The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series II

by Richard Davis (Editor), Christopher Lee (Foreword), Robert Bloch

The power of possession, writes Christopher Lee in his introduction to this book of the year's best weird tales, is the primary concern of horror stories. How and when this possession occurs is the question readers should ask themselves. "We all have our dark sides. In this age of marvels, where moonwalks have now become commonplace, much of the human psyche is still unexplained, and iceberg-like, most of its potentialities still remain below the surface. This is perhaps the only area where the Unknown can still retain its dark and sinister power, and thus its attraction."

Here are eleven up-to-date spine-tinglers by the modern masters of SF grue, including: Brian Lumley, Kit Pedler, Eddy Bertin, Robert Bloch, J. Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, and other inheritors of the mantles of Poe and Lovecraft.

Contents (US Edition differs slightly from UK edition):
Foreword by Christopher Lee.
David's Worm by Brian Lumley.
The Price of a Demon by Gary Brandner.
The Knocker at the Portico by Basil Copper.
The Animal Fair by Robert Bloch.
Napier Court by J. Ramsey Campbell.
Haunts of the Very Rich by T.K. Brown III.
The Long-Term Residents by Kit Pedler.
Like Two White Spiders by Eddy C. Bertin.
The Old Horns by J. Ramsey Campbell).
Haggopian by Brian Lumley.
The Events at Poroth Farm by T.E.D. Klein.

Genres: Horror, Anthologies, Short Stories, Fiction

207 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Richard Davis is an Australian author who writes in two genres:
* biographies of opera singers and classical musicians, and also
* popular ghost stories.

His full name is Richard Michael Davis.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

DAW Collectors #109

Cover Artist: Hans Arnold.

Name: Richard Davis, Birthplace: London, England, UK, 27 January 1945

002 -  The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series II (frontispiece) • interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
007 - Foreword (The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series II) • (1974) • essay by Christopher Lee
011 - David's Worm • (1971) by Brian Lumley
021 - The Price of a Demon • (1972) by Gary Brandner (variant of Price of a Demon)
033 - The Knocker at the Portico • (1971) by Basil Copper
047 - The Animal Fair • (1971) by Robert Bloch
061 - Napier Court • by Ramsey Campbell [as by J. Ramsey Campbell]
077 - Haunts of the Very Rich • (1971) by T. K. Brown, III
099 - The Long-Term Residents • (1971) by Kit Pedler
113 - Like Two White Spiders • (1973) by Eddy C. Bertin (trans. of Als twee grote witte spinnen 1971)
125 - The Old Horns • (1973) by Ramsey Campbell (as by J. Ramsey Campbell)
135 - Haggopian • ( s Cthulhu Mythos story) • (1973) by Brian Lumley
161 - The Events at Poroth Farm • (1972) by T. E. D. Klein

‘David’s Worm’ by Brian Lumley: tongue-in-cheek tale of a monster on the loose in the placid English countryside.

‘The Price of A Demon’ by Gary Brandner: bored housewife dabbles in the occult. A competent tale of modern mores colliding with arcane knowledge.

‘The Knocker at the Portico’ by Basil Copper: an eccentric experiences various torments; employs a traditional horror theme. Well-written, if not particularly imaginative.

‘The Animal Fair’ by Robert Bloch: a surprisingly good tale from Bloch about a creepy carnival sideshow, with a bleak Midwestern setting.

‘Napier Court’ by J. Ramsey Campbell: one of two Campbell tales in the collection; two too many, in my opinion. ‘Court’ is the leaden tale of a sickly young woman alone in a haunted house.

‘Haunts of the Very Rich’, by T. K. Brown the Third: spoiled rich people arrive on at a Fantasy Island and get some nasty surprises. Not really a horror story, as much as it is a satire of the pettiness and self-indulgent attitudes of the wealthy.

‘The Long-Term Residents’, by Kit Pedler: overworked scientist vacations in a strange countryside B & B. A bit too opaque and slowly-paced for my tastes.

