In which we take a closer look at each issue. For our capsule history of the magazine, go here.
Volume 3, Number 2
(May/June,
1983)
Cover Art: Artifact
TZ
Publications, Inc.
President
& Chairman: S. Edward Orenstein
Contents:
--“In the Twilight Zone: Cone fever . .
.” by T.E.D. Klein
--Other Dimensions: Books by Thomas M.
Disch
--Other Dimensions: Screen by Gahan
Wilson
--Other Dimensions: Music by Jack
Sullivan
--Other Dimensions: Nostalgia by Ron
Goulart
--Other Dimensions: Fantasy Acrostic #1
by Peter Cannon
--Other Dimensions: Etc.
--TZ Interview: V.C. Andrews by Lorenzo
Carcaterra
--Cartoon by Thomas Swick
--“The Raft” by Stephen King
--TZ Preview Section: TZ’s Triple Bill
-TZ
Screen Preview: Something Wicked This Way
Comes
--“Confessions of a Freelance Fantasist”
by Isidore Haiblum
--“Harry’s Story” by Robert H. Curtis
--“The Tuck at the Foot of the Bed” by
Ardath Mayhar
--Required Reading: “A Fragment of Fact”
by Chris Massie
--“Takeover Bid” by Andrew Weiner
--“Listen” by Joe R. Lansdale
--The Fantasy Five-Foot Bookshelf by
Thomas M. Disch, Karl Edward Wagner, and R.S.
Hadji
--Show-By-Show Guide: TV’s Twilight
Zone, Part Twenty-Four
--TZ’s Classic Teleplay: “The Lonely” by
Rod Serling
--Looking Ahead: In the August TZ . . .”
--“In the Twilight Zone: Cone fever . . .” by T.E.D. Klein
-Klein
begins his editorial by describing his experiences viewing Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho during its
first-run theatrical release. Klein attended the film with his family and a
family friend, a psychiatrist named Joan, the latter of whom, Klein relates,
guessed the twist in the tale after the first murder. This recollection is
prompted by the impending release of Pyscho II, previewed in this issue. Klein next discusses the highlight of the
issue, Stephen King’s “The Raft,” calling attention to the fact that the story
was first published in the November, 1982 issue of Gallery, a men’s magazine published by the same
company (Montcalm Publishing) which published TZ. Klein felt comfortable
reprinting the story so soon after its first appearance since he didn’t imagine
readers of Gallery also read TZ, and
vice versa. The “cone” in the title of the editorial refers to the unusual
history of King’s story. More on that later.
-Commenting on the grisly nature of King’s story, Klein promises more subdued offerings from the remaining stories and provides capsule biographies of the writers along with thumbnail portraits. Klein concludes the editorial by highlighting the “Fantasy Five-Foot Bookshelf” feature in the issue, which asked three expert readers to provide the best and worst in supernatural fiction. This feature has become something of a legendary guide for horror readers down the years, prompting various online discussions, Wikipedia articles, and republications. More on that later, as well.
--Other Dimensions: Books by Thomas M. Disch
-A
nifty new illustrative portrait highlights Disch’s column this issue. He begins
by lamenting the publishing industry’s tendency to rely on bland, boring, or
safe books (i.e. books likely to become bestsellers), or books simply
indicative of a genre (western, science fiction, horror, mystery, etc.). Disch refers
to comments made by Robert Wyatt, chief editor at Avon Books, at a recent PEN
symposium. Disch then turns his critical eye on SF and discovers that the same situation
exists in his chosen field. Disch expresses his displeasure with the latest
works by Asimov and Clarke before proceeding to examine three books he feels are
excellent examples of “mid-list” fiction (books not likely to become
bestsellers).
-First up is The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe. This novel is the fourth volume in Wolfe’s tetralogy, The Book of the New Sun. Disch speaks at length on his enjoyment of these books, and relates a time when he called up his friend, noted SF critic John Clute, and suggested the two of them create a critical study of the series. Disch quotes Clute on several aspects of Wolfe’s series, displaying the possibilities for discussion and dissection. Disch concludes with this: “I realize this is not the stuff that blurb-writers’ dreams are made of, but most sf readers by now will already have begun to read The Book of the New Sun and will know their own taste in the matter. Nor can I imagine that any reader of the first three volumes could be prevented from continuing to the end. At this moment the whole tetralogy seems simply too large for ordinary critical epithets to apply; one might as well scrawl ‘pretty damned big!’ on the Great Pyramid.”
