Studio Of Screams (2020)

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

Studio Of Screams (PS Publishing, 2020)

Prologue Stephen R. Bissette
Sword of the Demon Mark Morris
Interview the First Stephen R. Bissette
The Devil's Circus Christopher Golden
Interview the Second Stephen R. Bissette
Castle of the Lost Tim Lebbon
Interview the Third Stephen R. Bissette
The Squeamish Stephen Volk
Interview the Fourth & Epilogue Stephen R. Bissette

Wasn't sure whether to put this into the Imaginary Films thread or to start a new thread, but have opted for the latter. Studio of Screams is a linked anthology of tales by Mark Morris, Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, and Stephen Volk, wrapped in a framing narrative by Stephen R. Bissette.

Inspired by John Burke's Hammer horror novelisations, the four embedded tales are novelisations of four films from the legendary, spoken only of in whispers, Blythewood Studios, 60s and 70s purveyors of good old British terror and torture.

I'm slowly savouring this one, still on Mark Morris's Sword of the Demon, which reads like a cracking mixture of Hammer's The Mummy, She, and Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, down to the unmistakable casting of Peter Cushing as the leader of the expedition that uncovers the tomb of a legendary Chinese warrior. And Stephen Bissette's prologue, which sets the scene for his investigations into a studio that seemed to vanish deliberately into the night, is delicious - even Digby, The Biggest Dog in the World crops up as the young cinephile encounters his first Blythewood film on a matinee double bill.

As a Hammer and Amicus tribute - as well as a terrific read in its own right - it's all shaping up rather nicely.

[fritzmaitland]

I've a copy of this! On hold because of the short story marathon in October (and Midnight's Lair) but looking forward to it later. I've happy memories of John Burke's Hammer Horror Omnibi. Not so much the first one, as I'd seen Curse Of Frankenstein, and Revenge, Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb and The Gorgon didn't float my boat (at the time - I've come to relish the film version of The Gorgon)but the Second was brilliant - Plague Of The Zombies, The Reptile, Dracula-Prince Of Darkness and yes, even Rasputin - The Mad Monk.

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

Oct 16, 2020 19:49:55 GMT fritzmaitland said:

I've a copy of this!

Yeah, you got your copy ages before I got mine. I had to be a flash sod and go for the signed edition, which took a bit longer. But I'm glad to say it's proving worth the wait. And it's put me in the mood to get the Hammer Omnibus pairing down off the shelves where they've been biding their time.

[andydecker]

Hopefully this will be an Ebook some day. PS is a bit selective in this regard.

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

I finished this one a few nights ago, after forcing myself not to rush through it. The feeling of authenticity is marvellous, and as I read each individual 'novelisation', despite them embellishing events and adding details you'd be unlikely to have seen on screen (as novelisations were wont to do, of course) I was able to picture each of the films as if recalling them from some vividly remembered BBC2 Horror Double Bill.

The framing narrative, complete with footnotes and added biographical details, weaves the history of Blythewood through very real and recognisable points in the history of British horror films, exploitation cinema, literature, fashion and music - everything from the Carry On films to the Rolling Stones, Michael Reeves and Michael Ripper. And I'm sure some Vaulters would get a kick out of references to NEL's back catalogue and Richard Allen skinhead books.

In the absence of any Blythewood Studios films to watch, reading it has prompted me to a rewatch - and in a few cases get round to long delayed first watches - of a string of Hammer films, while over in some parallel universe, a stack of hidden film cans are the last resting place of the Blythewood horrors... if rest is indeed what they do...

[dem bones]

Stephen R. Bissette, Mark Morris, Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, Stephen Volk - Studio of Screams (PS May 2020)

Graham Humphreys

Stephen R. Bissette - Prologue: A Coat of Arms

Mark Morris - Sword of the Demon
Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the First
Christopher Golden - The Devil's Circus
Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the Second
Tim Lebbon - Castle of the Lost
Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the Third
Stephen Volk - The Squeamish
Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the Fourth
Stephen R. Bissette - Epilogue

Blurb:
RETURN IF YOU DARE TO THE HEYDAY OF HORROR . . .

