Monthly Archives: October 2015

Forgotten Book: Earthbound by Richard Matheson (1982)

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Spooky, erotic stuff lies inside the covers of Richard Matheson's Earthbound.

This is the 164th in my series of Forgotten Books.

All of you should know the work of Richard Matheson, particularly at this time of year. His work for The Twilight Zone alone is enough to make him a demi-god. Then there were his wonderful movies, adapting Edgar Allan Poe and others like Fritz Leiber, which he and Charles Beaumont, another demi-god, adapted in Burn, Witch, Burn. I reviewed that film several years ago. If you have not seen it, you should.

But, beyond those wonderful cinematic things, there is the literary Richard Matheson. First it was the short stories. The collections Born of Man and Woman, Shock!, Shock II, Shock III, Shock Waves, Shock 4 and The Shores of Space are treasures beyond measure. The signed Collected Stories by Richard Matheson is one of the core books of my library. It was expensive but worth every penny I spent.

Then there are the novels. You must have read some of them – I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, his war novel The Beardless Warriors, the amazing Hell House, Bid Time Return and What Dreams May Come, among many others. If you have not read these books, put down this column and go find them. Get any copy you can. It won’t matter. You will fall in love with the stories, with the printed word and with the mind of the Master.

I met RM only one time, at a World Fantasy Convention in Arizona. We didn’t talk long. It would have been embarrassing because I would have blithered like an idiot. We talked about a mutual friend Chad Oliver and RM spoke fondly of Chad’s days in California. Then he was gone, and I was still alive after being in his presence.

Not many writers affect me like that. But Matheson was a personal hero and I went all fanboy.

To this book now.

Earthbound is an overlooked Matheson title. It was originally published by Playboy Press under the pseudonym Logan Swanson in an uninspired looking paperback edition. Very few people saw it. In 1989, a small press in the UK, Robinson Publishing, presented the work in a hardcover edition bearing Matheson’s name and a creepy cover that was not given an artist credit.

Earthbound's original, far less exciting cover.

I had this book for a long time and decided that since this was Halloween week, I might as well read the master. What a quick, wild read. David and Ellen are a California couple whose marriage is in serious trouble. David has had an affair and been caught. He loves Ellen, in his way, but they have been married more than 20 years. Their kids are grown and gone. They are about to be grandparents and David is feeling mortality.

They decide to go on a second honeymoon back to the small town where they originally honeymooned. But their original cottage is gone to a fire, so they take another one nearby. They visit some of the same places, order the same meals but something is just not right.

Then David meets Marianna, a free spirit who wants nothing more than wild sex and depravity. When David succumbs to her temptations he feels excitement, guilt, lust, enervation and more. David immediately resents the liaison and vows to be faithful to Ellen. But Marianna is persuasive.

The novel moves between erotic thriller into erotic horror with astounding ease and makes twists and turns you don’t see coming (or at least I didn’t), leading to violent confrontation and resolution.

It’s short, vicious and packs a mean punch. Just like a Richard Matheson novel should.

Again, Halloween is a couple of days away. Enjoy your favorite horrors and candy and films. Scare yourself.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)

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Hard to believe the producers of this film originally envisioned it as soft-core porn.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 139th my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

OK, Halloween is happening in a few days so it must be time for another horror film. And, like last week’s film, I decided to watch a film I had never seen before. From 1970, I chose Count Yorga, Vampire, a film which has a decent reputation and which generated a sequel The Return of Count Yorga the next year.

I’m not sure why I didn’t see this when it was released in May 1970. I was just out of high school, getting ready to head off to The University of Texas in three months. I was working my first job and trying to save money and my girlfriend at the time, the fabulous Christine, was not at all impressed with horror or vampire films. Once at school, I never had much money so my movie trips were infrequent. If they included a date, we went wherever she wanted to go, and horror films were generally not on the bill of fare.

So, to the film.

Donna (Donna Anders) is upset over the recent death of her mother (Marsha Jordan). She has contacted her mother’s most recent boyfriend, Count Yorga (Robert Quarry), a Hungarian mystic who is conducting a séance for Donna, Donna’s boyfriend Michael (Michael Macready, the film’s producer), Donna’s friend Erica (Judy Lang) and her boyfriend Paul (Michael Murphy) plus others. At the séance, Donna gets hysterical and Count Yorga uses hypnosis to calm her down. Unbeknownst to the others, he gives her a telepathic hypnotic suggestion that she will obey and come when he calls.

The original Yorga film inspired this sequel.

Erica and Paul give Yorga a ride to his castle in the L.A. suburbs, and after they drop him off, their VW Microbus gets stranded in a suspicious mud puddle. Stranded, the two lovers do what lovers in remote places in Microbuses with curtains in the early ’70s would do. In the erotic afterglow, Erica hears a noise and finds the ominous figure of Count Yorga peering in. Paul gets out to investigate and is knocked out. Erica enjoys the erotic nature of the vampire.

The next day, a listless Erica is taken by Paul to Dr. James Hayes (Roger Perry), a researcher in blood diseases. A transfusion is required and Hayes notices the two small puncture marks on Erica’s throat.