-Next, Disch takes a look at the latest offering from Norman Spinrad, The Void Captain’s Tale. Disch notes the differences between Wolfe and Spinrad, likening Spinrad’s worldview to that of Norman Mailer’s and completing the comparison by briefly looking at works from both Spinrad and Mailer. The Void Captain’s Tale concerns the idea of interstellar flight achieved by electronically amplified female orgasm. Disch describes the novel, and its innovative use of language, this way: “the effect of the Spinradical sprach is not so much to make commonplace speech richer, stranger, and more poetic, but to signify the artifice of all social conventions, to be symptomatic of the central thesis of the book – that the sexual grail is something that words, in their nature, cannot express.”
-Lastly, Disch looks at the novel The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica by John Calvin Batchelor. This “novel of the imminent future” depicts a Swedish prison break and a southward voyage into a war on the Falkland Islands to ultimately end at the ice camps of Antarctica. Disch likens the novel to a work of objective history while also making the comparison to older, more archetypal works of adventure, such as Beowulf, Moby Dick, and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Disch writes: “Batchelor manages to make good on his promise of the highest and wildest drama precisely because he keeps a certain distance from his cast of high-voltage characters and handles their passions, crimes, and ordeals with electrician’s gloves. He anatomizes them, as a historian might, rather than presenting them always in cinematically detailed scenes.”
--Other Dimensions: Screen by Gahan Wilson
-Gahan
Wilson also receives a nice new illustrative portrait, courtesy of the
cartoonist himself. This month Wilson looks at two films which will likely be
familiar to readers in the Vortex: Videodrome
and The Dark Crystal.
-Videodrome is a darkly satirical horror (some say science fiction) film from Canadian director David Cronenberg which takes the television viewer’s obsession with violence to an extreme level. The film concerns a journalist who discovers a secret television channel which consists of extremely violent and sexually provocative images. The more you watch the more elastic your reality becomes. The film is a notable example of “body horror” in cinema, a subgenre of the horror film characterized by extreme physical transformation or mutation, and usually highlighted by a talented special makeup effects artist. In the case of Videodrome, the gruesome effects were created by multi-Academy Award winner Rick Baker.
-David Cronenberg can probably be credited with inventing the body horror film, at least in North American cinema, through the innovative horror/sf films he made early in his career (Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, The Fly), though there were other films, such as the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. On a side note, Dennis Etchison wrote the novelization of Videodrome under the pseudonym Jack Martin. Etchison, an award-winning writer of horror and science fiction, was a friend to several Twilight Zone writers, including Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, and Ray Bradbury, and also scripted the majority of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas.
-Gahan Wilson uses Videodrome to illustrate the differences between the films of his youth, where suggestion and restraint created scary effects, and the special effects extravaganzas of the eighties, where a new and talented generation of special makeup effects artists created memorably grotesque work which will likely never be equaled for artistry or effectiveness. Videodrome is not a reticent film, and Cronenberg is not, or was not, a restrained director. “The whole movie,” Wilson writes, “as stated above, is mercilessly explicit, almost tediously insistent that you see everything no matter how repulsive it may be or how technically difficult it may be to deliver.” Overall, Wilson greatly enjoyed the film, though he found the ending to be a bit of a dodge.
-Wilson next looks at The Dark Crystal, a fantasy film from Jim Henson and Frank Oz featuring a cast of highly detailed and innovative puppets. Wilson sees the film as having a strike against it from the outset: it seeks to illustrate fairyland, which he feels is too personal a place to be convincingly rendered in a film. Wilson also found another flaw with the film. There are simply too few characters, likely due to the cost of creating the puppets. The result is that the world of The Dark Crystal seems almost desolate. Wilson also found problems with the plot, the design of the heroic characters, and the bleak tone of the film (a complaint frequently echoed at the time as the film was marketed as a family film and many viewers expected the tone of Jim Henson’s The Muppets or Sesame Street). Wilson concludes on a positive note, however: “. . .that aside, there are some really marvelous things in the movie. My favorite sequence takes place in a swamp full of grand inventions, both vegetable and animal, including flying flowers and a lovable swamp monster. It all worked so well it made me wonder if the sequel to Crystal might not be well advised to skip the trappings of plot and present itself as a travelogue.”
