Michel Parry (ed) – Christopher Lee’s ‘X’ Certificate (Star, 1975)
Cover picture from United Artists film
The Man with the Golden Gun.
Fritz Leiber – The Spider
Henry Kuttner – I, The Vampire
Robert Bloch – Talent
Basil Copper – Amber Print
Clark Ashton Smith – The Gorgon
Peter Flemming – The Kill
Richard Matheson – Blood Son
Robert E. Howard – The Black Stone
W. C. Morrow – The Monster Maker
Bram Stoker – The Judges HouseBlurb:
CHRISTOPHER LEE's TERROR-TROVE
Here are the legendary Bram Stoker, Robert E. Howard (the creator of CONAN), Lee's step-cousin explorer Peter Fleming (the brother of the creator of JAMES BOND) and multifarious masters of the macabre. At last the actor who has been the perpetuator of the Cinema's most villainous characters introduces his personal terror trove of the strange and supernatural.Warning: the following has been cannibalised and stitched together Frankenstein-fashion from several lousy old posts.
Stories pertaining to the perils of the film industry (see also Peter Haining's
The Hollywood Nightmare) and Lee's experiences of same, even if the stories are selected by Parry. The majority need no introduction, although Leiber's delightful
The Spider - revived from a 1963 issue of men's mag
Rogue - isn't as well known as it deserves to be. You'll probably have most of these stories a number of times over, but that doesn't make the likes of Matheson's brilliant vampire story, Fleming's werewolf yarn or Morrow's variation on the Frankenstein theme bad stories and fans of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will surely appreciate Basil Copper's unseen footage. The Robert E. Howard story is a companion piece to
The Thing On The Roof which i just re-read in Parry's
6th Mayflower Book Of Black Magic StoriesParry coaxes a decent contribution from Lee even if the introduction contains the perennial grouching about playing Dracula, and why he won't be doing so again ...
Fritz Leiber - The Spider: Gibby Monzer is a Zacherley-style horror host whose stand-up routine is a demolition job on Dracula, the Invisible Man, the Bride and all the great monsters of the silver screen. Now three of these, the beautiful people, rendezvous on the corner below his house, waiting to pay Gibby a late night visit.
Henry Kuttner - I, The Vampire:
"It's awful - I'm not sure yet what happened. His wife ... came to life while they were cremating her. They saw her through the window, you know ...screaming and pounding at the glass while she was burned alive. Hess got her out too late. He went stark raving mad ..."People tend to develop pernicious anaemia when Chevalier Futaine, the mysterious star of forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster Red Thirst, is around. And now he has his designs on Jean, who he believes to be the reincarnation of his soul-mate, Sonja, staked some centuries earlier by a busybody priest.
Robert Bloch - Talent: Talent: Told in pseudo-documentary style. Orphaned Andrew Benson is the greatest mimic this world has ever known. His passion is the cinema and he can impersonate every actor or actress he's ever seen - even taking on their facial likeness - although his preference is for villains and monsters: Jack Palance in
The Man In The Attic, the Bela Lugosi
Dracula, Lon Chaney jr. in
The Wolfman, all things Peter Lorre. By some strange coincidence, he's always there or there abouts whenever a particularly grisly murder has been perpetuated ....
I don't like the ending much but it's great fun getting there.
Richard Matheson - Drink My Blood: Jules is obsessed with vampires. He tells of his ambition to become one in a composition which he reads aloud to his teacher and terrified classmates (it reads like the outro to the Mothers of Invention’s
Who needs the Peace Corps? if Zappa had been targeting phony Goths as opposed to phony Hippies) : “I want to live forever and get even with everybody and make all the girls vampires. I want to smell of death … I want to have a foul breath that stinks of dead earth and crypts and sweet coffins”.
Eventually he kidnaps a bat from the zoo, names it ‘The Count’ and nicks his finger to feed it blood. His devotion is ultimately rewarded.
Peter Fleming – The Kill: Set in a railway waiting room in the West of England, this one’s narrated by the nephew of Lord Fleer who has just inherited the old man’s estate following the death of the Belgian Germaine Vom, found dead the previous day with her throat torn out in keeping with a curse laid on the family by a Welsh housekeeper who died giving birth to some old Fleer’s illegitimate son – a werewolf. The young man chooses to confide his story to a fellow passenger …
Basil Copper - Amber Print: Silent movie buffs Blenkinsop and Carter locate an impossibly rare cut of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari which includes some mighty sadistic scenes which didn't survive the cutting room floor. They are pursued to their doom by Caligari and Cesare.
