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Post by newbienew on Sept 8, 2011 21:50:52 GMT
I recently obtained the following "Young Oxford" series of books (ed. Dennis Pepper): Nasty Endings Ghost Stories (in two volumes) Supernatural Aliens Nightmares Scarytales Christmas Stories (in two volumes; much darker than the title suggests) www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?332140www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?325539www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?332190www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?296881www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?296877www.worldcat.org/title/oxford-book-of-christmas-stories/oclc/59171998Lots of stories, but I don't want to read them all. Too many weak stories and I think that gets in the way of my enjoying the gems. Too many stories from the 1980s onwards. I don't like modern prose: reads like an "Oxford simplified reader". Too many authors whose names I don't recognize. (As an aside I can't stand the font or typeface the books use. Painfully, blandly generic. My eyes glaze over every time I look at the page and I wonder how that affects my enjoyment of the story.) I don't care for American writing, though I revere Poe and "The Young Oxford Book of Nasty Endings" features a goodish, slightly chilling story by the American book reviewer Anthony Boucher. Time permitting, can you advise me which stories to read? Am I being selfish? Perhaps so. But there are some truly dire re-tellings of other people's stories by Robert Scott that somehow slipped in there. I automatically read anything old, or that appeared in a Ghost Book, Weird Tales, or is by an author with literary credentials. That includes M.R. James, Roald Dahl, Rosemary Timperley, Kingsley Amis, John Wyndham, Angela Carter, H. Russell Wakefield, E.F. Benson, E. Nesbit, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Lafcadio Hearn, Charles Dickens. Are any of the other stories worth reading? No spoilers, please.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 9, 2011 10:01:06 GMT
well, i'd certainly suggest you try Shamus Frazer's Florinda if you've not already done so, and there's plenty of John Gordon spread over the books. Alison Prince's The Looney is exceptionally creepy, a minor horror classic buried in a "children"s anthology and brought to a wider audience via Ramsey Campbell who included it in Uncanny Banquet.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 14, 2012 0:55:50 GMT
Dennis Pepper (ed.) - Young Oxford Book of Nasty Endings (Oxford University Press, 1997) Simon Marsden Dennis Pepper – Introduction
Roald Dahl – The Landlady Ramsey Campbell – Call First Robin Klein – We’ll Look After You Marc Alexander – Sweet Shop Robert Scott – Those Three Wishes Alison Prince – The Looney (listed as The Loony) Sydney J. Bounds – Ghost Hunter E. Nisbet – The Mystery of the Semi-Detached Ruskin Bond – A Face in the Night Lance Salway – Such a Sweet Little Girl Anthony Boucher – Mr. Lupescu John Collier – Thus I Refute Beelzy T. H. White – A Sharp Attack of Something or Other Fredric Brown – Voodoo Henry Slesar – The Candidate Richard Matheson – The Near Departed Kenneth Ireland – The Statuette Robert Scott – The Meeting Robert Scott – The Talking Head John Christopher – Paths Ray Bradbury – The Veldt Gerald Kersh – The Old Burying Place . . . Harold Rolseth – Hey, You Down There! Robert Scott – A Hundred Steps Dannie Plachta – Revival Meeting Geraldine McCaughrean – Death’s Murderers John Wyndham – The Cathedral Crypt Ethel Helen Coen – One Chance Patrick Bone – The Secret of City Cemetery Robert Scott – The Helpful Undertaker Jack Ritchie – The Davenport Michael Avallone – Every Litter Bit Hurts Henry Slesar – Cop for a Day Evan Hunter – On the Sidewalk, Bleeding Richard Dockery and Judith Dockery Young – The Skeleton in the ClosetA real mixed bag, this collection. There are some great but highly familiar stories, such as the Bradbury, Collier, Boucher, Nisbet, and Brown--not to mention the first Slesar. There are some personal favorites, most notably the Campbell and Prince. There are a few science fiction tales, including the Kersh and Christopher (the latter sneakily references the tripod trilogy). There are a few crime tales, such as the Avallone and Hunter, plus the second Slesar. And there are some retold tales, such as all of the Scott pieces and the McCaughrean (which is none other than Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale"). Of the stories I hadn't previously read, I liked Ghost Hunter the best; Bounds is in fine form working the tried-but-true paranormal investigation theme. The Ireland story is enjoyably dark, and Rolseth's story is rather funny. There's one problem with an anthology of this nature, at least for me: given the theme, I couldn't help anticipating each story's "nasty ending." Sometimes this was all too easy; sometimes it was more difficult.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 18, 2019 9:08:10 GMT
We're agreed on Ghost Hunter. Read it for first time yesterday via an Archive.org loan, mildly erotic for Syd, could easily have made one of the adult Fontana Ghost/Horror/Tales of Terror selections. If The Green Ghost & Others is intended as a 'best of' then Ghost Hunter would far better represent him than the anaemic The Haunted Circus, that's for sure. * CB, hope you don't mind but I replaced the cover scan in your post to get rid of wretched Ph*t*b**ket logo.*
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Post by dem bones on May 7, 2020 16:12:03 GMT
Marc Alexander – Sweet Shop: (Not After Nightfall, 1985). A brother and sister don't believe in fairy tales until they chance upon Aunt Hazel's sweet shop among a row of condemned buildings.