-The Dark Crystal did not receive a sequel but it did get a prequel in the form of the Netflix series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. The film has also been the subject of books, comic books, video games, cassette tapes, and other media. The film also greatly furthered the career of illustrator Brian Froud, who designed much of the film as well as Jim Henson’s follow-up, Labyrinth. Froud turned those experiences into a successful series of books.
--Other Dimensions: Music by Jack Sullivan
-Jack
Sullivan returns to the pages of TZ to share his considerable knowledge of
music with a look at the career of Bernard Herrmann, the composer behind the musical
scores for numerous horror, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery films and
television series, including music for director Alfred Hitchcock, stop-motion
animator Ray Harryhausen, director Brian de Palma, and, of course, The Twilight Zone. Herrmann
scored the music for the opening sequence of the first season of TZ (which I
prefer over the better-known theme created from the music of Marius Constant),
as well as music for several notable episodes, including “Walking Distance,”
“Eye of the Beholder,” and “Living Doll.” Herrmann’s music for The Twilight
Zone was recycled frequently on the
series and can be heard in numerous episodes.
-As he did with his earlier music column, Sullivan describes the musical compositions in varying levels of detail and suggests the best available recordings for readers who wish to purchase the music. Sullivan covers Herrmann’s scores for Citizen Kane, Hangover Square, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts, Fahrenheit 451, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. Sullivan also briefly touches on Herrmann’s music for television on such series as Kraft Suspense Theatre, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and The Twilight Zone. Sullivan concludes his column with a look at Herrmann’s later career after his falling out with Alfred Hitchcock, with work on such films as The Night Digger, Sisters, It’s Alive, Obsession, and Taxi Driver. Sullivan indicates that this is the first in a new series of columns looking at film composers.
--Other Dimensions: Nostalgia by Ron Goulart
“Walking with Zombies and Other Saturday
Afternoon Pastimes”
-Goulart’s column is devoted to horror films of the 1940s. Goulart feels that the horror films of the forties have long lived in the shadow of the more famous horror films from the prior decade. Goulart begins by describing the ideal viewing conditions in the movie palaces of his youth before launching into a nostalgic run of actors and films. He begins with Bela Lugosi’s appearances as Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and Ghost of Frankenstein before moving on to Universal’s Mummy films. Here Goulart spends time on the performers under wraps such as Tom Tyler and Lon Chaney, Jr. He also gives space to the (mostly) British actors who populated horror films during the decade, such as Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, Basil Rathbone, and, of course, Boris Karloff. Goulart notes that American actress Evelyn Ankers appeared in virtually every Universal horror film of the decade, decries Lon Chaney, Jr.’s attempts to play Son of Dracula, and praises Chaney, Jr. Bela Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya in Universal’s The Wolf Man.
-Goulart spends time on poverty row productions (Voodoo Man, The Devil Bat) before moving on to the Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard “old dark house” mystery films The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers, as well as other, cheaper, horror comedy films. Goulart also looks at the finest series of horror films of the decade, those produced at RKO by Val Lewton with directors Jacques Tourneur (director of TZ’s “Night Call”) and Robert Wise. Goulart’s favorite among these is I Walked with a Zombie.
--Other Dimensions: Fantasy Acrostic #1 by Peter Cannon
-It’s
puzzle time again. The puzzle and answers are below.
-The
miscellany column this month begins with a final entry from the TZ Magazine
story contest, printing the shortest entry received by the magazine.
Interestingly, the short-short is by Bill DeVoe, author of the 2010 book Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Next, the column shares a photograph sent in by author George R.R.
Martin, who saw a restaurant sign reading: “Human Buffet Every Monday Night,”
and thought of the TZ episode, “To Serve Man.” There is a brief profile of Jeff
Rovin’s book, The Science Fiction Collector’s Catalog, and a look at a new contest calling for writers to create the worst possible
opening lines to a story.
-The remainder of the column is (mostly) devoted to the upcoming release of Twilight Zone: The Movie. We begin with Robert Martin’s profile of director George Miller (pictured with Carol Serling), director of the Mad Max films, who directed a remake of Richard Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” for Twilight Zone: The Movie. Miller describes how he got the job, his approach to remaking a classic, and the technical challenges of the shoot. Carol Serling is also briefly interviewed concerning her cameo as a passenger on the airplane during the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” segment. We are also given a general update on the shooting of the film and are promised production art and storyboards in an upcoming issue.