‘Like Two White Spiders’ by Eddy C. Bertin: a reworking of the traditional Hands of Horror theme, albeit with a bit more imagination and verve than is usually the case.

‘The Old Horns’ by J. Ramsey Campbell: another Campbell entry, this one just as underwhelming as ‘Napier Court’. ‘Horns’ deals with British beachgoers discomfited by a dank patch of forest.

‘Haggopian’ by Brian Lumley: another Lumley entry. This one deals with a warped, Jacques Cousteau - style explorer, and very unpleasant undersea life forms.

‘The Events at Poroth Farm’ by T. E. D. Klein: this novelette is the longest entry in the anthology. A neurotic professor of English literature decides to spend the summer on a remote farm; there are indications that the local fauna are not very welcoming. As is common with Klein’s fiction, the narrative is slow-paced and takes its time unfolding, and the denouement, when it eventually arrives, is underwhelming.

The series:

1. The Year's Best Horror Stories (1971)
2. The Year's Best Horror Stories II (1972)
3. The Year's Best Horror Stories III (1973)
4. The Year's Best Horror Stories IV (1976)
5. The Year's Best Horror Stories V (1977)
6. The Year's Best Horror Stories VI (1978)
7. The Year's Best Horror Stories VII (1979)
8. The Year's Best Horror Stories VIII (1980)
9. The Year's Best Horror Stories IX (1981)
10. The Year's Best Horror Stories X (1982)
11. The Year's Best Horror Stories XI (1983)
12. Year's Best Horror Stories XII (1984)
13. The Year's Best Horror Stories XIII (1985)
14. The Year's Best Horror Stories XIV (1986)
15. The Year's Best Horror Stories XV (1987)
16. The Year's Best Horror Stories XVI (1988)
17. The Year's Best Horror Stories XVII (1989)
18. The Year's Best Horror Stories XVIII (1990)
19. The Year's Best Horror Stories XIX (1991)
20. The Year's Best Horror Stories XX (1992)
21. The Year's Best Horror Stories XXI (1993)
22. The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII (1994)

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anthology #2, covering stories published from 1972-1973. Still mostly stinkers; odd choice to pick two each by Ramsey Campbell (one of which merited inclusion) and Brian Lumley (neither of which merited inclusion) and none by any women. That said, worth picking up for "The Events at Poroth Farm" alone, if by some chance you read horror anthologies and don't have multiple copies of it already, and the Brown was a pleasant surprise by an author I didn't know .

Introduced by the one and only Christopher Lee, who dwells briefly on the difference between terror (my thing) and horror (not my thing), unfortunately prevalent in the literature at the time. Good on him.

I read the American version ("Series II") which omits some of the stories in the British version ("No. 2").

David's Worm • Brian Lumley
The 7-year-old son of a nuclear researcher gets his hands on one of his dad's test subjects, a mutant planarian flatworm (a species famously regenerative, and infamously and inaccurately understood to chemically absorb the memories of other flatworms via cannibalism). The mutant flatworm gets loose - surprise - and starts feeding on bigger and bigger prey - surprise, surprise - moving from a minnow to a pike to a dog to, wouldn't you know it, David himself. The prose reads like it was written by someone who has never read another story in his life, not just painfully old-fashioned (I think I made this point in the first year's entry too but this reads like something from the 1930s or '40s) but downright clunky and bizarre:

David's worm had eyes too, two of them, and they were fixed equally firmly on the pike.

David gawked at the way it happened. The fish circled once, making a tight turn around his revolving "prey," then flashed in to the attack at a speed that left David breathless. The boy knew all about this vicious species of fish, especially about the powerful jaws and great teeth; but the pike in question might never have had any teeth at all - might well have been a caviar sandwich - for all Planny worried!

Yes, the worm is named Planny, and yes, "for all Planny worried!" is an inexplicable turn of phrase about a killer mutant flatworm, but I think it's "David gawked at the way it happened" that's really sticking with me - not only is it a filler sentence that adds nothing, but what an inexplicable way to phrase it.