Robert Scott – Those Three Wishes: Rather than be stomped upon, a magic snail grants them to Melinda Alice, the nastiest girl in the school. Will she uses them for good or evil?
E. Nesbit – The Mystery of the Semi-Detached: (Grim Tales, 1893). It's haunted by the ghost of a young woman yet to be horribly murdered.
Ruskin Bond – A Face in the Night: (David Cowperthwaite & Jeff Dempsey [eds.], Dark Dreams #2, Spring 1985). Schoolteacher runs screaming from pupil whose head is smooth as a boiled egg. Indian take on Lafcadio Hearn's Mujina, Tom Kristensen's The Vanished Faces, E. F. Benson's The Step, & any other variations thereof.
Richard Dockery & Judith Dockery Young – The Skeleton in the Closet: (The Scary Story Reader, 1995). Forty year missing schoolboy mystery solved at last.
Fredric Brown – Voodoo: (Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Sept. 1954). Mrs. Decker threatens to work black sorcery against her husband unless he agrees to her terms of divorce. Having no patience with mumbo jumbo, he calls her bluff.
Robert Scott – The Talking Head: Misery loves company, especially in a jungle wilderness.
Dannie Plachta – Revival Meeting : (Galaxy SF, Oct. 1969). Cryptogenetically frozen at the close of the previous century, Graham Kraken is restored from cold storage in 2088 none the worse for his deep sleep. Until ...
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Post by dem bones on May 8, 2020 7:07:12 GMT
Brian Pedley John Wyndham – The Cathedral Crypt: ( Marvel Tales of Science and Fantasy, Mar-Apr. 1935). Honeymooning in Spain, Clarissa and Raymond find themselves locked inside a cathedral. Nothing for it but to bed down in the chapel and wait for morning. At 1.30 am an unwelcome interruption. The newly-weds look on horrorified as a grim procession of brown robed monks and black habited nuns drag a disgraced young sister toward an alcove .... Gerald Kersh – The Old Burying Place . . . : ( Evening Standard, 25 May 1938). Amazing the strange artefacts you'll find scattered among the skeletons on the London Underground. Robert Scott – The Helpful Undertaker: You don't have to be dead to make it as a fashion victim. Robert Scott – A Hundred Steps: New bride less than pleased when husband insists on climbing an old tower. "A hundred steps to Heaven, a thousand steps to Hell." Jack Ritchie – The Davenport: (Helen Hoke [ed.], A Chilling Collection, 1979). Sergeant Whittier investigates the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Bremner. The last his wife saw of him, Henry was sprawled out on the couch. Invasion of the man-eating furniture. Michael Avallone – Every Litter Bit Hurts: (Robert L. Fish [ed], With Malice Toward All, 1968). Why a marked FBI man should never teach his kid not to throw stuff out of a car window. T. H. White – A Sharp Attack of Something or Other: "It's wonderful what a new hat can do for an old man," reckons Henry Foster - and so it proves when, thanks to the machinations of a young employee, he is carted off to a private nursing home. Patrick Bone – The Secret of City Cemetery: ( Bruce Coville's Book of Ghosts: Tales to Haunt You, 1994). Willard Armbruster, school bully and all round Johnny no mates, plays dead in an open grave to scare little kids as they pass the burial ground. The kindly old sexton warns him not to annoy the resident ghost. He doesn't listen.
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Post by dem bones on May 8, 2020 15:26:01 GMT
Robin Klein – We’ll Look After You: (Tearaways, 1990). Ambrose Fennel crashes his car on a lonely mountain road due to some idiot removing a warning sign. When he recovers consciousness, Fennel is lying heavily bandaged and helpless in a bed at the home of Mrs. Burbage and her idiot daughter, Mavis, who insist his leg is broken. Unfortunately, they've no telephone or means of transferring him to Hospital but never mind, they'll take care of him, however long it takes ....
