Benjamin Szumskyj-The Man Who Collected Psychos - Critical Essays On Robert Bloch (2009)

THE MAN WHO
COLLECTED PSYCHOS
ALSO BY BENJAMIN SZUMSKYJ
AND FROM MCFARLAND
American Exorcist:
Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty (2008)
Dissecting Hannibal Lecter:

Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris (2008)
Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008)

THE MAN WHO
COLLECTED PSYCHOS
Critical Essays on Robert Bloch
Edited by
Benjamin Szumskyj
FOREWORD BY ROBERT HOOD
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
The man who collected psychos : critical essays on Robert Bloch /
edited by Benjamin Szumskyj ; foreword by Robert Hood.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-4208-9
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
1. Bloch, Robert, 1917–1994— Criticism and interpretation.

I. Szumskyj, Benjamin, 1982–
PS3503.L718Z77 2009
813'.54—dc22 2009019858
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2009 Benjamin Szumskyj. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: Photograph of Robert Bloch © by Stathis Orphanos
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To Randall D. Larson, Ron Hanna
and Phillip A. Ellis
Acknowledgments
This book was supported by many like-minded individuals,

for whom I am very grateful. I’d like to thank Steve Vertlieb, Scott
D. Briggs, Philip L. Simpson, Darrel Schweitzer, Randall D. Lar-
son, Rebecca Janicker, S. T. Joshi, Phillip A. Ellis, Leigh Black-
more, John Howard, Joel Lane and Matthew R. Bradley for
submitting some of the finest essays on Bloch’s literature ever to
be assembled in one place. Thanks also to Michael Pfefferkorn and
Robert Hood. God Bless.
vi
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Foreword: The Heart of a Child
ROBERT HOOD 1
Preface 5
Introduction 7
Robert Bloch: The Psychology of Horror

STEVE VERTLIEB 13
A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft
S.T. JOSHI 23
Lessons from Providence: Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as a Mentor
and Bloch and Fandom
PHILLIP A. ELLIS 41
The Lighter Side of Death: Robert Bloch as a Humorist
DARRELL SCHWEITZER 57
The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime and
Suspense Novels of Robert Bloch
LEIGH BLACKMORE 68
Yours Truly, Daniel Morley: An Examination of Robert Bloch’s
novel The Scarf
JOHN HOWARD 89
The Keys to the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy
SCOTT D. BRIGGS 102
vii
viii Contents
“Better the House Than an Asylum”: Gothic Strategies in

Robert Bloch’s Psycho
REBECCA JANICKER 121
Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Bloch’s Partnership with Jack
the Ripper
RANDALL D. LARSON 134
Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers
PHILIP L. SIMPSON 150
Hell Is Other People: Robert Bloch and the Pathologies of
the Family
JOEL LANE 169
Programming Bloch: The Small-Screen Career of Psycho’s Creator
MATTHEW R. BRADLEY 186
About the Contributors 233

Index 239
Foreword:
The Heart of a Child
Robert Hood
“I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf.”

— Robert Bloch
Let me tell you a story about Robert Bloch. It’s also about two people
who were central to his development as a writer of the Weird. Only some of
it is true.
It’s a little known fact that at one point the world was changed radically
and all that we knew ceased to be, replaced by a reality that was stranger and
more dangerous than anything that had preceded it.
This apocalypse happened because of H.P. Lovecraft — at least at first —
though it began somewhere in a future time, a time when the bones of the
dead sang and anyone with the ear to hear the music could seek out the dead
and listen to their unliving ballads.
Into this noisy, if melodious world, came a scientist who argued passion-
ately that realities were never absolute and that humanity could create one at
any time if only it had the knowledge and the will to do so. To prove his
point, he followed the rich, deep-toned lilt that echoed from a grave in Provi-
dence, Rhode Island, and exhumed a collection of bones that he claimed were
those of H.P. Lovecraft. Putting the bones and an original edition of Weird
Tales, February 1928 — which included the iconic “The Call of Cthulhu”—
into an only-partially technological device he had constructed for the pur-
pose caused a massive supra-imaginative spike that dragged Lovecraft’s mythos
into objective reality (such as it is).
The effect was not immediate (as the changes first manifested on 15
1
2 Foreword
March 1937 and it took a while for the temporal currents to carry them
through to the present), but soon enough the sky began to boil over Provi-
dence. Out of this space-time vortex squirmed a multitude of hideous mon-
strosities — the Great Old Ones in all their horrible, chthonian ghastliness.
The result was worldwide annihilation.
Realizing his grave mistake, the scientist vowed to survive this calamity,
and the only way he could do that was to propel himself back through time
to a moment before the Ancient Malevolencies were injected into the time-
stream — to stop Lovecraft from writing any of his stories. In this future
period, scientific time travel had not yet been invented. However, darkness
was still as common as enlightenment and the scientist was also a proponent
of the black arts. Using the instabilities he had just created along with cer-
tain arcane rituals, he knew he could send himself back. Yes, it would be dan-
gerous. Yes, he suspected that this shifting of his corporeal form through the
space-time continuum had the potential to tear apart the whole structure of
the universe; he knew in fact that this would certainly happen if he evoked
the ritual powers more than a couple of times. But at this point he didn’t care.
Better to destroy the universe trying than to be personally ripped apart by
Yog-Sothoth or one of his kin.
So the scientist used an ancient ritual knife to slit open the torsos of five
women, in order to use their innards and their blood to feed the Power — and
as he consumed the heart of the final victim he was dragged into the chaos-
choked vortex of pre-time and inner space.
Willing himself to re-emerge, he arrived in Whitechapel in the London
of August 1888 — way off course. Furious with himself and too impatient to
wait around for the two years required until H.P. Lovecraft would be born in
a country far across the sea, he once again chose five women at random, slew
them according to the Mysteries and was flung through the space-time vor-
tex. But this time he was more in control, at least in respect to his point of
re-entry into normal space. Though he was aware that the architecture of
reality groaned and shuddered more seriously this time, threatening to fall
into total instability, it didn’t do so, thankfully, and he appeared in Provi-
dence in 1919, mere weeks before Lovecraft’s first story was due to be pub-
lished. It would do.
The scientist had hoped to avoid bloodshed, being the great admirer of
Lovecraft that he was, but needs must and so he hunted down the 29-year-
old nascent author, slit his throat and destroyed all copies of “The White
Ship.” Then he sighed a sigh of relief. The scientist’s work was done and the
world was saved. There would be no Cthulhan mythology. Ever.
Nervous about using the techno-magical time-travel ritual again so soon,
Foreword by Robert Hood 3
now that he was safe, he decided to hang around and watch the world develop
sans Cthulhu and his cohorts. Nearly ten years slithered past without any real
sign of change. 1928 came and passed and “Call of Cthulhu” wasn’t published
in Weird Tales; in fact up to that time no Lovecraftian-style stories were pub-
lished at all. He began to think that this might be an opportune moment for
him to slay five more sacrificial victims and make his way back to the future.
Then one day in 1938 he casually opened up the latest Weird Tales— and
found that it contained a story called “The Feast in the Abbey” by Robert A.
Bloch. The scientist couldn’t believe it. How could that be? In the old real-
ity, Lovecraft’s writing had certainly inspired Bloch, but now there was no
Lovecraft and no writings for him to be inspired by. He should never have
written this story. It was impossible.
Surely it was just a glitch in time, a minor backwash from the Old World
that would quickly dissipate. He waited and watched.
Then a few years later Weird Tales published “The Call of Cthulhu” by
Robert Bloch, followed by a whole slew of Lovecraftian tales, including “The
Thing on the Doorstep,” “Dreams in the Witch House,” and “The Dunwich
Horror.” The scientist was horrified. Clearly a connection existed between
Lovecraft and Bloch that was somehow transcending the new reality the sci-
entist had created. He knew what he had to do. He had to find out where
this Lovecraftian influence was coming from and stop it, with blood if nec-
essary. He traveled to Chicago and confronted Robert Bloch just as the author
was starting to write “At the Mountains of Madness.”
“These are not your stories!” he said.
“How can they not be?” Bloch replied calmly. “I wrote them.”
“But they belong in another reality and needed to be expunged from
history. They should no longer exist.”
Holding Bloch at knife-point, he explained all that he had done.
Bloch simply laughed. “Ah,” he said, “this explains the strong connec-
tion I have always felt with Howard Lovecraft, despite the fact that he was
slain so young. I have long felt him whispering in my ears as I type.”
“You must stop.”
Bloch pointed out that it was too late now, for the stories were still in
existence, growing from Lovecraft’s mind though realized by Bloch’s own pen.
Perhaps they always would be.
“Then I will need to travel in time once more,” the scientist exclaimed,
“I will go to a time before Lovecraft was born, before he could think the
thoughts that create these monsters, and stop the process there.”
But Bloch simply laughed.
“You are a mistaken fool,” he said. “Don’t you understand that there are
4 Foreword
no monsters out there.” He waved toward the skies. “They all exist inside you,”
and at this point his forefinger prodded the scientist’s chest. “In your heart
and mind. You gave birth to these horrors, not Lovecraft. Not me. It is you
who should never exist in order to save the future.”
And with those words the air boiled and a vast scaly hand reached
through the discontinuity and slew the man on the spot. It was the hand of
Ulthar, one of the Elder Gods, given the task of watching over the darknesses
of time and space. The hand held something out for Bloch to take. A heart.
“Thank you,” he said. “I shall keep it with me to remind me of where
reality truly lies.”
He put the heart in a jar and up until his death it sat on a shelf where
he could see it and gain inspiration for the stories that would, now, be truly
his.
The scientist’s name? It was Jack, of course, Jack Child.
As you read these essays and immerse yourself in the mind and work of
Robert Albert Bloch, remember that heart of a Child and what it represents —
and tremble lest the demons within it should escape their entrapment and
call to the demons in yours.
Preface
Critical studies of Robert Bloch’s works are sorely lacking and often
focus only on his legendary work Psycho, except the important effort by Ran-
dall Larson in Robert Bloch (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1986). The
present work takes the next step in producing essays with larger themes and
topics, targeting the academic community, and showcasing the unquestion-
able literary depth and value of the American author. As editor, I was very
decisive in my choice of subject matter and worked closely with the essayists
to ensure that every essay was both insightful and produced a refreshing out-
look on aspects of Bloch’s novels which have received little study or acknowl-
edgment in past literary excursions.
Robert Bloch is one of those authors in the field, whom everybody —
from reviewers to authors — has showered with constructive and unconstruc-
tive criticism, but has rarely received the professional criticism he deserves.
Often, while reading his fiction, I found it frustrating that there were never
any essays that sought to study his novels in full. I am an analytically-minded
person, especially in regards to literature, and am of the mindset that once
an author has established himself as a professional and his works have under-
gone countless reprints, there is no time like the present to initiate critical
studies.
This book is a collection of critical essays which explore Bloch’s novels
from a variety of angles. I have purposely avoided using essays with themes
and topics which have been exhausted before and only accepted those which
brought a new perspective to Bloch as an author. As such, this book is directed
towards the learned reader who has either read Bloch and wishes to see what
bridges may be established from his novels to the academic community, or
to the established academic who has heard of Bloch and is interested to know
the merit of his work.
The essays within have been formatted in accordance to the style con-
5
6 Preface
ventions of the Modern Language Association, allowing for footnotes and

bibliographies. Essayists have chosen to directly cite from the most commonly
available texts of Bloch’s novels, taking into consideration that readers are
unlikely to have access to first editions.
It is my hope that Robert Bloch will, sooner rather than later, be stud-
ied in the academic community and will be seen as an author worthy of study.
In reading the essays written specifically for this book, you will witness the
genius of Robert Bloch as not only an author, but as a human being, show-
casing the many layers of psychological, philosophical, literary, historical and
autobiographical elements that gave birth to the imagination behind his great-
est works of fiction. The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert
Bloch will hopefully open such a door and through its thought-provoking
essays, initiate a long awaited critical acceptance.
— B. J. S. S.
Introduction
“[S]he stepped into the shower stall. The water was hot, and she had to add
a mixture from the COLD faucet. Finally she turned both faucets on full
force and let the warmth gush over her. The roar was deafening, and the
room was beginning to steam up. That’s why she didn’t hear the door open,
or note the sounds of footsteps. And at first, when the shower curtains
parted, the steam obscured the face. Then she did see it there — just a face,
peering through the curtains, hanging in midair like a mask.... Mary
started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand
appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later,
cut off her scream. And her head....”
The above scene is from one of popular culture’s most famous novels of
horror, Psycho (1959). Though, like many novels, the name of its author has
never achieved the same level of fame as the creation and most people remem-
ber director Alfred Hitchcock — who beautifully adapted the novel — before
the author of Psycho. This is the public’s loss. If you have not yet embarked
on reading the works of Robert Bloch, you are neglecting a master of super-
natural and psychological horror.
Robert Bloch was born in Chicago on April 5, 1917, the first child of
Stella Loeb and Raphael Ray Bloch. His mother was a former elementary
school teacher, eventually becoming the director of the Milwaukee Jewish
Settlement, later known as the Abraham Lincoln House. His father was for-
merly enrolled in the Morgan Park Military Academy, but eventually became
an assistant cashier of the Home Savings Bank in Chicago. At age ten, Bloch
had a defining moment in his young life when he bought a copy of the leg-
endary pulp magazine Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine. In Once Around the
Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography (Tor, 1993), Bloch reminisced on that
moment:
Sometime late in the summer of 1927 the family ... entered Chicago’s North-
western Railroad station to entrain for a suburban destination. Where we were
7
8 Introduction
going eludes the memory, and it’s not important. What matters is that we
passed the huge magazine stand in the terminal. Here literally hundreds of
periodicals — including the then-popular weekly and monthly “pulp” maga-
zines — were ranked in gaudy array. Row after row of garish covers caught the
eye ... [each] competed for attention with scores of titles featuring romance,
mystery, detective stories, westerns, and every day sports.... I stared at them,
fascinated by this abundance of riches.
It was there that Bloch first encountered the works of H.P. Lovecraft
(1890–1937), who would soon become his literary mentor. Despite the Depres-
sion, Bloch continued to read Weird Tales and sought out more material by
Lovecraft. In 1933 he wrote a letter to Lovecraft through the magazine, receiv-
ing a prompt reply in April of the same year. The two of them continued to
correspond until Lovecraft’s untimely passing. This would have a profound
effect on the course of Bloch’s life. Bloch’s passion and ability to write came
as soon as he was able to drive his fingers onto the typewriter and Lovecraft
encouraged him to send his stories out for publication, even commenting on
some of Bloch’s early attempts. It was the start of a writing career that would
produce hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels beneath the banners
of horror, science fiction, fantasy, humor and historical fiction.
Bloch’s first story, entitled “The Thing,” represented a deliberate attempt
to copy Lovecraft’s style. Initially appearing in 1932 in Lincoln High School’s
literary arts magazine, it was published professionally in a limited run more
than sixty years later in 1993. Bloch sold his first story, entitled “Lilies,” to
William L. Crawford’s Marvel Tales in 1934 at the tender age of seventeen.
Crawford’s Unusual Stories published Bloch’s “The Black Lotus” in the win-
ter of 1935. That same year he sold a story to Weird Tales entitled “The Secret
in the Tomb.” Soon after, Bloch joined up with a writing club known as the
Milwaukee Fictioneers, which included the writers Stanley G. Weinbaum,
Ralph Milne Farley, Fredric Brown and the editor Raymond Palmer.
Like many pulp authors of his era, Bloch found a niche in the art of
telling stories in the genre of supernatural horror and weird fiction. However,
Bloch was fascinated by human nature and he used it as the basis for his tales
of sorcery and chaos. Starting with his story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”
in 1943, and later in his novels, Bloch began to explore the minds of serial
killers. While he continued to write stories about creatures from beyond the
stars, often his monsters were the quiet unassuming man next door. Bloch
felt that the human race was its own greatest creation, and in his stories, we
can see that beneath the veil of fiction, a stark realism is hard to deny.
Bloch’s work shows readers that he wrote for himself, rather than com-
mercially writing for someone. Even when he was commissioned to write a
Introduction 9
story or wrote to pay the bills, he was in control, and he wrote for his needs
and wants by way of his vision. He loved writing; therefore, he should love
his writings. Bloch was not a series or cycle writer; rather, he wrote the story
as he imagined it. If he felt compelled to continue the story of a character,
or felt there was a popularity that helped him see beyond the character’s ini-
tial employment, then and only then would he write a sequel or craft a new
yarn with the characters.
Bloch had the pleasure of seeing his books’ popularity rise throughout
his lifetime. He received awards such as the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker
Award and the first Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Conven-
tion. A Robert Bloch Award was established in his name by the Necronomi-
Con committee (from The Lovecraft Society of New England) at the second
“Cthulhu Mythos” convention gathering in 1995. His books and stories have
been reprinted in dozens of countries and passed on from generation to gen-
eration. Guided by the words of H.P. Lovecraft through their voluminous let-
ter correspondence, Bloch would recreate the horror genre, much like fellow
correspondent Fritz Leiber, paving the way for future horror writers such as
Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, Clive Barker
and countless others.
Robert Bloch passed away from cancer on September 23, 1994. It was a
sad day for the horror community. In his sixty years of writing he managed
to produce twenty-two novels and over four hundred short stories; an impres-
sive body of work by any standards. In addition, he wrote for television, radio,
and vaudeville. In his books and stories, he helped to redefine horror and make
it accessible even to those outside the genre. He gave us an early glimpse into
the mind of a psychopathic killer and he inspired a host of imitators, some
quite good, who followed in his footsteps. In order to create a good horror
story, Bloch said that “Fear is the main thing. Only it has to be a fear that is
close to reality, something that people can recognize as part of the world
around them. The more familiar, the stronger it is.” Those of us who never
met the man may feel the loss, but at least we can console ourselves with the
writings of this inspired, intelligent, and original author. In reading Bloch,
you will see the greatness of both the author and the works that he wrote,
that captured the attention of millions abroad.
The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch is a thor-
ough study of the many rich themes, topics and issues that exist within the
diverse writings of Bloch by leading scholars and newcomers alike. Most are
new to the community and are intended to produce further studies of the
highly respected author.
Opening the volume, Steve Vertlieb’s “Robert Bloch: The Psychology of
10 Introduction
Horror” is a bio-critical study of Bloch, showcasing the unquestionable tal-

ent and breadth of the author who entertained and scared readers for over
half a century.
S.T. Joshi’s “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft” is
the definitive study on the literary relationship of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert
Bloch, studying the evolution of Bloch as an ardent fan of Lovecraft’s imag-
ination and style, to a distinct and original author of horror in his own right.
“Lessons from Providence: Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as a Mentor and Bloch
and Fandom” by Phillip A. Ellis is an insightful study on Bloch’s literary rela-
tionship with H.P. Lovecraft, an experience that would not only help estab-
lish the rising author, but prove invaluable when he became a mentor decades
later. Ellis also explores Bloch’s role in fandom and how he perceived the rela-
tionship between authors and their fans.
Darrell Schweitzer brings some light to the volume with “The Lighter
Side of Death: Robert Bloch as a Humorist,” examining the many ways Bloch
used humor in his stories, showing him to be a very humorous individual that
everyone admired.
Before Psycho, Bloch wrote several other thrillers which Leigh Blackmore
studies in “The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime and Sus-
pense Novels of Robert Bloch.” The Scarf, Spiderweb, The Kidnapper, The Will
to Kill, Shooting Star, and The Dead Beat are explored and show the incred-
ible development and imagination of the author who was unafraid of study-
ing the darker side of humanity.
In “Yours Truly, Daniel Morley: An Examination of Robert Bloch’s novel
The Scarf,” John Howard explores Daniel Morley, the murderous character of
Bloch’s The Scarf and details why the novel is an underappreciated classic.
In “The Keys to the Bates Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy,” Scott
D. Briggs is the first critic to ever study the entire Psycho trilogy at once,
assessing the novels’— as opposed to films’— strengths and weaknesses and
what has made the character of Norman Bates so mesmerising to readers since
1959.
In Rebecca Janicker’s “‘Better the House Than an Asylum’: Gothic Strate-
gies in Robert Bloch’s Psycho,” the critic considers “how the Gothic operates
in Bloch’s influential novel through an examination of its themes, tropes and
narrative structures.”
“Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Bloch’s Partnership with Jack the Ripper”
by Randall D. Larson is a thorough study of Bloch’s fascination with the his-
torical Jack the Ripper and how, over time, the character evolved within the
author’s literary oeuvre.
In “Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers,” Philip L. Simpson, who has
Introduction 11
long studied the nature of serial killers, explores Bloch’s fascination with using
serial killers in his fiction and how successfully they are portrayed in his nov-
els and short stories.
Joel Lane’s “Hell Is Other People: Robert Bloch and the Pathologies of
the Family” explores why the “key to understanding the pathological charac-
ter in Bloch’s fiction is that he or she has internalized the madness of the fam-
ily or the community, distilling it to a lethal essence.”
Last but not least, in his “Programming Block: The Small-Screen Career
of Psycho’s Creator” Matthew R. Bradley comprehensively studies Bloch’s work
on the small and large screen, noting that despite Bloch’s “reservations about
the restrictions of the medium, television was able to introduce generations
of viewers and readers to his literary works, some of which had been pub-
lished before they were born, and in rare instances ... brought his scripts to
life with more fidelity to his original intentions.”
The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch is a study
of author Robert Bloch’s novels, short stories and life. Where previous vol-
umes studying Bloch’s writings have predominantly focused on the popular
and cinematic adaptation of his work, my chief purpose is to collect several
scholarly essays spotlighting the many rich themes, topics and issues that have
intrigued readers for over half a century. Taken as a whole, the volume repre-
sents a pioneering attempt by many of the community’s leading scholars to
chart the development of Robert Bloch’s growth from an author of amateur
pastiches to one of the greatest authors of weird fiction.
Benjamin Szumskyj, Editor

Melville, Western Australia
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Robert Bloch:
The Psychology of Horror
Steve Vertlieb
Across a sea of stars and time lies a horror too terrible to endure ... an
evil Hell-Bound Train riding to infinity upon tracks immersed in darkness,
careening toward midnight, consumed by madness ... a terrible Opener of
the Way to flights of fancy and depravity lost in translation, yet rediscovered
in endless pages of classic fantasy rendered by one of the greatest, most endur-
ing writers of the genre, Robert Bloch. One of the original circle of authors
and students inspired by the eloquent lunacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch
began his writing career in 1935 with a series of frightening short stories that
soon assumed a poetic eloquence that rivaled Lovecraft in horrific intensity
and originality. The crumbling pages of Weird Tales entertained these imag-
inative stories of witchcraft, mayhem and tales that witnessed madness. With
fables such as “The Hungry House,” “The Cheaters,” “Yours Truly, Jack the
Ripper,” “I Kiss Your Shadow,” “The Dark Demon,” “The Faceless God,”
“Beetles,” and “The Shambler from the Stars,” Robert Bloch quickly and
effectively established himself as a master of the macabre, setting a standard
of writing unequalled by any writer before or since.
Born in Chicago on April 5th, 1917, to Jewish parents, Robert Bloch
became an avid reader of pulp magazines and, in his teenage years, began a
life-transforming correspondence with Lovecraft who became his mentor,
encouraging the young fan to write and develop his own fantastic fiction. At
age seventeen he sold his first professional stories to Weird Tales and, with such
lurid titles as “The Feast in the Abbey,” and “The Secret in the Tomb,” began
to carefully establish his own fictional identity and style. In tribute to his
young disciple, Lovecraft paid incomparable homage to the teenager by writ-
13
14 The Man Who Collected Psychos
ing him into the text of his novel “The Haunter of the Dark” as Robert Blake.
After Lovecraft’s untimely death in 1937, Bloch continued to write for Weird
Tales, as well as the science fiction themed Amazing Stories Magazine, quickly
becoming one of the most widely read and popular authors of the genre.
In his private persona, Bloch was a gentle soul with a huge heart who
delighted in regaling audiences and friends with jokes and vaudevillian one
liners. A student of motion pictures and the arts, he entered a hidden cham-
ber within his soul when setting about creating the terrifying stories that
solidified his reputation and career. A Mr. Hyde to the softer reflection of
Henry Jekyll, the writer rarely shared his darker inspiration with his adored
and adoring wife, Elly, who preferred to gloss over and forgive his celebrity,
finding solace instead in his culture and humanity. For millions of readers of
traditional horror fiction, however, Robert Bloch was the master of the
macabre, a superb story teller whose hauntingly fanciful tales became the
standard by which others were judged. His fertile imagination sired the stuff
that unsettling dreams and nightmares are made of.
Admittedly, an arm chair psychologist, Bloch found the human psyche
endlessly fascinating, infusing his characters with complex, disturbing behav-
ioral patterns he could only imagine. An enthusiastic student of bizarre human
behavior, he carefully crafted each characterization with dangerously woven
personality flaws that lifted mere single dimensional protagonists from the
printed page to uncomfortable realization. In his introduction to a paperback
anthology Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper, published by Belmont Books in Jan-
uary 1962, Bloch writes, “My life as Jekyll has been commonplace in the
extreme. I have a home, a family, a regular occupation, friends; a normal
schedule of hobbies and amusements. Yet, Mr. Hyde is active, nonetheless.
It is a partnership which has proved both pleasant and profitable-and it would
ingratitude indeed if I allowed Dr. Jekyll to take the credit without proper
acknowledgement to his alter ego. But the inspiration comes from Mr. Hyde.
I fear, however, that Mr. Hyde must also share the blame for errors of taste
and judgment. In his haste to effect some particular ghastly revelation, he has
ignored many literary niceties. I can only submit that this is matter beyond
my control.”
Bloch, along with the reader, has given away both his rational reason-
ing and will power, consciously sacrificing his higher instincts for the greater
good of his imagination. As an actor of gentle or docile spirit studiously packs
away his better nature in order to mine the trenches of his hidden demons,
and more accurately capture the ugliness he must portray, either on screen or
in the theater, the writer’s imagination floods his more spiritual sanctuary in
search of the characters and stories lurking just beyond the fragile threshold
Robert Bloch (Vertlieb) 15
of sanity. He must unleash Hyde at the expense of Jekyll, sleepwalking vic-

ariously through the dungeons of depravity.
Sensitive to the duality of human nature, Bloch’s essay on “The Clown
at Midnight” remains a classic of extraordinary perception. He asks the reader
to visualize a circus clown performing within the restricted confines of a three
ring tent. The surroundings are familiar, and the imagery comforting. Chil-
dren of all ages laugh at the frantic behavior of the jolly clown adorned in
frilly, loose fitting costuming. The circus performer cavorts with blackened
teeth, his face pale and unrecognizable beneath the theatrical makeup that
deftly conceals his identity. Now, as Bloch suggests, what would happen if
you lifted that very same clown out of the familiar surroundings of a circus
sideshow, and placed him alone on a deserted corner, standing solitary beneath
a dimly lit street light? There, motionless and grinning beneath a soul less
mask, he assumes the persona of a demonic and terrifying escapee from either
an asylum for the criminally insane, or from the bowels of Hell. Sanity grasps
tentatively at the bonds holding together reason as the veil that witnessed
madness crumbles in horrifying confusion.
In his short story “The Hungry House (1951),” a psychologically vulner-
able couple move into an old mansion priced just a little too inexpensively.
They quietly congratulate themselves on their shrewd negotiating skills, lit-
tle realizing that the realtor was a little too anxious to let the property go at
such an unrealistic cost. It isn’t long before they begin to suspect that they
aren’t alone in the property, for this is a troubled house, a disturbed struc-
ture whose malevolence conspires to consume them. It had never occurred to
the couple that an alarming absence of mirrors within the dark walls of their
new home might have been a foreboding suggestion of danger to come.
Reflections caught out of the corners of their eyes suggest a shadowy pres-
ence hidden just beyond recognition. Shaving mirrors shudder in vague,
unholy perception, multiple and uninvited images shimmering in faded twi-
light. The house had once been inhabited by a vain, beautiful belle of the ball
whose self adoration had all but consumed her. Mirrors adorned every cor-
ner of the house so that she could observe her own perfect loveliness. The
years had finally passed her by but, for the mad and lonely soul who danced
solitary within its walls, time had stood mercifully still. She danced into the
very mirrors that had once caressed her, an old embittered hag whose frail
skin had been torn to ribbons by the jagged daggers smashing about her. They
said that her spirit still lived, and danced within those mirrors, mirrors dis-
covered in a locked attic upon investigation of the shadowy house. For now,
unleashed from her imprisonment, the tortured reflection of the haggard
crone, withered and cruel, reached out from beyond the grave to invite oth-
ers to join her ... others who might come to worship her beauty, frozen in
Hell.
“The Cheaters” (1947) portrayed the terrible consequences of greed and
distrust as the bewitched spectacles of an infamous sorcerer are discovered
hidden in the secret drawer of some antique furniture. The ancient eye glasses
reveal the naked truth and soul of anyone encountered by the wearer, expos-
ing in unimagined honesty, the inner thoughts and heart of their focus. Lit-
tle is left to the imagination as, one by one, its victims wear the accursed
“cheaters,” falling victim to dirty truths that might better have been left
unspoken. As secrets unravel in unwitting candor, betrayal and revenge all
but destroy the inquisitive inheritors of the deadly spectacles until, at last,
the ugliness of one’s own soul drives the final owner to madness and suicide.
As in Hitchcock’s cinematic morality play Rear Window (1954), there is little
reward for even the most selfless peeping tom. Bloch’s characters draw noble,
self serving parameters for themselves in which the hypocrisy of their men-
tal eavesdropping achieves intellectual justification and moral outrage but, in
the end, the lines between veracity and deception become as blurred as the
distorted lens of the “cheaters.”
Most, if not all, of Bloch’s stories involve damaged people. They are
misfits living beneath societal radar, outcasts from the mainstream living lives
of quiet desperation. Some are over weight and slovenly, while others are iso-
lated and lonely. They are abandoned by their world, left to find solace in
unsavory redemption. There is little tolerance for the unattractive or unin-
telligent in a world of uniformity, and so these discarded souls must reach
out in directions normally shunned by polite society. Abnormality attracts its
own, and so humanity’s refuse finds value in the darker corridors of explo-
ration. Bloch’s protagonists have degenerated to the deepest refuge of the
inhuman psyche, finding comfort and delusional grandeur in satanic ritual
and supernatural depravity. Their decadence offers respite from the outer
storm of derision, and seeming unity in leprous colonization. Often, their
rebellious rage threatens the very balance of sanity and reason, as miscreants
and misfits discover validation in psychological deformity and demonic pos-
session. Bloch, like Lovecraft before him, was able to vividly illustrate a vast
nether land in which deformity threatens to overcome the waking world,
while night consumes the sun. Lovecraft’s terrifying Cthulhu Mythos found
new, if fetid, breath in a continuing sequence of tales based upon the demented
writings of the “Mad Arab,” Abdul Alhazred, in the fabled book of the
damned, The Necronomicon. Anyone in possession of this hellish tome might
summon the “great old ones” from their slumber, causing a tear in the frag-
ile fabric of time and space in which the lumbering elder gods might rupture
the Earth once more, achieving infinity in terrifying abandon. After Love-
craft’s death in 1937, Bloch expanded the mythological library of literature
sought by sorcerers with such infamous texts as De Vermis Mysteriis, and Cultes
des Goules, each offering unholy access to monstrous damnation.
In 1945, Bloch was asked to write exclusively for a new syndicated radio
program called Stay Tuned for Terror. Broadcast and produced from Chicago,
the series presented a full season of thirty nine episodes showcasing the work
of the author, which he adapted for air from his own short stories. In addi-
tion to writing for print and for radio, Bloch held down regular weekly
employment as a copywriter for the Gustav Marx advertising agency, a posi-
tion he maintained for eleven years.
Although maintaining a respectable income and reputation during the
forties and fifties, and winning the coveted Hugo for his short story “That
Hellbound Train” (1958), Bloch continued to reside in the Midwest and
worked in an advertising position in order to remain economically afloat.
That changed in 1959 when the writer published his new novel ... the story
of a boy, his mom, and a motel. The work, which he titled Psycho, based
somewhat loosely upon the real life exploits of notorious Wisconsin mass
murderer Ed Gein (as was the somewhat less subtle Texas Chainsaw Massacre),
changed Bloch’s life forever. The book was purchased by blind agents for
Alfred Hitchcock and the rest, as they say, is history. Having literally no idea
who was purchasing his book, Bloch sold the film rights for something in the
neighborhood of two thousand dollars. Had the identity of the purchaser
been revealed, the author might have been entitled to a far grander sum.
While Outer Limits writer/producer Joseph Stefano penned the screenplay for
the controversial motion picture, Hitchcock commented in print that “Psy-
cho was ninety percent Robert Bloch’s book.”
Psycho will forever remain Robert Bloch’s most popular and identifiable
work based largely, of course, upon the success and legacy of the motion pic-
ture. To begin with, Hitchcock was one of the most respected and enduring
directors on the world stage, and so his decision to make a film of the author’s
work was one of considerable importance to Bloch. Much has been said about
the director’s decision to do away with the star of the picture roughly half
way through the film, and how daring and provocative that remarkable cre-
ative decision actually was. To his credit, Hitchcock wisely chose a major
actress to play the tragic Marion Crane, enabling her shocking early demise
to attain near operatic surprise and dramatic crescendo. However, it must be
remembered that Marion was killed quite early on in Bloch’s novel, as well,
insuring calculated shock by the unprepared reader. Hitchcock merely embel-
lished the calculation by casting the biggest star in the film as the doomed
heroine. Hitchcock’s other masterly decision was to cast Anthony Perkins in

the role of Norman Bates. Unlike Bloch’s sleazier depiction of Norman, Hitch-
cock chose to portray Norman as the boy next door, an outwardly shy sex-
ual innocent, brilliantly camouflaging his Jekyll and Hyde persona. Hence,
the revelation of his inner demons became more effectively disturbing. In
some ways, Norman Bates was a projection of Robert Bloch’s own literary
personality. As stated earlier, Bloch was himself a gentle, sensitive soul with
an appreciation for the arts, and a broad, infectious sense of humor. When
he chose to don the cape of creativity, however, he transformed himself into
a far darker, Freudian evocation of his personal complexity and shadowy iden-
tity. It may truthfully be stated that each of us masks our own inner demons
with smiles and banal pleasantry. If Robert Bloch, during his waking hours,
was his own Henry Jekyll then, surely, his Mr. Hyde would take center stage
when immersed in the twilight zone inhabited by Norman Bates.
The genius of Bloch’s Psycho is, of course, that the supposed main char-
acter of the novel isn’t revealed as merely a “red herring” until well into the
story’s progression. The groundwork for Marion Crane’s moral dilemma and
near redemption is laid out meticulously. She has abandoned her integrity
out of thoughtless greed, never fully comprehending the circumstances of her
fall from grace or its ultimate consequence. She has been entrusted with
depositing forty thousand dollars by her boss and his client, deciding instead
to steal the money and join her lover in an idealized dream of financial secu-
rity and sexual domesticity. The reader’s concern, then, is that she has come
to her senses in time to redeem her fortunes and return to her life, virtually
unscathed by a momentary decline into criminality. It is only then that we
learn that the story isn’t about Marion Crane at all but, rather, a recently intro-
duced proprietor of a seedy motel in which she quite innocently decides to
spend the night, while en route to her destiny. Tragically, the motel is her
destiny as she is gruesomely slaughtered by Norman Bates, the true focus of
the novel. All that has transpired up to this point is merely the expository
groundwork that serves to introduce the reader to the real thrust of both the
story, and Norman’s knife. Marion is expendable. She is a fragile, flawed indi-
vidual who can be sacrificed for the greater good of the novel. Bloch has care-
fully led the reader into a sheltered sense of complacency, traveling down a
calculated detour to a climactic intersection in which the proverbial rug is
unceremoniously pulled out from under him. Marion’s world, as well as our
own, has been turned inside and out. The bathroom door has closed, and
there is no turning back.
On the basis of the novel’s huge success, Bloch moved his family to Los
Angeles, leaving his day job behind and settling into the film community as
a full time, working author. Any acrimony with Hitchcock was washed away
by the muddy waters of success, and the opportunity to write stories for the
director’s popular television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Bloch became
one of the program’s most prolific writers, contributing some seventeen tele-
plays including “The Greatest Monster of Them All” (1961), “The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice” (1962), and “The Sign of Satan” (1964) guest starring Christo-
pher Lee.
Collections of short stories by the celebrated writer began appearing both
in hard and paperback editions with luridly commercial titles such as Night-
mares, More Nightmares, Even More Nightmares, Pleasant Dreams, Mysteries of
the Worm, and Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper. It was about this time that NBC
television producer, Hubbell Robinson, began developing a new series for the
network to star horror actor Boris Karloff. Airing over the network in prime
time from 1960 until 1962, Boris Karloff ’s Thriller remains the most fright-
ening, potent and atmospheric series in the troubled history of horror tele-
vision. The series presented some of the most disturbing and nightmarishly
visual hours of the past fifty years and many of its most memorable, haunt-
ing episodes were written for the program by Robert Bloch. These included
“The Cheaters” (the story of a deadly pair of Victorian spectacles that delved
into the truth of every soul it perceived), “The Grim Reaper” (featuring young
William Shatner as the greedy heir to a writer’s fortune who conspires to
frighten the elderly woman to death with stories of a terrible painting com-
ing to life) and, perhaps, the program’s defining moment. Based upon Bloch’s
short story, “The Hungry House,” William Shatner was featured once again
in “The Hungry Glass” as a recovering victim of a nervous breakdown who
purchases a house with a terrible secret, and strangely devoid of any mirrors.
Rarely has the medium of film so chillingly captured the gothic temperament
and nightmarish language of horror as effectively, or as reverently, as in this
uncompromisingly graphic, black and white television series. If Psycho brought
Robert Bloch’s name and reputation into the cinematic consciousness of the-
ater goers, Boris Karloff ’s Thriller brought the author lasting fame and recog-
nition in captive living rooms across the country. It was fitting, then, that the
decadent domicile used by NBC and Universal for the “Hungry Glass” episode
was, in fact, the very same structure utilized by Hitchcock to house Norman
Bates and his skeletal mother. Despite the apparent popularity and success of
the literate young series, however, it was surprisingly cancelled by the net-
work after only two years, reportedly at the urging of Alfred Hitchcock who
felt that its early suspense oriented stories constituted direct competition to
his own half hour anthology program on NBC.
Assignments for both television and theaters continued with screenplays
for The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), The Couch (1962), Strait-Jacket (1964)
(starring Joan Crawford as an ax murderess), The Night Walker (with the for-
mer husband and wife team of Barbara Stanwyk and Robert Taylor in 1964)
The Skull (1965) with Peter Cushing (adapted from Bloch’s short story, “The
Skull of the Marquis De Sade”) (1966), The Psychopath (1966), Torture Gar-
den (1967), The Deadly Bees (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Asy-
lum (1972) (once again starring Peter Cushing), The Cat Creature (1973) for
ABC television, three episodes of the original Star Trek (“What Are Little
Girls Made Of,” “Wolf in the Fold,” and “Catspaw”). Star Trek’s “Wolf in the
Fold” offered a futuristic variation of his earlier take on the White Chapel
slasher, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper.” Bloch had been working on a mas-
sive teleplay for CBS television in 1980, an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ In the
Days of the Comet produced by the legendary George Pal, when the fantasy
film pioneer died of a sudden heart attack. The ambitious collaboration, sadly,
was not to be. Among Bloch’s most curious projects for television aired as the
final episode of the ABC series, Bus Stop. Based upon the popular 20th Cen-
tury–Fox classic starring Marilyn Monroe, this all out horror tale became the
final episode of the short lived series, with actor Alfred Ryder in a frighten-
ing adaptation of Bloch’s short story, “I Kiss Your Shadow.”
Bloch was never entirely satisfied with his screen work, for neither the
direction or the theatricality of these final picturizations ever truly captured
the genuine dread portrayed by his written word. Only Hitchcock’s Psycho
ever realized the black and white simplicity of the writer’s psychology of hor-
ror. Bloch wrote in black and white or, to put it more succinctly, from a dark-
ened perspective devoid of color. The visualization of horror must be stripped
of comfort with the familiar. While colors enrich the waking realm in which
we work and interact, their very reassurance serves to erase the frighteningly
primordial recollection of a world immersed in dreams. Bloch’s stories were
essentially driven by his, and our, deepest fears. As we struggle to awaken from
night’s journey through shadows, it is the first light of day in which we must
find solace. Bloch understood that nightmares are derived from darkness, for
it is there that familiarity is lost. One cannot understand what he cannot see.
Rationalization is clarified by light. We can attempt to define what lies before
us. It has definition and color. Strip away that color, however, and the hori-
zons before us become dream like, or surreal. Drained of color, the world
degenerates into a simplistic panorama in which monstrous apparitions can
co-exist comfortably with reality. It is here, in a world stripped of pretense
and calming reassurance, that we walk naked through the night. Alone in the
darkness, we become vulnerable to emotional assault, and prey to the denizens
of darkness. The simplicity of black and white has now prepared our emer-
gence, or descent, into the nether world of dreams and nightmares. It is for
this reason, perhaps, that Bloch’s most successful work on screen remains the
quintessential horror anthology hosted by Boris Karloff for NBC Television.
Bloch lent distinction to his name whether adapting one of his own short
stories for the screen, or reworking the efforts of another writer. Asked to adapt
a short story written by Harold Lawlor for the Thriller series, the author com-
posed one of his most terrifying confections, entirely re-structuring the thread
of the original tale and turning it into modern horror classic. “The Grim
Reaper” aired during the 1961 television season, becoming one of the earliest
efforts in the fledgling series’ subtle transformation from suspense to outright
horror. The greedy nephew of an Agatha Christie styled mystery writer
attempts to frighten his wealthy aunt to death with the gift of an accursed
portrait of a skeletal avenger brandishing a razor like scythe. The tale is, of
course, a lurid fabrication concocted by Paul Graves (William Shatner) to drive
his elderly aunt either to madness or to death so that he might inherit her
fortune. His plan works all too well, for the normally grounded writer (Natalie
Schafer) sits before the awful portrait, drinking herself into an hallucinatory
stupor in which she imagines that the evil figure in the picture has stepped
down from its bloody perch to stalk her. The alcohol induced delusion con-
vinces her that Paul’s wicked stories of a cursed creature are, indeed, true and
she succumbs to the sum of her fears while frightened to death. Paul has
woven his insidious tale a little too well, however, for as he prepares his depar-
ture from the house, he senses something not quite right about the portrait.
The hideous image upon the bloody canvas has disappeared from its ornate
frame. As Paul clutches the opening of his mouth in mortal fear, barely stifling
a heart shattering gasp, he hears the rhythmic swish of the deadly blade from
somewhere in the room. Nothing is seen but Paul’s mask of terror as the
sounds grow closer to his body, frozen in paralyzing fear. An awful scream is
heard from beyond the locked door to the library, as frantic relatives and
friends of the late writer try unsuccessfully to pry open the lock. Paul’s own
vivid imagination has conspired to consume his weak and greedy psyche, and
he is torn to shreds by the monstrous aberration he conceived. The Reaper
has returned to its menacing lair within the canvas as though it had never left
its position on the wall ... and yet ... there is fresh blood glistening on the
painted scythe.
Both honored and treasured in his later years, Bloch received a Life
Achievement Award at the first World Fantasy Convention in 1975, a Life-
time Career Award presented by the World Science Fiction Convention, the
Bram Stoker Life Achievement Award, and the World Horror Convention’s
“Grand Master Award.” A respected and gifted writer of mystery, as well as
horror fiction, he served a term as President of the Mystery Writers of Amer-

