Birkin in Midnight House

[dem]

Birkin in Midnight House

Sir Charles Birkin - A Haunting Beauty (Midnight House, 2000)

Introduction - Mike Ashley

Little Boy Blue, The Mousehole, Some New Pleasures Prove, King Of The Castle, Waiting For Trains, Lords Of The Refuge, Ballet Nègre, The Smell of Evil, Text For Today, The Smell Of Evil, A Right To Know, Fairy Dust, Hosanna!, The Horror On Tobit, A Haunting Beauty.

Sir Charles Birkin - The Harlem Horror (Midnight House, 2002)

Introduction - John Pelan

The Harlem Horror, A Poem And A Bunch of Roses, Don't Ever Leave Me, The Godsend, A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts, The Kiss Of Death, The Belt, Dance Little Lady, Old Mrs. Strathers, The Beautiful People, T-I-M, The Hitch, Green Fingers, Special Diet, Shelter.

Blurb for Birkin's posthumous A Haunting Beauty:

''In the 1960's one author was almost solely responsible for keeping the horror genre alive in Britain, Sir Charles Birkin. In the years from 1964 to 1971 the author produced a string of powerful collections including The Kiss of Death, Spawn of Satan, and The Smell of Evil. In the early 1980's the author and editor Mike Ashley undertook the preparation of a retrospective showcase of the author's work. Efforts to market the volume were curtailed by Birkin's death in 1986 and the collection, A Haunting Beauty has remained lost -- until now. Midnight House is pleased to announce the publication of A Haunting Beauty, complete with a special introduction by Sir Charles Birkin nearly two decades after the author and editor began work on it. In this volume, (which we hope shall be but the first of several volumes preserving the best of Sir Charles Birkin's stories); the full range and diversity of the author's work is demonstrated by tales that run the gamut from the eerie supernatural thriller ''Ballet Negre'' to the poignant ghostly tale ''Little Boy Blue'' and the grotesqueries of ''Lords of the Refuge''. Also included are a pair of fine examples of stories based on the author's war-time experiences, ''The Mouse Hole'' and a story that has to rank as a masterpiece, ''Waiting for Trains''. While best-known for his disturbing tales of psychological horror, Birkin was also adept at the supernatural tale of terror as is amply demonstrated by this collection''.

One thing I'm trying to establish is how many of these stories were his earlier, Creeps, work masquerading under new titles. I'm certain The Belt is Henri Larne and the title story in My Name Is Death was once The Terror On Tobit.

These are great selections, but there's definitely enough strong material left over for a third. The Happy Dancers, The Cockroach, Marjories On Starlight, Havelock Farm, Kitty Fisher ...

[Johnlprobert]

We just can't get enough of Birkin at Probert Towers. Now we're reading the stories in the above volumes that we haven't already covered in My Name is Death and The Smell of Evil starting with:

The Mousehole - WW2. Occupied France. Le Souris is the hero of the resistance and when he causes Francoise Perrier's son to get shot by the Nazis what else can she do but hide the poor injured fellow in her great big gas oven while Mr Mousey buggers off? Of course those pesky SS types soon come a knocking and if she won't tell them where their quarry is they're going to light a nice big fire...

Absolutely no surprises in this one, which ends on a fairly lame note as Le Souris escapes, noticing as he does the column of smoke coming from Mme Perrier's chimney.

Some New Pleasures Prove - A superbly nasty classic. Pretty young Laura Campbell runs out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. And it's dark. And there's a storm. And psychopathic sex-murderer Arthur Smith ("he mutilated them and then raped them") is on the loose. But there's hope up ahead in the form of a lovely cosy cottage and its burly occupant, whose bloodstained sweater is under the sofa.

This is stunning stuff that has hardly dated at all, with a climax that wouldn't be out of place in a very good slasher film. Laura escapes upstairs to find one of Smith's recent victims hacked apart in a blood-drenched bedroom and steeling herself takes the girl's severed head and holds it above her own to psyche out the killer. One of Birkin's best and also one of his nastiest. Full marks.

[dem]

It will come as no surprise that i fully endorse John's take on Some New Pleasures Prove. Hugh Lamb included the story in his first anthology, A Tide Of Terror, the beginning of what would prove to be a productive relationship. After Spawn Of Satan scandalously failed to find a UK publisher, Birkin hung up his boots again, only for Hugh to lure him out of retirement to write some new material for future anthologies. Sir Charles obliged with, in my opinion, one of his all time classics, Marjorie's On Starlight (now i think of it, probably the story that made me wonder aloud if Birkin wrote The Clinic). Hugh, judicious as ever in selecting a neglected minor masterpiece, would later revive The Happy Dancers. But perhaps the most extraordinary titbit concerning Some New Pleasures Prove is ... You know when NEL produced their doomed, R. Chetwynd-Hayes ghosted horror magazine, Ghoul in 1976? The solitary non-RCH written story was?

Yes!

My favourite photo of Birkin, as scanned by Mr. Mark Samuels from his Tandem 1964 original of The Kiss Of Death. For some reason i've never been able to fathom, it puts me in mind of Wire's French Film Blurred. A Haunting Beauty seems very apt.The eyes. The Haunting Beauty of Sir Charles' eyes.

[andydecker]

Nice photo.

What motivated Birkin the writer, btw? I looked for some biographical material, but the wikipage is very slim on this - great overview about the stories, btw, dem - (and it had the best non-link ever, Spawn of Satan directs you to Marvels Son of Satan comic . But as I gathered he never wrote for a living ( for the magazine market for instance). So, what did he do?

