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Post by dem bones on Mar 14, 2024 10:09:37 GMT
Harry Steeger [ed.] - Terror Tales : February 1935 (Popular Publications, Jan 2024) Hugh B. Cave - Enslaved to Satan
Ray Cummings - The House of Doomed Brides
Arthur Leo Zagat - Riverfront Horror
Ben Judson- The Devil’s Dowry
George Edson - The Cross of Blood
Robert C. Blackmon - Moon Mania
Nat Schachner - Thirst of the Ancients
The Black Chapel: A Department  Amos Sewell A sixth TT facsimile reissue from Popular. Advertisement for new publication Horror Stories on p.4. Fans of Peter Haining's Terror!/ A Pictorial History of Horror Stories may recognise some of the artwork. Hugh B. Cave - Enslaved to Satan: Not till the Devil's handmaidens had dragged Paul Norton, man of God, down to the foul depths of their pain-filled horror chamber did he know that the blood-red message had spoken truth — that he had sold his soul to Satan.Wealthy parishioner Jason Manly bequeaths Woodlawn Park to the ministers of Denham Church, who vote to transform it into a Bible-themed entertainment complex. On the eve of the opening ceremony, Deacon Alfred Wyman, the one minister who spoke out against their get rich scheme, is crucified head down in the park by Satan's handmaidens! At their Master's command, the women next abduct the Rev. Paul Norton, brand him with an inverted crucifix, torture him with a burning iron until he agrees to do Satan's bidding. How could he refuse when the girl poised to scorch his eyes is his fiancée, Ruth Winward! Opening night. The first act, a re-enactment of Daniel's heroics in the lion's den, passes without incident. Next up: "The big sensation of the evening." Pierson's wet mouth curled in a grin. "The casting of black-souled sinners into a fiery furnace. The furnace is the real thing, and so are the victims. A great little act. Miller's the man who doped it out."
"But —"
"Oh, it's perfectly safe. No one'll get hurt. Miller himself is one of the lost souls. On the floor of the dance-hall, right next to the orchestra platform, we've got a big iron tank about six feet deep. The victims will be herded across the platform and forced to leap down into the flames, to the accompaniment of much screaming and wailing for mercy. And if you don't think Miller and the others can do a good job of wailing, you should have heard them in here half an hour ago, rehearsing !" Happily for the reader, Pierson's confidence is misplaced. With two Deacons cremated, and a third briefly hospitalised with superficial wounds, Norton receives the command to murder three colleagues — or join the dead churchmen in the fiery pit! Has the Fiend Incarnate come to Denham or is it just some local businessman dressed up?  Amos Sewell: A strange girl it was whom John Carson married — yet not till he had followed her to the home of her ancestors did he guess the fearful truth. As quite recently encountered and much enjoyed in Schachner's The Devil's Nightclub collection. Recommended to the sex-&-sadism-pulp curious who've yet to take the plunge. The real depravity was still two-three years in the future.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 14, 2024 21:20:18 GMT
Love Sewell's artwork. Hidden nudity in plain sight, drooling old perverts of course in wheelchairs, inbred hillbillies decades before Deliverance, square-jawed heroes ready to bust all shackles and some heads ... all in one picture.
Where do you get these facsimiles?
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Post by dem bones on Mar 15, 2024 11:51:03 GMT
Love Sewell's artwork. Hidden nudity in plain sight, drooling old perverts of course in wheelchairs, inbred hillbillies decades before Deliverance, square-jawed heroes ready to bust all shackles and some heads ... all in one picture. Where do you get these facsimiles?
