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Post by dem bones on Aug 12, 2010 19:17:59 GMT
Peter Haining (ed.) - Christopher Lee's New Chamber Of Horrors, (Souvenir, 1974: Mayflower [2 vols.], 1976) C. Lee; reluctant as ever to exploit his despised 'Dracula'/ Hammer credentials.Introduction - Christopher Lee
E. F. Benson - The Room In The Tower M. R. James - Count Magnus Mary Shelley - The Transformation Bram Stoker - The Burial Of The Rats Sax Rohmer - The Whispering Mummy Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle - The Leather Funnel Arthur Machen - Out Of The Earth Lord Dunsany - The Magician Algernon Blackwood - The Empty Sleeve H. P. Lovecraft - The Thing On The Doorstep Robert Bloch - Return To The Sabbath Fritz Leiber - Four Ghosts In Hamlet John Collier - The Devil, George And Rosie Ray Bradbury - The October Game Dennis Wheatley - A Life For A Life Richard Matheson - No Such Thing As A Vampire
About Christopher Lee - Peter Haining
"Christopher Lee, the 'Crown Prince of Terror' certainly knows a monster when he sees one! ... Herein are not only his favourite tales of fright, but a discussion of his own career and the important part horror plays in it" enthuses (presumably) Peter Haining on the inside cover blurb. A class if, again, over familiar collection with a 14 page photo-insert, the bulk of the contents have already been given the treatment on here. My guess is that many of these were Lee's choices whereas the selections in his anthologies with Michel Parry were most likely picked by his co-editor. Ray Bradbury's The October Game, wherein a man realises that the only way he can get back at his despised wife is through their daughter, remains one of the most shocking horror stories I've ever read. Bloch is less jokey than usual in his story of a film star who upsets his fellow Black Magicians by incorporating some of their secrets into his movies. Collier's The Devil, George and Rosie is too whimsical to be horrible, but fun for all that. No such problem with Conan-Doyle's The Leather Funnel, once lauded by Hugh Lamb for its "pointless cruelty". The Burial Of The Rats is memorable for its chase scene conducted in near silence, while A Life For A Life catches Wheatley in uniquely boring non-fiction mode. The vampire content - Matheson, E. F. Benson and James - is impeccable. The three i need to re-read are the Rohmer, Leiber and Machen for, despite scoring them highly in my tragic red asterisk/ blue asterisk/ no asterisk phase, i can no longer remember a damn thing about them.
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Post by fullbreakfast on Aug 12, 2010 21:25:04 GMT
The Room In The Tower gives me the proper creeps, it's got a quality of actual nightmare that absolutely works. E.F. Benson wrote some utter toss as well, but that one is an overlooked gem I reckon.
Don't remember it really being a vampire story, though...
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Post by dem bones on Aug 13, 2010 16:37:05 GMT
could be that i've been brainwashed into thinking of it as one by seeing it listed too many times in vampire bibliographies, although what about that business with the suicide's blood-filled coffin at the end? And as to Count Magus, i've gone from it is, it isn't, it is a vampire story each time i've re-read it!
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Post by andydecker on Aug 13, 2010 17:25:05 GMT
seeing it listed too many times in vampire bibliographies, just curious, is it known which story is the most-anthologized story of all time?
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Post by dem bones on Aug 13, 2010 21:27:19 GMT
wouldn't know where to look to find out such a thing andy, but my guess is that any number of Poe, MRJ, or Dickens' greatest hits would be there or there abouts. In the 'thirties there seems to have been a law that Walter Scott's Wandering Willie's Tale, Mary Shelley's The Transformation and W. W. Jacobs The Monkey's Paw had to be included in a collection before it could call itself a book of Ghost Stories. Dracula's Guest sure gets about a bit too.
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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 13, 2010 22:05:08 GMT
Surely The Monkey's Paw! By the way, look what I found in a 1984 copy of Fantasy Review - the Kraut Strikes Back indeed
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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2010 8:35:27 GMT
a really good article, too, punky in tone, communicates the enthusiasm of what must have been an exciting time. "We've now about 60 writers who publish books ... and there are two or three dozen pulp hacks who can make a living from their writing. The latter group established itself in the fifties, but the young ones mostly grew out of German fandom, and the average age is 27."
How did they all get along? Were the veterans supportive of the younger guys?
My favourite line
"Another consequence was the establishment of a ghetto situation. The genre was damned as "literature for lunatics" ...."
Dear God, what did they make of horror?!!!
