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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 19, 2007 20:17:20 GMT
The Haunting Of Toby Jugg - Dennis Wheatley. First published 1948. Arrow paperback (6th) July 1973. Ah, the conundrum of Dennis Wheatley. A relatively interesting and genuinely scarey little Occult thriller obscured by meandering but very interesting thoughts on the decline of the Church,hypnotism,reincarnation - and several tirades against (you guessed it) Socialism, taxmen, Communists, with a few sideswipes at Germans and Japanese (the novel is set in 1942) plus even the Jews (unless they're British - and are contributing to the war effort. ) In fact, unless you're British, Upper-class, right-wing (though not Fascist), moneyed or a member of the RAF, you're pretty rubbish. Perhaps thats going a bit far but the old soap box comes out quite frequently in this one (although there are a couple of relevant plot points concerning Socialism, Communism and Devil worship - seriously! )It's 1942. There's a war on. And poor old Flight-Lieutenant Sir Albert Abel (Toby) Jugg, Bart., DFC, R.A.F.V.R. (Ret.) is in a bit of a pickle. Shot down by the Germans he's lost the use of both his legs, and is seeing out the war on a Godforsaken Welsh estate. He's being looked after by his old German teacher, a Czech called Helmuth. Distinguished by his leonine white hair, black eyebrows and tawny eyes, Helmuth's care methods leave a lot to be desired. The blackout curtains in Toby's room are too short, he's not allowed a night light, or a radio gramophone, or too many sleeping draughts. This is a shame because, when the moon is full, a many-legged monstrous thing is trying to get into his room. Is Toby going nuts? Is Helmuth trying to send him round the twist? They met at a rather unusual school (Motto - Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law). Pupils could more or less do as they liked, study what they wanted, nothing was compulsory, sex education was practical (it was co-educational!) and there were no punishments. Except expulsion if you were caught lurking around the old ruined abbey nearby. The masters and ex-pupils have a kind of freemasons society (The Brotherhood) that meet there- obviously just a funny handshake, rolled up trouser leg, put a bit of business you way kind of thing - nothing sinister. Anyway, Toby's about to come into his grandfather's zillions when he reaches twenty-one. His birthday's in June - and the book starts in May. Unless, of course, he's certified insane - in which case a board of trustees (of which Helmuth is one) will gain control.
It's a good little (350 pages) book that unfortunately gets bogged down in various tirades. It's written in the form of a journal by Toby. There are some great fright sequences (especially if you're an arachnophobe). The good bits are really good, but few and far between. Being written so close to the alleged Letter To Posterity its fairly obvious DW was at the height of his Red/Pink paranoia. Toby's childhood Occult experiences are very well handled, his attempts to escape are tense and exciting, and, for the first half of the book at least, you (and he) are really uncertain as to his state of mind. There's a character called Taffy - the Welsh vernacular given him by DW makes him sound endearingly like Yoda. Helmuth is a top villain, becoming more and more dastardly as the book goes on. We're in The Satanist country here, rather than The Devil Rides Out (he peaked far too early) but it's well worth a look. Call me a Fascist/Imperialist Running Dog if you like, but there's something quite pleasurable in reading about a plucky, stiff upper lip Englishman clonking a despicable Johnny Euro-Foreigner with an empty bottle of champagne - having polished off the bubbly with his doxy in a tryst the night before.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 22, 2007 16:47:12 GMT
I've just watched the BBC4 adaptation of this as the kick-off to my festive TV horrors. I have no idea what it was meant to be about and started flicking through magazines during the last twenty minutes before flicking things at the screen. Even the presence of the lovely Rachel Stirling in a slip didn't redeem the final impenetrable moments of this rather peculiar waste of time. The opening felt like a good old British horror picture but (dare I say it) the whole enterprise needed more grue (how about some slashed faces and mutilated bits during the hallucination scenes) and breasts (thought there might be a last minute resort to this at the end bit alas no).
It was one of the first things I recorded with my brand spanking new SkyPlus box and has been the first to be well and truly deleted.
