‘Frighteners: New Stories of Horror and the Unknown’ – Edited by Mary Danby (Fontana)

 


Page Count: 159 Pages

Given that this book was first published in 1974, the word ‘New’ (in the title) is starting to look more and more redundant but… Given that I’m of an age now where shaving my head actually makes me look less bald (seriously), I’m a fine one to talk ;o)

Anyway… I saw this collection in Greenwich Market, a few months ago, and had to grab it as it reminded me of the lesser frequented shelves, at my old primary school, where a kid like me could find all the old horror and supernatural anthologies, and did. It is surprisingly easy to lose a book at my place, a flat that is literally full of books, but I came across ‘Frighteners’ the other day and last night, finally settled down for a read.

A beach inhabited by man-eating jellyfish…
A death-mask which returns to life…
A village of monster-mad zombies…
A hideous body which refuses to die…
A hospital menaced by a ghostly visitor…
A withered corpse in search of a friend…

Stories of stark originality and chilling humour, told by some of today’s most imaginative fear-mongers.

That last line of blurb really got me thinking as I’ll be honest, the only contributing author whose name rung a bell was R. Chetwynd-Hayes (and only because I had an anthology of his when I was a kid). All those names who were a big deal back in 1974, what happened to them? Or am I just not widely read in horror? Could be… Either way, there were a few authors here that I wouldn’t mind reading a little more of.

‘Frighteners’ is one of those books that I suspect you won’t just happen across, not unless you’ve got the disposable income to pay Amazon ‘second-hand’ prices. I was lucky enough to come across a cheap copy and I’m glad I did, otherwise I would have balked at the price and missed out on some unsettling tales here.

The usual caveat applies because, well… it has to really. While every story hit the mark to some degree, some were noticeably less impactful than others. That’s a good return for me (I’ll take it), other readers mileage will vary. If you’re looking for that very ‘English’ kind of horror (slow build up to the big pay-off with a little dry humour on the side) then ‘Frighteners’ should have you covered to some degree. There is a nice mixture of weird horror, suburban horror and even a couple of creature-features as well. Definitely something for everyone. Highlights for me were ‘My Very Good Friend’ (a reminder to check the sex of your Preying Mantis before you feed it growth serum). ‘Old Hethers Picture’ (the image it ends on is superb) and ‘The Catomado’ (just because it was so funny…)

I certainly got into it and spent an enjoyable evening in the knowledge that as bad as my day had been (not that bad, just ‘the wrong kind of interesting’), at least I wasn’t stuck on a beach full of man-eating jellyfish or getting my washing done at the launderette. Seriously, I did not see the ending coming in ‘Lost Soul’, damn…

‘Frighteners’ wasn’t a compulsive page turner but there was enough there to keep me reading and put some distance between me and work, which was all I was after when I picked it up, job done then ;o)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone’ – Zub, Scharf, Canola (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures)

Image
It’s starting to look like this could be the week where I make a half decent dent in my ‘Comics TBR Pile’, lets see how we do... I’ve really been struggling with the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ collection just recently (more than one reason but I want to finish the collection first before I talk about it) and I thought that I’d have to take a little step back from ‘Conan’ comics and come back when I was in a better mood for it. Until I realized that there was another ‘Conan’ comic lurking in the TBR pile and maybe I could give that a go instead. So that’s what I did. I’ve caught little glimpses of the ‘Black Stone’ storyline, in other ‘Conan’ comics, but I can’t help but feel that the event has kind of passed me by a little. That’s on me though to be fair, I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish right now and there are so many books that I just haven’t been able to focus on; I suspect a couple of them talk about a Black Stone… Oh well, I’m here now. Where better a place to catch up on ‘B...
Read more

‘Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth’ (1992)

Image
Every time Halloween comes round, I promise myself that I’ll watch more horror films and read more horror fiction; we’re halfway through the month and you can see how that’s going so far… There’s still plenty of October left though so lets see how I do from now until the end of the month ;o) First up is ‘Hellraiser 3’ which I watched last night, mostly because I love it (you can tell how this post is going to go, sorry…) but also because it was cheap on Prime and I’m still just on the wrong side of payday. Here goes… TV reporter Joey Summerskill’s life is changed forever when she witnesses the horrific death of a teenager, torn apart by bloody chains. Joey’s search for a story leads her to the Lament Configuration Box but it has already been opened, waking an old evil from its slumber… Now Pinhead walks the earth once more, creating a new army of Cenobites from the transmuted flesh of his victims; his one desire to reclaim the Box. Even with help from an unexpected source, Joey Summers...
Read more

‘Dig Me No Grave’ – Robert E. Howard

Image
  Page Count: Fourteen Pages, eight lines and two words (sorry, it has been one of those weeks) I was looking for something short and sweet, to end the week on, and came across ‘Dig Me No Grave’ courtesy of Paperback Warrior’s write-up . Having read it, I can attest to it being short (all of fourteen and a bit pages in ‘The Dead Remember’ collection) but sweet? Not at all and that is meant in the best possible way :o) ‘Dig Me No Grave’ was originally published in the February 1937 of ‘Weird Tales’ and while it has appeared in other collections since then, I read it in ‘The Dead Remember (The Dark Man Omnibus: Volume 2) and also found it in my copy of ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. If you’re an e-reading type, you can grab yourself ‘Dig Me No Grave’ over at Project Gutenberg. John Kirowan is woken, in the middle of the night, by his friend John Conrad, bearer of bad news and come to beg a favour. The occultist John Grimlan has just died and Conrad asks that Kirowan att...
Read more