SEDUCTIONS
By RAY GARTON (Pinnacle; 1984)
This was the first novel by Ray Garton, and a book that greatly upset one of its first readers, the late Robert Bloch–who allegedly informed the young Garton that “you’re unwell”
SATYR
There are some good things here, but they’re overshadowed by the not-so-good stuff
DRACULA in Pictures
Various graphic novels about Dracula have gained popularity of late
Alice in Euroland
There must have been something in the air. How else to explain what happened in Europe during the 1970s, when four world-renowned filmmakers inexplicably elected to ditch their usual fare in favor of bizarre ALICE IN WONDERLAND-inspired phantasmagorias?
Sexuality and Religiosity and Violence and War and Love and Everything: The Cinema of Fernando Arrabal
Arrabal’s films are very much in the mode of Bunuel’s seminal UN CHIEN ANDALOU, which, you’ll recall, opened with a close up of an eyeball being slashed and continued in that vein, outraging, scandalizing and shocking cineastes the world over.
SANTA STEPS OUT
Here’s a Yuletide favorite I’m betting you won’t find on any traditional Christmas reading list: SANTA STEPS OUT by Robert Devereaux, a true “Fairy Tale for Grown-ups”
PORTRAIT OF AN ENGLISHMAN IN HIS CHATEAU
A profoundly vile piece of work that I’ve long wanted to read. L’ANGLAIS DECRIT DANS LE CHATEAU FERME was initially published in Paris (under the pseudonym Pierre Morion) back in 1953, and then banned for over 25 years
A PERFECTLY NATURAL ACT
THE INVISIBLE MAN gets a thoroughly twisted updating in this forgotten relic from the early 1970s, when major publishers were actually willing to take on a perverse oddity like A PERFECTLY NATURAL ACT
RIPPLE
A graphic novel that may not be horrific enough for my readers, yet will almost certainly be too freaky and aberrant for the mainstream
RED STAINS
If nothing else, this gross-out anthology definitely lives up to its billing. It contains (as the back cover proclaims) “Tales of the Darkest Biological Extremes and the Psycho-Sexual Imagination”