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Post by dem bones on Jul 23, 2021 11:33:58 GMT
From April 1964, the cruel dilemma of a brilliant female archaeologist. D. H. Symonds - Nightmare Island: What dread secret frightened the natives away from the lush Aegean paradise? Prof. James Ashley and his two most brilliant archaeology students, Bill Ford and Margo Neff, spend the summer on Amorgos, intent on excavating a site they believe will serve proof that the voyages of Ulysses are rooted in historical fact. Over the weeks Ashley has grown resentful of Miss Neff's superior knowledge and aptitude for the work. She is in no doubt that when they make their great discovery, he and Ford will claim all the credit. Bill is an affable guy, but he's also the college Romeo. It so sticks in his caw that she's no interest in dating him. Eventually, a breakthrough. Ashley learns of Ios, 'the enchanted place,' a tiny island shunned by local fisherman as a place of no return. The trio cross in a motorboat. The place looks to be deserted; "Then suddenly they saw them! Huge women, seven and eight feet tall, dressed in short leather tunics. There were at least fifty of them. Amazons! though the Professor incredulously. But how ...?" The whip-wielding Amazons set upon the men with relish, securing them to trees for a thorough seeing to. Margo is left unharmed while the leader, Nausicaa, explains the situation. "We have nothing against you. It is men we hate. But if you do not join us you will have to join them in their torment. You would be wise to work with us." But what would this work entail? Nausicaa and colleagues lay on a demonstration. After which, the leader hands Margo a lash and insists she show 'em what she can do ... Yeah, right. This is Web Terror Stories we're talking about. As if our heroine would even consider selling out her male colleagues! But what's this ...? !!!
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Post by dem bones on Jul 24, 2021 5:16:28 GMT
Another from ths April 1964 Bizarre Doms & Subs Web Terror Stories. Normal service is resumed in;
Alex Burn - His Majesty: The Fiend!: Louis the Cruel granted the proud Marguerite a reprieve more horrible than Death itself! Marguerite de Montamert is seething. How dare King Louis XIth, have her brought to this wretched palace against her will! Just wait until he shows his ugly face! She'll soon have the so-called monarch minding his p's and q's! "From earliest childhood she had been brought up to feel that she, along with her brother the Baron of Montambert and her cousin the Duke of Burgundy, was superior in birth and breeding to that ugly misbegotten little changeling of the House of Valois, Louis XIth, known as The Cruel. Louis the Cruel, indeed! Louis the Clown was what they called him in her family, Louis the Jester, Louis the mountebank. It was ridiculous that such an insignificant little man should be attempting to claim absolute domination over all the great Nobles of France, to assert that he and not they should govern their fiefs, their duchies and baronies."
Alas for our young heroine, Louis prides himself on devising sadistic revenge on those who would dare oppose him. Marguerite is informed that tonight she will wed "the fine strapping lusty young bridegroom I have picked out for you." When, understandably, the beautiful nineteen year old refuses, she is removed to the torture chamber to meet her intended. Alaric, Viconte de Fresneaux, cousin to the King and hulking, slobbering idiot.
That settles it. No matter what hellish torture they subject her to, no way will she marry this drooling abomination!
Or will she?
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Post by dem bones on Jul 25, 2021 6:25:27 GMT
Emory Connor - Mistress of the Six Gates of Horror: No one has ever surpassed the Chinese at torture - but beautiful Hsui T'ang added one last refinement to the worst yet devised! Peking, 1900, during the bloodiest months of the Boxer uprising. The British Legation have taken refuge in the ancient Manchu fortress as they await the arrival of the promised fleet of British Navy gunboats. Alas, the fortress is not quite as impregnable as they've been led to believe - it is accessible via a network of secret tunnels of which they are blissfully innocent. Nor do they realise that the very beautiful Hsui T'ang, 29, the Legation's Chinese liaison, is also the notorious 'Black Dragon Woman,' a leading Boxer much given to inflicting the most sadistic tortures. Hsui T'ang has her hired muscle abduct five of Brits - one man, four women - and secure them in a subterranean torture chamber. Bryan Paxton, the young military attache, is forced to watch from a pillory as Mary the cook and Ginny the scullery maid are subjected to thumbscrew, boot, rack, press, etc, etc, until their corpses are broken into bloody pieces. Next it is the turn of Bettina, buxom Yorkshire serving lass, to suffer slow agonising death in a vermin-infested device reminiscent of Fu Manchu's beloved 'wire jacket.' Finally the Black Dragon Woman offers Paxton a choice. Either he betray his country, or he can look on as his fiancee, Dorothea, is eaten alive by river rats.
