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Post by dem on Mar 9, 2008 23:11:43 GMT
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Elemental (Fontana, 1974)  Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) in From Beyond The Grave
A Time To Plant - A Time To Reap
Birth
The Labyrinth
Someone Is Dead
The Jumpity-Jim
The WandererBack cover blurb: A beautiful, horror-crazed hunchback ...
A house with devouring walls ...
A corpse which seeks gruesome revenge ...
An unspeakable gaoler from the grim, dark past ...
Fear has many faces. Here are eight of its more bizarre, more nerve-jangling aspects, brought into icy focus by a master of the macabre. The Tandem - Fontana bust up. To coincide with From Beyond The Grave's release, Fontana published a tie-in edition of The Elemental, but as Chetwynd-Hayes explains, there were a few legal problems to be sorted out. "There was a big fight between Tandem and Fontana about who was going to bring it out. Bertie Van Thal got me into that mess: 'Don't worry', he said, 'I'm your agent, I'll handle this for you'. Then he dropped me in it and said 'It's nothing to do with me'. The book finally came out from Fontana and Tandem brought one out at the same time as 'by the author of From Beyond The Grave - that's how they got over it."
Stephen Jones & Jo Fletcher, Talk Of The Devil: A Writer In The Dark Lands, Skeleton Crew, Sept. 1990 Strictly speaking, The Elemental was hardly a tie-in with From Beyond The Grave at all as it only included one of the four stories featured in the film. The Gatecrasher came from The Unbidden and The Door and An Act Of Kindness from Cold Terror, both of which had been published by, yes, Tandem. The "Here are eight of its more bizarre, more nerve-jangling aspects" line on the back when there are only seven stories suggests they were really determined to get this out to coincide with the film. At least he was (still) on good form. The Elemental: Surrey. Reginald Warren has an elemental attach itself to his shoulder on the tube during the rush hour. Clapham-based Clairvoyant Madame Orloff, who happens to be in the same compartment, offers to rid him of the fast-growing parasite (for her usual fee), but Reginald thinks she's nuts and is glad to escape as his stop, where his wife Susan is waiting for him in a backless sun-suit. Unusually for RCH, theirs is a happy marriage ... or it is until the elemental mauls Susan, whereupon Reginald relents and hires Madame O. By way of exorcism, the clairvoyant chants some toe-curlingly unfunny doggerel and that certainly gets rid of the tenacious entity, but once she's scarpered and the coast is clear, it returns to settle the score. The Jumpity-Jim: The Primate Horrific or Jumpity-Jim hath little intelligence, being but a form of low existence that doth demand life essence and warm blood. Once it hath been raised it will leap about with much speed and agility, and, if that which it needs be not at hand, will depart with a mighty explosion.
But should there be within the radius of twenty feet, a virgin, who hath the right essence, and should the flesh of her back, that which lies between the neck and the upper portion of the loins, be bare, then will it leap thereon, and will become as part of the poor wretch, as doth the legs and other members that did God in his bountiful goodness provide.
Once the abomination has mounted the steed, it can in no wise be removed, unless a like-virgin, cursed with the same essence, can be induced, or forced, to accept the loathsome burden. Conrad Von Holstein, Unnatural Enmities And Their Disposal Young Harriet lands the unenviable position of kitchen maid at Dunwilliam Grange. Her career doesn't get off to the best of starts as, while she awaits collection outside The Royal George, she's beset by ranting preacher Father Dale. When she tells him where she's heading, he rips the dress from her back and begins an inspection of her body for "the devil's mark". Dashing, handsome Lord Dunwilliam appears just in time to rescue her from further molestation, and the Priest launches into a tirade against him and his family, the gist of it being that they're a shower of Black Magicians and the day of the Lord's vengeance is near. It's some time before Harriet encounters the reclusive Lady Dunwilliam, a beautiful woman of twenty-six, cruelly disfigured by a spectacular hunchback. Ma'am seems to take a shine to the girl, instantly promoting her from the scullery to companion, and Harriet frets that maybe the mistress fancies her, especially when she demands the girl wears a backless dress with no underclothing. The reality, as it turns out, is far, far worse than she could have imagined ... At first I thought that if ever a Chetwynd-Hayes story was nailed on for the full Amicus treatment it was this one, but on reflection The Jumpity-Jim would have been even better suited to a Hammer big tits and bonnets production in the Taste The Blood Of Dracula mould. The spurious Von Holstein book surfaces in a number of RCH stories and Lord Dunwilliam (or a relative of his) also appeared in Lord Dunwilliam And Cwn Annwn. Finally, RCH re-wrote The Jumpity-Jim as a Clavering Grange story, Loft Conversion, for Tales From The Other SideSomeone Is Dead: First published account of Francis St. Clare and his glamorous assistant Frederica Masters' misadventures (although The Wailing Waif Of Battersea from the later Night Ghouls is alluded to in the text) sees them investigating a haunting at Clarence Grange, built on the site of a seventeenth century prison. The malevolent spectre is that a sadistic warden, Royston Wentworth who is using black magic to build a bridge between his own time and the present day. But who is he using as a conductor? Francis is his usual chauvinistic self, and makes the near-fatal mistake of underestimating his enemy, something he is duty-bound to do at least once per story. Fred is flogged during a psychic trance, makes the occasional "outrageous" remark and wears a mauve blouse which, like all her others, has a "dangerous split" down the centre: does she bulk buy them? The story is probably overlong and you've guessed the human portal long before St. Clare, but it's an entertaining diversion for all that.
