Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me

Book Review: 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me'

Edited by Robert Arthur

5 / 5 Stars

'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me' (463 pp.) was published in hardback by Random House in 1967. Edited by Robert Arthur, it compiles stories, novelettes, and a novel all first published during the interval from 1913 to 1967, in a variety of magazines and anthologies.

Much of the contents of 'Scared Even Me' later were repackaged in the Dell paperbacks 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along With Me' (1970) and 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Slay Ride' (1971).

Over the course of 2022 I've become quite interested in these old Hitchcock anthologies. I first encountered the franchise as a teenager in the 1970s, and I read quite a few of the Dell paperbacks and I even have some of them stored away in a box in my basement. Back in the 70s I considered the Hitchcock anthologies to be staid compared to the emerging horror anthologies of the era, such as DAW's 'The Year's Best Horror Stories', so I never regarded them as being all that hip. 

However, I'm finding that the Hitchcock anthologies well are worth another look.

Below are my capsule summaries of the contents of 'Stories That Scared Even Me'. Note: in some instances, I've recycled my summaries from the Dell paperback 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me'.

Fishhead, by Irvin S. Cobb (1913): the eponymous backwoods resident isn't someone you want to anger.

Camera Obscura, by Basil Copper (1965): a moneylender meets the intriguing Dr. Gingold.

A Death in the Family, by Miriam Allen deFord (1961): oldie but goodie about a man with peculiar habits.

Men Without Bones, by Gerald Kersh (1954): neat little tale mixing sci-fi with horror in the depths of the Central American jungle. This story originally appeared in Esquire magazine in August, 1954.

Not with A Bang, by Damon Knight (1949): the Last Man on Earth and the Last Woman on Earth face an awkward future.

Party Games, by John Burke (1965): Simon Potter, a troubled little boy, shows up at Ronny Jarman's birthday party. Rambunctious, contumacious, snotnosed urchins had best not trifle with Simon. This story demonstrates that occasionally, more graphic horror content would surface in a Hitchcock anthology. 

X Marks the Pedwalk, by Fritz Leiber (1963): violent conflict between pedestrians and motorists in a near-future America. One of Leiber's best short stories.

Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond, by Nugent Barker (1965): this story originally appeared in 1939 in The Cornhill Magazine, and later in Best Tales of Terror 2, a UK horror anthology. The eponymous Mr. Bond finds himself lost on a country ramble. To his relief, he comes across an inn..........and its most peculiar innkeepers. This story relies on surrealism for its effect, but does it well, providing a creepy undertone to the proceedings. 

Two Spinsters, by E. Phillips Oppenheim (1926): on a dark and rainy night in the wilds of Devonshire, England, Erneston Grant seeks shelter in a dilapidated cottage. Author Oppenheim was a prolific, and best-selling, novelist during the interval from 1900 to 1943.

The Knife, by Robert Arthur (1951): it's not just an ordinary utensil. I suspect most readers will see where the plot is going well in advance. I would argue that 'The Knife' ably prefigures two of the most provocative stories in Harlan Ellison's 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions.

The Cage by Ray Russell (1959): A young and scheming countess, her elderly and trusting husband, and an enigmatic overseer who dresses all in black. What could possibly go wrong ?! 

It, by Theodore Sturgeon (1940): old-school tale of the predecessor to the 'swamp monsters' of the 1970s (like the Man-Thing and the Swamp-Thing).

Casablanca, by Thomas M. Disch (1967): a middle-aged American couple, self-absorbed and dismissive, find their vacation in Morocco abruptly upended. 

First published in New Worlds magazine, this is a very well-plotted and well-written story, with low-key sci-fi overtones. 'Casablanca' had me concluding that when Disch wasn't trying so hard to turn out 'speculative fiction' pieces (like 'The Squirrel Cage') for the New Wave movement, he was quite capable of writing very good, 'traditional' short stories.

