Lionel Fanthorpe & 'Supernatural Stories'

[dem]

Supernatural Stories was launched in May 1954 and continued through until the summer of 1967. There were 109 of these paperback magazines in all, and the majority of the stories were written by Robert Lionel Fanthorpe and John Glasby under a variety of pseudonyms, Glasby, for example writing every story bar one for the first eight books. They clocked in at 160 odd pages per issue and usually feature five or six stories, although sometimes they'd be given over to just the one short novel. Mike Ashley - Fantasy Reader's Guide (1979)

Going through some kind of illiterate's version of writers block just now, so another dip into the archives. We got good mileage out of Lionel Fanthorpe and Badger Books' Supernatural Stories on Vault MK. 1, so maybe it's time to see if they can work their magic here.

First got into these while going through a (thankfully, doomed) "I must collect every vampire story ever written" phase, and, looking over some issues recently, still find them a wonderful comfort read. It's all in the titles: The Loch Ness Terror, The Carnival Horror, Haunt of the Vampire, etc. Fanthorpe, for all that "his work ranks with that of Poe, Blackwood and Lovecraft", isn't exactly highly regarded in horror lit circles it seems so bonus points for that, although Richard Dalby has revived the occasional John Glasby/'A. J. Merak' story in his ghost anthologies.

Supernatural Stories #24 (April 1959)

Pel Torro - The Poltergeist
Lionel Roberts - The Hypnotist
Bron Fane - The Green Cloud
Leo Brett - The Drud
R. L. Fanthrope - Quest For Atlantis

The bloke in the red cape is Donald Rudd, psychic investigator, and those eyebrows are not his own. When the corpse of embittered old Miss Amelia Millicent Hautbois is found, drained of blood and dumped in the street, Rudd realises that the culprit is Count Estolak, vampire. Rudd allows himself to be lured to the sinister Slavonian's lair, and the gloating undead prepares for another blood-feast. But something's wrong: why is his victim so laid back about his dreadful predicament?

Because he's a Drud. And Druds drink vampire's blud.

Also of note in this issue, Fanthrope's "masterly" lost world story, Quest For Atlantis.

Sleeping Place (SS #67) is another nifty vampire outing, this one credited to 'R. Lionel Fanthorpe, S. M. B. I. S.' (any guesses)

"He put pen to paper and began to write in a neat scholarly hand. It was a strong masculine hand despite its scholarly neatness"

Almost worthy of me in my more 'literary' moments

There's a rather jarring interlude as Father Pierre reflects on Nazi atrocities in France during the occupation. It's some small indication to what our man was capable of if he'd ever taken his Badger writing the slightest bit seriously.

#Rene Rolant's Au Pair in #103 will probably never make the Mammoth Erotica series but it's quietly sleazy and most enjoyable for it.

The scheming manager of the Garfield Domestic Agency hires out the mysterious Transylvanian (oh dear!) Sangua Mortelli to lecherous G. T. Harper as an au pair. Harper's pleasure is to accuse his staff of theft and threaten them with the police unless they submit to his lustful advances. Sangua, however, needs little encouragement to vist his bedroom ...

[andydecker]

Fanthorpe found his way across the channel. There were a couple of paperbacks with some of the Supernatural Stories, also years earlier there were some of his SF novels.

I will see if I find them in the depths of my shelfes and do a few scans.

[pulphack]

that would be fascinating - the Badger covers were, erm, colourful if a little hurried. rather like the Rev's writing. or, indeed, many pulp paperback covers of the mushroom jungle years.

Spencers were amongst the poorest payers of that era, which was probably why the Rev decided that he needed to really go at it. armed with tape recorder and a typing agency (or his mum, maybe) around the corner, he would dictate rapidly while the previous spool was transcribed, hot from the reels. and then find he only had a couple of pages to tie it all up, hence some of the endings.

hence, too, gems like the sentence quoted by dem - that only happens when you're not looking at what you write (a bit like my posts). but there's little doubt that given the chance to reflect and slow the pace, the passages of 'quality' would have grown lengthier.

one thing i can't remember ever reading, and i'd love to know, is where all the pseudonyms came from - did he make them up, or some house sub at Spencers?

[dem]

Cover of the final issue by H. Fox, Summer 1967

Can't remember where I read it, probably in Mike Ashley's booklet again, but Fanthorpe reckons that if you gave him a staff of ten with typewriters, he could easily churn you out a series or several a week and having just read The Poltergeist in #24 i'm inclined to believe him! The Badger editorial policy was, apparently, non-existent - Spencer was paying so poorly he couldn't really afford to have one - and Fanthorpe, knowing the situation, took a cavalier approach to his work. The great thing is that the stories become memorable for his outrageous padding as much as the hoary plots themselves.

Echoing pulphack, i'd love to see those scans, Andy.

[andydecker]

Here are a few of the german editions of Fanthorpe.

The first is the short novel The Macabre Ones. It is one with Fanthorpes ghostbusting couple Val Stearmen and his wife La Noire, and it is quite awful. The supposed heroes make their entrance in chapter 12 of 17, which gives the novel an odd structure.

