This super-cool trade paperback collects several mummy-centric yarns from the pre-code horror comics of the early 1950s, and boy I had a lot of fun reading it. As a kid in the ‘80s I was a devoted comic reader, but even then I was interested in older stuff, so I knew about the horror comics of the ‘50s, particularly those by EC. As a Stephen King-obsessed teen in the early ‘90s I was really into EC, and I recall having several black-and-white hardcover collections of Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror and the like. Now that I think of it, I wonder whatever happened to them…
Well anyway, Mummies makes for perfect Halloween reading, collecting as it does several non-EC horror comics. While the stories here are certainly repetitive – basically, an ancient Egyptian mummy comes to life and kills a bunch of people – every single one of them is fun, probably an element that is sorely lacking in today’s comic books.
I stopped reading comics decades ago, but I still have an appreciation for the old stuff, and there’s nothing better than pre-code horror. I’d forgotten how vicious these comics were, not to mention how darkly comic, which makes it even more humorous when you realize they were essentially produced for the kids of the day. Well, it goes without saying that things have become a lot more watered down in the world of kid’s entertainment in the ensuing decades; then again, I read a lof of pre-code horror comics when I was a kid, and even then I was able to appreciate the goofy, over-the-top vibe without finding any of it scary, so those ‘50s comics creators knew what they were doing.
I was never a horror kid, but I did have an early obsession with the Universal Monsters Mummy. Looking back on it, I’m certain this obsession started with the cover of an LP my brother, who is seven years older than me, bought sometime in the late ‘70s. A record titled Famous Monsters Speak, which was a spoken-word affair, with a Dracula story on one side and a Frankenstein Monster story on the other side. Despite the cover showing the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and even the Creature From The Black Lagoon (another childhood favorite), none of these three characters were actually featured on the record! Well, all that aside, the illustration of the Mummy really appealed to me:
I also recall that shortly after this, probably in the very early ‘80s, when I was six or seven years old, I got a Mummy costume for Halloween. One of those oldschool deals with the plastic mask. I just searched for it on Google and found it – apparently it was a Ben Cooper costume from 1979:
I was also so into mummies that I wrote a story about one when I was seven years old.* But it was not until years later that I actually saw all of the Universal Mummy movies, snatching up the DVD box set when it was released. I have fond memories of being unemployed during the summer of 2011 and watching the Mummy movies (and the other Universal horror movies) while drinking my way through several bottles of wine I grabbed off the clearance shelf at Tom Thumb…ah, good times.
I don’t recall seeing too many mummy pre-code horror comics; I’m sure EC had some that I read back in the day, but if so I don’t remember them. I can see why the concept might not have been used very much, as mummies don’t really lend themselves to much return on investment so far as horror fun goes; just try watching the Lon Chaney Jr. Mummy movies in one sitting. Indeed, you’ll quickly see why clearance-rack wine is necessary. The movies are incredibly one-note and repetitive…nonetheless they are still fun, and I’d rather watch them than any modern-day horror movie.
This trade paperback was edited by Steve Banes, aka Mr. Karswell, who for many years has run the indispensible The Horrors Of It All blog, where he uploads high-quality scans of stories from his pre-code horror comic collection. This blog is one of the best on the entire internet, and I try to read a comic a day on there – and the blog has been running for so long that there is an incredible wealth of material on there. In fact, many of the stories in Mummies can be found on The Horrors Of It All.
But still, it is a different experience entirely to see the comics phyiscally, ie not on a computer or device screen, and Banes and IDW have done a phenomenal job reproducing these old comics. For one I am happy to say that they have not felt the need to tidy things up or re-color the comics. Personally I hate it when old comics are re-colored; like for example that Amazing Spider-Man Ultimate Newspaper Comic Collection book I reviewed on here a few months back: great, fun stories, with wonderful art, but the colors had been redone to make it all look more polite and “correct.”
Personally, I’m a huge fan of the oldschool, blurred-out, “messy” look of vintage four color comics, something I was unable to appreciate all those years ago in the black-and-white EC Comic hardcovers I collected. Sure, the art itself looked great, but missing out on the color really took something away…and, as a simple flipping through Mummies will indicate, the colors certainly popped in pre-code comics. In fact there is an almost proto-psychedelic vibe to these comics in how the colors are so overdone and deranged; in many ways these comics are also harbingers of the drive-in horror fare of the following decade, the cheap monster flicks of the 1960s with their lurid and overdone Technicolor prints.
And that’s another thing: these comics, despite being from the ‘50s and being made for kids, actually play like the more sensationalistic monster movies of the ‘60s. The only thing missing is the nudity. The violence certainly isn’t missing: in the stories here you will see countless murders, and atrocities like people eaten alive by ants or put inside of iron maidens. And there is in fact a T&A quotient, with each story featuring a young female with ample charms who is often put in a compromising position that results in her clothing being a little torn…yes, the comic producers of yore certainly knew what kind of material their young male (and older male!) readers wanted to see.
I was interested in the uniformity of design the various artists followed for their depictions of the mummies. Instead of the Boris Karloff or Lon Chaney Jr. approach, which was the mummy wrapping overtop the entire face, the pre-code horror comic illustrators went for a look more aligned with the Ben Cooper costume I showed above, with a demonic skull-like face. They’re more “Pushead” than “Karloff:”
I mean just take a look:
Only a few mummies in the stories collected here deviate from this look. The mummies themselves are all of a piece, though; unliving pharaohs who are either awoken by wily professors or come back to life due to a curse that was placed eons ago. It’s also humorous that all of the archeologists are either superstitious, stubborn, vengeful, or all three at once.
The stories are busily plotted despite being so short; some pages are overstuffed with dialog and captions, to the extent that the actual art is often lost in the shuffle. But to be honest this is part of the charm; I much prefer the cluttered storytelling of old comics to the streamlined, “cinematic” art of today’s lame comics.
Overall I had a lot of fun reading Mummies, and even though I wasn’t even born yet in the ‘50s, it still made me nostalgic, mainly because I did read ‘50s horror comics as a kid in the ‘80s. It made for perfect Halloween reading. Here are some random photos from the book:
*As mentioned above, I was so inspired by my Halloween mummy costume that I wrote a story about it. I was seven at the time, if not younger, and it was a “drawings with text on construction paper” type of story. Well anyway, all I recall is that the story, humorously, followed the exact same template as many of the stories in Mummies, proving that even a little kid realizes there’s little variety in a mummy-centric horror story: basically, a pharaoh dies, becomes a mummy, and centuries later the mummy comes to life and wreaks havoc.
I wrote a lot of stories as a kid, but here is why this particular one has always stuck with me. After writing it, I proudly showed the story to my mom, and I recall her standing there and reading it as I waited expectantly for her approval. I recall her face became troubled as she read a certain line, and then she showed me the story and asked, “What does this sentence say?”
It was at the beginning of the story, the part set in the ancient past, where the pharaoh had just died and was about to be mummified. “Oh,” I said, “that sentence says, ‘The servants wrapped the pharaoh’s body.’”
The troubled look abruptly left my mom’s face. “Okay,” she said, “but you spell ‘wrapped’ with a ‘w’ and with two ‘p’s.”
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the sentence I had actually written: “The servants raped the pharaoh’s body.” No wonder my mom looked so concerned.
