Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Terror Tales, July 1935

Nobody could accuse TERROR TALES, or any of the other Weird Menace pulps, for that matter, of being subtle and restrained. That's certainly true of this cover by John Howitt, which is one of the more lurid that I recall. The lineup of authors inside this issue is pretty much an all-star one for this genre: Hugh B. Cave, Wyatt Blassingame, Wayne Rogers, Paul Ernst, Nat Schachner, and James A. Goldthwaite writing as Francis James. All those guys wrote other things, too, of course, but they were prolific and well-regarded contributors to the Weird Menace pulps.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Mysteries, January 1941

I've never read an issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES and don't own any, but I should probably try to remedy that because it looks like my kind of pulp! The covers make it look like a cross between a regular detective pulp and a Weird Menace pulp. I don't know who did the art on this one, but it's certainly eye-catching. And the authors inside are equally intriguing: Norvell Page, Henry Kuttner, Russell Gray (who was really Bruno Fischer), Stewart Sterling, and R.S. Lerch. That's a fine group.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Sinister Stories, March 1940

SINISTER STORIES was the shortest-lived of Popular Publications' Weird Menace pulps, lasting only three issues in 1940. All three issues recycled covers from TERROR TALES. This one is particularly racy. I don't know the artist. The stories were all new, as far as I can tell. The best-known authors in this issue, at least these days, are Russell Gray (who was really Bruno Fischer) and Robert Leslie Bellem. Some of the others were familiar names to Weird Menace fans, though, such as Donald Dale (Mary Dale Buckner) and Francis James (James A. Goldthwaite), while Raymond Whetstone, William Brailsford, and Richard G. Huzarski are all pretty obscure, at least to me. SINISTER STORIES came along at the tail-end of the Weird Menace era, or it might have lasted longer. It certainly doesn't look like a bad pulp for that genre.

Hands Beyond the Grave - Henry Treat Sperry

I’ve gotten interested in the obscure pulp author Henry Treat Sperry, probably because when I looked him up on the Fictionmags Index, I noticed something odd. His first published story was “Hands Beyond the Grave” in the September 1934 issue of TERROR TALES, the first issue of that iconic Weird Menace pulp. Sperry’s second story, though, was “Posies for the Widdy” in the First December Number, 1934, of RANCH ROMANCES. Anybody who can go directly from TERROR TALES to RANCH ROMANCES is my kind of writer!

I don’t have that issue of RANCH ROMANCES, but I do have the facsimile reprint edition of that TERROR TALES published by Steeger Books, so I went ahead and read Sperry's story. It starts off as if Sperry was influenced to a certain extent by H.P. Lovecraft. The narrator of the story is a well-to-do young New Englander named Robert Mercer, who awakens one night to find a sinister, amorphous shape lurking at the foot of his bed. There’s lot of “nameless dread”, “unspeakable terror”, and “too horrified to move”. But then, unlike most of Lovecraft’s protagonists, Sperry has his hero bound out of bed, grab an ornamental javelin off the wall, and attack the lurking presence. It doesn’t do much good, of course: the thing vanishes with an explosion that leaves Mercer senseless. He calls a buddy of his, a doctor who’s also a psychical researcher, and with the help of an elderly female medium, they set out to find out what it is that’s haunting Mercer and why.

That early battle is the high point of the action in this story, which goes back to brooding and being scared, as well as a murder and finally an explanation of sorts. Honestly, I thought this yarn cried out for one more twist that never came, but for a debut story, it’s well-written and flows well, even though you wouldn’t exactly call it fast-paced. More action and dialogue than HPL, though.

I haven’t been able to find out much about Henry Treat Sperry. He was born in 1903 and died in 1938 at age 35. He was married and worked as an assistant editor at Popular Publications, helping with several of the pulps to which he sold stories. His writing career lasted only four years, but during that time he published almost 70 stories, most of them Weird Menace but with a scattering of detective and G-Man yarns, a few Western romances, and even an air-war story or two. One of his Western romances was called “Locoed Cowgirl” (RANCH ROMANCES, First February Number, 1938). I’m sure it was innocent enough, but I can’t help but think that would be a good title for a Weird Menace/Western romance crossover about a seemingly demonically possessed cowgirl. I’d read that.

In the meantime, the other stories in the first issue of TERROR TALES look great, and I plan to read them, too. That facsimile reprint is available on Amazon or directly from the Steeger Books website.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, May 1940

Rudolph Belarski provides the eye-catching cover for this issue of THRILLING MYSTERY, and spinning the yarns inside are Robert Bloch, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Carl Jacobi, Stewart Sterling, Arthur K. Barnes, house-name Will Garth, and lesser-known pulpsters Russell Stanton and David Bernard. With covers and titles like that, it's no wonder the Weird Menace pulps sold so well for a while.

