Halls of Horror began life as House of Hammer, one of Britain's premier horror magazines. The initial focus was on Hammer and comic adaptations of the studio's work. Eventually, the scope of the title was broadened to include horror from other studios and independents.
I always enjoyed the input of Tony Crawley, a correspondent who reported on horror and fantasy from the genre's far-flung corners of the globe. In a sense, reading Crawley was like getting updates of Phil Hardy's 'Aurum Film Encyclopedia' (the Horror volume).
The above ad mat is an example of rare poster art the magazine often published. Much of this art did not appear on video sleeves, but was used by producers to sell the film to distributors at festivals such as AFM, Cannes, and MIFED.
This piece of Unhinged art is really atmospheric and beautiful. Shame the film possessed none of its mystery.
This Vampire Lovers ad mat is included in this issue to support a career article on actress Ingrid Pitt.
The name on the fan letter above will be familiar to fans of the book 'Killing For Culture', one of my favorite genre film books of all time on the subject of Mondo/'Death Film'.
Written in '93 just prior to the explosion of internet access to atrocities beyond imagining a decade earlier, the Kerekes/David Slater book is ripe for a follow-up, and I sincerely hope the authors take up the task.
Another book begging for a serious update is David Hebditch and the late Nick Anning's monumental tome on the global porn industry, Porn Gold. Published in '88, a few years prior to the arrival of on-line pornography, the landscape so vividly drawn in the book has changed dramatically in the twenty-five years since; an update would not lack for material.
Kerekes mentions Ramsey Campell in his letter, and I agree with his sentiments. Campbell has always provided an astute veteran's view of the genre. In this issue's 'Campbell's Column', the horror writer revisits James Herbert's The Fog, a book he initially publicly criticized for its violence, fearing it was inappropriate for Herbert's large schoolboy readership.
I was a schoolboy when I devoured the scene Campbell refers to (penises are lopped off in a school gymnasium with garden shears), but I don't remember feeling anything but excitement and glee at the images his writing evoked.
Campbell concludes:
"I believe there is no worthwhile reason to write fiction other than to try to tell the truth. Herbert does, and never seeks to hide the contradictions of his personality. More power to him."
"I Am The Bird" is stated often, even insisted upon, in Terry M. Wright's luminous novel of the same name, but that doesn't make it so. In fact (a word too absolute for this book), nothing at all is certain in Mr. Wright's universe of dread.
Max Gorshen appears to be confined to his apartment, and he hints at there being reasons why -- at least physically -- he can't leave. You don't hear the squeak of a wheelchair, and he does run to the Big Apple store next door now and then, but there is a bittersweet memory lingering of a car accident long ago, and a steering column with a mind of its own. I repeat: none of this is certain; these are reconstructed memories written aloud.
In previous works by the author such as A Manhattan Ghost Story and The Playground, the dead loitered, stranded in a limbo of unreliable memories and abruptly canceled desires.
The skeleton of these novels was a more conventional narrative (relatively speaking) in which ordinary characters brushed shoulders with the extraordinary. Recently, Mr. Wright's explorations of memory, desire, mortality and sanity (just what is that exactly? he asks) have taken up residence beyond anything resembling a conventional, "commercial" narrative. I AM THE BIRD and Blue Canoe have their foundation pillars sunk solidly into the mind itself. It's the mind as a bubbling bog, a steaming sucking pit of conflict, contradictions, paranoia, and pure, primitive sexuality. The upshot for the reader is exhilaration.
It is no great shock that Ramsey Campbell has attempted an introduction to this rare tablet of literature.
Ramsey Campbell
In books like The Face That Must Die, he, too, trained his pen on the decaying mind, and death as a lingering aroma. "Insanity is a way of not being left alone," he writes. "Suppose death is indistinguishable from insanity?" In I AM THE BIRD, it is, and only that seems to be certain. "Is writing an act of denial?" he concludes, raising a terribly relevant point, and succeeding in deciphering the key (possibly) to Max Gorshen's process.
The narrative is shared by three voices, although shared is a little too polite. Better to say they jostle for position. Gorshen occupies the narrative limelight initially, but the insularity of his permanent night sweats is broken by (another) man who resides in his hallway and an African parrot who shares his living room. These folks may or may not be an unholy trinity, and it is to Mr. Wright's credit that their relationship is never defined beyond reasonable doubt. It is choices like these that make the work of this author so unique, infuriating, and immensely satisfying.
