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Tuesday, December 30, 2025

The Vikings 4: Trail of Blood by Neil Langholm

The Vikings 4
Trail of Blood by Neil Langholm (Kenneth Bulmer)
1976, Sphere


Erik Ravenhair returns to the New World to find the settlement gone. His band liberates his people, including his newly born child, and finds that the Irish pirates from a previous installment have joined up with natives hostile to Raga and his people.

A couple of capture/escape sequences and a rushed battle in the lava field of an erupting volcano finish off this series with this weakest entry.

From Amazon

Friday, December 12, 2025

Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock

Elric of Melniboné
by Michael Moorcock
1972, Hutchinson

An evil tyrant maybe wants to be marginally less evil. His cousin tries to usurp the throne and he gets a magic sword. Feels like a fix-up novel, a collection of short stories, focused on his origins, don't know if the stories later in the chronology were better.

A couple decent action sequences, but mostly visions and prophecies and not much going on. In a couple throwaway lines it manages to be more grimdark than most modern stuff I've read, low bar such as it is.

I'm likely in the minority, but Elric didn't come across as especially goth or rock n roll, certainly not as cool as the covers. He gets weak without his drugs, but it feels more like grandpa needing his heart medication more than Keith Richards. It didn't feel especially elevated, psychedelic, or intellectual either, just standard fantasy with less adventure than his earlier stuff.

From Amazon 

Saturday, December 6, 2025

Noose by Eric Red

Noose
by Eric Red
2018, Pinnacle


Had high hopes for this western written by the man behind The Hitcher, Near Dark, Body Parts, and others, but too many things in a row just didn't ring true:
  • Minutes after a murder, a teenager telegraphs in a bounty of $100,000 and gets it approved, about $3 million in today's money.
  • The nearest law thinks it's fishy, but agrees to paying the sum as plan A and sending a posse to find the suspect for plan B.
  • Noose is surrounded by a dozen men holding guns on him. He escapes by pushing them away (all twelve of them), jumping on his horse, and riding away, without getting hit, and gaining a considerable distance.
  • He does the "wire across two lampposts decapitates a rider" bit with barbed wire on a ridge. No mention what the barbed wire was connected to or where Noose could have been hiding to raise the wire, how it was raised, if he was holding it how did he manage to keep his grip while the wire sliced off the bounty killers head, if the wire was held saddle high wouldn't the horse lose its head too, or how far behind was this rider from his buddies that they didn't notice until the riderless horse followed them long enough that they couldn't just turn around and see Noose rummaging through the corpse's stuff.
  • Noose gets away again by sliding down an incline, the baddies watching from 150 feet away, clearly out of rifle range.
  • Noose does a series of sneak attacks on foot against a group of men on horses, on the Wyoming plains, no mention how he's hiding or slipping away.

I stopped at this point. I was listening to the audiobook, thinking I must have missed something and it being too much of a pain to skip back. Checked the ebook and it flowed even worse. Everything is "big" and happens "suddenly", the two women in the book have female or lady as their first name ("female marshal" or "lady criminal"). Felt like an 11 year old wrote it and had none of the character of his films.

From Amazon 

Friday, December 5, 2025

Claw 1: Day of Fury by Matthew Kirk

Claw 1 Day of Fury
by Matthew Kirk (Angus Wells)
1983, Granada

Blacksmith Tyler Wyatt agrees to watch some money in a safe, which makes him the target of bandits. To stop his father in law from being tortured, he brings in his wife, who is gang raped in front of him and later murdered. Wyatt himself has his left hand crushed with a hammer, which he replaces with a multi-claw prosthetic.

The origin story is the main tale, with some flash forwards of him starting his long trail of revenge. Pretty basic story-wise, but nasty and gory in parts. The origin stories are usually the weakest, looking forward to future installments.

From Amazon

Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Spur Giant - Soiled Doves by Dirk Fletcher

Spur Giant
Soiled Doves
by Dirk Fletcher
1995, Leisure

Spur McCoy investigates a train robbery with three major items stolen: bearer bonds, cash to buy a ranch, and the oversexed daughter of a politician. The reader is made aware early on that this is an inside job and the daughter is in on it, and it plays out similar to Fargo in some ways, though it came out a year earlier. They both draw from a noir background, don't think there's a direct connection.

McCoy does his investigation, but most of the action plays out without him, as the criminals double cross each other or are otherwise done in by their criminal lifestyle. Light on action, but plenty of sleaze and grit. The longer length means we get some subplot detours, like a woman talking her husband into sleeping with her sister and a criminal seducing a boarding house landlady.

The Soiled Dove is the name of a whorehouse that doesn't have much to do with the story.