The Road to Mictlantecutli, by Adobe James (1965): Morgan, a ruthless criminal, is travelling on a deserted road in Mexico. The strange sights and passions he encounters will lead him to change his life........for good, or for ill.

'Adobe James' was the pseudonym of American writer James Moss Cardwell (1926 – 1990), who had his short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. 

'Road' first appeared in issue 20 of the Adam Bedside Reader, and went on to be a staple entry in many anthologies, including The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1965) and The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981). It skillfully imbues supernatural gongs-on with a moral theme, and in my opinion, is one of the best horror stories of the sixties.

Guide to Doom, by Ellis Peters (1963): short-short tale of a chateau with a disturbing history. 'Ellis Peters' was the pseudonym of UK writer Edith Mary Pargeter, whose 'Brother Cadfael' mysteries were very succesful.

The Estuary, by Margaret St. Clair (1950): another short-short tale, and perennial anthology favorite.

Tough Town by William Sambrot (1957): a travelling salesman finds himself in the wrong kind of town.

The Troll, by T.H. White (1935): mild tale about a creature from Scandinavian fable.

Evening at the Black House, by Robert Somerlott (1964):  this first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine (?!). It's a tale with a twist at the end. Well done.

One of the Dead, by William Wood (1964):  this story originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in October 31, 1964 (the illustration below is from that issue). While a bit over-written, it's one of the better psychological horror stories I've read. 

It adroitly combines the haunted house trope with insightful observations about the anomie of mid-century suburban life in Los Angeles. There is an undertone of creepiness that comes to fruition in the story's final sentence. I finished 'One of the Dead' thinking that this sole story from Wood is markedly superior to many stories originating from better-known 'quiet horror' practitioners like Robert Aickman, T. E. D. Klein, Dennis Etchison, and Charles L. Grant. 

Information about author Wood is scant. According to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia he may have been a UK author, who wrote a 1962 novel titled The News from Karachi.

The Real Thing, by Robert Specht (1966): short-short about the village simpleton, with a 'shock' ending.

The Master of the Hounds, by Algis Budrys (1966): strange things are happening in rural New Jersey. Another story that first saw print in The Saturday Evening Post. Who would have thought The Post published so many horror / suspense stories back in the day ?!

The Candidate, by Henry Slesar (1961): corporate competitiveness gets a new dimension. Another story that reinforces my belief that Slesar (1927 -2002) was one of the more talented short-short story writers of the second half of the 20th century.  

Out of the Deeps , by John Wyndham (1953): Mike and his wife Phyllis, two reporters for a broadcast company in the UK, witness a strange aerial phenomenon while on a cruise near the Azores islands. It turns out to be the opening stages of an alien invasion.

First published in the UK as 'The Kraken Wakes', some 70 years later this remains one of the best novels in the 'alien invasion' genre of sci-fi. It is written with author Wyndham's usual understated prose style, and unfolds in a deliberate manner that is all the more effective for keeping the identities of the adversaries vague (and ultimately unknowable).

Summing up, after reading 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me' I felt comfortable with awarding the anthology a 5 star rating. The stories by Kersh, Burke, Leiber, Barker, Oppenheim, James, Disch, Wood, and Wyndham, in particular, well have stood the test of time and give the collection an impact that many other anthologies of suspense and horror tales of the 1960s and 1970s failed to match. 

Paintings by Brad Johannsen

Paintings by Brad Johannsen

from the collection of Mark Suall

In response to one of my postings about the artist Brad Johannsen, who in the 1970s did the book Occupied Spaces, as well as album cover artwork for a number of musicians, Mark Suall contacted me.

He owns a number of original works by Johannsen, and provided me with some jpg files that I have posted below.

Mark Suall's remarks on the paintings:

The oil (i.e., Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.) was produced in 2000. 

The Golda Meir portrait is from the early 70s. 

The Coney Island face was done for me as a favor around 1995. 

The boy with rifle is an altered reproduction of an Avedon photo my band wanted to use. Produced around 1993. 