It’s a small jump to realize that Yorga must be a vampire. Michael and Paul visit Yorga and discuss many things, including vampires. The visit convinces Hayes that Yorga is indeed undead. When Erica vanishes, plans are made to attack the vampire. Little do they know that Yorga has three lovely brides, including Erica and Donna’s mother.

This was a fun film and I enjoyed watching it. Apparently, according to the film’s Wikipedia entry, it was initially supposed to be a soft-core film called The Loves of Count Iorga with lots of nudity and the like, but Robert Quarry would only do the role if it was played as a straight horror film. No nudity, though it could easily have been shot with it. This film carries a PG-13 rating while the sequel was rated R.

I found this in the Edward Hamilton catalog with the sequel for $3.99. The Hamilton catalog is filled with new and remainder books at various prices. I’ve been a customer for about 30 years and ordered many a fine volume from them. More recently, they’ve added audio and video to the books, making for a wonderful browsing experience.

Other websites have the films available at various prices. Find your copies wherever you choose. I will be watching the sequel sometime soon.

Happy Halloween and enjoy the candy!

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Haunting Question: What’s the Scariest Short Story You’ve Ever Read?

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Short stories may be the ultimate way to experience horror fiction.

Think about it. You typically consume a short story in one sitting, no breaks, no relief from the mounting tension and dread. If the tale’s a gripper, you don’t dare come up for air. But with a novel — even one you really like — the experience is spread out, sometimes over a couple of weeks. And each time you put down the book, the tension dissipates.

Not surprisingly, virtually every major horror writer, from Edgar Allan Poe to Laird Barron, has written in short form. Pieces such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Next in Line,” Stephen King’s “I am the Doorway” and H.P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” all come to mind as my own early sources of chills — and writing inspiration.

With Halloween right around the corner, I asked other authors and editors to talk about the short stories that terrified them the most. The resulting selections make a great late-October reading list.

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Lisa Tuttle: Lisa Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy and horror author who currently resides in the United Kingdom. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections and several non-fiction titles. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the BSFA Award for Short Fiction and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story (which she refused).

The first thing I thought of when asked for the scariest short story I’d ever read was “The Fog Horn” by Gertrude Atherton. But then I realized no one under the age of 50 would truly appreciate just why it is so terrifying. So, to balance that out, I must add another. This one scared the socks off me when I first read it, aged about twelve, and it holds up very well today. I love ghost stories, but really, when you think about it, ghosts are not that scary, being unable to do very much. But there are exceptions, like “The Gentleman from Down Under” by L.P. Hartley.

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Joe McKinney: Joe McKinney, a two-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, is an author in many genres, including horror, zombie apocalypse tales, ghost stories, virus thrillers, crime and science fiction. He has written 17 novels, developed two collections of short stories, created a tale for a comic book, and been both published in and edited numerous anthologies.

Horror, if we’re being honest with ourselves, lives in the short story. That’s where the genre truly excels, and that’s why EVERY SINGLE MASTER OF HORROR has written in the short story genre. Yes, there are masterpieces in the novel genre. I grant you that. But the truly defining moments of horror’s graduation from fringe hack work to beloved cultural groupspeak come from the short story. So, if I had to pick just one, I’d give the nod to “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner. I first encountered that story in an anthology I picked up in a used bookstore. At this point, I don’t have any chance of remembering the name of the anthology, but I absolutely remember the terror that went through me as I read that story for the first time. It was not only a brilliant character study, but a master class in developing the slow, creeping dread that makes horror so effective. It was only later, after I’d begun my own journey through professional publishing, that I realized that the story was also a thorough commentary — indeed, almost a satire — of the horror genre as it came of age in the ’70s and ’80s.

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Nate Southard: Nate Southard is the author of Down, Pale Horses, Just Like Hell and several others. His latest collection, Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again?, is available now from Broken River Books. His work has appeared in such venues as Cemetery Dance, Black Static and Thuglit.  A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, Nate lives in Austin, Texas.

The story that sticks with me the most is Paul Tremblay’s “The Teacher.” A new teacher accepts eight kids into a special class, one that involves a horrible video and an even worse lesson. While not what most might consider a “scary” story, “The Teacher” is the kind of tale that worms its way deep and infects you. Once I finished it, I couldn’t read again for a few days. The entire world felt wrong.

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Jeffrey Ford: Jeffrey Ford is an American writer whose works span genres including fantasy, sf and mystery. His stories and novels have been nominated multiple times for the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Fountain Award, Shirley Jackson Award and the Edgar Allan Poe Award. He’s a graduate of Binghamton University, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.

I don’t scare easy when it comes to fiction. The most scared I’ve ever been reading a short story was when I was 10 and up late in my bed after everyone had gone to sleep. I read “The Phantom Rickshaw” by Rudyard Kipling. I’m not sure what it was about the piece that scared the shit out of me, maybe the inevitability of the young soldier’s death after he sees the forbidding form of the woman he jilted glide by in a rickshaw. It had to do with the quiet nature of the story — no outlandish haunting — just a silent exchange of glances between the living and the dead. Creepy. Kipling is one of the best short story writers. Borges considered him better than James Joyce and Henry James. His colonial lineage is hard to defend. I side with Salman Rushdie’s take on him — “Kipling, there is much that is hard to forgive, but more that is hard to forget.”

