Stephen Jones - Mammoth Book Of Dracula

[dem]

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Dracula: Vampire Tales for the New Millennium (Robinson, 1997)

Photo: Paul Aston

Introduction: I Bid You Welcome – Stephen Jones
Foreword: Great Uncle Bram and Vampires – Daniel Farson

Bram Stoker – Dracula: or The Un-Dead: Prologue
Christopher Fowler – Dracula’s Library
Thomas Ligotti – The Heart Of Count Dracula, Descendant Of Attila, Scourge Of God
Mandy Slater – Daddy’s Little Girl
Ramsey Campbell – Conversion
Manly Wade Wellman – The Devil Is Not Mocked
Nancy Kilpatrick – Teaserama
Nancy Holder – Blood Freak
Brian Lumley – Zack Phalanx Is Vlad The Impaler
Basil Copper – When Greek Meets Greek
Kim Newman – Coppola’s Dracula
Hugh B. Cave – The Second Time Around
Brian Mooney – Endangered Species
Roberta Lannes – Melancholia
Lisa Morton – Children of the Long Night
Nicholas Royle – Mbo
Paul J. McAuley – The Worst Place in the World
Guy N. Smith – Larry’s Guest
Jan Edwards – A Taste of Culture
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Rudolph
Graham Masterton – Roadkill
Terry Lamsley – Volunteers
John Gordon – Black Beads
Joel Lane – Your European Son
Brian Stableford – Quality Control
Michael Marshall Smith – Dear Alison
Conrad Williams – Bloodlines
Chris Morgan – Windows ’99 of the Soul
Mike Chinn – Blood of Eden
Brian Hodge – The Last Testament
Peter Crowther – The Last Vampire
F. Paul Wilson – The Lord’s Work

Jo Fletcher – Lord of the Undead [verse]

It's possible this might lose something if you don't read the stories in order but that's always a tall ask for me. Devoured this on publication but clearly wasn't giving it my full attention as the four i've just re-read rang not one bell between them. In fact, bar the reprints, only Teaserama and Larry's Guest have stuck, the one for its Betty Page meets Dracula premise, the other for it's injured vampire who takes up residence in the air-raid shelter at the bottom of the young kids back garden (Guy N. Smith's Whistle Down The Wind!).

Graham Masterton – Roadkill: "This part of the city, once fashionable, was now plagued by gangs of youths whose idea of an evening's entertainment was to throw petrol over sleeping tramps and set them alight, or break their legs with concrete blocks." Leeds & environs, Yorkshire. Vlad the Impaler climbs from his cellar to discover house stripped bare of belongings accumulated over the centuries, the portrait of Lucy Westenra eventually suffering the indignity of featuring on The Antiques Road Show. Unbeknown to the vampire, the Edwardian ruin has been hit by a compulsory purchase order to make way for a trunk road. Furious, he first attacks a young prostitute in a bus shelter, then spends the rest of night gorging on the blood of eight further helpless victims. This fierce session proves his undoing as Masterton kindly provides us with a nasty addition to the Ultimate Claustrophobia.

Jan Edwards – A Taste of Culture: Dracula visits the funfair on the village green, unresolved on tonight's refreshment. Chinese? Italian? A comely young mademoiselle decides him.

Thomas Ligotti – The Heart Of Count Dracula, Descendant Of Attila, Scourge Of God: The stake planted by Van Helsing impaled him, but that merely prolonged his suspension in Undeath, tortured by a thirst he's not been able to quench for a century. Now, at last, his stuck corpse has been discovered, though that might not necessarily mean good news. Nicely told and ends on a suitably pretentious note, but if I don't cut away here, this snippet will be longer than the story.

Christopher Fowler – Dracula’s Library: What became of Jonathan Harker on his travels? Fortunately, the frightfully proper young Englishman left us this journal which reveals how the vampire set him to cataloguing and, if possible, valuing his to-die-for book collection. Plenty on Vlad Drakul's bloody heritage, much black magic and scandalous erotica, the library even contains the obligatory volume bound in human skin. As he progresses in his task, so Harker is ensnared in the horrific and sensual world of the Count until it no longer appears abhorrent to him. The brides offer much encouragement. The comparison is doubtless either too obvious or too superficial, but this put me in mind of what Robert Aickman did to the Sweeney Todd story with Mark Ingestere: The Customer's Tale.

