In
which we take a closer look at each issue. For our capsule
history, go here.
Cover
art: David White
TZ
Publications, Inc.
President
& Chairman: S. Edward Orenstein
Secretary/Treasurer:
Sidney Z. Gellman
Executive
Vice-Presidents: Leon Garry, Eric
Protter
Executive
Publisher: S. Edward Orenstein
Publisher:
Leon Garry
Associate
Publisher and Consulting Editor: Carol
Serling
Editorial
Director: Eric Protter
Editor:
T.E.D. Klein
Managing
Editor: Jane Bayer
Assistant
Editor: Robert Sabat
Contributing
Editors: Gahan Wilson, Thomas M.
Disch
Design
Director: Michael Monte
Art
Production: Wendy Mansfield, Carol
Sun, Susan Lindeman
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Director: Stephen J. Fallon
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Thomas Schiff
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to the Publisher: Judy Borrman
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Mgr.: Chris Grossman
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Manager: Rachel Britapaja
Adv.
Production Manager: Marina Despotakis
Advertising
Representatives: Barney O’Hara &
Associates
Contents:
--In the Twilight Zone: “Market report .
. .” by T.E.D. Klein
--Other Dimensions: Screen (“Digging The Boogens) by Stephen King
--Other Dimensions: Books by Thomas M.
Disch
--Other Dimensions: Music by Jack
Sullivan
--Other Dimensions: Etc.
--TZ Interview: Robertson Davies by
Terence M. Green
--“Offer of Immortality” by Robertson
Davies
--A Glimpse of Ghostly Britain by
Stephen DiLauro (text) & Don Hamerman (photos)
--“Tommy and the Talking Dog” by Lewis
Shiner
--“Chompers” by Joe R. Lansdale
--On Location with The Last Horror Film by Steve Swires
--TZ Screen Preview: The Thing by Robert Martin
--“Not Our Brother” by Robert Silverberg
--“Why the Traveling Salesman from
Aldebaran Doesn’t Stop in Omaha Anymore” by Hal Goodman
--3 Journeys Into Nightmare:
-“Picnic
Area” by Joan Aiken
-“A
Trip to New York” by Nina Downey
-“Food,
Gas, Lodging” by Craig W. Anderson
--Show-By-Show Guide: TV’s Twilight
Zone: Part Sixteen by Marc Scott Zicree
--TZ Classic Teleplay: “A Hundred Yards
Over the Rim” by Rod Serling
--Looking Ahead: In the August TZ . . .
--In
the Twilight Zone: “Market report . . .” by T.E.D. Klein
-The
subject of Klein’s editorial is the lamentable state of the market for short
genre fiction. Klein takes as his launching point Barry N. Malzberg’s personal
history of science fiction, Engines
of the Night (reviewed last month by
Thomas M. Disch), in particular the
section in which Malzberg details his six-month editorship of Amazing and Fantastic in 1968. From there Klein examines the shrinking of the market and
expresses the hope that the success of TZ Magazine will produce imitators to
publish the many publishable stories which Klein must reject each month for
lack of space in the pages of TZ. Klein then provides his customary capsule
biographies of the issue’s contributors along with thumbnail images.
Gahan Wilson's cartoon explaining his absence. |
--Other
Dimensions: Screen by Stephen King
“Digging The Boogens”
-With
Gahan Wilson on a publicity tour, Stephen King steps in to praise the simple
pleasures of the low-budget horror film The
Boogens. The film, about ravenous
creatures who ascend from an abandoned mine to terrorize a small town, was
directed by James L. Conway and written by David O’Malley and Bob Hunt. It was
released in 1981. King extols the pleasures of the simple premise, crude
special effects, and performers who are “either in the Young and Fresh or Old
and Grizzled category.” King also gently scolds horror film fans who have
become so demanding of the form that they can no longer enjoy the pleasures of
a simple monster movie. King makes an interesting slipup when he credits Robert
Barbour Johnson’s 1939 story "Far Below” to Robert Townley Watson, the
latter of whom is a character from King’s own work. Robert Townley Watson was
the founder of the Overlook Hotel in King’s 1977 novel The Shining. He is the grandfather of Bill Watson, the
maintenance man who shows Jack Torrance the ins and outs of the hotel after
Torrance agrees to accept the job of winter caretaker. “Digging The
Boogens” is a fugitive nonfiction piece
from King as it does not appear to have been collected or reprinted since its
appearance here.
