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Post by Dr Terror on Feb 23, 2010 12:58:58 GMT
Your support, knowledge and insight would have made this a much poorer book indeed. Charming! to you too.
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Post by Dr Terror on Feb 23, 2010 13:01:25 GMT
The next issue of Prism will include an interview with Charles Black Now that Dem has bought up the subject of Beyond, I'm having second thoughts about that interview as I've remembered the Beyond curse...
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Post by allthingshorror on Feb 23, 2010 13:32:21 GMT
Your support, knowledge and insight would have made this a much poorer book indeed. Charming! to you too. I was wondering who would pick that up first!
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Post by dem bones on Feb 23, 2010 18:42:21 GMT
Mr. Riley, many thanks for your generous words on the previous page. i'm sure such an article would go down a storm with everyone at the BFS. Now that Dem has bought up the subject of Beyond, I'm having second thoughts about that interview as I've remembered the Beyond curse... well, Dr. T., if you or anyone else are planning to fall victim to the curse, could you please do so within, say, a few weeks? see, we've the strange and frightening story of Beyond ready to go, and don't fancy having to do any tricky last minute rewrites. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
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Post by allthingshorror on Mar 15, 2010 14:44:19 GMT
As it's Michel Parry - I've taken the liberty to post his thoughts on Back from the Dead...
BACK FROM THE DEAD
For me the most satisfying contributions to Johnny Mains’ anthology homage to the Pan Horror series are those which one can easily imagine appearing in Herbert Van Thal’s original selections.
Christopher Fowler’s ‘Locked’ is classic Pan Horror material: a deceptively jaunty setup, in which an inexperienced young woman moves into a rundown apartment building in London, leads inexorably to an unpleasant resolution (note the ominous detail of the four cheese-graters.)
Tony Richards’ ‘Mr Smyth’ features another ill-fated dweller in a decaying London apartment building. The creepy Casanova of this dark tale of rampant sex magic is an entirely original creation, yet the demi-monde of sexual excess he inhabits has echoes of the one once explored by pseudonymous Pan regular Adobe James.
From time to time Van Thal would throw a story of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ into his mix for variety (remember ‘Leningen Versus the Ants’ ?) Jonathan Cruise’s ‘The Forgotten Island’ is just such a story, as well as a riveting example of a ‘desert island tale’ where the island turns out to be not so deserted after all.
The basic grand guignol tale of ingenious revenge and torture was a mainstay of the Pan Horror series, as well as the series which inspired it – Christine Campbell Thomson’s ‘Not At Night’. ‘Waiting Game’ by Craig Herbertson, in the tradition of Poe by way, perhaps, of Oscar Cook, is as gruesome a little conte cruel as ever appeared in either series.
These new stories a la Pan may be more up to date in their details and allusions, yet the best of them are timeless in a way which would ensure their effectiveness whenever they were published. A 21st century revamping of an old favourite could be viewed as a form of literary grave-robbing, but this resurrection is one to be embraced.
Michel Parry
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stephenbacon
Crab On The Rampage
www.stephenbacon.co.uk
Posts: 78
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Post by stephenbacon on Mar 24, 2010 23:20:42 GMT
Can't wait to get a copy of this book at Brighton, Johnny. Looks great. And delighted to hear about volume 2!
David - sounds like the shift towards horror will be right up my street. I'll look forward to the forthcoming Prisms from now on.
