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Post by dem on Feb 15, 2017 11:42:15 GMT
So fitting that we should end this commentary with a double dose of the incomparable Robert Leslie Bellem, the first the usual winning bosom-fixated nonsense, the second an exceptional spicy ghost story!
Jerome Severs Perry [Robert Leslie Bellem] - Murder From Nowhere: (Spicy Mystery, Nov. 1935). Past sins in Ecuador finally catch up with the noted surgeon and taxidermist, Dr. William Gaxton, and his equally unscrupulous wife. But can it really be that both were killed by an invisible being firing poison darts from a blow pipe, or is there a "rational" explanation. Caxton's cousin, John Bryan, solves the mystery between repeatedly getting to grips with the heroine's "olive-white hillocks of nubile flesh." If I'm honest, some aspects of Mr. Perry's story are a little far fetched.
Robert Leslie Bellem - Mirror Magic : (Spicy Mystery, April 1938). "I put a charm on it, darling. Whenever you look in it, you will see the reflection of the man I love." So saying, Kyla (another one), in a moment of post-honeymoon bliss, hung the antique mirror in husband John Marsden's laboratory. But that was ten years ago. John, now aged forty-one and looking ninety, is plagued by a mysterious stomach ailment. By devoting every waking hour to science, he has neglected his wife. What better occasion than their anniversary to make amends?
But Yvonne, the French maid bars his way to Mrs. Marsden's room. Madam is indisposed with a life-threatening headache and must not be disturbed!
John returns to his lab, and catches his reflection in the mirror .... except it isn't his! for a moment there he thought he saw Tommy Meade, his handsome young assistant, smirking back at him, but, no .... it is him, John Bryan, as he was ten years ago! His younger self suggests they change places for the evening.
Yvonne, who, until now has never shown an amorous interest in her employer, takes a shine to the youthful model, and as her uniform consists of a negligee in the habit of falling open to reveal her "arrogant young breasts," one thing quickly needs to another. During their grapple on the couch, Yvonne admits she's been paid to cover for her mistress while she's out gallivanting with her secret lover - Tommy Meade!
John sets off for the hotel to spy on the treacherous pair who are so caught up in their intrigue as to remain oblivious to his presence. Kyra lets on that she detests her husband and only married him for his money. Over the past year she's been spiking his meals with arsenic, and tonight's salad is so toxic it is sure to finish him off! Small wonder he's been in excruciating agony this past twelve months.
Before he can confront the love-birds, John has an overwhelming compulsion to return to the lab and check the mirror. Something is wrong ...
The kiss off is fabulous. It is quite possible I have already found my personal fave anthology of 2017.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 15, 2017 22:48:50 GMT
So fitting that we should end this commentary with a double dose of the incomparable Robert Leslie Bellem, the first the usual winning bosom-fixated nonsense, the second an exceptional spicy ghost story! Before he can confront the love-birds, John has an overwhelming compulsion to return to the lab and check the mirror. Something is wrong ... The kiss off is fabulous. It is quite possible I have already found my personal fave anthology of 2017. Considering how much and how fast Bellem wrote he had a high success rate. The spicy story is the only genre which never was continued after its demise, which is a good thing for once. I can imagine reading a new terror tale, but not a spicy tale. Still Bellem was a master of this and is way better then his competition. |
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Post by dem on Feb 16, 2017 7:48:50 GMT