Remembering Reptilian Records

Remembering Reptilian Records
Fell's Point, Baltimore, 1990s

As I get older, I find myself thinking back to those days, over 30 years ago, when I was a graduate student living in Baltimore. I didn't have much money, so I was on the lookout for cheap thrills. And a good place to find them was a dark and anarchistic little boutique in the city's Fell's Point neighborhood: Reptilian Records. 

Back then, Baltimore was known as 'Charm City', as well as 'The City that Reads', the latter slogan dreamed up by a tourism and marketing campaign (the slogan quickly was transformed into 'The City that Breeds' by knowledgeable Baltimoreans and urban hipsters). The city was comparatively safer than it is nowadays, although you took care in where you went after dark.

There still were working-class redoubts in the northern and eastern parts of the city, in neighborhoods like Highlandtown, Hampden, Roland Park, Keswick, and Dundalk, while in the downtown area, the Inner Harbor remained a major tourist draw. Some of the best pizza in the city could be had at Matthew's, on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown.

Reptilian opened in November, 1989, at 403 South Broadway Street and quickly became the 'in' place to go for vinyl, and later CDs, in the genres of punk, thrash metal, speed metal, and the burgeoning grunge rock movement. Since I was 31 when I began patronizing Reptilian late in 1991, I was a little too old and set in my ways to have much interest in bands like Fugazi. 

But along with records, Reptilian also sold the more offbeat comic books, graphic novels, magazines, and the occasional book. You could find the latest issue of comics from Dark Horse, Eclipse, Tundra, Kitchen Sink, and other indie publishers, along with higher-end publications like 'Raw'. They had boxes stuffed with ultraviolent, 'transgressive' black-and-white horror comics from quasi-underground publishers like Northstar.

I have fond memories of visiting Reptilian on gray, drizzly, cold days, or in searingly hot summer days, and coming away with 'Aliens' comics from Dark Horse, 'Black Hole' and 'Death Rattle' from Kitchen Sink, a copy of 'Taboo', Robert Crumb's 'Hup' comics, and much other worthy material that now is stored in boxes in my basement.

Back in the early 1990s, Fell's Point was gentrifying, but slowly, and the profuse commercialization that now marks the area didn't exist. There still was a seedy ambience to the neighborhood, and back then, crime wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is nowadays. So I could park my car on side streets and not risk having it broken in to, or being mugged walking around Fell's Point.

When I came away from Reptilian with several packs of the infamous 'True Crime' trading cards, issued in late 1992 by comics publisher Eclipse, it seemed right and proper that I acquired them in Fell's Point, and not in some more presentable, upscale vending place.......

I patronized Reptilian until I left Baltimore early in 1997. The store eventually left its Fell's Point location for a storefront on North Howard Street, and closed for good in January 2009. The store's somewhat eccentric owner, 'Chris X', aka Chris Neu, converted his operation to a mail order / online vendor. Reptilian continues to this day as a producer and publisher of punk rock as custom vinyl LPs, and CDs. Their Facebook page is here. 

I'd buy a Reptilian Records tee shirt, but the days when I could wear a XXL size comfortably are long gone............sigh.......

I guess the message is, treasure those offbeat, crowded, dimly lit, overly loud little stores and vendors who are dedicated to the fringes of popular culture, because they are places you really will miss when they close.

The Myron Fass Fan Club

The Myron Fass Fan Club

Jeff Goodman was a staffer at Countrywide Publications, the publishing company run by schlock magazine mogul Myron Fass (March 29, 1926 - September 14, 2006). 

Fass started in print media in the 1950s as an artist in comic books, before teaming up early in the 1960s with Stanley Harris to create a line of girlie magazines. 

Fass's stance of churning out magazines to emulate whatever else on the newsstands was selling well, was highly successful. During the 1970s and on into the 1980s, Countrywide titles devoted to horror, crime, UFOs, and all manner of ephemeral pop culture phenomena made the company one of the nation's most lucrative magazine publishers. In the mid-80s Fass moved to Florida and, using the name 'Merion Riley-Foss', launched a new magazine venture under the rubric of a company titled 'Creative Arts'. Fass died at age 80 in Fort Lauderdale.