What made me remember this was that look that briefly passed over my mom’s face as she read my story – I got a first-hand, real-time glimpse of the power of storytelling, and how it can elicit both positive and negative reactions.
Of course the irony is, if I were to write a mummy horror story today, I probably would write, “The servants raped the pharaoh’s body.”
I wasn’t into Monster Magnet in the early to mid ‘90s, and I don’t recall knowing anyone who was into them, either. By the time Monster Magnet got big in the late ‘90s, I had already moved away from “modern music,” so long story short – I was never a Monster Magnet fan. Until now! Within the past few months I have belatedly discovered this New Jersey band, formed in the late ‘80s by a group of psych explorers who seemed to have walked out of the early ‘70s. In particular, I am only interested in the earliest era of Monster Magnet, which is to say the first few releases (specifically: one album and two Eps), which featured John McBain on guitar.
This, 25…Tab, is one of those Eps, with the caveat that the EP is actually longer than most LPs! The track “Tab” alone is over 30 minutes long, putting the limits of analog technology to the test; happily, this 2017 repress on 180 gram vinyl sounds great, save for the fact that it’s pressed a little quietly. The ideal LP side length is around 20 minutes; any more “data” on the side and something has to suffer in quality, usually either the bass level or the volume level. While the bass is nice and loud on the repress, you really have to crank the sucker up – but then, your only other option on vinyl is the original German release from 1993, and I doubt that sounds any better.
I’m getting ahead of myself. This EP is great! It sounds so much like Hawkwind at times that you could be fooled into thinking it had been released 20 years earlier. This is what really appeals to me about Monster Magnet; they did heavy psych rock with vintage equipment. I don’t know much about what Monster Magnet did after, but their self-titled 1990 EP (inexplicably only released in Germany…and to this day not reissued in the US!), this Tab EP, and finally their debut album Spine Of God, are all pretty damn great.
Not “heavy metal” per se, Monster Magnet is more heavy rock in the vein of the early 1970s, with lots of space rock and psych touches. It’s pretty awesome, and these guys were in for the whole trip – the subtitle of this Random Record Review, “It’s a Satanic Drug Thing,” comes from the back cover of Spine Of God: “It’s a Satanic drug thing…you wouldn’t understand.”
The entirety of Side 1 is taken up with “Tab,” a 30-minute headtrip of sonic effects and various rants from “lead singer” Dave Wyndoff, all of it anchored by the mantra-like bass of John McBain (who does not play his customary electric guitar on this track). I’ve played this song a lot and you really can get lost in it; I once saw it compared to the freak-out psych section in the middle of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” just taken to an epic length, and that’s actually pretty accurate. Just imagine that going on for about 30 minutes.
Side 2 gets into more “standard” song forms, starting off with the other title track, “25,” which is more Hawkwind than Hawkwind:
This one features McBain on guitar and boy does it rip – probably one of my favorite Monster Magnet songs. This track cuts hard into the following number, “Longhair,” which is an instrumental with a strutting, freak-flag-flying sort of vibe, and then the EP ends – or at least the original release ended – with “Longhair,” a mellow track with overdubbed McBain guitar that is the closest thing to a “normal” song on the EP. This 2017 vinyl reissue tags on a live take of “Spine of God,” presumably from 1990 – the track isn’t even mentioned on the LP jacket – and it’s so bootleg you can hear the people in the audience talking about it, one of them even saying, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were recording!”
Overall, a great “EP” that is really more so an LP, and the cover art must also be mentioned – an appropriation of a vintage science illustration, with Monster Magnet’s mascot the Bulldog added to it. The print job of the LP sleeve is great; the colors really pop, and also they made it a gatefold, but the inside is just a blurry photo of Monster Magnet on stage. Check it out, just be sure to crank up the volume.
Acid Reich: Mistress Of The Perpetual Harvest
Cool Beans, 1989 (original cassette release)
My copy: Mental Experience/Galactic Archives, 2021
Speaking of Monster Magnet…man, I like this obscure release a lot more than I probably should. And also I consider myself fortunate to have a copy; per the label, this will never be reissued. So what we have here is a late ‘80s recording by the proto-Monster Magnet – Dave Wyndorf, John McBain, and Tim Cronin – augmented with two additional musicians from the underground New Jersey scene. According to an insigtful interview printed on a flyer that is placed inside the sleeve – an inverview conduced by psych musician The Plastic Crimewave – this material was recorded during downtime in a home studio in between working at local record and comic book stores.
I find myself fascinated by this late ‘80s New Jersey scene that Monster Magnet was part of; it’s just super cool to think of these longhaired dudes in their 20s coming home from a day selling comics and then breaking out their vintage guitars and Orange amps and hitting record on the 4-track…playing music that was entirely out of fashion in the late ‘80s.
The origin of Acid Reich is it was just another “band” these guys would record as, usually releasing stuff on cassette tape on a “label” run by Cronin. Plastic Crimewave got hold of the original tape and it was used as the source for this vinyl LP release…which sounds a lot better than you’d expect, but be aware this is certainly lo-fi: the drums are a pounding tribal din and the guitars are more scrappy than heavy. But man it is heavy acid rock of the highest order, sounding more like an underground heavy rock bootleg from 1971 than anything from 1989, and of course I mean that as a compliment.
They also don’t short-change you on material: the LP runs around 40 minutes, the perfect LP length, but there are only 5 songs on it! Side 1 features the awesome “Black Sun,” which features echo-treated Tim Cronin endlessly shouting “Black sun…in my head!” like a madman over a lo-fi metal jam, and then unexpectedly we have an epic-length cover of Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun,” always one of my favorite Floyd songs. But man, Waters and company even at their most “far-out 1969 Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” never got this far out; it starts off somewhat similar to the Floyd original before heading into the outer reaches of heavy lo-fi psych metal.
Side 2 is more of the same – there’s an Acid Reich “Theme,” which is along the lines of “Black Sun,” and a heavy instrumental psych-metal-fest called “Revenge of Tim Boo Ba,” before things close out with a sarcastic take on “Amazing Grace,” which seems to feature Wyndorf on vocals. Oh and I should mention, as with “Tab,” John McBain plays bass throughout the entirety of Mistress Of The Perpetual Harvest (a local rocker named Shaune Kelley plays guitar on the LP), which is a shame, as McBain’s guitar tone was phenomenal – I mean, just check out “Nod Scene” from Spine Of God.
As mentioned, I contacted Guerssen, the parent label of Mental Experience, to see if they were going to repress this LP, and they responded that they were not going to. So, I went on a hunt, determined to get my own phsyical copy for an affordable price. I was lucky enough to, but given how obscure the album is, you might have to resort to the digital release on the Acid Reich Bandcamp page.
Spiral Shades: Hypnosis Sessions
RidingEasy Records, 2014
A little over twenty years ago I became a hardcore Black Sabbath fan, Ozzy-era only of course, mostly due to the awesome reviews by The Seth Man on Unsung. I bought the Black Sabbath CD box set when it came out in 2004, and still have it, and over the years I’ve gotten a few of their albums on vinyl, but prices have always been too high. And besides, the music is what matters, and Ozzy-era Sabbath is still some of my favorite music.