ica. During his lifetime, Bloch wrote twenty five novels, four hundred short
stories, an infinite number of collections, radio programs, screenplays and
teleplays.
In his personal life, despite his public persona, Robert Bloch was a quiet,
gentle man with a robust, self-effacing sense of humor and a love of the arts.
Cancer consumed his sensitive soul in 1994 at age 77. The Grim Reaper of
his imagination had returned to claim just one more victim, as endless night
descended in Pleasant Dreams.
A Literary Tutelage:
Robert Bloch and
H.P. Lovecraft
S.T. Joshi
Robert Bloch (1917–1994) has never made any secret of his literary and
personal debt to H.P. Lovecraft. Bloch corresponded with Lovecraft for the
last four years of the latter’s life, and received invaluable assistance and advice
from the elder writer in the craft of weird fiction. Only now, however, are we
able to probe the details of this literary tutelage, with the nearly simultane-
ous publication of Lovecraft’s Letters to Robert Bloch (1993) and an augmented
edition of Bloch’s collection of Lovecraftian pastiches, Mysteries of the Worm
(1993). These documents make two things very evident: first, that Bloch —
who first wrote to Lovecraft when he was sixteen, had his first story profes-
sionally published when he was seventeen, and died at the age of seventy-seven
a revered figure in the field, just as Lovecraft had been — quickly evolved into
a skilful writer in the Lovecraftian tradition; and second, that this apprentice
work is both intrinsically valuable and of consuming interest for its foreshad-
owing of Bloch’s later and more distinguished work in the realm of psycho-
logical suspense.
Bloch first came in touch with Lovecraft in April 1933, and his first
object was to read as much of Lovecraft’s work as he had not previously found
in magazines. To this end he asked his correspondent to lend him many tales;
Lovecraft did so, supplying a list of all the tales he had written up to that
time, several of which were still unpublished. In his very first letter to Bloch,
however, Lovecraft himself asked his young correspondent whether he had
written any weird work (Letters to Robert Bloch 7) and, if so, whether he might
23
see samples of it. Bloch took up Lovecraft’s offer in late April, sending him
two short items, “The Gallows” and another work whose title is unknown.
Lovecraft’s response to these pieces of juvenilia (which, along with a
good many others Bloch sent to the Providence writer, do not survive) is typ-
ical: while praising them, he also gave helpful advice derived from his many
years as both a critic and a practitioner of the weird tale:
It was with the keenest interest & pleasure that I read your two brief horror-
sketches; whose rhythm & atmospheric colouring convey a very genuine air
of unholy immanence & nameless menace, & which strike me as promising
in the very highest degree. I think you have managed to create a dark tension
& apprehension of a sort all too seldom encountered in weird fiction, &
believe that your gift for this atmosphere-weaving will serve you in good stead
when you attempt longer & more intricately plotted pieces.... Of course, these
productions are not free from the earmarks of youth. A critic might complain
that the colouring is laid on too thickly — too much overt inculcation of hor-
ror as opposed to the subtle, gradual suggestion of concealed horror which actu-
ally raises fear to its highest pitch. In later work you will probably be less
disposed to pile on great numbers of horrific words (an early & scarcely-con-
quered habit of my own), but will seek rather to select a few words — whose
precise position in the text, & whose deep associative power, will make them
in effect more terrible than any barrage of monstrous adjectives, malign nouns,
& unhallowed verbs [Letters to Robert Bloch 10].
This is a litany that Lovecraft would repeat for at least another year; and
although it took Bloch a little while to realize the wisdom of this caveat, he
finally did so. Indeed, by the 1940s Bloch had already evolved that tight-
lipped, blandly cynical style which would serve him well in his later crime
fiction —fiction that, in its relentless emphasis on the psychology of aberrant
individuals, is in many ways more potently horrifying than the adjective-
choked supernaturalism of his early work.
And yet, Bloch was clearly fond of this thickly laid-on horror at this stage
in his career, as indeed Lovecraft was at a corresponding age and for many
years later. One gauge of this tendency was Bloch’s relative fondness for the
tales of Lovecraft’s he was reading at this time. It is understandable that he
would express enthusiasm for “The Outsider,” “The Hound,” and “The Lurk-
ing Fear,” but remain relatively cool toward At the Mountains of Madness and
“The Shadow over Innsmouth” (Letters to Robert Bloch 20), where Lovecraft
was attempting to rein in his adjectives and write with more scientific preci-
sion and restrained suggestiveness. Although many of Bloch’s own early tales
do not survive, “The Laughter of a Ghoul”— read by Lovecraft in June 1933
(Letters to Robert Bloch 20) and published in the Fantasy Fan for December
1934 — seems very representative of them: “Slithering secrets dwelt within the
A Literary Tutelage ( Joshi) 25
archaic avenues of the vast and sombre forest near my manor in the hills —
secrets black and hideous, haunting and unspeakable, such as demonian pres-
ences mumble nightly in the aeon-dead abysses beyond the light of stars.”
What Lovecraft probably liked about work of this kind — even though he also
recognized that an overuse of fevered prose resulted in unintended humor —
was precisely its “atmosphere-weaving,” a quality he (correctly) believed sadly
lacking in most of the weird fiction published in the pulps. He continually
excoriated the brisk, “cheerful” style of the average pulp product, in which
spectacular defiances of natural law were regarded both by the characters and
by the author with a bland casualness that is fatal to convincingness. Over-
colored as Bloch’s early tales may have been, they at least were attempting to
achieve an emotional preparation for the supernatural.
A few months later Lovecraft read a story of Bloch’s entitled “The Grave.”
Here Lovecraft’s advice was the need for clarity in motivation. Why would a
grave-robber seek his booty in an ancient graveyard, since the skeletons would
all have crumbled to dust? Also, how can a skeleton remain articulated after
the flesh has fallen off? How were the tunnels leading from the grave dug?
Lovecraft also criticizes some psychological implausibilities in one character’s
behavior. Bloch manifestly took all these recommendations to heart in the
course of time.
Lovecraft read something entitled “The Feast” in late June 1933, remark-
ing that it “forms a very clever union of the macabre & the comic” (Letters
to Robert Bloch 21). It is not clear whether this is an early version of “The
Feast in the Abbey,” but Lovecraft in any case read that story in September;
indeed, he supplied the title, since Bloch had evidently sent it to Lovecraft
without one (Letters to Robert Bloch 35). This is, of course, Bloch’s first pub-
lished story in Weird Tales (it appeared in the January 1935 issue), although
“The Secret in the Tomb” (Weird Tales, May 1935) had been accepted earlier,
in July 1934 (Letters to Robert Bloch 50). Lovecraft read the latter tale as well,
although apparently not before its acceptance. He did, however, recommend
some minor corrections (Letters to Robert Bloch 52), which Bloch seems to
have made.
Both these stories evince that fascination with the mythical books of the
“Cthulhu Mythos” which would remain constant throughout Bloch’s early
work. It was in these tales, of course, that Bloch devised Ludvig Prinn’s Mys-
teries of the Worm, and Lovecraft mentions other titles that were cited in an
earlier draft of “The Secret in the Tomb” but later excised (Mazonides’ Black
Spell of Saboth, Petrus Averonius’ Compendium Daemonum). In “The Suicide
in the Study” (Weird Tales, June 1935) we find other such titles as “the Black
Rites of mad Luveh-Keraph, priest of Bast, or Comte d’Erlette’s ghastly Cultes
des Goules” (Mysteries of the Worm 19). Luveh-Keraph scarcely requires eluci-
dation, save to note that this coinage appears to be Bloch’s invention, not
Lovecraft’s. Some have thought that Bloch merely abstracted this from one
of Lovecraft’s letters, which frequently include whimsical signatures of this
sort; but in fact Lovecraft uses the “Luveh-Keraph” signature for the first time
only in April 1935 (Letters to Robert Bloch 65), a month after having read “The
Suicide in the Study” (Letters to Robert Bloch 61). In other words, he picked
up the usage from Bloch’s story, as a sort of wry acknowledgement.
There is not much to say about these early tales, save that they may be
marginally better than most of the other material appearing in Weird Tales. If
nothing else, the verve of their adjective-laden prose and lurid incidents is
engaging. “The Secret in the Tomb” is a preposterous story about a man who
battles a skeleton in his ancestral tomb. “The Feast in the Abbey” (not included
in Mysteries of the Worm) tells of cannibalism in a mediaeval monastery. “The
Suicide in the Study” is perhaps the most interesting of the lot: a reprise of
the Jekyll/Hyde theme, it tells of a man who believes that the good and evil
sides of every individual are “co-existent” (Mysteries of the Worm 20) and seeks
to bring up his evil side from the depths of his personality. The story is ham-
pered by a conventional conception of what constitutes good and evil; but
the evil side, when it finally emerges, presents a loathsome sight:
Out of the darkness nightmare came; stark, staring nightmare — a monstrous,
hairy figure; huge, grotesque, simian — a hideous travesty of all things human.
It was black madness; slavering, mocking madness with little red eyes of wis-
dom old and evil; leering snout and yellow fangs of grimacing death. It was
like a rotting, living skull upon the body of a black ape. It was grisly and
wicked, troglodytic and wise [Mysteries of the Worm 22].
Here evil is pictured as simultaneously subhuman (the Darwinian beast) and
somehow superhuman —“wise” and incapable of being controlled by our
“good” side.
The early story of Bloch’s that has brought him the greatest celebrity for
its connections with Lovecraft is “The Shambler from the Stars” (Weird Tales,
September 1935). Lovecraft mentions something called “The Shambler in the
Night” in a letter of November 1934 (Letters to Robert Bloch 55); this may be
an early version of the story, although if so it is odd that Lovecraft makes no
mention in his letter of its central feature — the fact that Lovecraft himself is
a character in the story. We all know the story of how “The Shambler from
the Stars” was provisionally accepted by Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales,
who felt that Bloch needed to get Lovecraft’s permission to kill him off
(although Wright had evidently not felt a similar need when, years before,
Frank Belknap Long had done the same to Lovecraft in “The Space-Eaters”),
so that Lovecraft wrote his whimsical letter to Bloch in late April 1935 author-
izing him “to portray, murder, annihilate, disintegrate, transfigure, metamor-
phose, or otherwise manhandle the undersigned in the tale entitled THE
SHAMBLER FROM THE STARS” (Letters to Robert Bloch 67).
The critical issue about the story is not that it is a “contribution” to the
“Cthulhu Mythos” but that, like Long’s tale, it makes Lovecraft a character,
and accordingly assists in the fostering of the Lovecraft legend — the legend
of the gaunt, reclusive delver into occult mysteries. Of course, he is never
named, merely identified as a “mystic in New England” who was “a writer of
notable brilliance and wide reputation among the discriminating few” (Mys-
teries of the Worm 26–27). But even more interesting, perhaps, is how Bloch
himself has become a character in his own story. In its early parts Bloch pres-
ents a sort of objective assessment of his own career as a writer up to that
point, finding much dissatisfaction in it:
I wanted to write a real story, not the stereotyped, ephemeral sort of tale I
turned out for the magazines, but a real work of art. The creation of such a
masterpiece became my ideal. I was not a good writer, but that was not entirely
due to my errors in mechanical style. It was, I felt, the fault of my subject
matter. Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, mythological monsters — these things
constituted material of little merit. Commonplace imagery, ordinary adjecti-
val treatment, and a prosaically anthropocentric point of view were the chief
detriments to the production of a really good weird tale [Mysteries of the Worm
26].
This paragraph could have come directly out of Lovecraft’s writings on the
subject, such as “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (1933). That last comment
about point of view seems to derive from a letter by Lovecraft to Bloch in
June 1933, in which he remarks how he had once (in the “Eyrie” for March
1924) advised “having a story told from an unconventional & non-human
angle,” specifically a story “from the ghoul’s or werewolf ’s point of view” (Let-
ters to Robert Bloch 21); he goes on to remark that H. Warner Munn had
attempted to embody this conception in “The Werewolf of Ponkert,” but had
botched the job because Munn’s “sympathies were still with mankind —
whereas I called for sympathies wholly dissociated from mankind & perhaps
violently hostile to it” (Letters to Robert Bloch 21). This notion is not in fact
present in “The Shambler from the Stars,” but does find its way into “The
Dark Demon.”
Lovecraft’s avowed sequel to Bloch’s story —“The Haunter of the Dark,”
written in November 1935 and published in Weird Tales for December 1936 —
continues the fusion of the real and the imaginary in its portrayal of charac-
ter. Here the protagonist, Robert Blake, is said to come (like Bloch) from
Milwaukee (the address given in the story — 620 East Knapp Street — was in
fact Bloch’s address), but the apartment he occupies on a visit to Providence
is transparently Lovecraft’s own dwelling at 66 College Street. Then again,
the titles of the stories Blake is said to have written at this time —“The Bur-
rower Beneath,” “The Stairs in the Crypt,” “Shaggai,” “In the Vale of Pnath,”
and “The Feaster from the Stars” (DH 94)— form an exquisite union of ele-
ments found in both Bloch’s and Lovecraft’s stories. In early March 1935
Lovecraft had wryly remarked on Bloch’s success in landing tales with titles
like “The —— in the ——” (Letters to Robert Bloch: Supplement 11); he echoes
them in the above list, although his own tales very frequently have titles of
this sort as well. At the end of “The Haunter of the Dark” Robert Blake is
left a glassy-eyed corpse staring through a window — a somewhat more taste-
ful demise than that of the victim of “The Shambler from the Stars,” who
ends up torn to pieces by a nameless entity.
For “The Shambler from the Stars” Lovecraft devised the Latin title of
Mysteries of the Worm—De Vermis Mysteriis— and claimed to have modified
the narrator’s statement of his ignorance of Latin, “since knowledge of elemen-
tary Latin is so universal” (Letters to Robert Bloch 65). And yet, the narrator’s
lack of knowledge of Latin is critical to the development of the plot, since it
is precisely because he finds a Latin copy of De Vermis Mysteriis, which he is
unable to read, that he feels the need to seek out his New England correspon-
dent and show him the work. (Bloch’s deficiencies in Latin make themselves
all too evident in another title he devised, the nonsensical Daemonolorum, cited
in “The Brood of Bubastis” [Mysteries of the Worm 95] and elsewhere.)
“The Dark Demon” (Weird Tales, November 1936) is interesting in this
context because it again displays Lovecraft as a character and, more impor-
tant, becomes a parable for his early assistance to Bloch’s literary develop-
ment. Here the narrator testifies that he had come into contact with the writer
Edgar Gordon, a “reclusive dreamer” (Mysteries of the Worm 62) living in the
same town. They develop a warm correspondence and also meet in person:
“What Edgar Gordon did for me in the next three years can never adequately
be told. His able assistance, friendly criticism and kind encouragement finally
succeeded in making a writer of sorts out of me, and after that our mutual
interest formed an added bond between us” (Mysteries of the Worm 62). Love-
craft does not seem to have read this tale prior to publication (Letters to Robert
Bloch 84), but he warmly commends it; he makes no mention of the above
tribute, but no doubt he saw clearly its import and was heartened by it.
Although Lovecraft himself is mentioned by name elsewhere in the story (Mys-
teries of the Worm 62), Gordon becomes a transparent Lovecraft figure in his
bizarre dreams and the very strange work he begins writing as a result of it:
the “stories [were] in first-person, but the narrator was not a human being”
(Mysteries of the Worm 64). Gordon, when pressed by the narrator as to where
he is getting his ideas, makes cloudy references to a “Dark One,” remarking:
“He isn’t a destroyer — merely a superior intelligence who wishes to gain men-
tal rapport with human minds, so as to enable certain — ah — exchanges
between humanity and Those beyond” (Mysteries of the Worm 66). This idea
is unquestionably derived from Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness,” in
which aliens from the depths of space wish to take the brains of selected
human beings on fantastic cosmic voyagings.
The mention of dreams is interesting, since in August 1933 Lovecraft,
commenting with amazement on Bloch’s claim that he dreamed only twice a
year, related a hideous dream in which some mediaeval soldiers attempt to
hunt down a monstrous entity but to their horror see it meld insidiously with
the body of their leader. Bloch claimed to be working on a story based upon
this dream (see Letters to Robert Bloch 33), but apparently never completed
it; it does not survive. He does, however, in “The Dark Demon” echo Love-
craft’s scorn of conventional Freudian interpretations of dreams. Bloch’s nar-
rator remarks, “Gordon’s fantasies were far from the ordinary Freudian
sublimation or repression types” (Mysteries of the Worm 63); Lovecraft in his
letter had written: “I may add that all I know of dreams seems to contradict
flatly the ‘symbolism’ theories of Freud. It may be that others, with less sheer
phantasy filling their minds, have dreams of the Freudian sort; but it is very
certain that I don’t” (Letters to Robert Bloch 31).
For all Lovecraft’s advice to Bloch, he does not seem to have done much
actual revision of Bloch’s work, as he did — many times unasked — with other
young colleagues. In June 1933 Lovecraft remarks that “I added corrections
here & there” to a story entitled “The Madness of Lucian Grey,” which was
accepted for publication by Marvel Tales but was never published and is now
non-extant. A blurb in Marvel Tales described it as “a weird-fantasy story of
an artist who was forced to paint a picture ... and the frightful thing that came
from it” (Letters to Robert Bloch 13n), which makes one immediately think of
Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model.” Lovecraft seems to have done much more
extensive work in November 1933 on a story called “The Merman”:
I have read “The Merman” with the keenest interest & pleasure, & am return-
ing it with a few annotations & emendations.... My changes — the congested
script of which I hope you can read — are of two sorts; simplifications of dif-
fuse language in the interest of more direct & powerful expression, & attempts
to make the emotional modulations more vivid, lifelike, & convincing at cer-
tain points where the narrative takes definite turns [Letters to Robert Bloch 41].
But unfortunately this tale also does not survive.
If any extant work of Bloch’s can be called a Lovecraft revision, it is

“Satan’s Servants,” written in February 1935. Bloch comments that the story
came back from Lovecraft “copiously annotated and corrected, together with
a lengthy and exhaustive list of suggestions for revision” (Something About Cats
and Other Pieces 117), and goes on to say that many of Lovecraft’s additions
are now undetectable, since they fused so well with his own style:
From the purely personal standpoint, I was often fascinated during the process
of revision by the way in which certain interpolated sentences or phrases of
Lovecraft’s seemed to dovetail with my own work — for in 1935 I was quite
consciously a disciple of what has since come to be known as the “Lovecraft
school” of weird fiction. I doubt greatly if even the self-professed “Lovecraft
scholar” can pick out his actual verbal contributions to the finished tale; most
of the passages which would be identified as “pure Lovecraft” are my work;
all of the sentences and bridges he added are of an incidental nature and
merely supplement the text [Something About Cats and Other Pieces 118].
And yet, it is not surprising that the original version of the story was rejected
by Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales; his comment as noted by Bloch —“that
the plot-structure was too flimsy for the extended length of the narrative”
(Something About Cats and Other Pieces 117)— is an accurate assessment of this
overly long and unconvincing story.
“Satan’s Servants” had initially been dedicated to Lovecraft, and after its
rejection Bloch urged Lovecraft to collaborate on its revision; but, aside from
whatever additions and corrections he made, Lovecraft bowed out of full-
fledged collaboration. He did, however, have much to say on the need for his-
torical accuracy in this tale of seventeenth-century New England, and he had
other suggestions as to the pacing of the story. Bloch apparently did some
revisions in 1949 for its publication in Something About Cats, but the story
still labors under its excess verbiage and its rather comical ending: a pious Pur-
itan, facing a mob of hundreds of devil-worshippers in a small Maine town,
defeats them all by literally pounding them with a Bible! It is just as well that
“Satan’s Servants” lay in Bloch’s files until resurrected as a literary curiosity.
It is with “The Faceless God” (Weird Tales, May 1936) that Bloch begins
his twofold fascination with Egypt and with the Lovecraftian “god” Nyarla-
thotep. One of Bloch’s earliest enquiries to Lovecraft was an explanation of
some of the invented names and terms that appear in some of his tales. In
regard to one such query Lovecraft responds in May 1933: “‘Nyarlathotep’ is
a horrible messenger of the evil gods to earth, who usually appears in human
form” (Letters to Robert Bloch 11–12). Bloch, who in his early days was attempt-
ing pictorial art, actually drew a picture of Nyarlathotep, which Lovecraft
charitably says “just fits my conception” (Letters to Robert Bloch 21).
The figure of Nyarlathotep is one of the most intriguing in Lovecraft —

perhaps because it was never fully developed or coherently conceived.
Nyarlathotep is commonly believed to be a shape-shifter — a view evidently
derived from some random passages in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,
especially where Nyarlathotep himself refers to “my thousand other forms”
(MM 403). One gains the feeling, however, that this was a sort of makeshift
excuse for Lovecraft to present Nyarlathotep in so many diverse guises in his
work. Bloch could not have read the Dream-Quest (it was not typed or cir-
culated in Lovecraft’s lifetime), but he uses Nyarlathotep in very much the
same way as Lovecraft; indeed, it could be said that Bloch has elaborated the
conception more exhaustively than Lovecraft himself did.
It would be of interest to know which of Lovecraft’s stories mentioning
Nyarlathotep Bloch did in fact read. I see no evidence that he had at this time
read the early prose-poem “Nyarlathotep” (1920), which had appeared only
in amateur magazines; it is here that the connection between Nyarlathotep
and Egypt is explicitly made, and it is this connection that Bloch develops.
The prose-poem is in fact listed in the list of stories Lovecraft sent to Bloch
in April 1933, but it is crossed off; and the subsequent letters do not suggest
that Lovecraft ever lent Bloch the story. If Lovecraft had in fact sent the item,
one imagines that he would not have had to “define” Nyarlathotep as he did
in the letter in May. Nyarlathotep is otherwise very glancingly mentioned in
“The Rats in the Walls” (1923), extensively cited in The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath (1926–27) (which Bloch did not read), and glancingly cited
in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930) and “The Dreams in the Witch
House” (1932).
In fact, Bloch probably derived most of his information on Nyarlathotep
from “The Haunter of the Dark,” the story Lovecraft wrote in November 1935
and dedicated to Bloch. Toward the end of the tale the character Robert Blake
writes in his diary: “What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep,
who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man?” (DH 114).
Here is the Egyptian connection that Bloch picked up on. “The Faceless God”
tells the story of the attempts of an evil Dr. Stugatche1 to unearth a statue of
Nyarlathotep buried in the sands of Egypt, only to meet a fittingly horrible
end. I am not clear why Bloch conceived of Nyarlathotep as faceless — a detail
that perhaps inadvertently recalls Lovecraft’s night-gaunts.
Bloch notes that his Egyptological (“or Egyptillogical”) tales were “con-
scious attempts to move away from Lovecraft’s literary turf ” (Mysteries of the
Worm 255). How successful Bloch was, in this early period, in these attempts
is debatable. He perhaps had not read — or did not know of Lovecraft’s hand
in —“Under the Pyramids” (the story published in Weird Tales as “Imprisoned
with the Pharaohs” and attributed to Harry Houdini), and of course Nyar-
lathotep’s Egyptian connection had indeed been established by Lovecraft. But
such a story as “The Opener of the Way” (Weird Tales, October 1936), while
still perhaps somewhat Lovecraftian in style, does not employ Lovecraft’s pan-
theon of invented deities but seeks to invest horror in the real gods of Egypt
(in this case Anubis). “The Brood of Bubastis” (Weird Tales, March 1937) is
very similar: aside from insignificant references to De Vermis Mysteriis, this
tale is nothing but a story of the cat-goddess Bubastis, and involves the ingen-
ious idea of an ancient Egyptian colony in England. Lovecraft read the story
about two months before his death, noting: “Your Bubastis story is excellent,
despite the dubious light in which it presents my beloved felidae” (Letters to
Robert Bloch 87).
“The Secret of Sebek” (Weird Tales, November 1937)— a story probably
written just after Lovecraft’s death — is an interesting case. The story is set in
New Orleans, and concerns the god Sebek, who has the head of a crocodile
and the body of a man. A character sees such a figure in a costume ball and,
thinking the man in disguise, attempts to pull off his crocodile mask — only
to find that “I felt beneath my fingers, not a mask, but living flesh!” (Myster-
ies of the Worm 129). The dominant influence on this story appears to be
“Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” which is likewise set in New Orleans
and likewise concludes apocalyptically with a character who pulls off an actual
mask from another character (Randolph Carter in the body of the extrater-
restrial wizard Zkauba), finding a horribly alien countenance underneath.
Again, only some random mentions of invented books make this a “Cthulhu
Mythos” story.
“Fane of the Black Pharaoh” (Weird Tales, December 1937) is perhaps
the most interesting of Bloch’s Egyptian tales, both for its intrinsic effective-
ness and for its connections with Lovecraft. This is an entire story about the
pharaoh Nephren-Ka. The name had been invented by Lovecraft, and is first
cited in the early story “The Outsider” (one of Bloch’s favorites): “Now I ...
play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown
valley of Hadoth by the Nile” (DH 52). Lovecraft resurrects him in a single
tantalizing sentence in “The Haunter of the Dark”: “The Pharaoh Nephren-
Ka built around it [the Shining Trapezohedron] a temple with a windowless
crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments
and records” (DH 106). Bloch elaborates upon this sentence, although depart-
ing somewhat from it. In “Fane of the Black Pharaoh” Nephren-Ka is rumored
to have been a worshipper of Nyarlathotep, and his “atrocious sacrifices” (Mys-
teries of the Worm 134) caused him to be deposed. Then, hiding in a secret
temple, Nephren-Ka is granted the gift of prophecy by Nyarlathotep and
paints an enormous series of pictures of the years and centuries to come. A

modern explorer learns just how much truth there is in this old fable.
“The Shadow from the Steeple” (Weird Tales, September 1950) simulta-
neously concludes the trilogy begun with “The Shambler from the Stars” and
“The Haunter of the Dark” and is Bloch’s final word about Nyarlathotep. As
early as December 1936 Lovecraft wrote, “...I hope to see ‘The Shadow in the
Steeple’ when you get it written” (Letters to Robert Bloch 84); this is an early
version of the story, as Bloch notes (Something About Cats and Other Pieces
118–19), but for some reason he put it aside for many years before resuming
it. The story as we have it was either written or revised around 1950, for it
makes mention of Edmund Fiske’s “fifteen-year quest” (Mysteries of the Worm
183) to discover the truth about the death of Robert Blake.
As in “The Dark Demon,” both Bloch and Lovecraft become characters
in the story — the latter explicitly and by name. The narrator notes: “Blake
had been a precocious adolescent interested in fantasy-writing, and as such
became a member of the ‘Lovecraft circle’— a group of writers maintaining
correspondence with one another and with the late Howard Phillips Love-
craft, of Providence” (Mysteries of the Worm 180). Later it is said that “another
Milwaukee author” (Mysteries of the Worm 181) had written a story about
Nephren-Ka entitled “Fane of the Black Pharaoh”! With somewhat question-
able taste, Bloch even incorporates Lovecraft’s death into the fabric of the plot,
noting that Fiske had intended in early 1937 to visit Lovecraft and query him
about Blake’s death, but that Lovecraft’s own passing foiled these plans. Bloch
has written on many occasions of the shock he felt at hearing of Lovecraft’s
death, and the narrator of “The Shadow from the Steeple” remarks that Love-
craft’s “unexpected passing plunged Fiske into a period of mental despondency
from which he was slow to recover” (Mysteries of the Worm 185); but I still
wonder whether it was proper for Bloch to make fictional use of both Love-
craft’s life and his demise in this fashion. In any event, it transpires that Dr.
Dexter — the “superstitious” (DH 114) physician who had hurled the Shining
Trapezohedron into the river after Blake’s death — is Nyarlathotep himself, a
clever twist on Lovecraft’s premise. The story also effectively incorporates fea-
tures from the sonnet “Nyarlathotep” from Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth
(1929–30), which says that “...at last from inner Egypt came / The strange
dark one to whom the fellahs bowed” and that “wild beasts followed him and
licked his hands.”
Bloch’s Egyptian tales may have been an attempt to escape partially from
Lovecraft’s influence, but we have seen that they were only indifferently suc-
cessful in that objective, although many of them are quite successful as sto-
ries. Bloch was so steeped in Lovecraft’s work at this time that many
borrowings may well have been unconscious. Hence something so slight as

one character’s observation in “The Grinning Ghoul” (Weird Tales, June 1936)
that there is no dust on the stairs of a crypt (Mysteries of the Worm 57) may
be an echo of the similarly dust-free corridors of the ancient city in At the
Mountains of Madness, swept clean by the passing of a shoggoth. “The Creeper
in the Crypt” (Weird Tales, July 1937) is set in Arkham and makes clear allu-
sion to Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”; but it may also betray
the influence of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (the narrator, after his experi-
ences, seeks aid from the federal government to suppress the horror), and also
perhaps of “The Terrible Old Man,” as the tale involves a Polish and an Ital-
ian criminal who kidnap a man only to undergo a loathsome fate in the cel-
lar of an old house, just as in Lovecraft’s story a Pole, a Portuguese, and an
Italian seek to rob the Terrible Old Man but meet death at his hands instead.
“The Sorcerer’s Jewel” (Strange Stories, February 1939) is clearly a vari-
ation on “The Haunter of the Dark” and its Shining Trapezohedron. A char-
acter refers to a “Star of Sechmet”:
Very ancient, but not costly. Stolen from the crown of the Lioness-headed
Goddess during a Roman invasion of Egypt. It was carried to Rome and
placed in the vestal girdle of the High-Priestess of Diana. The barbarians took
it, cut the jewel into a round stone. The black centuries swallowed it [Mys-
teries of the Worm 155].
This is precisely analogous to the “history” of the Trapezohedron, from remote
antiquity to the present, provided by Lovecraft in “The Haunter of the
Dark”— and it is in this passage that Lovecraft mentions Nephren-Ka. And,
just as Blake, when looking into the Shining Trapezohedron, “saw proces-
sions of robed, hooded figures whose outlines were not human, and looked
on endless leagues of desert lined with carved, sky-reaching monoliths” (DH
104), so a similar experience befalls a character in “The Sorcerer’s Jewel”:
A swirling as of parted mists. A dancing light. The fog was dispersing, and
it seemed to be opening up — opening to a view that receded far into the dis-
tance.... At first only angles and angles, weaving and shifting in light that was
of no color, yet phosphorescent. And out of the angles, a flat black plain that
stretched upward, endlessly without horizon ... [Mysteries of the Worm 156–57].
But Bloch’s early Lovecraftian tales may be of the greatest interest, at
least as far as Bloch’s own subsequent career is concerned, for the hints they
provide of how he metamorphosed his writing from the florid supernatural-
ism of his youth to the psychological suspense of his maturity. At first glance,
these two modes could not be more different; but in several tales of the late
1930s through the 1950s, Bloch shows how elements from both can be fused
to produce a new amalgam.
The first thing Bloch had to do was to gain control of his style. Already
by late 1934 Lovecraft is noting that “The tendency toward overcolouring so
marked last year is waning rapidly, & your command of effective diction ...
is becoming more & more dependable” (Letters to Robert Bloch 55). One of
the stories that elicited this comment was “The Grinning Ghoul,” and indeed
it is one of the first of Bloch’s stories that plays on the distinction between
psychological and ontological horror. The protagonist is a “moderately suc-
cessful practising psychiatrist” (Mysteries of the Worm 51), one of whose patients
is a professor who admits to having bizarre dreams. Naturally, the psychia-
trist initially dispenses with the dreams as mere vagaries, but later learns that
they have an all too real source.
Still more remarkable, and one of the finest stories of Bloch’s early period,
is the uncollected tale “Black Bargain” (Weird Tales, May 1942).2 Here both
the Lovecraftian idiom and the customary Lovecraftian setting have been
abandoned totally, and the subtle incursion of horror in a very mundane envi-
ronment produces potently chilling effects. A cynical and world-weary phar-
macist supplies some odd drugs — aconite, belladonna, and the like — to a
down-and-outer who comes into his store clutching a large black book in Ger-
man black-letter. A few days later the customer returns, but he has been trans-
formed: he is spruced up with new clothes and claims that he has been hired
by a local chemical supply house. As the man, Fritz Gulther, and the phar-
macist celebrate the former’s good fortune at a bar, the pharmacist notices
something anomalous about the man’s shadow: its movements do not seem
to coincide with Gulther’s. Thinking himself merely drunk, the pharmacist
attempts to put the incident out of his mind.
Gulther then offers the pharmacist a job at the chemical company as his
assistant. Going there, the pharmacist finds in Gulther’s office the book he
had been carrying — it is, of course, De Vermis Mysteriis. Eventually he worms
the truth out of Gulther: Gulther had uttered an incantation, made a sacrifice,
and called up the Devil, who had offered him success on one condition: “‘He
told me that I’d have only one rival, and that this rival would be a part of
myself. It would grow with my success’” (74). Sure enough, Gulther’s shadow
seems both to be growing and to be subsuming Gulther’s own life-force.
As Gulther begins to panic, the pharmacist suggests that they prepare a
counter-incantation to reverse the effect; but when he returns to Gulther’s
office with chemicals he has brought from his pharmacy, he finds Gulther
transformed:
I sat. Gulther rested on the desk nonchalantly swinging his legs.
“All that nervousness, that strain, has disappeared. But before I forget it,
I’d like to apologize for telling you that crazy story about sorcery and my
obsession. Matter of fact, I’d feel better about the whole thing in the future
if you just forget that all this ever happened” [76].
The pharmacist, dazed, agrees, but he knows that something has gone wrong.
In fact, the shadow has now totally usurped Gulther.
It is not the use of De Vermis Mysteriis that represents the Lovecraftian
connection in this fine, understated tale; instead, it is Gulther’s concluding
transformation. In effect, the shadow has taken possession of Gulther’s body
and ousted his own personality — in exactly the same way that, in “The Thing
on the Doorstep” (1933), Asenath Waite ousts the personality of her husband
Edward Derby from his body and casts it into her own body. The conclud-
ing scene in “Black Bargain” is very similar to a scene in Lovecraft’s story where
Derby’s personality is evicted while he is being driven back to Arkham from
Maine by the narrator, Daniel Upton. Asenath (in Derby’s body) remarks:
“‘I hope you’ll forget my attack back there, Upton. You know what my nerves
are, and I guess you can excuse such things’” (DH 291).
Several years later Bloch wrote another powerful tale, “The Unspeak-
able Betrothal” (Avon Fantasy Reader, 1949)— whose title, Bloch has repeat-
edly insisted, is not his. Here too we encounter a prose style radically different
from the adjective-riddled hyperbole of “The Feast in the Abbey,” and Bloch
effectively experiments with stream-of-consciousness in capturing the visions
that plague a young girl both at night and by day:
But everything kept going round and round, and when Aunt May walked past
the bed she seemed to flatten out like a shadow, or one of the things, only she
made a loud noise which was really the thunder outside and now she was sleep-
ing really and truly even though she heard the thunder but the thunder wasn’t
real nothing was real except the things, that was it nothing was real any more
but the things [Mysteries of the Worm 168].
These visions — which convince the girl’s family and friends that she is psy-
chologically aberrant — again prove to be based upon reality, and at the end
she is transported into space by the entities have infiltrated her mind. Two
years prior to the publication of this story, Bloch had written his first non-
supernatural novel of psychological horror, The Scarf (1947); and the rest of
his career would see an alteration between supernaturalism and psychologi-
cal suspense, with intermittent fusions of the two. “The Unspeakable Betro-
thal” is such a fusion in its sensitive delineation of a psyche that has been
rendered subtly non-human by outside sources. And yet, even here the influ-
ence of Lovecraft can be felt. “The Whisperer in Darkness” is very much in
evidence in the “deep, buzzing voice” (Mysteries of the Worm 166) that the girl
hears, and also at the conclusion when nothing but the girl’s face is left, as
her body has been spirited away. Lovecraft himself, however, is not given
enough credit for mingling supernatural and psychological horror: he did just
that in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and perhaps also in “The Shadow out
of Time,” and Bloch may well have found suggestive hints in both.
“Notebook Found in a Deserted House” (Weird Tales, May 1951) uses
somewhat the same stylistic device as “The Unspeakable Betrothal” in its nar-
ration by an ill-educated boy rather than a learned omniscient narrator. This
story does not feature much psychological analysis, and in its rather grotesque
misconstrual of Lovecraft’s shoggoth (here interpreted as some sort of tree
spirit) it led the way to Ramsey Campbell’s similar error in his juvenile story,
“The Hollow in the Woods” (in Ghostly Tales [1957/58]). But, if nothing else,
it shows how a tale of basically Lovecraftian conception can be adapted to a
very different idiom. Here, again, however, perhaps Bloch was simply adapt-
ing Lovecraft’s own extensive use of New England dialect in such tales as
“The Picture in the House,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Shadow over
Innsmouth.”
“Terror in Cut-Throat Cave” (Fantastic, June 1958) is of interest in com-
bining the crime or adventure story with supernaturalism. The basic plot of
the tale may have been conceived as early as 1933, for Lovecraft makes men-
tion of one of Bloch’s story plots as the “idea of finding a Thing in the hold
of a long-sunken treasure-ship” (Letters to Robert Bloch 26). This is, indeed,
exactly the core of “Terror in Cut-Throat Cave,” although by the time Bloch
wrote it he had mastered the tough-guy style he would use to such powerful
effect in The Dead Beat (1960), and his powers of characterization render the
three main figures crisply — Howard Lane, the jaded writer who seeks a thrill
from searching for underwater treasure; Don Hanson, a lumbering giant who
has eyes for nothing but money; Dena Drake, Don’s mistreated companion,
who stays with her brutal lover for lack of any other meaningful goal in her
life. I am not certain why this story is in Mysteries of the Worm: there is no
“Mythos” allusion of any kind in it, and Robert M. Price’s suggestion that
Hanson is “something of a modern Obed Marsh” (Mysteries of the Worm 218)
is unconvincing. And yet, there is one fascinating Lovecraftian connection.
Toward the end Lane’s mind is taken over by the nameless submerged entity,
and he writes: “For already I was a part of it and it was a part of me” (Mys-
teries of the Worm 249). No reader can fail to recall Robert Blake’s poignant
reflection of the fusion of his own mind with that of Nyarlathotep in “The
Haunter of the Dark”: “I am it and it is I...” (DH 115). That one sentence in
Bloch’s story is enough to reveal his borrowing of a central feature of Love-
craft’s tale for his own work.
It would be twenty years before Bloch would write another tale that
might conceivably be considered Lovecraftian; but when he did so, he did it
with a vengeance. Strange Eons (1978) is Bloch’s most extended tribute to

Lovecraft. No one is likely to think it a masterwork of literature, but it may
be among Bloch’s more successful later novels and is certainly a delight to the
Lovecraftian.
The premise of Strange Eons is simple: Lovecraft was writing truth, not
fiction. This is, of course, the premise under which many occultist groups
function; some asserting, with added implausibility, that Lovecraft himself
was unaware of the literal truth of his work. This view was already prevalent
among a few in Lovecraft’s own lifetime; note his amused comment on the
beliefs of the mystical William Lumley: “We [the Lovecraft circle] may think
we’re writing fiction, and may even (absurd thought!) disbelieve what we
write, but at bottom we are telling the truth in spite of ourselves — serving
unwittingly as mouthpieces of Tsathoggua, Crom, Cthulhu, and other pleas-
ant Outside gentry” (SL 4.271).
Bloch actually renders the idea half-believable by the gradualness of his
exposition and by his suggestion that Lovecraft was in fact aware of what he
was writing and was trying to utter a warning of some kind. The novel opens
with an individual discovering a painting that seems strikingly similar to one
ascribed to Richard Upton Pickman in “Pickman’s Model”; later it is discov-
ered that the painting is in fact by one Richard Upton, who was in touch with
Lovecraft and had shown him some spectacular canvases in Boston. As Strange
Eons progresses, various events seem uncannily to mimic those found in Love-
craft’s stories —“The Lurking Fear,” “The Statement of Randolph Carter”
(“You fool — Beckman is dead!” [Strange Eons 25]), “The Whisperer in Dark-
ness,” and so on.
The focus of the novel is, as might be expected, Nyarlathotep — here
embodied in the person of Reverend Nye, a black man who leads the Starry
Wisdom sect, seemingly just another of the harmless cults found so bounti-
fully in southern California. But very quickly it becomes clear that Nye and
his cult are far from harmless, as character after character dies off after learn-
ing too much. Drawing upon the prose-poem “Nyarlathotep,” Bloch sees in
the figure of Nyarlathotep nothing less than a symbol for — and, indeed, the
actual engenderer of— a cataclysmic chaos that could destroy the world and
perhaps the universe.
Strange Eons is a grand synthesis of Lovecraftian tales and themes. Bloch
fuses elements from the “Cthulhu Mythos” into a convincing unity: Nyarla-
thotep prepares for the emergence of Cthulhu from the depths of the Pacific;
the mind-exchange that Asenath Waite practiced in “The Thing on the Door-
step” allows a Starry Wisdom member to deceive an opponent at a critical
juncture, just as the mimicry that tricked Wilmarth at the conclusion of “The
Whisperer in Darkness” does so at an earlier point in the novel; and the female
protagonist serves, like Lavinia Whateley in “The Dunwich Horror,” as the
unwilling mate in a sexual union with one of the Great Old Ones. Through-
out Strange Eons, all the characters attempting to thwart Nyarlathotep —
including a powerful secret branch of the U.S. government — are themselves
thwarted by Nyarlathotep and his minions; and the conclusion offers no reas-
surance.
The final section of Strange Eons, a harrowing account of a severe earth-
quake that causes the submersion of a large part of California sometime in
the near future, is narrated in a hypnotic, quasi-stream-of-consciousness man-
ner that is as potently effective as the most incantatory Lovecraftian prose.
Here the resemblance to the prose-poem “Nyarlathotep” is very marked, as
all civilization seems to be cracking at the foundations. It is quite possible
that Bloch was thinking not only of the prose-poem but of the passage (which
he had already quoted in “The Shadow from the Steeple”) in the sonnet
“Nyarlathotep” in Fungi from Yuggoth:
Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.
That “noxious birth” is, in Bloch’s conception, nothing less than the emer-
gence of Cthulhu, and the novel ends grimly and apocalyptically:
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and the time of strange eons had
arrived. The stars were right, the gates were open, the seas swarmed with
immortal multitudes and the earth gave up its undead.
Soon the winged ones from Yuggoth would swoop down from the void and
now the Old Ones would return — Azazoth [sic] and Yog-Sothoth, whose
priest he [Nyarlathotep] was, would come to lightless Leng and old Kadath
in the risen continents which were transformed as he was transformed....
He rose, and mountains trembled, sinking into the sea.
Time stopped.
Death died.
And Great Cthulhu went forth into the world to begin his eternal reign
[Strange Eons 194].
Such a cheerless ending would be unthinkable to many modern weird

writers, who feel obligated to restore bourgeois normality at the end regard-
less of the havoc their monsters have caused; but Bloch is true to Lovecraft’s
vision here, for he knew that that vision was a bleak one that saw little place
for mankind in a boundless universe in which it was an infinitesimal atom.