--Other
Dimensions: Books by Thomas M. Disch
-Disch
looks at Upside Downside by Ron Goulart, Software by Rudy Rucker, The Tsaddik of the Seven
Wonders by Isidore Haiblum, Roderick by John Sladek, The Impending Gleam by Glen Baxter, and Poetry Comics by Dave Morice.
-Disch
describes Goulart’s Upside Downside as “unarguably a dud – the least comic comic novel, on the basis of chuckles per
chapter, that I’ve ever read.” Goulart is a regular contributor to TZ Magazine
and Disch continues by describing not only the process by which a work such as Upside
Downside gets published but the futility
of reviewing such a book.
-Disch
praised Rudy Rucker’s first published novel White Light but criticized
Rucker’s follow-up Spacetime Donuts. Rucker
is back with a new novel, Software, which
Disch finds more to his liking, largely on the basis of its conscious imitation
of the works of Philip K. Dick.
-Disch
had this to say about Isidore Haiblum’s The
Tsaddik of the Seven Wonders: “For me,
the whimsy is too gentle and the plot line too much like a game of Dungeons and
Dragons combined with a pillow fight, but that just shows that I’m a grumpy old
so-and-so who can no longer giggle at three in the morning. You kids have fun.
I’m going up to the study and grab forty winks.”
-Disch
next reviews John Sladek’s Roderick, an excerpt of which was featured in the
September, 1981 issue of TZ Magazine. Disch generally praises the work, ending
with: “What remains to be said of Sladek is that, like almost all great
humorists, under the hilarity and ingenuity there is a smoldering magma of
other emotions: anger, of course, for every satirist is an angry man, but a
good deal of pain and sorrow, too.”
-Disch
concludes his column by recommending the works of two cartoonist, Glen Baxter,
whose The Impending Gloom will appeal to those who enjoy the works of
Addams, Gorey, and Gahan Wilson, and Dave Morice, whose Poetry Comics “treats the texts of famous poems as comic
book texts, in styles that vary from brain-damaged funky . . . through
traditional cute-mouse capers . . . to a collage of Emily Dickinson done in the
style of True Romance comic.”
--Other
Dimensions: Music by Jack Sullivan
-Sullivan
returns with another installment in his history of macabre classical music. He
begins by covering the music of George Liegeti’s Requiem as it
was used by Stanley Kubrick in The Shining. The remaining selections are:
Symphony no. 7 & Symphony no. 8 by
William Shuman
Symphony no. 7 by Peter Mennin
“Eight Songs for a Mad King” by Peter
Maxwell Davies
“Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum” by
Olivier Messiaen
--Other
Dimensions: Etc.
-The
second installment of this new feature finds humor and food for thought in the
predictions of a psychic from the pages of the December, 1968 Playboy, a
graphic design from Stephen Schlich in which the text reads “Twilight Zone” one
way and “Rod Serling” the other, a quotation from The Black Book of Clark
Ashton Smith (Arkham House, 1979), a passage on the pulp magazines from
Frederick Pohl’s memoir The Way the Future Was, two examples of the use of “Twilight Zone” from the March 14 and March
28 issues of The New York Times, and
a poem written in parody of H.P. Lovecraft: “Another Fungus from Yuggoth” by
Baird Searles. The offer of a poster of Maximillian the Twilight Zone cat is
also reiterated to those who contribute usable material.