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Jessica Reisman: Jessica Reisman’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first novel, The Z Radiant, published by Five-Star Speculative Fiction, is “thinking reader’s sci-fi.” She was a Michener Fellow in Fiction in graduate school.

I wanted to go with a Lisa Tuttle story that I heard her read at a World Fantasy Convention (“Closet Dreams, according to Lisa. — Ed.) , but I can’t for the life of me remember the title. So I’m going with Maureen McHugh’s “The Naturalist.” The reason explaining why is essentially the same, however: I find stories about human monsters — psychopaths and sociopaths — much more terrifying and chilling than stories about supernatural monsters. Beyond being possible, they actually exist and do horrifying, scary, scary things.

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Gene O’Neill: Gene O’Neill is a multi-award nominated writer of science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction. More than 100 of his works have been published in venues including Cemetery Dance Magazine, Twilight Zone Magazine and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I think it’s a tie between George R.R. Martin’s “The Pear-Shaped Man” and Michael Shea’s “The Autopsy.” Martin’s story is great because essentially you become what you hate and fear. Shea’s story is great because of a dying man’s revenge against a seemingly overwhelming force.

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Tina Connolly: Tina Connolly is the author of the Ironskin trilogy from Tor Books, and the Seriously Wicked series, from Tor Teen. Ironskin, her first fantasy novel, was a Nebula finalist. Her stories have appeared in Women Destroy SF, Lightspeed, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and many more.

I don’t read a lot of horror, but I do remember loving to be scared stiff by the John Bellairs books as a kid. They were so deliciously gothic and atmospheric — and the creepy illustrations by Edward Gorey made them even better. The House with a Clock in the Walls is still my favorite, but the one that scared me the most was the terrifying sorcerer (who controls blizzards from inside his father’s tomb, IIRC) in the Dark Secret of Weatherend.

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Lori Michelle: Lori Michelle is the co-owner/CFO/layout guru of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and the editor-in-chief of Dark Moon Digest and Dark Eclipse. She is the author of Dual Harvest and the editor of Bleed, an anthology where the proceeds will go to the National Children’s Cancer Society. Several of her stories have appeared in anthologies including the 2012 Bram Stoker finalist Slices of Flesh.

I am not sure if this is the scariest story I have ever read, but it is certainly the most memorable short story I have ever read. It is by the great Stephen King and appeared in Nightmares & Dreamscapes. I am talking about “The Moving Finger.” The images of a strange anomaly coming into your safe haven via the drains has given me shivers over the years. The bathroom is supposed to be the place where you can relax. But SK has shown that nowhere is safe, not even your own sink.

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R.L. Ugolini: R.L. Ugolini’s short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including, most recently, Red Rock Review and Demonic Visions Vol. 3, 4 & 5. The Summerset Review nominated her story “Falllow” for the 2011 Million Writers’ Award. Samhain Publishing released her first novel Quakes in 2015.

It was 1843, and the world had yet to suffer the horrors (culturally, if not exactly psychologically) of sparkly vampires, Twitter or stuffed-crust pizza. An agitated narrator lays out his crime for his readers. He has done the unspeakable — he is a madman, a monster. And yet, as his story unfolds, it becomes clear the terror of the tale lies not with who he is or what he has done, but with how his conscience will bear his guilt. It is a reminder that horror need have no demons save those of our own making. For this reason, I recommend “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe.

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Max Booth III: Max Booth III is the author of three novels: Toxicity, The Mind is a Razorblade and How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. He’s currently a columnist for LitReactor and Slush Pile Heroes. He has studied under Craig Clevenger and award-winning editor Jennifer Brozek.

“I’m On My” by Shane McKenzie published in Splatterpunk Zine #4. A thousand stories popped in my head when Sanford asked me to pick the story that has scared me the most. Many classics, which I’m sure you already know about. However, there’s one short story that has really stuck with me since I first read it back in 2013. And that is Shane McKenzie’s “I’m On My.” It’s a short little tale about a man driving home to his family, only to encounter a slight detour. Look, when you’re driving, all it takes is for your attention to be distracted for a single second, and not only is your whole life ruined, but so are others’. “I’m On My” is a story about an innocent man accidentally running over a small child. There is nobody around that witnesses this crime. It’s just the man and the boy he’s hit. If you were in the same situation, how would you react? I think we all would like to say, “I’d call the police and wait with the boy!” But that’s just what we like to say. The truth is, there’s no way of knowing how we would react to such a situation unless it actually happens. It’s a heat-of-the-moment type of situation, and the implicated consequences of such an accident are absolutely terrifying. Every morning, I drive home from work and see various kids waiting for the school bus, and I swear, every morning I am reminded of “I’m On My.” This little story has fucked with me so much.