From Amazon

Saturday, November 29, 2025

Revenge Ride by Jury Grant

Revenge Ride
by Jury Grant
2017


Gunther "Gun" Battle's wife is killed, sending him on the titular revenge ride, mostly banging women. Sleazier update to classic Adult Westerns with a dash of Piccadilly Cowboy, down to the bad puns and other author names as characters.

No longer available. This and the other two installments are lost to time.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Horror Magazines

List of Horror Magazines through the 1970s. There are some category edge cases with Mystery, Fantasy, and Science Fiction. I mostly skipped foreign reprints, which sometimes have original material.


1802 The Marvellous Magazine and Compendium of Prodigies
1899 The Boys' Monster Weekly - Monster possibly referring to the size, one of the two covers I've seen refers to Spring Heeled Jack, so who knows.
1905 All-Story Magazine - some horror
1919 The Thrill Book - some horror
1922 Midnight Mystery Stories - included other features
1923 Hutchinson's Mystery-Story Magazine
1923 Weird Tales
1926 Ghost Stories
1927 Crime Mysteries - horror oriented crime
1927 Tales of Magic and Mystery
1929 Detective Trails - weird mystery
1929 True Strange Stories
1931 Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror
1932 Dime Mystery - weird menace
1933 Master Thriller - reprints, including some horror
1934 Spicy Detective Stories
1934 Spicy Mystery Stories
1934 Terror Tales - weird menace
1935 Horror Stories - weird menace
1935 Spicy Adventure Stories - some were dark enough to be horror adjacent
1935 Thrilling Mysteries - weird menace one-shot
1935 Thrilling Mystery - weird menace
1936 Ace Mystery - weird menace
1936 The Witch's Tales - Radio tie-in
1937 Eerie Stories one-shot
1937 Fireside Ghost Stories - one-shot
1937 Strange Detective Mysteries
1938 Eerie Mysteries
1938 Ghosts and Goblins - one-shot
1938 Mystery Tales - weird menace
1939 Marvel Tales - weird menace
1939 Strange Stories
1939 Uncanny Tales (USA)
1940 Sinister Stories
1940 Uncanny Tales (Canada)
1940 Weird Story Magazine
1941 All Star Detective - weird menace
1941 Eerie Tales - one-shot
1942 Four Star Mystery - one-shot, not sure of exact subgenre
1944 Horror Crime Cases - true crime one-shot
1945 Creep, Shadow - fanzine, reprints
1946 Strange Tales
1948 Four in One Weird and Occult Shorts - one shot, four unsold pulps stitched together under this cover, contents varied for each sold
1948 Horror Stories - UK reprints
1948 Shock
1949 Black Skull Magazine
1949 Book of Terror one shot
1950 Gargoyle - one-shot fanzine
1950 Gripping Terror - one-shot
1952 The Mysterious Traveler - radio tie-in
1955 Weird World
1957 Screen Chills and Macabre Stories
1957 Tales of the Frightened
1958 Monster Parade
1959 Monsters and Things
1959 Shock Tales / Suspense Tales
1960 A Book of Weird Tales - reprint one shot
1960 Fear!
1960 Shock
1960 Shock Mystery Tales
1962 Web Terror Stories
1962 Werewolves and Vampires - film mag with fiction
1963 Haunted - fanzine
1963 Magazine of Horror - reprints
1963 Prize Ghost Stories - Ghost Story reprints one shot
1963 True Twilight Tales - Ghost Story reprints
1965 Bizarre Mystery Magazine
1965 Gothique - fanzine
1966 Chilling Monster Tales - one shot with one reprint
1966 Giallar - fanzine
1966 Startling Mystery Stories
1969 Coven 13
1969 Weird Terror Tales
1970 Adventures in Horror / Horror Stories - horror porn
1970 Bizarre Fantasy Tales - reprints
1970 Gothic Romances
1971 Dark Horizons
1971 Gothic Secrets
1972 From Beyond the Dark Gateway - fanzine
1972 Horrible Stories - fanzine one-shot
1972 Horror Sex Tales - one-shot monster porn
1972 Monster Sex Tales - monster porn
1972 World of Horror - fanzine with some fiction
1973 Cthulhu Calls - fanzine with fiction
1973 Dark Fantasy
1973 Haunt of Horror - two prose digests, followed by comics with a prose story
1973 The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror
1975 Gothic Tales of Love Magazine
1975 New Witchcraft
1976 Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
1976 Dark Phantasms - fanzine one-shot
1976 Eerie Country
1976 Ghoul - humor one-shot
1977 Fantasy Tales
1977 Incredible Adventures - pulp reprints
1978 Dreams of a Dark Hue - fanzine one-shot
1978 Eldritch Tales - fanzine
1979 Ghosts & Scholars
1979 Gothic - fanzine
1980 Fantasy Macabre - fanzine
1981 Chillers - movie mag with fiction
1981 Crypt of Cthulhu
1981 Twilight Zone Magazine