Sunday, October 31, 2021
DEAD MEN PROWL by Carlton E. Morse
Recommended Halloween Listening: Yes, it's that time of the year again! To get into the proper spirit of Spooky Season, sit back, relax, and allow yourself to be transported to those thrilling days of yesteryear while listening to Carlton E. Morse's classic radio serial DEAD MEN PROWL. These episodes of ADVENTURES BY MORSE first aired in 1944. You can hear the entire series below....
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 1: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 2: THE PROWLER AT WORK
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 3: THE DEAD DO WALK AT NIGHT
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 4: CONVERSATION WITH THE WALKING DEAD
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 5: THE WALKING DEAD CAPTURED
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 6: LIFE HISTORY OF PROWLERS
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 7: FOUR GO TO JOIN THE PROWLING DEAD
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 8: PROWLER WITH THE ROPE AROUND HIS NECK
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 9: PROWLING DEAD WALK AGAIN
DEAD MEN PROWL CHAPTER 10: THE PROWLING DEAD INTRODUCES HIMSELF
Saturday, October 30, 2021
VoyageLA Interview
VoyageLA just did an extensive profile on me and my work. Over the course of the interview I discuss both good luck and bad luck, Bela Lugosi, shoplifting zombie anthologies, the joys of continuation schools, corpses stashed behind supermarkets, Operation Mindfuck, Cryptoscatology, UFOs, Shannon Doherty, and more! If you're interested in reading the full interview, click HERE.
Thursday, October 28, 2021
HALLOWEEN FIEND
Recommended Halloween Reading: One of the most daring independent publishers in the United States today is Grindhouse Press. Among their numerous transgressive offerings is C.V. Hunt's HALLOWEEN FIEND (2019), a short but effective dark fantasy novel about a small town called Strang and its uneasy relationship with a predatory being named "Halloween" who incessantly prowls the village every night just after sundown. The narrative revolves around an annual ritual that takes place on All Hallows' Eve, at which time a human sacrifice--ostensibly chosen at random--must be offered as an oblation to "Halloween."
Imagine a weird mixture of Lord Dunsany's THE BLESSING OF PAN (a novel cited by Aleister Crowley in MAGICK AND THEORY AND PRACTICE as “a noble and most notable prophesy" of humanity's future), Ray Bradbury's SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, and Robin Hardy's THE WICKER MAN, and you might have a close approximation of the peculiar experience waiting for you in the pages of HALLOWEEN FIEND, which can serve as both a trick and a treat on any night of the year... but most especially on the last evening of October.
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD: THE PERFECT OCTOBER READ!
Are you looking for something appropriately weird and disturbing to read on All Hallows' Eve? Why not try my latest novel, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD? A recent Amazon review described BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD as "perfect reading for October." Who am I to disagree?
What are the critics saying about BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD?
“Blending intertextual rampage through the horror-movie canon with engrossing noir mystery and a backdrop of Hollywood esoterica, Robert Guffey serves up an intoxicating pulp cocktail that will leave you wanting more. A crepuscular treasure from a fascinating author.”
--ALAN MOORE, author of V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN
“In Robert Guffey's latest and greatest novel, dreams of old movies and nightmares of classic horror rack into sharp focus through the lens of a brave film historian, one determined to squint clearly at fleeting grains of film through the shifting sands of time. Never has the truth of Hollywood been so well revealed through fiction. As a result, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD delightfully and definitively proves that Bela Lugosi isn't dead.”
--GARY D. RHODES, author of LUGOSI and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA
"[H]orror fans will delight in how Guffey cleverly immerses movie monsters in the real world. Film buffs and monster enthusiasts will relish the supernatural characters brought to life in this atmospheric celebration of monster mayhem."
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The sensation [of reading BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD] is like being led deep underground while your flashlight grows dimmer and dimmer, until you’re left in total darkness. That’s when the lights of a subterranean crypt flash on to reveal that you’re not where you expected to be, and where you are is far worse than you could have imagined. The result is an ending that left me chilled and took me a few days to fully process. As shocking as it was, everything was set up from the beginning. I know, I went back and checked, and have to give Guffey credit for pulling off a literary sleight of hand that caught me by surprise. I won’t spoil it with more, except to say that like the frog in water that’s warmed so slowly it doesn’t realize it’s coming to a lethal boil, Guffey’s readers face an equally stunning conclusion."
--TERENCE TAYLOR, NIGHTMARE MAGAZINEIf you don't want to read the print version of the book, why not try the unabridged Audible Audiobook? It's brilliantly read by the talented SAMUEL E. HOKE. Hoke was so dedicated to nailing the audio version that he contacted me before he began narrating the novel to make sure the accent of a particular character was exactly correct. He also went out of his way to research some of the films and documentaries about the real people and events upon which the novel is based. If you're interested, you can listen to a sample of the audiobook right HERE!