But while the first four albums are generally the most loved by fans, I’ve always been a fan of Sabotage, Sabbath’s 1975 LP that saw them retaining their sound while bringing in progressive elements…not to mention a lot of sonic trickery. I mean “Megalomania” is by far my favorite Black Sabbath song, a 9-minute track that starts off dreamy before going off the deep end into sonic FX-ridden riff heaven (or hell), not to mention some serious cowbell action. Why this track is not better known than “War Pigs” is a mystery for the ages, but whatever – 1975 Sabbath was the best.
Instead of continnuing in this pace, Sabbath unfortunately delivered Technical Ecstasy the following year, a muddled album that retained the progressive rock vibe but ruined everything with a generic “rock” approach. (And yes, that review I linked to is one I wrote for Unsung over twenty years ago!) But man, this 2014 album, produced by two guys – who weren’t even together in the same country when they recorded the album! – is the true followup to Sabotage that Black Sabbath never gave us.
With a guy named Filip Petersen, in Norway, handling all the guitars, and a guy named Kuhshal Bhadra, in India(!), handling the vocals and drums, Spiral Shades is a studio group if ever there was one…and that’s fine with me. I’ve never been a fan of live albums. I like to hear the studio technology taken to its limits, and like Monster Magnet, Spiral Shades has done the same thing – taken a vintage metal sound to its limits. This album truly sounds like it could have been recorded and released in 1975, and again that is a compliment.
And I haven’t even mentioned Bhadra’s vocals. There is a whole scene that’s developed in the past several years of Sabbath-worshipping “doom” metallers who have their own ersatz Ozzie on vocals…but folks, Kuhshal Bhadra is more Ozzy than Ozzy. This dude has Osbourne’s sound and delivery down pat, and there are tracks here you could play to someone who isn’t even really gullible and fool them into thinking it’s actually a Black Sabbath song. It’s truly incredible.
And not only that, but the songs themselves have the Sabbath sound, while not coming off like ripoffs or repeats of what Sabbath did; Hypnosis Sessions really does sound like a true followup to Sabotage, the riff centering all the songs in true Iommi fashion, with the band sometimes going for slow-build epics and other times going for head-banging riffathons. So far as the latter go, my favorite track on the album would be one of those short head-bangers, “Wizardry,” which features some cool fx on the guitar:
Coming in at nearly an hour, Hypnosis Sessions was released as a double album, meaning it’s the opposite scenario as with Monster Magnet’s 25…Tab vinyl release. Since each side comes in at around 12 to 14 minutes, there are no issues with lack of bass or volume. The album sounds great, and vinyl would be the ideal medium to play it in, but it does bum me that RidingEasy got cheap and didn’t release it as a gatefold. This means that both LPs are jammed into a standard jacket, thus ensuring that some day the seams will split.
Spiral Shades took nearly ten years to record a followup, the digital-only Revival; I’ve only listened to it once, but it is very much along the lines of Hypnosis Sessions, and it’s a damn mystery why RidingEasy didn’t keep them on the roster and release this one on vinyl as well.
Saltpig: Saltpig
Heavy Psych Sounds, 2024
My favorite release on this list, Saltpig came out via the wonderfully-named Heavy Psych Sounds, a Rome-based label that focuses on, you’ll be shocked to know, heavy psych rock, metal, doom metal, and etc. There are a ton of artists on this label and I highly recommend you check them out. Also they do quality vinyl releases, and it was in this fashion that I discovered Saltpig’s debut LP…which turned out to be my best music discovery of 2025, and certainly the best “new release” I’ve heard in perhaps decades.
I’m always buying music and listening to music, but it’s all old stuff, if you know what I mean. I realized a few months ago that there had to be new music out there that was worth listening to, and further I realized it was we hardcore rock junkies who were doing a disservice to these new groups – we’re so busy buying “Very Good Plus” copies of old records on Discogs that we are oblivious to new music that might be just as good.
And Saltpig is certainly a case in point. These guys are awesome, coming off like an unholy mix of Black Sabbath and The Stooges...maybe after the two had sat through a triple-feature of horror movies at the local drive-in. Like Spiral Shades, we have here a two-man group: Mitch Davis on vocals, guitars, and production, and Fabio Alessandrini on drums. Man, these guys are phenomenal: this album is so great that I’ve played it constantly since I got it. Usually I play records only a few times and then move on to the next new thing, but I’ve played Saltpig over and over. In fact I’m playing it again right now!
On the label page I linked to above, Saltpig’s music is described as a direction early 1970s proto-metal might have gone if it had not evolved “towards greater precision, bigger drums and more robust production.” I read this after listening to the album a few times, and I have to say, this description really sums up their sound. One can easily imagine that this would be the direction heavy music went in the early ‘70s. There is a sort of lo-fi murk to Saltpig, yet at the same time the production is phenominal, with a lot of buried effects; it’s a headphone album as well as a “blast on your stereo” album.
Side 1 is comprised of 5 tracks, each in the 3-5 minute span, centered around a Sabbath approach but offering a lot of variety. Oh and I forgot to mention, but a key to Saltpig’s success is Mitch Davis’s vocals; his is not an Ozzy wail, or a death metal grunt…his vocals are top-notch. The dude actually sings, which is what brings me back to the Stooges comparison…I mean, Iggy Pop/Stooge had one of the greatest rock voices ever, and Davis seems to have taken his inspiration from that area instead of a more traditional “doom metal” approach.
That said, Davis’s vocals are usually buried beneath FX and other trickery; as mentioned there is a very cool murk to Saltpig, lending to its “occult” vibe. But this is a drive-in monsterama kind of occult (ie the best kind), with side 1’s subjects ranging from demons to burning witches. Starting off with “Satan’s War,” Saltpig hits the ground running, and the way the 5 songs blend into one another, side 1 almost comes off like a continnuous piece. “Satan’s War” promptly displays their penchant for buried effects, with lots of sound effects buried beneath the music – even after listening to the album so many times, I still am surprised by the errant noises when listening on my headphones. “Demon” and “Burning Water” are aggressive, riffing numbers, and “When You Were Dead,” with its grungier, more lo-fi metal-punk vibe, is a harbinger of Side 2. “Burn The Witch” opens with a horror movie sample and almost sounds like ‘80s goth metal in the chorus.
Flip it over to side 2 and it’s another story entirely...one single track, “1950” (the title is actually the length of the track!), a mind-blower of blown-out amps and screamed, fx-ridden vocals, where Saltpig just rides a riff into infinity. It sounds like James Williamson-era Stooges looking into the future and doing a shorter, slightly faster take on Sleep’s “Dopesmoker.” Speaking (again) of the Stooges, if you are a fan of that band, then you’ve gone down the murky roads of bootlegs and unofficial releases, and it’s incredible how Saltpig has exactly replicated that sound with “1950;” it sounds like some track lifted off Heavy Liquid or Rough Power or one of the innumerable other Stooges boots.
For nearly twenty minutes we have this RIFF, which rolls upon itself over and over, before slowing down a bit for (what passes for) the chorus, and throughout it all Mitch Davis’s voice is lost in the sonic din. Man, it’s incredible! “1950” is my favorite new song in years and years and years. The track is so great that Saltpig even made a music video for it!
I was so blown away by Saltpig that I actually contacted the band throught their website, telling them how much I enjoyed the album. I was nearly as blown away when I received a response…in which they told me that they are putting “the finishing touches” on their followup album! Folks, I can’t tell you how amped up I am to hear another Saltpig album. I mean, think of it. This is the first time I’ve been excited to hear a new album since…when? Maybe not since the ‘90s!