Spicy Zeppelin Stories - Will Murray

SPICY ZEPPELIN STORIES is a pulp reprint of a pulp that never existed. As author Will Murray explains in his introduction, the concept began as a joke in the early days of Odyssey Publications, one of the first of the pulp reprinters back in the Eighties. Under a variety of pseudonyms, some of them anagrams of his real name, Murray set out to write stories in various pulp genres, basing his style in them on actual pulp authors, but adding in the spicy elements common to the genre (most often, beautiful young women losing some or all of their clothes by accident). The stories remained in his files for years but were finally gathered together and published by Tattered Pages Press. Now, in a real full circle move, Odyssey Publications has just brought out a new edition, using the never-before-seen original cover by Mike Symes and art from the Tattered Pages Press edition by Bobb Cotter.

That background is fun for pulp fans, but here’s where it gets really interesting: this book may have had its origins in a joke, but that doesn’t mean Murray failed to take writing the stories seriously. It may have been early in his career when he produced these yarns, but his storytelling ability was already there, along with a keen grasp of pulp history and what makes such stories work.

The collection leads off with “Gondola Girl”, a novella featuring tycoon King “Steel” Chane, whose efforts to establish an airship line are being sabotaged. The battle between Chane and his rival leads to a South Seas island where an important secret is waiting to be discovered. Murray’s inspiration in this story is Lester Dent, and as he continued to do for decades afterward, he does a great job of capturing the breakneck pace of Dent’s work.

“Gasbag Buckaroo” (great title) finds a stalwart young cowboy trying to solve the mystery of who’s rustling cattle from the ranch belong to the young woman he loves. “Hydrogen Horror” is a World War I spy yarn with a lot of flying action. In “Zeps of the Void”, two-fisted adventurer Solar Smith fights space pirates. G-Man Jeff Holt tries to discover who murdered all the passengers on a train speeding through the Kentucky hills in “Rail Lair”. No pulp collection would be complete without a Weird Menace story, and “Catwalk Creeper” fills the bill in this volume with a tale of passengers on a trans-Atlantic zeppelin flight turned to stone by a mysterious killer. The book wraps up with “Chane”, another appearance by King “Steel” Chane, the hero of “Gondola Girl”. This enigmatic tale brings up more questions than it answers.

While Murray’s writing may not be as polished in these stories than it is later on, the sense of fun and enthusiasm in them is highly infectious. I had a great time reading them. His command of the various genres is top-notch and all the stories race along, taking the reader with them on a thrilling ride. I really enjoyed SPICY ZEPPELIN STORIES. It’s available in paperback and hardcover editions, and I give it a high recommendation for all pulp fans.

The Curse of the Harcourts - Chandler H. Whipple

Since today is Halloween, I want to post about a classic horror yarn that not all that many people are familiar with. But a lot of pulp fans are. I’m speaking, of course, of THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS by Chandler Whipple, a collection of six grisly, bone-chilling novelettes originally published in the Weird Menace pulp DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE in 1935 that fit together to form one compelling narrative. These stories were reprinted several years ago by Altus Press in handsome trade paperback and e-book editions.

As John Pelan points out in his excellent introduction, despite being published in DIME MYSTERY, these are not traditional Weird Menace stories. They have historical settings, blatantly supernatural plot elements, and a high degree of graphic violence that isn’t explained away in the end by some logical resolution. No, these are straight out, full speed, blood and thunder horror yarns . . . which happens to be the kind I like best.

The first story, “The Son of Darkness”, appeared in the February 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY. Set in Normandy, it tells of the visit of an Italian nobleman, Count Pirelli, to the castle of Baron d’Harcourt and his family in the year 1000 (approximately). The baron welcomes Pirelli and even throws a party to celebrate his visit, but when the count tries to seduce d’Harcourt’s daughter, the baron whips him, humiliates him, and throws him out. That causes Pirelli to curse d’Harcourt and all his family and vow to exterminate them from the face of the earth, no matter how long it takes. Since it turns out that Pirelli is in league with Satan and probably can’t be killed, that’s liable to take a while, but he gets a good start on his bloody vengeance in this story.

