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Post by dem on Mar 4, 2008 2:02:55 GMT
Herbert Van Thal (ed.) - The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories (Pan, 1960) Oscar Cook - Piece-meal
George Langelaan - The Fly
William Samson - The Vertical Ladder
H. G. Wells - Pollock And The Porrah Man
Guy Preston - The Inn
Bram Stoker - The Judges House
Stanley Ellin - The Speciality Of The House
Agatha Christie - The Last Seance
Vernon Routh - The Black Creator
Stephen Hall - By One, By Two, By Three
Oscar Cook - Boomerang
Philip MacDonald - Our Feathered Friends
Geoffrey Household - Taboo
Edgar Allan Poe - The Black Cat
Carl Stephenson - Leiningen Versus The Ants.includes: Oscar Cook - Piece-meal:Cook is cornered by his ghoulish anti-buddy Warwick who extracts from him the gory details of the Mendingham case. As is so often the case, it centres around a love-triangle, this one involving Mendingham and Gregory and the latter’s wife, Moyra. While Gregory is on a year long tour of Dutch Borneo, his wife elopes with his best friend. When he returns to England, Gregory takes a houseboat on the Thames and becomes a virtual recluse. And then Mendingham disappears, although bits of him are soon clogging up the postal system. Cook pays a visit to the houseboat. It’s a fair bet he won’t be eating any kebabs in the foreseeable future. Guy Preston - The Inn: Frank Metheun, stranded on the mist shrouded Cumberland moors, chances upon an early theme pub with an extremely off-putting sign: “This was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone. Underneath … with grim irony, the legend ‘Ye Journey’s End’”.Somewhat reluctantly, he decides to put up there for the night. At first, his main cause of concern is that the landlord is eyeless and reminds him of a slug, but there’s also a beautiful girl hanging around and at least she must be harmless … On retiring to his room, he decides against taking a bath when he notices it is still “thick and slippery” with the blood of the previous guest. As darkness descends, the Landlord and his dishy daughter pay him a visit … One of my all time favourites of the Not at Night’s, and the climactic pursuit across the rooftop is genuinely exciting. Oscar Cook - Boomerang: Oscar is on form again in this one. Warwick repays Cook in kind for his story about poor Mendingham ( Piece-Meal) with a gruesome shocker of his own. Another love-triangle, again set in Borneo, this one involving two planters, Clifford Macy and Leopold Thring, and the latter's new bride, Rhona. When he learns of their affair, Thring avenges himself by inserting an insect into Macy's ears which burrows its way through his head and out the other side, eating his brain as it goes. Also features a novel death by white ant exterminator pump (applied to the throat). Agatha Christie - The Last Seance: Simone, the most gifted medium in Paris, is all seanced out. With each sitting she grows paler and thinner. Husband-to-be Raoul has reluctantly agreed that after today she can give it all up, but she has one last engagement with bereaved mother Madame Exe. Simone is uneasy; she dislikes, even fears Madame Exe although she's had great success contacting her dead daughter Amelie. At the previous sitting, the ectoplasm materialised into a solid image of the child: Raoul could even touch it, but withdrew his hand when he saw how much pain it caused Simone. Now, for the last seance, Madame Exe insists that Raoul be tied to his chair to prevent any trickery .... Stanley Ellin - The Speciality Of The House: Laffler introduces his underling Costain to the delights of Shirro's restaurant, the finest men-only meaterie one could ever wish to find, especially when "Lamb Amirstan" is on the menu .... Geoffrey Household - Taboo: Zweibergen, a village in the Carpathian Mountains, summer 1926. Loner Shiravieff is forced into union with Vaughan and his wife Kyra when three local men go missing in the forest. The peasants are convinced that a werewolf is responsible and, surprisingly, Vaughan agrees with them after his own fashion. He and Shiravieff take it in turns to act as bait and lure out whoever or whatever is responsible. A figure crawls from a cave under the spring ...... Among the finest non-supernatural lycanthrope stories and a thoroughly ghastly twist just when you think the worst is over. Vernon Routh - The Black Creator: "He hates beauty. He's a kind of evil God, a black creator. He wants a world full of hellish ugliness!" Dr. Diaz Volo is maybe my favourite evil genius from the entire series, and the story has a lovable thirties' campness about it but still manages to be scary (if ever-so-slightly unbelievable). Beatrice is the most put-upon innocent heroine this side of Ann Radcliffe and Volo's garden of writhing, half-human mutants even qualifies it as a legitimate demon flower story.
