|
|
Post by dem on Dec 17, 2017 16:19:52 GMT
Seems to me that parties, especially those of the fancy dress variety, provide an ideal setting for horror stories, supernatural or otherwise. T. E. D. Klein - Petey: A monstrous gatecrasher ruins the Kurtz's mansion warming party. As host and guests are much of a conniving muchness, you're unlikely to care who gets killed just so long as its all of them. (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Shadows 2, 1979) Mary Danby - Party Pieces: Maggie and George's New Year's bash gives Ray Bradbury's The October Game a thorough seeing to. (Mary Danby [ed.], 6th Fontana Horror, 1971) John Burke - Party Games: Eight year old Simon Potter turns up uninvited at Ronnie Jarman's birthday party making life uncomfortable for the boy's mother who is already struggling to keep control over twenty children. Simon's daddy is dead and the other kids torment him over the fact. He's not one to forgive and forget. (Herbert Van Thal [ed.], Pan Horror 6, 1965) Syd Bounds - The Mask]: Fool reporter shows up at Jane Clay's Halloween bash wearing an authentic death mask. Not just any authentic death mask but that taken from the local serial trunk murderer. (Mary Danby [ed.], Frighteners, 1974). " ....'[it] was based on a real Halloween party I attended' .... The Mask was one of Bounds' most successful stories, and was later broadcast on local commercial radio in Reading at Halloween .... " From Philip Harbottle's introduction to The Best Of Sydney J. Bounds: Vol 2, 2003, 2016) Lucy Maud Montgomery - The House Party On Smoky Island: ( Weird Tales, Aug. 1935/ Startling Mystery Stories #10, 1968): The reputation of Dr. Anthony Armstrong has been under a cloud since the suspicious death-by-overdose of his unlamented first wife Susette. The truth comes to light at Madeline Stanwick's shindig during a round of piss-poor ghost stories when uninvited guest, Christine Latham, takes her turn. The dead return, Flapper girls reduced to quivering jellies, etc. Al Sarrantonio - Pumpkin Head: Little Cleo shouldn't have invited Raylee, along in the first place, but to demand the new girl in class finish that horrid ghost story she was telling them at school is just begging for trouble. Karl. E. Wagner [ed.], Year's Best horror XI, 1983) Jennie Howarth & Paula Milne - The Exorcism of Amy (Pamela Lonsdale [ed], Spooky, 1984). So she turned up uninvited and ruined Elizabeth's thirteenth birthday do, but there are mitigating circumstances: Amy has her own gatecrasher to deal with. See also: Elsie Lee - The Masque Of The Red Death, (Lancer, 1964) Phil Daniel - The Dracula Murders (Hale, 1983) J. F. Straker - The Goat (Harrap & Co, 1972: Linford Mystery, 2002) And, the indispensable; Raoul Adony - French Party Games, (NEL/ Four Square, Dec. 1967) |
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jan 16, 2018 14:28:31 GMT
 Vincent Napoli: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1951). "All over the country, millions of people were sitting at their television sets, watching some paid technician stage a lurid melodrama about the destruction of a civilization which had degenerated to the point where millions of people just sat at their television sets, watching some paid technician stage a lurid melodrama about the destruction of a civilization which had degenerated -" A particularly rowdy party at Rudy's place. To calm his obnoxious guests, the host pays for a television to be delivered so they can watch the wrestling match. The show is replaced by an unscheduled live broadcast ... D. K. Broster - Clairvoyance: ( A Fire of Driftwood, William Heinemann, 1932). Meanwhile the party at Strode Manor has passed without any untoward incident until Mrs. Fleming subjects young Cynthia to hypnotism. |
|
|
|
Post by bluetomb on Jan 17, 2018 19:45:25 GMT
Chris Miller - The Magic Show (More Devil's Kisses, ed. Linda Lovecraft). One of the more demented short stories I can remember reading since, well, ever.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Jan 18, 2018 9:36:38 GMT
Chris Miller - The Magic Show (More Devil's Kisses, ed. Linda Lovecraft). One of the more demented short stories I can remember reading since, well, ever. The one that caused all the trouble. How could I have overlooked it?  August Derleth - "Who Shall I Say Is Calling?": ( MF&SF, Aug. 1952): Narrator and his sister Maryla gatecrash a masqued ball posing as 'Lord and Lady Dracula.' Swingers both, he makes a move on Cinderella, while she gets up close and personal with Apollo in the garden. It's a fun night for sure but they can't help but wonder if their fellow revellers are up to something ..... |
|
|
|
Post by dem on Mar 14, 2018 10:42:35 GMT
