Michel Parry - 3rd Mayflower Black Magic

[dem]

Michel Parry (ed.) - The 3rd Mayflower Book of Black Magic Stories (Mayflower, 1975)

Les Edwards

Sidney Horler – Black Magic
M. P. Dare – Borgia Pomade
Henry Kuttner – Threshold
Robert Sheckley – The Altar
Robert Bloch – The Black Kiss
Helena Blavatsky – The Cave Of Echoes
Ralph Adams Cram – No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince
Anthony Boucher – Review Copy
Joseph F. Pumilia – Instrument Of Darkness
Frederic Brown – Naturally
H. P. Lovecraft – Dreams In The Witch-House
Seabury Quinn – The Incense Of Abomination

Sidney Horler – Black Magic: "She had not exaggerated the dread with which this man would have inspired in the ordinary, clean-living, clean-thinking, normal person. The man, even from a distance, seemed to be surrounded by an aura of evil.".

Trevelyn, Cornwall, 1930. Miss Violet Long, 24, is engaged to marry Harry Sinclair when a new man enters her life. Rathin Memory, hirsute and possessed of a malefic stare, has recently moved into 'The Heights', a house with a dreadful reputation on account of a murder and suicide. Mr. Memory accosts Miss Long on the cliffs and tries his luck. Violet is outraged and protests that she can have nothing to do with him. Memory is unperturbed. "That which I desire I always obtain. I have asked for your friendship and I shall have it. There is no one strong enough to prevent me." As the title suggests, Rathin Memory is adept in the dark arts. First he casts a diabolical spell over Violet's father, leaving the poor old man paralysed, then he sets to depriving Harry Sinclair of his wits. Who can possibly stop this fiend in human form from ravishing our heroine? Step forward master of strangeness Sebastian Quin and his assistant Martin Huish!


M. P. Dare – Borgia Pomade: John Holben invites Gregory Wayne and his fellow antiquarian Alan Granville to visit his home at Chattington Manor, Northants, to examine a recently rediscovered hidden room. Among the artefact's they unearth, a strange-looking jar which they soon confirm is "a perfect Urbibo pierce" dating from the 15-1600's. Holben's wife is thrilled Unfortunately for her, it contains Lucrezia’s Borgia's magical face cream. Not one she used on herself, you understand, but rather gifted her love rivals. A couple of dabs and it will disfigure a girl’s face beyond recognition.

Robert Sheckley – The Altar: North Ambrose, New Jersey: Mr. Slater bumps into an urbane foreign gent who asks him directions to the Altar of Baz-Matain. It transpires that he is Elot, the group’s new business manager during a time of fierce local competition from the other occult aggregates who proliferate in the area. Mr. Slater is appalled that his respectable town should be given over to these blasphemers and telephone’s the mayor to demand he do something about it. In his turn that worthy tells Mr. Slater that he’s been strung a line. Determined to prove the mayor wrong, the next time he meets Elot Mr. Slater asks if he can attend the next ceremony …

Anthony Boucher – Review Copy: San Francisco. Mark Mallow, brilliant if brutal critic, destroys the reputation of occultist authority Jerome Blackland with one of his trademark molten reviews. Blackland takes it to heart and consults a Diabolist to exact revenge. Consequently Mallow receives in the post a copy of For The Blood Is The Death by Hieronymus Melancathon (Chorazin Press, New York, 1955) for his personal attention. The evil spell works and the reviewer is bloodily disposed of, but …

Frederic Brown – Naturally: Under college regulations, Henry Blodgett will be expelled if he fails his fourth course in two years, and as this one is mathematics his prospects do not look rosy. There's nothing left for it but to resort to Black Sorcery. Sadly for Henry, the Demon he raises only confirms that geometry was never his forte.

Henry Kuttner - Threshold: "I'll put three doors in your path. Doors each of a different colour. The first one will be in blue, and beyond it is one wish. When you pass the second door, which will be yellow, your second wish will come true. And beyond the third door - I shall be waiting to eat you."

Haggard's wants are simple: $1 million and his detested wife Jean out of the picture, and for that to happen he'll gladly trade his soul. Haggard has always prided himself on his superb brain and when he summons forth Baal, he - rightly - identifies the angry little fiend as his intellectual inferior. It shouldn't be too difficult to trick the colour of the dreaded third door from him. Aside from that there's a further stipulation to remember. After his two wishes are granted, Baal will deprive Haggard of some trifling physical power, but that shouldn't give him too much grief ....