-Mel Gibson, star of George Miller’s Mad Max and Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior), is interviewed by James Verniere. This interview has some interesting moments, since Gibson was not yet the high-profile star he became later in the decade. Gibson speaks about his being born in America but raised in Australia. At one point, Verniere asks Gibson if the actor will be appearing in Mad Max III, to which Gibson curtly replies: “No.” Gibson, of course, did appear in the third Mad Max film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Gibson also describes what is was like shooting the Mad Max films, how he got the role, and what his plans are for the future. At the time of this interview, Gibson was adamant that he did not want to become an action film star. Gibson promptly went on to become one of the most bankable action film stars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, particularly with the Lethal Weapon series.
-Finally, there is a brief update on the final segment being filmed for Twilight Zone: The Movie, Steven Spielberg’s remake of George Clayton Johnson’s “Kick the Can.” The actor Scatman Crothers is briefly profiled and Spielberg is quoted on the similarities and differences in working with children and older actors.
--TZ Interview: V.C. Andrews by Lorenzo Carcaterra
“Her bestselling Gothics are populated
by child-abusers, psychopaths, and sadists. And she herself knows a thing or
two about pain.”
-This interview is uncomfortable and unintentionally funny, not because there are shocking revelations or anything of that sort, but simply because V.C. Andrews clearly does not wish to be interviewed. Andrews inadvertently comes off as arrogant, defensive, surly, and shallow. Interviewer Carcaterra, a journalist-turned-novelist perhaps best-known for Sleepers, his 1995 novel turned into a 1996 film, appears to do his best to remain patient with his defensive subject. The interview was conducted shortly before the release of Andrews’ first hardcover novel, My Sweet Audrina, which was also her first novel not connected to the Dollanganger Family novels, which began with Flowers in the Attic.
-Carcaterra gives a brief summary of Andrews’ life, short on personal details but including information on her working methods and the construction of her novels. Andrews proceeds to discuss her writing methods, her disdain for her editor, why critics don’t know what they’re talking about, why she’s not a horror writer, and why no one else can write the way she writes. This last statement is ironic since another hand has been writing V.C. Andrews books in a seemingly endless stream since the author’s death. However, one can at least admire Andrews’ drive to become a bestselling author. She always loved to read and write and, when working on a new novel, showed an incredible work ethic, barely stopping to eat or sleep. Some of Andrews’ personal details vaguely emerge during the course of the interview. She’s unmarried, lives with her mother in Virginia Beach, and began her professional career as a commercial artist. She gave this up after she found she could make more money writing. Andrews took a bad fall down a school staircase as a young woman, the injures from which, despite what many people thought, did not leave her crippled but did require the occasional use of a wheelchair.
-Andrews is generally reticent to reveal anything about her personal life, including her childhood. One can understand why Andrews was so defensive if you consider that she was a best-selling author loved by perhaps millions of readers but also a writer unaccepted by any literary circle. She likely felt like a highly successful outsider in the book industry, and was openly reviled by many contemporary writers in the horror community. Nevertheless, Andrews’ name is still being used on books to this day, though she died in 1986. Films have been made from her work, as well. It is certain, at this late date, that she is a notable, if not important, figure in horror and Gothic fiction.
-An excerpt from Andrews’ novel If There Be Thorns is included with the interview. Andrews authored five books in her lifetime, with a sixth and seventh, Garden of Shadows and Fallen Hearts, completed after her death by horror/thriller novelist Andrew Neiderman, who also completed several others “inspired” by Andrews. Neiderman has written dozens of novels set within the worlds created by Andrews, all under Andrews’ name. For several years, the paperback versions of Andrews’ novels were notable for their die-cut or step-back covers, with fully painted interior covers by Lisa Falkenstern.
-If you are a V.C. Andrews fan, this interview is recommended, despite lacking any real content. It is safe to say that Andrews was not comfortable being interviewed and likely viewed the entire process as an intrusion to her privacy. She states very clearly in the interview that it is the book that matters, not the author. She was an introverted woman who valued her privacy. It is a wonder she agreed to this interview in the first place. It is also strange to find it in the pages of TZ. I suppose the magazine aimed to interview all the big names in horror publishing at the time, as they previously interviewed King, Straub, Saul, etc.
--Cartoon by Thomas Swick
Illustrated by David Klein
“There were five of them out there in
the chill water: two girls, two boys . . . and something worse than their
darkest nightmares. What follows is a tale of total, unrelieved horror –
definitely not for the faint of heart.”
