second volume in this legendary series contains less stories than the first, but it is a fine selection, including three stories which have been adapted as movies, two of them more than once.
Oscar Cook Piecemeal
Judging by the three stories I've read by him so far, neither subtlety nor good taste are among the virtues of Oscar Cook.
If you like your horror stories gross and unsophisticated he's your man, He had one story His Beautiful Hands in The First Pan Book of Horror Stories and he has two in this second volume.
Piecemeal is a story of revenge, primitive tribal culture and a disgusting practise which, though frowned upon in civilised society, appears in three of the stories in this collection.
I won't say what that practise is or in which stories it appears as it is generally meant to come as a surprise,
The three Oscar Cook stories all follow the same formula, The narrator and his friend Warwick, both journalists, meet for drinks at their club, One tells the other some gruesome tale which occurred to some acquaintance, The narrator is always disgusted by Warwick's delight over gruesome events and sometimes says he's not sure he wants to hear more but can't let the story go.
Sometimes Warwick, though keen to tell the story, grows pale and queasy at his own account, While the stories are genuinely gruesome, all the fuss and bother and growing pale can seem a bit like gilding the lily,
George Langelaan The Fly
The Fly is a classic tale of science fictional horror which has inspired five movies directly and had a major influence on popular culture by introducing the concept of a the matter transporter, a device which disassembles an object, an animal or a human into a their constituent atoms and then transmits those atoms to another place and reassembles them there.
The Fly was first published in Playboy inand filmed in, Star Trek then popularised the concept of the matter transporter further when it debuted in,
As you would expect the story differs quite a bit from the film versions but is much closer to Kurt Neumann's originalversion than to its sequels or to theCronenberg film.
The story is both more subtle and more horrific and I can only imagine how shocking it must have been to those who read it before it became so wellknown.
We've become somewhat desensitised to the idea of a man becoming halfman halffly because we have seen the movies and the parodies of the movies, etc.
But when you read the original story and put all of that out of your head you realise just what a nightmarish conception it is.
William Sansom The Vertical Ladder
This story stands out because it is about something very ordinary and believable.
No monsters or demons or medieval torture devices, just a young man dared to climb a ladder up the side of an old oil tank in the middle of nowhere.
But the horror is no less for its realism, I imagined myself in the place of the central character and whenever I think back on the ending of the story my mind recoils from contemplating it for very long.
H. G. Wells Pollock and the Porroh Man
H, G. Wells may be better known for his science fiction, but he also writes a mean horror story, This one deals with the popular subject of tribal black magic, An arrogant Brit kills a witch doctor and finds himself cursed, A fairly conventional story but with lots of effectively creepy detail,
Guy Preston The Inn
If reading horror stories teaches you anything it is to be careful not to stay anywhere that isn't listed in the Lonely Planet Guide for the country you happen to be in, especially if you are caught out in the middle of nowhere in a dense fog.
And if, as in this story, the innkeeper has no eyes you better take that as a warning that you are not going to get a good night's sleep, unless it is an eternal one.
As you might guess this is pretty traditional horror story territory, but it is handled with plenty of style, atmosphere and grossness,
Bram Stoker The Judge's House
Stoker's story The Squaw was one of the highlights of The First Pan Book of Horror Stories and he doesn't disappoint with his entry in the second volume.
Stoker's short stories are very similar to those of Edgar Allan Poe, he has a real flair for gothic atmosphere, melodramatic flourishes and imaginative surprises.
Here a young student stays in a house which once belonged to a notorious hanging judge, At first he thinks that his only companions are the masses of rats that scurry around behind the walls, but, . .
Stanley Ellin The Specialty of the House
Not too many surprises about where this story is going.
Seasoned horror readers will catch on pretty quickly, But it is written with great character and subtlety and has the ability to haunt the imagination in a way that a more blatantly gruesome story probably would not.
Agatha Christie The Last Séance
I never realised that Agatha Christie wrote horror stories, I'm familiar with her mysteries and spy stories, and I know she wrote romance novels, but I didn't suspect she would have a creepy little tale like this in her.
There isn't a lot to it but it sets up a disturbing situation and plays it out to a grotesque conclusion,
Vernon Routh The Black Creator
This story is in a similar vein to H, G. Wells The Island of Dr, Moreau but its villain Dr, Diaz Volo is more sadist than scientist, His island includes halfhuman halfanimal creations among other atrocities, but his only motive appears to be the destruction of anything beautiful and the powermad desire to inflict maximum physical and mental anguish on all who fall into his hands.
The story itself is not exceptional, but when it comes to grizzly horror and hints of things unspeakable it certainly delivers, If you like the stories of H, P. Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn, this will probably be right up your alley,
Stephen Hall By One, By Two, and By Three
Be careful about dabbling in the Black Arts.
This story deals with a man who gets more than he bargained for, as do his friends, when he reverts to an old family tradition that of witchcraft.
This is a longer story with plenty of buildup and characterisation which leads to some good oldfashioned chills, One scene in particular is nailbitingly tense,
Oscar Cook Boomerang
It's our old friend Oscar Cook back again, and this story picks up where Piecemeal left off, beginning with a reference to that story.
