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Post by dem bones on Aug 15, 2010 18:12:11 GMT
Edmund Crispin (ed.) – Best Tales of Terror (Faber and Faber, 1962) Edmund Crispin – Introduction
Ray Bradbury – The Emissary Evelyn Waugh – The Man Who Liked Dickens L. P. Hartley – A Summons L. T. C. Rolt – The Mine John Collier – Bird of Prey Roald Dahl – Royal Jelly Robert Aickman – Ringing the Changes John Metcalfe – Mr. Meldrum’s Mania Elizabeth Jane Howard – Three Miles Up J. G. Ballard – Manhole 69 James E. Gunn – The Misogynist Ray Bradbury – The Next in LineThis must have been very welcome in 1962 as even those stories which seem over-anthologised to us now were most of them fresh at the time, and Crispin's introduction reveals a man who was clearly fond of the macabre. Most of the stories have been commented upon by various hands elsewhere on the board, but i'm not sure we've had anything about. L. T. C. Rolt – The Mine: Shropshire. An old timer in The Miners Arms, Cleidden, explains how the now abandoned lead mine at Long Barrow came to be known locally as 'Hell's Mouth' after a party of fifteen began working the new level. The "angry darkness" of the cavern gave the miners the creeps to such an extent that, after one of their number seemingly vanished down there, it was a year before they could finally be coerced into working the seam. Then, one night, as the narrator is chatting with the engine-man, the emergency bell. They haul up the cage whose solitary occupant, Joe Beecher, looks absolutely ghastly. Without speaking to his rescuers, Beecher sprints off into Dykes Wood as though the Devil were after him, eventually falling to his death in the quarry. It is some weeks before the engine-man recovers sufficient of his wits to tell what he saw crouched above the cage ... I get sick of saying "one of Rolt's finest" but this is, and so are just about all the other stories I've read from Sleep No More. He really was brilliant at this stuff. J. G. Ballard – Manhole 69: "For the first time man will be living a full twenty-four hour day, not spending a third of it as an invalid snoring his way through an eight hour peep show of infantile erotica" That, at least, is the theory. Three volunteers, Long, Gorrell and Avery, have had their brains slightly modified by Dr. Neill so that, for the duration of the experiment, they shalln't be able to sleep even if they wish to. Confined to a gym, at first their only struggle is fighting off boredom but gradually paranoia sets in, followed by mass hallucination. To emphasise the claustrophobia of their situation, the author even introduces that most Gothic of props, the collapsing prison. It doesn't seem right, somehow, referring to a character in a Ballad story as anything so lowly as a mad scientist, but Dr. Neill slots into the tradition just so. Here is a man entirely insensible to the fact that his guinea-pigs, have been driven to psychosis thanks to his short-sightedness. James E. Gunn – The Misogynist: Harry, one month married to Lucille, is hugely popular with his workmates on account of his way with a funny story, but women just don't find him the least amusing, not even his blushing bride. Once you've endured his monologue about 'the female conspiracy', you'll have a better understanding of why this should be the case, except Harry isn't being paranoid .... Essentially, this is Richard Matheson's Crickets, just that the insects have been booted off-stage by the "monstrous regiment"! L. P. Hartley – A Summons: His little sister is a nervous type. "If I dream I'm being murdered I shall knock on the wall, and I shall expect you to come." Unbeknown to her, he's been having some pretty disturbing dreams of his own. It is only 1924, but Hartley has already invented our dear friend, dark-bloody-fantasy.