Out of sheer lazyitis, here are some I made earlier, slightly tarted up but not that you'd notice.

Ramsey Campbell – Conversion: sees our old friend the Transylvanian peasant pay a visit to Castle Dracula to confront him over the death of his sister in law. When he leaves the castle, his mind is a blank – all he can remember is that he found the suspected-vampire very affable. He reaches his house but … why does it smell so horrible all of a sudden? One of Ramsey's very EC ones.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Rudolph: Another RCH story that veers from the inventive to the unutterably irritating when his, for want of a better term, sense of humour gets the better of him. Some of the dire-logue is painful.

Hopelessly disillusioned with life, Lauren Benfield, 37, unexpectedly lands the strange but well-paid position as cook and general factotum to Count Rudolph, whose menu never varies from pig's blood, rich mince and 'blood sausage.' It is immediately apparent to the reader that Rudolph is Undead, but his behaviour is peculiar even for the species. We learn from young Janice, his niece, that he's "ashamed" of being what he is, the son of the Vampire King. "He won't partake from the neck or even intake vital essence from a bottle.... That's why he looks so weird. And all he's got to do is imbibe once - and, oh boy, you'll see the difference. He almost gives way when I get to work on him but no way. I don't mind slap bot and fumble but no give with the vital. Well, it wouldn't be decent."

Spurred on by Janice, the Count's resistance crumples and his victim, poor Laura, gives birth to his demon offspring. So he turns her out and sets 'the pack' on her.

'The pack' are by far the best thing about Dracula's Children, the four-novella collection this comes from, but even they can't rescue Rudolph from itself.

Manly Wade Wellman - The Devil is Not Mocked: Dracula and the children of the night make short work of a Nazi unit foolish enough to believe they can commandeer a Transylvanian Castle. First published in Unknown (June 1943), this is marvellous escapist pulp, doubtless written in aid of the War effort.

[andydecker]

I can´t remeber if I read all stories, suppose not. I think I bought this back then for the Newman story as I was - and am - a big fan of the Anno Dracula cycle. A shame taht the last one never materialized. Still can laugh about his mercyless Buffy parody.

Coppola´s Dracula seemed to be such an obvious idea, but I liked the story a lot. It had a very intense atmosphere.

[dem]

Aug 18, 2010 18:57:57 GMT andydecker said:

Still can laugh about his mercyless Buffy parody.

ah, you'll have to enlighten me!

I think Mammoth Dracula may have been a dry run for what Stephen Jones intends with the forthcoming Zombie Apocalypse? The stories are linked by a very short preamble to each of a "Then Dracula moved to New York, where ..." nature. This simple device doesn't make it a novel, more an album of random adventures and reminiscences from his five hundred year career, but it works and am at a loss as to why I didn't get along with the book first time around. It's been fun all the way so far.

Brian Lumley - Zack Phalanx Is Vlad The Impaler: Love a film-crew-in-peril story, me, and this is one you can imagine the Vault Keeper providing a cackling introduction for in Tales From The Crypt! "Are you sitting comfortably? Well, make the most of it!" Combustible movie director Harry S. Skatsman, jnr., is having a lousy time of it putting the finishing touches to his Vlad bio-pic in the Carpathian Mountains. Back in Hollywood, his lead Zack "King of the bad guys" Phalanx has been involved in a traffic accident, the latest mishap to delay his arrival on set, while the local peasants, initially recruited en masse as extras, have abandoned both the shoot and their village amid dark murmurs of something bad about to befall the production. All this, and it's Skatsman's birthday! Not to worry, though. Evidently Zack was playing a hilarious joke on him as there he is now, astride a horse, leading his warlords down from the mountains with battle-axes poised, stakes sharpened ....

Nancy Kilpatrick - Teaserama: Five centuries old and by now thoroughly contemptuous of mankind, Dracula's unlife takes on a purpose when he acquires some 8mm Irving Klaw cheesecake footage of Bettie Page. Bettie is the first woman since Mina Harker to turn him on. He's collected all the films and magazines, now he must have her. The great Wallachian Prince suffers the indignity of being reduced to stalker/peeping tom in his efforts to land his prize, but the pin-up proves elusive (she's not the queen of tease for nothing). The closest he gets is when Miss Page pulls a gun on him as he leers through her bedroom window.