John Christopher – Paths: (Peter Dickinson [ed.], Hundreds and Hundreds, 1984). Walking through the spooky wood near Southleigh, Kevin Luscome meets a girl, Arabella Cartwright, who is dressed like a refugee from The Railway Children. Further along the path they meet a medieval lad who doesn't like Mary, Queen of Scots, and a feral sub-Neanderthal savage. You can guess what period he represents. Kevin's The Tripods are Coming t-shirt is a neat touch. Geraldine McCaughrean – Death’s Murderers: Retold from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Irked that the Plague is impacting on their profession, a trio of gormless thieves vow to kill Death. Retold from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
Ethel Helen Coen – One Chance: (Weird Tales, Sept. 1935). Paul plots fiancée Marie's daring escape from New Orleans during a time of plague.
Sydney J. Bounds – Ghost Hunter: (Mary Danby [ed.], 13th Armada Ghost Book, 1981). Teenage phantom fighter Peter Matson investigates the haunting at Rosemont House. The seductive ghost of a girl who took her own life entices him into the attic.
Robert Scott - The Meeting: There's no avoiding an appointment with the Grim Reaper.
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Post by helrunar on May 8, 2020 16:15:23 GMT
Nice notes. Strange to read about plagues of the past now while living through one in the present.
I had to click on this thread to figure out what the theme was, since I was unfamiliar with these anthologies. Seems a mixture of the wondrous, the mediocre and the dire (somebody kept rewriting Chaucer--why on Earth?). And that often seems true of an anthology.
I loved the kick-off post from the enigmatic Newbienew. I found myself reading the comments as uttered by Ernest Thesiger in the role of Dr Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein. I gather that like so many who wander perhaps mistakenly into these hallowed halls, Mx Newbie quickly got their coat and made a swift exit.
cheers, H.
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Post by andydecker on May 8, 2020 16:58:25 GMT
John Wyndham – The Cathedral Crypt: ( Marvel Tales of Science and Fantasy, Mar-Apr. 1935). Somehow I never realized that Wyndham was a pre-war writer. I never had reason to look him up, but I pictured him always in the 50s. Weird.
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Post by andydecker on May 8, 2020 17:11:07 GMT
the comments as uttered by Ernest Thesiger in the role of Dr Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein. I know I am in the minority about this, but I always hated this character in the movie. These cute little bottle-homunculi were such a tonal shift in the gruesome gothic atmosphere. Also why should this artist, wo could create this perfect specimens, throw his lot with Dr.Frankenstein, whose needlework is terrible?
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Post by cauldronbrewer on May 8, 2020 19:10:35 GMT
the comments as uttered by Ernest Thesiger in the role of Dr Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein. I know I am in the minority about this, but I always hated this character in the movie. These cute little bottle-homunculi were such a tonal shift in the gruesome gothic atmosphere. Also why should this artist, wo could create this perfect specimens, throw his lot with Dr.Frankenstein, whose needlework is terrible? I can't argue with your logic, but I still love Dr. Pretorius. He's so much more entertaining than Dr. Frankenstein.
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Post by Dr Strange on May 8, 2020 20:25:55 GMT
I know I am in the minority about this, but I always hated this character in the movie. These cute little bottle-homunculi were such a tonal shift in the gruesome gothic atmosphere. Also why should this artist, who could create this perfect specimens, throw his lot with Dr.Frankenstein, whose needlework is terrible? I can't argue with your logic, but I still love Dr. Pretorius. He's so much more entertaining than Dr. Frankenstein. I haven't watched any of the old Universal films for ages, though I loved them as a kid - but I am with Andy on this one; even as a kid, I dreaded the appearance of some sort of "comic interlude" in the old B&W horror films I was watching on TV. I think film directors often did this just to placate the censors.
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Post by kooshmeister on May 9, 2020 1:20:29 GMT
I'm inclined to agree. I loved Una O'Connor in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Her budding romance with Much was just plain sweet. I found her tolerable in The Invisible Man, but only because the other characters thought she was as annoying as I did ("Aw, shut up!"), particularly her character's poor husband with his head injury. He's trying to self medicate after Griffin chucked his ass down the stairs and here she is making his splitting headache even worse by endlessly screeching. The other characters' reactions confirm that the comedy comes from the fact she's supposed to be intensely annoying.
But Whale apparently thought her screaming all the frickin' time was a gas, so he went balls deep into that routine in The Bride of Frankenstein, a movie I've never quite liked and considered inferior to its predecessor (now there's an unpopular opinion). I felt the whole movie was too camp, which ordinarily isn't an issue, as camp can be fun, but unfortunately James Whale was very bad at camp. I did unironically love the Dr. Pretorius character, though, as he was the film's only real example of camp done correctly. That said, the previously mentioned sequence with the tiny people in bottles felt very odd and out of place. The Carl Dreadstone novelization salvages it however by inserting a couple of disturbing moments. And in one instance, quite literally (ugh).