-Four college students drive out to a secluded lake in the early days of autumn. Cool weather is closing in quickly and soon it will be too cold to swim. The students swim out to a wooden raft in the middle of the lake and discover, to their horror, that there is something else in the lake. It looks like an oil slick but clearly has a mind of its own. It surrounds the raft and begins killing them one by one in horrible fashion. Soon, it becomes a frantic struggle for survival against an infinitely patient and hungry element with the unnerving power to hypnotize anyone who looks into its stygian depths.
-A lot is made in the issue about the gruesome nature of Stephen King’s story, and, for those with a weak stomach, I’ll echo the advisement to steer clear of this one. For those who like their horror straight-up, however, “The Raft” can be recommended unreservedly. Personally, I rank it close to the top of all of King’s short stories and, reading it again, find that it has lost none of its power to disturb. Although it is crude in places, it shows King at the height of his storytelling powers in creating characters, setting, and an absolutely terrifying situation.
-“The Raft” was first published as a removable insert in the November, 1982 issue of Gallery, a men’s magazine which was a sister publication of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, as both periodicals were issued by Montcalm Publishing. The story was reprinted in the pages of TZ and collected in King’s 1985 story collection, Skeleton Crew. In 1982, George Romero scripted an adaptation of King’s story for the film Creepshow 2, directed by Michael Gornick. The sequence is arguably the most memorable in the film. It stars Paul Satterfield, Daniel Beer, Page Hannah, and Jeremy Green, featuring grisly effects created by the KNB EFX Group. Romero changed the ending of the story to suit the cinematic treatment and give it a shock ending more in line with the comic book style of the film. An interesting bit of connecting trivia to the first Creepshow film is that the students are from the fictional Horlicks University in Pittsburgh, the same university featured in the first film’s segment, “The Crate,” based on a story by King also published in Gallery for the July, 1979 issue.
-The story behind the writing of “The Raft” is interesting in itself. King relates the tale in his notes at the back of Skeleton Crew but must also have related the tale at the time of its magazine publication since T.E.D. Klein repeats it in his introduction to the story. King originally wrote the story as “The Float” in 1968 and sold it the following year to Adam magazine. King states that Adam only paid on publication, not acceptance. The year following that, in 1970, King was driving his car through a construction site when a traffic cone struck the undercarriage of his car and knocked the car’s muffler loose. King was so angered by this that he got out of his car and began collecting the traffic cones so that no one else would be victimized by them. A policeman arrived to put a stop to it and issued King a citation for $250. King soon received a check in the mail from Adam magazine for that exact amount, for “The Float,” and paid off the ticket. King searched but never found the issue of Adam with his story in it. He was convinced that it was published since, again, Adam only paid on publication. King searched the newsstand for any and all publications from Knight Publishing (the company that issued Adam) but never found his story. It is very likely that “The Float” was never published. From that day to this, and despite diligent efforts, nobody has come forward with proof that King’s “The Float” appeared in any magazine. As King lost the original manuscript, it is equally unlikely that readers will ever get to see his first version of the story that became “The Raft.”
-King set about recreating the story, changing the title to “The Raft,” when he got bored on the set of Creepshow in 1981. He states that “The Raft” is far more gruesome in its effects than “The Float.”
--TZ Preview Section: TZ’s Triple Bill
“Ray
Bradbury’s magical novel is at last on film – with a little help from the magic
of special effects. Ed Naha chronicles the three-million-dollar facelift.”
-Film journalist Ed Naha interviews the film’s associate producer and director of special effects, Lee Dyer. The film adaptation of Bradbury’s 1962 dark fantasy novel about a malevolent traveling carnival, which itself began as a film treatment for Gene Kelly, suffered a troubled production. Produced by Disney, the film was shot by director Jack Clayton (director of The Innocents) from a script by Bradbury. However, an early cut of the film was unfavorably received by Disney executives to the point that a three-million-dollar special effects overhaul was ordered on the production. The resultant film is a bit of a mess, and, despite the money spent, surprisingly cheap in appearance. Although the film has its fans, and I include myself among them, it must ultimately be scored an average if not below average adaptation of Bradbury’s novel. This was the judgement from critics and audiences at the time, as the film was neither a critical nor commercial success. Lee Dyer, however, is extremely optimistic in this interview. He believes the special effects overhaul virtually saved the film, and made it better than it was before. Dyer guides Naha through a number of new scenes added to the film as well as changes (read: improvements) made to existing scenes. The interview concludes with Dyer describing a sequence featuring spiders and its effectiveness on a test audience, members of whom could not believe the film was a Disney product. Dyer’s response: “That’s probably the biggest compliment anyone could pay me!” Several photographs from the film accompany the article.