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Jamie Lackey: Jamie Lackey write science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories. She read submissions for Clarkesworld Magazine from 2008 through 2013. She also worked as an assistant editor for the Triangulation Annual Anthology Series from 2008-2010, and she was one of the magazine’s two coeditors in 2011. She was an assistant editor at Electric Velocipede from 2012-2013 and is the editor of Triangulation: Lost Voices.

I have to go with “Ponies” by Kij Johnson. It’s just so delightfully dark wrapped in shininess. And the ending is tragic and inevitable.

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Eric J. Guignard: Eric J. Guignard writes dark and speculative fiction from the outskirts of Los Angeles. His stories and articles have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Shock Totem, Buzzy Mag, Bewildering Stories and Stupefying Stories. He’s also an anthology editor, having published Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations and After Death…, the latter of which won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award.

Being an indecisive writer, I considered equally two of the scariest stories I’ve ever read, though each for a different reason. “Other People” by Neil Gaiman (published first in Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, 2006) is one of the bleakest visions of Hell I’ve ever encountered. This scared me remarkably, because there’s a belief that Hell is different for all, and it is designed individually based upon your worst fears… I wouldn’t have feared this prior, but after reading the story, suddenly Gaiman’s tale embodied what I imagined the worst type of Hell to be, in which you relive out all the pain you’ve caused other people, whether directly or indirectly, over and over again… and now I can’t “unknow it.” My second is “Crouch End” by Stephen King (published first in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, 1980; collected in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, 1993) I was probably about 18 or 19 years old when I read this story, and it freaked me out so much I swore I’d never read it again. And I haven’t… I don’t know if this story would still affect me so terribly now, but there were some passages that just haunted me at the time. I wasn’t familiar with the Cthulhu universe back then — which this story is homage to — so the descriptions of subtly-changing things around us and slithering shapes seen only from the corner of your eye were really quite seminal to me.

Forgotten Book: PS Showcase #3: Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal by Robert T. Jeschonek (2008)

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Chances are you've never read anything like Robert T. Jeschonek.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 163rd in my series of Forgotten Books.

Frequently when I review the books for the Forgotten Book column, I use a book I have read before and share my love or hatred of the book right here. Last week’s book Beastly Bones was new to me but not the writer. This week everything is new. I was looking for a book to read and talk about and, for some reason, this one caught my eye.

It fit several parameters I had established. It had to be short. Check. It had to have horror. Well, there are five stories here and several of them have horror elements. So, check. And it had to grab my attention. HUGE CHECK!!!

I loved this book. Robert T. Jeschonek was not a name I was familiar with. I had gotten the book from the publisher, PS Publishing, in a grab bag when they offered some of their back stock at a reduced price. Several small press publishers will do that occasionally as a way to move slow stock, odd items and to raise some quick cash. As a collector, it’s a great way to get some odd things I might not have initially ordered, but at a reduced price, I can take a chance on it.

And PS is one of those publishers I really like. I’ve got a lot of their books — many in the signed limited state. This is one of them. There is a hardback edition of 200 copies signed by Jeschonek and then this one with a dust jacket limited to 100 copies signed by Jeschonek and introducer Mike Resnick.

It was the introduction that sucked me in. I’ve met Mike Resnick many times over the years and I enjoy his work as a writer and an editor. Resnick starts his introduction remembering those guide-to books of the 80’s and 90’s that said stuff like, if you like Poul Anderson, try Gordon R. Dickson. He remembered that it said something like “If you like R. A. Lafferty, buy up all his books and keep reading them because no one else is remotely like him,” or something like that. He says that could apply to Jeschonek too.

So, with that type of fanfare, I had to see what was going on. Before we get to the stories, let me say, Resnick is right. If anything, he understated the case.

These were mind-blowing stories, the likes of which I had not seen in a long while. First up was “Something Borrowed, Something Doomed” which blew me away. This is the story of genebillies living in West Virginia.  Simple mountain folk know for their wicked sense of humor and gene splicing (“wildshinin’”) abilities. One of their traditions is to try to make a couple’s wedding into the most horrible day possible with the idea that, if you survived that, your marriage could survive anything. Our narrator is Vicky Dozen, a master wildshiner who is about to marry Bigfoor Tourniquet, who may be her equal. She is hoping the wedding is up to her mother’s best effort which reproduced the 12 plagues of Egypt in the wedding hall. Boils, locust, frogs and blood rivers were the least of it. Vicky is hoping her five brothers don’t do something stupid and, of course, they do. They end the world and someone forgot to protect the wedding chapel from that.

“Dionysus Dying” deals with a legendary saxophonist meeting his idol right at his death bed. Bobby Ball has enjoyed success in his past and when his idol Omar Wild sends for him as the one man to perform his final work, he sees possible new fame and success.

“Food Chain” deals with a woman having to deal with the idea that her food comes from a living, talking human being called a Ration who can make his flesh taste like anything and regenerate whatever you eat. She has her reasons for hating the Ration, though.

“The Day After They Rounded up Everyone Who Could Love Unconditionally” is very short: 750 words. It didn’t work for me.