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 5, 2010 21:54:11 GMT
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Apr 6, 2010 6:09:04 GMT
Looking forward to this Des
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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2010 19:38:54 GMT
Time to get stuck in on Mr. Mains's opus. David Sutton's introduction is nothing less than a brief history of the Brit horror anthology and it's an essay i'll surely return to once i've the bulk of the stories under my belt. As is most often the case, i've begun with the shortest piece to get acclimatised then jumped in wherever my bloodshot eyeballs took me (it's the only way i can do it). John Burke - Acute Rehab: If you're going to run someone over while drink driving, be sure it's somebody other than a surgeon's son. It's also unwise to carry a trunk-load of guilty secrets as patients have a knack of revealing all sorts under anaesthetic. Fans of the doomed jogger in Scream & Scream Again may endure an uncomfortable if happy flashback reading this short-short. Tony Richards - Mr. Smyth: Meatier by far, with a super kiss off. There's usually at least one story in every anthology which, if you chance upon it early on, hooks you for the rest as you hope there'll be at least another can match it. Detective Sergeant Alvin Baker is investigating Martin Edward Smyth, the stooped, cadaverous occupant of a decrepit Covent Garden flat, in connection with the deaths of four beautiful young women, each of them seen in his company shortly before they inexplicably expired through heart failure or cerebral hemorrhage. Though nothing about their deaths suggests foul play, why, as several eyewitnesses have attested, would the victims be so keen to throw themselves at this scruffy, cancer-ridden old codger? Baker decides to keep Mr. Smyth under surveillance but, his phenomenal pulling power apart, there's little out of the ordinary about the reclusive fifty-something. He spends Friday nights in a Soho pub, but otherwise rarely ventures outside his flat unless it's to keep his hospital appointment, pick up groceries or scour the second hand bookshops along Charing Cross Road for treasure. His choice of reading matter, notably a bulky volume with a sinister title, holds the key to the entire mystery. Harry E. Turner - Sounds Familiar: Count Rudy Von Hammerschloss, self-styled "leader of society, high fashion and gourmet-style entertaining", prides himself on his jumbo freezer, stocked as it is with the rarest delicacies nobody in their right mind would lavish money upon - perfect, in other words, for those whose wealth, pretension and credulity is on a par with his own (we are talking the male equivalent of Harry's beloved Fat Old Women Who Wear Fur Coats from Pan Horror 23. Imagine his horror when inspection reveals his larder completely bereft of owl nipples. This is particularly bad news for his downtrodden servant, Nathaniel, who has an urgent appointment to keep in Basingstoke ... I usually get on well with H.E.T.'s jolly brand of horror but can't say this particular story really worked for me, but never mind because, as the late, great Ed Wood once put it, "Torture! It pleasures me!", and next up we have an absolute gem. Craig Herbertson - The Waiting Game: Enrico, the head waiter of a Montmartre cafe, and Maria, his beautiful young lover, unwisely continue their relationship after Enrico has married the wealthy invalid Catherine Dupont. It will be but a temporary setback, he assures the innocent Maria. The old bag will die soon, he'll inherit her lovely cash and they can be happy. But M. Dupont proves more durable than anyone expected - "Damn that surgeon and his unholy skill" - so unforeseen circumstances require a Plan B. He shall casually recommend Maria as the new live-in maid. M. Dupont, who is anything but naive, suffers Enrico to get his wish and allows him to indulge his passion just so far before she treats them to a comeuppance straight out of the Academy of Pain! John Burke - The Stare: Harry Gourley is finally discharged from hospital after ankle surgery which comes as a double relief as Mr. Cleghorn, the patient in the bed opposite, fixed him with his basilisk glare the whole time he was in there and it was beginning to creep him out. Still, the poor bastard has since died, so he won't be met with that hateful stare every place he looks ...
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Post by dem bones on Nov 27, 2010 12:06:44 GMT
Christopher Fowler - Locked: Mr. Fowler is class, so no surprise he gets things off to a flying start with this delightfully macabre cautionary tale. Fed up with her mother's nagging, Tam leaves home and moves into a rather grim flat on the Caledonian Road, Islington. When Lewis, her rather creepy web-designer boyfriend of a month, invites himself around, Tam realises she no longer wants to go out with him and gives him his cards. She hopes he won't take it badly - Lewis is under a restraining order prohibiting him from stalking a minor soap star with whom he claims to have had a relationship - but no such luck. The obsessive little jerk posts details of their short but robust sex life on his blog, and even assaults the landlady, Mrs. Hamalki, when she intercepts him on his way to Tam's room. Worst of all, somebody - or something - has been making themselves at home in her flat when she's away, rearranging the furniture and helping themselves to snacks. Is it Lewis? Most likely, although the previous occupant, the webmaster of Gravestone: The Online Journal Of The Fantastic no less, isn't exactly lacking in strangeness: maybe he kept a set of keys? Or could it really be the ghost of a locally infamous murderer?
Tam pays a visit to the local Bolt & Lock. The proprietor has a way about him that hardly inspires confidence - he's a pale, bloated, fried food junkie with a Bobby Charlton comb-over: if you've read Mr. Fowler's early story, Jumbo Portions, this guy might be the restaurateur's most satisfied customers - but he sure knows what's what when it comes to home security ...
Myc Harrison - A Good Offence: When ten year old Barry Daley confides to his elder twin brothers that Coach Bruno Copely has been interfering with him, Ryan and Jim take extreme measures to ensure that this time the hockey team's resident child molester stays "cured". You can hardly fail with this material and 'Myc Harrison' doesn't. The comparison is so off i don't even know why i'm typing it but if you can imagine a sombre, gore-free, contemporary take on Al Feldstein, Jack Davis & 'Ghastly' Ingels notorious Foul Play strip from The Haunt Of Fear ...
