The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch

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THE MAN WHO COLLECTED PSYCHOS

ALSO

BY

BENJAMIN SZUMSKYJ MCFARLAND

AND FROM

American Exorcist: Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty (2008) Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris (2008) Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008)

THE MAN WHO COLLECTED PSYCHOS Critical Essays on Robert Bloch Edited by Benjamin Szumskyj FOREWORD

BY

ROBERT HOOD

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

The man who collected psychos : critical essays on Robert Bloch / edited by Benjamin Szumskyj ; foreword by Robert Hood. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4208-9 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Bloch, Robert, 1917–1994— Criticism and interpretation. I. Szumskyj, Benjamin, 1982– PS3503.L718Z77 2009 813'.54—dc22 2009019858 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Benjamin Szumskyj. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Photograph of Robert Bloch © by Stathis Orphanos Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To Randall D. Larson, Ron Hanna and Phillip A. Ellis

Acknowledgments This book was supported by many like-minded individuals, for whom I am very grateful. I’d like to thank Steve Vertlieb, Scott D. Briggs, Philip L. Simpson, Darrel Schweitzer, Randall D. Larson, Rebecca Janicker, S. T. Joshi, Phillip A. Ellis, Leigh Blackmore, John Howard, Joel Lane and Matthew R. Bradley for submitting some of the finest essays on Bloch’s literature ever to be assembled in one place. Thanks also to Michael Pfefferkorn and Robert Hood. God Bless.

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Contents Acknowledgments

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Foreword: The Heart of a Child ROBERT HOOD

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Preface

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Introduction

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Robert Bloch: The Psychology of Horror STEVE VERTLIEB

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A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft S.T. JOSHI

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Lessons from Providence: Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as a Mentor and Bloch and Fandom PHILLIP A. ELLIS

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The Lighter Side of Death: Robert Bloch as a Humorist DARRELL SCHWEITZER

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The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime and Suspense Novels of Robert Bloch LEIGH BLACKMORE

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Yours Truly, Daniel Morley: An Examination of Robert Bloch’s novel The Scarf JOHN HOWARD

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The Keys to the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy SCOTT D. BRIGGS vii

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Contents

“Better the House Than an Asylum”: Gothic Strategies in Robert Bloch’s Psycho REBECCA JANICKER

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Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Bloch’s Partnership with Jack the Ripper RANDALL D. LARSON

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Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers PHILIP L. SIMPSON

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Hell Is Other People: Robert Bloch and the Pathologies of the Family JOEL LANE

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Programming Bloch: The Small-Screen Career of Psycho’s Creator MATTHEW R. BRADLEY

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About the Contributors

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Index

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Foreword: The Heart of a Child Robert Hood “I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf.” — Robert Bloch

Let me tell you a story about Robert Bloch. It’s also about two people who were central to his development as a writer of the Weird. Only some of it is true. It’s a little known fact that at one point the world was changed radically and all that we knew ceased to be, replaced by a reality that was stranger and more dangerous than anything that had preceded it. This apocalypse happened because of H.P. Lovecraft — at least at first — though it began somewhere in a future time, a time when the bones of the dead sang and anyone with the ear to hear the music could seek out the dead and listen to their unliving ballads. Into this noisy, if melodious world, came a scientist who argued passionately that realities were never absolute and that humanity could create one at any time if only it had the knowledge and the will to do so. To prove his point, he followed the rich, deep-toned lilt that echoed from a grave in Providence, Rhode Island, and exhumed a collection of bones that he claimed were those of H.P. Lovecraft. Putting the bones and an original edition of Weird Tales, February 1928 — which included the iconic “The Call of Cthulhu”— into an only-partially technological device he had constructed for the purpose caused a massive supra-imaginative spike that dragged Lovecraft’s mythos into objective reality (such as it is). The effect was not immediate (as the changes first manifested on 15 1

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March 1937 and it took a while for the temporal currents to carry them through to the present), but soon enough the sky began to boil over Providence. Out of this space-time vortex squirmed a multitude of hideous monstrosities — the Great Old Ones in all their horrible, chthonian ghastliness. The result was worldwide annihilation. Realizing his grave mistake, the scientist vowed to survive this calamity, and the only way he could do that was to propel himself back through time to a moment before the Ancient Malevolencies were injected into the timestream — to stop Lovecraft from writing any of his stories. In this future period, scientific time travel had not yet been invented. However, darkness was still as common as enlightenment and the scientist was also a proponent of the black arts. Using the instabilities he had just created along with certain arcane rituals, he knew he could send himself back. Yes, it would be dangerous. Yes, he suspected that this shifting of his corporeal form through the space-time continuum had the potential to tear apart the whole structure of the universe; he knew in fact that this would certainly happen if he evoked the ritual powers more than a couple of times. But at this point he didn’t care. Better to destroy the universe trying than to be personally ripped apart by Yog-Sothoth or one of his kin. So the scientist used an ancient ritual knife to slit open the torsos of five women, in order to use their innards and their blood to feed the Power — and as he consumed the heart of the final victim he was dragged into the chaoschoked vortex of pre-time and inner space. Willing himself to re-emerge, he arrived in Whitechapel in the London of August 1888 — way off course. Furious with himself and too impatient to wait around for the two years required until H.P. Lovecraft would be born in a country far across the sea, he once again chose five women at random, slew them according to the Mysteries and was flung through the space-time vortex. But this time he was more in control, at least in respect to his point of re-entry into normal space. Though he was aware that the architecture of reality groaned and shuddered more seriously this time, threatening to fall into total instability, it didn’t do so, thankfully, and he appeared in Providence in 1919, mere weeks before Lovecraft’s first story was due to be published. It would do. The scientist had hoped to avoid bloodshed, being the great admirer of Lovecraft that he was, but needs must and so he hunted down the 29-yearold nascent author, slit his throat and destroyed all copies of “The White Ship.” Then he sighed a sigh of relief. The scientist’s work was done and the world was saved. There would be no Cthulhan mythology. Ever. Nervous about using the techno-magical time-travel ritual again so soon,

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now that he was safe, he decided to hang around and watch the world develop sans Cthulhu and his cohorts. Nearly ten years slithered past without any real sign of change. 1928 came and passed and “Call of Cthulhu” wasn’t published in Weird Tales; in fact up to that time no Lovecraftian-style stories were published at all. He began to think that this might be an opportune moment for him to slay five more sacrificial victims and make his way back to the future. Then one day in 1938 he casually opened up the latest Weird Tales— and found that it contained a story called “The Feast in the Abbey” by Robert A. Bloch. The scientist couldn’t believe it. How could that be? In the old reality, Lovecraft’s writing had certainly inspired Bloch, but now there was no Lovecraft and no writings for him to be inspired by. He should never have written this story. It was impossible. Surely it was just a glitch in time, a minor backwash from the Old World that would quickly dissipate. He waited and watched. Then a few years later Weird Tales published “The Call of Cthulhu” by Robert Bloch, followed by a whole slew of Lovecraftian tales, including “The Thing on the Doorstep,” “Dreams in the Witch House,” and “The Dunwich Horror.” The scientist was horrified. Clearly a connection existed between Lovecraft and Bloch that was somehow transcending the new reality the scientist had created. He knew what he had to do. He had to find out where this Lovecraftian influence was coming from and stop it, with blood if necessary. He traveled to Chicago and confronted Robert Bloch just as the author was starting to write “At the Mountains of Madness.” “These are not your stories!” he said. “How can they not be?” Bloch replied calmly. “I wrote them.” “But they belong in another reality and needed to be expunged from history. They should no longer exist.” Holding Bloch at knife-point, he explained all that he had done. Bloch simply laughed. “Ah,” he said, “this explains the strong connection I have always felt with Howard Lovecraft, despite the fact that he was slain so young. I have long felt him whispering in my ears as I type.” “You must stop.” Bloch pointed out that it was too late now, for the stories were still in existence, growing from Lovecraft’s mind though realized by Bloch’s own pen. Perhaps they always would be. “Then I will need to travel in time once more,” the scientist exclaimed, “I will go to a time before Lovecraft was born, before he could think the thoughts that create these monsters, and stop the process there.” But Bloch simply laughed. “You are a mistaken fool,” he said. “Don’t you understand that there are

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no monsters out there.” He waved toward the skies. “They all exist inside you,” and at this point his forefinger prodded the scientist’s chest. “In your heart and mind. You gave birth to these horrors, not Lovecraft. Not me. It is you who should never exist in order to save the future.” And with those words the air boiled and a vast scaly hand reached through the discontinuity and slew the man on the spot. It was the hand of Ulthar, one of the Elder Gods, given the task of watching over the darknesses of time and space. The hand held something out for Bloch to take. A heart. “Thank you,” he said. “I shall keep it with me to remind me of where reality truly lies.” He put the heart in a jar and up until his death it sat on a shelf where he could see it and gain inspiration for the stories that would, now, be truly his. The scientist’s name? It was Jack, of course, Jack Child. As you read these essays and immerse yourself in the mind and work of Robert Albert Bloch, remember that heart of a Child and what it represents — and tremble lest the demons within it should escape their entrapment and call to the demons in yours.

Preface Critical studies of Robert Bloch’s works are sorely lacking and often focus only on his legendary work Psycho, except the important effort by Randall Larson in Robert Bloch (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1986). The present work takes the next step in producing essays with larger themes and topics, targeting the academic community, and showcasing the unquestionable literary depth and value of the American author. As editor, I was very decisive in my choice of subject matter and worked closely with the essayists to ensure that every essay was both insightful and produced a refreshing outlook on aspects of Bloch’s novels which have received little study or acknowledgment in past literary excursions. Robert Bloch is one of those authors in the field, whom everybody — from reviewers to authors — has showered with constructive and unconstructive criticism, but has rarely received the professional criticism he deserves. Often, while reading his fiction, I found it frustrating that there were never any essays that sought to study his novels in full. I am an analytically-minded person, especially in regards to literature, and am of the mindset that once an author has established himself as a professional and his works have undergone countless reprints, there is no time like the present to initiate critical studies. This book is a collection of critical essays which explore Bloch’s novels from a variety of angles. I have purposely avoided using essays with themes and topics which have been exhausted before and only accepted those which brought a new perspective to Bloch as an author. As such, this book is directed towards the learned reader who has either read Bloch and wishes to see what bridges may be established from his novels to the academic community, or to the established academic who has heard of Bloch and is interested to know the merit of his work. The essays within have been formatted in accordance to the style con5

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ventions of the Modern Language Association, allowing for footnotes and bibliographies. Essayists have chosen to directly cite from the most commonly available texts of Bloch’s novels, taking into consideration that readers are unlikely to have access to first editions. It is my hope that Robert Bloch will, sooner rather than later, be studied in the academic community and will be seen as an author worthy of study. In reading the essays written specifically for this book, you will witness the genius of Robert Bloch as not only an author, but as a human being, showcasing the many layers of psychological, philosophical, literary, historical and autobiographical elements that gave birth to the imagination behind his greatest works of fiction. The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch will hopefully open such a door and through its thought-provoking essays, initiate a long awaited critical acceptance. — B. J. S. S.

Introduction “[S]he stepped into the shower stall. The water was hot, and she had to add a mixture from the COLD faucet. Finally she turned both faucets on full force and let the warmth gush over her. The roar was deafening, and the room was beginning to steam up. That’s why she didn’t hear the door open, or note the sounds of footsteps. And at first, when the shower curtains parted, the steam obscured the face. Then she did see it there — just a face, peering through the curtains, hanging in midair like a mask.... Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head....”

The above scene is from one of popular culture’s most famous novels of horror, Psycho (1959). Though, like many novels, the name of its author has never achieved the same level of fame as the creation and most people remember director Alfred Hitchcock — who beautifully adapted the novel — before the author of Psycho. This is the public’s loss. If you have not yet embarked on reading the works of Robert Bloch, you are neglecting a master of supernatural and psychological horror. Robert Bloch was born in Chicago on April 5, 1917, the first child of Stella Loeb and Raphael Ray Bloch. His mother was a former elementary school teacher, eventually becoming the director of the Milwaukee Jewish Settlement, later known as the Abraham Lincoln House. His father was formerly enrolled in the Morgan Park Military Academy, but eventually became an assistant cashier of the Home Savings Bank in Chicago. At age ten, Bloch had a defining moment in his young life when he bought a copy of the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine. In Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography (Tor, 1993), Bloch reminisced on that moment: Sometime late in the summer of 1927 the family ... entered Chicago’s Northwestern Railroad station to entrain for a suburban destination. Where we were

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Introduction going eludes the memory, and it’s not important. What matters is that we passed the huge magazine stand in the terminal. Here literally hundreds of periodicals — including the then-popular weekly and monthly “pulp” magazines — were ranked in gaudy array. Row after row of garish covers caught the eye ... [each] competed for attention with scores of titles featuring romance, mystery, detective stories, westerns, and every day sports.... I stared at them, fascinated by this abundance of riches.

It was there that Bloch first encountered the works of H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), who would soon become his literary mentor. Despite the Depression, Bloch continued to read Weird Tales and sought out more material by Lovecraft. In 1933 he wrote a letter to Lovecraft through the magazine, receiving a prompt reply in April of the same year. The two of them continued to correspond until Lovecraft’s untimely passing. This would have a profound effect on the course of Bloch’s life. Bloch’s passion and ability to write came as soon as he was able to drive his fingers onto the typewriter and Lovecraft encouraged him to send his stories out for publication, even commenting on some of Bloch’s early attempts. It was the start of a writing career that would produce hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels beneath the banners of horror, science fiction, fantasy, humor and historical fiction. Bloch’s first story, entitled “The Thing,” represented a deliberate attempt to copy Lovecraft’s style. Initially appearing in 1932 in Lincoln High School’s literary arts magazine, it was published professionally in a limited run more than sixty years later in 1993. Bloch sold his first story, entitled “Lilies,” to William L. Crawford’s Marvel Tales in 1934 at the tender age of seventeen. Crawford’s Unusual Stories published Bloch’s “The Black Lotus” in the winter of 1935. That same year he sold a story to Weird Tales entitled “The Secret in the Tomb.” Soon after, Bloch joined up with a writing club known as the Milwaukee Fictioneers, which included the writers Stanley G. Weinbaum, Ralph Milne Farley, Fredric Brown and the editor Raymond Palmer. Like many pulp authors of his era, Bloch found a niche in the art of telling stories in the genre of supernatural horror and weird fiction. However, Bloch was fascinated by human nature and he used it as the basis for his tales of sorcery and chaos. Starting with his story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” in 1943, and later in his novels, Bloch began to explore the minds of serial killers. While he continued to write stories about creatures from beyond the stars, often his monsters were the quiet unassuming man next door. Bloch felt that the human race was its own greatest creation, and in his stories, we can see that beneath the veil of fiction, a stark realism is hard to deny. Bloch’s work shows readers that he wrote for himself, rather than commercially writing for someone. Even when he was commissioned to write a

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story or wrote to pay the bills, he was in control, and he wrote for his needs and wants by way of his vision. He loved writing; therefore, he should love his writings. Bloch was not a series or cycle writer; rather, he wrote the story as he imagined it. If he felt compelled to continue the story of a character, or felt there was a popularity that helped him see beyond the character’s initial employment, then and only then would he write a sequel or craft a new yarn with the characters. Bloch had the pleasure of seeing his books’ popularity rise throughout his lifetime. He received awards such as the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award and the first Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. A Robert Bloch Award was established in his name by the NecronomiCon committee (from The Lovecraft Society of New England) at the second “Cthulhu Mythos” convention gathering in 1995. His books and stories have been reprinted in dozens of countries and passed on from generation to generation. Guided by the words of H.P. Lovecraft through their voluminous letter correspondence, Bloch would recreate the horror genre, much like fellow correspondent Fritz Leiber, paving the way for future horror writers such as Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, Clive Barker and countless others. Robert Bloch passed away from cancer on September 23, 1994. It was a sad day for the horror community. In his sixty years of writing he managed to produce twenty-two novels and over four hundred short stories; an impressive body of work by any standards. In addition, he wrote for television, radio, and vaudeville. In his books and stories, he helped to redefine horror and make it accessible even to those outside the genre. He gave us an early glimpse into the mind of a psychopathic killer and he inspired a host of imitators, some quite good, who followed in his footsteps. In order to create a good horror story, Bloch said that “Fear is the main thing. Only it has to be a fear that is close to reality, something that people can recognize as part of the world around them. The more familiar, the stronger it is.” Those of us who never met the man may feel the loss, but at least we can console ourselves with the writings of this inspired, intelligent, and original author. In reading Bloch, you will see the greatness of both the author and the works that he wrote, that captured the attention of millions abroad. The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch is a thorough study of the many rich themes, topics and issues that exist within the diverse writings of Bloch by leading scholars and newcomers alike. Most are new to the community and are intended to produce further studies of the highly respected author. Opening the volume, Steve Vertlieb’s “Robert Bloch: The Psychology of

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Horror” is a bio-critical study of Bloch, showcasing the unquestionable talent and breadth of the author who entertained and scared readers for over half a century. S.T. Joshi’s “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft” is the definitive study on the literary relationship of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch, studying the evolution of Bloch as an ardent fan of Lovecraft’s imagination and style, to a distinct and original author of horror in his own right. “Lessons from Providence: Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as a Mentor and Bloch and Fandom” by Phillip A. Ellis is an insightful study on Bloch’s literary relationship with H.P. Lovecraft, an experience that would not only help establish the rising author, but prove invaluable when he became a mentor decades later. Ellis also explores Bloch’s role in fandom and how he perceived the relationship between authors and their fans. Darrell Schweitzer brings some light to the volume with “The Lighter Side of Death: Robert Bloch as a Humorist,” examining the many ways Bloch used humor in his stories, showing him to be a very humorous individual that everyone admired. Before Psycho, Bloch wrote several other thrillers which Leigh Blackmore studies in “The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime and Suspense Novels of Robert Bloch.” The Scarf, Spiderweb, The Kidnapper, The Will to Kill, Shooting Star, and The Dead Beat are explored and show the incredible development and imagination of the author who was unafraid of studying the darker side of humanity. In “Yours Truly, Daniel Morley: An Examination of Robert Bloch’s novel The Scarf,” John Howard explores Daniel Morley, the murderous character of Bloch’s The Scarf and details why the novel is an underappreciated classic. In “The Keys to the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy,” Scott D. Briggs is the first critic to ever study the entire Psycho trilogy at once, assessing the novels’— as opposed to films’— strengths and weaknesses and what has made the character of Norman Bates so mesmerising to readers since 1959. In Rebecca Janicker’s “‘Better the House Than an Asylum’: Gothic Strategies in Robert Bloch’s Psycho,” the critic considers “how the Gothic operates in Bloch’s influential novel through an examination of its themes, tropes and narrative structures.” “Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Bloch’s Partnership with Jack the Ripper” by Randall D. Larson is a thorough study of Bloch’s fascination with the historical Jack the Ripper and how, over time, the character evolved within the author’s literary oeuvre. In “Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers,” Philip L. Simpson, who has

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long studied the nature of serial killers, explores Bloch’s fascination with using serial killers in his fiction and how successfully they are portrayed in his novels and short stories. Joel Lane’s “Hell Is Other People: Robert Bloch and the Pathologies of the Family” explores why the “key to understanding the pathological character in Bloch’s fiction is that he or she has internalized the madness of the family or the community, distilling it to a lethal essence.” Last but not least, in his “Programming Block: The Small-Screen Career of Psycho’s Creator” Matthew R. Bradley comprehensively studies Bloch’s work on the small and large screen, noting that despite Bloch’s “reservations about the restrictions of the medium, television was able to introduce generations of viewers and readers to his literary works, some of which had been published before they were born, and in rare instances ... brought his scripts to life with more fidelity to his original intentions.” The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch is a study of author Robert Bloch’s novels, short stories and life. Where previous volumes studying Bloch’s writings have predominantly focused on the popular and cinematic adaptation of his work, my chief purpose is to collect several scholarly essays spotlighting the many rich themes, topics and issues that have intrigued readers for over half a century. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a pioneering attempt by many of the community’s leading scholars to chart the development of Robert Bloch’s growth from an author of amateur pastiches to one of the greatest authors of weird fiction. Benjamin Szumskyj, Editor Melville, Western Australia

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Robert Bloch: The Psychology of Horror Steve Vertlieb Across a sea of stars and time lies a horror too terrible to endure ... an evil Hell-Bound Train riding to infinity upon tracks immersed in darkness, careening toward midnight, consumed by madness ... a terrible Opener of the Way to flights of fancy and depravity lost in translation, yet rediscovered in endless pages of classic fantasy rendered by one of the greatest, most enduring writers of the genre, Robert Bloch. One of the original circle of authors and students inspired by the eloquent lunacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch began his writing career in 1935 with a series of frightening short stories that soon assumed a poetic eloquence that rivaled Lovecraft in horrific intensity and originality. The crumbling pages of Weird Tales entertained these imaginative stories of witchcraft, mayhem and tales that witnessed madness. With fables such as “The Hungry House,” “The Cheaters,” “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” “I Kiss Your Shadow,” “The Dark Demon,” “The Faceless God,” “Beetles,” and “The Shambler from the Stars,” Robert Bloch quickly and effectively established himself as a master of the macabre, setting a standard of writing unequalled by any writer before or since. Born in Chicago on April 5th, 1917, to Jewish parents, Robert Bloch became an avid reader of pulp magazines and, in his teenage years, began a life-transforming correspondence with Lovecraft who became his mentor, encouraging the young fan to write and develop his own fantastic fiction. At age seventeen he sold his first professional stories to Weird Tales and, with such lurid titles as “The Feast in the Abbey,” and “The Secret in the Tomb,” began to carefully establish his own fictional identity and style. In tribute to his young disciple, Lovecraft paid incomparable homage to the teenager by writ13

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ing him into the text of his novel “The Haunter of the Dark” as Robert Blake. After Lovecraft’s untimely death in 1937, Bloch continued to write for Weird Tales, as well as the science fiction themed Amazing Stories Magazine, quickly becoming one of the most widely read and popular authors of the genre. In his private persona, Bloch was a gentle soul with a huge heart who delighted in regaling audiences and friends with jokes and vaudevillian one liners. A student of motion pictures and the arts, he entered a hidden chamber within his soul when setting about creating the terrifying stories that solidified his reputation and career. A Mr. Hyde to the softer reflection of Henry Jekyll, the writer rarely shared his darker inspiration with his adored and adoring wife, Elly, who preferred to gloss over and forgive his celebrity, finding solace instead in his culture and humanity. For millions of readers of traditional horror fiction, however, Robert Bloch was the master of the macabre, a superb story teller whose hauntingly fanciful tales became the standard by which others were judged. His fertile imagination sired the stuff that unsettling dreams and nightmares are made of. Admittedly, an arm chair psychologist, Bloch found the human psyche endlessly fascinating, infusing his characters with complex, disturbing behavioral patterns he could only imagine. An enthusiastic student of bizarre human behavior, he carefully crafted each characterization with dangerously woven personality flaws that lifted mere single dimensional protagonists from the printed page to uncomfortable realization. In his introduction to a paperback anthology Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper, published by Belmont Books in January 1962, Bloch writes, “My life as Jekyll has been commonplace in the extreme. I have a home, a family, a regular occupation, friends; a normal schedule of hobbies and amusements. Yet, Mr. Hyde is active, nonetheless. It is a partnership which has proved both pleasant and profitable-and it would ingratitude indeed if I allowed Dr. Jekyll to take the credit without proper acknowledgement to his alter ego. But the inspiration comes from Mr. Hyde. I fear, however, that Mr. Hyde must also share the blame for errors of taste and judgment. In his haste to effect some particular ghastly revelation, he has ignored many literary niceties. I can only submit that this is matter beyond my control.” Bloch, along with the reader, has given away both his rational reasoning and will power, consciously sacrificing his higher instincts for the greater good of his imagination. As an actor of gentle or docile spirit studiously packs away his better nature in order to mine the trenches of his hidden demons, and more accurately capture the ugliness he must portray, either on screen or in the theater, the writer’s imagination floods his more spiritual sanctuary in search of the characters and stories lurking just beyond the fragile threshold

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of sanity. He must unleash Hyde at the expense of Jekyll, sleepwalking vicariously through the dungeons of depravity. Sensitive to the duality of human nature, Bloch’s essay on “The Clown at Midnight” remains a classic of extraordinary perception. He asks the reader to visualize a circus clown performing within the restricted confines of a three ring tent. The surroundings are familiar, and the imagery comforting. Children of all ages laugh at the frantic behavior of the jolly clown adorned in frilly, loose fitting costuming. The circus performer cavorts with blackened teeth, his face pale and unrecognizable beneath the theatrical makeup that deftly conceals his identity. Now, as Bloch suggests, what would happen if you lifted that very same clown out of the familiar surroundings of a circus sideshow, and placed him alone on a deserted corner, standing solitary beneath a dimly lit street light? There, motionless and grinning beneath a soul less mask, he assumes the persona of a demonic and terrifying escapee from either an asylum for the criminally insane, or from the bowels of Hell. Sanity grasps tentatively at the bonds holding together reason as the veil that witnessed madness crumbles in horrifying confusion. In his short story “The Hungry House (1951),” a psychologically vulnerable couple move into an old mansion priced just a little too inexpensively. They quietly congratulate themselves on their shrewd negotiating skills, little realizing that the realtor was a little too anxious to let the property go at such an unrealistic cost. It isn’t long before they begin to suspect that they aren’t alone in the property, for this is a troubled house, a disturbed structure whose malevolence conspires to consume them. It had never occurred to the couple that an alarming absence of mirrors within the dark walls of their new home might have been a foreboding suggestion of danger to come. Reflections caught out of the corners of their eyes suggest a shadowy presence hidden just beyond recognition. Shaving mirrors shudder in vague, unholy perception, multiple and uninvited images shimmering in faded twilight. The house had once been inhabited by a vain, beautiful belle of the ball whose self adoration had all but consumed her. Mirrors adorned every corner of the house so that she could observe her own perfect loveliness. The years had finally passed her by but, for the mad and lonely soul who danced solitary within its walls, time had stood mercifully still. She danced into the very mirrors that had once caressed her, an old embittered hag whose frail skin had been torn to ribbons by the jagged daggers smashing about her. They said that her spirit still lived, and danced within those mirrors, mirrors discovered in a locked attic upon investigation of the shadowy house. For now, unleashed from her imprisonment, the tortured reflection of the haggard crone, withered and cruel, reached out from beyond the grave to invite oth-

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ers to join her ... others who might come to worship her beauty, frozen in Hell. “The Cheaters” (1947) portrayed the terrible consequences of greed and distrust as the bewitched spectacles of an infamous sorcerer are discovered hidden in the secret drawer of some antique furniture. The ancient eye glasses reveal the naked truth and soul of anyone encountered by the wearer, exposing in unimagined honesty, the inner thoughts and heart of their focus. Little is left to the imagination as, one by one, its victims wear the accursed “cheaters,” falling victim to dirty truths that might better have been left unspoken. As secrets unravel in unwitting candor, betrayal and revenge all but destroy the inquisitive inheritors of the deadly spectacles until, at last, the ugliness of one’s own soul drives the final owner to madness and suicide. As in Hitchcock’s cinematic morality play Rear Window (1954), there is little reward for even the most selfless peeping tom. Bloch’s characters draw noble, self serving parameters for themselves in which the hypocrisy of their mental eavesdropping achieves intellectual justification and moral outrage but, in the end, the lines between veracity and deception become as blurred as the distorted lens of the “cheaters.” Most, if not all, of Bloch’s stories involve damaged people. They are misfits living beneath societal radar, outcasts from the mainstream living lives of quiet desperation. Some are over weight and slovenly, while others are isolated and lonely. They are abandoned by their world, left to find solace in unsavory redemption. There is little tolerance for the unattractive or unintelligent in a world of uniformity, and so these discarded souls must reach out in directions normally shunned by polite society. Abnormality attracts its own, and so humanity’s refuse finds value in the darker corridors of exploration. Bloch’s protagonists have degenerated to the deepest refuge of the inhuman psyche, finding comfort and delusional grandeur in satanic ritual and supernatural depravity. Their decadence offers respite from the outer storm of derision, and seeming unity in leprous colonization. Often, their rebellious rage threatens the very balance of sanity and reason, as miscreants and misfits discover validation in psychological deformity and demonic possession. Bloch, like Lovecraft before him, was able to vividly illustrate a vast nether land in which deformity threatens to overcome the waking world, while night consumes the sun. Lovecraft’s terrifying Cthulhu Mythos found new, if fetid, breath in a continuing sequence of tales based upon the demented writings of the “Mad Arab,” Abdul Alhazred, in the fabled book of the damned, The Necronomicon. Anyone in possession of this hellish tome might summon the “great old ones” from their slumber, causing a tear in the fragile fabric of time and space in which the lumbering elder gods might rupture

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the Earth once more, achieving infinity in terrifying abandon. After Lovecraft’s death in 1937, Bloch expanded the mythological library of literature sought by sorcerers with such infamous texts as De Vermis Mysteriis, and Cultes des Goules, each offering unholy access to monstrous damnation. In 1945, Bloch was asked to write exclusively for a new syndicated radio program called Stay Tuned for Terror. Broadcast and produced from Chicago, the series presented a full season of thirty nine episodes showcasing the work of the author, which he adapted for air from his own short stories. In addition to writing for print and for radio, Bloch held down regular weekly employment as a copywriter for the Gustav Marx advertising agency, a position he maintained for eleven years. Although maintaining a respectable income and reputation during the forties and fifties, and winning the coveted Hugo for his short story “That Hellbound Train” (1958), Bloch continued to reside in the Midwest and worked in an advertising position in order to remain economically afloat. That changed in 1959 when the writer published his new novel ... the story of a boy, his mom, and a motel. The work, which he titled Psycho, based somewhat loosely upon the real life exploits of notorious Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein (as was the somewhat less subtle Texas Chainsaw Massacre), changed Bloch’s life forever. The book was purchased by blind agents for Alfred Hitchcock and the rest, as they say, is history. Having literally no idea who was purchasing his book, Bloch sold the film rights for something in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars. Had the identity of the purchaser been revealed, the author might have been entitled to a far grander sum. While Outer Limits writer/producer Joseph Stefano penned the screenplay for the controversial motion picture, Hitchcock commented in print that “Psycho was ninety percent Robert Bloch’s book.” Psycho will forever remain Robert Bloch’s most popular and identifiable work based largely, of course, upon the success and legacy of the motion picture. To begin with, Hitchcock was one of the most respected and enduring directors on the world stage, and so his decision to make a film of the author’s work was one of considerable importance to Bloch. Much has been said about the director’s decision to do away with the star of the picture roughly half way through the film, and how daring and provocative that remarkable creative decision actually was. To his credit, Hitchcock wisely chose a major actress to play the tragic Marion Crane, enabling her shocking early demise to attain near operatic surprise and dramatic crescendo. However, it must be remembered that Marion was killed quite early on in Bloch’s novel, as well, insuring calculated shock by the unprepared reader. Hitchcock merely embellished the calculation by casting the biggest star in the film as the doomed

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heroine. Hitchcock’s other masterly decision was to cast Anthony Perkins in the role of Norman Bates. Unlike Bloch’s sleazier depiction of Norman, Hitchcock chose to portray Norman as the boy next door, an outwardly shy sexual innocent, brilliantly camouflaging his Jekyll and Hyde persona. Hence, the revelation of his inner demons became more effectively disturbing. In some ways, Norman Bates was a projection of Robert Bloch’s own literary personality. As stated earlier, Bloch was himself a gentle, sensitive soul with an appreciation for the arts, and a broad, infectious sense of humor. When he chose to don the cape of creativity, however, he transformed himself into a far darker, Freudian evocation of his personal complexity and shadowy identity. It may truthfully be stated that each of us masks our own inner demons with smiles and banal pleasantry. If Robert Bloch, during his waking hours, was his own Henry Jekyll then, surely, his Mr. Hyde would take center stage when immersed in the twilight zone inhabited by Norman Bates. The genius of Bloch’s Psycho is, of course, that the supposed main character of the novel isn’t revealed as merely a “red herring” until well into the story’s progression. The groundwork for Marion Crane’s moral dilemma and near redemption is laid out meticulously. She has abandoned her integrity out of thoughtless greed, never fully comprehending the circumstances of her fall from grace or its ultimate consequence. She has been entrusted with depositing forty thousand dollars by her boss and his client, deciding instead to steal the money and join her lover in an idealized dream of financial security and sexual domesticity. The reader’s concern, then, is that she has come to her senses in time to redeem her fortunes and return to her life, virtually unscathed by a momentary decline into criminality. It is only then that we learn that the story isn’t about Marion Crane at all but, rather, a recently introduced proprietor of a seedy motel in which she quite innocently decides to spend the night, while en route to her destiny. Tragically, the motel is her destiny as she is gruesomely slaughtered by Norman Bates, the true focus of the novel. All that has transpired up to this point is merely the expository groundwork that serves to introduce the reader to the real thrust of both the story, and Norman’s knife. Marion is expendable. She is a fragile, flawed individual who can be sacrificed for the greater good of the novel. Bloch has carefully led the reader into a sheltered sense of complacency, traveling down a calculated detour to a climactic intersection in which the proverbial rug is unceremoniously pulled out from under him. Marion’s world, as well as our own, has been turned inside and out. The bathroom door has closed, and there is no turning back. On the basis of the novel’s huge success, Bloch moved his family to Los Angeles, leaving his day job behind and settling into the film community as

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a full time, working author. Any acrimony with Hitchcock was washed away by the muddy waters of success, and the opportunity to write stories for the director’s popular television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Bloch became one of the program’s most prolific writers, contributing some seventeen teleplays including “The Greatest Monster of Them All” (1961), “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1962), and “The Sign of Satan” (1964) guest starring Christopher Lee. Collections of short stories by the celebrated writer began appearing both in hard and paperback editions with luridly commercial titles such as Nightmares, More Nightmares, Even More Nightmares, Pleasant Dreams, Mysteries of the Worm, and Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper. It was about this time that NBC television producer, Hubbell Robinson, began developing a new series for the network to star horror actor Boris Karloff. Airing over the network in prime time from 1960 until 1962, Boris Karloff ’s Thriller remains the most frightening, potent and atmospheric series in the troubled history of horror television. The series presented some of the most disturbing and nightmarishly visual hours of the past fifty years and many of its most memorable, haunting episodes were written for the program by Robert Bloch. These included “The Cheaters” (the story of a deadly pair of Victorian spectacles that delved into the truth of every soul it perceived), “The Grim Reaper” (featuring young William Shatner as the greedy heir to a writer’s fortune who conspires to frighten the elderly woman to death with stories of a terrible painting coming to life) and, perhaps, the program’s defining moment. Based upon Bloch’s short story, “The Hungry House,” William Shatner was featured once again in “The Hungry Glass” as a recovering victim of a nervous breakdown who purchases a house with a terrible secret, and strangely devoid of any mirrors. Rarely has the medium of film so chillingly captured the gothic temperament and nightmarish language of horror as effectively, or as reverently, as in this uncompromisingly graphic, black and white television series. If Psycho brought Robert Bloch’s name and reputation into the cinematic consciousness of theater goers, Boris Karloff ’s Thriller brought the author lasting fame and recognition in captive living rooms across the country. It was fitting, then, that the decadent domicile used by NBC and Universal for the “Hungry Glass” episode was, in fact, the very same structure utilized by Hitchcock to house Norman Bates and his skeletal mother. Despite the apparent popularity and success of the literate young series, however, it was surprisingly cancelled by the network after only two years, reportedly at the urging of Alfred Hitchcock who felt that its early suspense oriented stories constituted direct competition to his own half hour anthology program on NBC. Assignments for both television and theaters continued with screenplays

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for The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), The Couch (1962), Strait-Jacket (1964) (starring Joan Crawford as an ax murderess), The Night Walker (with the former husband and wife team of Barbara Stanwyk and Robert Taylor in 1964) The Skull (1965) with Peter Cushing (adapted from Bloch’s short story, “The Skull of the Marquis De Sade”) (1966), The Psychopath (1966), Torture Garden (1967), The Deadly Bees (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Asylum (1972) (once again starring Peter Cushing), The Cat Creature (1973) for ABC television, three episodes of the original Star Trek (“What Are Little Girls Made Of,” “Wolf in the Fold,” and “Catspaw”). Star Trek’s “Wolf in the Fold” offered a futuristic variation of his earlier take on the White Chapel slasher, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper.” Bloch had been working on a massive teleplay for CBS television in 1980, an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ In the Days of the Comet produced by the legendary George Pal, when the fantasy film pioneer died of a sudden heart attack. The ambitious collaboration, sadly, was not to be. Among Bloch’s most curious projects for television aired as the final episode of the ABC series, Bus Stop. Based upon the popular 20th Century–Fox classic starring Marilyn Monroe, this all out horror tale became the final episode of the short lived series, with actor Alfred Ryder in a frightening adaptation of Bloch’s short story, “I Kiss Your Shadow.” Bloch was never entirely satisfied with his screen work, for neither the direction or the theatricality of these final picturizations ever truly captured the genuine dread portrayed by his written word. Only Hitchcock’s Psycho ever realized the black and white simplicity of the writer’s psychology of horror. Bloch wrote in black and white or, to put it more succinctly, from a darkened perspective devoid of color. The visualization of horror must be stripped of comfort with the familiar. While colors enrich the waking realm in which we work and interact, their very reassurance serves to erase the frighteningly primordial recollection of a world immersed in dreams. Bloch’s stories were essentially driven by his, and our, deepest fears. As we struggle to awaken from night’s journey through shadows, it is the first light of day in which we must find solace. Bloch understood that nightmares are derived from darkness, for it is there that familiarity is lost. One cannot understand what he cannot see. Rationalization is clarified by light. We can attempt to define what lies before us. It has definition and color. Strip away that color, however, and the horizons before us become dream like, or surreal. Drained of color, the world degenerates into a simplistic panorama in which monstrous apparitions can co-exist comfortably with reality. It is here, in a world stripped of pretense and calming reassurance, that we walk naked through the night. Alone in the darkness, we become vulnerable to emotional assault, and prey to the denizens of darkness. The simplicity of black and white has now prepared our emer-

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gence, or descent, into the nether world of dreams and nightmares. It is for this reason, perhaps, that Bloch’s most successful work on screen remains the quintessential horror anthology hosted by Boris Karloff for NBC Television. Bloch lent distinction to his name whether adapting one of his own short stories for the screen, or reworking the efforts of another writer. Asked to adapt a short story written by Harold Lawlor for the Thriller series, the author composed one of his most terrifying confections, entirely re-structuring the thread of the original tale and turning it into modern horror classic. “The Grim Reaper” aired during the 1961 television season, becoming one of the earliest efforts in the fledgling series’ subtle transformation from suspense to outright horror. The greedy nephew of an Agatha Christie styled mystery writer attempts to frighten his wealthy aunt to death with the gift of an accursed portrait of a skeletal avenger brandishing a razor like scythe. The tale is, of course, a lurid fabrication concocted by Paul Graves (William Shatner) to drive his elderly aunt either to madness or to death so that he might inherit her fortune. His plan works all too well, for the normally grounded writer (Natalie Schafer) sits before the awful portrait, drinking herself into an hallucinatory stupor in which she imagines that the evil figure in the picture has stepped down from its bloody perch to stalk her. The alcohol induced delusion convinces her that Paul’s wicked stories of a cursed creature are, indeed, true and she succumbs to the sum of her fears while frightened to death. Paul has woven his insidious tale a little too well, however, for as he prepares his departure from the house, he senses something not quite right about the portrait. The hideous image upon the bloody canvas has disappeared from its ornate frame. As Paul clutches the opening of his mouth in mortal fear, barely stifling a heart shattering gasp, he hears the rhythmic swish of the deadly blade from somewhere in the room. Nothing is seen but Paul’s mask of terror as the sounds grow closer to his body, frozen in paralyzing fear. An awful scream is heard from beyond the locked door to the library, as frantic relatives and friends of the late writer try unsuccessfully to pry open the lock. Paul’s own vivid imagination has conspired to consume his weak and greedy psyche, and he is torn to shreds by the monstrous aberration he conceived. The Reaper has returned to its menacing lair within the canvas as though it had never left its position on the wall ... and yet ... there is fresh blood glistening on the painted scythe. Both honored and treasured in his later years, Bloch received a Life Achievement Award at the first World Fantasy Convention in 1975, a Lifetime Career Award presented by the World Science Fiction Convention, the Bram Stoker Life Achievement Award, and the World Horror Convention’s “Grand Master Award.” A respected and gifted writer of mystery, as well as

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horror fiction, he served a term as President of the Mystery Writers of America. During his lifetime, Bloch wrote twenty five novels, four hundred short stories, an infinite number of collections, radio programs, screenplays and teleplays. In his personal life, despite his public persona, Robert Bloch was a quiet, gentle man with a robust, self-effacing sense of humor and a love of the arts. Cancer consumed his sensitive soul in 1994 at age 77. The Grim Reaper of his imagination had returned to claim just one more victim, as endless night descended in Pleasant Dreams.

A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft S.T. Joshi Robert Bloch (1917–1994) has never made any secret of his literary and personal debt to H.P. Lovecraft. Bloch corresponded with Lovecraft for the last four years of the latter’s life, and received invaluable assistance and advice from the elder writer in the craft of weird fiction. Only now, however, are we able to probe the details of this literary tutelage, with the nearly simultaneous publication of Lovecraft’s Letters to Robert Bloch (1993) and an augmented edition of Bloch’s collection of Lovecraftian pastiches, Mysteries of the Worm (1993). These documents make two things very evident: first, that Bloch — who first wrote to Lovecraft when he was sixteen, had his first story professionally published when he was seventeen, and died at the age of seventy-seven a revered figure in the field, just as Lovecraft had been — quickly evolved into a skilful writer in the Lovecraftian tradition; and second, that this apprentice work is both intrinsically valuable and of consuming interest for its foreshadowing of Bloch’s later and more distinguished work in the realm of psychological suspense. Bloch first came in touch with Lovecraft in April 1933, and his first object was to read as much of Lovecraft’s work as he had not previously found in magazines. To this end he asked his correspondent to lend him many tales; Lovecraft did so, supplying a list of all the tales he had written up to that time, several of which were still unpublished. In his very first letter to Bloch, however, Lovecraft himself asked his young correspondent whether he had written any weird work (Letters to Robert Bloch 7) and, if so, whether he might 23

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see samples of it. Bloch took up Lovecraft’s offer in late April, sending him two short items, “The Gallows” and another work whose title is unknown. Lovecraft’s response to these pieces of juvenilia (which, along with a good many others Bloch sent to the Providence writer, do not survive) is typical: while praising them, he also gave helpful advice derived from his many years as both a critic and a practitioner of the weird tale: It was with the keenest interest & pleasure that I read your two brief horrorsketches; whose rhythm & atmospheric colouring convey a very genuine air of unholy immanence & nameless menace, & which strike me as promising in the very highest degree. I think you have managed to create a dark tension & apprehension of a sort all too seldom encountered in weird fiction, & believe that your gift for this atmosphere-weaving will serve you in good stead when you attempt longer & more intricately plotted pieces.... Of course, these productions are not free from the earmarks of youth. A critic might complain that the colouring is laid on too thickly — too much overt inculcation of horror as opposed to the subtle, gradual suggestion of concealed horror which actually raises fear to its highest pitch. In later work you will probably be less disposed to pile on great numbers of horrific words (an early & scarcely-conquered habit of my own), but will seek rather to select a few words — whose precise position in the text, & whose deep associative power, will make them in effect more terrible than any barrage of monstrous adjectives, malign nouns, & unhallowed verbs [Letters to Robert Bloch 10].

This is a litany that Lovecraft would repeat for at least another year; and although it took Bloch a little while to realize the wisdom of this caveat, he finally did so. Indeed, by the 1940s Bloch had already evolved that tightlipped, blandly cynical style which would serve him well in his later crime fiction —fiction that, in its relentless emphasis on the psychology of aberrant individuals, is in many ways more potently horrifying than the adjectivechoked supernaturalism of his early work. And yet, Bloch was clearly fond of this thickly laid-on horror at this stage in his career, as indeed Lovecraft was at a corresponding age and for many years later. One gauge of this tendency was Bloch’s relative fondness for the tales of Lovecraft’s he was reading at this time. It is understandable that he would express enthusiasm for “The Outsider,” “The Hound,” and “The Lurking Fear,” but remain relatively cool toward At the Mountains of Madness and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (Letters to Robert Bloch 20), where Lovecraft was attempting to rein in his adjectives and write with more scientific precision and restrained suggestiveness. Although many of Bloch’s own early tales do not survive, “The Laughter of a Ghoul”— read by Lovecraft in June 1933 (Letters to Robert Bloch 20) and published in the Fantasy Fan for December 1934 — seems very representative of them: “Slithering secrets dwelt within the

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archaic avenues of the vast and sombre forest near my manor in the hills — secrets black and hideous, haunting and unspeakable, such as demonian presences mumble nightly in the aeon-dead abysses beyond the light of stars.” What Lovecraft probably liked about work of this kind — even though he also recognized that an overuse of fevered prose resulted in unintended humor — was precisely its “atmosphere-weaving,” a quality he (correctly) believed sadly lacking in most of the weird fiction published in the pulps. He continually excoriated the brisk, “cheerful” style of the average pulp product, in which spectacular defiances of natural law were regarded both by the characters and by the author with a bland casualness that is fatal to convincingness. Overcolored as Bloch’s early tales may have been, they at least were attempting to achieve an emotional preparation for the supernatural. A few months later Lovecraft read a story of Bloch’s entitled “The Grave.” Here Lovecraft’s advice was the need for clarity in motivation. Why would a grave-robber seek his booty in an ancient graveyard, since the skeletons would all have crumbled to dust? Also, how can a skeleton remain articulated after the flesh has fallen off? How were the tunnels leading from the grave dug? Lovecraft also criticizes some psychological implausibilities in one character’s behavior. Bloch manifestly took all these recommendations to heart in the course of time. Lovecraft read something entitled “The Feast” in late June 1933, remarking that it “forms a very clever union of the macabre & the comic” (Letters to Robert Bloch 21). It is not clear whether this is an early version of “The Feast in the Abbey,” but Lovecraft in any case read that story in September; indeed, he supplied the title, since Bloch had evidently sent it to Lovecraft without one (Letters to Robert Bloch 35). This is, of course, Bloch’s first published story in Weird Tales (it appeared in the January 1935 issue), although “The Secret in the Tomb” (Weird Tales, May 1935) had been accepted earlier, in July 1934 (Letters to Robert Bloch 50). Lovecraft read the latter tale as well, although apparently not before its acceptance. He did, however, recommend some minor corrections (Letters to Robert Bloch 52), which Bloch seems to have made. Both these stories evince that fascination with the mythical books of the “Cthulhu Mythos” which would remain constant throughout Bloch’s early work. It was in these tales, of course, that Bloch devised Ludvig Prinn’s Mysteries of the Worm, and Lovecraft mentions other titles that were cited in an earlier draft of “The Secret in the Tomb” but later excised (Mazonides’ Black Spell of Saboth, Petrus Averonius’ Compendium Daemonum). In “The Suicide in the Study” (Weird Tales, June 1935) we find other such titles as “the Black Rites of mad Luveh-Keraph, priest of Bast, or Comte d’Erlette’s ghastly Cultes

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des Goules” (Mysteries of the Worm 19). Luveh-Keraph scarcely requires elucidation, save to note that this coinage appears to be Bloch’s invention, not Lovecraft’s. Some have thought that Bloch merely abstracted this from one of Lovecraft’s letters, which frequently include whimsical signatures of this sort; but in fact Lovecraft uses the “Luveh-Keraph” signature for the first time only in April 1935 (Letters to Robert Bloch 65), a month after having read “The Suicide in the Study” (Letters to Robert Bloch 61). In other words, he picked up the usage from Bloch’s story, as a sort of wry acknowledgement. There is not much to say about these early tales, save that they may be marginally better than most of the other material appearing in Weird Tales. If nothing else, the verve of their adjective-laden prose and lurid incidents is engaging. “The Secret in the Tomb” is a preposterous story about a man who battles a skeleton in his ancestral tomb. “The Feast in the Abbey” (not included in Mysteries of the Worm) tells of cannibalism in a mediaeval monastery. “The Suicide in the Study” is perhaps the most interesting of the lot: a reprise of the Jekyll/Hyde theme, it tells of a man who believes that the good and evil sides of every individual are “co-existent” (Mysteries of the Worm 20) and seeks to bring up his evil side from the depths of his personality. The story is hampered by a conventional conception of what constitutes good and evil; but the evil side, when it finally emerges, presents a loathsome sight: Out of the darkness nightmare came; stark, staring nightmare — a monstrous, hairy figure; huge, grotesque, simian — a hideous travesty of all things human. It was black madness; slavering, mocking madness with little red eyes of wisdom old and evil; leering snout and yellow fangs of grimacing death. It was like a rotting, living skull upon the body of a black ape. It was grisly and wicked, troglodytic and wise [Mysteries of the Worm 22].

Here evil is pictured as simultaneously subhuman (the Darwinian beast) and somehow superhuman —“wise” and incapable of being controlled by our “good” side. The early story of Bloch’s that has brought him the greatest celebrity for its connections with Lovecraft is “The Shambler from the Stars” (Weird Tales, September 1935). Lovecraft mentions something called “The Shambler in the Night” in a letter of November 1934 (Letters to Robert Bloch 55); this may be an early version of the story, although if so it is odd that Lovecraft makes no mention in his letter of its central feature — the fact that Lovecraft himself is a character in the story. We all know the story of how “The Shambler from the Stars” was provisionally accepted by Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales, who felt that Bloch needed to get Lovecraft’s permission to kill him off (although Wright had evidently not felt a similar need when, years before, Frank Belknap Long had done the same to Lovecraft in “The Space-Eaters”),

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so that Lovecraft wrote his whimsical letter to Bloch in late April 1935 authorizing him “to portray, murder, annihilate, disintegrate, transfigure, metamorphose, or otherwise manhandle the undersigned in the tale entitled THE SHAMBLER FROM THE STARS” (Letters to Robert Bloch 67). The critical issue about the story is not that it is a “contribution” to the “Cthulhu Mythos” but that, like Long’s tale, it makes Lovecraft a character, and accordingly assists in the fostering of the Lovecraft legend — the legend of the gaunt, reclusive delver into occult mysteries. Of course, he is never named, merely identified as a “mystic in New England” who was “a writer of notable brilliance and wide reputation among the discriminating few” (Mysteries of the Worm 26–27). But even more interesting, perhaps, is how Bloch himself has become a character in his own story. In its early parts Bloch presents a sort of objective assessment of his own career as a writer up to that point, finding much dissatisfaction in it: I wanted to write a real story, not the stereotyped, ephemeral sort of tale I turned out for the magazines, but a real work of art. The creation of such a masterpiece became my ideal. I was not a good writer, but that was not entirely due to my errors in mechanical style. It was, I felt, the fault of my subject matter. Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, mythological monsters — these things constituted material of little merit. Commonplace imagery, ordinary adjectival treatment, and a prosaically anthropocentric point of view were the chief detriments to the production of a really good weird tale [Mysteries of the Worm 26].

This paragraph could have come directly out of Lovecraft’s writings on the subject, such as “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (1933). That last comment about point of view seems to derive from a letter by Lovecraft to Bloch in June 1933, in which he remarks how he had once (in the “Eyrie” for March 1924) advised “having a story told from an unconventional & non-human angle,” specifically a story “from the ghoul’s or werewolf ’s point of view” (Letters to Robert Bloch 21); he goes on to remark that H. Warner Munn had attempted to embody this conception in “The Werewolf of Ponkert,” but had botched the job because Munn’s “sympathies were still with mankind — whereas I called for sympathies wholly dissociated from mankind & perhaps violently hostile to it” (Letters to Robert Bloch 21). This notion is not in fact present in “The Shambler from the Stars,” but does find its way into “The Dark Demon.” Lovecraft’s avowed sequel to Bloch’s story —“The Haunter of the Dark,” written in November 1935 and published in Weird Tales for December 1936 — continues the fusion of the real and the imaginary in its portrayal of character. Here the protagonist, Robert Blake, is said to come (like Bloch) from

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Milwaukee (the address given in the story — 620 East Knapp Street — was in fact Bloch’s address), but the apartment he occupies on a visit to Providence is transparently Lovecraft’s own dwelling at 66 College Street. Then again, the titles of the stories Blake is said to have written at this time —“The Burrower Beneath,” “The Stairs in the Crypt,” “Shaggai,” “In the Vale of Pnath,” and “The Feaster from the Stars” (DH 94)— form an exquisite union of elements found in both Bloch’s and Lovecraft’s stories. In early March 1935 Lovecraft had wryly remarked on Bloch’s success in landing tales with titles like “The —— in the ——” (Letters to Robert Bloch: Supplement 11); he echoes them in the above list, although his own tales very frequently have titles of this sort as well. At the end of “The Haunter of the Dark” Robert Blake is left a glassy-eyed corpse staring through a window — a somewhat more tasteful demise than that of the victim of “The Shambler from the Stars,” who ends up torn to pieces by a nameless entity. For “The Shambler from the Stars” Lovecraft devised the Latin title of Mysteries of the Worm—De Vermis Mysteriis— and claimed to have modified the narrator’s statement of his ignorance of Latin, “since knowledge of elementary Latin is so universal” (Letters to Robert Bloch 65). And yet, the narrator’s lack of knowledge of Latin is critical to the development of the plot, since it is precisely because he finds a Latin copy of De Vermis Mysteriis, which he is unable to read, that he feels the need to seek out his New England correspondent and show him the work. (Bloch’s deficiencies in Latin make themselves all too evident in another title he devised, the nonsensical Daemonolorum, cited in “The Brood of Bubastis” [Mysteries of the Worm 95] and elsewhere.) “The Dark Demon” (Weird Tales, November 1936) is interesting in this context because it again displays Lovecraft as a character and, more important, becomes a parable for his early assistance to Bloch’s literary development. Here the narrator testifies that he had come into contact with the writer Edgar Gordon, a “reclusive dreamer” (Mysteries of the Worm 62) living in the same town. They develop a warm correspondence and also meet in person: “What Edgar Gordon did for me in the next three years can never adequately be told. His able assistance, friendly criticism and kind encouragement finally succeeded in making a writer of sorts out of me, and after that our mutual interest formed an added bond between us” (Mysteries of the Worm 62). Lovecraft does not seem to have read this tale prior to publication (Letters to Robert Bloch 84), but he warmly commends it; he makes no mention of the above tribute, but no doubt he saw clearly its import and was heartened by it. Although Lovecraft himself is mentioned by name elsewhere in the story (Mysteries of the Worm 62), Gordon becomes a transparent Lovecraft figure in his bizarre dreams and the very strange work he begins writing as a result of it:

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the “stories [were] in first-person, but the narrator was not a human being” (Mysteries of the Worm 64). Gordon, when pressed by the narrator as to where he is getting his ideas, makes cloudy references to a “Dark One,” remarking: “He isn’t a destroyer — merely a superior intelligence who wishes to gain mental rapport with human minds, so as to enable certain — ah — exchanges between humanity and Those beyond” (Mysteries of the Worm 66). This idea is unquestionably derived from Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness,” in which aliens from the depths of space wish to take the brains of selected human beings on fantastic cosmic voyagings. The mention of dreams is interesting, since in August 1933 Lovecraft, commenting with amazement on Bloch’s claim that he dreamed only twice a year, related a hideous dream in which some mediaeval soldiers attempt to hunt down a monstrous entity but to their horror see it meld insidiously with the body of their leader. Bloch claimed to be working on a story based upon this dream (see Letters to Robert Bloch 33), but apparently never completed it; it does not survive. He does, however, in “The Dark Demon” echo Lovecraft’s scorn of conventional Freudian interpretations of dreams. Bloch’s narrator remarks, “Gordon’s fantasies were far from the ordinary Freudian sublimation or repression types” (Mysteries of the Worm 63); Lovecraft in his letter had written: “I may add that all I know of dreams seems to contradict flatly the ‘symbolism’ theories of Freud. It may be that others, with less sheer phantasy filling their minds, have dreams of the Freudian sort; but it is very certain that I don’t” (Letters to Robert Bloch 31). For all Lovecraft’s advice to Bloch, he does not seem to have done much actual revision of Bloch’s work, as he did — many times unasked — with other young colleagues. In June 1933 Lovecraft remarks that “I added corrections here & there” to a story entitled “The Madness of Lucian Grey,” which was accepted for publication by Marvel Tales but was never published and is now non-extant. A blurb in Marvel Tales described it as “a weird-fantasy story of an artist who was forced to paint a picture ... and the frightful thing that came from it” (Letters to Robert Bloch 13n), which makes one immediately think of Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model.” Lovecraft seems to have done much more extensive work in November 1933 on a story called “The Merman”: I have read “The Merman” with the keenest interest & pleasure, & am returning it with a few annotations & emendations.... My changes — the congested script of which I hope you can read — are of two sorts; simplifications of diffuse language in the interest of more direct & powerful expression, & attempts to make the emotional modulations more vivid, lifelike, & convincing at certain points where the narrative takes definite turns [Letters to Robert Bloch 41].

But unfortunately this tale also does not survive.

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If any extant work of Bloch’s can be called a Lovecraft revision, it is “Satan’s Servants,” written in February 1935. Bloch comments that the story came back from Lovecraft “copiously annotated and corrected, together with a lengthy and exhaustive list of suggestions for revision” (Something About Cats and Other Pieces 117), and goes on to say that many of Lovecraft’s additions are now undetectable, since they fused so well with his own style: From the purely personal standpoint, I was often fascinated during the process of revision by the way in which certain interpolated sentences or phrases of Lovecraft’s seemed to dovetail with my own work — for in 1935 I was quite consciously a disciple of what has since come to be known as the “Lovecraft school” of weird fiction. I doubt greatly if even the self-professed “Lovecraft scholar” can pick out his actual verbal contributions to the finished tale; most of the passages which would be identified as “pure Lovecraft” are my work; all of the sentences and bridges he added are of an incidental nature and merely supplement the text [Something About Cats and Other Pieces 118].

And yet, it is not surprising that the original version of the story was rejected by Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales; his comment as noted by Bloch —“that the plot-structure was too flimsy for the extended length of the narrative” (Something About Cats and Other Pieces 117)— is an accurate assessment of this overly long and unconvincing story. “Satan’s Servants” had initially been dedicated to Lovecraft, and after its rejection Bloch urged Lovecraft to collaborate on its revision; but, aside from whatever additions and corrections he made, Lovecraft bowed out of fullfledged collaboration. He did, however, have much to say on the need for historical accuracy in this tale of seventeenth-century New England, and he had other suggestions as to the pacing of the story. Bloch apparently did some revisions in 1949 for its publication in Something About Cats, but the story still labors under its excess verbiage and its rather comical ending: a pious Puritan, facing a mob of hundreds of devil-worshippers in a small Maine town, defeats them all by literally pounding them with a Bible! It is just as well that “Satan’s Servants” lay in Bloch’s files until resurrected as a literary curiosity. It is with “The Faceless God” (Weird Tales, May 1936) that Bloch begins his twofold fascination with Egypt and with the Lovecraftian “god” Nyarlathotep. One of Bloch’s earliest enquiries to Lovecraft was an explanation of some of the invented names and terms that appear in some of his tales. In regard to one such query Lovecraft responds in May 1933: “‘Nyarlathotep’ is a horrible messenger of the evil gods to earth, who usually appears in human form” (Letters to Robert Bloch 11–12). Bloch, who in his early days was attempting pictorial art, actually drew a picture of Nyarlathotep, which Lovecraft charitably says “just fits my conception” (Letters to Robert Bloch 21).

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The figure of Nyarlathotep is one of the most intriguing in Lovecraft — perhaps because it was never fully developed or coherently conceived. Nyarlathotep is commonly believed to be a shape-shifter — a view evidently derived from some random passages in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, especially where Nyarlathotep himself refers to “my thousand other forms” (MM 403). One gains the feeling, however, that this was a sort of makeshift excuse for Lovecraft to present Nyarlathotep in so many diverse guises in his work. Bloch could not have read the Dream-Quest (it was not typed or circulated in Lovecraft’s lifetime), but he uses Nyarlathotep in very much the same way as Lovecraft; indeed, it could be said that Bloch has elaborated the conception more exhaustively than Lovecraft himself did. It would be of interest to know which of Lovecraft’s stories mentioning Nyarlathotep Bloch did in fact read. I see no evidence that he had at this time read the early prose-poem “Nyarlathotep” (1920), which had appeared only in amateur magazines; it is here that the connection between Nyarlathotep and Egypt is explicitly made, and it is this connection that Bloch develops. The prose-poem is in fact listed in the list of stories Lovecraft sent to Bloch in April 1933, but it is crossed off; and the subsequent letters do not suggest that Lovecraft ever lent Bloch the story. If Lovecraft had in fact sent the item, one imagines that he would not have had to “define” Nyarlathotep as he did in the letter in May. Nyarlathotep is otherwise very glancingly mentioned in “The Rats in the Walls” (1923), extensively cited in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926–27) (which Bloch did not read), and glancingly cited in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930) and “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932). In fact, Bloch probably derived most of his information on Nyarlathotep from “The Haunter of the Dark,” the story Lovecraft wrote in November 1935 and dedicated to Bloch. Toward the end of the tale the character Robert Blake writes in his diary: “What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man?” (DH 114). Here is the Egyptian connection that Bloch picked up on. “The Faceless God” tells the story of the attempts of an evil Dr. Stugatche1 to unearth a statue of Nyarlathotep buried in the sands of Egypt, only to meet a fittingly horrible end. I am not clear why Bloch conceived of Nyarlathotep as faceless — a detail that perhaps inadvertently recalls Lovecraft’s night-gaunts. Bloch notes that his Egyptological (“or Egyptillogical”) tales were “conscious attempts to move away from Lovecraft’s literary turf ” (Mysteries of the Worm 255). How successful Bloch was, in this early period, in these attempts is debatable. He perhaps had not read — or did not know of Lovecraft’s hand in —“Under the Pyramids” (the story published in Weird Tales as “Imprisoned

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with the Pharaohs” and attributed to Harry Houdini), and of course Nyarlathotep’s Egyptian connection had indeed been established by Lovecraft. But such a story as “The Opener of the Way” (Weird Tales, October 1936), while still perhaps somewhat Lovecraftian in style, does not employ Lovecraft’s pantheon of invented deities but seeks to invest horror in the real gods of Egypt (in this case Anubis). “The Brood of Bubastis” (Weird Tales, March 1937) is very similar: aside from insignificant references to De Vermis Mysteriis, this tale is nothing but a story of the cat-goddess Bubastis, and involves the ingenious idea of an ancient Egyptian colony in England. Lovecraft read the story about two months before his death, noting: “Your Bubastis story is excellent, despite the dubious light in which it presents my beloved felidae” (Letters to Robert Bloch 87). “The Secret of Sebek” (Weird Tales, November 1937)— a story probably written just after Lovecraft’s death — is an interesting case. The story is set in New Orleans, and concerns the god Sebek, who has the head of a crocodile and the body of a man. A character sees such a figure in a costume ball and, thinking the man in disguise, attempts to pull off his crocodile mask — only to find that “I felt beneath my fingers, not a mask, but living flesh!” (Mysteries of the Worm 129). The dominant influence on this story appears to be “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” which is likewise set in New Orleans and likewise concludes apocalyptically with a character who pulls off an actual mask from another character (Randolph Carter in the body of the extraterrestrial wizard Zkauba), finding a horribly alien countenance underneath. Again, only some random mentions of invented books make this a “Cthulhu Mythos” story. “Fane of the Black Pharaoh” (Weird Tales, December 1937) is perhaps the most interesting of Bloch’s Egyptian tales, both for its intrinsic effectiveness and for its connections with Lovecraft. This is an entire story about the pharaoh Nephren-Ka. The name had been invented by Lovecraft, and is first cited in the early story “The Outsider” (one of Bloch’s favorites): “Now I ... play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile” (DH 52). Lovecraft resurrects him in a single tantalizing sentence in “The Haunter of the Dark”: “The Pharaoh NephrenKa built around it [the Shining Trapezohedron] a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records” (DH 106). Bloch elaborates upon this sentence, although departing somewhat from it. In “Fane of the Black Pharaoh” Nephren-Ka is rumored to have been a worshipper of Nyarlathotep, and his “atrocious sacrifices” (Mysteries of the Worm 134) caused him to be deposed. Then, hiding in a secret temple, Nephren-Ka is granted the gift of prophecy by Nyarlathotep and

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paints an enormous series of pictures of the years and centuries to come. A modern explorer learns just how much truth there is in this old fable. “The Shadow from the Steeple” (Weird Tales, September 1950) simultaneously concludes the trilogy begun with “The Shambler from the Stars” and “The Haunter of the Dark” and is Bloch’s final word about Nyarlathotep. As early as December 1936 Lovecraft wrote, “...I hope to see ‘The Shadow in the Steeple’ when you get it written” (Letters to Robert Bloch 84); this is an early version of the story, as Bloch notes (Something About Cats and Other Pieces 118–19), but for some reason he put it aside for many years before resuming it. The story as we have it was either written or revised around 1950, for it makes mention of Edmund Fiske’s “fifteen-year quest” (Mysteries of the Worm 183) to discover the truth about the death of Robert Blake. As in “The Dark Demon,” both Bloch and Lovecraft become characters in the story — the latter explicitly and by name. The narrator notes: “Blake had been a precocious adolescent interested in fantasy-writing, and as such became a member of the ‘Lovecraft circle’— a group of writers maintaining correspondence with one another and with the late Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence” (Mysteries of the Worm 180). Later it is said that “another Milwaukee author” (Mysteries of the Worm 181) had written a story about Nephren-Ka entitled “Fane of the Black Pharaoh”! With somewhat questionable taste, Bloch even incorporates Lovecraft’s death into the fabric of the plot, noting that Fiske had intended in early 1937 to visit Lovecraft and query him about Blake’s death, but that Lovecraft’s own passing foiled these plans. Bloch has written on many occasions of the shock he felt at hearing of Lovecraft’s death, and the narrator of “The Shadow from the Steeple” remarks that Lovecraft’s “unexpected passing plunged Fiske into a period of mental despondency from which he was slow to recover” (Mysteries of the Worm 185); but I still wonder whether it was proper for Bloch to make fictional use of both Lovecraft’s life and his demise in this fashion. In any event, it transpires that Dr. Dexter — the “superstitious” (DH 114) physician who had hurled the Shining Trapezohedron into the river after Blake’s death — is Nyarlathotep himself, a clever twist on Lovecraft’s premise. The story also effectively incorporates features from the sonnet “Nyarlathotep” from Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth (1929–30), which says that “...at last from inner Egypt came / The strange dark one to whom the fellahs bowed” and that “wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.” Bloch’s Egyptian tales may have been an attempt to escape partially from Lovecraft’s influence, but we have seen that they were only indifferently successful in that objective, although many of them are quite successful as stories. Bloch was so steeped in Lovecraft’s work at this time that many

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borrowings may well have been unconscious. Hence something so slight as one character’s observation in “The Grinning Ghoul” (Weird Tales, June 1936) that there is no dust on the stairs of a crypt (Mysteries of the Worm 57) may be an echo of the similarly dust-free corridors of the ancient city in At the Mountains of Madness, swept clean by the passing of a shoggoth. “The Creeper in the Crypt” (Weird Tales, July 1937) is set in Arkham and makes clear allusion to Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”; but it may also betray the influence of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (the narrator, after his experiences, seeks aid from the federal government to suppress the horror), and also perhaps of “The Terrible Old Man,” as the tale involves a Polish and an Italian criminal who kidnap a man only to undergo a loathsome fate in the cellar of an old house, just as in Lovecraft’s story a Pole, a Portuguese, and an Italian seek to rob the Terrible Old Man but meet death at his hands instead. “The Sorcerer’s Jewel” (Strange Stories, February 1939) is clearly a variation on “The Haunter of the Dark” and its Shining Trapezohedron. A character refers to a “Star of Sechmet”: Very ancient, but not costly. Stolen from the crown of the Lioness-headed Goddess during a Roman invasion of Egypt. It was carried to Rome and placed in the vestal girdle of the High-Priestess of Diana. The barbarians took it, cut the jewel into a round stone. The black centuries swallowed it [Mysteries of the Worm 155].

This is precisely analogous to the “history” of the Trapezohedron, from remote antiquity to the present, provided by Lovecraft in “The Haunter of the Dark”— and it is in this passage that Lovecraft mentions Nephren-Ka. And, just as Blake, when looking into the Shining Trapezohedron, “saw processions of robed, hooded figures whose outlines were not human, and looked on endless leagues of desert lined with carved, sky-reaching monoliths” (DH 104), so a similar experience befalls a character in “The Sorcerer’s Jewel”: A swirling as of parted mists. A dancing light. The fog was dispersing, and it seemed to be opening up — opening to a view that receded far into the distance.... At first only angles and angles, weaving and shifting in light that was of no color, yet phosphorescent. And out of the angles, a flat black plain that stretched upward, endlessly without horizon ... [Mysteries of the Worm 156–57].

But Bloch’s early Lovecraftian tales may be of the greatest interest, at least as far as Bloch’s own subsequent career is concerned, for the hints they provide of how he metamorphosed his writing from the florid supernaturalism of his youth to the psychological suspense of his maturity. At first glance, these two modes could not be more different; but in several tales of the late 1930s through the 1950s, Bloch shows how elements from both can be fused to produce a new amalgam.

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The first thing Bloch had to do was to gain control of his style. Already by late 1934 Lovecraft is noting that “The tendency toward overcolouring so marked last year is waning rapidly, & your command of effective diction ... is becoming more & more dependable” (Letters to Robert Bloch 55). One of the stories that elicited this comment was “The Grinning Ghoul,” and indeed it is one of the first of Bloch’s stories that plays on the distinction between psychological and ontological horror. The protagonist is a “moderately successful practising psychiatrist” (Mysteries of the Worm 51), one of whose patients is a professor who admits to having bizarre dreams. Naturally, the psychiatrist initially dispenses with the dreams as mere vagaries, but later learns that they have an all too real source. Still more remarkable, and one of the finest stories of Bloch’s early period, is the uncollected tale “Black Bargain” (Weird Tales, May 1942).2 Here both the Lovecraftian idiom and the customary Lovecraftian setting have been abandoned totally, and the subtle incursion of horror in a very mundane environment produces potently chilling effects. A cynical and world-weary pharmacist supplies some odd drugs — aconite, belladonna, and the like — to a down-and-outer who comes into his store clutching a large black book in German black-letter. A few days later the customer returns, but he has been transformed: he is spruced up with new clothes and claims that he has been hired by a local chemical supply house. As the man, Fritz Gulther, and the pharmacist celebrate the former’s good fortune at a bar, the pharmacist notices something anomalous about the man’s shadow: its movements do not seem to coincide with Gulther’s. Thinking himself merely drunk, the pharmacist attempts to put the incident out of his mind. Gulther then offers the pharmacist a job at the chemical company as his assistant. Going there, the pharmacist finds in Gulther’s office the book he had been carrying — it is, of course, De Vermis Mysteriis. Eventually he worms the truth out of Gulther: Gulther had uttered an incantation, made a sacrifice, and called up the Devil, who had offered him success on one condition: “‘He told me that I’d have only one rival, and that this rival would be a part of myself. It would grow with my success’” (74). Sure enough, Gulther’s shadow seems both to be growing and to be subsuming Gulther’s own life-force. As Gulther begins to panic, the pharmacist suggests that they prepare a counter-incantation to reverse the effect; but when he returns to Gulther’s office with chemicals he has brought from his pharmacy, he finds Gulther transformed: I sat. Gulther rested on the desk nonchalantly swinging his legs. “All that nervousness, that strain, has disappeared. But before I forget it, I’d like to apologize for telling you that crazy story about sorcery and my

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The Man Who Collected Psychos obsession. Matter of fact, I’d feel better about the whole thing in the future if you just forget that all this ever happened” [76].

The pharmacist, dazed, agrees, but he knows that something has gone wrong. In fact, the shadow has now totally usurped Gulther. It is not the use of De Vermis Mysteriis that represents the Lovecraftian connection in this fine, understated tale; instead, it is Gulther’s concluding transformation. In effect, the shadow has taken possession of Gulther’s body and ousted his own personality — in exactly the same way that, in “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1933), Asenath Waite ousts the personality of her husband Edward Derby from his body and casts it into her own body. The concluding scene in “Black Bargain” is very similar to a scene in Lovecraft’s story where Derby’s personality is evicted while he is being driven back to Arkham from Maine by the narrator, Daniel Upton. Asenath (in Derby’s body) remarks: “‘I hope you’ll forget my attack back there, Upton. You know what my nerves are, and I guess you can excuse such things’” (DH 291). Several years later Bloch wrote another powerful tale, “The Unspeakable Betrothal” (Avon Fantasy Reader, 1949)— whose title, Bloch has repeatedly insisted, is not his. Here too we encounter a prose style radically different from the adjective-riddled hyperbole of “The Feast in the Abbey,” and Bloch effectively experiments with stream-of-consciousness in capturing the visions that plague a young girl both at night and by day: But everything kept going round and round, and when Aunt May walked past the bed she seemed to flatten out like a shadow, or one of the things, only she made a loud noise which was really the thunder outside and now she was sleeping really and truly even though she heard the thunder but the thunder wasn’t real nothing was real except the things, that was it nothing was real any more but the things [Mysteries of the Worm 168].

