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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2007 17:59:44 GMT
Robert Bloch - The House Of The Hatchet (Panther, 1976)  Anthony Roberts
House Of The Hatchet
Return To The Sabbath
The Mandarin's Canaries
Waxworks
The Feast In The Abbey
Slave Of The Flames
The Shambler From The Stars
Mother Of Serpents
The Secret Of Sebek
The Eyes Of The Mummy
One Way To Mars A very different selection to the Tandem paperback with which it share's its title. All but one of the stories fall into the 1935-40 period and all eleven first appeared in Weird Tales. Includes: House Of The Hatchet: See the Kulva Mansion! Visit the Haunted Chamber - See the axe used by the Mad Killer! DO THE DEAD RETURN? Visit the HOUSE OF TERROR - only genuine attraction of its kind. ADMISSION - 25 cents." He's been arguing constantly with wife Daisy since first they married. Today's their third anniversary so why not drive out to Prentiss Road and book a room in that hotel where they first ... But on their way they pass the Kulva place and Daisy being a horror ghoul she will insist they pay a visit. Only the curator, Homer Keenan, does too good a job of the scary spiel and she faints dead away in the 'haunted chamber'. There's a storm raging outside by now and Keenan offers to put Daisy up in his wife's room until she recovers. Then he, Mrs. Keenan and the narrator settle down to get drunk on brandy .... A scream! An early attempt at the psychological horror story that would eventually spawn Norman Bates. Return To The Sabbath: The brief rise and gruesome fall of Austrian horror actor and black magician Karl Jorla. His first film, Return To The Sabbath, made as a favour to a director friend, was never meant to be released but somehow finds its way to LA where its shown in a burlesque fleapit. Jorla’s stunning turn as a reanimated corpse decides aspiring producer Les Kincaid to sign him up for a Hollywood remake and Jorla jumps at the chance to get out of Austria. His fellow diabolists are furious as Return’s big resurrection ceremony exposes secrets of their craft. The director is ritualistically murdered in a Paris hotel and now several shadowy figures show up on set. Jorla see’s the filming through way beyond the call of duty …. The Feast In The Abbey: The narrator, in search of his brother, is given food and shelter at the Monastery ... by Abbot Henricus and his company of ghoulish undead monks devoted to the worship of Asmodeus. Wait until he sees the main course! Waxworks: Paris, the fogbound docklands. Bertrand, "a poet, a very bad poet, with the sentimentally esoteric nature such beings effect", is the latest man to have become obsessed with the strikingly beautiful waxwork of Salome in the local chamber of horrors. The proprietor, a shabby, fat little grey haired man informs him that he moulded the figure in the image of his wife, a reputed witch guillotined for the decapitation murders of five young men. Bertrand notices that the head of John the Baptist she brandishes on her silver platter periodically changes, and the horror escalates when he recognises one of them as that belonging to a family friend, Colonel Bertroux ... The Mandarin's Canaries: The Mandarin Quong is at his happiest when he's inflicting, devising and refining new methods of torture on his lucky subjects. this means he's at his happiest every waking second of his life. His solitary other passion is for his canaries which strip the flesh from his victims' bones. Yes, it's a joyful existence ... until he upsets Hiu Tzes, the Emperor's archer, by murdering his wife. Mother Of Serpents: The life and crimes of a pauper who rises to the Presidency of Haiti through foul means and fouler. His mother is a Black Priestess in the Serpent Cult, not a position guaranteed to impress his high class friends at Port au Prince so best to distance her altogether. Mother is hurt. She gets out her voodoo candles and .... Slave Of The Flames: A pyromaniac's progress. Abe starts with a mere hayrick but has soon built to greater things, namely the Great Chicago Slum Fire of 1871. It's hardly surprising he's made a success of his chosen vocation - he's being coached by the Emperor Nero and his Black Magician sidekick Zarog who attained near immortality when they torched Rome. By their pact to Malek Taos "the Peacock god of Evil" they must pay homage to him by sparking a glorious inferno at least once a century (the Great Fire of London was their handiwork). Abe, however, prefers to be a lone operator. How can he rid himself of these clowns? Four of these also appear in Horror 7 which Nightreader reviews for us HERE
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Post by sean on Feb 3, 2008 18:29:09 GMT
Here's the Tandem edition from 1965:  The different editions (more like different collections) only have two stories in common! This one contains: Introduction (by Bloch) Sweets to the Sweet The Dream Makers Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper The Eyes of the Mummy The Manikin House of the Hatchet The Cloak Beetles The Faceless God It has been a while since I've read this, so I'll give it another look as soon as possible and do a thingywhotsit on each of the stories... Oh, and the blurb goes: A FEAST OF HORROR...