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Post by dem bones on Nov 28, 2010 11:59:33 GMT
A change of pace with Christina Kiplinger - Mr. Golden’s Haunt: At aged seventy five, Boyd Golden realises that he's obsolete, has been ever since the Illumination Company unfeelingly retired him after thirty years loyal service. Bastard Vice President even called him by the wrong name at the retirement do in his "honour"? So where is Death? Sick of waiting around, Mr. Golden first mercy kills his obese, diabetic wife Elaine with a heavily doped coffee, then returns to his former workplace with a flammable accelerant. Death - who seems a decent enough chap - sympathises. From time to time Van Thal would throw a story of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ into his mix for variety (remember ‘Leningen Versus the Ants’ ?) Jonathan Cruise’s ‘The Forgotten Island’ is just such a story, as well as a riveting example of a ‘desert island tale’ where the island turns out to be not so deserted after all. Michel Parry[/i][/quote] Jonathan Cruise - The Forgotten Island: A pair of naturalists believe themselves the first humans to set foot on Isolation Island since the 'seventies, when a party of geologists noted its thriving rat and feral cat populations. But then they discover the journal of celebrated yatchman Jon Voster, missing, presumed drowned these past twenty-plus years. Voster and his girlfriend Ailsa had washed ashore when their craft was wrecked, salvaging enough tinned food to keep them going until rescue arrived - however long that might take. Ailsa took to their plight remarkably well, making a full time job of adopting and domesticating kittens ('Magellan' and 'Fergus' swiftly replacing Jon in her affections). It was Jon's task to provide for them all, easy at first as there were an abundance of fish, but once the supply dried up, he made a fatal mistake ... Michel Parry isn't a bad judge! A 'When Animals Attack!' mini-masterpiece which provides the book's stand-out grisly moment to date, this is reminiscent of Byron Liggett's ghastly The Cat Man (i intend that as a huge compliment).
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Post by dem bones on Dec 1, 2010 13:29:08 GMT
David A. Riley – The True Spirit: Grudge End in Edgebottom is infamous for a horrific machete massacre in 1983. Paul Maguire, twenty-two, butchered his parents and three younger siblings before taking his own life as the culmination of a Black Magic ritual. This last came as little surprise as the history of Grudge End is steeped in Witchcraft & Satanism and it remains a hotbed of clandestine Devil worship, animal torture and sporadic outbreaks of violence to the present day. In the direct aftermath of the slaughter, among the first to arrive at the house in Randall Street was ambulance driver Harold Briscombe, and the carnage he witnessed so upset him that he suffered a breakdown and never returned to work. Now long retired and in ill-health, Harold's one pleasure is the allotment he tends with his wife, Alice, a woman devoted to feeding the neighbourhoods community of stray kittens. This brings her into conflict with her next door neighbour and fellow pensioner, Edwin Gaskin, a whisky-sodden former resident of Grudge End who despises everything equally, though he's prepared to temporarily elevate cats above all other forms of life and threatens to kill any of them stupid enough to venture onto his premises. When two of Alice's favourite kittys are murdered (including Blakey, "so named because his face always reminded her of the lanky inspector in On The Buses) and a third disappears, Gaskin is the obvious suspect, but then his corpse is discovered, the cantankerous old git having apparently fallen downstairs in a drunken stupor. The police find Black Magic paraphernalia and a dead cat among his effects. Meanwhile, the Biscombe's patch on the allotment is among several vandalised by, its thought, the yobs from the decrepit council estate which overlooks it. An amiable twenty-something who introduces himself to them as Peter Hopkirk helps to put right the damage and soon becomes a fixture of their lives - he even offers to move in as 'protection' from whoever is behind all this recent unpleasantness (the police now realise that Gaskin was murdered). Alice, at first suspicious of their new friend, soon falls under his spell but the normally laid back Harold isn't so sure. Having caught the young man out in a lie regarding his supposed family and place of residence, Harold follows Hopkirk to the house in Randall Street, just as the young man intended him to ... In the above review of Back From The Dead, Michel Parry singles out the stories by Chris Fowler, Tony Richards, Jonathan Cruise and Craig Herbertson for especial praise, and i'd go for the same four plus The True Spirit as my picks of those read so far. At the risk of sounding a right crawler, for this reader the second coming of Mr. Riley has been one of the best things about the revival of interest in the Pan Horror's to date. Ken Alden - The Moment Of Death: One of five reprints, but i don't have a copy of Pan Horror #24 so this was new to me. Fengree visits convicted killer Lanover in the condemned cell on the eve of his date with madame guillotine. Fengree has a proposal for him: if Lanover agrees to participate in a trifling scientific experiment, he will give the go ahead for his offspring to be adopted by a wealthy childless couple and spare them the horrors of the orphanage. Essentially, a nastied up improvement on 'Dick Donovan's Some Experiments With A Head. Particularly enjoyed the two pages devoted to premature burial and select episodes from The Terror!