The final piece is “Playing Doctor” features Dr. Hildegarde Medici, female mad scientist, bent on world conquest and her assistant Glugor (”Glue”), who has been in love with her since she was six years old. But of course, she does not realize it. As her plans fail and bad news happens, Glue has a surprise for the mad doctor. A touching story of world domination and love.

This is an amazing book and I loved it. I had never heard of Jeschonek but I will be searching out more of his work. And you should too. Kudos for PS Publishing for putting out this little gem. They do this on a semi-regular basis so you should check them out too.

Read something new, bold, and different. You owe it to yourself.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (1972)

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One of many Paul Naschy werewolf movies.

This is the 138th my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

So, this week we have a Spanish werewolf movie featuring Paul Naschy as Waldemar Daninsky (el Hombre Lobo aka the Werewolf). Apparently he was the hit of Spanish horror in this role as this film is the 6th of 12 times he played the tortured werewolf.

In Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf, Justine (Shirley Corrigan) is the young new wife of a successful businessman Imre Kosta (Jose Marco) who has decided to visit the Hungarian village where he was born (and his parents were murdered) deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Sounds utterly romantic, yes? At the local inn, they find the way to the cemetery. While visiting the family graves, their Jaguar is burgled by three men. Imre is killed and the killers have sex and violence in mind for Justine.

Enter Waldemar who kills one of the men and takes Justine to the nearby castle (isn’t there always a nearby castle?) where the witch Uswika Bathory (Elsa Zabala) nurses her back to health. Meanwhile, Otvos (Luis Induni) the leader of the thieves, wants revenge for the death of his brother and gets the villagers, complete with pitchforks and torches, to march on the monster. The witch is killed by Otvos, who in turn is killed by the werewolf. Justine and Waldemar leave.

She takes him back to swinging 70’s London where she introduces him to Dr. Henry Jekyll (Jack Taylor), the grandson of the Victorian killer. Jekyll wants to use his grandfather’s formula to help Waldemar, though he is not sure that the werewolf really exists. But the monster is soon trapped in an elevator with a nurse when he changes, and London becomes aware that the werewolf is there.

The European cut has more sex and violence and is 25 percent longer.

Jekyll wants to administer the formula and turn Waldemar into the Hyde character. He hopes that the transformation into Hyde can cure Waldemar of his lycanthropy. Jekyll’s mistress Sandra (Mirta Miller) wants him to get the werewolf DNA (or something, so they can make a fortune.) She is also aware that Henry is still in love with Justine, giving us a little love triangle. Justine sees only Waldemar. Sandra has other plans. Murder and mayhem ensue. Hyde tours London, goes to a disco, kills and loves.

Naschy is pretty engaging in his various roles. He also wrote the screenplay as Jacinto Molina! The copy I saw was chopped down substantially from the original Spanish version which ran 96 minutes. The DVD is 73 minutes, so about 25 percent is gone. The result is a series of abrupt scene changes and a storyline that doesn’t always make sense. Apparently the longer version contains some nudity and more violence, if you’re wanting that.

Given a chance I might watch more in the series. I am curious about The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman. That might be some fun.

Also, many thanks to weird movie fiend Mike Madonna for shipping this one to me. Thanks, Mikey!

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Cocktail Hour: The Tooth Fairy (Inspired by Graham Joyce’s novel of the same name)

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Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy works both as dark fantasy and as a coming-of-age novel.

The Tooth Fairy, the 1996 novel by late British author Graham Joyce, is the kind of dark fiction that eschews quick, easy scares for something more disquieting. Its pervading feeling of unease sticks with you long after you finish.

Central characters Sam, Terry and Clive are regular kids growing up in a working class town in 1960s England, prone to the boredom and silliness you’d expect. Things take an odd turn for them, though, the day Sam loses a tooth and sticks it under his pillow, expecting the usual compensation.

Sam awakes as the Tooth Fairy sneaks in through an open window. But unlike the creature he expected, this fairy is a nasty little trickster who smells of horse’s sweat and chamomile and threatens Sam and his family.

After that first chilling encounter, the entity continues to drift in and out of Sam’s childhood and adolescence. Of course, Sam’s the only one who can see the fairy, whose sex, appearance and moods change seem to change in lock step with his growing pains. For much of the book, we’re left wondering whether the being is real or a figment of his fragile psyche.

Unlike most speculative fiction, The Tooth Fairy isn’t plot-driven. Instead, it’s structured like a literary novel. The book traces the growth of the characters through a series of episodes during their formative years. We laugh and wince as Sam and his buddies engage in petty vandalism, are bullied by older boys, discover masturbation and, ultimately, girls.

And that’s what makes The Tooth Fairy so memorable. It works as both as creepy dark fantasy and as a coming-of-age novel. Joyce brings Sam and his friends to such vivid life, one wonders how many of the experiences were his own. The characters feel real and we identify with them, which makes the supernatural threat all the more disturbing.

The Tooth Fairy cocktail: Chamomile but no horse sweat.