...His blurred outline reminded me of a crouching beast... his face... was a waxen mask of death... from which two eyes glared...
A mad beast is loose... an ageless, eternal beast...
...It grew and grew... It spread its wings and sank into the sand... nothing remained above the earth except a living head that twisted and struggled... the Thing had wound it's black paws around his neck and bitten him to death...
...IF YOUR NERVES CAN STAND IT
What can I say but "..."? |
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Post by dem bones on Feb 3, 2008 18:53:00 GMT
That's one of my all-time favourite covers and no mistake. The photo was the work of Sugar Editore Milan about whom I'm know absolutely nothing. Tandem re-issued it in 1971 with a Chris Achileos illo on the front. |
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Post by Steve on Feb 3, 2008 21:53:41 GMT
The photo was the work of Sugar Editore Milan about whom I'm know absolutely nothing. Sugar Editore are, or at least were (I'm not sure if they still exist), an Italian publishing company. I suppose they owned the rights to that image. Is it a still from a film? |
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Post by dem bones on Feb 4, 2008 8:26:55 GMT
Sugar Editore are, or at least were (I'm not sure if they still exist), an Italian publishing company. I suppose they owned the rights to that image. Is it a still from a film? It certainly looks that way. If it wasn't, it should have been. To try and make sense of it, Panther's companion volume to their version of The House Of The Hatchet: Robert Bloch - The Opener Of The Way (Panther, 1976) By Way Of Introduction
The Opener Of The Way
The Cloak
Beetles
The Fiddler’s Fee
The Mannikin
The Strange Flight Of Richard Clayton
Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper
The Seal Of The Satyr
The Dark Demon
The Faceless GodThe publishers regret to announce that there is no blurb to inform prospective readers about the contents of The Opener Of The Way. Unfortunately the person designated to write the blurb was found dead after reading the book, having apparently suffered some mysterious kind of severe shock …Includes: The Opener Of The Way: A tremendous tale of dread doom in a forgotten tomb beneath the desert sands of egypt.Tomb-looting archaeologist Sir Ronald Barton and ineffectual son Peter are the first men to set foot inside the subterranean vault in over three thousand years. It is exactly as described in the parchment Sir Ronald stole from the disfigured mummy's casket! The old man has performed the requisite blood sacrifice, but will it be enough to appease the jackal God Anubis? Beetles: Archaeologist Arthur Hartley returns from an excavation in Egyptian Sudan a changed man. Once noted for his happy-go-lucky demeanour, his friends can barely recognise the reclusive, paranoid, barking fellow who studiously ignores them. It's all to do with one of those tricky scarab curses. Hartley stole the mummy of a Temple virgin and the beetles have accompanied him across the ocean, preparing to strike the moment he falls asleep ... The Faceless God: More Egyptian jiggery pokery as evil Dr. Carnoti, unscrupulous adventurer and thief, tortures a native into revealing the exact whereabouts of a huge statue of Nyarlathotep, the God of evil. Carnoti sets off into the desert with a team of serfs who wisely abandon him to it when they reach their destination. The Faceless one sets Carnoti to flight across the scorching sand , draining every last drop of satisfaction from his protracted, agonising death. The Mannikin: Simon Maylore is born with the beginnings of a twin growing out of his back. As he attains manhood, so the hump becomes more pronounced - it has now grown a head, torso and arms: it can even speak (“More blood, Simon. I want more.”) The vampiric growth achieves domination over its host and Simon is manipulated into performing black magic rituals. The growth is intent on raising the Elder Gods versus mankind. Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper: Sir Guy Hollis has amassed irrefutable evidence to the effect that, through his mastery of Black Sorcery, the Ripper is undead and active in Chicago fifty years after he terrorised London's East End. Hollis consults celebrated shrink Dr. John Carmody not, as you might expect, to have his head seen to, but to act as his introduction to the local bohemians, artists, "the lunatic fringe", one of whom is sure to be the Whitechapel Demon! Everyone has a good chortle at 'the Walrus's expense, but what if he's right? The Cloak: Another famous one, although even Bloch accepted that the radically rewritten adaptation filmed for The House That Dripped Blood was an improvement on his original. Henderson buys a cloak for $5 from a mysterious Hungarian in a costumiers. When he wears it to the Lindstrom's Halloween ball, he steals the show, attacking the host and generally causing a stir with his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Of course, little does he know it once belonged to a real vampire. Henderson comes a cropper when he steps out onto the roof garden with beautiful Sheila, another frequent visitor to the same costumer. Stick the contents of the two Panther's together and you have a re-run of the original The Opener Of The Way, Bloch's first Arkham House collection from 1945 (reissued by Neville Spearman in 1974)! Robert Bloch - The Opener Of The Way (Neville Spearman, 1974) By Way Of Introduction