This is what makes Strange Eons the true homage that it is.
Bloch learned much from Lovecraft about the craft of writing weird
fiction, and he put that knowledge to good use. But while his early “Cthulhu
Mythos” stories entertain, while Strange Eons is an affectionate tribute, Bloch’s
real stature as a writer resides in his short stories of the 1940s onward and in
such gripping novels — which combine psychological penetration with hard-
boiled cynicism — as Psycho (1959) and The Dead Beat (1960). Just as Love-
craft’s later work straddles the always nebulous borderline between horror and
science fiction, so Bloch’s most representative writing effects a union between
the horror tale and the mystery or detective story. This is his true contribu-
tion to literature, and it will be for that that he will be remembered. But his
Lovecraftian works will also occupy a place of honor in his canon, if only
because they exemplify the ties of friendship that a respected master estab-
lished with his enthusiastic pupil. Along with Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner,
C. L. Moore, and a few others, Robert Bloch more than justified Lovecraft’s
predictions of his future greatness, and in turn Bloch more than repaid the
debt he owed to the twentieth century’s leading weird writer.
NOTES
1. This is the name of the character as given in the Weird Tales appearance of the story.
Subsequent appearances (beginning with The Opener of the Way [1945]) give the name as Car-
noti. Stugatche is clearly Bloch’s original name for this character, and it is mentioned in sev-
eral letters by Lovecraft. Bloch remarks of it: “The name comes from a group of imaginary
characters who — believe it or not — were invented to serve as players on teams in a card-game
called ‘Baseball’— the invention of my friends Herb Williams and Harold Gauer.... I later used
the name for a central character in my story, ‘The Faceless God’” (Letters to Robert Bloch 70n.
205). Perhaps August Derleth advised Bloch to change the name for the book appearance.
2. I am grateful to Robert M. Price for providing me with the text of this story.
WORKS CITED
Bloch, Robert. “Black Bargain.” Weird Tales 36, No. 5 (May 1942): 66–76.
_____. “The Laughter of a Ghoul.” Fantasy Fan 2, No. 4 (December 1934): 62–63.
_____. Mysteries of the Worm. Second Edition. Edited by Robert M. Price. Oakland, CA: Chao-
sium, 1993.
_____. “Satan’s Servants.” In Lovecraft’s Something About Cats and Other Pieces. Sauk City, WI:
Arkham House, 1949.
_____. Strange Eons. Chapel Hill, NC: Whispers Press, 1978.
Lovecraft, H.P. Letters to Robert Bloch. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. West War-
wick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993.
_____. Letters to Robert Bloch: Supplement. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. West
Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993.
Lessons from Providence:
Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as
a Mentor and Bloch
and Fandom
Phillip A. Ellis
S.T. Joshi, writing towards the end of his biography of H.P. Lovecraft,
notes that “in the last four years of his life [Lovecraft] attracted a vast num-
ber of young people ... who looked upon him as a living legend;” the next
paragraph begins with the following: “The most promising of them — or,
rather, the one who in the end amounted to the most — was Robert Bloch”
(Life 543). Bloch has also spoken about this relationship with Lovecraft. He
said “Lovecraft was certainly the major influence in my life” (Larson, Com-
panion 30). This simple statement eloquently echoes the importance that H.P.
Lovecraft’s mentorship had upon the life of Robert Bloch. In turn, Bloch
repaid that mentorship, by being mentor, in turn, to many others. When
asked, “have you in turn encouraged young writers?” he replied “I try to do
what I can, sort of to pay-off a debt.... When I find somebody who I think
is promising I try to encourage him or her and answer whatever questions I
can” (Larson, Companion 31). This has not been ignored, especially by those
that he mentored, in turn. Speaking about Bloch’s opinion of his own work,
Larson notes how “He seemed pleased with his career but clearly cared more
about the people that his career allowed him to meet and become friends
with” Pfefferkorn. Such people, are those that he helped mentor, in repay-
ment for the mentorship that he received from H.P. Lovecraft.
It could be easy, then, as we turn to examine Bloch as a mentee, and as
41
a mentor, to list, or to look superficially at the greater number of those for

whom Bloch was a mentor. It is easy, that is, to supply a catalogue of names,
and rely on basic numbers to convey Bloch’s importance for later weird fiction.
We shall not do that, we shall not take that easy option. Let us, instead, look
at three of those relationships that Bloch held, with Lovecraft, with Randall
Larson, and with Dallas Mayr. Doing so, we can begin to see some patterns
and aspects of his relationships that say something, both about Bloch and his
work, and about those relationships themselves. Simply, that is, in becoming
a mentor to these two, and so many others, Bloch was paying off a debt to
Lovecraft; Joshi (Evolution 107) reminds us that Bloch himself “has never
made any secret of [this] literary and personal debt.”
“Bloch first came in touch with Lovecraft in April 1933, and his first
object was to read as much of Lovecraft’s work as he had not previously found
in magazines;” thus Joshi has it in Evolution (107). This much seems simple
enough. Soon, under Lovecraft’s encouragement, Bloch began to write weird
fiction of his own. Bloch has described the initial impetus that made him a
writer in this way:
In about the fourth letter [to me, Lovecraft] said, “There’s something about
the way you write that makes me think that perhaps you’d be interested in
doing the same thing. Would you like to write some stories? I’d be glad to
comment on them.” So, naturally, how could I resist? I wrote several stories
which were very bad, and he didn’t criticize them, he praised them. Which
was just the kind of encouragement I needed [Larson, Companion 29].
In contrast, with access to the correspondence by Lovecraft to Bloch, Joshi
notes in both Life (543) and Evolution (107) that the initial impetus was in
that first letter by Lovecraft: “Bloch took up Lovecraft’s offer in late April,
sending him two short items, “The Gallows” and another work whose title is
unknown.” Thus Joshi notes in, in Evolution (107).
What developed, then, from this initial contact until Lovecraft’s early
death in 1937, was a friendship that helped inspire Bloch. It was, in essence,
a mentorship, as Bloch learnt the basics of his craft under Lovecraft’s tute-
lage. But it was a mentorship that remained tacit, a friendship. The closeness
of this relationship between Bloch and Lovecraft is aptly summarized by
Bloch’s simple statement in Larson (Companion 29), “Lovecraft and I remained
in close contact until the day he died in 1937.”
Bloch also makes clear the way that Lovecraft critiqued and encouraged
him. He writes, in an interview, that, instead of encouraging Bloch “to use his
methods and in effect imitate him,” Lovecraft “merely praised what [Bloch] did,
and if he made any criticisms they were always couched as suggestions and
largely that was factual matters” (Larson, Companion 31). Joshi echoes this; in
Lessons from Providence (Ellis) 43
his Life, on page 543, he notes that “Lovecraft’s response to [Bloch’s initial
stories] is typical: while praising them, he also gave helpful advice derived
from his many years as both a critic and a practitioner of the weird tale.”
Bloch came into contact in 1933; by 1934, a year into his correspondence
with Lovecraft, his first stories were being published by Weird Tales ( Joshi,
Life 543). These early stories, whilst in many ways echoes of Lovecraft’s work
and style, soon evolved into work with Bloch’s own style. The relevant chap-
ter in Joshi’s Evolution documents this development. This is not unusual:
most authors initially imitate others, their mentors, before developing their
own distinctive styles. Bloch, in a sense, outgrew Lovecraft, as a writer, as he
in turn, as a person, outlived Lovecraft.
Lovecraft also played his part more directly than as just Bloch’s mentor,
as a literary character in Bloch’s fiction. The first of these fictions is “The
Shambler from the Stars,” which, Bloch says, “was written as a homage to
HPL and dedicated to him” (Larson, Companion 39). The story has, as Bloch
adds, “an element of tongue-in-cheek, which [Lovecraft] recognized and rel-
ished” (Larson, Companion 39). Joshi, in his Life discusses “Shambler” in
equally slight detail, but adds one of the sequels to its publication. He notes
how B. M. Reynolds, a reader of Weird Tales had the following letter pub-
lished in Weird Tales: “Contrary to previous criticism, Robert Bloch deserves
plenty of praise for The Shambler from the Stars. Now why doesn’t Mr. Love-
craft return the compliment, and dedicate a story to the author?”1
Writing about Lovecraft’s sequel to “The Shambler from the Stars,” “The
Haunter of the Dark” in Companion, it is noted how, speaking of Lovecraft,
“Such was his sense of humor that he turned the tables on [Bloch]: if [Bloch’d]
used him as a character and killed him off, he’d do the same for [Bloch] in
‘Haunter’ as a sequel — and in so doing, ‘lend’ [Bloch] his actual study and
residence for use in his story” (Larson, Companion 39). As a result, Bloch
admits to being “flattered” (Larson, Companion 39). He goes on, immedi-
ately, to note that “Shambler” is “the only story [Lovecraft] ever dedicated to
anybody” (Larson, Companion 39), testament to the importance of Love-
craft’s mentorship of, and friendship with, Bloch for his creativity. Waugh,
almost in passing, notes of Lovecraft that he had “never ceased to write par-
odistically” and that this, “his last major story, ... arose from a parodistic com-
petition with the very young Robert Bloch” (196). This reading highlights the
importance of the place of humor in the relationship between Lovecraft and
Bloch. Although both serious about writing, they are at the same light-hearted,
almost equally youthful in their outlooks, and this youthfulness and humor
finds itself expressed, particularly, in the mordantly black humor of Bloch’s
weird fiction, that was to become one of its distinctive elements.
Bloch followed Lovecraft’s story with a third, written some years later,
in which one character is “vaguely like [their] mutual friend, Fritz Leiber”
(Larson, Companion 39). He admits, in an interview conducted in 1975, that
he wrote “The Shadow from the Steeple” “solely and expressly to round out
as a trilogy the other two stories” (Larson, Companion 39). Joshi, in Evolu-
tion goes into more detail. Despite its poignancy, as a tribute to Lovecraft, it
lies, in essence, outside of the scope of this essay, save only as an emblem of
the esteem with which Bloch holds Lovecraft.
Regarding all three stories, Bloch adds that “there is a generally unrec-
ognized playful element in all three stories,” and that, in all three, both Love-
craft and himself are “having a bit of fun with the genre” (Larson, Companion
39).
Bloch initially received from Lovecraft what he needed, not “literary
insight” (Larson, Companion 31), but, rather, “flattering opinions. This is what
[Bloch] needed — supportive response — and it stimulated [him] to greater
efforts and excesses” (Larson, Companion 31–32). The details could come later,
when Bloch was more mature as a writer, more sure of his abilities.
Of course, in becoming that mature writer Bloch was to differ in many
ways from his mentor. Unlike Lovecraft, and perhaps more like Derleth than
not, Bloch reveals a pragmatic outlook on his fiction. He is, essentially, a pro-
fessional writing, having writing as his primary economic activity during sev-
eral periods in his life. This differs from Lovecraft, who was more subject to
the need for inspiration, the need to be motivated by a desire to communi-
cate. This does not lessen the importance upon the outcome of Lovecraft’s
writing, as a whole, for his income: revision work, whilst of relative unim-
portance creatively, proved his main economic activity, and is one form of
writing, in its own way.
Although the relationship between Bloch and Lovecraft is instrumental
in his initial development as a writer, Bloch does not show much evidence of
boasting about it. For example, Mayr says the following about that relation-
ship, and of how he became aware of it: “Initially I don’t think I was aware
of it. Maybe Bob told me. Maybe I read about it in an intro to one of the
stories Bob finished for him. I honestly don’t remember.”2 This is telling: it
is evidence, not of the apparent unimportance of the Bloch-Lovecraft rela-
tionship, but of Bloch’s humility and lack of affectation. And, as the relation-
ship developed, Bloch felt that he had a debt to repay, something to pass on
to younger writers.
Mayr asked me, rhetorically, “Don’t we all have an ethical imperative to
pass on the kinds of breaks we got early on in life to the kids just coming up,
no matter what we do?”3 This was in response to a question I put to him,
about Bloch’s sense of payback for the mentorship of Lovecraft. Because, that
is, he received both support and advice from Lovecraft, then he was obliged
to do likewise for younger writers. And there have been a number of these
writers for whom Bloch has been a mentor. One of them is Randall Larson.
Randall Larson, a fellow contributor to this book, was the first of the
two mentees of Bloch that are being examined here. He is chiefly noted for
his three books about Bloch, a bibliography, a full-length study of Bloch’s
work, and an edited volume compiled of interviews with Bloch. Larson, it
turns out, “discovered Bloch quite by accident at the age of 17” (Pfefferkorn).
He notes, in his interview with Pfefferkorn how he
had read several of Bloch’s articles that appeared in Famous Monsters of Film-
land. When [he] found out about fanzines and got the bug to publish one of
[his] own, [he] came across Robert Bloch’s address in a letter column of Leland
Sapiro’s Riverside Quarterly. So [he] wrote him asking about an interview by
mail for [his] new fanzine.
Bloch was not the only writer that Larson contacted at this time. “His
was one of several interview letters I sent to various writers; his was the first
reply I received,”4 he comments. Larson has admitted to a degree of naivety
in his first dealing with Bloch. “My questions were rather general and fairly
naïve,” he writes, “but his replies were friendly and straightforward.”5 That
friendliness and straightfowardness to a young fan, and potential author, is
one of the salient points about Bloch that strikes me. Bloch, here, is echoing
an attitude familiar in turn from his own mentor, Lovecraft, and it helps
color Bloch’s relationships not only with his younger, fellow writers, but those
still in the field of fandom. That last point is of interest, and, whilst outside
the immediate scope of this essay, has been addressed elsewhere in this book.
A sense of that element of chance has remained when we consider the
Bloch-Larson correspondence as a whole. Looking back, after Bloch’s death,
Larson admits, candidly to this. He writes: “I feel it was rather quite provi-
dential that I found myself in an ongoing communication with him, which
spurred me to know more about his work, which had its own influential effect
on my developing fictioneering.”6
That first enquiry of his, of course, was only the start of that commu-
nication. “I wrote a letter of thanks,” Larsen notes, “he wrote back, and that
kept going for 24 years.”7 Larson continues, with more details about Bloch
as a correspondent. “As a letter writer, Bob was friendly but concise. He always
took time out to provide a prompt reply whether that was a hasty postcard
or a full letter.”8 In turn, as this correspondence grew, Larson notes that “The
more [he] got to know Bob, the more [he] got to know his writing, and that,
in turn, got [him] hooked on Lovecraft and the Mythos, and got me com-
pletely enthralled by everything Bob wrote” (Pfefferkorn). He goes on to note,

in the same interview, what it is about Bloch’s writing that initially attracted
him, then what later, and still, attracts him; he says:
What attracted me to Bob’s writing was initially the wordplay — the WAY he
told his stories — their sense of humor, and the way his horrors were conveyed
with their snapper endings that were so pleasingly ghoulish. What has con-
tinued to attract me to Bob’s writing were all the other elements that even-
tually came out in detail in my Reader’s Guide — Bob the observer,
commenting on the world and upon human behavior; Bob the moralist, who
when even writing about psychopathic killers or inhuman monsters, wove a
calculated morality play in which good won out over bad; Bob the humorist;
Bob the science fictioneer. Pervading it was Bob’s always gentle willingness
to encourage me and be a friend, if usually through letters and postcards, but
occasionally by allowing me egress into his world.
Elsewhere, Larson talks further about the importance of the correspondence
between Bloch and himself:
It was through our ensuing correspondence of letters and postcards that I got
to know Bob better — and he me — and through that a whole world of his
writing and associated worlds of fantasy and science fiction opened up for me.
I got to know, respect, and love his writing intimately, and that which had
influenced him also. By introducing me to Lovecraftiana, Bob expanded my
cultural horizons immeasurably, while also guiding me along paths where I
discovered psychological horror and modern strains of fantasy, honing my
viewpoint and refining my own style of wordsmithing.9
Larson goes into further detail, when asked how Bloch encouraged him
as a writer. “By treating me not as a fan and he a pro,” he says, in the Pfef-
ferkorn interview, “but by allowing me into his world, to an extent, of course,
and making me feel at home.” He adds that “in his home I was made to feel
like one of the Fictioneers, even though at that time I’d only written for
fanzines.... That, and making available his work for me to read and absorb,
that gave me many lessons in wordsmithing” (Pfefferkorn).
As we shall see with Mayr, what developed as a result of this contact,
this correspondence, is a friendship, more than anything more business-like
and formal. Larson reminds us of this; he writes, after all, that “what began
as a matter of opportunity availed through access — Bob’s simply making him-
self available to this young fan and treating [him] with courtesy and respect —
grew into mutual friendship and respect that had a tremendous influence
upon [him] as [he] grew into adulthood.”10 Elsewhere, when asked how tacit
was the relationship between Bloch and himself, Larson goes into more details:
It was completely tacit, except when I was asking specific questions for an
interview or a project. So there was no open negotiation or that kind of thing.
We just began corresponding and that opened up into a closer friendship, facil-
itated by my publication projects that were associated with Bob’s writing, for
sure, but our rapport was maintained far beyond those endeavors. In other
words, I didn’t approach Bob to be mentored nor did he assume the explicit
role of a mentor — that just happened as a natural consequence of our ongo-
ing communication in a very unassuming way. Somewhere along the way the
elusive boundary between professional acquaintanceship and friendship was
passed, and a less formal dialog was enabled.11
One result of Bloch’s mentorship of Larson is his feedback on Larson’s

weird fiction. “Bob,” Larson notes, “was always encouraging in his letters,
giving ... a great shot in the arm when [Larson] usually needed it” (Pfeffer-
korn). Another result is the updated, full-scale bibliography that Larson saw
published. Larson notes,
When I learned he had kept very detailed records of his published work, I
availed myself of that opportunity, with his generous blessing and assistance,
to compile and publish an updated bibliography, which eventually led to three
full books about him and his work, a reader’s guide, an updated and illus-
trated bibliography, and a collection of interviews compiled topologically.12
The friendship between, and the mentorship by Bloch of Larson has resulted
in real, material contributions to the field of Bloch studies. Though Larson
is not alone as a Bloch scholar, he is a rare figure, and the three books do
stand as a fitting testimony to the friendship between Bloch and himself, and
of his mentorship by Bloch. It is, simply a fitting response, and tribute, to
Bloch.
The second author we shall look at, for whom Bloch was a mentor, is
Dallas Mayr, who writes as Jack Ketchum. Mayr has proved a prolific author
for over three decades. In addition to numerous pieces of nonfiction and
shorter fiction, Mayr’s novels include Cover, The Girl Next Door, Hide and
Seek, Joyride, Ladies’ Night, The Lost, Off Season, Offspring, Only Child, Red,
and She Wakes (Ketchum). He, like Bloch, specializes in psychological hor-
ror; this specialization, though it reveals somewhat of the mutual interests that
brought Mayr and Bloch together, is, of course, only partially explicable as
the result of that friendship. The interest developed first, and is one of the
foundations of that friendship between Bloch and Mayr. And, as a result,
Mayr’s interest and work in the sub-genre developed further as a result, both
of the friendship and of the advice and support given to him by Bloch.
Mayr recalls the first piece of advice that Bloch gave to him. Bloch said
that “if you don’t have to write, don’t. It’s a hell of a job. If you do, give it all
you’ve got.”13 In addition, his most valuable advice, according to Mayr is that
a writer must “always know where you’re going with a piece before you start.
By that he didn’t meet to know the entire plot necessarily, all the twists and
turns, or even the exact ending.... What he meant was, know what you want
the reader to feel at the end.”14 From these comments, it can be seen that this
advice given to Mayr is practical in that it first emphasized the difficulties of
a career in writing, to act, not as a barrier to the prospective author, but as
a test of willingness and desire. Later, the advice is practical in that it addresses,
not so much the mechanics of particular stories, as the processes that under-
lie and drive the creation of narratives and narrative structures. By empha-
sizing, for example, the desired outcome, Bloch emphasizes that effective
fiction establishes a goal, not so much in terms of plot, or narrative destina-
tion, as a mood, or emotion, to which the atmosphere and events combine
and work towards. An analogy here is with narrative poetry, the aim of which
is similar, to evoke and convey an emotional response arising out of a given
story.
Mayr also emphasizes that he “was sending him everything from poems
to one-act plays to stories and nonfiction. Bob was no poet. So sometimes
he’d reply strictly as a reader ... moved or unmoved ... other times, especially
with the longer pieces, he’d get into details about character and motivation,
etc.”15 So that, whilst Bloch did address the specifics of Mayr’s writing, it was,
at times, circumscribed by the type of material shared, and by Bloch’s famil-
iarity and ability with that material.
Bloch also shared a philosophy of writing, which Mayr recalls in a pithy,
pungent way: “Apply ass to chair. Stop whining.”16 Here, Bloch’s humor and
directness of attitude to writing is captured succinctly, and neatly. It can be
seen from this statement that, again Bloch’s personality help affect the expres-
sion of the relationship between himself, as mentor, and his mentee, in this
case Mayr.
In turn, Mayr is quick to emphasis how little, in practical terms, that
he asked from Bloch during their friendship. “I asked him for a quote for Off-
spring, to try to boost Berkeley’s sales of my stuff, which he graciously gave.
But I didn’t want to lean on the friendship. By the time I started selling it
was enough, literally, to know he was smiling every time I published some-
thing.”17 That statement is testament enough to the degree to which “This
was,” as Mayr adds, “a friendship. Not a business relationship.”18
That said, as we can see in the quotation about “ass to chair,” Bloch is
not an example of the writer as “precious” artist. Mayr recalls that “Bob saw
himself as a craftsman, constantly working at his craft, because that was what
his nature, and his circumstances, had thrust upon him.”19 Even Larson talks
of his craft, rather than art (Pfefferkorn). Larson says, in that same response,
that he thinks that Bloch “viewed his work pretty much as work — a means
to make a living.” This emphasizes in part Bloch’s pragmatism, and in part

his development as a writer during the Great Depression. For many authors
who lived during, and developed out of, that period, authorship was a pro-
fession, a means towards making a living, and for which the ability to sur-
vive, the craft of writing, that is, was more important than considerations of
art. Lovecraft, as we have seen, was an exception in some ways, but even then
the profession of writing was, during this period, his main source of income,
writing, that is, in the form of his revision work.
Bloch, then, considered himself a craftsman, or artisan, rather than an
artist. he wrote, that is, to survive, not as a means of self-expression, and in
the process he developed a degree of self-expressiveness, as a way of making
his work more distinctive. His sense of humor, a key, integral part of his per-
sonality, is evident as a distinguishing element in his work; and it should be
evident, also, that this was not a ploy by Bloch to make his work sellable,
but, rather, a fundamental element in his personality that he allowed to express
itself through his work.
One result was a sense of intimacy, that helps explain Bloch’s appeal to
younger writers; Mayr writes that “The mature Bloch had a very immediate
and personal voice. Reading him, you felt he was talking to you.”20 Another
result was a sense of proportion, that mentees such as Mayr developed. He
explains it this way: “once I started writing professionally I became very aware
of the value of applying ass to chair on a regular basis. The craft comes first
I think. Master that, and some art can creep in.”21 Note the echo of Bloch’s
philosophy. It reads as an insight developed either directly or indirectly from
Bloch’s mentorship of Mayr, an insight organic to Mayr’s development as a
writer.
Just as Bloch saw a responsibility to younger writers, how does Mayr see
his responsibilities towards the coming generations of writers? When asked,
he replied that he reads and comments “on as much stuff as time permits, and
[does] so happily. [He figures] that if you like to read, you’ve got to promote
reading and writing and the younger writers who are going to provide the
new pages long after you’re gone. Or who are providing them right now ... in
[his] later years;” he adds, finally, “And I suspect that’s how Bob thought
too.”22
Bloch revealed, in an interview conducted in 1979, that he did not con-
sider himself as one of the important writers of the Weird Tales stable; “no
one has ever bothered to imitate me (Except, of course, in the 4,367 films
which have borrowed bits or the entire corpus of Psycho)” (Larson, Compan-
ion 32), he quips. Yet he has proven influential in his own way. Mayr, for
example, notes how
Bob broke new ground in his time for injecting a sly graveyard humor, a
modern vernacular, and a studied understanding of human psychology into
his stories. When everybody else was emulating Lovecraft and Poe, Bloch
went all realistic on them. Echos of all this are to be found in pretty much
all modern horror-writing.23
Even Larson says something similar: “he was greatly modest but he was also
realistic and was aware of his standing in the sci fi/fantasy/horror commu-
nity” (Pfefferkorn). But Bloch’s influence reaches beyond just that particular
community. Larson notes this about himself: “Even though my eventual writ-
ing and editorial endeavors took me somewhat afield of science fiction and
fantasy fiction, I think they definitely carry the influence of the man with the
heart of a small child (in a jar on his desk) [I keep mine in my hard disk],
and I have tried similarly to conduct myself with his grace, sociability, and
humor.” Bloch became, for many a friend, and for many of those a role model,
a mentor, and, for some, something even closer. “He was like a second father
to me,” Mayr notes.24 He became, also, a legend, and an exemplar for, not
only his direct mentees, but those how had not had the chance to have known
him directly.
In seeing the mentorship side of Bloch, it is then, no surprise he flour-
ished in the realm of fandom. Of course, when Bloch says, in his autobiog-
raphy, that “Tracing science fiction fandom back to its origins is like trying
to find the first rat responsible for carrying bubonic plague [203],” he is being
facetious. But Bloch goes on, (“It’s my guess” he says, in the same book, same
page, “that in the beginning...”) surmising about the origins of fandom, in a
similar way that he talks about his own origins. And the purpose? To lead
into a generalized discussion of fandom, and its place in his life. This is not
the only work to discuss fandom, and fandom in Bloch’s life. “I Was a Teen-
Age Faust,” for example, lists, in part, reasons why other professional writers
are not as involved as Bloch in fandom; we shall read why, later in this essay.
What matters, simply, in looking at Bloch and fandom is that we gain a sense
of his involvement, even if only through his own writings about fandom in
its various stages.
Bloch has written extensively for and about fandom, usually at the same
time. Twice, collections of this writing have appeared; the first is The Eighth
Stage of Fandom and the second Out of my Head. And we can see through a
brief look at salient examples from both a measure of Bloch’s involvement
with fandom.
Unfortunately, as Bloch himself writes, the conventions appear then dis-
appear, with little material evidence to show for their brief lives. Memories
also fade, and fanzines crumble to dust. So much that could have been writ-
ten about Bloch and fandom is either lost, or inaccessible to myself; what
remains, therefore, are trace elements with which a man and that man’s life
is to be resurrected. Let us, then, make that attempt.
Bloch writes, in the preface to Stage that “A professional writer is a man
who writes for money and believes that only an idiot gives away his work for
nothing. Shake hands with an idiot” (11). Of course, he is being humorous
here, as he goes on to make clear: “I’ve enjoyed turning out the pieces I’ve
done gratis for science fiction fan magazines [11],” he writes, and this enjoy-
ment is integral to Bloch. His professional fiction may be primarily written
to make a living, but the fan pieces are written, for enjoyment.
This is evident when we look at much of the material collected in both
of his books, particularly Stage. Take “The Seven Ages of Fan,” for example.
Here, the initial paragraph sets the tone, and reveals the humor with which
the piece is leavened: “One of the occupational hazards of fantasy writing
(along with ulcers, fights with the loan companies and schizophrenia) is a con-
stant exposure to fandom.” Although the body does delineate, in its own
manner, the subject, the beginning of the piece, and the segue into the sub-
ject is handled with deft touches of absurdity, touches that remind us that
this piece, after all, is not meant to be serious.
But “Ages” does reveal that fandom itself is a major theme in Bloch’s fan
writings. It is a major theme, primarily because Bloch returns to it so often,
irregardless of the lightness and lack of seriousness with which it is taken. It
is a major theme, though, not because Bloch appears to be defensive, justi-
fying to both God and man the dilatory ways of an otherwise professional
writer. He is, instead, celebratory. Bloch writes about fandom so much because
it is an important and joyous part of his life.
But for whom did Bloch write? Who published these pieces? For the
most part, these pieces appeared in fanzines, fan magazines, as opposed to
professional magazines, or prozines.
Fanzines “served as a means of self-expression and communication and
were indirectly responsible for preserving fandom as an entity,” write Bloch
(Bloch [203]–204). It is through fanzines that Bloch developed a body of
writing that exists alongside his professional one. Bloch notes this himself, in
his autobiography. he says that he “had read or at times contributed to fanzines
since the mid-thirties,” (204), then immediately goes on to say that “upon
becoming a professional writer I began to receive communications from read-
ers with aspirations of their own” (Bloch 204). In this way, Bloch ties together
one primary means of “fanac,” or fan activity, with his mentorship of others.
He goes on, immediately, to name names: Earl Pierce, Jr., Charles Beaumont,
and Robert Silverberg, are the three fans that he names, that later sold to
“prozines,” or professional magazines, such as Weird Tales, or became profes-

sional writers in their own right.
Bloch notes this phenomenon in one of his many humorous footnotes.
In this one, comparing the development of criminals out of “mere juvenile
delinquents” (Bloch 204), he goes on to state that “Similarly, most science
fiction writers and editors started out as fans.” In essence, then, Bloch is refer-
ring to the ambiguous relationship between fans and pros: fandom arose out
of an initial interest in the products of pros, even as the pros in turn have
arisen out of the ranks of fans. Each generation of fan, in turn, arises out of
interest in the current and former pros, many to become the pros of tomor-
row. And so this ambiguous, yet symbiotic relationship continues.
Bloch, after that passage naming the three pros that arose out of fans,
continues by returning to his own relationship to fandom. he writes: “A slow
learner, I stayed in fandom and continued to contribute articles, essays and
occasional fiction to fanzines. Thus far two book collections of this material
have been published” (Bloch 204). This digression from the narrative of his
life (the context being the lead-up towards the discussion of Bloch’s atten-
dance at the 1946 Pacificon) demonstrates yet again Bloch’s self-deprecating
humor. In a sense, he is arguing that fan activity is a luxury that he could not
have afforded as a professional writer, but there is much that fandom con-
tributed to Bloch during his life.
What, then, did fandom contribute to Bloch? One thing was the oppor-
tunity to develop friendships with young, arising writers. So that authors
such as Randall Larson, and Jack Ketchum, both of whom Bloch mentored,
could become amongst the next generations of writers, and, simultaneously,
a way to assuage the personal debt of mentorship that Bloch received from
Lovecraft. That is, as Lovecraft mentored Bloch, so too he would be mentor
to others; this aspect of Bloch’s life and career has been dealt with elsewhere
in this book.
Another thing that fandom contributed to Bloch was a social milieu, the
company of similarly-minded people with whom he could share his interests
in the weird. In a sense, that is, the company of fans and pros became Bloch’s
equivalent to the famous Lovecraft circle of correspondents.
These two reasons, of course, overlap. In his discussion of the 1948 World
SF Convention in Toronto, Bloch makes a candid, and revealing, statement.
He says: “Despite the flattering nature of these circumstances, the memories
I cherish revolve around fans and fellow writers” (Bloch 206). Here, in sim-
ple words, is a reminder of why Bloch remained involved in fandom: in large
part, the fans themselves. But there was also the chance to “meet some of the
people in my profession” (as Bloch writes in Bloch 207), the chance to talk
shop, that is, with his fellows, and, regarding the 1952 convention, the chance
to meet his fellow pro writers and begin “lasting friendships with many”
(Bloch 208).
But Bloch does speak elsewhere about fandom. As mentioned, a good
percentage of the writing that Bloch has written for, and has had published
in, fanzines discusses both fandom and other fans. “I Was a Teen-Age Faust”
is one such item. “Oldies but Goodies” is another. “The Traditions of Sci-
ence Fiction and Conventions,” Bloch’s Guest of Honor Speech at the 31st
World Science Fiction Convention, is a third, wherein he talks about his expe-
riences, in part, at the first of Toronto’s World Science Fiction Conventions
(see especially Traditions [101]–102). There are more, particularly in Stage,
such as “The Seven Ages of Fan,” and there are more yet uncollected. Essen-
tially, Bloch discusses fandom in a number of pieces, some of which deserve
a further examination.
If we turn our attentions towards “I Was a Teen-Age Faust,” we find
Bloch listing some of the reasons that he sees as instrumental in other pros
being less involved in fandom than him. The first, and by implication the
most important, is “a matter of lacking the necessary time” (Faust 26). That
is, some pros find that their time is best spent generating the income that they
need through writing. The second reason that Bloch puts forward is that “old
adage that ‘Distance lends enchantment’” (Faust 26). The third reason that
Bloch puts forward is “the domestic one” (Faust 27). In short, that is, “con-
siderations of time, money, and personal responsibility” (Faust 27). As to
why, in this essay, Bloch became, and remained, involved in fandom, he side-
steps the issue, putting forward a skit involving a Mephistopholean bargain
with the Devil, as another example of his humor, and, also, as a way of defus-
ing the demand for personal information (the skit is found in Faust 28–32).
Bloch, that is, by stating why some are not more fannish, refuses to tell us
why he is more fannish than them, and this is typical of the misdirections
that Bloch employs in some of his fan writing.
“The Traditions of Science Fiction and Conventions” returns, in part,
to these same themes, though, as we should expect, with differing emphases.
The “fundamental fact” that Bloch lists is that “a writer has nothing to sell
but his time” (Bloch Traditions 107). That is, as Bloch goes on to immedi-
ately note, “a part-time writer has more time for fan activity than a full-time
writer” (Bloch Traditions 107). Some writers have more time available to them
for fanac than others, and the more a writer relies upon writing for their
income, the less likely it is that they have that available time. Bloch then lists
“physical endurance” (Bloch Traditions 107). Then, “The more fans a writer
has, the less time he has for them” (Bloch Traditions 107). There is, also,
“Another thing we’re inclined to forget — writers have their individual idio-
syncrasies” (Bloch Traditions 107); and there is “the matter of the generation
gap” (Bloch Traditions 107).
“Oldies but Goodies” discusses science fiction conventions. In compar-
ing the ephemerality of these cons to circuses, Bloch further highlights a form
of otherworldliness to the proceedings, that the cons and circuses share a car-
nivalesque atmosphere that, ultimately, leaves few material traces upon the
surrounding world (Bloch Oldies [65]). This comparison segues into the bulk
of the article, a memoir of memorable conventions attended y Bloch; it would
be interesting to compare these accounts to the brief ones in Bloch, for exam-
ple.
“The Seven Ages of Fan” proposes a chronological development of
typical fans into seven “ages.” The piece, as a whole, is whimsical, far from
serious, but it does serve as one taxonomical way of classifying fans. It is also
of interest in that it displays somewhat of the temper with which Bloch
approached himself and his fellows. Bloch, that is, is willing to take himself
lightly, as with his fellows, and this lightness is evident in the accounts of
his speeches at conventions. There are other articles and items, of course,
such as “Bah! Humbug!,” a facetious complaint about fandom and being
an “old fan growing sour” (46). “I’ll Fry Tomorrow” is a fictional account of
a fanzine editor burning out, and looking back over life. And there are oth-
ers.
But, as mentioned, memories fade, and fanzines crumble to dust. What
we have examined has only been a minute relic of Bloch’s involvement with
fandom. So much more was only memory, and that is lost now with Bloch’s
death. Fittingly, Randall Larson delivers a posthumous verdict on Bloch and
fandom, when he says that
Bob was always a fan, and that’s one of the most remarkable things about
him. He never lost his fannish roots, and despite his fame and success, he still
looked at many aspects of the genres he loved with the attitude of a fan. You
don’t always find this — a lot of former fans who have achieved professional
success and stature have stepped over that very well defined line into Pro-dom
and seem to consider fannish things now beneath them. Bob clearly scuffed
out that line at every opportunity, and while this also meant he was vulner-
able to being taken advantage of by eager fans (some well-meaning, some not
so) (and he was), his approachability and generosity remain his best-remem-
bered attributes [Pfefferkorn].
What we have examined are some of Bloch’s fan productions, rather

than talk about him more directly as a fan. In a way, this book does that on
a larger scale: it talks about his work, his writings, and the memories that he
has left amongst his mentees. That is, perhaps, all that we can do now, to pore
through the trace elements that remain to mark Robert Bloch’s existence, his
professional life, and his life as a fan, and, simply, to analyze what is there,
still.
NOTES
1. Weird Tales 36:5. November 1935: 652; quoted in Joshi, Life 601.
2. Mayr to Ellis 18 October 2008.
4. Larson to Ellis. 17 October 2008.
13. Quoted in: Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008.
14. Mayr to John Goodrich c. 7 August 2008.
WORKS CITED
Bloch, Robert. “Bah! Humbug!.” In Stage: 46–48.
_____. The Eighth Stage of Fandom. Chicago : Advent, 1962.
_____. “I Was a Teen-Age Faust.” In Head: [25]–32.
_____. “I’ll Fry Tomorrow.” In: Stage: 48–53.
_____. “Oldies but Goodies.” In Head: [65]–69.
_____. Once Around the Bloch: an Unauthorized Autobiography. New York : Tor, 1993.
_____. Out of my Head. Cambridge, MA : Nesfa Press, 1986.
_____. “Preface.” In Stage: [11].
_____. “The Seven Ages of Fan.” In Stage: 14–16.
_____. “The Traditions of Science Fiction and Conventions.” In Head: [101]–117.
Joshi, S.T. The Evolution of the Weird Tale. New York : Hippocampus, 2004.
_____. H.P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI : Necronomicon Press, 1996.
Ketchum, Jack. “Jack Ketchum — Bibliography.” Jack Ketchum.net: the Official Website of
Horror Author Jack Ketchum. 22 October 2008. <http://jackketchum.net/complete

bib.html>
Larson, Randall D. (comp. & ed.). The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews,
1969–1986. Mercer Island, WA : Starmont House, 1989.
Pfefferkorn, Michael G. “A Conversation with Randall Larson.” The Unofficial Robert Bloch
Website. 21 October 2008. <http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/interview_larson01.html>
Waugh, Robert H. The Monster in the Mirror: Looking for H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Hip-
pocampus Press, 2005.
The Lighter Side of Death:
Robert Bloch as a Humorist
Darrell Schweitzer
Anyone who ever knew Robert Bloch or saw him in public can attest
that he was a very, very funny man, whose droll, macabre wit could rise to
any occasion, even the moment at the First World Fantasy Convention in
1975 when Bloch had just told the banquet audience how tired he was of being
accredited with the shower scene in Psycho (which was Hitchcock’s idea),
whereupon the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, where the convention
was being held, came in and commended Guest of Honor Bloch for the shower
scene in Psycho...
At the same banquet, when he was given the first World Fantasy Award
for Lifetime Achievement, he exclaimed with genuine emotion, “I haven’t had
this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister!”
“I have the heart of a little boy,” he was fond of saying. “I keep it in a
jar on my desk.”
“Bloch was a superb” was a byword at such events for decades, where he
was always in demand as a speaker.
He could be very funny in private too. One of his colleagues once told
me a story about how he and Bloch were in an elevator and, realizing that
there were “normal” people present, launched into a totally deadpan, ghoul-
ish conversation on household methods for disposing of corpses.
Bloch’s humor was the humor of the era of his youth, of the fading days
of vaudeville, the tail-end of the silent film era, and of Hollywood screwball
comedies, the Marx Brothers, and W.C. Fields. His interest in humor and in
stage performances were in evidence from the beginning. His first letters to
H.P. Lovecraft have not been published (and possibly do not still exist), but
57
we can deduce their content by Lovecraft’s responses to them found in H.P.