At least publisher Luther put a nice cover with a nude on the book (1973), a still from an exploitation movie, which promises more than the novel delivers. The german title is Dunkle Mächte, which can be translated as Dark Forces.

Next is Vampir Horror 32 from 1976, a long running paperback series, which was sold exclusivly at newsstand and was published monthly. It is from publisher Pabel, one of the big genre publishers at the time. This series did a lot of translations mostly of english novels. Mostly because of the length.

Title is Race with the Grim Reaper. It´s Supernatural Stories No. 69 and contains 5 stories, each by another "writer".



Next is Dämonenkiller No. 32 from 1977, a sister series to Vampir also from Pabel. Like Vampir Dämonenkiller (Demonkiller) was a paperback series which had its origin in a weekly Heftroman series. Unlike Vampir ( a short history of this heftroman series, for those who are interested is here ( groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2006/07/vampir-horror-roman-part-1.html )which was a anthology series, Dämonenkiller was a serial. But the paperback incarnation of the label was also an anthology series, publishing novels and collections from foreign and german writers.

Title: Hordes out of the Darkness. It is nine stories out of nine issues of Supernatural Stories.

The last one is also a Dämonenkiller, No. 35 from 1977. It is six stories out of six issues of supernatural Stories and is called The Midnight Museum, which is actually a story this time.

I have read these anthologys a long time ago and frankly don´t remember one story of them. Of course as was the habit of the time there is no info about the writers or the original included (or a cover credit), so I guess they got some letters praising one writer and damning another. Must have been worth a chuckle for the editors. If they knew themselves that Fanthorpe wrote them all by himself. Who knows?

[dem]

Nov 27, 2008 17:23:19 GMT andydecker said:

The first is the short novel The Macabre Ones. It is one with Fanthorpes ghostbusting couple Val Stearmen and his wife La Noire, and it is quite awful.

It's gone straight on my wants list! Thanks for taking the time and trouble to post this, Andy.

As i'm sure you're aware, although Fanthorpe and Glasby were responsible for the vast majority of the stories in Supernatural Stories and the other Badger publications (Future Science Stories, Out Of This World, Wonders Of The Spaceways, etc.), every once in a decade they got a little help from Syd Bounds, E. C. Tubb, Noel Boston (a disciple of M. R. James! what on earth was he doing in here?) and - on one occasion and much to his later embarrassment - R. Chetwynd-Hayes (his first novel The Man From The Bomb, Science Fiction #21, 1959)

H. Fox

Even after a hard days churning out ridiculous horror stories, still Fanthorpe's work wasn't done. Now he had to come up with the blurbs:

The Thing from Sheol, by Bron Fane is the nerve-chilling saga of a thing from the next world which tore down the flimsy curtain of Reality.
R. Lionel Fanthorpe's Invisible Presence, is another in his long line of supernatural thrillers. This time he tells the story of an evil entity made a thousand times worse because it could never be seen.
Neil Thanes makes a welcome return with his terrifying story of witchcraft and black magic. This is the kind of authentic horror which makes the most hardened sceptic wonder whether there is something in it after all.
New author Robin Tate makes an exciting debut with his weird account of forbidden horror in forbidden places. Midnight Ghoul is not a story for the nervous.
Irish author Peter O'Flinn tells of a mysterious Forgotten Country and the weird fate of the man who travelled through it.

All in all SN 81 is a satisfying collection of new mysteries designed for the discerning supernatural reader.

[severance]

The funniest thing I've ever read was a piece of Fanthorpe's padding where a woman spends an inordinate amount of time cleaning her teeth.

[pulphack]

that is quite... incredible. insane, genius, both, or just aware he was a few hundred words short? truly, the Rev is like Eric Vornoff in Bride Of The Monster... 'brilliant... but insane...'

[lemming13]

Actually, I've met him (two years ago, at a talk he gave on ghosts and mysteries), and it's true, he is on that fine, fine borderline. But all the best people are. In a way it's a pity he spends most of his time these days on the non-fiction, though pulp's loss is Forteana's gain. He's supposed to return to our area later this year, so I'll buttonhole him about coming back to the fold.

[dem]

Victor Norwood - Night Of The Black Horror (Badger #44, Jan. 1962)

Bah! Time spent worrying about whether or not this board is "anti-intellectual" is time that would be better invested exploring the wonders of Night Of The Black Horror. Unusually for a Badger, the novel is the work of neither Fanthorpe nor Glasby, Victor Norwood (1920 - 1983) having been "a prolific writer of westerns and adventure novels" with titles like Raw Deal For Dames, Hell's Wenches and Drums Along The Amazon to his names (he worked under a variety of pseudonyms, even wrote some Hank Jansen's). Somewhere along the line Norwood came into contact with a copy of Joseph Payne Brennan's splendid Slime as the early chapters are an outrageous steal! For Brennan's wino, Henry Hossing, read Norwood's Nate Dooley who goes the harmless tramp one better by murdering a stranger during a house robbery before getting himself devoured in the swamp at Horton's Cross. Slime's doomed farmer, old man Gowse loses his cow and his next door neighbour. Night Of The Black Horror's Rafa Corteens loses a herd of hogs before Mrs. Corteens hears his chilling scream as he's enveloped in the sheet of evil-stinking, red hot sludge. If memory serves, we're almost out of Brennan's plot now so it's going to be interesting to discover how Norwood will string this out for 150+ pages, but, as with most Badgers I've read, it's ideal post-Christmas hangover reading.

