Robert Weinberg, etc - Weird Vampire Tales

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Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemainowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.) - Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories From The Weird Fiction Pulps (Gramercy, 1992)

Introduction - Stefan R. Dziemainowicz

Seabury Quinn - The Man Who Cast No Shadow
Bassett Morgan - The Wolf Woman
Everil Worrell - The Canal
Clark Ashton Smith - A Rendezvous In Averoigne
Kirk Mashburn - Placide's Wife
Robert E. Howard - The Horror From The Mound
Edmond Hamilton - Vampire Village
Carl Jacobi - Revelations In Black
C. L. Moore - Shambleau
J. Wesley Rosenquest - Return To Death
Lloyd Arthur Eshbach - Isle Of The Undead
Earl Pierce, jnr. - Doom Of The House Of Duryea
Henry Kuttner - I, The Vampire
Robert Barbour Johnson - The Silver Coffin
Lester Del Rey - Cross Of Fire
Frank Belknap Long & Otis Adelbert Kline - Return Of The Undead
Greye La Spina - The Antimacassar
A. E Van Vogt - Asylum
Marion Brandon - The Dark Castle
Hugh B. Cave - Stragella
Raymond Whetstone - The Thirsty Dead
Arthur J. Burks - Murder Brides
Robert Bloch - The Cloak
Manly Wade Wellman - When It Was Moonlight
August Derleth - "Who Shall I Say Is Calling?"
William Tenn - She Only Goes Out At Night
C. M. Kornbluth - The Mindworm
Jerome Bixby & Joe E. Dean - Share Alike
Joe L. Hensey - And Not Quite Human
Charles Beaumont - Place Of Meeting


Amazing what you can cram into 442 pages. Although many of these selections are familiar from Haining (and others') collections, this is a must have for anybody who loves their trad vampires but isn't at all worried about the occasional bizarre twist to the formula.

Includes:

Seabury Quinn - The Man Who Cast No Shadow: Baron Cznezron must drink the blood of a virgin once every century to prolongue his evil existence. Together with his undead accomplice, (who was hung by an irate woman a few centuries back after a spate of child deaths), he abducts a beautiful girl and imprisons her in the caverns beneath Hazeltown House, Harrisonville.
Enter de Grandin, Trowbridge and Costello, just as the spreadeagled girl is about to have her throat slit ...

J. Wesley Rosenquest - Return To Death: A scientist, feared by superstitious Transylvanian villagers, suffers an attack of catalepsy. He's on the verge of being buried alive when he sits up in his coffin. Fortunately, the mountain folk know a vampire when they see one.

Earl Pierce jnr. - Doom Of The House Of Duryea: Father and son are reunited after twenty years following the death of Aunt Cecilia who insisted on their being kept apart when the father was accused of draining the blood of two of his children, a family taint going back five generations. Dad demands of his boy that he ties him to the bed to prevent him going walkabout in his sleep. Darkness falls.

Lester del Rey - Cross Of Fire: One of the grimmer stories. Karl Harhoffer falls victim to the woman known to the villagers as 'the night lady.' Evil things are whispered and even his Priest turns against him when Karl insists on seeing her. His friends, Flamchen and Fritz, eventually pay for their misguided loyalty, joining him in undeath. It is left to Karl to terminate their reign of terror.

William Tenn - She Only Goes Out At Night: Sympathy for the vampire. In Groppa County they'll tell you how old Doc Judd can handle anything, so it's lucky he's around when his son, Steve, falls for Tatiana Latianu, just as a weird epidemic begins to lay low the children of the community. The narrator, a Rumanian, realises there's something wrong about the girl when he starts getting twinges in his wooden leg. The Doc works out a humane solution to the situation and everybody's happy. Bloody spoilsport do-gooders, eh?

Robert E. Howard - The Horror From The Mound: A luckless Texan farmer, Steve Brill, excavates an old Indian burial mound in search of buried gold. His activities disturb the undead Moorish noble, De Valdez. The vampire celebrates his freedom by killing Brill's neighbour. As Brill, the archetypal muscle-bound Howard hero, reads up on the history of De Valdez, a ghastly face appears at the window ...