Lovecraft: Letters to Robert Bloch, such as the following, written in 1934, to
Bloch when he was seventeen:
Congratulations on your minstrel success! You certainly appear to have con-

stituted about nine-tenths of the performance ... a 12-man cast in yourself! I
can imagine the effect of your costume and rendition — plus, no doubt, the
widely imitated rubber cigar! [48]
While Bloch’s first professional sales were stories of blood-curdling ter-

ror, he was also trying to write humor from the very outset of his career. Col-
laborating with a high school friend, Harold Gauer, he composed a surrealistic
novel, In the Land of the Sky-Blue Ointment. “I suppose it was a novel,” Bloch
wrote later in his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch. “...It dealt with a
group of characters cast up on a remote tropical island presided over by a rich
and eccentric scientist, Dr. Nork, and visited by a variety of somewhat unusual
guests: a bulimic photographer, a magician named Black Art, pious propo-
nents of the Anti-Amusement League, the members of an opposing group
called the Sexual Congress, a church official named Bishop Shapiro, and a
scroungy author, one Lefty Feep. Gauer had appropriated the latter name from
some long-forgotten magazine source” (88).
Bloch and Gauer wrote alternating sections of In the Land of The Sky-
Blue Ointment. Years later, he was to mine his own contributions for stories,
including “The Strange Island of Dr. Nork” (Weird Tales, March 1949) and
“The Traveling Salesman” (Playboy, February 1957.)
The name “Lefty Feep” is enormously important in any consideration
of Bloch as a humorist.
Nevertheless, he broke into print first as a horror writer, as student of
Lovecraft’s. Lovecraft had corresponded with Bloch graciously and brilliantly
in the last three years of his (HPL’s) life. He had read and critiqued many
early Bloch stories, and recommended them to fellow correspondents, mak-
ing Bloch a full member of the legendary “Lovecraft Circle.”
Even in his early horror stories, there is an element of play, most evident
in “The Shambler from the Stars” (Weird Tales, September 1935), in which
Bloch causes a thinly-disguised Lovecraft to be devoured by a cosmic mon-
strosity. This might seem an overly-bold move by a novice writer, but Love-
craft took it with exceedingly good grace and retaliated by finishing off a
young weird-fictionist named “Robert Blake” in his “The Haunter of the
Dark” (Weird Tales, December 1936). Years later, out of a combination of
humor, nostalgia, and deep respect for his dead mentor, Bloch rounded out
the sequence into a trilogy with “The Shadow from the Steeple” (Weird Tales,
The Lighter Side of Death (Schweitzer) 59
September, 1950). All three of these are ostensibly horror stories, with the in-
joke aspect just under the surface.
Nevertheless, Bloch at some point had to get the Lovecraft monkey (or
possibly something less describable) off his back. His stories of the mid–1930s
were full of long paragraphs and sesquipedalian sentences which mimicked
Lovecraft’s manner fairly well, and made Bloch’s work fit seamlessly into the
Weird Tales without ever standing out as anything distinctly his own.
The break came in 1938, when an ambitious young fan named Ray
Palmer took over the editorship of the world’s first and oldest science fiction
magazine, Amazing Stories, which had fallen on hard times. Palmer immedi-
ately threw out the entire inventory he had inherited from his predecessor,
feeling (rightly) that it had been part of the magazine’s problem, and now
had to scramble for material to fill issues. One of the writers he turned to was
Robert Bloch.
Writing science fiction for Amazing forced Bloch to write things he’d
never had to in the Lovecraftian stories, such as extensive, conversational dia-
logue, as opposed to Lovecraftian monologues, and snappy action. One of
his early science fiction stories, “The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton”
(March 1939) about a man artificially aged by the psychological effects of
space travel, remains a classic. Some of the others of this period, if not so
classic, still moved Bloch in a new direction.
Palmer’s Amazing Stories was a success. Before long it spawned a com-
panion, Fantastic Adventures, to which Bloch was to become a regular con-
tributor. Fantastic Adventures, true to its title, published a great deal of
adventure fiction right on the borderline between science fiction and fantasy,
including some of the late works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but it also had a
substantial component of rather lowbrow, screwball humor, and stories with
titles like “Freddie Funk’s Flippant Fairies” (by Leroy Yerxa, September 1948)
and “The Strange Voyage of Hector Squinch” (by David Wright O’Brien,
August 1940).
Re-enter Lefty Feep. Bloch took the name Gauer had appropriated from
wherever and applied it to a new character, a “reformed” racketeer and race-
track tout straight out of Damon Runyon, a tall, thin man who wears enor-
mously brimmed hats and outrageous suits. “Even a blind man would have
found Feep at once,” we are told. “If he couldn’t see the suit, its color was so
loud he’d hear it.”
Lefty talks in a wise-cracking, often rhyming jive as he periodically
encounters the author-narrator (Bloch himself ) in a greasy-spoon restaurant
called Jack’s Shack and regales him with some outrageous yarn. The style of
these stories is more easily quoted than described. Here is from the opening
of “The Pied Piper Fights the Gestapo,” as collected in Lost in Time and Space
with Lefty Feep:
Feep was waving his arms at Jack as I approached. He turned and gave me a
nod of recognition, then continued to place his order.
“Make please with the cheese,” he demanded. “But snappy.”
“You want some snappy cheese?” Jack inquired.
“I do not care what kind of teeth the cheese is using,” Feep asserted. “Just
so there is plenty of it. Let it be long and strong. Let it be mean and green.
Let it be old with mould. But bring me lots of plenty in a fast hurry” [83].
There are many more extreme examples. At one point Bloch describes
Feep as “a one man assault on the English language.” The narrative technique
of all the Feep stories is that of the vaudeville comedian, a fast patter con-
taining so many jokes that if not all of them work, enough of them still do
to have the desired effect.
In the first Feep outing, “Time Wounds All Heels,” Jack also confides
to Bloch that Lefty is “the biggest liar in seven states,” but before Bloch can
get an answer to the next logical question, “Which seven?” Feep has launched
into a Rip Van Winkle sort of tale, about how he encountered the annual pic-
nic of The Diminutive Society of the Catskill Mountains, is invited to drink
and bowl, and wakes up twenty years later — in 1962 — a future of flying cars
and towering cities, in which, as a result of the food shortages after World
War II, everyone lives on vitamin pills. Lefty thwarts a pill-hijacking racket,
then manages to be sent back to his own time.
In later stories, he likewise defeats Axis agents, is often at odds with a
gangster named Gorilla Gabface, and encounters assorted supernatural beings
and magical wonders. He learns the secret of King Midas’s touch, much to
his grief. In what is probably the strongest story in the series, “The Weird
Doom of Floyd Scrilch” (a title which clearly parodies Bloch’s Lovecraftian
past), he makes the acquaintance of the statistically “average man” for whom
all advertisements work with 100 percent efficiency, which can be a problem
as he is likewise unable to resist them. When the average man glimpses an ad
that says “Use your own basement to raise giant frogs,” tragedy ensues. Black
Art, the magician from In the Land of Sky-Blue Ointments turns up again in
“Son of a Witch.”
There were ultimately twenty-three Lefty Feep stories published in Fan-
tastic Adventures between 1942 and 1950, although the main sequence of them
stopped in with “Tree’s a Crowd” ( July 1946), in which Lefty gets turned into
a tree while involved with a breakfast-food manufacturer and trying to escape
alimony demands from three ex-wives. Ghastly puns abound. (“Speaking as
a tree surgeon, I must admit the problem stumps me.”) There is a good deal
of satire about the advertising industry. Bloch, and Lefty, are in fine form.
That probably should have been the end of Feep, but one last adventure, aptly
entitled “The End of Your Rope,” was requested by Palmer’s successor,
Howard Browne, and duly published in the July 1950 issue. It involves mys-
tical hijinks with the Hindu rope trick and some spies, but is much weaker
than the rest of the series. The absurd, punning language which made the
earlier stories so magical is gone. Bloch had, by his own admission, lost inter-
est in the character, and in any case, times had changed, and Lefty was already
a bit of an anachronism. One last 1958 effort, published in a fanzine, “The
Return of Lefty Feep,” is not really a story, but a humorous convention report,
written for the science-fiction fan in-crowd, and never intended for a broader
readership.
The stories remained unreprinted for decades until, in 1987, the pub-
lisher Creatures At Large issued what was to be the first of three volumes col-
lecting the entire series. The first volume was beautifully done, with the stories
interwoven with comments by Bloch (mostly taken from an interview), and
capped off with a new Lefty Feep story, “A Snitch in Time,” telling how Bloch,
in the present, is astonished to meet an absolutely unchanged Lefty Feep,
right out of the zoot-suit era, on the streets of New York. It’s a case of time-
travel again. Feep has been sent forward to obtain various items from the
future. For a while he decides he likes the late ’80s and proceeds to make his
way in Hollywood, yet ultimately decides that with the decay in taste and
social standards, the past was better, and returns to the 1940s. Bloch, the nar-
rator, agrees and accompanies him.
Unfortunately the other two volumes were never published, and the rest
of the series is only available in old (but thankfully neither uncommon nor
expensive) copies of Fantastic Adventures.
For all the Lefty Feep stories may sound and even read like inspired,
lunatic slapdash, an outpouring of ridiculous riffs, Bloch made it clear from
interviews that they were not. He plotted his comedies carefully, having
worked out the punch lines ahead of time. This was also true, although even
less evident in another major sequence of comic fantasies that he produced
about the same time, which with broad generalization and less than total
accuracy can be described as being of the “Thorne Smith type.”
It is perhaps necessary to explain to today’s readers that Thorne Smith,
the author of The Night Life of the Gods, The Stray Lamb, Topper, Turnabout,
etc. was immensely popular from the 1930s until well into 1950s. He still has
readers today, though is only sporadically in print.
Smith’s humor has a lot in common with what we see in such movies of
the period as The Thin Man and sequels. His are “sophisticated,” boozy come-
dies which reflect the attitudes of the American public right after the repeal
of Prohibition. Many bizarre things happen to people, often upper-class peo-
ple, under the influence of alcohol. Characters virtually swim in martinis and
highballs. Drunkenness itself is regarded as funny. Nobody has ever heard of
alcoholism. Hangovers are one more joke. Nobody throws up, and if they
pass out, they do so decorously or at least amusingly. Smith then added super-
natural elements into the mix. The Night Life of the Gods is about the
Olympian deities coming to Earth and enjoying a spree on New York’s Broad-
way. Inebriate and risqué situations follow.
But, as David J. Schow remarked in an introduction to a volume of The
Lost Bloch, where Smith stuck with high-class characters and a Marx Broth-
ers type humor, Bloch more often wrote about ordinary working stiffs, and
his approach was a little closer to the Three Stooges.
There is a great deal of Thorne Smith influence evident in the fiction
published in John W. Campbell’s Unknown magazine, later entitled Unknown
Worlds. Campbell was a brilliant science fiction editor, who, in the course of
just a few years created science fiction’s “Golden Age” in Astounding Science
Fiction, having become the editor of that magazine about the time Ray Palmer
took over Amazing. His approach was considerably more highbrow than Palmer’s,
enough so that Palmer admitted that he aimed Amazing and Fantastic Adven-
tures deliberately below the audience that Campbell was reaching for.
About the same time Palmer started Fantastic Adventures, Campbell
started Unknown. This was a brilliant publication, which published many of
the classics of mid–20th century fantasy, including L. Sprague de Camp and
Fletcher Pratt’s The Incomplete Enchanter and Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife. But
Unknown also had a place for the Thorne Smith type story, for all Bloch did
not get up to stride with this sort of material until it was almost too late. He
had sold one story to Unknown quite early. “The Cloak” (May 1939) is a
darkly comic tale about a man who makes the mistake of wearing a genuine
vampire’s cloak and gradually turns vampiric, but the first substantial humor
piece Bloch had in the magazine was also his last.
“A Good Knight’s Work” (November 1942) is about a modern-day,
impoverished chicken farmer who finds himself confronted with a genuine
armored knight, sent forward in time from Camelot to retrieve the table on
which the Holy Grail rested. Misadventures, many of them quite boozy, ensue.
The knight helps the farmer defeat some extortionate gangsters. The farmer
helps the knight complete his quest. At the climax, suits of armor in the local
museum (all of which, coincidentally, belonged to various Round Table
knights) are suddenly inhabited by their former owners and came to the res-
cue. All of this is told as fast-moving, slapstick farce.
The sequel, “The Eager Dragon,” appeared in Weird Tales for January
1943. Now Unknown lasted until the October 1943 issue, but it is entirely
possible that its inventory was full before Bloch submitted “The Eager
Dragon.” Weird Tales was a bimonthly. Since the dates on magazines are off
sale dates, the January 1943 issue would have appeared in November 1942.
The lead-time for material going into that issue must have been at least a cou-
ple more months, so either John Campbell knew, sometime in mid–1942, that
Unknown was going to fold with the October 1943 issue, or else for some rea-
son he rejected “The Eager Dragon.”
In any case, the story appeared in Weird Tales only two months after its
predecessor appeared in Unknown. It is very much more of the same. Mer-
lin, in gratitude for assistance rendered, leaves our hero a gift — a genuine
dragon egg, which causes more comic mayhem when it hatches and proves
impossible to feed and keep under control.
The narrative voice of both of these stories is about halfway between the
Damon Runyon mode and that of Thorne Smith: Very fast-paced, present-
tense narration, more booze, fewer puns.
Meanwhile Bloch had sold another set of such stories to Weird Tales.
“Nursemaid to Nightmares” (November 1942) and “Black Barter” (Septem-
ber 1943), which were twice reprinted combined into one (as “Mr. Margate’s
Mermaid” in Imaginative Tales for March 1955 and under the collective title
“Nursemaid to Nightmares” in the 1969 book, Dragons and Nightmares.)
These concern an out-of-work writer who takes a job with an eccentric mil-
lionaire whose hobby is collecting mythological creatures. Thus the house-
guests at his vast mansion include a defanged vampire, a werewolf that has
to be walked on a leash, a centaur, a mermaid, and so on.
Weird Tales did not prove to be a long-time market for this type of fiction
either. Perhaps the low word-rates it offered by the end of the ’40s were
insufficient to attract any writer, including Bloch, who could sell the same
sort of story to Fantastic Adventures, which was still going strong and paid
better.
“The Devil With You!” at about 36,000 words is close to novel-length,
but has never been published as a book. It first appeared in Fantastic Adven-
tures for August 1950, was reprinted as “Black Magic Holiday” in Imagina-
tive Tales #3 (1954) and has been included in Volume One of The Lost Bloch.
It is very much in the Thorne Smith vein, awash in alcohol, virtually plot-
less, but filled with mildly risqué incidents and dialogue that would have been
right for Mae West:
“Hello, Annabel,” Hicks cried, genially. “What took you so long?”
“Just stopped on the way for a drink and a chaser.”
“Ten minutes for just a drink?”

“No, but it took me a while to get rid of the chaser. He was very persist-
ent” [36].
The “hero” of this escapade is another writer, one Bill Dawson, very
young, naive about the world, who decides for once to take his vacation some-
where other than the public library. Off he goes to the Big City, New York.
He rents a room, but soon finds two strange men in his bed. They are hotel
deadbeats, who have been slipping from room to room ahead of the manage-
ment, to avoid paying their bills. The manager arrives. Everybody gets drunk.
They shoot craps for not just the hotel bill but ownership of the hotel itself
and, way too easily, our hero wins. The manager is only too eager to get rid
of the place because of the magicians’ convention that is beginning the next
day. Before long Bill, the former manager, the two deadbeats, and a couple
tipsy ladies are in a haunted room where the bed comes alive and goes gal-
loping down the stairs with all of them aboard. The bed is alive because a
magician slept in that room during last year’s convention, muttered spells in
his sleep, and brought the furniture to life. Craziness piles on craziness. A
vampire and a werewolf check in. Out of the audience, an amateur magician
offers to saw a lady in half, and does, whereupon he is chased through the
hotel by her angry lower half which won’t stop kicking him. He is consider-
ably less sure about how to put her back together. And so on, until the assorted
wizard and warlock conventioneers sink an elevator shaft to Hell in order to
bring up Beelzebub as their guest of honor.
The Devil is also a major player in “Hell’s Angel” (in The Lost Bloch Vol-
ume Three). This is a story which was written around a cover by the great
fantasy artist Hannes Bok, for Imagination ( June 1951), and as such is a
remarkable performance, at 23,000 words, where most stories written around
covers tend to be little more than squibs.
The painting shows a man in the cockpit of a spaceship, looking out
through a glass bubble at an angel, scantily clad, but with harp and halo. She
looks distressed. He looks somewhat maniacally pleased with himself. We
know the story was written around the cover because the narrative actually
says at one point that the spaceship looks like something designed by Hannes
Bok.
The story is about a young man, out of work and hard up for cash like
a lot of Bloch protagonists. He isn’t a writer, however, but is trained in pub-
lic relations. In desperation he calls up the Devil, offering, not his soul, but
his services. The Devil is at first uninterested, but then accepts and sends the
young man on a mission to Heaven in a magical spaceship such as we see on
the magazine cover. The job is to kidnap an angel. The young man succeeds,
but meanwhile he has become fond of the angel (whose name is Angela), a
sweet, naive young thing who was only on Earth for a short while before she
died and became an angel. She plays the harp nicely, but isn’t very clever oth-
erwise.
Our hero refuses to turn her over to the Devil, but the Devil reassures
them that he doesn’t wish to harm the angel. He wants to copy her form
exactly. Satan’s fiendish plan is to market a line of “robots” which are actu-
ally imitation angels, possessed by demons. Before long every rich person in
the world will have such a demon as a confidant, and Satan will rule. When
the hero foils this plot, he and the angel are carried off to Hell, accompanied
by his cat-like familiar, Brimstone. Brimstone destroys the strings of the
angel’s harp, but the hero and the angel escape, Orpheus-style, because he
has managed to restring the harp — at Brimstone’s expense — with catgut.
Imagination was a companion to Imaginative Tales. Both were edited by
William Hamling, a long-time associate of Ray Palmer. Imaginative Tales,
particularly in its first years, was very much a successor to Fantastic Adven-
tures, which had folded in 1953. Hence the heavy use of Bloch material,
including reprints. The magazine also featured a series of quite deliberate
Thorne Smith imitations by Charles Myers about a ghost named “Toffee,”
designed to cash in on the Topper series, based on Smith, which was on tel-
evision at the time.
This was a market which would have supported Bloch’s supernatural
slapstick as long as he cared to write it. He did offer other contributions, such
as “The Miracle of Ronald Weems” (Imaginative Tales #5, 1955), but as the
1950s progressed Bloch was making his way into the book field with a whole
series of crime and suspense novels including the famous Psycho (1959). He
was beginning to work in Hollywood, writing for television and movies. Very
likely, it was simply a matter of money and career demands that drew Bloch
away from fantastic comedy.
Bloch continued to write a lot of short fiction for magazines, mostly
crime and science fiction, since the supernatural horror market shrank to near
vanishing in the ’50s, but the days of the long, crazy novellas were over. They
had gone the way of Lefty Feep.
After that, though there was a great deal of black irony in Bloch’s hor-
ror fiction, he wrote less overt comedy. One of his most famous ghastly-joke
endings actually occurred quite early, in a story called “Catnip,” published in
Weird Tales for March 1948. This is very much in the vein E.C. Comics would
make famous a few years later. An obnoxious, nasty-mouthed boy causes a
neighborhood witch to be burnt to death. When the witch’s feline familiar
has actually gotten into his mouth and removed his organ of speech, leaving
him bloodily gurgling, the boy’s mother, noticing he has not replied to her
summons, asks, “What’s the matter? Has the cat got your tongue —?” The
reader shudders and laughs at the same time, but it is an uneasy laughter.
Bloch summed up his ideas about comedy in an interview with Doug-
las Winter included in Volume Three of The Lost Bloch:
Comedy to me, as I have often remarked, is akin to horror in that both are
opposite sides of the same coin ... since both deal with the grotesque and unex-
pected, but in such a fashion as to provoke two entirely different reactions.
The so-called “sick” joke, which was popular about a dozen years ago, is, in
effect an synthesis of the two and illustrates what I am trying to say. But com-
edy is based on fantasy; comedy is fantasy usually. It’s exaggeration. I am not
talking now about the comedy of manners, of the highly stylized verbal wit
of the French and British playwrights in this and previous centuries; I am talk-
ing about physical comedy, the comedy that is based upon an extrapolation
of reality. The farce, with its comings and goings and slammings of doors and
hidings under beds and extreme overreaction to commonplace events, all the
way up to the whimsicality and fantasy of physical punishment that hurts no
one that you will find in most of the silent features.... You can cite literally
hundreds of examples with Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd and Langdon and
the Marx Brothers. Virtually every major comic deals in fantasy, pure and
sometimes not so simple. But we don’t generally regard it as fantasy because
it’s designed or promote laughter rather than tension or fear. Again, the ele-
ment of catharsis is common to both. Once that tension is relaxed in the so-
called serious fantasy or is exploded by the resolution of a comic incident with
laughter, we have obtained a catharsis [269–70].
Bloch was also a lifelong aficionado of silent movies. We can also see the
roots of his fantastic comedies in the works of the comedians cited above,
particularly Buster Keaton, one of Bloch’s heroes since childhood and a friend
in later years. Like silent film comedies, Bloch’s literary comedies are period
artifacts. It is a mistake to try to update them, and it was a mistake even for
Bloch to attempt this when he gathered “A Good Knight’s Work,” “The Eager
Dragon,” “Nursemaid for Nightmares” and “Black Barter” into the collection
Dragons and Nightmares. The stories are so much of their time, in language
and attitudes, that a dropped-in reference to Chairman Mao or Jane Fonda
is just jarring. Hopefully, the next time these are reprinted, the editor will
follow the original magazine texts.
Bloch’s comic fantasies, from Lefty Feep through such works as “The
Devil With You!” are what they are. They served a specific purpose in the
development of Bloch as a writer. First, they broke him away from the Love-
craftian model — as far away as it was possible to go. Then they enabled him
to achieve a new synthesis of humor and horror which gave so much of his
mature work its unique flavor.
It is worth mentioning, too, about those early stories, particularly the

Lefty Feeps, that they are still funny.
WORKS CITED
Robert Bloch. Dragons and Nightmares. Mirage Press, 1969.
_____. The Lost Bloch. Three volumes. Edited by David J. Schow. Burton, MI: Subterranean
Press, 1999–2002.
_____. Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep, Volume 1. Pacifica, CA: Creatures at Large,
1987. (Note: subsequent volumes have not appeared.)
_____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor Books, 1993.
H.P. Lovecraft. Letters to Robert Bloch. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. West War-
wick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993.
The Lefty Feep Series:

(all in Fantastic Adventures except the last two)
“Time Wounds All Heels.” April 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep.
“Gather Round the Flowing Bowler.” May 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep.
“The Pied Piper Fights the Gestapo.” June 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep.
“The Weird Doom of Floyd Scrilch.” July 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep.
“The Little Man Who Wasn’t All There.” August 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty
Feep.
“Son of a Witch.” September 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep.
“Jerk the Giant Killer.” October 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep.
“The Golden Opportunity of Lefty Feep.” November 1942. In Lost in Time and Space with
Lefty Feep.
“Lefty Feep and the Sleepy Time Girl.” December 1942.
“Lefty Feep Catches Hell.” January 1943.
“Nothing Happens to Lefty Feep.” February 1943.
“The Ghost of a Chance.” March 1943.
“Lefty Feep and the Racing Robot.” April 1943.
“The Goon from Rangoon.” May 1943.
“Geni with the Light Brown Hair.” June 1943.
“Stuporman.” July 1943.
“You Can’t Kid Lefty Feep.” August 1943.
“Lefty Feep’s Arabian Nightmare.” February 1944.
“Lefty Feep Does Time.” April 1944.
“Lefty Feep Gets Henpecked.” April 1945.
“Tree’s a Crowd.” July 1946.
“The End of Your Rope.” July 1950.
“The Return of Lefty Feep.” Shangri L’Affaires November 1958. In Out of My Head by Robert
Bloch, NESFA Press, 1986.
“A Snitch in Time.” Original to Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep, 1987.
The Twisted World Inside
Our Skulls: The 1950s Crime
and Suspense Novels
of Robert Bloch
Leigh Blackmore
Other than The Scarf, most of Robert Bloch’s early crime novels have
received little critical attention (with the exception of the writings of Randall
Larson, one of the foremost Bloch critics and bibliographers. Stefan Dzie-
manowicz, who has written extensively on Bloch, has not focused on the
crime novels at length. Larson gives an extremely thorough account of all
Bloch’s crime novels in his excellent Starmont Reader’s Guide on Bloch; a trun-
cated approach by Larson to the novels I cover here — with the exception of
The Dead Beat— can be found in his article “Precursors of Psycho”). Perhaps
this lack of critical attention is partly due to the fact that most of them were
done in small paperback printings and were not overly successful on first pub-
lication. The Kidnapper, for instance, remained out of print for over 30 years
before being reprinted by Tor Books in 1985. But of course, many paperback
originals of the period were regarded as pulp novels and not taken seriously
by mainstream critics.
Robert Bloch was already a highly experienced writer by the time he wrote
his first novel in 1947. His literary career can be said to have commenced twenty
years previously when in 1927, aged only ten years, he read (via chance acqui-
sition) his first copy of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, an issue that contained
the H.P. Lovecraft story “Pickman’s Model” (Weird Tales, October 1927). (A
variant of this story exists: according to Dziemanowicz (in Bleiler 99–100),
68
The Twisted World Inside Our Skulls (Blackmore) 69
Bloch persuaded an aunt to buy him the August 1927 issue of the magazine
as reading material for a train ride). Bloch’s family had moved to Milwaukee,
Wisconsin from Chicago, Illinois (the city of his birth) around this time.
As a teenager in 1933, Bloch initiated a correspondence with the great
horror master, an exchange which led to Bloch’s first fiction sales. Aged 15,
Bloch published a story called “The Thing,” which parodied Lovecraft’s style,
in his high-school magazine The Quill (April 1932) and he began writing for
fanzines as early as 1933.
Lovecraft gave the young Bloch advice on his fictional efforts, and in 1935
at the young age of 17, while still at high school, Bloch’s first paid fiction
appearance occurred with the story “Lilies” in the semi-pro magazine Mar-
vel Tales. In July of that year, following his graduation from high school, he
made his first professional sale, with “The Secret in the Tomb” to Weird Tales.
It was beaten into print by “The Feast in the Abbey” which he had sold on
the heels of “Secret”; “Feast” appeared in the January 1935 issue of Weird
Tales. Famously, of course, Bloch killed off Lovecraft in his story “The Sham-
bler from the Stars” (Weird Tales, September 1935), prompting Lovecraft to
return the favor in his “The Haunter of the Dark” (Weird Tales, December
1936), in which the protagonist is one “Robert Blake.”
Bloch never had any formal writing training other than high school, but
decided to become a professional writer immediately on leaving school. He
wrote full time for a decade, from 1934 to 1943. From 1935 he was a mem-
ber of the Milwaukee Fictioneers, a writing group which helped him develop
opportunities for markets outside of Weird Tales. His skill for writing gags
enabled him to sell skits and jokes to radio comedians, even while writing
horror tales.
At age 20, in 1937, Bloch reputedly published a collection of poetry
pseudonymously. It was the year that Lovecraft died (Bloch never met him
and was devastated by his death) but from that time on, Bloch expanded his
range of techniques and subjects. In the next decades, Bloch produced hun-
dreds of short stories for the pulps, writing SF, crime, humorous/comic fan-
tasy, westerns and some mainstream fiction as well as horror, for markets
ranging from Amazing, Super Science, Fantastic and Fantastic Adventures to
Playboy, Blue Book, Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s
Mystery Magazine. At least 140 of these tales were professionally published,
including perhaps his most famous early tale “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”
(1943). He gradually moved away from his overwritten, Lovecraft-influenced
early style — which S.T. Joshi has referred to as “entertainingly lurid” ( Joshi,
Modern Weird Tale 175)— to a spare, lean prose (often seasoned with his dark
acerbic wit) that perfectly suited his horrific and criminal themes.
He became a political campaign writer between 1939 and 1944, and

started work at the Gustav Marx Advertising Agency in Milwaukee in 1942,
having married his first wife (Marion Ruth Holcombe) in 1940. He remained
at the Marx Agency as an advertising copywriter for 11 years, writing now in
his spare time, placing around eight to twenty stories a year with the pulps
(Dziemanowicz in Bleiler 104) and supporting his family directly thereby. His
daughter, Sally Ann, was born in 1943.
In addition, Bloch’s first two short story collections appeared in 1945 —
the rare UK publication Sea Kissed, and the Arkham House collection The
Opener of the Way. Bloch also wrote prolifically for fanzines, turning out essay,
reviews and opinion pieces, some of which were later collected in The Eighth
Stage of Fandom (1962) and Out of My Head (1986).
Also in 1945–46, Bloch had the honor of scripting 39 stories into 15-
minute episodes for the Milwaukee-based radio show Stay Tuned for Terror;
33 of them were based on his own previously-published short stories. Bloch
was, by now, a highly seasoned and experienced professional writer. Never-
theless, he wasn’t making a living from his writing.
Following his early work, that period of his oeuvre which stretches
through the late 1940s with the many tales he published in Weird Tales and
elsewhere (most of which were primarily weird and supernatural), Bloch had
become interested in tales of death and madness, and had expanded his mar-
kets to include mystery magazines as from about 1943.
But he was not as interested in the straightforward tale of deduction or
detection as he was in exploring the psychopathology of criminal characters.
He was also setting out to explore the effects of social ills that nurture psy-
chopathic behavior. The corrupt values of both individuals and of wider soci-
ety are the target of Bloch’s irony and criticism in his crime novels. Along
with his developing taste for the macabre pun, often used as the ghoulish cli-
max or O.Henry–style twist ending to a given story, this approach makes his
crime fiction rather unique in the genre. Many of Bloch’s works depict nasty
characters getting their well-deserved comeuppance.
Stefan Dziemanowicz has pointed out that “Bloch’s novels from the
1950s and 1960s helped to break down the walls separating the horror and
crime genres with their skilful refurbishings of classic horror themes for
contemporary tales of psychological terror” (Dziemanowicz in Pringle 68).
Many of Bloch’s mid-period short stories fuse crime and the supernatural,
with the sociopathic and the uncanny being mixed in equal measure.
However, with the novels under discussion, Bloch concentrated purely on
human psychopathology, with no overt supernatural elements. This was
“the twisted world inside our skulls,” in which Bloch highlighted both skewed
individual psychology and made caustic commentary on social and political

issues.
Most of the crime novels Bloch wrote in the 1950s are a mixture of hard-
boiled crime and psychological suspense, with a careful balance between the
narration (they are usually narrated in the first person by a murderer or crim-
inal) and a suspended authorial judgment regarding the morality of the char-
acters’ actions. Yet many of the novels feature poetic justice against the villains,
and Bloch can fruitfully be read as a moralist.
THE SCARF
The Scarf was first published in hardcover by Dial Press in 1947; Tony
Palladino won an award for its jacket design. Bloch was then aged 30, and
(in his own words) had “pretty well mined the vein of ordinary supernatural
themes until it had become varicose” (interview with Douglas Winter, quoted
in Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 59). The novel is contemporaneous with
such famous Bloch stories as “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” (1945),
“Enoch” and “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” (both 1946) and “Sweets to the
Sweet” (1947).
The novel opens with the story of a young man who has suffered a child-
hood trauma. Daniel Morley, an inexperienced youth, had become entangled
with Miss Frazer, a spinsterish high school teacher from his Chicago school.
The teacher invites him into her home but seems to have conceived a psy-
chotic murder-suicide plan; she binds young Morley with a maroon scarf, seals
the house, and lets gas flood the room so that she and the youth can die
together as lovers.
Frazer’s plot is foiled — she apparently dies, and the traumatized Morley
manages to escape. Years later, Morley has become a successful writer in Hol-
lywood (his first novel is called Queen of Hearts), and is now a compulsive
serial strangler with a dual personality. (The geographical trajectory foreshad-
ows Bloch’s own, though he would not move to Hollywood until 1959, some
twelve years after The Scarf was published.) Morley narrates his story coolly
in a detached prose that echoes his detachment from his female victims —first
Rena, then Hazel, then Constance Ruppert. His psychological pattern has
become one of writing stories about his current girlfriend, and eventually
strangling her with the scarf— the same scarf with which Miss Frazer had
tried to strangle him.
The novel’s prose style is Chandleresque, with relentless action carried
forward by short, sharp sentences. One of the motifs Bloch uses in this novel
is the “Black Notebook,” a sort of diary which Morley keeps to record his ter-
rifying nightmares as well as his murders. Morley seems to envisage himself
as an avenging figure, a modern-day Crippen or Cream or Landru: “I’ll
remedy the deficiency. I’ll be Satan. I’ll be death. Look into my bony skull
sockets and see if you can read the secrets of the eyes that are not there. Read
my riddle — why does a death’s head always grin?” (Bloch, Unholy Trinity,
97).
Joshi considers these dream-sequences as “among the more effective
dream-sequences in modern weird literature” ( Joshi, Modern Weird Tale 178).
They are certainly that; for instance, the scene in which Morley envisages
being a mass-murdering sniper (years before real-life cases such as the Charles
Whitman/Texas Tower case of 1966): “Suppose you’re up there, looking down,
and you have a rifle in your hand. A big rifle with telescopic sights; maybe a
silencer. I don’t know if there is such a thing, but remember, this is only a
dream. A daydream...” (Bloch, Unholy Trinity 76). This is a highly disturb-
ing fantasy sequence that indicates Morley fantasizes about random murder
on a grand scale. (It was omitted from the original edition at the insistence
of the editor, and only restored in the 1966 edition). Yet in fact, his murders
are much more personal — he gets extremely close and involved with the
women he will ultimately murder.
The Black Notebook entries also demonstrate the way in which Bloch
sometimes viewed the world through jaundiced eyes:
Watch the beefy, red-necked gum-chomping, bristle-headed, horny young
sailors fumbling the breasts of sallow-faced, skinny, fish-eyed, clown-painted
little girls. See the sleek-haired pimps talking second-generation English to
fat, hennaed, giggling women. Visit the sly and slinking negro queer in the
men’s john. Look at the twisted mouth of the dying snowbird who plays tenor
sax in the combo. Gaze into the boiled red sheep’s eyes of the hairless bouncer
[Bloch, Unholy Trinity 18].
While this is the twisted view of Morley, the novel’s narrator, it is clear that
Bloch himself used the novel partly as vehicle for expressing his dissatisfac-
tion — a dissatisfaction that sometimes verged on disgust — with aspects of
twentieth-century civilization, and with the demeaning and demoralizing
effects of that civilization on individual character.
Morley’s Black Notebook seems to offer him a way of achieving some
catharsis, but although he strives to achieve insight into what makes him kill,
he fails to do so. However, one of the earliest entries reveals that Morley,
rather like Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon —and indeed, like
Norman Bates in Bloch’s later novel Psycho —was humiliated and psycholog-
ically abused by his mother:
Then, memories of the day she caught you, behind the woodpile back of the
house, playing Doctor — what the psychologists sweetly call “exploratory sex
play”— with a little neighbor girl of your own age, which was nine. Your
mother saw you, said you were filthy, ridiculed you, made your father switch
you good and hard. She sold you thoroughly on the idea that sex was vile and
shameful [Bloch, Unholy Trinity 14].
His mother ties Morley’s hands to his bedposts as punishment, to stop

him “polluting himself.” And a schoolgirl he falls in love with, Lucille, rejects
him in front of other pupils when he writes her a love poem. But Morley,
writing all this out, doesn’t have the self-perception to see how his back-
ground has warped him towards being a killer.
Bloch’s skills as a perceptive observer of humankind and their foibles
come to the fore in this work. S.T. Joshi believes that, as in the case of Psy-
cho, an ostensibly non-supernatural novel, a case could be made for the quasi-
weirdness of The Scarf ( Joshi, Modern Weird Tale 177). There is certainly some
ambiguity about the conflicting versions of reality presented by the narrator.
In the rewritten ending (published nearly twenty years later, in 1966, when
Fawcett issued Bloch’s revised version; the revised ending also presumably
appeared in the German and Finnish reprints of 1967 and later English-lan-
guage reprints such as the NEL reprint of 1973), it is revealed that Miss Frazer
did not die, and that in fact Morley was the one who sought to tie her up
and commit joint suicide because he loved her. But the truth of this is far
from clear, and the success of Bloch’s novel lies partly in the muddiness of
Morley’s motives; because he himself narrates the story, as an unreliable nar-
rator, we are unable to tell whether anything of what he tells us is ultimately
true or not.
Was Bloch a moralist? Some critics have thought not. Yet in Bloch’s own
words, from an interview with Darrell Schweitzer :“...all of my books are
morality plays in which the virtue triumphs and evil does not get rewarded,
as is the case in so many modern mainstream things in which the anti-hero
rips off people and rapes and murders and indulges in far greater excesses
than the villains, usually given the motivation of revenge as if this justifies
everything. We are living in an age in which there are series upon series of
Executioners and Butchers and Killers, one-man vigilante teams that out-do
Mickey Spillane, and I avoid that route.... I think that if we all of us lose our
faith in the triumph of goodness, then it’s going to be anarchy, social chaos,
nihilism” (Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 23). And again:
If anybody takes a close look at what I’ve written about that type of charac-
ter, he will find that I have written a morality play. I do not write things in
which an anti-hero indulges in the most monstrous and perverse behaviour
patterns and then walks away from it happy as a lark. My psychotic charac-
ters are shown to be frustrated, suffering, unhappy individuals who generally
come to a pretty sorry end [interview with Phillip Shreffler, quoted in Lar-
son, Robert Bloch Companion 67].
The original text of the novel had one reprint in paperback (as The Scarf
of Passion) by Avon in 1949, and was reprinted in a third edition from Avon
in 1952, making it the most commercially successful of Bloch’s 1950s novels
at the time. The 1966 version with the revised ending would go into various
printings in the U.S. and in foreign markets including Finland, Brazil and
West Germany. It was preserved in hardcover with its inclusion in the omnibus
Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense (1986).
SPIDERWEB
Following a period in the early 1950s when he wrote several famous tales
such as “The Man Who Collected Poe” (1951) and “Lucy Comes to Stay”
(1952) (his last story published in Weird Tales), in July 1953 Bloch moved his
family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, to Weyauwega, a small town
in the same state, where they would live for six years.
This was a productive period for Bloch, with a number of crime novels
written and published, and much work written for the higher-paying men’s
magazines. Nineteen fifty-three also marked the opportunity given to Bloch
to complete Poe’s unfinished tale “The Lighthouse” and his return to full-
time professional writing, which he continued for the rest of his life.
At the time Bloch wrote Spiderweb, he was still working for the Gustav
Marx Advertising Agency. His wife Marion had been ill for thirteen years of
orthopedic trouble, and his daughter Sally Anne was ten. Marion was even-
tually diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone. Though new anti-tuberculo-
sis drugs became available, her condition was a strain on their marriage.
Bloch revised and expanded an earlier, unsuccessful attempt at a novel —
this was sold for publication in paperback as Spiderweb. It was published by
Ace Pocketbooks as one half of an “Ace Double,” backed with David Alexan-
der’s The Corpse in My Bed.)
There had been a seven-year hiatus since he published his first novel,
The Scarf (1947); Bloch’s novelistic career began to suffer from what he describe
as “rigor mortis” when his editor at Dial quit to get married, and his then lit-
erary agency expired (Once Around the Bloch 200).
Most of Bloch’s crime novels have a great dark flavor reminiscent of the
noir movies of the late 1940s and early 1950s. One can visualize them as films,
and one must wonder whether Bloch hoped to sell these works for the screen
even at this early stage of his novelistic career. Unfortunately, none of them
were thus adapted — not even by Bloch when he made it to Hollywood in
later years.
Spiderweb, at around 55,000 words, is a somewhat shorter novel than
The Scarf, which ran 65,000. (The later Psycho is even shorter, running only
50,000 words). Spiderweb’s dialogue is (for the most part), sharp, punchy and
occasionally racy. Bloch has a way with wry lines that reflect on the foibles
of his characters, and of humanity at large. Any of the crime novels could
have been successfully filmed, and perhaps Bloch’s reputation as a writer of
psychological crime might have overwhelmed his later reputation as a horror
writer if these works had come to the screen.
Bloch’s typical humor shows up straight away in this novel. Describing
a reception room, he writes: “Two chairs and a sofa, overstuffed by a firm of
reliable overstuffers, completed the ensemble” (Spiderweb 1). Of Professor
Hermann: “He had taken his hat off and the light from the bathroom shone
on an absolutely hairless skull. If a fly lit on his head, it would slip and break
an ankle” (Spiderweb 19).
But so does Bloch’s love of the grotesque. Eddie Haines is a loser, an
aspiring but down-on-his-luck radio and television personality who has no
talent. Haines in Chapter 2 already sees people as “hideously animated dolls”:
“Those people walking along the Strip were no better or no worse than those
in any crowd, but right now I couldn’t stand their faces: those horrid, imper-
sonal wooden masks which everyone wears in public” (Spiderweb 13).
Like Daniel Morley in The Scarf, Eddie has prior tendencies to violent
behavior. When Eddie attacked his brother Charlie before leaving the Mid-
west, a haze had descended on him: “But I also knew that whenever I got
angry, really angry, the haze came back — and with it, the urge to kill. Per-
haps I was a murderer at heart. Perhaps I could go out again, right now, razor
in hand, and run amok in the streets among all the wooden-faced people. I
could carve new expressions on their faces with this razor of mine” (Spider-
web 16).
Gullible loser Eddie Haines has come to Hollywood from Iowa with a
dream of making it on the radio as an announcer, or even as a TV show pro-
ducer if he can pitch his “crackerjack” idea to the right person.
Instead, two months later, down $300 to an agent, he is despairingly
about to commit suicide with his straight razor when Professor Otto Her-
mann steps in with $100 and an offer to become someone else. Hermann is
a Svengali-like, Peter Lorre–lookalike confidence man who portrays himself
as a self-help guru with a number of henchmen already in his employ.
In a scene on page 41, Hermann shows Eddie the way people really are,
the world of normal people. It’s an ugly, sickening sight:
A cannibalistic circle huddled around a small fire, gorging on half-raw wee-
nies and rancid dill-pickles. Troglodyte faces gaped in the firelight. A wrin-
kled, wizened old man’s head: white, bushy hair and beetling black brows that
moved convulsively as he chewed with his whole face.
And it goes on:

There was a fat, blobby woman with stringy hair and a red neck; the rest of
her flesh hung in dead white folds, broken here and there by bulging purplish
veins that stood out like mountain ranges on a relief map....
And so on. Then Hermann takes him on the midway:

Fluorescence and incandescence blinded me. My lungs gulped in popcorn oil,
lard, the reek of frying meat, the stink of decayed fruit, and a rancid stench
composed of tobacco, sweat, cheap perfume and whiskey [Spiderweb 42].
Such descriptions are portrayed as being from Herrmann’s cynical point

of view, but there is a strong resonance of Bloch’s own distaste for the seamier
side of existence, and the sordidness of human motives in general.
At one point the story seems to be set in 1933, for on a table in the home
of “Mrs. Hubbard” there is an issue of Film Fun dated January 1933, but most
of the other atmosphere suggests the contemporary world of 1950s America.
Most likely that is so, for Bloch says the magazine contains “forgotten cin-
ema zanies.”
“Mrs. Hubbard” is, or appears to be, a fraudulent medium. Hermann
“unmasks” her for the benefit of his client (really his mark), the actress Lorna
Lewis. The unmasking reveals that the fraudulent “woman” medium is really
a man — a stooge of Hermann’s — and in this motif we can see a foreshadow-
ing of Bloch’s theme of the man dressing as a woman that features so strongly
in his 1959 novel Psycho.
Professor Hermann plans to corner the market by creating a psychology
guru, and he starts to transform Eddie Haines accordingly. Hermann manip-
ulates the murder of Lorna Lewis’ drunken boyfriend Mike Drayton in order
to have Haines over a barrel. The bald-skulled Professor is hinted to be some
kind of evil puppet-master, manipulating or hypnotizing Haines into becom-
ing Judson Roberts, operator of Y-O-U, Your Opportunities Unlimited.
Haines sets up offices as a self-help expert who has authored a successful self-
help book. With Eddie’s help, Hermann plans to pull off a major “sting” on
a wealthy client.
The writing is consistently suspenseful. Bloch excels in depicting a rel-
atively innocent protagonist caught up against his will in a web of corrup-

tion. Eddie feels trapped but as the plot unfolds, Hermann targets a state sen-
ator, blackmailing him and also drawing the senator’s niece into the web.
Prof Hermann is consistently depicted as a devilish figure, a sort of evil
puppeteer who pulls the strings on Eddie’s life. (Dziemanowicz has noted that
The Dead Beat and Spiderweb “portray the psychoanalyst-patient relationship
in the same terms, respectively, as the exorcist and the possessed, and the sor-
cerer and his apprentice”— see Dziemanowicz in Pringle 68.) Eddie has effec-
tively sold his soul to the devil.
Meanwhile, he falls in love with the senator’s niece. Bloch’s psycholog-
ical knowledge and reading is displayed in many passages in the book, espe-
cially where “Roberts” has to read up to become master of his phony trade.
Meanwhile Haines/Roberts gets fixated on the girl Ellen Post, whom he met
at one of Lorna’s parties. Hermann and Roberts plan to shakedown a YOU
client named Caldwell for $150,000. Hermann also plans to shake down the
politician Leland Post, Ellen’s uncle. Eddie confesses everything to Ellen —
except the murder.
But when Hermann eventually pushes Haines too far, Eddie is able to
ultimately triumph. The concluding set-piece to Spiderweb, set in Hermann’s
underground lair, is a powerful and gripping denouement:
I didn’t wait for three. I threw the glass jar forward with all my might. At the
same time I pulled Ellen down on the floor; at the same time the Professor’s
gun shredded the darkness with a fountain of flame. He screamed. The jar
had either hit him or smashed on the wall behind him. It didn’t matter. The
acid, whatever it contained, had splashed. Splashed over his face and throat
and chest, splashed and eaten. He writhed on the floor, and we could see him
[Spiderweb 157].
Spiderweb had an Australian paperback reprint by Phantom Books in

