This one began life as 'Why So Many Maitlands in the Amicus films?' way back on Vault MK I.
Just wondered why that name pops up so often in Subotsky's movies: the car-crash zombie in Tales From The Crypt, the would-be life insurance swindler in Vault Of Horror and an admittedly minor character in the "Lucy" sequence of The Uncanny are all named Maitland. By the looks of it, the "Maitland" character originates with Robert Bloch and The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade, (Weird Tales, 1945). Perhaps Milton Subotsky just had a great fondness for the story?Victor Rousseau - When Dead Gods Wake: (
Strange Tales, Nov. 1931,
Magazine of Horror, #25, January 1969): Chronicles the strange and terrible goings on at FRANCIS MAITLAND's personal museum.
Robert Bloch - The Skull Of The Marquis De Sade: (
Weird Tales, Sept 1945,
The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade, Pyramid 1965: Corgi 1976). CHRISTOPHER MAITLAND, a collector of morbid artefacts, is offered the skull of the divine Marquis for a knock-down £500 by down at heel Wapping-based dealer Marco who confesses he wants shot of it as the relic is playing on his mind. Maitland decides to sleep on it and, after a restless night in which he dreams vividly of being tortured by the Inquisition, consults his friend and fellow collector, Sir Fitzhugh Kilroy who once owned the skull and advises Maitland against making the purchase. “I’m not trying to frighten you, my friend. But I know the history of that skull. During the last hundred years it has passed through the hands of many men. Some of them were collectors, and sane. Others were perverted members of secret cults - worshippers of pain, devotees of Black Magic. Men have died to gain that grisly relic, and other men have been - sacrificed to it.”
Despite telling Sir Fitzhugh that he’s decided to give the skull a miss, Maitland calls on Marco at his Soho flat (Soho is, apparently a district of Wapping in this story) and finds him dead on his bed with a torn throat. Obviously, Marco’s police dog must have contracted rabies or something because there’s no sign of any break-in. Maitland shoots the dog and heads off home with his prize ….
Horror Hotel City Of The Dead (aka Horror Hotel in the US); 1959. Encouraged by her tutor Prof. Driscoll (C. Lee), Nan Barlow takes her vacation at Whitewood village, Mass., to bone up on the history of witchcraft in New England. Whitewood was the scene of a witch-burning in March 1692, and the place still retains a creepy atmosphere thanks to Milton Subotsky's insistence that the dry ice machine be set at full blast throughout. Warned to leave by the terrified local priest and conspired against by the villagers, witch cult, too late Nan discovers that Mrs Newless, the grim landlady at the Ravens Inn and the executed witch Elizabeth Selwyn are one and the same entity and the time for her annual sacrifice to Lucifer is imminent. BILL MAITLAND, a mouthy student in the humourless Driscoll's science class, saves the day when he staggers through the graveyard brandishing a deadly cross at the Satanists despite having been stabbed in the back. As far as I'm aware, there's not been a novelisation of this one.
"Maitland .... forever doomed to a living, waking nightmare" Jack Oleck - Reflection Of Death (
Tales From The Crypt, Bantam, 1972). In Al Feldstein original strip (
Tales From The Crypt #23, April-May 1951), FRITZ MAITLAND is the undead car smash victim, while his chauffeur Carl is blinded in the same accident. In Oleck's novelisation of the Amicus film, a CARL MAITLAND (Ian Hendry) takes over mouldering corpse duties and it's Susan Blake, the girl he's having an affair with, who loses her sight.
Jack Oleck - Bargain in Death: (
Vault Of Horror, Bantam, 1973. Originally
Tales from the Crypt #28, EC 1950): GEORGE MAITLAND, a struggling horror author, fakes his own death to get his hands on a life insurance policy. The daring fraud entails his swallowing 'heart pills' and a liquid drug which, he is confident, will "cut down my pulse and heartbeat, my entire metabolism, so that even the best doctor in the country will think I'm dead." The funeral passes without a hitch, the coffin is committed to the earth. All that remains is for his really trustworthy best pal Alex to come and dig him up. Unfortunately for Maitland, two young medical students bent on lifting a corpse for dissection purposes, get to him first.