These visions — which convince the girl’s family and friends that she is psychologically aberrant — again prove to be based upon reality, and at the end she is transported into space by the entities have infiltrated her mind. Two years prior to the publication of this story, Bloch had written his first nonsupernatural novel of psychological horror, The Scarf (1947); and the rest of his career would see an alteration between supernaturalism and psychological suspense, with intermittent fusions of the two. “The Unspeakable Betrothal” is such a fusion in its sensitive delineation of a psyche that has been rendered subtly non-human by outside sources. And yet, even here the influence of Lovecraft can be felt. “The Whisperer in Darkness” is very much in evidence in the “deep, buzzing voice” (Mysteries of the Worm 166) that the girl hears, and also at the conclusion when nothing but the girl’s face is left, as her body has been spirited away. Lovecraft himself, however, is not given

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enough credit for mingling supernatural and psychological horror: he did just that in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and perhaps also in “The Shadow out of Time,” and Bloch may well have found suggestive hints in both. “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” (Weird Tales, May 1951) uses somewhat the same stylistic device as “The Unspeakable Betrothal” in its narration by an ill-educated boy rather than a learned omniscient narrator. This story does not feature much psychological analysis, and in its rather grotesque misconstrual of Lovecraft’s shoggoth (here interpreted as some sort of tree spirit) it led the way to Ramsey Campbell’s similar error in his juvenile story, “The Hollow in the Woods” (in Ghostly Tales [1957/58]). But, if nothing else, it shows how a tale of basically Lovecraftian conception can be adapted to a very different idiom. Here, again, however, perhaps Bloch was simply adapting Lovecraft’s own extensive use of New England dialect in such tales as “The Picture in the House,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” “Terror in Cut-Throat Cave” (Fantastic, June 1958) is of interest in combining the crime or adventure story with supernaturalism. The basic plot of the tale may have been conceived as early as 1933, for Lovecraft makes mention of one of Bloch’s story plots as the “idea of finding a Thing in the hold of a long-sunken treasure-ship” (Letters to Robert Bloch 26). This is, indeed, exactly the core of “Terror in Cut-Throat Cave,” although by the time Bloch wrote it he had mastered the tough-guy style he would use to such powerful effect in The Dead Beat (1960), and his powers of characterization render the three main figures crisply — Howard Lane, the jaded writer who seeks a thrill from searching for underwater treasure; Don Hanson, a lumbering giant who has eyes for nothing but money; Dena Drake, Don’s mistreated companion, who stays with her brutal lover for lack of any other meaningful goal in her life. I am not certain why this story is in Mysteries of the Worm: there is no “Mythos” allusion of any kind in it, and Robert M. Price’s suggestion that Hanson is “something of a modern Obed Marsh” (Mysteries of the Worm 218) is unconvincing. And yet, there is one fascinating Lovecraftian connection. Toward the end Lane’s mind is taken over by the nameless submerged entity, and he writes: “For already I was a part of it and it was a part of me” (Mysteries of the Worm 249). No reader can fail to recall Robert Blake’s poignant reflection of the fusion of his own mind with that of Nyarlathotep in “The Haunter of the Dark”: “I am it and it is I...” (DH 115). That one sentence in Bloch’s story is enough to reveal his borrowing of a central feature of Lovecraft’s tale for his own work. It would be twenty years before Bloch would write another tale that might conceivably be considered Lovecraftian; but when he did so, he did it

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with a vengeance. Strange Eons (1978) is Bloch’s most extended tribute to Lovecraft. No one is likely to think it a masterwork of literature, but it may be among Bloch’s more successful later novels and is certainly a delight to the Lovecraftian. The premise of Strange Eons is simple: Lovecraft was writing truth, not fiction. This is, of course, the premise under which many occultist groups function; some asserting, with added implausibility, that Lovecraft himself was unaware of the literal truth of his work. This view was already prevalent among a few in Lovecraft’s own lifetime; note his amused comment on the beliefs of the mystical William Lumley: “We [the Lovecraft circle] may think we’re writing fiction, and may even (absurd thought!) disbelieve what we write, but at bottom we are telling the truth in spite of ourselves — serving unwittingly as mouthpieces of Tsathoggua, Crom, Cthulhu, and other pleasant Outside gentry” (SL 4.271). Bloch actually renders the idea half-believable by the gradualness of his exposition and by his suggestion that Lovecraft was in fact aware of what he was writing and was trying to utter a warning of some kind. The novel opens with an individual discovering a painting that seems strikingly similar to one ascribed to Richard Upton Pickman in “Pickman’s Model”; later it is discovered that the painting is in fact by one Richard Upton, who was in touch with Lovecraft and had shown him some spectacular canvases in Boston. As Strange Eons progresses, various events seem uncannily to mimic those found in Lovecraft’s stories —“The Lurking Fear,” “The Statement of Randolph Carter” (“You fool — Beckman is dead!” [Strange Eons 25]), “The Whisperer in Darkness,” and so on. The focus of the novel is, as might be expected, Nyarlathotep — here embodied in the person of Reverend Nye, a black man who leads the Starry Wisdom sect, seemingly just another of the harmless cults found so bountifully in southern California. But very quickly it becomes clear that Nye and his cult are far from harmless, as character after character dies off after learning too much. Drawing upon the prose-poem “Nyarlathotep,” Bloch sees in the figure of Nyarlathotep nothing less than a symbol for — and, indeed, the actual engenderer of— a cataclysmic chaos that could destroy the world and perhaps the universe. Strange Eons is a grand synthesis of Lovecraftian tales and themes. Bloch fuses elements from the “Cthulhu Mythos” into a convincing unity: Nyarlathotep prepares for the emergence of Cthulhu from the depths of the Pacific; the mind-exchange that Asenath Waite practiced in “The Thing on the Doorstep” allows a Starry Wisdom member to deceive an opponent at a critical juncture, just as the mimicry that tricked Wilmarth at the conclusion of “The

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Whisperer in Darkness” does so at an earlier point in the novel; and the female protagonist serves, like Lavinia Whateley in “The Dunwich Horror,” as the unwilling mate in a sexual union with one of the Great Old Ones. Throughout Strange Eons, all the characters attempting to thwart Nyarlathotep — including a powerful secret branch of the U.S. government — are themselves thwarted by Nyarlathotep and his minions; and the conclusion offers no reassurance. The final section of Strange Eons, a harrowing account of a severe earthquake that causes the submersion of a large part of California sometime in the near future, is narrated in a hypnotic, quasi-stream-of-consciousness manner that is as potently effective as the most incantatory Lovecraftian prose. Here the resemblance to the prose-poem “Nyarlathotep” is very marked, as all civilization seems to be cracking at the foundations. It is quite possible that Bloch was thinking not only of the prose-poem but of the passage (which he had already quoted in “The Shadow from the Steeple”) in the sonnet “Nyarlathotep” in Fungi from Yuggoth: Soon from the sea a noxious birth began; Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold; The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled Down on the quaking citadels of man. Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play, The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.

That “noxious birth” is, in Bloch’s conception, nothing less than the emergence of Cthulhu, and the novel ends grimly and apocalyptically: That is not dead which can eternal lie, and the time of strange eons had arrived. The stars were right, the gates were open, the seas swarmed with immortal multitudes and the earth gave up its undead. Soon the winged ones from Yuggoth would swoop down from the void and now the Old Ones would return — Azazoth [sic] and Yog-Sothoth, whose priest he [Nyarlathotep] was, would come to lightless Leng and old Kadath in the risen continents which were transformed as he was transformed.... He rose, and mountains trembled, sinking into the sea. Time stopped. Death died. And Great Cthulhu went forth into the world to begin his eternal reign [Strange Eons 194].

Such a cheerless ending would be unthinkable to many modern weird writers, who feel obligated to restore bourgeois normality at the end regardless of the havoc their monsters have caused; but Bloch is true to Lovecraft’s vision here, for he knew that that vision was a bleak one that saw little place

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for mankind in a boundless universe in which it was an infinitesimal atom. This is what makes Strange Eons the true homage that it is. Bloch learned much from Lovecraft about the craft of writing weird fiction, and he put that knowledge to good use. But while his early “Cthulhu Mythos” stories entertain, while Strange Eons is an affectionate tribute, Bloch’s real stature as a writer resides in his short stories of the 1940s onward and in such gripping novels — which combine psychological penetration with hardboiled cynicism — as Psycho (1959) and The Dead Beat (1960). Just as Lovecraft’s later work straddles the always nebulous borderline between horror and science fiction, so Bloch’s most representative writing effects a union between the horror tale and the mystery or detective story. This is his true contribution to literature, and it will be for that that he will be remembered. But his Lovecraftian works will also occupy a place of honor in his canon, if only because they exemplify the ties of friendship that a respected master established with his enthusiastic pupil. Along with Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and a few others, Robert Bloch more than justified Lovecraft’s predictions of his future greatness, and in turn Bloch more than repaid the debt he owed to the twentieth century’s leading weird writer.

NOTES 1. This is the name of the character as given in the Weird Tales appearance of the story. Subsequent appearances (beginning with The Opener of the Way [1945]) give the name as Carnoti. Stugatche is clearly Bloch’s original name for this character, and it is mentioned in several letters by Lovecraft. Bloch remarks of it: “The name comes from a group of imaginary characters who — believe it or not — were invented to serve as players on teams in a card-game called ‘Baseball’— the invention of my friends Herb Williams and Harold Gauer.... I later used the name for a central character in my story, ‘The Faceless God’” (Letters to Robert Bloch 70n. 205). Perhaps August Derleth advised Bloch to change the name for the book appearance. 2. I am grateful to Robert M. Price for providing me with the text of this story.

WORKS CITED Bloch, Robert. “Black Bargain.” Weird Tales 36, No. 5 (May 1942): 66–76. _____. “The Laughter of a Ghoul.” Fantasy Fan 2, No. 4 (December 1934): 62–63. _____. Mysteries of the Worm. Second Edition. Edited by Robert M. Price. Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1993. _____. “Satan’s Servants.” In Lovecraft’s Something About Cats and Other Pieces. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1949. _____. Strange Eons. Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press, 1978. Lovecraft, H.P. Letters to Robert Bloch. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993. _____. Letters to Robert Bloch: Supplement. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993.

Lessons from Providence: Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as a Mentor and Bloch and Fandom Phillip A. Ellis S.T. Joshi, writing towards the end of his biography of H.P. Lovecraft, notes that “in the last four years of his life [Lovecraft] attracted a vast number of young people ... who looked upon him as a living legend;” the next paragraph begins with the following: “The most promising of them — or, rather, the one who in the end amounted to the most — was Robert Bloch” (Life 543). Bloch has also spoken about this relationship with Lovecraft. He said “Lovecraft was certainly the major influence in my life” (Larson, Companion 30). This simple statement eloquently echoes the importance that H.P. Lovecraft’s mentorship had upon the life of Robert Bloch. In turn, Bloch repaid that mentorship, by being mentor, in turn, to many others. When asked, “have you in turn encouraged young writers?” he replied “I try to do what I can, sort of to pay-off a debt.... When I find somebody who I think is promising I try to encourage him or her and answer whatever questions I can” (Larson, Companion 31). This has not been ignored, especially by those that he mentored, in turn. Speaking about Bloch’s opinion of his own work, Larson notes how “He seemed pleased with his career but clearly cared more about the people that his career allowed him to meet and become friends with” Pfefferkorn. Such people, are those that he helped mentor, in repayment for the mentorship that he received from H.P. Lovecraft. It could be easy, then, as we turn to examine Bloch as a mentee, and as 41

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a mentor, to list, or to look superficially at the greater number of those for whom Bloch was a mentor. It is easy, that is, to supply a catalogue of names, and rely on basic numbers to convey Bloch’s importance for later weird fiction. We shall not do that, we shall not take that easy option. Let us, instead, look at three of those relationships that Bloch held, with Lovecraft, with Randall Larson, and with Dallas Mayr. Doing so, we can begin to see some patterns and aspects of his relationships that say something, both about Bloch and his work, and about those relationships themselves. Simply, that is, in becoming a mentor to these two, and so many others, Bloch was paying off a debt to Lovecraft; Joshi (Evolution 107) reminds us that Bloch himself “has never made any secret of [this] literary and personal debt.” “Bloch first came in touch with Lovecraft in April 1933, and his first object was to read as much of Lovecraft’s work as he had not previously found in magazines;” thus Joshi has it in Evolution (107). This much seems simple enough. Soon, under Lovecraft’s encouragement, Bloch began to write weird fiction of his own. Bloch has described the initial impetus that made him a writer in this way: In about the fourth letter [to me, Lovecraft] said, “There’s something about the way you write that makes me think that perhaps you’d be interested in doing the same thing. Would you like to write some stories? I’d be glad to comment on them.” So, naturally, how could I resist? I wrote several stories which were very bad, and he didn’t criticize them, he praised them. Which was just the kind of encouragement I needed [Larson, Companion 29].

In contrast, with access to the correspondence by Lovecraft to Bloch, Joshi notes in both Life (543) and Evolution (107) that the initial impetus was in that first letter by Lovecraft: “Bloch took up Lovecraft’s offer in late April, sending him two short items, “The Gallows” and another work whose title is unknown.” Thus Joshi notes in, in Evolution (107). What developed, then, from this initial contact until Lovecraft’s early death in 1937, was a friendship that helped inspire Bloch. It was, in essence, a mentorship, as Bloch learnt the basics of his craft under Lovecraft’s tutelage. But it was a mentorship that remained tacit, a friendship. The closeness of this relationship between Bloch and Lovecraft is aptly summarized by Bloch’s simple statement in Larson (Companion 29), “Lovecraft and I remained in close contact until the day he died in 1937.” Bloch also makes clear the way that Lovecraft critiqued and encouraged him. He writes, in an interview, that, instead of encouraging Bloch “to use his methods and in effect imitate him,” Lovecraft “merely praised what [Bloch] did, and if he made any criticisms they were always couched as suggestions and largely that was factual matters” (Larson, Companion 31). Joshi echoes this; in

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his Life, on page 543, he notes that “Lovecraft’s response to [Bloch’s initial stories] is typical: while praising them, he also gave helpful advice derived from his many years as both a critic and a practitioner of the weird tale.” Bloch came into contact in 1933; by 1934, a year into his correspondence with Lovecraft, his first stories were being published by Weird Tales ( Joshi, Life 543). These early stories, whilst in many ways echoes of Lovecraft’s work and style, soon evolved into work with Bloch’s own style. The relevant chapter in Joshi’s Evolution documents this development. This is not unusual: most authors initially imitate others, their mentors, before developing their own distinctive styles. Bloch, in a sense, outgrew Lovecraft, as a writer, as he in turn, as a person, outlived Lovecraft. Lovecraft also played his part more directly than as just Bloch’s mentor, as a literary character in Bloch’s fiction. The first of these fictions is “The Shambler from the Stars,” which, Bloch says, “was written as a homage to HPL and dedicated to him” (Larson, Companion 39). The story has, as Bloch adds, “an element of tongue-in-cheek, which [Lovecraft] recognized and relished” (Larson, Companion 39). Joshi, in his Life discusses “Shambler” in equally slight detail, but adds one of the sequels to its publication. He notes how B. M. Reynolds, a reader of Weird Tales had the following letter published in Weird Tales: “Contrary to previous criticism, Robert Bloch deserves plenty of praise for The Shambler from the Stars. Now why doesn’t Mr. Lovecraft return the compliment, and dedicate a story to the author?”1 Writing about Lovecraft’s sequel to “The Shambler from the Stars,” “The Haunter of the Dark” in Companion, it is noted how, speaking of Lovecraft, “Such was his sense of humor that he turned the tables on [Bloch]: if [Bloch’d] used him as a character and killed him off, he’d do the same for [Bloch] in ‘Haunter’ as a sequel — and in so doing, ‘lend’ [Bloch] his actual study and residence for use in his story” (Larson, Companion 39). As a result, Bloch admits to being “flattered” (Larson, Companion 39). He goes on, immediately, to note that “Shambler” is “the only story [Lovecraft] ever dedicated to anybody” (Larson, Companion 39), testament to the importance of Lovecraft’s mentorship of, and friendship with, Bloch for his creativity. Waugh, almost in passing, notes of Lovecraft that he had “never ceased to write parodistically” and that this, “his last major story, ... arose from a parodistic competition with the very young Robert Bloch” (196). This reading highlights the importance of the place of humor in the relationship between Lovecraft and Bloch. Although both serious about writing, they are at the same light-hearted, almost equally youthful in their outlooks, and this youthfulness and humor finds itself expressed, particularly, in the mordantly black humor of Bloch’s weird fiction, that was to become one of its distinctive elements.

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Bloch followed Lovecraft’s story with a third, written some years later, in which one character is “vaguely like [their] mutual friend, Fritz Leiber” (Larson, Companion 39). He admits, in an interview conducted in 1975, that he wrote “The Shadow from the Steeple” “solely and expressly to round out as a trilogy the other two stories” (Larson, Companion 39). Joshi, in Evolution goes into more detail. Despite its poignancy, as a tribute to Lovecraft, it lies, in essence, outside of the scope of this essay, save only as an emblem of the esteem with which Bloch holds Lovecraft. Regarding all three stories, Bloch adds that “there is a generally unrecognized playful element in all three stories,” and that, in all three, both Lovecraft and himself are “having a bit of fun with the genre” (Larson, Companion 39). Bloch initially received from Lovecraft what he needed, not “literary insight” (Larson, Companion 31), but, rather, “flattering opinions. This is what [Bloch] needed — supportive response — and it stimulated [him] to greater efforts and excesses” (Larson, Companion 31–32). The details could come later, when Bloch was more mature as a writer, more sure of his abilities. Of course, in becoming that mature writer Bloch was to differ in many ways from his mentor. Unlike Lovecraft, and perhaps more like Derleth than not, Bloch reveals a pragmatic outlook on his fiction. He is, essentially, a professional writing, having writing as his primary economic activity during several periods in his life. This differs from Lovecraft, who was more subject to the need for inspiration, the need to be motivated by a desire to communicate. This does not lessen the importance upon the outcome of Lovecraft’s writing, as a whole, for his income: revision work, whilst of relative unimportance creatively, proved his main economic activity, and is one form of writing, in its own way. Although the relationship between Bloch and Lovecraft is instrumental in his initial development as a writer, Bloch does not show much evidence of boasting about it. For example, Mayr says the following about that relationship, and of how he became aware of it: “Initially I don’t think I was aware of it. Maybe Bob told me. Maybe I read about it in an intro to one of the stories Bob finished for him. I honestly don’t remember.”2 This is telling: it is evidence, not of the apparent unimportance of the Bloch-Lovecraft relationship, but of Bloch’s humility and lack of affectation. And, as the relationship developed, Bloch felt that he had a debt to repay, something to pass on to younger writers. Mayr asked me, rhetorically, “Don’t we all have an ethical imperative to pass on the kinds of breaks we got early on in life to the kids just coming up, no matter what we do?”3 This was in response to a question I put to him,

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about Bloch’s sense of payback for the mentorship of Lovecraft. Because, that is, he received both support and advice from Lovecraft, then he was obliged to do likewise for younger writers. And there have been a number of these writers for whom Bloch has been a mentor. One of them is Randall Larson. Randall Larson, a fellow contributor to this book, was the first of the two mentees of Bloch that are being examined here. He is chiefly noted for his three books about Bloch, a bibliography, a full-length study of Bloch’s work, and an edited volume compiled of interviews with Bloch. Larson, it turns out, “discovered Bloch quite by accident at the age of 17” (Pfefferkorn). He notes, in his interview with Pfefferkorn how he had read several of Bloch’s articles that appeared in Famous Monsters of Filmland. When [he] found out about fanzines and got the bug to publish one of [his] own, [he] came across Robert Bloch’s address in a letter column of Leland Sapiro’s Riverside Quarterly. So [he] wrote him asking about an interview by mail for [his] new fanzine.

Bloch was not the only writer that Larson contacted at this time. “His was one of several interview letters I sent to various writers; his was the first reply I received,”4 he comments. Larson has admitted to a degree of naivety in his first dealing with Bloch. “My questions were rather general and fairly naïve,” he writes, “but his replies were friendly and straightforward.”5 That friendliness and straightfowardness to a young fan, and potential author, is one of the salient points about Bloch that strikes me. Bloch, here, is echoing an attitude familiar in turn from his own mentor, Lovecraft, and it helps color Bloch’s relationships not only with his younger, fellow writers, but those still in the field of fandom. That last point is of interest, and, whilst outside the immediate scope of this essay, has been addressed elsewhere in this book. A sense of that element of chance has remained when we consider the Bloch-Larson correspondence as a whole. Looking back, after Bloch’s death, Larson admits, candidly to this. He writes: “I feel it was rather quite providential that I found myself in an ongoing communication with him, which spurred me to know more about his work, which had its own influential effect on my developing fictioneering.”6 That first enquiry of his, of course, was only the start of that communication. “I wrote a letter of thanks,” Larsen notes, “he wrote back, and that kept going for 24 years.”7 Larson continues, with more details about Bloch as a correspondent. “As a letter writer, Bob was friendly but concise. He always took time out to provide a prompt reply whether that was a hasty postcard or a full letter.”8 In turn, as this correspondence grew, Larson notes that “The more [he] got to know Bob, the more [he] got to know his writing, and that, in turn, got [him] hooked on Lovecraft and the Mythos, and got me com-

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pletely enthralled by everything Bob wrote” (Pfefferkorn). He goes on to note, in the same interview, what it is about Bloch’s writing that initially attracted him, then what later, and still, attracts him; he says: What attracted me to Bob’s writing was initially the wordplay — the WAY he told his stories — their sense of humor, and the way his horrors were conveyed with their snapper endings that were so pleasingly ghoulish. What has continued to attract me to Bob’s writing were all the other elements that eventually came out in detail in my Reader’s Guide — Bob the observer, commenting on the world and upon human behavior; Bob the moralist, who when even writing about psychopathic killers or inhuman monsters, wove a calculated morality play in which good won out over bad; Bob the humorist; Bob the science fictioneer. Pervading it was Bob’s always gentle willingness to encourage me and be a friend, if usually through letters and postcards, but occasionally by allowing me egress into his world.

Elsewhere, Larson talks further about the importance of the correspondence between Bloch and himself: It was through our ensuing correspondence of letters and postcards that I got to know Bob better — and he me — and through that a whole world of his writing and associated worlds of fantasy and science fiction opened up for me. I got to know, respect, and love his writing intimately, and that which had influenced him also. By introducing me to Lovecraftiana, Bob expanded my cultural horizons immeasurably, while also guiding me along paths where I discovered psychological horror and modern strains of fantasy, honing my viewpoint and refining my own style of wordsmithing.9

Larson goes into further detail, when asked how Bloch encouraged him as a writer. “By treating me not as a fan and he a pro,” he says, in the Pfefferkorn interview, “but by allowing me into his world, to an extent, of course, and making me feel at home.” He adds that “in his home I was made to feel like one of the Fictioneers, even though at that time I’d only written for fanzines.... That, and making available his work for me to read and absorb, that gave me many lessons in wordsmithing” (Pfefferkorn). As we shall see with Mayr, what developed as a result of this contact, this correspondence, is a friendship, more than anything more business-like and formal. Larson reminds us of this; he writes, after all, that “what began as a matter of opportunity availed through access — Bob’s simply making himself available to this young fan and treating [him] with courtesy and respect — grew into mutual friendship and respect that had a tremendous influence upon [him] as [he] grew into adulthood.”10 Elsewhere, when asked how tacit was the relationship between Bloch and himself, Larson goes into more details: It was completely tacit, except when I was asking specific questions for an interview or a project. So there was no open negotiation or that kind of thing.

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We just began corresponding and that opened up into a closer friendship, facilitated by my publication projects that were associated with Bob’s writing, for sure, but our rapport was maintained far beyond those endeavors. In other words, I didn’t approach Bob to be mentored nor did he assume the explicit role of a mentor — that just happened as a natural consequence of our ongoing communication in a very unassuming way. Somewhere along the way the elusive boundary between professional acquaintanceship and friendship was passed, and a less formal dialog was enabled.11

One result of Bloch’s mentorship of Larson is his feedback on Larson’s weird fiction. “Bob,” Larson notes, “was always encouraging in his letters, giving ... a great shot in the arm when [Larson] usually needed it” (Pfefferkorn). Another result is the updated, full-scale bibliography that Larson saw published. Larson notes, When I learned he had kept very detailed records of his published work, I availed myself of that opportunity, with his generous blessing and assistance, to compile and publish an updated bibliography, which eventually led to three full books about him and his work, a reader’s guide, an updated and illustrated bibliography, and a collection of interviews compiled topologically.12

The friendship between, and the mentorship by Bloch of Larson has resulted in real, material contributions to the field of Bloch studies. Though Larson is not alone as a Bloch scholar, he is a rare figure, and the three books do stand as a fitting testimony to the friendship between Bloch and himself, and of his mentorship by Bloch. It is, simply a fitting response, and tribute, to Bloch. The second author we shall look at, for whom Bloch was a mentor, is Dallas Mayr, who writes as Jack Ketchum. Mayr has proved a prolific author for over three decades. In addition to numerous pieces of nonfiction and shorter fiction, Mayr’s novels include Cover, The Girl Next Door, Hide and Seek, Joyride, Ladies’ Night, The Lost, Off Season, Offspring, Only Child, Red, and She Wakes (Ketchum). He, like Bloch, specializes in psychological horror; this specialization, though it reveals somewhat of the mutual interests that brought Mayr and Bloch together, is, of course, only partially explicable as the result of that friendship. The interest developed first, and is one of the foundations of that friendship between Bloch and Mayr. And, as a result, Mayr’s interest and work in the sub-genre developed further as a result, both of the friendship and of the advice and support given to him by Bloch. Mayr recalls the first piece of advice that Bloch gave to him. Bloch said that “if you don’t have to write, don’t. It’s a hell of a job. If you do, give it all you’ve got.”13 In addition, his most valuable advice, according to Mayr is that a writer must “always know where you’re going with a piece before you start.

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By that he didn’t meet to know the entire plot necessarily, all the twists and turns, or even the exact ending.... What he meant was, know what you want the reader to feel at the end.”14 From these comments, it can be seen that this advice given to Mayr is practical in that it first emphasized the difficulties of a career in writing, to act, not as a barrier to the prospective author, but as a test of willingness and desire. Later, the advice is practical in that it addresses, not so much the mechanics of particular stories, as the processes that underlie and drive the creation of narratives and narrative structures. By emphasizing, for example, the desired outcome, Bloch emphasizes that effective fiction establishes a goal, not so much in terms of plot, or narrative destination, as a mood, or emotion, to which the atmosphere and events combine and work towards. An analogy here is with narrative poetry, the aim of which is similar, to evoke and convey an emotional response arising out of a given story. Mayr also emphasizes that he “was sending him everything from poems to one-act plays to stories and nonfiction. Bob was no poet. So sometimes he’d reply strictly as a reader ... moved or unmoved ... other times, especially with the longer pieces, he’d get into details about character and motivation, etc.”15 So that, whilst Bloch did address the specifics of Mayr’s writing, it was, at times, circumscribed by the type of material shared, and by Bloch’s familiarity and ability with that material. Bloch also shared a philosophy of writing, which Mayr recalls in a pithy, pungent way: “Apply ass to chair. Stop whining.”16 Here, Bloch’s humor and directness of attitude to writing is captured succinctly, and neatly. It can be seen from this statement that, again Bloch’s personality help affect the expression of the relationship between himself, as mentor, and his mentee, in this case Mayr. In turn, Mayr is quick to emphasis how little, in practical terms, that he asked from Bloch during their friendship. “I asked him for a quote for Offspring, to try to boost Berkeley’s sales of my stuff, which he graciously gave. But I didn’t want to lean on the friendship. By the time I started selling it was enough, literally, to know he was smiling every time I published something.”17 That statement is testament enough to the degree to which “This was,” as Mayr adds, “a friendship. Not a business relationship.”18 That said, as we can see in the quotation about “ass to chair,” Bloch is not an example of the writer as “precious” artist. Mayr recalls that “Bob saw himself as a craftsman, constantly working at his craft, because that was what his nature, and his circumstances, had thrust upon him.”19 Even Larson talks of his craft, rather than art (Pfefferkorn). Larson says, in that same response, that he thinks that Bloch “viewed his work pretty much as work — a means

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to make a living.” This emphasizes in part Bloch’s pragmatism, and in part his development as a writer during the Great Depression. For many authors who lived during, and developed out of, that period, authorship was a profession, a means towards making a living, and for which the ability to survive, the craft of writing, that is, was more important than considerations of art. Lovecraft, as we have seen, was an exception in some ways, but even then the profession of writing was, during this period, his main source of income, writing, that is, in the form of his revision work. Bloch, then, considered himself a craftsman, or artisan, rather than an artist. he wrote, that is, to survive, not as a means of self-expression, and in the process he developed a degree of self-expressiveness, as a way of making his work more distinctive. His sense of humor, a key, integral part of his personality, is evident as a distinguishing element in his work; and it should be evident, also, that this was not a ploy by Bloch to make his work sellable, but, rather, a fundamental element in his personality that he allowed to express itself through his work. One result was a sense of intimacy, that helps explain Bloch’s appeal to younger writers; Mayr writes that “The mature Bloch had a very immediate and personal voice. Reading him, you felt he was talking to you.”20 Another result was a sense of proportion, that mentees such as Mayr developed. He explains it this way: “once I started writing professionally I became very aware of the value of applying ass to chair on a regular basis. The craft comes first I think. Master that, and some art can creep in.”21 Note the echo of Bloch’s philosophy. It reads as an insight developed either directly or indirectly from Bloch’s mentorship of Mayr, an insight organic to Mayr’s development as a writer. Just as Bloch saw a responsibility to younger writers, how does Mayr see his responsibilities towards the coming generations of writers? When asked, he replied that he reads and comments “on as much stuff as time permits, and [does] so happily. [He figures] that if you like to read, you’ve got to promote reading and writing and the younger writers who are going to provide the new pages long after you’re gone. Or who are providing them right now ... in [his] later years;” he adds, finally, “And I suspect that’s how Bob thought too.”22 Bloch revealed, in an interview conducted in 1979, that he did not consider himself as one of the important writers of the Weird Tales stable; “no one has ever bothered to imitate me (Except, of course, in the 4,367 films which have borrowed bits or the entire corpus of Psycho)” (Larson, Companion 32), he quips. Yet he has proven influential in his own way. Mayr, for example, notes how

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The Man Who Collected Psychos Bob broke new ground in his time for injecting a sly graveyard humor, a modern vernacular, and a studied understanding of human psychology into his stories. When everybody else was emulating Lovecraft and Poe, Bloch went all realistic on them. Echos of all this are to be found in pretty much all modern horror-writing.23

Even Larson says something similar: “he was greatly modest but he was also realistic and was aware of his standing in the sci fi/fantasy/horror community” (Pfefferkorn). But Bloch’s influence reaches beyond just that particular community. Larson notes this about himself: “Even though my eventual writing and editorial endeavors took me somewhat afield of science fiction and fantasy fiction, I think they definitely carry the influence of the man with the heart of a small child (in a jar on his desk) [I keep mine in my hard disk], and I have tried similarly to conduct myself with his grace, sociability, and humor.” Bloch became, for many a friend, and for many of those a role model, a mentor, and, for some, something even closer. “He was like a second father to me,” Mayr notes.24 He became, also, a legend, and an exemplar for, not only his direct mentees, but those how had not had the chance to have known him directly. In seeing the mentorship side of Bloch, it is then, no surprise he flourished in the realm of fandom. Of course, when Bloch says, in his autobiography, that “Tracing science fiction fandom back to its origins is like trying to find the first rat responsible for carrying bubonic plague [203],” he is being facetious. But Bloch goes on, (“It’s my guess” he says, in the same book, same page, “that in the beginning...”) surmising about the origins of fandom, in a similar way that he talks about his own origins. And the purpose? To lead into a generalized discussion of fandom, and its place in his life. This is not the only work to discuss fandom, and fandom in Bloch’s life. “I Was a TeenAge Faust,” for example, lists, in part, reasons why other professional writers are not as involved as Bloch in fandom; we shall read why, later in this essay. What matters, simply, in looking at Bloch and fandom is that we gain a sense of his involvement, even if only through his own writings about fandom in its various stages. Bloch has written extensively for and about fandom, usually at the same time. Twice, collections of this writing have appeared; the first is The Eighth Stage of Fandom and the second Out of my Head. And we can see through a brief look at salient examples from both a measure of Bloch’s involvement with fandom. Unfortunately, as Bloch himself writes, the conventions appear then disappear, with little material evidence to show for their brief lives. Memories also fade, and fanzines crumble to dust. So much that could have been writ-

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ten about Bloch and fandom is either lost, or inaccessible to myself; what remains, therefore, are trace elements with which a man and that man’s life is to be resurrected. Let us, then, make that attempt. Bloch writes, in the preface to Stage that “A professional writer is a man who writes for money and believes that only an idiot gives away his work for nothing. Shake hands with an idiot” (11). Of course, he is being humorous here, as he goes on to make clear: “I’ve enjoyed turning out the pieces I’ve done gratis for science fiction fan magazines [11],” he writes, and this enjoyment is integral to Bloch. His professional fiction may be primarily written to make a living, but the fan pieces are written, for enjoyment. This is evident when we look at much of the material collected in both of his books, particularly Stage. Take “The Seven Ages of Fan,” for example. Here, the initial paragraph sets the tone, and reveals the humor with which the piece is leavened: “One of the occupational hazards of fantasy writing (along with ulcers, fights with the loan companies and schizophrenia) is a constant exposure to fandom.” Although the body does delineate, in its own manner, the subject, the beginning of the piece, and the segue into the subject is handled with deft touches of absurdity, touches that remind us that this piece, after all, is not meant to be serious. But “Ages” does reveal that fandom itself is a major theme in Bloch’s fan writings. It is a major theme, primarily because Bloch returns to it so often, irregardless of the lightness and lack of seriousness with which it is taken. It is a major theme, though, not because Bloch appears to be defensive, justifying to both God and man the dilatory ways of an otherwise professional writer. He is, instead, celebratory. Bloch writes about fandom so much because it is an important and joyous part of his life. But for whom did Bloch write? Who published these pieces? For the most part, these pieces appeared in fanzines, fan magazines, as opposed to professional magazines, or prozines. Fanzines “served as a means of self-expression and communication and were indirectly responsible for preserving fandom as an entity,” write Bloch (Bloch [203]–204). It is through fanzines that Bloch developed a body of writing that exists alongside his professional one. Bloch notes this himself, in his autobiography. he says that he “had read or at times contributed to fanzines since the mid-thirties,” (204), then immediately goes on to say that “upon becoming a professional writer I began to receive communications from readers with aspirations of their own” (Bloch 204). In this way, Bloch ties together one primary means of “fanac,” or fan activity, with his mentorship of others. He goes on, immediately, to name names: Earl Pierce, Jr., Charles Beaumont, and Robert Silverberg, are the three fans that he names, that later sold to

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“prozines,” or professional magazines, such as Weird Tales, or became professional writers in their own right. Bloch notes this phenomenon in one of his many humorous footnotes. In this one, comparing the development of criminals out of “mere juvenile delinquents” (Bloch 204), he goes on to state that “Similarly, most science fiction writers and editors started out as fans.” In essence, then, Bloch is referring to the ambiguous relationship between fans and pros: fandom arose out of an initial interest in the products of pros, even as the pros in turn have arisen out of the ranks of fans. Each generation of fan, in turn, arises out of interest in the current and former pros, many to become the pros of tomorrow. And so this ambiguous, yet symbiotic relationship continues. Bloch, after that passage naming the three pros that arose out of fans, continues by returning to his own relationship to fandom. he writes: “A slow learner, I stayed in fandom and continued to contribute articles, essays and occasional fiction to fanzines. Thus far two book collections of this material have been published” (Bloch 204). This digression from the narrative of his life (the context being the lead-up towards the discussion of Bloch’s attendance at the 1946 Pacificon) demonstrates yet again Bloch’s self-deprecating humor. In a sense, he is arguing that fan activity is a luxury that he could not have afforded as a professional writer, but there is much that fandom contributed to Bloch during his life. What, then, did fandom contribute to Bloch? One thing was the opportunity to develop friendships with young, arising writers. So that authors such as Randall Larson, and Jack Ketchum, both of whom Bloch mentored, could become amongst the next generations of writers, and, simultaneously, a way to assuage the personal debt of mentorship that Bloch received from Lovecraft. That is, as Lovecraft mentored Bloch, so too he would be mentor to others; this aspect of Bloch’s life and career has been dealt with elsewhere in this book. Another thing that fandom contributed to Bloch was a social milieu, the company of similarly-minded people with whom he could share his interests in the weird. In a sense, that is, the company of fans and pros became Bloch’s equivalent to the famous Lovecraft circle of correspondents. These two reasons, of course, overlap. In his discussion of the 1948 World SF Convention in Toronto, Bloch makes a candid, and revealing, statement. He says: “Despite the flattering nature of these circumstances, the memories I cherish revolve around fans and fellow writers” (Bloch 206). Here, in simple words, is a reminder of why Bloch remained involved in fandom: in large part, the fans themselves. But there was also the chance to “meet some of the people in my profession” (as Bloch writes in Bloch 207), the chance to talk

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shop, that is, with his fellows, and, regarding the 1952 convention, the chance to meet his fellow pro writers and begin “lasting friendships with many” (Bloch 208). But Bloch does speak elsewhere about fandom. As mentioned, a good percentage of the writing that Bloch has written for, and has had published in, fanzines discusses both fandom and other fans. “I Was a Teen-Age Faust” is one such item. “Oldies but Goodies” is another. “The Traditions of Science Fiction and Conventions,” Bloch’s Guest of Honor Speech at the 31st World Science Fiction Convention, is a third, wherein he talks about his experiences, in part, at the first of Toronto’s World Science Fiction Conventions (see especially Traditions [101]–102). There are more, particularly in Stage, such as “The Seven Ages of Fan,” and there are more yet uncollected. Essentially, Bloch discusses fandom in a number of pieces, some of which deserve a further examination. If we turn our attentions towards “I Was a Teen-Age Faust,” we find Bloch listing some of the reasons that he sees as instrumental in other pros being less involved in fandom than him. The first, and by implication the most important, is “a matter of lacking the necessary time” (Faust 26). That is, some pros find that their time is best spent generating the income that they need through writing. The second reason that Bloch puts forward is that “old adage that ‘Distance lends enchantment’” (Faust 26). The third reason that Bloch puts forward is “the domestic one” (Faust 27). In short, that is, “considerations of time, money, and personal responsibility” (Faust 27). As to why, in this essay, Bloch became, and remained, involved in fandom, he sidesteps the issue, putting forward a skit involving a Mephistopholean bargain with the Devil, as another example of his humor, and, also, as a way of defusing the demand for personal information (the skit is found in Faust 28–32). Bloch, that is, by stating why some are not more fannish, refuses to tell us why he is more fannish than them, and this is typical of the misdirections that Bloch employs in some of his fan writing. “The Traditions of Science Fiction and Conventions” returns, in part, to these same themes, though, as we should expect, with differing emphases. The “fundamental fact” that Bloch lists is that “a writer has nothing to sell but his time” (Bloch Traditions 107). That is, as Bloch goes on to immediately note, “a part-time writer has more time for fan activity than a full-time writer” (Bloch Traditions 107). Some writers have more time available to them for fanac than others, and the more a writer relies upon writing for their income, the less likely it is that they have that available time. Bloch then lists “physical endurance” (Bloch Traditions 107). Then, “The more fans a writer has, the less time he has for them” (Bloch Traditions 107). There is, also,

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“Another thing we’re inclined to forget — writers have their individual idiosyncrasies” (Bloch Traditions 107); and there is “the matter of the generation gap” (Bloch Traditions 107). “Oldies but Goodies” discusses science fiction conventions. In comparing the ephemerality of these cons to circuses, Bloch further highlights a form of otherworldliness to the proceedings, that the cons and circuses share a carnivalesque atmosphere that, ultimately, leaves few material traces upon the surrounding world (Bloch Oldies [65]). This comparison segues into the bulk of the article, a memoir of memorable conventions attended y Bloch; it would be interesting to compare these accounts to the brief ones in Bloch, for example. “The Seven Ages of Fan” proposes a chronological development of typical fans into seven “ages.” The piece, as a whole, is whimsical, far from serious, but it does serve as one taxonomical way of classifying fans. It is also of interest in that it displays somewhat of the temper with which Bloch approached himself and his fellows. Bloch, that is, is willing to take himself lightly, as with his fellows, and this lightness is evident in the accounts of his speeches at conventions. There are other articles and items, of course, such as “Bah! Humbug!,” a facetious complaint about fandom and being an “old fan growing sour” (46). “I’ll Fry Tomorrow” is a fictional account of a fanzine editor burning out, and looking back over life. And there are others. But, as mentioned, memories fade, and fanzines crumble to dust. What we have examined has only been a minute relic of Bloch’s involvement with fandom. So much more was only memory, and that is lost now with Bloch’s death. Fittingly, Randall Larson delivers a posthumous verdict on Bloch and fandom, when he says that Bob was always a fan, and that’s one of the most remarkable things about him. He never lost his fannish roots, and despite his fame and success, he still looked at many aspects of the genres he loved with the attitude of a fan. You don’t always find this — a lot of former fans who have achieved professional success and stature have stepped over that very well defined line into Pro-dom and seem to consider fannish things now beneath them. Bob clearly scuffed out that line at every opportunity, and while this also meant he was vulnerable to being taken advantage of by eager fans (some well-meaning, some not so) (and he was), his approachability and generosity remain his best-remembered attributes [Pfefferkorn].

What we have examined are some of Bloch’s fan productions, rather than talk about him more directly as a fan. In a way, this book does that on a larger scale: it talks about his work, his writings, and the memories that he

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has left amongst his mentees. That is, perhaps, all that we can do now, to pore through the trace elements that remain to mark Robert Bloch’s existence, his professional life, and his life as a fan, and, simply, to analyze what is there, still.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Weird Tales 36:5. November 1935: 652; quoted in Joshi, Life 601. Mayr to Ellis 18 October 2008. Mayr to Ellis 18 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008. Quoted in: Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008. Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008. Mayr to Ellis 20 October 2008. Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008. Mayr to Ellis 20 October 2008. Mayr to Ellis 20 October 2008. Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008. Mayr to Ellis 18 October 2008. Mayr to Ellis 18 October 2008. Mayr to Ellis 18 October 2008. Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008. Mayr to Ellis 20 October 2008.

WORKS CITED Bloch, Robert. “Bah! Humbug!.” In Stage: 46–48. _____. The Eighth Stage of Fandom. Chicago : Advent, 1962. _____. “I Was a Teen-Age Faust.” In Head: [25]–32. _____. “I’ll Fry Tomorrow.” In: Stage: 48–53. _____. “Oldies but Goodies.” In Head: [65]–69. _____. Once Around the Bloch: an Unauthorized Autobiography. New York : Tor, 1993. _____. Out of my Head. Cambridge, MA : Nesfa Press, 1986. _____. “Preface.” In Stage: [11]. _____. “The Seven Ages of Fan.” In Stage: 14–16. _____. “The Traditions of Science Fiction and Conventions.” In Head: [101]–117. Joshi, S.T. The Evolution of the Weird Tale. New York : Hippocampus, 2004. _____. H.P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI : Necronomicon Press, 1996. Ketchum, Jack. “Jack Ketchum — Bibliography.” Jack Ketchum.net: the Official Website of

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Horror Author Jack Ketchum. 22 October 2008. Larson, Randall D. (comp. & ed.). The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews, 1969–1986. Mercer Island, WA : Starmont House, 1989. Pfefferkorn, Michael G. “A Conversation with Randall Larson.” The Unofficial Robert Bloch Website. 21 October 2008. Waugh, Robert H. The Monster in the Mirror: Looking for H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2005.

The Lighter Side of Death: Robert Bloch as a Humorist Darrell Schweitzer Anyone who ever knew Robert Bloch or saw him in public can attest that he was a very, very funny man, whose droll, macabre wit could rise to any occasion, even the moment at the First World Fantasy Convention in 1975 when Bloch had just told the banquet audience how tired he was of being accredited with the shower scene in Psycho (which was Hitchcock’s idea), whereupon the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, where the convention was being held, came in and commended Guest of Honor Bloch for the shower scene in Psycho... At the same banquet, when he was given the first World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, he exclaimed with genuine emotion, “I haven’t had this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister!” “I have the heart of a little boy,” he was fond of saying. “I keep it in a jar on my desk.” “Bloch was a superb” was a byword at such events for decades, where he was always in demand as a speaker. He could be very funny in private too. One of his colleagues once told me a story about how he and Bloch were in an elevator and, realizing that there were “normal” people present, launched into a totally deadpan, ghoulish conversation on household methods for disposing of corpses. Bloch’s humor was the humor of the era of his youth, of the fading days of vaudeville, the tail-end of the silent film era, and of Hollywood screwball comedies, the Marx Brothers, and W.C. Fields. His interest in humor and in stage performances were in evidence from the beginning. His first letters to H.P. Lovecraft have not been published (and possibly do not still exist), but 57

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we can deduce their content by Lovecraft’s responses to them found in H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to Robert Bloch, such as the following, written in 1934, to Bloch when he was seventeen: Congratulations on your minstrel success! You certainly appear to have constituted about nine-tenths of the performance ... a 12-man cast in yourself! I can imagine the effect of your costume and rendition — plus, no doubt, the widely imitated rubber cigar! [48]

While Bloch’s first professional sales were stories of blood-curdling terror, he was also trying to write humor from the very outset of his career. Collaborating with a high school friend, Harold Gauer, he composed a surrealistic novel, In the Land of the Sky-Blue Ointment. “I suppose it was a novel,” Bloch wrote later in his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch. “...It dealt with a group of characters cast up on a remote tropical island presided over by a rich and eccentric scientist, Dr. Nork, and visited by a variety of somewhat unusual guests: a bulimic photographer, a magician named Black Art, pious proponents of the Anti-Amusement League, the members of an opposing group called the Sexual Congress, a church official named Bishop Shapiro, and a scroungy author, one Lefty Feep. Gauer had appropriated the latter name from some long-forgotten magazine source” (88). Bloch and Gauer wrote alternating sections of In the Land of The SkyBlue Ointment. Years later, he was to mine his own contributions for stories, including “The Strange Island of Dr. Nork” (Weird Tales, March 1949) and “The Traveling Salesman” (Playboy, February 1957.) The name “Lefty Feep” is enormously important in any consideration of Bloch as a humorist. Nevertheless, he broke into print first as a horror writer, as student of Lovecraft’s. Lovecraft had corresponded with Bloch graciously and brilliantly in the last three years of his (HPL’s) life. He had read and critiqued many early Bloch stories, and recommended them to fellow correspondents, making Bloch a full member of the legendary “Lovecraft Circle.” Even in his early horror stories, there is an element of play, most evident in “The Shambler from the Stars” (Weird Tales, September 1935), in which Bloch causes a thinly-disguised Lovecraft to be devoured by a cosmic monstrosity. This might seem an overly-bold move by a novice writer, but Lovecraft took it with exceedingly good grace and retaliated by finishing off a young weird-fictionist named “Robert Blake” in his “The Haunter of the Dark” (Weird Tales, December 1936). Years later, out of a combination of humor, nostalgia, and deep respect for his dead mentor, Bloch rounded out the sequence into a trilogy with “The Shadow from the Steeple” (Weird Tales,

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September, 1950). All three of these are ostensibly horror stories, with the injoke aspect just under the surface. Nevertheless, Bloch at some point had to get the Lovecraft monkey (or possibly something less describable) off his back. His stories of the mid–1930s were full of long paragraphs and sesquipedalian sentences which mimicked Lovecraft’s manner fairly well, and made Bloch’s work fit seamlessly into the Weird Tales without ever standing out as anything distinctly his own. The break came in 1938, when an ambitious young fan named Ray Palmer took over the editorship of the world’s first and oldest science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, which had fallen on hard times. Palmer immediately threw out the entire inventory he had inherited from his predecessor, feeling (rightly) that it had been part of the magazine’s problem, and now had to scramble for material to fill issues. One of the writers he turned to was Robert Bloch. Writing science fiction for Amazing forced Bloch to write things he’d never had to in the Lovecraftian stories, such as extensive, conversational dialogue, as opposed to Lovecraftian monologues, and snappy action. One of his early science fiction stories, “The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton” (March 1939) about a man artificially aged by the psychological effects of space travel, remains a classic. Some of the others of this period, if not so classic, still moved Bloch in a new direction. Palmer’s Amazing Stories was a success. Before long it spawned a companion, Fantastic Adventures, to which Bloch was to become a regular contributor. Fantastic Adventures, true to its title, published a great deal of adventure fiction right on the borderline between science fiction and fantasy, including some of the late works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but it also had a substantial component of rather lowbrow, screwball humor, and stories with titles like “Freddie Funk’s Flippant Fairies” (by Leroy Yerxa, September 1948) and “The Strange Voyage of Hector Squinch” (by David Wright O’Brien, August 1940). Re-enter Lefty Feep. Bloch took the name Gauer had appropriated from wherever and applied it to a new character, a “reformed” racketeer and racetrack tout straight out of Damon Runyon, a tall, thin man who wears enormously brimmed hats and outrageous suits. “Even a blind man would have found Feep at once,” we are told. “If he couldn’t see the suit, its color was so loud he’d hear it.” Lefty talks in a wise-cracking, often rhyming jive as he periodically encounters the author-narrator (Bloch himself ) in a greasy-spoon restaurant called Jack’s Shack and regales him with some outrageous yarn. The style of these stories is more easily quoted than described. Here is from the opening

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of “The Pied Piper Fights the Gestapo,” as collected in Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep: Feep was waving his arms at Jack as I approached. He turned and gave me a nod of recognition, then continued to place his order. “Make please with the cheese,” he demanded. “But snappy.” “You want some snappy cheese?” Jack inquired. “I do not care what kind of teeth the cheese is using,” Feep asserted. “Just so there is plenty of it. Let it be long and strong. Let it be mean and green. Let it be old with mould. But bring me lots of plenty in a fast hurry” [83].

There are many more extreme examples. At one point Bloch describes Feep as “a one man assault on the English language.” The narrative technique of all the Feep stories is that of the vaudeville comedian, a fast patter containing so many jokes that if not all of them work, enough of them still do to have the desired effect. In the first Feep outing, “Time Wounds All Heels,” Jack also confides to Bloch that Lefty is “the biggest liar in seven states,” but before Bloch can get an answer to the next logical question, “Which seven?” Feep has launched into a Rip Van Winkle sort of tale, about how he encountered the annual picnic of The Diminutive Society of the Catskill Mountains, is invited to drink and bowl, and wakes up twenty years later — in 1962 — a future of flying cars and towering cities, in which, as a result of the food shortages after World War II, everyone lives on vitamin pills. Lefty thwarts a pill-hijacking racket, then manages to be sent back to his own time. In later stories, he likewise defeats Axis agents, is often at odds with a gangster named Gorilla Gabface, and encounters assorted supernatural beings and magical wonders. He learns the secret of King Midas’s touch, much to his grief. In what is probably the strongest story in the series, “The Weird Doom of Floyd Scrilch” (a title which clearly parodies Bloch’s Lovecraftian past), he makes the acquaintance of the statistically “average man” for whom all advertisements work with 100 percent efficiency, which can be a problem as he is likewise unable to resist them. When the average man glimpses an ad that says “Use your own basement to raise giant frogs,” tragedy ensues. Black Art, the magician from In the Land of Sky-Blue Ointments turns up again in “Son of a Witch.” There were ultimately twenty-three Lefty Feep stories published in Fantastic Adventures between 1942 and 1950, although the main sequence of them stopped in with “Tree’s a Crowd” ( July 1946), in which Lefty gets turned into a tree while involved with a breakfast-food manufacturer and trying to escape alimony demands from three ex-wives. Ghastly puns abound. (“Speaking as a tree surgeon, I must admit the problem stumps me.”) There is a good deal

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of satire about the advertising industry. Bloch, and Lefty, are in fine form. That probably should have been the end of Feep, but one last adventure, aptly entitled “The End of Your Rope,” was requested by Palmer’s successor, Howard Browne, and duly published in the July 1950 issue. It involves mystical hijinks with the Hindu rope trick and some spies, but is much weaker than the rest of the series. The absurd, punning language which made the earlier stories so magical is gone. Bloch had, by his own admission, lost interest in the character, and in any case, times had changed, and Lefty was already a bit of an anachronism. One last 1958 effort, published in a fanzine, “The Return of Lefty Feep,” is not really a story, but a humorous convention report, written for the science-fiction fan in-crowd, and never intended for a broader readership. The stories remained unreprinted for decades until, in 1987, the publisher Creatures At Large issued what was to be the first of three volumes collecting the entire series. The first volume was beautifully done, with the stories interwoven with comments by Bloch (mostly taken from an interview), and capped off with a new Lefty Feep story, “A Snitch in Time,” telling how Bloch, in the present, is astonished to meet an absolutely unchanged Lefty Feep, right out of the zoot-suit era, on the streets of New York. It’s a case of timetravel again. Feep has been sent forward to obtain various items from the future. For a while he decides he likes the late ’80s and proceeds to make his way in Hollywood, yet ultimately decides that with the decay in taste and social standards, the past was better, and returns to the 1940s. Bloch, the narrator, agrees and accompanies him. Unfortunately the other two volumes were never published, and the rest of the series is only available in old (but thankfully neither uncommon nor expensive) copies of Fantastic Adventures. For all the Lefty Feep stories may sound and even read like inspired, lunatic slapdash, an outpouring of ridiculous riffs, Bloch made it clear from interviews that they were not. He plotted his comedies carefully, having worked out the punch lines ahead of time. This was also true, although even less evident in another major sequence of comic fantasies that he produced about the same time, which with broad generalization and less than total accuracy can be described as being of the “Thorne Smith type.” It is perhaps necessary to explain to today’s readers that Thorne Smith, the author of The Night Life of the Gods, The Stray Lamb, Topper, Turnabout, etc. was immensely popular from the 1930s until well into 1950s. He still has readers today, though is only sporadically in print. Smith’s humor has a lot in common with what we see in such movies of the period as The Thin Man and sequels. His are “sophisticated,” boozy come-

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dies which reflect the attitudes of the American public right after the repeal of Prohibition. Many bizarre things happen to people, often upper-class people, under the influence of alcohol. Characters virtually swim in martinis and highballs. Drunkenness itself is regarded as funny. Nobody has ever heard of alcoholism. Hangovers are one more joke. Nobody throws up, and if they pass out, they do so decorously or at least amusingly. Smith then added supernatural elements into the mix. The Night Life of the Gods is about the Olympian deities coming to Earth and enjoying a spree on New York’s Broadway. Inebriate and risqué situations follow. But, as David J. Schow remarked in an introduction to a volume of The Lost Bloch, where Smith stuck with high-class characters and a Marx Brothers type humor, Bloch more often wrote about ordinary working stiffs, and his approach was a little closer to the Three Stooges. There is a great deal of Thorne Smith influence evident in the fiction published in John W. Campbell’s Unknown magazine, later entitled Unknown Worlds. Campbell was a brilliant science fiction editor, who, in the course of just a few years created science fiction’s “Golden Age” in Astounding Science Fiction, having become the editor of that magazine about the time Ray Palmer took over Amazing. His approach was considerably more highbrow than Palmer’s, enough so that Palmer admitted that he aimed Amazing and Fantastic Adventures deliberately below the audience that Campbell was reaching for. About the same time Palmer started Fantastic Adventures, Campbell started Unknown. This was a brilliant publication, which published many of the classics of mid–20th century fantasy, including L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s The Incomplete Enchanter and Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife. But Unknown also had a place for the Thorne Smith type story, for all Bloch did not get up to stride with this sort of material until it was almost too late. He had sold one story to Unknown quite early. “The Cloak” (May 1939) is a darkly comic tale about a man who makes the mistake of wearing a genuine vampire’s cloak and gradually turns vampiric, but the first substantial humor piece Bloch had in the magazine was also his last. “A Good Knight’s Work” (November 1942) is about a modern-day, impoverished chicken farmer who finds himself confronted with a genuine armored knight, sent forward in time from Camelot to retrieve the table on which the Holy Grail rested. Misadventures, many of them quite boozy, ensue. The knight helps the farmer defeat some extortionate gangsters. The farmer helps the knight complete his quest. At the climax, suits of armor in the local museum (all of which, coincidentally, belonged to various Round Table knights) are suddenly inhabited by their former owners and came to the rescue. All of this is told as fast-moving, slapstick farce.

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The sequel, “The Eager Dragon,” appeared in Weird Tales for January 1943. Now Unknown lasted until the October 1943 issue, but it is entirely possible that its inventory was full before Bloch submitted “The Eager Dragon.” Weird Tales was a bimonthly. Since the dates on magazines are off sale dates, the January 1943 issue would have appeared in November 1942. The lead-time for material going into that issue must have been at least a couple more months, so either John Campbell knew, sometime in mid–1942, that Unknown was going to fold with the October 1943 issue, or else for some reason he rejected “The Eager Dragon.” In any case, the story appeared in Weird Tales only two months after its predecessor appeared in Unknown. It is very much more of the same. Merlin, in gratitude for assistance rendered, leaves our hero a gift — a genuine dragon egg, which causes more comic mayhem when it hatches and proves impossible to feed and keep under control. The narrative voice of both of these stories is about halfway between the Damon Runyon mode and that of Thorne Smith: Very fast-paced, presenttense narration, more booze, fewer puns. Meanwhile Bloch had sold another set of such stories to Weird Tales. “Nursemaid to Nightmares” (November 1942) and “Black Barter” (September 1943), which were twice reprinted combined into one (as “Mr. Margate’s Mermaid” in Imaginative Tales for March 1955 and under the collective title “Nursemaid to Nightmares” in the 1969 book, Dragons and Nightmares.) These concern an out-of-work writer who takes a job with an eccentric millionaire whose hobby is collecting mythological creatures. Thus the houseguests at his vast mansion include a defanged vampire, a werewolf that has to be walked on a leash, a centaur, a mermaid, and so on. Weird Tales did not prove to be a long-time market for this type of fiction either. Perhaps the low word-rates it offered by the end of the ’40s were insufficient to attract any writer, including Bloch, who could sell the same sort of story to Fantastic Adventures, which was still going strong and paid better. “The Devil With You!” at about 36,000 words is close to novel-length, but has never been published as a book. It first appeared in Fantastic Adventures for August 1950, was reprinted as “Black Magic Holiday” in Imaginative Tales #3 (1954) and has been included in Volume One of The Lost Bloch. It is very much in the Thorne Smith vein, awash in alcohol, virtually plotless, but filled with mildly risqué incidents and dialogue that would have been right for Mae West: “Hello, Annabel,” Hicks cried, genially. “What took you so long?” “Just stopped on the way for a drink and a chaser.”

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The “hero” of this escapade is another writer, one Bill Dawson, very young, naive about the world, who decides for once to take his vacation somewhere other than the public library. Off he goes to the Big City, New York. He rents a room, but soon finds two strange men in his bed. They are hotel deadbeats, who have been slipping from room to room ahead of the management, to avoid paying their bills. The manager arrives. Everybody gets drunk. They shoot craps for not just the hotel bill but ownership of the hotel itself and, way too easily, our hero wins. The manager is only too eager to get rid of the place because of the magicians’ convention that is beginning the next day. Before long Bill, the former manager, the two deadbeats, and a couple tipsy ladies are in a haunted room where the bed comes alive and goes galloping down the stairs with all of them aboard. The bed is alive because a magician slept in that room during last year’s convention, muttered spells in his sleep, and brought the furniture to life. Craziness piles on craziness. A vampire and a werewolf check in. Out of the audience, an amateur magician offers to saw a lady in half, and does, whereupon he is chased through the hotel by her angry lower half which won’t stop kicking him. He is considerably less sure about how to put her back together. And so on, until the assorted wizard and warlock conventioneers sink an elevator shaft to Hell in order to bring up Beelzebub as their guest of honor. The Devil is also a major player in “Hell’s Angel” (in The Lost Bloch Volume Three). This is a story which was written around a cover by the great fantasy artist Hannes Bok, for Imagination ( June 1951), and as such is a remarkable performance, at 23,000 words, where most stories written around covers tend to be little more than squibs. The painting shows a man in the cockpit of a spaceship, looking out through a glass bubble at an angel, scantily clad, but with harp and halo. She looks distressed. He looks somewhat maniacally pleased with himself. We know the story was written around the cover because the narrative actually says at one point that the spaceship looks like something designed by Hannes Bok. The story is about a young man, out of work and hard up for cash like a lot of Bloch protagonists. He isn’t a writer, however, but is trained in public relations. In desperation he calls up the Devil, offering, not his soul, but his services. The Devil is at first uninterested, but then accepts and sends the young man on a mission to Heaven in a magical spaceship such as we see on the magazine cover. The job is to kidnap an angel. The young man succeeds,

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but meanwhile he has become fond of the angel (whose name is Angela), a sweet, naive young thing who was only on Earth for a short while before she died and became an angel. She plays the harp nicely, but isn’t very clever otherwise. Our hero refuses to turn her over to the Devil, but the Devil reassures them that he doesn’t wish to harm the angel. He wants to copy her form exactly. Satan’s fiendish plan is to market a line of “robots” which are actually imitation angels, possessed by demons. Before long every rich person in the world will have such a demon as a confidant, and Satan will rule. When the hero foils this plot, he and the angel are carried off to Hell, accompanied by his cat-like familiar, Brimstone. Brimstone destroys the strings of the angel’s harp, but the hero and the angel escape, Orpheus-style, because he has managed to restring the harp — at Brimstone’s expense — with catgut. Imagination was a companion to Imaginative Tales. Both were edited by William Hamling, a long-time associate of Ray Palmer. Imaginative Tales, particularly in its first years, was very much a successor to Fantastic Adventures, which had folded in 1953. Hence the heavy use of Bloch material, including reprints. The magazine also featured a series of quite deliberate Thorne Smith imitations by Charles Myers about a ghost named “Toffee,” designed to cash in on the Topper series, based on Smith, which was on television at the time. This was a market which would have supported Bloch’s supernatural slapstick as long as he cared to write it. He did offer other contributions, such as “The Miracle of Ronald Weems” (Imaginative Tales #5, 1955), but as the 1950s progressed Bloch was making his way into the book field with a whole series of crime and suspense novels including the famous Psycho (1959). He was beginning to work in Hollywood, writing for television and movies. Very likely, it was simply a matter of money and career demands that drew Bloch away from fantastic comedy. Bloch continued to write a lot of short fiction for magazines, mostly crime and science fiction, since the supernatural horror market shrank to near vanishing in the ’50s, but the days of the long, crazy novellas were over. They had gone the way of Lefty Feep. After that, though there was a great deal of black irony in Bloch’s horror fiction, he wrote less overt comedy. One of his most famous ghastly-joke endings actually occurred quite early, in a story called “Catnip,” published in Weird Tales for March 1948. This is very much in the vein E.C. Comics would make famous a few years later. An obnoxious, nasty-mouthed boy causes a neighborhood witch to be burnt to death. When the witch’s feline familiar has actually gotten into his mouth and removed his organ of speech, leaving

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him bloodily gurgling, the boy’s mother, noticing he has not replied to her summons, asks, “What’s the matter? Has the cat got your tongue —?” The reader shudders and laughs at the same time, but it is an uneasy laughter. Bloch summed up his ideas about comedy in an interview with Douglas Winter included in Volume Three of The Lost Bloch: Comedy to me, as I have often remarked, is akin to horror in that both are opposite sides of the same coin ... since both deal with the grotesque and unexpected, but in such a fashion as to provoke two entirely different reactions. The so-called “sick” joke, which was popular about a dozen years ago, is, in effect an synthesis of the two and illustrates what I am trying to say. But comedy is based on fantasy; comedy is fantasy usually. It’s exaggeration. I am not talking now about the comedy of manners, of the highly stylized verbal wit of the French and British playwrights in this and previous centuries; I am talking about physical comedy, the comedy that is based upon an extrapolation of reality. The farce, with its comings and goings and slammings of doors and hidings under beds and extreme overreaction to commonplace events, all the way up to the whimsicality and fantasy of physical punishment that hurts no one that you will find in most of the silent features.... You can cite literally hundreds of examples with Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd and Langdon and the Marx Brothers. Virtually every major comic deals in fantasy, pure and sometimes not so simple. But we don’t generally regard it as fantasy because it’s designed or promote laughter rather than tension or fear. Again, the element of catharsis is common to both. Once that tension is relaxed in the socalled serious fantasy or is exploded by the resolution of a comic incident with laughter, we have obtained a catharsis [269–70].

Bloch was also a lifelong aficionado of silent movies. We can also see the roots of his fantastic comedies in the works of the comedians cited above, particularly Buster Keaton, one of Bloch’s heroes since childhood and a friend in later years. Like silent film comedies, Bloch’s literary comedies are period artifacts. It is a mistake to try to update them, and it was a mistake even for Bloch to attempt this when he gathered “A Good Knight’s Work,” “The Eager Dragon,” “Nursemaid for Nightmares” and “Black Barter” into the collection Dragons and Nightmares. The stories are so much of their time, in language and attitudes, that a dropped-in reference to Chairman Mao or Jane Fonda is just jarring. Hopefully, the next time these are reprinted, the editor will follow the original magazine texts. Bloch’s comic fantasies, from Lefty Feep through such works as “The Devil With You!” are what they are. They served a specific purpose in the development of Bloch as a writer. First, they broke him away from the Lovecraftian model — as far away as it was possible to go. Then they enabled him to achieve a new synthesis of humor and horror which gave so much of his mature work its unique flavor.

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It is worth mentioning, too, about those early stories, particularly the Lefty Feeps, that they are still funny.

WORKS CITED Robert Bloch. Dragons and Nightmares. Mirage Press, 1969. _____. The Lost Bloch. Three volumes. Edited by David J. Schow. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 1999–2002. _____. Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep, Volume 1. Pacifica, CA: Creatures at Large, 1987. (Note: subsequent volumes have not appeared.) _____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor Books, 1993. H.P. Lovecraft. Letters to Robert Bloch. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993.

The Lefty Feep Series: (all in Fantastic Adventures except the last two) “Time Wounds All Heels.” April 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “Gather Round the Flowing Bowler.” May 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “The Pied Piper Fights the Gestapo.” June 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “The Weird Doom of Floyd Scrilch.” July 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “The Little Man Who Wasn’t All There.” August 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “Son of a Witch.” September 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “Jerk the Giant Killer.” October 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “The Golden Opportunity of Lefty Feep.” November 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep. “Lefty Feep and the Sleepy Time Girl.” December 1942. “Lefty Feep Catches Hell.” January 1943. “Nothing Happens to Lefty Feep.” February 1943. “The Ghost of a Chance.” March 1943. “Lefty Feep and the Racing Robot.” April 1943. “The Goon from Rangoon.” May 1943. “Geni with the Light Brown Hair.” June 1943. “Stuporman.” July 1943. “You Can’t Kid Lefty Feep.” August 1943. “Lefty Feep’s Arabian Nightmare.” February 1944. “Lefty Feep Does Time.” April 1944. “Lefty Feep Gets Henpecked.” April 1945. “Tree’s a Crowd.” July 1946. “The End of Your Rope.” July 1950. “The Return of Lefty Feep.” Shangri L’Affaires November 1958. In Out of My Head by Robert Bloch, NESFA Press, 1986. “A Snitch in Time.” Original to Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep, 1987.

The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime and Suspense Novels of Robert Bloch Leigh Blackmore Other than The Scarf, most of Robert Bloch’s early crime novels have received little critical attention (with the exception of the writings of Randall Larson, one of the foremost Bloch critics and bibliographers. Stefan Dziemanowicz, who has written extensively on Bloch, has not focused on the crime novels at length. Larson gives an extremely thorough account of all Bloch’s crime novels in his excellent Starmont Reader’s Guide on Bloch; a truncated approach by Larson to the novels I cover here — with the exception of The Dead Beat— can be found in his article “Precursors of Psycho”). Perhaps this lack of critical attention is partly due to the fact that most of them were done in small paperback printings and were not overly successful on first publication. The Kidnapper, for instance, remained out of print for over 30 years before being reprinted by Tor Books in 1985. But of course, many paperback originals of the period were regarded as pulp novels and not taken seriously by mainstream critics. Robert Bloch was already a highly experienced writer by the time he wrote his first novel in 1947. His literary career can be said to have commenced twenty years previously when in 1927, aged only ten years, he read (via chance acquisition) his first copy of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, an issue that contained the H.P. Lovecraft story “Pickman’s Model” (Weird Tales, October 1927). (A variant of this story exists: according to Dziemanowicz (in Bleiler 99–100), 68

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Bloch persuaded an aunt to buy him the August 1927 issue of the magazine as reading material for a train ride). Bloch’s family had moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin from Chicago, Illinois (the city of his birth) around this time. As a teenager in 1933, Bloch initiated a correspondence with the great horror master, an exchange which led to Bloch’s first fiction sales. Aged 15, Bloch published a story called “The Thing,” which parodied Lovecraft’s style, in his high-school magazine The Quill (April 1932) and he began writing for fanzines as early as 1933. Lovecraft gave the young Bloch advice on his fictional efforts, and in 1935 at the young age of 17, while still at high school, Bloch’s first paid fiction appearance occurred with the story “Lilies” in the semi-pro magazine Marvel Tales. In July of that year, following his graduation from high school, he made his first professional sale, with “The Secret in the Tomb” to Weird Tales. It was beaten into print by “The Feast in the Abbey” which he had sold on the heels of “Secret”; “Feast” appeared in the January 1935 issue of Weird Tales. Famously, of course, Bloch killed off Lovecraft in his story “The Shambler from the Stars” (Weird Tales, September 1935), prompting Lovecraft to return the favor in his “The Haunter of the Dark” (Weird Tales, December 1936), in which the protagonist is one “Robert Blake.” Bloch never had any formal writing training other than high school, but decided to become a professional writer immediately on leaving school. He wrote full time for a decade, from 1934 to 1943. From 1935 he was a member of the Milwaukee Fictioneers, a writing group which helped him develop opportunities for markets outside of Weird Tales. His skill for writing gags enabled him to sell skits and jokes to radio comedians, even while writing horror tales. At age 20, in 1937, Bloch reputedly published a collection of poetry pseudonymously. It was the year that Lovecraft died (Bloch never met him and was devastated by his death) but from that time on, Bloch expanded his range of techniques and subjects. In the next decades, Bloch produced hundreds of short stories for the pulps, writing SF, crime, humorous/comic fantasy, westerns and some mainstream fiction as well as horror, for markets ranging from Amazing, Super Science, Fantastic and Fantastic Adventures to Playboy, Blue Book, Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. At least 140 of these tales were professionally published, including perhaps his most famous early tale “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1943). He gradually moved away from his overwritten, Lovecraft-influenced early style — which S.T. Joshi has referred to as “entertainingly lurid” ( Joshi, Modern Weird Tale 175)— to a spare, lean prose (often seasoned with his dark acerbic wit) that perfectly suited his horrific and criminal themes.

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He became a political campaign writer between 1939 and 1944, and started work at the Gustav Marx Advertising Agency in Milwaukee in 1942, having married his first wife (Marion Ruth Holcombe) in 1940. He remained at the Marx Agency as an advertising copywriter for 11 years, writing now in his spare time, placing around eight to twenty stories a year with the pulps (Dziemanowicz in Bleiler 104) and supporting his family directly thereby. His daughter, Sally Ann, was born in 1943. In addition, Bloch’s first two short story collections appeared in 1945 — the rare UK publication Sea Kissed, and the Arkham House collection The Opener of the Way. Bloch also wrote prolifically for fanzines, turning out essay, reviews and opinion pieces, some of which were later collected in The Eighth Stage of Fandom (1962) and Out of My Head (1986). Also in 1945–46, Bloch had the honor of scripting 39 stories into 15minute episodes for the Milwaukee-based radio show Stay Tuned for Terror; 33 of them were based on his own previously-published short stories. Bloch was, by now, a highly seasoned and experienced professional writer. Nevertheless, he wasn’t making a living from his writing. Following his early work, that period of his oeuvre which stretches through the late 1940s with the many tales he published in Weird Tales and elsewhere (most of which were primarily weird and supernatural), Bloch had become interested in tales of death and madness, and had expanded his markets to include mystery magazines as from about 1943. But he was not as interested in the straightforward tale of deduction or detection as he was in exploring the psychopathology of criminal characters. He was also setting out to explore the effects of social ills that nurture psychopathic behavior. The corrupt values of both individuals and of wider society are the target of Bloch’s irony and criticism in his crime novels. Along with his developing taste for the macabre pun, often used as the ghoulish climax or O.Henry–style twist ending to a given story, this approach makes his crime fiction rather unique in the genre. Many of Bloch’s works depict nasty characters getting their well-deserved comeuppance. Stefan Dziemanowicz has pointed out that “Bloch’s novels from the 1950s and 1960s helped to break down the walls separating the horror and crime genres with their skilful refurbishings of classic horror themes for contemporary tales of psychological terror” (Dziemanowicz in Pringle 68). Many of Bloch’s mid-period short stories fuse crime and the supernatural, with the sociopathic and the uncanny being mixed in equal measure. However, with the novels under discussion, Bloch concentrated purely on human psychopathology, with no overt supernatural elements. This was “the twisted world inside our skulls,” in which Bloch highlighted both skewed

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individual psychology and made caustic commentary on social and political issues. Most of the crime novels Bloch wrote in the 1950s are a mixture of hardboiled crime and psychological suspense, with a careful balance between the narration (they are usually narrated in the first person by a murderer or criminal) and a suspended authorial judgment regarding the morality of the characters’ actions. Yet many of the novels feature poetic justice against the villains, and Bloch can fruitfully be read as a moralist.