While lapping up this literary feast, I was reminded of a short, animated film about death and memory. It was part of the anthology Allegro Non Troppo, and focused on a cat who visits the semi-demolished apartment block where he lived long ago.
As he roams through the spaces where life once existed, his memories ignite momentarily and become real enough to experience once more.
It is a beautiful film, and its final revelation is sad and apt. It presents us with the idea that memories can exist separately from our selves, and are capable of breaking away from us like a branch from a tree. And surviving. In I AM THE BIRD, memory may be all that survives, and though it is rewritten, reshaped, and deceived by our unreliable (and failing senses) senses, it is our identity.
Like every character in it, the book's title is not to be trusted. The "I" is heavily underlined and represents a battle for control and superiority. The three story tellers, who may be one split unevenly into three, work hard to prove their legitimacy, and seem destined to struggle eternally. They suffer because of memory, because of need, because of ego. They've learned to vocalize, but they haven't learned to harmonize.
Of course, though the world of Max Gorshen is closing in and petrifying, he finds time and energy to contemplate masturbation and fornication. Like the last oxygen bubble burped from a drowning man, his sexual impulse further clouds his brain as it (falsely) promises a vacation from the madness. His rumination on the bird Langley's sexual habits provides one of the book's funniest passages:
As highly intelligent as he (Langley) so obviously is, his brain is set up only for mating (on the fly, so to speak, quickly and efficiently, but without the sort of tender, love, affection and need that we humans find so appealing and necessary), and then it quickly moves on to equally important, though separate matters -- eluding predators, finding nuitritious vegetation and edible insects.
In this, Gorshen may be acknowledging the complexity of human needs while admiring (and envying perhaps?) the lack of BS clogging the arteries of the animal kingdom. If only it were that simple for us?
Few writers of the fantastique get to the marrow of what it is to be born and die slowly over a lifetime. For Terry Wright, this is his territory, and he knows it like a caddie knows every club in a golf pro's bag.
Self portrait of Mr. Wright
In I AM THE BIRD, he mines the mental escarpment and documents the drawbacks of radical changes in elevation. Nobody does it better.
***
The 2006 edition of TM Wright's I AM THE BIRD from UK-based PS Publishing is a beautifully presented literary country that is well worth your discovery.
In Stephen King's The Shining, it's The Overlook Hotel that infects the narrator.
In Frank Lambirth's Now I Lay me Down To Sleep, it's Stone Warrior Island, a remote parcel of earth off the coast of Washington.
The '89 novel from Popular Library, a division of Warner Books, is a taut, first person account of a man's plunge into madness.
The H.P. Lovecraft influence is evident in the novel's events and voice.
It opens thus:
They sit before me, a cautious encouragement mirrored in their faces. My liberty, perhaps my life, depends on their accepting that I speak the truth. I came to this island, isolated in the Great North Woods of Canada, joined later by a family of four. They are all dead -- murdered -- yet there was no living soul except myself within two hundred miles of the tiny island. I have lived the past eight terrifying days in a minute universe stalked by the same horror that struck them down. Even now, surrounded by policemen, I cannot shake the premonition that I will not leave this hellish place. I start to talk, hesitantly at first, then with more assurance.
I like the paranoid, somewhat arch style of Lambirth's obscure novel. And I enjoyed experiencing the wilting hope of the narrator.
The 31st chapter opens with this declaration:
No smile rewarded my attempt at levity, yet my request turned the spigot on a stream of words.
Yes, Mr. Lambirth is channeling Lovecraft from beyond time and space, but there are elements of Ramsey Campbell, too (the awesome The Face That Must Die), and, of course William Hope Hodgson. The author sources these writers, but he mates them together and manages to regurgitate a fresh fetus.
The language is frequently hysterical, but it is consistent with the character's downward spiral, and we are left with no doubt that our narrator is losing his marbles.
The book is built for dread, not chills, and does not diverge from its mission.
Back in '89, I used to frequent The Paperback Shack on Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood, a veritable vending machine of contemporary horror novels. Each week I would buy three or four new releases; this was the horror glut that preceded the genre's temporary crash. For a short period at least, it was the best of times for horror.
Lambirth's only other novel is the '88 Behind The Door, which I'm ashamed to admit I don't own and haven't read.
The book's cover illustration is credited to Mark and Stephanie Gerber.
Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is a worthy addition to any horror library.