Henry Kuttner - I, The Vampire: "It's awful - I'm not sure yet what happened. His wife ... came to life while they were cremating her. They saw her through the window, you know ...screaming and pounding at the glass while she was burned alive. Hess got her out too late. He went stark raving mad ..."
People tend to develop pernicious anaemia when Chevalier Futaine, the mysterious star of forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster Red Thirst, is around. And now he has his designs on Jean, who he believes to be the reincarnation of his soul-mate, Sonja, staked some centuries earlier by a busybody priest.

Jerome Bixby & Joe E. Dean - Share Alike: Adrift in a lifeboat, Hofmanstahl and Craig. The former, a decent enough fellow, is a vampire, which makes Craig's situation all the more dicey. They reach a compromise over 'rations' which just might keep both going until they're rescued. Who will weaken first?

Joe L. Hensley - And Not Quite Human: All it took was one spaceship to conquer Earth and the Arcturians even captured the few skeletal specimens who miraculously survived the attack. But as the ship roars through space, the crew are afflicted by nightmares (even though these have been abolished) in which blood, bats and skulls feature prominently. The crew then begin committing suicide in increasingly imaginative ways. The captain is incredulous: "It's been bred out of the race ... it just doesn't happen! ... it's against the rules!" A visit from one of the earthlings, Adam Manning, educates him as what is and isn't possible to the undead.

Robert Bloch - The Cloak: Henderson buys a cloak for $5 from a mysterious Hungarian in a costumers. He wears it to the Lindstrom's Halloween ball, he steals the show, attacking the host and generally causing a stir with his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Famously filmed by Amicus for their "The House That Dripped Blood" omnibus.

Manly Wade Wellman - When It Was Moonlight: An episode in the life of Edgar Allan Poe: Eddie, investigates a reported case of premature burial in Philadelphia, encounters the woman who survived the ordeal, Elva Gauber. His ensuing efforts to get to the truth about the incident almost costs him his life, but it does give him the germ of the idea for "The Black Cat".

Charles Beaumont - Place Of Meeting: ... and the undead shall inherit the earth. In view of the food shortage, however, their leader advises them to return to their graves for a few centuries until the nuclear winter thaws and man starts wandering the surface again.

[David A. Riley]

"Enter de Grandin, Trowbridge and Costello, just as the spreadeagled girl is about to have her throat slit ..."

Are you sure it should read "de Grandin, Abbot and Costello"?

David

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C. M. Kornbluth - The Mind Worm: The Mind-worm is a product of the Atomic testing in the Pacific during his mother's pregnancy. A dull and stupid boy by human standards, none are aware that he's really a powerful psychic sponge who incites and feeds upon the emotions of others, killing them in the process. It's left to a Slavic community in West Virginia to recognise him as a variant on an old enemy and they set out to dispose of him by traditional means. A total Sci-horror classic!

Kirk Mashburn - Placide's Wife: The tight-fisted, stupid Placide kills his Gypsy wife Nita when he suspects her of having an affair with a mysterious peddler and discovers - via a blackened crucifix with mutilated saviour placed under his bed - that he's had a curse placed upon him. He hurls the crucifix at her corpse and it embeds in her neck. Before he and his equally dense friend Lebaudy can bury her, a cat settles on her breast and licks the blood away from her throat - and Nita returns as a werewolf! The peddler who caused all the trouble is a vampire and he and Nita bring terror to the Cajuns before his accidental staking by Lebaudy. Nita avenges herself on her husband - who, once savaged by his were-wife is impaled by the sexton to round off a really bad day - and survives to feature in a sequel.

Carl Jacobi - Revelations In Black: New York. The narrator reads what turns out to be the journal of a madman which he's just bought from a junkshop. Under the spell of the fantastic prose, he strays into a garden where he encounters the expected beautiful woman and, keeping her company, a huge dog. Gradually he realises that the pair are the vampires responsible for the death of the diarist. He trails them to their coffins with a hammer a stake.