THE SCARF The Scarf was first published in hardcover by Dial Press in 1947; Tony Palladino won an award for its jacket design. Bloch was then aged 30, and (in his own words) had “pretty well mined the vein of ordinary supernatural themes until it had become varicose” (interview with Douglas Winter, quoted in Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 59). The novel is contemporaneous with such famous Bloch stories as “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” (1945), “Enoch” and “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” (both 1946) and “Sweets to the Sweet” (1947). The novel opens with the story of a young man who has suffered a childhood trauma. Daniel Morley, an inexperienced youth, had become entangled with Miss Frazer, a spinsterish high school teacher from his Chicago school. The teacher invites him into her home but seems to have conceived a psychotic murder-suicide plan; she binds young Morley with a maroon scarf, seals the house, and lets gas flood the room so that she and the youth can die together as lovers. Frazer’s plot is foiled — she apparently dies, and the traumatized Morley manages to escape. Years later, Morley has become a successful writer in Hollywood (his first novel is called Queen of Hearts), and is now a compulsive serial strangler with a dual personality. (The geographical trajectory foreshadows Bloch’s own, though he would not move to Hollywood until 1959, some twelve years after The Scarf was published.) Morley narrates his story coolly in a detached prose that echoes his detachment from his female victims —first Rena, then Hazel, then Constance Ruppert. His psychological pattern has become one of writing stories about his current girlfriend, and eventually strangling her with the scarf— the same scarf with which Miss Frazer had tried to strangle him. The novel’s prose style is Chandleresque, with relentless action carried forward by short, sharp sentences. One of the motifs Bloch uses in this novel

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is the “Black Notebook,” a sort of diary which Morley keeps to record his terrifying nightmares as well as his murders. Morley seems to envisage himself as an avenging figure, a modern-day Crippen or Cream or Landru: “I’ll remedy the deficiency. I’ll be Satan. I’ll be death. Look into my bony skull sockets and see if you can read the secrets of the eyes that are not there. Read my riddle — why does a death’s head always grin?” (Bloch, Unholy Trinity, 97). Joshi considers these dream-sequences as “among the more effective dream-sequences in modern weird literature” ( Joshi, Modern Weird Tale 178). They are certainly that; for instance, the scene in which Morley envisages being a mass-murdering sniper (years before real-life cases such as the Charles Whitman/Texas Tower case of 1966): “Suppose you’re up there, looking down, and you have a rifle in your hand. A big rifle with telescopic sights; maybe a silencer. I don’t know if there is such a thing, but remember, this is only a dream. A daydream...” (Bloch, Unholy Trinity 76). This is a highly disturbing fantasy sequence that indicates Morley fantasizes about random murder on a grand scale. (It was omitted from the original edition at the insistence of the editor, and only restored in the 1966 edition). Yet in fact, his murders are much more personal — he gets extremely close and involved with the women he will ultimately murder. The Black Notebook entries also demonstrate the way in which Bloch sometimes viewed the world through jaundiced eyes: Watch the beefy, red-necked gum-chomping, bristle-headed, horny young sailors fumbling the breasts of sallow-faced, skinny, fish-eyed, clown-painted little girls. See the sleek-haired pimps talking second-generation English to fat, hennaed, giggling women. Visit the sly and slinking negro queer in the men’s john. Look at the twisted mouth of the dying snowbird who plays tenor sax in the combo. Gaze into the boiled red sheep’s eyes of the hairless bouncer [Bloch, Unholy Trinity 18].

While this is the twisted view of Morley, the novel’s narrator, it is clear that Bloch himself used the novel partly as vehicle for expressing his dissatisfaction — a dissatisfaction that sometimes verged on disgust — with aspects of twentieth-century civilization, and with the demeaning and demoralizing effects of that civilization on individual character. Morley’s Black Notebook seems to offer him a way of achieving some catharsis, but although he strives to achieve insight into what makes him kill, he fails to do so. However, one of the earliest entries reveals that Morley, rather like Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon —and indeed, like Norman Bates in Bloch’s later novel Psycho —was humiliated and psychologically abused by his mother:

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Then, memories of the day she caught you, behind the woodpile back of the house, playing Doctor — what the psychologists sweetly call “exploratory sex play”— with a little neighbor girl of your own age, which was nine. Your mother saw you, said you were filthy, ridiculed you, made your father switch you good and hard. She sold you thoroughly on the idea that sex was vile and shameful [Bloch, Unholy Trinity 14].

His mother ties Morley’s hands to his bedposts as punishment, to stop him “polluting himself.” And a schoolgirl he falls in love with, Lucille, rejects him in front of other pupils when he writes her a love poem. But Morley, writing all this out, doesn’t have the self-perception to see how his background has warped him towards being a killer. Bloch’s skills as a perceptive observer of humankind and their foibles come to the fore in this work. S.T. Joshi believes that, as in the case of Psycho, an ostensibly non-supernatural novel, a case could be made for the quasiweirdness of The Scarf ( Joshi, Modern Weird Tale 177). There is certainly some ambiguity about the conflicting versions of reality presented by the narrator. In the rewritten ending (published nearly twenty years later, in 1966, when Fawcett issued Bloch’s revised version; the revised ending also presumably appeared in the German and Finnish reprints of 1967 and later English-language reprints such as the NEL reprint of 1973), it is revealed that Miss Frazer did not die, and that in fact Morley was the one who sought to tie her up and commit joint suicide because he loved her. But the truth of this is far from clear, and the success of Bloch’s novel lies partly in the muddiness of Morley’s motives; because he himself narrates the story, as an unreliable narrator, we are unable to tell whether anything of what he tells us is ultimately true or not. Was Bloch a moralist? Some critics have thought not. Yet in Bloch’s own words, from an interview with Darrell Schweitzer :“...all of my books are morality plays in which the virtue triumphs and evil does not get rewarded, as is the case in so many modern mainstream things in which the anti-hero rips off people and rapes and murders and indulges in far greater excesses than the villains, usually given the motivation of revenge as if this justifies everything. We are living in an age in which there are series upon series of Executioners and Butchers and Killers, one-man vigilante teams that out-do Mickey Spillane, and I avoid that route.... I think that if we all of us lose our faith in the triumph of goodness, then it’s going to be anarchy, social chaos, nihilism” (Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 23). And again: If anybody takes a close look at what I’ve written about that type of character, he will find that I have written a morality play. I do not write things in which an anti-hero indulges in the most monstrous and perverse behaviour

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The original text of the novel had one reprint in paperback (as The Scarf of Passion) by Avon in 1949, and was reprinted in a third edition from Avon in 1952, making it the most commercially successful of Bloch’s 1950s novels at the time. The 1966 version with the revised ending would go into various printings in the U.S. and in foreign markets including Finland, Brazil and West Germany. It was preserved in hardcover with its inclusion in the omnibus Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense (1986).

SPIDERWEB Following a period in the early 1950s when he wrote several famous tales such as “The Man Who Collected Poe” (1951) and “Lucy Comes to Stay” (1952) (his last story published in Weird Tales), in July 1953 Bloch moved his family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, to Weyauwega, a small town in the same state, where they would live for six years. This was a productive period for Bloch, with a number of crime novels written and published, and much work written for the higher-paying men’s magazines. Nineteen fifty-three also marked the opportunity given to Bloch to complete Poe’s unfinished tale “The Lighthouse” and his return to fulltime professional writing, which he continued for the rest of his life. At the time Bloch wrote Spiderweb, he was still working for the Gustav Marx Advertising Agency. His wife Marion had been ill for thirteen years of orthopedic trouble, and his daughter Sally Anne was ten. Marion was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone. Though new anti-tuberculosis drugs became available, her condition was a strain on their marriage. Bloch revised and expanded an earlier, unsuccessful attempt at a novel — this was sold for publication in paperback as Spiderweb. It was published by Ace Pocketbooks as one half of an “Ace Double,” backed with David Alexander’s The Corpse in My Bed.) There had been a seven-year hiatus since he published his first novel, The Scarf (1947); Bloch’s novelistic career began to suffer from what he describe as “rigor mortis” when his editor at Dial quit to get married, and his then literary agency expired (Once Around the Bloch 200). Most of Bloch’s crime novels have a great dark flavor reminiscent of the noir movies of the late 1940s and early 1950s. One can visualize them as films,

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and one must wonder whether Bloch hoped to sell these works for the screen even at this early stage of his novelistic career. Unfortunately, none of them were thus adapted — not even by Bloch when he made it to Hollywood in later years. Spiderweb, at around 55,000 words, is a somewhat shorter novel than The Scarf, which ran 65,000. (The later Psycho is even shorter, running only 50,000 words). Spiderweb’s dialogue is (for the most part), sharp, punchy and occasionally racy. Bloch has a way with wry lines that reflect on the foibles of his characters, and of humanity at large. Any of the crime novels could have been successfully filmed, and perhaps Bloch’s reputation as a writer of psychological crime might have overwhelmed his later reputation as a horror writer if these works had come to the screen. Bloch’s typical humor shows up straight away in this novel. Describing a reception room, he writes: “Two chairs and a sofa, overstuffed by a firm of reliable overstuffers, completed the ensemble” (Spiderweb 1). Of Professor Hermann: “He had taken his hat off and the light from the bathroom shone on an absolutely hairless skull. If a fly lit on his head, it would slip and break an ankle” (Spiderweb 19). But so does Bloch’s love of the grotesque. Eddie Haines is a loser, an aspiring but down-on-his-luck radio and television personality who has no talent. Haines in Chapter 2 already sees people as “hideously animated dolls”: “Those people walking along the Strip were no better or no worse than those in any crowd, but right now I couldn’t stand their faces: those horrid, impersonal wooden masks which everyone wears in public” (Spiderweb 13). Like Daniel Morley in The Scarf, Eddie has prior tendencies to violent behavior. When Eddie attacked his brother Charlie before leaving the Midwest, a haze had descended on him: “But I also knew that whenever I got angry, really angry, the haze came back — and with it, the urge to kill. Perhaps I was a murderer at heart. Perhaps I could go out again, right now, razor in hand, and run amok in the streets among all the wooden-faced people. I could carve new expressions on their faces with this razor of mine” (Spiderweb 16). Gullible loser Eddie Haines has come to Hollywood from Iowa with a dream of making it on the radio as an announcer, or even as a TV show producer if he can pitch his “crackerjack” idea to the right person. Instead, two months later, down $300 to an agent, he is despairingly about to commit suicide with his straight razor when Professor Otto Hermann steps in with $100 and an offer to become someone else. Hermann is a Svengali-like, Peter Lorre–lookalike confidence man who portrays himself as a self-help guru with a number of henchmen already in his employ.

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In a scene on page 41, Hermann shows Eddie the way people really are, the world of normal people. It’s an ugly, sickening sight: A cannibalistic circle huddled around a small fire, gorging on half-raw weenies and rancid dill-pickles. Troglodyte faces gaped in the firelight. A wrinkled, wizened old man’s head: white, bushy hair and beetling black brows that moved convulsively as he chewed with his whole face.

And it goes on: There was a fat, blobby woman with stringy hair and a red neck; the rest of her flesh hung in dead white folds, broken here and there by bulging purplish veins that stood out like mountain ranges on a relief map....

And so on. Then Hermann takes him on the midway: Fluorescence and incandescence blinded me. My lungs gulped in popcorn oil, lard, the reek of frying meat, the stink of decayed fruit, and a rancid stench composed of tobacco, sweat, cheap perfume and whiskey [Spiderweb 42].

Such descriptions are portrayed as being from Herrmann’s cynical point of view, but there is a strong resonance of Bloch’s own distaste for the seamier side of existence, and the sordidness of human motives in general. At one point the story seems to be set in 1933, for on a table in the home of “Mrs. Hubbard” there is an issue of Film Fun dated January 1933, but most of the other atmosphere suggests the contemporary world of 1950s America. Most likely that is so, for Bloch says the magazine contains “forgotten cinema zanies.” “Mrs. Hubbard” is, or appears to be, a fraudulent medium. Hermann “unmasks” her for the benefit of his client (really his mark), the actress Lorna Lewis. The unmasking reveals that the fraudulent “woman” medium is really a man — a stooge of Hermann’s — and in this motif we can see a foreshadowing of Bloch’s theme of the man dressing as a woman that features so strongly in his 1959 novel Psycho. Professor Hermann plans to corner the market by creating a psychology guru, and he starts to transform Eddie Haines accordingly. Hermann manipulates the murder of Lorna Lewis’ drunken boyfriend Mike Drayton in order to have Haines over a barrel. The bald-skulled Professor is hinted to be some kind of evil puppet-master, manipulating or hypnotizing Haines into becoming Judson Roberts, operator of Y-O-U, Your Opportunities Unlimited. Haines sets up offices as a self-help expert who has authored a successful selfhelp book. With Eddie’s help, Hermann plans to pull off a major “sting” on a wealthy client. The writing is consistently suspenseful. Bloch excels in depicting a rel-

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atively innocent protagonist caught up against his will in a web of corruption. Eddie feels trapped but as the plot unfolds, Hermann targets a state senator, blackmailing him and also drawing the senator’s niece into the web. Prof Hermann is consistently depicted as a devilish figure, a sort of evil puppeteer who pulls the strings on Eddie’s life. (Dziemanowicz has noted that The Dead Beat and Spiderweb “portray the psychoanalyst-patient relationship in the same terms, respectively, as the exorcist and the possessed, and the sorcerer and his apprentice”— see Dziemanowicz in Pringle 68.) Eddie has effectively sold his soul to the devil. Meanwhile, he falls in love with the senator’s niece. Bloch’s psychological knowledge and reading is displayed in many passages in the book, especially where “Roberts” has to read up to become master of his phony trade. Meanwhile Haines/Roberts gets fixated on the girl Ellen Post, whom he met at one of Lorna’s parties. Hermann and Roberts plan to shakedown a YOU client named Caldwell for $150,000. Hermann also plans to shake down the politician Leland Post, Ellen’s uncle. Eddie confesses everything to Ellen — except the murder. But when Hermann eventually pushes Haines too far, Eddie is able to ultimately triumph. The concluding set-piece to Spiderweb, set in Hermann’s underground lair, is a powerful and gripping denouement: I didn’t wait for three. I threw the glass jar forward with all my might. At the same time I pulled Ellen down on the floor; at the same time the Professor’s gun shredded the darkness with a fountain of flame. He screamed. The jar had either hit him or smashed on the wall behind him. It didn’t matter. The acid, whatever it contained, had splashed. Splashed over his face and throat and chest, splashed and eaten. He writhed on the floor, and we could see him [Spiderweb 157].

Spiderweb had an Australian paperback reprint by Phantom Books in 1954 (and later a Norwegian edition in 1957) but, as Randall Larson observes, “then fell off the face of the earth” (Larson, “Paperblochs” 45). Despite this, Oscar J. Friend, Bloch’s new agent, encouraged him to write more novels. The market for horror fiction had shrunk with the death of the pulps in the 1950s, and Bloch had been interested in criminals and aberrant behavior for some time. Now in short order he turned out The Kidnapper and The Will to Kill, both of which, like Spiderweb, were published in 1954. He saw very little money for these, so presumably they didn’t sell well (Once Around the Bloch 214–17). But Bloch’s themes of psychologically unbalanced individuals began to strengthen, and he was to write altogether four crime novels between Spiderweb and the novel that shot him to fame, Psycho (1959). Spiderweb remained one of Bloch’s rarest novels, out of print in the U.S.

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for more than fifty years, until reprinted in paperback by Hard Case Crime in 2008. It has not been preserved in a hardcover edition.

THE KIDNAPPER “Better than Psycho! His great lost novel!” declares the cover of the 1988 Tor reprint of The Kidnapper. This is not just publisher’s hype. The Kidnapper, a gritty tale of a botched abduction, is undoubtedly one of Bloch’s most convincing, accomplished and hardboiled novels. Told from the kidnapper’s point of view, the novel was considered to be in scandalously bad taste at the time, as apparently The Scarf had been, since it was the first-person account of a compulsive psychopathic strangler. (Bloch, interview with Phillip Shreffler, quoted in Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 59.) The Kidnapper runs around 58,000 words. Steve Collins, the 27-year-old titular kidnapper — real name Stanley Kolischek — is a scheming, thoroughly nasty piece of work. Like many of the villains of Bloch’s crime novels, Collins has had a difficult childhood, so Bloch suggests there are reasons he has turned out a criminal. He beat up his father and ran away from home at the age of fifteen. Yet Collins is unpleasant by choice — violent to women, with a total lack of empathy for other people. When the book opens, Collins has pulled a robbery of a filling station in Florida, and ridden the freight trains to a different city. He goes to work for Foster Brothers doing night work. He hits on a scheme to use a fellow workmate, the mild-mannered Leo Schumann, known as “Specs,” and Collins’ own new girlfriend Mary Adams, who is a nanny for a wealthy family. He decides to kidnap the child, Shirley Mae Warren, whose father is a bank president and has a big house. Collins manipulates everyone around him — pretending to break up with Mary, knowing that she’ll come back because she’s in love with him; pandering to Specs’ needs for companionship by supplying him with women in return for the use of Specs’ car as a getaway vehicle. They plan the snatch in detail and kidnap the child, taking her to a rented cottage after sending her parents a ransom note demanding $200,000 cash. But by the end of the chapter where the child has been kidnapped, she accidentally dies — Collins keeps her tied up in the back of the car, and on opening the door she falls out, striking her head on the concrete. The whole scheme threatens to fall apart. Collins, with no pity at all for the child victim of his crime, conceals the child’s death from Mary, and hides the body at a location known only to him. Bloch’s prose throughout the book is sharp, brutally to the point, but never more so

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than in this scene where Collins hides the child’s body in a twenty-gallon oil drum: I pried the lid off. It was on tight, and that was good. The drum was dry and empty, in good shape. I kicked the sides in, dented it up all I could without folding it. Then I went around to the back seat of the car. It was awful, getting her into that drum. The drum was big enough, but her arms and legs wouldn’t fit. And I had to do it. I had to do it, and I did it. By the time I finished I was sweating, my clothes were wringing wet, and my hands shook so I could scarcely jam the lid back on. I looked around until I found a wrecking bar and I pounded the lid tight shut, bending the edges [Kidnapper 98].

Collins eventually tells Mary that the kid is dead, and breaks the radio at the house to prevent Specs from finding out that the police are looking for them. But the weak-willed Specs also discovers that the child is dead. Meanwhile Collins convinces them to hold out for the money, which is their getaway ticket. He phones the child’s father, Mr. Warren, who agrees to make the money drop, and Collins takes delivery of the package on a lonely country road. But the police have launched a nationwide search for the kidnapper. Mary and Specs start getting nervous and things get tense. Collins’ violence erupts: Then she shut up because I hauled off and hit her one across the mouth. Her jaw wobbled and her eyes got glassy. I grabbed her by the hair and hit her again. Then she came to life and tried to claw me. I yanked her hair as hard as I could and then I reach down and scooped her up in my arms. “Let me go, let me go! What are you —” “We’re going to bed, you and I,” I told her. “You said I was the doctor. Well, I got just the medicine for you. The best medicine in the world” [Kidnapper 172].

Specs gets even more nervous and demands his share of the loot, at which Collins brains him with his gun. Collins is now the killer of two people. He and Mary concoct a plot to sink their car in the river, making it appear the kidnapper has drowned. Collins is so ruthless that he considers killing Mary in her sleep. But she proves smart enough to get away at the last minute. At the novel’s gripping conclusion, the police surround the house, forcing Collins to come out with his hands raised: I could tell this Sheriff wanted to kill me. Well, if I went out now, he wouldn’t have the guts to do it. At least I could get back at him that way. So I opened the kitchen door.

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The Man Who Collected Psychos “That’s right, Collins! Come on out — we want to see what a mad beast looks like.” I raised my hand and then I stepped out on the porch. “Take a good look,” I said [Kidnapper 216].

Les Daniels has stated that The Kidnapper is one of Bloch’s least popular novels, apparently because of its downbeat plot and brutal realism, despite being one of Bloch’s favorites (Daniels 904). Moskowitz mentions that The Kidnapper was Bloch’s personal favorite of his novels: “Nobody, but nobody liked this little effort, which is a matter-of-fact, straightforward account of a vicious psychopathic kidnapper, told in the first person,” he complained. “I think it is my most honest book; there are no ‘tricks’ and there’s no overt ‘Look Ma — I’m writing touches.’ I believe it was disliked just because it was realistic, and hence unpleasant.” [Bloch, quoted in Moskowitz 5; his other favorites of his novels were The Star Stalker, Psycho, Night-World and Strange Eons— see interview with Graeme Flanagan, quoted in Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 19].

Regarding the touchy subject matter (the killing of a child), and how controversial it was in its time, Bloch said: “Stories such as The Kidnapper were rather rare back in the early ’50s; while not actually taboo, writers tended to avoid confronting the subject” (Enfantino 68). Lion Books, the publisher of the first edition of The Kidnapper, went out of business shortly after its release, which may account for its long-time scarcity. Save a French reprint of 1984, The Kidnapper remained out of print for over thirty years, until the Tor 1988 paperback edition. It has not been preserved in a hardcover edition, a sad fate for one of the best of any of Bloch’s novels.

THE WILL

TO

KILL

Built around the search for a serial killer, The Will to Kill is a thriller about a man (Tom Kendall, a dealer in stamps, coins and secondhand books) suffering from blackouts who suspects he may be that killer. At 55,000 words, it was again a fairly short work. Bloch had published three crime novels in the same year and was prolifically producing short stories, but as Larson has noted: “the ’50s was a bitter period for Bloch, personally. He nourished a growing pessimism toward what he felt was an endless treadmill upon which he had to write and write and write without satisfaction, just in order to make ends meet. His personal depression resulted in an increasing, even brutal, pessimistic tone in many of his stories” (Larson, in Schweitzer 69).

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Bloch had a growing interest in practical psychology and this is evident in the crime novels he produced during this period. Despite the responsibility of editing a science fiction magazine, Science-Fiction World, that occupied him during 1956, cynicism and despondency creep into Bloch’s writing in the last few years of the ’50s, culminating in such existentially bleak stories as “Funnel of God” (1959). Unlike most of the narrators of Bloch’s crime novels, Kendall is a rather likable fellow, and the reader hopes that he will escape from the implications of the killings that go on around him, even though he seems caught in the web. One of the aspects of The Will to Kill which makes it a first-rate thriller is Bloch’s skill at misdirection in the narrative. Wealthy lawyer, Anthony Mingo seems a likely suspect, for after eventually trailing him to his home, Kendall discovers that he has a penchant for sadism. Bloch indulges his love of old movies in the scenes describing Mingo screening episodes from the silent movie Waxworks as Kendall accuses him of murdering the dead Joe Calgary in order to save himself from being blackmailed over his kinky pastimes. And he pays tribute to Poe in a scene where Kendall forces Mingo to reveal Calgary’s body, which has been walled up in the cellar à la Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” But Mingo proves not to be the killer Kendall is seeking. While Larson considers that some of the red herrings in this novel are “contrived” (Larson, “Precursors of Psycho” 6), Bloch’s use of them is masterful, and the novel is more suspenseful because of the several possibilities cunningly provided by Bloch as to the killer’s identity which are finally resolved at the end. Bloch also has some fun with sexy scenes here and there: Kit came in, and for the first time I truly realised that it was a beautiful day. Oh, it wasn’t the sunshine and the sudden singing of birds; it wasn’t the blue sky and the balmy breeze. It was hair the color of fresh honey, and eyes that slanted upward with the oriental inclination of the true Norwegian. It was the swaggering stride of long, slim legs, and rounding upthrust of a sweater that was just tight enough, the tantalizing tan of neck and throat and bare arms. Kit made my days for me — and some of my nights, too [Bloch, Screams 5].

One of the important characters in the book is a blind man, known as Blind Bill. In a climactic scene towards the novel’s end, Kendall is in Bill’s room. Bloch’s writing is tense and exciting: My cigarette lighter flared up, flashed. I could see everything now; myself crouched in that little room, my left arm bleeding; Blind Bill standing right before me with the long thin blade poised, then plunging towards my throat. I raised the lighter and thrust the flame against his face, into his empty eyes.

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The Man Who Collected Psychos He screamed, and the sword cane slipped to the floor as he brought both hands up to claw at his seared sockets. I dropped the lighter as he staggered away, picked up the sword. He dropped to the bed, moaning [Bloch, Screams 114].

The dramatic tension of a climactic scene where the action happens partly in the dark had been used in a different context in Spiderweb, but it is just as effective here. Despite foreign editions in Sweden (1957); Denmark (1959); Holland, Japan (1960) and France (1983), The Will to Kill remained out of print in the U.S. for thirty-five years, destined to be one of Bloch’s rarest volumes, until preserved in hardcover in the omnibus Screams: Three Novels of Terror (1989).

SHOOTING STAR Shooting Star was his next novel, published in 1958. It was another “Ace Double” but in this volume all the work was Bloch’s — it was backed with his short story collection Terror in the Night, the volume totaling 110,000 words of new Bloch material. Bloch has called Shooting Star, exaggeratedly, “One of a dozen or more of my worst” (Once Around the Bloch 225). Despite the exaggerated dismissal he made of it, there is no denying that Shooting Star is not Bloch’s strongest novel. In a way it’s strange that this is Bloch’s fifth novel, because it reads like his first or second, having a somewhat routine feel. The first half feels way too talky, and although the action picks up during the second half, the cast is overly complicated and hard to follow. One of the main themes is the use of drugs. Mark Clayburn is a downon-his-luck one-eyed Hollywood notary public and literary agent, a former P.I. who used marijuana to excess. He ended up driving off a cliff, killing his then girlfriend and losing one of his eyes (now covered by a patch) in the process. His wish to stop the distribution of drugs in L.A. is one of the driving forces behind his investigation of the six-months-old murder of Dick Ryan, a movie actor, who has died in a shootout that also involves drug use. Clayburn’s old friend Harry Bannock has hired Clayburn to investigate and solve the murder. The ostensible motivation for the investigation is so that Abe Kolmar, Hollywood producer who starred Ryan in his series of Lucky Larry cowboy movies, can recoup his investment in the unreleased Ryan pictures by having Ryan’s name cleared. Some of the drug terminology is naturally dated — Bloch refers to marijuana as not only dope, weed and reefer but as “tea” and “muggles” (that lat-

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ter term more familiar nowadays to modern readers as non-magic practitioners in the Harry Potter books rather than as a euphemism for marijuana). Clayburn, desperate for money as he only has a couple of clients, agrees to help even though Ryan was found dead with “reefer butts” at the time; but threats immediately begin, and Clayburn’s life is continually endangered. The body count goes up as Clayburn continues to investigate while ignoring the intimidation and hoping he won’t get killed himself. There is some good use of typical Bloch humor, especially the opening line: “My private eye was a little bloodshot this morning.” Another amusing line is “Her pajamas had a tendency to gape. So did I” (Shooting Star 99). Bloch pulls off some punchy and tense chapter endings; for instance, that to Chapter 7, where Polly Foster, an actress friend of Dick Ryan’s calls Clayburn with information about the case. Going to her home, he finds an unexpected situation; She hadn’t lied. She’d autographed the menu. And she was waiting, waiting for me with her lips kissing the signature. From the way she sat there with her head resting on the table, you’d swear Polly Foster had hung up the receiver and passed right out. There was only one little detail which made me think differently... The bullet in her back [Bloch, Shooting Star 55].

While there are passages in this novel which express a jaundiced view of humanity, they do not rival the extreme bitterness of Spiderweb. Even so, Bloch’s eye for the unpleasant side of humanity as Clayburn walks the mean streets is unerring: I saw a man almost as handsome as the late Dick Ryan, in a Latin sort of way. He was cursing and being cursed by a fat Indian woman whose four offspring clung to her skirts and pummelled her pregnant belly. There was a girl about the same age and complexion as Billie Trent; at least I thought so until she turned her head and I saw the purple blotch covering the left side of her face. And there was a man with a moustache and an eyepatch, just like me. Only his patch covered both eyes, and he held out a battered tin cup. There but for the grace of God [Bloch, Shooting Star 126–27].

The complications of Bloch’s plot in this novel are somewhat too convoluted to make it an easy and enjoyable read. Nevertheless, it has a classic noir shootout/twist ending, and a nicely cynical tone at the finish as Clayburn pulls down his office shade and goes on with his sordid, yet necessary work. Shooting Star was reprinted in Japan, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and Australia. Nevertheless it remained out of print in the U.S. for fifty years, until reprinted in paperback by Hard Case Crime in 2008. It has not been preserved in a hardcover edition.

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Shooting Star was followed by Bloch’s best-known novel Psycho in 1959, which was filmed by Hitchcock the following year. Bloch moved his family from Wisconsin to Hollywood that year to write for TV, with scripts for suspense and thriller shows such as Lock-Up, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Star Trek, True, Whispering Smith, and Thriller, which would lead him to writing movie screenplays, commencing with 1962’s The Couch (which he novelized in the same year the movie was made, from a story by Blake Edwards). The story of how he sold the rights to Psycho, his most famous novel, for around $9500, ending up with only about $6000, is told in his autobiography (Bloch, Once Around the Bloch). Hitchcock’s film of Psycho catapulted Bloch to fame; however, we leave it to other hands to analyze that particular novel. The same year as he wrote Psycho, Bloch won the Hugo Award for science fiction for his story “That Hellbound Train” (ironic, since the story is not sf ) and also the E.E. Evans Memorial Award for Fantasy and Science Fiction Work.

THE DEAD BEAT In 1960, Bloch published The Dead Beat. It was issued by the hardcover house of Simon and Schuster, his publisher on Psycho. Partly due to Psycho’s success, The Dead Beat was well received, with its first printing in hardcover and many international editions. The cynicism and depression of Bloch’s late 50s work had begun to fade, replaced by a sense of optimism and frivolity. As Larson comments, Bloch had “sidestepped the endless treadmill and found new energy and satisfaction in what he was doing, and his work reflected this brighter outlook” (Larson, in Schweitzer 70). 1960 was a good year for Bloch; he won the Anne Radcliffe Award for Literature and also the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award for Psycho, which had been published the year before. The early sixties would see him publish several more novels of psychological suspense —Firebug (1961), The Couch (1962) and Terror (1962). Bloch’s first marriage to the perennially ill Marion ended in divorce in 1963 and in 1964 he married his second wife, Eleanor Alexander. In The Dead Beat, a mystery thriller set in the world of amongst the beat generation we are introduced to young Larry Fox, another selfish, aggressive and manipulative loner who commits crimes because he can’t seem to help himself. He knows no other way of getting by than to exploit other people. Having assaulted a sailor in a hotel room, he is on the lam, and meets Jill

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Whittaker, a naive young girl who is taken in by his charm. Similarly naïve — and in some senses, unconvincingly so — is the older woman, housewife Elinor Harris, who verges on having an affair with Fox while her traveling salesman husband is out of town. In The Dead Beat, Bloch continues and even strengthens further his themes of a morally bankrupt society in which the younger generation are misguided and selfish, psychoanalysts manipulate their clients, and the populace at large are indulgent and hedonistic. As Dziemanowicz has remarked, these novels “are remarkable for working serious commentary into a type of tale that traditionally serves a market hungry for exploitation. But the frustration and bitterness they reflect occasionally overwhelm their characters and plots” (Dziemianowicz in Bleiler 108). Fox plays piano in a nightclub dance band. He is attempting to blackmail his old girlfriend, La Verne, over the shakedown they had committed on the sailor together previously. But LaVerne is murdered by Larry. Unwittingly, Elinor and Walter Harris give shelter to Fox, the narcissistic killer, after finding him unconscious in their car’s back seat, and he takes advantage of their hospitality in true predatory style. Once again, Bloch gives the character reasons for his criminal behavior and twisted development — he had been in an orphanage in his youth — but Bloch doesn’t count these as excuses for his criminal acts, showing us Fox as the deliberate chooser of his own fate. The novel is highly suspenseful, if somewhat more low-key than usual for Bloch. Larry wraps LaVerne’s body up in a rug after he shoots her at a lakeside cabin, and though he plans to elope with Jill, the Whittaker’s daughter, Larry begins to lose his mind. Following the musical motif throughout the novel (Larry pretends to be a classical composer) Bloch cleverly uses terms like “downbeat” and “face the music” to have multiple meanings. Larry Fox thinks he is orchestrating his own composition, but what he orchestrates is his own doom. Many scenes in the book depend on Larry’s use of Elinor’s car to get around. Her naivety is extreme, and is one of the least convincing aspects of the novel. There are also some preachy sequences in the novel where Jim Whittaker pontificates about the youth of today and their ills, and some of the hip language is outdated; Bloch explains in his foreword to the omnibus reprint which includes The Dead Beat (Unholy Trinity) that problems of dating and language confronted him when various of his early novels were to be reprinted: “The cusp of the Sixties still belonged to Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation. The shock-waves emanating from the gyrations of Elvis’s crotch had not yet dislodged jazz and pop from the musical world, and the stage was still being set for the drug scene. Should I turn my beat anti-hero, Larry Fox,

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into a hippie — or even a Yuppie? Again I came to the realization that it wouldn’t work. Modern mores wouldn’t be applicable to Larry’s story”(Bloch, Unholy Trinity xiii). Jim Whittaker’s speeches evidently represent attitudes that Bloch was struggling with at the time he wrote the novel; without wishing to “dump on” the developing youth culture of the 60s, he strongly questioned many of its values, and Larry Fox was a portrayal of the dark side of that developing society. And, as Larson points out, by the novel’s end, Fox has become (literally) the title character of the novel: “he is, indeed, a Dead Beat” (Larson, Robert Bloch Starmont Guide 92). Another six-year hiatus as regards novelistic work followed before Bloch published the science fiction novel-pairing Ladies Day/This Crowded Earth (1968) (the sf novel Sneak Preview would appear in 1971), but he quickly followed these with two more crime novels that mark the ending of his early crime period of the ’50s and ’60s —The Star Stalker (1968) and The Todd Dossier (1969). The Star Stalker had been written as Colossal, and was actually a serious novel of Hollywood in the 1920s, planned as the first book of a trilogy. The Dead Beat was reprinted by Popular Library in paperback in 1961, in a hardcover British edition, and the same year was reprinted in various languages, including Japanese, Italian and French; it also saw reprint in England, Spain, Belgium, Holland, West Germany, Mexico and Finland, and was reprinted by Popular Library (U.S.) in 1967. A hardcover reprint occurred in the U.S. with its inclusion in the omnibus Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense (1986). After spending twenty or so years scripting for movies and television, and continuing to prolifically publish short fiction, Bloch continued to publish novels about criminals and serial killers —American Gothic (1974), The Night of the Ripper (1984), and The Jekyll Legacy (with Andre Norton, 1990) (though all three of these are set in the Victorian era and therefore don’t reflect the modern themes of crime and society in the same way as his 1950s and 1960s works); not to mention the two sequels to Psycho—Psycho II (1982) and Psycho House (1990) (his last novel), which are oft-overlooked due to the film sequels which were not based on Bloch’s second and third novels of the series. The “twisted world inside our skulls” continued to preoccupy Bloch, as he reflected in his fiction on aspects of modern culture that he felt encouraged anti-social and sociopathic behavior. That the theme continued to preoccupy him until the end of his life is evidenced by the late anthologies he edited, Psycho-Paths (1991) and Monsters in Our Midst (1993). Many of his macabre crime stories can be found in The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch (1988; 3 volumes). That Bloch is heir to the great tradition of psychological

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horror largely founded by Edgar Allan Poe is undeniable; and his 1950s crime novels contribute in large part to that reputation and the distinctive niche he still occupies in the genre.

WORKS CITED Bloch, Robert. The Dead Beat. In Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense. Los Angeles: Scream/Press, 1986. _____. The Kidnapper. New York: Tor Books, 1988. _____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorised Autobiography. New York: Tor Books, 1993. _____. The Scarf. In Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense. Los Angeles: Scream/Press, 1986. _____. Spiderweb/Shooting Star. New York: Hard Case Crime, April 2008. _____. The Will to Kill. In Screams: Three Novels of Terror. San Rafael, CA: UnderwoodMiller, 1989. Collins, Tom. “Robert Bloch: Society as Insane Asylum.” Twilight Zone ( June 1981). D’Ammassa, Don. “Robert Bloch” in Pederson, Jay P. (ed). St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Daniels, Les. “Robert Bloch” in Bleiler, E.F. (ed). Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror. New York: Scribner, 1985. Dziemanowicz, Stefan. “Robert Bloch” in Richard Bleiler (ed). Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson Gale, 2003 (2nd ed). _____. “Robert [Albert] Bloch” in S.T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemanowicz (eds.). Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. _____. “Robert [Albert] Bloch” in David Pringle (ed). St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers. Detroit: St. James, Press, 1998. _____. “An Interview with Robert Bloch.” Studies in Weird Fiction 16 (Winter 1995). Enfantino, Peter. “ A Conversation with Robert Bloch.” Paperback Parade, No 39 (August 1994). Flanagan, Graeme. Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography. Canberra, Australia: Graeme Flanagan, 1979. Indick, Ben P. “Robert Bloch: A Personal Memory.” Studies in Weird Fiction 16 (Winter 1995). Joshi, S.T. “Killing Women with Robert Bloch, Thomas Harris and Brett Easton Ellis” in his The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001. _____. “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft.” Studies in Weird Fiction, 16 (Winter 1995). Larson, Randall D. “Precursors of Psycho: The Early Crime Novels of Robert Bloch.” The Scream Factory 11 (1993). Online at: http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/larson_early.html (accessed September 21, 2008). _____. The Complete Robert Bloch: An Illustrated, Comprehensive Bibliography. Sunnyvale, CA: Fandom Unlimited, 1986. _____. “Paperblochs: Robert Bloch in Paperback.” Paperback Parade No 39 (August 1994). _____. Robert Bloch. [Starmont Reader’s Guide 37]. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1987. _____ (ed.). The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews 1969–1986. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1989. See especially Chapter 6, “On Writing Crime Fiction.” _____. The Robert Bloch Fanzine. Los Altos, CA: Fandom Unlimited Enterprises, September 1973 (2nd ed). _____. “Yours Truly, Robert Bloch” in Darrell Schweitzer (ed). Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1988. Matheson, Richard, with Ricia Mainhardt (eds.). Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master. New York: Tor Books, 1995. Moskowitz, Sam. “Psycho-logical Bloch” in Larson, Randall (ed). The Robert Bloch Fanzine.

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Los Altos, CA: Fandom Unlimited Enterprises, September 1973 (2nd ed). (Originally published in Amazing Stories December 1962.) Sullivan, Jack. “Robert Bloch” in his The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. Wiater, Stanley. “Robert Bloch” in Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror. New York: Avon, 1990. Winter, Douglas E. “Robert Bloch” in Faces of Fear. New York: Berkley, 1985.

Yours Truly, Daniel Morley: An Examination of Robert Bloch’s Novel The Scarf John Howard INTRODUCTION The Scarf was Robert Bloch’s first novel. It was published in 1947, when Bloch was 30. This essay will consider The Scarf as a novel about crime and the criminal, involving the psychological but not the supernatural. However, The Scarf certainly is a novel of horror, involving at the very least mental illness and the emotions of terror and revulsion. I also intend to place The Scarf in the context of Robert Bloch’s literary career and with other relevant works by him, as well as place it in context alongside similar American crime and psychological crime novels from the period. The text of The Scarf used for this essay is that of the 1972 paperback edition from New English Library, which was also the novel’s first publication in the United Kingdom. Page numbers therefore refer to this edition. Bloch had made a few revisions to the 1947 text (mainly the ending) for a new American paperback edition in 1966 (Larson). The UK edition reprinted this text, which has now, in effect, become the author’s preferred text. Even so, The Scarf retained its 1940s feel and mood, worthy of a novel by a number of the better practitioners of the “hard-boiled” school of crime fiction writing.

THE BLOCH BARGAIN When The Scarf appeared in 1947 Robert Bloch was a recognized writer of horror fiction, and somewhat less well-known as a science fiction writer, 89

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although his often off beat contributions to that field had sometimes been noteworthy. Bloch had started out in the mid 1930s as a teenage author whose work was strongly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. Unlike some of the other young (and not so young) writers whom Lovecraft encouraged, Bloch quickly started to sell fiction regularly. He did not restrict himself to a purely Lovecraftian style or outlook for long. By the late 1930s he was writing stories developing his own style and voice, while still on occasion displaying an effective fidelity to his first great literary influence. Bloch’s development as a writer included a growing interest in psychology, and the psychological side of horror fiction, often combining the psychological with the macabre and supernatural. Bloch shifted his focus of horror away from that which H.P. Lovecraft had emphasised: horror of the non-human unknown, from outside, where revelation follows upon revelation, and known certainties are overturned and the opposite shown to be the reality. Instead, he moved towards exploring the horror of the human and known, the psychological, but where all can still be overturned in death. Bloch later recalled: “By the mid 1940s, I had pretty well mined the vein of ordinary supernatural themes until it had become varicose. I realised, as a result of what went on during the Second World War and of reading the more widely disseminated work in psychology, that the real horror is not in the shadows, but in that little twisted world inside our own skulls. And that I determined to explore” (Winter 27). The publication of a full-length novel might seemed to have been quite a departure for Bloch, the author of numerous short stories in Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and other magazines. Highly regarded though his stories were, a novel seemed to be a great leap from the sort of fiction in which a situation is created and resolved within a short length and then put aside by the reader as the page is turned for the next story. But Bloch made his handling of a longer work appear effortless. The Scarf was an apparently straightforward and even plain novel. Its short, punchy sentences and paragraphs, its filmic dialogue and sketched-in moody settings, masked what was in fact a complex, challenging, sometimes phantasmagorical, and unsettling book. For Robert Bloch, as well as his readers, The Scarf was very different to anything that had gone before. But perhaps it was not such a drastic departure after all. Just four years earlier, Bloch had published a notable short story with “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (Weird Tales July 1943). In some ways this work of pulp fiction art was a forerunner of The Scarf. The story is told in the first person, and set firmly in the present, in drab and squalid streets and bars in Chicago. Bloch allowed the Victorian serial killer to survive and prosper into the 1940s by apparently supernatural means, although a psychological explanation was also

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possible. Bloch immediately makes the story different when the reader is told that the Ripper has become the prey rather than just the predator. Jack’s pursuer also had a connection with the mean streets of the East End of London in 1888, and has been driven to hunt him down by the desire for revenge, being convinced that he was still alive, and keeping alive through further murders. Bloch used a thoroughly contemporary background to explore and work through the motivations of his characters, and to entertain and pull the reader up short at the same time. In the conclusion, the Lovecraftian legacy of “everything you know is wrong” is also employed, in a similar way to how he would soon to do in The Scarf, and without invoking the supernatural or other unknown outside factor. At first glance the protagonist of The Scarf, Daniel Morley, does not seem promising material for a serial killer. Like Robert Bloch himself, young Morley was a bookish, somewhat isolated child who had to learn fast. Eventually, in order to secure a regular income and develop his writing, Morley secures a job writing radio continuity and advertising. Similarly, Bloch wrote copy for an advertising agency for over a decade. Bloch later explained the arrangement: “I put my work on the right-hand side of my typewriter, and the layouts and notes for advertising copy on the left-hand side. And when I exhausted what was on the left-hand side, I would put my material in the typewriter” (Winter, Faces of Fear 26). This was with the blessing of his employer, and “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” and The Scarf were among the stories written during this time. The environment into which Robert Bloch was born was a thoroughly ordinary one, as was his family and upbringing. This is reflected in the settings that he used for The Scarf. The large and busy cities of Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Hollywood were the backgrounds for the novel, and they were not treated in any sort of exotic or special way. The city streets with their bars, cheap restaurants, and run-down rooming houses where Daniel Morley lives and breathes — and does his killing — are thoroughly recognizable. But Bloch found that he was able to delve into the darker and decidedly abnormal side of families and relationships. He had learned well from H.P. Lovecraft to use ordinary settings and apparently outwardly normal characters in order to provide the contrast with their inner reality and the events, with their dreadful consequences, that he wanted to write about.

OPENING

THE

BLACK NOTEBOOK

The narrator and protagonist of The Scarf is Daniel Morley. He grew up as a sensitive and studious boy. When he was 18 his teacher, Miss Frazer, who

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was twenty years his senior, and had been encouraging his literary ambitions, fell in love with him. Just before Daniel was due to leave for college, she invited him to her home and gave him a maroon scarf as a present. She attempted to seduce him, and got him drunk. When he had passed out, she tied his hands with the scarf and turned on the gas, so that they would die together. Morley woke up in time and escaped by jumping through a window, injuring himself. Miss Frazer was dead. When he was released from hospital, he ran away, and from then on “hated women, books, everything.” But he held on to the scarf (Bloch 8). The opening of the novel is an extract from Morley’s “Black Notebook” in which he summarises his experience with Miss Frazer and the effect it had on him. These entries recur throughout The Scarf. The Black Notebook serves Morley as a place to write down his thoughts, to think out loud in writing. The Black Notebook works as a memory storage space for what Morley doesn’t always want to consciously remember all of the time, but which he doesn’t want to lose completely. Morley uses the Black Notebook as a refuge and a resource. He doesn’t entirely forget what goes into it, but isn’t constantly reminded either. Morley is embarking on his autobiography: the recollection of what has happened to him so far. What Morley is going to tell — the narrative of The Scarf that lies just ahead — has ended with him in prison or a mental institution. The scarf itself is present from the beginning: Morley is gazing at it as he speaks, or writes in the Black Notebook. He has come to the realisation that the scarf is a fetish for him: an object that has overwhelming and sexual significance, and from which he cannot bear to be separated. So Morley is abnormally obsessed with the scarf, and is doubly dependent upon it as he uses it to strangle his victims. In effect he needs the scarf, both mentally and physically, in order to achieve the feeling of power and sexual gratification that only committing murder gives him. But the power Morley exercises when he kills obscures the fact that he has to keep on running away. For as long as he commits murder after murder, he is on the run. The first escape from Miss Frazer has become neverending, as he has to escape from woman after woman as time goes on by. And he always carries his fetish, the scarf, in his pocket. Dan Morley begins a life of moving from city to city and drifting from one dead-end job to another. He is unable to make friends, and build steady relationships with women. At some point he becomes a serial killer of women, always strangling them with the scarf that Miss Frazer had given him. Morley’s hatred of them leads to him from murder to murder, apparently as casually as changing rooms in a cheap lodging house.

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Eventually Morley is living in Minneapolis, trying to make a start as a writer. He has grown tired of his current girlfriend, Rena, and plans to get away and move to Chicago. To keep her quiet Morley tells her that the story he is writing is actually about her. Rena continually bothers him about it, and he strangles her with the scarf, and escapes to Chicago. Morley is aware of a connection between his writing and the sort of people around him, especially the type of women he knows. He realises that he killed Rena with such effortlessness because to him she was not a real person. She had become a mere character. “You get her down on paper, where she can’t hurt you any more.... She’s on paper, where she belongs. Where you can control her” (Bloch 15). Once in a new city Morley changes his self-identity slightly but significantly, calling himself by his full first name once more. He decides that he doesn’t find committing murder to be frightening (Bloch 18). In a Black Notebook entry Morley reveals some more of the origins of his hatred of women. First there is his mother. When he was 9 years old she had punished him when she found out about an episode of childish sex play with one of the girls from his neighborhood. At night his mother tied his hands to the bed. On one occasion he escapes and glimpses his parents having sex. So his parents were as “filthy” as his mother had accused him of being. Later, he is in love with Lucille, a girl at his school. Morley declares himself the best way he knows, and writes her a poem. But she laughs and rejects it, and shows it to her friends, humiliating him completely. Morley wonders if everyone wants to kill someone sometime, or whether it is only him. He thinks that perhaps he is just more honest, in actually admitting that he would like to kill. Or maybe he is the abnormal one after all. He’d like to “come out” and show everyone what he is — and his method is to use the scarf (Bloch 25f ). The scarf is a weapon, but it was something that was first used against him, when Miss Frazer had tied his hands with it. Morley’s other memory of being physically unable to exercise control, when his mother tied his hands, emphasises the fetish aspect of the scarf for him. He is fascinated by it, and uses it, although the scarf, or something similar, has also been used against him. Morley controls the scarf, but at the same time he is under its power. Luckily for him, he is adaptable. In Chicago Morley becomes a cab driver, so he can have time to write. He meets the freelance model Hazel Hurley, who is attracted to him as a contrast to her current boyfriend, but especially because he told her that he is a writer. Morley wants to become Hazel’s lover as soon as he can, so flatters her. But he has no illusions. He is aware that “you don’t fall in love with what you feed on” (Bloch 31). Through Hazel’s contacts Morley gets a job writing radio continuity. He doesn’t make any friends except for Lou King, his imme-

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diate superior. Morley confides in Lou about his writing plans. Writing seems to offer Morley some sort of release, and a way of using his flawed experiences with women, although there is more to his fiction than a thinly-disguised autobiography. Because he is only able to write about what he knows, he isn’t able to create fiction derived from his imagination or insights into the lives of others. Morley starts to write a novel about a woman like Hazel. Lou King helps him to get a literary agent, and he makes good progress with his writing. Morley makes the error yet again of telling his girlfriend that his writing is about her. Now Hazel constantly bothers him about it, and won’t ever leave him alone. Phil Teffner, Morley’s agent, likes Morley’s novel, entitled Queen of Hearts. As before Morley soon wants to run away again and escape from his relationship and job. He confides in Lou King about leaving, and tells him that he is going to New York. Instead he rents a new room so that he can have peace while he continues to work on the book, and to avoid Hazel. She discovers where he is living, and finds out about his plan. Morley calms her down by telling her that going to New York was going to be their honeymoon. They go out on the town to celebrate, and while waiting for a train home he tries to strangle Hazel with the scarf, but she falls under a train instead. It will look like suicide. Running away again, Morley falls asleep on the train to New York and dreams about Miss Frazer and Rena and having his hands tied by the scarf. Waking up, he decides that he has learned that he will have to stop killing. In New York Morley is hailed as a new writer on the brink of success. Morley meets his agent, and his editor Patricia Collins, who guides him through the revisions that the publisher wants him to make on his novel. Kleeman, the chief editor, is demanding: “You know Kleeman,” answered the girl. “I’d hate to think of what would have happened if King James had come to him with the Bible” (Bloch 56). To begin with Morley is almost overwhelmed by the publisher’s criticisms of Queen of Hearts, but he sees that they are right. Pat reassures him, makes it clear that she believes in him and his work, and encourages him to start on the revisions, because despite Morley’s doubts of himself and his novel, he will improve it. Morley is soon strongly attracted to Pat, who is a very different woman compared with the type he normally goes for. Now he feels he has a future. There will be no more running away. Then an entry in the Black Notebook describes surreal dreams within dreams. Reality and dream seem indistinguishable, and Morley wonders whether or not he has ever woken up (Bloch 61–63). Pat Collins starts to change Morley’s image and appearance in advance of the publication of his novel. He enters literary polite and not so polite soci-

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ety and meets Constance Ruppert, who makes him uncomfortable when she says that she’s sure she knows him from Chicago. Morley also meets Constance’s ex-husband Jeff Ruppert, who is a successful psychoanalyst. He is usually on the defensive by these two new acquaintances. There is always the feeling that they see into him, through him, and will find out the truth, or somehow cause him to betray himself. Constance tells Morley that she associates him with the colour red, an intimation of his maroon scarf (Bloch 69). Ruppert thinks that Morley is a “fake,” and running away from something (Bloch 72–73). Morley is also dismayed to find out that Pat is engaged to Ruppert (Bloch 74). What seems to be a possible genuine love relationship for Morley is over before it could begin, and he has lost Pat to a man who he dislikes and who might be the only one able to penetrate his secret and bring him down. In a Black Notebook entry, Morley writes about how words have become stronger than actions, because of literacy. People learn to worship words. Words are magic formulae which are needed to get through life. Words define until people are words themselves. But “deep down inside, there’s a ‘you’ who doesn’t need words, can’t use them” (Bloch 76). The words can’t be used, and there can be no communication. Nevertheless, Morley knows that Truth is a word. And that “big word” is — murder. Murder means nothing because it is a word. “Murder isn’t a word. Murder is a deed” (Bloch 75–77). Constance starts to pursue Morley, but he isn’t interested, because of his continuing feelings for Pat Collins, despite her engagement to Ruppert. Queen of Hearts is published, and becomes an immediate bestseller. Now he has a future. There will be no more running away. Jeff Ruppert thinks that Morley writes about women objectively, like a trained observer (Bloch 80). When Morley tells Ruppert that he lives off women, Ruppert says that Morley hates them. He responds that he isn’t Jack the Ripper (see the references above to Bloch’s story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”). Ruppert and his former wife both try to advise Morley. Ruppert tells him that Constance might try to kill him, while she says that Ruppert tried to drive her insane. Constance knows that Morley wants Pat, and when she insults her, Morley hits her. Ruppert says that Constance is a “nympholept”— a nymphomaniac. She is definitely a maniac, with her sexual over-activity possibly also contributed to by a glandular disorder. Ruppert confides that for Constance, their marriage symbolised the excuse for the abandonment of all repression. The unstable Constance projected all her guilt on to her husband (Bloch 89). Lou King unexpectedly pays Morley a visit, and mentions Hazel’s suicide, then says that he knows that Morley “killed” Hazel. He means that she committed suicide because of the book Morley was writing. King has told

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Constance about his views. Morley tells Constance she helps him to forget, and she asks him to marry her. She says if they are married she will keep quiet about Morley’s past, because she knows he really did murder Hazel. When Morley comes down with flu, Constance says he should start wearing a scarf. Morley dreams of killing Constance. Leaving him at home ill in bed, Constance goes to inspect a possible house for them. Morley drives there, strangles Constance, and sets fire to the house — apparently the perfect crime, as he has an alibi, being unable to go out. Jeff Ruppert thinks Morley killed Constance: he questions details about the whereabouts of the car, and why no-one answered the phone when Morley was supposed to be at home ill. Morley tries to convince him that Constance’s death was suicide. Morley starts work on Lucky Lady, his second novel. Jeff Ruppert and Pat Collins leave for Hollywood. Then Queen of Hearts is sold to a Hollywood studio. In a Black Notebook entry Morley thinks about past serial killers — Spring-Heeled Jack, and Jack the Ripper. Morley wonders why he is a killer, but doesn’t know the answer. Morley thinks he’s smart — he won’t need the “crutch” of the Black Notebook any longer. This is the last entry in it (Bloch 113). Morley takes the opportunity to get away again, and leave for Hollywood. On the plane journey to Hollywood Morley meets the film director Lloyd Ainsworth who drunkenly reminiscences about his past career (Bloch 115–18). In Hollywood Morley still carries the scarf about, even when he meets Pat. In a bar he sees a man in a green sports jacket, who seems to vanish. Morley tells Pat that Ruppert won’t love her when they’re married. He sees the man in the green sports jacket again, and attacks him, but no-one else has seen him, and there’s no evidence of their struggle. Morley now openly wears the scarf all the time. Morley meets Duke Kling, a photographer who has read an advance copy of Lucky Lady. Morley feels strange, as when he saw the man in the green sports jacket. Kling tells him that he should write a book about true murders. He takes Morley home to look at his own “black book”— grisly photos of murder victims. Morley is revolted by the book, but Kling says that Morley really likes it, and that he knows what Morley is. Morley thinks that perhaps Kling is right, that he is someone who enjoys seeing death. But he runs away. Then Morley’s work on the screenplay of Queen of Hearts starts to go badly. As he is about to lose Pat to Jeff Ruppert, he starts to write a character like her into his film script, but destroys the manuscript after talking to “the guy in the mirror.” Morley’s own reflection — his unconscious — tricks him into admitting the possibility that he could strangle Pat (Bloch 135–

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36). Jeff Ruppert continues to probe at Morley, and tells him he isn’t able to claim some money left to him by Constance, because an insurance investigator thinks that she didn’t commit suicide after all, but was actually murdered. Morley runs away again, and eventually picks up Verna, a hostess in a bar. They set out to drive to Tijuana, across the border in Mexico. Morley tries to strangle her with his scarf, but she escapes, and takes the scarf with her. He returns to Hollywood. Pat breaks with Ruppert, who reveals that he made up the story about an insurance investigator and the problems with getting the money left to him by Constance. Morley and Pat agree to marry and elope. Morley reads Jeff Ruppert’s new book The Assassin: a Study. Morley and Pat travel to Mexico by same route as he did with Verna. Although he no longer has the scarf, he believes that when he is with Pat he doesn’t need it. On the way to Tijuana, they decide to spend the night in a motel, and Pat accidentally reveals that she has Morley’s scarf. Verna had survived and contacted Pat and Ruppert, who decided to see if Verna’s story was true. Morley decides to kill Pat, when Miss Frazer suddenly appears. She had not died, but had retired, and was living nearby. She calls Morley “Daniel.” The past returns, and he is the adolescent who Miss Frazer attempted to seduce. But he wants to hold Miss Frazer. It turns out that the beginning of the story recorded in the Black Notebook was actually the reverse of what had really happened. Morley’s twisted version in the Black Notebook was a catharsis, but he has always been living in unreality. That is unchanged, although the truth is revealed. He remains obsessed with Miss Frazer at the end, which is also the beginning. Morley is using the Black Notebook again.

“PSYCHOLOGY

HAS A LOT OF WORDS”

Robert Bloch’s interest in psychology, and the themes that he had explored in The Scarf, were probably still in his mind a year after the novel was published. As Fan Guest of Honour at the World Science Fiction Convention at Toronto (Torcon) in 1948, Bloch delivered a speech entitled “Fantasy and Psychology.” It is recorded that he did an impersonation of Peter Lorre, whose film debut in Fritz Lang’s M (1931) was a detailed portrayal of a sexually-motivated serial killer (Moskowitz 336). The film is an unflinching depiction of a murderer who cannot simply be dismissed as somehow evil. Bloch would continue to investigate these themes in future novels. When Bloch wrote The Scarf, he produced a book that, while using the outward form of a crime thriller, also explored the life and mentality of a serial

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killer, with the associated horror being handled in a completely non-supernatural way. The real horror was psychological, and was enhanced by the killer’s own matter-of-fact narration of his actions. These sprang from the consequences of his upbringing and the malign influence of the people whose words and actions had turned him towards the bad. There is no attempt by the author to justify any of the characters’ actions and their results, whether good or evil. In the case of Daniel Morley, there is no suggestion that murder is to be condoned, or the murderer relieved of responsibility. But even so, there is more to be explored and hopefully understood. Any moral judgements are left to the characters themselves in the context of the novel, and to the reader. In The Scarf Bloch displayed a characteristic honesty in confronting and exploring the dark aspect in an apparently normal character, and so all people — and therefore in himself. For Bloch there was no need for a “good” character to be the narrator or protagonist. This amoral approach is typical of the best and most challenging crime fiction (as well as the best film noir of the time). It is also unlike more traditional crime fiction, in which a good character is pitted against bad criminals. For example, Raymond Chandler’s character Philip Marlowe, who, although he is no saint, is clearly on the side of good (honesty, decency, law and order) against evil (corruption, chaotic human values, dishonesty). Later crime novels often followed the line that Bloch did rather than Chandler’s, and blurred the distinctions between good and evil, moral and immoral. They were more willing to explore the point of view of the murderer and other often repellent characters. People are rarely to be seen as simply good or bad. Their crimes are made to spring out of a definite context, rather than as if from out of thin air. They are shown as being just slices from the different lives that Morley finds himself moving through. Bloch confirms what is already known: that an artist with a talent need not necessarily be good in a particularly moral sense, but it is still not normal to be a serial killer. In The Scarf there are no portrayals of any especially good characters, except for the two people who Morley genuinely likes, and who genuinely like him. These are Lou King, Morley’s employer and mentor in Chicago, and Pat Collins, who helps him to improve his work and whom he comes to love. Even if Morley’s responses to King and Collins are mainly because they didn’t seem to want to take anything from him, but are at first simply doing their jobs, Morley’s two friendships stand out in a novel which is otherwise a chronicle of arid relationships dependent only on transactions and setting conditions. As a contrast, there is Duke Kling, whose “black book” of photographs

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possibly serves a similar function to Morley’s Black Notebook of writing. There is also the surely deliberate similarity between the names Duke Kling and Lou King, which serves to emphasise the difference between the two men. Apart from Morley himself, Kling is probably the most obviously loathsome character in The Scarf. Although Kling doesn’t apparently kill people, he makes his living from the results of death. Although it is all legitimate, Kling’s business photographing victims lets him get thrills out of it as well. He seems to consciously and actively enjoy what he likes: his enthusiasm for death. In Morley, Kling thinks he recognises a fellow connoisseur. But even Morley is repulsed by Kling. But it could be that Morley, too, does recognise Kling as someone who does have some idea of the “little twisted world” there is inside his head. Kling is very different to Lou King. King is pleasant and helpful at the beginning of Morley’s writing career (as Bloch’s employer was) while Kling wishes to help in a voyeuristic and sensational way at what will turn out to be near its end. At one point Morley launches into a tirade against the aims of the psychoanalysis that Jeff Ruppert practises with such success. Morley maintains that “abnormality pays off.” The artists and writers are known to be crazy, but there is also the “so-called common herd” that are generally accepted as being fairly adjusted. But Morley, as one of them, says that they are not. But they get along. Morley says that the “normal” people, who deal with these “misfits,” are unhappy because they have to hide their troubles. If that is normal, then the aims of psychoanalysis, which seeks to make the adjustment, are all wrong. People are maladjusted, because they haven’t been prepared for the failure that is the lot for most of them (Bloch 69–70). The Scarf is a portrayal of several maladjusted people, and of Daniel Morley in particular. These portraits make the meaning of the psychological horror and terror aspects of the novel. There is much evidence that Morley’s personality is disordered and his sanity is doubtful — for example, his dreams within dreams, the discussion with his reflection in a mirror, and the apparition of the man in the green sports jacket. Morley knows the truth but lives as if he doesn’t. He lives under the illusions he despises in others. The ending is a bleak one: that is challenged, it is not overcome. There is no mention of Morley being on death row, or having to pay for his crimes with his own death. So Morley was not responsible due to his insanity? The horror that is depicted in The Scarf is that people can be born, influenced, coerced, into doing terrible things and continuing the vicious circle. Life without horror is a life with illusions. Bloch is nothing if not honest.

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NOTE

ON “ANACHRONISMS” IN

THE SCARF

The revisions that Bloch made to the original text of The Scarf for its 1966 reprint created several anachronisms, or what would be anachronisms if the contemporary 1947 setting of the novel is still to be regarded as the present. Here are some of the most obvious (at least to this writer) anachronisms in The Scarf: Morley and Hazel dance in a bar to a Bob Dylan song on a jukebox. Dylan was born in 1941 and his first album was not released until 1962 (Bloch 30). Morley and Pat mention the war in Vietnam. Although it had been a trouble spot since at least 1945, American involvement really began to escalate during the presidency of John F Kennedy after 1960 (Bloch 72). The film director Ainsworth laments to Morley that so few people had ever written a good book about Hollywood. He mentions “Shulberg” as one of the exceptions (Bloch 117). Budd Shulberg’s popular Hollywood novel The Disenchanted was not published until 1950. Morley mentions using a credit card, which were not invented until 1950 (Bloch 120). In any case, establishing an exact date for the setting of The Scarf is not important. It is enough to know that it is the urban United States of America between the mid 1940s and mid 1960s. Even over forty years after the text of The Scarf was last revised by its author, it is a period that still retains enough associations and connections with our present. The settings of The Scarf are still recognizable, and navigable by the reader, as much as any novel which has a contemporary setting that has now become the definite past can be. The types of human nature and actions explored in the novel remain more obviously timeless.

CONCLUSION The Scarf captures the feel and mood of the time it was originally written. Several high-publicity serial killing “psychopaths” had attracted publicity in the United States since the mid 1930s. Memories of the atrocities committed during the Second World War by often apparently otherwise normal people were still fresh (Larson). These sorts of issues, along with the not uncommon violence and institutional corruption in much of American public life, had naturally also long been reflected in American fiction. Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest (1929) still remains an outstanding example of this. The 1930s and 1940s are thus now seen as the golden age of a particular school of crime fiction. By the time The Scarf was published, novels and short stories by such writers as Raymond Chandler, James M Cain, Dashiell

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Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich were well on the way to achieving recognition as literature that had to be taken seriously. This literature presented an alternative and sometimes almost dreamlike, but nevertheless real, portrait of a nation. Publication of The Scarf marked Bloch’s emergence as an author whose work could stand alongside such famous names. In particular The Scarf is also in the same class as John Franklin Bardon’s intense and deeply disconcerting psychological crime novels The Deadly Percheron (1946), The Last of Philip Banter (1947) and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (1948). Much of the low life and mean streets atmosphere of The Scarf feels like the original story treatment behind a Hollywood film noir or suspense thriller from that era, with the more sexually fetishist serial killer aspects being reminiscent of a film like The Spiral Staircase (1945) and, eventually, the film made in 1960 from what became Bloch’s best-known novel, Psycho.

WORKS CITED Bloch, Robert. The Scarf. New York: Dial Press, 1947. _____. The Scarf. New York: Avon Books, 1948 [as The Scarf of Passion]. _____. The Scarf. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1966. _____. The Scarf. United Kingdom: New English Library, 1972. Larson, Randall D. “Precursors of Psycho: The Early Crime Novels of Robert Bloch.” The Scream Factory 11 (1993). Online at: http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/larson_early.html (accessed September 21, 2008). Moskowitz, Sam. “Robert Bloch.” Seekers of Tomorrow. Cleveland: World, 1966 Winter, Douglas E. “Robert Bloch” in Faces of Fear. New York: Berkley, 1985.

The Keys to the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy Scott D. Briggs “I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times.” — Norman Bates [Robert Bloch, Psycho (33)]

It is a sad fact of our popular culture that millions of people across the globe know Psycho very well: that is, they know the film of Psycho, directed by the Master, Alfred Hitchcock, but not as many are familiar with Robert Bloch’s Psycho, the novel that inspired the film. Hitchcock’s wildly successful film continues to dominate the public consciousness and, indeed, its dreams and nightmares: the stark, indelible black-and-white images, the characters, the suspense and horror of the storyline, the infamous shower scene, Norman Bates as masterfully portrayed by the unnerving Anthony Perkins, the ultimate unveiling of “Mrs. Bates,” the unforgettably desolate setting of the little neglected dark motel off the road far from the main highway and the house behind it — all this has, by the present day, become such a part and parcel of our culture that for many, Psycho is just one of Hitchcock’s most popular and shocking films, now as then upon its release in 1960. However, there would be no Psycho the film and mass-culture phenomenon without Robert Bloch, or indeed, without his having written the novel Psycho in 1959, upon which the film is very closely based, with minimal alterations by master screenwriter Joseph Stefano. Because there would have been no Hitchcock Psycho unless Robert Bloch had first presented his novel, it is high time that the novel Psycho is given its due, as well as the two follow-up novels that Bloch wrote much later. Just as there would very likely have been no famous, successful author Robert Bloch 102

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without H.P. Lovecraft and his considerable influence upon, and encouragement of, a young fan named Robert Bloch, there can be no discussion of Psycho without Robert Bloch and his works. We are, therefore, not concerned here very much with Hitchcock’s film adaptation, nor are we concerned with the filmic sequels, including Psycho II (1983), ably directed by Richard Franklin and written by the talented Tom Holland, which, although a substantially successful and gripping sequel in its own right, had nothing to do with Bloch’s own sequel, Psycho II (1982). And we can safely dismiss the final two filmic sequels, of which, sadly, the only one of any merit at all is the last, Psycho IV: The Beginning, a made-for-television film that was, at least, written by the venerable Joseph Stefano. However, it seems Stefano’s late-career efforts were in vain, since Psycho IV is, sadly, a mediocre effort at best, and not at all representative of the best work of the various considerable talents involved. It should also be noted that the original film of Psycho was remade in 1998 by director Gus Van Sant, as an almost shot-for-shot modern replica of Hitchcock’s original, starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Anne Heche as Marion Crane. Even considering Van Sant’s considerable talents as a director of various original and innovative independent features, his overly reverent remake, besides being generally unnecessary, adds nothing to enrich the legacy of either Bloch’s novel or Hitchcock’s film, or anything of any value to our appreciation or understanding of either. Van Sant’s remake was almost universally panned and reviled by critics and fans of the original Psycho alike. No, we are not so much concerned with any of those works as we are here with one of the main credits included in Hitchcock’s iconic film: “Based upon the novel by Robert Bloch.” Bloch himself repeatedly pointed out a comment that Alfred Hitchcock made in an interview included in the 1969 book The Celluloid Muse, edited by Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg. The interview, as transcribed by Douglas E. Winter for his lengthy interview with Bloch (as source for his interview collection Faces of Fear) in The Lost Bloch Vol. 3, includes Winter’s urging that Bloch relates this key quotation from Hitchcock himself : “Psycho all came from Robert Bloch’s book. The scriptwriter, Joseph Stefano, a radio writer, he had been recommended by my agents MCA, contributed dialogue mostly, no ideas” (Schow 274–75). Bloch repeats this quotation from Hitchcock in Once Around the Bloch (Bloch 228), at the opening of the chapter in which Psycho first emerges from his creative psyche, and clearly it is no accident that he does so: Bloch wanted to leave us with the point that however successful Hitchcock’s film is — and it is, in the final analysis, very successful and clever indeed — it is still solidly based upon his novel, and that Hitchcock, accustomed as he was to taking liberties with other earlier literary properties that served as the basis of some of his

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films, was also apparently proud of remaining faithful to the original novel. Compare the film of Psycho with David Cronenberg’s highly truncated yet remarkably masterful and effective 1983 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Dead Zone, and it is obvious how rare such an almost completely faithful adaptation of a novel is, and how much this description applies to Hitchcock’s Psycho. Accordingly, the entire Psycho phenomenon is really but a major footnote in Bloch’s entire career — only the pinnacle of his decades of work in the fields of horror and suspense. One has only to read classic Bloch short stories like “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” earlier novels like The Scarf and The Will to Kill, his ingenious modern updating of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos in the novel Strange Eons (1978), and other works to understand why this is so. And so, we focus on Robert Bloch. We focus on Psycho and the sequels Psycho II and Psycho House. We focus on some of the things that inspired him to write Psycho, including the infamous real-life Wisconsin serial murderer Ed Gein. But most of all, we focus on Bloch himself, without whom there would be no Psycho, the phenomenon. According to a 1985 interview with Robert Bloch conducted by Ron Leming, the author was living “only 29 miles from Plainfield, Wisconsin, when the infamous Ed Gein’s crimes were discovered” (Leming 3). In fact, the Bloch family resided at this time in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, which was Bloch’s wife Marion’s hometown; the family had moved there in 1953, after Marion had become ill with bone tuberculosis, which had required a brief stay in hospital. Ed Gein was essentially a loner who was raised by his poor, troubled parents in Vernon County, Wisconsin. His father, George P. Gein, was reportedly a frequently violent alcoholic, and his mother, Augusta Gein was a domineering and ultra-religious “fire-and-brimstone”-spouting figure who exerted considerable influence upon her sons Edward and his older brother, Henry G. Gein, who ended up dying in a suspicious fire at the family farm in May 1944. Augusta Gein died of a second stroke not long after this, in December 1945. Ed Gein spent the next twelve years living alone on the family farm, during which, apparently, isolation and mental illness began to take more than its toll on him. Ed Gein was apprehended by police on November 16, 1957, in the small town of Plainfield after suspicions that he was involved in the disappearance of a local store owner, Bernice Worden, led to a full-scale investigation and search of his home, located on a small farm. Worden’s body — decapitated, gutted, and dressed out like a deer — was merely the beginning of the awful discoveries the police made that day at the Gein homestead.