[Dr Strange]

I was just wondering why this one wasn't in the vault, though all the others seem to be. It's a while since I read it, but my abiding memory is of how shocked and offended by Joseph Pumilia's Instrument of Darkness I was. Must read it again.

[dem]

Couldn't find #6 on here either, Dr. Strange - have added a stub for that so it won't feel left out. I think it's an excellent series, every bit as good in its way as Michel's four volumes of Victorian Horror, Reign Of Terror. For me, there's something quintessentially 'seventies about The Mayflower Books Of Black Magic, as though the books couldn't have come out of any other era. Can't really explain it - maybe it's just that they capture (and pander to) the day's big News Of The World-fuelled fascination with black magic 'n nudity. I know Ramsey has mentioned elsewhere that Michel encouraged him to introduce plenty of sex into his contributions (he obliged!), and reviving the nastier Crowley stories is inspired. Incredibly, I can remember nothing of the Pumilla story either.

Intent on a mini-Parry fest over coming weeks and it's gonna be fun reacquainting myself with a number of these.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 9, 2010 9:04:33 GMT dem said:

it's an excellent series

Sadly, I only have a couple of these in my possession (I think the other one is Number 2) but I am always keeping an eye out for them.

Aug 9, 2010 9:04:33 GMT dem said:

i can remember nothing of the Pumilla story

It's got a very nasty dog in it (though that probably doesn't help).

[dem]

Just re-read Instrument Of Darkness, a truly unpleasant experience it was, too. Thank you so much for directing me toward it.

*****Spoiler******

Joseph F. Pumilia – Instrument Of Darkness: With husband Alan away overnight on business and a storm brewing, Joyce is nervous. She's not recovered from the shocking revelations about her former neighbour Thornton Trahern and his depraved friends, one of whom, Anita Fontaine, even gave her art lessons.

Some months earlier, Trahern died in a fire that consumed his front room. His corpse, decked out in priests robes and surrounded by occult paraphernalia, lay in a pentagram, "the bloated white face composed in an eerie half-smile that was somehow obscene". Alan, went inside the room with the fire-crew, so he got to see far more than the newspapers dare publish. At first Joyce pestered him for the juicy details until, finally, in exasperation, he told her: "There was a photo of a woman. Having sex with a dog. A big black dog like Trahern's. Yes, you know her, it was -". Joyce has never asked for further detail. The strapping brute of a Great Dane has since disappeared.

Joyce can't keep the kids - Tad, 10 and Cissy, 14 - under house arrest the whole summer, but hates when they stray far from view. At least they've their schnauzer, Kerry, to protect them.

Until Kerry is brutally attacked by the Great Dane and dies of its appalling injuries.

A phone-call from Anita Fontaine. Has Joyce seen her dog? A big black one, used to belong to Thornton Trahern ...?

As the beast attempts to break in, Joyce grabs her husband's pistol, but unused to firearms, succeeds only in shooting a bullet into her leg. The blood drives the dog that is Trahern into a frenzy. The window shatters. The dog pads toward Joyce with rape in mind ...

**************

i think that's what i love about these books so much. Horler's quaint opening melodrama in no way prepares the reader for the likes of the Pumilla or (elsewhere in the series) Crowley's The Vixen and the Campbell stories which have more in common with Michel's 'Linda Lovecraft'/ The Devil's Kisses excursion.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 9, 2010 17:30:18 GMT dem said:

i've just re-read Instrument Of Darkness, a truly unpleasant experience it was, too. Thank you so much for directing me toward it.

I re-read it myself last night and it's still as nasty as I remember, which is strangely reassuring somehow.

[Johnlprobert]

Instrument of Darkness was the book at bedtime at Probert Towers last night. I felt a bit like Garth Marenghi reading it aloud - the prose is very sparse and it was obviously written as a shocker. I was expecting something really horrible to happen right at the end, though, so help me

[Thana Niveau]

Aug 10, 2010 7:55:32 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Instrument of Darkness was the book at bedtime at Probert Towers last night. I felt a bit like Garth Marenghi reading it aloud - the prose is very sparse and it was obviously written as a shocker. I was expecting something really horrible to happen right at the end, though, so help me

I kept expecting it to end more horribly than it did and was actually disappointed when it didn't because it was so obviously trying to shock. It felt like the author had shown us a really big gun (or a "BFG", as they said in Jason X, last night's dinnertime viewing ) and then been too coy to use it.