A great novel with great characters deserves a great drink, so let’s toast Graham Joyce’s The Tooth Fairy with a worthy cocktail of the same name. This one, inspired by the Earl Grey tea-infused Lady Grey cocktail, doesn’t smell of horse’s sweat, but it does combine chamomile with that most English of spirits: gin.

The Tooth Fairy

2 oz. gin
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. chamomile-infused simple syrup (see below)
3 drops of orange bitters
Stip of lemon peel

Shake gin, lemon juice, chamomile syrup and bitters over ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a strip of lemon peel.

Chamomile-Infused Simple Syrup

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tsp dried chamomile

Bring the sugar and water to a boil over medium heat. Add the tea and let it continue to boil for a minute or so. Remove from heat and continue to steep for an hour. Cool and strain syrup into a jar. It keeps refrigerated for up to a month.

 

Forgotten Book: Beastly Bones by William Ritter (2015)

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By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 162nd in my series of Forgotten Books.

One of my favorite books from last year was Jackaby by William Ritter, a young adult novel of weird happenings. R. F. Jackaby is an eccentric supernatural detective living in New Fiddleham, New England. He sees things that go bump in the night as well as in the daytime. Through extraordinary circumstances, he acquires an assistant/protégé, a young independent minded woman named Abigail Rook who was not content to sit at home while her parents looked for a suitable husband for her. When she was turned down for the position of assistant to her father in a paleological dig, she left England in disguise and world her way to America. As Jackaby’s assistant, they solved a vexing and complex murder involving the supernatural.

I enjoyed the first book thoroughly and immediately ordered the second one, Beastly Bones, to be delivered upon publication. It came the other day and I began to delve. The characters lived again as they had last year. Jackaby was still an odd mix of Sherlock Holmes, John Silence and Carnacki. Abigail was headstrong and plucky.

The house where Jackaby lives is filled with many things. There is the ghost of the owner Jenny Cavanaugh, who is Abigail’s closest friend, since Jackaby has some less-than-sociable tendencies. Jenny has been murdered and the murder has never been solved. Jackaby has vowed to do it when Jenny wants him to but that time has not yet come.

The case begins with a woman who is upset that her cat had kittens and then turned into a fish. The kittens are far from normal. They are chameleomorphs, animals who take on the form and characteristics of their food source. The mother cat has been fed fish, ergo she begins to change. Jackaby is concerned because these are seriously dangerous beasties, and he has plans to turn them into fish and then feed them insects within a confined area. As trapped insects, they are not nearly as tough.

They attract the attention of Jackaby’s friend Hank Hudson, a trapper of oddities and an old friend. He is hunting something big and odd in a neighboring county. While trying to determine where the dangerous kittens came from, they are asked to check out the mysterious death of a farm wife nearby. Her husband has found dinosaur bones and is trying to get some help and publicity. This brings in two rival paleontologists who hate each other. Then bones start to turn up missing and Jackaby becomes sure that the bones represent a mystical beast that should not be there.

And then the strange footprints appear.

It was a fun story and I got suckered deep into it, so I missed a few of the vital clues. But, in the end, I was very satisfied and horrified that it will again be a long time before the next book is available.

The characters are fun, even Jackaby’s former assistant, who is now a duck. The ghost is likable most of the time. The policeman, Charlie Barker from the first book, provides a suitable romantic interest for Abigail, though they are both incredibly shy and inexperienced, much like the intended audience for this volume.

I can heartily recommend these titles. There’s also a short story available for Kindle that I have not yet read, but the weekend is coming soon. Check it out.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Moment of Wonder: Apollo Animation

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Last week, the Interwebs were abuzz with news on the bursting-fat Flickr archive of images from NASA’s 11 Apollo missions. Turns out an independent group called the Project Apollo Archive, rather than the feds, spent the past 15 years prepping the photos for public consumption.

The sheer volume of images in the archive requires time and deep digging to fully enjoy. Lucky for us, filmmakers have already started doing that hard work. They’re using the pics as raw material for stop-motion animations, such as this one from Vimeo user harrisonicus, which really bring the wonder to life. Enjoy:

Apollo Missions from harrisonicus on Vimeo.

Forgotten Films: The Color Out of Space (2010)

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If you don't mind subtitles, Germany's Color Out of Space serves up Lovecraftian chills.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 137th my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

With this being the Halloween season, it is only appropriate that I review some horror-type films fir the next several weeks.

My friends Willie and Chuck brought this one to my attention. A German adaptation of The Color Out of Space based on the Lovecraft story of the same name. I do love the work of Lovecraft, as shown in more than a few columns of the Forgotten Books and Forgotten Films over the last six years or so. So when they expressed their pleasure in it, I checked up on it from Amazon and found that there was a Blu-Ray for a reasonable price and that it was limited to 1,000 copies. Sold!

When I first went to watch it, my Blu-Ray player seized up with the disc inside and would not respond. I tried the normal things – new batteries, manually hitting the control buttons on the machine, everything, and the disk remained stuck and the player was inert.

So, being the person that I am, I bought a new Blu-Ray player and set it up.