Goodman maintains a Facebook page devoted to Fass and the schlock magazine publishing industry. He provides lots of vintage photographs, observations, and anecdotes about the personalities that worked at Countrywide and in print media at large during the 70s, 80s and 90s. 

Goodman's remarks often are humorous and affectionate, but at times, filled with pathos, too. This is his reminiscence of a late 1990s encounter with Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione's wife, and the editor of Omni magazine, Kathy Keeton:

One day I was at Guccione's Upstate NY mansion. I used to buy stolen bottles of wine from a Saint Mark's Place crackhead, and he sold me a crazy expensive bottle of Chateau d'Yquem for $10. I brought it to Guccione's house. He made a pasta lunch and I gave him the bottle of Chateau d'Yquem. From that moment on, my standing was highly elevated with Guccione.

 

I was walking around the house during an afternoon. It was terrible hot, a broiling summer day. I came across Kathy Keeton pulling weeds from her vegetable garden. She was furiously pulling the weeds, robotically, like a mad woman. She was drenched in sweat.

"I have all this." she said, pointing at the mansion, the pool, the gardens. "I have what I wanted and I'm going to die. I have cancer. Why am I going to die?"

Then she went back to furiously pulling weeds. I said something probably silly, something like "You never know what will happen. These things don't always go the way that doctors tell you."

I didn't know anything about cancer at the time. She didn't look sick. I don't really remember the rest of the day. I thought about this all that week.

A few months later, I saw Kathy Keeton on a TV show and she talked about how she was cured. She had hooked up with some quack who was giving her some sort of chemical that was a component of rocket fuel called hydrazine sulfate. She was beaming, she was sure she had been cured by the rocket fuel.

She dropped dead a week later.

Penthouse magazine March 1975

 Penthouse magazine, March 1975

Let's go back in time to March, 1975, where Spring is in the air, and the latest issue of Penthouse magazine is on the stands.

The 'Forum' showcases the usual deviants: 

The height of fashion is owning a pair of Dingo boots........made with denim (?!) and leather:

And, in those innocent days of 1975, you could mail-order counterfeit guns !

And, for a fee, a Real Artist could draw dirty pictures for you ! 

The Pictorials are very much all about the 'soft focus erotica' sensibility pioneered by David Hamilton..........

There's a pictorial featuring a supple young woman posing next to exercise equipment........?!

The articles feature a humorous piece, by Henry Morgan, on the Irish (March has St. Patrick's Day, after all). The illustration is by Mercer Mayer, who was well-known for illustrating the 'Great Brain' books, by John D. Fitzgerald, that were popular in the 1970s.

The Interview features writer and journalist Louis 'Studs' Terkel. Terkel, who carefully cultivated an image of himself as an ally of the Proletariat, has pretty much faded as a newsworthy personality, but back in '75, he was quite the social critic.

There's a piece penned by a self-titled 'male hustler'. I'm sure everything he says is true !

And for the cartoons, we have a proto-Beavis saying crude things to a bewildered child........?! Along with a 'gay' cartoon that likely would not pass muster nowadays.

And there you have it, vintage smut from 1975.

Book Review: A Dream of Kinship

Book Review: 'A Dream of Kinship' by Richard Cowper

3 / 5 Stars

'A Dream of Kinship' (240 pp.) was published by Pocket Books / Timescape in August, 1981. The cover artist is uncredited.

This is the second book in the so-called 'White Bird of Kinship' trilogy. The initial volume in the trilogy is 'The Road to Corlay' (1978) and the final volume, 'A Tapestry of Time', was published in 1982.

My review of 'The Road to Corlay' is available here.

'Richard Cowper' was the pen name of the UK writer John Middleton Murry, Jr. (1926 - 2002).

