I was disappointed by Bruno Fischer's 1950 novel The Lustful Ape, but maybe this guy shines in shorter forms? Let's read three stories Fischer published under his pen name Russell Gray in late 1930s issues of Dime Mystery Magazine. According to wikipedia, Dime Mystery Magazine was the first of the "weird menace" or "shudder pulp" magazines; wikipedia indicates that this genre is all about "torture and brutality" and features apparently supernatural phenomena that turn out to have mundane explanations.
In 1937 [wikipedia tells us] the emphasis on sex and sadism in Dime Mystery's stories increased, but in 1938 the editorial policy switched back to detective stories. These stories now focused on detectives with some unusual handicap such as amnesia or hemophilia.
Well, we've got two 1937 stories and a 1939 story on today's dance card, so we'll see if they bolster wikipedia's descriptions or buck these alleged trends.
"Girls for the Pain Dance" (1937)
A bunch of wealthy people are on holiday at some colony of rich peoples' estates near a lake in the woods, I guess in upstate New York. Our narrator, his fiancé, and some of their pals see a pretty girl they know on the other side of the lake--she is naked, her skin looks burned, and she is doing some kind of frenzied dance! The narrator and his friends swim across the lake but are too slow--the woman has danced back into the woods and they can't find her;m they proceed to the estate where she lives with her uncle.
The naked girl's uncle doesn't know where she is, and reports that she is sort of wild child, often away for days at a time. Eventually she shows up, running into view in the dark of night, on fire, and dies among our shocked cast of upper-middle-class worthies after expending her last breathes in giving some vague clues about hell and the devil.
It is not long before another wealthy young woman has vanished and is then spotted across the lake, naked, her skin burned, doing a strange dance, just like her predecessor. This time the cast hears from the victim's kidnappers, who demand a half million dollars from her father. Daddy can only raise 300K, so he asks another rich guy, the narrator's future father-in-law, for 200, but father-in-law refuses, saying giving money to the kidnappers will only encourage them to kidnap more people. The second victim, just like the first, bursts out of the woods after sunset, naked and on fire--we hear about how her formerly "luscious breasts" are now "two charred mounds"--and collapses among her friends and family. With the last of her strength she offers semi-coherent comments about the devil.
The third victim is our narrator's fiancé, who is seized in a sort of commando raid by tommy-gun wielding men in devil costumes. The police are on hand to prevent just such an eventuality, but if you've been watching the news you won't be surprised to learn that the villains outfight the boys in blue and escape scot-free on a motor boat, the future Mrs. Narrator in their clutches.
Events occur that culminate in the narrator stumbling upon the abandoned coal mine where the men in devil costumes are holding his fiancé, and he watches as his nude betrothed "dances" in what amounts to a giant frying pan! The big metal plate is divided into sections, and at a control panel the devils can heat up one section at a time--our narrator's fiancé jumps from one section to another as the temperature of the various sections increases or decreases. The fiends are conditioning her to dance as the other two girls danced on the lake shore--the two previous girls, driven insane by pain, kept on dancing even when outside the frying pan.
Insanity is a recurring motif of Fischer's repetitive story and multiple men lose their minds in reaction to the capture, torture and murder of their fiancés or daughters. Our narrator isn't the only guy witnessing the torture session--his future father-in-law has been invited to watch the torture of his daughter, and this formerly tough egg starts losing it the sight of her agony. The devil-clad men demand a million dollars from him.
The young woman in questions slips and falls, burning her hip, and this triggers the narrator's charge into the torture chamber. He snatches up the devils' tommy gun and mows them down, saving the day. Their leader turns out to be the uncle and financial guardian of the first victim; he killed her to get at her inheritance and then got greedy.
This story is not good. We won't blame Fischer for all the typos, but we have to blame him for the less than credible behavior of the criminals and the police in the story, and the outlandish psychological effects Fischer suggests might result from being put in a giant frying pan, as well as the whole idea that frantically jumping from one spot to another would be interpreted as some kind of dance. The best part of "Girls for the Pain Dance" is the response of the wealthy men to the capture and torture of the young women, which is pretty believable and thus disturbing.
"Death Came Calling" (1937)
The initial narrator of this caper is a reporter who handles the crime beat of a small town. He is hanging around the cop shop when a man comes in bearing in his fist a human heart! This blood-drenched man then takes over the job of narration as the journalist and police stenographer record his outré claims. As he tells it, he banged some hot blonde chick but refused to marry her when she came by claiming she was preggers. So she jumped in the river and drowned.
Being one of her friends, our guy had to attended the suicide's funeral, where he saw her body in the casket. But when he got home, there she was! Looking as hot as ever! He couldn't resist her, and went to her, but blacked out and, when he awoke, wondered if it had all been a dream or hallucination. But then the next day he saw the dead girl on mass transit!