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Gein was responsible for multiple unspeakable crimes, including the murders of at least two to seven known victims, grave robbing, mutilation of his victims, and “trophy”-keeping: using the skin and body parts of several of his victims to fashion household implements such as lampshades made out of human skin, human breasts as cup holders, and other examples too horrifying to go into in any detail here. Ed Gein turned out to be one of the first early models of the modern definition of the “serial killer” decades before the term was coined, and the case made a considerable impression not only upon Wisconsin but upon the country as a whole at the time. Ed Gein was ultimately found mentally incompetent to stand trial after his initial arrest. He was remanded to the Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin, and later transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison. In 1968, Gein’s doctors announced that he was now mentally fit to stand trial, but within a week, on November 14, 1968, a judge determined him not guilty by reason of insanity, and Gein was confined for the rest of his life to Mendota State Hospital. The Gein case has been exhaustively well-documented both in book and online sources, so there is no need to go into further detail here. Although the exploits of Bloch’s creation Norman Bates pale before the awful crimes of Ed Gein, the similarities between the real-life case above and Bloch’s novel are unmistakable. It is an established fact (in fact, established repeatedly by its very author) that the Gein case was the major influence on, and impetus for, Bloch’s conceiving and writing Psycho. According to Bloch himself, the true origins of Norman Bates, the fictional creation, especially in an etymological and structuralist sense, can also be traced back to his choice of a name for his protagonist and even the very title of the novel. None of these choices were haphazard for Bloch: My title derives, of course, from psychotic and also from psycholog y and psychoanalysis. It was from the latter sources that I sought rationale for my protagonist — or more precisely, an irrationale ... so I built a motel and put him in business. But it wasn’t until I’d arrived at his fixation — accompanied by the transvestism that was to form his modus operandi, modus vivendi, and my “gimmick” all in one — that I hit upon his name. Norman Bates. The first name was a combination of two words, “nor man,” a pun which contains the secret of the story: my killer is neither woman nor man. Bates? I thought of his mother’s sexual domination in childhood and youth: a domination young Master Norman could not escape except through masturbation. To say nothing of how Norman “baits” his trap and in another sense “baits” his pursuers [Bloch, Once Around the Bloch 229].

Psycho was not Bloch’s first foray into the realms of crime fiction, psychological horror, or psychological suspense. Earlier novels such as The Scarf,

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Spiderweb, and The Will to Kill were all concerned with the doings of often criminal, psychotic, and/or violent killers, conveyed in a film noir, pulpinfluenced style that mainly diverged from the styles Bloch had previously employed in the pages of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines from his earlier run of short fiction. The pulp element was still strong, but Bloch’s new style for these novels was admittedly influenced by some of his favorite nonfantasy or supernatural authors, including James M. Cain. Much of the substance of Bloch’s novels of this period diverge from his earlier work in the field of supernatural fiction: the focus on the gods and monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos, and historical but now quite distant real-life crime figures such as Jack the Ripper, was now being replaced by a gritty, noir-inspired emphasis on reality and desperate characters stuck in drab lives where the only way out is crime, psychosis, murder, extortion, kidnapping, and other more traditionally pulp/noir themes and motifs. Bloch’s earliest influences for these seminal novels leading up to his creation of Psycho clearly include some of the titans in the mystery/noir/crime/ pulp fields. Bloch’s setting for The Scarf alone seems to foretell later associations with Hollywood, the movies, and major allusions to Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles. As even the primary setting of Bloch’s later sequel to Psycho, Psycho II, is Hollywood, it is obvious that his fascination with the place (and the fact that his work would eventually find him relocating there permanently) was no accident. It is also no accident that the plot of The Scarf revolves around the character Daniel Morley, a novelist-turned-screenwriter who, though seemingly urbane and mild-mannered, is in fact a despicable serial killer of women, especially when he hits frequent writer’s block in his career, looking to his own awful crimes to come up with new “material.” The major difference between The Scarf and Psycho is that the former is told in the first person, whereas later with Psycho, Bloch switches gears to a curious thirdperson narrative, mainly to keep the secrets of Psycho hidden until the author is ready to reveal them to the first-time reader. The Scarf reads like a confessional story; Psycho is an effort at creating a true psychological mystery story that attempts to keep the reader shocked, scared, and guessing at the truth until almost the very end of the novel. Bloch is careful at the beginning of Psycho to be somewhat vague about the setting: there is a brief mention that Mary Crane’s sister Lila has recently traveled to Dallas on a buying trip for her job at a record shop (thereby missing any sign of her sister’s initial disappearance), but Bloch is curiously reticent to give us many details about exactly where his two leading ladies, Mary and Lila, actually reside. Bloch sets up the small southern or southwestern town of Fairvale as the main setting for later events, and just outside the town

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of Fairvale is the location of the Bates Motel, the neighboring swamp, and all the rest, but the lack of concrete information as to just where it is that Mary Crane is heading as the novel begins sets up a strange sense of dislocation: we could really be anywhere from Texas to Arizona, Oklahoma, or any of the states surrounding the Midwest or Southwest. Bloch does mention that Mary’s car has Texas license plates when she pulls into the motel, and that she switches cars twice during her escape from her hometown. It is not necessary to delineate the entire plot and characters of Psycho, anymore than it is necessary to delineate to someone the details of Dracula or Frankenstein. However, the basic plot is as follows: Mary Crane (whose name was changed to Marion Crane for Hitchcock’s film), in a desperate moment of temporary “insanity,” steals $40,000 from her employer, the Lowery Agency, in what is apparently Texas. Mary needs the money to give to her fiancé, Sam Loomis, who runs a hardware store in Fairvale: he can’t marry her until he is more financially solvent and has paid off various debts. Her plan is to give Sam the money and explain her actions in person; she escapes from town with the money in her purse, switches cars, and eventually ends up caught in a rainstorm that causes her to try to find somewhere to stay for the night and think things over before greeting Sam in Fairvale the next day. She drives down a turnoff from the main highway leading to Fairvale and doubles back to the sign that reads “Motel — vacancy.” Mary pulls into the Bates Motel, meets the proprietor, Norman Bates (seemingly all alone in the place), checks into the cabin adjacent to the front office of the hotel, is invited up to the adjoining Bates house to dine with Norman as there are no nearby restaurants, and then retires to her cabin to unwind and take a shower. Mary Crane is murdered (in fact, beheaded) by someone dressed as an “old woman,” or in fact an old woman, while in the shower. The first three chapters of Psycho see Bloch slowly building the reader up to the true shock of his apparent main protagonist Mary Crane being murdered in the shower by someone who just might be Norman Bates’s controlling, insane mother — the person whom he complains of to Mary earlier when they first meet and have dinner together. Bloch shies away, as he always does, from any kind of graphic gore: instead, Mary’s murder, as with all the shocks in the novel, are “related” to the reader in the barest, most stark possible manner. Bloch achieves terror here merely with suggestion, and sneaking up on the reader, as it were, leaving us hanging in a sense with the awful violent act, but never indulging in any gratuitous gore, violence, or unnecessary forensic descriptions of any of the above. Bloch knows, as Hitchcock knew later when filming his movie (and also, in his case, due to pressure from the censors), that the reader is already terrified enough when Mary is attacked in

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the shower: all we need to read is “Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head” (Bloch, Psycho 37). Entire volumes could be written on why Psycho the novel and film still frighten us to this day — a result of these decisions of restraint — while many modern horror and suspense films fail miserably or lower themselves to the level of schlock by ruining whatever chills they might otherwise deliver with gratuitous gore and phony “shocks.” Even modern counterparts like John Carpenter’s Halloween, while more graphic in general than Psycho, still back off from the excesses of needless gore and absurd FX-based (or worse, CGIbased) bloody horror that seem to be diluting the field over the past twenty or so years. Modern pretenders to the horror/suspense thrones would do well to look to Psycho as the prime example of the adage that less is almost invariably more. The remainder of Psycho concerns the drastic switch of interest to the remaining characters, chiefly Norman, Lila Crane, Sam Loomis, and an insurance company investigator, Arbogast, who becomes involved in finding the now missing Mary Crane in an effort to retrieve the stolen money. Bates gets rid of Mary Crane’s body by putting it in the trunk of her car and sinking it in the swamp that borders the Bates property. Lila travels to Fairvale after days go by and her sister doesn’t communicate or reappear: upon her arrival she finds out that Sam had nothing to do with the money or her disappearance, and that he is also worried sick over Mary. Arbogast stumbles over the Bates Motel as a place to search, and he is then murdered in the Bates house by someone that looks like Norman’s mother. Lila and Sam desperately enlist the help of Fairvale Sheriff Chambers, who knows the Bates family and quite a bit more, it transpires, than many locals do regarding its rather dark history. Sam and Lila head to the motel themselves to see if they can discover anything themselves after the sheriff ’s visit fails to uncover anything unusual. Norman, realizing he is in grave danger of being exposed as the actual murderer, knocks out Sam Loomis in the motel office, while Lila explores the Bates house behind the motel, venturing downstairs to the basement and fruit cellar, where, just as she is about to make the horrifying discovery that Bates has exhumed and “preserved” his actual mother in a crude sort of taxidermic state of decay (Norman had earlier told Mary Crane that his only hobby was taxidermy), she is saved from the same exact fate of her sister by Loomis, who wrests the large butcher knife from Norman’s hand, just as she sees that Bates is indeed dressed up as if he were his own mother. Thus Norman is captured and the case solved, especially after the swamp is drained and Mary’s body and car are reclaimed.

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As in Hitchcock’s film version, the denouement includes a second-hand explanation of Bates’ illness and crimes by Dr. Steiner, the psychiatrist at the State Hospital in charge of the medical observation of Bates. Steiner’s diagnosis of Norman Bates includes his belief that Bates, years before, after murdering his own mother and her despised lover Joe Considine, fractured into a true multiple personality that included three facets: the young “Norman” who was obsessively protective of his mother; “Norma,” which was the facet of his personality that, in a very real sense, became his mother; and finally the adult “Normal” Norman, which was the side of Norman that he showed to the outside world and which allowed him to cope with living in the real world, and function without showing the two other facets of his split personality to any outsiders. Much criticism has been leveled by readers and critics over the years that Bloch’s novel is either merely lurid pulp trash, hackwork, inferior to Hitchcock’s film version of it, and/or inferior to much of Bloch’s previous work, short fiction or other works of his perhaps less famous than Psycho. In reality, it can be shown that much of this criticism does not hold up to close scrutiny. Bloch’s novel is very much the source for the film; accordingly, much of the misattribution of the story, characters, and substance of the film over the years to people like screenwriter Joseph Stefano, Hitchcock himself, or others is, quite simply, erroneous. Also, the novel contains much more substance in terms of background and plot than the film, especially where Norman’s history and motivations are concerned: the backstory regarding Norman’s having murdered his mother and her lover years before is the linchpin to understanding his later psychosis and split personality. With this information, Norman’s predicament becomes that much clearer, although Bloch’s pudgy, middle-aged, easy-to-anger, and quite antisocial Norman Bates is definitely less sympathetic than Anthony Perkins’s film version of Norman, who is an appealing, even charming, younger version of the character who elicits this sympathy by being (in outward appearance) a “normal” young man trapped in an awful situation, his mental illness notwithstanding. Bloch’s original Norman Bates is really none of these things, and is closer (in appearance, at any rate) to an Ed Gein archetype of antisocial persona, although the novel’s Bates is perhaps considerably more verbal and articulate than the real-life Gein ever was. Another difference is that Gein was never diagnosed as a multiple personality, although he was certainly antisocial, depraved, psychotic, unnaturally devoted to his mother, and had some of the same unsavory “hobbies” that Bloch’s Bates has. Bloch’s weakness, if he has any in Psycho, is a tendency toward surface glibness of style, and a seeming unwillingness to dwell very deeply into the

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psychological underpinnings of his characters — a surprising fact for what is, essentially, a psychological thriller, and one now considered one of the best of the genre. However, it also must be kept in mind that the novel’s scares and shocks hinge upon not revealing too much of the characters up front, so much of this reticence, in hindsight, can be seen to be a product of Bloch’s carefully constructing his plot to begin with a true shock (Mary’s sudden murder in the shower), and then slowly building to the next shock (Arbogast’s murder) and then, following swiftly, to the final revelation about Norman’s mother and his own true “identity.” With too much deep character development, the surprises in store for the reader with Psycho would be ruined, so that the very structure of the story dictates the spare style. As for Psycho being merely a pulp novel, not worthy of Bloch’s more accomplished or complex work, there is perhaps something to this criticism. Bloch maintains an extremely simple storyline and relatively simple characters, although in this case they are characters that, even with Norman Bates, the average reader can relate to, unlike (perhaps) some of Bloch’s earlier Lovecraftian or supernatural tales and novels. As for Psycho being “lurid,” it must be said that Bloch carefully avoids trivializing or sensationalizing his subject, eschewing outright gratuitous violence or gore or even any unnecessary digressions of plot or character development that do not support the taut, central suspense story at the center of the novel. Ultimately, it must also be seen that Bloch’s intention with Psycho is not to write a complex, poetic, diaphanously sensitive tale on the order of Arthur Machen’s, Algernon Blackwood’s, or Clark Ashton Smith’s more esoteric flights of the fantastic: the intent of Psycho is to be, above all else, a psychological crime novel, and we can trace much of Bloch’s inspiration to writers like James M. Cain and other masters of crime and suspense fiction, going all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe and perhaps even earlier than that. Compare the spare, taut, hardboiled prose style Bloch employs for Psycho to anything of Chandler, Cain, Jim Thompson, et al., and his novel hold up to almost any of the masterworks of those authors. Perhaps it is because Bloch did not start out writing in this stark a vein of realistic psychological suspense that Psycho was not taken as seriously when it first appeared than it generally is now by critics. It was only much later masters of the genre influenced by Bloch, including Stephen King, who fully grasped what Bloch was attempting to accomplish with novels like Psycho, The Scarf, Deadbeat, and The Will to Kill: “In their own way,” wrote King in Danse Macabre, “the novels that Bloch wrote in the 1950s had every bit as much influence on the course of American literature as did the Cain ‘heel-with-a-heart’ novels of the 1930s” (Rebello 12).

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Bloch tried different styles for The Scarf and all his novels leading up to Psycho, and it is a change that is at first disconcerting and even disturbing to many used to Bloch’s early tales. Bloch employs this occasional switching of points of view even within the same novel to masterful effect, especially in Psycho. One has only to read Ramsey Campbell’s novel The Face That Must Die (1977) to see how another modern horror master has taken on aspects of Bloch’s pulp/crime/noir style while still managing to construct his own personal idiom out of Bloch’s clear influence. Campbell manages the same trick as Bloch, revealing the psychological complexities of his workaday Liverpool characters and psychotic killer, Horridge, while maintaining a stark, austere, paranoiac, and often hallucinatory prose style that manages to strike out at the reader with moments of pure, abject terror without ever resorting to overwriting or purple prose. Both authors often quickly switch points of view from character to character, allowing each individual “voice” to dominate a given situation, then switching abruptly to the terrifying, fractured point of view of a Norman Bates or Horridge, putting readers off balance by the rapid contrast from rationality to psychosis. It must also be noted that Bloch takes what, by the late 1950s, were already hoary, creaking clichés (the old dark house, the murder mystery, the damsel in distress, and all the standard trappings of the detective story) and subverts them, eschewing ghosts and spirits for pure reality-based terror. If some of Bloch’s characterizations are just this side of wooden and, very rarely, one-dimensional, the novel can still rest securely in its own unique niche as being one of the most terrifying psychological suspense fictions of the twentieth century. None of the horror/suspense masterpieces of the later part of the century, including Stephen King’s own The Dead Zone (itself a clever combination of the psychological and supernatural suspense novel, employing many tropes that Bloch, Cain, and Jim Thompson had earlier made their own: the small-town setting, the totally unsuspected, seemingly “normal” local who turns out to be a psychotic murderer) or Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs would have been possible without the ground broken by Psycho. Bloch’s first sequel, Psycho II, would be more than twenty years in coming, and was first suggested, perhaps not surprisingly, by Bloch’s agent, Kirby McCauley, responding to Bloch’s reported despair, at the time, with the film and television world’s turn to the auteur theory first propagated in the 1960s by French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut, among others. Thus, McCauley suggested that Bloch, instead of attempting to cater to the changing, dumbed-down, and over-commercialized whims of the film and TV industries, “write Psycho II ” (Bloch, Once Around the Bloch 380). Bloch eventually rose to the challenge, although initially fighting grave doubts about

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being able to come up with a satisfying storyline for a sequel. Commercial interest in a sequel to Psycho was high (the novel being bid upon by Warner Books, in its earliest stages), and Bloch came up with a satisfying storyline that began with his musings of: What had old Norman been up to all this time? He’d be getting along in years now. Must be pretty damned dull for him, sitting there in that asylum; even duller if they’d gone ahead and cured him. Or thought they’d cured him. But suppose he wasn’t cured? And suppose he heard that somebody out in Hollywood intended to make a movie about him? What if he busted out and headed west? [Bloch, Once Around the Bloch 381]

Psycho II, the novel, finally made its debut in 1982, first published in a limited edition by Whispers Press, the outstanding small press founded by Stuart David Schiff, and then in mass market editions by Warner Books in the United States and Corgi Books in the UK. Bloch was also urged by his agent to show the completed novel to executives at Universal Studios as a courtesy, but Bloch’s sequel was reviled by almost everyone at Universal, and he was apparently told that the studio had no intention of filming a sequel to Psycho in any case. The primary reason that Universal didn’t like Bloch’s sequel was that it devoted a good many pages in criticizing the current trend toward gory, gratuitous, often mindless horror films that were being churned out by Universal and other studios at the time, and it probably didn’t help that Bloch made the audacious move of killing off Norman Bates by the halfway point of his sequel. Bloch refused to scrap his already-contracted for new work (something that Universal preposterously suggested to him), and also declined to write a novelization or a different screenplay for a film sequel, and so Universal went ahead throughout 1982–83 with its own original film sequel to Psycho; it appeared in 1983, again starring Anthony Perkins. According to Bloch in his autobiography, he was not even invited to any screenings of the new film, although since he was not involved creatively in any way, he likely did not consider this much of an insult. All that need be said here about Psycho II the film is that it is a rather good, solidly written, directed, and acted sequel on its own merits, but it can also be said that Bloch’s main premise, that of Norman Bates escaping from the asylum rather than being “cured” and released quietly back into society, as in Universal’s film, is still the more logical, plausible one. If, however, Bloch’s Psycho II had emerged as the superior of the two sequels, then Bloch could have considered himself victorious, and while the novel has a few merits, it still cannot begin to match the original in any way, although it tries hard to do so. Psycho II contains so many flaws that it is hard to know where to begin to describe why it is somewhat satisfying as a sequel

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in general, but not nearly as satisfying as the solid novel by Robert Bloch that one might have hoped for. The book was released to general acclaim and did quite well worldwide in terms of critical reception and sales, but it now seems dated, fails to hold up well upon re-reading, lacks believable characters, and boasts a seriously awkward plot development that jars readers out of immersion in the storyline instead of pulling them in closer. Bloch’s sequel posits that Norman Bates, twenty years after the events of the first novel, is still ensconced in the State Hospital not far from Fairvale, and that, if he is not totally cured, he has at least made significant progress under the therapeutic eyes of Dr. Claiborne and Dr. Steiner, the latter familiar to readers from Psycho. Two nuns from a nearby order, Sister Barbara and Sister Cupertine, visit the hospital in a van one day, and one of them has some psychiatric training and is interested in Norman Bates and his case. Dr. Claiborne reluctantly allows Sister Barbara to have a meeting with Norman in the hospital library, and a guard foolishly allows the two to be alone for a time, allowing Norman to murder Sister Barbara, change into her clothes, and escape to their van. Norman hijacks the van, kidnaps Sister Cupertine, murders her later, makes his way to Fairvale, and ultimately manages (apparently) to murder Lila Crane and Sam Loomis, who are still living in Fairvale, now a married couple. Before Norman even gets very far away from the State Hospital, we find him, at the beginning of chapter 5, having sex with the corpse of Sister Cupertine in the back of the stolen van. This, to most intelligent readers, should be a sure sign that Bloch’s and the novel’s credibility is in serious jeopardy. It is not even the awful fact of Bates’s necrophilia, but the utter lack of any motivation or precedent for this nastiness: taxidermy and grave robbing, yes, but necrophilia? There are some hints in Psycho of incest or some unnatural sexual relationship between Bates and his mother in his past, but nothing like this. Add to this the preposterous way that Bates manages to escape, with Bloch positing that a guard would simply allow himself to be distracted away from overseeing Bates’s meeting with the younger Sister Barbara, thus allowing Bates to murder her and escape, and the novel is already in serious danger of not being able to support itself under the weight of its own absurdity. The remainder of Psycho II follows the apparently erstwhile and dedicated Dr. Claiborne, in alliance with the local police departments, on the road to tracking down and recapturing Norman, and he proves elusive indeed: at one point the van is found burned to a cinder and two corpses are found inside. Later, Sam and Lila are found murdered in Sam’s hardware store in Fairvale, apparently the victims of Bates, and then Dr. Claiborne finds a press clipping about the movie that a Hollywood studio is planning about the Bates

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case, leading him to suspect that Bates is now heading to Hollywood to put a stop to its production, and/or cause further mayhem in the process. Claiborne flies out to Hollywood in pursuit and meets the studio people, cast, and producers involved in the film. Everyone involved naturally becomes a suspect in the case. Claiborne also believes he sees Bates at a Hollywood supermarket in the aisle security mirror, although for some reason he can’t seem to catch up with him. Accidents and unexplained fires occur on the soundstage of the studio, and eventually a few key people start turning up murdered. Bloch attempts, in a sense, to match the suspense he achieved with Psycho by having it transpire later in the novel that Bates was indeed murdered in the burned-out van after a struggle with a vagrant hitchhiker he had picked up after escaping from the hospital, leading the reader to wonder who exactly is responsible for the sabotage and murders going on in Hollywood. The improbable answer is that it is not young actress Jan Harper, playing Mary Crane from the original story and desperate for this big break to not be terminated, nor fat-cat producer Driscoll, nor the somewhat unhinged and drugaddicted film director Vizzini, nor the intense screenwriter Roy Ames, to whom Jan is attracted despite suspicions of his own possible mental instability, but rather Dr. Claiborne himself, since Bates turns up quite dead, his body positively identified by Sheriff Engstrom back home in Fairvale. Actually, Bloch posits a double villain, having the film director Vizzini get loaded on pills and attempt to sexually attack Jan Harper in the very “shower scene” set built on the lot at the studio, while Dr. Claiborne suddenly appears through the shower curtain and murders Vizzini, and then is wounded by a shot from a police officer’s gun, thus saving Jan Harper in the nick of time and exposing Dr. Claiborne as the “new Norman Bates”: as Dr. Steiner once again later explains for the reader, Claiborne had to “become” Norman, as Bates once “became” his mother, because having once planned a book about his patient, and feeling that his whole life was wrapped up in him, and thus with the real Bates now dead, the mentally unstable Claiborne had finally “snapped,” adopted Norman Bates’ entire persona, and committed most of the acts in the novel attributed to Norman, not counting the murders of the two nuns. Bloch writes Psycho II in almost the exact same prose style he utilized for Psycho, but the various shocks and scares are seriously compromised by shoddy writing, one-dimensional character development, sheer awkwardness of plot development, and some of the more absurdly gruesome elements, such as the necrophilia episode described above, and such nastiness as the seemingly pointless murder of a helpless little kitten by someone outside Jan Harper’s Hollywood Hills apartment after an attenuated date with Dr.

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Claiborne, which of course turns out later to be the work of the “good doctor.” Whereas the stripped-down, spare pulp fiction style works so well for Bloch in the original novel, in some ways it almost becomes a liability in the sequel. The various characters, especially those we meet when Claiborne arrives in Hollywood, are generally not developed enough to elicit the reader’s concern or sympathy. The only one for whom we truly have any semblance of empathy is Jan Harper, and even she doesn’t come off as being particularly believable or three-dimensional, or as emotionally complex as Bloch would clearly like her to be. Matters are not helped by Bloch’s adherence to an amorphous third-person narrative, as with Jan’s musings when she first meets Dr. Claiborne upon his arrival in Hollywood: She didn’t expect an invitation to stick around, but at least she might have a chance to say hello and size him up, maybe even get some clue as to why he was here. Of course Roy would be furious, but after last night Jan had decided it was no use trying to turn him around. What she needed to know right now was whether Dr. Claiborne was on her team or the enemy list [Bloch, Psycho II 141].

All this comes off as facile at best, and only serves to render Jan awkward, a faceless female character that is not given any real time to develop a full-fledged personality; and this is even more the case with many of the other characters in Psycho II. Norman Bates is barely given any time to be a character in the sequel to his own story, and Lila Crane and Sam Loomis fare even worse, being afforded barely a chapter being killed off as abruptly as Bates himself. Bloch’s half-veiled polemical attacks, scattered throughout the novel, against Hollywood and the excesses of modern horror fiction and films as also compared to the increased intensity of real-life violence and horrific events mainly come off as cranky and irrelevant, and fail to add much to an already weakly constructed novel. Sadly, Bloch’s audacious killing off of Norman early in the book cannot match the true shock of his killing of Mary Crane in the first novel, and thus even this conceit mainly falls flat. Psycho II also contains too much facile, stereotyped, cardboard character construction and not nearly enough scares, rendering it dull in the very places it so desperately needs to be terrifying. Dr. Claiborne’s becoming the “new Norman Bates” is handled almost too mildly to be frightening, and he doesn’t end up making the most convincing of villains once he is “exposed.” While Psycho II is not a wretched book, it has too many moments where it enters such territory to earn it a place in the horror fiction canon of classics. It is by no means the nadir of Bloch’s late novels, but it certainly cannot be ranked as one of his best.

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Bloch followed up Psycho II eight years later with the final book in the series, Psycho House. His intention here, according to comments he made later in his autobiography, is to come to grips with the “spirit” of Norman Bates and finally lay it to rest, as is illustrated quite plainly on the dust jacket of the hardcover edition of the novel, illustrating the Bates house and motel sign, although we find in the actual novel that this is merely a reconstruction of the original, and not the actual house. The whole point of the third and final book is the psychic shadow that the Bates case, house, motel, and, of course, the deeds of Norman Bates himself continue to cast over the quiet town of Fairvale. If Psycho House still doesn’t rise to the level of the sublime that Psycho did, at least Bloch avoids some of the pitfalls that made Psycho II such an uneven work. The only major flaw that one can point to in Psycho House, otherwise a fairly gripping and distinctive crime novel (and really not a horror novel, in any genuine sense), is that, given events in the second book, there is no more Norman Bates to give the story a real sense of menace. Dr. Claiborne is still alive but is now safely locked away in the State Hospital, so he cannot possibly be the suspect in the events of the third novel. Bloch is forced to come up with new villains and suspects along the way, and his character development, while still rudimentary in some cases, is vastly improved by his focus on the town of Fairvale, its unique set of characters and local movers and shakers, and in particular the inevitable huckster, Otto Remsbach, who unwittingly sets new macabre events in motion by his decision to reconstruct the old Bates motel and house as a tourist attraction. Some locals have a stake in the potential financial success of this venture, most just want to forget the whole Bates affair forever, and others may have an even better reason to stop others from finding out what’s really going on behind the façade of the opening of the Psycho House “attraction.” The third novel primarily follows the exploits of true crime author and reporter Amy Haines, who travels to Fairvale initially on a research trip involving a book she is planning on the Bates case. Before she even arrives in the town to interview various personalities, a teenage girl is murdered while exploring the not-yet-finished Bates House attraction, and so by the time Amy arrives, she is bound to get involved in the new murder case as much as the original one she is researching. Many of the locals are instant suspects, and much of the novel is taken up not with scares and shocks, but with Amy doing a Sherlock Holmes routine by interviewing and feeling out many of the locals. Sheriff Engstrom, only a minor character from Psycho II, takes on a greater role here by initially (albeit briefly) suspecting Amy as a possible suspect in the case, and then becoming something of an ally with her in trying to find out the truth behind the “new” Psycho murders.

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On the whole, Bloch’s cast of local characters, especially in the case of Amy Haines, fare much better here than the ones in Psycho II did, many of them appearing to be small-town clichés on the surface but later proving to be anything but that. One of them, Eric Dunstable, an out-of-towner who follows Amy from Chicago, is a self-described crackpot demonologist to whom nobody in town takes very kindly at first, but is later vindicated by his elimination as a suspect by being murdered by the true culprit, local newspaperman Hank Gibbs. Gibbs befriends and assists Amy in her investigations from the beginning, but is ultimately unmasked as the murderer of Dunstable and others, including the teenage girl, by virtue of his having a secret involvement with Otto Remsbach over the Bates house project and other factors that cause him to “snap” just like Dr. Claiborne in Psycho II and become the latest stand-in for the late Norman Bates. Psycho House fairs less successfully when it is required to be viewed as a horror novel, or even a truly gripping crime novel. Amy Haines makes a decent protagonist and a much more believable female heroine than Jan Harper does in the much more wooden and awkwardly written Psycho II, but there aren’t many true scares or shocks in this novel. The initial one — the murder of the teenage girl inside the faux Bates house — is handled as deftly as any in the previous two novels, but ultimately it comes off as a rehash and fails to chill the reader’s blood for this reason. Either that, or the modern reader has indeed become truly immune to violence, which is, after all, one of Bloch’s main contentions throughout the last two novels of the series, and this is an entirely plausible scenario, but one that also perhaps makes the author’s job that much harder, to truly scare and shock us with any degree of restraint, especially for the newer generations of readers who are coming upon the series only recently. Psycho House also suffers from its fair share of clumsy and even winceinducing prose, especially when Bloch attempts to work contemporary pop culture references into the novel. Bloch is clearly pandering to current popular culture, straining too hard to adopt the mindset of a young teenager, and decidedly not on top of his game overall with clumsy passages like this, opening the novel with the two young girls exploring the reconstructed “Bates house” by cover of night: “Don’t be funny!” It was obvious from the way she said it that Mick wasn’t mistaking Terry for another Whoopi Goldberg. “My dad was only a kid when this all happened here.” Terry nodded, but she didn’t like the here part. Because even if this was a fake bathroom and the frightened figure in the shower stall was merely wax, there had been a real Norman, a real knife, a real murder, and here was just

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The Man Who Collected Psychos too gross. Here at night, in the dark, listening to the sound of the door opening in the other room [Psycho House 5].

Poor Whoopi Goldberg just doesn’t have much of a place in what is supposed to be the terrifying opening chapter of a terrifying new sequel to Psycho, and so all this more than falls flat — it falls very much on its face. There is also the danger that such references only end up dating the novel very quickly, something that does not mar the original Psycho, since Bloch carefully avoided many such references in that work. Even these wouldn’t matter as much if the third book contained some genuine scares, but there are precious few to be had here. Psycho House is somewhat more successful when viewed as Bloch’s jaundiced version of Peyton Place meets Psycho meets Jim Thompson’s small-town crime classic The Killer Inside Me: while Bloch doesn’t provide a protagonist, as Thompson brilliantly did (and as a first-person narrative, no less) in his novel, who is at once a local, trusted policeman and also a dangerously unhinged, almost autistic-seeming psychotic killer whom nobody initially suspects of any wrongdoing, he does manage the feat of keeping the reader guessing much more than in Psycho II as to the identity of his killer. When it turns out to be Hank Gibbs, the mild-mannered, jovial newspaper publisher, who is an engaging character in Psycho House and one of the best-realized in the entire book, Bloch manages to achieve, if not a terrifying horror novel on the order of Psycho, at least a reasonably successful whodunit mystery in the tradition of a Jim Thompson or Raymond Chandler short story. If Bloch had only managed to terrify the reader in the third novel, it would help erase the bad taste left by the deeply troubled and flawed Psycho II, but as it is, it is merely an entertaining and engaging mystery tale that at least manages to bring the long saga of Norman Bates and Fairvale U.S.A. to a satisfying enough conclusion, and put those “demons” to rest once and for all. Although Robert Bloch made, over the course of over thirty years of his career, a valiant effort to expand upon his original novel Psycho and create a cohesive trilogy of novels that would only build upon the achievement of the first, it must be seen, in the final analysis, that he didn’t quite succeed in this lofty endeavor as well as he might have done. It is a daunting task to equal one’s own highest achievements, or, indeed, to produce anything that comes as close to the greatness achieved by an original, groundbreaking masterpiece, which the original novel Psycho most assuredly is. Psycho II might have been a daring attempt to update the story and take further chances with subverting a traditional horror/suspense narrative, but it fails to frighten or achieve a level of greatness for reasons delineated earlier. Psycho House was something of a fresh start for Bloch, and a nostalgic

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way to end the series, but it still fails to achieve any substantial score on the fright meter, and is more of a traditional mystery narrative than a horror novel, or novel of psychological suspense; additionally, the latter novel found Bloch’s grasp on his usually razor-sharp prose style slipping somewhat, and unable to deliver the chills that most students of the original Psycho were doubtless hoping for. However, Bloch also wrote countless other first-rate novels, short stories, and film screenplays, and many of these, along with Psycho, can still be considered the high watermarks of a long and illustrious career. Bloch’s entire career awaits rediscovery by new generations, and there is plenty for them to discover afresh. In the meantime, Norman Bates sits in the motel office, awaiting new readers who have not yet had the pleasure of “checking in” to the Bates Motel; the dark, menacing house still awaits them up on the hill behind the motel; and “Mother” still awaits them in the dark at the bottom of the stairs, right at the back, beyond the basement door, in the fruit cellar. And thus, Psycho will remain, for all time, an unparalleled masterpiece of psychological suspense.

WORKS CITED Bloch, Robert. Once Around The Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor Books, 1993. _____. Psycho. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959. _____. Psycho House. London: Robert Hale, 1995. _____. Psycho II. London: Corgi Books, 1982. (First hardcover edition: Binghamton, NY: Whispers Press, 1982.) Campbell, Ramsey. The Face That Must Die. Santa Cruz, CA: Scream/Press, 1983. Canby, Vincent. “Sequel to ‘Psycho.’” New York Times ( June 3, 1983). Joshi, S.T., and Stefan Dziemianowicz, eds. Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. 3 volumes. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. Larson, Randall D. “Precursors of Psycho: The Early Crime Novels of Robert Bloch.” The Unofficial Robert Bloch Website (reprinted from Scream Factory No. 11 [1993].) Accessed 11 August 2008. . Leming, Ron. “From Psycho to Asylum: The Horror Films of Robert Bloch.” The Unofficial Robert Bloch Website (reprinted from Fangoria, November 1985). Accessed 11 August 2008. . Matheson, Richard, and Mainhardt, Ricia, eds. Appreciations of the Master. New York: Tor Books, 1995. Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. 1960. DVD. Collector’s Edition. Universal Studios, 1998. Psycho. Dir. Gus Van Sant. 1998. Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment, 1998. Rebello, Stephen. Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. New York: Dembner Books, 1990. Schechter, Harold. Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho.” New York: Pocket Books, 1998. Schow, David, ed. Crimes and Punishments: The Lost Bloch, Volume III. Burton Hills, MI: Subterranean Press, 2002.

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Thompson, Jim. The Killer Inside Me. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1991. Winter, Douglas E. Faces of Fear. New York: Berkley, 1985. Rev. ed. London: Pan, 1990. Yanal, Robert. “Two Monsters in Search of a Concept.” Contemporary Aesthetics, an online journal: Accessed: 11 August 2008. .

“Better the House Than an Asylum”: Gothic Strategies in Robert Bloch’s Psycho Rebecca Janicker Published in 1959 and filmed by Alfred Hitchcock the following year, Robert Bloch’s Psycho has long been hailed as a groundbreaking and iconic horror text, not least because of its links to a real-life serial killer (Wagner 479). Previous treatments of the text in both its novelized and cinematic forms have concentrated on depictions of gender as with Julie Tharp’s “The Transvestite as Monster: Gender Horror in The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho,” issues of identity and community in the 1950s as in Mark Jancovich’s Rational Fears and psychoanalytical concerns as in David Punter’s “Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Some Pathological Contexts.” Following John A. McDermott, who discusses Psycho’s literary heritage of horror with reference to its specific antecedents in “‘Do You Love Mother, Norman?’: Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ and Metalious’s Peyton Place as Sources for Robert Bloch’s Psycho,” this chapter considers how the Gothic operates in Bloch’s influential novel through an examination of its themes, tropes and narrative structures. Whereas the Bates motel is the initial site of horror, it is in the Bates house that Bloch’s depictions of haunting find their fullest expression.

GOTHIC ORIGINS

AND

DEVELOPMENTS

Early Gothic From the very beginning Gothic literature came to be associated with antiquated settings and supernatural events. Yet, despite this seeming disre121

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gard for reality, it has ever been shown to engage with issues of injustice and oppression that are only too real.1 It has worked to expose social ills, critique the structures that have given rise to and sustained them, and question previously-unchallenged norms and values. Scholars of American Gothic have traced the differences between it and the eighteenth century European works in which its roots lay, noting how the genre’s adaptation to an American literary and social context has helped it remain relevant into the twentieth century. Enlightenment thinking in the eighteenth century cast the Middle Ages as a barbaric and superstitious past which was derisively known as “Gothic” (Botting 22). With its medieval trappings of castles, aristocrats and knights rescuing damsels in distress, Gothic fiction in Europe represented a nostalgic yet purposeful response to changing historical circumstances. The emerging rationalist worldview, with its “belief in the power of human enquiry to solve the problems of existence and its rejection of received ideas of orthodox religion” (Ellis 121) largely failed to engage with former, deeply-held, notions of sin and darkness. Yet the need for such ideas did not diminish and Gothic fiction, in its “attempts to explain what the Enlightenment left unexplained” (Botting 23), continued to address anxieties about the place of evil in the world that Enlightenment modes of thought attempted to elide. Early Gothic was thus characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and antiquity, drawing on heroes and villains, incarceration in physically repugnant and psychologically unsettling locations — epitomized by the iconic and influential haunted castle of Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764)— death, madness, subterranean places and situations of domestic and social unrest (Edmundson 4 and 8). Thematically speaking, it often has an underlying emphasis on the past encroaching on the present, often in a violent fashion beyond the bounds of accepted reality, described by many critics as the return of the repressed (Kilgour 3). Notably in Gothic fiction this may occur in a quite literal manner, as when those believed dead somehow resurface to disturb the living, in the form of ghosts, vampires, zombies or other unnatural creatures. Such occurrences signify other ineffectual attempts to keep the past buried. These latter may include individual transgressions, or instances of wider social injustice, that inevitably come to light.2 So the act of repression — as well as what is actually repressed — may be individual or social in nature. Similarly, when the past returns to the present, it may be the contents of the individual or the social subconscious forcing their way back towards recognition (Clemens 3–4). With a plot driven by the impetus to solve one of popular culture’s most notorious crimes Psycho can readily be considered in light of this literary tradition.

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American Gothic Some of the early overtly European features like issues of aristocracy and hereditary rights, as well as the crumbling castles and monasteries to which they pertain, appear rather less pressing in the case of the United States given its relatively new status as a country and its dearth of ancient buildings and social institutions. However the genre was clearly found to be of continuing relevance to this incipient nation whose fears were different from, yet no less grave than, those of Europe, encompassing both anxiety about the past it had fled and concern for the future it was trying to build. Indeed, as Jancovich argues, “It was horror fiction’s concern with the relationship between the past and the present which made it so appealing to American writers” (Horror 35). With its desire to avoid past mistakes in forging a better society in the New World, America was concerned with history from the outset and this was reflected in its literary output. Whilst it shared certain preoccupations such as the past, death and the supernatural with its British predecessor, America brought its own special anxieties to the genre. Early works represent attempts to found a new society in the face of a hostile frontier experience and in isolation from the Old World (Lloyd-Smith 25). Early religious imperatives to establish a model society left their mark; whilst the horrors of institutionalized slavery and the wrongful treatment of indigenous peoples have had far-reaching effects for American culture and the fiction through which it is represented. Thematically, it can be seen that these concerns point once again to the Gothic emphasis on the return of the repressed — this time in terms of American history and experience. Despite its relative youth, America seems no less bound up with history than its European forebears. Its brief history has provided sufficient experiences for a uniquely national Gothic literature to emerge. American Gothic’s thematic engagement with the national past has been, and continues to be, a means of working through fears, crystallizing anxieties and exploring how these tensions might be channeled (perhaps even controlled) through a text. With its competing drives towards both the present and the past, the Gothic novel has ever sought simultaneously to linger on the impact of history whilst looking ahead to consider the future,3 and this tension can be seen as one especially pertinent to an American audience. Despite rationalist attempts to override notions of darkness, Gothic literature acknowledged that this was an essential part of the human experience, and showed the extent to which people feel tied to their past, both personal and cultural. A need for this continues to the present day, to which Gothic horror’s continued longevity in American popular culture stands as a testa-

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ment. As one such text Psycho dramatizes the consequences of living with a troubled past. Gothic fiction has responded to social change over the decades by taking a variety of different forms. One such development, of particular interest here, was the shift in emphasis from an overtly supernatural treatment of horror to a more scientific one.4 Jason Colavito sees this drive to “explain horror through the tools of modern science” (18) as part of the increasing role played by science in society since World War II (17–18). Another shift in horror fiction which saw the threat as located within American society itself, rather than being introduced from outside, can also be detected around this time (Wood 78). Bloch’s fiction forms part of this trend insofar as it developed from his early Lovecraftian supernatural contributions to Weird Tales to novels such as The Scarf (1947), which dealt with themes of madness and death in relation to criminality (Punter and Byron 91–92, Daniels 903). An interest in human minds and behavior soon featured heavily in his fiction, S.T. Joshi describing his later work in terms of its “relentless emphasis on the psychology of aberrant individuals” (108). Psycho has been singled out as especially noteworthy in this regard because of its “significant impact on the tale of terror through its emphasis on psychological rather than supernatural oddities” (Daniels 901). It is important to note that Gothic conventions and concerns do not cease to apply to Bloch’s work however, as long-established horror themes of death, darkness and secrecy are still discernible, though in changed form. In noting this shift in fictional subject matter, Stephen King has observed that “What happened with Bloch when he ceased writing his Lovecraftian stories of the supernatural ... was not that he ceased being a horror writer; he simply shifted his perspective from the outside ... to the inside ... (original ellipsis) to the place where the Werewolf is” (95). So, whilst Psycho may be bound up with science and natural forms of explanation, most conspicuously with such disciplines as psychology and psychoanalysis, it can still be understood in terms of the American Gothic tradition.

GOTHIC CONCERNS

IN

PSYCHO

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick describes how readers and critics approach the Gothic novel in describing its conventions (with some omissions) thus: You know the important features of its mise en scène: an oppressive ruin, a wild landscape.... You know something about the novel’s form: it is likely to be discontinuous and involuted, perhaps incorporating tales within tales,

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changes of narrators, and such framing devices as found manuscripts or interpolated histories ... certain characteristic preoccupations will be aired. These include ... sleep-like and deathlike states; subterranean spaces and live burial ... the discovery of obscured family ties ... unintelligible writings ... the poisonous effects of guilt and shame; nocturnal landscapes and dreams; apparitions from the past ... the charnel house and the madhouse [8–9].

Many of the features outlined above can be clearly discerned in Psycho. Further, for the purposes of this chapter, they have been divided into features of setting, theme and trope, all of which can be considered as important to a Gothic narrative. At the outset the novel moves from a scene depicting the troubled relationship between forty-year-old motel owner Norman Bates and his overbearing mother to his encounter with troubled Mary Crane who has stolen money from her employer on an impulse. In the process of taking it to her fiancé Sam Loomis so he can pay off his debts and marry her sooner than they had originally hoped, a combination of fatigue and adverse weather conditions lead Mary to miss her turn and make an impromptu overnight stay at the Bates motel where she is murdered. When she fails to return home her worried sister Lila contacts Loomis and the pair of them — in conjunction with the insurance company’s investigator Milton Arbogast — work to discover her whereabouts. Bound up with the trappings of crime fiction, Psycho’s narrative is thus initially driven by the quest to regain the stolen money and then by the enquiry into Mary’s disappearance, whilst the figure of the private investigator and Bloch’s “tight-lipped, blandly cynical style” ( Joshi 108) are evocative of the hardboiled tradition. It thus seems that a straightforward investigation is the main thrust of the narrative. However, although the reader is privy to Mary’s brutal murder and Bates’s discovery and disposal of the corpse on behalf of his mother (whom he believes to be the murderer), later revelations reveal that the reader has been misled as to the real perpetrator of the crime. As is now widely-known, not least due to Hitchcock’s celebrated film, the real facts of the matter are far from what they had seemed. Mrs. Bates and her lover Joe Considine both died as a result of poisoning some twenty years previously, which was widely known and accepted as suicide. What was unknown to anyone but Norman is that he poisoned them and was so guilt-ridden about killing his mother that he “actually brought her back from the grave and gave her a new life. He put her to bed at night, dressed her and took her down into the house by day” (Psycho 124), identifying with her to the extent that he developed a fractured personality consisting of himself as a child, himself as an adult (his public persona) and his own mother. Taken in by this charade, out-of-towner Arbogast is

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insistent on meeting with Mrs. Bates which leads Norman to murder him and dispose of his corpse in the same way as Mary’s. It is only through Lila’s examination of the Bates house behind the motel that the full extent of his actions is made known and Norman is taken to the State Hospital. With its convoluted structure and subject matter of death and madness, secrecy and haunting, Psycho has clear links to the Gothic tradition.

Theme: “She’d Come Back, Out of the Swamp!” The over-arching themes that emerge with the outcome of the novel, tinged as they are with the supernatural, may be interpreted as Gothic in nature. From the outset there is a clear sense of a troubled past that will inevitability shape a troubled future presaged by a quarrel about old regrets, apparently between Norman and his mother, which concludes with her telling him “you’ll never get rid of me, even if you really wanted to” (Psycho 12). The crime fiction framework suggests that Norman’s history of trauma and the crimes to which it has led will inevitably be unearthed and that he (and others) will have to face the consequences. The toxic nature of guilt as described by Sedgwick makes its effects felt. Although Norman is unable to sense a personal connection to the murders, and his reflection “You always gave yourself away if you had a guilty conscience” (80) is an initial source of comfort to him as he is convinced of his mother’s culpability for the crimes, he has nonetheless long been plagued by a mental and emotional turmoil which the psychiatrist ascribes to the “guilty knowledge of his mother’s death” (123). However, Norman’s reflections on his personal innocence point unerringly to the Gothic preoccupation with the return of the repressed. As the explanatory quote above indicates, unable to bear the guilt of the murder, Norman “brought his mother back” in a grisly exhumation scene that would sit quite comfortably in a traditional Gothic novel, relived in his memories of “the graveyard at night and the digging and the panting and the splintering of the coffin lid” (125). This literal instance of the buried past being resurrected and brought into the present serves as a symbol of Norman’s repressed crimes, committed both during and prior to the events described here, which cannot lie forever dormant. His rebellion against parental figures, first detected by the reader in his verbal censure of his mother and later discovered to have found full physical expression in her murder along with that of the replacement father figure of the lover, is also suggestive of a struggle with the past and with older generations. Philip Wylie’s best-selling book Generation of Vipers (1942) set forth the dangers of “Momism” whereby mothers, especially those deprived of their

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husbands during wartime, would lavish a harmful excess of time and affection onto their children (May 64). The fear was that boys in particular would be rendered passive and perhaps even embroiled “in a dangerous Oedipal cycle” (May 65) as a result of frustrated female sexuality. Critics of the film have maintained that Norman’s evident crises of identity and masculinity have been caused by his mother’s dominance, but this view is problematic as the depiction of Mrs. Bates in Bloch’s novel is shaped entirely by Norman’s perception of her and cannot be considered an objective account of her behavior or her attitudes towards him ( Jancovich, Rational Fears 255–256). Arguing instead that for Bloch the “killer is often seen as a product of modernity, not maternity” (Rational Fears 246) Jancovich posits that Psycho, as with other of Bloch’s fictions, reflects wider concerns about the emerging modern world of the 1950s, which increasingly saw individuals becoming isolated as old communal structures eroded (247–248). Whereas Jancovich notes that Norman hasn’t lost contact with his family origins insofar as he retains ties that are too strong to his roots, it must further be noted that, physically ostracized from the township by changes in the road system, Norman has also failed to integrate into his local community in a personal way. This is evidenced clearly as the novel progresses; despite the Sheriff ’s repeated assertions that he knows Bates, it soon becomes clear that no-one can really be said to know him in any conventional sense.

Setting: “There Was Nothing about an Empty House Like This to Frighten Anybody.” Stylistically, because it seeks to generate suspense, the Gothic is a genre that often exploits the atmosphere in which the action is set. To this end, descriptions of physical space are used to create mood and connote underlying themes. American Gothic has been as much concerned with setting and its significance as its European predecessor. Early Gothic features, embedded in novels which critiqued oppressive and outmoded social norms, were adapted to address American fears about the hostile wilderness instead: “When cliffs are substituted for castle towers, and caves for dungeons, the threats and dangers of the natural world replace the threats and dangers of ancient aristocratic power structures” (Bergland 52). Authorial choices and descriptions about settings may help not only to establish an environment of fear but also go some way towards communicating the wider social issues at stake in the narrative. The isolation of the Bates motel and the house beyond, on an obsolete highway that very few passing motorists encounter and for which even local

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residents have little use, is of significant interest when considered in light of this tradition. Surrounded by rural woods and a deep, murky swamp, this lonely place has been literally bypassed by the kind of social progress represented by the new highway which circumvents the motel and embitters Bates at the opening of the novel.5 Such a location is reminiscent of the kind of precarious and isolated wilderness settlements so prevalent in early American Gothic. Reminded of its existence at last only by the exertions of the meticulous investigator, Loomis forgets about the motel entirely and dismisses the road as “The old highway — it’s a county trunk now. But there’s absolutely nothing along that route” (Psycho 63). Its proximity to woods and marshland designate it as a dwelling close to nature, “way down at the edge of the country” (62), and on the very periphery of known, civilized space. Its isolation points to fears about the vulnerability of such communities that hark back to the founding days of the nation and were thus addressed in its earliest Gothic fictions; to American fears about an absence of civilizing influences rather than to European fears about the oppressive nature of entrenched social practices. Moving from the surrounding area to the nerve-centre of Bates’s working life, Mary’s observation on entering the motel that “There was nothing distinctive about the office ... it was warm and dry and bright.... The room was plainly but adequately furnished” (22) suggests nothing which might alarm even the most cautious. Indeed, Norman associates the public space of the motel with the adult facet of his personality (Punter 103), later depriving Mother of her keys to ensure this distinction between public and private is observed: “She was safe in the house and he was safe in the motel” (Psycho 69). This division of the working and domestic spheres speaks of Norman’s attempts to exert independence from Mother and can also be linked to wider concerns in 1950s culture about threats to masculine identity. Such tensions were explored in Sloan Wilson’s best-selling novel of 1955 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit which sees its protagonist struggle to assert his masculinity in a feminized domestic environment (Halliwell 62). However, the scene in which Bates moves aside a framed license on the office wall to reveal a drilled hole into Mary’s room, through which he spies on her as she undresses, reveals the apparent normality of the office to be only a veneer of security. This element of secrecy, combined with the modification of the architecture for malevolent purposes, is redolent of the machinations of early European Gothic villains and positions Mary as a victim, firstly of voyeurism and secondly of the murder to which this first transgression leads. Once the action moves from the motel to the house, further hallmarks of the Gothic start to make themselves manifest. Invited by Bates to join him for supper in the early part of the evening, Mary’s initial reaction to his home

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immediately distinguishes her experience of this private space from that of the public one which preceded it as she is struck by its antiquation: “she couldn’t quite believe what she saw; she hadn’t dreamed that such places still existed in this day and age” (24). Much later, towards the climax of the action, Lila goes up to the house, convinced that it holds the key to the mystery. The inclusion of such a scene might be considered a Gothic convention in itself, as “we have, of course, been present at this scene of the ‘exploration of the house’ before in many previous literary and filmic (q.v.) manifestations of the Gothic” (Punter and Byron 241). Her covert foray into this ominous terrain is rich in those Gothic conventions of oppressive and repugnant spaces to which Sedgwick alludes: “The house was old, its frame siding gray and ugly here in the half-light of the coming storm. Porch boards creaked under her feet, and she could hear the wind rattling the casements of the upstairs windows” (Psycho 110). Visual markers of neglect, ambient sounds and the hostile elements all contribute to an atmosphere of unease as she crosses the boundary into this secret place. The house can thus be seen as a more modern, domesticated version of the iconic haunted castle that played so prominent a role in early Gothic literature (Railo 7), referred to by King more simply as a “Bad Place” (296). Such locations have symbolic as well as more practical functions and this can be seen in the case of Psycho. As Benjamin Hervey puts it “In true Gothic style, the grip of the past is figured architecturally, in the looming, archaic Bates house ... where the dead mother still lurks in secret recesses” (237). Lila’s discovery of Mrs. Bates’s corpse, concealed by an anxious Norman in the depths of the basement, forges links between the novel’s use of an evocative setting and its underlying suggestion of supernatural Gothic tropes of haunting.

Trope: “There are No Ghosts” Sedgwick’s work on Gothic conventions indicates that ghostly activity and supernatural states are key recurring tropes. Suggestions of such episodes appear early on in the novel and become increasingly instrumental in building up atmosphere, ultimately proving crucial in the explication of the narrative as a whole. There are several allusions made to such supernatural occurrences here. Having been assured of the demise of Norman’s mother by the Sheriff, Lila is understandably discomfited when her search of the house reveals Mrs. Bates’s eerily-preserved bedroom to be “a vital, functioning entity complete unto itself. It was spotlessly clean, immaculately free of dust and perfectly

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ordered. And yet, aside from the musty odor, there was no feeling of being in a showplace or museum ... it was still the room of a living person” (Psycho 115). The language here suggests more than mere memory, it actually denotes this space as one inhabited by an active, sentient presence. Lila’s disconcerting conclusion “And it was still alive” (115) underscores the extent to which the room is imbued with a sense of occupancy, despite her knowledge to the contrary gained from the phlegmatic Sheriff and even the ultimately natural explanation for the novel’s sinister events. Her repeated assertion of “There are no ghosts” (115, 116) only serves to exacerbate the sense of a haunting presence, as she is increasingly aware of the extent to which Mrs. Bates, in some unnatural form, still occupies the Bates house. A further Gothic trope here is Norman’s experience of what Sedgwick terms “sleep-like and deathlike states” (8), as when he passes out after spying on Mary thinking: “now he could sleep. There was no trick to it at all. You merely went into the roaring, and then past the roaring. Then everything was silent. Sleep, silent sleep” (36) and reawakens to discover her corpse. Whilst aware that he periodically loses his grip on full conscious awareness, as evidenced by his acknowledgment that he “knew he wasn’t thinking clearly any more” (45), and that these occasions are somehow associated with his need for his mother to come to his aid, he clearly has no firm grasp as to their extent or purpose. As the narrative unfolds, his dipping in and out of these states — varyingly attributed to sleep, drunkenness and the passivity engendered by his mother’s presence — compromises his already slender grasp of reality and serves to mislead the reader about “Mother’s” true identity. A typically Gothic device, this unreliable narration shows the extent to which her unnatural, ghost-like presence has infiltrated his mind and directly influenced his behavior. One of the novel’s first allusions to the supernatural and another example of a trope which occurs throughout it is Norman’s interest in occult knowledge. His ambivalent feelings about this find their expression in his condemnation of such behavior, expressed as the views of his mother. When seen in light of his interest in psychological research this seems a simple quest for knowledge, yet his perception of himself as “a man who studied the secrets of time and space and mastered the secrets of dimension and being” (67) implies something less conventional and rather more sinister about the altered states into which he passes. Along with other ostensibly throwaway remarks such as the Sheriff ’s suggestion that Arbogast cannot have seen Mrs. Bates but might have seen her “ghost sitting in the window” (96), Bloch seems to suggest the possibility that conventionally Gothic apparitions from Norman’s past are at work here.

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Narrative: “We’ll Probably Never Know Everything That Happened” These features of setting, theme and trope all work together to create a uniquely Gothic narrative form. The full thrust of the plot is far from clear from the outset and hidden layers of meaning reveal themselves only gradually. What seems initially to be a straightforward crime investigation eventually reveals much more transgressive acts that have eluded an entire community for many years and point to societal shifts that extend beyond personal circumstances. The true story is revealed only at the end, contingent as it is upon the intervention of experts, through a partial untangling of Norman’s identity confusion and disordered memories. As Punter notes, the novel thus takes the form of a tripartite structure of “account, diagnosis and aftermath-footnote” (95). Another of Sedgwick’s conventions — that of the “found manuscript”— retrospectively contributes to the explication of events in the form of Mrs. Bates’s suicide-note, which was clearly faked by Norman, when it is re-examined. The lead psychiatrist’s conclusion that “the wording of the note itself would be enough to tip off anyone that something was wrong. But nobody noticed” (123) shows how Norman’s troubled past can only be pieced together from fragmentary evidence. The narrative style may also be likened to Sedgwick’s conventions. The changes in narrator give insights into various characters’ states of mind, whilst limiting them to prevent a clear overview of events emerging until the end. Key insights are gained only gradually and by different characters, a device which serves to conceal crucial information and thus prevent any one person from gaining a complete picture until the novel’s denouement. This technique helps to maintain the twists and turns of the plot and to sustain suspense. The confusion Norman experiences in being pulled to the past whilst trying to make a life in the present leads to typically–Gothic twists and turns in both propelling and impeding the narrative. In particular, his subjection to altered mental states through his mother’s “possession” of him ensures that the reader is kept in the dark as much as he is — we are unable to understand fully as our vision is as restricted as his.

CONCLUSION The fragmentation of Norman’s personality is traced to his writing of the suicide note. Yet, in terms of Gothic’s preoccupation with the literal and

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thematic return of the repressed, his transgressions may be said to truly begin with the disinterment of his mother’s body and to culminate finally in his physical incarceration in the State Hospital and mental appropriation by Mother’s personality. Bookended thus by the charnel-house and the madhouse, two of Sedgwick’s most compelling conventions, Psycho’s narrative draws on the Gothic heritage of unsettling locations and themes. Pulling the strands of the chapter together, it is evident that the novel’s tropes are rooted in the supernatural tradition of European Gothic, its setting reflects changing American concerns about the interplay between community and wilderness and the “poisonous effects of guilt and shame” (Sedgwick 9) run throughout. These elements combine to create a multi-layered narrative which suggests that confronting a troubled past is neither clear-cut nor easy, but is certainly inexorable.

NOTES 1. To take one example, Valdine Clemens suggests that the portrayal of domestic violence in the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, was indicative of repressive conditions for women at the time of its publication: “The supernatural element could be held responsible ... for the atmosphere of terror and psychic turmoil that also arises from familial abuse” (31). 2. Otranto describes both more individualized crimes, as its narrative details the tyrant Manfred’s upholding of his usurping ancestor’s claim to the eponymous castle, and social ills, as with Clemens’ argument that it taps into latent fears about widespread domestic abuse. 3. Kilgour notes, in The Rise of the Gothic Novel, that “The very name ‘gothic novel’ ... is an oxymoron that reflects its desire to identify conflicting impulses: both towards newness, novelty, originality, and towards a return to nature and revival of the past” (17–18). 4. Although the term “Gothic” was not synonymous with “supernatural” in the first flush of Gothic literature (and has not become so in later years), early examples of such fictions tended to draw overtly on the supernatural as with Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, or to dangle the possibility of the supernatural in front of protagonists and readers alike as with Ann Radcliffe’s works which culminated with natural explanations for mysterious events. Whilst the supernatural might not be the ultimate source of horror in novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), as Ellis notes, it is still exploited to great effect as: “Whilst the phenomenon remains unexplained, supernatural explanation is powerfully suggested (my emphasis)” (67). 5. It is clear from Norman’s admonishment of his mother, later revealed to be a conversation entirely with himself, that he has long blamed her for the motel’s relegation to the back roads: “I told you how it would be at the time, when we got that advance tip that they were moving the highway” (Psycho 9) he rants. His tenuous grasp of reality makes it hard to determine exactly when this tip was made, but the burgeoning of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s, which led to motorists bypassing small towns, points to the further fragmentation and isolation of minor communities at this time (Dunar 171).

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WORKS CITED Bergland, Renée L. The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, University Press of New England, 2000. Bloch, Robert. 1959. Psycho. London: Corgi, 1962. Botting, Fred. Gothic. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Clemens, Valdine. The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror From The Castle of Otranto to Alien. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. Colavito, Jason. Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008. Daniels, Les. “Robert Bloch,” in E. F. Bleiler (ed.), Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror Vol. 2. New York: Scribner’s, 1982. Dunar, Andrew J. America in the Fifties. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006. Edmundson, Mark. Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic. Cambridge, MA and London: University of Harvard Press, 1997. Ellis, Markman. The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Halliwell, Martin. American Culture in the 1950s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Hervey, Benjamin. “Contemporary Horror Cinema,” in Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London: Routledge, 2007. Jancovich, Mark. Horror. London: B. T. Batsford, 1992. _____. Rational Fears: American horror in the 1950s. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Joshi, S.T. The Evolution of the Weird Tale. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004. Kilgour, Maggie. The Rise of the Gothic Novel. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. King, Stephen. 1981. Danse Macabre. London: Warner, 1993. Lloyd-Smith, Allan. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction. New York and London: Continuum, 2004. May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. Revised and Updated Edition. New York: Basic Books, 1999. McDermott, John A. “‘Do You Love Mother, Norman?’: Faulkner’s ‘A Rose For Emily’ and Metalious’s Peyton Place as Sources for Robert Bloch’s Psycho.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 40, no. 3 (2007). Punter, David. “Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Some Pathological Contexts,” in Brian Docherty (ed.), American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1990. Punter, David, and Byron, Glennis. The Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Railo, Eino. Haunted Castle: A Study of the Elements of English Romanticism. London: Routledge, 1927. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. North Stratford, NH: AYER Co., 1999. Tharp, Julie. “The Transvestite as Monster: Gender Horror in The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 19, no. 3 (1991). Wagner, Hank. “The Serial Killer,” in S.T. Joshi (ed.), Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares Vol. 2. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Wood, Robin. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan ... and Beyond. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Bloch’s Partnership with Jack the Ripper Randall D. Larson Of all the various characters, real and unreal, who populated the fiction of Robert Bloch, perhaps the one who had the most significant influence upon his direction as an author was the legendary Whitechapel killer known as Jack the Ripper, whose unsolved murders and mutilations of at least five (and likely more) women remains one of history’s great macabre mysteries. Saucy Jack opened a new vein in Bloch’s fiction, disemboweling a new kind of literary entrail that Bob would make his own. In the decades that followed his first fictional encounter with the infamous murderer of 1888 London, Bloch’s literary journey would return to Whitechapel on numerous occasions, examining and displaying the deeds of Jack the Ripper and holding them up as unfortunate icons of hatred, violence, and of fear. When Bloch first took a stab at writing a contemporary short story involving Jack the Ripper in 1943, he had been writing professionally for nine years. From 1935 to 1938 almost the entirety of his typewritten output consisted of Lovecraftian horror stories, exploring and embellishing the fictional mythology devised by his Rhode Island mentor, and concocting clearly inventive and beautifully crafted entertainments that mostly culminated in a sudden shock ending, a witty punch-line invoking not a joke, but jolt of shock and horror. Despite the success and effectiveness of these stories, most of which appeared in Weird Tales magazine, this period of Bloch’s writing remained shackled by the Lovecraftian idiom in which he was then writing. A wonderful idiom it was, but even Bloch has admitted that his writing had 134

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changed by 1939 and he was emerging from the Lovecraft cocoon to explore new worlds of fantasy fiction. By 1938, Bloch branched out into science fiction, writing for Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, among others; uncloaking himself from the veil of Lovecraftiana and beginning to explore his own style of writing. In one of these, 1939’s “The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton,” Bloch first began to explore the psychological realms of fantasy fiction that would become his specialty in the decades to come. When his story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” was published in the July 1943 issue of Weird Tales, the 9,000-word tale soon became a pivotal effort in his early career, as well as his single most popular short story. Until the novel Psycho became the label permanently to be affixed to Bloch’s byline, “YTJTR” was the story most often associated with him throughout the 40s and 50s. Although Bloch himself considered it to be rather “run of the mill,”1 the story went on to be anthologized and adapted more than 40 times since its first appearance. In 1943, Jack the Ripper was nowhere as popular a figure of mass murder as he has become today. There were no Ripper tours in London, no hundreds of nonfiction accounts of the Ripper’s deeds, and only one famous work of fiction, Marie Belloc Lowndes novel, The Lodger and its equally reputable 1926 motion picture adaptation from Alfred Hitchcock. “At the time I wrote ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,’ the course-material available to me was very skimpy — a few short articles in true crime books,” Bloch told interviewer Gerald Brown. “Since then, Ripper books have become a veritable cottage industry...” (24). In Bloch’s hands, Red Jack became the subject of three famous stories, one notable teleplay, and one full novel, as well as a subject reference in many other stories having to do with violence and murder. As a consummate and perceptive observer of society, Bloch found in Jack the Ripper a literal and literary icon for commentary on the social history of violence, and its potential residency in all of us. As Brown noted, Bloch here was “tapping into the feral part of his mass-audience’s psyche. ‘The Ripper’ fires our primal superstitions and stirs our mythological yearnings” (23). “YTJTR” tells of an amateur detective in Chicago, still searching for the killer of Whitechapel, convinced he is alive and active in the contemporary United States and that his killings are necromantic sacrifices made to sustain his youth. Despite Bloch’s subsequent ambivalence about the story’s literary merits, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” is a masterful exercise in terror. Technically well conceived and executed, the story grasps the reader from the start and retains that hold through the slamming twist of its final moments.

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Sam Peeples, in his 1964 biography of Bloch, noted that the story is also notable for another reason: “Bloch discovered a new ingredient that surprisingly made it possible for [him] to break the mold of the Weird Tales pattern.” According to Peeples, this ingredient was reality. “The oddly compelling strength of the commonplace, the usual — when given a turn or two out of alignment — marked this story, and most of the stories that were to follow it” (3). Indeed, Bloch was to become a master at concocting vivid terror in the most common and mundane of settings and circumstances, from scarves to showers. While a select few of his subsequent works would return to the eldritch landscapes and strange aeons of his Lovecraftian period — and welcome these tales would be —“YTJTR” marked Bloch’s most powerful exploration of the contemporary real world and the violence that both affects it and is influenced by it. It may in fact be the very ordinariness of the circumstances that contributes the most to the impact of the tale’s suspense and terror, and those that would follow. Beneath the words, ruminating like a restless serpent writhing below the forward motion of his storytelling, lays Bloch’s constant and perceptive observation of the human condition and its prevalence towards violence. Since “YTJTR,” many of Bloch’s short stories and most of his novels were devoted to a direct examination of violence in society; a scrutiny that began in this pivotal tale. “In the beginning my work was almost entirely in the field of fantasy, where the violent element was openly and obviously a product of imagination,” Bloch wrote in 1977 about his rapport with the Ripper. “The mass violence of World War II caused me to examine violence at its source — on the individual level. Still unwilling or unable to cope with its present reality, I retreated into history and recreated, as a prototype of apparently senseless violence, the infamously famous mass murderer who styled himself, ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’ ... my first novel, The Scarf [was] a first-person account of a mass murderer. Since that time, while still employing fantasy and science fiction for satire and social criticism, I’ve devoted many of my subsequent short stories and almost all of my novels to a direct examination of violence in our society.... Twenty years ago I wrote [the killer in The Scarf ] as a villain — today he emerges as an anti-hero. For the violence has come into its own now; the violence I examined, and at times projected and predicted, has become today’s commonplace and accepted reality. This, to me, is far more terrifying than anything I could possibly imagine”(The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper 1).

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BLOOD BROTHERS Bloch had initially become acquainted with Jack the Ripper in his youth while reading of him in various true crime books about famous historical murderers. He was reminded of him when he ran across Lowndes’ The Lodger. “All I did,” Bloch explained, “was to say to myself: ‘What if Jack the Ripper was alive today?’ and the story came from the famous bit of verse almost immediately, once I realized that this was the tag line” (Walker 23). In his 1993 autobiography, Bloch further explained that he was attracted to the character and his tag line because, unlike many mass murderers who are named by the media or the police, the Ripper christened himself, in a letter sent to the London Central News Agency on September 27, 1888, closing it with the appellate that gave him his everlasting name (and Bloch his story title): “Yours Truly — Jack the Ripper.” Bloch says he was “fascinated by the phrasing the murderer used for self-identification, and, upon due reflection, realized that these five words could constitute both the title and the plot of a short story. Bringing the Ripper into modern time and using an American city as a new setting for his ... operations required the addition of a supernatural rationale which I had no difficulty supplying” (195). What also captured Bloch’s attention in Jack the Ripper was the emblematic nature of his crimes, and their unsolved mysterioso. “I consider [Jack the Ripper to be] one of the great mystery figures of all times,” Bloch told a Starlog interviewer in 1986. “He captured the imagination of the world.” Since writing “YTJTR,” Bloch became known and noted for his forte as a master of psychological thrillers; “YTJTR,” however, is not truly a psychological story. It lacks the kind of insight into human behavior and psychology marked by 1939’s “The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton,” in which Bloch’s narrative details with vivid precision the psychological stresses the title character endures during a spaceship voyage, and especially in later crime thrillers like “Lucy Comes to Stay,” “The Real Bad Friend,” and novels like The Scarf, The Kidnaper, and Psycho with their subjective, stream-of-consciousness narrative moments. “YTJTR” was a straightforward action thriller, told mostly through dialog. His writing style was evolving from its earlier quasi–Lovecraftian pastiche to the tighter narrative spun with plays-on-words, catch-phrases, pun-full double entendres, and humorously ironic punch-lines. His growing fascination with psychology and the enigma of violence were starting to dominate his writer’s thinking and would eventually lead the majority of his literary output away from science fiction and fantasy and toward crime and mystery fiction. “YTJTR” endures as a superb combination of all of these elements. We have a crime thriller based upon historical reality that,

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beneath the surface, seeks to examine the nature of violence in a society; this is invested with a strong sense of fantasy in the concept of the Ripper’s necromantic sacrifices to dark things that boon him eternal youth; and throughout there is a subtle undercurrent of psychological interplay, as Bloch touches objectively upon the Ripper’s motivations and carefully prepared his characters for the shocking climax, which ends with brilliantly horrific punch line.

“JUST

CALL ME... JACK”

Perhaps the first literary technique that becomes noticeable in “YTJTR” is that it is written in the first person. This does not seem at all unusual until the end, when we realize that the narrator, to whom the amateur detective has been confiding his obsessed search, is in fact the Ripper himself, who swiftly dispatches the protagonist in a wonderfully-staged surprise ending. It is this technique, that of having the story secretly told by the antagonist whose very existence and practices have formed the origin of the plot and its protagonist’s motivation, that makes the climactic revelation even more of a surprise and a punch, and is one of the first examples of the effective literary craftsmanship that has marked the majority of Bloch’s carefully contrived thrillers in the decades that followed. Bloch also realized how effective a thriller could be when told in the first person by the villain; as his novels The Scarf and The Kidnaper would later employ and develop in longer form, packing a far more intense punch through the psychological insight with which Bloch develops their characterizations. “YTJTR” is even more potent in this regard because, unlike these novels, the reader is unaware until the end that the narrator is the villain. The second technique that becomes apparent in this story is its dominant use of dialog. Nearly the entire story is conveyed through dialog, from the catchy opening through the gripping finale. This in itself is a strong indication that Bloch had completely severed the literary umbilical cord that restricted him from venturing too far afield from Lovecraft pastiche, which was inherently weak in handling dialog. Here, though, Bloch whisks us through the story with that very medium. At the very start, the conversation between John Carmody, a psychiatrist (and our narrator), and Sir Guy Hollis, described succinctly as a “stage Englishman,” expresses the plot of the story. Like a motion picture that conveys much of its storyline not through vocal or titled narration but purely through visual presentation, “YTJTR” maintains its forward motion and contemporary atmosphere through fast-paced dialog rather than creepy atmos-

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phere. Hollis describes the history of Jack the Ripper to Carmody (and to any readers as yet unfamiliar; as many were in 1943) and goes on to explain how the Ripper disappeared from Whitechapel in the midst of his murder spree, leaving his identity and crimes unsolved forever. Carmody, of course, would know all of this, yet Hollis’ reiteration of history preludes his presentation of his own fantastic hypothesis. At the very start, we are introduced to the characters through their dialog: I looked at the stage Englishman. He looked at me. “Sir Guy Hollis?” I asked. “Indeed. Have I the pleasure of addressing John Carmody, the psychiatrist?”

In these simple sentences, Bloch succinctly gives us a picture of his major characters, one he will not extensively enlarge beyond a fourth paragraph describing Hollis in minor detail. His concise phrase, “stage Englishman,” has already given us the image. From this introduction, the dialog moved us quickly into Hollis’ story, his beliefs about the Ripper, and his request for Carmody’s help in capturing him.