'Dream' opens in 3019 AD, just after the events of 'The Road to Corlay'. The Kinship, a sort of post-Christian sect heavily imbued with humanism, is under persecution by the Catholic Church and its head inquisitor, the malevolent Lord Constant. Across the archipelagos that constitute the former British Isles and northern France, the agents of Lord Constant maneuver to detect and extirpate the followers of the White Bird (the talisman of the Kinsman, and a sort of New Age analogue to the Holy Spirit).

Corlay, a city in Brittany, is under secular protection and seemingly safe from the actions of the Church. However, in the opening chapters of 'Dream' we are introduced to the Magpie, an enigmatic soldier of fortune and convert to the Kinship. The Magpie has come to Corlay filled with a sense of unease, and anxious to see to the welfare of Jane, the young widow of Thomas of Norwich, an early acolyte of the faith and the man who best knew the boy Tom of Cartmel, the John-the-Baptist analogue introduced in 'Corlay'.

Jane and her circle are reluctant to believe that the Church would dare strike at them in the safety of Corlay. But as the Magpie is about to discover, it is not just the survival of the Kinship that is a stake, but the survival of the boy, Tom, that Jane soon is to birth. For Tom is to be no ordinary child, but one gifted with strange powers, powers for good, but also for ill. And the Lord Constant fears for the change that will overtake his world if Tom is allowed to live...... 

I gave 'The Road to Corlay' a three-star Rating and I am content with bestowing the same Rating for 'A Dream of Kinship'. 

The opening chapters of 'Dream' are the best, being well-crafted in terms of building suspense and pathos unfolding amid the wintry hills and desolate fields of Brittany. 

The remaining two-thirds of the novel are considerably less dramatic, as they constitute a  bildungsroman centered on the youth and maturation of Jane's son Tom, and his talent for piping songs that bring a sense of the otherworldy to his listeners. Interspersed with the adventures of Tom are incidents dealing with the at-times lethal geopolitics of the Kingdoms making up what used to be the British Isles. 

Curiously, in 'Dream', author Cowper abandons the science fiction sub-plot present in 'Corlay'. I found this improved the novel, allowing Cowper to focus more fully on his pastoral, post-apocalyptic civilization, which he depicts with considerable affection. 

Summing up, those who read 'The Road to Corlay' will want to pursue this second volume in the trilogy. It's a fantasy novel with a skillful prose style on the part of author Cowper. However, 'A Dream of Kinship' does have a deliberate, character-centered pacing, and those accustomed to the broader and more exciting scale of 'epic' fantasy storytelling may find 'Dream' to be lacking in this regard.

Book Review: The Faded Sun: Kesrith

Book Review: 'The Faded Sun: Kesrith' by C. J. Cherry

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Faded Sun: Kesrith’ (252 pp.) is DAW Book No. UE1600 and was published in August 1978. The cover illustration is by Dino D’Achille. It’s the first book in the so-called ‘mri’ trilogy, with the other volumes ‘The Faded Sun: Shon'jir’ (1978) and ‘The Faded Sun: Kutath’ (1979).

Some 20 years ago I started to read ‘Kesrith’, got about half-way through it, and was so bored, I gave up on the book. In the spirit of completion, I recently decided to attempt ‘Kesrith’ again, and this time I persevered all the way to the end…………

Following the publication of ‘Dune’ in 1965, detailed depictions of alien societies, psychologies, and social mores became a major theme in sci-fi. An unwritten rule became commonplace, that exposition on aliens be rendered in stilted, formalistic prose. Nouns associated with alien societies were capitalized, aliens rarely used contractions in their speech, and all manner or esoteric and arcane mannerisms by aliens were used to propel narratives about perplexed Terrans, or outsiders, struggling to comprehend these mysterious entities. The apogee of this stylistic attitude came with Donald Kingsbury’s 1982 novel ‘Courtship Rite’.