 Boris Dolgov: ( Weird Tales, May 1947). When the tide of carnival reaches full flood the Evil Being it is who rides the crest. Horace Holloway, fresh home from the war and struggling to adapt to his old world, is spending a lonesome Mardi Gras until he hires an authentic frontier scout costume for the night. Passing St. Louis cemetery, he meets the fabulously beautiful Clothilde Deschamps. Clothilde - who may or may not be a voodoo priestess - invites him to a masked ball so spectacular he feels as though he has walked into an opium dream. All is well until some fool insults Ms. Deschamps whereupon her gallant punches him out. On recovering, the abusive party challenges Holloway to a duel. The soldier takes this as a joke, but Clothilde insists honour must be satisfied. It is only when Horace is wounded and blood seeps from the cut that his hostess realises her terrible mistake. He is one of them, "the dreadful living who we fear so much." There can be no future for their love until he joins her in the grave. Charles Black- Belt Up ( A Taste For The Macabre, 2018). No party, but Jane Moorcroft demanding her staff adopt fancy dress for World Book Day ends in disaster all the same. G. H. Dubrow - Death Feast of the Damned : (M. J. Shapiro [ed.], Monster Parade #4, March 1959). "It was a fancy dress party - with death as the door price." |
|
|
|
Post by dem on Apr 24, 2019 6:32:48 GMT
 Page Trotter: ( Ghost Stories, Sept. 1929). "One of you is to die before morning. Within a year the other, with his own hand, will kill the woman he loves!". Winter 1917. The Stevens sisters' throw a fancy dress party at their mansion on Knob Hill. Among the attendees, a gatecrasher costumed as a Grecian Goddess, carrying a pair of bronze shears in her girdle. "I find it useful for snipping threads," she explains to our narrator, Dick Worth. Beautiful as she is, Dick can't help but feel repulsed by his dancing partner, who turns vicious when an impetuous young reveller attempts to unmask her .... More dressing up fun - and a chemical spill - in Malcolm Rose's The Devil's Footprints (A. Finnis [ed], 13 More Tales of Horror, 1994). |
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Apr 24, 2019 15:19:01 GMT
Wow, Kev. I LOVE this one!
Thanks!
Steve
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Sept 8, 2021 8:13:12 GMT
Masked ball mayhem and fancy dress horrors;  Amos Sewell: ( Cosmopolitan, Feb. 1909: Alden H. Norton [ed], Hauntings and Horrors, 1969). Gustav Meyrink - The Man on the Bottle (Der Mann auf der Flasche): (1904: Peter Haining [ed.], Ghost Tour, 1984). Lyllian Huntley Harris - The Vow on Halloween: ( Weird Tales, May-June-July 1924: Peter Haining [ed.], Hallowe'en Haunting, 1984, as by 'Dorothy Macardle'). L. P. Hartley - The Cotillon: (Cynthia Asquith [ed.], When Churchyards Yawn, 1931). Gustav Meyrink - Bal Macabre: ( Strange Tales, Oct. 1932: 'Sean Richards' [ed.], The Elephant Man & Other Freaks, 1980). Peter Leslie - What’s a Ghoul Like You Doing in a Place Like This?: ( 'The Avengers' Annual, 1969): Peter Haining [ed.], More Great Tales of Crime & Detection, 1994). Tina Rath - The Fetch: ( 19th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, 1983). |
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Sept 8, 2021 9:23:27 GMT
From what year is the illustration by Sewell? It reminds me of the work of German painters George Grosz and Otto Dix.
The often high quality of the magazine illustrations is kind of baffling. The publishers can't have paid much for them, still they show mostly a level of craft which is lost.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Sept 8, 2021 10:19:43 GMT
From what year is the illustration by Sewell? It reminds me of the work of German painters George Grosz and Otto Dix. The often high quality of the magazine illustrations is kind of baffling. The publishers can't have paid much for them, still they show mostly a level of craft which is lost.
Sorry, overlooked providing the details! It's from Strange Tales, Oct 1932, illustrating Meyrink's Bal Macabre. I much prefer his women imperilled by drooling fiends work for Terror Tales as a rule, the ST stuff seems to either lack inspiration or, more likely, doesn't reproduce so great. Bal Macabre is a notable exception. |
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Sept 8, 2021 11:03:14 GMT
Ah, thanks. Here are two pictures to illustrate what I mean. George Grosz - Café, 1922 Otto Dix - Metropolis (the middle part of a tryptich) 1927
There seems to be some influence. But I don't understand anything about art so maybe I just imagine it.
|
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Sept 8, 2021 15:37:03 GMT
I think the phrase "women imperilled by drooling fiends" sums up so much of the Vault experience for this cobwebbed denizen...
Saluting, Hel
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Sept 8, 2021 16:23:23 GMT
I think the phrase "women imperilled by drooling fiends" sums up so much of the Vault experience for this cobwebbed denizen... Saluting, Hel Thank you. We aim to please. |
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 8, 2021 19:37:29 GMT
I think the phrase "women imperilled by drooling fiends" sums up so much of the Vault experience for this cobwebbed denizen... Saluting, Hel Thank you. We aim to please. I like movies about young women in flimsy nightgowns terrorized by frogmen? Am I in the right place? |
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Sept 9, 2021 5:27:04 GMT
I have some old VCR tapes, slightly soiled covers. I also have an old VCR machine, going cheap. Meet me round the back in half an hour. Cash only, squire, alright?
|
|