Having pursued Bettie from state to state as she works through her hectic schedule, a very irked Dracula abandons any hope of wooing her, he'll just have to take her by force. He bursts in on Klaw's studio, but too late. The feds have busted the place, Irving and his sister Paula are quitting the business, and the girls have already taken off. All Dracula has to show for his efforts is the directors cut of ... Teaserama

Not exactly a horror story, but fittingly cute and a nice one for Bettie's legion admirers. Karl E. Wagner's The Kind Men Like is suggested to those who fancy something ... wilder.

[dem]

Guy N. Smith - Larry's Guest: Ignore whatever rubbish I wrote about this in first post, Larry isn't a little kid, he's 52, obese, and has devoted his adult life to looking after mum, senile, 84, in the hope she'll die before him so he can enjoy the inheritance. An amateur photographer, Larry uses the underground air-raid shelter in the garden as his darkroom. He also allows his mate, Jim, to store illicit booze and fags there overnight - only this time, it seems, Jim has left a coffin which is plain taking liberties! Bad enough, but Larry is mortified to discover that he's acquired a lodger, a red eyed, ruby lipped nutter who thinks he's Dracula! This being a GNS story, the lecherous old Count has only one thing on his mind, so Larry is despatched to Bingley Street and the local red-light district, his mission, to procure a "comely wench" for the squatter in the bunker. Drug-user Sally Ann is the lucky girl but it's the photographer who is the real beneficiary in another surprisingly jolly, non-horrible horror story.

[andydecker]

Aug 19, 2010 8:29:19 GMT dem said:

Aug 18, 2010 18:57:57 GMT andydecker said:

Still can laugh about his mercyless Buffy parody.

ah, you'll have to enlighten me!

The Other Side of Midnight, which I read online somewhere but was included in a Best New Horror.

It had Newman´s vampire Genevieve living in Malibu in a trailer - in a hommage to the Rockford Files - and working as a P.I.. She gets attacked by a deranged high school vampire slayer who is manipulated by the school librarian.

mind you, it was a bit broad. Buffy was such an easy target. Still it was fun.

[dem]

Aug 19, 2010 20:36:20 GMT andydecker said:

The Other Side of Midnight, which I read online somewhere but was included in a Best New Horror.

It had Newman´s vampire Genevieve living in Malibu in a trailer - in a hommage to the Rockford Files - and working as a P.I.. She gets attacked by a deranged high school vampire slayer who is manipulated by the school librarian.

mind you, it was a bit broad. Buffy was such an easy target. Still it was fun.

Thanks, andy. It's in Best New Horror 12 which I don't have a copy of ... but it was reprinted in the recent Best Of Best New Horror which I do! Yet another for the never-ending 'to read' list! Tell you what else I enjoyed of Kim Newman's; his Where The Bodies Are Buried stories.

[dem]

As with the Mammoth Book Of Werewolves/ Wolf Men so too Robinson's The Mammoth Book of Dracula, due for reissue March 24th 2011 with an additional, brand new story from Charlaine Harris.

Blurb
Vampire tales offering a fictional history of the most memorable vampire of them all, Count Dracula.

How will the King of Vampires adapt to the social and technological changes brought by the twenty-first century? Could the Count’s condition be cured by modern medicine? How does the mythology perpetuated by literature and movies affect the existence of a real bloodsucker? What if Dracula found himself ruler of a world controlled by vampires? Or perhaps political and ecological catastrophe will result in the Count’s final destruction?

This tribute to the world’s greatest vampire collects together more than 200,000 words of Dracula fiction by masters of dark fantasy such as: Hugh B. Cave, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Basil Copper, John Gordon, Brian Hodge, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick, Roberta Lannes, Thomas Ligotti, Paul J. McAuley, Nicholas Royle, Guy N. Smith and many more.

[franklinmarsh]

Hee ! Picked up a copy of this last weekend, inspired by Kim and GNS. It appears to have Mr Jones autograph scrawled in it. No dedication though.