Here we have another story which is perhaps best read on an empty stomach, Contrary to the title it doesn't take place in Australia but in Borneo, It's a revenge story. A friend assures me that what happens in this story is not physically possible, But most of us are not that wellinformed on anatomy and Cook certainly makes it sound convincing, Eeeeeuuuuuuckkk!
Philip Macdonald Our Feathered Friends
This is a very strange, haunting tale, What happens in it is not dissimilar to what happens in a rather famous story and in a number of different movies, but where it differs from them is in its poetic tone and hints that it may be about something more than what it appears to be.
Geoffrey Household Taboo
Is this a werewolf story You'll have to read it to find out, A psychiatrist tries to make a point about the importance of letting out one's feelings in order to avoid what we would now call posttraumatic stress disorder.
To illustrate his point he tells the tale of a horrific event in his own life, Household keeps you guessing about where the story will lead and he has a dry wit which adds extra appeal,
Edgar Allan Poe The Black Cat
What can I say about this story If you are a selfrespecting horror fan you've already read it.
It's one of Poe's most famous classics, a cautionary tale about being cruel to animals, The demon alcohol turns a good kind man into a monster who beats his wife and gouges out his cat's eye, You just know it is all going to rebound on him, This is one of those stories which set the standard against which other horror stories are judged, It's been filmed many times,
Carl Stephenson Leiningen Versus The Ants
With its jungle setting and its macho hero who smokes a cigar the size of a corn cob, this is the epitome of the sort of stories which filled the men's adventure magazines which were so popular in thes,s ands.
Leiningen runs a jungle plantation in Brazil, He is advised to flee when a ten mile long and two mile wide army of ants is headed for his plantation, This particular kind of ant eats everything in its path, They overrun animals and strip them down to a skeleton in a matter of minutes, But Leiningen is made of sterner stuff, He's determined to stay, along with his nervous indian workers, and pit his brain against the power of the ants, It's fascinating to see the ways in which his carefully thought out defences fail in the face of the inexorable march of the ants, And the climax is particularly exciting, This was filmed as The Naked Jungle inwith Charlton Heston as Leiningen, I haven't seen the movie but Heston sounds like perfect casting, Being a Hollywood movie they added a love interest who is not in the story, A splendid followup to the first anthology there aren't as many tales collected here, on account of some of them being longer, but for the most part they're brilliant with only a few duds.
Things kick off in grand style with Oscar Cook's PIECEMEAL, For those who don't know, Cook was a British author who spent some time living in the jungles of Borneo, a setting which influenced all of his exotic horror stories.
This one's a classic tale of body horror which packs a real punch, George Langelaan's THE FLY follows next, and it's the story that the famous 's movie was based on, Suffice to say that the film follows the story very closely, and the story is just as good,
William Sansom's THE VERTICAL LADDER is the third in the anthology and it's another wonderful premise and perfect for a reader who's scared of heights like yours truly.
It's a simple story about a kid who decides to climb a high and rusting ladder, only to have second thoughts once he's up there.
It's quite like Jack Finney's CONTENTS OF A DEAD MAN'S POCKET from the first anthology, and just as tense,
POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN, by H, G. Wells, is another exotic horror effort, this time detailing an African tribal curse, It's a classic piece of writing and one that's just as good as the bestremembered efforts in this genre, so it's a wonder you don't hear more about it.
Wells keeps you guessing as to whether the events are physical or purely psychological, and it has a fine nasty edge like THE CONE,
Guy Preston's THE INN is a bit of an old chestnut a guy breaks down in the middle of nowhere and is forced to spend the night in a lonely inn.
However, sometimes the oldfashioned stories are the best, and that's the case here in this delightfully gruesome effort, Bram Stoker's THE JUDGE'S HOUSE, a relatively obscure effort by the DRACULA author, is almost as effective and a clear influence on Lovecraft's RATS IN THE WALLS.
THE SPECIALITY OF THE HOUSE is a story by Stanley Ellin that details an unnerving experience in a weird restaurant, The story is fairly guessable, but the subtlety and quality of the writing are what make it work, The next two stories are lesser fare Agatha Christie's THE LAST SEANCE mixes the quaint and nasty, while Vernon Routh's THE BLACK CREATOR is an unoriginal variation on the Wells novel, THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS.
Stephen Hall's BY ONE, BY TWO, AND BY THREE is another grand old tale of black magic and sinister familiars, containing some great setpieces.
Imagine Dennis Wheatley but with more of a pulp angle and you'll be there,
Then we get the return of Oscar Cook, whose BOOMERANG is probably the most singularly grotesque horror story ever written, It's also highly memorable for that reason,
Things drop off again for Philip Macdonald's OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS, which is like a weaksauce version of Hitch's THE BIRDS, and Geoffrey Household's TABOO, which is a welltold but standard werewolf story.
Then we get an old favourite, Poe's THE BLACK CAT, which is a classic for a reason, a quality piece of writing that proves to be completely readable and loaded with a spooky atmosphere.
The collection finishes with a novella, Carl Stephenson's LEININGEN VERSUS THE ANTS, and boy is it a cracker, It's about a plantation owner in Brazil who learns that an army of millions of flesheating ants is on its way, and who refuses to abandon his estate.
What follows is ferociously exciting, inevitably horrible, and completely, utterly compelling truly one of my favourite stories ever written, And on that note, THEND PAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES is doubtlessly one of the best horror anthologies I've ever read!,
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