Two hundred years have passed by the time of “Curse of the Harcourts” from the March 1935 issue. The d’Harcourt family is now English, and the current head of the family, Sir Henry d’Harcourt is in charge of a castle on the border between England and Wales which is besieged by an army of Welsh rebels. Then the castle is infiltrated by Druid sorcerers bent on revenge against the family for disrespecting their gods, revenge that involves human sacrifice and a literal trip to Hell for Henry.

Two hundred years after that, in “Shadow of the Plague” (April 1935), the Harcourt family now lives in London during the time of the Black Plague, and the evil entity that has stalked them through time takes advantage of that deadly disease to further his vengeance.

By the time of “White Lady of Hell” (June 1935), the Harcourt family has shrunk to three—a brother and sister and their mother—and has been exiled to Florence because of political intrigue in England. More than a hundred years has passed since the previous story, but you can bet that the evil Pirelli, who was Florence originally and made his deal with the Devil there, will show up again, and so he does, with the Harcourt siblings barely surviving to carry on the line. Not with each other, mind you. These stories are pretty lurid, but they don’t go quite that far.

In “A Child for Satan”, which originally appeared in the September 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY, we learn that there were Harcourts living in Salem at the time of the witch trials, because, well, sure, why not? This is the only story in the series with a female protagonist, a young woman who is married to a Harcourt and has an infant son with him. But the evil Count Pirelli wants the child for Satan and will resort to any evil means to get him. In some respects, despite the supernatural menace of the Count, this one does bear more of a resemblance to a typical Weird Menace yarn.

The series concludes with “The Last Harcourt” (October 1935), which takes place in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts in 1932 and features the final showdown between the Harcourts and the satanic Count Pirelli. That showdown has a pretty epic feel to it, too, and then Whipple gives us a nice little twist in the ending.

I enjoyed this series, but I have to give it a qualified recommendation, that qualification being that if you want to read it for Halloween, start at the beginning of October and space out the stories over the entire month, rather than reading the whole thing in less than a week like I did. The sameness of the plots tends to weaken them, and the relentless parade of torture, misery, and death is just overwhelming. I think the series would be more effective with plenty of time between installments, the way the readers of DIME MYSTERY encountered it back in 1935. That said, if you’re a pulp fan, I really think you ought to read THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS, because I’ve never run across anything else exactly like it in the pulps. (The art on all those issues of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE is by Walter M. Baumhofer, by the way.)

Slaves of the Blood Wolves - Robert Weinberg, ed.

This is a modern-day reprint published by Wildside Press of a collection originally edited and published by Robert Weinberg in 1979 that reprinted four Weird Menace pulp stories from the Thirties. The Weinberg edition has a very nice cover by Stephen Fabian that the Wildside Press reprint also uses. This collection features four authors who were million-words-a-year guys, or close to it, anyway.

The author who leads off this collection, Arthur J. Burks, definitely produced more than a million words a year for a number of years during the pulp era. He wrote all types of stories, as well: detective, aviation, adventure, science fiction, even a few Westerns and sports yarns. He was a prolific contributor to the Weird Menace pulps. His story “Slaves of the Blood Wolves” appeared in the December 1935 issue of TERROR TALES. It’s about a doctor and nurse flying into a blizzard to reach a remote Canadian settlement where the doctor’s father once lived. The people there are beset by two calamities: a mysterious wasting disease and the threat from a horde of starving, blood-hungry wolves. Things turn nasty quickly, as you might expect. Unlike most Weird Menace stories, there’s no real mystery or Scooby Doo ending in this one, just pure action and horror. It’s well-written but maybe a little too over the top for my tastes. (Yes, such a thing is possible, believe it or not.)

Wyatt Blassingame had a great career in the pulps, writing hundreds of detective, Western, and sports stories in addition to being one of the leading authors of Weird Menace yarns. His novelette “Satan Sends a Woman” appeared in the January 1936 issue of TERROR TALES. In it, two-fisted adventurer Ed Roland explores a sinister Alabama swamp where several men have disappeared. The swamp is also the only way to reach an area of the coast where a ship carrying a fortune in pearls is supposed to have run aground some years earlier. Not only does Roland have to deal with the regular dangers that a swamp poses (snakes, alligators, quicksand, etc.), but he also encounters a strangely beautiful young woman who may not be what she seems. Like the Burks yarn that precedes it in this collection, “Satan Sends a Woman” doesn’t really follow the Weird Menace formula, but it’s well-written and gallops along in an entertaining fashion. I’ve read quite a few stories by Blassingame in the past few years and always enjoy his work.