The Price of a Demon • Gary Brandner
There's something to be said for a short short that knows exactly what it wants to be and what generic markers it wants to hit and gets in, does it, and gets out in a modicum of pages. In Encino, a white collar drone's kind of batty wife has gotten into witchcraft and, wouldn't you know it, finds herself chanting spells from the wrong book ("Daemonic Spelles") by the wrong "ancient druid" and starts being bitten by an invisible demon. Brandner conveys her terror well (and the terroir of Southern CA too), and it's nice to find a husband in a horror story who immediately believes his wife and tries to help solve the problem. Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem, though, and the ending conveys that pent-up terror nicely as well - the whole story, indeed, could have devolved into horror and gore quite easily but (thankfully) avoids it.

The Knocker at the Portico • Basil Copper
Opens with a very brief aside about the narrator having found the following manuscript in some old documents: a middle-aged scholar in London describes the course of his life up until the time he marries his beautiful young assistant, has a brief period of happiness, and then falls into turmoil and distress as his magnum opus takes over all of his time and attention. A handsome young doctor falls into the void between the couple, and the stressed-out and suspicious protagonist begins to hear a thunderous knocking at the portico, silent to everyone else, driving him increasingly mad and paranoid. Eventually the wife leaves and the thoroughly-insane scholar kills their housemaid and tracks her down to the doctor's home, crashing thunderously against his door and, wouldn't you know it, catches a glimpse of his decrepit form in a mirror: "THE KNOCKER AT THE PORTICO WAS MYSELF." We then return to the frame "story" (which is all of nine sentences in total) and learn that the knocker died in the doctor's asylum but the narrator is his great-grandson and "just heard the knocking for the first time tonight." This has nothing to do with anything.

Self-conscious pastiche of "The Outsider" with some Poe thrown in for good measure, endless tensionless setup for not a lot of payoff, and the less said about the frame the better.

The Animal Fair • Robert Bloch
Dave, a hitchhiker in Oklahoma, lands in a deserted town before realizing everyone is at a low-rent carnival (not to be confused with the low-rent carnival from Bloch's story in Vol. 1). He's nonplussed by the star attraction, a sickly, pathetic gorilla, and hitchhikes out of town before being picked up by - wouldn't you know it - the head carnie himself, a reactionary ex-stuntman, full of anti-Hollywood and anti-hippie rants, who had made his name portraying animals in the films by wearing authentic skin costumes he butchered and brought back from the bush. That all came to an end when his adopted daughter was assaulted and murdered by a cultish group of hippies she had fallen in with, led by a man named "Dude" (a thinly-fictionalized Charles Manson). The captain took out all of Dude's flunkies, but implies the man himself has escaped. He then relates some nonsense stories about the bush and witch doctors tricking people into thinking they're animals by sewing them into skins and drugging them, all while the gorilla is caged in the back of the truck.

If you know Bloch you know where this is headed but it dodges at the last minute, Dave "not really wanting to stop, because then he'd have to ask the question." I appreciated that, even if I didn't appreciate much of what came before.

Napier Court • Ramsey Campbell
Alma Napier, a sickly young musician, is left home alone by her parents while they go on vacation. They've always infantilized her, and she's a bit of a recluse anyway and always preferred to stay home and focus only on music, which her left-leaning ex-boyfriend (her parents forced their separation because of his lower class station) accuses her of "abdicat[ing] from the human race and its suffering" and lectures her about her ideological shortcomings, as does her best friend, who seems destined to end up with the ex-boyfriend. Alma's also sexually repressed - her flute takes on phallic overtones, and she (and Campbell) draw attention to Michael Caine "sublimating his sex-drive through his saxophone" in Hurry Sundown. A lot going on there, huh? Also, the house is probably haunted, in a classic Campbellian manner of distant narrative asides and subtle wrongness and tricks of the eye, where the former tenant committed suicide and "fade[d] into the house" just as Alma is trying to do. A smart, dense, psychologically-driven haunted house story in the Jacksonian tradition.