SPOILERS AHEAD Though told in the first person, the story lacks the degree of psychological narration that Bloch would later master. In “YTJTR” the narrator’s voice rarely interjects his own thoughts. This, of course, works appropriately in helping disguise any premature revelation that Carmody, the narrator, is the Ripper, since any prolonged subjective thoughts conveyed by the narrator would surely reveal this. Bloch, therefore, keeps the focus on the verbal discourse between Carmody and Hollis, avoiding any of the narrator’s personal thoughts. This is a slight cheat — since afterwards the reader may wonder: to whom is the narrator speaking or directing his first-person narrative; but it splendidly sets up the finish, which remains one of Bloch’s finest revelatory denouements. There is one exception to this, which occurs shortly after the opening in which Carmody and Hollis attend a dinner party hosted by some friends. Dialog runs rampant as Bloch briefly introduces the wild personalities in attendance, and Hollis begins to reveal to Carmody his beliefs about the Ripper and his compulsive sacrificial killings. Hollis believes the Ripper may even be here, at this party, and he proposes turning the lights off and giving the villain the opportunity to reveal himself in the darkness by eliminating his

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accuser. As the party is plunged into darkness, Bloch’s narration becomes is succinct and very tight, carrying us through the sequence with almost cinematic pacing; until Bloch focuses on the narrator who shares a portion of his own thoughts with us, as the room blurs into blackness: But Jack the Ripper was dead, dead and dust these many years — by every human law. Only there are no human laws when you feel yourself in the darkness, when the darkness hides and protects and the outer mask slips off your face and you feel something welling up within you, a brooding shapeless purpose that is brother to the blackness.

This narration not only builds an effectively gloomy atmosphere, but — in its use of a very long sentence, divided only by occasional punctuation — builds this particular scene to an almost breathless peak, culminating in a shocking crescendo provided by four staccato paragraphs and a final revelation: Sir Guy Hollis shrieked. There was a grisly thud. Baston had the lights on. Everybody screamed. Sir Guy Hollis lay sprawled on the floor in the center of the room. The gun was still clutched in his hand.

With these four paragraphs of five to six syllables each, leading up to the final paragraph containing one sentence with thrice as many syllables, and a final coda of eight syllables, creating a rhythm that launches us through the moment, lurching us quickly into the imagery and then brings us to a stiff halt, viewing the scene from above with the final sentences. Bloch stabs us with words, revealing the power of punctuation and wordcrafting, traits he will excel all throughout his career, creating through his choice of words and punctuation a very cinematic narrative rhythm and pace that leads the reader quickly to a series of shocking revelations and a final explanation before the act break. It’s a kind of horror haiku that carries the reader quickly into and out of the narrative moment with splendid effectiveness. Bloch repeats the process at the end of the story. Hollis, confident he will run into the Ripper soon, takes Carmody out with him into the night. Because he is a little drunk, Carmody takes his gun away from him, explaining that Hollis shouldn’t walk around the street brandishing it. Bloch allows Hollis a few moments of subjective revelation, again using rhythmic narration — dialog, this time — as he admits to Carmody his motivation: one of the Ripper’s victims in 1888 had been his mother: He took my mother’s life and the lives of hundreds to keep his own hellish being alive. Like a vampire, he battens on blood. Like a ghoul, he is nour-

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ished by death. Like a fiend, he stalks the world to kill. He is cunning, devilishly cunning. But I’ll never rest until I find him, never!”

Bloch brings us back to Carmody, revealing his perception of Hollis’ revelation: I believed him then. He wouldn’t give up. He wasn’t just a drunken babbler any more. He was as fanatical, as determined, as relentless as the Ripper himself.

This last paragraph also reveals the narrator’s decision that he had to act and could no longer humor his friend. Finally, Bloch provides his chilling denouement through a series of short sentences, with short bridges of accelerating narrative, short paragraphs growing even shorter, quicker, like knife stabs: “Let’s go,” I said, steering him down the alley. “Wait a minute,” said Sir Guy. “Give me back my gun.” He lurched a little. “I’d feel better with the gun on me.” He pressed me into the dark shadows of a little recess. I tried to shrug him off, but he was insistent. “Let me carry the gun, now, John,” he mumbled “All right,” I said. I reached into my coat, brought my hand out. “But that’s not a gun,” he protested. “That’s a knife.” “I know.” I bore down on him swiftly. “John!” he screamed. “Never mind the ‘John,’” I whispered, raising the knife. “Just call me... Jack.”

Much of the story’s dialog style is dated, and some of the narration is merely dutiful, but those minor flaws are punctuated by Bloch’s narrative verisimilitude and his carefully formulated rhythmic wordplay that leads the reader by steps, turns, and jolts through each sequence to his final revelatory climax. Lester Del Rey, writing the introduction to Ballantine’s The Best of Robert Bloch, described a steady evolution going on in Bloch’s writing: “Originally, as with most who followed the Lovecraft school of fiction, Bloch had concentrated on terror from the outside. Men who dared to investigate legends or who were inadvertently drawn into strange events were beset by horrors far beyond their knowledge or control. There was little importance given to what went on in their minds, provided they were duly terrified: Now, perhaps because his mystery and detective writing required more realism — or perhaps simply because he was growing in skill and scope — Bloch began to look inward, into the strange recesses in the minds of his people. It was in the darkness that lies behind our surface thoughts that he found the

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The Man Who Collected Psychos real lurking horrors. His stories gained a new dimension ... a second, deeper level of psychological understanding had replaced or been added to the surface events [xiii].

What is the reason for “YTJTR’s” unabated popularity? asks Eduardo Zinna in an online examination of Bloch’s Ripper fiction. “Certainly not its plot — and its dénouement — which, after so many years and so many reprints, no longer carry the punch they once undoubtedly did. There remains a finely crafted, highly readable narrative. Some have remarked that its few settings and dialogue-driven action make it ideal for other media, as shown by its many radio and television adaptations. Others underline that its protagonists are one-sided characters, easy to visualize.... Finally, even though the story is ostensibly set in contemporary times in a modern American city, there is actually nothing to anchor it firmly in Chicago in 1943: no description of its locations, no use of current slang, no mention of fashionable pop stars or ... the World War then raging. It might be precisely because of its utter lack of topicality that the story has borne its increasing age without becoming in any way dated (2008). The mixture of reality and fantasy which was to inexorably link the remainder of Bloch’s fiction gave it a degree of impact and terror that even Lovecraft, in his atmospheric and conceptual genius, lacked: that acute, nagging realization that monsters are not simply shapeless entities that dwell in hidden catacombs or exist among the oblique spaces between the stars, but they are walking among us, here and now. This general essence of Bloch’s work — this examination of the inner monstrosities of character that can lay dormant but rumbling within so many of our fellows — carries an echo that, like the story, has lingered ominously. It is this theme of human abnormality that allows Bloch’s terrors to slice to the core of his readers, for it is a sense we all share as well see and hear about the cruelty and violence occurring in the world around us. Lovecraft’s horrors, however vivid and magnificent in their pervasive sense of ambiguous cosmic dread, could be kept somewhat at arm’s length, or at least out of sight and mind. Not so with Bloch’s human villains, not from this point on in his writing. They can’t be so easily cast aside, since they walk among us and often appear to be one of us. With many stories, written like “YTJTR” in the first person, they often are us. Bloch’s growing interest in the sociology of violence and aberrant human behavior, and his understanding of the chord it can be made to strike in his readers, has shaped his work since. And occasionally prompted a revisitation with Red Jack.

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ARGELIUS II

The concept of Jack the Ripper as an undying sorcerer, existing through the years by thriving on the bloody sacrifices he painstakingly offers to the dark forces, is one that would recur in Bloch’s 1967 Star Trek screenplay, “Wolf in the Fold,” in which the Enterprise crew encounters the murderous essence of the Ripper, here postulated as an undying alien entity that feeds upon the fear of its victims, and takes up residence in the central computer onboard the spaceship Enterprise. His murders recommencing, Enterprise’s Chief Engineer Scotty becomes suspected, requiring the crew to solve the mystery and deal with the entity. Story editor Dorothy Fontana asked Bloch to contribute a Jack the Ripper script for the show’s second season. The episode shared not just a few elements with “YTJTR,” including a séance scene which ends in darkness and a murder, like the one Hollis stages in the short story. Broadcast in December 1967 during the show’s second season, “Wolf in the Fold” was well-directed by Joseph Pevney, and plays out very nicely with plenty of typical Bloch-isms inherent in the dialog and action.

THE STRANGE AFFAIR

OF JACK AND JULIETTE

“A Toy for Juliette,” Bloch’s contribution to Harlan Ellison’s stimulating 1967 anthology, Dangerous Visions, was a powerful story of a sadistic nymphomaniac in the far future who is given human “gifts” by her grandfather, plucked from various moments in history in his time machine; she makes use of the toys for perverse pleasure, killing them at the moment of ecstasy, until the latest one happens to be a quiet gentleman from Whitechapel who gives Juliette a pointed lesson in justice. (Ellison’s own contribution to this anthology was a sequel to Bloch’s story, called “The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World.”). “A Toy for Juliette” is not so much about the Ripper as about the future femme fatale of the title — her name and character comes from the Marquis de Sade’s novel, “Juliette,” about an amoral nymphomaniac who ends up successful and happy. In Bloch’s morality play, Juliette reaps what she has sewn, with the reader’s assumed familiarity with Jack the Ripper prompting the understanding of the story’s denouement. Bloch’s wordplay is very much in evidence here, from the story’s alluring opening in Juliette’s mirrored boudoir (“Juliette entered the bedroom, smiling, and a thousand Juliettes smiled back at her.”) to its sharp closing (“They didn’t discover what was left of Juliette’s body for several days. Back in London, after the final mysterious murder in the early morning hours, they never did find Jack the Ripper...”).

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DOCTOR RIDLEY’S MEDICAL BAG In 1976, Bloch was visited again by Jack the Ripper when he wrote “A Most Unusual Murder,” a short story about a collector of criminal memorabilia whose obsession to obtain Jack the Ripper’s medical bag leads him to confront a time traveling curio collector (not unlike Juliette’s grandfather) and an ironic involvement in murder himself. Like most of Bloch’s short stories, this one flows smoothly through Bloch’s deceptively unassuming wordplay, the reader quickly immersed into the narrative from its simple opening (“Only the dead know Brooklyn. Thomas Wolfe said that, and he’s dead now, so he ought to know. London, of course, is a different story...”). Through the track of the story, through dialog between protagonist Kane, a Ripperologist who has studied the cases for many years, and Woods, his friend, Bloch details the many suspects considered at one time or another to be the Ripper. This also gives the reader a concise history lesson in Ripperology that eventually settles on one John Ridley, MD. as Kane’s most likely suspect. And when Kane discovers Ridley’s medical bag on display in an unusual curio shop in London, he manages to buy it, only to be later confronted by the shop owner who reneges the sale, admitting he himself is a collector of memorabilia from unusual murders. Kane insists on keeping Ridley’s bag and the deadly scalpel he believes is inside; but the shop owner informs him that the Ripper’s implement of death is already in his collection — the medical bag contains a souvenir of a different murder — and Ridley wasn’t the Ripper after all. Kane finds the scalpel in the bag and in the ensuing struggle with the shop owner, Woods is sliced and killed. “Thank you,” murmurs the shop owner. “You have given me what I came for.” He snatches up the scalpel and disappears. Kane is left staring at the gaping wound in Wood’s throat, and the story concludes as easily as it began: He was still staring when they came and took him away. The trial, of course, was a sensation. It wasn’t so much the crazy story Kane told as the fact that nobody could ever find the fatal weapon. It was a most unusual murder....

Like “A Toy for Juliette,” this story isn’t so much about the Ripper as it is about the obsessive allure of Ripperology among amateur detective and Ripper hobbyists. Like “Juliette,” the historical Ripper prompts the tale’s twist ending while also allowing Bloch to entertain an informative and analytical examination into Ripper suspects. The story is as much an examination of criminal profiling as Bloch lines up his suspects and proceeds to exonerate each of them as it is an observation of the obsessive/compulsive nature of Rip-

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perologists — as it is simply an enjoyable and well played out short story. And another scalpel’s notch in Bloch’s heritage of Jack the Ripper fiction.

NIGHT

OF

EXORCISM

After all of this dabbling into Ripper-related fictioneering, Bloch finally gave the Ripper his due in a novel-length treatment with 1984’s The Night of the Ripper. Here, Bloch writes a compelling historical thriller while comparing his heinous crimes against the backdrop of history’s legacy of violence. The result is a compelling novel that immerses the reader with the fog enshrouded streets of 1888 Whitechapel while postulating a solution to the Ripper’s identify that Bloch himself admits is quite fanciful.2 “Over the years I’ve written a number of stories involving Jack the Ripper — and, in so doing, amassed quite a collection of books and articles on his deeds, or misdeeds,” Bloch recalled while completing the book. “Inevitably I was struck by the numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the accounts given by various theorists. I tried to collate the ‘facts’ given by these ‘Ripperologists,’ and eventually decided it was almost impossible to do so. Meanwhile, quite a few fans kept suggesting I do my own version of the story, so in the end it seemed as if writing a book was inevitable, if only to rid myself of the Ripper once and for all. The Night of the Ripper is an act of exorcism” (letter to the author). The Night of the Ripper is a fairly straightforward account of the Ripper murders and the confused police investigation that failed to solve them, told from a variety of viewpoints. Bloch’s protagonist is Mark Robinson, an American doctor on sabbatical to study under Dr. Albert Trebor at London Hospital at the time the murders occur. Robinson becomes enamored of nurse Eva Sloane, a spunky career-minded woman disconcerted with Victorian tradition, and his concern for her increases as she is thrown closer into danger through the Ripper investigation. The novel mixed history with postulation. Its environment is historically sound and well-researched, into which Bloch immerses his fictional characters and all manner of cameo appearances from various personages of the period, from Oscar Wilde and Conan Doyle to John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Many individuals who were actually involved in the investigation appear as characters, including many of the real persons suspected of being Jack the Ripper. In addition, nearly all of Bloch’s fictional characters are suspected at one time or another; though, in traditional whodunit formula, the real identity of the Ripper (for the purposes of the novel, at least — Bloch

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makes no pretense at suggesting his solution was the real case) is quite unexpected.3 Mark Robinson’s viewpoint, and that of Scotland Yard Inspector Abberline, dominate the narrative. But Bloch also includes numerous vignettes illustrating the perspective of other people (excepting, unusually, that of the Ripper’s victims). All of the divergent viewpoints center around one major issue: who is Jack the Ripper and why is he committing these unearthly murders? Each character seems to have his own interpretation, and Bloch intertwines these various theories to create his own frightening picture of the Ripper. The familiar theories are expressed and dispensed with: the Ripper is a monomaniac who murders prostitutes in a form of misguided, self-righteous moral judgment; the Ripper is a lunatic who commits his murders under the maddening influence of the full moon; the Ripper is an unscrupulous supplier of body parts to medical schools. But the theory Bloch seems to favor the most is a simple one: the Ripper is a monster. Like so many of Bloch’s fictional psychopaths (of which the Ripper is a prototype), Jack the Ripper is simply and distinctly: A man who has a total disregard for his fellow creatures. A man whose own perverted pleasures take precedence over the pain and suffering of others. A man completely convinced of its own superiority, rankling because his intelligence and abilities have not been recognized by the rest of the world. A homicidal maniac, yes, but also an egomaniac.

Bloch’s solution to the Ripper’s true identity, in the context of the novel, is a fanciful one which comes as a complete and almost forced surprise. In fact the irony of the solution is so great that it threatens to weaken credibility. It’s an example of Bloch’s taking a bit of license for the sake of entertaining effect, and it works, dramatically, if not entirely logically. Almost each chapter of The Night of the Ripper is prefaced with a historical excerpt concerning torture or some human cruelty, which contrasts the Ripper’s notorious crimes against more acceptable headlines of history. These excerpts — which Ripper’s publisher initially felt were too shocking for publication — give the novel an extra edge and somewhat gruesomely remind the reader that even the Ripper’s appalling deeds can’t compete against the world’s legacy of violence. “This series of headings deals with episodes taken from history — either excerpts of actual accounts or paraphrases — extending from 2300 B.C. to A.D. 1888, the year of the Ripper murders,” Bloch explained. “These headings, from countries all over the world, are accounts of cruelties and atrocities perpetrated in the name of patriotism, religion, or sheer perversity. As such, they are intended to serve as a subtle reminder that the deeds of a ‘monster’ like Jack the Ripper pale into insignificance alongside the

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accepted customs of ‘ordinary’ citizens in all walks of life, at all times and in all places. [This] helps to elevate the book somewhat above the mere thriller level — or so I hope” (Larson 12). The Night of the Ripper, is clearly about more than the violence of 1888 London, but is a commentary on our own violence, our own potential for Ripper-like aggression: Were there others lying in wait all over the world, smiling their secret smiles, doing their secret deeds? Why do human beings behave with such inhumanity; why do they enjoy inflicting pain, delight in death? [chapter 45].

Bloch’s personal conclusion about Jack the Ripper is a moral one, and it’s a conviction that is central to all of his deluded murderers and psychopaths whose deeds result in carnage and obscenity. “An obscenity, yes,” Bloch wrote. “But a morality, too; a terrible morality implicit in the knowledge that the Ripper’s inevitable and ultimate victim is always himself. “Even as you and I” (The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper, back cover).

THE LESIONS

OF

HISTORY

Robert Bloch’s rapport with Jack the Ripper, then, aside from resulting in some of the works of fiction the writer has produced, also gave Bloch the opportunity to indulge in the kind of sociological observation that his writing has always engendered. Bloch has always used the medium of fiction to examine nuances of aberrant sociology that has both interested and concerned him, mankind’s prevalence toward violence, in particular. As one of history’s most iconic examples of brutal violence, the Ripper murders provided Bloch with a potent opportunity to scrutinize these deeds against the mirror of fantasy, speculation, and psychology, proffering analysis and provoking thought while telling fine tales. Bloch incorporated other infamous villains of history into his fiction — “Iron Mask” (1944), “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” (1945), “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” (1946), American Gothic (1974), often using these historical criminals as springboards to examine the legacy of violence represented by their crimes. But the Ripper remained Bloch’s most frequent reference when it came to historical murder and mayhem. Even when a story may not directly deal with Jack the Ripper, the cunning killer is never far from Bloch’s mind. The Ripper’s crimes found their inevitable peak in Bloch’s fiction with his 1960 story, “The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow.” In this story, Bloch

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writes: “It was the Victorian age which Jack the Ripper really killed. His coming was the symbol of change.... You want to know the truth about a historical period? Never mind its heroes — study its murderers!” Expanding this theme to the nuclear age, Bloch concludes: “Every age must have its symbolic murderer. But today, murder is not enough. There is only one fitting crime and that is — self destruction.” Like his short stories “The Pin” and “The Man Who Never Did Anything Right,” Bloch has consigned the fate of the world to a man sitting in a room staring at a button. In the case of “The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow,” annihilation is the inevitable cycle if we are to follow the course of history. For 1888 London, as with 1943 Chicago, Jack the Ripper remains the harbinger of the ultimate destruction of humankind. In 1988, Bloch contributed a foreword to a story collection published on the centenary of the murders. “The identity of Jack the Ripper remains a mystery...” he wrote, “...and an even greater mystery is this — why, after a hundred years of hypothesis, do we still seek an answer?” Bloch answers: “...the Ripper remains as a symbol of all our secret fears — the fear of a stranger in a darkened street, fear of the neighbor whose commonplace exterior may conceal the beast within, even the fear of a friend we think we know; a friend who may become a fiend once the mask comes off and the knife comes out” (Bloch, Jack the Ripper introduction). That perspective, first embodied in 1943’s “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” would form the substance and scope of virtually all of Bloch’s fiction to follow.

NOTES 1. In a 1980 interview for Questar with Dr. Jeffrey Elliott, Bloch remarks: “I’m grateful for its success, but it’s one of those stories that I could have written better had the idea occurred to me later in life” (Robert Bloch Companion 63). In the afterword to The Best of Robert Bloch, Bloch comments: “Actually, it’s not my idea of a well-written story. If I were writing it today [1977] instead of 1943, I feel much improvement could be made” (395). When anthologized here, Bloch did revise the story somewhat to improve its narrative, modifying a few of the dated references and dialog lines. 2. Robert Bloch, letter to the author, dated September 25, 1984: “[my solution is] quite fanciful, I feel. Though not as far-fetched as that of one non-fiction work which solemnly insists the Ripper slayings were part of a plot involving Masonic rituals and the notion of killing Kelly to protect the Crown by high-placed Masons. Indeed, this seemed so fanciful to me that it’s one theory I chose to ignore in the book as too preposterous.” 3. In typical Bloch fashion, in his 1993 autobiography, Bloch revealed: “After much study and consideration, I now firmly believe that Jack the Ripper was actually Queen Victoria” (196).

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WORKS CITED Brown, Gerald. “Yours Truly, Robert Bloch.” Night Voyages #3, 1978. Bloch, Robert. “Afterword,” The Best of Robert Bloch. New York: Ballantine, 1977. _____. “Introduction.” Susan Casper & Gardner Dozois, editors, Jack the Ripper. New York: TOR Books, 1988. _____. Letter to the author, dated September 25, 1984. _____. [Liner notes from] The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper LP recording. New York: Alternate World Recordings, 1977. _____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: TOR Books, 1993. Del Rey, Lester. “Robert Bloch: The Man Who Wrote Psycho.” The Best of Robert Bloch. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977. Elliott, Jeffrey. “Robert Bloch,” Questar, August 1980. Larson, Randall D. “Robert Bloch: An Interview on Recent Works.” Threshold of Fantasy #2 (Winter 1985–86). Lofficier, Randy & Jean-Marc. “Robert Bloch: The Subtle Horrors of Star Trek.” Starlog #112, 1986. Peeples, Samuel. “Building Bloch.” Robert Bloch Bibliography. Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire: Graham Hall, 1964. Reprinted in The Robert Bloch Fanzine (R.D. Larson/Fandom Untld, 1972). Schweitzer, Darrell. “Interview with Robert Bloch.” Fantasy Mongers #1, 1979. Walker, Paul. “Robert Bloch Interviewed.” Moebius Trip /SF Echo #20, 1974. Quoted in Larson, The Robert Bloch Companion (Borgo, 1989). Zinna, Eduardo. “Yours Truly, Robert Bloch.” Casebook: Jack the Ripper 28 September 2008.

Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers Philip L. Simpson Robert Bloch is remembered by many as the author of the novel Psycho, published in 1959. In this novel, Bloch presents the template for the modern serial killer in fiction. The title of the book refers to its psychosexually maladjusted protagonist, Norman Bates, a 40-year-old man who finds release from his lonely life by murdering attractive women who find their way off the main highway to the isolated motel he manages. Bloch makes it clear from the first chapter onward that the origin of Bates’s sexual psychosis stems from his love/hate relationship with his mother. Though his mother is long deceased, Bates keeps her alive in his mind and keeps her body, crudely preserved through taxidermy, in the cellar of his house. Whenever sexually aroused by a woman, Bates’s inner “mother” takes over his personality and leads him to kill the woman causing the conflict within his diseased mind. Through this character, Bloch relocates the external marauding monsters of early– to mid–twentieth century American horror fiction (the vampires, the werewolves, the reanimated corpses and the mad scientists who created them) into the interior psychological landscape of middle-class Americans. Under the paradigm solidified by Bloch and then famously adapted for the cinema by screenwriter Joe Stefano and director Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho, the killers of horror fiction become ordinary human beings, if not quite “boys next door” at least bland and inoffensive non-entities, masquerading behind masks of normalcy until their inner psychosis drives them to murder again and again. Critics commonly point out Bloch’s mid-century turn from the weird fiction of his youthful literary apprenticeship to H.P. Lovecraft to “delve more deeply into the psychology of his characters,” as Harold Bloom puts it (Mod150

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ern Horror 48). In doing so, Bloch takes the mood and conventions of supernatural or “weird” fiction and recasts them into narratives centered on serial killers, creating a hybrid genre of Gothic horror, thriller, and detective story which comes to characterize the typical serial killer story of later decades. Also like many successive serial killer stories, Bloch infuses his tales with generous mixes of social criticism, more subtly at first, and then with increasing stridency as his career progresses. American capitalism specifically comes in for a hash critique. Bloch’s social consciousness, however, does not spare him from the opprobrium of those critics who call this kind of fiction, with its depictions of women in particular savagely punished for gender transgressions, inherently misogynistic. This essay will focus on two of his works, The Scarf representing his early career and American Gothic representing his later career, as illustrative of Bloch’s work with serial killer fiction, while of necessity touching upon other selected novels and short stories along the way. Serial killers were not new topics in fiction with the publication of Psycho in 1959; Bloch himself had dealt with them in earlier stories and novels. One of his most famous short stories, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1943), was inspired by the infamous 1888 murders of prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London. “Jack the Ripper,” the popular name of the Whitechapel murderer, is widely acknowledged as the first modern serial killer, in the sense that the unidentified perpetrator’s crimes were given massive publicity through the mass media of the era. Bloch’s story, first appearing in July 1943 issue of the much-loved pulp magazine Weird Tales and endlessly reprinted ever since, brings the Ripper into the modern city of Chicago, carrying on his work in the guise of the first-person protagonist, a psychiatrist named John ( Jack) Carmody. Through blood sacrifices of women to the dark gods, the sorcerer Jack has remained a young man even though now in his eighties. When a British gentleman named Sir Guy Hollis discovers the Ripper’s secret and tracks him to Chicago, Carmody kills him at the story’s climax so that “Jack” may continue his series of murders to remain eternally young. A then-new spin on the Ripper legend, Bloch’s idea of placing the Ripper into a contemporary urban environment has been recycled many times since, a fact Bloch complains about in passing in his autobiography (195). Gary Coville and Patrick Lucanio credit (or perhaps blame) Bloch for not only relocating the Ripper from London to modern Chicago but also moving him “from the realm of crime fiction (i.e., from the realm of history) to the realm of supernatural horror, and it is in such tales that the truest mythic representation of Jack the Ripper is unveiled.... As such, and because of Bloch’s theme, the Ripper has become a major figure in the literary genre of horror” (59). Coville and Lucanio also observe that the Ripper’s presence is felt,

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whether explicitly named or not, in the countless “slasher films” of recent decades. Other observers have found a problematic misogyny underlying the Ripper’s transformation into literary character. For example, Jane Caputi does not specifically single out Bloch but does point to the process of mythification of the Ripper as instrumental in what she identifies as the misogynistic character of contemporary fascination with serial murder: “...patriarchal culture has enshrined ‘Jack the Ripper’ as a mythic hero; he commonly appears as an immortal figure in literature, film, television, jokes and other cultural products” (101). A great deal of this fascination can be attributed to, or blamed upon from the perspective of critics such as Caputi, Bloch’s tale. Jack the Ripper remained a figure of fascination for Bloch throughout his long career, appearing again as the extraterrestrial entity “Redjac” in a screenplay Bloch wrote for the 1960s science-fiction series Star Trek and as the title character of his novel The Night of the Ripper (1984). Bloch himself says of his interest in the Ripper: “Over the years Jack and I would become blood brothers” (196) and is quoted in a separate interview with Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier as saying: “I consider [the Ripper] one of the great mystery figures of all times. He captured the imagination of the world” (quoted in Larson, Companion 63). Bloch’s exploration of the individual psychology of serial murder led to other stories and books not based directly on the Ripper crimes. Bloch’s first novel, The Scarf (1947), is a tale about a serial strangler of women who also happens to be a novelist. In this novel, Bloch draws some parallels between the art of writing fiction and the dehumanization process that allows serial killers to murder their fellow human beings. His next two novels, Spiderweb (1954) and The Kidnapper (1954), are not explicitly about serial murder but nevertheless explore the realm of the murdering criminal mind. However, The Will to Kill (1954), about a man prone to blackouts who begins to fear he is a serial killer, returns to the theme in full force. Shooting Star (1958) is centered on a series of murders of Hollywood stars. Psycho, Bloch’s most wellknown novel of serial murder, followed in 1959. The circumstances under which Robert Bloch wrote Psycho are wellknown. His real-life inspiration for the case was the arrest in 1957 of Ed Gein, a rural Wisconsin resident, for murder. Gein’s filthy farmhouse was discovered to be a macabre reliquary of human bones and female body parts looted from the local graveyard. The publicity surrounding the ghoulish case had an impact on Bloch. In his own words, he describes how he turned the newspaper accounts into fiction: “I based my story on the situation rather than on any person, living or dead, involved in the Gein affair; indeed, I knew very little of the details concerning the case and virtually nothing about Gein himself at the time” (Once Around 228). Therefore, Psycho is not a blow-by-blow

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retelling of the more gruesome details of the Gein case. Instead, Bloch uses the idea of a quiet rural recluse who is also a psychotic murderer. Bloch elaborates on his conception of such a man: “...the man next door may be a monster, unsuspected even in the gossip-ridden microcosm of small-town life.... In order to become a successful serial murderer in a close-knit rural society, a man must adopt a reclusive existence; operating a motel on the outskirts of town seemed a solution” (228–9). Thus was born Norman Bates, whose first name of “nor man” is a pun based on Bloch’s characterization of him as “neither woman nor man” (229) and whose last name is another pun based on Norman’s habit of obsessive masturbation and his “baiting” of a trap (the motel) to catch the unwary women who unfortunately find their way to the motel. Gein’s unhealthy relationship with a dominant mother also finds its way into Bloch’s story. Norman is so dominated by his mother, in fact, that even after her death he keeps her constant arguing and nagging alive in his mind, stores her mummified body in his fruit cellar, and even becomes her when his lustful thoughts drive him to murder. In the public mind, the slender young actor Anthony Perkins in Hitchcock’s film adaptation will forever be associated with the name of Norman Bates, but Bloch’s original depiction of the character is a forty-yearold plump man given to excessive drinking and book reading (usually about grisly subjects) in between imaginary arguments with his dead mother. The literate Bates in Bloch’s book is even aware of the Freudian Oedipal theory and attempts to explain it to “Mother,” with predictably disastrous results. Upon first publication of Psycho, the New York Times columnist Anthony Boucher favorably reviewed the novel, which in turn caught director Alfred Hitchcock’s eye (McGilligan 578). The rest is cinematic history. However, over the years the critics who have applauded Hitchcock’s adaptation of Bloch’s novel for the screen have generally disregarded Bloch. This fact was not lost upon Bloch, who complains about it in his autobiography: “I, too, admire and applaud Hitchcock, but as several million readers of Psycho can testify, these concepts came, as Hitchcock himself said, ‘from the book’” (231). Of the critics who do acknowledge Bloch’s authorship, Raymond Durgnat is fairly typical. He gives credit to Bloch for the story while dismissing him as a serious artist: “The novel anticipates many striking features of the film, and Bloch deserves credit as a co-auteur— at least of structure and substance, if not artistic quality.... Rarely has Hitchcock taken so much from a literary original. While respecting Bloch’s craftsmanship and his modern, sensible, observations, I was surprised to find myself completely unmoved by his, merely adequate, characterisation” (11). But to dismiss Bloch as an artist is to lose sight of the magnitude of his creative accomplishment, as Les Daniels argues:

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“Bloch’s novel is an indisputable tour de force, the distillation of twenty-five years of experience and experimentation; it provided not only the plot for the movie, but many of the clever little touches most critics assume are Hitchcock’s own” (904–5). If Psycho marks the height of Bloch’s mature thematic treatment of the inner psychology of serial murder, then several works from the later phase of his career mark Bloch’s gradual recalibration of the theme to focus on the contributive social factors involved, such as Night-World (1972), set in a sanitarium; American Gothic (1974), set against the backdrop of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and its unfettered celebration of progress and capitalism; Psycho II (1982), ranging from a sanitarium setting to Hollywood; the aforementioned The Night of the Ripper, with its depiction of the entirety of late-19th-century London as a madhouse; and Psycho House (1990), featuring an amusement-park recreation of the Bates murder motel. Taken as a collective, these later novels offer a damning indictment of various modern social institutions and trends in the creation of an environment in which serial murder is inevitable. Bloch is usually classified as a writer of psychological suspense or horror, and in fact he embraced the label, as he writes in the afterword to his short-story collection Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of: “I can’t tell you who first came up with the term ‘psychological suspense.’ But I’m forever grateful to him.... The material in this collection falls into two genres: supernatural fantasy and the conte cruel. But there’s a common element — horror, or psychological suspense, if you prefer the term” (284–5). He elaborated on the personal origins of this aspect of his work in a 1985 interview with Douglas Winter: “I realized, as a result of what went on during World War II and of reading the more widely disseminated work in psychology, that the real horror is not in the shadows, but in that twisted world inside our own skulls” (quoted in Larson 59). On other occasions, however, Bloch objected to a narrow focus on the twisted individual psyche. Though speaking of the science fiction genre in particular, Bloch complained as far back as 1957, in a speech at a University of Chicago symposium, that fiction writers in every genre were paying far too much attention to individual psychological dynamics than social issues (Berger 137). The irony of his position, of course, is that much of Bloch’s early work, culminating in the publication of Psycho two years after delivering that remark, is collectively labeled “psychological terror.” Certainly some degree of implied social criticism exists in Bloch’s work going all the way back to “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” and The Scarf, but it is also certain that his later novels take on an increasingly acidic, even bitter, tone toward the social trends that disturbed Bloch most. It is a risky and probably

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even foolhardy business to psychoanalyze any writer through published or spoken remarks, but it’s at least theoretically possible that Bloch’s statement revealed some kind of personal dissatisfaction with his own approach to his material, and that in his later years especially, the social issues which concerned him most found increasing expression through his fiction. Given this general career trajectory, it is instructive to compare Bloch’s first novel-length tale of serial murder, The Scarf, against one of his late-phase novels: American Gothic. Any number of writers have already analyzed Psycho extensively as the most well-known of Bloch’s novels of serial murder, but typically have done so with little or no in-depth analysis of the other extant works. Given that this body of criticism of Psycho already exists, then, it is the purpose of this project to focus on some other novels equally significant in serious study of Bloch’s treatment of serial murder as a topic for fiction. The Scarf is the story of Dan Morley, a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter who also happens to be a serial killer of women. Bloch’s style in the novel is heavily influenced by that of Raymond Chandler (Larson, Robert Bloch 60), an immediate nod to the crime genre and a departure from his early fiction modeled upon a mythos established by H.P. Lovecraft. Donald Barr, one of the first reviewers, also comments upon the style: “The Scarf is the case-history of a pathological murderer, told in the strangler’s own words. It is true that these words, which by rights ought to be full of anguish and passion and bewilderment, are actually full of teasing professional artifice, but Mr. Bloch accounts for this nicely by making Daniel Morley a popular novelist” (31). This novel, according to Harold Bloom, “established several themes that came to dominate his crime and suspense writing, among them the miserable lives of his criminals, the banality of their evil, and their society’s complicity in either inducing or reinforcing their behavior” (Modern Crime 2). S.T. Joshi proclaims this novel as one of Bloch’s two finest novels (the other being Psycho), maybe even the finest: “...perhaps only a highly contrived and implausible ending will force us to give the palm to its more celebrated companion” (177). Morley, initially scarred by a verbally abusive mother, has a fateful confrontation with his high school teacher, Miss Frazer, who invites him to her house. There, she binds his hands with a red scarf and attempts to kill herself and him by turning up the gas heater. Morley escapes, although he believes Miss Frazer is dead. He matures physically but still remains haunted by a hatred of women. This hatred compels him to sexually exploit and then murder women who become emotionally close to him. The instrument he uses to kill them is a red scarf that, he informs us from his position as unreliable first-person narrator, his teacher used to bind his hands before trying to kill him in the murder/suicide attempt. Even his lucrative career as a writer

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is a result of his need (and growing skill) to manipulate women, although Jeff Ruppert, a male psychoanalyst in New York, sees right through the image Morley carefully presents to the publishing world. As Joshi complains, the revised 1966 edition of the novel presents the reader with the contrived ending that Joshi resents, wherein Miss Frazer reappears to force Morley into a marriage that, to him, will be worse than arrest or death. It is revealed that it was Morley who tried to kill the both of them that night in her house, not the other way around. Some of the same themes more fully and famously developed in Psycho are present in The Scarf as well. Morley and Bates both suffer as adults from formative traumas at the hands of abusive mothers. Morley and Bates both engage in the killing of women to relieve the inner tension created by sexual desire for a woman combined with hatred of the mother figure. Morley and Bates both remain unsatisfied by acts of murder and are driven to kill again when placed into sexually charged situations. Morley and Bates both fetishize women’s apparel; for Morley it’s the scarf, for Bates the entire wardrobe. Morley and Bates both separate their private murderous personalities from their meticulously crafted public personas, with Bates reaching the point of actual multiple-personality disorder. Both novels have a male psychiatrist who intervenes in the narrative at key points to instruct the reader on psychoanalytic theory. And so on. The Scarf serves as a conceptual first draft for Psycho. However, The Scarf in its own right contributes a number of themes and conventions to later stories about serial murder. Bloch delights in placing the reader into the first person point-of-view of a serial killer, a technique favored by generations of writers and filmmakers since, most infamously the cinematic “slashers” of the 1980s. By forcing this identification for the length of an entire novel, Bloch leads the reader into a consideration of the miserable psychological landscape of such a character. First and foremost, the psychology of the male killer of women, Bloch maintains, is based on fear: fear of one’s own identity being smothered or consumed by feminine force. At one point, Morley confesses: “Why is it that women have to mother you, make you over, suffer for you? Why can’t they let you alone? I might as well admit it. I was afraid of Hazel Hurley” (44). As described in his private journal, Morley suffers a terrible nightmare in which a walk into a hallway ends in his fall into “a gigantic red mouth, gaping to fill the entire doorway. The jaws close down, the teeth rend and tear” (66). The devouring vagina dentata is symbolic of his intense fear of the loss of identity. The fear generates a backlash reaction of anger that manifests itself both in physical and verbal violence. This passage is illustrative of Morley’s murderous hatred masquerading as “hipster” wordplay: “Rap — that was a funny word.... It sounds like rape and then again it

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sounds like something else, like wrap for instance, only wrap is something you do — so is rape, only wrap is more practical; we’ve had our little rape so let’s have a wrap and not take the rap” (51). Jeffrey Ruppert, the psychoanalyst character serving to channel Bloch’s extensive research into psychological theory, clearly sees the homicidal rage lurking beneath Morley’s writing and bluntly tells the writer so: “But you do hate women.... It’s there, in the book. More than detachment, cynicism, objectivity — I can sense pure hatred in your descriptions and the attitudes behind them. Actually, you don’t describe. You dissect. Sadistically.... Are you positive that you aren’t writing as a sort of safety valve, to keep you from taking more direct action?’ (84). Lest one mistake Ruppert’s psychoanalytic insights into misogyny as immunity to its reach, however, his description of his former wife Constance’s alleged nymphomania is as demeaning toward women as anything Morley says: “You see, friends never know. They never see the violence, the manic rages, the frenzied, insensate clinging centered in the womb — the actual womb that brings hysteria to birth” (91). So if an educated man of science subscribes to this notion of the corruptive power of the womb, then Morley’s murder of women is not so inexplicable an action as it may seem in isolation. Certainly these two men, the psychoanalyst and the actual “psycho,” are the twinned “blood brothers” in misogyny that Caputi writes of. The irrational fear of the mysterious, engulfing womb drives men like these to acts of verbal and physical violence. As noted by Larson (Robert Bloch 62), Bloch also parallels the craft of writing and the business of selling one’s writing to the act of fetish-based murder. Indeed, as Joshi argues, “Words and reality have become inextricably confused in [Morley’s] mind” (177). Morley’s prelude to murdering a woman is to become romantically involved with her, write about her to improve his financial circumstances, and then kill her with his red scarf once he has exploited her as grist for his fiction. In a very real sense, women are characters for him, words to be written on a page and then disposed of, as he says of Rena, a woman he murders in the novel’s first chapter: “I killed Rena because she was just a story character to me. She wasn’t real. She didn’t exist at all. It wasn’t as if she had friends, a family, a home.... You get her down on paper, where she can’t hurt you any more, can’t remind you of anyone — even herself. She’s on paper, where she belongs. Where you can control her” (17). Maybe Morley uses a scarf to kill his victims, but he has first symbolically killed them through his objectification of them as characters in demeaning, misogynistic stories. For example, he writes a novel, Queen of Hearts, by basing it on a lover named Hazel. He explains his writing strategy thusly: “Actually, I suppose there’s no trick in writing a salable novel about a woman. Take

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one Cinderella, add a dash of cynicism, sprinkle with sex episodes, mix ten drops of soap opera, and there you are.... It was all Hazel, every page of it.... I merely had to close my eyes and remember it all. There was a little of Rena in it, too; but most women are essentially alike” (40). Morley as a writer essentially preys on the life stories of women to exploit their sensibilities for the purposes of self-gain. Lou King, a New York publisher, disgusted by Morley’s treatment of his New York girlfriend Hazel, accuses him of psychic vampirism: “You drained that girl dry, didn’t you, Morley? Drained her like some goddamned vampire — just to write a cheap book” (96). If Morley exploits real women to create flat fictional characters that cheapen the complex inner lives of women, he has little more respect for the audience of his popular fiction. Rather than remain true to his artistic vision, he deliberately chooses to pander to what he perceives to be the conventions of the marketplace: “...if that’s the way they want it written, that’s the way I’ll write it” (41). Morley reserves his authentic writing voice for a private black notebook, a diary full of philosophical ruminations about murder. (Extracts from the notebook are indicated in the text of Bloch’s novel by italics.) He begins writing it to understand his own psyche. The notebook provides a glimpse into the role that concealment and repression play in the continued social functioning of the undetected killer: “Maybe they’d be afraid of me if they knew what went on inside. I must never let them find out. Write it down, but don’t tell anybody” (28). But if the purpose in Morley writing the notebook is to explain his murderous behavior, the project is a failure. Morley wonders what is wrong with his psyche but cannot find answers: “Calling myself crazy won’t solve anything. A label isn’t an explanation” (115). Try as he might, Morley cannot define the word murder and comes to this conclusion: “Maybe this is the answer, the real answer. That murder isn’t a word. It never is, never was, never will be a word like all the rest.... Murder isn’t a word. Murder is a deed” (79). Studying the deeds of infamous murderers like Gilles de Rais and Jack the Ripper for meaning is equally fruitless. In the end, consumed by fantasies of godlike power over his fellow humans and fully in harmony with the idea of killing, Morley abandons the notebook as an unnecessary reminder of his painful past. He also renounces the power of words in favor of practical action or deeds, perhaps a peculiar position for a writer to take but not unusual in consideration of Bloch’s tendency to lampoon or skewer his own craft. American Gothic, published nearly thirty years after The Scarf, is a departure from Bloch’s previous excursions into psychological horror. As Randall Larson notes, American Gothic “is more a Gothic suspense story, rich in the tradition of the idealistic woman who is at a romantic crossroads confronting

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human evil in a dark and imposing castle” (Robert Bloch 110). Thus, the story’s Gothic villain is more of a genre convention than a nuanced depiction of a psychopathic murderer, such as that found in The Scarf. This villain is so dastardly that he dismembers murder victims in his basement to burn them more easily and keeps the hearts of his female victims floating in jars of alcohol in a cabinet in his bedroom — a decidedly more graphically gruesome set of behaviors than those ascribed to Dan Morley or Norman Bates. The imperiled heroine is Crystal Wilson, a female journalist who finds her fiancée Jim Frazer’s constant arguments with her over her work so tiresome that she eventually throws him over for her editor. Her dissatisfaction with her ordinary work assignments and her romantic life lead her into the dangerous territory lorded over by the villain — a journey that ultimately turns out happier for her than it does for Mary Crane in Psycho. Like Psycho, the novel is based on the murders committed by real-life serial killer: in this case, Herman Mudgett, also more widely known by his pseudonym of Henry H. Holmes. Bloch openly acknowledges in a postscript to the novel that Holmes served as the inspiration for the novel’s suave conman and killer, “Dr.” G. Gordon Gregg, whom Regina Minudri in her review of the novel calls a “bizarre, ghoulish anti-hero” (116). Bloch also summarizes the bare-bones facts of the case for the reader, referring to Holmes’s construction of a castle near the site of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, his posing as a pharmacist and physician, his skill in hypnosis, his engaging in a number of financial swindles targeted at women, and of course his numerous murders. His castle, an architectural monstrosity of labyrinthian passageways and hidden rooms, also served him as a slaughterhouse in which he killed and dissected any number of unfortunate visitors to the World’s Fair. Bloch concludes the postscript in characteristically sardonic style: “But all this, of course, was long ago and far away. Mass murderers, gas chambers and secret burials and coldblooded slaughter for profit belong to the dim and distant past. Today we live in more enlightened times. Don’t we?” (246) Of course, Bloch’s question is rhetorical. He knows very well, as does his audience, that the history of the twentieth century argues quite persuasively against the notion that murder is a thing of the past. Rather, Bloch uses the novel’s historical setting and its juxtaposition of the castle and the fairgrounds as a means to comment on the rapacious nature of capitalism and the dangers of naïve faith in technological progress as an indicator that human beings have moved away from primal emotions and the savagery that arises from them. It is the same binary opposition that structures Erik Larson’s 2003 non-fiction bestseller, The Devil in the White City, which contrasts the triumph of architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, director of works for the Chicago

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World’s Fair, against the “castle of death” operated by H. H. Holmes in close proximity to the fairgrounds. Larson’s introductory note to his book could just as well introduce Bloch’s: “Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book ... is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black” (xi). Similarly, Larson’s opening description of Holmes would not be out of place in Bloch’s fiction: “And in Chicago a young handsome doctor stepped from a train, his surgical valise in hand. He entered a world of clamor, smoke, and steam, refulgent with the scents of murdered cattle and pigs. He found it to his liking” (12). By the end of Larson’s account, it is clear that he has engaged in a work of fiction as well, though he takes great pains to emphasize the depth of research deployed to recreate Holmes as a convincing historical personage: Exactly what motivated Holmes may never be known. In focusing on his quest for possession and dominance, I present only one possibility, though I recognize any number of other motives might well be posited. I base my account on known details of his history and behavior and on what forensic psychiatrists have come to understand about psychopathic serial killers and the forces that drive them.... Clearly no one other than Holmes was present during his murders — no one, that is, who survived — yet in my book I recreate two of his killings.... To build my murder scenes, I used threads of known detail to weave a plausible account, as would a prosecutor in his closing arguments to a jury [395].

These words, although more elegant in style than Bloch’s characteristic spare prose, do not differ markedly from Bloch’s recitation of his own research methodology at the end of American Gothic: “While certain liberties have been taken with contemporary events and [Holmes’s] personal history, the basic facts remain” (245). Seemingly, non-fiction and fiction authors alike who write about Holmes cannot resist juxtaposing him and his “Castle of Horrors” against the celebration of civilization’s grandest achievements manifested in the World’s Fair. Harold Schechter, who has made a veritable literary cottage industry out of writing hagiographies of serial killers, describes Holmes’s setting up shop on the border of the White City: “In a booming suburb of Chicago, he erected his stronghold, a place as imposing in its way as Marshall Field’s dazzling emporium or the gleaming domes and spires of the Chicago World’s Fair — the ‘Great White City’ that would arise on the shores of Lake Michigan within a few years of the monster’s arrival” (3). Of course, this is the identical binary opposition by which Bloch structures his novel. Schechter also depicts Holmes as a man representing both “primordial evil” (1) on the inside and “the prodi-

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gious energies characteristic of that bustling era” (3) on the outside — again, just as Bloch does. The convergence of non-fiction and fiction could not be clearer in the comparison among Larson’s, Schechter’s, and Bloch’s books. American Gothic is not without its flaws, as its critics have noted. Newgate Callendar, for one, writes: “Unfortunately, [American Gothic] is not as good as some of his previous ones. His ingredients are all too familiar: the evil doctor, the bright girl reporter, the scalpels and the dismemberment chamber, and so on. The ending contains no surprises, and the writing is not much above a juvenile level” (33). Given its predictability and clunky style, at least in the eyes of some critics, the book nevertheless draws out some intriguing themes. It opens by drawing a parallel between the world of illusion fabricated by Gordon Gregg in the building of his Gothic castle and that crafted on a much larger scale by the architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, designer of the fairgrounds and its magnificent buildings. The linkage is made explicit in this passage describing the technological wizardry on display at the Exposition: “Electricity. Magic. The modern magic of 1893 — a brave new world of telegraph and telephones, like the one Gordon had installed right there in the house on Sunnyside Avenue” (7). Just as the White City gleams in the sunlight, representing the wonders of technological advancement, so too is Gregg’s house ironically located on a street named “Sunnyside.” Inside his sprawling house, Gregg maintains a prescription shop that also offers magic for sale: “Pharmocopoeia. Vials and bottles and jars, in acrid, aromatic array. Liquid laudanum, spirits of niter, powdered opium, herbs and balsams and unguents, chemical concoctions. More magic — the magic of healing” (8). Yet all of this magic is a glittering façade, deliberately constructed by Gregg to conceal his true sinister agendas of thievery and murder, just as the magical wonderland of the Fair masks the true horrors of urban squalor in Chicago. His wife, Millie, as she arrives at the castle for the first time, recognizes it for what it is, “only a make-believe, something out of a fairy tale for children. Real castles didn’t have rooms to rent and a drugstore on the first floor” (2). She knows the elixirs that her husband sells are medically worthless: “Only colored water — more make-believe.” Gregg himself is a artificial construction, possessing no medical degree but passing himself off as a doctor, and pretending to be a devoted lover when in actually he is a Bluebeard figure, murdering wife after wife, including Millie in the book’s opening chapter. However, the world in which Gregg operates is no better in its pretensions, as Millie recognizes about her own adoption of the fashions of the day: “But then, who was she to look down her nose...? The rustle of her bombazine skirt reminded Millie that she was pretending too: beneath her dress, the bustle and the padding and corseting were false” (2). The World’s Fair,

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for all of its exotic allure, is also a sham, a simulacrum of world cultures crammed into 550 acres for tourist convenience. Rather than travel the globe to experience authenticity, the fairgoers are content to gaze upon the geographically contained replicas of Egyptian monumental architecture, a Chinese tea house, a Japanese bazaar, and a model of St. Peter’s in Rome. If Gregg is a villain pretending to be something he isn’t, so too by metaphoric association is the Fair and those who attend it to revel in the triumphs of capitalism. Gregg speaks to the linkage in the climactic scene, when he finally confesses his murders to the heroine: You’ve got to find working capital, that’s the primary rule of economics.... Look at the Fair and you’ll see. The big exhibits — the steel industry, the railroads, textiles, armaments: don’t you think the men behind them had to do their share of what you call swindling? Banking, insurance, real estate, I don’t care what it is, you’ve got to look sharp, cut corners, take whatever steps are necessary.... Where do you draw the line? When a factory shuts down and workers starve in the streets, what do you call that? What’s your term for the mortality rate of children working twelve hours a day in the sweatshops? [230].

Gregg attempts to place his crimes within the context of capitalism as a means of self-justification, but nevertheless there is enough larger truth in what he says to give the reader pause. Images of rapacious, murderous capitalism dominate the novel. Typical is the description of the seedy District area, home to countless number of businesses catering to the baser instincts of humanity, as a devouring beast: “Pawnshop mouths with steel gratings like serrated teeth were flung open to fasten upon the unwary.... In the end, the beast engulfed them all” (80). Capitalism and individual psychosis are linked, as noted by David Punter in his critique of the book: “On the one hand, we may trace the psychic effects of capitalism, the implanted need for success and profit, the apparent need to treat other people as objects in the process of engaging successfully in business. On the other hand, we may think about the psychological need for domination and possession which the castle represents” (102). The insatiable maw of the businesses preying upon the visitors to the Fair is directly equated to the trapdoor in the floor of the bathroom in Gregg’s upstairs office, a trapdoor through which Gregg drops the construction foreman Bryan O’Leary to his death after Gregg has drugged him: “O’Leary’s final glimpse was of the hole in the floor as he toppled forward. It was deep, dark, yawning. Why, it’s like a mouth, he thought. Then it swallowed him” (58). The trapdoor opens up a vertical tunnel that plunges like an esophagus into the bowels of Gregg’s castle, where the bodies of his victims are “digested” in the furnace. The upstairs office itself functions as a kind of mouth in which Gregg “consumes”

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his victims, such as Thad Hoskins, a criminal accomplice who once helped Gregg steal bodies from graveyards to sell them to dissection labs and who now must be dispatched because of his guilty knowledge. The recurring emphasis on Gregg’s “white teeth in a pale white face” (29) further suggests that Gregg himself, as a swindler and a murderer, is a devourer of bank accounts and bodies. The point is made quite explicit in this passage: “Then the mouth beneath the moustache opened to accept the fragment of [chicken] flesh, the white teeth tore, the muscles of the lean jaw ripped convulsively, voraciously. The hands belonged to a surgeon, the face was that of a gentleman, but the appetite was animal” (192). Taken in total, the correspondence between literal consumption and the figurative consumption of capitalism as a social force, as embodied in one murderer operating with impunity among the gambling houses and brothels and street crime targeting tourists, carries the narrative weight of Bloch’s critique of the carnivorous aspect of economics. Also under Bloch’s merciless lens is the hypocrisy of men. He goes to special lengths to lampoon the self-righteousness pretensions of the male fairgoers in particular. One of the most popular attractions on the fairgrounds is a building on the recreated Street in Cairo (ironically not far from the Women’s Building) where an exotic dancer named Little Egypt titillates the male crowd, who by virtue of trained morality cast disapproving looks her way but also can’t stop looking at her. Bloch describes her audience as comprised of men of all socioeconomic levels: “young hayseeds dressed in go-tomeeting best ... sports in checked vests ... solid citizens, men of substance” (21). Insurance agent Jim Frazer, the young fiancée of the novel’s journalist protagonist, also attends the show to satisfy base instinct: “No use pretending he was any better than the rest; he’d come to join this grinning, gaping group for the same reason, and like the others he was grateful there were no ladies present. If Crystal ever found out he’d come here, he’d feel like a damned fool” (22). Little Egypt’s show is a ghetto-ized zone of lust, where the Victorian-era men can briefly indulge their sexual curiosity and voyeurism within severely prescribed limits far from the sight of respectable women. By implicating the female protagonist’s boyfriend in the same seamy milieu as all other men, within the context of a novel about a male victimizer of women, Bloch places masculine sexuality on a continuum of objectification of and attraction/repulsion toward female biology that finds its logical culmination in serial murder. As Gregg dissects the broken body of his female accomplice Alice Porter, he muses: “He did what was necessary then, and she was clean and soft once more. Soft and yielding, the way a woman should always be. And fair, so very fair. But even clean she is a vessel of uncleanliness, which

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must be discarded” (185–6). His thoughts are representative of the misogynist who violently acts out on his fear of women, and remain disturbingly within the mainstream of cultural attitudes even if his actions do not. This quasi-feminist authorial agenda may be an attempt in some way to repudiate Bloch’s earlier career focus on sexual murders told largely or even exclusively from the point-of-view of the killers, the template for which is established in The Scarf. In American Gothic, however, Bloch seems less interested in exploring the distorted sexuality of Gregg than offering a critique of a sexist, misogynistic culture that incubates killers like Gregg. In this one regard, the project is not so dissimilar to that of Jane Caputi, who as noted elsewhere offers strong condemnation of the tendency of writers such as Bloch who mythologize the sex crimes of Jack the Ripper and other serial killers. However, what complicates the matter is Bloch’s insistence on undermining his creation of the strong female central character, Crystal. At first she deviates from all kinds of gender norms. She has a traditionally masculine job, shows career ambition, flaunts standards of decency by going to a belly-dancer show and a famous up-scale brothel to observe male behavior, and barges into male-dominated geographical spaces such as barbershops without regard for decorum. Eventually, as her name symbolically suggests, that independence is shattered through a series of plot developments that render her more helpless and thus traditionally “female.” Beginning the novel as an aggressive journalist determined to get a good story at all costs, Crystal falls under the literally hypnotic influence of Gregg and nearly surrenders emotionally and sexually to him. She finally must be rescued from the Gothic castle by her employer and editor, Charlie Hogan, who battles and defeats Gregg mano a mano. She is so swept off her feet by Hogan’s assertive masculinity that she ditches her fiancée, Jim, for the perceived stronger male. The diminishment of Crystal’s initially heroic stature is a conventional masculine solution, dramatized in narrative form, to the problem presented by a strong-willed woman crossing gender boundaries. This story arc is even more striking when one considers that though the novel is told in stretches from the point of view of male characters such as Jim and Gregg himself, the majority of the novel’s voices are female. The first female voice belongs to Millie, one of Gregg’s many wives who comes to an unfortunate end by being chloroformed and then killed by her husband. Another voice belongs to Genevieve Bolton, Gregg’s personal secretary who becomes his lover and also his victim when he saps her strength through continued doses of arsenic-tainted “elixir” and then kills her when she discovers him at work with the body of yet another female victim. Alice Porter, an accomplice of Gregg’s who masquerades as the murdered Genevieve to throw

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off suspicion, is another female voice. However, through being murdered by Gregg, these women drop quickly out of sight in the text. Their deaths are necessary formulaic prerequisites for creating an atmosphere of dread in which the heroine can be more effectively threatened and tortured. The novel’s dominant female voice is that of Crystal, a professional journalist seeking to discover the secrets of the dark gothic castle sitting on the border of the gleaming White City. Toward that end, she goes “undercover” by posing as the dead Millie’s niece come to Chicago to visit the Fair and decide some financial matters left unresolved by Millie’s death. In taking on such an investigation, the strong-willed Crystal is the genre heir to Bloch’s own Lila Crane, who traveled to the Bates Motel, posing as Sam Loomis’s wife, in search of her sister. Bloch thus balances the destroying forces of patriarchy as embodied in villains like Gregg and Bates with independent female protagonists who cross into forbidden territories like imposing Gothic castles and isolated rural motels seeking answers to dangerous puzzles. They are border crossers and hence transgressors who bring danger upon themselves through the act of transgression. Arguably, they are punished within the terms defined by the narrative precisely because they are transgressors. Crystal is introduced to the reader as she crosses over from the respectable world of the fairgrounds into the liminal zone of the Street in Cairo, where the belly dancer Little Egypt gyrates enticingly in front of her gaping male audience. To shield her identity from Jim, she hides her features beneath a veil, cementing her in the reader’s mind as an “undercover” investigator. When Jim un-covers her, he reacts in the male custom of his time, saying that women “aren’t supposed to see such things,” meaning the partially undraped body of Little Egypt. Crystal scoffs at his prudery: “Women know all about the female body. It’s you men who are the ignorant ones.” She will have none of his excuses as to his presence on the Midway: “Come off it! Why don’t you tell the truth and admit you were curious, just like all the rest?” (25) She then defends her profession as a journalist to Jim: “Half the world is female. Women buy papers just as men do. And we’re just as capable of finding news as we are at reading it” (26). Crystal is thus established as a spokesperson for “half the world”— the female half. As part of her project to expand the consciousness of her betrothed, she acerbically criticizes male foibles and proclaims not only the capability of women to perform any job men do but the purchasing power of women. In the same breath, however, she is defined by the same economic considerations that drive everyone else in the novel, which in turns leads her to evaluate unfavorably her fiancée for his potential as provider. By the novel’s end, Crystal’s harsh education in the dangerous ways of the world ends with

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her falling in love with her editor and employer, the male who proves himself the strongest in the narrative by killing Gregg in single combat in the castle’s dungeon. It should be noted that Bloch attempted to minimize the importance of this development in a 1974 letter to Randall Larson: “Jim was originally my hero, just an ordinary guy. Simon & Schuster wanted me to switch to Hogan, as more ‘gutsy.’ So I made the change, but wasn’t happy with either character as a result” (quoted in Larson, Companion 62). Regardless of the reasons for the change or who was behind it, Bloch’s explanation does not mitigate against the fact that, wittingly or unwittingly, Crystal’s endangerment by one male and transference of romantic allegiance from an “ordinary” love interest to the more “gutsy” alternative begs for a feminist critique. Rather than consider true independence, Bloch’s heroine turns rather conventionally to thoughts of just what kind of man really could take care of her economic needs: “Jim wasn’t the only man in the world. Suppose she were to marry someone else? Not one of the reporters she knew at work; they were clods for the most part, notoriously unreliable. But there were others — men of action and accomplishment, men who weren’t afraid to gamble for high stakes in the game of life. Men like Gordon Gregg, for example” (39). Her dissatisfaction with Jim leads her into a dangerous situation where her living in the castle under false pretenses renders her vulnerable to Gregg’s murderous designs on her. As Gregg performs the part of an ardent suitor to conceal his intent to murder her, she performs the part of a fiancée while trying to keep him at arm’s length long enough for Charlie Hogan to show up the castle performing the part of her mother’s attorney. The risk of taking on a role, of course, is that by acting the emotion one may eventually come to feel it. This progression is precisely what happens to Crystal when she allows Gregg to massage her forehead to rid her of a headache. She nearly surrenders to him sexually: “And it wasn’t playacting anymore, not when he touched her and she felt the sudden, terrible vitality flowing from his fingertips; not when his mouth crushed hers so that their mingled breath became a single panting of purpose” (216–7). Only the timely sound of Hogan prowling in the castle’s cellar, which then sends Gregg downstairs to investigate, prevents the sexual encounter. This encounter demonstrates that such play-acting, with its potentially lethal stakes, is built upon an economics of performativity, in which declarations of undying love are hypocritical or self-interested means to an end: financial gain. As Gregg’s castle burns to the ground in a fall worthy of the House of Usher, the weeping Crystal composes herself while in Charlie Hogan’s arms, and her eyes moist in the glare of the fire, declares her newfound romantic allegiance to Hogan, the better and battle-proven provider. It is an incongruously happy (or restorative, if one prefers) ending

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in the context of all the murders, one that makes the most sense if the narrative subtext is to subvert the independence of the career-oriented heroine by showing how reliant she truly is upon the physical and financial protection of a male. Of course, it is entirely possible that Bloch indicts his heroine the same as everyone else in perpetuating the capitalistic mindset that made a Dr. Gregg possible. In summary, Bloch devoted a large part of his lengthy, prolific career to exploring the psychology of the serial murderer and the social conditions that contribute to its prevalence in American culture. In doing so, he certainly leaves himself open to the charge of misogyny, particularly in combining an obsessive focus on the subject with a sense of humor that many might find inappropriate or even offensive, given the context. It is important to remember, however, that whatever else he may do, he excoriates through his characters the kind of capitalistic and individualistic ideology that drives American collective behavior. If the early phase of his career tends to highlight the role of individual psychosis in serial killing, the mature and later part of his career foregrounds the culpability of mass ideologies (particularly of capitalism and American self-reliance) in promulgating murder. In that the serial killer is often portrayed in the genre as the sine qua non result of commonly held ideologies, Bloch establishes that template with his fiction.

WORKS CITED Barr, Donald. “Silken Death.” The New York Times Book Review 28 September 1947: 31. Berger, Albert I. “Towards a Science of the Nuclear Mind: Science-Fiction Origins of Dianetics.” Science-Fiction Studies 16 (1989): 123–44. Bloch, Robert. American Gothic. 1974. New York: iBooks, 2004. _____. Once around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor, 1993. _____. The Scarf. 1947. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1966. _____. Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of. New York: Ballantine, 1979. Bloom, Harold. “Robert Bloch: 1917–1994.” Modern Crime and Suspense Writers. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1995. 1–3. _____. “Robert Bloch: 1917–1994.” Modern Horror Writers. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1995. 48–63. Caputi, Jane. “American Psychos: The Serial Killer in Contemporary Fiction.” The Journal of American Culture 16.4 (December 1993): 101–112. Coville, Gary, and Patrick Lucanio. Jack the Ripper: His Life and Crimes in Popular Entertainment. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999. Daniels, Les. “Robert Bloch.” Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror: Volume 2: A.E. Coppard to Roger Zelazny. E.F. Bleiler, ed. New York: Scribner, 1985. 901–07. Durgnat, Raymond. A Long Hard Look at “Psycho.” London: BFI Publishing, 2002. Joshi, S.T. The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001. Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. New York: Crown, 2003.

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Larson, Randall D. Robert Bloch. Starmont Reader’s Guide 37. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1986. Larson, Randall D. The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews 1969–1986. Starmont Studies in Literary Criticism 32. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1989. McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Minudri, Regina. “American Gothic (rev).” Library Journal (September 1974): 116. Schechter, Harold. Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer. 1994. New York: Pocket, 1996.

Hell Is Other People: Robert Bloch and the Pathologies of the Family Joel Lane Robert Bloch (1917–1994) is known for the personal style and attitude that distinguish his novels and short stories. He developed a vein of noir fiction that was profoundly informed by the supernatural horror genre and reworked its classic themes as psychological analogues. He wrote in a terse, nervous style that used wordplay and surrealism to hint at the dark undercurrents beneath the surface of normal behavior. His trademark endings are starkly expressed revelations that echo comic timing, and are sometimes bleak jokes in themselves. For Bloch, the focus of horror is neither mortality nor the unknown: it’s how these themes are internalized in the human psyche. And while he’s best known as a portrayer of the deranged and dangerous individual, he never allows such individuals to stand for “humanity” in the abstract. Rather, like certain alleged mafia operatives, he immerses them in the concrete. Bloch is a unique master of the social as the dimension of horror and madness. His stories always display a corruption of human relationships: love gone sour, families destroying their members, insane social groups or trends, civilization in crisis. The key to understanding the pathological character in Bloch’s fiction is that he or she has internalized the madness of the family or the community, distilling it to a lethal essence. The theme of damaged family relationships runs through Bloch’s key works, and the mention of an abusive or neglectful parent is always a sign that the story is headed for a particularly intense conclusion. 169

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In this sense, Bloch is the most Freudian of weird fiction writers — despite his relative lack of interest in sex as such. Bloch, who was well-versed in psychoanalysis, understood that the importance of sex in Freudian theory derives from what it means to the individual: a domain of absolute power and gratification, a chance to be adult and child at once. Bloch’s characters are motivated not by sex, but by destructive needs arising from the closure of pathways to love. Bloch’s thoughtful and revealing “unauthorized autobiography” Once Around the Bloch (1993) contains no dramatic account of personal trauma to ‘explain’ the pessimistic and violent themes that dominate his work. However, the book shows us a man for whom life was never easy. Bloch struggled with poverty and unhappiness for many years. It distressed him greatly that his parents both suffered painful deaths from chronic illness, and that his first wife had a disabling health condition. He notes that the image of the mummified figure in Psycho was derived from his last sight of his mother’s body (230). It’s no coincidence that in the sixties, when Bloch’s first marriage broke up, his short fiction became dominated by the theme of marital conflict. His second marriage lasted until his death, and the fame that followed the success of Psycho eased his financial worries. He was known for his good humor, personal kindness and unstinting work ethic. He built normality in his own life as seriously as he crafted abnormality in his fiction. His puns — the only black mark on his character — were a nervous defense against the conflicts of reality, a way of inflicting on language the irrational violence that he sensed in the world. Fritz Leiber described the Robert Bloch of 1937: “I recall Bob as a slender, serious, sensitive young man, keenly and responsively — sympathetically — aware of the plight of people, especially young people, ground down by the Depression and caught up in the fantastic, heartless buying and selling machinery that was America” (Flanagan 25). These words are worth keeping in mind. Bloch’s depictions of blighted lives were always tinged with compassion, and his pessimism was the reaction of a secular liberal to a culture that blended religious faith with amorality. Bloch’s fiction portrays the family as a microcosm of society — coercive, abusive and controlling — and the individual as a microcosm of the family. Conflict and ambivalence run deeply through his perception of the human condition. This sense of ‘human nature’ as something divided and unstable is what gives his horror fiction its nervous edge and resonance. His work dramatizes the breakdown of the key personal roles that define our lives: child, lover and parent.

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IN LOCO PARENTIS Bloch’s writing career famously began with a fan letter to H.P. Lovecraft, written when Bloch was fifteen. The older writer became his friend and mentor, and Bloch’s first published stories were overtly influenced by Lovecraft. At a subtler level, the influence remained important. To see why, it’s necessary to appreciate that Bloch saw Lovecraft’s work very much in terms of the Gothic tradition. If one shifts attention from those “cosmic” stories that most critics consider Lovecraft’s primary canon to the strand of morbid horror and black humor that also runs through his work, the relationship is clearer. Tales such as “Pickman’s Model” and “The Thing on the Doorstep” combine a fatalistic darkness with a warped and unsettling sense of the absurd. And on that side of Lovecraft’s output, the dominant themes are family and inheritance. Fourteen of Lovecraft’s stories relate strongly to the theme of family. For Lovecraft, the family — or rather, the “clan”— is the key determinant of identity. The pull of blood ties is often manifest as a hereditary “taint” of madness, or even of the inhuman. While Lovecraft’s racism plays a part in his images of genetic horror, he appears quite ambivalent to the concept of a “pure” blood line. The New England Yankee Charles Dexter Ward is corrupted and displaced by his amoral Colonial ancestor, Joseph Curwen, who looks exactly like him. The de la Poer family is, on the face of it, everything that Lovecraft admired: English aristocrats and slave-owners in the American South, a breed apart. But their ancestral mansion proves to be founded on debasement. One of Bloch’s favorite Lovecraft stories (Flanagan 18) was “The Thing on the Doorstep,” in which a man falls under the influence of the daughter of an occultist. When married to her, he realizes that her father’s rapacious soul has taken possession of her body — and is now trying to take possession of his. Grim even by Lovecraft’s standards, this story combines the themes of an unhappy marriage, an abusive parent and the destructive power of family traditions. Lovecraft’s influence on Bloch is visible whenever he uses family history to explore aberrant behavior. Most notably, the discovery of Norman Bates’ mother in the fruit-cellar is an echo of the nocturnal discovery made by Wilmarth in his friend’s house. The conversation between Norman and his mother that Marion overhears parallels the whispered revelations heard by Wilmarth: the oddness of what is heard serves to mask a greater aberration in the source of the words. Edgar Allan Poe’s fevered but tightly-woven narratives of erotic and mor-

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bid obsession are perhaps the most important literary source for Bloch’s portraits of psychotic or psychopathic characters. The narrators of Poe’s quasisupernatural love stories are caught between the families they have come from and the ones they are building. One says of his lover: “Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls” (Poe 176). Another sees his daughter become the perfect double of his dead lover, and follow her early death. Roderick Usher is consumed by an obsessive love for his sister that goes beyond the sexual. (Lovecraft commented that the Ushers and their house share a common soul (399)). Bloch’s characters also confuse desire with morbidity, and familial with sexual love. Another key influence on Bloch’s work was the grim and ironic short stories of Ambrose Bierce, in which the ties of marriage and family give way unpredictably to violence. Bierce uses puns and other forms of verbal wit to suggest that reality does not follow the laws of reason or good manners. In “A Horseman in the Sky,” a bleak story of patricide, he remarks innocently that “the line of march of aerial cavalry is directed downward” (Bierce, In the Midst of Life 23). In the shattering “Chickamauga,” a child playing at soldiers is interrupted by a group of horribly injured infantrymen; returning home, he finds his mother’s body in the ruins of their shelled house. In “The Boarded Window,” Bierce uses a shock ending to reveal the terrible secret behind the solitude of a widower: through a mistake, he has caused his wife to suffer a hideous death. In “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot,” the ghost of a murdered woman displays the deformity that led her husband to kill her. “The Death of Halpin Frayser” portrays an Oedipal relationship that culminates in a vampiric attack by the dead mother on the living son: In these two romantic natures was manifest in a signal way that neglected phenomenon, the dominance of the sexual element in all the relations of life, strengthening, softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manners were not infrequently mistaken for lovers [Bierce, Can Such Things Be 15].

Bloch’s apocalyptic story “Daybroke” is clearly modeled on Bierce’s tales of the American Civil War, while many of Bloch’s terse revelations and black jokes echo Bierce’s sense of irony. The nihilistic impulse that unites Poe and Bierce — the desire not only to break taboos, but to leave them broken beyond repair — is displayed by Bloch at his best: in the psychological novels and short stories that he wrote between the mid-forties and the mid-sixties, including The Scarf, Psycho, The Couch, “Lucy Comes to Stay,” “The Hungry House” and “Betsy Blake Will Live Forever.” Other fictional genres impacted on Bloch’s writing, most notably the sardonic (and not always light) urban anecdotes of Damon Runyon and the

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cold Depression-era noir of James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett. The influence of noir on Bloch’s writing extended beyond his preoccupation with murder. Bloch is one of the first writers of weird fiction for whom the separation of people from the everyday world cannot be taken for granted. Unless insane, his characters do not live in a world of cosmic reverie or bitter introspection: they live in a world of financial and other real-life worries. Their universe is the city, and its stars are human.