“America’s favorite motel-keeper is
back, and he’s just as odd as ever. James Verniere talks to director Richard
Franklin, the man who’s set Norman Bates free.”
-Psycho II may have had the least-troubled production of the films under discussion in this issue, and it is certainly the film that made the most money and received the highest critical acclaim. Still, the film is best viewed as a better-than-average example of the slasher film so prevalent in the eighties, and comparison’s to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho should be avoided. I recently re-watched Psycho II and, although I enjoyed it as a younger viewer, I found it pretty dreadful upon another viewing. The film is competently made, and Anthony Perkins is very good in it, but there is a sort of paint-by-numbers quality to its plotting (complete with ludicrous twist ending) and a griminess to its tone that is off-putting and badly dates the film. Plus, the central premise, that Norman Bates is released back into the community to reside virtually unsupervised at the scene of his crimes, requires more suspension of disbelief than I was willing to give. Ultimately, it feels like a completely unnecessary film, and the fact that two additional sequels, a shot-for-shot remake, a television pilot, and a television series followed is staggering.
-Still, Psycho II definitely has its fans. And those fans might be interested in James Verniere’s interview with director Richard Franklin. Franklin was best-known at the time for the 1981 Australian thriller Road Games, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacy Keach. Franklin brings the gritty, grounded approach of that film to bear on Psycho II. The impressive cast (Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Robert Loggia, Meg Tilly, Dennis Franz) is briefly discussed, as is the script from Tom Holland and the musical score from Twilight Zone alum Jerry Goldsmith. Richard Franklin speaks on not being intimidated by the original or by Hitchcock’s legacy, as well as the challenges of eliciting the same type of shocks as the original film. Franklin also speaks on the character of Norman Bates and offers a response to those who are automatically skeptical of the film: “I think that anybody who looks at our film objectively will not be disappointed. I think that our film evokes what we remember of the original, but, most important, it is a film in its own right. What I hope will happen is that the two films will merge and become one larger film.” The article is also accompanied by several photographs from the film.
-The article also features Verniere’s short interview with Antony Perkins. Perkins comes across as a very genial man, optimistic and unwilling to say anything negative about anything. He speaks on being typecast after Psycho, the opportunities this afforded him, and of making the most of those opportunities. Perkins also talks about working with Hitchcock, about the qualities of the script for Psycho II that captured his imagination, how Norman Bates has grown and changed as a character, whether he received correspondence from the American murderer Ed Gein (whose crimes allegedly inspired Robert Bloch’s original novel), and whether he felt that Psycho II captured the “seductive ghoulishness” of the original.
--TZ Screen Preview: The Keep by James Verniere
“In Paramount’s version of the paperback
bestseller, interfering Nazis stumble on a far more ancient evil. James
Verniere reports.”
-The Keep had a very troubled production, with heavy studio interference reducing director Michael Mann’s vision of a three-hour plus epic horror/adventure film into a ninety-six-minute, confused mess which the director has tried to bury ever since. Verniere profiles the story behind F. Paul Wilson’s novel concerning Nazis who inadvertently unleash an ancient evil entity in Romania as well as the supernatural warrior destined to the battle the evil. Verniere also discusses the filming locations, Michael Mann’s previous work, and the director’s resistance to the “horror” label for the film. In the latter respect, Verniere likens Mann’s resistance to director Paul Schrader’s for his remake of Cat People. One amusing aspect is Verniere’s negative view of Wilson’s bestselling novel, which he labels “run-of-the-mill” and “mediocre” in the course of the article. The article is briefer than the others since Michael Mann kept details of the film guarded against the press. Several photographs from the film accompany the article.
--“In the Field of the Dying Cherry Tree” by Curtis K. Stadtfeld
Illustrated by Robert Morello
“How long could a tree keep on dying?
How long could a man?”
-An older man recalls a time when, as a boy, he first witnessed a horribly blackened corpse hanging from an old cherry tree on his family’s property. No one else seems to see the hanging man. The boy eventually learns the story from his parents, who heard it from a town gossip. The hanging body is the apparition of a wrongly murdered man, who was a stranger beset by townsfolk who believed he had stolen a horse. The hanging man continues to intermittently appear to the narrator as he grows to adulthood. He now tends the family property and has come to accept the presence of the apparition, though he still attempts to shield his own child from the vision.
