The Vampire Cinema

'The Vampire Cinema' by David Pirie

Quarto Books, 1977

Back in the 1970s, before there was an internet, or an amazon.com, one primary way to acquire PorPor books was via the companies that specialized in selling remainders through mass-mailed catalogs. 

One of the larger such companies was Publishers Central Bureau, or PCB. Their distinctive two-tone catalogs regularly would arrive at my house as part of the junk mail.

'The Vampire Cinema', published in 1977 by Quarto Books, was a perennial entrant in the PCB catalog, and in late 1978 I ordered it.

'The Vampire Cinema' is actually a pretty good overview of vampire movies up till the early 70s. It's well illustrated with copious, often full-page, color,  black and white, and tinted stills.

Pirie's chapters start off with a look at vampires in popular fiction and mythology; move on to the early vampire films, such as Nosferatu; the Universal films featuring Bella Lugosi; and then the Hammer vampire films, staring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula.

The chronology then moves to the Eurotrash, low-budget 'sex' vampire films of such directors as Jean Rollin and Roger Vadim. Blurring the lines between softcore porn and art house horror, this sub-genre also was exploited by Hammer, with early 70s movies such as The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil, Countess Dracula, and Lust for a Vampire.

The book's final chapters touch on the mixed success Hammer experienced with taking its Dracula series to the 20th century, as well as an overview of the 'New American' vampire films of the 70s, such as Blacula and Count Yorga. 

Pirie makes the argument that the American low-budget horror cinema made a crucial transition in subject matter, taking the European image of the vampire as a seductive aristocrat, and converting it into a zombie or ghoul with a more grim and unglamorous aesthetic.

'The Vampire Cinema' closes with a brief overview of The Latin Vampire, as epitomized by Spanish and Italian productions of the 60s and 70s.

I suspect that anyone under 30, exposed to the tsunami of vampire content dominating today's popular culture, is going to find the content of 'The Vampire Cinema' to be quirky and quaint. 

The book's most appreciative audience will probably be found among those who subscribe to Shock Cinema and search the cult cinema websites for the DVDs available for some, but not all, of the films covered in 'The Vampire Cinema'. In other words, those who grew up in the 60s and 70s and still have a nostalgic fondness for the Old School approach to horror movies. 

This book is for you....and copies can be found at the usual online sources for under $10.

Book Review: The Black Horde

Book Review: 'The Black Horde' by Richard Lewis

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Black Horde’ (166 pp., Signet, October 1980) first was published in the UK in 1979 under the title ‘Devil’s Coach Horse’. 

The ‘Devil’s Coach Horse’ actually exists; it's a species of Rove Beetle commonly found in backyards in the UK. A predator on other invertebrates, it has strong jaws capable of giving people a good nip:

courtesy of Robert Wright's Twitter account, https://twitter.com/entorob/status/303823427914051584

Richard (E.) Lewis has written a large number of novels for the adult and young adult markets. ‘The Black Horde’, along with his other novel ‘The Spiders’ (1987), doesn’t pretend to be anything other than the literary equivalent of the low-budget, ‘monster of the week’ movies that appear on the SyFy Channel.

The plot is simple and direct: while working overseas, John Masters, a British entomologist, discovers a new species of rove beetle, one resembling the Devil’s Coach Horse. While transporting live specimens back to the UK, his plane crashes in the Alps, and Masters is fatally injured. With the coming of Spring and the melting of the snow, his corpse is recovered from the mountain top and shipped home. 

It turns out that the enterprising beetles have used Masters' body as an impromptu shelter, and they emerge from the corpse at a British mortuary........ and escape into the wild. This is a disaster in the making.

For these are not ordinary rove beetles, preying on small insects; instead, these rove beetles prefer the taste of human flesh. With their sharp mandibles, they can chew their way into exposed skin in a matter of seconds. Once embedded in the internal organs of their victim, the beetles lay eggs, which rapidly hatch into flesh-eating larvae, which in turn mature into pupae, and then adult beetles, completing the cycle.

Young entomologist Paul Adams, a colleague of the departed Masters, finds himself called in as a subject matter expert when the police receive disturbing reports of people being eaten alive by beetles. As Adams and the authorities soon learn, these isolated incidents are the forerunners of much greater horror to come, as the beetle population expands and swarms of hungry insects trespass on the English countryside in a frenzied search for warm, sustaining flesh….

‘The Black Horde’ shows considerable influence from the horror novelist James Herbert, adopting the clipped, declarative prose style favored by that author and the regular inclusion of passages of gore and grue. 

As with many of Herbert’s novels, ‘The Black Horde’ alternates its main narrative with vignettes in which people – most often couples having sex – find themselves at risk of a bloody, painful, terrifying death at the mandibles of the ravenous beetles. 

