Flashback Friday: Peter Cushing's TALES OF A MONSTER HUNTER Paperback from 1977

Peter Cushing's Tales of a Monster Hunter (1978)

As you might imagine, the Geekerati library is filled with volumes containing tales of Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and not a small amount of Horror. One of the books I am proudest to have in the library is the 1978 paperback printing of Peter Cushing's Tales of a Monster Hunter.

It is unlikely that the volume was actually edited by Mr. Cushing, as the copyright lists both him and Peter Haining and Cushing's autobiographical Preface is written in third person. Peter Haining was an anthologist of horror tales who had a number of volumes printed in the late 70s and early 80s. Setting that aside, there is reason to think that Cushing provided feedback to the selections and even if he didn't the stories collected in the anthology pair nicely with a Cushing/Hammer Films marathon.

Here is a brief overview of the contents of the book.

How I Became a Monster Hunter by "Peter Cushing" is a biographical essay that gives a very good overview of Cushing's acting career and has some nice quotations from Cushing himself.

The Masked Ball by Alexandre Dumas is a very short story that is included in the book because of Cushing's very small role in The Man in the Iron Mask. Like all the stories in this volume, there is some connection between the tale and Cushing's career.

The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley is a reminder that the creator of modern science fiction wrote more than just Frankenstein. Given that much of Cushing's career was spent portraying various versions of Dr. Frankenstein, a Shelley story is a must.

Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker is an episode that, according to its introduction in Tales, was excluded from the novel due space restrictions imposed on Stoker by his editor. Cushing's connection to Dracula in his portrayal of Van Helsing is well known and it has been argued is one of the inspirations for the Cleric class in D&D.

In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman by Joseh Nesvadba is a Yeti tale that is included due to Cushing's performance in The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. This is not the story that inspired the film, which was a teleplay, but it bears some similarities in tone to the underappreciated film.

The Ring of Thoth by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle connects with Cushing's career in two ways. Cushing played Sherlock Holmes on the big screen in Hound of the Baskervilles and he also starred in a Hammer version of the Mummy story. "The Ring of Thoth" isn't a Holmes tale, but it is a Mummy yarn and one that makes me wonder if Robert E. Howard had a copy on his shelf. Howard's Thoth-Amon sought his Serpent Ring of Set in the first Conan tale.

The Gorgon by Gertrude Bacon is a Victorian tale that makes use of the Greek legend of the Gorgon. Cushing had starred as the villain in the 1964 Hammer film The Gorgon and there are few enough tales of the creature that this makes a nice addition to the book. The Hammer film is much better than its effects and is one of a list of Hammer productions I wish could be remade with the same caliber of performances but with modern effects.

The Man Who Collected Poe by Robert Bloch is the first tale in the volume that Cushing actually performed in an adaptation of during his career. The story is adapted in the film Torture Garden (1967) where Cushing plays the "bibliophile."

The Ghoul of Golders Green by Michael Arlen is only connected to Cushing's career in that he starred in a film called The Ghoul in 1974 which was based on an original screenplay by John Elder. There are few enough tales of ghouls, so the tale fits even if the connection is limited.

There Shall Be No Darkness by James Blish is the final tale in the volume and it is a great story to finish with as it served as the basis for the film The Beast Must Die. A recent Vulture article recommended watching this film before or after watching Knives Out. If you've ever played the game Werewolf, you really should check this movie out as it provides the audience with a short "Werewolf Break" in order for the audience to guess which character is the werewolf. It's great fun.


 

The New INVISIBLE MAN Trailer starring Elizabeth Moss Hits All the Right Notes

 

Universal Pictures has been trying to revive their Movie Monsters for a new audience for the past few decades to very mixed results. Their catalogue of creatures runs is a library of Classic Horror that includes: The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. That's a menagerie that should form the foundation for a media empire, and it did.

In the early 20th Century, Universal dominated the horror movie market with these characters, but they also contributed to their downfall. As the popularity of the characters dwindled as audiences had come to think of them as cliche, Universal began to parody the characters in order to keep them fresh. When Abbot and Costello met Frankenstein, it wasn't in a production from a rival company. No, it was Universal who produced the picture and to financial success. That success diluted the brand as a Universal brand, even as they held copyright and trademark over many of the characters.

The Hammer Studios revived many of these characters, and in the Gothic setting, and eventually did so with distribution agreements with Universal. In the documentary Flesh and Blood, Christopher Lee states that Hammer's Horror of Dracula saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy. This information is repeated in The Encyclopedia of Hammer Films. Hammer's productions initially treated the characters seriously, but updated the gore and sexuality to match the times. They too eventually fell into the parody/irony trap with productions like Dracula A.D. 1972.

While viewers in the early 1980s saw the release of An American Werewolf in London, an excellent Wolfman story distributed by Universal, they also saw other compelling adaptations of the monster like Joe Dante's classic The Howling. As the characters moved into the public domain, the Monsters were set free and Columbia/Sony took advantage of that freedom with films like Wolf, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was clear that if Universal wanted to demonstrate that these characters were "truly theirs," they would have to do something special. Their first foray, 1999s The Mummy, stands out as an excellent film that combines Pulp action and Horror storytelling, but as that franchise wandered into cheesy sword and sorcery films (as much as I love them) like The Scorpion King or bizarre and confused films like Van Helsing (Frankenstein's monster as Duracell for Dracula's Incubator is a strange premise) the relaunch momentum faded as it became stylistically confused. Universal's other serious attempt, the underrated The Wolfman, got lost in the shuffle.