-This is a pleasantly creepy ghost story with a careful building of atmosphere that gives the story its power. The description of the dead, blackened, hanging man is grisly and effective.
--“Confessions of a Freelance Fantasist” by Isidore Haiblum
Illustrated by the author
“A survival guide in the form of a
memoir, by the author of The Tsaddik of
the Seven Wonders.”
-This is a humorous memoir by the science fiction and fantasy writer who produced “the first Yiddish science fantasy novel ever” (as proclaimed on the paperback) with his first book, The Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders. Haiblum wrote several additional science fiction novels, noted for their wit and inventiveness, as well as mystery fiction, much of it reflecting his Jewish upbringing in New York. Haiblum guides the reader through his childhood, describing his Americanization by learning English as a second language (after Yiddish), discovering American comic books and radio, and learning to write and draw imaginative stories. Haiblum describes his school days, his days at university, his short stint as a civil servant working for the housing division of the city of New York, and ultimately his plunge into the world of professional writing, where he began his career under the guidance of editor Larry Shaw at Dell books.
-This was a funny and interesting memoir from a SF writer unknown to me. The memoir is profusely illustrated with Haiblum’s sketches and doodles, presenting caricatures of himself at different stages of his life. It makes for a pleasing, breezy read.
--“Harry’s Story” by Robert H. Curtis
Illustrated by Nicola Cuti
“The situation was as simple as an E.C.
Comic. Unfortunately, Harry was a bit simple, too!”
-Harry isn’t very bright. As a young man, he accidentally caused the deaths of his parents when he climbed behind the wheel of the family car and rammed the vehicle into a tree. Harry was disfigured but survived, unlike his parents. All grown up now, Harry has a job and has started a relationship with his beautiful coworker, Virginia, who everyone tells him is only interested in him because of the money Harry received upon the death of his parents. Harry doesn’t see it that way, though, because Harry isn’t very bright. Harry also doesn’t understand that his new girlfriend and her friend, a man named Freddie, are planning to do away with Harry to get at the money in his possession. Virginia and Freddie poison Harry but that doesn’t keep the simple man down. He comes back from the dead and surprises Virginia and Freddie while they are making love. The shock is too much for the murderous couple. They go stark, raving mad and are institutionalized. But Harry still visits them regularly. This humorous horror story was reprinted in the first issue of TZ’s sister magazine, Night Cry.
--“The Tuck at the Foot of the Bed” by Ardath Mayhar
Illustrated by Frances Jetter
“A cautionary tale on the importance –
nay necessity – of making your own bed.”
-Barbara has always had a fear of someone or something reaching out from under the bed and grabbing her. She makes sure to always tuck the sheets in at the foot of the bed so that her feet aren’t exposed to reaching hands. Barbara grows up and gets married. Her husband convinces her that the fear of being grabbed is irrational. Eventually, Barbara lets go of her fear. One night, her husband makes the bed. He doesn’t tuck in the sheet at the foot of the bed. In the middle of the night, something from underneath the bed reaches up and grabs Barbara. She screams, waking her husband. He reaches out to her but cannot grab her before she is pulled down from the bed and through an opening in the floor, which quickly disappears afterwards.
-This short-short was a predictable but creepy play on a fear that many people have, that of leaving one’s body exposed while sleeping. The story was collected in Crazy Quilt: The Best Short Stories of Ardath Mayhar (2009).
--Required
Reading: “A Fragment of Fact” by Chris Massie
Illustrated by José Reyes
“A curious encounter, one night in the
country, with a most peculiar man . . . or something rather like one.”
-A cyclist travels far from his home along the English marshlands. He becomes increasingly tired and thirsty. As he doesn’t see an inn anywhere, he chances upon an isolated home. He sees the shape of an enormous man pass across the window blinds. He parks his bicycle, strolls to the door and pulls the bell. The cyclist is greeted by this enormous man who invites him into the house. The cyclist asks for water and is brought the dog’s water bowl. The enormous man apologizes, explains that his dog recently died, and corrects the error by bringing the cyclist clean water. The man informs the cyclist that between the ringing of the bell and his answering the door, his wife died, as well. The cyclist is greatly disturbed by this news. He apologizes for his poor timing and moves to leave the home. He tells the enormous man to see to his wife, make sure she is dead, and to call a doctor. As the cyclist pedals away, a large dog lunges from the hedges and nips at his heels.