1954 (and later a Norwegian edition in 1957) but, as Randall Larson observes,
“then fell off the face of the earth” (Larson, “Paperblochs” 45). Despite this,
Oscar J. Friend, Bloch’s new agent, encouraged him to write more novels. The
market for horror fiction had shrunk with the death of the pulps in the 1950s,
and Bloch had been interested in criminals and aberrant behavior for some
time. Now in short order he turned out The Kidnapper and The Will to Kill,
both of which, like Spiderweb, were published in 1954. He saw very little
money for these, so presumably they didn’t sell well (Once Around the Bloch
214–17). But Bloch’s themes of psychologically unbalanced individuals began
to strengthen, and he was to write altogether four crime novels between Spi-
derweb and the novel that shot him to fame, Psycho (1959).
Spiderweb remained one of Bloch’s rarest novels, out of print in the U.S.
for more than fifty years, until reprinted in paperback by Hard Case Crime
in 2008. It has not been preserved in a hardcover edition.
THE KIDNAPPER
“Better than Psycho! His great lost novel!” declares the cover of the 1988
Tor reprint of The Kidnapper. This is not just publisher’s hype. The Kidnap-
per, a gritty tale of a botched abduction, is undoubtedly one of Bloch’s most
convincing, accomplished and hardboiled novels.
Told from the kidnapper’s point of view, the novel was considered to be
in scandalously bad taste at the time, as apparently The Scarf had been, since
it was the first-person account of a compulsive psychopathic strangler. (Bloch,
interview with Phillip Shreffler, quoted in Larson, Robert Bloch Companion
59.) The Kidnapper runs around 58,000 words.
Steve Collins, the 27-year-old titular kidnapper — real name Stanley
Kolischek — is a scheming, thoroughly nasty piece of work. Like many of the
villains of Bloch’s crime novels, Collins has had a difficult childhood, so Bloch
suggests there are reasons he has turned out a criminal. He beat up his father
and ran away from home at the age of fifteen. Yet Collins is unpleasant by
choice — violent to women, with a total lack of empathy for other people.
When the book opens, Collins has pulled a robbery of a filling station in
Florida, and ridden the freight trains to a different city. He goes to work for
Foster Brothers doing night work.
He hits on a scheme to use a fellow workmate, the mild-mannered Leo
Schumann, known as “Specs,” and Collins’ own new girlfriend Mary Adams,
who is a nanny for a wealthy family. He decides to kidnap the child, Shirley
Mae Warren, whose father is a bank president and has a big house. Collins
manipulates everyone around him — pretending to break up with Mary,
knowing that she’ll come back because she’s in love with him; pandering to
Specs’ needs for companionship by supplying him with women in return for
the use of Specs’ car as a getaway vehicle. They plan the snatch in detail and
kidnap the child, taking her to a rented cottage after sending her parents a
ransom note demanding $200,000 cash. But by the end of the chapter
where the child has been kidnapped, she accidentally dies — Collins keeps her
tied up in the back of the car, and on opening the door she falls out, strik-
ing her head on the concrete. The whole scheme threatens to fall apart.
Collins, with no pity at all for the child victim of his crime, conceals the child’s
death from Mary, and hides the body at a location known only to him. Bloch’s
prose throughout the book is sharp, brutally to the point, but never more so
than in this scene where Collins hides the child’s body in a twenty-gallon oil
drum:
I pried the lid off. It was on tight, and that was good. The drum was dry and
empty, in good shape. I kicked the sides in, dented it up all I could without
folding it.
Then I went around to the back seat of the car.
It was awful, getting her into that drum. The drum was big enough, but
her arms and legs wouldn’t fit. And I had to do it. I had to do it, and I did
it.
By the time I finished I was sweating, my clothes were wringing wet, and
my hands shook so I could scarcely jam the lid back on. I looked around until
I found a wrecking bar and I pounded the lid tight shut, bending the edges
[Kidnapper 98].
Collins eventually tells Mary that the kid is dead, and breaks the radio
at the house to prevent Specs from finding out that the police are looking for
them. But the weak-willed Specs also discovers that the child is dead. Mean-
while Collins convinces them to hold out for the money, which is their get-
away ticket. He phones the child’s father, Mr. Warren, who agrees to make
the money drop, and Collins takes delivery of the package on a lonely coun-
try road.
But the police have launched a nationwide search for the kidnapper.
Mary and Specs start getting nervous and things get tense. Collins’ violence
erupts:
Then she shut up because I hauled off and hit her one across the mouth. Her
jaw wobbled and her eyes got glassy. I grabbed her by the hair and hit her
again. Then she came to life and tried to claw me. I yanked her hair as hard
as I could and then I reach down and scooped her up in my arms.
“Let me go, let me go! What are you —”
“We’re going to bed, you and I,” I told her. “You said I was the doctor.
Well, I got just the medicine for you. The best medicine in the world” [Kid-
napper 172].
Specs gets even more nervous and demands his share of the loot, at which
Collins brains him with his gun. Collins is now the killer of two people. He
and Mary concoct a plot to sink their car in the river, making it appear the
kidnapper has drowned. Collins is so ruthless that he considers killing Mary
in her sleep. But she proves smart enough to get away at the last minute. At
the novel’s gripping conclusion, the police surround the house, forcing Collins
to come out with his hands raised:
I could tell this Sheriff wanted to kill me. Well, if I went out now, he wouldn’t
have the guts to do it. At least I could get back at him that way.
So I opened the kitchen door.
“That’s right, Collins! Come on out — we want to see what a mad beast
looks like.”
I raised my hand and then I stepped out on the porch.
“Take a good look,” I said [Kidnapper 216].
Les Daniels has stated that The Kidnapper is one of Bloch’s least popu-
lar novels, apparently because of its downbeat plot and brutal realism, despite
being one of Bloch’s favorites (Daniels 904). Moskowitz mentions that The
Kidnapper was Bloch’s personal favorite of his novels:
“Nobody, but nobody liked this little effort, which is a matter-of-fact, straight-
forward account of a vicious psychopathic kidnapper, told in the first per-
son,” he complained. “I think it is my most honest book; there are no ‘tricks’
and there’s no overt ‘Look Ma — I’m writing touches.’ I believe it was dis-
liked just because it was realistic, and hence unpleasant.” [Bloch, quoted in
Moskowitz 5; his other favorites of his novels were The Star Stalker, Psycho,
Night-World and Strange Eons— see interview with Graeme Flanagan, quoted
in Larson, Robert Bloch Companion 19].
Regarding the touchy subject matter (the killing of a child), and how
controversial it was in its time, Bloch said: “Stories such as The Kidnapper
were rather rare back in the early ’50s; while not actually taboo, writers tended
to avoid confronting the subject” (Enfantino 68).
Lion Books, the publisher of the first edition of The Kidnapper, went out
of business shortly after its release, which may account for its long-time scarcity.
Save a French reprint of 1984, The Kidnapper remained out of print for over
thirty years, until the Tor 1988 paperback edition. It has not been preserved
in a hardcover edition, a sad fate for one of the best of any of Bloch’s novels.
THE WILL TO KILL

Built around the search for a serial killer, The Will to Kill is a thriller
about a man (Tom Kendall, a dealer in stamps, coins and secondhand books)
suffering from blackouts who suspects he may be that killer. At 55,000 words,
it was again a fairly short work.
Bloch had published three crime novels in the same year and was
prolifically producing short stories, but as Larson has noted: “the ’50s was a
bitter period for Bloch, personally. He nourished a growing pessimism toward
what he felt was an endless treadmill upon which he had to write and write
and write without satisfaction, just in order to make ends meet. His personal
depression resulted in an increasing, even brutal, pessimistic tone in many of
his stories” (Larson, in Schweitzer 69).
Bloch had a growing interest in practical psychology and this is evident

in the crime novels he produced during this period. Despite the responsibil-
ity of editing a science fiction magazine, Science-Fiction World, that occupied
him during 1956, cynicism and despondency creep into Bloch’s writing in the
last few years of the ’50s, culminating in such existentially bleak stories as
“Funnel of God” (1959).
Unlike most of the narrators of Bloch’s crime novels, Kendall is a rather
likable fellow, and the reader hopes that he will escape from the implications
of the killings that go on around him, even though he seems caught in the
web.
One of the aspects of The Will to Kill which makes it a first-rate thriller
is Bloch’s skill at misdirection in the narrative. Wealthy lawyer, Anthony
Mingo seems a likely suspect, for after eventually trailing him to his home,
Kendall discovers that he has a penchant for sadism. Bloch indulges his love
of old movies in the scenes describing Mingo screening episodes from the silent
movie Waxworks as Kendall accuses him of murdering the dead Joe Calgary
in order to save himself from being blackmailed over his kinky pastimes. And
he pays tribute to Poe in a scene where Kendall forces Mingo to reveal Cal-
gary’s body, which has been walled up in the cellar à la Poe’s “The Cask of
Amontillado.” But Mingo proves not to be the killer Kendall is seeking. While
Larson considers that some of the red herrings in this novel are “contrived”
(Larson, “Precursors of Psycho” 6), Bloch’s use of them is masterful, and the
novel is more suspenseful because of the several possibilities cunningly pro-
vided by Bloch as to the killer’s identity which are finally resolved at the end.
Bloch also has some fun with sexy scenes here and there:
Kit came in, and for the first time I truly realised that it was a beautiful day.
Oh, it wasn’t the sunshine and the sudden singing of birds; it wasn’t the blue
sky and the balmy breeze.
It was hair the color of fresh honey, and eyes that slanted upward with the
oriental inclination of the true Norwegian. It was the swaggering stride of long,
slim legs, and rounding upthrust of a sweater that was just tight enough, the
tantalizing tan of neck and throat and bare arms. Kit made my days for me —
and some of my nights, too [Bloch, Screams 5].
One of the important characters in the book is a blind man, known as

Blind Bill. In a climactic scene towards the novel’s end, Kendall is in Bill’s
room. Bloch’s writing is tense and exciting:
My cigarette lighter flared up, flashed. I could see everything now; myself
crouched in that little room, my left arm bleeding; Blind Bill standing right
before me with the long thin blade poised, then plunging towards my throat.
I raised the lighter and thrust the flame against his face, into his empty eyes.
He screamed, and the sword cane slipped to the floor as he brought both
hands up to claw at his seared sockets. I dropped the lighter as he staggered
away, picked up the sword. He dropped to the bed, moaning [Bloch, Screams
114].
The dramatic tension of a climactic scene where the action happens
partly in the dark had been used in a different context in Spiderweb, but it is
just as effective here.
Despite foreign editions in Sweden (1957); Denmark (1959); Holland,
Japan (1960) and France (1983), The Will to Kill remained out of print in the
U.S. for thirty-five years, destined to be one of Bloch’s rarest volumes, until
preserved in hardcover in the omnibus Screams: Three Novels of Terror (1989).
SHOOTING STAR
Shooting Star was his next novel, published in 1958. It was another “Ace
Double” but in this volume all the work was Bloch’s — it was backed with his
short story collection Terror in the Night, the volume totaling 110,000 words
of new Bloch material. Bloch has called Shooting Star, exaggeratedly, “One of
a dozen or more of my worst” (Once Around the Bloch 225).
Despite the exaggerated dismissal he made of it, there is no denying that
Shooting Star is not Bloch’s strongest novel. In a way it’s strange that this is
Bloch’s fifth novel, because it reads like his first or second, having a some-
what routine feel. The first half feels way too talky, and although the action
picks up during the second half, the cast is overly complicated and hard to
follow.
One of the main themes is the use of drugs. Mark Clayburn is a down-
on-his-luck one-eyed Hollywood notary public and literary agent, a former
P.I. who used marijuana to excess. He ended up driving off a cliff, killing his
then girlfriend and losing one of his eyes (now covered by a patch) in the
process. His wish to stop the distribution of drugs in L.A. is one of the driv-
ing forces behind his investigation of the six-months-old murder of Dick
Ryan, a movie actor, who has died in a shootout that also involves drug use.
Clayburn’s old friend Harry Bannock has hired Clayburn to investigate
and solve the murder. The ostensible motivation for the investigation is so
that Abe Kolmar, Hollywood producer who starred Ryan in his series of Lucky
Larry cowboy movies, can recoup his investment in the unreleased Ryan pic-
tures by having Ryan’s name cleared.
Some of the drug terminology is naturally dated — Bloch refers to mar-
ijuana as not only dope, weed and reefer but as “tea” and “muggles” (that lat-
ter term more familiar nowadays to modern readers as non-magic practition-

ers in the Harry Potter books rather than as a euphemism for marijuana). Clay-
burn, desperate for money as he only has a couple of clients, agrees to help
even though Ryan was found dead with “reefer butts” at the time; but threats
immediately begin, and Clayburn’s life is continually endangered. The body
count goes up as Clayburn continues to investigate while ignoring the intim-
idation and hoping he won’t get killed himself.
There is some good use of typical Bloch humor, especially the opening
line: “My private eye was a little bloodshot this morning.” Another amusing
line is “Her pajamas had a tendency to gape. So did I” (Shooting Star 99).
Bloch pulls off some punchy and tense chapter endings; for instance,
that to Chapter 7, where Polly Foster, an actress friend of Dick Ryan’s calls
Clayburn with information about the case. Going to her home, he finds an
unexpected situation;
She hadn’t lied. She’d autographed the menu. And she was waiting, waiting
for me with her lips kissing the signature. From the way she sat there with
her head resting on the table, you’d swear Polly Foster had hung up the receiver
and passed right out. There was only one little detail which made me think
differently...
The bullet in her back [Bloch, Shooting Star 55].
While there are passages in this novel which express a jaundiced view of
humanity, they do not rival the extreme bitterness of Spiderweb. Even so,
Bloch’s eye for the unpleasant side of humanity as Clayburn walks the mean
streets is unerring:
I saw a man almost as handsome as the late Dick Ryan, in a Latin sort of way.
He was cursing and being cursed by a fat Indian woman whose four offspring
clung to her skirts and pummelled her pregnant belly. There was a girl about
the same age and complexion as Billie Trent; at least I thought so until she
turned her head and I saw the purple blotch covering the left side of her face.
And there was a man with a moustache and an eyepatch, just like me. Only
his patch covered both eyes, and he held out a battered tin cup. There but for
the grace of God [Bloch, Shooting Star 126–27].
The complications of Bloch’s plot in this novel are somewhat too con-
voluted to make it an easy and enjoyable read. Nevertheless, it has a classic
noir shootout/twist ending, and a nicely cynical tone at the finish as Clayburn
pulls down his office shade and goes on with his sordid, yet necessary work.
Shooting Star was reprinted in Japan, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany
and Australia. Nevertheless it remained out of print in the U.S. for fifty years,
until reprinted in paperback by Hard Case Crime in 2008. It has not been
preserved in a hardcover edition.
Shooting Star was followed by Bloch’s best-known novel Psycho in 1959,

which was filmed by Hitchcock the following year. Bloch moved his family
from Wisconsin to Hollywood that year to write for TV, with scripts for sus-
pense and thriller shows such as Lock-Up, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Star Trek,
True, Whispering Smith, and Thriller, which would lead him to writing movie
screenplays, commencing with 1962’s The Couch (which he novelized in the
same year the movie was made, from a story by Blake Edwards). The story
of how he sold the rights to Psycho, his most famous novel, for around $9500,
ending up with only about $6000, is told in his autobiography (Bloch, Once
Around the Bloch). Hitchcock’s film of Psycho catapulted Bloch to fame; how-
ever, we leave it to other hands to analyze that particular novel.
The same year as he wrote Psycho, Bloch won the Hugo Award for sci-
ence fiction for his story “That Hellbound Train” (ironic, since the story is
not sf ) and also the E.E. Evans Memorial Award for Fantasy and Science Fic-
tion Work.
THE DEAD BEAT

In 1960, Bloch published The Dead Beat. It was issued by the hardcover
house of Simon and Schuster, his publisher on Psycho. Partly due to Psycho’s
success, The Dead Beat was well received, with its first printing in hardcover
and many international editions.
The cynicism and depression of Bloch’s late 50s work had begun to fade,
replaced by a sense of optimism and frivolity. As Larson comments, Bloch
had “sidestepped the endless treadmill and found new energy and satisfac-
tion in what he was doing, and his work reflected this brighter outlook” (Lar-
son, in Schweitzer 70).
1960 was a good year for Bloch; he won the Anne Radcliffe Award for
Literature and also the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award
for Psycho, which had been published the year before. The early sixties would
see him publish several more novels of psychological suspense —Firebug (1961),
The Couch (1962) and Terror (1962). Bloch’s first marriage to the perennially
ill Marion ended in divorce in 1963 and in 1964 he married his second wife,
Eleanor Alexander.
In The Dead Beat, a mystery thriller set in the world of amongst the beat
generation we are introduced to young Larry Fox, another selfish, aggressive
and manipulative loner who commits crimes because he can’t seem to help
himself. He knows no other way of getting by than to exploit other people.
Having assaulted a sailor in a hotel room, he is on the lam, and meets Jill
Whittaker, a naive young girl who is taken in by his charm. Similarly naïve —
and in some senses, unconvincingly so — is the older woman, housewife Eli-
nor Harris, who verges on having an affair with Fox while her traveling
salesman husband is out of town.
In The Dead Beat, Bloch continues and even strengthens further his
themes of a morally bankrupt society in which the younger generation are
misguided and selfish, psychoanalysts manipulate their clients, and the pop-
ulace at large are indulgent and hedonistic. As Dziemanowicz has remarked,
these novels “are remarkable for working serious commentary into a type of
tale that traditionally serves a market hungry for exploitation. But the frus-
tration and bitterness they reflect occasionally overwhelm their characters and
plots” (Dziemianowicz in Bleiler 108).
Fox plays piano in a nightclub dance band. He is attempting to black-
mail his old girlfriend, La Verne, over the shakedown they had committed on
the sailor together previously. But LaVerne is murdered by Larry. Unwit-
tingly, Elinor and Walter Harris give shelter to Fox, the narcissistic killer,
after finding him unconscious in their car’s back seat, and he takes advantage
of their hospitality in true predatory style. Once again, Bloch gives the char-
acter reasons for his criminal behavior and twisted development — he had
been in an orphanage in his youth — but Bloch doesn’t count these as excuses
for his criminal acts, showing us Fox as the deliberate chooser of his own fate.
The novel is highly suspenseful, if somewhat more low-key than usual
for Bloch. Larry wraps LaVerne’s body up in a rug after he shoots her at a
lakeside cabin, and though he plans to elope with Jill, the Whittaker’s daugh-
ter, Larry begins to lose his mind. Following the musical motif throughout
the novel (Larry pretends to be a classical composer) Bloch cleverly uses terms
like “downbeat” and “face the music” to have multiple meanings. Larry Fox
thinks he is orchestrating his own composition, but what he orchestrates is
his own doom.
Many scenes in the book depend on Larry’s use of Elinor’s car to get
around. Her naivety is extreme, and is one of the least convincing aspects of
the novel. There are also some preachy sequences in the novel where Jim
Whittaker pontificates about the youth of today and their ills, and some of
the hip language is outdated; Bloch explains in his foreword to the omnibus
reprint which includes The Dead Beat (Unholy Trinity) that problems of dat-
ing and language confronted him when various of his early novels were to be
reprinted: “The cusp of the Sixties still belonged to Jack Kerouac and the Beat
Generation. The shock-waves emanating from the gyrations of Elvis’s crotch
had not yet dislodged jazz and pop from the musical world, and the stage was
still being set for the drug scene. Should I turn my beat anti-hero, Larry Fox,
into a hippie — or even a Yuppie? Again I came to the realization that it

wouldn’t work. Modern mores wouldn’t be applicable to Larry’s story”(Bloch,
Unholy Trinity xiii). Jim Whittaker’s speeches evidently represent attitudes
that Bloch was struggling with at the time he wrote the novel; without wish-
ing to “dump on” the developing youth culture of the 60s, he strongly ques-
tioned many of its values, and Larry Fox was a portrayal of the dark side of
that developing society. And, as Larson points out, by the novel’s end, Fox
has become (literally) the title character of the novel: “he is, indeed, a Dead
Beat” (Larson, Robert Bloch Starmont Guide 92).
Another six-year hiatus as regards novelistic work followed before Bloch
published the science fiction novel-pairing Ladies Day/This Crowded Earth
(1968) (the sf novel Sneak Preview would appear in 1971), but he quickly fol-
lowed these with two more crime novels that mark the ending of his early
crime period of the ’50s and ’60s —The Star Stalker (1968) and The Todd
Dossier (1969). The Star Stalker had been written as Colossal, and was actu-
ally a serious novel of Hollywood in the 1920s, planned as the first book of a
trilogy.
The Dead Beat was reprinted by Popular Library in paperback in 1961,
in a hardcover British edition, and the same year was reprinted in various lan-
guages, including Japanese, Italian and French; it also saw reprint in England,
Spain, Belgium, Holland, West Germany, Mexico and Finland, and was
reprinted by Popular Library (U.S.) in 1967. A hardcover reprint occurred in
the U.S. with its inclusion in the omnibus Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Sus-
pense (1986).
After spending twenty or so years scripting for movies and television,
and continuing to prolifically publish short fiction, Bloch continued to pub-
lish novels about criminals and serial killers —American Gothic (1974), The
Night of the Ripper (1984), and The Jekyll Legacy (with Andre Norton, 1990)
(though all three of these are set in the Victorian era and therefore don’t reflect
the modern themes of crime and society in the same way as his 1950s and
1960s works); not to mention the two sequels to Psycho—Psycho II (1982) and
Psycho House (1990) (his last novel), which are oft-overlooked due to the film
sequels which were not based on Bloch’s second and third novels of the series.
The “twisted world inside our skulls” continued to preoccupy Bloch, as
he reflected in his fiction on aspects of modern culture that he felt encour-
aged anti-social and sociopathic behavior. That the theme continued to pre-
occupy him until the end of his life is evidenced by the late anthologies he
edited, Psycho-Paths (1991) and Monsters in Our Midst (1993). Many of his
macabre crime stories can be found in The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch
(1988; 3 volumes). That Bloch is heir to the great tradition of psychological
horror largely founded by Edgar Allan Poe is undeniable; and his 1950s crime
novels contribute in large part to that reputation and the distinctive niche he
still occupies in the genre.
WORKS CITED
Bloch, Robert. The Dead Beat. In Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense. Los Angeles:
Scream/Press, 1986.
_____. The Kidnapper. New York: Tor Books, 1988.
_____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorised Autobiography. New York: Tor Books, 1993.
_____. The Scarf. In Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense. Los Angeles: Scream/Press, 1986.
_____. Spiderweb/Shooting Star. New York: Hard Case Crime, April 2008.
_____. The Will to Kill. In Screams: Three Novels of Terror. San Rafael, CA: Underwood-
Miller, 1989.
Collins, Tom. “Robert Bloch: Society as Insane Asylum.” Twilight Zone ( June 1981).
D’Ammassa, Don. “Robert Bloch” in Pederson, Jay P. (ed). St. James Guide to Science Fiction
Writers. New York: St. James Press, 1996.
Daniels, Les. “Robert Bloch” in Bleiler, E.F. (ed). Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and
Horror. New York: Scribner, 1985.
Dziemanowicz, Stefan. “Robert Bloch” in Richard Bleiler (ed). Supernatural Fiction Writers:
Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson Gale, 2003 (2nd ed).
_____. “Robert [Albert] Bloch” in S.T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemanowicz (eds.). Supernatural
Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.
_____. “Robert [Albert] Bloch” in David Pringle (ed). St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and
Gothic Writers. Detroit: St. James, Press, 1998.
_____. “An Interview with Robert Bloch.” Studies in Weird Fiction 16 (Winter 1995).
Enfantino, Peter. “ A Conversation with Robert Bloch.” Paperback Parade, No 39 (August 1994).
Flanagan, Graeme. Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography. Canberra, Australia: Graeme Flanagan,
1979.
Indick, Ben P. “Robert Bloch: A Personal Memory.” Studies in Weird Fiction 16 (Winter 1995).
Joshi, S.T. “Killing Women with Robert Bloch, Thomas Harris and Brett Easton Ellis” in
his The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.
_____. “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft.” Studies in Weird Fiction, 16
(Winter 1995).
Larson, Randall D. “Precursors of Psycho: The Early Crime Novels of Robert Bloch.” The
Scream Factory 11 (1993). Online at: http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/larson_early.html
(accessed September 21, 2008).
_____. The Complete Robert Bloch: An Illustrated, Comprehensive Bibliography. Sunnyvale, CA:
Fandom Unlimited, 1986.
_____. “Paperblochs: Robert Bloch in Paperback.” Paperback Parade No 39 (August 1994).
_____. Robert Bloch. [Starmont Reader’s Guide 37]. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1987.
_____ (ed.). The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews 1969–1986. San Bernadino,
CA: Borgo Press, 1989. See especially Chapter 6, “On Writing Crime Fiction.”
_____. The Robert Bloch Fanzine. Los Altos, CA: Fandom Unlimited Enterprises, Septem-
ber 1973 (2nd ed).
_____. “Yours Truly, Robert Bloch” in Darrell Schweitzer (ed). Discovering Modern Horror
Fiction II. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1988.
Matheson, Richard, with Ricia Mainhardt (eds.). Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master.
New York: Tor Books, 1995.
Moskowitz, Sam. “Psycho-logical Bloch” in Larson, Randall (ed). The Robert Bloch Fanzine.
Los Altos, CA: Fandom Unlimited Enterprises, September 1973 (2nd ed). (Originally
published in Amazing Stories December 1962.)
Sullivan, Jack. “Robert Bloch” in his The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernat-
ural. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986.
Wiater, Stanley. “Robert Bloch” in Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror.
New York: Avon, 1990.
Winter, Douglas E. “Robert Bloch” in Faces of Fear. New York: Berkley, 1985.
Yours Truly, Daniel Morley:
An Examination of Robert
Bloch’s Novel The Scarf
John Howard
INTRODUCTION
The Scarf was Robert Bloch’s first novel. It was published in 1947, when
Bloch was 30. This essay will consider The Scarf as a novel about crime and
the criminal, involving the psychological but not the supernatural. However,
The Scarf certainly is a novel of horror, involving at the very least mental ill-
ness and the emotions of terror and revulsion. I also intend to place The Scarf
in the context of Robert Bloch’s literary career and with other relevant works
by him, as well as place it in context alongside similar American crime and
psychological crime novels from the period.
The text of The Scarf used for this essay is that of the 1972 paperback
edition from New English Library, which was also the novel’s first publica-
tion in the United Kingdom. Page numbers therefore refer to this edition.
Bloch had made a few revisions to the 1947 text (mainly the ending) for a
new American paperback edition in 1966 (Larson). The UK edition reprinted
this text, which has now, in effect, become the author’s preferred text. Even
so, The Scarf retained its 1940s feel and mood, worthy of a novel by a number
of the better practitioners of the “hard-boiled” school of crime fiction writing.
THE BLOCH BARGAIN

When The Scarf appeared in 1947 Robert Bloch was a recognized writer
of horror fiction, and somewhat less well-known as a science fiction writer,
89
although his often off beat contributions to that field had sometimes been
noteworthy. Bloch had started out in the mid 1930s as a teenage author whose
work was strongly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. Unlike some of the other
young (and not so young) writers whom Lovecraft encouraged, Bloch quickly
started to sell fiction regularly. He did not restrict himself to a purely Love-
craftian style or outlook for long. By the late 1930s he was writing stories devel-
oping his own style and voice, while still on occasion displaying an effective
fidelity to his first great literary influence.
Bloch’s development as a writer included a growing interest in psychol-
ogy, and the psychological side of horror fiction, often combining the psycho-
logical with the macabre and supernatural. Bloch shifted his focus of horror
away from that which H.P. Lovecraft had emphasised: horror of the non-human
unknown, from outside, where revelation follows upon revelation, and known
certainties are overturned and the opposite shown to be the reality. Instead, he
moved towards exploring the horror of the human and known, the psycholog-
ical, but where all can still be overturned in death. Bloch later recalled: “By
the mid 1940s, I had pretty well mined the vein of ordinary supernatural themes
until it had become varicose. I realised, as a result of what went on during
the Second World War and of reading the more widely disseminated work in
psychology, that the real horror is not in the shadows, but in that little twisted
world inside our own skulls. And that I determined to explore” (Winter 27).
The publication of a full-length novel might seemed to have been quite
a departure for Bloch, the author of numerous short stories in Weird Tales,
Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and other magazines. Highly regarded
though his stories were, a novel seemed to be a great leap from the sort of
fiction in which a situation is created and resolved within a short length and
then put aside by the reader as the page is turned for the next story. But Bloch
made his handling of a longer work appear effortless. The Scarf was an appar-
ently straightforward and even plain novel. Its short, punchy sentences and
paragraphs, its filmic dialogue and sketched-in moody settings, masked what
was in fact a complex, challenging, sometimes phantasmagorical, and unset-
tling book. For Robert Bloch, as well as his readers, The Scarf was very dif-
ferent to anything that had gone before.
But perhaps it was not such a drastic departure after all. Just four years
earlier, Bloch had published a notable short story with “Yours Truly, Jack the
Ripper” (Weird Tales July 1943). In some ways this work of pulp fiction art
was a forerunner of The Scarf. The story is told in the first person, and set
firmly in the present, in drab and squalid streets and bars in Chicago. Bloch
allowed the Victorian serial killer to survive and prosper into the 1940s by
apparently supernatural means, although a psychological explanation was also
Yours Truly, Daniel Morley (Howard) 91
possible. Bloch immediately makes the story different when the reader is told
that the Ripper has become the prey rather than just the predator. Jack’s pur-
suer also had a connection with the mean streets of the East End of London
in 1888, and has been driven to hunt him down by the desire for revenge,
being convinced that he was still alive, and keeping alive through further
murders. Bloch used a thoroughly contemporary background to explore and
work through the motivations of his characters, and to entertain and pull the
reader up short at the same time. In the conclusion, the Lovecraftian legacy
of “everything you know is wrong” is also employed, in a similar way to how
he would soon to do in The Scarf, and without invoking the supernatural or
other unknown outside factor.
At first glance the protagonist of The Scarf, Daniel Morley, does not seem
promising material for a serial killer. Like Robert Bloch himself, young Mor-
ley was a bookish, somewhat isolated child who had to learn fast. Eventually,
in order to secure a regular income and develop his writing, Morley secures
a job writing radio continuity and advertising. Similarly, Bloch wrote copy
for an advertising agency for over a decade. Bloch later explained the arrange-
ment: “I put my work on the right-hand side of my typewriter, and the lay-
outs and notes for advertising copy on the left-hand side. And when I
exhausted what was on the left-hand side, I would put my material in the
typewriter” (Winter, Faces of Fear 26). This was with the blessing of his
employer, and “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” and The Scarf were among the
stories written during this time.
The environment into which Robert Bloch was born was a thoroughly
ordinary one, as was his family and upbringing. This is reflected in the set-
tings that he used for The Scarf. The large and busy cities of Minneapolis,
Chicago, New York, and Hollywood were the backgrounds for the novel, and
they were not treated in any sort of exotic or special way. The city streets with
their bars, cheap restaurants, and run-down rooming houses where Daniel
Morley lives and breathes — and does his killing — are thoroughly recogniza-
ble. But Bloch found that he was able to delve into the darker and decidedly
abnormal side of families and relationships. He had learned well from H.P.
Lovecraft to use ordinary settings and apparently outwardly normal charac-
ters in order to provide the contrast with their inner reality and the events,
with their dreadful consequences, that he wanted to write about.
OPENING THE BLACK NOTEBOOK

The narrator and protagonist of The Scarf is Daniel Morley. He grew up
as a sensitive and studious boy. When he was 18 his teacher, Miss Frazer, who
was twenty years his senior, and had been encouraging his literary ambitions,
fell in love with him. Just before Daniel was due to leave for college, she
invited him to her home and gave him a maroon scarf as a present. She
attempted to seduce him, and got him drunk. When he had passed out, she
tied his hands with the scarf and turned on the gas, so that they would die
together. Morley woke up in time and escaped by jumping through a win-
dow, injuring himself. Miss Frazer was dead. When he was released from hos-
pital, he ran away, and from then on “hated women, books, everything.” But
he held on to the scarf (Bloch 8).
The opening of the novel is an extract from Morley’s “Black Notebook”
in which he summarises his experience with Miss Frazer and the effect it had
on him. These entries recur throughout The Scarf. The Black Notebook serves
Morley as a place to write down his thoughts, to think out loud in writing.
The Black Notebook works as a memory storage space for what Morley doesn’t
always want to consciously remember all of the time, but which he doesn’t
want to lose completely. Morley uses the Black Notebook as a refuge and a
resource. He doesn’t entirely forget what goes into it, but isn’t constantly
reminded either.
Morley is embarking on his autobiography: the recollection of what has
happened to him so far. What Morley is going to tell — the narrative of The
Scarf that lies just ahead — has ended with him in prison or a mental institu-
tion. The scarf itself is present from the beginning: Morley is gazing at it as
he speaks, or writes in the Black Notebook. He has come to the realisation
that the scarf is a fetish for him: an object that has overwhelming and sexual
significance, and from which he cannot bear to be separated. So Morley is
abnormally obsessed with the scarf, and is doubly dependent upon it as he
uses it to strangle his victims. In effect he needs the scarf, both mentally and
physically, in order to achieve the feeling of power and sexual gratification
that only committing murder gives him.
But the power Morley exercises when he kills obscures the fact that he
has to keep on running away. For as long as he commits murder after mur-
der, he is on the run. The first escape from Miss Frazer has become never-
ending, as he has to escape from woman after woman as time goes on by. And
he always carries his fetish, the scarf, in his pocket. Dan Morley begins a life
of moving from city to city and drifting from one dead-end job to another.
He is unable to make friends, and build steady relationships with women. At
some point he becomes a serial killer of women, always strangling them with
the scarf that Miss Frazer had given him. Morley’s hatred of them leads to
him from murder to murder, apparently as casually as changing rooms in a
cheap lodging house.
Eventually Morley is living in Minneapolis, trying to make a start as a

writer. He has grown tired of his current girlfriend, Rena, and plans to get
away and move to Chicago. To keep her quiet Morley tells her that the story
he is writing is actually about her. Rena continually bothers him about it,
and he strangles her with the scarf, and escapes to Chicago. Morley is aware
of a connection between his writing and the sort of people around him, espe-
cially the type of women he knows. He realises that he killed Rena with such
effortlessness because to him she was not a real person. She had become a mere
character. “You get her down on paper, where she can’t hurt you any more....
She’s on paper, where she belongs. Where you can control her” (Bloch 15).
Once in a new city Morley changes his self-identity slightly but
significantly, calling himself by his full first name once more. He decides that
he doesn’t find committing murder to be frightening (Bloch 18). In a Black
Notebook entry Morley reveals some more of the origins of his hatred of
women. First there is his mother. When he was 9 years old she had punished
him when she found out about an episode of childish sex play with one of
the girls from his neighborhood. At night his mother tied his hands to the
bed. On one occasion he escapes and glimpses his parents having sex. So his
parents were as “filthy” as his mother had accused him of being. Later, he is
in love with Lucille, a girl at his school. Morley declares himself the best way
he knows, and writes her a poem. But she laughs and rejects it, and shows it
to her friends, humiliating him completely.
Morley wonders if everyone wants to kill someone sometime, or whether
it is only him. He thinks that perhaps he is just more honest, in actually
admitting that he would like to kill. Or maybe he is the abnormal one after
all. He’d like to “come out” and show everyone what he is — and his method
is to use the scarf (Bloch 25f ). The scarf is a weapon, but it was something
that was first used against him, when Miss Frazer had tied his hands with it.
Morley’s other memory of being physically unable to exercise control, when
his mother tied his hands, emphasises the fetish aspect of the scarf for him.
He is fascinated by it, and uses it, although the scarf, or something similar,
has also been used against him. Morley controls the scarf, but at the same
time he is under its power. Luckily for him, he is adaptable.
In Chicago Morley becomes a cab driver, so he can have time to write.
He meets the freelance model Hazel Hurley, who is attracted to him as a con-
trast to her current boyfriend, but especially because he told her that he is a
writer. Morley wants to become Hazel’s lover as soon as he can, so flatters
her. But he has no illusions. He is aware that “you don’t fall in love with what
you feed on” (Bloch 31). Through Hazel’s contacts Morley gets a job writing
radio continuity. He doesn’t make any friends except for Lou King, his imme-
diate superior. Morley confides in Lou about his writing plans. Writing seems
to offer Morley some sort of release, and a way of using his flawed experi-
ences with women, although there is more to his fiction than a thinly-dis-
guised autobiography. Because he is only able to write about what he knows,
he isn’t able to create fiction derived from his imagination or insights into the
lives of others.
Morley starts to write a novel about a woman like Hazel. Lou King helps
him to get a literary agent, and he makes good progress with his writing. Mor-
ley makes the error yet again of telling his girlfriend that his writing is about
her. Now Hazel constantly bothers him about it, and won’t ever leave him
alone. Phil Teffner, Morley’s agent, likes Morley’s novel, entitled Queen of
Hearts. As before Morley soon wants to run away again and escape from his
relationship and job. He confides in Lou King about leaving, and tells him
that he is going to New York. Instead he rents a new room so that he can
have peace while he continues to work on the book, and to avoid Hazel. She
discovers where he is living, and finds out about his plan. Morley calms her
down by telling her that going to New York was going to be their honey-
moon. They go out on the town to celebrate, and while waiting for a train
home he tries to strangle Hazel with the scarf, but she falls under a train
instead. It will look like suicide.
Running away again, Morley falls asleep on the train to New York and
dreams about Miss Frazer and Rena and having his hands tied by the scarf.
Waking up, he decides that he has learned that he will have to stop killing.
In New York Morley is hailed as a new writer on the brink of success. Mor-
ley meets his agent, and his editor Patricia Collins, who guides him through
the revisions that the publisher wants him to make on his novel. Kleeman,
the chief editor, is demanding: “You know Kleeman,” answered the girl. “I’d
hate to think of what would have happened if King James had come to him
with the Bible” (Bloch 56). To begin with Morley is almost overwhelmed by
the publisher’s criticisms of Queen of Hearts, but he sees that they are right.
Pat reassures him, makes it clear that she believes in him and his work, and
encourages him to start on the revisions, because despite Morley’s doubts of
himself and his novel, he will improve it. Morley is soon strongly attracted
to Pat, who is a very different woman compared with the type he normally
goes for. Now he feels he has a future. There will be no more running away.
Then an entry in the Black Notebook describes surreal dreams within dreams.
Reality and dream seem indistinguishable, and Morley wonders whether or
not he has ever woken up (Bloch 61–63).
Pat Collins starts to change Morley’s image and appearance in advance
of the publication of his novel. He enters literary polite and not so polite soci-
ety and meets Constance Ruppert, who makes him uncomfortable when she
says that she’s sure she knows him from Chicago. Morley also meets Con-
stance’s ex-husband Jeff Ruppert, who is a successful psychoanalyst. He is usu-
ally on the defensive by these two new acquaintances. There is always the
feeling that they see into him, through him, and will find out the truth, or
somehow cause him to betray himself. Constance tells Morley that she asso-
ciates him with the colour red, an intimation of his maroon scarf (Bloch 69).
Ruppert thinks that Morley is a “fake,” and running away from something
(Bloch 72–73). Morley is also dismayed to find out that Pat is engaged to
Ruppert (Bloch 74). What seems to be a possible genuine love relationship
for Morley is over before it could begin, and he has lost Pat to a man who he
dislikes and who might be the only one able to penetrate his secret and bring
him down.
In a Black Notebook entry, Morley writes about how words have become
stronger than actions, because of literacy. People learn to worship words.
Words are magic formulae which are needed to get through life. Words define
until people are words themselves. But “deep down inside, there’s a ‘you’ who
doesn’t need words, can’t use them” (Bloch 76). The words can’t be used, and
there can be no communication. Nevertheless, Morley knows that Truth is a
word. And that “big word” is — murder. Murder means nothing because it is
a word. “Murder isn’t a word. Murder is a deed” (Bloch 75–77).
Constance starts to pursue Morley, but he isn’t interested, because of his
continuing feelings for Pat Collins, despite her engagement to Ruppert. Queen
of Hearts is published, and becomes an immediate bestseller. Now he has a
future. There will be no more running away. Jeff Ruppert thinks that Mor-
ley writes about women objectively, like a trained observer (Bloch 80). When
Morley tells Ruppert that he lives off women, Ruppert says that Morley hates
them. He responds that he isn’t Jack the Ripper (see the references above to
Bloch’s story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”). Ruppert and his former wife
both try to advise Morley. Ruppert tells him that Constance might try to kill
him, while she says that Ruppert tried to drive her insane. Constance knows
that Morley wants Pat, and when she insults her, Morley hits her. Ruppert
says that Constance is a “nympholept”— a nymphomaniac. She is definitely
a maniac, with her sexual over-activity possibly also contributed to by a glan-
dular disorder. Ruppert confides that for Constance, their marriage symbol-
ised the excuse for the abandonment of all repression. The unstable Constance
projected all her guilt on to her husband (Bloch 89).
Lou King unexpectedly pays Morley a visit, and mentions Hazel’s sui-
cide, then says that he knows that Morley “killed” Hazel. He means that she
committed suicide because of the book Morley was writing. King has told
Constance about his views. Morley tells Constance she helps him to forget,
and she asks him to marry her. She says if they are married she will keep quiet
about Morley’s past, because she knows he really did murder Hazel.
When Morley comes down with flu, Constance says he should start wear-
ing a scarf. Morley dreams of killing Constance. Leaving him at home ill in
bed, Constance goes to inspect a possible house for them. Morley drives there,
strangles Constance, and sets fire to the house — apparently the perfect crime,
as he has an alibi, being unable to go out. Jeff Ruppert thinks Morley killed
Constance: he questions details about the whereabouts of the car, and why
no-one answered the phone when Morley was supposed to be at home ill.
Morley tries to convince him that Constance’s death was suicide.
Morley starts work on Lucky Lady, his second novel. Jeff Ruppert and
Pat Collins leave for Hollywood. Then Queen of Hearts is sold to a Holly-
wood studio. In a Black Notebook entry Morley thinks about past serial
killers — Spring-Heeled Jack, and Jack the Ripper. Morley wonders why he
is a killer, but doesn’t know the answer. Morley thinks he’s smart — he won’t
need the “crutch” of the Black Notebook any longer. This is the last entry in
it (Bloch 113). Morley takes the opportunity to get away again, and leave for
Hollywood.
On the plane journey to Hollywood Morley meets the film director Lloyd
Ainsworth who drunkenly reminiscences about his past career (Bloch 115–18).
In Hollywood Morley still carries the scarf about, even when he meets Pat.
In a bar he sees a man in a green sports jacket, who seems to vanish. Morley
tells Pat that Ruppert won’t love her when they’re married. He sees the man
in the green sports jacket again, and attacks him, but no-one else has seen
him, and there’s no evidence of their struggle. Morley now openly wears the
scarf all the time.
Morley meets Duke Kling, a photographer who has read an advance
copy of Lucky Lady. Morley feels strange, as when he saw the man in the
green sports jacket. Kling tells him that he should write a book about true
murders. He takes Morley home to look at his own “black book”— grisly pho-
tos of murder victims. Morley is revolted by the book, but Kling says that
Morley really likes it, and that he knows what Morley is. Morley thinks that
perhaps Kling is right, that he is someone who enjoys seeing death. But he
runs away.
Then Morley’s work on the screenplay of Queen of Hearts starts to go
badly. As he is about to lose Pat to Jeff Ruppert, he starts to write a charac-
ter like her into his film script, but destroys the manuscript after talking to
“the guy in the mirror.” Morley’s own reflection — his unconscious — tricks
him into admitting the possibility that he could strangle Pat (Bloch 135–
36). Jeff Ruppert continues to probe at Morley, and tells him he isn’t able
to claim some money left to him by Constance, because an insurance inves-
tigator thinks that she didn’t commit suicide after all, but was actually mur-
dered.
Morley runs away again, and eventually picks up Verna, a hostess in a
bar. They set out to drive to Tijuana, across the border in Mexico. Morley
tries to strangle her with his scarf, but she escapes, and takes the scarf with
her. He returns to Hollywood. Pat breaks with Ruppert, who reveals that he
made up the story about an insurance investigator and the problems with get-
ting the money left to him by Constance. Morley and Pat agree to marry and
elope. Morley reads Jeff Ruppert’s new book The Assassin: a Study. Morley
and Pat travel to Mexico by same route as he did with Verna. Although he
no longer has the scarf, he believes that when he is with Pat he doesn’t need
it. On the way to Tijuana, they decide to spend the night in a motel, and Pat
accidentally reveals that she has Morley’s scarf. Verna had survived and con-
tacted Pat and Ruppert, who decided to see if Verna’s story was true.
Morley decides to kill Pat, when Miss Frazer suddenly appears. She had
not died, but had retired, and was living nearby. She calls Morley “Daniel.”
The past returns, and he is the adolescent who Miss Frazer attempted to
seduce. But he wants to hold Miss Frazer. It turns out that the beginning of
the story recorded in the Black Notebook was actually the reverse of what had
really happened. Morley’s twisted version in the Black Notebook was a cathar-
sis, but he has always been living in unreality. That is unchanged, although
the truth is revealed. He remains obsessed with Miss Frazer at the end, which
is also the beginning. Morley is using the Black Notebook again.
“PSYCHOLOGY HAS A LOT OF WORDS”
Robert Bloch’s interest in psychology, and the themes that he had

explored in The Scarf, were probably still in his mind a year after the novel
was published. As Fan Guest of Honour at the World Science Fiction Con-
vention at Toronto (Torcon) in 1948, Bloch delivered a speech entitled “Fan-
tasy and Psychology.” It is recorded that he did an impersonation of Peter
Lorre, whose film debut in Fritz Lang’s M (1931) was a detailed portrayal of
a sexually-motivated serial killer (Moskowitz 336). The film is an unflinch-
ing depiction of a murderer who cannot simply be dismissed as somehow evil.
Bloch would continue to investigate these themes in future novels.
When Bloch wrote The Scarf, he produced a book that, while using the
outward form of a crime thriller, also explored the life and mentality of a serial
killer, with the associated horror being handled in a completely non-super-

natural way. The real horror was psychological, and was enhanced by the
killer’s own matter-of-fact narration of his actions. These sprang from the
consequences of his upbringing and the malign influence of the people whose
words and actions had turned him towards the bad. There is no attempt by
the author to justify any of the characters’ actions and their results, whether
good or evil. In the case of Daniel Morley, there is no suggestion that mur-
der is to be condoned, or the murderer relieved of responsibility. But even so,
there is more to be explored and hopefully understood. Any moral judgements
are left to the characters themselves in the context of the novel, and to the
reader.
In The Scarf Bloch displayed a characteristic honesty in confronting and
exploring the dark aspect in an apparently normal character, and so all peo-
ple — and therefore in himself. For Bloch there was no need for a “good” char-
acter to be the narrator or protagonist. This amoral approach is typical of the
best and most challenging crime fiction (as well as the best film noir of the
time). It is also unlike more traditional crime fiction, in which a good char-
acter is pitted against bad criminals. For example, Raymond Chandler’s char-
acter Philip Marlowe, who, although he is no saint, is clearly on the side of
good (honesty, decency, law and order) against evil (corruption, chaotic
human values, dishonesty). Later crime novels often followed the line that
Bloch did rather than Chandler’s, and blurred the distinctions between good
and evil, moral and immoral. They were more willing to explore the point of
view of the murderer and other often repellent characters. People are rarely
to be seen as simply good or bad. Their crimes are made to spring out of a
definite context, rather than as if from out of thin air. They are shown as being
just slices from the different lives that Morley finds himself moving through.
Bloch confirms what is already known: that an artist with a talent need not
necessarily be good in a particularly moral sense, but it is still not normal to
be a serial killer.
In The Scarf there are no portrayals of any especially good characters,
except for the two people who Morley genuinely likes, and who genuinely
like him. These are Lou King, Morley’s employer and mentor in Chicago,
and Pat Collins, who helps him to improve his work and whom he comes to
love. Even if Morley’s responses to King and Collins are mainly because they
didn’t seem to want to take anything from him, but are at first simply doing
their jobs, Morley’s two friendships stand out in a novel which is otherwise
a chronicle of arid relationships dependent only on transactions and setting
conditions.
As a contrast, there is Duke Kling, whose “black book” of photographs
possibly serves a similar function to Morley’s Black Notebook of writing.