Hugh B. Cave - Stragella: A corpse-festooned lifeboat is adrift in the Indian Ocean. Miggs and Yancy, the only survivors of the tramp ship Cardigan are dying of thirst. Salvation seems at hand when they cross a fog-bound ship, The Golconda, but it proves to be derelict save for the skeletons of the crew ... untl nightfall, and the arrival of Stragella, a beautiful Serbian vampire, and her undead accomplices Papa Bocito and Serannis. Miggs is soon drained of his blood but Yancy survives thanks to his tattoo ...

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August Derleth - "Who Shall I Say Is Calling?": 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 even so, they can't help but wonder if their fellow revellers are up to something.

Frank Belknap Long & Otis Adelbert Kline - Return Of The Undead: Terror on the campus when four medical students led by hunky but dim M. T. 'Empty' Cummings dig up the corpse of Simeon Hodges, late wild man of the woods. The plan is to transfer the body to Freddy Simpson's bed, because the guy is such a sap he faints at the sight of blood, and what does a hot babe like Nancy Summers see in him anyway? "Digging up Hodges is no crime because the old fellow was a nonentity plus," reasons Empty, but his colleague, Terry O'Rourke, doesn't like the look of the deceased one bit. "There's an English scholar named Summers who cites hundreds of cases of vampirism in the twentieth century, " he cautions, but nobody's listening. Simeon dutifully demonstrates that death has done him the world of good. Nancy, fresh from archery classes, walks in on a scene of horror. Let's hope she's borrowed a few moves from her namesakes.

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Raymond Whetstone - The Thirsty Dead. (Terror Tales, March 1935). The spiderlike old man wanted a visitor. And in the forest gloom that visitor could not see his pointed, eager teeth! Short and alarmingly conventional for a shudder pulp. Confound it all, man, we might be reading a proper horror story! As if I'd waste 15¢ of my hard-earned on that rubbish!

Philip Moore lives alone in a creepy woodland house on the outskirts of Willoughby. The villagers avoid him on account of he's senile and probably perverted and into black magic. The nearest person he has to a friend is Hilda the housekeeper, "a hideous old hag with a perpetual sneer on her pock-marked face and a body bent and twisted like a solitary, wind-tortured tree." So far, so very promising! It can only be a matter of paragraphs before the debauched duo abduct our newly-wed heroine, lash her to a crucifix and drill her brains out. Trouble is, there is no heroine. The narrator agrees to spend an hour in the mad old coot's company out of pity for his loneliness. Moore picks up a violin which, he claims, was a gift from Paganini who taught him to play. But Paganini died over a century ago!.

Had H. Van Thal included The Thirsty Dead in the first Pan book I doubt there would have been too many complaints.

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Arescu and the professor fall under the spell of glam suicide Helena Barrientos (1779-1799), the mistress of Archenfels.

Marion Brandon - The Dark Castle : (Strange Tales, Sept, 1931). An American Uni professor touring Central Europe with model student, Arescu, a Romanian. Arescu is prone to superstition and when their car breaks down on a lonely mountain road he admits that he'd be worried if they were anywhere near Archenfels Castle, the lair of the vampire woman! Even so, they are still lost. Fortunately, a woman in a long dark hooded cloak who just happens to be passing volunteers directions to the nearest "farm". What a charming creature!

[ripper]

This is the kind of vampire anthology that I favour. Not much in the way of the dreaded vampire romance here, I would guess, nor angst-ridden teen vampires. Stephen Jones included Hugh B. Cave's 'Stragella' in his 'Mammoth Book of Vampires'.

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Bassett Morgan - The Wolf-Woman (Weird Tales, Sept. 1927). "They dug her out of the glacier, this golden-haired vampire of the North, and she called the white wolves to her bidding."

Hugh Rankin

Tragedy strikes the Stanwell party as they ascend Mount Logan when Jo, an ancient Eskimo-Indian who has made his home in the icy wilderness, guides them to the perfectly preserved bodies of a golden-haired woman, a wolf pack and a woolly mammoth, frozen in a glazier for hundreds of years. By means of the Professor's miracle restorative - Stanwell had the foresight to prepare a vast quantity of the serum before embarking on the expedition - they resurrect, first the white wolves and then the beautiful huntress who shows her appreciation by draining Stanwell of his blood. Lieutenant Cressey, his second in command, very nearly suffers the same fate and subsequently craves a reunion with the she-devil like a junkie craves a fix.