Been ordering them via (spit) Am*z*n.uk. As I write, they're up to #7 (March 1935) — still a long way to go until Donald Graham takes his bow. Wonder if they'll get around to Horror Stories? It pays to keep an eye on the prices, as they've been known to fluctuate wildly (anything from £7+ to £19+ per issue). |
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Post by andydecker on Mar 15, 2024 18:07:00 GMT
Been ordering them via (spit) Am*z*n.uk. As I write, they're up to #7 (March 1935) — still a long way to go until Donald Graham takes his bow. Wonder if they'll get around to Horror Stories? It pays to keep an eye on the prices, as they've been known to fluctuate wildly (anything from £7+ to £19+ per issue). Found them. Thanks. Seems I looked under the wrong tree. Nothing under 20 Euros here for what I guess will be print on demand. (As far as experience goes; they don't mark this seldom.) Too much for this kind of quality. |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 16, 2024 13:02:25 GMT
The quality has been decent to date, no complaints from me. Worst I've had was a truly dreadful Ghost Stories Jan 1927 facsimile from Gwandanaland. However, I'm deeply grateful to the same publisher for the Horror Stories: Sept 1937 - Weird Tales: Dec 1928 double he knocked out as Classic Horror Pulps: Volume 1 (he's since fallen into dispute with Am*z*n who have removed all his wares).  Amos Sewell: A curse was on the Layton blood, and fear in the Laytons' eyes. Was it a Layton who prowled the hallways, marking his victims with the bloody cross?. Thirty years ago, Kurt Gilder, hurt in love, was committed to a Madhouse for the mutilation murders of old man Layton and his brother, John. Now - someone or something - has revived the maniac's campaign against both the family and their domestic pets. Suspicion first falls on Grandma Layton, found crouching over the corpse of her son, except she dies in bed that same night. Could it be Jaffray the butler, a squat hunchback with a massive head and weird yellow cats eyes. Surely he must hate everyone normal-looking? And what's with that creepy kid, Conrad, always first to a murder scene "like a foul little ghoul defiling the sanctity of the grave." Robert Freeman, recently engaged to Christine Layton, resolves to unmask the culprit - but could it be the butcher is his own sweetheart? I never regarded Ernst as a shudder pulp author - he cut out once they entered their mindless sadism for its own sake years - but this is terrific, not least for a denouement outrageous even for Terror Tales. In memory of Charles Black. Five years .... |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 19, 2024 18:37:15 GMT
 Amos Sewell: Two bodies lay beneath the blood-red moon, and no one knew when death would strike again. Adrift on the Pacific, Castleton drank blood and ate from the corpses of three dead shipmates to survive. "I — I had to. But — God! — I've fought it. I — I've wanted to taste blood - ever since." Fifty years later, the invalid's daughter, Ethel, is found sprawled unconscious between the corpses of her two brothers — her mouth all gored and bloody from ripping out their throats! Has Ethel inherited her father's appetite for human flesh? Is a werewolf loose on the Castleton estate? Nat Hough, motor cycle patrolman, investigates.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 21, 2024 20:01:11 GMT
 Amos Sewell: The black monster that struck from the fog with rending claws of steel was surely no human thing — yet one by one it was driving these wretched folk, screaming, from their last refuge! A Supreme Court blocks Mr. G. Watts Condon's plans to demolish a row of New Deal Town's decrepit waterfront properties, long a shelter for the destitute. The developer graciously accepts the ruling, him being such a famous philanthropist and all. But the squatters' relief at the verdict is short-lived as Rat-face Floyd, Old Mom Stone and alkie friends are systematically butchered by a shapeless black mass with pitchforks for hands! "Baldy Thomas!" I said, and looked at the top of his head to make sure. My stomach came up into my throat. Because there wasn't any top to his head. His skull had been peeled open like you peel the shell off a soft-boiled egg. And the mess inside was awful ... The sounds I squeezed out of my throat didn't make words, and then they did. "Who're you? What — what are you ... ?" Story notable for the heroics of its 19-year-old female lead, Marge Beals, who, according to our narrator, Henry 'Hen' Trent — him of the deformed fin — ain't pretty, "no, not pretty at all, but I'd a damn sight rather look at her than at the best looker in Minsky's chorus." Not that Hen's in the running now that hotshot young lawyer's hit town. |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 23, 2024 12:06:28 GMT
Ray Cummings - The House of Doomed Brides: Too late, Earle Kennison learned of the monstrous fate reserved for those who scoff at wizard's spells. A straight supernatural story so incongruous in this company it might have been written for another market. Setting is a remote Scottish castle overlooking the village of Grath. Sixteen-year-old Gretna daren't wed her childhood sweetheart for fear of a necromancer's curse which has brought death to a succession of Frane women in childbirth. Her grandfather, a scientist and clairvoyant, proposes a seance to both raise the evil spirit and divine the future. Might have been more impressed with this one had I not been spoiled rotten by Cave, Ernst, and Schachner. Same goes for; Ben Judson - The Devil's Dowry: What fearful power was it that brought Julie Anthony's death on the eve of her wedding-day? When the parson's daughter, Julia Anthony, dies of a mysterious illness, Simone, a Haitian faith-healer, offers to revive her for $500. Deeply suspicious of this supposed miracle worker, George, the dead girl's fiancé, a reporter on the Evening Mercury, ventures downtown to investigate his activities. Simone introduces George to one of his success stories, Old Lazar — a mindless zombie! Does he want Julia back that badly? A nocturnal stake-out of the faith healer's basement confirms the journalist's worst fears that Simone presides over a hundred-strong voodoo cult! Worse, he has entered into conspiracy with a local GP, Dr. Pelay, to drug select, rich white patients into a state of catalepsy. Once buried, the 'corpse' can be revived — either for return to the bereaved or sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast!
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