--TZ
Interview: Robertson Davies by Terence M. Green
“Canada’s literary magician speaks his
mind on ghost fiction, evil, and the modern age.”
-It
is a good thing that interviewer Terence M. Green provides a brief biography of
Davies before the interview proper since little about Davies’s life and career
are approached in the interview. The interview somewhat narrowly focuses on the
influences in Davies’s fictions, from Davies’s thoughts on supernatural fiction
and the idea of Evil, to the neutering of fairy tales and the works of Poe and
Mervyn Peake. Davies also speaks a bit on the current sociopolitical climate
and the fundamental importance of personal experience in the creation of
fiction. Despite the somewhat narrow focus and lack of biographical detail, the
interview is a delight as Davies is engaging and intelligent. Davies’s works
which are discussed are his ghost stories (an example of which follows the
interview), the Deptford Trilogy of novels (Fifth Business, The Manticore, and
World of Wonders), and his then-current
book, The Rebel Angels. Davies died
in 1992, aged 82.
--“Offer
of Immortality” by Robertson Davies
Illustrated by Lisa Mansolillo
“Forget the warm weather – it’s
Christmas in Toronto! So settle back in your chair, let your dinner digest, and
listen as the Master of Massey College recounts his last college ghost story.”
-The
narrator (Davies) befriends a visiting professor from Colombia, Jesus Maria
Murphy, who offers to reveal the secret of his immortality. As the narrator is
taking a day to decide whether he wants to be cryogenically frozen in order to
return and observe the progress at the college, Murphy comes to a bad end
during the annual Christmas dinner.
-Davies,
the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college associated with the
University of Toronto, made a tradition of telling ghostly and strange stories
during Christmas at the college, much like that master of the ghost story, M.R.
James. “Offer of Immortality” was the final story told by Davies at
Christmastime before his retirement. It was collected, along with Davies’s
other Christmas ghost stories, in High
Spirits (1983). Perhaps the most notable aspect
of the tale is the level of humor, which Davies acknowledged as a conscious
attempt to contrast the “somber” quality of many ghost stories.
--“A
Glimpse of Ghostly Britain” by Don Hamerman (photographs) & Stephen DiLauro
(text)
“The Druids are long dead, they say, but
in their land the ancient mysteries survive”
-This
feature essentially functions as a travel guide to the legendary haunted places
of Great Britain, covering Stonehenge in Wiltshire, Dead Man’s Tree in London’s
Green Park, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Tower of London, and the
tombstones in a courtyard of the Blackfriars section of London. This was a fun
and engaging short feature with some excellent photographs.
--“Tommy
and the Talking Dog” by Lewis Shiner
Illustrated by Donni Gilles
“More important, what he said made
sense.”
-A
young boy is offered a pair of magical shoes by a talking bulldog with the
promise of treasure to be discovered. After putting on the shoes, the boy finds
that he can walk into any room in a motel and speak candidly with the
inhabitants there. Eventually, the boy throws the shoes away only to later
discover that the treasure he sought was the ability to see the world in any
way he desired.
-Lewis
Shiner returns to the pages of the magazine after an appearance in the May,
1981 issue with his story “Blood Relations.” With “Tommy and the Talking Dog” Shiner
gives us a grimy, modern parable which may have worked better with a bit of
humor in it. Instead it is written in a sober manner while presenting the
rather clichéd moral of a young boy who escapes his drab existence by imagining
such things as talking animals. Still, it’s a breezily written fantasy from a
writer who would make greater inroads in the SF community with his cyberpunk
stories and novels. “Tommy and the Talking Dog” was collected in Nine Hard Questions About the Nature of the Universe
(Author’s Choice Monthly #4) (1990).
--“Chompers”
by Joe R. Lansdale
Illustrated by Randy Jones
“One thing about that old lady: she
never bit off more than she could chew!”