Norvell Page is best known for writing most of the Spider novels, of course, but he wrote a bunch of other stuff for the pulps, including stories for some of the Weird Menace magazines. His novella “The Red Eye of Rin-Po-Che” appeared in the November 1939 issue of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Its protagonist is globe-trotting Irish adventurer Moriarity O’Moore, who is in a New York City nightclub one evening when a beautiful young woman jumps up from a table as he’s passing by, throws her arms around him, and kisses him like he’s her long-lost lover. Only thing is, O’Moore has never laid eyes on her before. But the man she’s with is a sinister-looking bozo, and when she begs O’Moore for help, you know he’s going to play along with the gag, whatever it is. And so off we gallop into a yarn that’s almost non-stop action as O’Moore battles to save a beautiful girl and a fabulously valuable ruby from the evil clutches of some cultists and their high priest. As with the first two stories in this collection, “The Red Eye of Rin-Po-Che” isn’t a standard Weird Menace yarn, either, and it probably would have been more at home in a detective pulp or some magazine like ARGOSY. But I’m not complaining, because this is a great tale that reminds us Norvell Page was one of the top action writers in the pulps, right up there with Robert E. Howard and Lester Dent. There’s a second Moriarty O’Moore story, “The Red Eye of Kali”, which also appeared in DIME MYSTERY a year later, in the November 1940 issue, but it appears never to have been reprinted.

This collection wraps up with “Girl of the Goat-God” by Arthur Leo Zagat, one of the top names in Weird Menace pulps and also the author of numerous detective, science fiction, and adventure yarns. Originally published in the November 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE, this story actually does fall firmly within the usual Weird Menace boundaries: there’s a sinister old house with some sinister gardens, a statue of Pan that may be coming to life and killing people, a swamp, a beautiful young woman with a menacing aunt, a stalwart hero who loves the girl, and a herd of goats that stampedes at the worst possible time. All of it told in Zagat’s slick, breathless prose that makes the pages just race by. Anybody who has read many Weird Menace stories will figure out the ending pretty quickly, but that doesn’t matter. The fun lies in how Zagat gets there, and it’s a lot of fun indeed.

As we’ve seen, SLAVES OF THE BLOOD WOLVES isn’t really that representative of the Weird Menace genre, but every story in it is very well-written and highly entertaining. My favorite is the Norvell Page yarn with its fantastic action and pace, but the other stories are all well worth reading as well. For pulp fans, I give this collection a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, December 1935

This is the second issue of THRILLING MYSTERY, launched by the Thrilling Group to compete with the success of Popular Publications’ leading Weird Menace pulp DIME MYSTERY. I don’t know who did the cover, but it’s plenty garish and eye-catching. An e-book reprint of this pulp is available from Radio Archives, so being both time- and attention span-challenged, I read it recently.

Wyatt Blassingame was one of the top Weird Menace authors over at Popular, so it’s no surprise to find him leading off this issue with a novelette called “The Flame Demon”. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Blassingame, but unfortunately, this yarn about a villain calling himself the God of Fire comes across to me as pretty uninspired. There are some nice action scenes—lots of big fires, and the protagonist finds himself in a really harrowing position—but Blassingame seems to have phoned in the muddled plot, which requires quite a bit of unconvincing exposition in the final pages to explain. I don’t have any way of knowing, of course, but I suspect that Rogers Terrill at Popular rejected this story and Harvey Burns, the editor at THRILLING MYSTERY, snapped it up because of Blassingame’s name recognition in the genre.

“Voice From Hell”, a short story by Jack D’Arcy (really D.L. Champion, creator of the Phantom Detective), is a Poe-like tale with a clever twist to it about a murderer tormented by his crime. It’s a slight but enjoyable story and an improvement over Blassingame’s novelette.

This issue really begins to pick up steam with “Ghouls of the Green Web”, a novelette from the dependable G.T. Fleming-Roberts. It’s set in a small Kansas city during the Dust Bowl, one of the few pulp stories I’ve read to use that bit of real-life history in its plot. Fleming-Roberts does a really nice job with it, too. The writing is excellent. Fleming-Roberts’ prose can be lurid, over the top, and genuinely creepy when it needs to be, and then turn around and achieve a terse, hardboiled, poetic effect. The menace seems a bit more realistic than some, as well. I really enjoyed this one.

I don’t know anything about James Duncan, author of the novelette “Blood in the Night” except that his real name was Arthur Pincus and that he wrote dozens of mystery, detective, and Weird Menace stories for a variety of pulps. His story in this issue is a bit of a kitchen-sink tale, with a witch’s curse, murders that appear to have been committed by a vampire, and an old house full of heirs to a fortune who benefit by knocking each other off, a set-up reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel, plus a master detective who is, at least, nothing like Hercule Poirot. Duncan pulls it all together and makes it work in a reasonably entertaining fashion.