There is also the surely deliberate similarity between the names Duke Kling
and Lou King, which serves to emphasise the difference between the two
men. Apart from Morley himself, Kling is probably the most obviously loath-
some character in The Scarf. Although Kling doesn’t apparently kill people,
he makes his living from the results of death. Although it is all legitimate,
Kling’s business photographing victims lets him get thrills out of it as well.
He seems to consciously and actively enjoy what he likes: his enthusiasm for
death. In Morley, Kling thinks he recognises a fellow connoisseur. But even
Morley is repulsed by Kling. But it could be that Morley, too, does recognise
Kling as someone who does have some idea of the “little twisted world” there
is inside his head. Kling is very different to Lou King. King is pleasant and
helpful at the beginning of Morley’s writing career (as Bloch’s employer was)
while Kling wishes to help in a voyeuristic and sensational way at what will
turn out to be near its end.
At one point Morley launches into a tirade against the aims of the psy-
choanalysis that Jeff Ruppert practises with such success. Morley maintains
that “abnormality pays off.” The artists and writers are known to be crazy,
but there is also the “so-called common herd” that are generally accepted as
being fairly adjusted. But Morley, as one of them, says that they are not. But
they get along. Morley says that the “normal” people, who deal with these
“misfits,” are unhappy because they have to hide their troubles. If that is nor-
mal, then the aims of psychoanalysis, which seeks to make the adjustment,
are all wrong. People are maladjusted, because they haven’t been prepared for
the failure that is the lot for most of them (Bloch 69–70).
The Scarf is a portrayal of several maladjusted people, and of Daniel
Morley in particular. These portraits make the meaning of the psychological
horror and terror aspects of the novel. There is much evidence that Morley’s
personality is disordered and his sanity is doubtful — for example, his dreams
within dreams, the discussion with his reflection in a mirror, and the appari-
tion of the man in the green sports jacket. Morley knows the truth but lives
as if he doesn’t. He lives under the illusions he despises in others. The end-
ing is a bleak one: that is challenged, it is not overcome. There is no men-
tion of Morley being on death row, or having to pay for his crimes with his
own death. So Morley was not responsible due to his insanity?
The horror that is depicted in The Scarf is that people can be born,
influenced, coerced, into doing terrible things and continuing the vicious cir-
cle. Life without horror is a life with illusions. Bloch is nothing if not hon-
est.
NOTE ON “ANACHRONISMS” IN THE SCARF

The revisions that Bloch made to the original text of The Scarf for its
1966 reprint created several anachronisms, or what would be anachronisms if
the contemporary 1947 setting of the novel is still to be regarded as the pres-
ent. Here are some of the most obvious (at least to this writer) anachronisms
in The Scarf: Morley and Hazel dance in a bar to a Bob Dylan song on a juke-
box. Dylan was born in 1941 and his first album was not released until 1962
(Bloch 30). Morley and Pat mention the war in Vietnam. Although it had
been a trouble spot since at least 1945, American involvement really began to
escalate during the presidency of John F Kennedy after 1960 (Bloch 72). The
film director Ainsworth laments to Morley that so few people had ever writ-
ten a good book about Hollywood. He mentions “Shulberg” as one of the
exceptions (Bloch 117). Budd Shulberg’s popular Hollywood novel The Dis-
enchanted was not published until 1950. Morley mentions using a credit card,
which were not invented until 1950 (Bloch 120).
In any case, establishing an exact date for the setting of The Scarf is not
important. It is enough to know that it is the urban United States of Amer-
ica between the mid 1940s and mid 1960s. Even over forty years after the text
of The Scarf was last revised by its author, it is a period that still retains
enough associations and connections with our present. The settings of The
Scarf are still recognizable, and navigable by the reader, as much as any novel
which has a contemporary setting that has now become the definite past can
be. The types of human nature and actions explored in the novel remain more
obviously timeless.
CONCLUSION
The Scarf captures the feel and mood of the time it was originally writ-
ten. Several high-publicity serial killing “psychopaths” had attracted public-
ity in the United States since the mid 1930s. Memories of the atrocities
committed during the Second World War by often apparently otherwise nor-
mal people were still fresh (Larson). These sorts of issues, along with the not
uncommon violence and institutional corruption in much of American pub-
lic life, had naturally also long been reflected in American fiction. Dashiell
Hammett’s novel Red Harvest (1929) still remains an outstanding example of
this. The 1930s and 1940s are thus now seen as the golden age of a particu-
lar school of crime fiction. By the time The Scarf was published, novels and
short stories by such writers as Raymond Chandler, James M Cain, Dashiell
Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich were well on the way to achieving recogni-
tion as literature that had to be taken seriously. This literature presented an
alternative and sometimes almost dreamlike, but nevertheless real, portrait of
a nation.
Publication of The Scarf marked Bloch’s emergence as an author whose
work could stand alongside such famous names. In particular The Scarf is also
in the same class as John Franklin Bardon’s intense and deeply disconcerting
psychological crime novels The Deadly Percheron (1946), The Last of Philip
Banter (1947) and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (1948). Much of the low life
and mean streets atmosphere of The Scarf feels like the original story treat-
ment behind a Hollywood film noir or suspense thriller from that era, with
the more sexually fetishist serial killer aspects being reminiscent of a film like
The Spiral Staircase (1945) and, eventually, the film made in 1960 from what
became Bloch’s best-known novel, Psycho.
WORKS CITED
Bloch, Robert. The Scarf. New York: Dial Press, 1947.
_____. The Scarf. New York: Avon Books, 1948 [as The Scarf of Passion].
_____. The Scarf. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1966.
_____. The Scarf. United Kingdom: New English Library, 1972.
Scream Factory 11 (1993). Online at: http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/larson_early.html
(accessed September 21, 2008).
Moskowitz, Sam. “Robert Bloch.” Seekers of Tomorrow. Cleveland: World, 1966
Winter, Douglas E. “Robert Bloch” in Faces of Fear. New York: Berkley, 1985.
The Keys to the Bates Motel:
Robert Bloch’s Psycho Trilogy
Scott D. Briggs
“I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times.”

— Norman Bates [Robert Bloch, Psycho (33)]
It is a sad fact of our popular culture that millions of people across the
globe know Psycho very well: that is, they know the film of Psycho, directed
by the Master, Alfred Hitchcock, but not as many are familiar with Robert
Bloch’s Psycho, the novel that inspired the film. Hitchcock’s wildly successful
film continues to dominate the public consciousness and, indeed, its dreams
and nightmares: the stark, indelible black-and-white images, the characters,
the suspense and horror of the storyline, the infamous shower scene, Nor-
man Bates as masterfully portrayed by the unnerving Anthony Perkins, the
ultimate unveiling of “Mrs. Bates,” the unforgettably desolate setting of the
little neglected dark motel off the road far from the main highway and the
house behind it — all this has, by the present day, become such a part and
parcel of our culture that for many, Psycho is just one of Hitchcock’s most
popular and shocking films, now as then upon its release in 1960. However,
there would be no Psycho the film and mass-culture phenomenon without
Robert Bloch, or indeed, without his having written the novel Psycho in 1959,
upon which the film is very closely based, with minimal alterations by mas-
ter screenwriter Joseph Stefano.
Because there would have been no Hitchcock Psycho unless Robert Bloch
had first presented his novel, it is high time that the novel Psycho is given its
due, as well as the two follow-up novels that Bloch wrote much later. Just as
there would very likely have been no famous, successful author Robert Bloch
102
The Keys to the Bates Motel (Briggs) 103
without H.P. Lovecraft and his considerable influence upon, and encourage-
ment of, a young fan named Robert Bloch, there can be no discussion of Psy-
cho without Robert Bloch and his works. We are, therefore, not concerned
here very much with Hitchcock’s film adaptation, nor are we concerned with
the filmic sequels, including Psycho II (1983), ably directed by Richard Franklin
and written by the talented Tom Holland, which, although a substantially suc-
cessful and gripping sequel in its own right, had nothing to do with Bloch’s
own sequel, Psycho II (1982). And we can safely dismiss the final two filmic
sequels, of which, sadly, the only one of any merit at all is the last, Psycho IV:
The Beginning, a made-for-television film that was, at least, written by the
venerable Joseph Stefano. However, it seems Stefano’s late-career efforts were
in vain, since Psycho IV is, sadly, a mediocre effort at best, and not at all rep-
resentative of the best work of the various considerable talents involved.
It should also be noted that the original film of Psycho was remade in
1998 by director Gus Van Sant, as an almost shot-for-shot modern replica of
Hitchcock’s original, starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Anne Heche
as Marion Crane. Even considering Van Sant’s considerable talents as a direc-
tor of various original and innovative independent features, his overly rever-
ent remake, besides being generally unnecessary, adds nothing to enrich the
legacy of either Bloch’s novel or Hitchcock’s film, or anything of any value
to our appreciation or understanding of either. Van Sant’s remake was almost
universally panned and reviled by critics and fans of the original Psycho alike.
No, we are not so much concerned with any of those works as we are
here with one of the main credits included in Hitchcock’s iconic film: “Based
upon the novel by Robert Bloch.” Bloch himself repeatedly pointed out a com-
ment that Alfred Hitchcock made in an interview included in the 1969 book
The Celluloid Muse, edited by Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg. The inter-
view, as transcribed by Douglas E. Winter for his lengthy interview with
Bloch (as source for his interview collection Faces of Fear) in The Lost Bloch
Vol. 3, includes Winter’s urging that Bloch relates this key quotation from
Hitchcock himself : “Psycho all came from Robert Bloch’s book. The
scriptwriter, Joseph Stefano, a radio writer, he had been recommended by my
agents MCA, contributed dialogue mostly, no ideas” (Schow 274–75). Bloch
repeats this quotation from Hitchcock in Once Around the Bloch (Bloch 228),
at the opening of the chapter in which Psycho first emerges from his creative
psyche, and clearly it is no accident that he does so: Bloch wanted to leave
us with the point that however successful Hitchcock’s film is — and it is, in
the final analysis, very successful and clever indeed — it is still solidly based
upon his novel, and that Hitchcock, accustomed as he was to taking liberties
with other earlier literary properties that served as the basis of some of his
films, was also apparently proud of remaining faithful to the original novel.
Compare the film of Psycho with David Cronenberg’s highly truncated yet
remarkably masterful and effective 1983 film adaptation of Stephen King’s
novel The Dead Zone, and it is obvious how rare such an almost completely
faithful adaptation of a novel is, and how much this description applies to
Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Accordingly, the entire Psycho phenomenon is really but a major foot-
note in Bloch’s entire career — only the pinnacle of his decades of work in the
fields of horror and suspense. One has only to read classic Bloch short sto-
ries like “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” earlier novels like The Scarf and The
Will to Kill, his ingenious modern updating of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos
in the novel Strange Eons (1978), and other works to understand why this is so.
And so, we focus on Robert Bloch. We focus on Psycho and the sequels
Psycho II and Psycho House. We focus on some of the things that inspired him
to write Psycho, including the infamous real-life Wisconsin serial murderer
Ed Gein. But most of all, we focus on Bloch himself, without whom there
would be no Psycho, the phenomenon.
According to a 1985 interview with Robert Bloch conducted by Ron
Leming, the author was living “only 29 miles from Plainfield, Wisconsin,
when the infamous Ed Gein’s crimes were discovered” (Leming 3). In fact,
the Bloch family resided at this time in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, which was
Bloch’s wife Marion’s hometown; the family had moved there in 1953, after
Marion had become ill with bone tuberculosis, which had required a brief
stay in hospital.
Ed Gein was essentially a loner who was raised by his poor, troubled par-
ents in Vernon County, Wisconsin. His father, George P. Gein, was report-
edly a frequently violent alcoholic, and his mother, Augusta Gein was a
domineering and ultra-religious “fire-and-brimstone”-spouting figure who
exerted considerable influence upon her sons Edward and his older brother,
Henry G. Gein, who ended up dying in a suspicious fire at the family farm
in May 1944. Augusta Gein died of a second stroke not long after this, in
December 1945. Ed Gein spent the next twelve years living alone on the fam-
ily farm, during which, apparently, isolation and mental illness began to take
more than its toll on him.
Ed Gein was apprehended by police on November 16, 1957, in the small
town of Plainfield after suspicions that he was involved in the disappearance
of a local store owner, Bernice Worden, led to a full-scale investigation and
search of his home, located on a small farm. Worden’s body — decapitated,
gutted, and dressed out like a deer — was merely the beginning of the awful
discoveries the police made that day at the Gein homestead.
Gein was responsible for multiple unspeakable crimes, including the

murders of at least two to seven known victims, grave robbing, mutilation of
his victims, and “trophy”-keeping: using the skin and body parts of several
of his victims to fashion household implements such as lampshades made out
of human skin, human breasts as cup holders, and other examples too hor-
rifying to go into in any detail here. Ed Gein turned out to be one of the first
early models of the modern definition of the “serial killer” decades before the
term was coined, and the case made a considerable impression not only upon
Wisconsin but upon the country as a whole at the time.
Ed Gein was ultimately found mentally incompetent to stand trial after
his initial arrest. He was remanded to the Central State Hospital in Waupun,
Wisconsin, and later transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison. In
1968, Gein’s doctors announced that he was now mentally fit to stand trial,
but within a week, on November 14, 1968, a judge determined him not guilty
by reason of insanity, and Gein was confined for the rest of his life to Men-
dota State Hospital. The Gein case has been exhaustively well-documented both
in book and online sources, so there is no need to go into further detail here.
Although the exploits of Bloch’s creation Norman Bates pale before the
awful crimes of Ed Gein, the similarities between the real-life case above and
Bloch’s novel are unmistakable. It is an established fact (in fact, established
repeatedly by its very author) that the Gein case was the major influence on,
and impetus for, Bloch’s conceiving and writing Psycho.
According to Bloch himself, the true origins of Norman Bates, the
fictional creation, especially in an etymological and structuralist sense, can
also be traced back to his choice of a name for his protagonist and even the
very title of the novel. None of these choices were haphazard for Bloch:
My title derives, of course, from psychotic and also from psycholog y and psy-
choanalysis. It was from the latter sources that I sought rationale for my pro-
tagonist — or more precisely, an irrationale ... so I built a motel and put him
in business. But it wasn’t until I’d arrived at his fixation — accompanied by
the transvestism that was to form his modus operandi, modus vivendi, and
my “gimmick” all in one — that I hit upon his name.
Norman Bates.
The first name was a combination of two words, “nor man,” a pun which
contains the secret of the story: my killer is neither woman nor man. Bates?
I thought of his mother’s sexual domination in childhood and youth: a dom-
ination young Master Norman could not escape except through masturba-
tion. To say nothing of how Norman “baits” his trap and in another sense
“baits” his pursuers [Bloch, Once Around the Bloch 229].
Psycho was not Bloch’s first foray into the realms of crime fiction, psy-
chological horror, or psychological suspense. Earlier novels such as The Scarf,
Spiderweb, and The Will to Kill were all concerned with the doings of often
criminal, psychotic, and/or violent killers, conveyed in a film noir, pulp-
influenced style that mainly diverged from the styles Bloch had previously
employed in the pages of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines from his ear-
lier run of short fiction. The pulp element was still strong, but Bloch’s new
style for these novels was admittedly influenced by some of his favorite non-
fantasy or supernatural authors, including James M. Cain. Much of the sub-
stance of Bloch’s novels of this period diverge from his earlier work in the
field of supernatural fiction: the focus on the gods and monsters of the Cthulhu
Mythos, and historical but now quite distant real-life crime figures such as
Jack the Ripper, was now being replaced by a gritty, noir-inspired emphasis
on reality and desperate characters stuck in drab lives where the only way out
is crime, psychosis, murder, extortion, kidnapping, and other more tradi-
tionally pulp/noir themes and motifs.
Bloch’s earliest influences for these seminal novels leading up to his cre-
ation of Psycho clearly include some of the titans in the mystery/noir/crime/
pulp fields. Bloch’s setting for The Scarf alone seems to foretell later associa-
tions with Hollywood, the movies, and major allusions to Raymond Chan-
dler’s Los Angeles. As even the primary setting of Bloch’s later sequel to Psycho,
Psycho II, is Hollywood, it is obvious that his fascination with the place (and
the fact that his work would eventually find him relocating there permanently)
was no accident. It is also no accident that the plot of The Scarf revolves
around the character Daniel Morley, a novelist-turned-screenwriter who,
though seemingly urbane and mild-mannered, is in fact a despicable serial
killer of women, especially when he hits frequent writer’s block in his career,
looking to his own awful crimes to come up with new “material.” The major
difference between The Scarf and Psycho is that the former is told in the first
person, whereas later with Psycho, Bloch switches gears to a curious third-
person narrative, mainly to keep the secrets of Psycho hidden until the author
is ready to reveal them to the first-time reader. The Scarf reads like a confes-
sional story; Psycho is an effort at creating a true psychological mystery story
that attempts to keep the reader shocked, scared, and guessing at the truth
until almost the very end of the novel.
Bloch is careful at the beginning of Psycho to be somewhat vague about
the setting: there is a brief mention that Mary Crane’s sister Lila has recently
traveled to Dallas on a buying trip for her job at a record shop (thereby miss-
ing any sign of her sister’s initial disappearance), but Bloch is curiously reti-
cent to give us many details about exactly where his two leading ladies, Mary
and Lila, actually reside. Bloch sets up the small southern or southwestern
town of Fairvale as the main setting for later events, and just outside the town
of Fairvale is the location of the Bates Motel, the neighboring swamp, and
all the rest, but the lack of concrete information as to just where it is that
Mary Crane is heading as the novel begins sets up a strange sense of disloca-
tion: we could really be anywhere from Texas to Arizona, Oklahoma, or any
of the states surrounding the Midwest or Southwest. Bloch does mention that
Mary’s car has Texas license plates when she pulls into the motel, and that
she switches cars twice during her escape from her hometown.
It is not necessary to delineate the entire plot and characters of Psycho,
anymore than it is necessary to delineate to someone the details of Dracula
or Frankenstein. However, the basic plot is as follows: Mary Crane (whose
name was changed to Marion Crane for Hitchcock’s film), in a desperate
moment of temporary “insanity,” steals $40,000 from her employer, the Low-
ery Agency, in what is apparently Texas. Mary needs the money to give to her
fiancé, Sam Loomis, who runs a hardware store in Fairvale: he can’t marry
her until he is more financially solvent and has paid off various debts. Her
plan is to give Sam the money and explain her actions in person; she escapes
from town with the money in her purse, switches cars, and eventually ends
up caught in a rainstorm that causes her to try to find somewhere to stay for
the night and think things over before greeting Sam in Fairvale the next day.
She drives down a turnoff from the main highway leading to Fairvale and dou-
bles back to the sign that reads “Motel — vacancy.” Mary pulls into the Bates
Motel, meets the proprietor, Norman Bates (seemingly all alone in the place),
checks into the cabin adjacent to the front office of the hotel, is invited up
to the adjoining Bates house to dine with Norman as there are no nearby
restaurants, and then retires to her cabin to unwind and take a shower. Mary
Crane is murdered (in fact, beheaded) by someone dressed as an “old woman,”
or in fact an old woman, while in the shower.
The first three chapters of Psycho see Bloch slowly building the reader
up to the true shock of his apparent main protagonist Mary Crane being mur-
dered in the shower by someone who just might be Norman Bates’s control-
ling, insane mother — the person whom he complains of to Mary earlier when
they first meet and have dinner together. Bloch shies away, as he always does,
from any kind of graphic gore: instead, Mary’s murder, as with all the shocks
in the novel, are “related” to the reader in the barest, most stark possible man-
ner. Bloch achieves terror here merely with suggestion, and sneaking up on
the reader, as it were, leaving us hanging in a sense with the awful violent
act, but never indulging in any gratuitous gore, violence, or unnecessary
forensic descriptions of any of the above. Bloch knows, as Hitchcock knew
later when filming his movie (and also, in his case, due to pressure from the
censors), that the reader is already terrified enough when Mary is attacked in
the shower: all we need to read is “Mary started to scream, and then the cur-
tains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher knife. It was the
knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head” (Bloch, Psycho 37).
Entire volumes could be written on why Psycho the novel and film still
frighten us to this day — a result of these decisions of restraint — while many
modern horror and suspense films fail miserably or lower themselves to the
level of schlock by ruining whatever chills they might otherwise deliver with
gratuitous gore and phony “shocks.” Even modern counterparts like John
Carpenter’s Halloween, while more graphic in general than Psycho, still back
off from the excesses of needless gore and absurd FX-based (or worse, CGI-
based) bloody horror that seem to be diluting the field over the past twenty
or so years. Modern pretenders to the horror/suspense thrones would do well
to look to Psycho as the prime example of the adage that less is almost invari-
ably more.
The remainder of Psycho concerns the drastic switch of interest to the
remaining characters, chiefly Norman, Lila Crane, Sam Loomis, and an insur-
ance company investigator, Arbogast, who becomes involved in finding the
now missing Mary Crane in an effort to retrieve the stolen money. Bates gets
rid of Mary Crane’s body by putting it in the trunk of her car and sinking it
in the swamp that borders the Bates property. Lila travels to Fairvale after
days go by and her sister doesn’t communicate or reappear: upon her arrival
she finds out that Sam had nothing to do with the money or her disappear-
ance, and that he is also worried sick over Mary. Arbogast stumbles over the
Bates Motel as a place to search, and he is then murdered in the Bates house
by someone that looks like Norman’s mother. Lila and Sam desperately enlist
the help of Fairvale Sheriff Chambers, who knows the Bates family and quite
a bit more, it transpires, than many locals do regarding its rather dark his-
tory. Sam and Lila head to the motel themselves to see if they can discover
anything themselves after the sheriff ’s visit fails to uncover anything unusual.
Norman, realizing he is in grave danger of being exposed as the actual mur-
derer, knocks out Sam Loomis in the motel office, while Lila explores the Bates
house behind the motel, venturing downstairs to the basement and fruit cel-
lar, where, just as she is about to make the horrifying discovery that Bates
has exhumed and “preserved” his actual mother in a crude sort of taxidermic
state of decay (Norman had earlier told Mary Crane that his only hobby was
taxidermy), she is saved from the same exact fate of her sister by Loomis, who
wrests the large butcher knife from Norman’s hand, just as she sees that Bates
is indeed dressed up as if he were his own mother. Thus Norman is captured
and the case solved, especially after the swamp is drained and Mary’s body
and car are reclaimed.
As in Hitchcock’s film version, the denouement includes a second-hand

explanation of Bates’ illness and crimes by Dr. Steiner, the psychiatrist at the
State Hospital in charge of the medical observation of Bates. Steiner’s diag-
nosis of Norman Bates includes his belief that Bates, years before, after mur-
dering his own mother and her despised lover Joe Considine, fractured into
a true multiple personality that included three facets: the young “Norman”
who was obsessively protective of his mother; “Norma,” which was the facet
of his personality that, in a very real sense, became his mother; and finally the
adult “Normal” Norman, which was the side of Norman that he showed to
the outside world and which allowed him to cope with living in the real world,
and function without showing the two other facets of his split personality to
any outsiders.
Much criticism has been leveled by readers and critics over the years that
Bloch’s novel is either merely lurid pulp trash, hackwork, inferior to Hitch-
cock’s film version of it, and/or inferior to much of Bloch’s previous work,
short fiction or other works of his perhaps less famous than Psycho. In real-
ity, it can be shown that much of this criticism does not hold up to close
scrutiny. Bloch’s novel is very much the source for the film; accordingly, much
of the misattribution of the story, characters, and substance of the film over
the years to people like screenwriter Joseph Stefano, Hitchcock himself, or
others is, quite simply, erroneous. Also, the novel contains much more sub-
stance in terms of background and plot than the film, especially where Nor-
man’s history and motivations are concerned: the backstory regarding
Norman’s having murdered his mother and her lover years before is the linch-
pin to understanding his later psychosis and split personality.
With this information, Norman’s predicament becomes that much
clearer, although Bloch’s pudgy, middle-aged, easy-to-anger, and quite anti-
social Norman Bates is definitely less sympathetic than Anthony Perkins’s film
version of Norman, who is an appealing, even charming, younger version of
the character who elicits this sympathy by being (in outward appearance) a
“normal” young man trapped in an awful situation, his mental illness notwith-
standing. Bloch’s original Norman Bates is really none of these things, and is
closer (in appearance, at any rate) to an Ed Gein archetype of antisocial per-
sona, although the novel’s Bates is perhaps considerably more verbal and artic-
ulate than the real-life Gein ever was. Another difference is that Gein was
never diagnosed as a multiple personality, although he was certainly antiso-
cial, depraved, psychotic, unnaturally devoted to his mother, and had some
of the same unsavory “hobbies” that Bloch’s Bates has.
Bloch’s weakness, if he has any in Psycho, is a tendency toward surface
glibness of style, and a seeming unwillingness to dwell very deeply into the
psychological underpinnings of his characters — a surprising fact for what is,

essentially, a psychological thriller, and one now considered one of the best
of the genre. However, it also must be kept in mind that the novel’s scares
and shocks hinge upon not revealing too much of the characters up front, so
much of this reticence, in hindsight, can be seen to be a product of Bloch’s
carefully constructing his plot to begin with a true shock (Mary’s sudden
murder in the shower), and then slowly building to the next shock (Arbo-
gast’s murder) and then, following swiftly, to the final revelation about Nor-
man’s mother and his own true “identity.” With too much deep character
development, the surprises in store for the reader with Psycho would be ruined,
so that the very structure of the story dictates the spare style.
As for Psycho being merely a pulp novel, not worthy of Bloch’s more
accomplished or complex work, there is perhaps something to this criticism.
Bloch maintains an extremely simple storyline and relatively simple charac-
ters, although in this case they are characters that, even with Norman Bates,
the average reader can relate to, unlike (perhaps) some of Bloch’s earlier Love-
craftian or supernatural tales and novels. As for Psycho being “lurid,” it must
be said that Bloch carefully avoids trivializing or sensationalizing his subject,
eschewing outright gratuitous violence or gore or even any unnecessary digres-
sions of plot or character development that do not support the taut, central
suspense story at the center of the novel.
Ultimately, it must also be seen that Bloch’s intention with Psycho is not
to write a complex, poetic, diaphanously sensitive tale on the order of Arthur
Machen’s, Algernon Blackwood’s, or Clark Ashton Smith’s more esoteric flights
of the fantastic: the intent of Psycho is to be, above all else, a psychological
crime novel, and we can trace much of Bloch’s inspiration to writers like
James M. Cain and other masters of crime and suspense fiction, going all the
way back to Edgar Allan Poe and perhaps even earlier than that. Compare
the spare, taut, hardboiled prose style Bloch employs for Psycho to anything
of Chandler, Cain, Jim Thompson, et al., and his novel hold up to almost
any of the masterworks of those authors. Perhaps it is because Bloch did not
start out writing in this stark a vein of realistic psychological suspense that
Psycho was not taken as seriously when it first appeared than it generally is
now by critics. It was only much later masters of the genre influenced by
Bloch, including Stephen King, who fully grasped what Bloch was attempt-
ing to accomplish with novels like Psycho, The Scarf, Deadbeat, and The Will
to Kill: “In their own way,” wrote King in Danse Macabre, “the novels that
Bloch wrote in the 1950s had every bit as much influence on the course of
American literature as did the Cain ‘heel-with-a-heart’ novels of the 1930s”
(Rebello 12).
Bloch tried different styles for The Scarf and all his novels leading up to
Psycho, and it is a change that is at first disconcerting and even disturbing to
many used to Bloch’s early tales. Bloch employs this occasional switching of
points of view even within the same novel to masterful effect, especially in
Psycho. One has only to read Ramsey Campbell’s novel The Face That Must
Die (1977) to see how another modern horror master has taken on aspects of
Bloch’s pulp/crime/noir style while still managing to construct his own per-
sonal idiom out of Bloch’s clear influence. Campbell manages the same trick
as Bloch, revealing the psychological complexities of his workaday Liverpool
characters and psychotic killer, Horridge, while maintaining a stark, austere,
paranoiac, and often hallucinatory prose style that manages to strike out at
the reader with moments of pure, abject terror without ever resorting to over-
writing or purple prose. Both authors often quickly switch points of view from
character to character, allowing each individual “voice” to dominate a given
situation, then switching abruptly to the terrifying, fractured point of view
of a Norman Bates or Horridge, putting readers off balance by the rapid con-
trast from rationality to psychosis. It must also be noted that Bloch takes
what, by the late 1950s, were already hoary, creaking clichés (the old dark
house, the murder mystery, the damsel in distress, and all the standard trap-
pings of the detective story) and subverts them, eschewing ghosts and spir-
its for pure reality-based terror. If some of Bloch’s characterizations are just
this side of wooden and, very rarely, one-dimensional, the novel can still rest
securely in its own unique niche as being one of the most terrifying psycho-
logical suspense fictions of the twentieth century. None of the horror/suspense
masterpieces of the later part of the century, including Stephen King’s own
The Dead Zone (itself a clever combination of the psychological and super-
natural suspense novel, employing many tropes that Bloch, Cain, and Jim
Thompson had earlier made their own: the small-town setting, the totally
unsuspected, seemingly “normal” local who turns out to be a psychotic mur-
derer) or Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs would have
been possible without the ground broken by Psycho.
Bloch’s first sequel, Psycho II, would be more than twenty years in com-
ing, and was first suggested, perhaps not surprisingly, by Bloch’s agent, Kirby
McCauley, responding to Bloch’s reported despair, at the time, with the film
and television world’s turn to the auteur theory first propagated in the 1960s
by French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut, among others. Thus,
McCauley suggested that Bloch, instead of attempting to cater to the chang-
ing, dumbed-down, and over-commercialized whims of the film and TV
industries, “write Psycho II ” (Bloch, Once Around the Bloch 380). Bloch even-
tually rose to the challenge, although initially fighting grave doubts about
being able to come up with a satisfying storyline for a sequel. Commercial

interest in a sequel to Psycho was high (the novel being bid upon by Warner
Books, in its earliest stages), and Bloch came up with a satisfying storyline
that began with his musings of:
What had old Norman been up to all this time? He’d be getting along in years
now. Must be pretty damned dull for him, sitting there in that asylum; even
duller if they’d gone ahead and cured him. Or thought they’d cured him. But
suppose he wasn’t cured? And suppose he heard that somebody out in Hol-
lywood intended to make a movie about him? What if he busted out and
headed west? [Bloch, Once Around the Bloch 381]
Psycho II, the novel, finally made its debut in 1982, first published in a
limited edition by Whispers Press, the outstanding small press founded by
Stuart David Schiff, and then in mass market editions by Warner Books in
the United States and Corgi Books in the UK. Bloch was also urged by his
agent to show the completed novel to executives at Universal Studios as a cour-
tesy, but Bloch’s sequel was reviled by almost everyone at Universal, and he
was apparently told that the studio had no intention of filming a sequel to
Psycho in any case. The primary reason that Universal didn’t like Bloch’s sequel
was that it devoted a good many pages in criticizing the current trend toward
gory, gratuitous, often mindless horror films that were being churned out by
Universal and other studios at the time, and it probably didn’t help that Bloch
made the audacious move of killing off Norman Bates by the halfway point
of his sequel. Bloch refused to scrap his already-contracted for new work
(something that Universal preposterously suggested to him), and also declined
to write a novelization or a different screenplay for a film sequel, and so Uni-
versal went ahead throughout 1982–83 with its own original film sequel to
Psycho; it appeared in 1983, again starring Anthony Perkins. According to
Bloch in his autobiography, he was not even invited to any screenings of the
new film, although since he was not involved creatively in any way, he likely
did not consider this much of an insult. All that need be said here about Psy-
cho II the film is that it is a rather good, solidly written, directed, and acted
sequel on its own merits, but it can also be said that Bloch’s main premise,
that of Norman Bates escaping from the asylum rather than being “cured”
and released quietly back into society, as in Universal’s film, is still the more
logical, plausible one.
If, however, Bloch’s Psycho II had emerged as the superior of the two
sequels, then Bloch could have considered himself victorious, and while the
novel has a few merits, it still cannot begin to match the original in any way,
although it tries hard to do so. Psycho II contains so many flaws that it is hard
to know where to begin to describe why it is somewhat satisfying as a sequel
in general, but not nearly as satisfying as the solid novel by Robert Bloch that
one might have hoped for. The book was released to general acclaim and did
quite well worldwide in terms of critical reception and sales, but it now seems
dated, fails to hold up well upon re-reading, lacks believable characters, and
boasts a seriously awkward plot development that jars readers out of immer-
sion in the storyline instead of pulling them in closer.
Bloch’s sequel posits that Norman Bates, twenty years after the events
of the first novel, is still ensconced in the State Hospital not far from Fair-
vale, and that, if he is not totally cured, he has at least made significant progress
under the therapeutic eyes of Dr. Claiborne and Dr. Steiner, the latter famil-
iar to readers from Psycho. Two nuns from a nearby order, Sister Barbara and
Sister Cupertine, visit the hospital in a van one day, and one of them has some
psychiatric training and is interested in Norman Bates and his case. Dr. Clai-
borne reluctantly allows Sister Barbara to have a meeting with Norman in the
hospital library, and a guard foolishly allows the two to be alone for a time,
allowing Norman to murder Sister Barbara, change into her clothes, and
escape to their van. Norman hijacks the van, kidnaps Sister Cupertine, mur-
ders her later, makes his way to Fairvale, and ultimately manages (apparently)
to murder Lila Crane and Sam Loomis, who are still living in Fairvale, now
a married couple. Before Norman even gets very far away from the State Hos-
pital, we find him, at the beginning of chapter 5, having sex with the corpse
of Sister Cupertine in the back of the stolen van. This, to most intelligent
readers, should be a sure sign that Bloch’s and the novel’s credibility is in seri-
ous jeopardy. It is not even the awful fact of Bates’s necrophilia, but the utter
lack of any motivation or precedent for this nastiness: taxidermy and grave
robbing, yes, but necrophilia? There are some hints in Psycho of incest or
some unnatural sexual relationship between Bates and his mother in his past,
but nothing like this. Add to this the preposterous way that Bates manages
to escape, with Bloch positing that a guard would simply allow himself to be
distracted away from overseeing Bates’s meeting with the younger Sister Bar-
bara, thus allowing Bates to murder her and escape, and the novel is already
in serious danger of not being able to support itself under the weight of its
own absurdity.
The remainder of Psycho II follows the apparently erstwhile and dedi-
cated Dr. Claiborne, in alliance with the local police departments, on the road
to tracking down and recapturing Norman, and he proves elusive indeed: at
one point the van is found burned to a cinder and two corpses are found
inside. Later, Sam and Lila are found murdered in Sam’s hardware store in
Fairvale, apparently the victims of Bates, and then Dr. Claiborne finds a press
clipping about the movie that a Hollywood studio is planning about the Bates
case, leading him to suspect that Bates is now heading to Hollywood to put
a stop to its production, and/or cause further mayhem in the process. Clai-
borne flies out to Hollywood in pursuit and meets the studio people, cast,
and producers involved in the film. Everyone involved naturally becomes a
suspect in the case. Claiborne also believes he sees Bates at a Hollywood super-
market in the aisle security mirror, although for some reason he can’t seem
to catch up with him. Accidents and unexplained fires occur on the sound-
stage of the studio, and eventually a few key people start turning up mur-
dered.
Bloch attempts, in a sense, to match the suspense he achieved with Psy-
cho by having it transpire later in the novel that Bates was indeed murdered
in the burned-out van after a struggle with a vagrant hitchhiker he had picked
up after escaping from the hospital, leading the reader to wonder who exactly
is responsible for the sabotage and murders going on in Hollywood. The
improbable answer is that it is not young actress Jan Harper, playing Mary
Crane from the original story and desperate for this big break to not be ter-
minated, nor fat-cat producer Driscoll, nor the somewhat unhinged and drug-
addicted film director Vizzini, nor the intense screenwriter Roy Ames, to
whom Jan is attracted despite suspicions of his own possible mental instabil-
ity, but rather Dr. Claiborne himself, since Bates turns up quite dead, his body
positively identified by Sheriff Engstrom back home in Fairvale. Actually,
Bloch posits a double villain, having the film director Vizzini get loaded on
pills and attempt to sexually attack Jan Harper in the very “shower scene” set
built on the lot at the studio, while Dr. Claiborne suddenly appears through
the shower curtain and murders Vizzini, and then is wounded by a shot from
a police officer’s gun, thus saving Jan Harper in the nick of time and expos-
ing Dr. Claiborne as the “new Norman Bates”: as Dr. Steiner once again later
explains for the reader, Claiborne had to “become” Norman, as Bates once
“became” his mother, because having once planned a book about his patient,
and feeling that his whole life was wrapped up in him, and thus with the real
Bates now dead, the mentally unstable Claiborne had finally “snapped,”
adopted Norman Bates’ entire persona, and committed most of the acts in
the novel attributed to Norman, not counting the murders of the two nuns.
Bloch writes Psycho II in almost the exact same prose style he utilized
for Psycho, but the various shocks and scares are seriously compromised by
shoddy writing, one-dimensional character development, sheer awkwardness
of plot development, and some of the more absurdly gruesome elements,
such as the necrophilia episode described above, and such nastiness as the
seemingly pointless murder of a helpless little kitten by someone outside
Jan Harper’s Hollywood Hills apartment after an attenuated date with Dr.
Claiborne, which of course turns out later to be the work of the “good doc-
tor.”
Whereas the stripped-down, spare pulp fiction style works so well for
Bloch in the original novel, in some ways it almost becomes a liability in the
sequel. The various characters, especially those we meet when Claiborne
arrives in Hollywood, are generally not developed enough to elicit the reader’s
concern or sympathy. The only one for whom we truly have any semblance
of empathy is Jan Harper, and even she doesn’t come off as being particularly
believable or three-dimensional, or as emotionally complex as Bloch would
clearly like her to be. Matters are not helped by Bloch’s adherence to an amor-
phous third-person narrative, as with Jan’s musings when she first meets Dr.
Claiborne upon his arrival in Hollywood:
She didn’t expect an invitation to stick around, but at least she might have a
chance to say hello and size him up, maybe even get some clue as to why he
was here. Of course Roy would be furious, but after last night Jan had decided
it was no use trying to turn him around. What she needed to know right now
was whether Dr. Claiborne was on her team or the enemy list [Bloch, Psycho
II 141].
All this comes off as facile at best, and only serves to render Jan awk-
ward, a faceless female character that is not given any real time to develop a
full-fledged personality; and this is even more the case with many of the other
characters in Psycho II. Norman Bates is barely given any time to be a char-
acter in the sequel to his own story, and Lila Crane and Sam Loomis fare even
worse, being afforded barely a chapter being killed off as abruptly as Bates
himself. Bloch’s half-veiled polemical attacks, scattered throughout the novel,
against Hollywood and the excesses of modern horror fiction and films as also
compared to the increased intensity of real-life violence and horrific events
mainly come off as cranky and irrelevant, and fail to add much to an already
weakly constructed novel.
Sadly, Bloch’s audacious killing off of Norman early in the book cannot
match the true shock of his killing of Mary Crane in the first novel, and thus
even this conceit mainly falls flat. Psycho II also contains too much facile,
stereotyped, cardboard character construction and not nearly enough scares,
rendering it dull in the very places it so desperately needs to be terrifying.
Dr. Claiborne’s becoming the “new Norman Bates” is handled almost too
mildly to be frightening, and he doesn’t end up making the most convincing
of villains once he is “exposed.” While Psycho II is not a wretched book, it
has too many moments where it enters such territory to earn it a place in the
horror fiction canon of classics. It is by no means the nadir of Bloch’s late
novels, but it certainly cannot be ranked as one of his best.
Bloch followed up Psycho II eight years later with the final book in the
series, Psycho House. His intention here, according to comments he made later
in his autobiography, is to come to grips with the “spirit” of Norman Bates
and finally lay it to rest, as is illustrated quite plainly on the dust jacket of the
hardcover edition of the novel, illustrating the Bates house and motel sign,
although we find in the actual novel that this is merely a reconstruction of
the original, and not the actual house. The whole point of the third and final
book is the psychic shadow that the Bates case, house, motel, and, of course, the
deeds of Norman Bates himself continue to cast over the quiet town of Fairvale.
If Psycho House still doesn’t rise to the level of the sublime that Psycho
did, at least Bloch avoids some of the pitfalls that made Psycho II such an
uneven work. The only major flaw that one can point to in Psycho House, oth-
erwise a fairly gripping and distinctive crime novel (and really not a horror
novel, in any genuine sense), is that, given events in the second book, there
is no more Norman Bates to give the story a real sense of menace. Dr. Clai-
borne is still alive but is now safely locked away in the State Hospital, so he
cannot possibly be the suspect in the events of the third novel. Bloch is forced
to come up with new villains and suspects along the way, and his character
development, while still rudimentary in some cases, is vastly improved by his
focus on the town of Fairvale, its unique set of characters and local movers
and shakers, and in particular the inevitable huckster, Otto Remsbach, who
unwittingly sets new macabre events in motion by his decision to reconstruct
the old Bates motel and house as a tourist attraction. Some locals have a stake
in the potential financial success of this venture, most just want to forget the
whole Bates affair forever, and others may have an even better reason to stop
others from finding out what’s really going on behind the façade of the open-
ing of the Psycho House “attraction.”
The third novel primarily follows the exploits of true crime author and
reporter Amy Haines, who travels to Fairvale initially on a research trip involv-
ing a book she is planning on the Bates case. Before she even arrives in the
town to interview various personalities, a teenage girl is murdered while
exploring the not-yet-finished Bates House attraction, and so by the time
Amy arrives, she is bound to get involved in the new murder case as much as
the original one she is researching. Many of the locals are instant suspects,
and much of the novel is taken up not with scares and shocks, but with Amy
doing a Sherlock Holmes routine by interviewing and feeling out many of
the locals. Sheriff Engstrom, only a minor character from Psycho II, takes on
a greater role here by initially (albeit briefly) suspecting Amy as a possible
suspect in the case, and then becoming something of an ally with her in try-
ing to find out the truth behind the “new” Psycho murders.
On the whole, Bloch’s cast of local characters, especially in the case of