-A
homeless lady finds a pair of fake teeth lying in a pool of blood and, having
few remaining teeth herself, pops them into her mouth. Soon, she finds herself
to be ravenously hungry while the teeth grow larger and sharper. She begins to
eat anything in her way, including several people, before the teeth turn on
her. Afterwards, a homeless man finds the fake teeth in a pool of blood and,
having few remaining teeth himself, pops them in. Soon, he discovers that he’s
ravenously hungry . . .
-“Chompers”
works a bit like a darker and more humorous version of the Twilight Zone
episode “Dead Man’s Shoes,” in which a magical object is passed from one
homeless person to the next with each unaware of the object’s deadly power.
Lansdale, now better known for his mystery and historical fiction, wrote many
of these short, funny, macabre tales early in his career. Most of them were
collected in Bumper Crop (2004).
Lansdale appeared in earlier issues of TZ Magazine with similar type tales with
“The Dump” in the July, 1981 issue and “The Pasture” in the December, 1981
issue. “Chompers” was first collected in Stories by Mama Lansdale’s
Youngest Boy (Author’s Choice Monthly #18) (1991).
A short film was made of the story in 2008 by writer/director Joseph Gatto.
--On
Location with The Last Horror Film by
Steve Swires
“How with limited time, a limited
budget, and plenty of chutzpah, Judd Hamilton managed to make a Cannes-based
thriller with a cast of thousands.”
-This
is a rather lengthy look at the making of the 1982 horror comedy film The Last Horror Film, which began as a vehicle for star Caroline Munro developed by her
then-husband Judd Hamilton. It concerns an obsessed fan, played by Joe Spinell
of Maniac fame, who stalks a female
horror star (Munro) during the premier of her film Scream. The film was directed, guerilla style at the
Cannes Film Festival, by director David Winters from a script by Winters and
Hamilton. Steve Swires gives a full rundown of the making of the film,
including interviews with Hamilton and Munro and plenty of photographs.
--TZ
Screen Preview: The Thing by Robert
Martin
“TZ’s Robert Martin, on location, braves
the frozen wastes to witness some climactic scenes from John Carpenter’s terror
epic.”
-This
is a fascinating set report from the production of a film which, though not
entirely successful during its initial release, has come to be considered one
of the true horror classics of the 1980s. The Thing was released in the
summer of 1982 to lukewarm reviews and underwhelming business. Since that time,
however, Carpenter’s reimagining of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella “Who Goes
There?” has grown in stature, due to its excellent direction, claustrophobic
atmosphere, engaging cast, and the startling special makeup effects of Rob
Bottin. The film was further enhanced by a score from Ennio Morricone, one of
the rarer occasions in which Carpenter did not provide the score for his film. Accompanied
by great photos, Robert Martin gives a full set report from the making of the
film, including aspects of location scouting and shooting, production design,
casting, fire and demolition stunts, as well as slight but tantalizing descriptions
of the makeup effects being developed by Rob Bottin. Interestingly, the report
ends with a glimpse of some of Carpenter’s possible future projects, two of
which sound intriguing but never came to fruition: a weird western titled El
Diablo and an adaptation of Stephen
King’s Firestarter, the latter of
which became a disappointing 1984 film directed by Mark L. Lester starring Drew
Barrymore and George C. Scott.
--“Not
Our Brother” by Robert Silverberg
Illustrated by Richard Basil Mock
“The mask was the thing he sought most –
yet behind it was the one thing he feared.”
-An
American collector of Mexican masks barely escapes with his life after he finds
himself in a small Mexican village where a local celebration of animal deities
summons dangerous inhuman entities.
-As
Klein notes in his editorial, Silverberg, the Grand Master of Science Fiction,
returns to the magazine with a horror story about strange happenings in a small
Mexican village after placing two earlier stories with the magazine about
strange happenings in Chile and Jerusalem (“How They Pass the Time In Papel” from
the May, 1981 issue and “A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa” from the
July, 1981 issue). This might be the best of the bunch as it possesses some
unnerving scenes and well captures that disorienting “stranger in a strange
small town” atmosphere which seemed to be so popular in horror fiction in the
1980s. The climax, though somewhat telegraphed, is capably handled and
Silverberg expertly captures the character of an out-of-the-way Mexican
village, or at least how an American would imagine it to be.