Haunts of the Very Rich • T. K. Brown, III
Six rich assholes are on a business jet to a remote resort, so secret they (and the rest of the world) don't even know exactly where it is, which turns out to be a double-edged sword when a storm cuts off power shortly after they arrive and they're utterly isolated. Everything breaks, rots, fails, the staff quit, bandits attack, misery compounds misery, etc etc. Wait - none of them remember how they got on the plane in the first place! Again, you know where this is going, but it zigs and zags a bit, and nails that kind of surreal, existential terror that I love.

Brown just appears to have dabbled in writing short stories, which is a shame, because this one piqued my interest and he had a real knack for pithily summing things up to move the story along where lesser writers would have sunk into needless detail ("Nerves were lacerated; tempers rose and were lost; cruel words were exchanged. By morning, the Dugan marriage had suffered fatal injuries.") He got up to some interesting things outside of writing, though:

"Thomas K. Brown, 82, a retired Howard University German professor who was also a short story author, died of pneumonia July 3 at Mariner Health nursing home in Kensington, MD. Brown taught at Howard University from 1969 to 1985. His fiction appeared in Esquire and Playboy under the pen name T.K. Brown III... Mr. Brown, who was born in Philadelphia, studied German at the University of Munich after Haverford. He worked as a broadcaster for the Office of War Information during World War II and was interpreter at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after the war. In the 1950's and early 60's, he and his wife, Carolyn, owned and managed a resort motel in the Florida Keys."

The Long-Term Residents • Kit Pedler
A biochemist drives from London to a bed and breakfast in the countryside for a much-needed vacation. Everything's a bit odd, especially the proprieter and her "long-termers" who seem to spend all of their time sitting in the common area. The mystery is enjoyable and probes themes of aging and fulfillment and alienation nicely, even as the prose is wooden and the dialogue has a halting, unnatural rhythm to it, and then as always the explanation (mad scientists, old acquintances, "full body transfusions") sucks all the life out of the whole thing.

Like Two White Spiders • Eddy C. Bertin
A first-person confession by an accused murderer in an asylum. He's a lifelong outsider with beautiful hands, but, wouldn't you know it, the hands are evil, and the narrative builds to a hysterical Poe-esque off-screen act of brutality. Well-written and -constructed but utterly impossible to take seriously. Off-handedly placed within the Cthulhu Mythos when the relentless hand-monsters are compared to the Hounds of Tindalos.

The Old Horns • Ramsey Campbell
A very vague short piece about a debauched company picnic at the titular patch of quicksand (the title also referencing pan pipes, satyrs, etc). The protagonist, an erstwhile poet, lends a somewhat irritating voice to the proceedings. Dozing off during a game of hide and seek, he has a dream (?) of awful figures performing some sort of pagan ritual, distorted heads echoing a faced balloon (?) a child saw earlier. A caddish member of the group goes missing (who initially praised paganism, which the narrator counters dragged you down and "rotted you") and the poet tries to find him. There's a lot of the moon and flies and mud and paganism and rot and strangled singing/screaming/music and bloated heads or decapitated heads or rotted faces in the mud. I don't know.

Both Campbell tales here end with offset single lines that seem to be intended to be pithy or snappy ("Only in dreams can houses scream for help." and "Poetry had won.") but neither works particularly well.

Haggopian • Brian Lumley
A cartoonishly fawning reporter gets to interview a famous ichthyologist - shades of Jacques Cousteau, intentionally, and, unintentionally and unfortunately for my ability to take the story seriously, Troy McClure. Not that the story needed much help in that regard, it's a drawn-out ode to Innsmouth and Lumley's puppyish enthusiasm for abandoning humanity for the freaks and the weird of HPL's lost aeons and Deep Ones and pockets of atavism. Haggopian, it turns out, was fed on by a supernatural hagfish for a while and is now a half-human half-fish vampire, complete with vampire brides and a hagfish, uh, organ jutting from his torso:

"You see, Mr. Belton, I had developed-yes, an organ! An appendage, a snout-like thing had grown out of my stomach, with a tiny hole at its end like a second navel!"