Highly, highly recommended – I got the basic black vinyl pressing, but Heavy Psych Sounds offers various pressings at various prices, plus digital as well, so take your pick – just so long as you check it out. And while the vinyl is likely pressed from digital, which is how it is done these days, I suspect the album itself was recorded in analog, as it has that vintage sound, which adds to the vibe. Just a perfect album, and one I will continue to listen to again and again.
Bloodsong: Season Of The Dead - Halloween '25
Digital release, 2025
Rounding out this review with a special mention of a new single release from Bloodsong, who I have raved about before – first about their Initium Meets Earth A.D. release, and their later Season Of The Dead. The other day I got an email notice that Bloodsong had just put up a new song on Bandcamp, and I went over there immediately to check it out.
Coming in at 2 tracks, Season Of The Dead – Halloween ‘25 features remakes of earlier songs, and what’s notable is that this one-man band has now become a two-man band. (Two-man bands could almost be a theme of this post!) Main man I, Misanthrope has been joined by the awesomely-named “Dr. Anthony Fulci” on lead guitar, and the good doctor shreds it up on new mixes of “Season Of The Dead” and “I Want Your Blood.”
While both of these songs were great in their previous mixes, it must be said that Dr. Fulci brings something new to the table, in particular “I Want Your Blood,” which is here transformed into the greatest song Bloodsong has yet done. Like I said before, if you’ve worn out your Misfits and Samhain records, you need to look into Bloodsong; absolutely no band comes as close to capturing that mid-‘80s Samhain sound, while still offering something new and uniquely their own.
I think the only thing missing is a physical release of Bloodsong’s material…I’d love to have some of this stuff on vinyl. Hopefully I, Misanthrope and Dr. Anthony Fulci will continue to join forces and bring us a full album of heavy horror punk, but in the meantime this two-track single is perfect Halloween listening, so head over to Bandcamp and check it out!
So obscure it wasn’t even mentioned on Curt Purcell’s otherwise-comprehensive Groovy Age Of Horror, Dr. Holton ran for six novels that took place squarely in the groovy era, and though the books were packaged as Gothics, overall they had more in common with Doctor Orient.
Charlotte Hunt was a British author, her real name Doris Marjorie Hodges; she passed away in 1997. This first volume of the series, The Gilded Sarcophagus, certainly reads like the work of an English author. So British it hurts, the novel is overstuffed with the usage of “quite” and the action is anemic. As for the sex, there’s none. One can only hope that future volumes improve on this; another thing going against The Gilded Sarcophagus is that it is written in first-person. It seems that future volumes trade off between first-person and third-person.
Another thing that makes the Dr. Holton series unique for a Gothic is that the protagonist is a man. I’m no expert, but it seems to me that Gothic focused on damsels in distress. Thus Hunt walks a strange line here, as her narrator must come off as the manly hero while also coming off as being in distress. Ultimately it makes Dr. Paul Holton seem like a wimp.
This isn’t helped by Holt’s speciality: he’s not a master of the mystic arts or magic or anything like that – no, he’s a psychiatrist! He’s got a clinic in London, and he’s engaged to young Julie Font…so there goes any hopes of him scoring a little, as he would if this series had been written by a red-blooded male author. No, there’s no hanky panky in this book at all. It’s essentially G rated, probably more so than even the average Gothic of the era.
Hunt/Hodges clearly wanted a Sherlock Holmes – Professor Moriarity rivalry, as Dr. Holton seems to be concerned with the ongoing feud between Dr. Holton and the wily Manfred Blackton, a conman with occult leanings. I envionsioned Blackton as an almost satanic villain, but having read the book he comes off like just a generic bad guy, with nothing memorable nor even too extreme about him. Indeed at one point he even specifies that he’s “not a sadist.”
Another schtick with the series is that each novel seems to center around some mystical artifact; in this first one, it’s the legendary “Roth Parchment,” an ancient Egyptian document which was supposedly written by a scholar from Atlantis…a scholar, folks, who is named Roth(!?). Now look, I know Atlantis is a legend and all, but don’t you think Hodges could’ve come up with a better name for her ancient Atlantean occult mage than Roth? Why didn’t she just go all the way with it and say the guy’s first name was John while she was at it?
Well anyway, it’s not that our narrator is even interested in this stuff to begin with. He comes into it all via his fiance, Julie; it’s Julie’s brother, Simon, who is a translator of hieroglyphs and who apparently was helping Uncle Rupert translate the parchment…which Rupert has somehow gotten hold of. But meanwhile the tale is more centered around Simon’s disappearance; Julie is certain foul play was involved, and that the wily Manfred Blackton was behind it.
There is a lot of talking and debating and belaboring in the 222 pages of The Gilded Sarcophagus. Neither Paul Horton nor Julie Font are memorable characters; Horton, via his narration, comes off like a fusspot, and Julie is always worried and concerned. In fact she might be closer to the traditional protagonist of a Gothic; a pretty young woman who is always scared.
Blackton is not introduced to the tale for a bit. Hodges’s narrative is cluttered and clunky; she introduces a ton of characters to us in the opening chapters and also relies very heavily on expository dialog. She also repeats herself in the narrative; both Simon and his uncle have lost a woman they loved, and each man has sort of gone of the deep end in his grief. Initially it is easy to confuse the two characters.
For old Rupert, he has found solace in the Circle of Ra, an occult group headed up by Blackton, a wide-shouldered rake who is always accompanied by a raven-haired beauty named Zerena. These two, it is my understanding, will be a thorn in Holton’s side for the entirety of the series. Zerena acts as a medium for the Circle of Ra, channeling the spirit of an Atlantean, with Blackton as the Aleister Crowley behind it all, but unfortunately we readers know it’s all a crock; there is no actual supernatural content in The Gilded Sarcophagus.
There is no real tension to the narrative; everyone tells Julie that her brother – who by the way is in his late 20s or something like that, so it isn’t like he’s a kid – has probably just taken off for somewhere. But Julie reveals to Holton that she and Simon have a psychic bond, and once spoke to each other via ESP. This is the furthest we get into the metaphysical realm in the novel.
I mentioned Curt Purcell’s long-gone blog at the start of the review, but truth be told there aren’t many “groovy age” details in The Gilded Sarcophagus, though a cursory glance at future novels – particularly the ones in third-person – get a bit more groovy. This first book could just as easily take place in the 1930s, given the lack of mention of any ‘60s topical details. There is a blandness to the entire book, though.
It doesn’t help that there isn’t even any T&A to keep us pervs entertained; the author is almost skittish about writing anything “saucy,” once again proving my theory that most British authors can’t write pulp because they’re afraid they’ll get their sleeves dirty. But then again, techincally this is a Gothic, so maybe they were just anemic to begin with.
Unfortunately, Holton’s ever-shocked, deadbeat fiance Julie gets in the way, and given that the novel ends with her and Holton getting married(!), my assumption is she’ll be there to further get in the way in future volumes. But Hunt doesn’t even dwell on anything naughty between Julie and Holton; theirs seems to be a chaste relationship.
Things finally pick up steam with the discovery of a corpse or two, and the unexpected outing of Blackton as a villain with murderous intentions. But still even so, he’s not a sadist, people! And our narrator is a chump, caught twice in the final quarter; he spends a few chapters trussed up in a dungeon, at one point resorting to actual prayer to get himself free(!).