-The
story was reprinted in Great Stories
from Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine (1982) and collected in The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984). It was most recently reprinted by
Stephen Jones in The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories (2018), which also offered a preface detailing the genesis of the tale.
Silverberg had recently become fascinated with Mexican masks and begun to
collect them. He was also producing short fiction at a rate he had not
experienced in decades. Since the story was horrific fantasy and thus unlikely
to sell to the science fiction magazines, Silverberg first sent the story to
Alice K. Turner at Playboy. Turner
rejected the story on the basis of its resemblance to “A Thousand Paces Along
the Via Dolorosa” and the fact that she felt it possessed the same problems as
that earlier story. Silverberg then sent the story to T.E.D. Klein at TZ who
published the story but not without also commenting on the tale’s resemblance
to the earlier stories Silverberg placed in the magazine.
--“Why
the Traveling Salesman from Aldebaran Doesn’t Stop in Omaha Anymore” by Hal
Goodman
Illustrated by Bill Logan
“‘Call me Al,’ he told everyone. But he
should have added, ‘Caveat Emptor!’”
-This
slight, Bradburyesque tale is a humorous short-short about an alien who arrives
on Earth and sets up a booth at a local fair to sell items he’s collected on
his journey across the universe. He sells a trio of young sisters some items
which take on a life of their own, prompting the alien to make a fast escape
when the girls’ father comes after him with a shotgun.
--3
Journeys Into Nightmare
“Picnic
Area” by Joan Aiken
“A
Trip to New York” by Nina Downey
“Food,
Gas, Lodging” by Craig W. Anderson
-Three
short stories in which the atmosphere of dreams and nightmares is used to
explore predicaments of character.
--“Picnic
Area” by Joan Aiken
Illustrated by D.W. Miller
“After long years of absence, he was
returning to the past – or perhaps it was the other way around.”
-A
middle-aged man is driving through an area of Wales in which he spent time as a
boy during The Blitz. He stops at a picnic area where he is bitten by a dog.
Seeking help at a nearby village, he finds himself in the very house in which
he lived during his brief childhood relocation. There, the repressed memory of
a terrible sin rises again to the surface with deadly consequences.
-Joan
Aiken (1924-2004) returns to the pages of the magazine with a well-wrought,
haunting meditation on memory and repression. The rising tension and weird
atmosphere are handled well and the ending is suitably grim. The story was
collected in A Whisper in the Night:
Stories of Horror, Suspense, and Fantasy (1982).
The collection also includes Aiken’s “Old Fillikin,” which appeared in the
April, 1982 issue of TZ. Aiken’s 1958 story “Marmalade Wine” was adapted for
the second season of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. Aiken’s father was the American poet and short story writer Conrad Aiken
(1889-1973), whose 1932 story “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” was also adapted for
the second season of Night Gallery.
--“A
Trip to New York” by Nina Downey
Uncredited illustration
“Fun city was their destination – but
getting there was more than half the fun.”
-Dave
and Sally are driving across the country on their way to New York. They never
seem to make progress since each day starts over in a seemingly never-ending
cycle of repetition. Only Dave seems to be aware of their predicament and is
unable to convince his wife of the dilemma.
-This
was a neat story on an old theme, that of the inescapable repetition of a
series of events, the ultimate nightmare of déjà vu. It was Downey’s first
published story and was originally submitted for the magazine’s first annual
short story contest.
--“Food,
Gas, Lodging” by Craig W. Anderson
Illustrated by Frances Jeter
“Three little words – surely that was
too short for a death sentence.”