The Cloak
Beetles
The Fiddler’s Fee
The Mannikin
The Strange Flight Of Richard Clayton
Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper
The Seal Of The Satyr
The Dark Demon
The Faceless God
House Of The Hatchet
The Opener Of The Way
Return To The Sabbath
The Mandarin's Canaries
Waxworks
The Feast In The Abbey
Slave Of The Flames
The Shambler From The Stars
Mother Of Serpents
The Secret Of Sebek
The Eyes Of The Mummy
One Way To Mars The Tandem selection from same first appeared in the US as Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper (Belmont, 1962). |
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Post by weirdmonger on Feb 4, 2008 8:43:50 GMT
This is the Neville Spearman hardback edition (of both those paperbacks?): My copy has this written in my own fair hand inside: " Desmond LewisPurchased in the company of P.Frank Jeffery at the house of G. Ken Chapman today 14th July 1975." The 'G.Ken' part of that legendary bookseller's name gave birth the the 'Geekens' that appeared in some of my fiction: creatures that were live half-cooked chickens on stilts. |
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Post by sean on Feb 4, 2008 12:58:04 GMT
If I remember rightly, Panther did a similar thing with Ray Bradbury's 'The October Country' (the hardback - which was pretty much 'Dark Carnival' anyway!) They split it into two paperbacks, a thin 'October Country' and 'The Small Assasin', just chucking in an extra tale or two for added flavour.
Now I see the cover to the Panther 'Opener of the Way', I remember that I used to own it, but gave it away due to the fact that it was almost 'House of the Hatchet' (Tandem).
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Post by sean on Feb 5, 2008 12:21:37 GMT
The Tandem 'House' is a good read, some nice early Bloch, although maybe a bit heavy on Egypt-based tales for my liking. Some conventions (such as having characters writing as they are killed by whatever kills them) have since died out, and there inclusion in some of the stories here (mainly from the 1940's, I think) can be either (a) Cute, or (b) Irritating... INTRODUCTION In which Mr Bloch compares writers of horror and fantasy to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde SWEETS TO THE SWEET Sam's brother John (a heavy drinking, unpleasant man) is convinced that his daughter, eight year old Irma, is a witch. He, of course, finds out the hard way. THE DREAM-MAKERS A writer discovers a group of former silent film actors and their director who appear not to have aged at all in the twenty years since their last film. He discovers their secret, and something about how and why various forces run the world, and what can happen when you go against their wishes. YOURS TRULY, JACK THE RIPPER A Chicago psychiatrist meets a British man (with a very personal interest in the matter) whom is convinced that Jack the Ripper is alive and well and still ripping. The psychiatrist agrees to help in finding him, and, to be fair, he does... THE EYES OF THE MUMMY Egypt, sand, curses, graverobbing, and an eyeless mummy feature in this one. Everything goes horribly wrong, naturally, but the narrator keeps typing as he meets his terrible fate... THE MANIKIN Vaguely Lovecraftian, this one. A man from a ill-starred family has a hunch, which begins to grow dramatically. One character manages to write "I will tell... I can't think... I will write it... damn you! stop... No! don't do that! get your hands..." whilst under attack. Good of him. HOUSE OF THE HATCHET A house haunted by a murder victim. All fake, of course. There is no ghost. Not at first, anyway... THE CLOAK A man hires an 'authentic' vampire cloak from a strange man in a strange shop for a halloween party. It has a strange effect on him, causing him some problems with mirrors. Nice story, with an extra twist in its tail. BEETLES Another Eyptian curse (will these people never learn?) which causes the naughty archeologist to believe himself plagued by the insects of the title. If Bloch didn't get a credit for one of the segments of Stephen King and George Romero's film 'Creepshow' (which, incidentally, stars a very young Joe Hill), he should have... THE FACELESS GOD Egypt again, but this time featuring a statue of Nyarlathotep with terrible powers. A particlulary nasty tale (it opens with somebody being tortured on the rack), thus a great one to finish on. __________ Oh, and I have to include this advert from the back of the Tandem '65 edition, just for a giggle:  |
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Post by dem bones on Feb 6, 2008 18:59:27 GMT
Jungle West 11 sounds like a precursor to the 'Satanic Survivor' alleged 'non-fiction' that became very popular in the 'seventies. I have a special fondness for Dorothy Irvine's laugh-out-loud From Witchcraft To Christ (Concordia, 1973) which , astonishingly, went through at least 18 reprints!