Amy Haines, fare much better here than the ones in Psycho II did, many of
them appearing to be small-town clichés on the surface but later proving to
be anything but that. One of them, Eric Dunstable, an out-of-towner who
follows Amy from Chicago, is a self-described crackpot demonologist to whom
nobody in town takes very kindly at first, but is later vindicated by his elim-
ination as a suspect by being murdered by the true culprit, local newspaper-
man Hank Gibbs. Gibbs befriends and assists Amy in her investigations from
the beginning, but is ultimately unmasked as the murderer of Dunstable and
others, including the teenage girl, by virtue of his having a secret involve-
ment with Otto Remsbach over the Bates house project and other factors that
cause him to “snap” just like Dr. Claiborne in Psycho II and become the lat-
est stand-in for the late Norman Bates.
Psycho House fairs less successfully when it is required to be viewed as a
horror novel, or even a truly gripping crime novel. Amy Haines makes a
decent protagonist and a much more believable female heroine than Jan
Harper does in the much more wooden and awkwardly written Psycho II, but
there aren’t many true scares or shocks in this novel. The initial one — the
murder of the teenage girl inside the faux Bates house — is handled as deftly
as any in the previous two novels, but ultimately it comes off as a rehash and
fails to chill the reader’s blood for this reason. Either that, or the modern reader
has indeed become truly immune to violence, which is, after all, one of Bloch’s
main contentions throughout the last two novels of the series, and this is an
entirely plausible scenario, but one that also perhaps makes the author’s job
that much harder, to truly scare and shock us with any degree of restraint,
especially for the newer generations of readers who are coming upon the series
only recently.
Psycho House also suffers from its fair share of clumsy and even wince-
inducing prose, especially when Bloch attempts to work contemporary pop
culture references into the novel. Bloch is clearly pandering to current pop-
ular culture, straining too hard to adopt the mindset of a young teenager,
and decidedly not on top of his game overall with clumsy passages like this,
opening the novel with the two young girls exploring the reconstructed “Bates
house” by cover of night:
“Don’t be funny!” It was obvious from the way she said it that Mick wasn’t
mistaking Terry for another Whoopi Goldberg. “My dad was only a kid when
this all happened here.”
Terry nodded, but she didn’t like the here part. Because even if this was a
fake bathroom and the frightened figure in the shower stall was merely wax,
there had been a real Norman, a real knife, a real murder, and here was just
too gross. Here at night, in the dark, listening to the sound of the door open-
ing in the other room [Psycho House 5].
Poor Whoopi Goldberg just doesn’t have much of a place in what is sup-
posed to be the terrifying opening chapter of a terrifying new sequel to Psy-
cho, and so all this more than falls flat — it falls very much on its face. There
is also the danger that such references only end up dating the novel very
quickly, something that does not mar the original Psycho, since Bloch care-
fully avoided many such references in that work. Even these wouldn’t matter
as much if the third book contained some genuine scares, but there are pre-
cious few to be had here.
Psycho House is somewhat more successful when viewed as Bloch’s jaun-
diced version of Peyton Place meets Psycho meets Jim Thompson’s small-town
crime classic The Killer Inside Me: while Bloch doesn’t provide a protagonist,
as Thompson brilliantly did (and as a first-person narrative, no less) in his
novel, who is at once a local, trusted policeman and also a dangerously
unhinged, almost autistic-seeming psychotic killer whom nobody initially
suspects of any wrongdoing, he does manage the feat of keeping the reader
guessing much more than in Psycho II as to the identity of his killer. When
it turns out to be Hank Gibbs, the mild-mannered, jovial newspaper pub-
lisher, who is an engaging character in Psycho House and one of the best-real-
ized in the entire book, Bloch manages to achieve, if not a terrifying horror
novel on the order of Psycho, at least a reasonably successful whodunit mys-
tery in the tradition of a Jim Thompson or Raymond Chandler short story.
If Bloch had only managed to terrify the reader in the third novel, it would
help erase the bad taste left by the deeply troubled and flawed Psycho II, but
as it is, it is merely an entertaining and engaging mystery tale that at least
manages to bring the long saga of Norman Bates and Fairvale U.S.A. to a sat-
isfying enough conclusion, and put those “demons” to rest once and for all.
Although Robert Bloch made, over the course of over thirty years of his
career, a valiant effort to expand upon his original novel Psycho and create a
cohesive trilogy of novels that would only build upon the achievement of the
first, it must be seen, in the final analysis, that he didn’t quite succeed in this
lofty endeavor as well as he might have done. It is a daunting task to equal
one’s own highest achievements, or, indeed, to produce anything that comes
as close to the greatness achieved by an original, groundbreaking masterpiece,
which the original novel Psycho most assuredly is.
Psycho II might have been a daring attempt to update the story and take
further chances with subverting a traditional horror/suspense narrative, but
it fails to frighten or achieve a level of greatness for reasons delineated ear-
lier. Psycho House was something of a fresh start for Bloch, and a nostalgic
way to end the series, but it still fails to achieve any substantial score on the
fright meter, and is more of a traditional mystery narrative than a horror
novel, or novel of psychological suspense; additionally, the latter novel found
Bloch’s grasp on his usually razor-sharp prose style slipping somewhat, and
unable to deliver the chills that most students of the original Psycho were
doubtless hoping for.
However, Bloch also wrote countless other first-rate novels, short sto-
ries, and film screenplays, and many of these, along with Psycho, can still be
considered the high watermarks of a long and illustrious career. Bloch’s entire
career awaits rediscovery by new generations, and there is plenty for them to
discover afresh. In the meantime, Norman Bates sits in the motel office, await-
ing new readers who have not yet had the pleasure of “checking in” to the
Bates Motel; the dark, menacing house still awaits them up on the hill behind
the motel; and “Mother” still awaits them in the dark at the bottom of the
stairs, right at the back, beyond the basement door, in the fruit cellar. And
thus, Psycho will remain, for all time, an unparalleled masterpiece of psycho-
logical suspense.
WORKS CITED
Bloch, Robert. Once Around The Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor
Books, 1993.
_____. Psycho. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959.
_____. Psycho House. London: Robert Hale, 1995.
_____. Psycho II. London: Corgi Books, 1982. (First hardcover edition: Binghamton, NY:
Whispers Press, 1982.)
Campbell, Ramsey. The Face That Must Die. Santa Cruz, CA: Scream/Press, 1983.
Canby, Vincent. “Sequel to ‘Psycho.’” New York Times ( June 3, 1983).
Joshi, S.T., and Stefan Dziemianowicz, eds. Supernatural Literature of the World: An Ency-
clopedia. 3 volumes. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.
Unofficial Robert Bloch Website (reprinted from Scream Factory No. 11 [1993].) Accessed
11 August 2008. <http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/bloch.html>.
Leming, Ron. “From Psycho to Asylum: The Horror Films of Robert Bloch.” The Unofficial
Robert Bloch Website (reprinted from Fangoria, November 1985). Accessed 11 August
2008. <http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/leming_interview1.html>.
Matheson, Richard, and Mainhardt, Ricia, eds. Appreciations of the Master. New York: Tor
Books, 1995.
Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. 1960. DVD. Collector’s Edition. Universal Studios, 1998.
Psycho. Dir. Gus Van Sant. 1998. Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment, 1998.
Rebello, Stephen. Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. New York: Dembner Books,
1990.
Schechter, Harold. Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho.” New
York: Pocket Books, 1998.
Schow, David, ed. Crimes and Punishments: The Lost Bloch, Volume III. Burton Hills, MI:
Subterranean Press, 2002.
Thompson, Jim. The Killer Inside Me. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1991.
Winter, Douglas E. Faces of Fear. New York: Berkley, 1985. Rev. ed. London: Pan, 1990.
Yanal, Robert. “Two Monsters in Search of a Concept.” Contemporary Aesthetics, an online
journal: Accessed: 11 August 2008. <http://www.contemporaryaesthetics.org/pages/about.
html>.
“Better the House Than an
Asylum”: Gothic Strategies in
Robert Bloch’s Psycho
Rebecca Janicker
Published in 1959 and filmed by Alfred Hitchcock the following year,

Robert Bloch’s Psycho has long been hailed as a groundbreaking and iconic
horror text, not least because of its links to a real-life serial killer (Wagner
479). Previous treatments of the text in both its novelized and cinematic
forms have concentrated on depictions of gender as with Julie Tharp’s “The
Transvestite as Monster: Gender Horror in The Silence of the Lambs and Psy-
cho,” issues of identity and community in the 1950s as in Mark Jancovich’s
Rational Fears and psychoanalytical concerns as in David Punter’s “Robert
Bloch’s Psycho: Some Pathological Contexts.” Following John A. McDermott,
who discusses Psycho’s literary heritage of horror with reference to its specific
antecedents in “‘Do You Love Mother, Norman?’: Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for
Emily’ and Metalious’s Peyton Place as Sources for Robert Bloch’s Psycho,” this
chapter considers how the Gothic operates in Bloch’s influential novel through
an examination of its themes, tropes and narrative structures. Whereas the
Bates motel is the initial site of horror, it is in the Bates house that Bloch’s
depictions of haunting find their fullest expression.
GOTHIC ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENTS

Early Gothic
From the very beginning Gothic literature came to be associated with
antiquated settings and supernatural events. Yet, despite this seeming disre-
121
gard for reality, it has ever been shown to engage with issues of injustice and
oppression that are only too real.1 It has worked to expose social ills, critique
the structures that have given rise to and sustained them, and question pre-
viously-unchallenged norms and values. Scholars of American Gothic have
traced the differences between it and the eighteenth century European works
in which its roots lay, noting how the genre’s adaptation to an American lit-
erary and social context has helped it remain relevant into the twentieth cen-
tury.
Enlightenment thinking in the eighteenth century cast the Middle Ages
as a barbaric and superstitious past which was derisively known as “Gothic”
(Botting 22). With its medieval trappings of castles, aristocrats and knights
rescuing damsels in distress, Gothic fiction in Europe represented a nostalgic
yet purposeful response to changing historical circumstances. The emerging
rationalist worldview, with its “belief in the power of human enquiry to solve
the problems of existence and its rejection of received ideas of orthodox reli-
gion” (Ellis 121) largely failed to engage with former, deeply-held, notions of
sin and darkness. Yet the need for such ideas did not diminish and Gothic
fiction, in its “attempts to explain what the Enlightenment left unexplained”
(Botting 23), continued to address anxieties about the place of evil in the world
that Enlightenment modes of thought attempted to elide.
Early Gothic was thus characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and
antiquity, drawing on heroes and villains, incarceration in physically repug-
nant and psychologically unsettling locations — epitomized by the iconic and
influential haunted castle of Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764)— death,
madness, subterranean places and situations of domestic and social unrest
(Edmundson 4 and 8). Thematically speaking, it often has an underlying
emphasis on the past encroaching on the present, often in a violent fashion
beyond the bounds of accepted reality, described by many critics as the return
of the repressed (Kilgour 3). Notably in Gothic fiction this may occur in a
quite literal manner, as when those believed dead somehow resurface to dis-
turb the living, in the form of ghosts, vampires, zombies or other unnatural
creatures. Such occurrences signify other ineffectual attempts to keep the past
buried. These latter may include individual transgressions, or instances of
wider social injustice, that inevitably come to light.2 So the act of repression —
as well as what is actually repressed — may be individual or social in nature.
Similarly, when the past returns to the present, it may be the contents of the
individual or the social subconscious forcing their way back towards recog-
nition (Clemens 3–4). With a plot driven by the impetus to solve one of pop-
ular culture’s most notorious crimes Psycho can readily be considered in light
of this literary tradition.
“Better the House Than an Asylum” ( Janicker) 123
American Gothic
Some of the early overtly European features like issues of aristocracy and
hereditary rights, as well as the crumbling castles and monasteries to which
they pertain, appear rather less pressing in the case of the United States given
its relatively new status as a country and its dearth of ancient buildings and
social institutions. However the genre was clearly found to be of continuing
relevance to this incipient nation whose fears were different from, yet no less
grave than, those of Europe, encompassing both anxiety about the past it had
fled and concern for the future it was trying to build. Indeed, as Jancovich
argues, “It was horror fiction’s concern with the relationship between the past
and the present which made it so appealing to American writers” (Horror 35).
With its desire to avoid past mistakes in forging a better society in the New
World, America was concerned with history from the outset and this was
reflected in its literary output.
Whilst it shared certain preoccupations such as the past, death and the
supernatural with its British predecessor, America brought its own special
anxieties to the genre. Early works represent attempts to found a new soci-
ety in the face of a hostile frontier experience and in isolation from the Old
World (Lloyd-Smith 25). Early religious imperatives to establish a model soci-
ety left their mark; whilst the horrors of institutionalized slavery and the
wrongful treatment of indigenous peoples have had far-reaching effects for
American culture and the fiction through which it is represented. Themati-
cally, it can be seen that these concerns point once again to the Gothic empha-
sis on the return of the repressed — this time in terms of American history
and experience. Despite its relative youth, America seems no less bound up
with history than its European forebears. Its brief history has provided
sufficient experiences for a uniquely national Gothic literature to emerge.
American Gothic’s thematic engagement with the national past has been,
and continues to be, a means of working through fears, crystallizing anxieties
and exploring how these tensions might be channeled (perhaps even con-
trolled) through a text. With its competing drives towards both the present
and the past, the Gothic novel has ever sought simultaneously to linger on
the impact of history whilst looking ahead to consider the future,3 and this
tension can be seen as one especially pertinent to an American audience.
Despite rationalist attempts to override notions of darkness, Gothic litera-
ture acknowledged that this was an essential part of the human experience,
and showed the extent to which people feel tied to their past, both personal
and cultural. A need for this continues to the present day, to which Gothic
horror’s continued longevity in American popular culture stands as a testa-
ment. As one such text Psycho dramatizes the consequences of living with a
troubled past.
Gothic fiction has responded to social change over the decades by tak-
ing a variety of different forms. One such development, of particular inter-
est here, was the shift in emphasis from an overtly supernatural treatment of
horror to a more scientific one.4 Jason Colavito sees this drive to “explain hor-
ror through the tools of modern science” (18) as part of the increasing role
played by science in society since World War II (17–18). Another shift in hor-
ror fiction which saw the threat as located within American society itself,
rather than being introduced from outside, can also be detected around this
time (Wood 78). Bloch’s fiction forms part of this trend insofar as it devel-
oped from his early Lovecraftian supernatural contributions to Weird Tales to
novels such as The Scarf (1947), which dealt with themes of madness and
death in relation to criminality (Punter and Byron 91–92, Daniels 903). An
interest in human minds and behavior soon featured heavily in his fiction,
S.T. Joshi describing his later work in terms of its “relentless emphasis on the
psychology of aberrant individuals” (108). Psycho has been singled out as espe-
cially noteworthy in this regard because of its “significant impact on the tale
of terror through its emphasis on psychological rather than supernatural odd-
ities” (Daniels 901).
It is important to note that Gothic conventions and concerns do not cease
to apply to Bloch’s work however, as long-established horror themes of death,
darkness and secrecy are still discernible, though in changed form. In noting
this shift in fictional subject matter, Stephen King has observed that “What
happened with Bloch when he ceased writing his Lovecraftian stories of the
supernatural ... was not that he ceased being a horror writer; he simply shifted
his perspective from the outside ... to the inside ... (original ellipsis) to the
place where the Werewolf is” (95). So, whilst Psycho may be bound up with
science and natural forms of explanation, most conspicuously with such dis-
ciplines as psychology and psychoanalysis, it can still be understood in terms
of the American Gothic tradition.
GOTHIC CONCERNS IN PSYCHO

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick describes how readers and critics approach the
Gothic novel in describing its conventions (with some omissions) thus:
You know the important features of its mise en scène: an oppressive ruin, a
wild landscape.... You know something about the novel’s form: it is likely to
be discontinuous and involuted, perhaps incorporating tales within tales,
changes of narrators, and such framing devices as found manuscripts or inter-

polated histories ... certain characteristic preoccupations will be aired. These
include ... sleep-like and deathlike states; subterranean spaces and live burial
... the discovery of obscured family ties ... unintelligible writings ... the poi-
sonous effects of guilt and shame; nocturnal landscapes and dreams; appari-
tions from the past ... the charnel house and the madhouse [8–9].
Many of the features outlined above can be clearly discerned in Psycho. Fur-
ther, for the purposes of this chapter, they have been divided into features of
setting, theme and trope, all of which can be considered as important to a
Gothic narrative.
At the outset the novel moves from a scene depicting the troubled rela-
tionship between forty-year-old motel owner Norman Bates and his overbear-
ing mother to his encounter with troubled Mary Crane who has stolen money
from her employer on an impulse. In the process of taking it to her fiancé
Sam Loomis so he can pay off his debts and marry her sooner than they had
originally hoped, a combination of fatigue and adverse weather conditions lead
Mary to miss her turn and make an impromptu overnight stay at the Bates
motel where she is murdered. When she fails to return home her worried sis-
ter Lila contacts Loomis and the pair of them — in conjunction with the insur-
ance company’s investigator Milton Arbogast — work to discover her
whereabouts. Bound up with the trappings of crime fiction, Psycho’s narra-
tive is thus initially driven by the quest to regain the stolen money and then
by the enquiry into Mary’s disappearance, whilst the figure of the private
investigator and Bloch’s “tight-lipped, blandly cynical style” ( Joshi 108) are
evocative of the hardboiled tradition. It thus seems that a straightforward
investigation is the main thrust of the narrative.
However, although the reader is privy to Mary’s brutal murder and Bates’s
discovery and disposal of the corpse on behalf of his mother (whom he believes
to be the murderer), later revelations reveal that the reader has been misled
as to the real perpetrator of the crime. As is now widely-known, not least due
to Hitchcock’s celebrated film, the real facts of the matter are far from what
they had seemed. Mrs. Bates and her lover Joe Considine both died as a result
of poisoning some twenty years previously, which was widely known and
accepted as suicide. What was unknown to anyone but Norman is that he
poisoned them and was so guilt-ridden about killing his mother that he “actu-
ally brought her back from the grave and gave her a new life. He put her to
bed at night, dressed her and took her down into the house by day” (Psycho
124), identifying with her to the extent that he developed a fractured person-
ality consisting of himself as a child, himself as an adult (his public persona)
and his own mother. Taken in by this charade, out-of-towner Arbogast is
insistent on meeting with Mrs. Bates which leads Norman to murder him
and dispose of his corpse in the same way as Mary’s. It is only through Lila’s
examination of the Bates house behind the motel that the full extent of his
actions is made known and Norman is taken to the State Hospital. With its
convoluted structure and subject matter of death and madness, secrecy and
haunting, Psycho has clear links to the Gothic tradition.
Theme: “She’d Come Back, Out of the Swamp!”

The over-arching themes that emerge with the outcome of the novel,
tinged as they are with the supernatural, may be interpreted as Gothic in
nature. From the outset there is a clear sense of a troubled past that will
inevitability shape a troubled future presaged by a quarrel about old regrets,
apparently between Norman and his mother, which concludes with her telling
him “you’ll never get rid of me, even if you really wanted to” (Psycho 12). The
crime fiction framework suggests that Norman’s history of trauma and the
crimes to which it has led will inevitably be unearthed and that he (and oth-
ers) will have to face the consequences. The toxic nature of guilt as described
by Sedgwick makes its effects felt. Although Norman is unable to sense a per-
sonal connection to the murders, and his reflection “You always gave yourself
away if you had a guilty conscience” (80) is an initial source of comfort to
him as he is convinced of his mother’s culpability for the crimes, he has
nonetheless long been plagued by a mental and emotional turmoil which the
psychiatrist ascribes to the “guilty knowledge of his mother’s death” (123).
However, Norman’s reflections on his personal innocence point unerr-
ingly to the Gothic preoccupation with the return of the repressed. As the
explanatory quote above indicates, unable to bear the guilt of the murder,
Norman “brought his mother back” in a grisly exhumation scene that would
sit quite comfortably in a traditional Gothic novel, relived in his memories
of “the graveyard at night and the digging and the panting and the splinter-
ing of the coffin lid” (125). This literal instance of the buried past being res-
urrected and brought into the present serves as a symbol of Norman’s repressed
crimes, committed both during and prior to the events described here, which
cannot lie forever dormant.
His rebellion against parental figures, first detected by the reader in his
verbal censure of his mother and later discovered to have found full physical
expression in her murder along with that of the replacement father figure of
the lover, is also suggestive of a struggle with the past and with older gener-
ations. Philip Wylie’s best-selling book Generation of Vipers (1942) set forth
the dangers of “Momism” whereby mothers, especially those deprived of their
husbands during wartime, would lavish a harmful excess of time and affec-
tion onto their children (May 64). The fear was that boys in particular would
be rendered passive and perhaps even embroiled “in a dangerous Oedipal
cycle” (May 65) as a result of frustrated female sexuality. Critics of the film
have maintained that Norman’s evident crises of identity and masculinity
have been caused by his mother’s dominance, but this view is problematic as
the depiction of Mrs. Bates in Bloch’s novel is shaped entirely by Norman’s
perception of her and cannot be considered an objective account of her behav-
ior or her attitudes towards him ( Jancovich, Rational Fears 255–256).
Arguing instead that for Bloch the “killer is often seen as a product of
modernity, not maternity” (Rational Fears 246) Jancovich posits that Psycho,
as with other of Bloch’s fictions, reflects wider concerns about the emerging
modern world of the 1950s, which increasingly saw individuals becoming iso-
lated as old communal structures eroded (247–248). Whereas Jancovich notes
that Norman hasn’t lost contact with his family origins insofar as he retains
ties that are too strong to his roots, it must further be noted that, physically
ostracized from the township by changes in the road system, Norman has also
failed to integrate into his local community in a personal way. This is evi-
denced clearly as the novel progresses; despite the Sheriff ’s repeated assertions
that he knows Bates, it soon becomes clear that no-one can really be said to
know him in any conventional sense.
Setting: “There Was Nothing about an Empty House Like This

to Frighten Anybody.”
Stylistically, because it seeks to generate suspense, the Gothic is a genre
that often exploits the atmosphere in which the action is set. To this end,
descriptions of physical space are used to create mood and connote underly-
ing themes. American Gothic has been as much concerned with setting and
its significance as its European predecessor. Early Gothic features, embedded
in novels which critiqued oppressive and outmoded social norms, were adapted
to address American fears about the hostile wilderness instead: “When cliffs
are substituted for castle towers, and caves for dungeons, the threats and dan-
gers of the natural world replace the threats and dangers of ancient aristo-
cratic power structures” (Bergland 52). Authorial choices and descriptions
about settings may help not only to establish an environment of fear but also
go some way towards communicating the wider social issues at stake in the
narrative.
The isolation of the Bates motel and the house beyond, on an obsolete
highway that very few passing motorists encounter and for which even local
residents have little use, is of significant interest when considered in light of

this tradition. Surrounded by rural woods and a deep, murky swamp, this
lonely place has been literally bypassed by the kind of social progress repre-
sented by the new highway which circumvents the motel and embitters Bates
at the opening of the novel.5 Such a location is reminiscent of the kind of
precarious and isolated wilderness settlements so prevalent in early American
Gothic. Reminded of its existence at last only by the exertions of the metic-
ulous investigator, Loomis forgets about the motel entirely and dismisses the
road as “The old highway — it’s a county trunk now. But there’s absolutely
nothing along that route” (Psycho 63). Its proximity to woods and marshland
designate it as a dwelling close to nature, “way down at the edge of the coun-
try” (62), and on the very periphery of known, civilized space. Its isolation
points to fears about the vulnerability of such communities that hark back to
the founding days of the nation and were thus addressed in its earliest Gothic
fictions; to American fears about an absence of civilizing influences rather than
to European fears about the oppressive nature of entrenched social practices.
Moving from the surrounding area to the nerve-centre of Bates’s work-
ing life, Mary’s observation on entering the motel that “There was nothing
distinctive about the office ... it was warm and dry and bright.... The room
was plainly but adequately furnished” (22) suggests nothing which might
alarm even the most cautious. Indeed, Norman associates the public space of
the motel with the adult facet of his personality (Punter 103), later depriving
Mother of her keys to ensure this distinction between public and private is
observed: “She was safe in the house and he was safe in the motel” (Psycho
69). This division of the working and domestic spheres speaks of Norman’s
attempts to exert independence from Mother and can also be linked to wider
concerns in 1950s culture about threats to masculine identity. Such tensions
were explored in Sloan Wilson’s best-selling novel of 1955 The Man in the
Gray Flannel Suit which sees its protagonist struggle to assert his masculin-
ity in a feminized domestic environment (Halliwell 62). However, the scene
in which Bates moves aside a framed license on the office wall to reveal a
drilled hole into Mary’s room, through which he spies on her as she undresses,
reveals the apparent normality of the office to be only a veneer of security.
This element of secrecy, combined with the modification of the architecture
for malevolent purposes, is redolent of the machinations of early European
Gothic villains and positions Mary as a victim, firstly of voyeurism and sec-
ondly of the murder to which this first transgression leads.
Once the action moves from the motel to the house, further hallmarks
of the Gothic start to make themselves manifest. Invited by Bates to join him
for supper in the early part of the evening, Mary’s initial reaction to his home
immediately distinguishes her experience of this private space from that of

the public one which preceded it as she is struck by its antiquation: “she
couldn’t quite believe what she saw; she hadn’t dreamed that such places still
existed in this day and age” (24). Much later, towards the climax of the action,
Lila goes up to the house, convinced that it holds the key to the mystery. The
inclusion of such a scene might be considered a Gothic convention in itself,
as “we have, of course, been present at this scene of the ‘exploration of the
house’ before in many previous literary and filmic (q.v.) manifestations of the
Gothic” (Punter and Byron 241). Her covert foray into this ominous terrain
is rich in those Gothic conventions of oppressive and repugnant spaces to
which Sedgwick alludes: “The house was old, its frame siding gray and ugly
here in the half-light of the coming storm. Porch boards creaked under her
feet, and she could hear the wind rattling the casements of the upstairs win-
dows” (Psycho 110). Visual markers of neglect, ambient sounds and the hos-
tile elements all contribute to an atmosphere of unease as she crosses the
boundary into this secret place.
The house can thus be seen as a more modern, domesticated version of
the iconic haunted castle that played so prominent a role in early Gothic lit-
erature (Railo 7), referred to by King more simply as a “Bad Place” (296).
Such locations have symbolic as well as more practical functions and this can
be seen in the case of Psycho. As Benjamin Hervey puts it “In true Gothic
style, the grip of the past is figured architecturally, in the looming, archaic
Bates house ... where the dead mother still lurks in secret recesses” (237).
Lila’s discovery of Mrs. Bates’s corpse, concealed by an anxious Norman in
the depths of the basement, forges links between the novel’s use of an evoca-
tive setting and its underlying suggestion of supernatural Gothic tropes of
haunting.
Trope: “There are No Ghosts”

Sedgwick’s work on Gothic conventions indicates that ghostly activity
and supernatural states are key recurring tropes. Suggestions of such episodes
appear early on in the novel and become increasingly instrumental in build-
ing up atmosphere, ultimately proving crucial in the explication of the nar-
rative as a whole. There are several allusions made to such supernatural
occurrences here.
Having been assured of the demise of Norman’s mother by the Sheriff,
Lila is understandably discomfited when her search of the house reveals Mrs.
Bates’s eerily-preserved bedroom to be “a vital, functioning entity complete
unto itself. It was spotlessly clean, immaculately free of dust and perfectly
ordered. And yet, aside from the musty odor, there was no feeling of being
in a showplace or museum ... it was still the room of a living person” (Psycho
115). The language here suggests more than mere memory, it actually denotes
this space as one inhabited by an active, sentient presence. Lila’s disconcert-
ing conclusion “And it was still alive” (115) underscores the extent to which
the room is imbued with a sense of occupancy, despite her knowledge to the
contrary gained from the phlegmatic Sheriff and even the ultimately natural
explanation for the novel’s sinister events. Her repeated assertion of “There
are no ghosts” (115, 116) only serves to exacerbate the sense of a haunting pres-
ence, as she is increasingly aware of the extent to which Mrs. Bates, in some
unnatural form, still occupies the Bates house.
A further Gothic trope here is Norman’s experience of what Sedgwick
terms “sleep-like and deathlike states” (8), as when he passes out after spying
on Mary thinking: “now he could sleep. There was no trick to it at all. You
merely went into the roaring, and then past the roaring. Then everything was
silent. Sleep, silent sleep” (36) and reawakens to discover her corpse. Whilst
aware that he periodically loses his grip on full conscious awareness, as evi-
denced by his acknowledgment that he “knew he wasn’t thinking clearly any
more” (45), and that these occasions are somehow associated with his need
for his mother to come to his aid, he clearly has no firm grasp as to their extent
or purpose. As the narrative unfolds, his dipping in and out of these states —
varyingly attributed to sleep, drunkenness and the passivity engendered by
his mother’s presence — compromises his already slender grasp of reality and
serves to mislead the reader about “Mother’s” true identity. A typically Gothic
device, this unreliable narration shows the extent to which her unnatural,
ghost-like presence has infiltrated his mind and directly influenced his behav-
ior.
One of the novel’s first allusions to the supernatural and another exam-
ple of a trope which occurs throughout it is Norman’s interest in occult
knowledge. His ambivalent feelings about this find their expression in his
condemnation of such behavior, expressed as the views of his mother. When
seen in light of his interest in psychological research this seems a simple quest
for knowledge, yet his perception of himself as “a man who studied the secrets
of time and space and mastered the secrets of dimension and being” (67)
implies something less conventional and rather more sinister about the altered
states into which he passes. Along with other ostensibly throwaway remarks
such as the Sheriff ’s suggestion that Arbogast cannot have seen Mrs. Bates
but might have seen her “ghost sitting in the window” (96), Bloch seems to
suggest the possibility that conventionally Gothic apparitions from Norman’s
past are at work here.
Narrative: “We’ll Probably Never Know Everything That

Happened”
These features of setting, theme and trope all work together to create a
uniquely Gothic narrative form. The full thrust of the plot is far from clear
from the outset and hidden layers of meaning reveal themselves only gradu-
ally. What seems initially to be a straightforward crime investigation eventu-
ally reveals much more transgressive acts that have eluded an entire community
for many years and point to societal shifts that extend beyond personal cir-
cumstances.
The true story is revealed only at the end, contingent as it is upon the
intervention of experts, through a partial untangling of Norman’s identity
confusion and disordered memories. As Punter notes, the novel thus takes the
form of a tripartite structure of “account, diagnosis and aftermath-footnote”
(95). Another of Sedgwick’s conventions — that of the “found manuscript”—
retrospectively contributes to the explication of events in the form of Mrs.
Bates’s suicide-note, which was clearly faked by Norman, when it is re-exam-
ined. The lead psychiatrist’s conclusion that “the wording of the note itself
would be enough to tip off anyone that something was wrong. But nobody
noticed” (123) shows how Norman’s troubled past can only be pieced together
from fragmentary evidence.
The narrative style may also be likened to Sedgwick’s conventions. The
changes in narrator give insights into various characters’ states of mind, whilst
limiting them to prevent a clear overview of events emerging until the end.
Key insights are gained only gradually and by different characters, a device
which serves to conceal crucial information and thus prevent any one person
from gaining a complete picture until the novel’s denouement. This technique
helps to maintain the twists and turns of the plot and to sustain suspense.
The confusion Norman experiences in being pulled to the past whilst trying
to make a life in the present leads to typically–Gothic twists and turns in both
propelling and impeding the narrative. In particular, his subjection to altered
mental states through his mother’s “possession” of him ensures that the reader
is kept in the dark as much as he is — we are unable to understand fully as
our vision is as restricted as his.
CONCLUSION
The fragmentation of Norman’s personality is traced to his writing of
the suicide note. Yet, in terms of Gothic’s preoccupation with the literal and
thematic return of the repressed, his transgressions may be said to truly begin
with the disinterment of his mother’s body and to culminate finally in his
physical incarceration in the State Hospital and mental appropriation by
Mother’s personality. Bookended thus by the charnel-house and the mad-
house, two of Sedgwick’s most compelling conventions, Psycho’s narrative
draws on the Gothic heritage of unsettling locations and themes. Pulling the
strands of the chapter together, it is evident that the novel’s tropes are rooted
in the supernatural tradition of European Gothic, its setting reflects chang-
ing American concerns about the interplay between community and wilder-
ness and the “poisonous effects of guilt and shame” (Sedgwick 9) run
throughout. These elements combine to create a multi-layered narrative which
suggests that confronting a troubled past is neither clear-cut nor easy, but is
certainly inexorable.
NOTES
1. To take one example, Valdine Clemens suggests that the portrayal of domestic vio-
lence in the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, was indicative of repressive conditions
for women at the time of its publication: “The supernatural element could be held respon-
sible ... for the atmosphere of terror and psychic turmoil that also arises from familial abuse”
(31).
2. Otranto describes both more individualized crimes, as its narrative details the tyrant
Manfred’s upholding of his usurping ancestor’s claim to the eponymous castle, and social
ills, as with Clemens’ argument that it taps into latent fears about widespread domestic abuse.
3. Kilgour notes, in The Rise of the Gothic Novel, that “The very name ‘gothic novel’ ...
is an oxymoron that reflects its desire to identify conflicting impulses: both towards new-
ness, novelty, originality, and towards a return to nature and revival of the past” (17–18).
4. Although the term “Gothic” was not synonymous with “supernatural” in the first
flush of Gothic literature (and has not become so in later years), early examples of such
fictions tended to draw overtly on the supernatural as with Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, or to
dangle the possibility of the supernatural in front of protagonists and readers alike as with
Ann Radcliffe’s works which culminated with natural explanations for mysterious events.
Whilst the supernatural might not be the ultimate source of horror in novels like The Mys-
teries of Udolpho (1794), as Ellis notes, it is still exploited to great effect as: “Whilst the phe-
nomenon remains unexplained, supernatural explanation is powerfully suggested (my
emphasis)” (67).
5. It is clear from Norman’s admonishment of his mother, later revealed to be a con-
versation entirely with himself, that he has long blamed her for the motel’s relegation to the
back roads: “I told you how it would be at the time, when we got that advance tip that they
were moving the highway” (Psycho 9) he rants. His tenuous grasp of reality makes it hard to
determine exactly when this tip was made, but the burgeoning of the Interstate Highway
System in the 1950s, which led to motorists bypassing small towns, points to the further frag-
mentation and isolation of minor communities at this time (Dunar 171).
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Ripping Good Yarns:
Robert Bloch’s Partnership
with Jack the Ripper
Randall D. Larson
Of all the various characters, real and unreal, who populated the fiction
of Robert Bloch, perhaps the one who had the most significant influence upon
his direction as an author was the legendary Whitechapel killer known as Jack
the Ripper, whose unsolved murders and mutilations of at least five (and likely
more) women remains one of history’s great macabre mysteries. Saucy Jack
opened a new vein in Bloch’s fiction, disemboweling a new kind of literary
entrail that Bob would make his own. In the decades that followed his first
fictional encounter with the infamous murderer of 1888 London, Bloch’s lit-
erary journey would return to Whitechapel on numerous occasions, examin-
ing and displaying the deeds of Jack the Ripper and holding them up as
unfortunate icons of hatred, violence, and of fear.
When Bloch first took a stab at writing a contemporary short story
involving Jack the Ripper in 1943, he had been writing professionally for nine
years. From 1935 to 1938 almost the entirety of his typewritten output con-
sisted of Lovecraftian horror stories, exploring and embellishing the fictional
mythology devised by his Rhode Island mentor, and concocting clearly inven-
tive and beautifully crafted entertainments that mostly culminated in a sud-
den shock ending, a witty punch-line invoking not a joke, but jolt of shock
and horror. Despite the success and effectiveness of these stories, most of
which appeared in Weird Tales magazine, this period of Bloch’s writing
remained shackled by the Lovecraftian idiom in which he was then writing.
A wonderful idiom it was, but even Bloch has admitted that his writing had
134
Ripping Good Yarns (Larson) 135
changed by 1939 and he was emerging from the Lovecraft cocoon to explore
new worlds of fantasy fiction. By 1938, Bloch branched out into science fiction,
writing for Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, among others; uncloak-
ing himself from the veil of Lovecraftiana and beginning to explore his own
style of writing. In one of these, 1939’s “The Strange Flight of Richard Clay-
ton,” Bloch first began to explore the psychological realms of fantasy fiction
that would become his specialty in the decades to come.
When his story “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” was published in the July
1943 issue of Weird Tales, the 9,000-word tale soon became a pivotal effort in
his early career, as well as his single most popular short story. Until the novel
Psycho became the label permanently to be affixed to Bloch’s byline, “YTJTR”
was the story most often associated with him throughout the 40s and 50s.
Although Bloch himself considered it to be rather “run of the mill,”1 the story
went on to be anthologized and adapted more than 40 times since its first
appearance.
In 1943, Jack the Ripper was nowhere as popular a figure of mass mur-
der as he has become today. There were no Ripper tours in London, no hun-
dreds of nonfiction accounts of the Ripper’s deeds, and only one famous work
of fiction, Marie Belloc Lowndes novel, The Lodger and its equally reputable
1926 motion picture adaptation from Alfred Hitchcock. “At the time I wrote
‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,’ the course-material available to me was very
skimpy — a few short articles in true crime books,” Bloch told interviewer Ger-
ald Brown. “Since then, Ripper books have become a veritable cottage indus-
try...” (24).
In Bloch’s hands, Red Jack became the subject of three famous stories,
one notable teleplay, and one full novel, as well as a subject reference in many
other stories having to do with violence and murder. As a consummate and
perceptive observer of society, Bloch found in Jack the Ripper a literal and
literary icon for commentary on the social history of violence, and its poten-
tial residency in all of us. As Brown noted, Bloch here was “tapping into the
feral part of his mass-audience’s psyche. ‘The Ripper’ fires our primal super-
stitions and stirs our mythological yearnings” (23).
“YTJTR” tells of an amateur detective in Chicago, still searching for
the killer of Whitechapel, convinced he is alive and active in the contempo-
rary United States and that his killings are necromantic sacrifices made to
sustain his youth. Despite Bloch’s subsequent ambivalence about the story’s
literary merits, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” is a masterful exercise in ter-
ror. Technically well conceived and executed, the story grasps the reader
from the start and retains that hold through the slamming twist of its final
moments.
Sam Peeples, in his 1964 biography of Bloch, noted that the story is also
notable for another reason: “Bloch discovered a new ingredient that surpris-
ingly made it possible for [him] to break the mold of the Weird Tales pattern.”
According to Peeples, this ingredient was reality. “The oddly compelling
strength of the commonplace, the usual — when given a turn or two out of
alignment — marked this story, and most of the stories that were to follow it”
(3).
Indeed, Bloch was to become a master at concocting vivid terror in the
most common and mundane of settings and circumstances, from scarves to
showers. While a select few of his subsequent works would return to the
eldritch landscapes and strange aeons of his Lovecraftian period — and wel-
come these tales would be —“YTJTR” marked Bloch’s most powerful explo-
ration of the contemporary real world and the violence that both affects it
and is influenced by it. It may in fact be the very ordinariness of the circum-
stances that contributes the most to the impact of the tale’s suspense and ter-
ror, and those that would follow. Beneath the words, ruminating like a restless
serpent writhing below the forward motion of his storytelling, lays Bloch’s
constant and perceptive observation of the human condition and its preva-
lence towards violence. Since “YTJTR,” many of Bloch’s short stories and most
of his novels were devoted to a direct examination of violence in society; a
scrutiny that began in this pivotal tale.
“In the beginning my work was almost entirely in the field of fantasy,
where the violent element was openly and obviously a product of imagina-
tion,” Bloch wrote in 1977 about his rapport with the Ripper. “The mass vio-
lence of World War II caused me to examine violence at its source — on the
individual level. Still unwilling or unable to cope with its present reality, I
retreated into history and recreated, as a prototype of apparently senseless
violence, the infamously famous mass murderer who styled himself, ‘Yours
Truly, Jack the Ripper’ ... my first novel, The Scarf [was] a first-person account
of a mass murderer. Since that time, while still employing fantasy and sci-
ence fiction for satire and social criticism, I’ve devoted many of my subse-
quent short stories and almost all of my novels to a direct examination of
violence in our society.... Twenty years ago I wrote [the killer in The Scarf ]
as a villain — today he emerges as an anti-hero. For the violence has come
into its own now; the violence I examined, and at times projected and pre-
dicted, has become today’s commonplace and accepted reality. This, to me,
is far more terrifying than anything I could possibly imagine”(The Life and
Future Times of Jack the Ripper 1).
BLOOD BROTHERS
Bloch had initially become acquainted with Jack the Ripper in his youth
while reading of him in various true crime books about famous historical
murderers. He was reminded of him when he ran across Lowndes’ The Lodger.
“All I did,” Bloch explained, “was to say to myself: ‘What if Jack the Ripper
was alive today?’ and the story came from the famous bit of verse almost
immediately, once I realized that this was the tag line” (Walker 23).
In his 1993 autobiography, Bloch further explained that he was attracted
to the character and his tag line because, unlike many mass murderers who
are named by the media or the police, the Ripper christened himself, in a let-
ter sent to the London Central News Agency on September 27, 1888, closing
it with the appellate that gave him his everlasting name (and Bloch his story
title): “Yours Truly — Jack the Ripper.” Bloch says he was “fascinated by the
phrasing the murderer used for self-identification, and, upon due reflection,
realized that these five words could constitute both the title and the plot of
a short story. Bringing the Ripper into modern time and using an American
city as a new setting for his ... operations required the addition of a super-
natural rationale which I had no difficulty supplying” (195).
What also captured Bloch’s attention in Jack the Ripper was the emblem-
atic nature of his crimes, and their unsolved mysterioso. “I consider [Jack the
Ripper to be] one of the great mystery figures of all times,” Bloch told a Star-
log interviewer in 1986. “He captured the imagination of the world.”
Since writing “YTJTR,” Bloch became known and noted for his forte
as a master of psychological thrillers; “YTJTR,” however, is not truly a psy-
chological story. It lacks the kind of insight into human behavior and psy-
chology marked by 1939’s “The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton,” in which
Bloch’s narrative details with vivid precision the psychological stresses the
title character endures during a spaceship voyage, and especially in later crime
thrillers like “Lucy Comes to Stay,” “The Real Bad Friend,” and novels like
The Scarf, The Kidnaper, and Psycho with their subjective, stream-of-con-
sciousness narrative moments. “YTJTR” was a straightforward action thriller,
told mostly through dialog. His writing style was evolving from its earlier
quasi–Lovecraftian pastiche to the tighter narrative spun with plays-on-words,
catch-phrases, pun-full double entendres, and humorously ironic punch-lines.
His growing fascination with psychology and the enigma of violence were
starting to dominate his writer’s thinking and would eventually lead the major-
ity of his literary output away from science fiction and fantasy and toward
crime and mystery fiction. “YTJTR” endures as a superb combination of all
of these elements. We have a crime thriller based upon historical reality that,
beneath the surface, seeks to examine the nature of violence in a society; this
is invested with a strong sense of fantasy in the concept of the Ripper’s necro-
mantic sacrifices to dark things that boon him eternal youth; and through-
out there is a subtle undercurrent of psychological interplay, as Bloch touches
objectively upon the Ripper’s motivations and carefully prepared his charac-
ters for the shocking climax, which ends with brilliantly horrific punch line.
“JUST CALL ME... JACK”
Perhaps the first literary technique that becomes noticeable in “YTJTR”