HOME

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Bloch’s first-published short story, “The Feast in the Abbey” (1935), appeared when he was seventeen. It’s quite a debut. A traveler in France, trying to reach the village where his brother lives, gets lost in a forest at night and comes upon a somber abbey where a celebration is in progress. The monks are eating and drinking without restraint. They tell the narrator the local legend of a ruined abbey where the ghosts of blasphemous monks return to feast. Then they lift the lid from the last remaining platter: “It was the head of my brother” (The Early Fears 211). The story is a pulp-horror retread of Blackwood’s “Secret Worship,” but its conclusion is pure Bloch: the stark wording, the violation of taboo, the invocation of family in a nightmare context. “Mother of Serpents” (1936) is another family story: a Haitian political leader, inconvenienced by his mother’s voodoo practices, kills her and makes a candle from the fat of her corpse. The candle, when lit, becomes a snake and chokes him. The casual racism of this story is not characteristic of Bloch’s mature work, and neither is the stupidity of the plot. However, matricide is a striking choice of theme for a teenage writer — and the symbolism of a man being strangled by his mother resonates with some of Bloch’s later work. As Bloch matured and his perspective darkened, human relationships emerged as his core theme. “The Fiddler’s Fee” (1940) tells the story of a Faustian pact that ends with an insane musician playing in a concert hall on a violin constructed from the bones and hair of his dead sweetheart. “House of the Hatchet” (1941) has an entirely contemporary setting and style. An illmatched young couple visit a possibly bogus “haunted house” set up as a roadside attraction. It finally proves to be haunted, but only by the violence that has taken place between them. In “The Hungry House” (1951), a young couple discover their first home has an occupant who can only be seen in mirrors. Following a disastrous party, the couple are left alone with the entity. Their disorientation builds to a violent conclusion. “For a moment he started to tell her about it, and then

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he realized she was gone. Now there were only the two of them left. He and it” (The Early Fears 439). Soon there is only it: a figure that “capered and postured” while dabbling its fingers in a pool of blood. “It had the face of an old woman and the face of a child, the face of a bearded man, and his face, and her face, changing and blending” (The Early Fears 440). In this remarkable story, Bloch created a weird metaphor for the family: a maniacal and infantile creature that destroys individuals, taking everything for itself. The story may have influenced Ramsey Campbell, another weird fiction writer with an ambivalent view of the family — see his “Napier Court” (1971) in particular. Another Bloch story from this phase, “Lucy Comes To Stay” (1950), is often seen as a precursor to Psycho. The narrator is a young alcoholic woman whose best friend or sister, Lucy, has killed someone in order to get her out of trouble. Unable to show the doctor where Lucy is, the narrator points to a mirror. “We just stood there against the bars, Lucy and I, laughing like crazy” (Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of 80). This represents a crucial point of departure for Bloch: by depicting madness as the internal replication of a troubled relationship, he created a psychological analogue of the ghost story. Other stories depict the vulnerability of children to adults. In “Sweets to the Sweet” (1947), a young girl uses black magic to take revenge on her abusive father. His image of her as a “witch” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” (1951), the best of Bloch’s overtly Lovecraftian stories, a child’s viewpoint is used to depict the corruption of home and family. The man who claims to be the narrator’s cousin is an impostor, and something inhuman follows him to the house. The monstrous entities that lurk in the woods are metaphors for the adult world to which the betrayed child is given up. “I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell” (1955) explores the theme of the psychiatrist as father-figure. The protagonist, Bromely, is a PR agent adrift in a world of insincere catch-phrases. He visits a psychiatrist to help him reconnect with himself: “Dr. Fell listened as he told him about his father and mother and about the peculiar feeling he now had — the feeling that Dr. Fell reminded him of his father and mother” (Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of 99). Fell tells him that this is Bromely’s own office, and that he is there alone. Confused, Bromely falls asleep — and awakes as Fell. The father-figure has taken over to fill the void of a disintegrating identity. Another of Bloch’s psychiatric stories, “The Screaming People” (1959), is an ambitious take on the classic noir themes of amnesia and hypnosis. The narrator, Steve, is an amnesiac who has been helped by a psychiatrist, Dr. Wagram, to build a new life. Wagram runs a private hospital based on the

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therapeutic properties of regression to the womb: “The orthodox analyst becomes a father-image. I extend that: I become the mother-image as well” (Chamber of Horrors 65). His hospital is full of psychotic patients in a longterm state of hypnotic regression. It emerges that Wagram is using post-hypnotic suggestion to make Steve and other patients commit crimes for him. Ostensibly a healer, he is a controller and user of people. After his death, Wagram’s patients revert to a state of violent psychosis — with terrible consequences. While the plot is indebted to Cornell Woolrich, the tormented protagonist is a typical Bloch character: his only conception of peace is a pure isolation where “No one can get to me, not even myself ” (Chamber of Horrors 52). Parental issues loom large in Bloch’s superb noir story “Betsey Blake Will Live Forever” (1958). Steve, an unsuccessful screenwriter, rents a Hollywood beach house and becomes friendly with Jimmy, a struggling PR agent. One night, Jimmy turns up in an excited state. He has been commissioned to publicize the films of Betsey Blake, a once-famous actress whose career faded due to alcohol and ageing. Blake is missing and presumed dead — a golden opportunity to revive her stardom. Then a drunken middle-aged woman turns up and greets Jimmy as an old friend. She claims to be Betsey Blake, returning from a protracted misadventure in another country. Jimmy offers to walk her home. The next morning, the woman’s body is found at the foot of a cliff. Jimmy claims that she was not Betsey Blake. Steve realizes he has killed Blake to preserve his own career opportunity as the man who made her immortal. He says bitterly to his friend: “Why, you’d murder your own mother for a story.” As the police arrive, Jimmy replies: “That’s right. How’d you guess?” (Blood Runs Cold 95). The ending transforms the whole story: a bleak inner narrative is suddenly laid bare. After the success of Psycho (1959), Bloch devoted more time to novels and screenplays than to short stories. In the sixties, his short fiction belonged mostly to the crime or mystery genre; but in the seventies, he returned effectively to both supernatural and psychological horror. “The Animal Fair” (1971) is a grim revenge story. A hitcher visits a carnival where he sees a sickly gorilla being forced to dance. Later, he hitches a ride with the gorilla’s owner and hears his story: how he brought up a niece who, at the age of sixteen, was raped and fatally drugged by a gang of hippies. He killed one of the gang, but their leader escaped. After a spell in prison, the animal trainer resumed his career. Finally, the hitcher sees the gorilla in the back of the caravan raise its arms, revealing crude stitches. Bloch notes in Cold Chills (1977) that his antipathy toward hippies was based on bad personal experiences (97). None the less, this bitter story is

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implicitly a defense of conventional morality against the challenge of the counterculture. Above all, it shows the continued power of the family as an emotional trigger in Bloch’s writing. By contrast, “See How They Run” (1973) is another story of a madman with a destructive family background. The narrator is being treated for alcoholism, and keeping a diary that shows his mental disintegration. He dreams of taking revenge on his abusive mother, but reacts violently when his doctor talks to him about his feelings. The only escape from these conflicts is regression to an infantile state, in which he kills his girlfriend and tells the doctor “I was a bad boy” (Cold Chills 172). Bloch’s ambivalence towards the family is dramatized in the chilling “Nina” (1977), where a married man on a business trip in Latin America has a passionate affair with a native Indian woman who, he is told, belongs to a snake-worshipping sect. When he returns to his wife and their newborn son, Nina follows him. In the hospital, he finds his wife crushed to death and the baby missing. Nina has been sighted getting onto a boat, apparently pregnant. This story, in Freud’s terms, shows the “bad mother” triumphing over the “good mother.” “The Rubber Room” (1980) is among Bloch’s most uncompromising portraits of madness. Emery develops a paranoid fear and hatred of Jews, rooted in the teachings of his possessive mother: “Behave yourself or the Jew man will get you, Mother said” (Midnight Pleasures 7). After his mother’s death, Emery starts to research the “Jewish conspiracy” and becomes a committed Nazi. While in police custody, he tells a lawyer how he killed a Jewish child to stop her betraying him to them. Alone in his cell, he imagines a terrorist coming for him: “behind every ski mask was a Jewish face” (Midnight Pleasures 7). Then the figure of his nightmares becomes real. Emery is found dead in the cell where another patient had recently killed himself: “the crazy terrorist guy in the ski mask” (Midnight Pleasures 16). At one level, this ending merely grafts a supernatural element onto what is essentially a portrait of psychosis. But it also symbolizes the connection that Bloch drew repeatedly in his later work between the madness of individuals and the madness of society. The fear may be personal, but the terror is collective.

MY SON

THE

KILLER

For better or worse, Bloch’s name will always be associated primarily with his fifth novel. Psycho (1959) is a concentrated noir masterwork that bears

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comparison with the novels of David Goodis or Jim Thompson. It blends subtle characterisation with stark horror, undermining the reader’s sense of reality. The layers of normality that disguise Norman Bates are peeled away until the madness of his life is laid bare. A telling early moment is when Bates complains to Marion Crane about his mother’s irrational behavior, and she suggests that perhaps his mother would be better off in an institution. Rising to his feet and knocking a cup to the floor, Bates cries: “She’s not crazy!” (Psycho 27). But what we make of this denial has to be reassessed later. Neither this moment nor any other represents the “real” Norman Bates. His comment that “I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times” (Psycho 27) prompts agreement from Marion, but she cannot see what he really means. The brutal pun that describes Marion’s death has the purpose of bringing the reader face to face with unreason. Another pun arises when Norman is thinking about his mother: “It was getting so he couldn’t handle her alone any more. Getting so he couldn’t handle himself, either. What had Mother used to say about handling himself? It was a sin. You could burn in hell” (Psycho 32). These abrupt shifts of meaning are as close as we get to understanding Bates from his own thoughts. Another striking comment relates to Bates’ reading, a mish-mash of popular science and occultism: “He was a grown man, a man who studied the secrets of time and space and mastered the secrets of dimension and being” (Psycho 67). Which may be intended as a rebuke to some of Lovecraft’s more obsessive fans, though it more probably reflects Bloch’s distaste for cults and their followers. The novel’s moment of truth is Lila’s discovery of the mummified body of Norma Bates in the fruit cellar. From that, it becomes clear (as in a Lovecraft story) how the ruin of Norman’s identity has played out in time and space. Like Oedipus, Bates has blinded himself— but only in his mind. He has successfully buried his passion for his mother and its consequences, but only by creating a grotesque facsimile of the life they had. Bloch undoubtedly intends us to recognize in Norman Bates’ false home an exaggerated form of the price we all pay for stability in our personal lives. Hence Lila’s comment: “We’re all not quite as sane as we pretend to be” (Psycho 125). This sense of Bates as a warped everyman underlies the success of the Hitchcock film, which has given the Oedipus complex a face in modern popular mythology. The virtues of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) are numerous. However, we should remember Hitchcock’s own admission that the film “all came from Robert Bloch’s book” (Once Around the Bloch 228). The film plays on the symbolic geography of the house and the motel, which represent the id and the

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ego. It realizes Bloch’s description of Norma Bates’ room perfectly. It translates the physical horror of the novel’s grimmest moments into memorable images. The main failings of the film stem from Hitchcock’s lack of interest in motivation. For example, the fact that Marion’s theft is a revenge on a man who has offered her money for sex is omitted from the film — thereby losing the key point that her crime is driven by emotional forces, not by rational self-interest. Some details that build up our understanding of Norman Bates are left out, with the insights being saved up for a lengthy and rather prosaic final explanation. The film accentuates the visual at the expense of the verbal. It’s clear from Bloch’s comments (in his autobiography) that he and Hitchcock respected each other. He notes, however, that the director “was not the kind of person anyone would call ‘Al’” (Once Around the Bloch 335). I take this to imply that differences in their socio-economic background made it difficult for the two men to socialize on an equal basis. A generation of film critics have shown their appreciation of Hitchcock’s Psycho by denigrating Bloch’s novel. For them, the novel is the mass of lead that Hitchcock transmuted into cinematic gold. It doesn’t even matter that the ideas all came from Bloch: he only put them in a book, whereas it took the genius of Hitchcock to make them part of a film. Critics like that make me very angry. So angry I could just ... never mind. The iconic significance of Norman Bates was reflected in the recent British TV comedy program Goodness Gracious Me, which explored the experience of the Asian immigrant community in the UK. In one sketch, two proud mothers were competing as to which had the most dutiful son. One declared: “My son is so besotted with me that on his wedding night, he sent his bride to the hotel in a taxi and spent the night in a cot at the foot of my bed.” The other retorted: “That’s nothing. My son is so hopelessly Oedipal, he dresses up in my clothes and pretends to have conversations with me when I’m not there.” It’s instructive to compare Bloch’s Psycho with Philip Roth’s infamous novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1967). Both are novels by Jewish-American men that deal with the fallout from the Oedipus complex. While Roth’s perspective is more overtly comic than Bloch’s, the former is clearly aware of the Gothic potential of his material. Portnoy remarks: “The macabre is very funny on the stage — but not to live it, thank you!” (Roth 125). When discussing his parents’ ignorance of sexual deviation, he states: “There are men who screw stiffs! You simply cannot imagine how some people will respond to having served fifteen- and twenty-year sentences as some crazy bastard’s idea of

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‘good’!” (Roth 141). Closer still to the nightmare logic of Norman Bates, he declares: “Doctor, maybe other patients dream — with me, everything happens. I have a life without latent content” (Roth 291). Some readers have accused Roth of misogyny, based partly on the corrosive dislike of women expressed by Portnoy. But the latter is a character, and the comparison with Norman Bates is not so far-fetched when you read the sour closing chapters of Roth’s novel. Having degraded several non–Jewish women in abusive relationships, Portnoy attempts to rape a Jewish woman because she looks like his mother. He fails to commit the crime only because he becomes impotent. There is a dark aspect to this novel, and the pathology of its protagonist cannot safely be ascribed to its author. One important difference between the two novels is that Roth creates many parallels between Portnoy and himself, whereas the only overt similarity between Bates and Bloch is their age in 1959 (about forty). Norman Bates is an archetypal small-town Protestant, and his Oedipal tendencies are embedded in a narrative of secret madness and violence. The pathology of Alex Portnoy has to be read between the lines of a wildly comic rant about the failings of Jewish-American culture. This helps to explain why Portnoy’s Complaint is something that Roth has had to live down, whereas Psycho was the critical highlight of Bloch’s career. I don’t know whether the two writers read each other’s books. By the time he came to write Psycho II (1982), Bloch had spent two decades being known as “the author of Psycho.” He had also seen the massproduction of “slasher” films and novels in which the “psycho” had become a quantifiable performing unit. The title of Psycho II is itself probably ironic, as the novel not only examines the commercial exploitation of Norman Bates as an “icon,” but also shows would-be imitators of Bates proliferating in a manner reminiscent of a famous scene in Spartacus. The opening chapters present a somewhat caustic “What did you expect?” scenario: Norman Bates kills a nun who is visiting him in the psychiatric institution where he is now a trusted patient. He rapes the corpse while thinking about his mother. Then he disguises himself in her clothes in order to escape. Thereafter, as the narrative shifts to the Hollywood studio where a horror film about the Bates case is being made, the reader is kept guessing about who is responsible for a series of atrocities. Is it the middle-aged actor who is desperate to “get into role” as the killer? Or the scriptwriter with a deep-seated antagonism towards the film? Or the Italian director with his own psychosexual demons? Or Bates himself? These characters represent different facets or alternative versions of Norman Bates, like a purpose-built dysfunctional family. Roy Ames, the

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scriptwriter, conceals violent impulses behind a charming façade. Paul Morgan, the actor, researches the sexual ambiguity of Bates by working as a gay hustler. Santo Vizzini, the director (who is not, in any way, meant to resemble Dario Argento) has built his reputation on a series of misogynistic horror films in the giallo tradition. He is also hiding a personal trauma: as a boy, he became sexually aroused when he witnessed his mother being gang-raped by soldiers. The only person who tries to understand Bates as a whole person is his psychiatrist, Dr. Claiborne — who turns out to be the mystery killer, Bates having died not long after escaping from the hospital. Psycho II is a savagely comic dissection of the cinematic myth-making process, with childhood traumas and family secrets at its heart. It suggests that a pathological state of arrested development is the norm not only in the film industry, but in society as a whole. Psycho House (1990), Bloch’s last novel, is neither comic nor particularly horrific. Instead, it defects to the mystery side of the border. Long after the death of Norman Bates, a Fairvale businessman decides to reconstruct the motel as a commercial attraction. The project is dogged by objections from the community — and then a series of real murders take place at the “motel.” In direct contrast to his portrait of Hollywood, Bloch depicts a small-town culture dominated by bigotry, religion and fear of the modern world. Is the violence due to city folk coming along, or is its source home-grown? Whereas Psycho II explored facets of Norman Bates, in Psycho House Bloch depicts two characters who seem to represent facets of himself. Hank Gibbs, the local newspaper editor, is a friendly individual whose mordant jokes reveal an underlying anger. Charles Pitkin, a Jewish lawyer, is an imaginative creator of business plans and media campaigns. Put together, they would make a plausible composite of Robert Bloch. And together, as it turns out, they have been responsible for the deaths: Gibbs did the killing and Pitkin the covering up, guided by their joint plan for the success of the motel. Steiner, the psychiatrist who realizes what Gibbs and Pitkin have done, pictures them as the twin masks of comedy and tragedy. He also knows that Pitkin, whose wife died many years before, has been hiding the secret of an incestuous relationship with his adult daughter. The whole town is a dysfunctional family, with its buried secrets and its code of denial. At the end of the novel, Steiner points out of the window and says the asylum is “out there” (Psycho House 217). So is the Bates motel.

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The same themes run through other Bloch novels: destructive families, love turning to hate, the insights of psychoanalysis — and always, murder as a failed attempt to break the chain of re-enactment. Bloch’s characters rarely kill for practical reasons. The murders are rituals, the sacraments of a private religion. They are psychological analogues of black magic, just as the mother or father as a presence in memory is a psychological analogue of possession by spirits. Bloch’s fiction gives a new meaning to the word “possessive.” The Scarf (1947) was Bloch’s first novel. I’m not sure how different the revised 1966 edition is from the original (apart from a mention of Bob Dylan, (30) who was a child in 1947), but I assume some of the 1966 book’s sexual frankness to derive from the revision (though probably not from Bob Dylan). Whatever its exact developmental history, The Scarf is a brilliant and chilling portrait of a psychopath whose manipulation of women is guided by an infantile urge to dominate and destroy. His murder weapon is a personal talisman: a maroon scarf. Dan’s “Black Note Book,” a private diary, gives us a window into an inner life that he effectively hides from those who know him. The second entry in it details an episode from his childhood when he was harshly punished by his mother for playing “Doctor” with a girl at the age of nine, and then accidentally saw his parents having sex. The punishment included having his hands tied to the bedposts. This episode is symbolic of the mixture of anger and desire that he feels towards his mother. Later, Dan notes: “I had a nightmare about a Medusa with red serpent locks, locks that coiled about me and strangled me as a wet mouth pressed mine. And all the while Medusa was giggling” (41). (It’s interesting to note that this image is clearly influenced by C.L. Moore’s classic Weird Tales story “Shambleau,” which Bloch read and admired as a teenager (Flanagan 19)). In the last installment of his diary, he records images of the women he has killed decomposing — a reversal of his own sense of being dead and helpless. Bloch is not necessarily suggesting that Dan was “turned” into a killer by an abusive mother. Her cruelty towards him was fairly normal for that generation. His past is not an “explanation,” but rather a Rosetta stone that allows us to interpret the symbolic meaning of his crimes as the acting out of destructive fantasies. Firebug (1961) is the story of a personal apocalypse. While on the track of an arsonist, a man with a profound fear of fire relives his own past traumas. The compulsion to start fires is explained by a psychiatrist as arising from a “bad family situation” (88): the disturbed child grows into a sexually inca-

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pable adult for whom burning down buildings serves as a ritual of cleansing, a surrogate for sexual release and a revolt against parental authority. The narrative, in which a series of urban cults are targeted by the arsonist, suggests that Bloch has religion in his sights. The arsonist turns out to be a young woman fuelled by rage at her mother’s sexual promiscuity. The Couch (1962) is a terse, dislocated novel about the ruined psyche of a serial murderer. It is Bloch’s most literary work, reflecting both the modernist noir fiction of Jim Thompson and the bitter plays of Tennessee Williams. An image that occurs to Charles tells us much about the mood Bloch is in: He got the funniest picture of an actor with a trepanned skull, leaning forward towards a dressing-room mirror, reaching into the great hole on top of his skull and applying powder and rouge to the gray, pulsing sponge of his brain to make it presentable to the public [21].

Charles’ inner life revolves around his feelings towards his sister and his father, the most significant memory being of a Halloween night when his sister wore a witch mask. His imagination transforms this image into a “deadwhite” face with “blind eyes” and a “marred mouth” (79). In a disturbing scene, he takes his girlfriend to the derelict family home, where the gazebo seems to embody his fears: Its pillars were carved white statuary figures of robed females. Angels, perhaps. Leprous angels, with pocked, noseless faces [77].

Eventually, Charles’ psychiatrist teases out the key memory: that when he and his sister Ruthie were teenagers, their father caught him touching her hair in a way he interpreted as sexual, and beat Charles for it. The emotions surrounding the memory make it clear that he did have incestuous feelings for Ruthie. After reliving this memory, Charles begins to identify the psychiatrist with his father. While its storyline does not quite live up to its more intense passages, The Couch is a striking example of Bloch’s ability to reach beyond the scope of the conventional murder mystery. Novels like this demonstrate the potential for cross-breeding between the crime and horror genres, as well as the relevance of Gothic themes — incest, obsession, ruins — to the modern psychological thriller. Bloch’s novel Strange Eons (1979) is a return to the Lovecraftian themes of his earliest stories. Despite the lack of any “cosmic” perspective, it is remarkably effective. Bloch focuses on elements of Lovecraft’s work that relate strongly to his own: cults and conspiracies, manipulative leaders and blind followers — and the use of a relentless downward-spiralling narrative. Far from

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taking refuge in pulp nostalgia, Strange Eons is a stark portrait of a society on the edge of chaos. Lori (1989) is another story of a personal apocalypse. The teenaged Lori loses her parents to a fire that appears to have been started deliberately. Her dreams put her in touch with an inner voice that speaks of struggling towards birth. A self-styled clairvoyant finds a disturbing object in the ruined house: a college yearbook with a picture of Lori under a different name. In the end, the person she trusts most — her psychiatrist — deceives her. He is one of the creators of a conspiracy that saw Lori’s actual mother buried in a psychiatric hospital with no death certificate. He may even be Lori’s biological father. While Lori lacks the narrative cohesion and internal logic of Bloch’s most successful novels, it makes an ambitious attempt to blend psychological and supernatural elements. And it shows Bloch in his seventies still grappling with a theme that had preoccupied him throughout his writing career: the pathology of the nuclear family, with the façade of normality disintegrating to reveal a far less comforting pattern of relationships and identities. There is, in the end, no easy answer to the question Dr. Fell asks: Who are you? (Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of 105).

NO ASYLUM HERE Bloch’s weird fiction is nothing if not social. Human relationships are always the primary source of madness and despair in his stories. However, he rarely adopts the kind of polemical stance characteristic of Harlan Ellison. Rather, Bloch’s stance is usually ironic and non-committal. Is he a tormented idealist like Poe or a jaded cynic like Bierce, a radical like Hammett or a reactionary like Lovecraft? Potentially he is all or none of these: his work never identifies a core “human nature” underlying the opposed elements whose endless war he dramatizes. Even setting the juvenile “Mother of Serpents” (1936) aside, one might suspect from such stories as “The Cure” (1957) and “Nina” (1977) that Bloch followed Lovecraft in attributing lethal unreason to non-white races. However, it’s more likely that the conception of these stories simply worked backwards from their macabre conclusions. Bloch does not usually look beyond white America when depicting examples of barbarity and superstition. Certainly “The Warm Farewell” (1977) is a fierce denunciation of the KKK and its beliefs. Bloch is recurrently critical of capitalism, whether he is talking about the film industry or the lives of impoverished city people. In American Gothic

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(1974), a psychological horror novel set in the late nineteenth century, a man who kills for profit is described as “A businessman, dealing in death. A salesman, dedicated to making a killing” (206). At the end of Psycho House, Dr. Steiner points the finger of blame at “The demons that possessed Hank Gibbs and continue to possess so many others. Greed. Avarice. The real demons that are taking over this world” (217). Bloch is also subtly critical of religion. In Firebug and elsewhere, he mocks the claims of religious cults and their messianic leaders. By describing the superstitious rituals of psychologically damaged people, he invites the reader to follow Freud’s identification of religious faith with neurosis and fanaticism with psychosis. In “The Rubber Room” (1980), the murderer Emery repeats over and over that “the Jews killed Our Saviour” (Midnight Pleasures 5, 6 and 9). The dogmatism of the American Right is satirized in the grim anti-war story “Daybroke” (1958). Where Bloch steers closer to the wind of conventional opinion is in the area of sexual morality. The condemnation of hippies in “The Animal Fair” (1971) echoes similar attacks on beatnik culture in “The Big Kick” (1959) and the novel The Dead Beat (1962). In the latter, a sociopath is identified as one of “the Beats” by a character who explains: “There’s more to the Beat Generation than sitting around in coffee-houses digging cool sounds.... Being Beat is simply an attitude towards life.... An attitude of me-first, of anythingfor-kicks” (170). I hope I can be forgiven for not recognizing the underlying psychopathic selfishness in Ginsberg’s passionate, tender elegies for friends and relatives, or in Kerouac’s melancholic quest for spiritual answers in the American night. The family is a crucial theme for Bloch because it mediates between civilization and the individual. The family is a microcosm of society: a complex mesh of authority, revolt, conflict and interdependence. The individual is a microcosm of the family, divided against itself. As a writer of weird fiction, Bloch is concerned with violence and unreason not as symptoms of an external “evil” but as integral features of the human identity. In Bloch’s fiction, few human bodies and fewer minds make it to the end of the story in one piece. But Bloch’s body of work, taken as a whole, is neither headless nor heartless. Amongst the grim jokes and violent acts, there is a persistent search for the Kantian ideal of ethical reason.

NOTE The dates given for stories and novels in this article are the dates of first publication, based on Graeme Flanagan’s bibliography and other sources. The dates given below are those of the copies I have referred to, which are mostly not first editions.

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WORKS CITED Bierce, Ambrose. Can Such Things Be. London: Jonathan Cape, 1927. _____. In the Midst of Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 1964. Bloch, Robert. American Gothic. London: Star Books, 1975. _____. Blood Runs Cold. New York: Popular Library, 1962. _____. Chamber of Horrors. New York: Award Books, 1966. _____. Cold Chills. New York: Leisure Books, 1977. _____. The Couch. London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1962. _____. The Early Fears. Minneapolis: Fedogan & Bremer, 1994. _____. Firebug. Evanston: Regency Books, 1961. _____. Lori. New York: Tor, 1989. _____. Midnight Pleasures. New York: Tor, 1987. _____. Mysteries of the Worm. New York: Zebra Books, 1981. _____. Once Around the Bloch. New York: Tor, 1993. _____. Psycho. London: Corgi Books, 1977. _____. Psycho II. New York: Warner Books, 1982. _____. Psycho House. New York: ibooks, 2003. _____. The Scarf. London: New English Library, 1966. _____. Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of. New York: Ballantine, 1979. _____. Strange Eons. Los Angeles: Pinnacle Books, 1979. Campbell, Ramsey. Dark Companions. Glasgow: Fontana, 1982. Flanagan, Graeme. Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography. Canberra: Graeme Flanagan, 1979. Lovecraft, H.P. Dagon and Other Macabre Tales. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1986 _____. The Dunwich Horror and Others. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1982 Moore, C.L. Northwest Smith. New York: Ace Books, 1981. Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. London: Everyman’s Library, 1955. Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. London: Corgi Books, 1977.

Programming Bloch: The Small-Screen Career of Psycho’s Creator Matthew R. Bradley When Robert Bloch died at the age of seventy-seven on September 23, 1994, he left a lasting legacy of literary, cinematic, and televised terror that spanned six decades and encompassed two dozen novels — including the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Psycho (1960)— countless radio, TV and film scripts, and more than a thousand short stories. Conducted shortly before his death, my interview with Bloch was published in Filmfax #40, and focused primarily on his feature films, most notably those written for William Castle (Strait-Jacket and The Night Walker, both 1964) and Amicus: The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1967), Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), and Asylum (1972). But like many of his friends and fellow writers such as Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, and Jerry Sohl, Bloch also plunged enthusiastically into the then-burgeoning medium of television, where he was an almost constant presence for thirty years. Surprisingly, Bloch’s television career began outside the fantasy genre in the fall of 1959 when his friend Samuel A. Peeples invited him to Hollywood to write a teleplay for Lock-Up, a series that appealed to Bloch as an alternative to the Westerns then dominating the airwaves. Produced by the lowbudget ZIV studios, known to genre aficionados for such seminal SF series as Science Fiction Theater and Men into Space, the show featured Macdonald Carey, formerly the romantic lead in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), as Herbert L. Maris, a real-life Philadelphia attorney who specialized in free186

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ing those wrongly convicted. Peeples recommended Bloch to the story editor, and not only agreed to provide a script himself if Ziv was dissatisfied with what he submitted, but also offered to put him up while he completed the assignment. Bloch ended up contributing a half-dozen episodes, including “Murder Is a Gamble,” “Voice of Doom,” “Death and Texas,” “Beau and Arrow,” and “Abandoned Mine.” Along the way, he also acquired a membership in the Writers Guild of America, an apartment across from the former Republic Studio, and an agent, Gordon Molson, who would represent him for the next twenty-two years until Molson’s death. Because of his feature-film work, beginning with The Couch (1961), Bloch’s contribution to television initially consisted mostly of selling stories to be adapted by other writers, but he did eventually try his hand at a Western with “The Poet and Peasant Case” (8/28/61), an episode of the Audie Murphy series Whispering Smith that Bloch tailor-made for actor Alan Mowbray. Production of the series began in 1959 but was halted due to an injury to co-star Guy Mitchell; it aired at last on NBC from May to September of 1961. Aptly, the man who will be forever identified as the “author of Psycho” was most closely associated on television with the long-running anthology series hosted by its director, first in a half-hour format as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–62) and then as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962–65), shuttling back and forth between CBS and NBC over the years. While Bloch was working on Lock-Up, his stories “The Cure” and “Betsy Blake Will Live Forever” were acquired for Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the latter was first retitled “Is Betsy Blake Still Alive?” and eventually televised as “Madame Mystery” (3/27/60). That and “The Cure” (1/24/60) were the first of a whopping seventeen episodes of the Hitchcock series to be written by Bloch and/or based on his work during the show’s ten-year run, more than his friends Beaumont, Bradbury, Ellison, Matheson and Sohl put together, although fellow contributor Henry Slesar provided more stories and teleplays than any other single writer. Published in Playboy in 1957, “The Cure” is set in “the godforsaken backwaters of Brazil” (The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 2, 94) where Jeff is hiding out with Mike, his partner in an armored-truck robbery; Marie, his girlfriend; and Luiz, his devoted Indian servant, who has brought them to his village while they wait for a Cuban, Gonzales, to exchange the loot for pesos and send their share. Driven mad by weeks of waiting in the hot, rainy, bug-infested jungle, Marie slashes Jeff ’s ankle with a machete before she is subdued by Luiz, who obligingly offers to kill her, and Jeff agrees to Mike’s suggestion that he and Luiz take her to a psychiatrist in Belém while

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Jeff ’s ankle heals and he waits for the runner from Gonzales to arrive with their money. When Luiz at last returns alone, he reveals that Mike had received the money before leaving and plotted with Marie to kill him, but after the money fell in the river during a fight in which he killed Mike, Luiz took all too literally Jeff ’s desire that the captive Marie be brought to a “headshrinker,” and proudly produces the shriveled proof of his “good job” (The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 2, 96). The first of Bloch’s stories to appear on Alfred Hitchcock Presents was adapted for the screen by British playwright Michael Pertwee, whose brother Jon later became the third incarnation of Dr. Who on the BBC’s eponymous long-running science fiction series, and starred in the segment of The House That Dripped Blood based on Bloch’s “The Cloak.” Formerly a dialogue director at Warner Brothers from 1944 to 1951, director Herschel Daugherty was now launched on a twenty-year television career that encompassed episodes of thirty-odd series such as The Man and Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek, The Time Tunnel, Mission: Impossible, Ghost Story (aka Circle of Fear), and The Six Million Dollar Man. Perhaps best known for Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), Israeli actor Nehemiah Persoff starred as Jeff Jenson in the televised version, which somewhat blunted Bloch’s theme of thieves falling out and receiving their just deserts by depicting Jeff and Mike (Mark Richman) as exploring for oil in the Amazon, and Marie (Cara Williams) as Jeff ’s wife. German-born Hollywood veteran John Brahm directed “Madame Mystery,” as well as two subsequent Bloch-related Hitchcock teleplays and a record-setting twelve episodes of the original Twilight Zone, while William Fay adapted the show from Bloch’s “Betsy Blake Will Live Forever,” which was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1958. Struggling writer Steve (Harp McGuire) is working on his novel in a beachfront cottage when his neighbor, young studio flack Jimmy Dolan ( Joby Baker), offers him a lucrative job helping to build a legend around “Madame Mystery,” a secretive star killed in a speedboat accident, to maintain public interest until her last film, Splendor, opens in three months. Steve reluctantly agrees, but after Betsy Blake (Audrey Totter) appears at the cottage, having survived the crash and been rescued by a fishing trawler, Jimmy pushes the drunken slattern to her death to protect his p.r. campaign, and when Steve observes while dialing the police, “You’d kill your own mother to be a big man at Goliath Studios,” Jimmy reveals he just has. Gordon Molson and his associates had already started to take the fledgling fortyish screenwriter around Hollywood and introduce him to producers and executives at various concerns, including the staff of Alfred Hitchcock Presents at Universal Studios. Psycho was still being shot at that time (the late

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fall of 1959), so its success had nothing to do with launching his screenwriting career, and a brief visit to the soundstage a few days later marked his only personal involvement with the making of the film. Ironically, the show’s producers wanted to hire Bloch to adapt another writer’s work, Frank Mace’s story “The Cuckoo Clock,” rather than his own. Hired by Hitchcock as his personal secretary in 1935, producer Joan Harrison had worked her way quickly up through the ranks from continuity assistant and script consultant to dialogue writer; graduating to scenarist with Jamaica Inn (1939), she shared Oscar nominations for Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent (both 1940), and also co-wrote Suspicion (1941). She was brought back into the fold to oversee the series, having struck out on her own as a producer after Saboteur (1942), while associate producer and former Mercury Player Norman Lloyd, who essayed the title role in the same film, succeeded her as executive producer when she left yet again to devote more time to her marriage with author and screenwriter Eric Ambler. Likewise, the show’s story editor, Berlin-born Gordon Hessler, later succeeded Lloyd as associate producer, and directed The Oblong Box (1969), Scream and Scream Again, Cry of the Banshee (both 1970), and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) for American International Pictures (AIP) in England before returning to U.S. television. Bloch enjoyed an unusually cordial relationship with these key staff members, and in “My Hitch with Hitchcock,” an introductory essay he wrote for John McCarty and Brian Kelleher’s book Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An Illustrated Guide to the Ten-Year Television Career of the Master of Suspense, he related: the British custom of four o’clock tea was scrupulously and sumptuously observed in Joan Harrison’s private office. It was a far cry from the usual producer’s offer of instant coffee in a paper cup. I had other reasons to be grateful to my hosts and hostess. Early on in our relationship, a writer living three thousand miles away popped up with a claim that my story “The Cure” was a plagiarism. At that time I was still pretty much of an unknown quantity as far as the Hitchcock team was concerned, and they could have been understandably forgiven had they ended our relationship then and there.... But once I assured them of my innocence they rallied to the rescue without further question. Upon investigation they discovered that the charges were completely unfounded. There was no litigation and my reputation ... remained unsullied. The same held true after they bought and filmed a published story of mine which I scripted, “The Sorceror’s [sic] Apprentice.” When the network censors viewed the teleplay there was thunder from on high; this show was simply “too gruesome” to be aired. Nobody called me on the carpet because of this capricious decision — and as a matter of fact, when the series went into syndication my show was duly televised without a word from the powers that be.

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Bloch added that Hitch himself, while rarely in attendance, “was nonetheless a palpable presence [whose] taste and standards” were always considered. Also directed by Brahm, “The Cuckoo Clock” (4/17/60) begins as the widowed Ida Blythe (Beatrice Straight) and her daughter Dorothy (Hitchcock’s own daughter Pat, who also appeared in Psycho the same year) stop for supplies en route to their remote summer cabin and learn from the loquacious shopkeeper, Burt (Don Beddoe), of an escaped mental patient. Dorothy reluctantly leaves Ida alone for the weekend, and when she returns to the cabin after fetching some firewood, Ida is shocked to see Madeline Hall (Fay Spain), a high-strung young woman who says she was frightened by a mysterious man watching her while she was painting nearby, and insists that it is he who knocks on the cabin door soon afterwards. An Oscar winner for Network (1976), Straight superbly portrays Ida’s terror as she becomes convinced that Madeline is the mental patient, and when the knocking at the door resumes, she opens it to a man (Donald Buka) who warns her that the patient is female and dangerous, only to learn too late that it was indeed he as the man forces his way inside and kills Ida. With the acceptance of “The Cuckoo Clock” and the offer of further work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bloch’s career as a budding television writer seemed at last to be off and running, and then just as quickly stumbled with the announcement of a strike by the Writers Guild, which would begin on January first of the following year. This delayed his plans to bring his first wife, Marion, and their daughter, Sally, out to Hollywood from Weyauwega, a small town in upstate Wisconsin, forcing him to return to writing stories and articles while he waited for the strike to end, which took almost six months, and for Psycho to provide him with his first feature-film story credit. As related in his delightful “unauthorized autobiography,” Once Around the Bloch, at a private pre-release screening, he told the director, “Mr. Hitchcock, I think this is either going to be your greatest success or your biggest bomb” (250). The film’s now-classic status provides an unequivocal answer, and its success spurred sales of the novel as well. That same season, Bloch also joined the writing staff of Thriller, another series produced by Universal’s television arm, with similarly suspenseful stories, an instantly recognizable host in Boris Karloff, and many of the same personnel (e.g., Daugherty and Brahm, who with fifteen and eleven episodes, respectively, were its most frequent directors). Matheson adapted his only Thriller episode, “The Return of Andrew Bentley” (12/11/61), from a story by August Derleth and Mark Schorer, while Beaumont contributed a pair of teleplays, “Girl With a Secret” (11/15/60) and “Guillotine” (9/25/61), the latter based on a story by noir legend Cornell Woolrich, as was Hitchcock’s classic

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film Rear Window (1954). But as with Alfred Hitchcock Presents and England’s Amicus studios, which filmed Bloch’s “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” as The Skull (1965) before hiring him as a screenwriter, Bloch was recruited for Thriller— which initially aired immediately following the Hitchcock show on the same network, NBC — only after three of his stories had been adapted by others. Stephen King called Thriller “probably the best horror series ever put on TV,” noting in Danse Macabre that “after a slow first thirteen weeks, [it] was able to become something more than the stock imitation of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that it was apparently meant to be ... and took on a tenebrous life of his own” (King 224). According to Alan Warren’s This Is a Thriller: An Episode Guide, History and Analysis of the Classic 1960s Television Series, many of the show’s early problems can be traced to uncertainty regarding its direction and the tensions between creator Hubbell Robinson and his original producer, Fletcher Markle. Writes Warren, “Markle’s Thrillers rank among the poorest of the lot; they indicate he saw little difference between the new series and the long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” of which Markle’s associate producer and story editor, James P. Cavanagh, was a veteran screenwriter; both men were soon supplanted by two new producers, Maxwell Shane and William Frye, brought in to handle Thriller’s crime and horror episodes, respectively. Both anthology shows relied primarily on previously published material, with the Hitchcock series drawing frequently from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the host’s eponymous counterpart, although some episodes of Thriller, like writer-director Shane’s “Rose’s Last Summer” (10/11/60)— made before his promotion to producer — were originals. Shane, who had already adapted Woolrich’s work onscreen in Fear in the Night (1947) and Nightmare (1956), left after “Papa Benjamin” (3/21/61), the first of three episodes based thereon, and Frye, the show’s sole credited producer for the remainder of its two-season run, soon gave it a distinctive flavor by mining the pages of the famed fantasy pulp, Weird Tales. It was there that Bloch had initially encountered the work of both H.P. Lovecraft, his mentor, and Derleth, a future friend and fellow protégé, and it quickly became his best-known magazine outlet, although not his first: contrary to some reports, his first sale, at the ripe old age of seventeen, was to Marvel Tales, where his story “Lilies” appeared in 1934. Directed by Brahm and written by the show’s most prolific contributor, Donald S. Sanford, “The Cheaters” (12/27/60) marked one of only two episodes — the other being the Poe adaptation “The Premature Burial” (10/2/61)— that were actually introduced with the host’s frequently quoted tagline, “As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this is a Thriller!” Based on a

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story first published in the November 1947 issue of Weird Tales, it follows a pair of sinister spectacles inscribed with the Latin word veritas (truth) from owner to owner, like the dress tailcoat in the all-star anthology film Tales of Manhattan (1942), and shows how each is brought to grief by their supernatural powers of mind-reading and self-revelation. Henry Daniell had enjoyed one of his best roles opposite Karloff in Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945), and appears in the prologue as sorceror-scientist Dirk Van Prinn (alluded to only briefly by Bloch), who invents the yellow-lensed “cheaters,” tries them on in front of a mirror and then, overcome with terror at what he sees, hangs himself. Years later, junkman Joe Henshaw (Paul Newlan) buys the contents of the house, and in a secret compartment of Van Prinn’s desk he finds the spectacles, which reveal his wife, Maggie (Linda Watkins), and his young helper, Charlie (Ed Nelson), as “cheaters” who plan to kill him, so he bludgeons them both before a policeman ( John Mitchum) guns him down. Two-time Oscar nominee Mildred Dunnock, who had appeared in Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry (1955), is Miriam Olcott, an elderly kleptomaniac who buys the glasses at a demolition sale of Joe’s inventory and learns that her nephew, Edward Dean ( Jack Weston), and Dr. Clarence Kramer (Dayton Lummis) are plotting to murder her for her inheritance. After she stabs Kramer with a hatpin and dies in an accidental fire, the nouveau riche Dean dresses as Ben Franklin and dons the spectacles for a costume party, at which he denounces a “cheater” during a poker game and is killed in the mêlée by writer Sebastian Grimm (Harry Townes), who pockets the glasses and then smashes them after repeating Van Prinn’s error. Bloch’s “The Hungry House,” published in Imagination in April 1950, was adapted by another Twilight Zone veteran, writer-director Douglas Heyes, as “The Hungry Glass” (1/3/61), which Warren identifies along with “The Cheaters” as “two of the strongest horror entries,” airing consecutively after a string of mediocre episodes, primarily crime dramas. “To this day,” he writes, “‘The Cheaters’ is considered by some to be the high-point of television horror; ‘The Hungry Glass’— which [fellow Thriller historian] Jay Allen Sanford considered the ‘turnaround’ episode, establishing the show’s district [sic] image — featured a strong performance by a young William Shatner.” Shatner later made his only other Thriller appearance in Bloch’s first-season finale, “The Grim Reaper,” and coincidentally, he also starred in a pair of Matheson-scripted Twilight Zone episodes, “Nick of Time” (11/18/60) and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (10/11/63), before landing the role of Captain James Tiberius Kirk on Star Trek, another series to which both Bloch and Matheson contributed.

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Donna Douglas, later the delectable Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, plays lovely Laura Bellman in the prologue, and yet when a knock at the door interrupts her preening before multiple mirrors in her New England home, it is an old hag (Ottola Nesmith) who answers it and begs, “Leave me alone, can’t you? Leave me alone with my mirrors.” Years later, Gil Thrasher (Shatner) and his wife Marcia (played by the director’s own wife, Joanna Heyes) buy the old Bellman place, and while waiting for the realtor, Adam Talmadge (Russell Johnson), and his wife Liz (Elizabeth Allen) to arrive, they learn from the crusty locals that the house now contains no mirrors, and “comes fully equipped with visitors.” Laughing off the rumors and the absence of mirrors, attributed by Adam to several accidents involving broken glass, they attempt to settle in despite a series of unnerving incidents in which shadowy figures are glimpsed in reflective surfaces, until Marcia finds the missing mirrors — which reflect her like a bug’s-eye view from The Fly (1958)— locked up in the attic. Interestingly, Shatner’s fine performance contains echoes of both of his Twilight Zone episodes: like businessman Bob Wilson in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” the shell-shocked Korean War vet Gil begins to doubt his sanity, and his bantering relationship with Marcia, which becomes strained as the terror encroaches, recalls the newlyweds in “Nick of Time.” A photographer, Gil captures the image of a little girl on one of his negatives, and when pressed, Adam reveals that the disappearance of young Mary Lou Dempster was yet another tragedy chalked up by the locals to the crazed Laura Bellman, who supposedly lived on in her mirrors when they were taken from her and she died by dancing through a windowpane. Hearing screams, Gil races up to the attic and finds Marcia being pulled by ghostly figures into a large mirror, which he smashes with a poker, but sees when Adam subdues him that he has killed her, and while Gil sits in shock with the Talmadges soon after, Marcia’s reflection beckons him in a window and he crashes through to his death on the rocks below. Best known as the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, Johnson appeared in several of producer William Alland’s genre films, including It Came from Outer Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), and The Space Children (1958). As he told Alan Warren in This is a Thriller It was a powerful show, and I enjoyed very much working with Douglas [Heyes] and Bill Shatner. I’d worked with Shatner before, a number of times, and he’s always a good actor to work with, for me, anyway; I really enjoyed the give and take with Bill. I thought it was a good script, I really did, and Douglas is a good director. I thought the cast was really good: his wife was one of the women in the show, and the other was Elizabeth Allen, who had

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In the meantime, Bloch continued to turn out teleplays for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, starting with the first he based on his own work, “The Changing Heart” (1/3/61), and then adapting both Bryce Walton’s “The Greatest Monster of Them All” and Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady,” published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The New Yorker, respectively. Airing back-toback with “The Hungry Glass” the same night, “The Changing Heart” was directed by Robert Florey, who along with Bela Lugosi had been handed Universal’s Poe film Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) as a consolation prize when they were pulled off of Frankenstein (1931), and featured Anne Helm, later the co-star of Bloch’s movie The Couch. Engineer Dane Ross (Nicholas Pryor) falls for Lisa (Helm), the granddaughter of clockmaker Ulrich Klemm (Abraham Sofaer), but when he is transferred to Seattle the overly protective Klemm forbids them to wed, and Ross returns months later to learn that before succumbing to illness himself, Klemm saved the lovesick girl’s life by giving her a clockwork heart. The most prolific of the directors to work on the Hitchcock series, and the only one to win an Emmy Award thereby (for “The Glass Eye” [10/6/57], starring Shatner), Robert Stevens had more than thirty episodes to his credit, including “The Greatest Monster of Them All” (2/14/61), and also worked on The Twilight Zone, but directed only a few films. As low-budget producer Hal Bellew (Sam Jaffe of Gunga Din [1939] fame) seeks a subject for his next monster movie, his writer, Fred Logan (William Redfield), suggests that they eschew the giant insects then in vogue in favor of a comeback vehicle for retired horror star Ernst von Kroft (Richard Hale), billed in the 1930s as “The Greatest Monster of Them All.” But when the film opens, the star is shocked to learn that director Morty Lenton (Robert H. Harris, who had ironically starred in AIP’s How to Make a Monster [1958]) has dubbed him with a Bugs Bunny soundalike, and Fred races to the set just before the vengeful von Kroft, who has killed Morty in a simulated vampire attack, leaps to his own death from a catwalk. Airing a week later, “The Landlady” (2/21/61) was directed by Austrian actor Paul Henreid, immortalized as Victor Laszlo in Casablanca (1942), and featured former child star Dean Stockwell, celebrated for the title role in Joseph Losey’s antiwar fable The Boy with Green Hair (1948), as bank clerk Billy Weaver, newly arrived in an English provincial town. An Academy Award

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nominee for The Little Foxes (1941) who had also played the mother in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Patricia Collinge is the eponymous landlady, who says that she is very particular about the young men she takes in, and when Billy sees the names of her two other unseen lodgers in the register, he finds them both naggingly familiar. Plying him with tea, the landlady tells Billy that it will soon be time to go upstairs and meet the others, and after wondering whether he hadn’t read that one of them had disappeared, he compliments her on the incredibly realistic stuffed animals in her parlor and then sinks into paralysis, clearly poisoned and poised to become the next addition to her macabre collection. Undoubtedly Bloch’s best-known story, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” has been oft anthologized and dramatized in various media since it was first published in Weird Tales in July of 1943, and depicts an ageless Ripper who maintains his youth by committing regularly recurring series of six identical murders as blood sacrifices to the Lovecraftian “dark gods.” Barré Lyndon was eminently qualified to adapt this story for Thriller, having written The Man in Half Moon Street, a stageplay about an elderly physician kept youthful with periodic glandular transplants, and although remade by Hammer as The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), it was first filmed by Ralph Murphy for Paramount under its original title in 1944. That same year, Lyndon scripted the psychological thrillers The Lodger and Hangover Square, both directed by none other than John Brahm and starring Laird Cregar; the former was the second sound remake of Hitchcock’s 1926 classic, and featured Cregar — fresh from appearing in a CBS radio version of Bloch’s story on The Kate Smith Hour— as the Ripper. Richard Matheson related in an interview with the author (published in Filmfax #42) that years later, seeking an antagonist for intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) in his sequel to the record-setting TV-movie The Night Stalker (1/11/72), “I wanted to make the guy in the second one Jack the Ripper, who was still alive and had come over to this country, but I’m a friend of Robert Bloch’s, and I called him and asked him if it would disturb him if I did that, and I could sense that he felt that it would, so I didn’t do it. Then of course right afterward, on The Sixth Sense, they did the same thing anyway, but at least I didn’t do it.” Nonetheless, the eponymous killer in The Night Strangler (aka The Time Killer, 1/16/73) has a strikingly similar modus operandi, albeit more scientific than supernatural, and both Matheson’s script and Lyndon’s teleplay invoke the ageless alchemist the Comte de St. Germain (although Bloch’s story does not), while ironically, the very first episode of the subsequent series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, was “The Ripper” (9/13/74). Actors Ray Milland and John Williams, who had appeared together in

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Hitchcock’s Dial “M” for Murder (1954), were the director and star, respectively, of “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (4/11/61), which opens in Victorian London as the unseen Ripper claims his latest victim, while outside a street singer ( J. Pat O’Malley) performs the macabre title tune. In the present, Capt. Pete Jago (Edmon Ryan) listens skeptically as former Scotland Yard pathologist Sir Guy (Williams), a medical liaison in the British Embassy, explains his outré theory regarding the Ripper, complete with chart (“They always have a chart,” cracks Jago), to the police department and its consulting psychiatrist, Dr. John Carmody (Donald Woods). Believing the Ripper has an artistic bent, Sir Guy seeks him in the bohemian community to which exsculptor Carmody still has ties, but after Hymie Kralik (Adam Williams) proves to be a red herring and his model, Arlene (Nancy Valentine), becomes the next victim, Sir Guy is lured into an alley and stabbed by Carmody, who tells the dying man, “Not John — Jack.” “The Devil’s Ticket” (4/18/61) became the next episode of Thriller after “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” and starred none other than Macdonald Carey, who also appeared in Hammer’s The Damned (aka These Are the Damned) that year. It was Carey for whom Bloch had written those half-dozen Lock-Up teleplays when he started in television, “and yet for some inexplicable reason the two of us weren’t ever in the same place at the same time,” he related. Then, “a period of thirty years went by. And one day as I sat signing copies of my latest novel in a Westwood bookshop, in walked Macdonald Carey. And presented me with a copy of his third book of poetry! It was a joyful reunion for two people who had never met” (Once Around the Bloch 367). Directed by Jules Bricken, a veteran of two previous Thriller episodes and a contributor to the Hitchcock series who later produced John Frankenheimer’s The Train (1964), the episode was faithfully adapted by Bloch from his own short story, which had originally been published in the September 1944 issue of Weird Tales. Robert Cornthwaite, the ill-advised scientist from The Thing (1951), appears in the prologue as pawnbroker Spengler, who has sold his soul, and by the time impoverished artist Hector Vane (Carey) arrives there to pawn one of his paintings, the Devil ( John Emery) has claimed the screaming Spengler in a cloud of smoke and is now running the shop by himself. Vane pawns his soul in exchange for fame and riches, agreeing in return to paint a picture for the Devil, who has him sign a contract and gives him a ticket redeemable at sundown in ninety days, yet when the suddenly successful Vane comes to offer him a landscape the Devil refuses, insisting on a portrait that will capture — and allow him to claim — the model’s soul. The unfaithful artist paints a portrait of his wife, Marie ( Joan Tetzel), but after his jealous

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mistress, Nadja (Patricia Medina), unwittingly slashes it, Vane repents and renders the Devil instead; believing he now has the upper hand, he returns at the appointed hour, only to learn as the Devil demands his ticket that it was in the pocket of an old overcoat burned by Marie. Bloch’s teleplay, the music of Morton Stevens (who along with future Oscar winner Jerry Goldsmith scored forty-two of the sixty-seven Thriller episodes, including all seven of Bloch’s), and Carey’s performance are all superb, especially the mixed emotions on Vane’s face as he paints Marie’s portrait, believing that he is dooming her to eternal damnation while at the same time rekindling much of the love that had been lost between them. Shortly before his death in 1994, Carey told Warren in This Is a Thriller, “I thought [“The Devil’s Ticket”] was one of the best things I ever did.... It’s a hell of a good show. They don’t make them like that any more! Everybody is good in it — it’s done impeccably, it’s written well, it’s produced well. It should be revived, but I don’t know how you would do it.” Emery, who appeared in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), was Tallulah Bankhead’s only husband, while Medina, also seen on Thriller in “The Premature Burial,” was married to Joseph Cotten from 1960 until the actor’s death in 1994. As with the Hitchcock series, Bloch enjoyed a warm relationship with the Thriller staff (producer William Frye, associate producer Douglas Benton, and story editor Jo Swerling), eventually contributing seven scripts and several stories adapted by other writers. As a result of his work on feature films and those two shows, he never became involved with The Twilight Zone, which was written primarily by Rod Serling and what Bloch called the “Matheson Mafia,” including Beaumont and George Clayton Johnson. “Universal was closer to where I lived and Thriller offered a close approximation of ideal working conditions. For one thing, there was a wider choice of material than other shows allowed: Hitchcock would use nothing supernatural or sciencefictional, while Twilight Zone used nothing else. On Thriller I had the opportunity to vary my work, just as I did for publication purposes. In a number of instances my scripts were shot from first draft. Whatever rewriting seemed necessary was the result of mutual discussion and decision” (Once Around the Bloch 279). Bloch’s only collaboration with Brahm on Thriller, “A Good Imagination” (5/2/61), also marked one of the most dramatic retoolings in both the tone and content of its original source material, a story by Bloch that first appeared in the January 1956 issue of Suspect, and ironically resulted in an episode that would not have been out of place chez Hitchcock. In the story, Logan is a mild-mannered man (neither his first name nor his profession is ever specified) with a literary bent, who looks to Edgar Allan Poe for inspi-

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ration while seeking revenge on his wife, Louise, and her lover, George Parker, the handyman who tends to more than just their summer house while Logan is at his business in town during the weekdays. Asking George to wall up an opening in the cellar with quick-drying cement, he then tells the terrified man that he has just suffocated a bound and gagged Louise, and after making sure the police subsequently see her alive, which will provide him with an alibi and send George to a madhouse, Logan tears open the wall and consigns Louise to the exact fate he described. As filmed, however, Bloch’s grim original becomes merely the final act in a macabre comedy, with Edward Andrews in a characteristically zesty performance as Frank Logan, a dealer in rare books who uses his “good imagination” and literary inspirations to rid himself of not only his wife’s two lovers but also anyone who might be able to bring him to justice. His first victim, Randy Hagen (William Allyn), is killed with an antique battle-ax taken from his own wall in a simulated burglary, and when Louise (Patricia Barry) tells her brother, Arnold Chase (Britt Lomond), that she suspects Logan, allegedly attending a book dealer’s convention in Philadelphia at the time, Arnold hires a private eye, Joe Thorp (Ken Lynch). Logan then disposes of both Thorp, who tries to blackmail him after cracking his alibi, and Arnold with a bottle of poisoned liquor, but in a newly ironic twist ending, once Logan has walled up Louise, the Sheriff ( Jim Bannon) arrives with George (Ed Nelson, echoing his obnoxious “other man” role in “The Cheaters”), hoping a look at her will snap him out of it. Meanwhile, back at the Hitchcock ranch, Bloch adapted “The Gloating Place” (5/16/61) from his own short story, which was published in 1959 in Rogue, a Playboy wannabe that employed such friends and fellow writers as Harlan Ellison and Frank M. Robinson, for which he also wrote a monthly column, “Basic Bloch.” Susan Harper (Susan Harrison), an unpopular student at Shamley High School — playfully named after Hitchcock’s own production company — decides to “make herself important” by fabricating a story about a man in a mask and gloves who tries to attack her in the park, an account which is dutifully investigated by the somewhat skeptical Lt. Palmer (Henry Brandt). Bumped from the headlines by a climbing accident that kills two fellow students, she renews interest in her story by strangling her romantic rival, Marjorie Stone (Marta Kristen, the future Judy Robinson on Lost in Space), only to have her father’s fears of a copycat criminal borne out when she goes to her “gloating place” in the park and is killed by a masked man. Harrison subsequently appeared as the Ballerina in the classic Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” (12/22/61), and is the mother of Darva Conger, who in February 2000 briefly became the ill-fated

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bride selected by comedian Rick Rockwell on the notorious, headline-making Fox fiasco Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Director Alan Crosland, Jr., had an equally interesting family history: a stage and silent film veteran, his father and namesake had directed both the first feature with synchronized music, Don Juan (1926), and the first talkie, The Jazz Singer (1927), for Warner Brothers before dying in a car crash in 1936, while his mother was silent star Elaine Hammerstein. Before beginning his prolific television career, which also included episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as Men into Space, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and The Sixth Sense, Crosland had been a Hollywood editor since the mid–1940s, and his final credits in that capacity included one of Harrison’s few feature films, Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Herschel Daugherty directed Bloch’s next four Thriller teleplays, starting with “The Grim Reaper” (6/13/61), starring a veritable “who’s who” of previous Bloch-based episodes: Shatner and Elizabeth Allen from “The Hungry Glass,” Daniell and Paul Newlan from “The Cheaters,” and Robert Cornthwaite from “The Devil’s Ticket.” Bloch told Alan Warren that when he loosely adapted Harold Lawlor’s short story “The Black Madonna,” which was first published in the May 1947 issue of Weird Tales, “The Grim Reaper” (in the short story, it’s a Madonna portrait that sheds tears) was, as you say, just a taking-off point for what ended up as my teleplay. Somehow the original concept didn’t fit my image of what a Thriller episode should be, so I replaced the sad Madonna and her sighs with [a portrait of ] the Grim Reaper and his [blood-dripping] scythe. And to anyone who affects to sneer at the pun, let me say that this is exactly how I got the idea — by word (or in this case, sound) association. I’m susceptible to influence from rhyme or assonance, and think this is true of most writers.

Once again, Daniell appears in the prologue, this time as Pierre Radin, who in 1848 finds that his son Henri has hanged himself just after completing the titular canvas; a century later, Paul Graves (Shatner) warns its latest owner, his Aunt Beatrice (Natalie Schafer of Gilligan’s Island fame), that the painting bleeds before each owner meets a violent death. An eccentric, publicity-hungry mystery writer, Bea laughs off the curse, as does her fifth husband, television actor Gerald Keller (Scott Merrill), from whom Paul eagerly solicits an autograph, although Gerald has eyes for her secretary, Dorothy Linden (Allen), who repels his advances, and soon the alcoholic Aunt Bea is found dead at the bottom of the staircase. Sgt. Bernstein (Newlan) deems her death accidental, yet Dorothy suspects Gerald, especially when Bea’s lawyer, Phillips (Cornthwaite), reveals that he inherits her entire estate, but the real culprit is Paul, who poisons Gerald after duping him into “autographing” his

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own suicide note and will inherit as Bea’s only living relative, only to fall victim to the curse himself. From “The Weird Tailor” (10/16/61) on, Bloch adapted his own material on Thriller, in this case a story published in Weird Tales in July 1950, and according to Alan Warren, he “expanded the story line and added characters, including Nicolai and Madame Roberti (and also worked in his own forbidden volume De Vermis Mysteriis [Mysteries of the Worm]).” Gary Clarke, who had played the teenage werewolf (replacing Michael Landon from AIP’s eponymous 1957 film) opposite Robert H. Harris in How to Make a Monster, appears in the prologue as the drunken young Arthur Smith, who sets the story in motion when he literally stumbles into a black magic ritual performed by his father (George Macready) and is killed. Seeking to bring him back, the wealthy Smith visits a blind fortune teller, Madame Roberti (Iphigenie Castiglioni), and in turn is sent to Nicolai (Abraham Sofaer), a dealer in used cars under the sobriquet of “Honest Abe,” who for a million dollars sells Smith one of only three remaining copies of De Vermis Mysteriis, which contains the sorcerous spell he will require. Character actor Henry Jones, whose many memorable film roles include the sarcastic coroner in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), plays the titular tailor, Erik Borg, who is hounded by creditors and abusive to his neglected wife, Anna (Sondra Kerr), and to whom Smith offers $500— on delivery — to make a suit using a strange, colorless fabric and precise instructions. While he works by hand, only at certain specified dates and times, the pathetic Anna turns to a tailor’s dummy with a cracked head, which she has dubbed Hans (embodied by an unbilled mime, Dikki Lerner), as her only friend, but by the time Borg brings him the suit, Smith has exhausted all his wealth in his efforts to revive Arthur, whose frozen body Borg discovers. Believing Smith is a murderer, the terrified tailor stabs him when he tries to take the suit by force and orders Anna to burn it before he goes out and gets drunk, returning to find that she has placed it on Hans instead, and as Borg attacks Anna, who plans to go to the police, Hans comes to life and kills him, telling Anna, “From now on, just you and I will be together.” A decade later, Bloch revamped the same story as a segment of Roy Ward Baker’s Asylum, one of three anthology films he scripted for Amicus, each based on a quartet of his published works and beginning with Torture Garden, directed by Baker’s fellow Hammer veteran, Academy Award–winning cinematographer Freddie Francis. The other segments, also based on stories from Weird Tales, included “Frozen Fear,” with Richard Todd as an adulterer who chops up his wife, only to be killed by the neatly wrapped portions of her frozen body, and “Lucy Comes to Stay,” a precursor to Psycho in which

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the murderous Lucy (Britt Ekland) is revealed as a figment of Charlotte Rampling’s imagination. Here allotted less than half the running time of a Thriller episode for “The Weird Tailor,” Bloch removed the elements he had hitherto added and reduced the tale to its essentials, with Peter Cushing — himself recently bereft of his beloved wife, Helen — as Mr. Smith and Barry Morse, best known for such series as The Fugitive and Space: 1999, as Bruno, the tailor. Oscar Homolka, an Academy Award nominee whose films ranged from Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936) to William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus (1961) and whose wife, Joan Tetzel, had appeared in “The Devil’s Ticket,” was the star of the memorable episode “Waxworks” (1/8/62), adapted by Bloch from a story published in the January 1939 issue of Weird Tales. Pierre Jacquelin (Homolka) is the proprietor of a waxworks depicting “fifty of the world’s most diabolical murderers,” where a young art student named Irene (Amy Fields) apparently falls victim to the figure of an executed killer, as does Sgt. Dane (Alan Baxter) when he begins to take a romantic interest in Pierre’s niece and assistant, Annette (Antoinette Bower). As with Sir Guy and the Ripper, Col. Andre Bertroux (Martin Kosleck) has followed a trail of waxworkrelated deaths for years, and only after he and Det. Mike Hudson (future Tarzan Ron Ely) also die does Lt. Bailey (Booth Colman) learn that the disguised Pierre killed for fresh blood to animate Annette, molded over the body of his wife, an executed murderess. Like “The Weird Tailor,” this episode was subsequently remade with Peter Cushing as a segment of an Amicus anthology film, The House That Dripped Blood, directed by Peter Duffell and adapted by Bloch from four of his published short stories, and once again the feature-film version was, of necessity, significantly shorter than its televised counterpart. Here, however, they are substantially different, with the former hewing much closer to his original story, as retired stockbroker Phillip Grayson (Cushing ) becomes obsessed with the hauntingly familiar figure of Salome holding the head of John the Baptist, which Jacquelin (Wolfe Morris) explains was modeled after his wife, executed for murdering his best friend. Neville Rogers ( Joss Ackland), an old friend and former romantic rival, visits Grayson and together they go to the waxworks, where Salome has the same effect on Rogers; ultimately, each man winds up with his head on the platter — as Bertroux did in the story — courtesy of Jacquelin, who had framed his adulterous wife and now jealously disposes of her “admirers.” However, Duffell told Mark A. Miller, author of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema, that he had substantially rewritten this segment, which as scripted by Bloch was closer to his Thriller teleplay:

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In a letter to Miller, Bloch countered, “I didn’t care for the improvements on ‘Waxworks’— with the emphasis on the Peter Cushing’s [sic] character’s yearning for his lost love and the subordination of the role of the waxworks proprietor. The version I wrote for Thriller ... was — I think — much stronger. Oscar Homolka was memorable as the waxworks keeper” (Miller 234). The Amicus “Waxworks” was bookended by “Method for Murder” (published in Fury in 1962), in which writer Denholm Elliott believes his fictive strangler has come to life, and “Sweets to the Sweet” (Weird Tales, March 1947), with Christopher Lee as a cold, neglectful father whose daughter (Chloe Franks) makes a voodoo doll of him and throws it into the fire. Interestingly, when writing the last and best-known segment, “The Cloak,” Bloch apparently drew from his Hitchcock teleplay “The Greatest Monster of Them All” as well as his story, published in Unknown in May of 1939, in which the illfated Stephen Henderson purchases a “genuine” vampire cloak for a Halloween party in the sinister shop of an unnamed costumer. The movie’s Paul Henderson ( Jon Pertwee) is a horror star who wants realism in the cheap films he is forced to make, echoing Ernst von Kroft in the earlier script, and after buying the cloak from Theo Von Hartmann (Geoffrey Bayldon, who also appeared in Asylum), he comes to believe it is turning him into a vampire and even bites his co-star, Carla (Ingrid Pitt). Bloch did give Duffell credit in his autobiography “for deftly turning the final segment into a send-up of my vampire story, ‘The Cloak,’ and thereby improving it a hundred percent” (Once Around the Bloch 353). The voluptuous and vivacious Pitt starred in Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula that same year, and is perfectly cast as Carla, who later dons the cloak and sprouts fangs herself, telling the terrified Paul before she bites him, “We loved your films so much, we wanted you to become one of us forever. Welcome to the club!” Himself an actor, John Newland directed “Bad Actor” (1/9/62), an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents adapted by Bloch from a story by Max Franklin, and had served in the same capacity for all ninety-four episodes of ABC’s allegedly fact-based supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond (aka Alcoa Presents, 1959–61), which he also hosted. Airing the night after “Wax-

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works,” it starred Robert Duvall in one of his first roles — more than a year before his Twilight Zone episode “Miniature” (2/21/63)— as alcoholic actor Bart Collins, who gets carried away during an altercation with Jerry Lane (Charles Robinson), his rival for both a plum upcoming role and the affections of Marjorie Rogers (Carole Eastman). Like the adulterous actor getting too far into character in “Method for Murder,” he strangles Jerry, dissolving the body with acid, but when Lt. Gunderson (William Schallert) comes to his apartment to question him, Bart’s suspicious behavior leads him to discover Jerry’s head in the ice bucket, echoing Emlyn Williams’s twice-filmed Gothic stageplay, Night Must Fall. Henry Jones returned in the leading role of undertaker Carl Somers in “’Til Death Do Us Part” (3/12/62), and even more than “A Good Imagination,” Bloch’s three-page original story, published in the January 1960 issue of Bestseller Mystery, was but the merest acorn from which a more elaborate Thriller teleplay grew, with the story serving as a twist ending. Carl’s wife, Abbie (Frances Morris), learns that he has corresponded through a matrimonial bureau with Celia Hooper (Reta Shaw), so he strangles her and heads out West to wed Celia, only to find that she not only is grossly obese but also comes complete with a suspicious brother, Elmer (Philip Ober), and a sisterin-law, Myrtle ( Jocelyn Brando, sister of Marlon). Daugherty’s droll direction matches the material as Carl blackmails a shady sawbones, Dr. O’Connor (Edgar Buchanan), into giving him some ineffectual poison, then strangles Celia and conceals her in a coffin beneath Myrtle when the latter dies suddenly, but later the Marshal ( Jim Davis) says that Elmer may have murdered Myrtle, so he must exhume her. Many pinpoint Newland’s “Pigeons from Hell” (6/6/61), adapted by John Kneubuhl from a story by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan and Kull (which had been published posthumously in the May 1938 issue of Weird Tales), as not only the finest episode of Thriller but also the single most frightening story ever done on television. Stephen King offered a dissenting opinion in Danse Macabre: My own nominee for that honor would be the final episode of a little-remembered program called Bus Stop (adapted from the William Inge play and film). The series, a straight drama show [for which Inge was also the script supervisor], was canceled following the furore over an episode starring then rock star Fabian Forte as a psychopathic rapist — the episode [“A Lion Walks Among Us” (12/3/61)] was based on a Tom Wicker novel. The final episode, however, deviated wildly into the supernatural, and for me, Robert Bloch’s adaptation of his own short story “I Kiss Your Shadow” [3/25/62] has never been beaten on TV — and rarely anywhere else — for eerie, mounting horror [King 227].

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In his autobiography, Bloch related that when his agent arranged a screening of the pilot for a proposed series entitled Nightmare, he was surprised to see that it was an adaptation of “I Kiss Your Shadow,” which had debuted in the March 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and been included in his Arkham House collection Pleasant Dreams. Twentieth Century–Fox had bought the story directly from [August] Derleth, and was under the impression that he owned theatrical rights to everything that Arkham House [which he co-founded] ever published. That was definitely not the case, and Gordon Molson exhibited my original contracts as proof. The studio offered an embarrassed apology and a thousand dollars for the use or misuse of my story. What they offered to Derleth I wasn’t told, and he never offered an explanation. Suffice it to say that Nightmare didn’t become a series [Once Around the Bloch 257].

Pace King, the Bus Stop episode was actually adapted by Barry Trivers, a prolific if undistinguished screenwriter in the 1930s and ’40s, and interpolated the recurring characters of Sheriff Will Mayberry (Rhodes Reason) and D.A. Glenn Wagner (Richard Anderson) into Bloch’s tale of Joe Elliot (George Grizzard) and his fiancée, Donna Gibson ( Joanne Linville). After the possessive Donna is killed in a car accident with Joe driving, he tells her brother, Doug (Alfred Ryder), that her “shadow” has begun visiting him in the cottage where they were to live, and although he makes some progress with a psychiatrist, Dr. Barton (Stefan Schnabel), the haunted young man soon loses his job and begs Doug, “Make her stay dead!” When Barton plunges to his death from his office window, Doug deduces that Joe pushed him because he got too close to the truth, and after admitting that he felt smothered and killed Donna with a wrench, Joe runs to the cemetery and is found dead, slumped over her casket (which, in the story, also contains a newborn infant apparently conceived after death). Coincidentally, Newland also directed that standout episode, as well as Bloch’s final Thriller teleplay, “Man of Mystery” (4/2/62), but while it is credited as “based on his story,” Bloch told Alan Warren, “Man of Mystery” was written at a time when eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was very much in the news. I’d already written a short story [“Show Biz,” published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1959] predicting that actors might be chosen and groomed as political leaders (which, of course, came true!) but then I got to wondering why the same setup couldn’t apply to financial tycoons.... So instead of writing another short story, I chose to present this one as a teleplay. And that’s how “Man of Mystery” was born.