Likewise, I know very little about Saul W. Paul, author of the short story “Forest of Fear”. That appears to have been his real name, and he sold about a dozen stories in the Thirties, mostly to the Spicy pulps. This story, about a honeymooning young couple who encounter a deadly menace in the woods, is only borderline Weird Menace and has nothing even apparently supernatural about it, but it does strike a few nicely creepy notes.

Arthur J. Burks was a million-words-a-year man, so I’m surprised I haven’t read more by him, only a few stories here and there. His novelette in this issue, “Demons in the Dust”, is another Dust Bowl yarn, but Burks carries the situation so far that this story reads more like post-apocalyptic science fiction than Weird Menace. And as post-apocalyptic SF, it’s not bad, although the plot—the protagonist and his newlywed wife try to escape from a particularly bad dust storm—is a little thin. But there’s lots of action and it’s well-written, making for a bleak but satisfying tale.

H.M. Appel is another author I’m not familiar with, except for seeing on the Fictionmags Index that he wrote several dozen stories for various Weird Menace and detective pulps. His short story “Hooks of Death” isn’t really Weird Menace, either, despite being fairly grisly in places. It’s about a young highway patrolman’s pursuit of a serial killer stalking a particular stretch of road. The prose has plenty of momentum and the hero’s background furnishes a nice twist.

Jack Williamson isn’t a name I expected to encounter in the Table of Contents in a Weird Menace pulp, but in addition to being one of the giants of science fiction, Williamson also wrote a considerable amount of fantasy and horror, so it’s not that much of a stretch. His novelette “Grey Arms of Death” is about some very Cthulhu-like creatures from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean stalking some deep-sea explorers and invading a lonely cliffside mansion. I don’t know if Williamson ever read Lovecraft, but based on this story I feel like there’s a good chance he did. This is pure Weird Menace, and Williamson, already a very seasoned pro in 1935, throws himself into the breakneck, lurid prose with great gusto. This is a fast-moving and very entertaining story, probably my favorite in the whole issue.

Overall, this issue of THRILLING MYSTERY is a satisfying read, even though some of the stories don’t fit the Weird Menace genre that well. I have no way of knowing, but since it was only the second issue, I suspect that the stories by Duncan, Paul, and Appel were intended originally for POPULAR DETECTIVE or possibly as back-ups in THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE and were pulled out of inventory to go in THRILLING MYSTERY. But that’s pure speculation on my part.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Mystery Magazine, July 1940

Rafael De Soto provides not only some action and a good-looking redhead, but also some downright weirdness in this cover for DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE. The Weird Menace boom was just about over by the time this pulp was published, but you can still see its lingering influence in the cover and the story titles. There are some excellent authors in this issue: Bruno Fischer (as Russell Gray), Wyatt Blassingame, Stewart Sterling, Ralph Oppenheim (best remembered for his aviation yarns), and the lesser-known Costa Carousso and W. Wayne Robbins.

Terror Tales - John H. Knox

Art by John Howitt

This is kind of a familiar story. A young man with literary ambitions in a central Texas town, the son of a well-respected professional man, is friends with all the locals who also have literary ambitions. He decides to become a pulp writer and pounds out stories in a small room that becomes his sanctum, while also working at various odd jobs. When he breaks in and makes his first sale, he becomes even more prolific, with his work appearing in several of the top pulp magazines of the era and even frequently featured on the covers.

Robert E. Howard, you say? Nope. This is John H. Knox we’re talking about, the son of a minister and probably the most successful pulp writer to come out of Abilene, Texas. Certainly the most successful author of Weird Menace yarns from Abilene, which is less than an hour’s drive from Cross Plains, the home of Robert E. Howard. It kind of boggles the mind to think that these two young men lived so close to each other and toiled in the same business at the same time, yet, as far as I know, they never met or even knew of each other.

Radio Archives compiled several collections of Knox’s Weird Menace stories, including this one where all the stories are taken from the pulp TERROR TALES. I decided to sample his work, and this seemed like a good place to start.