The finale sees Holton trussed up yet again, and folks he is literally saved by the deux ex machina appearance of some newly-introduced character…now that I think of it, perhaps Holton’s prayer was answered, after all. But there’s no big action finale, and Holton has no martial skills to speak of; there’s a part where Blackton knocks him out, and Holton informs us that he wasn’t as fast as he normally was because he was tired from being trussed up all night…this kind of made me laugh out loud, as the narrator must explain to us why he was unable to fight the main villain.
As you’ll no doubt be unsurprised to learn, Blackton and Zerena escape at novel’s end, paving the way for the next volume, The Cup Of Thanatos, which hopefully will be better.
Leave it to Irving Greenfield to write a paperback original that comes off like a sleazy, X-rated, “in the tradition of” take on William Blatty’s The Exorcist, with the added bonus that Greenfield’s novel was published the year before Blatty’s novel! Now that’s an impressive feat.
I picked this one up many years ago, along with a concurrent PBO Greenfield published with Dell, The Sexplorer, and it seems to me now that the two novels are connected in a way. Not in the repeating characters or situations – like with Greenfield’s later Making U-Hoo and Julius Caesar Is Alive And Well – but in how they are essentially sleaze paperbacks that were published by a mainstream outlet.
Speaking of “in the tradition of,” one thing I’ve always meant to mention on here is that Harold Robbins was the only bestselling author who actually got more explicit than his “in the tradition of” imitators…save for Irving Greenfield. For make no mistake, Greenfield’s novels are incredibly raunchy, leaving no juicy stone unturned – and it seems now that the same raunchy material repeated throughout his oeuvre, like for example his focus on “dining at the Y,” something much dwelt upon here in Succubus, just as it was nearly two decades later in Depth Force.
Seriously, while Succubus is marketed as “horror,” explicitly so in the 1979 Manor Books reprint (where Greenfield was strangely credited as “Campo Verde”), it is in reality a piece of steamy fiction, filled with characters having sex, thinking about sex, dreaming about sex, fantasizing about sex, or talking about sex. The “possession” stuff is just an add on, with the additional note that techinically it isn’t even a “succubus” that posseses the main character!
No, it’s a priestess from ancient Sumeria, her spirit taking possession of a lovely young brunette named Rina, she of the “tantalizing upturned breasts.” The priestess, we’re told, has blonde hair, and presumably that’s supposed to be her on the photo cover. Rina is married to Thomas, a 30 year-old professor of Etruscan history in New York City. They have only been married for a short while, and Greenfield builds up some mystery over how and why they met. Eventually we’ll learn that Rina was guided to this meeting, but unfortunately the entire plot unravels if you think about it too much.
Greenfield keeps the reader from thinking about the plot holes by focusing on sex for nearly the entire 205 pages. Mind you, this isn’t a complaint. No one writes an explicit sex scene like Irving Greenfield. I mean, this dude himself was a teacher. I’ve always imagined what one of his classes might have been like: “Professor Greenfield, should it be written as ‘come’ or as ‘cum’?” (That’s a joke I’ve been meaning to write on here for like 13 years!)
Proving my point, Succubus opens with Thomas and Rina lounging in their home, Thomas dozing as he reads and Rina relaxing on the couch…and soon enough Thomas is thinking and dreaming about sex, as is Rina, and shortly after that they are going at it full-bore. Here Greenfield will quickly prove his fondness for cunnilingus, with lots of detail of Thomas working on Rina’s “lips” and whatnot. It’s pretty crazy and certainly has that hardcore ‘70s vibe in full effect…again, pretty impressive given that the novel was published just as the ‘70s were beginning.
As if that weren’t enough, we have another long sex scene as Thomas sexually fantasizes about a woman walking ahead of him on the street as he makes his way to his school; this is the material that made me think of The Sexplorer, which I started to read back in 2010, back when I started the blog, but for some reason never finished. From there Thomas goes into his office…where later he is propositioned by a sexy young student (“We’ve been talking about sex so damn much that my crotch is already wet!”), who strips for him and then, after more of the Y-dining, the two go at it on Thomas’s desk. No juicy stone is left unturned.
Meanwhile Rina “sees” all of this, and thus is certain Thomas has cheated on her. Greenfield pulls an interesting conceit here that Rina is possessed, but does not know it…even after mental conversations with the priestess who has possessed her, and who can take over Rina’s body at whim, Rina will come out of the mental conversations with no recollection of them. Greenfield, who also plays an interesting conceit in that he doesn’t concern himself with explaining any of it, provides a few genuinely creepy moments as Rina will go “into a room” in her mind and talk to this priestess, and see things via remote vision.
But still, Succubus isn’t much of a horror rollercoaster. It’s more of a character study; Greenfield’s narrative style is somewhat different this time around, as he is very much concerned with probing the thoughts and feelings of his characters. Very much of the novel is stuck in the headspace of Thomas and Rina, going on about their feelings and how they react to each other – and, given the otherwise formal tone of Greenfield’s narrative style, this gives the book an almost stuffy feel.
Rina, post that beginning-of-the-novel sex, has suddenly announced her desire to go see Thomas’s estranged uncle, William. Eventually Thomas agrees, and meanwhile Greenfield has fun with Rina being bitchy and catty to Thomas, as she “knows” he had sex with that girl in his office, and thus wants to be spiteful…even though Thomas does not know that Rina knows. And meanwhile Rina will frequently go into long, pages-filling dreams about ancient Sumeria, where we learn the horrific backstory of the priestess, who betrayed her people with a foreigner and who was then raped by a few hundred slaves until she died, her corpse fed to the ravens…oh, and meanwhile her soul was cursed!
Greenfield does not do much to bring the priestess to life, so to speak. Her goal is simple: the retrieval of a “scroll” Thomas’s uncle, a globetrotting rake, has gotten hold of…a highly-valued scroll from Sumeria that no one can read. We are to understand that the ancient Sumerians have a cult, or something, that still operates in the present day, and they want this scroll back – it is the very thing the priestess betrayed her people with, centuries ago, and thus she has now possessed Rina’s body to acquire it.
Here’s where the plot falls apart: why didn’t Rina just go after Uncle William? A handsome older man who is unmarried and who lives alone on a castle in Antigua, William would be prime for the plucking by a sexy brunette babe with tantalizing upturned breasts. I mean, wouldn’t we all be? One wonders why the priestess even bothered ensnaring Thomas, if her ultimate goal was William. But then who can understand the mind of an undead ancient Sumerian priestess?
It’s very heavy on the psychological tip as Rina and Thomas go to Antigua, bickering and bantering all the way, and then William comes along and there’s more bickering and bantering, and Rina decides to screw him to get that scroll, which was her plan all along. Meanwhile Thomas is hoodwinked into screwing a phantom female of his mind, created by the priestess – who seems to have whatever power Greenfield needs her to have, for the convenience of the plot.
Indeed, Greenfield has spent so much time focused on introspection and sex-fantasizing that he must rush through the conclusion. Basically William and Thomas realize Rina is possessed like in the final eight pages, and they get a voodoo priestess, and there’s chanting and whatnot…but while the main problem is resolved, Greenfield is stingy with the details.