No comment.

There are a lot of exclamation points in this story.

The Events at Poroth Farm • T. E. D. Klein
Not much that hasn't already been said about this one, an utter classic of the field you've probably read - and if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Here's what I wrote one of the other times I read it:

In which an eldritch spirit possesses a cat and learns to be evil by reading horror fiction.

Inspired, in more ways than one, by Machen’s “The White People,” as our hapless grad student protagonist relocates to a farm in rural New Jersey for some summer reading for a course he’s putting together on the Gothic tradition. Everything is disconcerting, but what is really Wrong, and what is due to our narrator’s increasingly-unreliable state of mind? He seems to be kind of an addled sort anyway, and is on top of that an urban intellectual surrounded by nature and religious country folk, breathing in copious amount of industrial-strength insecticide, out of his element in every imaginable way, reading the most terrifying fiction that the world has produced, seeing and hearing things that shouldn’t be there…

An interesting counterpoint to Straub’s Ghost Story (1979), both Machen-inspired modern tales of horror and metafiction and monsters with a sense of humor.

As with the Campbell, I loved the blink-and-you'll-miss-it references to things awry and portentous.

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another stellar entry in the massive DAW Best of Horror series (1972-1994).

"David's Worm" by Brian Lumley. An EC-Comics ode about parasites and curious children. More humor than outright horror.

"The Price of a Demon" by Gary Brandner, author of The Howling. Standard soft-core fare about a book of incantations falling into a hippy's hands. While the idea of bite marks appearing out of nowhere is quite haunting, this short tale is a dull stinker more suited for the back pages of a tawdry men's magazine.

"The Knocker at the Portico" by Basil Copper. Typical gaslight grue about madness and lost identity, with an ending one can see from a marathon-mile away.

"The Animal Fair" by Robert Bloch. A good pulp-noir take on the aimless hitchhiker visiting a carnival in the middle of nowhere, and which includes an interesting plot twist that touches on the Manson family killings.

"Napier Court" by Ramsey Campbell. Interesting for it is one of Campbell's transitional pieces between his Lovecraft pastiches and his later urban-dread works. Solid but not spectacular.

"Haunts of the Very Rich" by TK Brown III. A dated yet thoroughly fun tale about the elite visiting a off-the-map tourist trap. Kind of reads like a Playboy version of Ballard's High Rise.

"The Long-Term Residents" by Kit Pedler. Be careful what you wish for when you visit the quaint countryside for a weekend getaway. Sometimes relaxation can have disastrous results.

"Like Two White Spiders" by Eddy C. Bertin. An ode to 'Hands of Orlac', quite conventional until the ending, where we get to see what's inside those haunted hands. Quite gruesome.

"The Old Horns" by Ramsey Campbell. While not his best from the early years, this one possesses some dark and wonderful images of a pagan rite along a desolate stretch of beach. While there is a lack of linear movement, the hallucinatory aspects take hold and stick long after reading. And when the little boy sees a balloon looking at him from the pines...priceless understand Campbellian horror.

"Haggopian" by Brian Lumley. Pastiche Lovecraft yet again from Mr. Lumley, but it does illuminate a unique link between vampires and oceanic parasites, the star being a hagfish from another dimension. Sun-soaked horror with quite the gruesome ending.

"Events of Poroth Farm" by T.E.D. Klein. Heavily anthologized over the years, and rightly so. A watermark of 1970s strange fiction.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

FIRST TIER: Second installment in the long-lived series (which I am furtively rereading in order to get Goodreads reviews in), featuring stories from 1971. As is usual with these things, a mixed bag (although, with retrospective knowledge, the early 70s were slim pickings for horror fiction). Not one of the stronger volumes (lacks an absolutely excellent selection) but not too weak either (doesn't contain any clunkers - which you'd hope for, out of a "best of," even keeping differences in taste as a consideration) with most of the stories in the "Good but slightly flawed"category.