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Post by monker on Aug 16, 2010 2:28:50 GMT
You are a worry, dem. I'll have to read that Hartley story... it'll probably turn out to be his best!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2010 8:38:34 GMT
*incredulous* Are you implying that my judgement in matters literary are in some ways, shall we say, flawed, mr. monker? Have a care, sir! wasn't for the likes of me and some of you guys may never have even heard of Six Million Dollar Man: The Secret Of Bigfoot - you'd probably still be reading R. H. Malden, Arthur Gray or some other old dead blokes. In his introduction, Crispen writes of A Summons "Evasiveness lies in the fact that the ostensible theme of the story is to some extent a red herring. What disquiets us chiefly, without our fully realising it, is the - to put it mildly - somewhat off-colour trend of the soliloquist's thoughts; This is not, surely, quite the ideal elder brother for a nervous girl to have." Which, essentially, is what i was just coming to. At just the four pages it's surely one of Hartley's most economical stories in the field, effective, but it didn't frighten me anything like it appears to have Crispen. I'm certainly with him on The Mine, though and am looking forward to a rematch with Mr. Meldrum's Mania.
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Post by monker on Aug 16, 2010 21:54:21 GMT
Just teasing, dem, but I won't give you credit for discovering that bigfoot episode of The Six Million Doller Man, that thing's been haunting me for years. If, however, you could shed more light on that weird episode I saw with the alien transformations, I'd be eternally greatful.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2010 13:49:29 GMT
i think we'd best send out an S. O. S. to killercrab for an answer to that one.
an idle google led me to a YouTube clip of the Bionic woman versus Bigfoot which is absolutely brilliant. i've since been trying to learn if there was a novelisation of that one as well, but all i could come up with were this pair of tie-ins, Eileen Lottman's The Bionic Woman: Welcome Home Jaime (Berkley Medallion, 1975) and Maud Willis's The Bionic Woman: A Question Of Life (Star, 1977), neither of which look likely to feature any Sasquatch action, more's the pity.
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Post by killercrab on Aug 17, 2010 14:52:53 GMT
Sounds like a season 4 or 5 story - either The Return of Bigfoot OR The Lost Island in which Steve saves a drowning alien. One of my favourites is the one where William Shatner can talk to dolphins after returning from space. KC
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Post by Johnlprobert on Aug 17, 2010 19:13:48 GMT
One of my favourites is the one where William Shatner can talk to dolphins after returning from space. KC That's 'Burning Bright' KC - one of my favourite episodes too!
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Post by killercrab on Aug 17, 2010 19:20:42 GMT
but all i could come up with were this pair of tie-ins, Eileen Lottman's The Bionic Woman: Welcome Home Jaime (Berkley Medallion, 1975) and Maud Willis's The Bionic Woman: A Question Of Life (Star, 1977) >>
I don't think there were alot of BW tie-in books actually. My favourite BW villians are the Fembots - ah those were the days...
KC
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Post by dem bones on Aug 18, 2010 13:27:22 GMT
good on you, gents, i knew you wouldn't let us down! KC, i've a feeling those are the only two Bionic Woman novelisations, which seems an awful shame. That $6m Dollar Man: The Secret Of Bigfoot tie-in has to be read to be disbelieved. They just don't write them like that anymore, and more's the pity.
back at Best Tales Of Terror and even i couldn't fail to appreciate the genius of The Smoking Leg, The Double Admiral and the later, horrible Time-Fuse, but some of John Metcalfe's other better known stories have been a struggle. Aickman's choice Nightmare Jack and the almost unanimously lauded The Feasting Dead (that Hamlyn-esque title couldn't be less appropriate) are cases in point and a rematch is long overdue. This next story, often hilarious and ultimately horrific, is a perfect place to start.
