - apart from the boffo cover.

You mean Prendeghast Doc? The one who mentions Crabs - leaving Rich to mention super-rats. Hee!

[killercrab]

NB Have tracked down a copy of Bloodthirst - now there's a Ronson! >>

I wanna hear about this one! CF Astell hasn't covered it either. Ronson is two books not out at crabby cove...

KC

[dem]

Jun 19, 2008 14:10:14 GMT franklinmarsh said:

NB Have tracked down a copy of Bloodthirst - now there's a Ronson! (Waits for Dem's jeers).

No jeers from me, FM - I like what little I've read of his. I ran the Pieces Of Mary quote (and the similar sentiments expressed by Chris Morgan in his No Slime, No Chainsaws introduction to Dark Fantasies) purely to illustrate just how far these books got up the noses of certain horror authors and critics.

[franklinmarsh]

Jun 19, 2008 21:39:31 GMT dem said:

No jeers from me, FM - I like what little I've read of his.

I merely meant, your Majesty, that I thought you'd read Bloodthirst and didn't think that much of it.

[dem]

Have I? You're probably right but if I did, I don't remember a thing about it . Just had a look and my pitiful haul of Ronson wretchedness comprises Ghoul, the anthology he edited for Beaver and Haunted Houses You May Visit under his Marc Alexander, serious ghost researcher pseudonym.

edited by me 'cause I said Ogre instead of Ghoul

[franklinmarsh]

No - I've checked the old board and you claim never to have read it. How bizarre. My mind's going.

[franklinmarsh]

A slight sense of disappointment on my second read of this, but overall it's a good 'un. Not as OTT as some of our faves but so busy and entertaining you can't help but enjoy it. The nods to other books (and films) spice it up a little.
The actual explanation of the 'Ogre' is pretty bosh but so ridiculous it doesn't matter, and the 'It's not over!' ending was a bit unnecessary. Some great characters and set pieces.
The whole Leopard Man (presumably a nod at the Black Panther) is a complete mcguffin, but throws up a genuinely nasty scene. The business of St Michael's church, built on the site of a pre-Christian temple with mysterious carving of St Michael slaying the serpent, its bricked up 'Devil's Door', and the tomb of the Calgarths in the churchyard where an old vagabond was sucked dry of life by a 'vampire', is terrific. The evening of madrigals is a nice little episode too. I have to love the siege of Richard's farm by Clegg and drunken cronies, complete with shotgun, boiling water, molotov cocktails and the exploitative Globeswatch-stirring stripping of Patricia.
A few old regulars on the scene can't do any harm - pipe-smoking Inspector Jardine, looking into the disappearances, oddball vicar Clifford Wakeling and, of course, handkerchief-in-cuff foppish Man from the Ministry James Prendergast, worrying about the forthcoming election, leaks from Windscale, Greenpeace environmentalists, Richard and Patricia informing the press, and not least all those Sci-Fi tales of 'immense crabs' and 'man-devouring spiders.'
Indrani Cama, maroon with silver edge sari wearing biologist and cheery German pipe layer Karl Bruggermann add a touch of non-British fun to the proceedings.
Hope Bloodthirst lives up to my memories!

[Dr Terror]

Jun 19, 2008 14:10:14 GMT franklinmarsh said:

Some good stuff in here even if Mr Ronson is the nasty equivalent of John Harvey with the Piccadilly Cowboys - shies away from the really explicit stuff

I was surprised by that.

There's a couple of chapters in particular that he builds up to good cliff hanger endings and I expected the next to carry on where they left off, but instead of showing us the characters make good their escape or whatever, he just jumps to them recovering after they have done so (or whatever).

[fullbreakfast]

Jun 16, 2008 15:41:49 GMT killercrab said:

I was pleasantly surprised after expecting a Tolkein type ogre roaming about. That said - maybe such a creature roaming a contemporary setting might of worked too.

ade

I think a Tolkien-type ogre wandering round Cumbria pulling fell walkers' heads off and eating them sounds much more fun than some sort of overgrown amoeba with an attitude. Which I think is a bit of a swizz given the title!

There again I suppose Clive Barker has covered that theme quite nicely in Rawhead Rex, albeit with a typically Barkerish sexual slant.

[fibre]

After separating from his wife, photographer Richard Finlay has, in a fit of misanthropy, re-located to the remote village of Greysike in the Lake District of England. His move there coincides with mysterious events: villagers are disappearing and it seems that the excavations involved in the laying-down of a new pipeline have awakened a mighty beast (or as the blurb calls it: “man's oldest enemy”). If “ogre” gets you thinking of a baby-eating giant, you may or may not be disappointed when the monster is revealed to be a blob-thing, reminiscent of something you pull out of your nose, only about sixty feet wide. Subplots help stretch the story out to novel length: a serial killer called the Leopard Man appears and then disappears, and Richard and the new love of his life Patricia have to put up with surly locals to whom “outsiders” are interfering “boogers” to be dealt some STRAW DOGS-style torment. The residents of the picturesque Greysike include a psychopathic club-footed farmer, a feeble-minded pervert called Daft Tom, a fussy postmistress, and a nymphomaniac. In other words, you've got your usual trashy horror-novel representation of a small English village.

Ronson (who also wrote, among others, PLAGUE PIT and GHOUL in Hamlyn's early eighties deluge) does have the slightly irritating habit of building up to a cliffhanger and then switching abruptly to its aftermath, preferring simply to flick off a quick update to explain what happened: an “oh yeah, I forgot, our heroes were saved from being eaten by the giant goo-ball by being picked up off the belltower by a helicopter” sort of a thing. Nevertheless, some of the setpieces, notably the monster's assault on the pub and the flamethrower section, are effectively handled with a real visual flair. As with so many of these novels, the destruction of the antagonist at the end is a little pat, and it's notable that Ronson has to inject some human villainy into the final few pages to increase the drama. Still, a good reminder of the days when horror novels didn't have to be six hundred pages long and when “paranormal romance” was an unknown phrase. 3/5.

cinematic-fibre.blogspot.co.uk/

[dem]

Been a whole load of bookstacy going on in realm of dem this past week and can finally add a cover to FM & Fibre's spirited endorsements. If Ogre is even half as much fun as the magnificent Plague Pit it will do me.

Mark Ronson - Ogre (Hamlyn, 1980)

Photography: John Knights

Blurb:
Death ... mutilation ....panic.

The peace of a remote Cumbrian village is disturbed by a rash of unusual killings. At first suspicion falls on a newcomer, Richard Finlay, but then a notorious murderer nicknamed the Leopard Man is rumoured to be in the area. When he is caught the villagers believe their nightmare is over.

But the disappearances continue. As Finlay pieces together the chilling evidence he becomes aware of unspeakable menace. For in the old mining tunnels far below, an age-old creature has awoken from its timeless slumber.

OGRE

The whole community is put in terrifying danger as it continues to satisfy its craving for human flesh . . .