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Post by redbrain on Mar 4, 2008 15:08:18 GMT
This always seemed to me the most classy story collection of any of the Pan Books of Horror Stories. But, I suppose, people don't often love the Pan series for its classiness.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 4, 2008 19:38:23 GMT
Number of classics there. The inn with its septic tank always had me gagging. Mind you I kept rereading it. I would still say Ellins 'Speciality of the House' must rank as one of the all time greats. Its a paradigm of subtlety. Judges House, another creepy one.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 11, 2008 16:47:51 GMT
Ooooo - another classic volume, one I have fond memories of reading one Sunday afternoon as a kid.
Oscar Cook's stories I always liked because of their 'Portmanteau' setting, as well as being pretty bloody gruesome. 'Boomerang' is especially horrible. I've always wanted to see the Night Gallery episode based on it.
For some reason The Vertical Ladder scared me as well - the guy left halfway up that giant gas cylinder (?) after they took the ladder away.
Leiningen versus the Ants was of course made into that Charlton Heston film (The Naked Jungle?)
And The Fly! It's got The Fly!!!
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Post by dem on Mar 11, 2008 17:50:56 GMT
Oscar 'God' Cook! Can't help with the Night Gallery dramatisation of Boomerang, John, but radiolovers.com have a selection of vintage episodes of Beyond Midnight which just so happens to include Something On His Mind - an adaptation of Cook's gory Piecemeal! The Vertical Ladder is one I daren't re-read. In my teens I found the ending the scariest thing ever and I'd hate to go back to it now only to find it doesn't touch me in the slightest, unlikely as that may be. Oh yeah, and the Leiningen ... film was indeed The Naked Jungle with Charlton Heston being all angry at the world. I love it when the ants go sailing across the river using leaves for ships! Vol. 2 has a strong claim to being the best of the Pan Horror selections. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 11, 2008 22:25:45 GMT
Actually, Kev, I re-read The Vertical Ladder in the Tartarus Press collection of Sansom's work 'Various Temptations' and it didn't have anywhere near the same effect. Mind you, some of the other stories in that book are so weird it probably suffered by comparison!
I would LOVE an Oscar Cook collection!
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Post by dem on Mar 12, 2008 12:08:07 GMT
That's exactly why I've put off and put off a rematch with A. M. Burrage's One Who Saw, Julian Hawthorne's unashamedly romantic vampire story Ken's Mystery and consistently postponed long-threatened Bernard Taylor ( The Moorstone Sickness, Sweetheart, Sweetheart .... ) and Seabury Quinn retrospectives. I'd hate to be disappointed, lose those delicious, tingly memories of being thrilled/ freaked/ scared/ madly entertained (delete as applicable). Sometimes it's great to go back, though. I certainly appreciate Ramsey Campbell far more these days than I did in my teens, likewise William Sansom. The Vertical Ladder and A Woman Seldom Found apart, I didn't much care for his work until I returned to the old Pan's and Fontana's when we started Vault. Now I've his card marked as one of the early pioneers of what came to be known as 'quiet horror'! Come to think of it, I couldn't stand 'quiet horror' at one point either .... I would LOVE an Oscar Cook collection! Me too! From my lame excuse for *ahem* "research", I reckon there are just about enough stories to make such a book viable and a delve through '20's issues of Adventure Stories and similar pulps would possibly exhume more. Get onto it, Mr. Pelan! |
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Post by PeterC on Mar 13, 2008 8:43:03 GMT
'those delicious, tingly memories of being thrilled/ freaked/ scared/ madly entertained'
Yes, I remember all that with my first encounters with the Pan and Fontana series as a kid in the sixties.
Sometimes it was little details that freaked me; such as the moment in 'The Inn' when the visitor is offered a drink in a bowl and sees that the bowl is marked 'Dog'.