I recommend Ian McEwan's Black Dogs as an alternative. Far more horrifying and insidious.

[dem]

Know what you mean, my dear Lord & Lady P. After spending all that time building up to it, luckily for Cissy if not the reader, Pumilla pulled his punch right at the last. Says a lot for this board when a story as nasty as Instrument Of Darkness isn't nasty enough.

I'm bouncing between numbers #3 and #6 right now (just the two Henry Kuttner stories to go in the latter) and as well as providing some top-notch entertainment, it's served as a reminder of just how on top of his game Michel Parry was at the time. Whereas Hugh Lamb's (superb) anthologies were inventive but perhaps more traditional in their approach, Michel was clearly out to ruffle feathers with collections seeped in weird sex, drugs and satanism. In his afterword to Scared Stiff :Tales of Sex and Death, Ramsey Campbell recalls how Mayflower consulted their lawyers before they allowed Michel to run Dolls (considering what happened to the first version of Agro and More Devil's Kisses they were within their rights!). And no matter how often i've read it, that Wheatley piss-take of a WARNING against dabbling in the occult which opens each of the Black Magic books never fails to get a smirk out of me.

[Dr Strange]

Well, if that BFG wasn't FB enough for you it seems Pumilia also co-wrote a story called "Hung Like An Elephant", which I saw described somewhere as "Kafka-esque" (you know, like "Metamorphosis" - man wakes up one morning to find himself, um, well the title says it all).

[dem]

Michel used his work on a regular basis but that one seems to have passed him by! Of course, if you really want a real nasty sick thrill, try Chris Miller's notorious The Magic Show in More Devil's Kisses ....

[Dr Strange]

Aug 10, 2010 12:04:03 GMT dem said:

Michel used his work on a regular basis but that one seems to have passed him by! Of course, if you really want a real nasty sick thrill, try Chris Miller's notorious The Magic Show in More Devil's Kisses ....

Not going to be easy to get hold of though is it? Or is it?

I did try a google for "Chris Miller" + "magic show" but I am pretty sure this isn't it...

www.chrismillermagic.com/

But I see from your previous link that Pumilia also wrote a story called "Toad" (is the answer to the question anything to do with the way that certain cold-blooded animals catch their prey?).

[Johnlprobert]

Aug 10, 2010 11:45:35 GMT Dr Strange said:

Well, if that BFG wasn't FB enough for you it seems Pumilia also co-wrote a story called "Hung Like An Elephant", which I saw described somewhere as "Kafka-esque" (you know, like "Metamorphosis" - man wakes up one morning to find himself, um, well the title says it all).

That's not the one where he slings it round his neck and its ends up strangling him is it?

Or have I just made that up?

[Johnlprobert]

Aug 10, 2010 12:04:03 GMT dem said:

Michel used his work on a regular basis but that one seems to have passed him by! Of course, if you really want a real nasty sick thrill, try Chris Miller's notorious The Magic Show in More Devil's Kisses ....

I spotted the Animal House reference on there. It's interesting that John Landis has been quoted as saying that the original script (by Miller & friends) was so disgusting that it had to be radically rewritten before it could go before the cameras

[dem]

Aug 10, 2010 13:12:35 GMT Dr Strange said:

But I see from your previous link that Pumilia also wrote a story called "Toad" (is the answer to the question anything to do with the way that certain cold-blooded animals catch their prey?).

Got it in one. As a horror story it lacks horror. As erotica it lacks erotica. As a sex comedy it's about as funny as .... not one of his more successful efforts is what i'm trying to say. I was more impressed with his Forever Stand The Stones in Jack The Knife though it's a blur to me now. He has another one, The Myth Of The Ape God in The Rivals Of Kong, and Ramsey Campbell used The Case Of James Elmo Freebish in Superhorror aka The Far Reaches Of Fear.

The Magic Show attracted considerable comment on Vault Mk I. Weird thing was, although More Devil's Kisses was eventually pulped, there must have already been plenty in circulation as most of us seemed to have more trouble getting hold of the first book.