-A
white-collar criminal is on the run with his ill-gained assets when he chances
upon an out-of-the-way diner which conceals a sinister secret. This was a
predicable yet enjoyably nasty story in which the primary pleasure is watching
a villain twist in the wind before getting his just deserts. The story would
have been right at home in an issue of Tales
from the Crypt or as an episode of Tales
from the Darkside. It is in the mold of
such TZ episodes as “Deaths-Head Revisited” and “The Last Night of a Jockey.” The
story was reprinted in the Summer, 1985 issue of Night Cry.
--Show-By-Show
Guide: TV’s Twilight Zone: Part Sixteen by Marc Scott Zicree
“Continuing Marc Scott Zicree
show-by-show guide to the entire Twilight
Zone television series, complete with Rod Serling’s opening and closing
narrations.”
-Marc
Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight
Zone Companion (now in its third
edition), continues his guide to the original series, with cast and crew
listings, Rod Serling’s narrations, and episode summaries. This month he covers
the fourth season episodes “On Thursday We Leave for Home,” “Passage on the
Lady Anne,” and “The Bard.”
--TZ
Classic Teleplay: “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” by Rod Serling
-The
complete teleplay for Rod Serling’s second season episode in which the leader
of a wagon train (Cliff Robertson) finds himself suddenly transported to 1961.
The episode was directed by Buzz Kulik and originally aired on April 7, 1961.
You can read Brian’s review of the episode here.
--Looking
Ahead: In August’s TZ
-Next
month looks like another great issue beginning with Edgar Allan Poe’s and
Robert Bloch’s great collaborative effort, “The Lighthouse,” and continuing
with stories from Michael Kube-McDowell, Barbara Owens, and Janet Fox. The
issue also features an interview with perhaps the greatest of the Twilight Zone directors,
Douglas Heyes, and a trio of screen preview features on E.T, Tron, and Poltergeist. Thomas M. Disch returns with more book reviews and Ron Goulart steps in
for Gahan Wilson on movies. The TZ Classic Teleplay for next month is Rod
Serling’s “The Trade-Ins.” See you then.
-JP
Great write-up as always. What a jampacked issue. Disch's reviews here and elsewhere were always so intriguing. And I really have to sit down with the Sullivan soundtrack-macabre series.
ReplyDeleteThese pics are all fantastic as well. Especially the one by the Silverberg entry.
I was just talking with some friends at another blog about that never-made Carpenter adaptation of FIRESTARTER. I would love an Ur-Kindle to watch how that one played out on some other level of the Tower! It's so cool to see a preview of what would become such a classic. Carpenter was on a roll-to-end-all-rolls in this period.
Speaking of King: to my immense discredit, I've yet to see THE BOOGENS.
Have you read that Davies collection HIGH SPIRITS? I've got that and the Kirby Macauley DARK FORCES collection lined up for some rainy day, but the rain has yet to fall. Looking forward to both.
These issues are so good, even the material I don't love has something interesting about it. I think it's that I just really enjoy this period of genre literature and the writers, like Lansdale and King, who were doing what I think is their best work.
DeleteThe Carpenter Firestarter would have been an amazing film, considering the creative peak Carpenter was operating on at the time. We did get Carpenter for Christine, which I think is one of the better King films (and an underrated one). Did the other blog do a writeup on the unmade film? If so, I'd like to read it. I saw The Boogens many years ago, don't remember much about it and didn't bother to seek it out again to write up the King review. What I found so refreshing is how unabashedly enthusiastic King could be around this time. It's not something you see much from King anymore, at least not about material like The Boogens.
I have not read High Spirits but if I ever see a copy in the wild I'll definitely pick it up. I have a paperback of the Deptford Trilogy around somewhere but it always seems to get buried under the tbr pile. Dark Forces is a classic, sort of the foundation anthology for the '80s horror boom.
Thanks for reading!
I wish the marketplace still had a spot for a magazine like this. I miss it so much!
ReplyDelete