Frighteners

[dem bones]

Frighteners #1 (Newsfield, July 1991)

Oliver Frey

Graham Masterton - Eric The Pie
James Allison - Yatterjack
Oliver Kean - Blood Of Satan
Rand Soellner - Mud
Michael Armstrong - I Was A Middle-Aged Werewolf

Graham Masterton - Eric the Pie: Animal cruelty, torture, bestiality, eating alive, gore and excrement .Yep, every bit as gross as I remembered it, although I was way off on the farmyard setting 'cause the incident in question takes place in an open field. *ulp!* You really don't want to know about that incident ...

When he was seven, Eric's mum was fond of telling him "you are what you eat" until he convinced himself he was going to turn into a mince-beef pie. He goes on starvation diet until mum explains what she meant. "Food gives you life, that's all. If you eat life, you'll have life. It's like an equation. Life in, life out."

Those wise words have the desired effect and soon Eric has rediscovered his healthy appetite. He becomes quite the gourmet. After all, if mum's got it right, it stands to reason that the more life you can consume, the longer you'll live. So he progresses through woodlice and spiders to birds and domestic pets until the nasty business alluded to above, which sees Eric surrendering his virginity to a far from willing partner.

Eric leaves school in 1963 and takes a job at a graphics company near his new home in Lewisham (he has a flair for illustration, having plenty of practice drawing all the unseemly things he'd like to eat should the opportunity present itself). A solitary man who seldom talks to his colleagues, he attracts the attention of young Deborah Gibbs in accounts who diagnoses his never-smiling demeanor as "Byronic". When soppy Sandy Jarrett bets her sixpence that she wouldn't dare ask him out, Deborah flashes him a generous expanse of thigh and invites him along to the Blue Wanker pub after work. In return, he takes her back to his garage, and locks the door behind them. It's impossible to see much in the dark but the stench nearly floors her. Eric turns on the light to reveal his larder ...

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that whoever edited Frighteners briefed Masterton to go way over the top, write something that would get the magazine noticed, and noticed it was - by W. H. Smith's who reputedly refused to stock it on the strength of Eric's excesses. Vile for sure, but it can't hold a candle to Kowlongo Plaything.

[stephenbacon]

Wasn't this issue the one that caused all the controversy? It was pulled fairly quickly, if I remember correctly.

Mind you, I used to love Fear magazine.

[andydecker]

Ah, Fear magazine. Now that brings back memories.

This was so great. It let me order a lot of books which I would have missed otherwise. I still have them.

[shaun Jeffrey]

I've got all three issues, and was sad to see it pulled because of one story.

[dem bones]

I doubt it was all entirely down to one story that it went under, Shaun. It was maybe a little ambitious to attempt a magazine comprising four short stories, an ongoing serial and Oliver Frey's illustration. No author info, editorial or letter page (not in 1 and 3, anyhow. I've not seen #2). Even the ads were kept to a bare minimum.

Sliced 'n diced from Vault Mk. I

Nightreader provided the cover scan and contents for #2

Frighteners #2: August 1991)

Shame this was so short lived...looks pretty good. The contents of this one are:

'The Statement Of Henry Worthy' by Brian Lumley
'A Stranger Calls' by Phillip Alton Gardner
'Blood Of Satan' by Oliver Kean
'Frightshift' by Colin T Nicholls
'Family Ties' by Rick Cadger

lynnieLynn wrote:

Ooohhh, that pic of the green man/plant thing in issue 2 reminds me of a story in the Misty comics, scared me when I was little!!

Didn't stop me reading them of course.

demonik wrote:
Misty! Now you're talking! I think the Bride might even have that issue someplace. It was very much like the Creeping Vine story in Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors if I remember.

********

Frighteners 3

Guy N. Smith - The Executioner
Oliver Kean - Blood Of Satan
Simon Barton - A Gathering Of Dreams
Cliff Wallace - Abbadon
John H. Rosenman - The Mouth
Tony Lee - Inheritance

Corpse Candle wrote:
I never knew Guy N.Smith had a story in this infamous publication. I read Mastersons Eric The Pie story and it has had quite an influence on my own horror writing.

I found it a great template as to how you can make the reader feel like throwing up and chill them.

I have seen the first copy of this being bid for 90 quid on e-bay I don't know how much it went for in the end. Suffice to say if you are lucky enough to have any copies of this it is indeed a rare magazine to have in your collection.

Dr. Terror wrote:
Rosenman has a lot of credits, in fact he was even in that issue of Tapestry i was in.

I see in issue 1 there was a story by one James Allison, wasn't he a Robert E. Howard character?

Steve confirmed

Yep.

"As I lie here awaiting death, which creeps slowly upon me like a blind slug, my dreams are filled with glittering visions and the pageantry of glory. It is not of the drab, disease-racked life of James Allison I dream, but all the gleaming figures of the mighty pageantry that have passed before, and shall come after... I am one and all the pageantry of shapes and guises and masks which have been, are, and shall be the visible manifestations of that illusive, intangible, but vitally existent spirit now promenading under the brief and temporary name of James Allison."

- The Valley of the Worm

While the real James Allison can be found here (includes a downloadable short story anthology).