In the prologue, public relations man Harry Laxer (William Phipps) finishes an exposé of his secretive former employer, the “international playboy and

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financier” Joel Stone, but before Laxer can deliver it to the publisher, he and the manuscript of Man of Mystery are both burned by an unseen assailant. Later seen in Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969), John van Dreelen is Stone, whose “faithful shadow” is the deaf-mute Lucas (Walter Burke), and who buys a nightclub run by Rudy (Ken Lynch of “A Good Imagination”), hoping to make singer Sherry Smith (Mary Tyler Moore, then in her first season as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show) his next conquest. Small-time comic Lou Waters (William Windom), who loves and fears for Sherry, visits Jill Naylor (Mercedes Shirley), hoping that Stone’s erstwhile inamorata can talk some sense into her, but Jill too is killed before she can blow the whistle on Stone, and the magnate invites Sherry to fly to Mexico with him after picking up a “retirement fund” at his hunting lodge. There he is killed by Lucas, who suddenly speaks to reveal that he is Joel Stone, having hired a charming and attractive actor to front for him, and when Lou breaks in to confront him he observes, “we three are all that’s left that know the secret”; soon, Lucas and “Harlan Croft” (Lou) are running the company, after Sherry reportedly killed Stone and then herself. Like the previous season’s “The Gloating Place,” Bloch’s “The Big Kick” (6/19/62) was also directed for Alfred Hitchcock Presents by Alan Crosland, Jr., and based on another of his stories published in Rogue in 1959, which served as a not-too-subtle satire on the so-called “beat generation,” with its hip dialogue and its free-living and -loving protagonists. Two beatniks, Mitch and Judy, live only for the sexual thrills they call “the big kick,” until he needs money to go to the Coast and join a combo, so he suggests that Judy get friendly with a well-off “square” named Kenny, but when the diamond bracelet he gives her turns out to be stolen and Mitch is arrested, Judy learns that Kenny gets his “big kick” with a knife. The Hitchcock version — Bloch’s last to be broadcast in the half-hour format — stuck to the story faithfully, and featured Anne Helm (who had played Lisa in “The Changing Heart”) as Judy Baker, minor sagebrush star Brian Hutton as Mitch, and Wayne Rogers, best known as Capt. John F.X. (Trapper John) McIntire on the first three seasons of M*A*S*H, as Ken. Originally scheduled as Hitchcock’s seventh-season opener on October 3, 1961, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is perhaps the most memorable entry in the television career of Polish director Josef Leytes (variously credited as Joseph Leytes, Joseph Lejtes, or Józef Lejtes), a filmmaker in his native country prior to World War II and in Israel immediately afterwards. An Academy Award nominee for Shane (1953) and the star of “Pigeons from Hell,” Brandon De Wilde plays Hugo, a retarded runaway orphan who is taken in by the kindly carnival magician Victor Sadini (David J. Stewart), and quickly comes to

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revere Sadini’s tart-tongued wife and assistant, Irene (British bombshell Diana Dors), whom Hugo regards as an angel. The less-than-angelic Irene is carrying on with the high-wire artist, George (Larry Kert), and persuades Hugo that the Satanic-looking Sadini really is the Devil, but after stabbing him the well-meaning youth accidentally knocks Irene unconscious and, believing that Sadini’s wand has given him “the Power,” decides to prove it by sawing her in half, with gruesome results. Bloch’s first teleplay for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Annabel” (11/1/62) reunited Dean Stockwell and director Paul Henreid from “The Landlady,” as well as featuring a return engagement by Henry Brandt of “The Gloating Place,” and like Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), it was also based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Sweet Sickness. Chemist David Kelsey (Stockwell) refuses to accept that his relationship with Annabel (Susan Oliver) is over now that she has married Gerald Delaney (Brandt), and posing as “William Newmaster” he buys a house in the country as a surprise for her, where David’s Manhattan roommate, Wes Carmichael (Gary Cockrell), believes he is visiting his father on weekends. Learning the address from David’s co-worker, Linda (Kathleen Nolan), Gerald warns him at gunpoint to stop pestering Annabel, but “Newmaster” kills him, telling the Sheriff (Bert Remsen) that he was a drunken intruder, and then lures Annabel there, strangling her when she has learned the truth so that they may enjoy their beautiful house together forever. “A Home Away from Home” (9/27/63) was Bloch’s last Hitchcock teleplay to be based on his own work (a prize-winning story that had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1961), and the only one directed by Daugherty, with Ray Milland now moving in front of the camera. The wife of filmmaker Sydney Pollack, Claire Griswold appeared with Robert Duvall in “Miniature” and here stars as Natalie Rivers, who arrives from Australia at the Norton Sanatorium, little dreaming that Dr. Howard Fenwick (Milland), himself a patient, has just strangled her uncle and only relative, Dr. Norton (Ben Wright), whom she has never met. Unlike the reader, the viewer knows her predicament at the outset as Fenwick impersonates Norton, saying, “Give [a mental patient] a role to play in real life and he’ll accept the challenge,” and puts his own book Permissive Therapy into practice, presenting Miss Gibson (Virginia Gregg), Martha (Connie Gilchrist), and Nicky Long ( Jack Searl) as his staff. Discovering Norton’s body in the dumbwaiter and his assistant, Andrew (Peter Leeds), in a cell upstairs, Natalie learns the truth at last and, accompanied by a beautiful Bernard Herrmann score, escapes her literary counterpart’s grim fate when “Inspector” Roberts (Brendan Dillan) takes his assigned role too seriously and alerts his colleagues in the police.

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Allen Warren writes in This Is a Thriller, When Thriller left the air in July 1962, the most immediate and obvious beneficiary was the venerable Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This show promptly moved from NBC to CBS, expanded to a full 60 minutes, and was retitled The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Its stories became noticeably more macabre.... Ironically, the show that Thriller had once patterned itself after now seemed like an imitation. Many episodes were notable ventures into the supernatural virtually indistinguishable from Thriller. “The Sign of Satan,” scripted by Robert Bloch and based on his story “Return to the Sabbath” [Weird Tales, July 1938], featured Christopher Lee as a European horror star reluctant to make his American debut because of a cult bent on killing him. It was an atmospheric episode with a memorably creepy denouement.

In fact, Brahm’s work on the Hitchcock series predated Thriller, and that story, like “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” was adapted by Barré Lyndon. “The Sign of Satan” (5/8/64) was directed by Robert Douglas, an English actor who had himself appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and in a notable case of life imitating art, his countryman Lee was now making his own American debut. Soon after arriving in Hollywood, Lee recalled in his memoir Tall, Dark and Gruesome, the phone rang and I heard an English voice I knew, the actor Bob Douglas who was often a heavy in remakes in the Prisoner of Zenda class. I was surprised.... He said we’d be seeing a lot of each other in the next two weeks. I was even more surprised. Then he explained, “I’m directing the film.” “Isn’t Alfred Hitchcock directing it?” I asked. “Good heavens, no!” laughed Bob.... “He’s only the host.... He never directs [sic]. He has a staff of directors, and I’m one.” After the immediate pang, I thought this would be fine, and never had cause to reverse my opinion. One day ... as I was cycling from the stage to the commissary a large black Cadillac went by, and behind its tinted glass I could see Hitchcock.... He was real. That was all I needed to know. Altogether, that was a good day. [Lee 193–5].

Actress Kitty (Gia Scala), director Max Rubini (Gilbert Green), assistant Ed Walsh (Adam Roarke), and public relations man Dave Connor (Myron Healey) view footage from an obscure Austrian film financed by a cult, in which former stage actor Karl Jorla (Lee) is resurrected by devil worshippers, installed as their arch-priest, and then killed once again by his own acolytes. An Academy Award nominee for The Country Girl (1954), who later shot Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), John F. Warren provides suitably atmospheric photography for these scenes, reminiscent of those in Lee’s memorable British chiller City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel, 1960), which helps to offset the overly familiar, uncredited stock score. Both Jorla and his director, Fritz Ohmmen, have been hiding out in

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Paris since they made the film, which the cult never intended to be seen publicly, and Ohmmen, who sold a pirated copy of it to Dave, warns him to be careful where he shows it for fear of reprisals, but Max, determined to use Jorla in his next horror movie, has him brought to Hollywood. Lee, whose German credits include the title role in Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, 1962), affects an acceptable accent as Jorla, shunning publicity that would reveal his location and insisting that the sign of Satan, soon found branded on Ohmmen’s strangled body in a Paris attic, is genuine and ubiquitous. Jorla vanishes after an attempt on his life, yet reappears when Max tries to shoot around him and Kitty conjures his character of “Baron Ulmo” (in a slow-motion shot worthy of the great Mario Bava), murmuring an address in Topanga Canyon, but when the negative is developed he is nowhere to be seen, and at the address the police find his body, dead for three days. After being turned down by the editors of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and several others, Bloch’s story “Water’s Edge” was published in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine in 1956; amusingly, it was not only included in the anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV the following year but also, perhaps inevitably, done on TV ... for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Scripted by Alfred Hayes, who shared Oscar nominations for Paisà (1946) and Teresa (1951), “Water’s Edge” (10/19/64) was directed by feature-film veteran Bernard Girard, as was Matheson’s “Ride the Nightmare” (11/29/62). Later the sinister husband in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and a three-time Academy Award nominee (once each as director, writer, and supporting actor), John Cassavetes is well cast as convict Rusty Connors, whose cellmate Mike Krause (Rayford Barnes) killed his best friend, Pete, in a payroll heist and waxes rhapsodic about his wife, Helen, a blonde beauty. Just before dying of pneumonia, Mike reveals that the money is still with Pete, whose body was never found, so upon his release Rusty tries to track down the payroll by seeking out Helen, yet as played by fifty-five-year-old Ann Sothern, a fellow nominee for The Whales of August (1987), the fat, frowsy waitress in a small-town diner is hardly what he expected. Backed by a Herrmann score similar to that in Vertigo, he seduces Helen to secure her help, but after finding the money and Pete’s skeleton in a rat-infested boathouse they turn on each other, leaving Helen — who had deliberately let herself go in order to camouflage her eventual departure — dead with a boathook in her back and Rusty bound and gagged, awaiting the rats. John Brahm’s only Bloch-related episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Final Performance” (1/18/65) was adapted by Clyde Ware, dropping the ini-

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tial article “the” from Bloch’s title, and starred Franchot Tone, an Oscar nominee for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) who would die of lung cancer in 1968, as crusty old ex-vaudevillian “Rudolph the Great.” Best known to genre fans for Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and The Return of Count Yorga (1971), Roger Perry is Cliff Allen, a television writer flagged down en route to Hollywood by the underaged Rosie (Sharon Farrell), although she denies asking for a ride when he is stopped by the Sheriff (Kelly Thordsen), whereupon Cliff ’s ailing auto promptly packs it in. While it is fixed he checks into a motel, where Rosie works for the possessive Rudolph and begs Cliff to take her away, but when she fails to make their rendezvous he confronts her in Rudolph’s makeshift theater, and after Rosie professes her love for Rudolph and sends Cliff away, we see that “the world’s greatest ventriloquist” has turned her into a grisly “dummy.” Best known for Alland’s This Island Earth, Hollywood veteran Joseph M. Newman directed “The Second Wife” (4/26/65), which Bloch based on a story by Richard Denning, with June Lockhart, later Marta Kristen’s mother on Lost in Space, as mail-order bride Martha Hunter and John Anderson, the used car salesman in Psycho, as her husband, Luke. Finding her new home both literally and figuratively cold, Martha is unnerved to learn that she had a predecessor who died mysteriously while visiting Luke’s relatives, and even more so when she finds a coffin-shaped box concealed in the garage and hears her miserly husband digging at all hours in the locked cellar, so she buys a gun to protect herself from him. Martha’s fears seem justified when Luke abruptly suggests that they visit his relatives, and demands that she take a look at what he’s been working on down in the basement before they go, but after the terrified woman shoots her apparently homicidal husband, she descends into the cellar at last and finds the brand-new furnace that Luke intended as a wedding present. The final episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Off Season” (5/10/65), was adapted by Bloch from a story by Edward Hoch, and marked both a beginning and ending of sorts, as it was among the first directorial credits of William Friedkin, later an Academy Award winner for The French Connection (1971) and a nominee for The Exorcist (1973). “Bill [Friedkin] often says that it was Hitchcock who discovered him, but that was plainly not the case,” as Norman Lloyd, who by then had become the show’s executive producer, told John McCarty and Brian Kelleher in Alfred Hitchcock Presents. “I hired Bill Friedkin after seeing a documentary he made at a Chicago TV station about a convicted murderer named Crump. Joe Wizan, an agent at MCA [Universal’s parent company], brought him to my attention, and I assigned him to direct ‘Open [sic] Season,’ one of the last Hitchcocks, with John

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Gavin, our [then] present ambassador to Mexico.” Gavin, of course, is best known as Sam Loomis, the lover (and posthumous brother-in-law) of the illfated Marion Crane in Psycho. Here, he plays Johnny Kendall, a big-city cop who loses his job because of his itchy trigger finger and moves with his girlfriend, Sandy (Indus Arthur), to a small resort town, where Sheriff Dade (Tom Drake) hires him as his new deputy, albeit one forbidden to wear a gun and relegated to checking on empty summer homes during their eponymous off-season. Learning that the previous deputy was fired for carrying on with women in one of those homes, Johnny begins to suspect that he is having an affair with Sandy, and after strapping on his prohibited pistol and finding the ex-deputy dallying in the dark, he kills them both, only to discover that the woman was not Sandy but Sheriff Dade’s wife, Irma (Dody Heath). Sadly, none of the Bloch-related episodes were among the eighteen that Hitchcock himself directed for his anthology show, and a subsequent attempt at collaboration on a feature film foundered as well after he offered Bloch an open-ended contract to develop a story with him in the mid– 1960s, as Stephen Rebello relates in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. Rebello writes: Hitchcock summoned ... Bloch to hatch a successor to Psycho. Bloch met Hitchcock to discuss the director’s notion to graft elements of the real-life murder cases of seductive British murderers Haigh and Christie of the forties onto an original suspense narrative that might form a long-hoped-for “prequel” to the classic Shadow of a Doubt ... Bloch — by that time the recipient of an “Edgar” Award from The Mystery Writers of America for Psycho, and a prolific screenwriter — found himself unable to agree to the terms of Hitchcock’s contract. The arrangement proposed by Hitchcock meant that Bloch was to be paid only when and if he were to come up with an approach that pleased the director. Bloch moved on. No one dared reject Hitchcock. When the writer’s name came across Hitchcock’s desk on a short list of writers for a later project, the director wrote next to it: “Too many pictures for William Castle”— a reference to the director for whom Bloch had written Strait-Jacket, a low-budget shocker featuring Joan Crawford as an apparent axe-murderess [188].

Directed by John Rich and adapted by Stephen Kandel from Bloch’s story of the same name, “There Was a Little Girl” (4/6/66) was a first-season episode of the groundbreaking show I Spy, in which Bill Cosby became the first black actor on American television ever to star in a dramatic series, playing Alexander Scott opposite Robert Culp as Kelly Robinson. According to an episode guide on I Spy— The Definitive Site (http://i-spy.150m.com/), “Scott and Robinson are assigned to play babysitter for the teenage daughter [played by Mary Jane Saunders, who was actually in her early twenties at the

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time] of an American VIP during her Mexican vacation. Trouble finds them all when she buys a pre–Colombian mask at a gift store originally destined for New York, USA. What is in the mask which would cause such panic and why would the pursuers want to give the girl a painful yet humiliating death?” Bloch also reportedly wrote one or more teleplays for Run for Your Life, another adventure series that ran concurrently with I Spy (1965–68) on the same network, NBC, and starred Ben Gazzara. In 1966, Bloch accepted an invitation to work with Shatner, producer Gene Roddenberry, and story editor Dorothy Fontana on their new series Star Trek; Fontana had previously been the secretary to Sam Peeples, who scripted the show’s second pilot. The late James Goldstone had helmed that pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (9/22/66), and in Cinefantastique’s thirtieth anniversary tribute to the series, Robin Brunet wrote, “When the pilot sold, Roddenberry wanted Goldstone to remain ‘part of the Star Trek team,’ but Goldstone politely declined — a career in feature films was about to take off. Goldstone did return during year one, as a favor to Roddenberry, to guide [Bloch’s] ‘What Are Little Girls Made Of?’ [10/20/66] out of troubled production waters, but doesn’t care to elaborate on the nature of the troubles or recall ‘a single shooting day of it’” (44). Roddenberry’s future wife, Majel Barrett, was cast as “Number One,” the second in command of the Enterprise, in the show’s abortive and unaired first pilot, “The Cage” (later incorporated into the two-part episode “The Menagerie”), and after being displaced by Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) at the network’s insistence, she returned as Nurse Christine Chapel. In “What Are Little Girls Made Of ?,” the crew locates her fiancé, medical archaeologist Roger Korby (Michael Strong), on the frigid planet Exo-III, where he reported finding underground ruins left by its former inhabitants before losing contact five years ago, and giant Ruk (Ted Cassidy) kills the first of the show’s ill-fated “red shirts,” Matthews (Vince Deadrick) and Rayburn (Budd Albright). Kirk and Chapel are welcomed by Korby, his assistant Dr. Brown (Harry Basch), and the attractive Andrea (former child star Sherry Jackson, the stepdaughter of Twilight Zone director Montgomery Pittman), but when Brown forbids them at gunpoint to contact the ship, he is shot with a phaser by Kirk and revealed to be an android, as is the indigenous Ruk. Using the records of the “Old Ones,” who left Ruk tending their machinery centuries ago, he and Korby built Brown and Andrea, and Korby assures the jealous Chapel that the latter has no emotions before demonstrating the alien technology by creating an android duplicate of Kirk, which interacts with the original by way of a seamless split-screen effect. Kirk had, of course, come face-to-face with himself before when a transporter malfunction divided

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him into his good and evil selves in Matheson’s “The Enemy Within” (10/6/66), but Korby now proposes to grant him effective immortality by transferring his consciousness into the emotionless android, an honor that the flesh-and-blood Kirk is none too eager to accept. Deducing that the Old Ones were killed by their own machines because their emotions were considered illogical and unacceptable, Kirk encourages Ruk to turn on Korby, who is forced to destroy him before being exposed as an android as well; convinced of their inferiority to humans when Andrea mistakenly slays the faux Kirk, he sacrifices them both with a phaser. Perhaps understandably, Barrett who played Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation and also gave voice to the ship’s computer, was dismissive of her new character, noting in her commentary for the Sci-Fi Channel’s Special Edition of this episode: I’ve never been a real aficionado of Nurse Chapel. I figure she was kind of weak and namby-pamby. I mean after all, here she was a doctor, and in order to find a lost fiancé she takes a reduction in rank and pay and signs on board this ship and goes out to find her fiancé. She finds him, he turns out to be an android, now he’s not going to do her any good. She immediately signs on board this ship again for another five-year mission ... falls in love with a Vulcan who only comes in heat once every seven years [as revealed in “Amok Time” (9/15/67)]— now, this woman is a loser! ... I kind of reject women who are that way ... in real life....

A former stage and screen actor who had appeared in Joan Harrison’s production of Nocturne (1946), Joseph Pevney went on to direct many films for Universal-International during the 1950s, most notably the histrionic Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), and a baker’s dozen episodes of Star Trek, including Bloch’s two remaining scripts. “Catspaw” (10/27/67) was the first episode produced during Star Trek’s second season, although its broadcast was delayed until just before Halloween, and marked the introduction of the youth-oriented navigator Ens. Pavel Chekov, played by Walter Koenig, who at that time was wearing a wig while his hair grew to its more recognizable Monkees-style length. Emerging from the corpse of crewman Jackson ( Jimmy Jones), beamed back on board from a landing party to Pyris VII that included Chief Engineer Scott ( James Doohan) and Helmsman Sulu (George Takei), a disembodied voice intones to Kirk and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley), “There is a curse on your ship. Leave this place or you will all die.” Beaming down to the planet’s fog-swept surface with Spock, Kirk and McCoy are again warned away by three witches (Rhodie Cogan, Gail Bonney, and Maryesther Denver), dismissed as illusory by Spock, and enter the castle that is the source of the lifeform readings they are tracing, where they

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follow a black cat and fall into a dungeon, awakening in chains. Released by entranced “catspaws” Scotty and Sulu, they find themselves in the presence of Korob (Theodore Marcuse), who conjures up items with a “transmuter” wand and converses with the cat, in reality his sensation-seeking colleague Sylvia (Antoinette Bower, also seen in “Waxworks”), and her sympathetic magic seals the Enterprise in an impenetrable force field. The aliens, who also invoke the Old Ones, try to force the captives to reveal their scientific secrets, while Spock theorizes that they have inadvertently tapped into the universal myths of our racial subconscious, and when Sylvia menaces them as the nowgiant cat, Kirk destroys the transmuter, banishing the illusions and returning the aliens to their true, dying forms. Barrett’s metamorphosis from Number One to nurse was not the only distaff demotion in Star Trek history. As Sue Uram noted in her Cinefantastique episode guide to the series, Looking at the chain of command in this episode, there is a question of who was next in line. With Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott and Sulu on the planet, Uhura should be the next in line. D.C. Fontana once said that, as the script supervisor, she had tried to put Uhura in command of the ship while all the other regulars, except Ensign Chekov, were on the planet Pyris VII ... but was not allowed to do so. The producers promoted semi-regular, Lt. DeSalle [Mike Barrier] to the position of Assistant Chief Engineer for the purpose of having him outrank Uhura. Roddenberry did not include a communications officer among the proposed regular characters in the format and Uhura did not appear in either of the pilot episodes [65].

Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) debuted in Sohl’s superb “The Corbomite Maneuver” (11/10/66), directed by Joseph Sargent, which was the first episode produced after the second pilot. In addition to “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” Bloch also portrayed the character in his novel The Night of the Ripper and his Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold” (12/22/67), and credited Dorothy Fontana with not only suggesting the latter but also giving him considerable help with the teleplay. In his autobiography, he graciously added, “in the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve read about Star Trek since it became a cult phenomenon, I seldom saw a scriptwriter give credit to Dorothy or another member of the staff, though I know that in some instances the writers taking the bows lent little more than their names to the shooting script” (Once Around the Bloch 336). Sohl, in contrast, had his name replaced with the nom de plume of Nathan Butler on “This Side of Paradise” (3/2/67) after Fontana drastically rewrote his original submission, “The Way of the Spores.” Scotty is on therapeutic shore leave with Kirk and McCoy on the hedo-

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nistic planet of Argelius, trying to overcome a total resentment toward women since one caused an explosion that threw him against a bulkhead, and after Argelian dancer Kara (Tania Lemani) is killed, Scott — seemingly ill-fated while on terra firma — is found standing over her body with a knife. He remembers nothing, and chief city administrator Hengist ( John Fiedler), a native of Rigel IV, investigates to no avail, so the prefect, Jaris (Charles Macauley), plans to have his wife Sybo (Pilar Seurat) use her ancient ancestral gift of Argelian empathic contact to reveal the past, and Kirk has Lt. Karen Tracy (Virginia Aldridge) beam down with a psycho-tricorder. She too is killed while conducting a “twenty-four hour regressive memory check” on Scott, who once again remembers nothing and is the most likely suspect, notwithstanding Kara’s jealous fiancé Morla (Charles Dierkop), and Kirk rejects Spock’s suggestion that they use the ship’s computer to learn the truth, preferring to let the case be resolved by Argelian law. Before becoming the next victim, Sybo senses “fear, anger, hatred. Anger feeds the flame. Oh, oh, there is evil here, monstrous, terrible evil, consuming hunger, hatred of all that lives, hatred of women, a hunger that never dies. It is strong, overpowering, an ancient terror. It has a name — Boradis, Kesla, Redjac — devouring all life, all light.... Redjac!” Agreeing at last to use its technology, Hengist and Jaris beam aboard the Enterprise, where the computer informs them that Redjac (Red Jack) was another name for the Ripper, actually a formless alien entity that subsists on the emotions of others, specifically fear, a mass of energy consisting of a highly cohesive electromagnetic field that can assume physical form. A series of Ripper murders stretches through time and space from Victorian London to Rigel IV, exposing Hengist as the killer, but when subdued he collapses and Redjac takes over the computer, trying to terrorize the crew by threatening all manner of destruction, until driven back into Hengis with an insoluble math problem and dispersed in space with the transporter. Like Serling before him, Roddenberry was determined when launching Star Trek to use the finest fantasy/SF writers as contributors, and in addition to Ellison and the usual suspects of the “Matheson Mafia” these included Jerome Bixby, whose story “It’s a Good Life” became a memorable Twilight Zone episode, and genre giant Theodore Sturgeon. But as the Enterprise’s “five-year mission” (truncated to three by the show’s cancellation in 1969) wore on, the involvement of these luminaries lessened and Bloch became increasingly disenchanted, later telling Dennis Fischer in Cinefantastique, I rewrote all three shows as is accustomed in second draft.... I understand from what George Clayton Johnson [whose Star Trek teleplay “The Man Trap” (9/8/66) was the first to be broadcast] said that on the final episode I did ...

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they wanted a rewrite and they called George in, asked him if he could make certain changes in it, and he flatly refused. So that was it for any changes in the rewrite; nothing was done by George or anyone else.... [Television executives], by and large, are not themselves creative. They don’t write, they don’t direct ... their only function is an executive one.... Now I ask you ... suppose you were in one of those 27 slots? You were getting scripts daily, and you read them, and you say, “That’s very good,” and you pass it on. After a month, don’t you think somebody above you would say, “What do we need this yo-yo for? All he’s doing is saying, ‘Yeah, I like it.’” So they have to make a meaningful contribution in the form of some kind of criticism ... [99].

Hammer Films owed much of its early success to theatrical adaptations of television series and serials, but as Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio note in their invaluable Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Checklist: Because of Hammer’s success at the box office, there was really no need until the late sixties for the company to become seriously involved in television. However, Hammer’s success in the theatres began to wane ... and the company’s association with 20th Century–Fox led to the production of a television series, Journey to the Unknown.... [T]he series went into production at Elstree Studios and lasted through most of 1968. In all, seventeen stories were filmed.... The episodes ... premiered on the ABC network on September 26, 1968. The series ran until January 30, 1969, but made little impact in America [389].

Harrison invited Bloch to London, where he adapted “The Indian Spirit Guide” (10/10/68) from his own story and “Girl of My Dreams” (12/26/68) from one by Matheson. Peter Sasdy directed the latter and other episodes, as did Alan Gibson before they graduated to feature films with Hammer’s Taste the Blood of Dracula and Crescendo (both 1969), respectively; Robert Stevens and Hammer veterans Roy Ward Baker and Don Chaffey also contributed to the brief series. Later combined with Gibson’s “Poor Butterfly” (1/9/69) in the ersatz TV-movie Journey into Midnight, “The Indian Spirit Guide” was directed by Baker (later of Asylum) and features Julie Harris, an Academy Award nominee for Fred Zinnemann’s The Member of the Wedding (1952) and the star of Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), as Leona Gillings. Scheming secretary Joyce (Tracy Reed) persuades Leona to hire her lover, private eye Jerry Crown (Tom Adams, the strangler in “Method for Murder”), to help contact her late husband Howard, but after Jerry exposes cross-dressing “psychic sensitive” Mrs. Hubbard (Dennis Ramsden) and mystic Edward Chardur (Marne Maitland) as frauds, he aims to marry Leona. She meets medium Sarah Prinn (Catherine Lacey), an old acquaintance of Howard’s, and when Sarah’s Apache guide, Bright Arrow ( Julian Sherrier), appears during

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her séance and says that Howard wants to warn Leona against Jerry, who was only using her for her money, the skeptic tries to expose him and winds up dead with a trio of arrows in his chest. “Girl of My Dreams” was adapted by Bloch and television writer Michael J. Bird from a story that was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October of 1963; as Matheson, who had already written several screenplays for Hammer Films, mused in another interview with the author (published in Filmfax #75–76), “I don’t know why they didn’t let me do it, because it was an easy thing to adapt.” American actor Michael Callan, whose credits include the genre film Mysterious Island (1961), stars as unscrupulous photographer Greg Richards, who obtains money in exchange for specific information that will allow people to prevent various catastrophes, as revealed in precognitive dreams by his reluctant and emotionally dependent wife, Carrie (Zena Walker). When she dreams that the son of wealthy Mrs. Wheeler ( Jan Holden) will be run down by a van, Greg thinks he is onto the big score at last, but after the guilt-ridden Carrie gives Mrs. Wheeler the information for nothing, Greg fatally injures her during a violent altercation, only to learn with her dying breath of his own impending murder — date and time unknown. While he never wrote for The Twilight Zone, Bloch was ironically chosen to novelize the ill-fated 1983 feature-film version, which incorporated remakes of Johnson’s “Kick the Can” (2/9/62), Serling’s “It’s a Good Life” (11/3/61), and Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (10/11/63)— all scripted by Matheson himself— plus an original segment by John Landis. Bloch did contribute to Serling’s second anthology series, Night Gallery, basing “Logoda’s Heads” (12/29/71) on a story by Derleth, and would have been an obvious choice to adapt the work of their mutual mentor, but oddly enough, Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” (12/8/71) and “Pickman’s Model” (12/1/71) were scripted by Serling and Alvin Sapinsley, respectively. When the show was cut to thirty minutes for syndication, its multiple segments of varying length were often butchered or padded with miscellaneous footage, and in this case actor Tim Matheson (no relation to Richard) had to be brought in to record new narration, explaining the presence of several minutes from Curt Siodmak’s Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956). The syndicated version is an unbelievable mishmash, with Matheson explaining in a voiceover to the hilariously mismatched footage how the brother of his character, Henley, and a female colleague, Dr. Irene Winston (actually Beverly Garland in her Curucu role of Dr. Andrea Romar), disappeared on an expedition into jungle territory controlled by Logoda. The story proper begins as Henley and Maj. Crosby (Patrick Macnee) visit the witch

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doctor (Brock Peters), who claims that his shrunken heads have told him the missing anthropologist drowned in the river, and a young woman from the nearest village, Kyro (Denise Nicholas), tempts his wrath by revealing that the kindly white man was killed while seeking Logoda. Crosby and Henley take her to the residency for safety, but when they are summoned to his hut the next day they find Logoda’s torn body, and Kyro tells Henley, “I knew Logoda killed your brother, but I couldn’t prove it, so I have avenged him in my own way.... Logoda could make the heads speak, but my magic is stronger. You see, I know how to make them kill.” “Once a series has been cancelled, it’s like carrion,” lamented Jeannot Szwarc, who directed both “Cool Air” and “Logoda’s Heads,” in Mark Phillips and Frank Garcia’s Science Fiction Television Series. “The vultures do what they want. I never saw the episodes in syndication, but I’m sure the overall result was awful” (319). Night Gallery’s woes had begun even earlier, however, with Serling (who outlived the show by only two years) trying to remove his name despite two of his scripts, “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” (1/20/71) and “The Messiah of Mott Street” (12/15/71), garnering Emmy nominations. To its credit, the series boasted the involvement of future filmmakers like Steven Spielberg (who directed one segment of the 1969 pilot and the firstseason episode “Make Me Laugh” [1/6/71]), Szwarc, John Badham, and Leonard Nimoy (who made his directorial debut with “Death on a Barge” [3/4/73]), as well as Twilight Zone veterans Douglas Heyes, Sr., and Ralph Senensky, and featured adaptations of works by a host of respected genre authors. Bloch declined a lucrative offer from William Castle, who had since produced Rosemary’s Baby, to serve as the story editor for his anthology series Ghost Story, but did agree to contribute to the show after finishing his novel Nightworld, and submitted a modern-day version of Hansel and Gretel that Castle retitled “House of Evil” (11/10/72). Its witch was a kindly grandmother whose cookies ... took on the powers of voodoo dolls; harming them brought harm to the humans they were molded to resemble. My dual-natured wicked witch and lovable old lady was written with someone like Bette Davis in mind.... But Bill Castle made a slight witch-switch.... [H]e transformed my grandmother into a grandfather and gave the role to Melvyn Douglas.... Another wave of the cigar Bill used as a magic wand, and my cookie-dolls no longer represented specific individuals. There went the supernatural logic of my story. And after the show was aired, there went I, trying to distance myself as much as possible from the necessity of doing any further scripting [Once Around the Bloch 354–5].

TV movies proliferated during the early 1970s, and Bloch collaborated with producer Douglas S. Cramer, formerly executive vice president in charge

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of production for Star Trek, and director Curtis Harrington on a pair of telefilms that he scripted for rival networks ABC and NBC, The Cat Creature (12/11/73) and The Dead Don’t Die (1/14/75), respectively. Harrington had made a noteworthy debut with Night Tide (1961), starring a young Dennis Hopper, and continued his association with its distributor, AIP, by cobbling together Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965, as “John Sebastian”) and Queen of Blood (1966) to utilize effects footage from two Soviet films purchased by Roger Corman. Harrington has attracted more of a cult following than major boxoffice success through such off beat genre films as Games (1967), What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), and Ruby (1977), and starting with The Cat Creature he has directed primarily for television, later working with Cramer once again on episodes of Wonder Woman, Dynasty, and The Colbys. The Cat Creature, on which Bloch shared the story credit with Cramer and his associate, Wilford Lloyd Baumes, has an extremely checkered history, as he recounted in John Brosnan’s seminal study, The Horror People. I’d done this script for a made-for-TV horror film and at a late stage they changed the leading lady and brought in a rather big-name star [Diahann Carroll, who then had a contractual commitment with the network]. So I had to do a certain amount of rewriting, just to make sure that the new characterization didn’t clash with the fantasy elements of the show.... Then they decided that since she was a star the story would have to change.... Now the normal course of the story called for her introduction in the second act but no, I had to write in a sequence that would introduce her at the beginning. So I restructured it ... but it destroys the careful build-up in a suspense story when you have to arbitrarily change things. The ludicrous thing is that [having fulfilled her contract, Carroll] didn’t play the role after all but they still had to shoot it that way. And they had cut out a great deal of what I had written because it was running too long, they said, but when they shot it they discovered that they were twelve minutes short.... If they’d left what I had put in so carefully ... they would have had a perfectly realized script. But they discovered this when they saw the roughcut and by then the sets had been struck, the actors who had been hired ... were gone — and they had to add twelve minutes. So they recalled two actors and they had part of one set left and part of another; then they contacted me and said that they were shooting in two days time and wanted twelve minutes of script. And do it, they said, in such a way that it integrates with the story and doesn’t affect the flow! I did it but it certainly didn’t improve the story [Brosnan 209–10].

The story opens with appraiser Frank Lucas (Kent Smith, the star of Val Lewton’s Cat People [1942], to which the film was an homage) inventorying the estate of Hiram Drake and finding a mummy with a gold and emerald cat amulet, but when he leaves the room it is stolen by Joe Sung (Keye Luke),

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and a cat emerges from the sarcophagus and kills Lucas. After unsuccessfully trying to fence the amulet to Hester Black (Gale Sondergaard), Sung leaves the briefcase that had contained it at her Sorcerer’s Shop and she gives it to her sales clerk, Sherry Hastings (Renne Jarrett), who on her way home finds the cat and is hypnotized into jumping from her balcony, so Hester hires Rena Carter (Meredith Baxter) to replace her. Asked to aid Lt. Marco (Stuart Whitman) in his investigation, archaeologist Roger Edmonds (David Hedison) finds the sarcophagus defaced as if by claws and bearing the symbol of the cat-headed goddess Bast, whose priests could turn into cats and were buried alive for making human sacrifices for which she granted them eternal life, and together they seek the amulet. Hester points them to Sung, Drake’s former gardener, but like Lucas he is killed and drained of blood while Marco questions the clerk ( John Carradine) at his Skid Row hotel, and when a ticket in Sung’s shoe leads them to a pawnbroker (Peter Lorre, Jr.), who is found dying with a knife in his back, Marco suspects Hester and has her shop staked out. The cat hypnotizes the policeman on watch and kills Hester, who had the amulet sewn into the lining of her cape, and Roger learns from his colleague, Dr. Reinhart ( John Abbott), that it was used to hold something captive rather than to worship Bast, its inscription reading, “Beware the Seal of Kur-ub-Set, for he who dares to remove it will open the Gates of Hell.” Roger tells Rena that the cats gathering around her apartment recognize her as a priestess of Bast, and after he refuses her offer of immortality she changes again and attacks him, but he puts the amulet around her neck and Rena, revealed in full priestess regalia, stumbles outside and reverts to her mummy form, which is soon shredded by the cats and crumbles into dust. The Dead Don’t Die was based on Bloch’s story from the July 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures, and although he applauded the veteran character actors who filled the supporting roles, he was less than enthused with the performances of leading man George Hamilton and villain Ray Milland. Set in 1934, the film version was produced by frequent Cramer colleague Henry Colman, with Cramer and Baumes now serving as executive producers, and opens on Death Row in the Illinois State Penitentiary. Don Drake (Hamilton) promises his brother Ralph ( Jerry Douglas) that he will find out who really murdered his wife, Frances, and after Ralph goes to the chair, claiming he had blacked out at the time of her death, a mysterious woman later revealed as Vera LaValle (Linda Cristal) attends his lonely funeral. Don visits Jim Moss (Milland), at whose Chicago dance marathon Frances was killed, and learns that trainer Frankie Specht ( James McEachin) found the body but vanished before the trial; later, as Vera warns him to leave

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town, Don sees Ralph in the street and follows him to an antique shop, where Don accidentally kills the owner, Perdido (Reggie Nalder). Knocked unconscious by Perdido’s employee, Levenia ( Joan Blondell), Don awakens with Vera, who says she rescued him at gunpoint after the evil Varek lured him to the shop, and when Don demands to see him, Vera takes him to a funeral parlor, where in a chilling scene Varek raises Perdido’s body and through its mouth tells Don, “The dead are my children.” Lt. Reardon (Ralph Meeker) dismisses Don’s story, especially when a visit to Perdido’s shop reveals him apparently alive and well, so Don flees and takes refuge with Moss, and while the latter is out looking for leads, Vera appears and says that although she disobeyed his orders to kill Don, she can only belong to Varek, whose voodoo brought her back to life. Like Ralph, Vera was executed for a murder she did not commit and initially served Varek out of gratitude, but the shock of finding out that he framed her by having one of his zombies kill her employer enabled her to regain her free will, and when the as-yet-unseen Varek senses her betrayal he destroys Vera, burning a doll in her image with a blowtorch. Finally Varek is revealed as Moss, who manipulated Specht into killing Frances and now has Perdido run him over, yet Don dashes his plan to take over the world by shocking Ralph back to his senses, and upon learning that he was framed, the dead man strangles Moss and hangs his body up on a meathook in the cold storage warehouse where he kept his zombies. Interestingly, one of the most significant alterations made by Bloch in adapting his fifty-page novelette for the screen was to the nature of its protagonist, originally a writer of horror fiction amusingly identified as “Bob,” who meets the condemned and unrelated convict while working as a guard at the penitentiary and trying unsuccessfully to write a book on the side. Bloch shared story credit with Robert F. O’Neill, who co-scripted with fellow producer Frank Telford, on “Minotaur” (9/30/76), the second episode of NBC’s SF series Gemini Man, featuring Ben Murphy as diver Sam Casey, a secret agent with the power to turn invisible for fifteen minutes at a time as the result of a freak underwater explosion. Known to genre fans as Heywood Floyd in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), William Sylvester was cast as Sam’s boss, Leonard Driscoll, while Ross Martin of Wild, Wild West fame guest-starred as Carl Victor; director Alan J. Levi also helmed the eponymous pilot film (5/10/76), written by Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens and syndicated as Code Name: Minus One. The show itself had a curious history, beginning life in 1975 as The Invisible Man, which like a 1958–59 British series of the same name was inspired by the H.G. Wells novel, and when it was cancelled after only a dozen episodes, it was revamped by the same pro-

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duction team the following fall as Gemini Man, only to die an even quicker death a month later. Victor is a scientist fired by Driscoll for turning the A-73, designed as a purely defensive surveillance system, into an uncontrollable offensive weapon, and after vanishing along with the robot he has dubbed Minotaur (Loren Janes), whose power he demonstrates to Sam, now threatens to level a skyscraper unless he is paid a half-billion dollars in cash. Learning that Victor is being aided by his daughter Nancy (Deborah Winters), who believes him to be working for world peace, Sam follows her to his secret lab, which is surrounded by a maze, but as in Greek mythology he is trapped inside the labyrinth with the Minotaur and, detected with infrared in spite of his invisibility, knocked unconscious and captured. His power temporarily neutralized, Sam opens Nancy’s eyes to her father’s madness and true intentions, and when Victor threatens to destroy the headquarters of Driscoll’s organization, Intersect, the robot rebels and goes after Sam, who joins forces with Nancy to disable it by lassoing Minotaur with an electric hoist, leaving Victor mentally shattered by its betrayal. Bloch’s early Lovecraftian story “The Mannikin,” which also refers to “Ludvig Prinn’s infamous Mysteries of the Worm” (The Early Fears 50), was adapted as an episode of the 1977 anthology series Classics Dark and Dangerous, produced by the Ontario Educational Communications Authority in association with Highgate Productions and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. The nameless narrator of the story, published in Weird Tales in April 1936, expresses his growing concern over the condition of his erudite but misshapen and misanthropic friend Simon Maglore, shunned by his fellow residents of Bridgetown because of the hump that disfigures his back and the rumors of witchcraft in his family dating back for generations. Increasingly isolated as his hump grows and his mental and physical health deteriorate, he embarks upon progressively arcane studies that also alarm the narrator, who at last breaks into his house to find the unfortunate Simon dead, the victim of a grotesque, sentient figure growing from his back, which controlled his will and bit him to death when he tried to rebel. Directed by Donald W. Thompson (billed as Don Thompson), best known for a series of fundamentalist apocalypse films beginning with A Thief in the Night (1972), the uncredited script updates the story to the present and transforms Simon into a singer, Simone; Ronee Blakley starred and wrote her own songs, as she had in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975). Following the death of her mother, who along with the sinister housekeeper, Miss Smith (Pol Pelletier), had forced her to participate in séances as a child, Simone Maglore is plagued by mysterious voices and a recurring pain in her back, so

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Dr. Paul Carstairs (Cec Linder from Goldfinger [1964]) refers her to a psychologist, David Priestley (Keir Dullea of 2001 fame). Now bearing a hump, Simone returns to her hated childhood home, where Miss Smith frees the manikin, but when a concerned David traces her there he is dismissed by the suddenly serene Simone, and as he drives away, planning to return the next day with Carstairs, he is killed by the bug-eyed green monster, which has concealed itself in the back seat of his car. An old adage holds that the quality of a script is inversely proportional to the number of writers involved, so perhaps the less said the better about executive producer Irwin Allen’s miniseries The Return of Captain Nemo (aka The Amazing Captain Nemo), an unsold CBS pilot shown theatrically in Europe, on which Bloch was but one of six credited screenwriters. For the record, the others were Norman Katkov, Preston Wood, Robert C. Dennis, William Keys, and Mann Rubin — all television veterans, as was director Alex March of Allen’s series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, while the show was broadcast in three parts: “Deadly Blackmail” (3/8/78), “Duel in the Deep” (3/15/78), and “Atlantis Dead Ahead” (3/22/78). Awoken from a century of suspended animation by Navy divers Tom Franklin (Tom Hallick) and Jim Porter (Burr De Benning), Jules Verne’s hero ( José Ferrer) pits the Nautilus against the supersub of Prof. Cunningham (Burgess Meredith), who plans to destroy Washington, D.C., and, recalling Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1970), seeks lost Atlantis. Hosted by the author himself, the British anthology series Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected debuted in 1979 and initially featured dramatizations by Ronald Harwood of his celebrated stories, many of which had already been done on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including a remake of “The Landlady” (10/6/79) starring Siobhan McKenna in the title role. When John Houseman replaced Dahl, the title was shortened to Tales of the Unexpected (not to be confused with the short-lived NBC series of the same name), accommodating works by other writers such as an adaptation of Bloch’s “Fat Chance” (11/15/80), which was published in Keyhole in 1960 and concerned “a typical middle-class American couple” (The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 3, 35) John and Mary. In the story, John becomes disgusted with Mary’s obesity and begins carrying on with her best friend Frances, but after conspiring with the shady Dr. Applegate (played on TV by the seemingly ubiquitous Geoffrey Bayldon) to poison Mary while Frances is on a trip, he learns that she has unwittingly given the arsenic-laced chocolates to Frances as a farewell present. During the 1980s, numerous attempts were made to return to the anthology show format on network, syndicated, and cable television, including exec-

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utive producer Steven Spielberg’s high-profile flop Amazing Stories and equally ill-fated revivals of both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, but none proved as enduring as the originals. One of the first, and one of the quickest to leave the airwaves, was ABC’s Darkroom, which was hosted by James Coburn and, like Night Gallery, featured multiple stories of varying lengths in each of its seven hour-long shows, including a remake of the Thriller episode “Guillotine” (1/8/82) and adaptations of works by Davis Grubb, Robert R. McCammon and Fredric Brown. Christopher Crowe, who produced the series with Gemini Man alumnus Robert F. O’Neill, faithfully adapted William F. Nolan’s ghoulish story “The Partnership” (12/25/81), and Nolan himself, according to whom the episode was their highest-rated, wrote a teleplay based on another of his stories, “The Party,” but the show was cancelled before it could be produced. Bloch adapted three of his own stories, starting with “The Bogeyman Will Get You” (12/4/81), which was published in Weird Tales in 1946, and just as Jodie Foster, later an Oscar winner for The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), had appeared in “House of Evil,” this starred Helen Hunt, a future recipient for As Good as It Gets (1997). Directed by sometime cinematographer John McPherson, the show depicts Nancy Lawrence’s growing conviction that Phillip Ames (Randolph Powell), who is writing a book in the cabin across the lake from her parents and appears only at night, is a vampire, especially after she finds the murdered body of her missing friend, Julie, in the lake with its throat mutilated. Her search of his cabin reveals that he has no mirrors and is studying demonology (including a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis, complete with worm), yet when Phillip finds her looking for clues in the boathouse, he gazes into a mirror to prove that he is not a vampire, but sadly says that she will have to be silenced anyway, and reveals that he is, in fact, a werewolf. Based on a brief story from his 1965 collection The Skull of the Marquis de Sade, “A Quiet Funeral” (12/18/81) brought Bloch back together with Curtis Harrington, once again effectively using a funeral parlor setting, and starred Robert F. Lyons and Eugene Roche, who had appeared together earlier in the genre telefilm The Ghost of Flight 401 (2/18/78). “A small-time hood with big ideas,” Marty Vetch (Lyons) learns that Charlie the Printer (Roche), a consummate counterfeiter and forger, will be making a delivery one stormy night, so he forces Charlie off the road, wedging him inside under the smashed steering wheel, and takes the briefcase containing $50,000 before pushing the vengeful victim’s car over a bluff. Hiding out in Vegas with his girlfriend Leda (Misty Rowe) to establish an alibi, Vetch sees a notice of Charlie’s funeral in the Detroit paper and returns to keep up appearances, but at the oddly empty

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mortuary Charlie rises from the coffin, revealing that he survived the crash and forged the obituary, and locks Vetch inside the casket, where his screams will soon cease. “Catnip” (12/25/81) was directed by executive story consultant Jeffrey Bloom, who later adapted V.C. Andrews’s Flowers in the Attic (1987), and considerably updated by Bloch from his story, published in the March 1948 issue of Weird Tales, in which fourteen-year-old protagonist Ronnie Shires is trying to influence the outcome of a school election. Here, Ronnie (Cyril O’Reilly) is a motorcycle-riding drug dealer who kills a reputed witch, Mrs. Mingle ( Jocelyn Brando, who appeared in “’Til Death Do Us Part” almost twenty years earlier), with a bomb intended for her hated black cat, rather than burning her home with a carelessly-tossed cigarette butt as in the story, but in both versions his fate is the same. After Mrs. Mingle’s death, her vengeful cat follows Ronnie everywhere, eventually entering through his bedroom window when he returns home to attack him as he opens his mouth to scream, whereupon his mother (Lynn Carlin), calling him from downstairs with no response, utters the quintessentially Blochian punchline, “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Debuting in 1984, the syndicated series Tales from the Darkside was the creation of Laurel Entertainment, in which writer-director George A. Romero was then partnered with Richard P. Rubinstein, his producer on Martin, Dawn of the Dead (both 1978), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), and Day of the Dead (1985), after which Romero left Laurel. Rubinstein then became closely associated with Stephen King, who had written Creepshow and contributed stories to Tales from the Darkside in both its television and 1990 feature film incarnations, and Rubinstein went on to produce the adaptations of King’s Pet Sematary (1989), The Stand (1994), The Langoliers (1995), Thinner (1996) and The Night Flier (1997). Several of Bloch’s stories were featured on the series, including “A Case of the Stubborns” (12/2/84), published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1976, which was directed by Jerry Smith and adapted by James Houghton; best known for the irreverent comedies he made with writer-director Preston Sturges, Eddie Bracken starred as Grandpa. Widowed Addie Tolliver (Barbara Eda Young) and her son, Jody (rising heartthrob Christian Slater, who later appeared in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), are mourning the passing of her father Titus the night before when Grandpa himself comes downstairs, dressed in his funeral suit and demanding breakfast, too stubborn to acknowledge his death. Despite Doc Snodgrass (Bill McCutcheon) detecting no heartbeat and showing him his death certificate, Grandpa — already starting to turn in the hot weather, courtesy of Ed French’s makeup — rejects the suggestion of Rev. Peabody (Brent Spiner,

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three years before playing Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation) that “now it’s time to lie down and call it quits.” Finally, the desperate Jody goes to Spooky Hollow and consults the Voodoo Woman (Tresa Hughes), who gives him a bag of strong black pepper to put in Grandpa’s napkin, and after sneezing his nose off, he finally accept this as irrevocable proof and goes voluntarily upstairs where, as Addie tells Jody, “He done laid down his burden at last. Gone to glory, amen.” In 1985, five years after the director’s death, NBC revived Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran for a single season executive produced by Darkroom veteran Christopher Crowe (with new episodes produced for the USA Network two years later), using colorized versions of Hitchcock’s wraparounds from the classic series and a mix of original episodes and remakes. Among the latter were “Method Actor” (11/10/85), a retitled version of “Bad Actor” starring Martin Sheen, and “The Gloating Place” (1/5/86), which was directed by Christopher Leitch, who helmed the recent TV-movie remake Satan’s School for Girls (2000), and adapted from Bloch’s story by David Stenn, subsequently a supervising producer for Beverly Hills, 90210. Subverting Bloch’s concept, Samantha Loomis (Isabelle Walker) recounts an encounter with an existing killer and is made into a minor media celebrity by TV reporter Carl Cansino (Stephen Macht), but when her rival, Debbie Spooner (Christie Houser), reports a similar attack, Sam mistakenly assumes she too has lied, and both girls are killed by Carl himself. While recovering from various eye surgeries during the mid–1980s, Bloch took a temporary hiatus from writing novels in favor of a return to what he called “more fragmentary fiction” (Once Around the Bloch 397), and one of these latter-day efforts, written in 1984, was filmed as a third-season episode of Tales from the Darkside, “Everybody Needs a Little Love” (2/22/87). Published that same year in Bloch’s collection Midnight Pleasures, the story is told by an unnamed narrator who meets another recent divorcé, David Curtis, in a bar, and when he suggests taking advantage of a bargain rate for couples on a trip to Las Vegas, Curtis pilfers a window dummy from the department store where he works to be his traveling companion. Unnerved when Curtis dubs the dummy Estelle and begins treating her like a person, the narrator learns that his supposed ex-wife, also Estelle, disappeared, and sees a car race from his apartment with the dummy at the wheel; later Curtis is found stabbed to death, with the dummy nearby, in the gravel pit where he had buried his wife after killing her the same way. The television version was written and directed by John Sutherland, a longtime Laurel employee better known as John Harrison (under which name he also scored this and several other episodes), who had acted in Dawn of the

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Dead and Knightriders before graduating to both a composer and Romero’s first assistant director on Creepshow and Day of the Dead. Sutherland playfully dubs the narrator “Roberts” ( Jerry Orbach) and substitutes a suitably Blochian twist ending, veering sharply away from the story at the point where the literary Curtis throws a bottle at the narrator during their last meeting; here, Roberts is hit on the head from behind with the bottle, later awakening to find Curtis (Richard Portnow) stabbed. His narration is revealed to be an interrogation by Lt. Mann (Don Peoples), and as he insists that “the mannequin did it,” a woman at first shown only in shadow — and ultimately revealed as “Estelle”— implicates him by telling another detective (Philip Lenknowsky) that he was fooling around with the real Estelle, whose rotting remains were found under Curtis’s sink. As he approached seventy, Bloch became frustrated with the travails of writing for the film and television industry, which was increasingly dominated by youthful executives who wanted to work with those in their own age bracket, and he was further soured by the failure of an abortive project with producer George Pal. He then agreed to work on a pilot inspired by Stephen King’s novel Salem’s Lot and the miniseries based on it but, as he wrote in his autobiography: Just how one would go about doing a series was another matter, since recycling a dead town and an undead villain hardly seemed like an original idea.... [M]y initial qualms were partially dispelled when I learned that the producer of the opus was Doug Benton, whom I’d worked with back in the days of the Thriller shows. I evolved a story line, had it approved, and emerged with a script. But upon learning that thirty-seven copies of that script were to be distributed to network personnel on both the west and east coasts, I realized the project was foredoomed.

His subsequent sales to television were of stories scripted largely by other writers for Tales from the Darkside and its successor, Monsters, although he did agree to adapt “Beetles” (9/27/87), which was directed for Darkside by Frank De Palma, from his story published in the December 1938 issue of Weird Tales. Arthur Hartley (Rod McCary) dismisses a warning from Hamid Bey (Sirri Murrad) about the curse of the beetle god after smuggling a mummy out of an Egyptian tomb. His cottage increasingly infested by scarabs, which have hollowed out and hidden inside the mummy, the greedy grave robber is found dead with bugs emerging from his mouth, a gross-out effect already borrowed by King et alia in a segment of Creepshow. Rubinstein kept Laurel going into the mid-nineties, and with longtime associate Mitchell Galin, who had also produced King’s Golden Years (1991), later formed New Amsterdam Entertainment to take its place; when Tales

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from the Darkside left the air in 1988, they quickly created a similar series, Monsters, with many of the same contributors. Based on Bloch’s story and directed by Jeff Wolf, “The Legacy” (12/3/88) was written by the aforementioned “John Sutherland,” who under the Harrison name later went on to direct Tales from the Darkside: The Movie but has continued to work primarily in television, adapting and directing the SFC miniseries Dune (2000) from the Frank Herbert classic. Researching a book on Lon Chaney–lookalike Fulton Pierce, Dale (David Brisbin) rents the house he once owned and becomes convinced that instead of just donning greasepaint, Pierce could “make-up his mind” to embody the monsters he portrayed, and his girlfriend Debbie Curzon (Lara Harris) arrives to find he has unleashed Pierce’s spirit from its makeup box. The Monsters episode “Mannikins of Horror” (5/20/89) was directed by the multi-talented Ernest D. Farino, at various times a title designer, animator, special visual effects supervisor, and writer, and adapted by Josef Anderson from Bloch’s short story, which had been published in Weird Tales in 1939 and previously filmed as the final segment of Asylum. The Amicus version was incorporated into the framing story that ties the segments together, as aspiring employee Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) comes to the titular madhouse, and is told by Dr. Lionel Rutherford (Patrick Magee) that the job is his if he can identify which of four patients is his associate, “Dr. B. Starr,” who has now been taken over by a new personality. Ex-neurosurgeon Byron (Herbert Lom) constructs human figures with perfectly proportioned brains and internal organs, and after making one in his own image and imbuing it with his consciousness he sends it to kill Rutherford with a scalpel, but Byron dies by remote control when Martin crushes the figure, only to be strangled with a stethoscope by the real Dr. Starr. With almost double the running time of the Asylum segment, and Oscar winner Dick Smith as its special effects makeup consultant, Monsters was able to visualize Bloch’s story in more — and more gruesome — detail, albeit resetting it in a futuristic “new society,” and restored the original character names now that the “B. Starr” plot device was unnecessary. Dr. Colin (William Prince, a longtime soap opera star also seen in Hitchcock’s last film, Family Plot [1976]) opines that the sympathetic Dr. Jerris (Glynis Barber) should have been named the new director of the institution instead of arrogant young Dr. Starr (Brian Brophy), who scoffs at Colin’s notion that he is “coming apart,” and yet will live on in his clay men. Starr orders Colin restrained and the figures removed, but when one of them comes to life it plunges a letter opener into Starr’s eye, and after finding the body and crushing the face of the figure resembling Colin, Jerris hears screams coming from his room, where

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she herself winds up screaming uncontrollably after seeing the mangled face on the figure in his bed. Bloch penned two sequels to his original novel, Psycho II (in which he killed off Norman Bates) and Psycho House, but he was not involved with the subsequent screen incarnations that began with the unrelated Psycho II (1983), written by Tom Holland of Fright Night (1985) fame and directed by an Alfred Hitchcock protégé, Richard Franklin. Anthony Perkins himself directed the second sequel, Psycho III (1986), and interestingly, while he continued to play Norman until shortly before his death of pneumonia brought on by AIDS in 1992, another actor, Kurt Paul, started his own lengthy association with the same role as a stunt man in both Psycho II and III, presumably doubling for Perkins. Paul spoofed the character as “Norman Baines” in a Knight Rider episode, “Halloween Knight” (10/28/84), and as “Norman Blates,” the coroner on the series Sledge Hammer!, even getting a shot at the real McCoy when the Bates canon, such as it was, moved to the small screen with the TV-movie Bates Motel (7/5/87), which Perkins boycotted. Richard Rothstein wrote and directed this unsold NBC pilot for a proposed series that mercifully never materialized, which ignored the events of the theatrical sequels and starred Bud Cort, best known for his title roles in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud (1970) and opposite Ruth Gordon in Hal Ashby’s delightful black comedy Harold and Maude (1971), as Alex West. Picking up more or less where Psycho left off, Bates Motel opens in black and white in 1960 as Norman (Paul, strongly resembling Perkins but given no dialogue) is sentenced to the state mental hospital at Dunsmore, where he is soon introduced by Dr. Goodman (Star Trek’s Robert Picardo) to Alex, a withdrawn yet sympathetic young boy who killed his widowed and abusive stepfather. By 1987, Norman has become the father the boy never had, while seeing the adult Alex (Cort) as a younger version of himself, so in order to ensure that he will have a second chance when he is released, Norman bequeaths him the motel, redecorated by Alex with a southwestern motif and obviously intended as the setting for a variety of unrelated stories featuring various guest-stars. After securing a loan from skeptical banker Tom Fuller (Gregg Henry), who urges him to develop the desirable real estate instead, Alex reopens the motel with the help of Willie (Lori Petty), an actress living in the unoccupied property while working as a chicken-suited mascot at a fast-food restaurant, and Henry Watson (Moses Gunn), a former handyman for Norman’s mother. The bodies of both the latter (here christened Gloria) and her cheating husband Jake, apparently killed by Mrs. Bates, are dug up during the renovation, and inevitably Alex’s sanity comes into question when he begins seeing their ghostly manifestations, but with equal inevitability these are

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revealed to be the work of Fuller, who is trying to manipulate Alex into defaulting on the loan. There is, however, a genuine ghost at the motel, known only as “A Friend” (Khrystyne Haje), who tries to talk the thrice-divorced Sally (Kerrie Keane) out of killing herself, and does so with the help of Tony Scotty ( Jason Bateman) and a group of other teenaged suicides from the late 1950s and early ’60s, appearing at the motel as attendees of a prom-night party to dissuade Sally. Joseph Stefano, who had adapted Bloch’s novel after Alfred Hitchcock fired James P. Cavanagh, returned thirty years later for both Psycho IV: The Beginning (11/13/90), a made-for-cable sequel-cum-prequel, and Gus Van Sant’s recent remake of the original, recreated shot-for-shot with a new cast, a slightly updated script, and Herrmann’s classic score. Although arousing the ire of many fans (and, understandably, Bloch himself ) by consistently downplaying the importance of Norman’s creator, while Hitchcock correctly observed that “Psycho all came from Robert Bloch’s book,” Stefano did return the character to its roots in his teleplay for Psycho IV: The Beginning by exploring the history hinted at in the novel. Like Richard Rubinstein, with whom he collaborated on The Stand, director Mick Garris has gone on to become the foremost interpreter of Stephen King’s work on the large and small screen with the films Sleepwalkers (1992) and Riding the Bullet (2004), the miniseries remake of The Shining (1997), and the TV-movies Quicksilver Highway (1997) and Desperation (2006). A slim, boyish twenty-seven when he first played Bates, portrayed as fat and forty in the novel, Perkins stars as the apparently cured Norman, whose post-incarceration exploits are wisely downplayed as he calls radio host Fran Ambrose (CCH Pounder) to discuss her talk-show topic du jour, matricide (with the ubiquitous Kurt Paul as a paroled mother-killer, Raymond Linette). He relates the circumstances that led to the many murders at the Bates Motel and the twisted relationship between himself and his mother, Norma (Olivia Hussey), with the teenaged Henry Thomas, best known for E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial (1982), well-cast as the young Norman and Warren Frost as psychiatrist Leo Richmond, played by Simon Oakland in the original. Richmond recognizes Norman, who calls himself “Ed” in an obvious nod to the real-life case of Ed Gein, which inspired the novel, and announces his intention to kill his wife and former therapist, Connie (Donna Mitchell), because she carries his “aging bad seed,” but ultimately he is persuaded to renounce violence and finally frees himself by burning down the house. The flashbacks depict Norma as a sexually repressed, mentally unstable widow whose ambivalent attitude towards her son alternates between behaving seductively with him and castigating him for his inevitable arousal, call-

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ing him a girl and locking him inside a closet, where he is forced to wear a dress and lipstick to make him forget about his “filthy thing.” As before, the jealous Norman uses strychnine to poison his mother and the lover she plans to marry, but in a small yet significant bit of revisionism, he is now bartender Chet Rudolph (Thomas Schuster) rather than the man who originally talked Norma into building the Bates Motel, identified by Bloch as Joe Considine and invoked if not named in Hitchcock’s film. Unfortunately, the sequel lacked that classic’s subtlety and restraint, featuring partial nudity and fullcolor violence as well as several other gratuitous murders, and as Bloch noted in his preface to a thirty-fifth anniversary edition of the original novel, issued in 1994 by Gauntlet Publications, “In this instance I’m quite happy, even eager, to give [Stefano] full credit” (Psycho 17). In his last years, Bloch ceased writing for film and television, but even as recently as four years after his death, his work was still being brought to the screen, as demonstrated by both the Van Sant version of Psycho (1998) and “The Lighthouse” (2/20/98), an episode of the Showtime cable network’s erotic anthology series The Hunger, hosted by Terence Stamp. As adapted and updated from 1796 to the present day by the show’s story editor, Bruce Smith, the story “The Lighthouse” is credited solely to Bloch, who actually wrote approximately eighty percent of it. He revealed in his autobiography that its fascinating history began with his pastiche “The Man Who Collected Poe,” which was memorably filmed with Peter Cushing and Jack Palance as a segment of Torture Garden. I deliberately inserted sentences taken directly from [Poe’s] “The Fall of the House of Usher,” combining them with my own just to see if anybody would notice. One of the few who did was Professor Thomas Ollve [sic] Mabbott, of Hunter College, who was putting together a collection of Poe stories for publication. In the course of his research he encountered Poe’s final and unfinished tale, “The Lighthouse,” and wrote to me, suggesting that I might complete it.... It proved quite a challenge to pick up the story where Poe had left off [after a mere two pages] and continue it in such a manner that the reader wouldn’t detect any change of style. Poe was considerably more difficult to imitate or emulate than Lovecraft. I kept at it until the result was reasonably seamless, and “The Lighthouse” found first publication [in January 1953] in Fantastic [Once Around the Bloch 212].

Directed by Darrell Wasyk and Tom Dey, the episode featured Bruce Davison, best known for the title role in Willard (1971); Canadian co-stars Simone-Élise Girard and Vlasta Vrana both appeared in Scanners II: The New Order (1991). Seeking solitude while writing a novel, Davison takes a job as a lighthouse-keeper and with his mind conjures up a rose and an ideal woman,

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Angelica, but when a friend reveals the rose as a piece of seaweed Davison kills him in a rage, and after seducing him Angelica lures him to a watery death. “I have the heart of a little boy,” Bloch used to say, adding that he kept it in a jar on his desk, and this was all too evident from the wicked glee with which he invested his tales and teleplays, the good humor he maintained even into his final illness, and the countless kindnesses bestowed on everyone from aspiring colleagues like Matheson to anonymous fans. Despite his reservations about the restrictions of the medium, television was able to introduce generations of viewers and readers to his literary works, some of which had been published before they were born, and in rare instances like Thriller, it brought his scripts to life with more fidelity to his original intentions than many a motion picture producer or director did.

WORKS CITED Bloch, Robert. The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 1: Final Reckonings. New York: Citadel Twilight, 1990. _____. The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 2: Bitter Ends. New York: Citadel Twilight, 1990. _____. The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 3: Last Rites. (New York: Citadel Twilight, 1991. _____. The Early Fears. Minneapolis: Fedogan & Bremer, 1994. _____. Midnight Pleasures. New York: Doubleday, 1987. _____. “My Hitch with Hitchcock,” in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An Illustrated Guide to the Ten-Year Television Career of the Master of Suspense by John McCarty and Brian Kelleher. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. _____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor, 1993. _____. Psycho. Springfield, PA: Gauntlet, 1994. Bradley, Matthew R. “Momma’s Boy: A Conversation with Robert Bloch,” Filmfax #40 (Aug./Sept. 1993), pp. 78–82. Brosnan, John. The Horror People. New York: Plume, 1977. Brunet, Robin. “Directing the Pilot,” Cinefantastique 27:11–12 ( July 1996), pp. 43–4. Fischer, Dennis. “Robert Bloch,” Cinefantastique 27:11–12 ( July 1996), p 99. Johnson, Tom, and Deborah Del Vecchio. Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Checklist. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996. King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley, 1983. Lee, Christopher. Tall, Dark and Gruesome. Baltimore: Midnight Marquee, 1999. Matheson, Richard. Telephone interview with the author, August 3, 1991, published in an editedform as “And in the Beginning Was the Word... : An Interview with Screenwriter Richard Matheson” in Filmfax #42 (Dec. 1993/Jan. 1994), pp. 40–4, 78–82, 98. _____. Telephone interview with the author, January 12, 1999, published in an edited form as “Enter The Twilight Zone with Richard Matheson” in Filmfax #75–76 (Oct. 1999/Jan. 2000), pp. 78–84, 125. _____, and Ricia Mainhardt, editors. Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master. New York: Tor, 1995. Miller, Mark A. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema: A Filmography of Their 22 Collaborations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995.

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Phillips, Mark, and Frank Garcia. Science Fiction Television Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996. Rebello, Stephen. Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. New York: Dembner Books, 1990. Uram, Sue. “Star Trek: The 30th Anniversary,” Cinefantastique 27:11–12 ( July 1996), pp. 24– 111. Warren, Alan. This Is a Thriller: An Episode Guide, History and Analysis of the Classic 1960s Television Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996.

About the Contributors Leigh Blackmore is a writer, editor, manuscript assessor, and occultist, who lives in Wollongong with his two partners, and several cats. He published and edited, with B.J. Stevens and Chris G.C. Sequeira, Terror Australis: The Australian Horror & Fantasy Magazine from 1987 until 1992, and edited Terror Australia: Best Australian Horror (Hodder & Stoughton Australia, 1993). His weird fiction has appeared in the first two Agog! anthologies (“Uncharted” was a Ditmar nominee for Best Novella in 2003), Daikaiju 3, various places online including www.ligotti.net and www.writingshow.com and has recently has his poetry collected in Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses. He has also contributed to scholarly works on supernatural fiction including World Supernatural Fiction (edited by S.T. Joshi and Stefan J. Dziemianowicz), and is a coeditor of Studies in Australian Weird Fiction. The author wishes to record his gratitude for the assistance of Michael G. Pfefferkorn of the Robert Bloch website The Bat Is My Brother http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/bloch.html who provided several Robert Bloch texts for use in writing this essay. Matthew R. Bradley is the editor of Richard Matheson’s Duel & the Distributor and the co-editor of The Richard Matheson Companion, both published by Gauntlet Press. A revised edition of the latter, entitled The Twilight and Other Zones: The Dark Worlds of Richard Matheson, will be published by Citadel in 2009. Bradley has also interviewed several of Matheson’s fellow members of the Southern California School of Writers: Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, and Jerry Sohl. His book Richard Matheson on Screen is forthcoming from McFarland. Bradley lives in Connecticut with his wife and daughter. His essay previously appeared, in a substantially edited form, in Filmfaxplus #112 (Oct./Dec. 2006) and #113 ( Jan./Mar. 2007). The author wishes to express his very special thanks to the late, great Brian G. Ehlert, without whose generosity and extraordinary videotape archives this essay literally could not have been written.

Scott D. Briggs is a freelance writer, essayist and critic who has been active in the professional, amateur and small press literary fields for over twenty years, specializing in horror, fantasy and SF literature, film, rock and roll, pop, alternative and modern classical music, including previous essays for Necronomicon Press and Greenwood Press on the works of William Peter Blatty and Robert Aickman, reviews and essays

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for Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, and various pieces for periodicals such as The NY Arts Magazine, The Big Takeover and www.sequenza21.com. He earned a B.F.A. in communication arts and sciences in 1992 from New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, N.Y. Mr. Briggs makes his home in Long Island, N.Y., and is also a film devotee, an avid 6 and 12-string guitarist, and a collector of books, music, and films. He, of course, enjoys Italian food, ice cream and playing with cats like one of his all-time idols, H.P. Lovecraft.

Phillip A. Ellis has published hundreds of poems in a variety of international magazines, journals, fanzines and e-anthologies and volumes; Strange Gardens (2005), 21 Sonnets (2005), The Flayed Man and Other Poems (2008) and the forthcoming Strange Airs. He is the editor of Calenture: A Journal of Studies in Speculative Verse http://www. calenture.fcpages.com/ and Wild Grapes: Australian Poetry http://australian-poetry.blog spot.com/. He is also an accomplished critic of poetry who has appeared in Studies in Weird Fiction, Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies, Eldritch Dark.com, and Studies in Australian Weird Fiction to name but a few. Robert Hood was born on the 24th of July, 1951, in Rydalmere, NSW, and has published well over 100 stories as well as two collections of his own work (Day-dreaming on Company Time, Immaterial and Creeping in Reptile Flesh) and several novels (the supernatural young adult series Shades). He’s appeared in Karl Edward Wagner’s Year’s Best Horror, and has been nominated for several awards, including a Readercon award for best collection, as well as the Ditmar, Aurealis and Atheling awards. During 2004– 2007 he edited (with Robin Pen) three anthologies of giant monster stories, the first being Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales. He currently lives with his partner Cat Sparks and a number of small cats on the Illawarra Coast and earns a crust as the graphic design/publications coordinator of the Faculty of Commerce at Wollongong University.

John Howard was born in London in 1961. He discovered science fiction and horror fiction as a child, and has been an avid reader, collector, and fan ever since. His short fiction, solo and in collaboration, has appeared in the anthologies Beneath the Ground and Strange Tales, as well as the collection Masques & Citadels (with Mark Valentine). John has reviewed genre books for a wide range of magazines and society journals for more than twenty-five years. He has published many articles on various aspects of the science fiction and horror fields, especially the work of classic authors such as Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, August Derleth, M. R. James, and the writers of the pulp era. John’s website can be found at www.waldeneast.com.

Rebecca Janicker is a PhD student in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham, with a thesis focusing on the haunted house motif in American Gothic fiction. Her work on regionalism in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King has been published in Extrapolation and U.S. Studies Online. She is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth.

S.T. Joshi (BA, MA, Brown University) is a widely published critic and editor. He is the author of such critical studies as The Weird Tale (University of Texas Press, 1990),

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H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Starmont House, 1990), and The Modern Weird Tale (McFarland, 2001). He has edited the standard corrected edition of H.P. Lovecraft’s collected fiction, revisions, and miscellaneous writings (Arkham House, 1984– 95; 5 vols.), as well as The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (Night Shade Books, 2001) and Collected Essays (Hippocampus Press, 2004–06; 5 vols.). He has prepared three annotated editions of Lovecraft’s tales for Penguin (1999–2004). His exhaustive biography, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996), won the British Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. He is the founder and editor of Lovecraft Studies (1979f.) and Studies in Weird Fiction (1986f.). Joshi has done scholarly work on other authors of supernatural fiction. He is the author of a bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1993) and critical study of Lord Dunsany (Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination, Greenwood Press, 1995), and a critical study of Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction, Liverpool University Press, 2001). He has prepared editions of the work of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M.R. James, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Donald Wandrei, and other writers. In recent years he has turned his attention to Ambrose Bierce and is the co-editor (with Stefan Dziemianowicz) of World Supernatural Literature: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2005; 3 vols.).

Joel Lane has written two collections of weird fiction, The Earth Wire (Egerton Press) and The Lost District and Other Stories (Night Shade Books), and has edited an anthology of subterranean horror stories, Beneath the Ground (Alchemy Press). His critical studies of several modern authors of weird fiction have appeared in Wormwood, Foundation and Supernatural Tales. He contributed an article on Robert Bloch’s The Opener of the Way to Horror: Another 100 Best Books edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. Randall D. Larson has written about horror literature, film music, and popular culture for more than thirty-five years. A former small press editor and publisher, Larson also writes weird fiction, writes on film music for buysoundtrax.com and cinefantastiqueonline.com, and has been the editor of a national trade magazine for the emergency communications community for 20 years. A Blochophile since his youth, Larson authored three essential guidebooks to Bloch’s fiction: The Reader’s Guide to Robert Bloch, The Complete Robert Bloch (bibliography), and The Robert Bloch Companion (collected interviews).

Darrell Schweitzer is the author of about 250 published fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories, countless poems (he is infamous for having rhymed “Cthulhu” twice in a limerick), interviews, etc. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award three times. His books include three novels, The White Isle, The Shattered Goddess, and The Mask of the Sorcerer, and eight collections, the most recent of which is Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer. As critic he has been a reviewer and columnist for numerous magazines, and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Science Fiction. He has published book-length studies of H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, edited numerous symposia such as Discovering H.P. Lovecraft and the Thomas Ligotti Reader and has been a co-editor of Weird Tales since 1987.

