Robert Bloch - Nightmares

[dem bones]

Robert Bloch - Nightmares (Belmont, 1961)

Ten Weird Tales from Pleasant Dreams

The Sorcerer's Apprentice
I Kiss Your Shadow
Mr. Steinway
The Proper Spirit
Catnip
Hungarian Rhapsody
The Light-House
The Hungry House
The Sleeping Beauty (aka The Sleeping Redheads)
Sweet Sixteen (aka Spawn Of The Dark One)

"She gazed long and lovingly at the tear stained face of the fantastically rouged and painted old harridan, gazed at the corpse countenance readied for the grave by a mad embalmer"

A stripped down version of his Arkham House collection Pleasant Dreams (1950). Many of the Corgi paperbacks are fun but, to my mind, patchy, rarely scary, often more crime-suspense than horror stories. Nightmares sets that right!

includes:

Sweet Sixteen: Packs of Hells Angels descend on remote Kettle Moraine County each weekend, building fires on the hill and drinking the bars dry, much to the consternation of aged anthropologist Kerry, who is studying their nihilistic, often brutal behavior for a paper he intends to write. He comes to the conclusion that these "psychopaths" are fiends, "the spawn of a union between a demon and a mortal woman ... during the war ... the women had nightmares - the kind of nightmares women have had through the ages. The nightmare of the incubus, the carnal demon who visits them in sleep. It happened before in the history of our culture, during the Crusades. And then followed the rise of the witch cults all over Europe." His young friend Hibbard wonders what this batty old timer on about. I'm sure we can rely on Mr. Bloch to set him straight ....

The Hungry House: Laura Bellman, the county's reigning beauty during her youth, vowed never to marry while her papa still lived and, unfortunately for her, the old codger turned out to be a tenacious bastard. After his death, the years having flown, she's left alone with her servants and scores of mirrors which still reflect the face of a gorgeous young woman even though her looks have deteriorated alarmingly along with her sanity. Following the manslaughter of a domestic who tried to remove her looking glass, she's shut up alone in the old place, mirrors confiscated, finally killing herself by smashing her head through a window.

That's when the spate of disappearances and mysterious deaths began around the Bellman house which continue into the middle of the new century.

When Hacker the Estate Agent reluctantly admits as much to the young couple who've just bought it and been terrified by the appalling faces leering at them from the many mirrors they discovered in a locked room, they pack their bags and prepare to leave - tomorrow morning.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Hugo, a simple-minded, squinty-eyed hunchback, runs away from the orphanage when he learns that he's about to be committed to the local asylum. Famous stage magician the Great Sadini finds him starving to death out back of the theatre and takes him on as his props man. All is well until the kindly Sadini's wife and onstage assistant Isobel embarks on an affair with a handsome crooner. When Hugo catches them at it, Isobel persuades him that Sadini is the Devil and all his supposed 'tricks' - including the neat one when he power-saws her in half - are real. She's only with him because he has her under a spell. But if Hugo were to kill him ....

Hungarian Rhapsody: Solly Vincent, retired racketeer, learns that his new neighbour, Helen Esterhazy, is not only “stacked” but prone to writhing nude on a bed of gold coins. When she cooly spurns his advances, Solly decides the situation calls for a course of rape, murder and pillage.

I'm not sure why i love this one so much, but i do. Even the bloody obvious pun ending is effective and, in Solly, we have a prototype for the Richard Laymon nasty piece of work minus the obscenities.

Mr. Steinway: Dorothy Endicott falls madly in love with concert pianist Leo Winston, but she has a jealous rival for his affections - Mr. Steinway, a homicidal keyboard bought him by his late mother when he made his debut at Carnegie Hall.

The Lighthouse: A posthumous collaboration with Edgar Allan Poe, Bloch aping Poe's style to complete one of his unfinished stories which he does surprisingly well, the end result being a weird sea vampire shocker. Told in diary form, The Lighthouse details the decline of an unnamed misanthrope into madness and despair after he wills a beautiful woman from the ocean floor to be his companion.

[andydecker]

Weird. I just bought the second volume "More Nightmares", and it seems that the stories here are the more interesting lot. As usual with Belmont the edition is terrible, no original dates in the stories, no infos whatsoever. Just slapped together.

[Dr Strange]

I know it's a long-shot, given how prolific he was, but I was wondering if you could place this story which I am pretty sure is by Bloch? (Apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place)

What little I remember is that it's about a guy who (I think) is a travelling salesman - anyway he is away from home a lot, and when he's away his wife is sure someone is spying on her. She tells him about it and he decides to try to catch the stalker. It's a kind-of Psycho twist - the husband is the stalker, but doesn't know it (in a split personality sort of way). Ring any bells?