I can’t recommend ‘The Black Horde’ as a masterful example of the horror genre, but if you are looking for a brief ‘pulp’ read, something on the order of a James Herbert out-take, it fits the bill.

Heavy Metal October 1983

'Heavy Metal' magazine October 1983

 

October, 1983, and in heavy rotation on FM radio and MTV is 'In A Big Country' by the Scottish New Wave band, Big Country.

The October 1983 issue of Heavy Metal magazine features a front cover by Luis Royo, and a back cover (a portrait of Ranxerox) by Liberatore.

The Dossier section opens with an interview with a documentary film-maker about his recent work, a film about Bob Dylan. By 1983 Dylan had lapsed into well-deserved obscurity, and this film did little to resurrect his career, which would be effectively killed once and for all by a disastrous performance at the close of the Live Aid concert in 1985.

The Dossier moves on to a brief overview of Harlan Ellison's literary career; an advertisement for the biography Loving John [Lennon] by former girlfriend May Pang; and a cultural analysis of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon (?)........ it must've been a slow month for Dossier content.

 

John Glen, director of the just-released Bond film Octopussy, gets an interview,as does the director Walter Hill.

For the comics content, the October issue offers up new installments of 'Tex Arcana', 'The Odyssey' by Navarro and Sauri, 'The Third Song', by Jodorowsky and Arno, and 'Ranxerox', by Tamburini and Liberatore.

Perhaps the best strip in the issue is another of the 'red convertible' tales by Didier Eberoni, this one titled 'Nimble Fingers', with a plot by Rodolphe. 

Its existential theme is well-served by the great artwork of Eberoni, whose meticulous rendering of the grassy fields, the tree branches and twigs, and the contours of the rocks.

Book Review: Inseminoid

Book Review: 'Inseminoid' by Larry Miller

1 / 5 Stars

In the aftermath of the success of the 20^th Century Fox film ‘Alien’ in the Summer of 1979, schlock producers released a stream of low-budget imitations: ‘Alien Contamination’ (1980) ; ‘Inseminoid’ (aka ‘Horror Planet’) (1981);  ‘Parasite’ (1982); and ‘Xtro’ (1982).

This novelization of 'Inseminoid' (158 pp) was released in April, 1981 by UK publisher New English Library.

Team Nova is an archeology expedition housed in an installation on a remote planet. In the course of excavating some ancient ruins, the team discovers a burial crypt containing a deceased alien creature, preserved in a sealed, coffin-like chamber.

When the alien is returned to the laboratory, it gradually comes back to life, to the astonishment of the crew. However, their carelessness about securing the alien proves their undoing, as the creature succeeds in escaping, and rapes crewmember Sandy.

The hapless Sandy rapidly devolves into a pregnant, homicidal quasi-alien, endangering the lives of the rest of the crew. Can the surviving members of Team Nova kill Sandy…or will she succeed in giving birth to the alien offspring ?

I never saw more than brief snatches of trailers of ‘Inseminoid’ when it was released back in the early 80s. Needless to say, the segments I did see confirmed the film’s low-budget, schlocky underpinnings. The film did have a strong cast of veteran British actors, including Stephanie Beacham (‘Dynasty’, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’), Victoria Tennant (‘Flowers in the Attic’), and Judy Geeson (‘Star Trek Voyager’).

The novelization differs from the film in terms of selected scenes and events (i.e., the fate of Sandy). But not unsurprisingly, the novelization really fails to improve on the original script, in terms of making a dud narrative into something worthwhile. Some of the goofy contrivances that take place in ‘Inseminoid’ exist for no other reason than to provide the film with an opportunity to display disemboweled corpses, a la Alien.

What little suspense that exists in the narrative comes about mainly because the crewmembers of Team Nova are abysmally stupid and clumsy. In the end, I wound up rooting for the monster, if only because so many of the horny, dim-witted crew-members deserved to die.

In summary, even the most dedicated fans of Bad Films may want to pass on the novel or DVD of 'Inseminoid'.

The Canal by Corben

'The Canal' by Richard Corben 
based on the poem by H. P. Lovecraft
originally published in H. P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horror (Marvel / Max) issue #2, September 2008
scanned from the graphic novel compilation (2009)

The Age of Darkness by Caza

'The Age of Darkness' by Caza

Caza is the pseudonym used by the French artist Philippe Cazaumayou (b. 1941).

Caza was a regular contributor to the magazine Metal Hurlant, which began publishing in France in December 1974.

In the mid-70s Leonard Mogel, the owner and publisher of The National Lampoon magazine in the US, was visiting France and saw a copy of Metal Hurlant. Impressed, he obtained the licensing rights to produce an American version of the magazine. Heavy Metal debuted in April, 1977. 