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Post by andydecker on Aug 14, 2010 11:58:01 GMT
Jesus Motherf****g Christ, It Lives! to quote Shea and Wilson I totally forget this. a really good article, too, punky in tone, communicates the enthusiasm of what must have been an exciting time. "We've now about 60 writers who publish books ... and there are two or three dozen pulp hacks who can make a living from their writing. The latter group established itself in the fifties, but the young ones mostly grew out of German fandom, and the average age is 27 I can´t remember how the contact with Fantasy Newletter was done; I had a suscription and liked it a lot. It was very well done. I wrote this together with german sf-writer and editor Ronald Hahn who was (and is) working in the industry. I was just a fan back then. He was responsible for the punky tone; he wrote a lot of humourous and satirical sf at the time, visited international cons and so on. How did they all get along? Were the veterans supportive of the younger guys? Not really. I never was much into fandom, but there were several groups, some of which - especial the younger guys - were very political. And they despised a lot of those veterans, some of which were pretty right wing. There really was an energy, as if the big break was just waiting around the corner. From the ghetto to the serious markets. To be recognized. To write THE SF novel. But it all died with a whimper. My favourite line "Another consequence was the establishment of a ghetto situation. The genre was damned as "literature for lunatics" ...." Dear God, what did they make of horror?!!! Not much Horror was a new market on the pulp front, and when it finally established its own fandom with mini-cons and collectors, it was already dying on its feet. And it never developed that kind of valid literary criticismn the SF had occasionally. But to be honest, on that level there isn´t enough content in german horror pulp to write about. As SF was growing more respectable thanks to the movies and the snobish literary critics even recognized a few choice writers like Dick, Asimov or Herbert, Horror was only a topic when it had problems with censorship. It has all so fundamentally changed. Today writers like Stephen King are absorbed in the mainstream, horror as a marketing category is dead - or relegated to the small press, the ultimate niche, which seemingly can´t differentiate between fiction and fan-fiction - , the pulp market as a whole is as good as dead.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2010 18:26:19 GMT
There really was an energy, as if the big break was just waiting around the corner. From the ghetto to the serious markets..... much as it's unlike me to introduce a note of optimism, but it will come again, you know! Though it may take a while. Not being an author (anti-grammer, non-existent punctuation, inability to string two coherent sentances together all proved a handicap) i'm not best placed to comment on the situation over here, but i'm guessing the industry has been in better shape. Other than Robinson, i can't think of any mainstream publisher that produces horror paperbacks on a relatively regular basis, but even they seem to favour paranormal/ vampire romance titles these days (no problem with that: it sells). i'm sure there ARE more, but they don't come immediately to mind. The consensus seems to be that the best work is coming via small press imprints, and there's probably a lot of truth in that, though even a few of their number do a grand job of alienating the audience with their fuck you prices. There are days when the devil in me hopes every SP publisher who ever broke the £30 barrier goes bust like the rest of us in impending recession-the sequel, but then i think of the alternative - bloody ebooks and the like ....
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Post by andydecker on Aug 15, 2010 13:07:38 GMT
There really was an energy, as if the big break was just waiting around the corner. From the ghetto to the serious markets..... much as it's unlike me to introduce a note of optimism, but it will come again, you know! No, I meant this specifically about the 80s and SF. There was the idea that Sf as literature was relevant, that it had to move from the space opera a la Smith to earnest concerns. Like the later Brunner or Malzberg, Joe Haldeman and so on. This of course never happened, as even the big german publishers of the time rather bought anglo-american novels than manuscripts from german writers. German SF had a bad reputation as being boring badly written and a non-seller. This was a frustrating situation for the writers as they perceived this as not even getting a chance. Quite ironically fantasy, which back then was ridiculed by those writers as crap, is today the big seller on the paperback and even hardcover markets - no small thanks to Harry Potter who made the abominable All Ages fantasy a success - while SF is slowly dying. And of course nobody writes socially or politcal relevant SF anymore. As nobody wants to read it either. The SF which still sells is the Space Opera. It is also a sad irony that today there is a lively market for german writers on the book market. And they even are successful in sales. But this is a new generation.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2010 11:26:52 GMT
