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Post by dem on Mar 7, 2021 21:07:47 GMT
John Pelan [ed.] - Tales of Terror & Torment: Vol 2 (Dancing Tuatara, 2014) John Pelan - Introduction: The Men (and Women) Behind the Mayhem
Richard Race Wallace - The Pool Where Horror Dwelt
Russell Gray - The Singing Corpses
John Dickson Carr - The Man Who Was Dead
J. O. Quinlivan - The Horror I Thought Was Love
Dane Gregory - Little Men from Hell
G. T. Fleming-Roberts - Swamp Wolf
Wayne Rogers - Hell Welcomes Lonely Wives
Ray Cummings - Death’s Dreadful Lover
Donald Graham - The Chorus Horror Trained
Emerson Graves - Terror from the Deep
John H. Knox - Master of Monsters
Chandler Whipple - Spawn of the Endless Night
Donald Dale - Bodies Born for Slaughter Blurb: For more than seventy years some of the best horror fiction of the 1930s and 1940s has remained unavailable. ignored by anthologists and dismissed by collectors, the weird menace pulps were far, far more than mere sex and sadism. Some of the best weird fiction of the time appeared in the pages of Dime Mystery Magazine, Terror Tales and Horror Stories. However, until now there has not been a major anthology showcasing this material.
In this two volume anthology, author and award-winning editor John Pelan has assembled a massive collection to provide an introduction to these long-lost stories. In this first volume you'll be introduced to authors such as J. O. Quinlivan, Russell Gray, Donald Dale, Emerson Graves, G. T. Fleming-Roberts, John H. Knox and John Dickson Carr.
Enter the Grand Guignol world of the weird menace pulps and enjoy thrills such as you've never previously encountered!Donald Graham - The Chorus Horror Trained: ( Horror Stories, July 1939). When a workman is killed during construction of the Northchester Strand, his widow lays a curse on the theatre. For every play staged at the Strand "six shall die - horribly." A tragedy on opening night sees a transept beam crash down on stage, crushing two performers before a horrified/delighted sell-out crowd. The Strand gathers cobwebs for five years, it's owner, Martin Billings, eccentric millionaire, refusing to sell up and cut his losses, insisting that, once the fuss has died down, his baby will be the envy of Broadway. Now a young troupe have taken it upon themselves to relaunch the venue with a comedy production, Springtime. The first night is a success, but hardly have the cast given their bows than Merilee Johnson, actress' maid, inexplicably takes a nail-file and plunges it in her fiance's throat, while actress Peggy Holt butchers a girlfriend with shears. What can it all mean? Soon various insane chorines stalk the streets, whipping an old nightwatchman to shreds, hanging a torn and mutilated little girl from a lamppost, revelling in sadistic girl-fights, etc. With Springtime's female lead, Janet Cranson, now missing, our narrator, Frank Leonard, ace reporter, is going spare. Will there be enough of Janet left worth marrying once the murder dancers and their evil puppetmaster are through with her?
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Post by helrunar on Mar 9, 2021 2:28:43 GMT
Intriguing! That Donald Graham yarn sounds like quite the page-turner.
Now I need to go find out just what a dancing tuatara is...
cheers, H.
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Post by dem on Mar 9, 2021 7:03:40 GMT
John Dickson Carr - The Man Who Was Dead: ( Dime Mystery Magazine, May 1935). Returning to Chelsea from four months convalescence in South Africa, Nicholas Lessing, sole heir to his uncle's fortune, reads oh his own death in the newspaper. If he hurries, he might be in time to attend his own funeral tomorrow. From Waterloo station to Cheyne Walk, Lessing is made uncomfortably aware that strangers shrink from him. A ticket collector asks if he's traveling with the unusually tall, blind man following in his footsteps, only for the fellow to be gone when Lessing turns his head. Arriving home, he finds his wife weeping over an open coffin. Dare he approach?
An early, supernatural shudder before the mandatory debutante-whipping interludes and "it was the sheriff dressed up as giant space cucumber all along!" pay offs. Not sure Carr's blatant speed hackwork is any better or worse than what came later. Just different.