It frequently incorporated translated versions of Metal Hurlant stories, and during the late 70s and early 80s, those of Caza were present in almost every monthly issue of Heavy Metal.

HM's use of higher-resolution printing plates, and ‘slick’ paper stock, well served the crisp colors and highly detailed line work of Caza’s black-and-white, and color, stories.

Accomplished as a draftsman, Caza also displayed considerable skill as a writer, particularly within the confines of the 4 - 10 page story, the lengths he used for most of his contributions. While most of his Metal stories relied on offbeat, quirky humor, when he chose to explore the horror and action genres, his work continued to be of consistent quality.

The Heavy Metal editorial staff made much of the contributions of Moebius (the late Jean Giraud) but in my opinion, Caza’s work was equal to, if not oftentimes superior to, the graphic work of Moebius.

Sadly, a number of Caza’s most impressive Metal Hurlant stories never made it into the pages of Heavy Metal, and an English-language compilation of Caza’s Metal Hurlant / Heavy Metal work has yet to appear. The best effort to date remains 1987's trade paperback Escape from Suburbia, which compiled 12 comics, most of which appeared in Heavy Metal.

 

As well, ebooks of some of Caza's work are available at his online store.

Caza fans do have at their disposal ‘The Age of Darkness’, published in 1998, in English, in full-color. 
 
'The Age of Darkness' doesn’t provide much information on the origin of the comics presented in this volume, but judging by the artist’s signatures, they were produced during the interval from 1980 to 1997. Some (all ? ) of them appeared in Heavy Metal magazine in the 70s and 80s.

The 14 stories in ‘Age’ are all loosely related, and can be read as standalone entries. Most revolve around the sometimes violent interactions between the mutants or free-spirits who roam the wastelands, and a race of humanoids called ‘Oms’, who resemble the ‘Weebles’ children’s toys from the 1970s (‘Weebles Wobble, But They Don’t Fall Down’).

The Oms represent a regimented, sterile, mechanized society that retreats from the  dangerous, but also more vibrant, natural world outside their gates. They are depicted with some degree of pathos.

Caza’s artwork is stunning in its detail and use of color, and is ably reproduced in this book. Although each entry rarely is longer than 5 - 6 pages, the plots are well-composed and display quirky humor, horror, and pathos.

Readers who appreciate quality graphic art, and a European sensibility to the sf genre, will want to get a copy of ‘The Age of Darkness’. 

[ I was able to purchase 'The Age of Darkness' from the Heavy Metal online store, where it was available for $12.95, in Fall 2012. As of October 2013, there still are copies in stock at the Heavy Metal online store. There are copies available at amazon, but for exorbitant prices.]

Here is 'Nighttime' (1980) from 'The Age of Darkness'. A neat, nasty little horror tale.....

Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series X

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series X' edited by Karl Edward Wagner

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X’ is DAW Book No. 493 (240 pp) and was published in August, 1982. The striking cover artwork is by Michael Whelan.

All of the stories in this volume were first published in 1980 or 1981, in 'slick' magazines or small press anthologies.

In his Introduction, editor Wagner provides an overview of the genre in 1981, covering both new and failing print outlets for horror fiction. Wagner also notes that, with volume X, The Year’s Best Horror Stories series has achieved the ten-year mark, with the first volume being ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: No. 1’, DAW Books No. 13, released in the US in 1971.

Wagner had an unfortunate affinity for the work of the grossly over-rated Ramsey Campbell, not only foisting two Campbell stories on readers of Series X, but also doing so for other DAW volumes, such as Series XVII.

In this volume, we are given ‘Through the Walls’, which has something to do – deep within its remarkably bad prose – with a suburban husband undergoing a nervous breakdown. Campbell actually uses the sentence: The hinges of the gate shrieked jaggedly; Pears felt as if the sound were being dragged through his ears. The entire story is crammed with these metaphors, all of them straight out of a 'how not to write fiction' class.

Campbell’s other contribution, ‘The Trick’, deals with Halloween in the UK, and the neighborhood bag lady, who may be a witch. This tale is more accessible than ‘Through the Walls’ but still suffers from such clotted, figurative prose that wading through it was tedious.

The other entries in ‘Series X’ are of varying quality. ‘Touring’, By Dozois, Dann, and Swanwick, meshes rock and roll with ghosts. ‘Homecoming’, by Howard Goldsmith, is an embarrassingly bad haunted-house tale.

There are two entries in the classic English Ghost Story mode. ‘Wyntours’, by David G. Rowlands, and ‘Old Hobby Horse’, by A. F. Kidd, adhere to this genre without adding anything really new or novel.

‘Firstborn’, by David Campton, features a remote estate, an eccentric uncle, and a strange greenhouse; there is a Roald Dahl-ish quality to this story that makes it one of the better ones in the anthology.