Considering how much and how fast Bellem wrote he had a high success rate. The spicy story is the only genre which never was continued after its demise, which is a good thing for once. I can imagine reading a new terror tale, but not a spicy tale. Still Bellem was a master of this and is way better then his competition. I'm not sure there's always that much difference between the Spicy's and the Shudders, Andy - hardly surprising when you consider several of the days most prolific pulp hacks wrote for both markets. Many of the Best of Spicy ...'s would be equally at home in a Terror Tales, Horror Stories or Uncanny Tales. Henry Kuttner even opts for their hallmark Scooby Doo denouement. To be fair, gratuitous whipping interludes are a notable absentee for the most part. On this evidence, the Spicy's favour good old fashioned lust over orgies of flagellation, though that's not to say they lack for scenes of salacious sadism. You are right. If ever a man understood his audience it was Robert Leslie Bellem, and the great entertainer is responsible for the majority of highlights. 'Lew Merrill's cracking Bat Man is likewise terrific. |
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Post by dem on Feb 17, 2017 20:05:19 GMT
Not got a copy - when's Christmas? - but here's the dirt on volume 2. For those who've not yet had the pleasure, inclusion of Robert Leslie Bellem's MAD SCIENTIST masterpiece Labyrinth Of Monsters - perhaps the most delirious of his proper horror stories - is a major plus. Alfred Jan (ed.) - The Best of Spicy Mystery: Vol 2 (Altus, 2015)  H. J. Ward
Ellery Watson Calder - Cats of Cassandra (Aug. 1935) Ellery Watson Calder - Castle Sinister (Oct. 1935) Hugh Speer - She Who Was He! (Dec. 1935) Robert Leslie Bellem - Labyrinth of Monsters (Jan. 1936) Robert Leslie Bellem - Taupoo Dance (Apr. 1936) Clint Morgan - Blind Flight (Aug. 1936) Clive Trent - The Secret of Old Farm (Sept. 1936) Jerome Severs Perry - "I Must Have 5 Corpses" (Nov. 1936) Carl Moore - False Face (March 1937) Cary Moran - Red—for Murder (Aug. 1937) Clark Nelson - Flesh of the Living (Oct. 1939) Blurb: The Thrills of Horror! Romantic Tales of the Eerie and Occult! You’ll find them in Spicy Mystery—stories of red-blooded men and lovely girls in dangerous situations, in an atmosphere of chills and thrills. Real life is never so tense and dramatic as when a girl is in peril—or as when a siren as deadly as she is beautiful sets her snare for a man…. Are you bored of typical weird menace plots, many of which crept into Spicy Mystery? Then sample these tales which break out of that tired formula where every ending is happy, and the only challenge is guessing which minor character gets exposed as the villain in a rubber monster suit and demon mask! The Best of Spicy Mystery, Volume 2 contains 11 classic stories by the masters of the genre, complete, uncut, and with the original illustrations. It also includes an all-new introduction by editor Alfred Jan, one of the leading experts on the series. |
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Post by dem on Sept 16, 2019 17:21:45 GMT
Spicy Mystery Stories for August 1935 (Wildside Press, 2004)  H. J. Ward
Atwater Culpepper - The Isle of the Restless Dead
Ellery Watson Calder - Cats of Cassandra
Carl Moore - Mate for Medusa
E. Hoffmann Price - Naga’s Kiss
Jerome Severs Perry - Dead Legs Walk
Don King - Hell Hole of Horror
Charles R. Allen - Out of the Tomb
Charles A. Baker, Jr. - Bride of the Serpent
Arthur Wallace - Death Vault of Venus Blurb: The famous "Weird Menace Pulp" magazines of the 1930s and 1940s are among the rarest and most sought-after publications by collectors. The "Spicy" magazines - which included Spicy Mystery, Spicy Adventure, Spicy Detective, and others - published a titillating mix of fantasy, horror, mystery, and suspense, punctuated by episodes of torture, sadism, sex, and other risqué elements. Although tame by current standards, and sometimes of dubious literary merit, these publications presented tales which thrilled a sensation-hungry audience. Despite the themes and constraints of the market, writers who would later become famous - including Hugh B. Cave, E. Hoffman Price, Robert Leslie Bellem, and many more - were frequent contributors.