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Post by dem bones on Dec 3, 2010 17:43:35 GMT
Jane Louie - A Caribbean Incident: Against the advise of veteran sea salts, arrogant Lieutenant Barry Kingston, not long out of Sandhurst, hires a catamaran to explore the Tobago Coys, whereupon he is promptly caught in a fierce wind and blown miles off course. Washed up on an island, he stumbles on a lost world, where the descendants of shipwrecked slaves worship the crumbling skeleton of Colonel Griffin, the white man who saw their ancestors safely to shore. After three hundred years, the Colonel's bones are not in the best shape so glory be to divine providence for sending his replacement! Conrad Hill - An Outing With H.: Not sure what I was expecting from A Meeting With H that what i got should surprise me so, but surprise me it certainly did. An everyday tale of street life in London's West End in the immediate aftermath of the horrific "Greek Street Massacre", as seen through the eyes of ace wallet-lifter and one man crime wave 'H'. Unlike the legion threshold people of his close acquaintance, 'H' appears to pose zero threat to anyone, what with him being stuck in a wheelchair, but you'd be better advised to mix it with his hardnut, club-owning mate Fergus 'Drac' Delaney, Alex the drug-addled, schizophrenic Big Issue seller, or the massed ranks of Mistress Matron's Correction Club than take on 'H'. Sadly for them, a vicious skinhead gang are not party to this information and seriously overstep the mark. Hill's depiction of the seedier aspect of Charing Cross and Soho is deadly accurate and, so help me, the sheer violence and overall feel of the thing is The Windowlicker Maker relocated to the capital. This is very good stuff indeed. Jack Wainer - Angel: Susan Thomas is nine when, exploring the spinney out back of her house, she first encounters the Angel. Seemingly unaware of her presence, he feasts savagely on the rabbit he's just torn to pieces. Thereafter this magnificent, lethally beautiful creature reappears to Susan at four yearly intervals, gradually seducing her into his world of beauty and stark terror. It's probably just me, but Angel seems to lack the essential Pan Horroribleness of several of the others, and for one dreadful moment i thought i might be reading a Dark Fantasy story by mistake, but that evidently is not the case as i haven't come out in hives. Roger Clarke - Gallybagger: Two years after the war ended, Coates is assigned to the Isle of Man to oversee the dismantling of the huge, 'top secret' fuel pipe under the channel. Coates has the misfortune to catch Mrs. Dawes, the village nuisance, in the act of siphoning petrol from the tanks. Mrs. Dawes, a self-confessed 'wise-woman, is locally notorious as one of the fiercely patriotic St. Boniface witches who reputedly prevented the German invasion of Albion by summoning a demonic protector. Although he refuses to press charges against the mad old bat for fear of alienating the locals, Coates comes to grief shortly afterward when his workforce excavate a crashed Nazi fighter plane and he thoughtlessly pockets a swastika icon from the cockpit. What became of the crew? Perhaps the forlorn 'gallybaggers' (scarecrows to we mainlanders) in the field know more than they're letting on.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2013 13:55:37 GMT
I know that Dem wanted to see it happen, and I can now announce that it will - a paperback version of BACK FROM THE DEAD will be published next Halloween by Spectral Press. I'll be dumping the Van Thal biography, adding two new essays, changing all the classic reprints and possibly adding two new stories to the mix. AND if it's possible, I'll be transcribing the complete interview of the Pan Book of Horror Stories panel that I hosted at the World Fantasy Convention in 2010.
BFTD was my first book, it wasn't perfect, but at least this gives me a chance to go under the bonnet and tinker with it. And it will be dedicated to Basil Copper, John Burke and Francis King who have all died since the book came out.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 14, 2013 17:33:17 GMT
I'm really chuffed about this. Excellent news - and well deserved
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