As I removed the old one, I looked for various ways to retrieve my unplayed disc but to no avail. As a last ditch effort, I plugged the player into another circuit. Suddenly, I saw the flickering of a power light. I punched the manual controls and out popped the tray. I grabbed the remote with its new batteries and the machine responded. Now I had two Blu-Ray players. I could not return the new one as I had pretty well destroyed the box opening it. So the old one went upstairs to reside next to the DVD/VCR combo in the guest bedroom. Another problem solved.

Last night, I watched this film. I had vague memories of the earlier version — Die, Monster, Die with Boris Karloff and Nick Adams — which I saw many years ago. I checked my movie listing and I do not appear to have a copy of that one. I know I have The Dunwich Horror and that one may show up soon.

This one was quite fun. It’s done in glorious black and white (mostly), and it’s set in three different timelines. The story starts with Jonathan Davis (Ingo Heise) returning to Arkham College to discuss the disappearance of his father with Mr. Danforth (Olaf Kratke), a librarian in the Forbidden Books area. The elder Davis had unexpectedly gone off to Germany a few weeks earlier and had not been heard from.

Jonathan heads over to the Swabian-Franconian Forest area of Germany to try to find his dad. He enquires at a pub and finds Armin Peirske (Michael Kausch) who did not recognize the father from the current pictures but did from his time in the war.

So we shift to the period at the end of World War II where the elder Davis (Ralf Lichtenberg) is a doctor looking to relocate people displaced by the war. Armin is returning wounded from the war to his farm when he encounters Davis. Davis asks him about the area, particularly the neighboring valley. Armin tells Davis not to go over there.

No one lives there. Anymore.

Now we shift to Armin’s tale from prior to the war when a meteorite has landed in that valley on the farm of Nahum Gärtener (Erik Rastetter), who has a small farm and orchard that he runs with his wife and three sons. Scientists come to examine the meteorite, which has some very strange properties and keeps shrinking. Testing does not determine its origins, so the scientists return and find a small opening in the fragment. They crack it open and something happens. There is a release and suddenly the fragment disappears.

Then strange things begin to happen. Giant pears begin to grow in the orchards but the fruit tastes spoiled. Frau Gärtener (Marah Schneider) sees something and goes very slowly insane. Things happen to the boys.

I’m not going to delve too much deeper here. You should see this film for yourself. It’s one of the best Lovecraftian films ever made. I can easily compare it to The Call of Cthulhu that I reviewed some time ago which was excellent.

The film is dual language – parts of it are in English but most of it is in German — so you will have to read your film. But, if you’ve read Lovecraft, you can easily read a film.

I’m not sure if it’s on Netflix or one of the other services. Amazon has it on its Amazon video and the Blu-Ray is still available for under $20.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Haunting Question: What’s Your Go-To Scary Movie for Halloween?

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If you’re a horror buff you undoubtedly have a go-to film when the Halloween spirit drifts in on cool autumn air. You know, that one you find yourself glued to the instant it pops up on the cable horror marathon.

In my case, it’s The Shining. I find it impossible to resist its calling. Stanley Kubrick’s camera bestows the haunted hotel with an unsettling beauty and Jack Nicholson’s performance is a brilliant tightrope walk between hammy and terrifying.

I asked other writers — some who specialize in horror and others who don’t — what fright flicks they’re most likely to throw on the DVD player this time of year. Here’s hoping the answers send you exploring creepy new cinematic territory or revisiting old nightmares.

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Lee Thomas: Lee Thomas is the Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of more than 20 books, including The Dust of Wonderland, In the Closet, Under the Bed, The German, Torn, Ash Street, Like Light for Flies and Butcher’s Road. Writing as Thomas Pendleton and Dallas Reed, he is the author of the novels Mason, Shimmer and The Calling from HarperTeen. He is also the co-author (with Stefan Petrucha) of the Wicked Dead series of books for young adults.

One of the nightmarish creatures that emerges from The Mist.

While season-specific titles – Halloween (1978) and Trick ‘r Treat (2007) – always make for great viewing this time of year, I have a – relatively – new seasonal favorite in Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist (2007). Great performances from the cast and a nihilistic ending that will piss off grandma, The Mist is a modern creature-feature classic. I watch it in black and white, which ups the nightmare vibe considerably.

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Yvette Benavides: Yvette Benavides is an author of literary fiction, often set on the U.S.-Mexico border, and an associate professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University. She teaches composition and literature courses as well as courses in the combined MA/MFA program in literature, creative writing and social justice.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. I guess it’s the first one that comes to mind because it is the scariest — at least the early imprint of it. (It was made in 1971.) I watched it on late-night TV a few years after it was made, when I was maybe 8 or 9. An emotionally/mentally fragile woman feels unsafe in her home. That’s scary. The psychological vampires won’t leave.

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The atmosphere of British film The Innocents earned high marks from Steve Rasnic Tem.

Steve Rasnic Tem: Steve Rasnic Tem’s short fiction has been compared to the work of Franz Kafka, Dino Buzzati, Ray Bradbury and Raymond Carver, but to quote Joe R. Lansdale: “Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.” His 300 plus published pieces have garnered him a British Fantasy Award, and nominations for the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards.

