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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2007 17:36:53 GMT
Herbert Van Thal (ed.) - The 9th Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1968) Raymond Williams - Man-Hunt Dulce Gray - The Fly Dorothy K. Haynes - Though Shalt Not Suffer A Witch ... Lindsay Stewart - Strictly For The Birds Martin Waddell - Bloodthirsty Adobe James - An Apparition At Noon Rene Morris - The Baby Machine Colin Graham - The Best Teacher Walter Winward - Stick With Me Kid, And You'll Wear Diamonds Dulcie Gray - The Happy Return Raymond Harvey - Father Forgive Me John Burke - A Comedy Of Terrors Tim Stout - The Boy Who Neglected His Grass Snake Lindsay Stewart - Jolly Uncle W. H. Carr - Mr. Anstey's Scarecrow Alex Hamilton - Not Enough Poison Martin Waddell - Old Feet Peter Richey - Don't Avoid The Rush Hour Eddy C. Bertin - The Whispering Horror Raymond Williams - Smile Please A. G. J. Rough - Compulsion Mary R. Sullivan - Crocodile Way James McArdwell - The Green Umbilical Chord Tanith Lee - Eustaceincludes: Eddy C. Bertin - The Whispering Horror: Little Harvey Denner and narrator Dan discover the entrance to a cellar close by a ruined house in the woods. Harvey, the braver of the two, descends to find the whispering man, 'Stake', who claims to be two hundred years old. "He had been very sick, and he had been so long in the dark that the sun hurt his eyes". Harvey visits his new friend every day, even sneaking out of the house at night, and all the while people are remarking how pale and thin he's become ... The day after Harvey's funeral, Dan stops off by his grave to find it desecrated, the coffin dug up and what's left of his friend's body hanging over the side. The men folk arm themselves and track the horror to its lair ... Yes, this one really was overlooked for Dark Voices: The Best Of The Pan Book Of Horror Stories. John Burke - A Comedy Of Terrors: Robbie Searidge, a designer for a movie company, practices torture and mutilation on his visitors then reproduces the finer details of their tormented deaths on film for mass consumption. When he catches his girlfriend Dolores prying in his secret room he flays her alive then disposes of her body (and those of her predecessors: burnt alive, hung, drawn and quartered, etc.) at the junkyard. But Dolores brother is convinced that Robbie is a murderer and before she went "missing" Dolores confided to him that lover-boy talks in his sleep: about his greatest fear .... Lindsay Stewart - Jolly Uncle: Clive learns that Mason Mason, the little boy in his care, has a weak heart after taking him to see Dracula's Curse On The Virgins at the local cinema. He hits on a fiendish plan to scare the boy to death and claim his inheritance. He assembles a vampire from a sackful of rags and coke and the bits and pieces he brought home from Africa: a shrunken head; two pearl white shark's teeth; a black cloak and a cravat tied around the neck to hide the sacking. He takes it to meet Mason ... Raymond Williams - Man-Hunt: Two years ago John Blandon raped and mutilated June Kent and scattered her body parts across London. At his trial he put on such a great play of lunacy that the judge bought it, thus sparing his neck. Now he's on the run with the dogs closing in. He chances on the house of a middle aged woman and her daughter. This'll do nicely. Perhaps they might even be up for a threesome - not that they'll have any say in the matter should the mood take him. As it happens, with no prompting from him the girl - Pat, her mother calls her - comes to his room dressed in a sexy black negligee. He never did get to ask her surname .... Tim Stout - The Boy Who Neglected His Grass Snake: The boy is Trevor Cater, an odious, spoilt little brat who wants what he sees, and sulks and whines 'til his parents relent and get it for him. Such is the case with the grass snake which he callously allows to starve to death then discards in the dustbin. The snake's ghost wreaks dreadful vengeance for this ill-treatment, I'm delighted to say. Martin Waddell - Bloodthirsty:The brain is now settled comfortably in it's pool of degenerate frogspawn, awaiting the surgeon's momentous decision: which corpse should he transplant it into this time? Eventually, Count Alexis becomes the lucky recipient, and you can guess the rest. Lindsay Stewart - Strictly For The Birds: A wheelchair bound old man and his valet feeding the pigeons in Regent Park. What could be more innocent? well, the invalid is being eaten up by gangrene and the 'breadcrumbs' are evil-reeking and slimy - that should give you a clue. Stewart seems to have a fondness for the name Mason as here's a whole family of them. Although the mother