[dem bones]

It certainly rings a bell, Dr. Strange, and might well be The Travelling Salesman in one of the Playboy books of the supernatural, but i no longer have a copy and damned if i can find the story elsewhere!

May 15, 2009 11:08:09 GMT andydecker said:

Weird. I just bought the second volume "More Nightmares", and it seems that the stories here are the more interesting lot. As usual with Belmont the edition is terrible, no original dates in the stories, no infos whatsoever. Just slapped together.

Very true, Andreas, or at least, my first thought was that Belmont had shoved the cream of the stories into the first book, leaving not very much beyond The Cheaters and pointlessly recycled early Weird Tales horrors for the second. There doesn't appear to have been UK editions of either of these, or Pleasant Dreams come to that, which is unusual given Corgi, Panther and Tandem were happy to publish any old rubbish just so they could print 'By the author of Psycho' on the cover.

[andydecker]

And here is More Nightmares.

Ten Weird Tales from Pleasant Dreams and the Opener of the Way.

That Hell-Bound Train
The Feast in the Abbey
Slave of the Flames
One way to Mars
The Cheaters
The Fiddler´s Fee
Mother of Serpents
Waxworks
Seal of the Satyr
The Dark Demon

That Hell-Bound Train: Tramp Martin, whose father was a railway man, meets the train and does a pact with the devil. He wants to be able to stop time. When he experiences the perfect moment. Of course there is the inevitable twist at the end.

The Feast in the Abbey: In a storm the narrator gets to this strange abbey where he patricipates in a big feast. Only the strange monks are satanists, and the meat is not from the nearest butcher ... This has to be a really early story. It´s style is ridicously overblown without any dialogue. Not much resemblance to the later dialogue-driven and sparse writer. Still, I guess the twist was pretty gruesome at the time.

Slave to the Flames: Young Abe likes to burn things. When he burns some houese down in Chicago in 1871, he meets immortal Nero, who desperatly seeks a new burnt offering to his master Malik Tous to prolong his immortality.

[dem bones]

May 17, 2009 12:27:35 GMT andydecker said:

The Feast in the Abbey .... This has to be a really early story. It´s style is ridicously overblown without any dialogue. Not much resemblance to the later dialogue-driven and sparse writer. Still, I guess the twist was pretty gruesome at the time.

It's the first one he ever had published in Weird Tales (Jan. 1935) and, what with the evil monks and that ghastly ending, i far prefer it over the more accomplished, award winning That Hell-Bound Train. Waxworks from 1939 is another that lays the horrors on with a trowel. Already you can see he has a big thing about severed heads and that would last all through his career.

[Dr Strange]

May 15, 2009 13:01:44 GMT Dr Strange said:

I know it's a long-shot, given how prolific he was, but I was wondering if you could place this story which I am pretty sure is by Bloch? (Apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place)

What little I remember is that it's about a guy who (I think) is a travelling salesman - anyway he is away from home a lot, and when he's away his wife is sure someone is spying on her. She tells him about it and he decides to try to catch the stalker. It's a kind-of Psycho twist - the husband is the stalker, but doesn't know it (in a split personality sort of way). Ring any bells?

That was one of my very first posts to the Vault and just now I have accidently stumbled on what may be the answer - apparently there is a short story by Bloch called The Real Bad Friend, published in 1957, that is widely seen as a sort of forerunner of Psycho. Unfortunately that's all I can find on the web - the title and the comment that it is a "split personality" story that predates Psycho. Can anyone confirm whether my vague recollection of the plot (above) is even in the ballpark? Or is that another story altogether (and probably not even by Bloch at all)?

LATER ADD: It's definitely the right title (though not necessarily the right plot) - I've managed to track it down to the book I read it in, which is called No, But I Saw The Movie (ed. David Wheeler, Penguin, 1989).

[dem bones]

It seems to be one of Bloch's that didn't make it into any of his paperback collections, so if you can't find another No, But I Saw The Movie, you may have to hunt down;

Robert Bloch - The King of Terrors (Robert Hale 1978)

Water's Edge
The Deadliest Art
Fat Chance
A Good Imagination
A Home Away from Home
The Living Dead
The Man Who Knew Women
Method for Murder
The Real Bad Friend - (Mike Shane's Mystery Magazine, February, 1957)
String of Pearls
Under the Horns
The Unpardonable Crime
Untouchable
Terror in the Night.

let us know if you find it!

[Dr Strange]

I am not holding out much hope of ever reading it again.