SECOND TIER: The Editor's foreword clearly lays out the intent of the series: to collect the best stories published that year from various sources, excluding British paperbacks (but including hardcovers), with special attention to (or at least desire for) Continental (translated) work and small press & amateur publications - which is admirable. Christopher Lee's introduction bemoans the current state of popular horror as too much grue, and instead appreciates the presumed slow-build/Gothic or human touches of these selections. As stated above, not a bad installment but not stellar, which about holds for the time period itself. The contents of this UK edition differ somewhat slightly (a few additions, a few subtractions) from the US edition.

THIRD TIER: the stories in review, weakest to strongest as usual.

Two stories here I shifted down a notch on re-read, from "Good but flawed" to just "Okay." A wife's dabbling in trendy California occultism takes a serious turn when a spell from an old book unleashes an invisible demon that repeatedly bites at her in "The Price Of A Demon" by Gary Brandner. Can the husband's desperate appeal to her professor (who teaches a class on "Witchcraft") really save the day? Eh, Bradner just sketches the scenario and then gestures towards an ending instead of supplying one - more like the opening scene of novella than a full story. Meanwhile, in Basil Cooper's "The Knocker At The Portico," an overworked scholar begins to suspect his wife is cheating on him with a mysterious doctor, while he strives to finish his latest work and finds himself plagued by a loud, incessant, and spectral knocking no one else can hear. It's kind of a half-baked homage to Gothic/Decadent writing and, honestly, my eyes seemed to slide right off the page as I read, so...

In the "Good but slightly flawed" category we have a majority of the pieces here: Set in the rural, American South, "Thirst" by Gerald Page (soon too take over editing this anthology series with volume 4) has a man attacked at night by a mysterious figure who wounds his throat and drinks his blood. Later, found buried in a cave and considered dead, he awakes on the mortuary slab, but finds himself possessed of new fears, inhibitions, and an overwhelming thirst for blood... Not bad, if a little long, in presenting a prosaic, stripped-down, POV of what transforming into a vampire means (surely, that's not a spoiler?) - a wretched, miserable existence filled with a maze of unknown "rules" and an obsessive compulsion that drives you. Which marks it as a nice transition between the "classy" Lugosi/Lee Draculas or "jokey" MUNSTERS/Horror Host vampires that were on their way out and the "Romantic/Sexy" Barnabas Collins/Anne Rice vampires that were around the corner (In a sense, the portrayal of vampires here is most in line with the desperate/feral Janos Skorzeney of The Night Stalker novel and telefilm). There's a slight, if interesting, racial aspect as well - as the black citizens of the area are well-aware of the existence of a vampire (a word that only gets used once), and how to deal with it, but are worried about repercussions if a white "man" is killed by them. Still, a bit too drawn out.

A young boy releases his father's experimentally irradiated planarian worm into the local pond (in "David's Worm" by Brian Lumley), then watches as his "pet" grows larger and larger, absorbing fish life (as well as all the fishes' skills/memories). And, as might be expected, things proceed badly from there.... Lumley, here, is writing a monster yarn in a broad, chummy, almost YA style that is not un-enjoyable, although the ending spins its punchline out a bit longer than it needed to be. No great shakes, but I could see it sticking in a kid's head if they read it at the right age. Rosemary Timperley's "The Woman With The Mauve face" has a woman continually spy a distinctive version of herself appearing everywhere, a version no one else can see, and worry that she may be losing her mind - until an accident on a train platform seems to solve the problem... A slight little psychological piece on madness, I dropped it a grade on the reread.