Author Carolyn Janice Cherry (b. 1942) took these conventions to heart. Many of her sci-fi novels deal with humans / Terrans who through misadventure find themselves submerged in alien societies. Often, if they are to survive, these Terrans must overcome hostility or indifference from their hosts. 

‘Kesrith’ plainly is modeled on ‘Dune’, and while this is not a bad thing, the fact is that the book is too slowly paced, and too dependent on characterization and world-building, to be effective.

The eponymous planet is a Dune-style desert world, an armpit of the galaxy. Some Fremen-like, Vaguely Arab, Vaguely Muslim tribesmen, known as the mri, eke out a squalid existence as mercenaries to a more sophisticated, but risk-averse race of aliens known as the regul.

 

The war between the regul – waged through their mri intermediaries – and humans has gone badly for the regul, and as ‘Kesrith’ opens, the regul are in the process of abandoning their operations on Kesrith and turning the planet over to the Federation. The mri are less than pleased with the thought of being deserted by their hereditary allies, and the enclave on Kesrith is beset with considerable angst. 

Things don’t improve when a duo of Terrans, the taciturn diplomat George Stavros and his aide-de-camp Sten Duncan, arrive on Kesrith as barely-tolerated guests of the regul. As the narrative progresses, there are fractious interactions between the regul, mri, and humans, interactions that have ominous implications for the frail reality of the truce between regul and humans. Will the mri survive the conflicts roiling Kesrith, or find their race exterminated ? 

From its opening page, ‘Kesrith’ smothers the reader with alien-culture motifs. There is a barrage of invented words, some with apostrophes to lend them a Vaguely Arabic flavor. The dialogue is reliant on an enigmatic diction, leaving the reader with the unenviable job of trying to parse the meanings behind what is being said. Making things worse, it’s not just the mri culture that gets this treatment, but the regul do as well. 

I could tolerate the verbiage if the lead characters have some redeeming qualities, but sadly, in ‘Kesrith’, they don’t. The mir characters Niun and Melein, and the Terran protagonist Sten Duncan, are very dumb, and I found myself indifferent to their fates. Indeed, I found the novel’s most interesting characters to be the bearlike 'dus', indigenous mammals who have something of a Companion Animal relationship with the prickly, peevish mri.

Nothing of consequence happens until Chapter Sixteen (page 172), two-thirds of the way through the book. Thus, the reader must invest quite a bit of his or her time before things even start to get interesting.

I finished 'The Faded Sun: Kesrith' with no burning desire to advance to the next volume in the trilogy. I'd be interested to hear if any PorPor followers believe that ‘The Faded Sun: Shon'jir’ is an improvement. Or is it just more of the same...........?!

At Cupboard Maker Books

At Cupboard Maker Books
Enola, PA

Cupboard Maker Books is a used bookstore located in Enola, Pennsylvania, a town on the western shore of the Susquehanna River, across the river from Harrisburg. It's at 157 North Enola Rd, also known as Route 15, which in turn is directly accessible from exit 65 on Interstate 81. Cupboard Maker Books is not hard to miss: it has a uniquely colorful storefront (above).

It's across the street from a train yard (below).

On the day in early March that I visited, they were having a 33% off promotion for science fiction and fantasy titles.

It's a pretty big place, lots of aisles, lots of books, both hardcover and paperback.

The section devoted to sci-fi is extensive, both for hardbound and paperback books. They also have a dedicated section for horror fiction, something of a rarity in used bookstores.

There are at least two cats on the premises, although one was apparently in quarantine........?!

Most paperbacks are $3 each. I came away with a good selection of regular Old School potboilers (two with an emphasis on teen pregnancies ?!), and a couple of vintage science fiction titles:

When you're done at Cupboard Maker and you are wanting a bite to eat, I recommend Al's of Hampden, a brewpub that serves good pizza, sandwiches, salads, and appetizers. They have a large selection of craft beers of tap, too. At 2240 Millennium Way in Enola, in back of the Weiss market, they are a short drive from exit 61 off of Interstate 81.