Sunday, October 24, 2021
LON CHANEY JR.'S UNHOLY 13
A couple of years ago, to help improve your Halloween viewing experience, I posted a list of what I considered to be the top thirteen films of both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. This year I decided to extend the same courtesy to Lon Chaney, Jr., who co-starred with both Karloff (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE BLACK CASTLE) and Lugosi (THE WOLF MAN, THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, and THE BLACK SLEEP) in several memorable films. What follows is an excerpt from my 2019 article, "Death Comes to Dark Oaks: Son of Dracula as Film Noird (and Other Occult Matters)," which was published in Gary D. Rhodes and Tom Weaver's book, SCRIPTS FROM THE CRYPT: SON OF DRACULA:
Once we accept Lugosi’s absence from [Son of Dracula], we can move on and appreciate Chaney’s performance. To this day, even among devoted horror fans, Chaney is castigated as an actor of limited range. And yet how many actors of “limited range” could deliver a performance that still has the impact of Chaney’s turn as Lennie in Lewis Mileston’s 1939 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men? It’s hard to imagine any other 1940s Hollywood leading man capable of bringing to the screen the doomed gravitas necessary to make Lawrence Talbot’s phantasmagoric predicament as a cursed outsider believable and sympathetic, as Chaney does in George Waggner’s The Wolf Man (1941). Legendary producer-director Stanley Kramer clearly respected Chaney’s acting skills very much, as he cast him in key supporting roles in High Noon (1952), Not as a Stranger (1955), and The Defiant Ones (1958). In the 2015 article “Evolution of a Horror Star,” Greg Mank insists that Chaney’s interpretation of ex-convict Big Sam, who dissuades a mob from lynching protagonists John “Joker” Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) in The Defiant Ones, should have earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. It’s hard to disagree with that assessment.
Chaney’s style was not Lugosi’s style. Lugosi’s over the top, quasi-surreal acting techniques could often make his horror films even more dreamlike than originally intended. Chaney’s approach was the reverse. Chaney operated as a ballast for the High Weirdness that surrounded him in his films. To appear believable and relatable, no matter how outlandish or garish the situation, was Chaney’s main talent.
Chaney’s Midwestern, down-to-earth persona;
his overpowering physique; his weathered roadmap of a face that so often seemed
to bear permanent, unseen scars lurking just beneath the surface: all of these elements combined to create a
necessary anchor for the carnivalesque strangeness that surrounded his own
personal cinematic universe. His ability
to impart gritty realism to even the nuttiest and most melodramatic scenarios
is evident in his most memorable roles: not
just the aforementioned man-child Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men; not just poor, doomed Lawrence Talbot in that
quintet of classic horror films, i.e., The
Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf
Man, The House of Frankenstein
(1944), The House of Dracula (1945),
and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein;
not just the tired, fatalistic Sheriff Martin Howe in High Noon, but also in less appreciated works such as Jack Hill’s Spider Baby (1967), Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963), Roy Del
Ruth’s The Alligator People (1959),
Bert I. Gordon’s The Cyclops (1957),
Jack Pollexfen’s Indestructible Man
(1956), Roy Kellino’s TV episode "The Golden Junkman" (1956),
John Hoffman’s Strange Confession
(1945), Reginald Le Borg’s The Mummy’s
Ghost (1944), and George Waggner’s Man
Made Monster (1941). Some of these
films are genuine masterpieces of cult cinema (e.g., Spider Baby); others boast significant historical importance (e.g.,
The Haunted Palace is the first
cinematic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, now a veritable cinematic
subgenre of its own); some showcase sincere, master class performances within a
modest budget (e.g., "The Golden Junkman");
some feature a wonderful starring performance despite the low-budget madness
that threatens to overwhelm even Chaney’s considerable presence (the next time you
watch Indestructible Man, for
example, ask yourself, “Who else but Chaney, Jr. could hold an entire film
together with little more than close-ups of his pained eyes?”); others
demonstrate that the actor was eminently capable of transmitting genuine
emotion even with one hand tied not behind his back, but to the front of his chest (note how Chaney is able to suggest thousands upon thousands of years of
frustrated sexual desire with nothing more than subtle body language in The Mummy’s Ghost during the pivotal
scene in which Kharis’ long-lost lover, Ananka, dissolves into ash seconds
before he’s about to hold her in his arms once more); his Universal debut in Man-Made Monster as “Dynamo” Dan
McCormick—a carnival performer with boyish charm who becomes an unwitting
guinea pig in an illicit scientific experiment involving electrophysiology and
mind control—takes full advantage of Chaney’s ability to shift by degrees from
folksy optimism to resigned stoicism to noble selflessness.
And now comes a list of my personal favorite Chaney movies, which range from the sublime to the ridiculous (in fact, some of them manage to combine both elements in a single film)....
FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943)
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)