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Philip L. Simpson received his BA and MA degrees in English from Eastern Illinois University in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and his doctorate in American literature from Southern Illinois University in 1996. A professor of communications and humanities at the Palm Bay campus of Brevard Community College in Florida for eight years and Department Chair of Communications and Humanities for five years, he is now serving as academic dean of behavioral/social sciences and humanities at Brevard Community College. He also serves as vice president of the Popular Culture Association and area chair of Horror for the Association since 1998. He received the Association’s Felicia Campbell Area Chair Award in 2006. He is a book reviewer and elected member-at-large for the Association as well as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Popular Culture. His book, Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction, was published in 2000 by Southern Illinois University Press. He contributed the foreword to Dark Parades: The Spectacle of Isolation in Horror Films, by Carl Royer and Diana Royer (2005). His essays of literary, cultural, and/or cinematic criticism have also been published in journals such as Cineaction, Paradoxa, Clues, and Notes on Contemporary Literature; encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (2005), Twenty-First Century British and Irish Novelists (2003), Conspiracy Theories in American History (2003), The Guide to United States Popular Culture (2001), War and American Popular Culture (1999), and The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film (1998); and books such as Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Film (2004); The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film (2003); Car Crash Culture (2002); Jack Nicholson: Movie Top Ten (2000); and Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (1999). Steve Vertlieb, an award-winning writer, film historian, critic, archivist, and poet, has been writing about motion pictures and symphonic film music in a variety of books, magazines, journals, and tabloids since 1969 and has been profiled in Who’s Who in Entertainment in America. He has worked in Philadelphia television and radio for fourteen years as a film editor, cameraman, floor director, assistant music director, and announcer and has also written columns, articles, and reviews for such publications as L’Incroyable Cinema, The Late Show, Black Oracle, Midnight Marquee, Home Viewer, Film Music Review, The Thunder Child, and Cinemacabre. He served as associate editor and frequent contributor to New York’s groundbreaking film tabloid, The Monster Times, and has enjoyed success as a poet in the pages of such magazines as Outer Darkness, Songs of Innocence and Penny Dreadful. In 1981, he was awarded the M.A.F.C. trophy for Best Writer of the Year. Soon after, he was inducted into the Legion of Honor by The Chapel of Four Chaplains for his volunteer work, recording programming for the blind community. In 2004 he was honored by Unity Church of Christ for narrating more than twenty years of twice weekly Dial-A-Prayer recordings.

Benjamin Szumskyj is a qualified high school teacher (double degree: BA in education / BA in social sciences, minor in English) and currently teaches at a private Christian high school. He has also achieved a graduate diploma in Christian studies from Tabor Bible College, Perth, a diploma in library and information studies from Perth Central TAFE and is currently finishing a bachelor of theology degree. A for-

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mer editor-in-chief of Studies in Fantasy Literature and Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, he has also written dozens of essays and articles on literary criticism for several magazines and journals such as Notes in Contemporary Literature, Wormwood: Writings About Fantasy, Supernatural and Decadent Literature and Star*Line: Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and has edited books on critical studies such as Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (2006), Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008), Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris (2008) and American Exorcist: Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty (2008).

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Index A-73 221 “Abandoned Mine” 187 Abbeline, Inspector 146 Abbott, John 219 ABC 215, 218, 223 Abraham Lincoln House 7; see also Milwaukee Jewish Settlement Academy Awards 194 The Accused 223 “Ace Double” 74, 82 Ace Pocketbooks 74 Ackland, Joss 201 Adams, Mary 78, 79 Adams, Tom 215 Agog! 233 Aickman, Robert 233 Ainsworth, Lloyd 96 Albright, Bud 211 Alcoa Presents 202; see also One Step Beyond Aldridge, Virginia 214 Alex 228, 229 Alexander, David 74 Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (Rebello) 210 The Alfred Hitchcock Hour 187, 206, 207, 208, 209 Alfred Hitchcock Presents 19, 84, 187, 188, 190, 191, 194, 202, 205, 207, 222, 223, 225 Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An Illustrated Guide to the TenYear Television Career of the Master of Suspense (McCarty & Kelleher) 189, 209 Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV (Hitchcock) 208

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine 69, 206, 208 Alhazred, Abdul 16 Alland 209 Allen, Cliff 209 Allen, Elizabeth 199 Allen, Irwin 222 Allyn, William 198 Altman, Robert 221, 228 The Amazing Captain Nemo 222; see also The Return of Captain Nemo Amazing Stories 223 Amazing Stories Magazine 14, 59, 62, 69, 90, 134 Amazon 188 Ambler, Eric 189 Ambrose, Fran 229 America 123 American Exorcist: Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty (Szumskyj) 237 American Gothic 123–124; see also Gothic literature American Gothic 86, 147, 151, 154, 155, 158–167, 183–184 American International Pictures 189, 194, 218 Ames, Philip 223 Ames, Roy 114, 179–180 Amicus 186, 191, 200, 201, 202, 227 “Amok Time” 212 The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (Lovecraft) 235 Anderson, John 209 Anderson, Josef 227 Anderson, Richard 204 Andrea 211, 212 Andrew 206 Andrews, Edward 198

239

Andrews, V.C. 224 Angela 65 Angelica 231 “The Animal Fair” 175, 184 Annabel 206 “Annabel” 206 Anne Radcliffe Award for Literature 84 Annette 201 Anti-Amusement League 58 Anubis 32 Applegate, Dr. 222 Arbogast, Milton 108, 110, 125, 130 Argelius 214 Argento, Dario 180 Arizona 107 Arkham 34, 36 Arkham House 70, 204 Arlene 196 Art, Black 58, 60 Arthur, Indus 210 As Good as It Gets 223 Ashby, Hal 228 The Assassin: A Study 97 Astounding Science Fiction 62 Asylum 20, 186, 200, 202, 215, 227 At the Mountains of Madness (Lovecraft) 3, 24, 34 Atheling awards 234 Atlantis 222 “Atlantis Dead Ahead” 222 Aurealis awards 234 Australia 83, 206 Averonius, Petrus 25 Avon 74 Axis 60 “Bad Actor” 202, 225; see also “Method Actor” Badham, John 217

240 “Bah! Humbug!” 54 Bailey, Lt. 201 Baines, Norman 228; see also Bates, Norman Baker, Joby 188 Baker, Judy 205 Baker, Roy Ward 200, 215 Ballantine Books 141 Bankhead, Tallulah 197 Bannock, Harry 82 Bannon, Jim 198 Barbara, Sister 113 Barber, Glynis 227 Bardon, John Franklin 101 Barker, Clive 9 Barr, Donald 155 Barrett, Majel 211, 212, 213 Barrier, Mike 213 Barry, Patricia 198 Barton, Dr. 204 Basch, Harry 211 “Baseball” 40n1 “Basic Bloch” 198 Bast 25, 219 The Bat Is My Brother 233 Bateman, Jason 229 Bates, Gloria 228 Bates, Jake 228 Bates, Mrs. Norma 102, 108, 109, 110, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 132n5, 150, 171, 176, 177, 229, 230 Bates, Norman 10, 18, 72, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 132n5, 150, 153, 156, 159, 165, 171, 176, 178, 179, 228, 229, 230; see also Baines, Norman; Blates, Norman Bates Motel 228 Bates Motel 107, 116, 119, 127, 165, 229, 230 Baumes, Wilford Lloyds 218, 219 Bava, Mario 208 Baxter, Alan 201 Baxter, Meredith 219 Bayldon, Geoffrey 202, 222 Beat Generation 85 Beatrice 199, 200 “Beau and Arrow” 187 Beaumont, Charles 51, 186, 187, 190, 197 Beddoe, Don 190 Beelzebub 64 “Beetles” 13, 226 Beléz 187 Belgium 83, 86

Index Bellew, Hal 194 Bellman, Laura 193 Beneath the Ground (Lane) 234, 235 Benton, Douglas 197, 226 Berenice 172 Berkeley 48 Berlin 189 Bernstein, Sgt. 199 Bertroux, Col. Andre 201 The Best of Robert Bloch 141, 148n1 Bestseller Mystery 203 “Betsy Blake Will Live Forever” 172, 175, 187, 188 “‘Better the House Than an Asylum’: Gothic Strategies in Robert Bloch’s Psycho” ( Janicker) 10, 121–133 Beverly Hills, 90210 225 Bey, Hamid 226 Bierce, Ambrose 172, 183, 235 “The Big Kick” 184, 205 The Big Takeover 234 Billy 195 Bird, Michael J. 216 Bixby, Jerome 214 Black, Hester 219 “Black Bargain” 35 “Black Barter” 63, 66 “The Black Lotus” 8 “The Black Madonna” (Lawlor) 199 “Black Magic Holiday” 63 “Black Notebook” 72, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 181 Black Oracle 236 Black Spell of Saboth 25 Blackmore, Leigh vi, 10, 68– 88, 233 Blackwood, Algernon 110, 173, 235 Blake, Betsy 188 Blake, Robert 14, 27–28, 33, 34, 37, 58, 69 Blakly, Ronee 221 Blates, Norman 228; see also Bates, Norman Blatty, William Peter 233 Blind Bill 81 Bloch, Eleanor Alexander 14, 84 Bloch, Marion 74, 84, 104, 190 Bloch, Raphael Ray 7 Bloch, Robert: awards given to 9, 21–22, 57; books 9; as character in own fiction 27; color and horror fiction 20; critical studies 5; focus

of horror 169; identification with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 14; novels 5; private persona 14; protagonists 16; see also Blake, Robert; individual titles Bloch, Sally Anne 70, 74, 190 Blondell, Joan 220 Bloom, Harold 150, 155 Bloom, Jeffrey 224 Blue Book 69 Blythe, Dorothy 190 Blythe, Ida 190 “The Boarded Window” (Bierce) 172 The Body Snatcher 192 “The Bogeyman Will Get You” 223 Bok, Hannes 64 Bolton, Genevieve 165 Bonney, Gail 212 Boradis 214 Borg, Anna 200 Borg, Erik 200 Boston 38 Boucher, Anthony 153 Bower, Antoinette 201, 213 The Boy with Green Hair 194 Bracken, Eddie 224 Bradbury, Ray 186, 187, 233 Bradley, Matthew R. vi, 11, 186–232, 233 Brahm, John 188, 190, 191, 195, 197, 207, 208 Bram Stoker Awards 235 Bram Stoker Life Achievement Award 9, 21 Brando, Jocelyn 203, 224 Brando, Marlon 203 Brandt, Henry 198, 206 Brazil 187 Brevard Community College 236 Brewster McCloud 228 Bricken, Jules 196 Bridgetown 221 Briggs, Scott D. vi, 10, 102– 120, 233–234 Bright Arrow 215 Brimstone 65 Brisbin, David 227 British Fantasy Awards 235 Broadway 62 Bromely 714 “The Brood of Bubastis” 28, 32 Brooklyn 144 Brophy, Brian 227 Brosnan, John 218

Index Brown, Dr. 211 Brown, Fredric 8, 223 Brown University 234 Browne, Howard 61 Brunet, Robin 211 Bruno 201 Buchanan, Edgar 203 Bugs Bunny 194 Buka, Donald 190 Burke, Walter 205 Burnham, Daniel Hudson 159, 161 Burroughs, Edgar Rice 59 “The Burrowers Beneath” 28 Burt 190 Bus Stop 20, 203, 204 Butler, Nathan 213; see also Sohl, Jerry buysoundtrax.com 235 Byron 227 The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 20 “The Cage” 211 Cain, James M. 100, 106, 110, 111, 173 Caldwell 77 Calenture: A Journal of Studies in Speculative Verse 234 Calgary, Joe 81 “The Call of Cthulhu” (Lovecraft) 1, 3 Callan, Michael 216 Callendar, Newgate 161 Camp, L. Sprague de 62 Campbell, John W. 62 Campbell, Ramsey 9, 37, 111, 173, 235 Canadian Broadcast Company 221 Cansino, Carl 225 Captain Nemo and the Underwater City 222 Caputi, Jane 152, 157, 164 Car Crash Culture 236 Carey, Macdonald 186, 196, 197 Carla 202 Carlin, Lynn 224 Carmichael, Wes 206 Carmody, John 138, 139, 140, 141, 151, 196 Carnoti, Dr. 40n1 Carpenter, John 108 Carradine, John 219 Carroll, Diahann 218 Carstairs, Dr. Paul 222 Carter, Randolph 32 Carter, Rena 219 Casablanca 194 “A Case of the Stubborns” 224

Casey, Sam 220, 221 “The Cask of Amontillado” 81 Cassavetes, John 208 Cassidy, Ted 211 Castiglioni, Iphigenie 200 Castle, William 186, 201, 210, 217 The Castle of Otranto (Walpole) 122, 132n1, 132n2, 132n4 The Cat Creature 20, 218 Cat People 218 “Catnip” 65, 224 “Catspaw” 20, 212 Cavanagh, James P. 191, 229 CBS 187, 207, 222 The Celluloid Muse (Higham & Greenberg) 103 Central State Hospital 105 Chambers, Sheriff 108 Chandler, Raymond 98, 100, 106, 110, 118, 155 Chaney, Lon 212, 227 “The Changing Heart” 194, 205 Chapel, Nurse Christine 211, 212 The Chapel of Four Chaplains 236 Chardur, Edward 215 Charles 182 Charlie 192 Charlie the Printer 223, 224 Chase, Arnold 198 “The Cheaters” (short story) 13, 16 “The Cheaters” (television drama) 19, 191, 199 Chekov, Ensign Pavel 212, 213 Chicago 3, 7–8, 17, 69, 71, 91, 93, 117, 136, 142, 147, 151, 159, 160, 161, 165, 209 Chicago World’s Fair 154, 159–160, 161–162, 165 “Chickamauga” (Bierce) 172 Child, Jack 4 Christie, John 210 Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema (Miller) 201 Cinderella 158 Cineaction 236 Cinefantastique 211, 214 cinefantastiqueonline.com 235 Cinemacabre 236 Circle of Fear 188 Citadel 233

241 City of the Dead 207; see also Horror Hotel Claibourne, Dr. 113, 114–115, 116, 117, 180 Clampett, Elly May 193 Clarke, Gary 200 Classics Dark and Dangerous 221 Clayburn, Mark 82, 83 Clemens, Valdine 132n1, 132n2 “The Cloak” 62, 188, 202 “The Clown at Midnight” 15 Clues 236 Coburn, James 223 Code Name: Minus One 220 Cogan, Rhodie 212 Colavito, Jason 124 The Colbys 218 Cold Chills 175 Colin, Dr. 227 Collected Essays (book series; Lovecraft) 235 Collinge, Patricia 195 Collins, Bart 203 Collins, Patricia 94, 96, 97, 98, 100 Collins, Steve 78; see also Kolischek, Stanley Colman, Booth 201 Colman, Henry 219 Colossal 86 Columbian Exposition 159 Compendium Daemonum 25 The Complete Robert Bloch (Larson) 235 Conan 203 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 145 Conger, Darva 198 Conjure Wife (Leiber) 62 Connecticut 233 Connor, Dave 207, 208 Connors, Rusty 208 Considine, Joe 108, 125, 230 Conspiracy Theories in American History 236 “Cool Air” (tv episode) 216, 217 “The Corbomite Maneuver” 213 Corgi Books 112 Corman, Roger 218 Cornthwaite, Robert 196, 199 The Corpse in My Bed (Alexander) 74 Cort, Bud 228 Cosby, Bill 210 Cotten, Joseph 197 The Couch 20, 84, 172, 181, 187, 194

242 Count Yorga, Vampire 209 Countess Dracula 202 The Country Girl 207 Cover (Ketchum) 47 Coville, Gary 151–152 Cramer, Douglas S. 217, 218, 219 Crane, Lila 106, 108, 113, 115, 126, 129, 130, 165, 176 Crane, Marion 17, 103, 107, 171, 176, 177, 210 Crane, Mary 106, 107, 108, 109, 114, 115, 125, 126, 128–129, 159 Crawford, Joan 20, 210 Crawford, William F. 8 Cream, Dr. Thomas Neil 72 Creatures at Large 61 “The Creeper in the Crypt” 34 Creepshow 224, 226 Cregar, Laird 195 Crescendo 215 Crippen, Dr. H. H. 72 Cristal, Linda 219 Croft, Harlan 205 Crom 38 Cronenberg, David 104 Crosby, Maj. 216, 217 Crosland, Alan, Jr. 199, 205 Crosland, Alan, Sr. 199 Crowe, Christopher 223, 225 Crown, Jerry 215, 216 Crump 209 Cry of the Banshee 189 Cthulhu 38, 235 Cthulhu Mythos 9, 16–17, 25, 27, 32, 37, 38, 40, 45, 104, 106 “The Cuckoo Clock” (Mace) 189, 190 Culp, Robert 210 Cultes des Goules 17, 25–26 Cunningham, Prof. 222 Cupertine, Sister 113 “The Cure” 183, 187, 189 Curtis, David 225, 226 Curtis, Estelle 225, 226 Curucu, Beast of the Amazon 216 Curwen, Joseph 171 Curzon, Debbie 227 Cushing, Helen 201 Cushing, Peter 20, 201, 202, 230 Dade, Irma 210 Dade, Sheriff 210 Daemonolorum 28 Dahl, Roald 194, 222

Index Daikaiju 3 233 Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales 234 Dale 227 Dallas 106 The Damned 196 Dane, Sgt. 201 Dangerous Visions (Ellison) 143 Daniell, Henry 192, 199 Daniels, Les 80, 153–154 Danse Macabre (King) 110, 191, 203 “The Dark Demon” 13, 27, 28, 33 Dark Parades: The Spectacle of Isolation in Horror Films (Royer & Royer) 236 Darkroom 223, 225 Data 225 Daugherty, Herschel 188, 190, 199, 203, 206 Davis, Bette 217 Davis, Jim 203 Davison, Bruce 230 Dawn of the Dead 224, 225– 226 Dawson, Bill 64 Day of the Dead 224, 226 “Daybroke” 172, 184 Daydreaming on Company Time (Hood) 234 The Dead Beat 10, 37, 40, 68, 77, 84–86, 110, 184 The Dead Don’t Die 218, 219 The Dead Zone (King) 104, 111 The Deadly Bees 20, 186 “Deadly Blackmail” 222 The Deadly Percheron (Bardon) 101 Deadrick, Vince 211 Dean, Edward 192 “Death and Texas” 187 “The Death of Halpin Frayser” (Bierce) 172 “Death on a Barge” 217 De Benning, Burr 222 Delaney, Gerald 206 de la Poer family 171 Del Ray, Lester 141 Del Vecchio, Deborah 215 Dempster, Mary Lou 193 Denmark 82 Denning, Richard 209 Dennis, Robert C. 222 Denver, Maryesther 212 De Palma, Frank 226 Derby, Edward 36

Derleth, August 44, 190, 191, 204, 216, 234 d’Erlette, Comte 25 DeSalle, Lt. 213 Desperation 229 Detroit 223 De Vermis Mysteriis 17, 28, 32, 35, 36, 200, 223; see also Mysteries of the Worms Devil 64, 65, 196, 197; see also Satan The Devil in the White City (Larson) 159 Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (Bardon) 101 “The Devil with You” 63, 66 “The Devil’s Ticket” 196, 197, 199, 201 De Wilde, Brandon 205 Dexter, Dr. 33 Dey, Tom 230 Dial “M” for Murder 196 Dial Press 71, 74 Diana 34 The Dick Van Dyke Show 205 Dierkop, Charles 214 Dillan, Brendan 206 Diminutive Society of the Catskill Mountains 60 Discovering H. P. Lovecraft (Schweitzer) 235 The Disenchanted (Shulberg) 100 Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris (Szumskyj) 237 Ditmar awards 233, 234 “‘Do You Love Mother, Norman?’: Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ and Metalious’s Peyton Place as Sources for Robert Bloch’s Psycho” (McDermott) 121 Dr. Who 188 Dolan, Jimmy 188 Don Juan 199 Doohan, James 212 Dors, Diana 206 Douglas, Donna 193 Douglas, Jerry 219 Douglas, Melvyn 217 Douglas, Robert 207 Dracula (Stoker) 107 Dragons and Nightmares 63, 66 Drake, Dena 37 Drake, Don 219, 220 Drake, Frances 219 Drake, Hiram 218

Index Drake, Ralph 219, 220 Drake, Tom 210 Drayton, Mike 76 The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Lovecraft) 31 dreams 29 “Dreams in the Witch House” (Lovecraft) 3, 31, 34 Dreelen, John van 205 Driscoll 114 Driscoll, Leonard 220, 221 Duel & the Distributor (Matheson) 233 “Duel in the Deep” 222 Duffell, Peter 201, 202 Dullea, Keir 222 Dune 227 Dunsany, Lord 235 Dunsmore 228 Dunstable, Eric 117 “The Dunwich Horror” (Lovecraft) 3, 37, 39 Durgnat, Raymond 153 Duvall, Robert 203, 206 Dylan, Bob 100, 181 Dynasty 218 Dziemanowicz, Stefan 68, 70, 77, 85, 233, 235 “The Eager Dragon” 63, 66 The Earth Wire (Lane) 235 Eastern Illinois University 236 Eastman, Carole 203 Edgar Allan Poe Award 84 Edmonds, Roger 219 Edwards, Blake 84 E.E. Evans Memorial Award for Fantasy and Science Fiction Work 84 Egypt 34 Egypt, Little 163, 165 Ehlert, Brian G. 233 The Eighth Stage of Fandom 50, 51, 70 Ekland, Britt 201 Eldritch Dark.com 234 Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine 188, 191, 194, 204 Elliot, Doug 204 Elliot, Joe 204 Elliott, Denholm 202 Elliott, Dr. Jeffrey 148n1 Ellis, Markman 132n4 Ellis, Phillip A. vi, 10, 41–56, 234 Ellison, Harlan 143, 183, 186, 187, 198, 214 Elstree Studios 215

Ely, Ron 201 Emery 176, 184 Emery, John 196 Emmy Awards 194 The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film 236 Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film 236 “The End of Your Rope” 61 “The Enemy Within” 212 England 86, 189, 191 Engstrom, Sheriff 114, 116 “Enoch” 71 USS Enterprise 211, 213, 214 Estelle 225, 226 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial 229 Europe 123 Even More Nightmares 19 “Everybody Needs a Little Love” 225 evil: and good in crime fiction 98; nature of 26 Evolution of the Weird Tale ( Joshi) 43, 44 Exo-III 211 The Exorcist 209 Extrapolation 234 The Face That Must Die (Campbell) 111 “The Faceless God” 13, 30, 31, 40n1 Faces of Fear (Winter) 103 Fairvale 106, 108, 113, 116, 118, 180 “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Poe) 230 Family Plot 227 Famous Monsters of Filmland 45 “Fane of the Black Pharaoh” 32, 33 Fantastic 69 Fantastic Adventures 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 69, 90, 134, 219 “Fantasy and Psychology” 97 The Fantasy Fan 24 Farino, Ernest D. 227 Farley, Ralph Milne 8 Farrell, Sharon 209 “Fat Chance” 222 Fawcett 73 Fay, William 188 Fear in the Night 191 “The Feast” 25 “The Feast in the Abbey” 3, 13, 25, 26, 69, 173 “The Feaster from the Stars” 28

243 Feep, Lefty 58, 59–60, 61, 65, 66, 67 Fell, Dr. 174, 183 Fenwick, Dr. Howard 206 “The Fiddler’s Fee” 173 Fiedler, John 214 Field, Marshall 160 Fields, Amy 201 Fields, W.C. 57 Film Fun 76 Film Music Review 236 Filmfax 186, 195, 216 Filmfaxplus 233 “Final Performance” 208 Finland 86 Firebug 84, 181, 184 Fischer, Dennis 214 Fiske, Edmund 33 “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” 198 The Flayed Man: And Other Poems (Ellis) 234 Florey, Robert 194 Florida 236 Floyd, Heyward 220 The Fly 193 Fonda, Jane 66 Fontana, Dorothy 143, 211, 213 Foreign Correspondent 189 “Foreword: The Heart of a Child” (Hood) 1–4 Forte, Fabian 203 Foster, Jodie 223 Foster, Polly 83 Foster Brothers 78 Foundation 235 Fox, Larry 84, 85–86 France 82, 83 Frances 222 Francis, Freddie 200 Frankenheimer, John 196 Frankenstein (film) 194 Frankenstein (Shelley) 107 Franklin, Benjamin 192 Franklin, Max 202 Franklin, Richard 103, 228 Franklin, Tom 222 Franks, Chloe 202 Frazer, Jim 159, 163, 164, 165, 166 Frazer, Miss 71, 73, 91–92, 93, 94, 97, 155, 156 “Freddie Funk’s Flippant Fairies” (Yerxa) 59 French, Ed 224 The French Connection 209 Freud, Sigmund 29 Friedkin, William 209 “A Friend” 229

244 Friend, Oscar J. 77 Fright Night 228 Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (Szumskyj) 237 Frost, Warren 229 “Frozen Fear” 200 Frye, William 191, 197 The Fugitive 201 Fuller, Tom 228, 229 “Funnel of God” 81 Fury 202 Gabface, Gorilla 60 Galin, Mitchell 226 “The Gallows” 24, 42 Games 218 Garcia, Frank 217 Garland, Beverly 216 Garris, Mick 229 Gates of Hell 219 Gauer, Harold 40n1, 58 Gauntlet Press 230, 233 Gavin, John 209–210 Gazzara, Ben 211 Gein, Augusta 104 Gein, Ed 17, 104–105, 109, 152, 153, 229 Gein, George P. 104 Gein, Henry G. 104 Gemini Man 220, 221, 223 Generation of Vipers (Wylie) 126 George 206 Germany 83 The Ghost of Flight 401 223 Ghost Story 188, 217 Gibbs, Hank 117, 118, 180, 184 Gibson, Alan 215 Gibson, Donna 204 Gibson, Miss 206 Gilchrist, Connie 206 Gilligan’s Island 199 Gillings, Howard 215, 216 Gillings, Leona 215, 216 Ginsberg, Alan 184 Girard, Bernard 208 Girard, Simone-Élise 230 The Girl from U.N.C.L.E 188 The Girl Next Door (Ketchum) 47 “Girl of My Dreams” (Matheson) 215, 216 “Girl with a Secret” 190 “The Glass Eye” 194 Gleason, Jackie 194 “The Gloating Place” 198, 205, 206, 225 Gods, the Elder 4 Goldberg, Whoopi 117, 118

Index Golden Age of Science Fiction 62 Golden Years 226 Goldfinger 222 Goldsmith, Jerry 197 Goldstone, James 211 Goliath Studios 188 Gonzales 187, 188 good and evil in crime fiction 98 “A Good Imagination” 197, 203, 205 “A Good Knight’s Work” 62, 66 Goodman, Dr. 228 Goodness Gracious Me 178 Gordon, Edgar 28 Gordon, Ruth 228 Gothic literature 121–122; see also American Gothic Grand Master Award 21 Grandpa 224, 225; see also Titus “The Grave” 25 Grave, Paul 21 Graves, Paul 199 Grayson, Phillip 201 Great Depression 8 Great Old Ones 2 “The Greatest Monster of Them All” 19, 194, 202 Green, Gilbert 207 Greenberg, Joel 103 Greenwood Press 233 Gregg, G. Gordon 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166 Gregg, Millie 161, 164, 165 Gregg, Virginia 206 “The Grim Reaper” 19, 21, 192, 199 Grimm, Sebastian 192 “The Grinning Ghoul” 34, 35 Griswald, Claire 206 Grizzard, George 204 Grubb, Davis 223 The Guide to United States Popular Culture 236 “Guillotine” 190, 223 Gulther, Fritz 35, 36 Gunderson, Lt. 203 Gunga Din 194 Gunn, Moses 228 Gustav Marx Advertising Agency 17, 70, 74 Guy, Sir 196, 201 Hadoth 32 Hagen, Randy 198 Haigh, John 210

Haines, Amy 116 Haines, Charlie 75 Haines, Eddie 75, 76, 77 Haje, Khrystyne 229 Hale, Richard 194 Hall, Madeline 190 Hallick, Tom 222 Halloween 212 Halloween 108 “Halloween Knight” 228 Hamilton, George 219 Hamling, William 65 Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Checklist ( Johnson & Del Vecchio) 215 Hammer Horror 195, 196, 202, 215, 216 Hammerstein, Elaine 199 Hammett, Dashiell 100–101, 173, 183 Hangover Square 195 Hans 200 Hansel and Gretel 217 Hanson, Don 37 Hard Case Crime 78, 83 Harold and Maude 228 Harper, Jan 114, 117 Harper, Susan 198 Harrington, Curtis 218, 223 Harris, Elinor 85 Harris, Julie 215 Harris, Lara 227 Harris, Robert H. 194, 200 Harris, Thomas 72, 111 Harrison, Joan 189, 212, 215 Harrison, John 225, 227; see also Sutherland, John Harrison, Susan 198 Hartley, Arthur 226 Hartmann, Theo Von 202 Harwood, Ronald 222 Hastings, Sherry 219 “The Haunter of the Dark” (Lovecraft) 14, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 43, 58, 69 The Haunting 215 Hayes, Alfred 208 Healey, Myron 207 Heche, Anne 103 Hedison, David 219 “Hell Is Other People: Robert Bloch and the Pathologies of the Family” (Lane) 11, 169–185 “The Hellbound Train” 17, 84 “Hell’s Angel” 64 Helm, Anne 194, 205 Henderson, Paul 202 Henderson, Stephen 202 Hengist 214

Index Henley 216, 217 Henreid, Paul 194, 206 Henry, Gregg 228 Henry, O. 70 Henshaw, Joe 192 Henshaw, Maggie 192 Herbert, Frank 227 Hermann, Professor Otto 75, 76, 77 Herrmann, Bernard 206, 208, 229 Hervey, Benjamin 129 Hessler, Gordon 189 Heyes, Douglas 193 Heyes, Douglas, Sr. 217 Heyes, Joanna 193 Hide and Seek (Ketchum) 47 Higham, Charles 103 Highgate Productions 221 Highsmith, Patricia 206 Hindu rope trick 61 Hitchcock, Alfred 7, 17, 18, 19, 84, 102, 103, 104, 109, 121, 150, 153, 176, 177, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 225, 227, 228, 229 Hitchcock, Pat 190 Hoch, Edward 209 Hogan, Charlie 164, 166 Holcombe, Marion Ruth 70 Holden, Jan 216 Holland 82, 86 Holland, Tom 103, 228 Hollis, Sir Guy 138, 139, 140, 141, 151 “The Hollow in the Woods” (Campbell) 37 Hollywood 61, 65, 71, 75, 82, 84, 86, 91, 96, 97, 106, 112, 114, 115, 154, 155, 194, 209 Holmes, Henry H. 139, 160; see also Mudgett, Herman Holy Grail 62 “A Home Away from Home” 206 Home Savings Bank 7 Home Viewer 236 Homolka, Oscar 201, 202 Hood, Robert vi, 1–4, 234 Hooper, Celia 203 Hooper, Elmer 203 Hooper, Myrtle 203 Hopper, Dennis 218 Horridge 111 Horror: Another 100 Best Books ( Jones & Newman) 235

Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Film 236 Horror Hotel 207; see also City of the Dead The Horror People (Brosnan) 218 Horror Writers Association 235 “A Horseman in the Sky” (Bierce) 172 Hoskins, Thad 163 Houghton, James 224 “The Hound” (Lovecraft) 24 Houndini, Harry 32 “House of Evil” 217 “House of the Hatchet” 173 House of Usher 166 The House That Dripped Blood 20, 186, 188, 201 Houseman, John 222 Houser, Christie 225 How to Make a Monster 194, 200 Howard, John vi, 10, 89–101, 234 Howard, Robert E. 203 H.P. Lovecraft: A Life ( Joshi) 235 H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West ( Joshi) 235 Hubbard, Mrs. 76, 215 Hudson, Det. Mike 201 Hughes, Howard 204 Hughes, Tresa 225 Hugo 205, 206 Hugo Award 9, 84 The Hunger 230 “The Hungry Glass” 19, 192, 194, 199; see also “The Hungry House” “The Hungry House” 13, 15–16, 19, 172, 173, 192; see also “The Hungry Glass” Hunt, Helen 223 Hunter, Luke 209 Hunter, Marta 209 Hunter College 230 Hurley, Hazel 71, 93, 94, 95, 100, 156, 157, 158 Hussey, Olivia 229 Hutton, Brian 205 Hyde, Mr. 14, 15, 26 “I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell” 174 “I Kiss Your Shadow” 13, 20, 203, 204 I Spy 210, 211 I Spy —The Definitive Site 210 “I Was a Teen-Age Faust” 50

245 “I’ll Fry Tomorrow” 54 Illinois 69 Illinois State Penitentiary 219 Imagination 64, 65, 192 Imaginitive Tales 63, 65 Immaterial and Creeping in Reptile Flesh (Hood) 234 “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” (Lovecraft) 31– 32 In the Days of the Comet (Wells) 20 In the Land of the Sky-Blue Ointment (Bloch & Gauer) 58, 60 “In the Vale of Pnath” 28 The Incomplete Enchanter (Camp & Pratt) 62 L’Incroyable Cinema 236 “The Indian Spirit Guide” 215 Inge, William 203 Intersect 221 “Introduction” (Szumskyj) 7–11 The Invisible Man 220 Iowa 75 Irene 201 “Iron Mask” 147 “Is Betsy Blake Stll Alive?” 187 Israel 205 It Came from Outer Space 193 Italy 83 “It’s a Good Life” (Serling) 214, 216 Jack 60 Jack Nicholson: Movie Top Ten 236 Jack the Ripper 8, 10, 95, 96, 106, 134, 151–152, 158, 164, 195, 196, 201, 213, 214 Jack’s Shack 59 Jackson 212 Jackson, Sherry 211 Jacquelin, Pierre 201 Jaffe, Sam 194 Jago, Captain Pete 196 Jamaica Inn 189 James, King 94 James, M.R. 234, 235 Jancovitch, Mark 121, 123, 127 Janes, Loren 221 Janicker, Rebecca vi, 10, 121–133, 234 Japan 82, 83 Jaris 214 Jarrett, Renne 219 The Jazz Singer 199

246 Jeckyll, Dr. 14, 15, 26 The Jeckyll Legacy 86 Jeff 187, 188; see also Jensen, Jeff Jenson, Jeff see Jeff Jerris, Dr. 227 Jimmy 175 John 222 John the Baptist 201 Johnson, George Clayton 186, 197, 214, 233 Johnson, Liz 193 Johnson, Russell 193 Johnson, Tom 215, 216 Jones, Henry 200, 203 Jones, Stephen 235 Jorla, Karl 207, 208 Joshi, S.T. vi, 10, 23–40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 69, 72, 73, 124, 155, 156, 157, 233, 235 Journal of Popular Culture 236 Journey into Midnight 215 Journey to the Unknown 215 Joyce 215 Joyride (Ketchum) 47 Judy 205 Julie 223 Juliette 143, 144 Juliette (Sade) 143 Kandel, Stephen 210 Kane 144 Kara 214 Karloff, Boris 19, 21, 190, 191, 192 The Kate Smith Hour 195 Katkov, Norman 222 Kazan, Elia 188 Keane, Kerrie 229 Keaton, Buster 66 Kelleher, Brian 189, 209 Keller, Gerald 199 Kelley, DeForrest 212 Kelsey, David 206; see also Newmaster, William Kendall, Johnny 210 Kendall, Tom 80, 81 Kennedy, John F. 100 Kenny 205 Kerouac, Jack 85, 184 Kerr, Sondra 200 Kert, Larry 206 Kesla 214 Ketchum, Jack 47, 53; see also Mayr, Dallas Keyhole 222 Keys, William 222 “The Keys to the Bates

Index Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy” (Briggs) 10, 102–120 Khem 31 “Kick the Can” ( Johnson) 216 The Kidnapper 10, 68, 77, 78–80, 137, 138, 152 Kilgour, Maggie 132n3 The Killer Inside Me (Thompson) 118 King, Lou 93, 94, 95, 98 King, Stephen 9, 104, 110, 111, 124, 129, 191, 203, 204, 224, 226, 229, 234 Kirk, Captain James Tiberius 192, 211, 212, 213, 214 Kit 81 Kitty 207, 208 KKK 183 Kleeman 94 Klein, T. E. D. 9 Klemm, Ulrich 194 Kling, Duke 96, 98, 99 Kneubuhl, John 203 Knightriders 224, 226 Koenig, Walter 212 Kolchak, Carl 195 Kolchak: The Night Stalker 195 Kolischek, Stanley 78; see also Collins, Steve Kolmar, Abe 82 Korby, Roger 211, 212 Korob 213 Kosleck, Martin 201 Kralik, Hymie 196 Kramer, Dr. Clarence 192 Krause, Helen 208 Krause, Mike 208 Kristen, Marta 198, 209 Kroft, Ernst von 194, 202 Kull, King 203 Kur-ub-Set 219 Kuttner, Henry 40 Kyro 217 Lacey, Catherine 215 Ladies Day/This Crowded Earth 86 Ladies’ Night (Ketchum) 47 Landis, John 216 “The Landlady” 194, 206, 222 Landon, Michael 200 Landru, Henri Desire 72 Lane, Howard 37 Lane, Jerry 203 Lane, Joel vi, 11, 169–185, 235 Lang, Fritz 97 The Langoliers 224 Larson, Erik 159, 160

Larson, Randall D. vi, 5, 10, 42, 45, 46, 48–49, 50, 53, 54, 68, 77, 80, 81, 84, 86, 134–149, 157, 158, 166, 235 Las Vegas 225 The Last of Philip Banter (Bardon) 101 Laszlo, Victor 194 The Late Show 236 Latin 28 “The Laughter of a Ghoul” 24–25 Laurel Entertainment 224, 225, 226 LaValle, Vera 219, 220 LaVerne 85, 85n Lawlor, Harold 21, 199 Lawrence, Nancy 223 Laxer, Harry 204, 205 Lecter, Hannibal 72 Leda 223 Lee, Christopher 19, 202, 207, 208 Leeds, Peter 206 “The Legacy” 227 Leiber, Fritz 9, 40, 44, 62, 170, 234 Leitch, Christopher 225 Lejtes, Joseph 205 Lejtes, Józef see Lejtes, Joseph Lemani, Tania 214 Leming, Ron 104 Lenton, Morty 194 Lerner, Dikki 200 “Lessons from Providence: Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as a Mentor and Bloch and Fandom” (Ellis) 10, 41–56 Letters to Robert Bloch (Lovecraft) 23 Levenia 220 Levi, Alan J. 220 Lewis, Lorna 76, 77 Lewton, Val 218 Leytes, Josef see Lejtes, Joseph Leytes, Joseph see Lejtes, Joseph Life Achievement Award 9, 21, 57 Lifetime Career Award 21 “The Lighter Side of Death: Robert Bloch as a Humorist” (Schweitzer) 10, 57–67 “The Lighthouse” 230 “The Lighthouse” (Poe) 74, 230 Ligotti, Thomas 9 “Lilies” 8, 69, 191

Index Lincoln High School 8 Linda 206 Linden, Dorothy 199 Linder, Cec 222 Linette, Raymond 229 Linville, Joanne 204 Lion Books 80 “A Lion Walks Among Us” 203 Lisa 194, 205 “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft” ( Joshi) 10, 23–40 The Little Foxes 195 Liverpool 111 “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” 71, 147 Lloyd, Norman 189, 209 Lockhart, June 209 Lock-Up 84, 186, 187, 196 The Lodger 195 The Lodger (Lowndes) 135, 137 Loeb, Stella 7 Lofficier, Jean-Marc 152 Lofficier, Randy 152 Logan, Frank 198 Logan, Fred 194 Logan, Louise 198 Logoda 216, 217 “Logoda’s Heads” 216, 217 Lom, Herbert 227 Lomond, Britt 198 London 2, 136, 144, 147, 151, 154, 215, 234 Long, Frank Belknap 26, 27 Long, Nicky 206 Long Island 234 Loomis, Sam 107, 108, 113, 115, 125, 128, 165, 210, 225 Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination ( Joshi) 235 Lori 183 Lori 183 Lorre, Peter 75, 97 Lorre, Peter, Jr. 219 Los Angeles 18, 106 Losey, Joseph 194 The Lost (Ketchum) 47 The Lost Bloch 62, 63, 64, 65, 103 The Lost District: And Other Stories (Lane) 235 Lost in Space 198, 209 Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep 60 Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies 234

Lovecraft Circle 33, 58 Lovecraft, H.P. 1–3, 8, 9, 10, 13–14, 16, 23, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 57–58, 68, 69, 90, 91, 103, 104, 134, 150, 155, 171, 172, 183, 191, 216, 230, 234, 235; advice to Bloch re: fiction 24–25, 42 Lovecraft Society of New England 9 Lovecraft Studies 234, 235 Lowery Agency 107 Lowndes, Mary Belloc 135, 137 Lucanio, Patrick 151–152 Lucas 205 Lucas, Frank 218, 219 Lucille 73, 93 Lucky Lady 96 Lucky Larry 82 Lucy 174, 201 “Lucy Comes to Stay” 74, 137, 172, 174, 200 Lugosi, Bela 194 Luiz 187, 188 Luke, Keye 218 Lumley, William 38 Lummis, Dayton 192 “The Lurking Fear” (Lovecraft) 24, 38 Luveh-Keraph 25 Lynch, Ken 198, 205 Lyndon, Barré 195, 207 Lyons, Robert F. 223 M 97 Mabbot, Prof. Thomas 230 Macauley, Charles 214 Mace, Frank 189 Machen, Arthur 110, 234, 235 Macht, Stephen 225 Macnee, Patrick 216 Macready, George 200 “Madame Mystery” 187, 188 Madison 105 “The Madness of Lucien Grey” 29 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 204, 216, 224 Magee, Patrick 227 Maglore, Simon 221 Maglore, Simone 221 Maitland, Marne 215 “Make Me Laugh” 217 The Man from U.N.C.L.E 188 The Man in Half Moon Street 195 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Wilson) 128

247 Man of a Thousand Faces 212 Man of Mystery 205 “Man of Mystery” 204 “The Man Trap” ( Johnson) 214 “The Man Who Collected Poe” 74, 230 The Man Who Could Cheat Death 195 “The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow” 147–148 “The Man Who Never Did Anything Right” 148 Manfred 132n2 Manhattan 206 Mann, Lt. 226 “The Mannikin” 221 “Mannikins of Horror” 227 Mao Tse-tung 66 March, Alex 222 Marco, Lt. 219 Marcuse, Theodore 213 Marie 187, 188 Maris, Herbert L. 186 Markle, Fletcher 191 Marlowe, Philip 98 Martha 206 Martin 224 Martin, Dr. 227 Martin, Ross 220 Marvel Tales 8, 29, 69, 191 Marx Brothers 57, 62 Mary 222 M*A*S*H 205 The Mask of the Sorceror (Schweitzer) 235 Masques & Citadels (Howard & Valentine) 234 Matheson, Richard 186, 187, 190, 192, 195, 208, 212, 216, 231, 233 Matheson, Tim 216 “The Matheson Mafia” 197, 214 Matthews 211 Mayberry, Will 204 Mayr, Dallas 42, 44, 46, 47– 48, 49; see also Ketchum, Jack Mazonides 25 MCA 209 McCammon, Robert 223 McCarty, John 189, 209 McCary, Rod 226 McCauley, Kirby 111 McCoy, Dr. Leonard “Bones” 212, 213 McCutcheon, Bill 224 McDermott, John A. 121 McEachin, James 219

248 McFarland 233 McGavin, Darren 195 McGuire, Harp 188 McIntire, Capt. F. X. “Trapper John” 205 McKenna, Siobhan 222 McPherson, John 223 Medina, Patricia 197 Meeker, Ralph 220 The Member of the Wedding 215 Men into Space 186, 199 Mendota State Hospital 105 Mercury Players 189 Meredith, Burgess 222 Merlin 63 “The Merman” 29 Merrick, John 145 Merrill, Scott 199 “The Messiah of Mott Street” (Serling) 217 “Method Actor” 225; see also “Bad Actor” “Method for Murder” 202, 203, 215 Mexico 86, 210 Michigan, Lake 160 Mick 117 Midas, King 60 “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” (Bierce) 172 Midnight Marquee 236 Midnight Pleasures 225 Mike 187, 188 Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine 69, 208 Milland, Ray 195–196, 206, 219 Miller, Mark A. 201, 202 Milwaukee 28, 33, 69, 70, 74 Milwaukee Fictioneers 8, 69 Milwaukee Jewish Settlement 7; see also Abraham Lincoln House Mingle, Mrs. 224 Mingo, Anthony 81 “Miniature” 203, 206 Minneapolis 91, 93 Minotaur 221 “Minotaur” 220 Minudri, Regina 159 “The Miracle of Robert Weems” 65 Mission: Impossible 188 “Mr. Margate’s Mermaid” 63 Mr. Sardonicus 201 Mitch 205 Mitchell, Donna 229 Mitchell, Guy 187

Index Mitchum, John 192 The Modern Weird Tale ( Joshi) 235 Molson, Gordon 187, 188, 204 Monroe, Marilyn 20 The Monster Times 236 Monsters 226, 227 Monsters in Our Midst 86 Moore, C.L. 40, 181 Moore, Mary Tyler 205 More Nightmares 19 Morgan, Paul 180 Morgan Park Military Academy 7 Morla 214 Morley, Daniel 10, 71, 72, 73, 75, 91, 106, 155–156, 157, 158, 159, 181 Morris, Frances 203 Morris, Wolfe 201 Morse, Barry 201 Moskowitz, Sam 80 Moss, Jim 219 “A Most Unusual Murder” 144 “Mother of Serpents” 173, 183 Mowbray, Alan 187 Mudgett, Herman 139; see also Holmes, Henry H. Munn, H. Warner 27 “Murder Is a Gamble” 187 The Murders in the Rue Morgue 189, 194 Murphy, Audie 187 Murphy, Ben 220 Murphy, Ralph 195 Murrad, Sirri 226 Mutiny on the Bounty 209 “My Hitch with Hitchcock” 189 Myers, Charles 65 Mysteries of the Worm 19, 23, 25, 37, 221; see also De Vermiis Mysteriis The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe) 132n4 Mysterious Island 216 “Mystery, Madame” 188 The Mystery Writers of America 22, 84, 210 Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media 236 Nadja 197 Nalder, Reggie 220 “Napier Court” (Campbell) 174 Nashville 221 Nautilus 222 Naylor, Jill 205

NBC 21, 187, 191, 207, 211, 218, 220, 225 NecronomiCon 9 The Necronomicon 16 Necronomicon Press 233 Nelson, Ed 192, 198 Nemo, Captain 222 Nephren-Ka 32, 33, 34 Nesmith, Ottola 193 Network 190 New Amsterdam Entertainment 226 New English Library 89 New Orleans 32 New South Wales 234 New York 61, 62, 64, 91, 94, 211 New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury 234 The New York Review of Science Fiction 235 The New Yorker 194 Newlan, Paul 192, 199 Newland, John 202, 203, 204 Newman, Joseph M. 209 Newman, Kim 235 Newmaster, William 206; see also Kelsey, David Nicholas, Denise 217 Nichols, Nichelle 213 “Nick of Time” 192, 193 The Night Flier 224 Night Gallery 216, 217, 223 The Night Life of the Gods (Smith) 61, 62 Night Must Fall 203 The Night of the Ripper 86, 145, 152, 154, 213 The Night Stalker 195 The Night Strangler 195; see also The Time Killer Night Tide 218 The Night Walker 20, 186 Nightmare 191, 204 “Nightmare at 20, 000 Feet” 192, 193, 216 Nightmares 19 Nightworld 80, 154, 217 Nile 32 Nimoy, Leonard 211, 217 “Nina” 176, 183 Nocturne 212 Nolan, William F. 223, 233 Nork, Dr. 58 Northwestern Railroad Station 7–8 Norton, Dr. 206 Norton Sanatorium 206 “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” 37, 174

Index Notes on Contemporary Literature 236, 237 “Number One” 211, 213 “Nursemaid to Nightmares” 63, 66 The NY Arts Magazine 234 Nyarlathotep 30–31, 32, 33, 37, 38, 39 “Nyarlathotep (Lovecraft; prose poem) 38 “Nyarlathotep” (Lovecraft; sonnet) 33, 39 Nye, Reverend 38 Oakland, Connie 229 Oakland, Simon 229 Ober, Philip 203 The Oblong Box 189 O’Brien, David Wright 59 O’Connor, Dr. 203 Oedipus 176 “Off Season” see “Open Season” Off Season (Ketchum) 47 Offspring (Ketchum) 47 Ohmmen, Fritz 207, 208 Oklahoma 107 Olcott, Miriam 192 “Old Ones” 211, 212, 213 “Oldies but Goodies” 54 O’Leary, Brian 162 Oliver, Susan 206 O’Malley, J. Pat 196 On the Waterfront 188 Once Around the Bloch 7–8, 58, 103, 170, 190 One Step Beyond 202; see also Alcoa Presents O’Neill, Robert 220, 223 Only Child (Ketchum) 47 Ontario Educational Communications Authority 221 “Open Season” 209 “The Opener of the Way” 32 The Opener of the Way 40n1, 70, 235 Orbach, Jerry 226 O’Reilly, Cyril 224 Out of My Head 50, 70 Outer Darkness 236 Outer Limits 17, 199, 220 “The Outsider” (Lovecraft) 24, 32 Paisà 208 Pal, George 20, 226 Palance, Jack 230 Palladino, Tony 71 Palmer, Lt. 198

Palmer, Raymond 8, 59, 61, 62, 65 “Papa Benjamin” 191 Paradoxa 236 Paramount Pictures 195 Paris 208 Parker, George 198 “The Partnership” 223 “The Party” (Nolan) 223 Paul, Kurt 228, 229 Peabody, Rev. 224 Peeples, Samuel A. 136, 186, 211 Pelletier, Pol 221 Pen, Robin 234 Penguin Books 235 Penny Dreadful 236 Peoples, Don 226 Perdido 220 Perkins, Anthony 18, 102, 112, 153, 228, 229 Permissive Therapy (Fenwick) 206 Perry, Roger 209 Persoff, Nehemiah 188 Perth 236 Perth Central TAFE 236 Pertwee, Jon 188, 202 Pertwee, Michael 188 Pet Sematary 224 Pete 208 Peters, Brock 217 Petrie, Laura 205 Petty, Lori 228 Pevney, Joseph 143, 212 Peyton Place 118 Pfefferkorn, Michael G. vi, 45, 233 Phantom Books 77 Philadelphia 198, 236 Phillips 199 Phillips, Mark 217 Phipps, William 204 Picardo, Robert 228 Pickman, Richard Upton 38 “Pickman’s Model” (Lovecraft) 29, 38, 68, 171, 216 “The Pictures in the House” (Lovecraft) 37 “The Pied Piper Fights the Gestapo” 60 Pierce, Earl, Jr. 51 Pierce, Fulton 227 “Pigeons from Hell” 203, 205 “The Pin” 147 Pitkin, Charles 180 Pitt, Ingrid 202 Pittman, Montgomery 211 Plainfield 104 Playboy 69, 187, 198

249 Pleasant Dreams 19, 204 Poe, Edgar Allan 50, 74, 81, 87, 110, 171, 172, 191, 194, 197, 230 “The Poet and Peasant Case” 187 Pollack, Sydney 206 “Poor Butterfly” (Gibson) 215 Popular Culture Association 236 Popular Library 86 Porter, Alice 163–164 Porter, Jim 222 Portnow, Richard 226 Portnoy, Alex 178–179 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth) 178–179 Post, Ellen 77 Post, Leland 77 Pounder, C. C. H. 229 Powell, Randolph 223 Powell, Robert 227 Pratt, Fletcher 62 “Precursors to Psycho” (Larsen) 68 “Preface” (Szumskyj) 5–6 “The Premature Burial” 191, 197 Presley, Elvis 85 Price, Robert M. 37, 40n2 Priestley, David 222 Prince, William 227 Prinn, Dirk Van 192 Prinn, Ludvig 25, 221 Prinn, Sarah 215 The Prisoner of Zenda 207 “Programming Block: The Small-Screen Career of Psycho’s Creator” (Bradley) 11, 186–232 Providence 1, 2, 24, 28, 33, 57 “The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World” (Ellison) 143 Pryor, Nicholas 194 Psycho 5, 7, 10, 11, 17–18, 19, 20, 40, 57, 65, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 84, 101, 102, 121, 137, 150, 151, 152–153, 154, 155, 156, 170, 172, 175, 176–179, 186, 187, 188, 190, 200, 209, 210, 230 Psycho II 86, 103, 104, 106, 111, 112–115, 116, 118, 154, 179, 180, 228 Psycho II (film) 103, 112, 228 Psycho III (film) 228 Psycho IV: The Beginning 103, 229

250 Psycho House 86, 104, 116–119, 154, 180, 184, 228 Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary American Film and Fiction (Simpson) 236 The Psychopath 20, 186 Psycho-Paths 86 Punter, David 121, 131, 162 Pyris VII 212, 213 Queen of Blood 218 Queen of Hearts 71, 94, 95, 96, 157 Questar 147n1 Quicksilver Highway 229 “A Quiet Funeral” 223 The Quill 69 Quiller-Couch, Arthur 235 Radcliffe, Anne 132n4 Radin, Henri 199 Radin, Pierre 199 Rais, Gilles de 158 Rampling, Charlotte 201 Ramsden, Dennis 215 Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction ( Joshi) 235 Rational Fears ( Jancovitch) 121 “The Rats in the Walls” (Lovecraft) 31 Rayburn 211 Readercon awards 234 The Reader’s Guide to Robert Bloch (Larson) 235 “The Real Bad Friend” 137 Rear Window 16, 191 Reardon, Lt. 220 Reason, Rhodes 204 Rebecca 189 Rebello, Stephen 210 Red (Ketchum) 47 Red Dragon (Harris) 72, 111 Red Harvest (Hammett) 100 Red Jack 214; see also Redjac Redfield, William 194 Redjac 152, 214; see also Red Jack Reed, Tracy 215 Reinhart, Dr. 219 Remsbach, Otto 116, 117 Remsen, Burt 206 Rena 71, 93, 94, 157, 158 Republic Studio 187 “The Return of Andrew Bentley” 190 The Return of Captain Nemo 22; see also The Amazing Captain Nemo

Index The Return of Count Yorga 209 “The Return of Lefty Feep” 61 “Return to the Sabbath” 207 Reynolds, B. M. 43 Rhode Island 1, 57 Rich, John 210 The Richard Matheson Companion (Bradley) 233 Richard Matheson on Screen (Bradley) 233 Richards, Carrie 216 Richards, Greg 216 Richman, Mark 188 Richmond, Leo 229 “Ride the Nightmare” 208 Riding the Bullet 229 Ridley, John 144 Rigel IV 214 “The Ripper” 195 “Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Bloch’s Partnership with Jack the Ripper” (Larson) 10, 134–149 Rivers, Natalie 206 Riverside Quarterly 45 Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected 222; see also Tales of the Unexpected Roarke, Adam 207 Robert Bloch (Larson) 5 “Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers” (Simpson) 10–11, 150–168 Robert Bloch Award 9 The Robert Bloch Companion (Larson) 235 “Robert Bloch: The Psychology of Horror” (Vertleib) 9–10, 13–22 “Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Some Pathological Contexts” (Punter) 121 Roberti, Madame 200 Roberti, Nicolai 200 Roberts 226 Roberts, “Inspector” 206 Roberts, Judson 76, 77 Robinson, Charles 203 Robinson, Frank M. 198 Robinson, Hubbell 19, 191 Robinson, Judy 198 Robinson, Kelly 210 Robinson, Mark 145 Roche, Eugene 223 Rockwell, Rick 199 Roddenberry, Gene 211, 213, 214 Rogers, Marjorie 203 Rogers, Neville 201 Rodgers, Wayne 205

Rogue 198, 205 Romar, Dr. Andrea 216 Rome 34, 162 Romero, George A. 224, 226 Rosemary’s Baby 208, 217 “Rose’s Last Summer” 191 Rosie 209 Ross, Dane 194 Roth, Philip 178, 179 Rothstein, Richard 228 Rowe, Misty 223 Royer, Carl 236 Royer, Diana 236 “The Rubber Room” 176, 184 Rubin, Mann 222 Rubini, Max 207, 208 Rubinstein, Richard P. 224, 226, 229 Ruby 218 Rudolph, Chet 230 “Rudolph the Great” 209 Rudy 205 Ruk 211, 212 Run for Your Life 211 Runyon, Damon 59, 63, 172 Ruppert, Constance 71, 95, 96, 97, 157 Ruppert, Jeff 95, 96, 97, 99, 156, 157 Rutherford, Dr. Lionel 227 Ruthie 182 Ryan, Dick 82, 83 Ryan, Edmon 196 Rydalmere 234 Ryder, Alfred 20 Sabotage 201 Saboteur 189 Sadini, Irene 206 Sadini, Victor 205, 206 St. Germain, Comte de 195 St. Peter’s Basilica 162 Salem’s Lot 226 Sally 229 Salome 201 Sandy 210 Sanford, Donald S. 191 Sanford, Jay Allen 192 Sapinsley, Alvin 216 Sapiro, Leland 45 Sargent, Joseph 213 Sasdy, Peter 215 Satan 65, 72; see also Devil Satan’s School for Girls 225 “Satan’s Servants” 30 Saunders, Mary Jane 210 Scala, Gia 207 Scanners II: The New Order 230 The Scarf 10, 36, 68, 71–74,

Index 75, 78, 89, 100, 104, 105, 106, 110, 111, 124, 136, 137, 138, 151, 152, 154, 155– 158, 159, 164, 172, 181; see also The Scarf of Passion The Scarf of Passion 74; see also The Scarf Schafer, Natalie 21, 199 Schallert, William 203 Schechter, Harold 160 Schiff, Stuart David 112 Schnabel, Stefan 204 Schorer, Mark 190 Schow, David J, 62 Schumann, Leo “Specs” 78, 79 Schuster, Thomas 230 Schweitzer, Darrell vi, 10, 57–67, 235 Science Fiction Television Series (Phillips & Garcia) 217 Science Fiction Theater 186 Science-Fiction World 81 Sci-Fi Channel 212 Scotland Yard 146, 196 Scott, Alexander 210 Scotty 143, 212, 213, 214 Scotty, Tony 229 Scream and Scream Again 189 “The Screaming People” 174 Screams: Three Novels of Terror 82 Sea Kissed 70 Searl, Jack 206 Seattle 194 Sebastian, John 218 Sebek 32 “The Second Wife” 209 “The Secret in the Tomb” 8, 13, 25, 26, 69 “The Secret of Sebek” 32 “Secret Worship” (Blackwood) 173 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 124, 129, 130, 131 “See How they Run” 176 Sekenre: The Book of the Sorceror (Schweitzer) 235 The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch 86 Senensky, Ralph 217 Sequeira, Chris G. C. 233 serial killers 10–11 Serling, Rod 197, 214, 216, 217 Seurat, Pilar 214 “The Seven Ages of Fan” 51, 54

Sexual Congress 58 Shades (book series; Hood) 234 “The Shadow from the Steeple” 33, 39, 44, 58 Shadow of a Doubt 186, 195, 210 “The Shadow Out of Time” 37 “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (Lovecraft) 24, 34, 37 “Shaggai” 28 “Shambleau” (Moore) 181 “The Shambler from the Stars” 13, 26, 27, 28, 33, 43, 58, 69 “The Shambler in the Night” 26 Shamley High School 198 Shane 205 Shane, Maxwell 191 Shapiro, Bishop 58 Shatner, William 19, 21, 192, 194, 199, 211 The Shattered Goddess (Schweitzer) 235 Shaw, Reta 203 She Wakes (Ketchum) 47 Sheen, Martin 225 Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace 208 Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes see Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace Sherrier, Julian 215 The Shining 229 Shining Trapezohedron 34 Shires, Ronnie 224 Shirley, Mercedes 205 Shooting Star 10, 82–84, 152 “Show Biz” 204 Showtime 230 Shulberg, Budd 100 “The Sign of Satan” 19, 207 The Silence of the Lambs (film) 223 The Silence of the Lambs (Harris) 111 Silverberg, Robert 51 Simon and Schuster 84, 166 Simpson, Philip L. vi, 10–11, 150–168, 236 Siodmak, Curt 216 The Six Million Dollar Man 188 The Sixth Sense 195, 199 The Skull see “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade”

251 The Skull of the Marquis de Sade 223 “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” 20, 71, 147, 191; see also The Skull of the Marquis de Sade Slater, Christian 224 Sledge Hammer! 228 Sleepwalkers 229 Slesar, Henry 187 Sloane, Eva 145 Smith, Arthur 200 Smith, Bruce 230 Smith, Clark Ashton 110 Smith, Dick 227 Smith, Jerry 224 Smith, Kent 218 Smith, Miss 221, 222 Smith, Mr. 201 Smith, Sherry 205 Smith, Thorne 61, 62, 63, 65 Sneak Preview 86 “A Snitch in Time” 61 Snodgrass, Doc 224 Sofaer, Abraham 194, 200 Sohl, Jerry 186, 187, 213, 233; see also Butler, Nathan Somers, Abbie 203 Somers, Carl 203 “Son of a Witch” 60 Sondergaard, Gale 219 Songs of Innocence 236 “The Sorceror’s Apprentice” 19, 189, 205 “The Sorceror’s Jewel” 34 Sorceror’s Shop 219 Sothern, Ann 208 Southern Illinois University 236 The Space Children 193 “The Space-Eaters” (Long) 26 Space: 1999 201 Spain 86 Spain, Fay 190 Sparks, Cat 234 Spartacus 179 Specht, Frankie 219 Spellbound 197 Spengler 196 Spiderweb 10, 74–78, 82, 83, 106, 152 Spielberg, Steven 223 Spillane, Mickey 73 Spiner, Brent 224 The Spiral Staircase 101 Splendor 188 Spock, Mr. 211, 212, 213, 214 Spooky Hollow 225 Spooner, Debbie 225

252 Spores from Sharnoth: And Other Madnesses (Blackmore) 233 Spring-Heeled Jack 96 “The Stairs in the Crypt” 28 Stamp, Terence 230 The Stand 224, 229 Stanwyck, Barbara 20 Star*Line: Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association 237 Star of Sechmet 34 The Star Stalker 80, 86 Star Trek 20, 84, 143, 152, 188, 192, 211, 212, 213, 214, 218, 228 Star Trek: The Next Generation 212, 225 Starlog 137 Starmont Reader’s Guide 68 Starr, Dr. B. 227 The Starry Wisdom sect 38 State Hospital 113, 116, 126, 132 “The Statement of Randolph Carter” (Lovecraft) 38 Stay Tuned for Terror 17, 70 Stefano, Joseph 17, 102, 103, 109, 150, 229, 230 Steiner, Dr. 109, 113, 114, 180 Stenn, David 225 Steve 174, 175, 188 Stevens, B. J. 233 Stevens, Leslie 220 Stevens, Morton 197 Stevens, Robert 194, 215 Stewart, David J. 205 Stockwell, Dean 194, 206 Stone, Joel 205 Stone, Marjorie 198 Straight, Beatrice 190 Strait-Jacket 20, 186, 210 Strange Airs (Ellis) 234 Strange Eons 38–40, 80, 104, 182 “The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton” 59, 134, 137 Strange Gardens (Ellis) 234 “The Strange Island of Dr. Nork” 58 Strange Tales 234 “The Strange Voyage of Hector Squinch” (O’Brien) 59 Strangers on a Train 206 The Stray Lamb (Smith) 61 Street in Cairo 163, 165 Studies in Australian Weird Fiction 233, 234, 237

Index Studies in Fantasy Literature 237 Studies in Weird Fiction 234, 235 Stugatche, Dr. 31, 40n1 Sturgeon, Theodore 214 Sturges, Preston 224 Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of 154 “The Suicide in the Study” 25, 26 Sulu, Helmsman 212, 213 Sung, Joe 218, 219 Sunnyside 161 Sunset Strip 75 Super Science 69 Supernatural Tales 235 Suspect 197 Suspicion 189 Sutherland, John 225, 226, 227; see also Harrison, John Sweden 82 The Sweet Sickness (Highsmith) 206 Sweet Smell of Success 199 “Sweets to the Sweet” 71, 174, 202 Swerling, Jo 197 Sybo 214 Sylvester, William 220 Sylvia 213 Szumskyj, Benjamin 5–11, 236–237 Szwarc, Jeannot 217 Tabor Bible College 236 Takei, George 212 Tales from the Darkside 224, 225, 226–227 Tales from the Darkside: The Movie 224, 227 Tales of Manhattan 192 Tales of the Unexpected 222; see also Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected Tall, Dark and Gruesome 207 Talmadge, Adam 193 Tarzan 201 Taste the Blood of Dracula 215 Taylor, Robert 20 Teffner, Phil 94 Telford, Frank 220 Teresa 208 The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film 236 “The Terrible Old Man” (Lovecraft) 34 The Terror 84

Terror Australia: Best Australian Horror (Blackmore, Stevens & Sequira) 233 Terror Australis: The Australian Horror & Fantasy Magazine 233 “Terror in Cut-Throat Cave” 37 Terror in the Night 82 Terry 117 Tetzel, Joan 196, 201 Texas 107 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 17 Tharp, Julie 121 “There Was a Little Girl” 210 These Are the Damned 196 “They’re Tearing down Tim Riley’s Bar” (Serling) 217 A Thief in the Night 221 The Thin Man 61 “The Thing” 8, 69 The Thing 196 “The Thing on the Doorstep” (Lovecraft) 3, 36, 38, 171 Thinner 224 This Is a Thriller: An Episode Guide, History and Analysis of the Classic 1960s Television Series (Warren) 191, 193, 197, 207 This Island Earth 193, 209 “This Side of Paradise” 213 Thomas, Henry 229 The Thomas Ligotti Reader (Schweitzer) 235 Thompson, Donald (Don) W. 221 Thompson, Jim 110, 111, 118, 182 Thordsen, Kelly 209 Thorp, Joe 198 Thrasher, Gil 193 Thrasher, Marcia 193 Three Stooges 62 Thriller 19, 21, 84, 190, 191, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 207, 223, 226, 231 “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (Lovecraft) 32 The Thunder Child 236 Tijuana 97 “’Til Death Do Us Part” 203, 224 The Time Killer 195; see also The Night Strangler The Time Tunnel 188 “Time Wounds all Heels” 60 Titus 224; see also Grandpa Todd, Richard 200

Index The Todd Dossier 86 Toffee” 65 Tolliver, Addie 224, 225 Tolliver, Jody 224, 225 Tone, Franchot 209 Topanga Canyon 208 Topaz 205 Topper (Smith) 61, 65 Tor 78, 80 Torcon 97 Torn Curtain 207 Toronto 97 Torture Garden 20, 186, 200, 230 Totter, Audrey 188 Townes, Harry 192 “A Toy for Juliette” 143, 144 Tracy, Lt. Karen 214 “The Traditions of Science Fiction and Conventions” 53 The Train 196 “Transvestite as Monster: Gender Horror in The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho” (Tharp) 121 “The Traveling Salesman” 58 Trebor, Dr. Albert 145 “Tree’s a Crowd” 60 Trent, Billie 83 Trivers, Barry 204 Troi, Lwaxana 212 The Trouble with Harry 192 True 84 Truffaut, François 111 Tsathogghua 38 Turnabout (Smith) 61 Twentieth-Century–Fox 199, 204, 215 Twenty-First Century British and Irish Novelists 236 21 Sonnets (Ellis) 234 The Twilight and Other Zones: The Dark Worlds of Richard Matheson (Bradley) 233 The Twilight Zone 188, 192, 193, 194, 197, 198, 199, 203, 211, 214, 216, 217, 223 The Twilight Zone: The Movie 216 “The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime and Suspense Novels of Robert Bloch” (Blackmore) 10, 68–88 Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Szumskyj) 237 2001: A Space Odyssey 220, 222

Uhura 213 Ulmo, Baron 208 Ulthar 4 “Uncharted” (Blackmore) 233 “Under the Pyramids” (Lovecraft) 31–32 Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense 74, 85, 86 United Kingdom 89, 112 United States of America 112, 170, 215 Unity Church of Christ 236 Universal-International 212 Universal Studios 112, 190, 194, 197 University of Chicago 154 University of Nottingham 234 University of Portsmouth 234 Unknown see Unknown Worlds Unknown Worlds 62, 63, 202 “The Unspeakable Proposal” 36 Unusual Stories 8 Upton, Daniel 36 Upton, Richard 38 U.S. Studies Online 234 USA Network 225 Usher, Roderick 172 Valentine, Mark 234 Valentine, Nancy 196 The Vampire Lovers 202 Vane, Hector 196, 197 Vane, Marie 196, 197 Van Sant, Gus 103, 229, 230 Varek 220 Vaughn, Vince 103 Verna 97 Verne, Jules 222 Vertigo 200, 208 Vertlieb, Steve vi, 9–10, 13– 22, 236 Vetch, Marty 223, 224 Victor, Carl 220, 221 Victor, Nancy 221 Victoria, Queen 148n3 Vietnam 100 Vizzini, Santo 114, 180 “Voice of Doom” 187 Voodoo Woman 225 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 199, 222 Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet 218 Vrana, Vlasta 230 Wagner, D.A. Glenn 204 Wagner, Karl Edward 234

253 Wagram, Dr 174, 175 Waite, Asenath 36, 38 Walker, Isabelle 225 Walker, Zena 216 Walpole, Horace 122, 132n4 Walsh, Ed 207 Walton, Bryce 194 Wandrei, Donald 235 War and American Popular Culture 236 Ward, Charles Dexter 171 Ware, Clyde 208 “The Warm Farewell” 183 Warner Books 112 Warner Brothers 188, 199 Warren, Alan 191, 192, 193, 197, 199, 200, 204, 207 Warren, John F. 207 Warren, Mr. 79 Warren, Shirly Mae 78, 79 Washington, D. C. 222 Wasyk, Darrell 230 Waters, Lou 205 “Water’s Edge” 208 Watkins, Linda 192 Watson, Henry 228 Waupun 105 Waxworks 81 “Waxworks” 201, 202–203 “The Way of the Spores” 213 Weaver, Billy 194 Weinbaum, Stanley G. 8 “The Weird Doom of Floyd Scrilch” 60 “The Weird Tailor” 200, 201 The Weird Tale ( Joshi) 234 Weird Tales 1, 3, 7, 8, 13, 14, 25, 26, 27, 30, 40n1, 43, 63, 65, 68, 69, 70, 74, 90, 106, 124, 134, 136, 151, 181, 191, 192, 195, 196, 199, 200, 201, 203, 221, 223, 224, 226, 227, 235 Wells, H.G. 20, 220 “The Werewolf of Ponkert” (Munn) 27 West, Alex 228 West, Mae 63 West Germany 86 Weston, Jack 192 Westwood 196 Weyauwega 74, 104, 190 The Whales of August 208 “What Are Little Girls Made of ” 20, 211 Whateley, Lavinia 39 What’s the Matter with Helen? 218 Wheeler, Mrs. 216

254 “Where No Man Has Gone Before” 211 “The Whisperer in Darkness” (Lovecraft) 29, 31, 36, 38–39 Whispering Smith 84, 187 Whispers Press 112 The White Isle (Schweitzer) 235 “The White Ship” (Lovecraft) 2 Whitechapel 2, 136, 145, 151 Whitman, Charles 72 Whitman, Stuart 219 Whittacker, Jim 86 Whittaker, Jill 84–85 Who Wants to Marry a MultiMillionaire? 199 Who’s Who in Entertainment in America 236 Wicker, Tom 203 Wild Grapes: Australian Poetry 234 Wild, Wild West 220 Wilde, Oscar 145 The Will to Kill 10, 77, 80–82, 104, 106, 110, 152 Willard 230 Williams, Adam 196 Williams, Cara 188 Williams, Emlyn 203 Williams, Herb 40n1 Williams, John 195–196 Williams, Tennessee 182 Willie 228

Index Wilmarth 38, 171 Wilson, Bob 193 Wilson, Crystal 159, 163, 164, 165, 166 Wilson, Sloan 128 Windom, William 205 Winkle, Rip Van 60 Winston, Dr. Irene 216 Winter, Douglas E. 66, 103, 154 Winters, Deborah 221 Wisconsin 69, 74, 84, 104, 105, 152, 190 Wise, Robert 192, 215 Wizan, Joe 209 Wolf, Jeff 227 “Wolf in the Fold” 20, 143, 213 Wolfe, Thomas 144 Wollongong 233 Wollongong University 234 Women’s Building 163 Wonder Woman 218 Wood, Preston 222 Woods 144 Woods, Donald 196 Woolrich, Cornell 101, 175, 190, 191 Worden, Bernice 104 World Fantasy Awards 235 World Fantasy Convention 9, 21, 57 World Horror Convention 21 World Science Fiction Convention 21, 97

World Supernatural Fiction ( Joshi & Dziemianowicz) 233, 235 World War II 124, 136, 205 Wormwood: Writings About Fantasy, Supernatural and Decadent Literature 235, 237 Wright, Ben 206 Wright, Farnsworth 26, 30 Writers Guild of America 187, 190 Wylie, Philip 126 Year’s Best Horror (book series) 234 Yerxa, Leroy 59 Yog-Sothoth 2 Young, Barbara Eden 224 “Yours Truly, Daniel Morley: An Examination of Robert Bloch’s Novel The Scarf ” (Howard) 10, 89–101 “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” 8, 13, 20, 69, 90–91, 104, 135, 151, 154, 195, 207, 213 Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper 14, 19 “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (tv episode) 196 Zinna, Eduardo 142 Zinnemann, Fred 215 Zkauba 32