The August 1935 issue of Spice Mystery Stories includes contributions from Robert Leslie Bellem, Atwater Culpepper, Ellery Watson Calder, Carl Moore, E. Hoffman Price, Jerome Severs Perry, Don King, Charles R. Allen, Charles A. Baker, Jr., and Arthur Wallace. Carl Moore - Mate For Medusa: Snakes with feet ... lizards with wings ... men without arms - such were the doctor's mad creations! With a lovely girl in his power, what new horror did he plan?"Men with three arms! Martin fought for his sanity." Eddie Martin, ace reporter on the News, calls at the big house on the swamp to interview Dr. Leo Lombard, who claims to have perfected a superior grafting process. Alerted by a scream, Martin breaks down a door to find a naked girl tied to a bed. She is Helen Vinton, come to pay her respects to the late Mrs. Lombard - her sister - except .... Mona isn't dead! Her disappearance from the outside world is all part of the surgeon's cruel ruse to lure Helen into his clutches! On the grieving Helen's arrival, lecherous Lomard overpowered her with chloroform and lashed her to the bedposts. Now he and Harry (mutant Negro manservant) are free to feel up her "generous taut breasts" whenever the mood takes them. There's something physically odd about Lombard and Harry; their baggy blouses bulge out in front as if they were hunchbacks in reverse. What can it all mean? Martin doesn't know and, anyway, right now his attention is diverted by the appearance of an ape-like amputee. Martin recognises him as his fellow News hack, Carl Clauser, who disappeared after paying Lombard a home visit - but what's happened to his arms, and why is he drooling so? Clauser approaches the helpless Helen and sets to fondling her "crowned white mounds" - with his toes. Lombard has big plans for Martin: The virile ace reporter is to father a race of supermen by the elephantine, eight foot tall version of Mona, whose body has been cruelly inflated to obscene proportions. This new Mona is so heavy Martin can't wriggle out from underneath her. All seems lost until .... Blimey, what a choice story to dive in on. Title is a misnomer - where's Medusa? - but outrageous, hyperactive plot more than compensates. Surely even Robert Leslie Bellem will struggle to out-mad this one?
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Post by dem on Sept 23, 2019 20:00:32 GMT
Don King - Hell Hole of Horror: Was she a wraith, this mystery girl of the Black Forest? What evil spell linked her to the crawling Terror .... bound her to the woman who was Mistress of the Monsters?
"What was this creeping, crawling thing whose lips were livid gashes in a hell-spawned face, whose nose was flattened until only hairy holes marked the nostrils, whose body was a gnarled mockery of human shape under a pointed skull so weird as to defy the wildest stretches of imagination? Did it exist? Did it live?"
Lane Wilbur, woodsman, defies a family curse, rattlers, and mounds of "globular, velvet smoothness," to expose a fiend responsible for the abduction of seven children from Colonel Matt Elkins' family, the first of them within two days of his retirement from the Circus. Things get off to a bad start when Wilbur is forced to shhot dead his dog, but perk up rapidly when Elsa, mystery girl of the swamp, falls into his greedy clutches. Elsa leads Wilbur to La Belle, a hideous snake-charming hag who specialises in moulding circus freaks from healthy babies.
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Post by dem on Sept 27, 2019 13:07:24 GMT
Robert Leslie Bellem - The Executioner: Could the headsman win a woman's heart? Could love escape the shadow of his grisly trade? The weird, powerful story of a passion choked in blood - and two fates twisted beneath the fatal axe. Identical twins Wilhelm and Erich Gerhardt were separated in childhood when their parents split. Dad remained in Berlin with Erich, Mum emigrated to Brooklyn, New York with Wilhelm. They've not met since. Until ... Wilhelm, his name Americanised as Bill Gerard, is knocked down by a cab in Manhattan - and wakes up in a Berlin hospital. Confusing as this is, Bill's not initially too concerned as he's pampered by a frisky fräulein whose bedside manner is straight out of Rosie Dixon: Night NurseTheir latest wrestling match is interrupted by Graf Van Kemmerer. He is nurse Kathy's homicidally jealous-ex, and, it seems, 'Herr Gerhardt's immediate superior in the Nazi regime! The count hands the invalid an envelope bearing the names of party members suspected of disaffection with the cause. Der Fuehrer requests he recover in time for the imminent blood purge. Bill is by now flitting between two worlds, his American self receding further into the distance as he is seemingly possessed by by his twin. For Erich is the Headsman, the official Nazi Executioner! The vulpine Van Kemmerer is not one to let bygones be bygones, and, once the patient is back on his feet, informs him of his next duty. Tonight he will execute a female spy .... Much of the dialogue recalls 'Allo 'Allo at it's side-splitting best (not a compliment to be bandied around willy-nilly, I realise), but that said, The Executioner is atypically grim for Bellem, essentially a Nazi variation on R. Anthony's The Witch-Baiter with very large breasts. Sobering.
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Post by dem on Jun 8, 2021 15:04:11 GMT
Jerome Severs Perry - Dead Legs Walk: Beautiful, feminine legs — but they were disembodied spectres of a dead girl — seeking her body! Did the secret lie with the Doctor of Death or with the shrunken mummified heads of Astro?