won't be seeing the outside of a mental hospital any time soon ... Raymond Williams - Smile Please: Delorice Caine, popular stripper at the El Toro Club, finishes her act and heads back for her dressing room to find an admirer has left her a gift of £500 and a request she awaits his telephone call. Edward wishes her to give a performance at a private party for eight of his friends, "you know, the odd MP, Harley Street specialist, business tycoon who is keen to get his name on the Birthday honours list" - not the type of fellows who can be seen to frequent a seedy strip joint. Delorice is to play Eve in the Garden of Eden. "Will there be a young Adam chasing me around the bushes?" she asks flirtatiously. No, but there will be an apple. And fig leaves. And a f***ing enormous snake ... Whereas John Burke's Robbie murders young women for inspiration, Edward Hitchcock is, out of necessity, a strictly one-take man so let's hope Delorice goes out on a career best. Dulce Grey - The Happy Return: Jilted by Arnold Ransome once he's taken her virginity and got her pregnant, Diane avenges herself through the baby which she raises in secrecy. When the boy is seven, she deposits him on Arnold's doorstep. "Both he and his wife Mary were horrified at the headdress but not having studied medieval history had no idea what they were in for when they carefully unscrewed the mask ..." Tanith Lee - Eustace: He has his faults but our girl can overlook them, because ... A bit rubbish to be frank, but Van Thal obviously had a keen eye for talent and Tanith Lee would go on to far greater things than this short-short. Peter Richey - Don't Avoid The Rush Hour: Seventeen year old Paul Lancer has spent the evening in a Wardour Street pub. It's his first drunk, he's fallen asleep on the platform at Leicester Square and the last train's long gone. His parents will go spare! that's the least of his worries just now, though. Someone else is locked in with him ...
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Post by redbrain on Nov 27, 2007 10:02:57 GMT
No summary, I note, of my favourite 9th Pan Horrors story:
Martin Waddell - Old Feet
Black humour rather than horror, but I think it's a real hoot!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 27, 2007 16:46:20 GMT
I've not yet tackled Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch ... either so what chance poor Marty? James McArdwell - The Green Umbilical Chord: Tops! A demon flower story that we overlooked on the old Vegetation thread and not a bad one at that! His spiteful, botanist wife Margarite owns everything - the house, the car, the bank account and all the flowering plants in the garden. All Andrew has is his beloved ivy plant - and she even tries to poison that. When she strikes him during an argument his involuntary reaction is to stick her with the knife he's holding. R.I.P. Margarite, filleted and ground up as fertilizer. His ivy plant reacts well to this new ingredient in its diet but comes the day when he has to provide more. He experiments with household pets before turning his hand to grave-robbing. Soon the ivy is capable of catching and preparing its own food .... Mary R. Sullivan - Crocodile Way: Malay. A late night hunt on the Klang river ends in the deaths of Jock and the native boy Haji Noor when they inadvisedly pick a fight with a monster croc. Reads more like a True Life Adventure yarn than a fantasy horror tale. A. G. J. Rough - Compulsion: Shunned for his pug-ugly face and mocked for his pronounced limp our friendless friend avenges himself on society by bumping off complete strangers utilising a variety of methods. The random nature of the murders frustrates the police who don't yet have the luxury of CCTV footage and DNA samples to analyse. Adobe James - An Apparition At Noon: Africa. The roosters, hens and both Mastiffs have been killed during the night and now his wife Kathleen, five years dead, is up out of her grave and flaunting everything she's got in her racy black negligee. Have the loneliness and alcoholism finally wrecked his mind - or has a fiendish extra terrestrial assumed the form of the only woman he ever loved? Yet more to follow ...
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Post by redbrain on Nov 28, 2007 18:42:19 GMT
Is it just me - or does the mummy on the cover look like an amiable drunk?
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Post by paisleycravat on Nov 30, 2007 21:35:16 GMT
I think it's definitely the most amusingly unscary Panthology cover.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 30, 2007 22:34:15 GMT
Very anti-climactic after the magnificent bucket head for #8. If there was any justice he'd have been given his own chat show.