Shaun wrote:
It was a pretty good magazine, and I had high hopes for it until things went belly up! Hoarder that I am, I bet I've still got my copies in a box somewhere.

Finally decided to have a clear out. Alas, couldn't find issue 1, only issues 2 and 3. But while looking, I also found issue 1 and 2 of David Riley's 'Beyond', issue 1 and 2 of something called 'Terror' published in January 1992. Issue 1, 2 and 3 of 'Dark Asylum' from 1995, Shivers issue 1 from 1992, a stack of The Dark Side magazines and a few copies of Fear, and a whole host of other small press magazines such as Exuberance.

demonik

Shaun, I think you've got the complete run of Terror as I believe it went bust after #2.

[shaun Jeffrey]

Sept 9, 2008 14:50:42 GMT dem bones said:

I doubt it was all entirely down to one story that it went under, Shaun.

Shaun, I think you've got the complete run of Terror as I believe it went bust after #2.

Check out Graham's view from an intervew conducted in 1996: www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/5160/masters.html

As for Terror, it's just a pity that it's probably not worth anything

[dem bones]

Graham Masterton's "misunderstood" Eric The Pie tends to overshadow everything else in Frighteners, so time to revisit the support cast.

James Allison - Yatterjack: The horror of his injuries was nothing compared to the dark dreams that came to him in the hospital bed .... Even the most kindly nurses avert their faces while tending the travesty of a human being in bed X, and the new patient, victim of a road accident, wishes they'd transfer him to another ward. As the morphine wears off, he realises that a mere change of scenery would make no improvement to his circumstances. Fans of Lovecraft's The Outsider will quickly get the idea.

Michael Armstrong - I Was A Middle-Aged Werewolf: Preying on defenceless humans, tearing their throats out by the light of the full moon, gorging, feeding - that was nice! The monster's problems lay elsewhere .... Herman's mid-life crisis takes turn for the complicated following seemingly innocuous visit to the zoo. On-off lover Audrey proves improbably sympathetic to his condition.

Guy N. Smith - The Executioner: Guy N. Smith, bestselling chronicler of terror, charts one man's relentless pursuit of vengeance. Having finally located the whereabouts of Bremmer, the Nazi war criminal, the last thing Lech Wolskel needs is for internationally famous hit-man the Hawk to take out the bastard before he can string him up.

John H. Rosenman - The Mouth: They hated and loathed him: he was gross - even grosser than they knew. One for the gorehounds. Self-styled vigilantes pay corpulent mass of blubber Mr. Monmouth a home visit with intent to do him serious mischief. Curly, Judd, Buddy and Ralph detest the unpleasantly plump lard-arse for daring to frequent their favoured hang out, Sue & Arnie's diner. Monmouth, who thrives on persecution, is prepared for them.

Tony Lee - Inheritance: She looked cute, and he wanted some honest brute fun - but looks can .... Horrible rapist with MEGADETH badge pinned on his leather jacket picks wrong young woman to assault. Fiend would likely have gotten away with it again had he not insisted Miss Medusa remove her mirror shades. Story dedicated 'To Ann Georgina and Ramsey Campbell.'

[dem bones]

"One of it's three huge, toothed tubes had blown off completely, leaving a green soggy, canker on the main body down in the pit. The sore boiled over with little yellow pustules. Another had torn half away, it's shredded stump spraying dark stickiness around the pit, a Lovecraftian garden hose. The largest shaft remained intact, champing angrily at the air like a blind Doberman [...] Its central mass shivered and shook like an immense testicle ready to release its load .."

Rand Soellner - Mud: Florida, land of tourists and fun - but in Bat Flap Hollow people are dying ... chewed up, sucked in and devoured by the thing which lurks in the mud.. Presumably the Menzies customer who complained about Eric The Pie abandoned issue #1 before he reached this gory Squirm clone as it is doubtful he or she would approve. Mud accounts for 24 of the issue's 52 pages, hitting the ground running with an account of teen runaway Alice LeGuido's grisly death in a cobweb-strewn crater. Twelve years on, Alice's chewed skeleton is recovered by construction workers laying foundations for the new Seminole County Office Park. Subsequent investigations implicate a 'Satanic Cult' and, perhaps more significantly for the reader, spark a steamy romance between Detective Kreig Kizer and Dawn Sylvestri, President of the Construction Co. Kizer, who, on the word of a native American astrologer, is convinced that a Zodiac Killer is operating out of Bat Flap Hollow, deputises twelve of Dawn's hardest crewmen for a midnight corpse hunt, disturbing a voracious hydra-headed horror from the depths. 'Satanic Cult' sub-plot is forgotten along the way, but several spectacular deaths and a prolonged gratuitous BAD SEX interlude compensate in a consistently entertaining micro Hamlyn nasty.

From issue #3:

Simon Barton - A Gathering Of Dreams: The one sensation she could not have she took from others - until her dream came true: Grim twelve pager. Charlotte is blessed/ cursed with a dubious gift for manipulating the dreams of her one night stands and driving them to madness and suicide. There have been occasions when she derived a cruel delight in destroying lives, but that is all behind her now she's fallen in love with David. Or so she hopes.