Tom Dexter, publisher of the Clarion, receives a midnight visit from the ghastly livid white gams of a missing french maid. Having somehow dropped a message for his attention, the legs promptly vanish in the dark, and that is the last we see of them, or the corpse they presumably belonged to, for three pages or so. The note reads.
“Dexter:
This is what happens to meddlers. Not just death alone; but mutilation as well. Mutilation and soul-destruction. Legs that must walk, undead, through the night; that must walk in horrible search for the bodies of which they were once a part. Searching in vain for the bodies that have been destroyed.
Take heed. You have already gone too too far in your campaign of vilification. The next time, it will be the lovely legs of your fiancee, Doris Killian — the girl you adore.
— The Doctor of Death
Doris — in danger! It is all too horrible, like something out of science fiction!
But who is this 'Doctor of Death,' and why has he taken against Tom Dexter so? Could it have something to do with the Clarion's ongoing crusade versus charlatan fortune tellers and mumbo jumbo merchants, in particular Professor Astro, the self-styled 'mystic,' recently taken residence at the old Yancy house? Everybody knows the so-called "supernatural" is for gullible halfwits and yet — he watched those amputated walk the length of the bedroom with his own eyes. "Either he had gone mad, or else he had stumbled into a miasmatic maelstrom of hellish, fiendish foulness. And he knew he was not mad."
Ellery Watson Calder - Cats of Cassandra: Her unearthly beauty was a snare to the wicked — her errie companions were as weird as the fortune-teller herself ... a slinking horde to suck the hot blood of death at last.
Rumours of hidden treasure lure Mort Marriner to break into the fortune teller's house on Aldama Street. Madame Cassandra, non-bogus Seeress, and her army of feline friends have been expecting him. Were-cat thrills, surprisingly bloody, and sporadic globeswatch action — "her breasts throbbed like captive things beneath his palms," etc.
The 'Jerome Severs Perry' is the incomparable Robert Leslie Bellem at his most unhinged (especially the denouement). Cats ... conquers by forgoing an "it was the Mayor all along!" anti-climax.
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Post by dem on Jan 21, 2022 11:29:16 GMT
Kenneth W. Hutchinson [ed.] - Spicy Mystery Stories: Feb 1937 (Wildside Press, 2004) Hugh Speer - The Time Dissolver
Morgan Grant - Devil's Sleep
Rex Norman - Trail of the Goat
Carl Moore - Death Kiss
Justin Case - Hurricane Woman
Colby Quinn - Delayed Action
Lew Merrill - Hell's Robots
Clive Trent - Satan's Music
Robert Leslie Bellem - Flame DemonHugh Speer - The Time Dissolver: One dose of that secret Tibetan powder and time and space lose their meaning. Harmon's wife is young and lovely and at the same time she is an old woman, repulsive and ugly, but still capable of love. Testimony of Ned Harman, an inmate of the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane, who went wild on a visit to his in-laws and murdered Mr. Rogers with a Borneo spear. What could have driven him to behave so? Can it really be that old Mr. and Mrs. Rogers drugged he and their daughters drinks that they might commandeer their fit young bodies for a night of slobbering lechery? Spicy Mystery was forever falling foul of the censor but this is tame stuff when compared with the sex and sadism on offer in the shudder pulps. Which is not to say the stories and, especially, the illo's are not seriously entertaining in their own right. Morgan Grant - Devil's Sleep: An interview with a magician — that's what Bonny wanted; but in the depths of that mysterious house, she found horrors that were not stage settings ... and no audience had been planned for the fate that awaited her. "Bonny Leeds picked her way through it all (the hectic newsroom) as cool as a cucumber. The tight ringlets of her auburn hair jiggled almost as much as the twin globes of her soft, round breasts. Bonny wore a brassiere from December to April. It was August — and hot. " When the Great Dunleven, famous for exposing fake mediums and phoney psychic phenomena, inherits $100,000 from a female admirer, Muck Edwards, cantankerous editor of the Daily Ma*l, despatches his most glamorous reporter, Beulah Ann 'Bonny' Leeds to bag an exclusive interview with Mr. Moneybags. Her task proves more difficult than anticipated. After serving her a spiked drink, a man claiming to be Dunleven's assistant ushers our heroine to a subterranean dungeon, lair of a ghost-faced sex fiend .....