For example, William mentions a “cult” that has tried to take the scroll from him. Who are these people and what happens to them? In fact, the priestess tells Rina that the leader is the literal god Enki, so what are we to make of this? The old gods still walk the earth? We also are not given a satisfactory reason why Rina was even possessed, nor why the gods had Thomas and not his uncle in their sights…and Greenfield brushes this all aside, having all three characters not remember a single thing about Rina’s possession at the end of the book.
So while it was a frustrating read as a horror paperback, it must be stated that Succubus was certainly a success as a piece of paperback sleaze; I could imagine a horny 14 year-old kid taking notes from this damn book in the pre-internet world. “Girls must really like it when you rub on something called a ‘clit!’ I’ve gotta remember that!”
A few years back I reviewed Mark Of The Werewolf by Jeffrey Sackett; checking my review, it seems I mostly had an issue with what seemed to be Sackett’s overly passive and casual narrative style, which did little to convey any sort of suspense, drama, or tension. Well, friends, it’s almost as if an entirely different Jeffrey Sackett wrote Candlemas Eve, as this earlier novel of his does not suffer from that humdrum writing style, and also features a lot more in the sex and violence departments.
That said, at nearly 400 pages of small print, the book is still too long for its own good, but that’s common for ‘80s horror paperbacks. And yes, Sackett does dwell on lame stuff too frequently, and also commits the usual “1980s pulp horror novelist” mistake of making his “heroes” incredibly lame losers that you can’t stand and can’t wait to see gutted and sent off to hell, but then maybe that’s intentional. I’m willing to forgive these things, given that Sackett injects a bunch of explicit sexual material in Candlemas Eve, something that was sorely lacking in Mark Of The Werewolf.
The plot is also more interesting: basically, a down on his luck rocker gets involved with a pair of witches, and fame and fortune ensues. The only problem is, one of the witches has a sort of “fatal attraction” for the rocker, and has a tendency to kill anyone who gets in his way. And then when the rocker turns on her, she really goes batshit crazy.
The rocker is named Simon Proctor, in his “midforties,” a guy who has managed to barely hang on in the music biz since the ‘60s. Sackett is guilty of misleading the reader in Simon’s intro; Candlemas Eve actually has two fakeout openings. For one, we start off in the 1690s, as a pair of hot whores lure a guy to their place, have super explicit sex with him – complete with the detail of one of them taking his, er, essence in her mouth and then spitting it into a cup – and then the girls slit his throat, mix his blood with his essence, and commit his soul to Satan and whatnot.
This sequence is more OTT than anything in Mark Of The Werewolf, and we’re only a handful of pages in! Then Sackett pulls back on the camera, as it were, and we discover that all of this is a movie, one that is being broadcast to a live studio audience(!!). I mean seriously, it’s straight-up hardcore, and we’re supposed to believe that not only was it shown to a TV audience, but also the filmmaker, rock star Simon Proctor, sunk a few million bucks into the movie and hopes to make a windfall upon its release in theaters.
Okay, I know we must suspend belief when it comes to horror fiction, but come on! In what world would an adult movie get a theatrical release and be previewed for a studio audience? Sackett sort of brushes the movie under the narrative carpet – it’s only mentioned sporadically from here on out – but it’s really hard to believe.
But Sackett commits an even greater sin immediately thereafter. Simon is on this talk show to debate a panel of fellow guests, among them a Tipper Gore type and also an old German guy who is a professor of comparative religion, and this guy mocks Simon’s “silly story” of 17th century witches that cannot be based on fact, despite what Simon insists. And Simon Proctor keeps demanding that he is indeed a witch, descended from a man named John Proctor who was hanged for witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s.
But here’s the thing: we readers will soon learn that Simon, who dyes his hair jet black and who paints his face with “ghoulish” makeup and wears pentagrams and whatnot, really is just a fraud, as the professor of religion accuses him of being; Simon does not believe in the devil, or any witch stuff; he’s just doing it for the money, because it’s what “the kids” are into these days.
This I felt was a big misstep, one that Jeffrey Sackett is unable to get over in the ensuing novel. While it is fine as-is, Candlemas Eve would have been immeasurably superior if Simon Proctor was the character initially presented to us: a stern-faced practicioner of Satanism. But it’s just an act, and Simon will prove to be a total loser: neurotic about his failing fortunes and his growing age.
It gets even worse: after the talk show, Simon performs for an audience of ten thousand in New York City – which sounds like a lot to me, but we’re to understand it’s nothing compared to the audiences Simon and his band, Witch’s Sabbath, used to pull in. But after the show, Simon wipes off his makeup and drives himself home to New Hampshire, moping all the way. I mean at this point I was wondering what the hell sort of “Rock Novel” I was reading…what self-respecting rocker drives himself home after a gig?
It gets even worse (again): Not content to just write a rock novel, Sackett also wants to bring in the horror-mandatory “family and kids” aspect, so he can have more drama. Simon lives on the old family inn with his daughter, 16 year-old Rowena, his son, 22 year-old Lucas, and his father, old Floyd. (There’s no wife, and Lucas and Rowena have different mothers, both of whom are long out of the picture.)
So yes, we also have this family drama dynamic, because in addition to Simon’s kids there’s also Lucas’s girlfriend, Karyn (who is pregnant), and Lucas’s best bud Jeremy, who is the nephew of the local minister and who also carries a torch for Rowena. These will be the characters Jeffrey Sackett focuses on in Candlemas Eve; the members of Simon’s band only appear infrequently in the narrative.
The character of Floyd is especially hard to take. He’s an old prick who spends the narrative either berating Simon or mocking him, or telling him how disappointed he is in him. This only further serves to make our hero, who is supposed to be a Satanic rocker, seem like a chump. I mean honestly folks, it’s like Frasier, only with Kelsey Grammer replaced by Alice Cooper.
Things improve greatly with the appearance of Gwendolyn and Adrienne, a pair of young witches who show up one night and tell Simon they’re going to make him a star for Satan. We readers however know these two are something else entirely: the spirits of two witches who were hanged back in the 1690s. One of them – the current Gwendolyn, formerly Abigail in the 17th Century – is in love with John Proctor, Simon Proctor’s ancestor (ie the man who was hanged for witchcraft), and the devil has brought her back to life so that she can be with him again; Simon, we are told, is the spitting image of his ancestor John.
It all sounds muddled, and really it is, but Sackett does a good job of making it all sensible in the novel itself. The important thing is that Gwendolyn, who is a smokin’ hot brunette with an incredible body, says that Satan will make Simon Proctor a star; there will be no more of the fakery. So she and Adrienne – who is mousy and scrawny – take up their lutes and perform some 17th century tunes, and Simon can’t help but think how good they’d sound if they were rockified, sort of like “the Byrds used to do.”
I have to give Jeffrey Sackett credit: by not giving a shit about what was going on with rock in the era in which he was writing (ie the late ‘80s), he managed to make Candlemas Eve come off as timeless. Indeed, the only rock groups Sackett mentions in the book are the Byrds, Jethro Tull, and Donovan(!). In other words this novel could just as easily take place in the 1970s; there are no topical ‘80s details, and the revamped Witch’s Sabbath, with the two actual witches Gwendolyn and Adrienne on “amplified lutes,” comes off more like Fleetwood Mac with Satanic overtones than any ‘80s metal band.