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 22, 2007 17:50:56 GMT
This book was the first horror work to freak me out as a child, before I knew it was horror. Didn't know it'd been filmed. des
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Post by franklinmarsh on Dec 23, 2007 9:40:04 GMT
The Haunted Airman was a major, major disappointment. A crying shame that this was the last DW adaption the late, great Bob Rothwell got to see as quite a few of us were really looking forward to it. Beeb 4's A Letter To Posterity Dennis doc is well worth watching.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 23, 2007 10:14:27 GMT
As you're no doubt aware, it's Bob's anniversary on Boxing Day, Franklin. I'm sure you'll join me in raising a glass to him. There's now a celebratory appreciation on the Wheatley site here. Gutted that his death wasn't acknowledged in the Necrology section of The Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror though. I kind of hoped The Haunted Airman would have made it onto terrestrial TV by now. I think the only positive comments I've read about it were written by the BBC's promo dept!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2008 7:19:38 GMT
I've still not got around to this since Franklin kindly slipped me a copy at the Basil Copper launch, but I know a man who has. Christopher Fowler's collection Old Devil Moon (Serpent's Tail, 2007), concludes with a Q and A session during the course of which he's asked his thoughts on "dark fiction and the pulps of the past".
"There's a certain amount of queasiness about early dark fiction because it extends from fear of the unknown , for which one might often read 'otherness'. Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu tales are peppered with uncomfortable stereotypes, and Dennis Wheatley's once-ubiquitous witchcraft novels reflect the period's obsession with the idea that England might become enslaved by sinister foreign forces, although The Haunting Of Toby Jugg, with its monstrous Nazi-empowered spider tapping the bedroom windows at night, still holds eerie resonance."
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Post by wordswortheditions on Oct 27, 2008 15:57:08 GMT
With an Introduction by Anthony LejeuneNight after night, out there in the moonlight, Something was trying to get in at the bedroom window. A huge malevolent Something. Something not of this world. Inside, Toby Jugg, a wounded Battle of Britain pilot, thought first that he was hallucinating, then that he must be going mad, finally that this evil Something was real and striving to reach him. So begins what is probably Dennis Wheatley’s most terrifying story of the supernatural. The struggle which ensues brought Toby unexpected help but also ungues treachery as it moves inexorably towards an appalling confrontation and seemingly inevitable catastrophe. No wonder Dennis Wheatley was called “The Prince of Thriller Writers”.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 12, 2008 15:02:46 GMT
.... there's something quite pleasurable in reading about a plucky, stiff upper lip Englishman clonking a despicable Johnny Euro-Foreigner with an empty bottle of champagne - having polished off the bubbly with his doxy in a tryst the night before. There was plenty of that about at the time - and in the earlier Boys Own publications Wheatley strove to emulate. One of my all-time favourite books, and one I return to again and again, is E. S. Turner's Boys Will Be Boys: The story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et. al. (Michael Joseph, 1948) where-in a veritable army of noble stiff upper lip English heroes unleashed versus sneaky, swarthy Johnny Foreigner types. The politics too, are pure Wheatley (with 'Japs' and 'Wogs' copping the worst of it). And as for feminists .... Sexton Blake's ... attitude to the question of votes for women was clear cut. At one stage Mrs. Bardwell joined the Women's League of Freedom and said, in reply to a query about some insignia she was wearing:
"This lurid thing, sir, as you 'ave called it, is a mark of honourable extinction and in no wise deserving of the finger of scorn. I wouldn't part with it for orders or jewelled garters or for the company of the Bath nor any other boasted insignitaries of 'igh degree. It is a toking of the fact that I have joined the Women's League of Freedom. Sir, I am proud to state that I 'ave become an 'umble decipher of the great Mrs. Spankhard ..."
Exasperated, Blake spoke sharply to Mrs. Bardwell and threatened to pack her off bag and baggage at a week's notice. This was probably the only time he really lost his temper with his loquacious housekeeper in 55 years - and rising.
And I still haven't read bastard Haunting Of Toby Jugg!