To the era of British cinema when the bywords for terror and the celluloid supernatural were Hammer Films, Amicus Productions, and Blythewood the Studio of Screams (as the News of the World dubbed it in 1965).

Here, as never permitted before, are the authorised novelizations of four Blythewood classic horror films. Forgotten by some. Unforgettable to many. To chill your spine from the printed page as they once did from the silver screen ...

SWORD OF THE DEMON
Death and disaster stalk the members of a British expedition after they plunder the tomb of a legendary Chinese warlord, for among the artefacts they ship back to London is a sword rumoured to contain the spirit of a vengeful demon ...

THE DEVIL S CIRCUS
Le Circus Furneaux brings screams of joy wherever they travel, but there are other screams as well. Each searching for a missing brother, Yvette and Hugo will find those screams beneath the big top of The Devil s Circus! ...

CASTLE OF THE LOST
After surviving the war, Jack and his wife and child return to his family estate, Grayland Castle, the site of a scandal involving ritual sex and murder. That was all in the past, and now they're here to make the place their home. But in such places, the past does not wish to remain hidden. And in the castle's basements, shadows stir ...

THE SQUEAMISH
In the swinging sixties, Geraldine Copper works for the EBFC, better known as the censor, in London's Soho. When she clashes with a firebrand director, Marcus Rand, over cuts to his violent and sexually-charged film The Mortal Sins of Dracula, it sets in train a series of ghastly events as the film itself seems to haunt her ...

BUT WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BLYTHEWOOD STUDIOS?
Reclusive former movie producer Lawrence Blythewood agrees to surreptitiously meet with a college professor in rural Québec. Insisting upon the utmost security, he comes out of exile for just 24 hours. Long enough to discuss his cinematic legacy and the four films above but harbouring his own dark agenda ...

Stephen R. Bissette - Prologue: A Coat of Arms: A university professor, originator of a controversial course in 'Cancel Culture - Expurgating and expurgated pop culture,' determines to investigate the demise of Blythewood Studios, whose sixties-seventies heyday saw them rival Hammer and Amicus as the UK's most successful purveyors of horror movies. So why did they disappear overnight? As far as the professor has been able to establish, there is not even so much as a nth generation bootlegged print of a single Blythewood movie survived their demise to prove they ever existed.

Much to his surprise, 'Lord' Lawrence Blythewood agrees to a meet at a Québec bed and breakfast. On his arrival, the professor is provided with impossibly rare paperback novelizations of four of the studio's greatest horror hits to read between interviews over the next twenty-four hours, after which his host will again vanish back to self-imposed exile.

Mark Morris - Sword of the Demon: July, 1890. Sir Winston Tremayne leads an expedition to a jungle temple in the Tian Shan Mountains, where lies the tomb of a legendary warrior. As befits a national hero, Wu Lin Zheng was buried with all worldly riches, not the least of them his terrible sword. Legend has it this awesome weapon is possessed by a demon sworn to destroy anyone stupid enough to plunder the sacred shrine. Fortunately, perma-apoplectic Sir Clyde Stokesley, sponsor of the expedition, is not one to heed the superstitious piffle of ignorant foreign Johnnies. This little lots going back to London for flogging to the highest bidder! The party duly strip the sepulchre of its every treasure. Richard Frye, at twenty-five far the youngest of the team, slips a green pendant into his pocket as a gift for fiancée, Florence, Sir Winston's cherished daughter.

The party sail home to England. The murder Demon follows ....

A very The Mummy's Shroud (minus mummy) feel to this one. Sir Clyde steals the whole thing.

[andydecker]

Intrigued by your account I ordered it through the PS Publishing site. Seems they don't sell through Amazon any longer or at least not all of their Ebooks. But it was no problem to order it.

I just read the first Bissette part and was truly impressed. This is more scary in its actual references than in its fictional. "Cancel Culture"? WTF.

But Blythewood Film on the other hand rang so true that I thought for one moment that it was a real company. I would watch Miracle of the Bowmen in a minute. I really hope, Bissette can sustain this.

