FRIGHT FEST #6: The Black Cat - Robert Poe

Whaddya know? Another distant relation to Edgar Allan Poe cropped up. This time it's Robert Poe who wrote two mystery novels inspired by two short stories by the Master of the Macabre.  I found his second one first and because it's titled The Black Cat (1997) and drawn from that nasty story of ax murder, a body walled up in a cellar, and a vengeful cat, I thought I'd tackle this one for Halloween.  It also promised a storyline about a witch and how her practicing Wicca affects the town of Crowley Creek, Virginia.

Our narrator is John Charles Poe who, just like the author, is also descended from the great Edgar. He has been entrusted with a box of documents and letters written by EAP, handed down to the eldest Poe over the past five or so generations. Occasionally John Charles turns to this box and pores over what ol' Edgar wrote. It was fun to read these letters as the author tells us in a footnote that they are taken directly from known letters and essays Poe wrote himself. But they have little to do with the story other than reminding us that the book is supposed to be an exploration of the inescapable concept of doing evil for its own sake.

The novel is basically nothing more than a re-telling of "The Black Cat." There is a woman who disappears and is feared to be dead by the more superstitious members of the town. Her husband, the local veterinarian, is sure she simply left him and will show up at her relatives in Charlottesville. John Charles Poe, a reporter, at the urging of his research assistant Edith starts looking into this disappearance. Anyone familiar with Poe's short story knows that Margaret Cully is never coming back.

The vet has hired Julie Noir, a young girl who John Charles says can be anywhere between seventeen and twenty-four. She alternately acts like a wise old woman and a naive teen making it all the more difficult to pin down her age.  Julie is also a practicing Wiccan. She has an exceptional skill at healing the sick animals at Dr. Lawrence Cully's clinic. She gathers special herbs at night in the light of the moon (preferably a full moon, of course) and concocts all sorts of unique potions and poultices. An old Irish Setter named Gomer suffering from a GI illness was treated by Dr. Cully but had a relapse. As soon as Julie applies her special herb treatment to the dog he recovers within hours. Does she have magical powers? Or is it arcane science? We never really know. The townspeople begin to freak out, in particular the zealot Rev. Rowland Fairchild who accuses Julie of witchcraft and dealing with Lucifer. He starts a campaign to oust her from Crowley Creek. But Dr. Cully is unwilling to fire his assistant. You see, he is lusting for her wants to possess her. It's no surprise when he confesses he has had a sexual relationship with her. 

From a French 1948 edition
artwork by Albert Dubout

And where is The Black Cat in all of this?  Julie has a pet cat called Asmodeus, of course.  A cat named after a demon can't be a good sign.  Asmodeus is almost always seen on Julie's shoulder watching everyone.  The cat is always ready to protect Julie.  It has taken a liking to John Charles and has an antipathy towards Dr. Cully.  Again, anyone familiar with Poe's classic short story will have figured the entire plot once Asmodeus appears. And sure enough the story fulfills it promise of echoing all that occurs in "The Black Cat."  Though the characters notice the eerie similarities to the short story and the events taking place in town it takes John Charles way too long to think of going into Dr. Cully's cellar and exposing him for the killer he most obviously is.

As the so-called mystery of Margaret's disappearance and the revelations of her murder slowly unfolds there are three or four subplots going on. John Charles is a reporter and he has an antagonistic relationship with his editor Mrs. Boynton. We have generational criticism of lost teenage misfits, how easy it is for teens to be exploited when vulnerable. The author attempts to satirize the small-mindedness of small towns that want everything to stay the same, and attacks their intolerance of counterculture types. Finally, there is a very strange 17th century, fire and brimstone, backlash in response to a young woman practicing Wicca. The "us against them" mentality got to be annoying and I got the feeling that the author had a big hang-up against punk rock and death metal and its insidious influence on young people. Late in the novel a disturbing sequence occurs when John Charles and Edith attend a death metal concert for a band called The Dead Souls. Ironically, in a story including an ax murder and entombment, this is the most gruesome and bizarre incident in the book and it most definitely serves as the author's big message of the book.

From a French 1933 edition,
artwork by Auguste Leroux

The most off-putting aspect was Fairchild's over-the-top reaction to Wicca rituals. His insane ranting and quoting Old Testament passages from the Bible was utterly anachronistic. He is introduced as an Episcopalian priest with a church that has a small parish and with little influence in a town of Christians who attend other churches. By the end of the book he has become the only religious figure speaking out against Julie and for some reason everyone is listening to him. I don't know why because he comes across as a lunatic. When he's practically foaming at the mouth about witches being the Devil's handmaidens, quoting the Book of Leviticus, and mentioning a moonlight ritual he witnessed during which Julie prayed to the Goddess and calls it blasphemy it all seems ridiculous.  I always thought that Episcopalians are just American versions of Church of England followers and therefore similar to Catholics minus the Pope and leadership from the Vatican. I would think like Catholics the message of an Episcopalian is the teachings of Jesus and not an obsession with obscure passages from the Old Testament, a preoccupation of fundamentalist Christians. Reverend Fairchild seems more like a Calvinist or a Puritan rather than a late 20th century Episcopalian. It was all very strange and sort of insulting to read those passages. It could have been handled with less hysteria and ludicrous zealotry.