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Post by dem on Jan 24, 2022 10:20:30 GMT
Rex Norman - Trail of the Goat: Felice came looking for the man who had gone into Haiti in search of "She Who Sleeps." And she found that the same magic which enveloped her father could reach dark fingers for her, too.
Our heroine is accompanied to the Dark Continent by handsome young Steve Curtis who, much to her disappointment, has yet to notice she's a woman. The couple arrive at Professor Williams' last known whereabouts, a village presided over by Ti Goro, ancient voodoo doctor. Initially hostile, Ti Goro finally invites the whites to sit in on a ceremony to resurrect 'the shaggy goat-horned one' where-in a stunningly attractive native girl (twin "brown goblets of enchantment," etc.) is transformed into a were-goat. Steve and Felice follow her to the skeleton-strewn cave of "She Who Sleeps" - a cannibal Goddess in "mummy clothes" - who promptly wakes up! Despite all these seemingly supernatural goings-on, author reveals that the soon-to-be lovers have been duped by a one woman fancy dress party. "Science" is the real culprit.
Colby Quinn - Delayed Action: It was a clever scheme to fleece deluded victims in the sanitarium, and Kirby had played crooked all along and taken his share. It was when he began to feel sorry for a girl that his soft spot got him in trouble.
Nola Wayne, committed to the drying out wing of Dr. Conroy's Sanitarium for shooting her boyfriend in the lung - his lacing of her every soft drink with hard liquor has turned her alcoholic (!) - falls foul of the unscrupulous medic's blackmail racket. Conroy, Dr. Kirby Dall, and ferocious nurse Nell Martin have successfully convinced a succession of drugged and vulnerable patients that they have committed murder in the sleep. Of course, the staff will cover up for them, but these things take money .... Lucky for Nola, fit young Dr. Conroy is so besotted by her curves that he belatedly discovers a conscience.
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Post by dem on Jan 25, 2022 19:03:37 GMT
Carl Moore - Death Kiss; Every man she loves meets death by violence, and yet even when she avoids a man to save his life, the curse of her love still claims him.
Linda Moreno is a crime fraternity equivalent of Typhoid Mary. Every man she kisses dies soon afterward, either shot down, executed, or mangled in a car accident. On her brother's death in the electric chair, Linda pulls a vanishing act. Johnny Harrington, ace reporter of the Star, fortuitously tracks her to Lake Comus. It was Harrison first wrote of her as a "Jinx Woman" and dubbed her "the Kiss of Death," but despite this, Linda takes a shine to him. It all ends in tears. Her refusal to sleep with him - out of genuine concern for his safety - drives Harrington to drink, and he vindictively leaks the news that another of her paramours has been killed. Linda is eventually taken into custody after shooting dead a policeman. On the eve of her execution she invites Johnny to her cell for a final heart to heart ...
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Post by dem on Jan 30, 2022 10:37:16 GMT
Clive Trent - Satan's Music: At the strains of the Corinthian lyre, men and women became like animals and all their baser impulses came crowding to the surface.
Loves young dream, Ray Hammond, New York business exec, and Elsie Ferguson, model, aka "that young Greek god and that goddess person," reluctantly accept an invitation to Beasley's party, the host - "a repulsive, withered" antiquarian in his seventies - being Ray's managing director. Fellow attendees; a harem of lynx-eyed young women and the mandatory drooling, crooked-back, demented pensioners, boss-eyed with unnatural lusts. As the effects of the drugged wine kick in, a half naked effeminate named Xylos strikes up a love melody on an ancient Corinthian lyre. Ray and Elsie are powerless but to participate in a full-scale Greco-Roman orgy!
"Her dress was hanging about her hips, her brassiere hung awry, her full breasts that he had never seen before - save through her frock, were bare - lovely soft cones that palpitated, danced madly with her every movement."
When Ray snaps out of the spell, tries to drag Elsie from the lap of a slobbering pervert, Beasley sacks him on the spot - as does Elsie, who suddenly loathes him with her every fibre! How can he lure here back from the clutches of these sex fiends. What is the unholy secret of Satan's music?
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