Rosemary Timperley - The Bandaged Man: (
9th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories, 1975). Louella Grant, 32, devotes herself to looking after invalid husband Robert, hideously mutilated and bandaged from head to foot after a plane crash. After five years of this selfless drudgery she meets and falls in love with JOHN MAITLAND. Not wishing to hurt Robert, she conducts the affair in secrecy. But now she’s begun to wish him dead for all their sakes. On New Years Night she finally decides to give nature a hand by drugging her husband and dousing the room in petrol before meeting John at The White Rose. A bandaged man invades the dancefloor.
Ruth Rendell - You Can’t Be Too Careful: (
23rd Pan Book Of Horror Stories, 1982). Fastidious office worker Delia Galway is obsessed with security, as is her landlady, Mrs. Swanson. Mrs. Swanson is also very aware that her tenant is getting her rooms on the cheap and, to meet the raise in rent, Delia is obliged to grudgingly take a flatmate. At first secretary Rosamund adapts well to her strict, lock-everything, indoors-by-midnight regime, but then she falls for CHRIS MAITLAND and, as any Amicus lover knows, with that surname the poor bastard is doomed. After the old girl next door is bludgeoned during a burglary, Delia takes to sleeping with an evil carving knife under her pillow. One night, she hears a man's muffled voice coming from the kitchen ....
Charles Black - The Revelations of Dr. Maitland: (
Fiction #3, 2007;
Black Ceremonies, Parallel Universe, 2015). Begins like it means Lovecraftian business (it even references M. Pickman), but we are a very long way from the Cthulhu Mythos. It is 1972, and Dr. ANDREW MAITLAND is experimenting with the powerful drug, Liao. Maitland is quick to reassure an outraged business associate that he's not dropped out, nor has he any intention of leaving Barbara for a hippy chick. Liao is no hallucinogenic, but a portal offering access to one's past and future lives. Maitland has recently witnessed the horrors of the trenches via the eyes of a young conscript, Private George Prendergast, and must share his knowledge or lose his sanity!
Rog Pile - Bait: (
Filthy Creations #4, May 2008). Reclusive heavy drinker RUSSELL MAITLAND obsesses over a pretty girl he secretly photographed before the cathedral fountain on an excursion into town. Elusive she may be, but never hard to find. All one need do is folow the blood trails in the snow.
Mark Samuels - Keeping Your Mouth Shut: (
Sixth Black Book Of Horror, Mortbury, 2010). William Powell, aspiring horror author, takes voluntary redundancy from steady job so he can devote a year to writing the classic scary novel. This proves to be more difficult than he thought and, when his wife leaves him for a randy dry cleaner, William's world falls to pieces. Somehow he convinces himself that salvation lies in the arms of SYLVIA MAITLAND, the 'seventies scream queen whose films include
The Asylum By The Borderland and an adaptation of Charles Birkin's
The Terror On Tobit. Much to William's delight, he discovers Sylvia's current whereabouts, the Felpham Seaview Hotel in Bognor Regis, and sets off to seduce her. Tragically, Ms. Maitland dies mere hours before William reaches the hotel, but he's come too far to be denied ...
First time i read this, it depressed the hell out of me, but today it had me laughing like a drain. It begins with what reads like a straight account of a personal
annus horribilis, briefly mutates into a piss-take of certain facets of the late 00's Dark Fantasy scene and then .... well, imagine the The Who's
Pictures Of Lily given a horror makeover and taken to it's logical, ultra-grim conclusion.
Novels
William Lauder The Uncanny (Arrow, 1977). When her parents are killed in a plane crash, nine year old Lucy goes to live with her Aunt Joan's family in Los Angeles, where she is tormented by her surrogate sister, Angela. The elder girl takes great delight in torturing the newcomers cat, Wellington, until, her patience exhausted, Lucy takes a crash-course in black magic to cut Angela down to size. A MISS MAITLAND fatures at the beginning of the story, but as no harm comes to her this one doesn't really count.
Richard Lewis - Night-Killers, (Hamlyn, 1983). CHIEF INSPECTOR PETER MAITLAND of Leman Street heads the investigation into a recent spate of grisly murders.
J. G. Ballard - Concrete Island. (Cape, 1974). Trapped by relentless traffic, ROBERT MAITLAND is marooned on a traffic island in the middle of a motorway intersection and must forage with two fellow castaways to survive.