For the Halloween season The Black Cat was an OK read.  I did find a copy of Poe's first book Return to the House of Usher (1997) but I'm unsure if I will bother with it knowing what's he's done with this re-telling of EAP's short story.  Ultimately, the mystery was hardly mysterious since it completely echoed "The Black Cat." The religious zealotry was absurd, the teen cliques (punks vs. the straights) were overplayed, the bullying and violence among the teens also seemed over-the-top in reaction to something as innocuous as a girl who heals sick animals with herbs. Even the supernatural element seemed nebulous. The true mystery of the book is Julie Noir. Is she a good witch or a bad witch?  Though everything seems to wrap up neatly -- the villain's evil is exposed, our hero is redeemed -- that ultimate question about Julie is never really answered.

For the curious who feel compelled to read this book you may buy my copy. It's listed for sale here. 

FRIGHT FEST #5: The Night of the Wolf - Frank Belknap Long

So far in this Fright Fest of supernatural mystery reviews we've had ghosts, demons, vampires and zombie kittens (sort of ), haunted houses, animated skeletons, and macabre murders.  It was only a matter of time before I found a werewolf novel.  This one comes from the pen of Lovecraft acolyte and Arkham House refugee Frank Belknap Long.  Last time I reviewed a novel by Long it was Journey into Darkness that I whipped through while I was waiting for my panel to be called for jury duty back in 2011. That book is a weird, rambling, science fiction/horror novel that spent several pages discussing Jungian archetypes and the collective unconsciousness as well as the work of psychoanalyst and sexologist Wilhelm Reich.  So I was prepared for yet another rambling book from Long that would no doubt be filled with tangential or superfluous passages.  I was pleasantly surprised that it is a straightforward B movie on paper. The incident-filled story takes place within a single day (beginning around noon and ending in the hours after midnight) and easily could have served as the treatment for a 1970s TV movie.

The Night of the Wolf (1972)  opens with an over-the-top depiction of the slaughter of nearly an entire household.  Someone or some thing has beaten and clawed Margrave (no first name ever given), an archeologist colleague of our narrator John (no last name given). Later four more victims are found in various places around Margrave's home. Anne the maid, one of the victims, manages to utter a few bone-chilling sentences before succumbing to her gruesome wounds: "It was --it was not human.  I saw--it.  It  was--some kind of animal..."

The survivors --two men and two women-- band together to find this "some kind of animal" and kill it.  In the meantime the sheriff is called to start a murder investigation and gather up all the corpses. His police department is too small of staff to handle several grisly murders that he is sure are the work of an escaped madman. Therefore, he promises to deputize as many men as he can and set up a dragnet surrounding Margrave's home. This of course will provide Long with more victims to be mauled with gallons of blood sure to spill before the final pages.

As the back cover blurb already gives away one of the surprises I'll mention that Margrave and John are responsible for unleashing this beast.  Margrave is in possession of an artifact that John was unaware of his bringing back from their dig at a Bulgarian cave several months ago. Doris Margrave, the dead archeologist's daughter, tells of a visit from a mystery man who claims to have known her father. Two days prior to her father's murder this visitor had a heated argument with her father. The visitor named Ruschna vowed that the house will go up in flames and all will perish if the artifact which belongs to him is not returned. One of the women then spends much of the book (offstage and we only learn of this second hand in the final chapter) tearing apart the house looking for this artifact. You'd think John and Dan Shields, a house guest of Margrave's, would immediately look for the artifact and return it to prevent further violence and death, but they have to rescue Doris who is abducted by the wolf-like creature.

Before the climax involving the rescue of Doris from a cave by the seashore, there will be a near drowning, two more beast attacks, the recovery of a wolf-headed staff most likely used as a murder weapon, an arson attempt, a road accident involving a weasel, and several sightings of a half man/half wolf creature whose lower body resembles a dwarfish human. It sounds like an action oriented thriller, but sadly most of the book consists of long dull passages of talk, talk, talk. John enjoys ruminating about everything from his love of Doris (often) to the psychic manifestations of Eastern Europeans. Exchanges between Dan and John are often inexplicably repetitive. This I ascribe to Long's past life as a penny-a-word "fictioneer." Old habits dies hard, for sure. Those pulp writers learned to drag out their stories with overly descriptive passages and circuitous dialogue just to pad out the story in order to make more money.

The Night of The Wolf is part of a series of nine paperback originals published by Popular Library between 1972 and 1973 that supposedly pay homage to the Universal Pictures classic monster movies of the 1930s and early 1940s. Populated with vampires, reanimated corpses, Central American mummies, witches, she-demons and other supernatural creatures the "Frankenstein Horror Series" books are cult collectibles now. Many of them are incredibly hard to find. Those that are available for sale from online dealers tend to be exorbitantly priced. But if you dig deep you may find a handful of these titles for under $15 which is the only sane price for any of these somewhat mediocre 70s horror novels.