The first story in this collection is “Dead Man’s Shadow”, from the December 1934 issue of TERROR TALES. It makes use of a standard mystery plot: a creepy old house full of sinister, eccentric characters, relatives of a rich old man who are waiting for him to die so they can fight over his fortune. The protagonist is a private detective hired by one of the potential heirs who fears someone is going to try to murder him. Knox’s Texas connection comes through in this one because the private eye works for the Lone Star Detective Agency in San Antonio, and although it’s never stated, it’s easy to assume that the creepy old house is located on the Texas Gulf Coast. While there’s nothing groundbreaking in the plot, and the main villain is pretty easy to spot, Knox keeps the action moving along very well, and his prose is both evocative and fast-moving, two important qualities for a Weird Menace writer.

Art by John Howitt

“The Ice Maiden” was published in the June 1935 issue of TERROR TALES, and man, does it move! The narrator is a reporter who has journeyed to an isolated lodge somewhere in the North Woods to interview a famous Arctic explorer, along with two of the man’s colleagues. The beautiful young wife of one of the other men is there, too. After the discussion strays into the subject of mythological monsters found in the icy climes, the explorer says that he has something in the basement that he wants the others to see. Well, we all know that in a Weird Menace story, nothing stashed away mysteriously in a basement is going to be good, and sure enough, that’s the case here. Gruesome murders right and left, baffling disappearances, love at first sight . . . Knox really piles it on, and the characters barely get to take a breath before some other horror threatens them. The ones who survive, that is. I got so caught up in enjoying this story that I completely missed the clues to the big twist, which made it even more fun. This is just a great Weird Menace yarn.

Art by John Howitt

“His Bodiless Twin”, from the November 1935 issue of TERROR TALES, is a much different sort of story. It starts off philosophical, with discussions among the characters about mankind’s dual nature, the presence of good and evil in every man, and what a boon it would be if, say, a man’s evil nature could be separated from his good side through some combination of science and the occult, and then destroyed. Why, what could possibly go wrong with something like that? Of course, once the narrator agrees to go through with the experiment devised by his beautiful young wife’s cousin, who happens to be a movie star/scientist/metaphysicist, things do indeed go wrong. I’ll give Knox credit for writing some nicely atmospheric scenes in this one, but it’s talky in stretches and the big twist stretches disbelief pretty close to the breaking point.

Art by John Howitt

Dave Powell, the protagonist of “Reunion in Hell” (TERROR TALES, March 1936), is the sort of down-on-his-luck guy you’d expect to encounter in a Fifties noir novel by David Goodis or Gil Brewer. He and two other men were partners in a successful gold mine, until an explosion killed one of them and caused a scandal that ruined Dave and his other partner. Because he’s broke and desperate, Dave’s beautiful, wholesome young wife is tempted by an offer from a sleazy producer to join his burlesque show. Then, an unexpected visitor offers Dave a chance to fix everything. All he has to do is pretend to be somebody else and attend a family reunion held in a spooky old house. Again . . . what could possibly go wrong? This yarn rockets right along with a lot of well-done action and over the top horror. Knox really piles the trouble on his hero, and watching Dave battle through it is pretty entertaining. But as in “His Bodiless Twin”, the explanation for all the crazy goings-on really stretches credulity past the breaking point. I realize it’s kind of silly to be complaining about believable plots in Weird Menace stories, but Knox seems to be trying to outdo himself with every story.

Art by John Drew

If Knox faltered—a little—in the previous two stories, he more than redeems himself with “Kiss Me—and Die!”, a great yarn from the March/April 1937 issue of TERROR TALES. The plot is still packed full of stuff. Let me see if I can remember all of it. First of all, the story takes place in and around an isolated Arizona settlement that’s mostly a ghost town called Angel’s Grave. The setting gives it an almost Western feel at times. The place is called Angel’s Grave because local legend has it that two hundred years earlier, a Spanish soldier murdered his mistress and concealed her body in a cave. But ever since then, her ghost, known as “Sister Death”, has been appearing and luring men to their deaths with a siren-like scream. A mad scientist from Germany who claims to have mastered the process of alchemy has showed up in the area and built a laboratory in a cave that may or may not be the final resting place of Sister Death. Then there’s a millionaire toy manufacturer who wants to buy the process from the mad scientist, assuming, of course, that it turns out to be real, and the toy manufacturer has a beautiful daughter who the narrator, an undercover newspaper reporter, falls in love with at first sight. The mad scientist has deaf-mute assistants and a mysterious Hindu servant. And, oh, yeah, a blind violinist and a drunken artist are hanging around Angel’s Grave, too. Whew. As crazy as all that sounds, Knox actually makes the plot work, while providing several gruesome murders and plenty of breakneck action. I had a great time reading this one.

