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Atres Artes, v. 1, issue 3, 1946
Page 15
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Fantasy Article Book Review by Lionel Inman TALES OF TERROR: Edited by Boris Karloff -- World Publishing Company 1943 The words, "horror" and "terror", says Boris Karloff in his introduction to this volume of chillers, are often used indiscriminately for stories designed to stir the imagination and tingle the spine. It is hardly possible for words to be farther apart in their true meanings. Horror carries with it a connotation of [revulsion] which has nothing to do with clean terror. The tales of juicy sex murders fall under this catagory; you finish them with a bad taste in your mouth, but their is nothing of terror. The element od real terror, he says, is fear -- fear of the unknown and unknowable. He has collected in this volume fourteen stories, rangeing form shorts to novelettés. Only two stories are really worth the appelation, "terror", namely, " The Willows," by Algernon Blackwood adn "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe's tale is so easily acquired in any library that it loses and novelty is might have in a volume as this. In "The Willows", the sometines great Blackwood is at his very best. This is the only story in the entire book that really had me shivering. Two lone humans float down the swollen Danube River into the unexplored depths of the Black Forest, whre they land on an island of willows. They immediately become aware that their presence is definately not desired by the mysterious denizens of the island -- the willows! Each morning the willows seem to have crowded closer to their tent. About the island the impappable fabric that separates the know from the unknow have seemed to have worn thin. Unknown, malignant entities are at work, sensing their enrochment upon the island. The skillful way in which Blackwood develops the story into a masterpiece of suspense and fear sometimes verge on the poetic. "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions is a good story, but that is as far as it goes, as there is nothing particularly terryfing about it. The plot is old and familiar: an author purchases a strange old house, in which no one can live. The atmosphere of the place so captures him that he falls in love with the ghost of the former occupant, who was supposed to been a beautiful women. So enwrapped with his new love does he become that he grows to detest his former sweetheart, a stolid, unimaginative women author. You can possible imagine the rest; he is found dead. The perennial "The Damn Thing" by Ambrose Bierce is here too. This seems to be a favorite with some terror enthusiasts, for what reason I couldn't say. It's only merit seems to be the fact that it first advance the theory that there are other colors beyond the visible spectrum of human sight. Bram Stoker of "Dracula" fame is on hand with "The Judge's House," another tale of a man in a haunted house. "The Waxworks" by A. M. Burrage tells of a newspaper man who is paid a sum to stay in the Chamber of Horrors overnight. The room contains wax images of various murderers. He imagines in the night that na image, a razor fiend, comes to life and slits his throat. In the morning he is found dead, of course supposedly killed by his imagination. The other stories range from good to mediocre. They are worth reading, but do not belong in a terror anthology. On an average, we get better fiction in any magazine. TALES OF TERROR is well worth the price of 49¢, and you are advised to get it, if for nothing more than, "The Willows." -- Page 15 --
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Fantasy Article Book Review by Lionel Inman TALES OF TERROR: Edited by Boris Karloff -- World Publishing Company 1943 The words, "horror" and "terror", says Boris Karloff in his introduction to this volume of chillers, are often used indiscriminately for stories designed to stir the imagination and tingle the spine. It is hardly possible for words to be farther apart in their true meanings. Horror carries with it a connotation of [revulsion] which has nothing to do with clean terror. The tales of juicy sex murders fall under this catagory; you finish them with a bad taste in your mouth, but their is nothing of terror. The element od real terror, he says, is fear -- fear of the unknown and unknowable. He has collected in this volume fourteen stories, rangeing form shorts to novelettés. Only two stories are really worth the appelation, "terror", namely, " The Willows," by Algernon Blackwood adn "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe's tale is so easily acquired in any library that it loses and novelty is might have in a volume as this. In "The Willows", the sometines great Blackwood is at his very best. This is the only story in the entire book that really had me shivering. Two lone humans float down the swollen Danube River into the unexplored depths of the Black Forest, whre they land on an island of willows. They immediately become aware that their presence is definately not desired by the mysterious denizens of the island -- the willows! Each morning the willows seem to have crowded closer to their tent. About the island the impappable fabric that separates the know from the unknow have seemed to have worn thin. Unknown, malignant entities are at work, sensing their enrochment upon the island. The skillful way in which Blackwood develops the story into a masterpiece of suspense and fear sometimes verge on the poetic. "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions is a good story, but that is as far as it goes, as there is nothing particularly terryfing about it. The plot is old and familiar: an author purchases a strange old house, in which no one can live. The atmosphere of the place so captures him that he falls in love with the ghost of the former occupant, who was supposed to been a beautiful women. So enwrapped with his new love does he become that he grows to detest his former sweetheart, a stolid, unimaginative women author. You can possible imagine the rest; he is found dead. The perennial "The Damn Thing" by Ambrose Bierce is here too. This seems to be a favorite with some terror enthusiasts, for what reason I couldn't say. It's only merit seems to be the fact that it first advance the theory that there are other colors beyond the visible spectrum of human sight. Bram Stoker of "Dracula" fame is on hand with "The Judge's House," another tale of a man in a haunted house. "The Waxworks" by A. M. Burrage tells of a newspaper man who is paid a sum to stay in the Chamber of Horrors overnight. The room contains wax images of various murderers. He imagines in the night that na image, a razor fiend, comes to life and slits his throat. In the morning he is found dead, of course supposedly killed by his imagination. The other stories range from good to mediocre. They are worth reading, but do not belong in a terror anthology. On an average, we get better fiction in any magazine. TALES OF TERROR is well worth the price of 49¢, and you are advised to get it, if for nothing more than, "The Willows." -- Page 15 --
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