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Post by Calenture on Nov 30, 2007 23:10:17 GMT
Looking down Dem's synopses brought almost every one of these stories back vividly. Also, Old Feet (possibly better thanFried Man?)
So I think it's my favourite Pan - or would be if it included Our Feathered Friends.
I even like the mummy-face cover!
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Post by paisleycravat on Nov 30, 2007 23:55:57 GMT
Surely it's a hat box on #8, rather than a bucket?
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Post by redbrain on Dec 1, 2007 14:38:37 GMT
Looking down Dem's synopses brought almost every one of these stories back vividly. Also, Old Feet (possibly better than Fried Man?) So I think it's my favourite Pan - or would be if it included Our Feathered Friends. I even like the mummy-face cover! Glad to see that someone else likes Old Feet. I think the story is probably teh funniest in teh entire Pan series.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 2, 2007 17:52:40 GMT
Surely it's a hat box on #8, rather than a bucket? Oh crap. You're right! Dorothy K. Haynes - "Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch ...": Beatrice the dairymaid has designs on farmhand Jack Hyslop, the betrothed of Minty Fraser. She prevails upon the simple, friendless Jinnot to throw a fit and accuse Minty of giving her the evil eye. Jinnot eventually complies, sells out her kindly guardian for sixpence. The villagers duly drag Minty away to be swum in the pond, an ordeal she doesn't survive. Witnessing the violent episode has a dreadful effect on Jinnot. What if she herself is a witch? She easily convinces herself that it's at least a possibility, which would make her duty bound to avenge Minty. And Beatrice, now Mrs. Hyslop, is about to give birth. What better opportunity for Jinnot to put her powers to the test. It's beyond me to do the sheer grimness of this one justice, but the overall effect is like some literary equivalent of Witchfinder General. Martin Waddell - Old Feet: Acton. Richard scoops a manky foot in a rotting grey sock from the tea urn. He decides to give it to Emma of the multiple boyfriends who, despite what her mother has been lead to believe, doesn't work in a banana factory. Emma is disappointed: it's not an easy gift to exchange for cash but she's nothing if not tenacious. Perhaps if she had the right foot to go with it? I'm not being wilfully perverse when I say that I prefer Bloodthirsty of the two Waddell stories. Dulce Gray - The Fly: Arthur and Maria Pontney, middle-aged suburbanites, their marriage a sham, united in mutual loathing. Your typical Pan couple in other words. He's having an affair with secretary Mabel, a girl half his age. Maria despises sex ,so the silly bitch is welcome to him as far as she's concerned. But she still wants to kill him. If only she could hypnotise him like that stage magician she saw, make him jump out of the window. And flies. He hates flies so she'll have to find a little duty for them ... Walter Winward - Stick With Me Kid, And You'll Wear Diamonds: Another henpecked husband-ungrateful wife combo, this one so dull Winward can't be bothered giving them names. He's an under-achieving jeweller who has yet to make good on the promise he made her before they married. Her incessant moaning gives him just the kick up the backside he's needed all along! She gets her diamonds but is hardly in any condition to appreciate her good fortune. Colin Graham - The Best Teacher: Gareth Gwynne, successful horror author, is addressing a writers circle, among them the one-armed Sadelin (the name's a giveaway) who has a deep interest in his work. Gwynne takes an instant dislike to Sadelin but is browbeaten into accepting his offer of a lift to the station. Sadelin confides that he too writes terror tales though he's yet to be published. If Mr. Gwynne would be so kind as to read his manuscripts ... he will? How very kind! We'll just take a detour to my house to pick them up. Back at the house, one drugged Whiskey later and the author is tied down on a metal table. Sadelin fetches his tool-kit. He isn't really a fan of horror authors after all!
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Post by Calenture on Dec 2, 2007 18:24:08 GMT
Surely it's a hat box on #8, rather than a bucket? Oh crap. You're right! Never mind, Dem. He'll always be bucket head to some of us. A much snappier name than "head in poncy hat box". I wonder if Dot Haynes and Alex White ever went double-dating? Actually, I don't think I'll pursue that train of thought...