[helrunar]

What a fun thread! The notes on Sword of the Demon actually remind me of the 1964 Hammer thriller Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, which I watched some of several years ago on DVD--will have to go back and watch the whole film now. 

cheers, Hel

[dem bones]

Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the First: "It was our mummy movie really, wasn't it?" Blythewood lets on that Sword ... was rush released in the spring of 1965 to annoy Hammer, whose much-hyped The Face of Fu Manchu was imminent. Both did well at the box office. The tomb from which the Yaoguai escapes is based on the West Kennet Long Barrow on Silbury Hill, and Blythewood stresses there is important significance in this, he'll come back to it later. I'll not reveal the cast beyond reassuring Jojo that Michael Ripper shows his face.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jun 9, 2022 11:29:15 GMT dem bones said:

I'll not reveal the cast beyond reassuring Jojo that Michael Ripper shows his face.

Oh, good.

[helrunar]

That's a strange mistake in that yarn. Face of Fu Manchu wasn't Hammer, although Christopher Lee helmed the cast in the title role. It was produced by the infamous Harry Alan Towers (apparently, one of his bylines was "the cheque's in the mail" and it never was) for a German outfit, Constantin Films, and released by Warners in the UK and, if I recall correctly, "Seven Arts" in the US. Directed by Don Sharp who made it look and play much better than might have been expected.

Noteworthy Fu news: the long-unavailable Paramount Studios films, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu and The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, are being released in a restored Blu Ray edition by the Kino Lorber company next week. The disc just got a strongly positive review on the DVD Beaver site.

It has to be noted that the character played by Warner Oland in these films is really a completely separate personality from the Devil Doctor of Sax Rohmer's novels. But the films are fun for those of us who enjoy old genre cinema of this period.


H.

[dem bones]

Jun 9, 2022 17:31:55 GMT helrunar said:

That's a strange mistake in that yarn. Face of Fu Manchu wasn't Hammer, although Christopher Lee helmed the cast in the title role. It was produced by the infamous Harry Alan Towers (apparently, one of his bylines was "the cheque's in the mail" and it never was) for a German outfit, Constantin Films, and released by Warners in the UK and, if I recall correctly, "Seven Arts" in the US. Directed by Don Sharp who made it look and play much better than might have been expected.

Noteworthy Fu news: the long-unavailable Paramount Studios films, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu and The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, are being released in a restored Blu Ray edition by the Kino Lorber company next week. The disc just got a strongly positive review on the DVD Beaver site.

It has to be noted that the character played by Warner Oland in these films is really a completely separate personality from the Devil Doctor of Sax Rohmer's novels. But the films are fun for those of us who enjoy old genre cinema of this period.


H.

That was my mistake, not the author's. Mr. Bissette correctly credits Harry Alan Towers with Mask ..., not Hammer.

[dem bones]

"Step Right Up for the Three-Ring Nightmare - Now a Major Motion Picture!"

Christopher Golden - The Devil's Circus: A French setting for Blythewood's killer clown/ Big top macabre outing. Predates Hammer's Vampire Circus, which borrows some of its ideas.

Her father dead in a house fire, Yvette Comtois is left destitute and penniless, grasping Uncle Xavier having claimed the family vineyard in lieu of unpaid debt. The young woman's only hope is brother Claude, a clown in Le Circus Furneaux, who has not been home in an age.

Hugo Schuster has also lost a loved one to the same company. At close of a recent performance, he was beaten unconscious by the strongman, and Oskar, his little brother, abducted. It seems that for every village the Circus visit, a shrivelled bag of skin that, until recently, was a rosy-cheeked child, is found discarded in a field ....

Yvette and Hugo cross paths when she is set upon by would-be rapists, Gerhardt the butcher's boy, and his brother, Willi. Schuster floors the former, while a grapple on a bridge sees Willi fall in the river. He can't swim. Gerhardt flies screaming "murder" to the village constable. Fortunately for Hugo, Elfriede, a powerful witch, has a down on the Circus, whose child murders bring the craft into disrepute. She assists the couple's escape from the village, directing them to Glimmeldingen, a thirty-mile hike away, where, she has divined, the circus will next perform.