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Post by jayaprakash on Nov 6, 2012 6:28:50 GMT
I've been dipping into this collection lately. 'A time to plant-a time to reap' has finally won me over, I think. Perhaps I was finally in the mood for its dark humour. 'Birth' and 'The Labyrinth' are both kitchen-sink stories, but this time around the audacity of Chetwynd-Hayes' imagination and the many telling and creepy details have been a real revelation. 'Birth' in particular is such an evocative story, making the process of a disembodied spirit assembling a physical body for itself seem so vivid and for the moment believable. The vampire angle still seems like a bit of a sudden lurch, like those annoying, soaring scale-changes pop songwriters indulge in in pursuit of the anthemic, but it is easy to forgive considering the quality of what has gone before. 'The Labyrinth' is almost pure gold, from the little touches of dark wit to the slow build from understated menace to out and out phantasmagoria, even if the end seems a bit too pat. But how many ways are there, really, to end a horror story?
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Post by dem on Feb 15, 2017 18:23:41 GMT
I'm really up for haunted public bench stories. Can anyone suggest other examples? The Wanderer: Sir James Sinclair hosts a weekend party at Clavering Grange. Among the guests, Peter Wainwright, architect, thirty, and his man-hungry companion, Catherine. Peter is sick of the girl long before she makes a play for the pissed up Baron. Oh, for olden times when, he believes, women acted and dressed like women, or, to be more precise, windswept Gothic heroines crying out to be protected. Which is when he spots the young beauty in white sat forlornly on a bench. From the moment he sets eyes on her, Peter realises the lady is a ghost, but that's no problem. On arriving home to SW 16 he dumps Catherine ("When I look at you I see only a plastic doll in a blonde wig."0, but his fantasies turn to nightmare when the needy ghost moves in. Misery loves company, and the sad spectre is determined that he take the knife and follow her example so they can be together forever. |
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Post by dem on Feb 16, 2017 10:43:27 GMT
'Birth' and 'The Labyrinth' are both kitchen-sink stories, but this time around the audacity of Chetwynd-Hayes' imagination and the many telling and creepy details have been a real revelation. 'Birth' in particular is such an evocative story, making the process of a disembodied spirit assembling a physical body for itself seem so vivid and for the moment believable. The vampire angle still seems like a bit of a sudden lurch, like those annoying, soaring scale-changes pop songwriters indulge in in pursuit of the anthemic, but it is easy to forgive considering the quality of what has gone before. 'The Labyrinth' is almost pure gold, from the little touches of dark wit to the slow build from understated menace to out and out phantasmagoria, even if the end seems a bit too pat. But how many ways are there, really, to end a horror story? : Gurney Slade suffers a fatal heart attack while mowing the lawn. All things considered he adapts remarkably quickly to his new circumstances. Through sheer force of will Slade manufactures a replica of his old body. He buries the corpse so Caron, his significant other of seven years, will be none the wiser. But his once regular diet is as raw sewage to him, and if Gurney II doesn't find nourishment fast the flesh will continue to blacken and fall from his bones.... Bad time for Caron to take a shower. Labyrinth: Brian and Rosemary are hopelessly lost on Dartmoor when they happen on a sprawling mansion