In it's own artless way, Mistress of the Six Gates of Horror is as unrelentingly revolting and nihilistic as Russell Gray's Fresh Fiances for the Devil's Daughter which, quite possibly, provided the "inspiration."
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Post by andydecker on Jul 25, 2021 15:41:15 GMT
Emory Connor - Mistress of the Six Gates of Horror: No one has ever surpassed the Chinese at torture - but beautiful Hsui T'ang added one last refinement to the worst yet devised! In it's own artless way, Mistress of the Six Gates of Horror is as unrelentingly revolting and nihilistic as Russell Gray's Fresh Fiances for the Devil's Daughter which, quite possibly, provided the "inspiration." That it did.
I stumbled upon it in one of Singer's foreign editions and thought it - I didn't knew about Gray at the time - a thinly disguised re-write of George Fielding Eliot's The Copper Bowl (Weird Tales, 1928; reprinted in Pan 1). It is basically the same plot. I truly wonder who wrote this. As far as I remember all - or nearly all - the writer's names of this incarnation of Web Terror Stories just appeared once. Maybe unpublished left overs from Popular's shudder pulps? Or really written in the 60s? Somehow this seems unlikley.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 25, 2021 19:09:28 GMT
I stumbled upon it in one of Singer's foreign editions and thought it - I didn't knew about Gray at the time - a thinly disguised re-write of George Fielding Eliot's The Copper Bowl (Weird Tales, 1928; reprinted in Pan 1). It is basically the same plot. I truly wonder who wrote this. As far as I remember all - or nearly all - the writer's names of this incarnation of Web Terror Stories just appeared once. Maybe unpublished left overs from Popular's shudder pulps? Or really written in the 60s? Somehow this seems unlikley. I think the six gates contraption is the close relation of a torture device featured in Sax Rohmer's The Devil Doctor from 1916. I doubt the stories are shudder pulp leftovers. The style is very different, and, from memory, there are contemporary (fifties/ early sixties) flourishes in the 'Leather Mask' issue. Maybe one day we'll learn they were all written by torture porn's answer to R. Lionel Fanthorpe. Seems incredible that John Jakes and Marion Zimmer Bradley got roped in at the beginning. Kent L Bowman - Drums of Torment: Was pain the only bribe which could appease the wrath of the Apache spirits?. Arizona, 1883. Kitty Parker, the belle of Sawyer's Bluff, in the toils of Geronimo's Braves. Two Feathers wants her for a plaything, the Medicine Man would sacrifice her to the Gods. The Apache chief decides in favour of the latter. Short, very horrible. Robert Rossner - Angel of Evil: Leora was smooth all right. But she couldn't fool me with her sweet innocence. Mitch can't see what is glaringly obvious to everyone around him. His wife, Leora, is a self-serving, conniving she-devil who treats him like a doormat. Finally, his old army buddies, Dave, Sandy and Kevin, decide enough is enough, and lure Leora into the park at night on the pretext of throwing a surprise for Mitch. All build up, disappointing ending to an issue which, if you like this kind of thing, assuredly has its moments.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 28, 2021 6:29:51 GMT
From Peter Enfantino's Mistress of the Putrefying Lash! The Complete and Unedited Look at the Sleazy World of Web Terror Stories in Bare Bones #6 (Spring, 2021) we learn that Angel of Evil (see above) was a reprint from Web Detective Stories for September 1961, which explains the incongruous nature of the piece. Mr. Enfantino's super annotated guide runs to 20 pages and includes detailed synopses of every story to appear over the seven issues, most of them the work of mysterious one shot authors with names like Ramon Aguillera, Christine Crewell, Blake Burnham and Franz Raunch. Deadpans the author, "I have a sneaking feeling there was a whole lot of writing being done by just a few storytellers."