John Metcalfe - Mr. Meldrum's Mania: St. John's Wood, London and Sixth Avenue, New York City. Begins at the end, or at least in the direct aftermath of the hero's horrific transformation which leaves a lift-operator at the Forensic Arts Building stark raving mad (he dies on the psychotic ward of Bellevue that same night), our narrator a shambling wreck with a twin aversion to fedora hats and flapper girls, and the dubious alienist, Dr. Fazo, pocketing his stash and abandoning a lucrative practice for good . For months leading up to the catastrophe, Mr. Amos Meldrum, a 32 year-old exporter of pseudo-"rare Spanish delicacies", has been troubled by his face. Since having a tooth pulled, he is conscious of an invisible, 15" protuberance from his nose which makes it impossible for him to get within a foot of an object without a throb of pain. While studying the mummy caskets in the British Museum, he becomes involved in an altercation with a tourist and, blacking out, causes the man such damage it makes the headlines of the Evening Standard which speak in terms of an "escaped madman". Meldrum, whose flatmate has been telling him for some months that he's acting strange, finds it expedient to leave the country. So he heads for New York, where he encounters Ferdinand Smith (our narrator and eyewitness to the final tragedy) who accompanies him on his regular visits to the couch of Dr. Fazo. After patiently relieving Mr. Meldrum of any surplus cash, the alienist, astonishingly, hits upon the truth - that subconsciously his patient imagines himself to be turning into the Egyptian God Thoth. Fazo's analysis is accurate in every detail but one. There is no "imagines" about it ....
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Post by monker on Aug 19, 2010 13:44:43 GMT
'The Lost Island' is definitely The Six Million Dollar Man episode I was thinking of.
On Metcalfe; I really do think that 'The Bad Lands' is a classic and the non weird, 'Paper Windmills' is incredibly atmospheric. However, his occasional, bombastic style can be a bit of a trial. I also struggled a bit to know what was actually happening at a few points in the extended 'chase' sequence on the train at the end of 'The Feasting Dead'. I think there might be a few different edits of that novella, I'm not sure if anything is clearer in any of them.
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 19, 2010 14:51:12 GMT
I read Crispin's The Moving Toyshop not too long ago - there's a famous car chase in that where the character says "Let's go left, after all Gollancz is publishing this book!" But the one I was reading was a Penguin, so even more confusing...
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Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 5, 2011 12:12:00 GMT
Edmund Crispin's "St Bartholomew’s Day" in Richard Dalby's The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories Volume 2 is a good M.R. James inspired horror story. Crispin's first two crime novels, The Case of the Gilded Fly and Holy Disorders, contain complete Jamesian ghost stories as part of the narrative. Both novels are in print. I've read a lot of Jamesiana, and Crispin's three stories are worth reading.
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Post by charliegrenville on Jul 17, 2014 17:11:37 GMT
That Bigfoot episode of the Bionic Woman must have terrified a lot of people of my age. It often crops up in pub and party conversations, or at least it used to, alongside The House That Bled To Death and Quiet As A Nun, as one of "those moments" And it's my attempt to piece together those moments from the broken strands of childhood memory that have led me to where I am today.
Yet one of my pre teen terrors still eludes me- the episode of Hawaii Five O concerning voodoo, where a man is killed at the start in a ritual, and scary faced dollies jump around. It was enough to send the 6 year old me running into the garden for my mum, and 35 years on I still haven't seen it in full. Anybody know its name?
It took me three attempts to type this by the way. The trees either side of the train line keep making the reception go giznay on the hombre.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 18, 2014 9:22:24 GMT
Yet one of my pre teen terrors still eludes me- the episode of Hawaii Five O concerning voodoo, where a man is killed at the start in a ritual, and scary faced dollies jump around. It was enough to send the 6 year old me running into the garden for my mum, and 35 years on I still haven't seen it in full. Anybody know its name? 'fraid not, but would love to see it! And wasn't there a halloween episode? The one that has stuck with me is camp classic A Distant Thunder, with nice Danno infiltrating a Neo-Nazi cell and coming on all racist.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 24, 2020 13:41:38 GMT
Edmund Crispin's "St Bartholomew’s Day" in Richard Dalby's The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories Volume 2 is a good M.R. James inspired horror story. Crispin's first two crime novels, The Case of the Gilded Fly and Holy Disorders, contain complete Jamesian ghost stories as part of the narrative. Both novels are in print. I've read a lot of Jamesiana, and Crispin's three stories are worth reading. This is the 1980 Avon edition of The Case of the Gilded Fly for which I have a copy. Unusually, the cover artist seems to have actually read the book and followed the description of Fen (Crispin's academic amateur detective).
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