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Post by dem on Dec 14, 2008 0:40:18 GMT
Douglas Hill (ed) - The Way of the Werewolf (Panther, 1966)  Alan ManhamBlurb: Eight gruesome tales of werewolves to chill the spine and strike terror into your heart!
Fangs curved and gleaming …
Eyes yellowed and bloodshot …
Waiting to pounce on the unwary wayfarer …
So, dear reader, tread carefully and beware of the werewolf!Douglas Hill - Introduction
Seabury Quinn - The Phantom Farmhouse
Saki - Gabriel-Ernest
Algernon Blackwood - Running Wolf
Bruce Elliott - Wolves Don’t Cry
Claude Seignolle - The Galoup
Jane Rice - The Refugee
Frederick Marryat - The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
Alex Hamilton - Canis Lupus Sapiens Mark Valentine's recent The Werewolf Pack has restored my faith in the mangy old loup garou enough for me to scurry back to Douglas Hill's 'sixties effort. Can't remember being too impressed when I read this maybe a decade back (Brian J. Frost's The Werewolf Book doesn't take any prisoners) , but tastes change and so far, so good ... Bruce Elliott - Wolves Don’t Cry: In a neat reversal of the usual formula, Lobo the wolf wakes up in his cage one morning to discover he's been transformed into a man. Mistaken for a bum by his keeper, he's bundled into a van and admitted to hospital where he's bullied into standing upright, wearing clothes and generally doing the good citizen thing. But some of his natural instincts prove impossible to cure as one unsuspecting lady motorist discovers when she kindly offers him a lift while he's on a rehabilitation programme. After watching The Wolf Man at the cinema, he consults a library for every piece of literature they have on lycanthrope to seek a magical ritual that will return him to his old self. Alex Hamilton - Canis Lupus Sapiens: Poor Smithers the park-keeper. All he wants to do is lock up for the night but the public don't seem to think the closing time notices apply to them. As if separating a snogging couple, evading an over-friendly filthy dog, and hunting down an elusive old guy in a grey coat were not enough, he also has an interminable football match to contend with. Tubbins, the reds captain has just belted the ball over the bar and straight into the wolves' corner of the mini-zoo, and he's dim enough to try and retrieve it. But what's the guy in the coat doing sitting in there with them?
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Post by dem on Feb 12, 2017 16:46:45 GMT
Frederick Marryat - The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains: (The Phantom Ship, 1839: As Chapter 39: Krantz's Narrative). Krantz catches his wife having it off with a randy nobleman and murders both. Realising he can expect no mercy from the judiciary, the killer grabs his three little kids and quits Transylvania for the Hartz Mountains, notorious abode of werewolves and evil spirits!
The incident has soured Krantz's opinion of womankind. He takes a vow of misogyny.
Hardly have the family adapted to their new circumstances than a huge white she-wolf takes to sniffing around the cottage after dark. One night, while hot in pursuit of the creature, Krantz meets fellow fugitives, Wilfred of Barnsdorf, a wild huntsman, and his beautiful daughter, Christina, all white furs and perfect teeth. He offers them shelter, Christina comes on all friendly, and that's his vow up in smoke. True love at last!
Wilfred consents to his daughter's marriage but first Krantz must proclaim the following solemn oath.
"'I swear by all the spirits of the Hartz mountains, by all their power for good or for evil, that I take Christina for my wedded wife; that I will ever protect her, cherish her, and love her; that my hand shall never be raised against her to harm her.... And if I fail in this my vow, may all the vengeance of the spirits fall upon me and upon my children; may they perish by the vulture, by the wolf, or other beasts of the forest; may their flesh be torn from their limbs, and their bones blanch in the wilderness: all this I swear.'
No sooner is the strange ceremony done and Wilfred returned to the woods than Christina shows her true colours. If the little ones were wary of her before, they are terrified now. Krantz is blind to her cruelty. She makes a habit of sneaking off into the woods when he's asleep. Reports of werewolf attacks escalate. One night Caesar, at nine years the eldest child, takes up his father's rifle and follows wicked step-mother into the trees ...
Cue terrific scenes of child murder, grave robbery, corpse eating - all the greats - before thrilling coda ends on exciting note of extreme jungle doom. What more can you reasonably ask? For this reader Marryat's Gothic nasty is among the greatest werewolf shorts ever written.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 12, 2017 16:52:10 GMT
Cue terrific scenes of child murder, grave robbery, corpse eating - all the greats - before thrilling coda ends on exciting note of extreme jungle doom. What more can you reasonably ask? Zeppelins? Or am I being unreasonable? |
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Post by dem on Feb 13, 2017 13:47:33 GMT
Claude Seignolle - Le Gâloup: ( La Malvenue et autres Contes Diaboliques, Marabout, 1965. Translated by Ada Lorain). A wolf lays waste to the farms of Saint-Métraine, banqueting on upwards of twenty sheep a night. M. Loreux is quietly adamant that the culprit is Loup Garou and assuredly walks among the community by day. Tillet, something of a local hero having once rid the community of a witch, leads a forty-strong band of vigilantes into the woods on a do or die mission. At Loreux's insistence they first bless their pitchforks and rifles. Unlike the reader, the timid farmers do not have the advantage of the werewolf's deeply philosophical misanthropic musings to guide them, but come up trumps regardless. Algernon Blackwood - Running Wolf: ( Century Magazine, August 1920). Another of 'the Ghost man's nature rambles. Alberta, Canada. A young Injun brave is banished from his tribe for breaking their ultimate taboo in killing a wolf. Dying alone in the wilderness, the Happy Hunting Ground is denied him until his bones are afforded a tribal burial. His spirit is doomed to wander the woods in the guise of a timber-wolf. A century later Hyde, a hotel clerk is taking a fishing holiday at Medicine Lake. He is initially aghast that a lone wolf watching from the trees has no fear of his camp fire. It becomes clear that the creature wishes him no ill but is desperate for assistance. Together they dig up the forgotten skeleton. Hyde performs the necessary and Running Wolf is liberated from his torment. Jane Rice's The Refugee and Seabury Quinn's The Phantom Farmhouse has already suffered elsewhere. Editor Douglas Hill was a contributor to cult seventies part-work Man, Myth & Magic. A selection of his writings were published as: Douglas Hill - Return From The Dead (MacDonald Unit 75, 1970) Walking Corpses
Blood, Sex and Vampires
Some Ghosts There Were
Invisible Vandals
The Cult Of The Poltergeist
Inhuman Phantoms
Further ReadingBlurb: The history of Ghosts, Vampires, Werewolves and Poltergeists. One of an exciting series of specially commissioned works forming a popular guide to the world of the supernatural.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 23, 2017 19:39:11 GMT
Wow, what a GORGEOUS cover on Way of the Werewolf! The fact that good old Seabury Quinn's "Phantom Farmhouse" is the opener also induces good will.
The Claude Seignolle tale piques my interest. To live in 2017 USA as a somewhat aware human is to have considerable sympathy with a werewolf's "deeply philosophical misanthropic musings."
Cool painting on the cover of Return from the Dead, too. Man, Myth and Magic was an endless trove of fabulous treasures.
cheers, H.
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