Artist Unknown

Compared to the inspired lunacy of “Kiss Me—and Die!”, the set-up for “Tenement of the Damned” (TERROR TALES, November/December 1937) is fairly simple. It also makes use of Knox’s Texas background in the setting, an unnamed city along the Texas/Mexico border that I think is probably supposed to be El Paso. It seems that a Mexican drug smuggler named El Vibora—The Viper—has been shot and killed by the Border Patrol, but the poor people who live in the slums near the Rio Grande believe that he has come back to life in the form of a snake that draws women and children to their deaths. It’s up to two-fisted real estate agent Jim Francis to figure out what’s really going on, and he has a personal reason to do so because his beautiful young wife, whose father owns the property where the slum sits, has a mysterious serpentine mark on her arm that shows she’s a target of El Vibora! At times, this story reads like Knox was trying to write a straightforward hardboiled detective yarn, but it never strays very far from Weird Menace territory. It’s a good story and moves along quite well.

It also wraps up this collection, which is no longer available. But if you already have it on your Kindle and are a Weird Menace fan, I give it a pretty high recommendation. Knox can be a little inconsistent, certainly, but all the stories are enjoyable and a couple of them are exceptional. I think he’s an interesting writer, and I intend to read more by him. There are three print collections of his Weird Menace stories available from Ramble House, and I've already ordered them even though there’s some duplication between them and the ebook volumes I have.

And I still think it’s a shame Knox and Bob Howard never ran into each other. I think they would have gotten along just fine.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Mysteries, September 1940

You don't get much more lurid than this cover for STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES. I don't know who the artist is, but he's just crammed the action and menace into this one. Inside are stories by Emile C. Tepperman, Donald G. Cormack, R.S. Lerch, Raymond Whetstone (sounds like a pseudonym, but apparently his real name), and Donald Dale, who was really Mary Dale Buckner, one of the few female authors to write Weird Menace yarns. I don't see how the contents could live up to that cover, but you never know.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Stories, January 1934

Clifford Benton's cover for this issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES is pretty exciting. I don't think I'd heard of Benton before. Looks like he did only a few pulp covers, all of them either for this magazine or its predecessor, NICKEL DETECTIVE. There's a strong group of writers in this issue, too: Norvell W. Page, E. Hoffmann Price, Arthur J. Burks, Frederick C. Painton, Ralph Perry, Harold Ward, Samuel Taylor, and a couple less familiar to me, Jack Smalley and Les Tillray. This is Tillray's only entry in the FMI. Might have been a pseudonym, might've just been his only sale. I don't know much about STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES, but based on this issue, it appears to have been a pulp worth reading.

UPDATE: I've learned from Lynn Munroe that the Les Tillray story in this issue, "Terror Trail", was actually written by none other than Erle Stanley Gardner, and that its original title was "Death Trail". Many thanks to Lynn for this great bit of literary detective work!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Real Mystery Magazine, April 1940

This is the first issue of a very short-lived Weird Menace pulp (there was only one more issue) debuting at a time when the Weird Menace boom was just about over. Most of the authors inside are house-names. The only ones who aren't are Ray Cummings (with a story as by Ray King), Bruno Fischer (with a story as by Russell Gray), and somebody named Lon Cordot, who published only a few stories and may well have been a pseudonym or house-name, too. I don't know who did the cover, but it's pretty eye-catching.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Stories, December 1940

The Weird Menace boom was over by the end of 1940, but STRANGE STORIES, a semi-Weird Menace pulp from the Thrilling Group was still hanging on. This is a good cover, a little reminiscent of the Spicy pulps. Good-looking girls sure had trouble keeping their clothes intact in those days. There are some good writers in this issue: Seabury Quinn, Norman A. Daniels, Don Alviso, Alexander Samalman. As well as some I've never heard of: Dorothy Quick, Joseph H. Hernandez, George J. Rawlins, and Dr. Arch Carr. Unusual to see a doctor using his title in a pulp magazine, but there you go. I wonder if he was a medical doctor. David H. Keller was always billed as David H. Keller, M.D.