The couple locate their loved ones, not that it does them much good as neither are in the mood for tearful reunions, having taken up worship of a demon in the form of a nine-foot stone statue depicting a vile humanoid winged serpent. "Our master gifts us with long life, with strength and success, and we revel in its glory. But it cannot live inside stone, and so we procure shells for it to inhabit. The shells burn out quickly ..."

Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the Second: It was Blythwood's brother, Louis, had an obsession with the neolithic chalk mound on Silbury Hill, "creepy place. The interviewee lets on that a certain prop, familiar from several of the films, is of crucial importance to the overall Blythewood story. Post-The Devil's Circus (1968), relations with John Trevelyan of the British Board of Film Classification soured as Blythewood trowelled on "all kinds of sex" in an attempt to outdo the competition. "Didn't work, went too far ...."

[andydecker]

Have to say that I thought Sword of the Demon a bit bland and by the numbers. I am just no fan of Mark Morris rather dry and prosaic style. Compared to a movie like The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires or the marvellous Horror Express it also suffered from its modern stiffness.

I especially thought so after reading The Devil's Circus by Christopher Golden. This was much better written and more emotional, had some terrific ideas and set-pieces (loved the witch, the degenerate villagers and the fiery ending with the melting clowns, no dull minute in this), and I would have watched it in a minute if it were real.

Interview the First and Interview the Second were a lot of fun. Of course it helps if you know some things about British horror movies of the time, still this is inventive and hasn't a wrong or anachronistic word yet.

I would like to know how they produced this. Did Bissette wrote the plots for the movies and gave them to the writers, or did he write his parts after the novellas were in? (This would make Golden's story even more impressive.) This all is remarkable seamless.

Now onward to Lebbon and Volk.

[dem bones]

Tim Lebbon - Castle of the Lost: Darkest and, for me, strongest of the 'novelisations' to date. Blythewood saw in the 'seventies with censor-baiting nudity, gore and perversion.

At close of WWII, Jack Greyland reluctantly moves back to Wales to reclaim what's left of his birthright. Jack, wife Lucy, and little George had been making a go of it in London, until a combination of greedy landlord and rats drove them from their squalid apartment. Greyland Castle, on the outskirts of Tall Stemming, holds bad memories for Jack, though he'd left before the worst of the atrocities perpetuated by his parents and sister, Mary, all since vanished, believed consumed in the inferno which claimed all but a solitary tower. "What they did almost tore the village apart. Three people dead. Three more missing. Witchcraft, strange ceremonies, experiments in immortality."

Jack pays a visit to the King's Head. The locals are not pleased to have a Greyland back among them, no matter that he had no involvement in the orgies and murders. His plans to renovate the castle and let it out to tourists will not go unopposed. Still he stubbornly ignores all warnings, even those of his adored grandma, who fears for his wife and son. She insists that, under no circumstances must he be tempted to investigate the cavern beneath the basement ....

Meanwhile, Abertha, the obligatory crone, prowls the courtyard by night, hanging carved wooden antler-like charms in doors and windows. Is she fending off the evil ones — or summoning them to a banquet of blood?

Nearest comparison I can think of is a Basil Copper Black Magic gothic with plenty of bad sex thrown in. Far the most powerful ending, too.

Stephen R. Bissette - Interview the Third: Lawrence Blythewood opens up on outsmarting the censors. Should he anticipate a script would meet with problems, he'd first submit adaptations of his favourite Charles Birkin stories, knowing Trevelyn would ban them on subject matter alone. Consequently, Castle ..., on the surface at least, a classic Poe-derived haunted tower story, seemed comparatively benign and passed with minimal cuts. Blythewood would also hire hack authors to adapt Richard Allen's Skinhead titles for same purpose.
It was brother Louis provided the studio's celebrated prop — a golden casket, predating the perhaps not entirely mythical King Arthur of the Britons — excavated on Glastonbury Tor. The casket originally contained seven gemstones - "the spirit of England" according to our suddenly garrulous interviewee. So why did they remove a stone with each film it appeared in?