Incidentally, for those like self, who care about such things, these are not facsimile reproductions so, as the unimaginative cover design may have indicated, they lack the often outrageous artwork that contributed so much to the shudder pulps' appeal.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 9, 2021 9:23:51 GMT
Now I need to go find out just what a dancing tuatara is... cheers, H. You too, huh? I always thought this a somewhat complicated name for a speciality press. Incidentally, for those like self, who care about such things, these are not facsimile reproductions so, as the unimaginative cover design may have indicated, they lack the often outrageous artwork that contributed so much to the shudder pulps' appeal. I also toyed with the idea to order this, but as I still haven't read the other five volumes I ordered a few years ago, I just put them on the list. But I could read the introduction thanks to A*z*n. I don't know enough about Carr to know if this really is such a big thing or if it is just a fluke that he was in Terror Tales or wherever this was in. Like the couple of (mediocre) horror stories western writer Frank Gruber published in Weird Tales, which just were an oddity. I only got one hardcover from DTP, the rest were paperbacks. The hc was a nice edition, but I also missed the artwork. The paperbacks were disappointing as far as I was concerned. On the other hand, these were PoD editions to my surprise, so I guess I have to be satisfied that they still are in one part. |
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Post by pulphack on Mar 9, 2021 10:37:49 GMT
A tuatara is a lizard native to New Zealand, and as Dancing Tuatara is part of Ramble House, then it's Fender Tucker's sense of humour at work, I'd wager. They POD through Lulu,who I've always found very good quality. As for the illustrations, well they have a house style for covers and it's about that for the interior type face, etc, so never expect anything other than good, readable type and editing. Isn't that enough? The amount of incredibly old material otherwise unavailable apart from stupid prices that he makes easily available - well, anything else seems like carping. (A tuatara is a lizard, of course, not a fish)
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 9, 2021 15:31:25 GMT
A tuatara is a lizard native to New Zealand, and as Dancing Tuatara is part of Ramble House, then it's Fender Tucker's sense of humour at work, I'd wager. They POD through Lulu, who I've always found very good quality. As for the illustrations, well they have a house style for covers and it's about that for the interior type face, etc, so never expect anything other than good, readable type and editing. The Ramble House/Dancing Tuatara books are on the spartan side in terms of looks, but they're nicely produced. And without them, I never would've had the chance to own some of the works by Jack Mann, Mark Hansom, R. R. Ryan, and Donald Dale. |
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Post by dem on Mar 10, 2021 21:02:38 GMT
G. T. Fleming-Roberts - Swamp Wolf: (Dime Mystery Magazine, June, 1934). Mark Linsday braves the treacherous swamp known as 'Black Curtain' on account of folk have a habit of being swallowed by it. The only people to have survived it for any great length of time are Dr. Mosby, a scholar of sorcery and the dark arts, and Ted Dalton, his hideously hunchbacked assistant, who mostly keep themselves to themselves. Mark is desperately hoping that Dr. Mosby's job offer still stands. As he approaches the gloomy house in the pines, a stray dog alerts him to something lying in the marsh. A corpse — the skin flayed from it's chest!
Dr. Mosby confides that this is the third such murder in as many days. It is as though whoever stole a page from his unspeakably rare grimoire is crafting a girdle from human skin! But why?
Another early one, pretty grisly and not a female character in sight!
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Post by ramseycampbell on Mar 11, 2021 10:55:11 GMT
Now I need to go find out just what a dancing tuatara is... cheers, H. You too, huh? I always thought this a somewhat complicated name for a speciality press. Incidentally, for those like self, who care about such things, these are not facsimile reproductions so, as the unimaginative cover design may have indicated, they lack the often outrageous artwork that contributed so much to the shudder pulps' appeal. I also toyed with the idea to order this, but as I still haven't read the other five volumes I ordered a few years ago, I just put them on the list. But I could read the introduction thanks to A*z*n. I don't know enough about Carr to know if this really is such a big thing or if it is just a fluke that he was in Terror Tales or wherever this was in. Like the couple of (mediocre) horror stories western writer Frank Gruber published in Weird Tales, which just were an oddity. I only got one hardcover from DTP, the rest were paperbacks. The hc was a nice edition, but I also missed the artwork. The paperbacks were disappointing as far as I was concerned. On the other hand, these were PoD editions to my surprise, so I guess I have to be satisfied that they still are in one part. Carr wrote several supernatural tales. "Blind Man's Hood" has more than a touch of M. R. James, whose influence also shows up in some of the detective novels - The Plague Court Murders, for instance. |
