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Post by dem on Sept 5, 2010 5:29:54 GMT
Michel Parry (ed.) - The Supernatural Solution: Chilling Tales Of Sleuths Versus Spooks (Panther, 1976) Introduction - Michel Parry
J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Green Tea
E. and H. Heron - The Story Of Yand Manor House
William Hope Hodgson - The Gateway Of The Monster
L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace - The Warder Of The Door
Dion Fortune - Blood Lust
Arthur Machen - The Shining Pyramid
Seabury Quinn - The Jest Of Warburg Tantavul
Manly Wade Wellman - The Two Graves Of Lill Warren (aka The Last Grave Of Lill Warren
Dennis Wheatley - The Case Of The Red-Headed WomanBlurb:
Meet the haunted detectives - they track cases too tough for Sherlock Holmes himself!
Doctor Martin Hesselius, Carnacki the Ghost-finder, Bell the master of mysteries, Neils Orsen the Ghost-hunter: thrill to the suspense-charged adventures of these and other daring psychic sleuths as they track malevolent supernatural evildoers to the edge of the unknown - and beyond …Lord Probert recently guided us through the Dr. Martin Hessius casebook via his review of In a Glass Darkly, and there's a Wordsworth edition of Carnacki The Ghost-Finder we're sure to get around to in time. Dion Fortune's Blood Lust we've met on the fledgling The Secrets Of Dr. Taverner thread. As to the rest, lucky you, we begin with some revamped rubbish from early Vault. Seabury Quinn - The Jest Of Warburg Tantavul: Caused an outcry when it was first published due to it's taboo subject matter. "Offhand", commented Author & Journalist for October 1934, "it is faintly conceivable that a delicate handling of this subject might appear in one of the experimental periodicals, or even such purveyors of adult literary fare as Harpers, Scribner's or American Mercury, but in a pulp magazine, never!". The strangely named villain of the piece is one of the most spiteful creations in Quinn's fiction, his dying "jest", an envelope addressed to "To my Children, Dennis and Arabella Tantavul, to be opened on the occasion of the birth of their first child". Some neat supernatural touches - at one point, the disembodied, leering face of Tantavul hovers over the pram like a child's balloon - as the dead man wreaks his last and most terrible act of revenge on the woman who dared divorce him.  H. R. Hammond, Weird Tales, Sept. 1934. : "Old-time folks believe it's poison bad luck to bury a witch in church ground". Lill, a femme fatale and reputed witch is dead, shot through the heart with a silver bullet. The reclusive Pos Parrell - the only man who ever truly loved her and one of the few who never had a kiss from her lips - pays for both her coffin and a plot in the Beaver Dam churchyard. Come the morning after the funeral, and her body's been dug up and dumped on his doorstep by some callous soul - or at least, that's how it appears to Pos .. Regular Wellman psychic sleuth John Thurstone, well-versed in the works of Montague Summers and a colleague of Seabury Quinn's Jules De Grandin, investigates .. Dennis Wheatley - The Case Of The Red-Headed Woman: The four Neils Orsen stories - The Case Of The Thing That Whimpered, The Case Of The Long Dead Lord, The Case Of The Red Headed Woman and The Case Of The Haunted Chateau - and perhaps best read (if at all!) in Wheatley's Gunmen, Gallants & Ghosts (originally Hutchinson, 1943: the post-1962 editions include new material) where each are prefaced with a short but informative author's note and we learn that the psychic sleuth was modelled on Wheatley's psychic friend, Henry Dewhurst. The titles seem to echo the 'Flaxman Low' stories, but these are far closer to pastiches of Carnacki. Together with his assistant, Bruce Hemmingway, the affable, globetrotting Swede Neils Orsen investigates cases in London, New York, Scotland and France. Some of the seemingly 'supernatural' cases are rationalised - the only thing haunting one of the locations is a cell of (didn't you just know it?) German spies - but he comes up against the real deal on two occasions. In The Case Of The Red Headed Woman, a South Kensington flat gains a terrible reputation following a series of suicides. Wheatley considers this the pick of the bunch and I doubt he got too many arguments on that score. The Case Of The Haunted Chateau gets off to a promising start: During World War II, an old chateau " ... had to be abandoned because it is so badly haunted that even the officers refuse to stay in it." The spectre is reputedly that of the sadistic Vicomte de Cheterau who bled the peasants dry and was crucified by them during the Revolution for his sins. As to The Long Dead Lord, he's up and mithering Fiona Clyde in Stuart Castle until Orsen puts a stop to his fun and games.