The obligatory Charles L. Grant story, ‘Every Time You Say I Love You’, is actually one of his better stories, featuring an ending that, unlike so many of his other short stories, delivers a neat payoff.

The mandatory Dennis Etchison entry, ‘The Dark Country’ has nothing to do with horror, being more of a psychological drama involving dissipated American tourists loose in Acapulco. Even as a psychological drama it is over-written and plodding.

‘Luna’, by G. W. Perriwils, features an astronaut troubled by unusual nightmares. ’Mind’, by Les Freeman, deals with a day-tripper to the English town of Whitby; the train service offers something out of the ordinary.

The magazine Running Times was the source for David Clayton Carrad’s ‘Competition’, about a jogger who takes a turn down a forbidding causeway. It’s another of the better tales in the collection.

‘On 202’, by Jeff Hecht, centers on a late-night drive through spooky New England countryside.

M. John Harrison’s ‘Egnaro’ is a tale about a middle-aged bookshop owner whose life is afflicted with entropy. He seeks salvation in the existence of the eponymous mythical country. While well-written, 'Egnaro' is devoid of any horror content, and its inclusion either a sign of how slim the pickings were, or Wagner’s limited capabilities as an anthology editor.

The final entry, Harlan Ellison’s ‘Broken Glass’, deals with telepathy gone bad. It’s rather graphic sexual content is something of a surprise to encounter in a ‘Year’s Best’ anthology, and indicates that Wagner was willing to embrace this aspect of horror fiction, even as he deliberately avoided entertaining any submissions with graphic violence.

The verdict ? ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X’ has a couple of worthwhile entries, but the rest are mediocre. It’s a pretty clear picture of the genre as it stood in the early 80s, a genre experiencing increasing commercial success, primarily due to the novels of Stephen King, but also a genre that, in the main, was content to recycle the same old tropes and plot devices.

Although in the early 80s James Herbert and Shaun Hutson were bravely promoting fiction with genuine horror content, the advent of Clive Barker and ‘The Books of Blood’, and the much-needed changes essential to the emancipation of the genre, were still three years in the future.

Survivor or Savior

'Survivor or Savior !'
by Doug Moench and Gonzalo Mayo
from Creepy No. 62 (May, 1974)

 

Great artwork from Gonzalo Mayo in this sf comic from Creepy #62 (May 1974). (Scanned from the Creepy Archives,  volume13, Dark Horse / New Comic Co., June 2012)

 

Book Review: Hothouse

Book Review: 'Hothouse' by Brian Aldiss

3 / 5 Stars

‘Hot House’ was first published as a series of five novelettes in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1961, with the fix-up novel released in the UK in 1962. This Sphere paperback (206 pp) was released in 1971. The cover artwork is by Eddie Jones.

(Abridged versions of ‘Hothouse’, retitled ‘The Long Afternoon of Earth’, were released in the US).

The story is set millions of years into Earth’s future, when the Sun has enlarged (en route to going nova). The planet has stopped rotating, which means that one side is perpetually exposed to the Sun, and has acquired the characteristics of the novel’s title. The other half of the Earth is in perpetual darkness and cold and supports little, if any, life.

On the hothouse side of the Earth, plant life has assumed ecological supremacy; indeed, a single enormous banyan tree occupies most of the terrestrial acreage of the hemisphere. All animal life has long since been extinguished by the increased solar radiation, but mankind lingers on – in the form of 2-feet tall, tarsier-like creatures who survive in the upper branches of the banyan. Life for these people is a constant battle with giant insects and a vicious array of carnivorous plants.

As the novel opens, the reader is introduced to a band of humans, led by the elderly Lily-yo, and featuring the main character, a man-child named Gren. A vividly described series of battles against the relentless plant life results in Gren leaving the tribe, cast into the unknown regions of the forest, filled with creatures even stranger than those occupying the teeming boughs.

As the novel unfolds, Gren finds unlikely allies in his journey across the landscape of this ‘hothouse’. But Gren doesn’t realize that the planet upon which he wanders is itself destined for extinction, for the Sun is beginning to swell even larger…..and soon the plants and animals on the surface of the Earth will have to confront the end of all life..........

For a novel first written in 1962 (and, of course, well before author Aldiss became increasingly infatuated with the New Wave movement and its literary contrivances) ‘Hothouse’ has a surprisingly modern prose style: clean, direct, and for the most part devoid of figurative passages. 

The ecology of this far-future Earth is well-conceived, and features some of more interesting monsters depicted in sf. The middle stretches of the narrative do suffer from some loss of momentum, a plain consequence of ‘Hothouse’ s genesis as a fix-up.

But overall, Hothouse stands as one of the better novels the genre produced in the early 60s, and one of its more imaginative treatments of ecology.