In "Napier Court" by Ramsey Campbell a young woman (a flautist in training) languishes at home with a fever while her parents are away on vacation. She has recently broken up with her boyfriend (under pressure from her parents) and the stress of this, and her illness, and her anxiety-ridden/near reclusive nature (which was a source of conflict with her friends) combine with some recently acquired knowledge (that her home was previously occupied by a suicide) to make her increasingly sure that she is not alone in the house... While this is early Campbell (emerging from his strongly Lovecraftian phase - this story obliquely mentions the "Severn Valley" locale) and just starting to test out his psychological horror approach (wherein the main character's internal state is mirrored by, and the answered by, the external setting). It's a little choppy going at times, slightly confusing, but there is a wonderful "Campbellian" scene where our main character is blocked from fleeing the home by the simple (yet off-putting and inexplicable) appearance, outside her front gate, of a large white laundry sack leaning against a lamp-post at night...a sack which then moves, slightly. The climactic revelation that she has switched places with the ghost or thing or whatever, and it now occupies her body while she is trapped in the essence of the house is nicely different as well. Not PRIME Campbell, but not bad.

An assortment of very rich, bitter people are whisked off by chartered plane to an expensive, exclusive, and very secret vacation spot called Paradise Plage, in "Haunts Of The Very Rich" by T.K. Brown III. But, almost immediately on arrival in their jungle/lake-shore paradise, thing begin to go wrong...and then continue to go wrong...and then continue... This story (which was turned into an ABC Movie Of The Week in September, 1972) is best understood as an inverted FANTASY ISLAND (which is kind of funny, given that even the initial MFTV movie that launched FANTASY ISLAND teased a possibly threatening aspect - "Fantasy Island...indeed" Mr. Roarke says pointedly before the first commercial fade out - and the initial series hinted occasionally at Roarke's possible unearthly status, which was in turn picked up heavily for the revival series, and now we even have a "horror movie" version of FANTASY ISLAND coming soon, bringing the whole thing full circle). Given the above description, you might be forgiven for having guessed the twist already the guests are all dead and Paradise Plage is actually hell but one of the odd things abut this story is that while one could gripe that the writing is so accelerated and sketchy as to suggest an outline more than an actual story, the truth is that terseness actually works in the piece's overall favor as a bit of predictable dark fantasy (at an expanded length, the inevitable ending would have seemed more stultifying). The TV movie added a nice little bit of business (with Robert Reed as a priest who escapes into, and then returns from, the jungle) to stretch the running time, but it similarly suffered from a lack of a satisfying ending for what is a pretty fait accompli scenario (the story ends a little more strongly, though no differently, in essence). Enjoyable, if disposable.

Finally, there were three solidly "Good"stories in this collection: In"The Throwaway Man" by Steve Chapman a living, malignant thing made of clockwork machinery and scrap evolves in a junkyard, but is countered by a natural living thing made of water and slime that has evolved to match it. And no human ever realizes what is going on. I liked this pithy little thing - it's kind of like a Bradburyesque fable (see his "The Burning Man" or "The Women") in near-Flash format, in which nature evolves monsters and then also creates their equal, all under the nose of humanity. Nicely done. In "Shadows of the Living" by Ronald Blythe, a dissatisfied member of the landed gentry finds that the new Rector installed in his country seat causes him consternation with his bumbling manner and dedication to religious thought. But, the little village also has a dark event in its past, wherein a previous religious figure was dispatched by the locals in an awful manner... I didn't like this at first, as it confusingly sets up the class and religious situation, but as it goes on and we get the gist of it, it turns into a nice piece of psychological horror about classic roles.

Finally, in "The Animal Fair" by Robert Bloch a young drifter, stuck in a small town, takes in the transient carnival and is appalled at a wild animal act that showcases a sickly gorilla. Later, accepting a lift from the drunken animal trainer, he is regaled with a sad story from the man's life in which the trainer's young niece was abused and murdered by some Manson-styled hippies, one of whom escaped justice. I liked this more than I expected - I was *expecting* Bloch in his latter-day, sardonic TALES FROM THE CRYPT mode (all "heh-heh, kiddies" punchlines and the like) and, while the root of the horror in this story IS that kind of pulpy/TOC thing, it appears mainly through implication. Instead, the story highlights a lot of Bloch's writing chops - setting scenes, sketching characters, and ability to roll a story along. Granted, the structure is kind of weird - a bit more set-up than usual, then the crux of the thing happening in flashback, before ending on the merest intimation - but it was a good read.