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Post by dem on Sept 5, 2010 8:57:37 GMT
Arthur Machen - The Shining Pyramid: Vaughan persuades Dyson to leave his bustling Oxford Street nerve-centre to accompany him back to remote South Wales where Annie Trevor, the local village beauty, recently went missing after taken a short cut over the wild, bare hillside. According to the ever-dependable superstitious peasants, she's been made away with by the little people or some such yokel tommyrot. Vaughan, in his wisdom, reckons it's all part of some nebulous plot to steal his silver plate collection, but Dyson, intrigued by the curious arrangements of flints and the chalking of sinister eye symbols that appear nightly on his friend's property, eventually hits upon the dreadful truth. Satisfied he's identified the correct night from the cryptic messages, he leads his friend out in the hills to a vantage point overlooking a bowl-shaped depression in the earth.
"Speak a little lower." said Dyson. "It might not do us any good if we are overheard."
"Overheard here! There is not a soul within three miles of us."
"Possibly not: indeed, I should say certainly not. But there might be a body somewhat nearer."
And so it proves!
Machen's fairy folk have little in common with J. M. Barrie's Tinker Bell and friends. "Things made in the form of man but stunted like children, hideously deformed with the almond eyes burning with evil and unspeakable lusts." They detest mankind, rejoicing in his catastrophes (Out Of The Earth) when they're not actually instrumental in bringing about the destruction themselves (The Shining Pyramid, The Novel Of The Black Seal). Dyson and Vaughan are too late to rescue Annie - who dies horribly - and it's doubtful either could ever find it in them to tell poor Mr. Trevor what exactly became of his daughter.
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Post by marksamuels on Sept 5, 2010 9:23:24 GMT
I jotted down an ingenious theory in my HPL notebook about "The Shining Pyramid", specifically about the column of green flame mentioned when the slimy horde of Little People appear in dreadful writhings. I believed that Lovecraft directly borrowed that imagery of the green flame and trogolodytes for his tale "The Festival" (1923). Alas! I soon discovered that Lovecraft didn't read this particular Machen story until 1925!  Mark S. |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 22, 2016 14:21:03 GMT
Arthur Machen - The Shining Pyramid: Vaughan persuades Dyson to leave his bustling Oxford Street nerve-centre to accompany him back to remote South Wales where Annie Trevor, the local village beauty, recently went missing after taken a short cut over the wild, bare hillside. According to the ever-dependable superstitious peasants, she's been made away with by the little people or some such yokel tommyrot. Vaughan, in his wisdom, reckons it's all part of some nebulous plot to steal his silver plate collection, but Dyson, intrigued by the curious arrangements of flints and the chalking of sinister eye symbols that appear nightly on his friend's property, eventually hits upon the dreadful truth. Satisfied he's identified the correct night from the cryptic messages, he leads his friend out in the hills to a vantage point overlooking a bowl-shaped depression in the earth. "Speak a little lower." said Dyson. "It might not do us any good if we are overheard."
"Overheard here! There is not a soul within three miles of us."
"Possibly not: indeed, I should say certainly not. But there might be a body somewhat nearer."And so it proves! Machen's fairy folk have little in common with J. M. Barrie's Tinker Bell and friends. "Things made in the form of man but stunted like children, hideously deformed with the almond eyes burning with evil and unspeakable lusts." They detest mankind, rejoicing in his catastrophes ( Out Of The Earth) when they're not actually instrumental in bringing about the destruction themselves ( The Shining Pyramid, The Novel Of The Black Seal). Dyson and Vaughan are too late to rescue Annie - who dies horribly - and it's doubtful either could ever find it in them to tell poor Mr. Trevor what exactly became of his daughter. It turns out that Border Country, a Harlech Television series of plays set in the Welsh border that I remember on ITV but paid no attention to, included an episode (the third of three) based on "The Shining Pyramid". Did anyone see it? It starred Anton Rogers as Dr. Dyson and Edward Petherbridge as Lord Vaughan. Even in 1979 the actors were too old for the characters (who also seem to have gone up in the world). Did anyone see it? Details are scarce: www.imdb.com/title/tt0400816/ |
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Post by Durtal1963 on Dec 17, 2018 9:31:03 GMT
It turns out that Border Country, a Harlech Television series of plays set in the Welsh border that I remember on ITV but paid no attention to, included an episode (the third of three) based on "The Shining Pyramid". Did anyone see it? It starred Anton Rogers as Dr. Dyson and Edward Petherbridge as Lord Vaughan. Even in 1979 the actors were too old for the characters (who also seem to have gone up in the world). Did anyone see it? Details are scarce: www.imdb.com/title/tt0400816/Yes, I did. It was shown late night on Granada TV, I think. Either that or due to some quirk of atmospherics I was able to pick it up in Lancashire though being broadcast from Wales. I remember it being quite atmospheric, though if truth be told it probably suffered from that addiction to the ‘pregnant pause’ that so characterises ‘70s TV. And the lead actor was Edward Petherbridge, who was always too theatrical and mannered for my taste. If I’m honest though, mucky pup that I was at the time, I chiefly remember it for the Annie character getting her kit off! Am surprised that it hasn’t resurfaced since on a Network DVD. Would certainly buy it if it became available. |