[Johnlprobert]

Jan 26, 2011 17:55:38 GMT dem bones said:

it seems to be one of Bloch's that didn't make it into any of his paperback collections, so if you can't find another No, But I Saw The Movie, you may have to hunt down;

Robert Bloch - The King of Terrors (Robert Hale 1978)

Water's Edge
The Deadliest Art
Fat Chance
A Good Imagination
A Home Away from Home
The Living Dead
The Man Who Knew Women
Method for Murder
The Real Bad Friend - (Mike Shane's Mystery Magazine, February, 1957)
String of Pearls
Under the Horns
The Unpardonable Crime
Untouchable
Terror in the Night.

let us know if you find it!

Very nice! Is that an Ionicus cover, Mr D?

[dem bones]

Actually, John, I'm not sure that it is. The cover shown, scrounged offline, is from the US mysterious Press edition and doubt very much ionicus ever worked for them. The Robert Hale replaced it with a trad photo arrangement (the old stuffed rat/ papier mâché skull combo).

[bigjim88]

Very Nice! I've a copy sitting around I've never read and this has inspired me to pick it up!

[Dr Strange]

Sorry for bumping this thread up (again), but I just found this - link

Seems I got the plot of Bloch's The Real Bad Friend sort of right, but with a few key points missing. Anyway, now I really want to read it again.

[dem bones]

Oct 7, 2016 9:47:20 GMT Dr Strange said:

Sorry for bumping this thread up (again), but I just found this - link

Seems I got the plot of Bloch's The Real Bad Friend sort of right, but with a few key points missing. Anyway, now I really want to read it again.

David Wheeler [ed.] - No, But I Saw the Movie: The Best Short Stories Ever Made Into Film (Penguin, 1989)

Cover design by Melissa Jacoby. Photo: FPG International

Bruce Jay Friedman - Foreword
David Wheeler - Introduction
Acknowledgements

Mary Orr - The Wisdom of Eve
Howard Breslin - Bad Time at Honda
Julio Cortazar - Blow Up
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body Snatcher
Daphne du Maurier - Don't Look Now
George Langelaan - The Fly
Tod Robbins - Freaks
Damon Runyon - The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown
Bruce Jay Friedman - A Change of Plan
John M. Cunningham - The Tin Star
Samuel Hopkins Adams - Night Bus
Philip Van Doren Stern - The Greatest Gift
Sampson Raphaelson - The Day of Atonement
Eric Hodgins - Mr Blandings Builds His Castle
Robert Bloch - The Real Bad Friend
Cornell Woolrich - Rear Window
Ernest Haycox - Stage to Lordsburg
Arthur C. Clarke - The Sentinel

Selected Short List of other Stories made into Films
Index


Blurb:
The classic stories that inspired our favourite fiims

High Noon. All About Eve. The Fly. Blow-Up. The Heartbreak Kid. The Jazz Singer. Guys and Dolls. Stagecoach. Don’t Look Now. Psycho. Behind many of Hollywood's greatest movies are equally great short stories. No, But I Saw the Movie collects more than two dozen of the world's best films as they were originally written. such stories as:

“Rear Window." Cornell Woolrich's tale of innocent voyeurism run mad — which became a Hitchcock masterpiece;
“The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke, the chilling science-fiction tale that was the basis for the smash film 2001: A Space Odyssey;
“Night Bus” by Samuel Hopkins Adams. the romance Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert brought to life in It Happened One Night — winner of an armful of Oscars.

These outstanding stories represent many genres — comedy; true crime; science fiction; , romance; horror —and each is timeless in its own right. For those who've spent hours in dark theaters enjoying the best films of our century, here is a collection ol cinematic tales to delight film buffs and fiction aficionados alike.

Robert Bloch - The Real Bad Friend: (Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Feb. 1957). George Foster Pendleton, a 43 year-old vacuum cleaner salesman, first met Roderick back in '44 during army service when they both spent time in the stockade, George for throttling a sergeant. Roderick is a hedonist, always looking after number one, while George is shackled to a dreary job and a joyless marriage. Roderick leans on his pal to get his act together. Just think, if he were rid of Ella they'd have her $85,000 inheritance to blow. Just think of all the fun they could have on some Caribbean island, lording it over the native gals. It's not like they have to kill her or anything, just drive her so crazy that she's committed to a mental institution. Of course, if he'd prefer to spend the rest of his days wed to a frigid shrew and rotting in some crummy job .... All George need do is give Roderick the go ahead and he'll see to everything.

George gives him the go ahead.

Very Psycho (minus the transvestism: George is in awe of his domineering mother), the essence of Enoch (Weird Tales, Sept. 1946) is in there too.

[Dr Strange]

Thanks for reminding me; went back on google again in the hope of turning the story up somewhere online, but no luck.

But - I found out it's in Otto Penzler's Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (along with quite a few other stories in No, But I Saw The Movie), which just came out last month.  "Big book"? At 1200 pages (and 61 stories), I think that's a pretty fair description.  So, another one to look out for in second-hand bookshops further down the line.