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 7, 2008 14:25:00 GMT
Pan 2 is a fine collection (especially nice to go back to after plodding through Pan 24) I re-read the Oscar Cook stories last night. In my minds eye I always see Warwick as a bit of a Terry Thomas like character
I love that old world of Gentlemen's Clubs, with brandy and cigars and tales of terror by a roaring fire.
'The Vertical Ladder' is great too - not a 'Horror Story' in the traditional sense, but it conveys brilliantly the fear and loneliness of the poor lad's predicament
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Sept 7, 2008 17:39:35 GMT
vertical ladder is tremendous - read it umpteen times (thread somewhere in the archive) Likewise the smoking room thing is great. I have been thinking for a while about trying to emulate this atmosphere in some way if I get time to write more than a postcard
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 7, 2008 20:33:44 GMT
Hi Craig - question is, how could you emulate the Gentlemen's Club in the Noughties? I'm sure they still exist, but it seems 'back in the day' every 'white collar' Pan hero / villain had 'a club'
In these ultra PC days where you can't even smoke a fag in a bus shelter, a similar story might begin;
"It was a bitterly cold night as I joined Warwick in Wetherspoons. I gestured that he might move a little closer to me, so as to better hear my ghastly account, and be a little further away from Sky Sports on the Plasma Television. But first, we agreed, we would go outside in the rain for a smoke"
I continuing a little trawl through Pan 2, I have just enjoyed again 'The Inn' by Guy Preston - what a brilliant tale. Pan 2 is definitely one of the best of the very early collections.......
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 15, 2008 20:47:20 GMT
I have just finished a complete read through Pan 2 - and bloody marvellous it is too. In all honesty I don't think I have read all these stories before - I think as a youngster I was probably far more attracted to the short shockers in the later books.
My best 'discovery' this time round has to be 'The Judge's House' - wow - what a really creepy tale - and no happy ending either!
Although as always some stories are stronger than others there isn't one in here I didn't enjoy - highly recommended..............
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Post by dem on Sept 15, 2008 21:38:56 GMT
I have just finished a complete read through Pan 2 - and bloody marvellous it is too .... My best 'discovery' this time round has to be 'The Judge's House' - wow - what a really creepy tale - and no happy ending either! . It's such a fantastic selection, isn't it? I really can't choose between the first three volumes. All 30 books have something to recommend them but the early ones seem more consistently thrilling to me, although i guess having a bias for the Not at Night's and Creeps i'm gonna say that. If you fancy some more Stoker, then the current, 65th issue of Lee Harris, Alasdair Stuart and Trudi Topham's free download pdf-zine Hub includes his influential werewolf-vampire short Dracula's Guest. |
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Post by lukemorningstar on Sept 15, 2008 21:51:21 GMT
Thank you Dem - I'll check that out forthwith (and hereuntofore....and hereinafter)
Loved 'Leiningen Vs The Ants' - perhaps not so much a horror story, more a ripping adenture yarn. Although I should imagine
20 square miles of hard as nails, big bastard bitey Ants would be pretty horrifying if you got in their way..............
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Post by dem on Sept 16, 2008 13:11:49 GMT
Loved 'Leiningen Vs The Ants' - perhaps not so much a horror story, more a ripping adenture yarn. Although I should imagine 20 square miles of hard as nails, big bastard bitey Ants would be pretty horrifying if you got in their way.............. Have you seen the film version of Leiningen Versus The Ants, The Naked Jungle (1954) starring Charlton Heston? Not very horrific - the last few times i've caught it were on afternoon TV - but worth a watch. Just found an old note about it which i've slightly cleaned up though you wouldn't know it: Fairly faithful to Carl Stephenson's original although they've grafted on a gurly love story. Charlton Heston does his broody "I don't like women!" thing and stomps around in a bad mood for most of it, but you know he's gonna shag Joanna (Eleanor Parker) eventually, just as certain as you know it will take place off-screen. The dreaded Marabunta ants deserved an Oscar for their performance, though, crossing the river on leaves and eating somebody and their horse down to a skeleton. If you get a chance, check out the great Terry Tapp's The Invaders in Fontana Horror # 12, a very cheeky reworking of Leiningen with a vastly improved climax! |
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