[jamesdoig]

"Slime" is an eternal favourite - just tried to find Monster Museum where I first read it as a kid, but no luck.

[Johnlprobert]

Dec 28, 2010 22:32:19 GMT jamesdoig said:

"Slime" is an eternal favourite - just tried to find Monster Museum where I first read it as a kid, but no luck.

JPB's Slime is great pulp - it's in Pan Horror 4 and is the lead-off tale in The Feaster From Afar, if you can find a copy.

That Victor Norwood cover is quite splendid, by the way

[jamesdoig]

Dec 29, 2010 6:55:33 GMT Johnlprobert said:

JPB's Slime is great pulp - it's in Pan Horror 4 and is the lead-off tale in The Feaster From Afar, if you can find a copy.

Yep, I've got The Feaster From Afar - one of those books I had to have. And this old Ballantine - somehow it's always a better experience reading from an old paperback. So I'll always read Cry Horror, or similar vintage than, say, a new Penguin Classics can't expln why.

[dem]

Dec 29, 2010 10:01:53 GMT jamesdoig said:

somehow it's always a better experience reading from an old paperback. So I'll always read Cry Horror, or similar vintage than, say, a new Penguin Classics can't expln why.

I agree, James, and if it's a pre-battered old paperback then so much the better. Not sure why, but think it has something to do with not wishing to be the one to crease the spine. It's so much better if someone's already done the job.

Meanwhile, back with Vic Norwood and man, stay away from Boogers Swamp until I get a clearer idea of what's going on in there! Unable to convince the sheriff of her story on account of everyone thinks she's touched in the head, Clara Corteen prevails upon a pair of good natured, tough as nails good ol' boys to search the marshland for her husband and his forty hogs. The abominable stench damn near bowls them over - even their rabid dog doesn't want to know and he stinks like a skunk - but they ain't skeert of nothin', the Gotch brothers ... until a hideous black ooze rears up above them. Poor Hank and Destry are squashed flat and incorporated into the sludge amid lots of screaming.

Other than it's blatant plagiarism of Slime, Night Of The Black Horror's main claim to fame is that one, admittedly overwrought passage found it's way into the Kim Newman & Neil Gaiman smug-fest Ghastly Beyond Belief (Arrow, 1985) and those of a morbidly curious disposition can read it on Northern Planets. It's not quite up there with the Fanthrope tooth-brushing episode Sev refers to above, but you can't fault him for effort.

[dem]

Supernatural Stories #95 (Badger, Feb. 1965)

H. Fox

Lee Barton - The Return Of Albertus
Leo Brett - The Golem
Trebor Thorpe - Dragon's Blood Mountain
Thornton Bell - Grimoire
Robin Tate - Spring Fever
R. Lionel Fanthorpe - Bitter Reflection

Damn, all engrossed in Night Of The Black Horror one minute, lost my place the next and forgot all about it! With a big Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe interview due in April's Paperback Fanatic #18, now is as good a time as any to brush up on some Badger's, so will get back to Victor Norwood once i've sampled a few from #95, all of which appear to be the mischievous Fanthorpe's work. Bitter Reflections is excellent, no nonsense pulp horror malarkey with but the briefest of LF's trademark 'generous padding' interludes (a never-ending description of how dirty the shop windows are: come to think of it, he also takes longer than strictly necessary over the hero's chemistry set adventures) and - did he make a habit of them? - a pop culture reference ("Leming wanted to laugh. The old man's voice was so reminiscent of the superbly funny Henry Crun of the Goon Show.") Am now halfway through 'Thornton Bell's Grimoire - vintage dole queue horror - and thought Dr. T might appreciate the blurb: The secrets of the Black Book lived again in hate-filled hands.

Bitter Reflection: Adrian Leming is a disillusioned wage slave, his boring job as an insurance clerk a necessary compromise if he wishes to maintain a Kensington address. His escape comes at evenings and weekends when he explores the shabby back streets of Soho. "Leming regarded most of the activities in the Square Mile as healthy protests against the clamping limitations of a society that was semi-Victorian and semi-Puritanical." On one such excursion, he chances on a grimy antique shop whose ancient, cadaverous proprietor persuades him to but a sealed Incan flask for five guineas. On returning home, Adrian heads downstairs to his laboratory (??!!!), pulls the stopper from the flask and sets about examining the strange ointment within. As Adrian heats a sample over a Bunsen burner, it splashes him on the mouth. It tastes as appalling as it smells, but he composes himself and takes a look in the mirror.

Adrian Leming has undergone an appalling metamorphosis.

"Evil.' He snarled. Evil is a fine thing! Evil! I am Evilllllll .....

So begins the reign of terror, the police hunting what is either an escaped gorilla or the new Jack the Ripper, and Adrian truly happy for the first time in his downtrodden existence. His only cause for concern: what will happen when he's drained the last drop of the killer potion?