It varies over time, but again and again I find myself returning to Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. It’s wonderfully atmospheric, and explores very well the idea of how the past can maintain a terrible hold on the present.

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Joe R. Lansdale: Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites.

The Haunting, the original version. Why is because it truly creeps me out and edges between psychological and possible supernatural.

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Elizabeth Bourne: Writer and photographer Elizabeth’s fiction has been published in Black Lantern, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, Interzone and Clarkesworld. She loves writing genre and is currently working on a second-world fantasy novel and a mystery set in prohibition era San Francisco.

My #1 go-to Halloween movie is The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s phenomenal, and phenomenally creepy, book The Haunting of Hill House. This is one of those wonderful instances where the book and movie are equally good. What higher praise can there be than that Stephen King wrote Rose Red (shot in Tacoma’s Thornewood Castle) as an homage to this masterpiece.

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William F. Nolan: William F. Nolan writes mostly in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres. Though best known for coauthoring the acclaimed dystopian science fiction novel Logan’s Run with George Clayton Johnson, Nolan is the author of more than 2,000 pieces (fiction, nonfiction, articles and books), and has edited twenty-six anthologies in his fifty-plus year career.

Alien and The Fly (1986) – and Blood of Dracula. All damn scary.

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Stina Leicht: Stina Leicht is a sf/fantasy writer living in central Texas. Her latest novel is titled Cold Iron, a new secondary world flintlock fantasy series for Simon and Schuster’s Saga Press. The next book in the series, Blackthorne, will be released in 2017. Her second novel And Blue Skies from Pain was on the Locus Recommended Reading list for 2012.

Things get scary in the 1976 Carrie.

Because of my love of good horror I can’t limit myself to one film. So, here are my four favorites. The first is The War of the Worlds (2005). It has layers beyond the main plot. It talks about the transition from boy to man. Both Ray and his son, Robbie, demonstrate this growth forced upon them by tragedy. (Too bad the women don’t.) The scene in the basement of the farmhouse packs a wallop. Also? The tripod animation just rules. My next pick is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). Like WotW, Body Snatchers has been remade quite a bit, but the team of Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright did it best. The film is extremely creepy, particularly the end. I’m a huge Stephen King fan, and I’m torn between The Mist (2007) and Carrie (1978), but I’ll pick Carrie today. Sissy Spacek captures Carrie’s frail vulnerability perfectly. And that’s the important thing to remember about Carrie, I feel — it’s that transition from victim to perpetrator that is so relevant today. It says a lot about extremist Christianity and misogyny. My last pick is between American Werewolf in London and Cabin in the Woods (2012). Joss Whedon isn’t perfect — no one is — but Cabin is a gem from the first scene to the last. Price of admission is the merman scene.

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Josh Rountree: Josh Rountree’s short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony 6 and Happily Ever After. His short fiction collection, Can’t Buy Me Faded Love, is available from Wheatland Press. His first novel, Alamo Rising, was co-written with Lon Prater and is now available from White Cat Publications.

The Shining. It’s different than King’s book but just as amazing in its own way. Both the movie and the book still scare the crap out of me every time.

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Derek Austin Johnson: Derek Austin Johnson has lived most of his life in the Lone Star State.  A member of the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, his work has appeared in Rayguns Over Texas! edited by Rick Klaw, Nova Express, Moving Pictures, Her Majesty’s Secret Servant, and Revolution SF.  His film column “Watching the Future” appears each month on SF Signal.

Pontypool (2009, d. Bruce McDonald). There’s much to love in this suspenseful movie, from the claustrophobic setting to a surprising amount of humor. Combining elements of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and director Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, Pontypool stands as one of the most intriguing of zombie movies.

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Scott A. Cupp: Scott A. Cupp is a writer from San Antonio who has been associated with the science fiction community for more than 40 years. He has been a regular reviewer at Mystery Scene magazine, where he reviewed western and horror novels, and at the Missions Unknown blog, where he did columns on Forgotten Books and Forgotten Films.

The more recent film Pontypool puts a new twist on zombie invasions.

When the Halloween season comes around I love catching up on great horror films. Among those I remember fondly this time of year are William Castle’s 13 Ghosts which I saw when I was 8 or 9. You had a special viewfinder to see or not see the ghosts when they appeared. Of course, I watched them all, then I had to walk home in the dark. Every shadow haunted me on that trip. As more of an adult, I loved the original Lugosi Dracula, particularly when Van Helsing and crew kill Lucy Westenra in the crypts of London. It was a creepy scene heightened by my memory of that particular passage in the novel, which is one of my favorites. Of course, my forgotten film this week, The Leopard Man, has a scene where a young girl afraid of the dark has been sent out for corn meal to make her father’s tortillas. On her way home she encounters a leopard that has escaped its leash. She runs home screaming to be let in but the door is bolted and her mother feels she is shirking her duties. The cries and beatings get more frantic and suddenly the screams are visceral and there are other, animal sounds. Then there is silence as blood seeps under the door. All in chilling black and white. This is noir horror at its best. I also love all of the 1963 version of The Haunting for its psychological terror.