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Post by dem bones on Dec 19, 2007 15:02:58 GMT
The final four, the pick of which is a genuine 'when insects attack!' classic!
Alex Hamilton - Not Enough Poison: Juanmarco. Sarah Harte, snobbish ex-pat, has demanded neighbours the Fallons do something about their ant infestation as the little red beasts have had the effrontery to dig a mound in her garden. Three local incompetents are duly hired to terminate the termites by blitzing their nests with DDT. Naturally, the ants swarm straight onto Sarah's property and soon have the house surrounded. Some truly nasty pet deaths ensue in this blackly comic mini masterpiece.
W. H. Carr - Mr. Anstey's Scarecrow: Another good, creepy story. Number 9 is certainly far better than I'd remembered it. Lawson has always despised Anstey for his good fortune and the fact that he's made good for himself while he, Lawson, has been tied to tending his crappy farm in this dull village. Things come to a head when Anstey woo-es and weds Lorna, the girl Lawson always fancied but who rejected him on account of his boorish behaviour. When the oppprtunity presents itself he batters his 'enemy' to death. But Lorna suspects and vows to avenge her husband. Perhaps if she'd informed Lawson earlier that she was a powerful Black Witch all the unpleasantness might have been avoided. As it is, she animates a scarecrow against him.
Rene Morris - The Baby Machine: Spoiled rotten Malinda has been cheating on her doting husband Peter but now he's had enough. She's to leave immediately - and their baby son is staying with him as it's not as if she's ever behaved like a mother. That duty has been admirably performed by 'Matilda', the robotic baby-machine of Peter's invention. Malinda determines to defy her husband one last time but Matila is pathologically possessive - and rubber tits her to death!
Raymond Harvey - Father Forgive Me: Kilenmore. Father O'Neil is a popular fellow. First the village outcast John Flynn confesses his lust for him then feisty seventeen year old Mary Carey threatens to accuse him of rape by way of explaining away her problematic pregnancy. He batters the one to death (lots of eyeball-hanging-on-cheek action) only to be sexually blackmailed by the other who witnessed the murder. I'm sure this must have gone down a storm in Catholic communities!
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 24, 2007 12:53:00 GMT
Quite possibly my favourite Pan, and the first one I ever read. I remember actually feeling sick reading stories like the Colin Graham one. The Whispering Horror is one of my all time favourite horror stories, and Bloodthirsty is so completely bonkers it's brilliant with its story of the all-powerful Brain (it liked to think of itself witha capital 'B') who ends up as a vampire. What WAS Mr Waddell on? 'Strictly for the Birds' is another one I have fond, if slightly nauseated, memories of.
And I like the cover - I'm sure on mine it looks like he's got a mouthful of blood
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Post by dem bones on Dec 27, 2007 23:11:51 GMT
Hi John
I was surprised how lenient you were about #11. Don't get me wrong - I think the Case, Riley and Lewis contributions are excellent but what a high quota of filler! Never mind that it's Charles Birkin, I wish Van Thal had avoided verse altogether.
I'm in total agreement with you over #9. What amazed me on rereading it was that it was so much better than I remembered it and now I'm wondering if I ever finished it before. How else could I have forgotten the likes of Not Enough Poison and The Green Umbilical Chord? Eddy C. Bertin's The Whispering Horror would waltz into my personal Best From The Pan Horrors but there's so much else to appreciate. Very rarely were the books to be as consistently strong again.
I just dug out a copy of Alex Hamilton's Beam Of Malice collection I've had hanging around for years and that looks well promising.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 28, 2007 19:13:00 GMT
Well Dem I'm quite kindly disposed to all of the Pans for sheer nostalgia if nothing else, and I'm sure the fact that Vol 9 was the first one I owned (bought for me by my mum for 50p in Brecon Woolworths!) colours my opinion of it as well. But to be honest I wish a few anthologies these days had even half its variety, its gleeful desire to shock, and an almost worrying sense that anything could happen in the next story.
As for No.11 - I remember as a young lad reading some of the crappy ones several times, trying to work out where the horror actually was. Something I fear I have continued to do with a lot of today's 'Best Of' anthos.
I've got Alex Hamilton's 'Attic Express' from Ash-Tree to read at some point.
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