It began with a line from Justin Marriott's article on the Fawcett Crest Horrors in
Paperback Fanatic #17.
" ... M. L. Carter's noteworthy Demon Lovers and Strange Seductions ... surely qualifies as the first erotic horror anthology, four years ahead of the superior and more explicit and authority-baiting Devil's Kisses from Michel Parry (as 'Linda Lovecraft')"Anthologies of this nature have been a commonplace since the late 'eighties when Jeff Gelb & Lon Friend unleashed
Hot Blood: Tales of Provocative Horror (Pocket Books, 1989), the first entry in what would become a franchise. Friend dropped out of the project after the debut and Michael Garrett took over as co-editor for the next two,
Hotter Blood: More Tales Of Erotic Horror (Pocket, Jan 1991) and
Hottest Blood: The Ultimate In Erotic Horror (Pocket, Jan 1993), after which i was too exhausted to continue until Nancy A. Collins & Edward E. Kramer (eds.) enticed me to engage in some scandalous
Forbidden Acts (Avon October, 1995) with Karl E. Wagner, Lucy Taylor and ex-Turtle Howard "Happy Together" Kaylan. Michelle Slung came up with something a little more restrained, even literary, with
I Shudder At Your Touch (Penguin, 1991) and
Shudder Again: 22 Tales of Sex and Horror (Roc, 1993). And then there was Louisianax Caliban & Louis Ravensfield's independently published
In Blood We Lust: Depraved Sexual Fantasies for Vampires (Dark Angel Press, 1999), a book Rog kindly gifted me years back and, shamefully, one i've still not mustered sufficient enthusiasm to begin though i'm sure it's all jolly sensual.
Anyway, what i wanted to know was who should we credit with starting all this sordid business? Had there been an anthology of erotic horror stories anything like as extreme as the more infamous items in
The Devil's Kisses (Corgi, 1976) and, especially
More Devil's Kisses (Corgi, 1977) before Michel Parry invited 'Linda Lovecraft' over to party?
Ramsey Campbell, the man who would later nearly write a novel entitled
Spanked By Nuns recalls in his introduction to
Scared Stiff :Tales of Sex and Death (Guild, 1989), a collection of stories mostly written for Michel's anthologies (including a sex,drugs & horror combo which never saw the light of day): "After editing three volumes of black magic volumes for Mayflower, he complained to me that nobody was submitting tales on a sexual theme. So I wrote
Dolls, which so took the Mayflower folk aback they showed it to their lawyers, who advised them to publish."
Knowing Michel as an avid reader in several genres, if he was miffed that "nobody was submitting tales on a sexual theme" i'm prepared to believe that there wasn't much of a racy nature going on in the horror mainstream, not in short story form at any rate, though this hadn't prevented others from having a crack at compiling something a little steamier than the norm.
Don Conglon set some kind of ball rolling with his contribution to the Ballantine Chamber Of Horror series,
Tales Of Love And Horror (1961) featuring a relatively subdued cover painting from the brilliant Richard Powers and strong, if hardly ultra-risqué contributions from May Sinclair (her fab supernatural sex comedy,
The Nature of Evidence), Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Davis Grubb, William Sansom and Helen R. Hull's grim masterpiece - Mr. Winchester wills wife Thalia back from the grave, Thalia resents his interference -
Clay Shuttered Doors.
Lucy Berman likewise showed willing with
Demon Lovers: Tales of Unearthly Passions and Fiendish Seductions, (Tandem, 1970), although from what i recognise of the content, it is again hitched to the respectable end of the spectrum: Le Fanu's
Shalken The Painter, Robert Hichens'
How Love Came to Professor Guildea, F. Marion Crawford's
For The Blood Is The Life, Barry Pain's
The Moon-Slave, Thomas Lovell Beddoes' admittedly delightful poem,
The Phantom Wooer, etc.
In her introduction to
Demon Lovers & Strange Seductions: Tales of Lust and Terror (Fawcett, 1972), Margaret L. Carter wonders: "Do incorporeal forces roam the Earth, lusting after the flesh of mortal men and women?" If her selections are anything to go on, then they surely do. It's probably fair to say that there's nothing in
Demon Lovers ... quite as kinky as 'Lovecraft's better selections, but there are similarities, not least that Carter supplemented the supernatural tales with some straight SF and the odd humorous piece. It's a far more imaginative selection than her excerpt-heavy debut
The Curse Of The Undead and where else will you find Arthur Machen's
The Great God Pan and Hichens
How Love Came To Prof. Guildea sharing space with Winston Marks'
The Naked People (
Amazing Stories, September 1954) wherein a recuperating patient is haunted by nude spectres, one of whom is having it off with the nurse? It's evident that much thought went into the compilation. Even the Le Fanu story -
Ultor de Lacy - is one of his least anthologised.
If not in quality then in intent to provide a cheap thrill, it was magazines like
Web Terror Stories (1962-65),
Adventures In Horror (1970-1) and one-offs like
Monster Sex Tales (1972) which arguably paved the way for Michel's one-man war versus the missionary position. Within a year of Don Conglan's paperback, the gang at
Web Terror Stories magazine were getting into an audacious BDSM/ horror crossover which may or may not have been a conscious attempt at a shudder pulp revival. The subheading to Leslie Manette's
The Girl In The Iron Collar - "A feminist learns the facts of life" - in the debut issue amply indicates
Web's determination to corner the misogynist market, though by 1965 the girls were turning the tables and those who endured
The Whipping Cure or the
Lash Of The Avenger were as likely to be men as women. The improbably named Franz Raunch, Christine Crewell and Rip Kelly are among those to thank for providing so generous a quota of "depraved fancies."
Theodore S. Hecht
Adventures In Horror (Stanley Publications, 1970) has been described as a "Semi-pornographic magazine of horror and occult fiction". After two issues in late 1970, it changed its name to
Horror Stories, went bi-monthly before folding in October 1971. Its "sin packed" pages evidently comprised a surely, winning mix of staged photographs, "true confessions" (
She Tried To Sell My Soul To Satan), and original sadistic macabre fiction - Obediah Kemp's
Fangs Of The Fiend For The Girl Who Died Twice (August 1971) is surely worth any asking price you care to name on title alone.
Monster Sex Tales (1972) was, if anything, even more outrageous. Hecht's magazine had showed admirable restraint in settling for photo-covers featuring our boring old friend the grinning skull in various stages of purification.
Monster Sex Tales had a badly drawn Frankenstein monster ripping the blouse from a big-breasted young woman. The fiction content includes
Castle of Dracula,
Voyage of Dracula and
Lust of the Vampire by Chester Winfield, Ray Hemp and Dudley McDonley, all of whom, it is alleged, were Ed Wood jnr. According to Wood biographer Rudolph Gray, the
Plan 9 From Outer Space man also contributed seven stories to something called
Horror Sex Tales (Gallery Press, 1972) under another batch of pseudonyms including 'Dick Trent' and the caper 'Ann Gora'.
Given a choice between the complete run of Ex-Occidente Press titles and one mangy, dog-eared copy of
Adventures In Horror I would not have to think hard on which i'd be taking home.
******
NB: In case you'd not noticed, the above isn't an 'exhaustively researched article' or anything so grand, it's just a bunch of vaguely related snippets welded together. i've not set eyes on certain titles i speak of with such authority, and those i have are hardly germane to the subject. Also, i bet i missed some dead obvious early ones too, so please feel free to show me the error of my ways!