[Deleted]

I found his Ron Chetwynd Hayes VAMPRIE STORIES for two quid yesterday. Jaw hit the floor...

[dem]

Feb 2, 2014 20:00:52 GMT franklinmarsh said:

Hee ! Picked up a copy of this last weekend, inspired by Kim and GNS. It appears to have Mr Jones autograph scrawled in it. No dedication though.

Stap me, but there's synchronicity for you. I just re-read The Lake in the Third Black Book Of Horror and who should turn up? Good to hear from you, Mr. M, you beastly cad! In case you weren't aware, your The Last Bus is regurgitated all over the most recent Vault Advent Calendar, 2013.

[erebus]

I'm sure I had this, although the artwork was different, depicting some side profile of a female vampire spewing blood down her chin. And here is the painful part, I had this, the Frankenstein, Zombie, and Werewolf Mammoths. But in some brain drained uncalculated moment I took them to a charity shop. A month later I was pining for them back. Reason was, I think, is I always had something else to read at that time and I always passed them by. What a proper nugget I am

[dem]

Feb 3, 2014 11:01:12 GMT erebus said:

I'm sure I had this, although the artwork was different, depicting some side profile of a female vampire spewing blood down her chin.

You're thinking of the original edition of The Mammoth Book of Vampires, Mr. E.

[erebus]

Yes. You're absolutely right. Thats the one I had .

[dem]

Nancy Holder - Blood Freak: It is the Swinging sixties. 'Captain Blood,' having relocated to a castle in the Borrego desert to get away from humanity, is sought out by the flower children who consider rumours of a real-life vampire unliving on the old movie set too far out to go uninvestigated. At first Vlad (for it is he) encourages these pilgrims, but quickly concludes that mind-expanding drugs are wasted on the vacuous. "The hippie children became tiresome and he considered impaling them all. But someone on the outside was bound to find out and then there would be hell to pay." If only the doors of perception would open to him, but hallucinogenics have no effect on the Undead. Heavy bummer. But then acid guru Dr. Timothy Leary arrives with wife Rosemary, the most beautiful woman the Impaler has ever seen. Can the fugitive King of Peace & Love turn on the Count?

Chris Morgan - Windows 99 Of The Soul: Digital age Dracula reboots his war on mankind in the guise of the 'Millennium bug.'

Mandy Slater - Daddy's Little Girl: Angelica is summoned to meet her father (guess who) from whom she's been estranged for twenty-five years. The train journey perks up when sex pest Aleister Crowley and groupie invade the carriage and invite her to join them in an orgy. Dracula is not best pleased when she relates the outcome. She's no daughter of his!

[dem]

Mammoth Dracula more entertaining than I remembered it. Hugh Cave's original is proper 'thirties pulp throwback, and this next is personal pick of entire volume.

John Gordon - Black Beads: The Grayson house has stood unoccupied this past fifty years since the widow's daughter inexplicably vanished, never to be seen again. Now adventure-loving Richard Appian imposes on mystery girlfriend Angela to accompany him on a midnight raid of the property. Theirs is an odd romance. He found her in the woods, looking awful dead under a pile of leaves. Angelica has never allowed him to accompany her home protesting her place is "too small" for both of them. Ricky reckons that this could be his lucky night!

Hugh B. Cave - The Second Time Around: Ellenton, New England. Professor Jerome Howell, Psychic investigator, author of How To Protect Yourself Against Vampires & Co., responds to a plea for assistance from frightened villagers who believe an Undead walks among them. The alleged "vampire" epidemic is a hoax perpetrated by Monk Morrisey and Dan Clay, a pair of numbskull teen car-jackers, who puncture the throats of their victims with a two-pronged fork to simulate bite marks. True to form, the pair force Howell's Buick off road and into a tree, robbing him while he's out cold. But where did his passenger, an elderly female hitch-hiker, get to?

Howell, his memory blanked in the collision, struggles from the wreck to seeks aid at nearest haunted house. Dracula and elderly brides, desperate to scotch the dangerous rumours, take full advantage of situation. When next Howell encounters the teenage miscreants he'll be more than their match.