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭

“David’s Worm”, Brian Lumley (1971) ✭✭½
“The Price of a Demon”, Gary Brandner (1972) ✭✭✭½
“The Knocker at the Portico”, Basil Copper (1971) ✭✭✭
“The Animal Fair”, Robert Bloch (1971) ✭✭✭✭
“Napier Court”, Ramsey Campbell (as by J. Ramsey Campbell) (1971) ✭✭
“Haunts of the Very Rich”, T. K. Brown III (1971) ✭✭✭½
“The Long-Term Residents”, Kit Pedler (1971) ✭✭✭
“Als Twee Grote Witte Spinnen” (“Like Two White Spiders”), Eddy C. Bertin, (1971/1973 trans.) ✭✭✭
“The Old Horns”, Ramsey Campbell (as by J. Ramsey Campbell) (1973) ✭½
“Haggopian”, Brian Lumley (1973) ✭✭✭
“The Events at Poroth Farm”, T. E. D. Klein (1972) ✭✭✭✭✭

[Frank McGirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a few enjoyable stories here. Only two I found to not be worth reading. Left it with a 12 year old, so I can't cite specific stories, but many of the short one's were well-written and clever. And the longer, Lovecraft inspired story at the end was quite well done.

I picked it up just to canibalize it for it's cover, but didn't have the heart tear it apart after reading it.

A nice was to pass some time on the deck of a sailboat.

[Matt Kight · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the original Sphere version from the UK (as opposed to the later, more popular DAW version).

1 Gerald W. Page Thirst 3.5
Basic vampire story at the foothills of Overhill Mountain, just don't let a cat jump over a corpse.

2 Brian Lumley David's Worm 4.5
Flatworm specimen on a slide should never be returned to nature, especially when it's been exposed to radiation.

3 Gary Brandner The Price of a Demon 4.0
Enjoyable yarn about witchcraft and summoning demons which I always dig. Just wish the ending wasn't as abrupt, was very curious what would happen next.

4 Basil Cooper The Knocker at the Portico 4.5
First published in 1971 but reads just like a gothic MR James or Blackwood story from the early 1900's. Great little story with a nice twist.

5 Steve Chapman The Throwaway Man 2.0
Author imagines a battle between a junkyard machine and the ocean... creative but not really my thing.

6 Rosemary Timperley The Woman with the Mauve Face 3.0
Very short psychological thriller, similar twist as Portico.

7 Ronald Blythe The Shadows of the Living 4.0
Disturbing story reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and The Wicker Man. Definitely had to brush up on my Anglican church terminology.

8 Robert Bloch The Animal Fair 4.5
Easy to read, interesting, ending was a bit ambiguous but I assume it was the dude in the back.

9 Ramsey Campbell Napier Court 3.5
Supernatural haunting or just good old fashion delirium brought on by a cold?

10 T K Brown III Haunts of the Very Rich 5.0
My favorite story, was entertaining from beginning to end. Gilligan's Island with a morbid twist.

AVERAGE 3.9

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another mostly great collection of horror stories, my favorites being "Thirst" by Gerald W. Page (a very cool vampire story), "David's Worm," by Brian Lumley (a very interesting biological horror), "The Animal Fair" by Robert Bloch (a hitchhiker stumbles upon a carnival that had a rather unique attraction), and "Haunts of the Very Rich" by T.K. Brown III (talk about a vacation from Hell!).

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed every story. A very fine collection of 70's horror.

[Bill Borre]

"Price of a Demon" by Gary Brandner - wc
"Thirst" by Gerald W. Page - wc

[Dollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

None of these stories particularly stood out.

[Matt]

The record for this book has been merged with The Year's Best Horror Stories : Series II, but the contents are not identical. There is some overlap, but isfdb.org treats them as bibliographically separate, which Goodreads ought to do as well.