Penny Dreadfuls: Sensation Tales of Terror compiled by Stefan Dziemianowicz

I think it would appropriate to listen to J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor while reading my latest post.




Penny Dreadfuls: Sensational Tales of Terror by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


" Penny Dreadfuls were cheaply printed, inexpensive publications written to titillate the masses with shocking thrills and lurid horrors. Over time, "penny dreadful" became a catch-phrase for any story steeped in gothic horror that pushed the limits of what was acceptable in popular fiction." From the Dust Jacket

This is a collection of twenty short stories, some novellas, of gruesome and horrific stories of varying quality. Some, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit and Pendulum deserve their place as timeless horror classics. Others probably needed to be left in the nineteenth century.

They are all Victorian in style which is to say they possess a certain melodramatic flair with damsels in distress and genteel men determined to save them. Many would have been considered quite horrible in their day but can be taken in stride in our jaded era.

The worst in my opinion was written by Bram Stoker, of all people. He wrote a disgusting little short of two psychopathic young boys who torment and murder babies and get away with it. Not sure what he was going for in that. It did not scare me, just filled me with revulsion towards the writer as much as the characters. Why write a story like that?

Some writers not much known today, wrote some good, scary tales and wrote them well. One was by James Hogg, a lamentably little known writer, who wrote a wonderful short called George Dobson's Expedition to Hell. A carriage driver has a horrible, hellish vision and when he awakes he discovers no peace (I don't want to give anything away so I leave out the details).

Another was by John Galt (who is John Galt? chuckle...if you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, forget it) where he describes a young man's nightmarish experience as a coma victim taken for dead and what happens thereafter.

Of course the Piece de Resistance and the last story in the collection is The String of Pearls better known as Sweeney Todd. I had never seen the movie or musical and do not know what attracted anyone to converting this story into a form of visual entertainment, but it kept me on the edge of my seat, biting my nails for the entire book, which is a couple hundred pages.

All in all, a great diversion for the month of October.




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