Really enjoyed your synopsis' of the Tandem Hatchet, Sean. I enjoyed the three Egyptian stories myself. Bloch had a keen interest in the subject and, by his own admission, his early stories are inaccurate as the resource material was still thin on the ground and virtually impossible for him to get hold of during the depression.
It could simply be a case of familiarity breeding contempt, but I always thought Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper was over-rated.
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Post by sean on Feb 15, 2008 10:08:52 GMT
Cheers Dem! I enjoyed having a reason to re-read it. There's a few more Bloch books I intend to get round to in the near future...
I think 'Yours Truly...' is a pretty good, but not amazing, story. But you're right, it has appeared in so many places that it has become perhaps overly familiar.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 4, 2008 11:49:36 GMT
Dem - the photo on the cover of the 1965 Tandem edition is indeed a still from a film. It's William Castle's 1960 opus 'Thirteen Ghosts' which was shot in a funny way so that you could only see the ghosts through special 'ghost viewers' that were handed out to the audience, which I think is one of the reasons it hasn't surfaced on DVD yet.
I'm either surprsied that no-one had picked up on that or a bit worried that I did.
Best to forget about it and read another book.
Mind you, I think I'll only tackle Jungle West 11 once I've read Jungle Wests 1-10.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 28, 2017 11:37:09 GMT
Also curious about Tarleton Fiske, author of Seal of the Satyr--the latter sounds like something in my line. : ( Strange Stories, June 1939, as by 'Tarleton Fiske'). If Pan and his glam retinue are your thing, then this early Bloch should see you alright - Greek setting, more centaurs, nymphs and maenads than you can shake a stick at, even a decent pay off. Roger Talquist, archaeologist and superfan of Greek mythology, is waylaid by Papa Lepolis, a geriatric rustic who claims to know the whereabouts of a forest grotto where the ancients once paid homage to the Nature God. True to his word, Lepolis leads the young man to the shrine. Talquist is in his element until he realises that Lepolis is intent on sacrificing him to the Deity in return for immortality. In the ensuing struggle, the intended victim turns the assailant's knife against him. Lepolis falls lifeless on the altar stone. Pan, who has been watching from the trees, rewards Talquist with an ugly green talisman and settles back to savour his terrible fate. This next might be considered a lowbrow Cthulhu codswallop variation on the same story.  Harold S. De Lay: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1936). "I am no longer interested in writing for the herd. I'm afraid humanity doesn't mean anything to me since I have learned those steps which lie beyond - and how to achieve them. "Edgar Henquist Gordon, a misanthropic author of cosmic horror stories ( Night-Gaunt, Gargoyle, The Soul Of Chaos, etc.), confides in the narrator that his morbid supposed 'fictions' are factual accounts of adventures beyond the wall of sleep. Gordon's guide on these nocturnal forays is The Dark One, who resembles "a medieval conception of the demon Asmodeus. Black all over, and furry, with a snout like a hog, green eyes, and the claws and fangs of a wild beast." The Dark One, who, according to Gordon, is a very benign demon once you get to know him, has assured the author that soon he too will be as one with the Elder Gods. The narrator sadly dismisses his friend as a raving lunatic, until that night he furtively approaches what he takes to be Gordon's sleeping form .... |
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Post by helrunar on Nov 28, 2017 15:22:13 GMT
Both those tales sound like lovely Yuletide treats! "Cthulhu codswallop"--music to my ears!
Thanks, Kev!
Best, H.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 29, 2017 7:31:25 GMT
Both those tales sound like lovely Yuletide treats! "Cthulhu codswallop"--music to my ears! Thanks, Kev! Best, H. For me, Seal Of The Satyr is far the pick of the two, especially when the green haired,red-eyed nymph lures Talquist to the lake. Which is not to say The Dark Demon is bereft of interest. Just to reassure us that 'Edgar Henquist Gordon' is not based on who we think it is, Bloch references Lovecraft in the text, along with Edward Lucas White and Samuel Coleridge, three authors who claim to have taken inspiration from their dreams. Would love to include an early Bloch on the calendar but seems those in the public domain are already available via the wonderful SFF audio (hit the link and type 'Robert Bloch' in the search box). |
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