I’m also happy to report that Sackett is a rock novelist who actually describes the music…at least he sort of does. There are several concert sequences, and we’re told that characters will play guitar solos or lute solos, and the lyrics are reprinted throughout…but otherwise it’s not properly conveyed what the music sounds like. We do know that it’s not heavy metal, per se. I think the implication is that it sounds wholly different from anything else going on at the time, and for that reason – not to mention the notoriety Gwendolyn generates – the band becomes a huge success.
I had a hard time buying this; I mean the hardcore mainstream movie was one thing, but it’s entirely another to think that “the kids” of the late ‘80s (of whom I was one!) would go for the ornate lyrics-cum-poetry that Sackett strings through the novel. The most curious thing is that none of the lyrics rhyme, and there’s no hook to any of the songs; I also got a Comus vibe from how Sackett described Witch’s Sabbath, and Comus was a cult band at best.
In this regard Candlemas Eve greatly resembles The Armageddon Rag, with Witch’s Sabbath becoming more and more popular as they go along, with the caveat that Sackett doesn’t work in a subplot that they are generating evil in their audience and threatening the status quo. Rather, Candlemas Eve revolves on more of a personal space, with Gwendolyn becoming increasingly evil and controlling and Simon becoming increasingly anxious about her.
Well, sort of. It’s actually Simon’s daughter, Rowena, who distrusts Gwendolyn. Simon Proctor is more focused on the money and the fame; he’s such a dimwitted “protagonist” that you can’t help but root against him. With her penchant for wearing revealing clothes, proclaiming to all and sundry that she is a Satan-worshipping witch, and also giving Simon blowjobs right in front of his teenaged daughter, Gwendolyn easily steals the novel – and, what’s more, the reader sort of roots for her. Sure, she’s an agent of darkness, and murders several innocent people in the course of the book…but at the same time she died for love, and is reborn for love, and commits herself to Simon Proctor.
In a way Candlemas Eve is like Bewitched; a mega powerful witch falls in love with a mortal man who doesn’t realize how lucky he has it. Just like Darrin would always shame Sam for using her witchcraft, so too does Simon Proctor constantly tell Gwendolyn that she’s not “really” a witch, that the Devil doesn’t exist, that it’s all fantasy. Yes, folks, it’s another of those horror novels where the characters don’t realize they’re in a horror novel.
It must be stated that there isn’t much “horror” stuff per se for the majority of the novel. Other than a bit where Simon – this time with Gwendolyn – goes back on that talk show, and Gwendolyn kills the religion professor via witchcraft voodoo (of course people think the guy just had a heart attack, as no one else realizes this is a horror novel, either), Candlemas Eve is more of a rock novel, with Simon and Witch’s Sabbath practicing new songs and taking them on the road.
As mentioned this time around Sackett doesn’t shirk on the juicy details; being a Satanic witch and all, Gwendolyn isn’t one to stand on ceremony, and gives herself to Simon on the night she meets him. First there’s a humorous bit where she smokes dope with him, uncertain what this “weed” is he’s referring to. Sackett does a good job of showing how out of time Gwendolyn is with the twentieth century, though her awkward, oldstyle English gets to be annoying after a while. Ie, “Know you not” and the like. But anyway, when Simon and Gwendolyn get down, Sackett leaves no juicy stone unturned – a marked difference from Mark Of The Werewolf. Yes, I realize I used “marked” and “Mark” in the same sentence.
Sadly the sleaze is minimal after this, other than a bravura bit where Rowena, Simon’s killjoy daughter – who despite being a killjoy is always on the road with the band – comes in on an in-progress orgy, with all the Witch’s Sabbath guys banging various babes and her dad getting that aforementioned blowjob from Gwendolyn. Even the pregnant girl, Karyn, is in on the festivities! Sackett shows a dedication to sleaze that I would not have expected; he even opens the novel with a preface stating that readers who frown on sexual explicitness should not read the book!
But otherwise the novel is tame on that regard, and also the frequent cutaways to what really happened in the seventeenth century became obtrusive. I had no interest in Adrienne and was not eager to read about her sad sack life in the 1690s and how she ran afoul of jezebel Abigal, ie the future Gwendolyn. I also kept wondering what happened to the two “actresses” who played Abigail and Mary in the opening sequence of the novel, ie the full hardcore movie based on John Proctor’s life, but as mentioned Sackett sort of drops the movie angle.
Instead, the focus is on the fame the band has generated, and this really brings in some similarities with The Armageddon Rag. Their audiences become bigger and bigger with each city, the fans really eating up their overly wordy Puritan-era lyrics and songs, praising Satan and whatnot, but if Gwendolyn’s goal was to spread the word of her “Master” through Simon’s music, Sackett drops this subplot, focusing more on Gwendolyn’s growing evilness.
Now as I’ve said before, I love my hot Satanic chicks. Gwendolyn as presented is the ideal woman: a stacked beauty who is totally devoted to her man and, what’s more, is superhumanly powerful, and will use her superhuman power to protect and empower her man. But dullard Simon doesn’t appreciate this; again, it’s what I call the Bewitched Conundrum. And Gwendolyn is totally fun, other than her penchant for killing ministers, that is.
She’s surely more fun than Simon’s deadbeat daughter, and she’s more fun than sad sack Adrienne, and she’s a helluva lot more fun than old pisspot Floyd Proctor. Either Sackett had so much fun writing Gwendolyn that he didn’t realize how likable he was making her, or his tongue was in his cheek and he knew exactly what he was doing.
The horror element slowly creeps in, beginning in the final quarter when Gwendolyn finally tells Simon the truth – that she is the spirit of Abigail, a witch who has been dead for 300 years, and who is currently possessing the body of a modern girl thanks to her master, Satan. You win a no-prize if you guess that Simon doesn’t believe her. What’s more, he’s such a piece of shit that, when Gwendolyn begs to marry him, Simon agrees to go along with it…but secretly plans to just fake it, and also to secretly record it, to add it as a bonus to a video he’s making. Because “the kids” will love it. Now honestly, what kid in 1988 would “love” to see their rockstar idol get married at the end of the video? I mean it’s like if that longform 1990 Danzig video ended with a Satanic wedding ceremony…come on.
Gwendolyn is truly the villain in the final chapters, as even she can no longer take Simon’s shit and thus vows to kill him – along with all the other Proctors. Sackett again proves his horror credentials by killing off characters the reader would think is safe; the finale is particularly gruesome, with eviscerated zombies shambling around under Gwendolyn’s control, people being turned into flame, and corpses who are invariably possessed by either Satan or by kindly ghosts.
Given the plot, it’s not surprising that Sackett brings in a religious theme, and Candlemas Eve features a saccharine “you’ve proved the goodness of your soul” finale that isn’t too heavy on the treacle, much to Sackett’s credit. But man, given the people who are bloodily butchered in the finale, you wonder how any of the survivors are going to be able to cope.
Overall I really enjoyed Candlemas Eve, with the caveat that all of the characters were for the most part unlikable, save for the friggin’ villain. But again, I like my hot Satanic pulp horror chicks, so it was only natural that Gwendolyn would be my favorite character. The novel was much, much better than Mark Of The Werewolf, and I’d recommend it if you are in the mood for some horror reading this Halloween season.
That said, thanks to my son I myself am in a horror mood – he’s been bitten hard by the Halloween bug – so I’ll have more horror reviews up this month.