house. A smiley-faced elderly lady who gives her name as Mrs Brown invites them to join her for tea and jam sandwiches. The moor is especially dangerous after dark and she insists they spend the night as her guests. They're too exhausted to refuse, even though the whols situation seems ... wrong. The couple are initially nervous of Carlo the butler, a deaf mute who lopes about like a wolf, but it's the house itself they should be wary of. As Mrs. Brown candidly reveals, it wasn't built - it grew. It transpires that she has been a widow for close on five centuries since the villagers drove a stake through her husband's heart. "When they buried his beautiful body they planted a seed, and from that seed grew the house. A projection of himself." The House of Petros is a voracious appetite in brick and flesh, draining the essence from those the old witch and her werewolf manservant can lure within. Agree with Jaya. Birth shows RCH on his best form right up until the inevitable anti-climax. For those who missed if first time around, the story was later reprinted in The Fantastic World Of Kamtellar. Less keen on Labyrinth which is decent enough but has, I dunno ..... annoying mannerisms. Put me in mind of a a frightfully Middle England variation on Robert Bloch's The Hungry House (with a dash of Edifice Complex). |
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Post by dem on Feb 18, 2017 8:23:55 GMT
A Time To Plant - A Time To Reap: A recurring theme in RCH's fiction is the (sometimes, as in this case, unintentional) cultivation of human crops. When Arthur Cooper wed Agatha, he did so purely to get his hands on her vast wealth. Now aged thirty, he's still not seen a penny of it. Agatha, fifty-five, is a tight-fisted, eighteen stone, lard arsed nymphomaniac who makes his every hour a misery, so small wonder she doesn't survive past the opening sentence. Arthur buries her in the garden beneath a flower bed. The police are led to believe she fell from a cliff at Beachy Head, and her grieving husband inherits a monster £250, 000. Jackpot!
With Agatha pushing up geraniums, Arthur invests in a flash red Mercedes and a flash bit of stuff. Clover Bryant, 36-24-36, is a gold-digger with New Age pretensions, but she's hot stuff in bed, and his bulging wad is more than good to keep her sweet for the foreseeable future. The problem is Agatha. Somehow her corpse has self-dismembered and the fingers and toes have taken root! Arthur replaces the flowerbed with a cabbage patch, but when the first crop sprouts fists he opts for a rockery.
The late Agatha's unsporting behaviour preoccupies her spouse. He strays in front of a speeding sports car sustaining multiple injuries. As Arthur, bandaged from head to toe, languishes in hospital, Clover gets up close and personal with the Hooray Henry who put him there. The "accident" was anything but. Toffy-nosed Jeremy promises that next time there will be no mistake. It's just a question of what to do with the body?
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Post by mcannon on Feb 18, 2017 9:01:06 GMT
A Time To Plant - A Time To Reap: but she's hot stuff in bed, and his bulging wad is more than good to keep her sweet for the foreseeable future.>> Ooh errr, Missus! RCH didn't ghostwrite any of the Timothy Lea "Confessions of..." novels by any chance, did he?  Mark |
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Post by dem on Feb 18, 2017 17:59:04 GMT
Never mind the oh so bloody "interesting" ones, I wanna know which of Britain's Prince Of Chills' "make-weights" (blooming cheek!) were optioned?
It's a shame their Amicus rivals never got around to adapting some of the overspill from this collection as sequel to From Beyond the Grave.