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Post by dem bones on Aug 31, 2021 5:34:42 GMT
More from the issue for February 1965. Christine Crewell - The Curse Of The Borgias: Was it fantasy, or had the hideous, crawling thing actually moved? Spoilt Dina is forever splashing out on expensive antiques to the point where she and sister Jane's inheritance is rapidly dwindling. This latest impulse purchase - two wall panels as recently graced the palace of a Venetian Duke - is her most extravagant spend to date. According to Dina, they were commissioned by a Borgia and "done by Santangelo in the thirteenth century." The carvings depict brightly coloured leaves climbing a curved trellis. On closer scrutiny, each blossoms bears a human face. A tortured, bloated face, as though modelled on a drowned person. Jane, appalled, protests - this latest waste of money is too disgusting! So Jane locks her in with it. Properly supernatural horror and, for once, not a whiplash in sight. Aurelia Mulhare - The Pain Tree: She sought excitement, and found it at the Sign of the Skull! The natives of a small Caribbean island have grown resentful of Danish rule and the powerful voodoo element plan toward an uprising. Birgitta, Governor Pousen's daughter, has arrived from Denmark for cousin Inger's funeral, although she's more interested in seducing simpering fop Count Pierre du Lac, the master of Beau Visage. Her father warns her to steer clear of du Lac who, so some absurd people claim, may be a Hougan chief. Birgitta, undeterred, persuades her maid to lead her into the hills for tonight's voodoo ceremony. Sure enough, there is her dreamboat, transformed into powerful leader, but - oh, the indignity! - it seems he would prefer to cavort with dead Inger than a proper live girl! A furious Birgitta betrays the Count to her father, whose men have the wretch dragged kicking and screaming to the Pain Tree .... Bursell Bradshaw - The Angel Of Hell: Lil uncovered the Great Mystery of the art world, and it destroyed her. Determined to reach the top in a male dominated industry, Lil Winters, a young reporter on the Bass Head Gazette, sets up easel outside the home of reclusive artist, Paul du Frees, determined to lure him into an interview and learn all about the mysterious painting he's been working on this past twenty years! Imagine her delight when, ushered inside his home, the great artist insists on revealing all! "It was a great pity that Lil wasn't content with merely being beautiful. She could have made some guy here in Bass Head mighty happy — if she wanted to. The Trouble was that she didn't want to." And look where it gets her. Shackled to a table with wires inserted every damn place at the mercy of a sadistic maniac with a paintbrush!
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Post by dem bones on Sept 1, 2021 7:10:54 GMT
Pete Brown - Satan's Spawn: "I never thought I could be cruel to any living thing." Sadly, thirty years of isolation at decaying retreat high in the Himalayas has twisted the toothless, smelly old hermit's mind. How else to explain his incarceration and torture of Darvi, a beautiful young woman he claims to be "the daughter of all evil"? Now the old timer has been granted retirement, his young replacement, Bhavarid-la, makes it his first duty to liberate the poor defenceless creature ....
Charles Patterson - My Love, My Prisoner: Antonio was poisoned by the deadliest poison of all: his own imagination. When Antonio Vitagliano takes a teen Sicilian for his bride, the cynics predict the worst. However, as a wife Stella proves saintly to the point of stupidity; uncomplaining at Vitagliano's parsimony, aghast at Signora Pollio's well meaning suggestion that she go on sex strike until he gives her some money of her own ("That would not be proper. I cannot deny my husband his sacred rights!), fetching and carrying for the fat slob without complaint. Unfortunately, Stella is also a wonderful cook, and within short weeks of their marriage, Vitagliano's gluttony has put a strain on his heart. Worse, he now entertains a suspicion that Stella is trying to poison him so she can carry on with young Marcello, the hunky farmhand. So far, so so, but you can tell the staff writer is by now getting right fed up with churning out this nonsense. Uninspired pseudonym, a title that bears no relation to story, ridiculous, tacked-on sadistic interlude involving a cat o' nine tails ....
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