COLLECTING HORROR AT CHRISTMAS

Well, our good friend has gone home today after visiting for a week of pre-festive fun. She'll be nearly home now. The Missus took her to the airport early doors.

Our friend's departure coincides with the third Sunday of the month, the third Sunday of Advent and marks the start of the final full week before the Big Day itself on the 25th.

I still haven't written any Christmas cards but I hope to do that today now we're at a loose end. We have trimmed up though and Blue and me are currently staring at that most magical of all Yuletide symbols, the decorated tree.

In the past around this time I would have bought myself something online, usually to do with Project SWORD, to be opened after Christmas when the season's lustre had waned. 

The one remaining SWORD toy I need is too expensive for me to buy now so I have treated myself to something much more modest, a book about collecting horror novels called Paperbacks from Hell.

Do you treat yourself at Christmas like this? Is it normal?

Anyway I've been collecting horror novels for years and have loads of them in the attic. There are many variations of the classics like Dracula and Frankenstein and also some very unusual paperbacks like the two Famous Monsters of Filmland books. One of my personal favourites is a first edition hardback copy of Hell House, the story which inspired the 70's horror movie The Legend of Hell House starring Galen himself, Roddy McDowell.

Another favourite is the rather startling cover on More Tales of Unease depicting a young girl carrying a teddy and wearing a hideous witch mask.

I haven't been able to find that mask on any Don Post mask reference guides or any other masks online so maybe it was custom made? Anyone know any more about the mask or the cover?

here's close-up of the mask.

It will be fun to see if this and my other horror novels are included in Paperbacks from Hell but they may well not be as so many different books have been published over the decades. I shall find out after Christmas when the mince pies are mere crumbs and the kids have gone home.

In the meantime I'm looking forward to any decent creepy plays on the radio and ghost stories on the telly over the festive season. I'll get a Radio Times to see what's on. I also love the small woodcut drawings that the magazine uses as fillers at Christmas if you know what I mean. I hope they still do them.

I listened to a radio fantasy this week as I drove home from work. I enjoyed it a great deal and has whetted my appetite for more. It was Radio 4's two-part afternoon play The Winter Queen.

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001hjy

I also caught the fag end of Inside No.9's latest TV offering, The Devil of Christmas https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b086zcd6 . It features Krampus no less, that European ogre in charge of the Naughty List and an ancient continental myth seemingly on the rise in the English-speaking world as well. 

The team behind Inside No.9 are real fans of classic horror and this shines through all of their stuff going right back to A League of Gentlemen. I've always enjoyed spotting the many homages and film references spattered throughout their programmes, so I was chuffed spotting one at the end of The Devil of Christmas, a reference to one of my favourite classic horror anthologies, The House That Dripped Blood no less. More specifically it was from the first segment, about a novelist's possession, starring Denholm Elliott, a segment called A Method for Murder.

Towards its climax the villain of the story utters its unsettling punchline: "Richard? I don't know anybody called Richard. My name is Dominick". 

Here's Dominick, the handsome devil.

This line is echoed at the Snuff-like and rather gruesome end of the Inside No.9 show and I plan to watch the whole Christmas episode on catch-up when I get chance.

Christmas is also a time for more subtle fayre like ghost stories and the BBC once had a fine tradition of airing one for the season. These Ghost Stories for Christmas became classics of the genre and are loved by creepy fans like me everywhere. Maybe you like them too readers?

Perhaps its most famous story was Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad, which was aired in 1967 starring the irreplaceable Michael Horden as the doomed Professor.

So taken was I with this TV play when I saw it for the first time many many years later that it sparked in me a real love of folk horror, which prevails to this day. So when I got the chance to visit the locations used in the play this summer I jumped at the chance. They whistled you might say.

What I found will be the subject of another post.