-This unnerving story originally appeared in The Pan Book of Horror Stories (1959). Its appearance in TZ was its first republication outside of reprints of the Pan book. It is a creepily effective piece, though I’m not sure why Klein chose to include it here. Perhaps to fill a space and perhaps to resurrect an English story that was likely unfamiliar to TZ’s readers. It reminded me very much of the stories of Robert Aickman, strange stories rather than horror stories, stories of unease and disorientation. Besides “The Raft,” this was my favorite story in the issue.
--“Takeover Bid” by Andrew Weiner
Illustrated by Marty Blake
“Money, they say, makes the man. What,
then, did the stock shares make?”
-Baker, a struggling workingman who carefully saves to buy a home with his wife, gets a call from his friend Lomax, a wealthy investor, with the offer of a lifetime. An investment opportunity presents itself in the form of a new company, Advanced Hurgorvia. Baker sinks all his carefully saved money in the stock and watches it steadily rise. His wife encourages him to sell but he holds out, again and again. Soon, Baker begins experiencing strange physical changes. When he meets Lomax at a restaurant, he sees that his friend is experiencing the same bizarre changes. After receiving much correspondence from the company, Baker eventually discovers the truth. This is an alien invasion, not from the skies but from the stock market. Baker and Lomax and all the other greedy investors are changing into aliens. Soon, Advanced Hurgorvia will be big enough for a full-scale takeover.
--“Listen” by Joe R. Lansdale
Illustrated by Bill Logan
“Invisibility – as the psychiatrist
discovered – was just a state of mind.”
-Merguson finds himself slowly disappearing. People ignore him, forget about him, look past him. He has to constantly repeat himself and he seems to leave people’s memories as soon as he finishes interacting with them. It has gotten so bad that Merguson’s wife openly cheats on him. Merguson visits a psychiatrist to try and fix the problem. Except the psychiatrist is just as bad as everyone else. Merguson grows enraged when he realizes that the shrink hasn’t heard a word he’s said. Merguson strangles the psychiatrist to death. He’ll never be caught, though, because the secretary swears that no one arrived for an appointment that afternoon.
-Joe Lansdale returns to the pages of TZ with another humorous and grim short-short. Lansdale has always been a highly versatile writer but found a niche in the pages of TZ with these short, blackly funny shockers. The story has been reprinted a few times. It was first collected in Lansdale’s A Fistful of Stories (and Articles) (1996), included in 100 Menacing Little Murder Stories (1998), and reprinted in Lansdale’s collection Bumper Crop (2004), where he wrote: “Ever feel like no one’s paying attention? That you’re lost in the crowd? Everyone feels that way from time to time, but there are people who feel that way all the time. Shy people. Insecure people. I’ve known them. That knowledge inspired this story.”
--The Fantasy Five-Foot Bookshelf by Thomas M. Disch, Karl Edward Wagner, and R.S. Hadji
“Three unusually erudite scholars (with
unusually strong opinions) list their favorite – and least favorite – reading.
-This opinionated reader’s guide to supernatural fiction features three experts sharing their picks for the best and worst in the genre. This feature, and the companion lists in the next issue, has served as a sort of underground guide for discerning horror readers since its first appearance. At the time, many of these works were very difficult to get hold of, unless one was willing to pay a large sum on the secondhand market. With the advent of the internet and the small press, many of these works have become accessible again. Particular mention should be made of Valancourt Books, which has made an effort to reprint a number of the titles on this list, particularly those selected by Karl Edward Wagner. The lists are shared below.
--Show-By-Show Guide: TV’s Twilight Zone: Part Twenty-Four by Marc Scott Zicree
-Zicree
is nearing the end of his guide to the original series. In this installment, he
provides cast and crew listings, plot summaries, and Rod Serling’s opening and
closing narrations for the fifth season episodes “What’s in the Box,” “I Am the
Night – Color Me Black,” and “The Masks.”
--TZ Classic Teleplay: “The Lonely” by Rod Serling
-Rod
Serling’s teleplay for the first season episode “The Lonely” is presented here.
The episode was directed by Jack Smight, starring Jack Warden, Jean Marsh, and
John Dehner, with a musical score from Bernard Herrmann. “The Lonely” remains
an emotionally resonant showcase for Rod Serling’s fine writing. You can read
more about the episode by revisiting Brian’s review.
--Looking Ahead: In the August TZ
-JP
No comments:
Post a Comment