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Post by Dr Terror on Dec 17, 2018 15:18:02 GMT
There's a bit about Border Country here |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 18, 2018 13:17:46 GMT
It turns out that Border Country, a Harlech Television series of plays set in the Welsh border that I remember on ITV but paid no attention to, included an episode (the third of three) based on "The Shining Pyramid". Did anyone see it? It starred Anton Rogers as Dr. Dyson and Edward Petherbridge as Lord Vaughan. Even in 1979 the actors were too old for the characters (who also seem to have gone up in the world). Did anyone see it? Details are scarce: www.imdb.com/title/tt0400816/Yes, I did. It was shown late night on Granada TV, I think. Either that or due to some quirk of atmospherics I was able to pick it up in Lancashire though being broadcast from Wales. I remember it being quite atmospheric, though if truth be told it probably suffered from that addiction to the ‘pregnant pause’ that so characterises ‘70s TV. And the lead actor was Edward Petherbridge, who was always too theatrical and mannered for my taste. If I’m honest though, mucky pup that I was at the time, I chiefly remember it for the Annie character getting her kit off! Am surprised that it hasn’t resurfaced since on a Network DVD. Would certainly buy it if it became available. Thanks for the reply, almost exactly two years later! When I saw Edward Petherbridge live in The Woman in Black, he gave a fine understated performance that contrasted (in a good sense) with Joseph Fiennes's broader performance. te |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 18, 2018 13:33:09 GMT
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 18, 2018 13:35:12 GMT
Damned if I know. Gremlins? |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 18, 2018 13:44:09 GMT
Ghosts! Brr.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 18, 2018 15:00:33 GMT
There's a bit about Border Country hereSpot the mistakes in this sentence: "Arthur Machem’s supernatural ‘The Shining Pyramid’, in which an academic sceptic gets drawn into the ancient Celtic occult, sits within the H. R. James Ghost Story for Christmas mould". |
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Post by helrunar on Dec 18, 2018 23:23:37 GMT
Cool to read about the film of "The Shining Pyramid." I wonder whether it survives or not.
I seem to recall looking at the one surviving image and maybe a Radio Times blurb from the period back when this was first posted.
H.
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Post by ripper on Dec 20, 2018 11:01:49 GMT
Border Country sounds vaguely familiar, so I think I saw at least one of the episodes, but as for exactly what I saw back then it is just too hazy.
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Post by Durtal1963 on Dec 21, 2018 12:04:48 GMT
It turns out that Border Country, a Harlech Television series of plays set in the Welsh border that I remember on ITV but paid no attention to, included an episode (the third of three) based on "The Shining Pyramid". Did anyone see it? It starred Anton Rogers as Dr. Dyson and Edward Petherbridge as Lord Vaughan. Even in 1979 the actors were too old for the characters (who also seem to have gone up in the world). Did anyone see it? Details are scarce: www.imdb.com/title/tt0400816/Yes, I did. It was shown late night on Granada TV, I think. Either that or due to some quirk of atmospherics I was able to pick it up in Lancashire though being broadcast from Wales. I remember it being quite atmospheric, though if truth be told it probably suffered from that addiction to the ‘pregnant pause’ that so characterises ‘70s TV. And the lead actor was Edward Petherbridge, who was always too theatrical and mannered for my taste. If I’m honest though, mucky pup that I was at the time, I chiefly remember it for the Annie character getting her kit off! Am surprised that it hasn’t resurfaced since on a Network DVD. Would certainly buy it if it became available. Thanks for the reply, almost exactly two years later! When I saw Edward Petherbridge live in The Woman in Black, he gave a fine understated performance that contrasted (in a good sense) with Joseph Fiennes's broader performance. te Interesting to hear another’s take on Edward Petherbridge. Perhaps I am too hard on him - though his performance as Lord Peter Wimsey does nothing to persuade me otherwise - since he was/is(?) married to the lovely Emily Richard, who starred in one of my favourite supernatural thrillers of the 1980s, ‘The Dark Side of the Sun’. |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 21, 2018 14:05:39 GMT
Thanks for the reply, almost exactly two years later! When I saw Edward Petherbridge live in The Woman in Black, he gave a fine understated performance that contrasted (in a good sense) with Joseph Fiennes's broader performance. te Interesting to hear another’s take on Edward Petherbridge. Perhaps I am too hard on him - though his performance as Lord Peter Wimsey does nothing to persuade me otherwise - since he was/is(?) married to the lovely Emily Richard, who starred in one of my favourite supernatural thrillers of the 1980s, ‘The Dark Side of the Sun’. I thought Edward Petherbridge gave an effective performance as Lord Peter Wimsey. He de-emphasized Wimsey's silly-assedness (if there's such a word). |
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