First, the author (Ramsey Campbell?) added the fact that one of the tiny artificially grown people was a clone of Dr. Waldman from the first movie, who, we learn, was the principal force behind driving Pretorius out of his position at the college. Pretorius never got the chance to get his vengeance against Waldman, so created this tiny clone of him, giving him a great intellect but leaving him imprisoned in the bottle with nothing but a book with blank pages. So all the miniature Waldman can do day after day is sulk over this useless book. He alone among the little people was created by Pretorius explicitly to suffer.
And secondly, there's the chilling fate of the tiny king. In the movie, when the horny little booger gets loose and attempts to go boink the queen, Pretorius simply recaptures him and returns him to the bottle. He's less forgiving in the novelization. Far less forgiving. After grabbing him, Pretorius decides he's had enough of the miniature monarch's repeated escape attempts and decides to make an example of him. Frankenstein, his emotions already taxed by seeing the tiny Dr. Waldman, can't watch and promptly takes his leave as Pretorius grabs a very large, wickedly-pointed needle. He doesn't witness the king's demise... but unfortunately, he isn't out the door fast enough to avoid hearing the piercing death squeal as the needle is used.
I'm unsure if these elements were from the script. Certainly there's no miniature Waldman in the movie. And I really, really doubt that even implying that Pretorius skewers the little king would've made it past the censors, so I'm assuming these are entirely inventions of the author's. If so, bravo. Pretorius inventing a tiny clone of the guy who fired him just so he can torment him and make his life miserable is exceedingly clever, and shows what a petty bastard he is... and the thing with the king, even only implying it, reminds the ready that was whimsically campy as he is, Septimus Pretorius is nevertheless a cruel man to be feared.
These additions, to me, rescued the scene from utter ridiculousness.
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Post by andydecker on May 9, 2020 12:30:54 GMT
I'm inclined to agree. First, the author (Ramsey Campbell?) added the fact that one of the tiny artificially grown people was a clone of Dr. Waldman from the first movie, who, we learn, was the principal force behind driving Pretorius out of his position at the college. Pretorius never got the chance to get his vengeance against Waldman, so created this tiny clone of him, giving him a great intellect but leaving him imprisoned in the bottle with nothing but a book with blank pages. So all the miniature Waldman can do day after day is sulk over this useless book. He alone among the little people was created by Pretorius explicitly to suffer. These additions, to me, rescued the scene from utter ridiculousness. I never bothered with the novelization, but this sounds more interesting than most of the rest of the story. It is an interesting idea that the movie was supposed to be camp. I guess in hindsight you are right. Bride has a lot of conscious self-parody and comic relief cranked-up to eleven. Maybe Whale didn't see another way, after his first movie became so iconic. How often got it parodied in cartoons like Bugs Bunny alone?
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Post by dem bones on May 9, 2020 18:08:37 GMT
Lance Salway – Such a Sweet Little Girl: ( A Nasty Piece of Work & other Ghost Stories, 1987). Cute, over-indulged, seven-year old Julia, noted for a vivid imagination, claims there's a ghost in her bedroom; it has "great big eyes and teeth, and horrible, nasty claws. Big claws, and it smells." Edward, fourteen, sees through her rabid attention-seeking for what it is. Julia, who despises big brother even more than he does her, sics the ghost on him. Henry Slesar – The Candidate: ( Rogue, Aug. 1961). Burton Gruzner, a walking grudge against his fellow man, is invited to meet a representative of the thousand strong, fanatically hush-hush Society for United Action, "whose one function" explains Mr. Tucker, "is to wish people dead." Count me in, says Mr. Gruzner. Harold Rolseth – Hey, You Down There!: ( Yankee, Nov. 1971). A simple misunderstanding sees good old drunken, wife-beating redneck, Calvin, fall foul of a subterranean race who trade in gold bars and savour the taste of raw "turkey." Kenneth Ireland – The Statuette: ( We're Coming For You, Jonathan, 1982). "It was confiscated - as evidence. Something to do with Black Magic." The bronze imp, purchased at a Police auction, lures young Wayne to his doom. Ramsey Campbell - Call first: (Kirby McCauley [ed.], Night Chills, 1975). Ned, a nosey parker Librarian, triggers the latest thing in burglar alarms. Henry Slesar – Cop for a Day: ( Manhunt, Jan. 1957). When a heist goes badly wrong thanks to his trigger-happy young accomplice. Phil Pennick, veteran bank robber, masquerades as policeman to gain access to the solitary witness and wipe her out. An incongruous inclusion, as is; Evan Hunter – On the Sidewalk, Bleeding: ( Manhunt, July 1957). JD interlude. A sixteen year old gang member reflects on his biggest regret as he lies dying in an alley.
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