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Post by dem on Apr 6, 2020 5:39:31 GMT
Three years later .... According to Howard Maxford's Hammer Complete: The Films, the Personnel, the Company A-Z (McFarland & Co Inc, Feb. 2019. A snip at £95.00. No, I don't have a copy, funny you should ask), the following stories were considered for the doomed The Haunted House of Hammer TV series. *** J. K. Bangs - The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall Marjorie Bowen - The Prescription A. M. Burrage - The Sweeper __________ The Cottage in the Wood William Charlton - Norton Camp R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Alice in Bellington Lane __________ Cold Fingers __________ The Ghost who Limped __________ The Ghouls __________ Keep the Gaslight Burning __________ The Man who Stayed Behind __________ Markland the Hunter __________ Run for the Tunnel __________ The Sad Ghost __________ Something Comes In From The Grave (presumably a misprint) __________ The Wanderer __________ Which One? F. Marion Crawford - The Doll's Ghost Agatha Christie - The Lamp John Elder - And the Dead still Live, My Darling __________ I Can't come Mummy, I'm Dead Jeffrey Farnol - The Cupboard Leslie Halliwell - The Ghost of Sherlock Holmes M. R. James - Canon Alberic's Scrapbook __________ The Haunted Doll's House __________ Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad Nigel Kneale - The Housekeeper Roger Mallison - Welcombe Manor Seabury Quinn - And Give Us Yesterday Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body-snatcher Bram Stoker - The Judges House Terry Tapp - The Four-Poster ( The Bed ?) __________ Mariners Heather Vineham - Graveyard Lodge, __________ The Rock Garden Elizabeth Walter - Come and Get me Edith Wharton - Afterward Also four stories to I'm at a loss to identify: The Coatstand The Shelter (Rod Serling?) The Summons A Strange Case of Drowning (Tony Richards' Someone Drowned?) |
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Post by andydecker on Jul 31, 2020 9:14:12 GMT
Managed to plug a few gaps in the collection. Here is the translated edition of The Elementals, published in 1977. For some unknown reason Pabel Publishing loved RCH, they did six paperbacks over the years in the Vampir Horror Paperback line. As usual some stories are missing because of the fixed length with 145 pages. Missing are Someone is Dead and The Wanderer. As I often remarked, I am not Chetwynd-Hayes biggest fan. This was quite interesting though, as it shows the radically different styles in which he wrote. You got the "macabre" - or Blochian? - approach with The Elemental or A Time to Sow, the high concept with The Birth and the Gothic with The Labyrinth and The Jumpity-Jim.
I liked the grim conclusion of The Elemental, even if I found the tone grating and the characters shrill carricatures at best. A Time to Sow didn't work for me, the ending is terrible, the story too long. It reads like a typical story where the writer didn't have an idea how to end. Bloch would have written a punch-line in half the space, and it would have worked. Again RCHs characters are hard to stomach, but not in a good way. Like an unintended parody of On the Buses, which leaves a bad taste. But the Labyrinth and especially the creepy The Jumpity-Jim would indeed have made good Hammer or Amicus movies. The plots are original, the atmosphere works and the ambigous end of TJJ has bite. TJJ may be the story of RCH which I liked best so far of his work. |
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Post by PeterC on Jul 31, 2020 13:28:00 GMT
I'm afraid I'm not much of a fan, either. RCH stories so often feature stereotypical, almost 'Carry-On' type characters and very predictable plots. I'm always a bit disappointed to see one of his efforts in an anthology.
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Post by fritzmaitland on Oct 15, 2021 11:16:24 GMT
The Elemental: Surrey. Reginald Warren has an elemental attach itself to his shoulder on the tube during the rush hour. Clapham-based Clairvoyant Madame Orloff, who happens to be in the same compartment, offers to rid him of the fast-growing parasite (for her usual fee), but Reginald thinks she's nuts and is glad to escape as his stop, where his wife Susan is waiting for him in a backless sun-suit. Unusually for RCH, theirs is a happy marriage ... or it is until the elemental mauls Susan, whereupon Reginald relents and hires Madame O. By way of exorcism, the clairvoyant chants some toe-curlingly unfunny doggerel and that certainly gets rid of the tenacious entity, but once she's scarpered and the coast is clear, it returns to settle the score. Oct 14. Yes! Enjoyed this more than I expected. There's an undercurrent of nastiness to counter the uniquely British jollity, and , as Andreas mentions, the ending was a bit of a shocker considering the previous fairly light-hearted tone. Some engaging datedness (Reginald's young wife doesn't prepare him square meals, but whips up with-it meals. Arf!) Must admit I'm not keen on the film (apart from crazy Dave Warner's bit) but Ian Carmichael is a perfect silly-ass Reginald, whereas I had someone like Miriam Margolyes in mind for Madame Orloff. |
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Post by helrunar on Oct 15, 2021 12:24:30 GMT
I'm a huge fan of Margaret Leighton so I love the film version. Miriam would be very funny in a remake but I don't generally care for remakes.
Some of Madame's shop talk about special rates and extras is hilariously on-point for a certain type of "spiritual entrepreneur"--even today.
H.
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