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Post by andydecker on Mar 11, 2021 15:43:20 GMT
G. T. Fleming-Roberts - Swamp Wolf: ( Dime Mystery Magazine, June, 1934). Mark Linsday braves the treacherous swamp known as 'Black Curtain' on account of folk have a habit of being swallowed by it. The shudder-pulpsters loved the swamp as a setting. G. T. Fleming-Roberts' Blood Magic, Blassingame's Village of the Dead, a few by Gray. There must be more. |
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Post by andydecker on Mar 11, 2021 16:10:53 GMT
Carr wrote several supernatural tales. "Blind Man's Hood" has more than a touch of M. R. James, whose influence also shows up in some of the detective novels - The Plague Court Murders, for instance. Thanks, Ramsey. Good to know. Since ages I have four Carr mysteries on the crime shelf in a nice translated edition. Castle Skull, Death in Five Boxes, The Hollow Man and The Mad Hatter Mystery. Some day ... |
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Post by dem on Mar 11, 2021 21:14:30 GMT
Carr wrote several supernatural tales. "Blind Man's Hood" has more than a touch of M. R. James, whose influence also shows up in some of the detective novels - The Plague Court Murders, for instance. Thanks, Ramsey. Good to know. Since ages I have four Carr mysteries on the crime shelf in a nice translated edition. Castle Skull, Death in Five Boxes, The Hollow Man and The Mad Hatter Mystery. Some day ... Carr contributed something called The Door to Doom to another great shudder pulp, Horror Stories for June 1935. Anyone read it? Is it a proper shudder pulp shudder pulp (nudes, whips, scooby doo ending, etc) or something relatively sombre? Chandler Whipple - Spawn of the Endless Night: ( Dime Mystery, Nov. 1935). A second, properly supernatural story involving pursuit by a phantom blind man, this one demanding "give me back my eyes!" Hapless stock market broker John Newcombe is obsessed with the intricately carved ebony box sat in the window of a Lower Broadway auction house. Somehow he just knows that, were he to own it, his financial struggles would be over. John attends the auction and outbids rival unseen with $100 he doesn't possess, but at last the box is his. Uniquely, the auctioneer lets Newcombe have it for the price of his original bid, $5, as he believes him to have suffered some kind of breakdown: he's spent the afternoon bidding against no-one. No matter. The fetish (as he thinks of it) in his clutches, John is transformed into a financial hot-shot to the point where he's offered partnership in the firm. But each extraordinary market gain costs him the most skull-splitting headaches. He also grows uncomfortably aware of an invisible stalker trailing him on the street. As Newcombe's stock rises, so his sight fails alarmingly and Carla's devotion wanders to a guy who can actually see. The phantom with the missing eyes catches up with him ... Donald Dale - Bodies Born for Slaughter: ( Terror Tales, Sept. 1940). I thought this one sounded familiar. Bodies ... |
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Post by jamesdoig on Mar 13, 2021 9:22:22 GMT
Carr contributed something called The Door to Doom to another great shudder pulp, Horror Stories for June 1935. Anyone read it? Is it a proper shudder pulp shudder pulp (nudes, whips, scooby doo ending, etc) or something relatively sombre? No nudes or whips sadly, but homicidal French innkeepers with an ingenious way of knocking off their guests and the ghost of a French nobleman/occultist/serial killer.  instagram album downloader |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Mar 13, 2021 16:07:45 GMT
Carr contributed something called The Door to Doom to another great shudder pulp, Horror Stories for June 1935. Anyone read it? Is it a proper shudder pulp shudder pulp (nudes, whips, scooby doo ending, etc) or something relatively sombre? No nudes or whips sadly, but homicidal French innkeepers with an ingenious way of knocking off their guests and the ghost of a French nobleman/occultist/serial killer. instagram album downloaderI've read "The Door to Doom". I remember nothing about it! |
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Post by ramseycampbell on Mar 16, 2021 9:03:33 GMT
Carr wrote several supernatural tales. "Blind Man's Hood" has more than a touch of M. R. James, whose influence also shows up in some of the detective novels - The Plague Court Murders, for instance. Thanks, Ramsey. Good to know. Since ages I have four Carr mysteries on the crime shelf in a nice translated edition. Castle Skull, Death in Five Boxes, The Hollow Man and The Mad Hatter Mystery. Some day ... is very atmospheric, as I recall. It was the first of his I read, and set me off trying to write a novel of that kind (twice). |
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Post by andydecker on Mar 16, 2021 14:39:52 GMT
Thanks, Ramsey. Good to know. Since ages I have four Carr mysteries on the crime shelf in a nice translated edition. Castle Skull, Death in Five Boxes, The Hollow Man and The Mad Hatter Mystery. Some day ... is very atmospheric, as I recall. It was the first of his I read, and set me off trying to write a novel of that kind (twice). Unfortunatly I am not very familiar with your novels. Which ones? |
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