These sorts of episodes continue, wrecking the man's relationship with his new girlfriend and with his boss, who in separate incidents catch him embracing and kissing this woman who seems to come out of nowhere to seduce him with her gorgeous breasts. He gets a new job, and then another when the living dead woman again appears to ruin his reputation at work; this happens again and again, driving the man into penury. The living dead woman even comes on the scene to throw a monkey wrench into the works when our guy tries to hire a prostitute!
Eventually, the man decides to plunge a stake into the heart of the living dead woman, thinking that might put her in her grave permanent like. After stabbing her with the stake again and again, he reaches into her oozing chest cavity to pull out her heart and bring it with him to the police station.
The reporter then resumes the responsibility for the story's narration, and we get the twist ending. The woman who terrorized the man is the twin sister of the suicide and was derailing his career and relationships in pursuit of revenge.
"Death Came Calling" is a much more believable and compelling story than "Girls for the Pain Dance;" the gross out parts are less silly and everyone's behavior is more or less understandable. The story also moves quickly and lacks the overabundance of characters and repetitive scenes that characterize "GftPD." I can mildly recommend "Death Came Calling."
"The Chimes of Death" (1939)
"The Chimes of Death" vies with "Girls for the Pain Dance" for title of today's most ridic story. Our narrator is a private dick who happens to be very short. He has been summoned by the mayor of a small city to help their overtaxed police force deal with the bizarre crime wave that has suddenly struck this little burg. For the last three nights, precisely on the stroke of midnight, some normal citizen has gone berserk and assaulted another person for no reason. Our narrator witnesses just such an event as the story begins: a couple are walking in front of city hall when the clock in the tower strikes twelve, and the man, well known as a devoted husband, suddenly starts clawing at his wife, ripping off her clothes and tearing at her flesh! When the cops and our narrator pull him off his wife, the man comes to his senses and doesn't even remember what he has just done.
That same night, some thugs attack our little guy; he fights them off and as they flee he sees that one of them is a man he shot dead five years ago, a "notorious booze-runner"--the horrible injuries on the man's face, inflicted by our hero's bullets, are still evident!
In addition to this wacky quasi-supernatural crime plot, "The Chimes of Death" provides us readers a love triangle plot. The narrator is an expert ping-pong player and met a hot chick at a national table tennis tournament recently. This girl is the daughter of the mayor of this town--it was she who got her dad to summon our narrator. Some other dude is also smitten by the mayor's daughter, but she only has eyes for our hero; our guy rescues her when this rival tries to get fresh and, I guess, rape her. The ensuing fight over the mayor's daughter is interrupted when the mayor's other daughter is assaulted by her wealthy boyfriend when the town clock strikes one. People are now going berserk every hour instead of every twenty-four!
Whoever is hypnotizing these people into attacking their loved ones has sent a note demanding 50k--these guys are not nearly as ambitious as the fiends in "Girls for the Pain Dance," or maybe their modest demands are just a reflection of the greater distance of this town from the economic juggernaut that is New York City. The living dead booze-runner reappears; there is a car chase and gunfire, and the narrator is captured by the booze-runner after a crash. The one-eyed revenant hypnotizes the diminutive detective--presumably planting the suggestion that he murder some individual at some specific time--and releases him.
When our guy gets back to the police station he learns the mayor's daughter has been kidnapped. But she reappears just before 4:00 AM. She and our hero start making out, but when the clock strikes four, then begins the gore! Each of these lovebirds turns into a frenzied killer bound and determined to tear the flesh from the other's bones with his or her fingernails and pearly whites! The other guy who loves the mayor's daughter jumps in and preserves their lives, then carries off the woman. When the detective comes to his senses he follows them, only to find his rival for the love of the mayor's daughter mortally wounded--the villains have killed him and captured our guy's sweetheart again!
The detective figures out where the criminals' hideout is and arrive just as the booze-runner with half a face is about to carve off half of the mayor's daughter's face. Our guy captures the villains and gets his old foe to admit he spent the last few years in India learning hypnotism. Another fight erupts and the detective guns down the villains. Our hero is injured, but will live to marry the mayor's daughter.
While crazy, this story is much better than "Girls for the Pain Dance;" the wacky elements (a man with half a face, people tearing the flesh off their spouses, lovers and children with their fingernails and teeth) are actually sort of horrifying and not as risible as the material in the earlier story (like the spasmic dancing and thr giant frying pan), the plot operates somewhat more smoothly and the characters are significantly more interesting and behave more logically. We're judging "The Chimes of Death" acceptable.
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This is shoddy exploitation junk, but "Death Came Calling" and "The Chimes of Death" have some entertainment value. We may return to Dime Mystery Magazine for more twisted violence-against-women insanity, but our next adventures will find us in the pages of more influential and respectable publications.
In other words, these stories are Scooby-Doo plus sadism. There's a combination for you!
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