Enter the 2010s and a renewed effort to revitalize the brand with a focus on creating a "shared universe" for the characters. In this new model, inspired by superhero films, Universal produced the "superhero Dracula" film Dracula Untold where Dracula takes on the curse for noble reasons and it is suggested that Dracula will be one of a cast of monsters who will fight a greater evil "Creature Commandos style" in a future Team-Up film. The shared universe was expanded with a new The Mummy featuring Tom Cruise as the target of the Mummy's obsession, with a gender reversal on Mummy and beloved. The film also features Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. My own "headcanon" has Tom Cruise's character as Frankenstein's Monster "Adam," but that's a conversation for another time. The Tom Cruise film earned sufficient money that it didn't kill off the idea of continuing Classic Monster productions. As Scott Mendelson points out in his Forbes article discussing the new The Invisible Man trailer, it wasn't really a success either. In large part because the "Dark Universe" shared universe model seems to be off putting to many fans. I'm not among those fans. I'd love to see the shared universe Monsters vs. Satan film, but that's just the role playing gamer in me.

This leaves us with the new The Invisible Man trailer. Where does it lie? Well, it certainly doesn't seem to be a part of the "Dark Universe." What it does seem to be is a great updating of the original Horror tale. Universal Pictures seems to be on the verge of repeating their success with Hammer Films by teaming up with Blumhouse Productions for this latest Classic Monster movie. Blumhouse is the perfect production company to develop The Invisible Man. The story should be a commentary of the evil men would do if they possessed the Ring of Gyges that is accessible to a modern audience. By incorporating elements of Gaslight, a 1944 MGM film that is particularly salient today, with the traditional Invisible Man story, the potential is through the roof.

If the trailer for The Invisible Man is any sign. It will be a new classic and be further evidence of Blumhouse's ability to channel modern fears into classic tales.

Classic Horror RPG CHILL Rises from the Dead with New Kickstarter

Before I get into the details of what my ideal new edition of the CHILL role playing game is, I'd like to take a moment to thank Matthew McFarland and Michelle Lyons-McFarland for taking the time to acquire the license to this classic game and put together what looks to be a very solid horror role playing game. 

If you are a fan of horror role playing games and want to help small press publishers succeed, then you should back the brand new Chill 3rd Edition Kickstarter. I'm a backer and I will be blogging about the game's playtest rules very soon.
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Now that I've cleared the air and made it clear that I am excited about the game that Matthew and Michelle are putting together, I'm going to gripe. That's what we obsessives do when things aren't perfect, we gripe. But I'm not going to gripe in an non-constructive manner. This isn't about what I think Matthew and Michelle are doing wrong, it's about what I wish they would ALSO do.

If you were to ask me what my favorite genres of film are, I would without hesitation tell you that they are romantic comedies and horror movies. You are probably wondering what When Harry Met Sally and Hostel have in common that I would rank the genres of these two films so highly. I would tell you that I don't think Hostel is a "horror" movie. Being pedantic, I'd try to convince you that it was splatterpunk or back track and change the word horror to weird. When it comes to weird and fantastic tales, my heart has two great loves Ray Harryhausen and Hammer Studios. It is the horror of the kind that Hammer Studios made, and now makes again, that I love. Give me stuffy Victorian/Edwardian era investigators encountering terrors from the unknown with a skepticism that is fueled by emerging scientific discoveries, and you have warmed my heart to know end. If you add to that a romantic element - which can either be of the courtship or familial variety - and I'm all in. Films like Horror of Dracula, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, and The Woman in Black are rich in mood and capture the imagination and are perfect for adaptation to role playing. The original Chill role playing game attempted to emulate this kind of storytelling, and I loved it because of it.

The rules for the original Chill role playing game were easy to learn and perfectly designed for new gamers. It was the combination of ease of play and Hammer Horror that I believe led to Rick Swan's negative review in The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. Other publications like Space Gamer and Different Worlds gave the game much higher praise - I'll share those reviews in a future blog post - and seemed to understand that Chill was the introductory game in a series of games that became increasingly complex as their genre required. The Goblinoid Games blog has a great description of the original Pacesetter system and they are the publisher of some of the other Pacesetter System games. Goblinoid Games has also designed their own horror game inspired by the horror movies of the 80s which I blogged about at Blackgate Magazine.

When I read the description for the new edition of Chill, it was immediately clear that the game would not be my idealized version of the game. The description referenced the Mayfair edition of the game, a game that tried to be "edgier" in order to compete with Call of Cthulhu. I've also seen Matthew's Facebook discussion of the game and he mentions how his version will treat mental illness. I'll be the first to admit that Call of Cthulhu doesn't do a good job representing actual mental illness, but neither does the fiction it is emulating. Lovecraft's fiction is about a descent into a particular kind of madness as understood at a particular time. Having said that, my idealized version of Chill would have no rules for insanity. It would only have rules for fear and shock. Hammer stories aren't about protagonists who are slowly driven insane as their world view is shattered. Instead, they are about the success and failure of the rational to engage with the supernatural.

The new Chill's artwork hints that it is inspired by many of the horror films currently on the market, with no small touch of American Horror Story. This is not a bad thing. In fact, if one ignores the shifting of time period that's pretty close to the Hammer tone...and films like Mama have demonstrated that the classic Ghost Story has legs. That's my longish way of saying that I'd like Matthew and Michelle to release a Victorian/Hammer supplement for Chill and that I hope their game system is quick easy and intuitive. My first read through the quick start rules gives me reason to believe at least half of that will happen...the rules part.