UPDATE: The cover artist was the great Earle Bergey, who did six covers for STRANGE STORIES during its 13-issue run.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Mystery Stories, January 1936

This cover by H.L. Parkhurst is pretty lurid and bizarre even by Spicy pulp standards . . . but it sure catches the eye, doesn't it? Inside are stories by the usual top-notch suspects: two by Robert Leslie Bellem (as himself and as by Jerome Severs Perry), two by Edwin Truett Long (as Cary Moran and Mort Lansing), two by E. Hoffmann Price (as himself and as by Hamlin Daly), Hugh B. Cave (as Justin Case), Colby Quinn, and Charles A. Baker Jr., who may or may not have been real. It's pretty easy to see why most of the Spicy pulps were sold under the counter back in 1936, no matter how tame they may seem today.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, October 1936

Well, here's a cover with a little bit of everything! THRILLING MYSTERY may not have been the best-known of the Weird Menace pulps, but it had some good covers and authors. Inside this issue are stories by top pulpsters John H. Knox, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Frank Belknap Long, D.L. Champion (writing as Jack D'Arcy), Frederick C. Painton, and none other than Leslie Scott, best remembered for his Westerns, of course, writing under his pseudonym A. Leslie. A very entertaining issue, I'll bet.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Mystery Tales, June 1938

MYSTERY TALES is one of the lesser-known Weird Menace pulps, although you certainly couldn't tell that by the talent associated with this issue. The lurid cover is by the great Norman Saunders, and inside are stories by some top pulpsters, including Henry Kuttner, Wyatt Blassingame, John H. Knox, Walter Ripperger, Cyril Plunkett, and Hal K. Wells.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Mystery Stories, April 1942

The usual good cover by H.J. Ward on this issue of SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, the Spicy line's sort-of-Weird-Menace pulp. Inside are stories by the usual group of authors under the usual mix of pseudonyms and house-names: Robert Leslie Bellem (at least twice), Hugh B. Cave (as Justin Case), Laurence Donovan, Edwin Truett Long, Colby Quinn, and more. I really like the Spicy pulps, as most of you know. I find them consistently entertaining, although formulaic enough that I have to space them out some.

Forgotten Novelettes: Three Weird Menace Stories by Arthur Leo Zagat

I've posted before for Halloween about Weird Menace yarns by one of my favorites, Arthur Leo Zagat. This year we have a Zagat triple feature, so to speak, in which we look at three excellent examples of the Weird Menace genre.

You might think that a story entitled "Satan Calls the Strike" would be about baseball, but you'd be wrong. This tale from the October 1937 issue of DIME MYSTERY, the leading Weird Menace pulp, centers around a small town in Massachusetts where the only real industry is the local silk mill. Ah, so it's about a workers' strike at the mill. No, no at all, although the mill does figure heavily in the plot. Instead, three sinister figures show up in town: a blind man with the mark of a red right hand on his face, who can strike others blind with only a gesture; a starving infant who causes food to go bad wherever he goes; and a beautiful woman who sucks the life from the living. Naturally, their arrival wreaks havoc in the town, and it's up to a two-fisted young lawyer to battle these apparently supernatural menaces and discover what's really going on. Zagat pours on the horror until you have to wonder how he's ever going to get any logical, reasonable explanations out of all this, and when he finally does, my impulse was to say, "Oh, come on! You expect me to believe that?" The thing of it is, the writing is really excellent in this story, with some of it coming off almost as a mainstream tale of Americana in this small town, that I wound up forgiving the ludicrous elements of the plot. This isn't the best Zagat story I've read so far, but it's right up there close to the top.

"Ghouls Ride the Highways" is from the November 1935 issue of HORROR STORIES, and it's one of the fastest-paced, most suspenseful tales you're ever likely to run across. You might not think a story set mostly on a bus would fit that description, but Zagat makes it work. The protagonist is a newly married young woman who's trying to deliver a drug to a sinister doctor that will save her new husband from a mysterious disease. When she dozes off while riding the bus, though, she wakes up to a violent nightmare that involves dangerous mountain roads and a crazed driver. Then, when she finally reaches her destination, things get worse. One of the things I love about these stories are the goofy explanations for all the supposedly supernatural goings-on, and in this story, the so-called logical summing-up is more over-the-top than ever. Plus the story has an unexpected twist at the end of the sort you don't often encounter in Weird Menace yarns.

Sandhogs, construction workers who build tunnels, usually under rivers, appear now and then as the protagonists in pulp stories, and that's the case in "Lilith--Deep Lady of Death", from the March/April 1939 issue of TERROR TALES. The engineer who designed the tunnel in this yarn, along with his girlfriend, are the protagonists in the tale of a sinister beauty who shows up deep underground to lure workers to their deaths. This is another very swift story, taking place in one short evening, and as such there's no let-up in the action and horror as Zagat keeps things rocketing along to a climax with the potential to turn apocalyptic.

All three of these stories are quite entertaining, and they just reinforce my feeling that Zagat is my favorite Weird Menace writer. I've never read any of his science fiction or mysteries, and I really need to get around to that.