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Post by dem bones on Oct 22, 2009 12:20:20 GMT
.... and, shamefully, that's still the case though if this cover doesn't inspire me to knuckle down, nothing will. Started his flying saucer outing, Star Of Ill-Omen but gave up four chapters in, all impatient that it was failing to live up to it's "Wheatley's worst novel" billing although, now i think of it, the potential was there. SheldonArrow 1963/4 edition Something else of no interest. i realised today that i don't just buy the various editions for their covers, great as they unquestionably are. it's also the blurbs, especially those on the backs of the sixties and seventies Arrow jobs. How is it that during the past hundred years so little interest has been taken in the Devil's activities? The Haunting of Toby Jugg suggests an answer. Woven into a tale of modern love and courage, of intrigue, hypnotism and Satan-worship, it propounds a theory that under a new disguise the Devil is still intensely active — that through his chosen emissaries he is nearer than ever before to achieving victory in his age-old struggle to become, in fact, as well as in name, the Prince of this World.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jan 7, 2013 8:53:03 GMT
Jings! Found a DVD of The Haunted Airman in a local charity shop yesterday, packaged with a hastily thrown together biog DVD of Mr Pattinson as a 'boxed set' entitled 'Robsession!' with a picture of a suitably embarrassed looking R-Patz (sic) on t'cover surrounded by lipstick kisses. Ulp! Even covering the cover with a couple of Cradle Of Filth cds couldn't prevent the old boy behind the counter giving me a 'what a pouf' smirk. As the Mrs isn't immune to Robsession! we watched it last night. Coming in to it unencumbered by 'Wheatley adaptation' expectations I must admit I really rather enjoyed it now there's a bit of distance. As a tale of a WWII pilot imaging all manner of horrors (including Julian Sands with a hilarious hairstyle attempting something nefarious) as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder (there's you're re-imagining for a modern audience - together with the nurse) it was intriguing and spooky - if a little drawn out.
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Post by glodfinger on Jan 28, 2013 0:09:47 GMT
It's an exasperating book. Parts of it are absolutely brilliant, and parts of it are just .When I read it for the first time, I was just getting to the last few pages and expecting something really breathtaking, when suddenly....the real ending of the story came. One of the great WTF moments of my reading experience. I literally fell of my chair, laughing. Oh well, it's still better than THE HAUNTED AIRMAN.
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Post by valdemar on Jan 28, 2014 20:55:58 GMT
'The Haunted Airman' was utterly dreadful. Obviously made by people who were not at all familiar with the original book. This happens quite a lot - witness the recent not-at-all-good 'Oh Whistle And I'll Come To You', and the frankly excrementitious adaptation of 'A View From A Hill'. Why bother, if you're not going to do it properly? Unless you know and love the source material, and are a very skilled TV/Film maker, you CANNOT improve the stories. This material is not helped by being 'clever': just make it straight, and everything should be okay.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 29, 2014 6:38:57 GMT
I quite agree - having had the misfortune to have come across some of these types of film-makers over the last two decades, it seems that the attitude is simply that they want to take something that's known and put a 'new twist' on it to make their name, without actually having any regard for the source other than they've vaguely heard of it so therefore it must be dead famous, like. A remake/remodel can be done well - Sherlock, even given the mixed reviews of the third series (I liked it) - but that's a reflection of Gatiss' love and knowledge of the originals. And - ipso facto - proves my point. (A bit of latin there, but not as good as the old latin master's joke 'Cesar adsum jam forte'...)
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Post by David A. Riley on Jan 29, 2014 9:19:59 GMT
'The Haunted Airman' was utterly dreadful. Obviously made by people who were not at all familiar with the original book. This happens quite a lot - witness the recent not-at-all-good 'Oh Whistle And I'll Come To You', and the frankly excrementitious adaptation of 'A View From A Hill'. Why bother, if you're not going to do it properly? Unless you know and love the source material, and are a very skilled TV/Film maker, you CANNOT improve the stories. This material is not helped by being 'clever': just make it straight, and everything should be okay. I couldn't agree more. "A View From A Hill" is my favourite James story and I cannot say how devastated I was with how it was mangled for TV. I have watched it a couple of times since on DVD and cannot for the life of me understand why they changed so much in it. The original story had a clever enough plot that it didn't need all the embellishments given it, none of which made any sense. The other thing too was that James always built up towards the supernatural events without any overt hints. Filmmakers just have to give false shocks early on and try and create a macabre atmosphere through portentous music, etc. They turn something that is subtle into a ham fisted travesty which I am sure James would have scorned. As for "The Haunted Airman", Wheatley may not be amongst the world's best writers but he sure as hell knew how to tell a tale effectively - something which the adaptation of The Haunting of Toby Jugg clearly showed they were incapable of doing.
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