The Spider #31: The Cholera King, by Grant Stockbridge
April, 1936 Popular Publications
It’s funny; the volumes of The Spiderthat I think I won’t enjoy turn out to be the most entertaining. It happened before with Reign Of The Death Fiddler, and now again with The Cholera King. Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page really keeps the story moving…mostly because he changes the direction of the plot so many times that the book veritably speeds by.
It’s a month after the previous volume, the events of which aren’t mentioned, but when we meet him Richard “The Spider” Wentworth is taking a much-needed vacation, along with his ever-suffering fiance, Nita Van Sloan. On a boat in the mid-Atlantic, Wentworth is in the process of having a marksman contest with a fellow shipmate, when the shipmate abruptly tries to kill Wentworth. The man then jumps off the ship and is picked up by a plane, making his escape.
However, this is not the plot Page wants to fool around with. Immediately thereafter we learn that cholera is rampant on the boat, and what’s more, Wentworth is informed that there’s been a cholera outbreak back in New York City. Wentworth does what any other pulp hero would do; he commandeers the boat’s sea-airplane and takes off for New York.
One thing I have been much appreciating about the latest volumes of The Spider is Nita’s growing involvement. Whereas past volumes shunted her off to the side, only appearing long enough to be captured, this time out Nita flat-out insists that she go to New York with Wentworth; she demands to take part in his adventures, now. This leads to a great bit where Wentworth, after flying alone in what he’s thought was a solo capacity for several hours, finds himself attacked by dogfighting planes – and is saved by the surprise appearance of a stowaway on his little airplane.
However this sequence is the only part of The Cholera King that I didn’t enjoy, as Page indulges in several pages of “aeronautical fiction.” Once Wentworth lands in New York, though, we get back on firmer pulp ground; Wentworth learns that cholera is rampant in the city, with thousands dead, and what’s more New York has been quarantined. This was especially timely in our post-Covid world, Norvell Page once again displaying a strange prescience:
Yes, “God help a city when the very children forget to play.” Not to mention a city where mothers are arrested for taking their children to playgrounds. Or where a man is arrested for paddleboarding on an empty beach. Not to mention the hundreds of other injustices the ruling class of “experts” perpetrated on we the public in the reign of Covid – things which they just wish we’d forget about, today – all in the name of “public health.”
It’s pretty sad that even the imagination of a 1930s pulp writer pales in comparison to reality, especially given that the New Yorkers in Page’s novel rebel against these injustices, and indeed unite, rise up together, and take their salvation into their own hands. But then, these people have none other than the Spider to lead them.
Page isn’t content to just write a novel about New York under a cholera quarantine, though. He also works in a murder-mystery plot, with city notables getting killed, and “tit-tat-toe” (or, more commonly today, tic-tac-toe) diagrams carved into their torsos. Wentworth is certain these murders are related to the cholera outbreak, but police boss Kirkpatrick doesn’t believe it.
We get more flying fiction as Wentworth (with Nita!) goes off in pursuit of men who try to sabotage a supply of acids or whatnot that’s being brought in to counteract the cholera in the city’s water. After this it’s back to the murder mystery subplot as Wentworth chases down various red herrings, certain that someone is the mastermind behind this nefarious plot.
Once again Wentworth himself names the villain of the piece: it’s the Plague Master, and sadly he continues the trend of being a poorly-costumed villain. He’s tall, bald, wears a crimson robe, and has a mummy-like face. He operates mostly in the background, but like all other Spider villains, he not only has an army of criminals at his command but he also knows who the Spider really is.
Speaking of the Spider, the best part in The Cholera King entails Wentworth donning his Spider guise and going out into the city to take down the looters – yet more prescience on Page’s part, with the caveat that in his day looters were still considered criminals. Wentworth, slouching through the city in his cloak and deformed mask, comes upon a pair of sadists as they toss a woman out of a window, and the Spider goes up there to dish out some bloody payback. It’s a cool moment, the best in the book, and it would’ve been great if Page had just written the entire novel in this manner.
Unfortunately, our author has other intentions: for one, he introduces yet another subplot where Wentworth disguises himself yet again and goes into the slums of the Bowery, posing as a criminal in the hopes of being drafted into the Plague Master’s criminal empire. This subplot is humorously dropped as Page changes his mind and instead has the Spider become a hero for the downtrodden, quarantined masses of New York City.
If only there had been a Spider in the real world of 2020! After taking down many of the looters and criminals who are plaguing the disease-ridden, quarantined city (not to mention being chased by the cops himself), Wentworth the next day comes upon a group of desperate people who are about to drink from a water hose, even though the water is contaminated with cholera and it will mean sudden death if they drink it. Wentworth is driven to help them and, still in his cape and whatnot, makes a stirring speech and says he will lead them to safety.
This part is great and shows that Page understood the concept of masculine strength, another thing the “experts” have tried to make us forget. There are constant asides of “What a man!” from the women who flock to the powerful leader that is Richard Wentworth, one of them even mentioning later on how no man will ever equal Wentworth in her eyes. Wentworth, we’ll recall, is a man of wealth who has seen a need in people and has willingly put himself in harm’s way to help them, despite being branded as a criminal and hated by the authorities. Boy, this sure reminds me of a particular real-world person…
Now The Cholera King becomes a survival yarn as Wentworth, still posing as the Spider, leads a few million New Yorkers on an “exodus” into the country, where they can have fresh water and live again, away from the cholera. Again there’s that prescience as they are constantly impeded by the authorities, ie the “experts,” who even draw guns on them and tell them they cannot proceed, because they are infected with cholera and it’s important for the “public health” that they stay in New York. To die.
But Norvell Page and Richard Wentworth are on the side of freedom and life, not tyranny and death, and Wentworth leads his millions on into the wilderness, breaking right through the government troops who have lined up to stop them. It was awesome to read this and to be reminded that there was a time when a pulp writer could still believe in the independence and free spirit of the American people, to imagine that they would buck against the forces of oppression. Sadly, as demonstrated by the willful masking, one-way-aisles-at-the-grocery-store, and “six feet of separation” of the Covid years (the majority of which was bullshit that was made up on the fly), this independence and free will has either been lost in the 89 years since The Cholera King was published, or it never existed in the first place and is just the product of a pulp writer’s imagination. Personally, I believe the former.
The exodus sequence is almost disconnected from the rest of the book, but is entertaining as hell, especially given its connotations with our modern day, or at least the modern day of a few years ago. (Fortunately, things seem to be changing profoundly.) But then it’s back to the “posing as a criminal to get hired” subplot, which of course leads to Wentworth being trapped by the Plague Master, who by the way also has Nita prisoner – and also wants her to marry him!
There’s no big action finale for The Cholera King; indeed, Norvell Page relies on deus ex machina, with Wentworth being saved as he’s being led to his death. Really, Page has spent so much of the narrative on the tic-tac-toe mystery (including a super-long footnote in which he tells how to solve the various ciphers in the text, perhaps unintentionally inspiring the future Zodiac Killer), not to mention the exodus from New York, that the poor Plague Master himself is reduced to almost a footnote…and the “revelation” of his real identity is (intentionally?) hilarious, as it’s some dude Wentworth and Nita knows, but the guy hasn’t even been mentioned in the book!
Anyway, I really enjoyed The Cholera King; the plot was all over the place, but the high points were really high, and Norvell Page’s unwitting prediction of the Covid era gave the book a lot of resonance with today.