No, I meant this specifically about the 80s and SF. yeah, i got that, but i thought the comparison between what was happening with the SF crowd in Germany then and the current state of play re horror (and, to the best of my very limited knowledge, SF) in the UK was worth making. From what i can gather, horror also has a pretty awful reputation over here (which, i guess, is why so many writers are keen to distance themselves from it, hence 'Dark Fantasy') and one name author once told me that his big selling crime fiction is really "horror for those who don't know they like it". i can see at least some of "our" authors attempting to infiltrate and subvert the Paranormal Romance genre over the coming years as that is what's shoving horror off the shelves in the high street bookstores (the few that are left) and a body has to eat. For all that i might not often show it, i do feel sorry for the present crop of small press movers and shakers who would likely have made the transition to the mainstream with ease were both the industry and the genre going through the kind of boom periods we saw in the wake of Stephen King, Clive Barker and, much as it pains me to admit it, Anne Rice. Seems to me they opened doors for hundreds of their contemporaries and the more of it was on the High Street, the more the likes of casual readers like my step-dad would read it. It's not hard to picture his reaction if i mentioned to him that i was after a little something from Ex-Occidente Press which was gonna set me back £50 (relax, i'm not!), and he'd be right.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 6, 2010 6:29:07 GMT
Arthur Machen - Out Of The Earth: Have been putting off and putting off rereading Machen's greatest horror hits for fear they'll not live up to my fond recollections, but today's rematch with The Shining Pyramid went so well - probably got more from it than the first time - that I had to try another. Out Of The Earth, first published in 1915, is a companion piece to the far earlier The Shining Pyramid (1895): Told in documentary style with input from a number of sources, it concerns a spate of rumours emanating from Welsh villages where, it's claimed, the children have terrified lone women, beaten and even tortured young evacuees - "A little boy had been impaled on a stake in a lonely field near Manavon; another boy had been lured to destruction over the cliff at Castell Coch". Machen knows these areas well - he holidays there on a frequent basis - and can't believe the children have, as claimed by his lawyer friend, taken to using language so foul it would even raise eyebrows in the worst London slum. Of course, the local kids are entirely innocent of these allegations. The real culprits are the Little People - those horrible, stunted creatures with the faces of lecherous old men - who are celebrating that mankind, currently engaged in bloody World War, is behaving very much as they would wish. Machen's reference to the public reaction to his (then) recently published The Bowmen adds a winning touch of "authenticity" to his report. Lord Dunsany - The Magician: He lurks with his hapless acolyte in a slimy, dark cavern beneath Belgrave Square, and he has decided that London has outlasted it's welcome and must be returned to one massive field. The acolyte is sent forth to locate the ingredient crucial to the spell's success: "Bring me the heart of the toad that dwelleth in Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany." Several months later, this poor devil returns with a nasty little rotting something in a box. They drag their cauldron up a hill on the outskirts of the city, the Magician utters his terrible incantations, and .... Sax Rohmer - The Whispering Mummy: Cairo. Artist Felix Breton and our narrator, Kernaby Pasha, visit a nightclub to watch the performance of exotic dancer Yasmina. Breton, duly captivated by Yasmina's beauty, asks her to pose for him, a request which does not go down well with her non-too secret admirer, Ahmed Es-Kebir, who belongs to feared occult outfit, the Black Darwishes. Breton loans a sarcophagus from the museum as a prop for his macabre painting, and gradually comes to the realisation that Yasmina is a reincarnation of its mummified occupant, a Priestess of Isis. Then - disaster! Yasmina disappears and the mummy informs the artist - in the dancer's broken French - that she has been murdered by the Black Darwishes, and he, Breton, is to blame. Had he not outraged Ahmed Es-Kebir she would be dancing still. Despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, the local magistrate, Abu Tabah, doesn't believe any of this whispering mummy mumbo jumbo. He has been keeping an eye on things since the incident at the nightclub, and is well aware that the Black Darwishes favoured form of retribution is to drive those who incur their enmity to suicide. All very atmospheric, but, disappointingly, the "supernatural" episode is rationalised when you rather hoped it wouldn't be and the story limps out on a lame note as a result. Any disenchanted belly-dancers who are maybe carrying an excess pound or two are likely to utter a few death-curses of their own when they read the opening sequence.
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Post by dem bones on May 20, 2018 17:03:04 GMT
Algernon Blackwood - The Empty Sleeve: (The London Magazine, Jan. 1911). Such is the magnitude of master violinist Mr. Hyman's zeal to possess the Gilmer brothers' prized Guarnerius, that it takes on animal shape. The Gilmer flat is subsequently ransacked by a cat-burglar, but the botched robbery costs Hyman dear when his paw is caught in the elevator door. Fritz Leiber - Four Ghosts In Hamlet: (MF&SF, Jan. 1965). Old trouper Guthrie Boyd bows out to career best notices at Wolverton theatre, yet the doctor confirmed Boyd's alcoholism had taken it's toll hours before the first curtain. Monica, who has been dabbling with a ouija board, swears the show-stealing phantom was Shakespeare himself, but perhaps Bill 'Props' Simpson knows more about the ghost-Ghost than he cares to admit.
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