"He felt possessed of a wild desire to find her and thrill again to the touch of her satin arms and her mouth warm on his flesh. He knew it for an evil thing, a worse craving than whiskey or dope, and found himself battling the weakness of flesh ..."

Only the timely intervention of Baptiste, a burly Canadian-Indian hired to guide the party to the summit, saves Cressey from setting off in the night. Baptiste applies a crucifix to the lieutenant's flesh, scorching the flesh. His suspicions confirmed, Baptiste rings the camp with wooden crosses to keep the wolves and their mistress at bay.
The 'ghost-wolves' attack the nearest camp, gnawing the bones of two guards.

The arrival of the rescue party, led by a man named Johnson, only makes matters worse. Johnson falls under the wolf-woman's spell. He is obsessed with freeing the Mammoth and shipping it home.

Jo, meanwhile, carves an ivory effigy of the beautiful vampire.

For once, no improbable trans-species brain transplants, but 'Bassett'/ Grace's suspenseful and bloody bizarre vampire thriller is up there with Island Of Doom among her very finest achievements. Pulp gold.

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J. Allen St. John

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach - Isle of the Undead: (Weird Tales, Oct. 1936). An uncanny tale of the fate that befell a yachting party on the awful island of living dead men.

The yacht Ariel is attacked and boarded by mouldering ancient Persian pirates, the crew of a rotting black galley under the command of evil Captain Leo Coreo. Coreo controls the living-drowned with his "horn of drugged sounds." The passengers - save for Cliff Darrell and Vilma Bradley - are frogmarched ashore to a castle and feasted upon by five red cloaked Satanic vampires. Cliff and Vilma launch a heroic rescue bid that costs the girl her dress and, when she falls under the soporific spell of the horn, very nearly a whole lot more. A very ludicrous vampire romp, which, had it been published a decade earlier, might have been denounced as a dreaded "Baird purchase."

J. Allen St. John

[cauldronbrewer]

Sept 10, 2021 14:49:10 GMT dem said:

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach - Isle of the Undead: (Weird Tales, Oct. 1936). An uncanny tale of the fate that befell a yachting party on the awful island of living dead men.

The yacht Ariel is attacked and boarded by mouldering ancient Persian pirates, the crew of a rotting black galley under the command of evil Captain Leo Coreo. Coreo controls the living-drowned with his "horn of drugged sounds." The passengers - save for Cliff Darrell and Vilma Bradley - are frogmarched ashore to a castle and feasted upon by five red cloaked Satanic vampires. Cliff and Vilma launch a heroic rescue bid that costs the girl her dress and, when she falls under the soporific spell of the horn, very nearly a whole lot more. A very ludicrous vampire romp, which, had it been published a decade earlier, might have been denounced as a dreaded "Baird purchase."

I'll give Lloyd Arthur Eshbach this: I still remember "Isle of the Undead" ten or so years after reading it. "A very ludicrous vampire romp" sums it up well.

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Arthur J. Burks - Murder Brides: (Horror Stories, Dec. 1935). The gruesome ghoul with blood-smeared mouth and evil groping hands, chanting that she had nine lives, was the weird woman Claude Dern had just killed ...."

Claude Dern, a recluse and reluctant psychic, is crossing the treacherous black Hawkwold Swamp when he chances upon a shadowy figure with blood on her lips worrying over a naked girl sprawled across a pile of leafy branches. Dern intervenes. The assailant draws a knife, as does he. He lands a fatal blow. Oh, the horror! He has killed a woman dressed in male attire! A .... a ... a lesbian vampire!!! Appalled, but unwilling to do time for slaying a monster in self-defence, he disposes of the corpse in the ebon ooze and escorts the victim, Miss Marna Shattuck, to her cabin. But what's this? The dead woman has come back for more! Luring Cern into the trees, she suffers him to stab her over and over, weigh her body down with stones and toss her back in the swamp. By the time he gets back to the cabin, Marna has vanished!

Speed merchant though he was, in my limited experience, Burks invariably plotted a decent story. This being a shudder pulp, the seemingly 'supernatural' aspects are ultimately rationalised, though Murder Brides is no less grim for that.