And 30 years between the first and the second collection is a rather long time.

[Johnlprobert]

He looks like Uber Euro Sleaze Star Udo Kier (Flesh For Frankenstein, Suspiria, Expose, The Kingdom et al)!

I remember RCH's Ghoul magazine being billed as 'a ghastly giggle' and having read some of the RCH-penned stuff I'm quite staggered that Some New Pleasures Prove should have found its way in there !

[Thana Niveau]

Aug 1, 2010 10:48:50 GMT dem said:

one of his all time classics, Marjorie's On Starlight (now i think of it, probably the story that made me wonder aloud if Birkin wrote The Clinic).

I have a vague memory of you saying this story was in one of the Fontana collections but I can't find it. Did I hallucinate that? Where can it be found?

[Jojo Lapin X]

As far as I am aware, I have never read anything by Charles Birkin. But what I want to know now is: is he related to Jane Birkin?

[jonathan122]

Aug 2, 2010 10:48:24 GMT Jojo Lapin X said:

As far as I am aware, I have never read anything by Charles Birkin. But what I want to know now is: is he related to Jane Birkin?

I was bored at work, so I looked this up. Apparently she's his first cousin once removed.

[Michael Connolly]

“Marjorie’s on Starlight” is in A Wave of Fear, edited by Hugh Lamb. You can check the details of this and many other stories that appeared in anthologies in Mike Ashley’s The Supernatural Index: A Listing of Fantasy, Supernatural, Occult, Weird and Horror Anthologies (Bibliographies & Indexes in Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror) which Amazon allows you to look inside for a search.

[Johnlprobert]

Thanks Codex (and Dem who I know has mentioned this elsewhere). Unfortunately we don't have that and the story doesn't seem to be in any other book. In the meantime (which takes on a whole new meaning when applied to 'Birkin reading time') we've been keeping ourselves happy with;

Waiting For Trains - This tale of an English RTO (Rail Transport Officer) supervising the unloading of a train full of German prisoners into lorries for their taking to trial and subsequent execution may seem a little different from the other tales in the book, but when you read Birkin's (quite acidic) introduction and realise it's based on a real life experience it's just as gruesome as the others, if not more so.

A Right to Know - A good old fashioned ghost story set in Cheveley Manor. Except that this is a Birkin tale so the ghost is a malformed baby with stunted limbs that was strangled and burned along with his mother in the 1500s and comes back to 'get' newborn boys who are brought to the house. One of the best and scariest ghosts I've seen described in a long while and, as ever, no happy endings

[dem]

It might be worth repeating Hugh Lamb's introduction to Waiting For Trains in Star Book Of Horror #1

This is without doubt the most appalling tale in this book. Do not expect any fictional monsters, ghosts, any of the usual contents of horror stories. Instead there is a tale set very firmly in the real world.

Charles Birkin's wartime service took him to occupied Germany, where he witnessed the events on which this tale is founded. Though he wrote it quite some time ago, only this year there was graphic confirmation in a Sunday newspaper of the events described.

The usual Charles Birkin story is based on man's inhumanity to man, and he is without doubt the greatest exponent of this kind of tale. Waiting For Trains goes one step further and brings us yet another timely reminder that the most horrifying thing in the world is man himself.

I make no apologies for including this very serious tale in what is basically a light anthology. But read it, feel the atmosphere of deceit and tragedy and ask yourself if you have ever read a more horrifying story.

On a more cheerful note, i love the new avitar Lord P!

[Johnlprobert]

Aug 3, 2010 22:20:54 GMT dem said:

On a more cheerful note, i love the new avitar Lord P!

Why thank you! Lady P will be chuffed as she took the photograph ;D

[Craig Herbertson]

Aug 4, 2010 5:55:37 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Aug 3, 2010 22:20:54 GMT dem said:

On a more cheerful note, i love the new avitar Lord P!

Why thank you! Lady P will be chuffed as she took the photograph ;D

Yes its a good shot.

[Johnlprobert]

Thank you gentlemen!

Fairy Dust - One of the best in the book. A sad lonely little boy's stepmother is reading him Peter Pan. The fact that said stepmother is pregnant but the little boy stands to inherit his father's millions couldn't possibly have anything to do with her getting him to stand on the highest parapet of the family stately home while telling him she has some magic pixie dust that could make him fly could it? This one's so cruel we were in fits of malignant glee by the end.

Lords of the Refuge - It's time for this book's freakshow story! Not all of them though - most of them have been drowned at the start of the story when the ship they're all in capsizes in the Caribbean, leaving only Nelly the lizard woman, Richard the dwarf and Wolfgang the simple giant who likes impaling things. Richard and Nelly conceive a beautiful daughter and all is well until gung-ho missionary Matthew Power arrives and wants to take the daughter back to civilisation. Will he succeed or will he end up spreadeagled on the beach, slashed open in the shape of an inverted cross and then fed to the fish? Hmmm...

[dem]

i'm sure someone will be able to improve on this, but my "research" has so far turned up only three Birkin magazine appearances, all of them reprints. As mentioned, 'Some New Pleasures Prove' showed up in the doomed Ghoul (and most likely helped kill it) in 1976. Ballet Negre made it into Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Volume 33 Number 5, November 1967) and some warped editor or other editor saw fit to reprint the delightful Fairy Dust in the reputable Argosy for September 1970. That all three should also be included in Mr. Pelan's A Haunted Beauty which, to these eyes, looks like an attempted greatest hits collection, suggests they are among his most popular stories and a good place for the novice to start. If you don't find them to your taste, chances are, you won't like Birkin.