is that it is written in the first person. This does not seem at all unusual until
the end, when we realize that the narrator, to whom the amateur detective
has been confiding his obsessed search, is in fact the Ripper himself, who
swiftly dispatches the protagonist in a wonderfully-staged surprise ending. It
is this technique, that of having the story secretly told by the antagonist whose
very existence and practices have formed the origin of the plot and its pro-
tagonist’s motivation, that makes the climactic revelation even more of a sur-
prise and a punch, and is one of the first examples of the effective literary
craftsmanship that has marked the majority of Bloch’s carefully contrived
thrillers in the decades that followed. Bloch also realized how effective a thriller
could be when told in the first person by the villain; as his novels The Scarf
and The Kidnaper would later employ and develop in longer form, packing
a far more intense punch through the psychological insight with which Bloch
develops their characterizations. “YTJTR” is even more potent in this regard
because, unlike these novels, the reader is unaware until the end that the nar-
rator is the villain.
The second technique that becomes apparent in this story is its domi-
nant use of dialog. Nearly the entire story is conveyed through dialog, from
the catchy opening through the gripping finale. This in itself is a strong indi-
cation that Bloch had completely severed the literary umbilical cord that
restricted him from venturing too far afield from Lovecraft pastiche, which
was inherently weak in handling dialog. Here, though, Bloch whisks us
through the story with that very medium.
At the very start, the conversation between John Carmody, a psychia-
trist (and our narrator), and Sir Guy Hollis, described succinctly as a “stage
Englishman,” expresses the plot of the story. Like a motion picture that con-
veys much of its storyline not through vocal or titled narration but purely
through visual presentation, “YTJTR” maintains its forward motion and con-
temporary atmosphere through fast-paced dialog rather than creepy atmos-
phere. Hollis describes the history of Jack the Ripper to Carmody (and to any
readers as yet unfamiliar; as many were in 1943) and goes on to explain how
the Ripper disappeared from Whitechapel in the midst of his murder spree,
leaving his identity and crimes unsolved forever. Carmody, of course, would
know all of this, yet Hollis’ reiteration of history preludes his presentation of
his own fantastic hypothesis.
At the very start, we are introduced to the characters through their dia-
log:
I looked at the stage Englishman. He looked at me.
“Sir Guy Hollis?” I asked.
“Indeed. Have I the pleasure of addressing John Carmody, the psychiatrist?”
In these simple sentences, Bloch succinctly gives us a picture of his major

characters, one he will not extensively enlarge beyond a fourth paragraph
describing Hollis in minor detail. His concise phrase, “stage Englishman,”
has already given us the image. From this introduction, the dialog moved us
quickly into Hollis’ story, his beliefs about the Ripper, and his request for
Carmody’s help in capturing him.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Though told in the first person, the story lacks the degree of psycholog-
ical narration that Bloch would later master. In “YTJTR” the narrator’s voice
rarely interjects his own thoughts. This, of course, works appropriately in
helping disguise any premature revelation that Carmody, the narrator, is the
Ripper, since any prolonged subjective thoughts conveyed by the narrator
would surely reveal this. Bloch, therefore, keeps the focus on the verbal dis-
course between Carmody and Hollis, avoiding any of the narrator’s personal
thoughts. This is a slight cheat — since afterwards the reader may wonder: to
whom is the narrator speaking or directing his first-person narrative; but it
splendidly sets up the finish, which remains one of Bloch’s finest revelatory
denouements.
There is one exception to this, which occurs shortly after the opening
in which Carmody and Hollis attend a dinner party hosted by some friends.
Dialog runs rampant as Bloch briefly introduces the wild personalities in
attendance, and Hollis begins to reveal to Carmody his beliefs about the Rip-
per and his compulsive sacrificial killings. Hollis believes the Ripper may even
be here, at this party, and he proposes turning the lights off and giving the
villain the opportunity to reveal himself in the darkness by eliminating his
accuser. As the party is plunged into darkness, Bloch’s narration becomes is

succinct and very tight, carrying us through the sequence with almost cine-
matic pacing; until Bloch focuses on the narrator who shares a portion of his
own thoughts with us, as the room blurs into blackness:
But Jack the Ripper was dead, dead and dust these many years — by every
human law.
Only there are no human laws when you feel yourself in the darkness, when
the darkness hides and protects and the outer mask slips off your face and
you feel something welling up within you, a brooding shapeless purpose that
is brother to the blackness.
This narration not only builds an effectively gloomy atmosphere, but — in its
use of a very long sentence, divided only by occasional punctuation — builds
this particular scene to an almost breathless peak, culminating in a shocking
crescendo provided by four staccato paragraphs and a final revelation:
Sir Guy Hollis shrieked.
There was a grisly thud.
Baston had the lights on.
Everybody screamed.
Sir Guy Hollis lay sprawled on the floor in the center of the room. The
gun was still clutched in his hand.
With these four paragraphs of five to six syllables each, leading up to the
final paragraph containing one sentence with thrice as many syllables, and a
final coda of eight syllables, creating a rhythm that launches us through the
moment, lurching us quickly into the imagery and then brings us to a stiff
halt, viewing the scene from above with the final sentences. Bloch stabs us
with words, revealing the power of punctuation and wordcrafting, traits he
will excel all throughout his career, creating through his choice of words and
punctuation a very cinematic narrative rhythm and pace that leads the reader
quickly to a series of shocking revelations and a final explanation before the
act break. It’s a kind of horror haiku that carries the reader quickly into and
out of the narrative moment with splendid effectiveness.
Bloch repeats the process at the end of the story. Hollis, confident he
will run into the Ripper soon, takes Carmody out with him into the night.
Because he is a little drunk, Carmody takes his gun away from him, explain-
ing that Hollis shouldn’t walk around the street brandishing it. Bloch allows
Hollis a few moments of subjective revelation, again using rhythmic narra-
tion — dialog, this time — as he admits to Carmody his motivation: one of
the Ripper’s victims in 1888 had been his mother:
He took my mother’s life and the lives of hundreds to keep his own hellish
being alive. Like a vampire, he battens on blood. Like a ghoul, he is nour-
ished by death. Like a fiend, he stalks the world to kill. He is cunning, dev-
ilishly cunning. But I’ll never rest until I find him, never!”
Bloch brings us back to Carmody, revealing his perception of Hollis’ revela-

tion:
I believed him then. He wouldn’t give up. He wasn’t just a drunken babbler
any more. He was as fanatical, as determined, as relentless as the Ripper him-
self.
This last paragraph also reveals the narrator’s decision that he had to act and
could no longer humor his friend. Finally, Bloch provides his chilling denoue-
ment through a series of short sentences, with short bridges of accelerating
narrative, short paragraphs growing even shorter, quicker, like knife stabs:
“Let’s go,” I said, steering him down the alley.
“Wait a minute,” said Sir Guy. “Give me back my gun.” He lurched a lit-
tle. “I’d feel better with the gun on me.”
He pressed me into the dark shadows of a little recess.
I tried to shrug him off, but he was insistent.
“Let me carry the gun, now, John,” he mumbled
“All right,” I said.
I reached into my coat, brought my hand out.
“But that’s not a gun,” he protested. “That’s a knife.”
“I know.”
I bore down on him swiftly.
“John!” he screamed.
“Never mind the ‘John,’” I whispered, raising the knife. “Just call me...
Jack.”
Much of the story’s dialog style is dated, and some of the narration is merely
dutiful, but those minor flaws are punctuated by Bloch’s narrative verisimil-
itude and his carefully formulated rhythmic wordplay that leads the reader
by steps, turns, and jolts through each sequence to his final revelatory climax.
Lester Del Rey, writing the introduction to Ballantine’s The Best of Robert
Bloch, described a steady evolution going on in Bloch’s writing: “Originally,
as with most who followed the Lovecraft school of fiction, Bloch had con-
centrated on terror from the outside. Men who dared to investigate legends
or who were inadvertently drawn into strange events were beset by horrors
far beyond their knowledge or control. There was little importance given to
what went on in their minds, provided they were duly terrified:
Now, perhaps because his mystery and detective writing required more real-
ism — or perhaps simply because he was growing in skill and scope — Bloch
began to look inward, into the strange recesses in the minds of his people. It
was in the darkness that lies behind our surface thoughts that he found the
real lurking horrors. His stories gained a new dimension ... a second, deeper
level of psychological understanding had replaced or been added to the sur-
face events [xiii].
What is the reason for “YTJTR’s” unabated popularity? asks Eduardo
Zinna in an online examination of Bloch’s Ripper fiction. “Certainly not its
plot — and its dénouement — which, after so many years and so many reprints,
no longer carry the punch they once undoubtedly did. There remains a finely
crafted, highly readable narrative. Some have remarked that its few settings
and dialogue-driven action make it ideal for other media, as shown by its many
radio and television adaptations. Others underline that its protagonists are
one-sided characters, easy to visualize.... Finally, even though the story is
ostensibly set in contemporary times in a modern American city, there is actu-
ally nothing to anchor it firmly in Chicago in 1943: no description of its loca-
tions, no use of current slang, no mention of fashionable pop stars or ... the
World War then raging. It might be precisely because of its utter lack of top-
icality that the story has borne its increasing age without becoming in any
way dated (2008).
The mixture of reality and fantasy which was to inexorably link the
remainder of Bloch’s fiction gave it a degree of impact and terror that even
Lovecraft, in his atmospheric and conceptual genius, lacked: that acute, nag-
ging realization that monsters are not simply shapeless entities that dwell in
hidden catacombs or exist among the oblique spaces between the stars, but
they are walking among us, here and now.
This general essence of Bloch’s work — this examination of the inner
monstrosities of character that can lay dormant but rumbling within so many
of our fellows — carries an echo that, like the story, has lingered ominously.
It is this theme of human abnormality that allows Bloch’s terrors to slice to
the core of his readers, for it is a sense we all share as well see and hear about
the cruelty and violence occurring in the world around us. Lovecraft’s hor-
rors, however vivid and magnificent in their pervasive sense of ambiguous cos-
mic dread, could be kept somewhat at arm’s length, or at least out of sight
and mind. Not so with Bloch’s human villains, not from this point on in his
writing. They can’t be so easily cast aside, since they walk among us and often
appear to be one of us. With many stories, written like “YTJTR” in the first
person, they often are us. Bloch’s growing interest in the sociology of vio-
lence and aberrant human behavior, and his understanding of the chord it
can be made to strike in his readers, has shaped his work since.
And occasionally prompted a revisitation with Red Jack.
NIGHTFALL ON ARGELIUS II
The concept of Jack the Ripper as an undying sorcerer, existing through
the years by thriving on the bloody sacrifices he painstakingly offers to the
dark forces, is one that would recur in Bloch’s 1967 Star Trek screenplay, “Wolf
in the Fold,” in which the Enterprise crew encounters the murderous essence
of the Ripper, here postulated as an undying alien entity that feeds upon the
fear of its victims, and takes up residence in the central computer onboard
the spaceship Enterprise. His murders recommencing, Enterprise’s Chief Engi-
neer Scotty becomes suspected, requiring the crew to solve the mystery and
deal with the entity. Story editor Dorothy Fontana asked Bloch to contribute
a Jack the Ripper script for the show’s second season. The episode shared not
just a few elements with “YTJTR,” including a séance scene which ends in
darkness and a murder, like the one Hollis stages in the short story. Broad-
cast in December 1967 during the show’s second season, “Wolf in the Fold”
was well-directed by Joseph Pevney, and plays out very nicely with plenty of
typical Bloch-isms inherent in the dialog and action.
THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF JACK AND JULIETTE
“A Toy for Juliette,” Bloch’s contribution to Harlan Ellison’s stimulating

1967 anthology, Dangerous Visions, was a powerful story of a sadistic nympho-
maniac in the far future who is given human “gifts” by her grandfather,
plucked from various moments in history in his time machine; she makes use
of the toys for perverse pleasure, killing them at the moment of ecstasy, until
the latest one happens to be a quiet gentleman from Whitechapel who gives
Juliette a pointed lesson in justice. (Ellison’s own contribution to this anthol-
ogy was a sequel to Bloch’s story, called “The Prowler in the City at the Edge
of the World.”). “A Toy for Juliette” is not so much about the Ripper as about
the future femme fatale of the title — her name and character comes from the
Marquis de Sade’s novel, “Juliette,” about an amoral nymphomaniac who
ends up successful and happy. In Bloch’s morality play, Juliette reaps what
she has sewn, with the reader’s assumed familiarity with Jack the Ripper
prompting the understanding of the story’s denouement. Bloch’s wordplay is
very much in evidence here, from the story’s alluring opening in Juliette’s mir-
rored boudoir (“Juliette entered the bedroom, smiling, and a thousand Juli-
ettes smiled back at her.”) to its sharp closing (“They didn’t discover what was
left of Juliette’s body for several days. Back in London, after the final mysteri-
ous murder in the early morning hours, they never did find Jack the Ripper...”).
DOCTOR RIDLEY’S MEDICAL BAG

In 1976, Bloch was visited again by Jack the Ripper when he wrote “A
Most Unusual Murder,” a short story about a collector of criminal memora-
bilia whose obsession to obtain Jack the Ripper’s medical bag leads him to
confront a time traveling curio collector (not unlike Juliette’s grandfather) and
an ironic involvement in murder himself. Like most of Bloch’s short stories,
this one flows smoothly through Bloch’s deceptively unassuming wordplay,
the reader quickly immersed into the narrative from its simple opening (“Only
the dead know Brooklyn. Thomas Wolfe said that, and he’s dead now, so he
ought to know. London, of course, is a different story...”).
Through the track of the story, through dialog between protagonist Kane,
a Ripperologist who has studied the cases for many years, and Woods, his
friend, Bloch details the many suspects considered at one time or another to
be the Ripper. This also gives the reader a concise history lesson in Ripper-
ology that eventually settles on one John Ridley, MD. as Kane’s most likely
suspect. And when Kane discovers Ridley’s medical bag on display in an
unusual curio shop in London, he manages to buy it, only to be later con-
fronted by the shop owner who reneges the sale, admitting he himself is a
collector of memorabilia from unusual murders. Kane insists on keeping Rid-
ley’s bag and the deadly scalpel he believes is inside; but the shop owner
informs him that the Ripper’s implement of death is already in his collec-
tion — the medical bag contains a souvenir of a different murder — and Rid-
ley wasn’t the Ripper after all. Kane finds the scalpel in the bag and in the
ensuing struggle with the shop owner, Woods is sliced and killed. “Thank
you,” murmurs the shop owner. “You have given me what I came for.” He
snatches up the scalpel and disappears. Kane is left staring at the gaping wound
in Wood’s throat, and the story concludes as easily as it began:
He was still staring when they came and took him away.
The trial, of course, was a sensation. It wasn’t so much the crazy story Kane
told as the fact that nobody could ever find the fatal weapon.
It was a most unusual murder....
Like “A Toy for Juliette,” this story isn’t so much about the Ripper as it is
about the obsessive allure of Ripperology among amateur detective and Rip-
per hobbyists. Like “Juliette,” the historical Ripper prompts the tale’s twist
ending while also allowing Bloch to entertain an informative and analytical
examination into Ripper suspects. The story is as much an examination of
criminal profiling as Bloch lines up his suspects and proceeds to exonerate
each of them as it is an observation of the obsessive/compulsive nature of Rip-
perologists — as it is simply an enjoyable and well played out short story. And
another scalpel’s notch in Bloch’s heritage of Jack the Ripper fiction.
NIGHT OF EXORCISM
After all of this dabbling into Ripper-related fictioneering, Bloch finally
gave the Ripper his due in a novel-length treatment with 1984’s The Night of
the Ripper. Here, Bloch writes a compelling historical thriller while compar-
ing his heinous crimes against the backdrop of history’s legacy of violence.
The result is a compelling novel that immerses the reader with the fog
enshrouded streets of 1888 Whitechapel while postulating a solution to the
Ripper’s identify that Bloch himself admits is quite fanciful.2
“Over the years I’ve written a number of stories involving Jack the Rip-
per — and, in so doing, amassed quite a collection of books and articles on
his deeds, or misdeeds,” Bloch recalled while completing the book. “Inevitably
I was struck by the numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the accounts
given by various theorists. I tried to collate the ‘facts’ given by these ‘Ripper-
ologists,’ and eventually decided it was almost impossible to do so. Mean-
while, quite a few fans kept suggesting I do my own version of the story, so
in the end it seemed as if writing a book was inevitable, if only to rid myself
of the Ripper once and for all. The Night of the Ripper is an act of exorcism”
(letter to the author).
The Night of the Ripper is a fairly straightforward account of the Ripper
murders and the confused police investigation that failed to solve them, told
from a variety of viewpoints. Bloch’s protagonist is Mark Robinson, an Amer-
ican doctor on sabbatical to study under Dr. Albert Trebor at London Hos-
pital at the time the murders occur. Robinson becomes enamored of nurse
Eva Sloane, a spunky career-minded woman disconcerted with Victorian tra-
dition, and his concern for her increases as she is thrown closer into danger
through the Ripper investigation.
The novel mixed history with postulation. Its environment is histori-
cally sound and well-researched, into which Bloch immerses his fictional
characters and all manner of cameo appearances from various personages of
the period, from Oscar Wilde and Conan Doyle to John Merrick, the Ele-
phant Man. Many individuals who were actually involved in the investiga-
tion appear as characters, including many of the real persons suspected of being
Jack the Ripper. In addition, nearly all of Bloch’s fictional characters are sus-
pected at one time or another; though, in traditional whodunit formula, the
real identity of the Ripper (for the purposes of the novel, at least — Bloch
makes no pretense at suggesting his solution was the real case) is quite unex-
pected.3
Mark Robinson’s viewpoint, and that of Scotland Yard Inspector Abber-
line, dominate the narrative. But Bloch also includes numerous vignettes
illustrating the perspective of other people (excepting, unusually, that of the
Ripper’s victims). All of the divergent viewpoints center around one major
issue: who is Jack the Ripper and why is he committing these unearthly mur-
ders? Each character seems to have his own interpretation, and Bloch inter-
twines these various theories to create his own frightening picture of the
Ripper. The familiar theories are expressed and dispensed with: the Ripper
is a monomaniac who murders prostitutes in a form of misguided, self-right-
eous moral judgment; the Ripper is a lunatic who commits his murders under
the maddening influence of the full moon; the Ripper is an unscrupulous
supplier of body parts to medical schools. But the theory Bloch seems to favor
the most is a simple one: the Ripper is a monster. Like so many of Bloch’s
fictional psychopaths (of which the Ripper is a prototype), Jack the Ripper
is simply and distinctly:
A man who has a total disregard for his fellow creatures. A man whose own
perverted pleasures take precedence over the pain and suffering of others. A
man completely convinced of its own superiority, rankling because his intel-
ligence and abilities have not been recognized by the rest of the world. A
homicidal maniac, yes, but also an egomaniac.
Bloch’s solution to the Ripper’s true identity, in the context of the novel, is
a fanciful one which comes as a complete and almost forced surprise. In fact
the irony of the solution is so great that it threatens to weaken credibility. It’s
an example of Bloch’s taking a bit of license for the sake of entertaining effect,
and it works, dramatically, if not entirely logically.
Almost each chapter of The Night of the Ripper is prefaced with a his-
torical excerpt concerning torture or some human cruelty, which contrasts the
Ripper’s notorious crimes against more acceptable headlines of history. These
excerpts — which Ripper’s publisher initially felt were too shocking for pub-
lication — give the novel an extra edge and somewhat gruesomely remind the
reader that even the Ripper’s appalling deeds can’t compete against the world’s
legacy of violence. “This series of headings deals with episodes taken from
history — either excerpts of actual accounts or paraphrases — extending from
2300 B.C. to A.D. 1888, the year of the Ripper murders,” Bloch explained.
“These headings, from countries all over the world, are accounts of cruelties
and atrocities perpetrated in the name of patriotism, religion, or sheer per-
versity. As such, they are intended to serve as a subtle reminder that the deeds
of a ‘monster’ like Jack the Ripper pale into insignificance alongside the
accepted customs of ‘ordinary’ citizens in all walks of life, at all times and in
all places. [This] helps to elevate the book somewhat above the mere thriller
level — or so I hope” (Larson 12).
The Night of the Ripper, is clearly about more than the violence of 1888
London, but is a commentary on our own violence, our own potential for
Ripper-like aggression:
Were there others lying in wait all over the world, smiling their secret smiles,
doing their secret deeds? Why do human beings behave with such inhuman-
ity; why do they enjoy inflicting pain, delight in death? [chapter 45].
Bloch’s personal conclusion about Jack the Ripper is a moral one, and it’s a
conviction that is central to all of his deluded murderers and psychopaths
whose deeds result in carnage and obscenity. “An obscenity, yes,” Bloch wrote.
“But a morality, too; a terrible morality implicit in the knowledge that the
Ripper’s inevitable and ultimate victim is always himself.
“Even as you and I” (The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper, back
cover).
THE LESIONS OF HISTORY

Robert Bloch’s rapport with Jack the Ripper, then, aside from resulting
in some of the works of fiction the writer has produced, also gave Bloch the
opportunity to indulge in the kind of sociological observation that his writ-
ing has always engendered. Bloch has always used the medium of fiction to
examine nuances of aberrant sociology that has both interested and concerned
him, mankind’s prevalence toward violence, in particular. As one of history’s
most iconic examples of brutal violence, the Ripper murders provided Bloch
with a potent opportunity to scrutinize these deeds against the mirror of fan-
tasy, speculation, and psychology, proffering analysis and provoking thought
while telling fine tales.
Bloch incorporated other infamous villains of history into his fiction —
“Iron Mask” (1944), “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” (1945), “Lizzie Bor-
den Took an Axe” (1946), American Gothic (1974), often using these historical
criminals as springboards to examine the legacy of violence represented by
their crimes. But the Ripper remained Bloch’s most frequent reference when
it came to historical murder and mayhem. Even when a story may not directly
deal with Jack the Ripper, the cunning killer is never far from Bloch’s mind.
The Ripper’s crimes found their inevitable peak in Bloch’s fiction with
his 1960 story, “The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow.” In this story, Bloch
writes: “It was the Victorian age which Jack the Ripper really killed. His com-
ing was the symbol of change.... You want to know the truth about a histor-
ical period? Never mind its heroes — study its murderers!”
Expanding this theme to the nuclear age, Bloch concludes: “Every age
must have its symbolic murderer. But today, murder is not enough. There is
only one fitting crime and that is — self destruction.” Like his short stories
“The Pin” and “The Man Who Never Did Anything Right,” Bloch has con-
signed the fate of the world to a man sitting in a room staring at a button.
In the case of “The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow,” annihilation is the
inevitable cycle if we are to follow the course of history. For 1888 London,
as with 1943 Chicago, Jack the Ripper remains the harbinger of the ultimate
destruction of humankind.
In 1988, Bloch contributed a foreword to a story collection published on
the centenary of the murders. “The identity of Jack the Ripper remains a
mystery...” he wrote, “...and an even greater mystery is this — why, after a hun-
dred years of hypothesis, do we still seek an answer?” Bloch answers: “...the
Ripper remains as a symbol of all our secret fears — the fear of a stranger in
a darkened street, fear of the neighbor whose commonplace exterior may con-
ceal the beast within, even the fear of a friend we think we know; a friend
who may become a fiend once the mask comes off and the knife comes out”
(Bloch, Jack the Ripper introduction).
That perspective, first embodied in 1943’s “Yours Truly, Jack the Rip-
per,” would form the substance and scope of virtually all of Bloch’s fiction to
follow.
NOTES
1. In a 1980 interview for Questar with Dr. Jeffrey Elliott, Bloch remarks: “I’m grate-
ful for its success, but it’s one of those stories that I could have written better had the idea
occurred to me later in life” (Robert Bloch Companion 63). In the afterword to The Best of
Robert Bloch, Bloch comments: “Actually, it’s not my idea of a well-written story. If I were
writing it today [1977] instead of 1943, I feel much improvement could be made” (395).
When anthologized here, Bloch did revise the story somewhat to improve its narrative, mod-
ifying a few of the dated references and dialog lines.
2. Robert Bloch, letter to the author, dated September 25, 1984: “[my solution is] quite
fanciful, I feel. Though not as far-fetched as that of one non-fiction work which solemnly
insists the Ripper slayings were part of a plot involving Masonic rituals and the notion of
killing Kelly to protect the Crown by high-placed Masons. Indeed, this seemed so fanciful
to me that it’s one theory I chose to ignore in the book as too preposterous.”
3. In typical Bloch fashion, in his 1993 autobiography, Bloch revealed: “After much
study and consideration, I now firmly believe that Jack the Ripper was actually Queen Vic-
toria” (196).
WORKS CITED
Brown, Gerald. “Yours Truly, Robert Bloch.” Night Voyages #3, 1978.
Bloch, Robert. “Afterword,” The Best of Robert Bloch. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
_____. “Introduction.” Susan Casper & Gardner Dozois, editors, Jack the Ripper. New York:
TOR Books, 1988.
_____. Letter to the author, dated September 25, 1984.
_____. [Liner notes from] The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper LP recording. New
York: Alternate World Recordings, 1977.
_____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: TOR Books,
1993.
Del Rey, Lester. “Robert Bloch: The Man Who Wrote Psycho.” The Best of Robert Bloch.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
Elliott, Jeffrey. “Robert Bloch,” Questar, August 1980.
Larson, Randall D. “Robert Bloch: An Interview on Recent Works.” Threshold of Fantasy #2
(Winter 1985–86).
Lofficier, Randy & Jean-Marc. “Robert Bloch: The Subtle Horrors of Star Trek.” Starlog #112,
1986.
Peeples, Samuel. “Building Bloch.” Robert Bloch Bibliography. Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire:
Graham Hall, 1964. Reprinted in The Robert Bloch Fanzine (R.D. Larson/Fandom Untld,
1972).
Schweitzer, Darrell. “Interview with Robert Bloch.” Fantasy Mongers #1, 1979.
Walker, Paul. “Robert Bloch Interviewed.” Moebius Trip /SF Echo #20, 1974. Quoted in Lar-
son, The Robert Bloch Companion (Borgo, 1989).
Zinna, Eduardo. “Yours Truly, Robert Bloch.” Casebook: Jack the Ripper 28 September 2008.
<www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-bloch.html>
Robert Bloch
and His Serial Killers
Philip L. Simpson
Robert Bloch is remembered by many as the author of the novel Psycho,

published in 1959. In this novel, Bloch presents the template for the modern
serial killer in fiction. The title of the book refers to its psychosexually mal-
adjusted protagonist, Norman Bates, a 40-year-old man who finds release
from his lonely life by murdering attractive women who find their way off the
main highway to the isolated motel he manages. Bloch makes it clear from
the first chapter onward that the origin of Bates’s sexual psychosis stems from
his love/hate relationship with his mother. Though his mother is long
deceased, Bates keeps her alive in his mind and keeps her body, crudely pre-
served through taxidermy, in the cellar of his house. Whenever sexually
aroused by a woman, Bates’s inner “mother” takes over his personality and
leads him to kill the woman causing the conflict within his diseased mind.
Through this character, Bloch relocates the external marauding monsters of
early– to mid–twentieth century American horror fiction (the vampires, the
werewolves, the reanimated corpses and the mad scientists who created them)
into the interior psychological landscape of middle-class Americans. Under
the paradigm solidified by Bloch and then famously adapted for the cinema
by screenwriter Joe Stefano and director Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho, the killers
of horror fiction become ordinary human beings, if not quite “boys next door”
at least bland and inoffensive non-entities, masquerading behind masks of
normalcy until their inner psychosis drives them to murder again and again.
Critics commonly point out Bloch’s mid-century turn from the weird
fiction of his youthful literary apprenticeship to H.P. Lovecraft to “delve more
deeply into the psychology of his characters,” as Harold Bloom puts it (Mod-
150
Robert Bloch and His Serial Killers (Simpson) 151
ern Horror 48). In doing so, Bloch takes the mood and conventions of super-
natural or “weird” fiction and recasts them into narratives centered on serial
killers, creating a hybrid genre of Gothic horror, thriller, and detective story
which comes to characterize the typical serial killer story of later decades.
Also like many successive serial killer stories, Bloch infuses his tales with gen-
erous mixes of social criticism, more subtly at first, and then with increasing
stridency as his career progresses. American capitalism specifically comes in
for a hash critique. Bloch’s social consciousness, however, does not spare him
from the opprobrium of those critics who call this kind of fiction, with its
depictions of women in particular savagely punished for gender transgressions,
inherently misogynistic. This essay will focus on two of his works, The Scarf
representing his early career and American Gothic representing his later career,
as illustrative of Bloch’s work with serial killer fiction, while of necessity
touching upon other selected novels and short stories along the way.
Serial killers were not new topics in fiction with the publication of Psy-
cho in 1959; Bloch himself had dealt with them in earlier stories and novels.
One of his most famous short stories, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1943),
was inspired by the infamous 1888 murders of prostitutes in the Whitechapel
district of London. “Jack the Ripper,” the popular name of the Whitechapel
murderer, is widely acknowledged as the first modern serial killer, in the sense
that the unidentified perpetrator’s crimes were given massive publicity through
the mass media of the era. Bloch’s story, first appearing in July 1943 issue of
the much-loved pulp magazine Weird Tales and endlessly reprinted ever since,
brings the Ripper into the modern city of Chicago, carrying on his work in
the guise of the first-person protagonist, a psychiatrist named John ( Jack) Car-
mody. Through blood sacrifices of women to the dark gods, the sorcerer Jack
has remained a young man even though now in his eighties. When a British
gentleman named Sir Guy Hollis discovers the Ripper’s secret and tracks him
to Chicago, Carmody kills him at the story’s climax so that “Jack” may con-
tinue his series of murders to remain eternally young.
A then-new spin on the Ripper legend, Bloch’s idea of placing the Rip-
per into a contemporary urban environment has been recycled many times
since, a fact Bloch complains about in passing in his autobiography (195).
Gary Coville and Patrick Lucanio credit (or perhaps blame) Bloch for not
only relocating the Ripper from London to modern Chicago but also mov-
ing him “from the realm of crime fiction (i.e., from the realm of history) to
the realm of supernatural horror, and it is in such tales that the truest mythic
representation of Jack the Ripper is unveiled.... As such, and because of Bloch’s
theme, the Ripper has become a major figure in the literary genre of horror”
(59). Coville and Lucanio also observe that the Ripper’s presence is felt,
whether explicitly named or not, in the countless “slasher films” of recent

decades. Other observers have found a problematic misogyny underlying the
Ripper’s transformation into literary character. For example, Jane Caputi does
not specifically single out Bloch but does point to the process of mythification
of the Ripper as instrumental in what she identifies as the misogynistic char-
acter of contemporary fascination with serial murder: “...patriarchal culture
has enshrined ‘Jack the Ripper’ as a mythic hero; he commonly appears as an
immortal figure in literature, film, television, jokes and other cultural prod-
ucts” (101). A great deal of this fascination can be attributed to, or blamed
upon from the perspective of critics such as Caputi, Bloch’s tale. Jack the
Ripper remained a figure of fascination for Bloch throughout his long career,
appearing again as the extraterrestrial entity “Redjac” in a screenplay Bloch
wrote for the 1960s science-fiction series Star Trek and as the title character
of his novel The Night of the Ripper (1984). Bloch himself says of his interest
in the Ripper: “Over the years Jack and I would become blood brothers” (196)
and is quoted in a separate interview with Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier as
saying: “I consider [the Ripper] one of the great mystery figures of all times.
He captured the imagination of the world” (quoted in Larson, Companion 63).
Bloch’s exploration of the individual psychology of serial murder led to
other stories and books not based directly on the Ripper crimes. Bloch’s first
novel, The Scarf (1947), is a tale about a serial strangler of women who also
happens to be a novelist. In this novel, Bloch draws some parallels between
the art of writing fiction and the dehumanization process that allows serial
killers to murder their fellow human beings. His next two novels, Spiderweb
(1954) and The Kidnapper (1954), are not explicitly about serial murder but
nevertheless explore the realm of the murdering criminal mind. However,
The Will to Kill (1954), about a man prone to blackouts who begins to fear
he is a serial killer, returns to the theme in full force. Shooting Star (1958) is
centered on a series of murders of Hollywood stars. Psycho, Bloch’s most well-
known novel of serial murder, followed in 1959.
The circumstances under which Robert Bloch wrote Psycho are well-
known. His real-life inspiration for the case was the arrest in 1957 of Ed Gein,
a rural Wisconsin resident, for murder. Gein’s filthy farmhouse was discov-
ered to be a macabre reliquary of human bones and female body parts looted
from the local graveyard. The publicity surrounding the ghoulish case had
an impact on Bloch. In his own words, he describes how he turned the news-
paper accounts into fiction: “I based my story on the situation rather than on
any person, living or dead, involved in the Gein affair; indeed, I knew very
little of the details concerning the case and virtually nothing about Gein him-
self at the time” (Once Around 228). Therefore, Psycho is not a blow-by-blow
retelling of the more gruesome details of the Gein case. Instead, Bloch uses
the idea of a quiet rural recluse who is also a psychotic murderer. Bloch elab-
orates on his conception of such a man: “...the man next door may be a mon-
ster, unsuspected even in the gossip-ridden microcosm of small-town life....
In order to become a successful serial murderer in a close-knit rural society,
a man must adopt a reclusive existence; operating a motel on the outskirts of
town seemed a solution” (228–9).
Thus was born Norman Bates, whose first name of “nor man” is a pun
based on Bloch’s characterization of him as “neither woman nor man” (229)
and whose last name is another pun based on Norman’s habit of obsessive
masturbation and his “baiting” of a trap (the motel) to catch the unwary
women who unfortunately find their way to the motel. Gein’s unhealthy rela-
tionship with a dominant mother also finds its way into Bloch’s story. Nor-
man is so dominated by his mother, in fact, that even after her death he keeps
her constant arguing and nagging alive in his mind, stores her mummified
body in his fruit cellar, and even becomes her when his lustful thoughts drive
him to murder. In the public mind, the slender young actor Anthony Perkins
in Hitchcock’s film adaptation will forever be associated with the name of
Norman Bates, but Bloch’s original depiction of the character is a forty-year-
old plump man given to excessive drinking and book reading (usually about
grisly subjects) in between imaginary arguments with his dead mother. The
literate Bates in Bloch’s book is even aware of the Freudian Oedipal theory
and attempts to explain it to “Mother,” with predictably disastrous results.
Upon first publication of Psycho, the New York Times columnist Anthony
Boucher favorably reviewed the novel, which in turn caught director Alfred
Hitchcock’s eye (McGilligan 578). The rest is cinematic history. However,
over the years the critics who have applauded Hitchcock’s adaptation of Bloch’s
novel for the screen have generally disregarded Bloch. This fact was not lost
upon Bloch, who complains about it in his autobiography: “I, too, admire
and applaud Hitchcock, but as several million readers of Psycho can testify,
these concepts came, as Hitchcock himself said, ‘from the book’” (231). Of
the critics who do acknowledge Bloch’s authorship, Raymond Durgnat is
fairly typical. He gives credit to Bloch for the story while dismissing him as
a serious artist: “The novel anticipates many striking features of the film, and
Bloch deserves credit as a co-auteur— at least of structure and substance, if
not artistic quality.... Rarely has Hitchcock taken so much from a literary orig-
inal. While respecting Bloch’s craftsmanship and his modern, sensible, obser-
vations, I was surprised to find myself completely unmoved by his, merely
adequate, characterisation” (11). But to dismiss Bloch as an artist is to lose
sight of the magnitude of his creative accomplishment, as Les Daniels argues:
“Bloch’s novel is an indisputable tour de force, the distillation of twenty-five

years of experience and experimentation; it provided not only the plot for the
movie, but many of the clever little touches most critics assume are Hitch-
cock’s own” (904–5).
If Psycho marks the height of Bloch’s mature thematic treatment of the
inner psychology of serial murder, then several works from the later phase of
his career mark Bloch’s gradual recalibration of the theme to focus on the con-
tributive social factors involved, such as Night-World (1972), set in a sanitar-
ium; American Gothic (1974), set against the backdrop of the Chicago World’s
Fair of 1893 and its unfettered celebration of progress and capitalism; Psycho
II (1982), ranging from a sanitarium setting to Hollywood; the aforementioned
The Night of the Ripper, with its depiction of the entirety of late-19th-cen-
tury London as a madhouse; and Psycho House (1990), featuring an amuse-
ment-park recreation of the Bates murder motel. Taken as a collective, these
later novels offer a damning indictment of various modern social institutions
and trends in the creation of an environment in which serial murder is
inevitable.
Bloch is usually classified as a writer of psychological suspense or hor-
ror, and in fact he embraced the label, as he writes in the afterword to his
short-story collection Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of: “I can’t tell you who
first came up with the term ‘psychological suspense.’ But I’m forever grate-
ful to him.... The material in this collection falls into two genres: supernat-
ural fantasy and the conte cruel. But there’s a common element — horror, or
psychological suspense, if you prefer the term” (284–5). He elaborated on the
personal origins of this aspect of his work in a 1985 interview with Douglas
Winter: “I realized, as a result of what went on during World War II and of
reading the more widely disseminated work in psychology, that the real hor-
ror is not in the shadows, but in that twisted world inside our own skulls”
(quoted in Larson 59). On other occasions, however, Bloch objected to a nar-
row focus on the twisted individual psyche. Though speaking of the science
fiction genre in particular, Bloch complained as far back as 1957, in a speech
at a University of Chicago symposium, that fiction writers in every genre were
paying far too much attention to individual psychological dynamics than
social issues (Berger 137). The irony of his position, of course, is that much
of Bloch’s early work, culminating in the publication of Psycho two years after
delivering that remark, is collectively labeled “psychological terror.” Certainly
some degree of implied social criticism exists in Bloch’s work going all the
way back to “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” and The Scarf, but it is also cer-
tain that his later novels take on an increasingly acidic, even bitter, tone
toward the social trends that disturbed Bloch most. It is a risky and probably
even foolhardy business to psychoanalyze any writer through published or spo-

ken remarks, but it’s at least theoretically possible that Bloch’s statement
revealed some kind of personal dissatisfaction with his own approach to his
material, and that in his later years especially, the social issues which con-
cerned him most found increasing expression through his fiction.
Given this general career trajectory, it is instructive to compare Bloch’s
first novel-length tale of serial murder, The Scarf, against one of his late-phase
novels: American Gothic. Any number of writers have already analyzed Psy-
cho extensively as the most well-known of Bloch’s novels of serial murder, but
typically have done so with little or no in-depth analysis of the other extant
works. Given that this body of criticism of Psycho already exists, then, it is
the purpose of this project to focus on some other novels equally significant
in serious study of Bloch’s treatment of serial murder as a topic for fiction.
The Scarf is the story of Dan Morley, a novelist and Hollywood screen-
writer who also happens to be a serial killer of women. Bloch’s style in the
novel is heavily influenced by that of Raymond Chandler (Larson, Robert
Bloch 60), an immediate nod to the crime genre and a departure from his
early fiction modeled upon a mythos established by H.P. Lovecraft. Donald
Barr, one of the first reviewers, also comments upon the style: “The Scarf is
the case-history of a pathological murderer, told in the strangler’s own words.
It is true that these words, which by rights ought to be full of anguish and
passion and bewilderment, are actually full of teasing professional artifice, but
Mr. Bloch accounts for this nicely by making Daniel Morley a popular nov-
elist” (31). This novel, according to Harold Bloom, “established several themes
that came to dominate his crime and suspense writing, among them the mis-
erable lives of his criminals, the banality of their evil, and their society’s com-
plicity in either inducing or reinforcing their behavior” (Modern Crime 2).
S.T. Joshi proclaims this novel as one of Bloch’s two finest novels (the other
being Psycho), maybe even the finest: “...perhaps only a highly contrived and
implausible ending will force us to give the palm to its more celebrated com-
panion” (177). Morley, initially scarred by a verbally abusive mother, has a
fateful confrontation with his high school teacher, Miss Frazer, who invites
him to her house. There, she binds his hands with a red scarf and attempts
to kill herself and him by turning up the gas heater. Morley escapes, although
he believes Miss Frazer is dead. He matures physically but still remains haunted
by a hatred of women. This hatred compels him to sexually exploit and then
murder women who become emotionally close to him. The instrument he
uses to kill them is a red scarf that, he informs us from his position as unre-
liable first-person narrator, his teacher used to bind his hands before trying
to kill him in the murder/suicide attempt. Even his lucrative career as a writer
is a result of his need (and growing skill) to manipulate women, although Jeff
Ruppert, a male psychoanalyst in New York, sees right through the image
Morley carefully presents to the publishing world. As Joshi complains, the
revised 1966 edition of the novel presents the reader with the contrived end-
ing that Joshi resents, wherein Miss Frazer reappears to force Morley into a
marriage that, to him, will be worse than arrest or death. It is revealed that
it was Morley who tried to kill the both of them that night in her house, not
the other way around.
Some of the same themes more fully and famously developed in Psycho
are present in The Scarf as well. Morley and Bates both suffer as adults from
formative traumas at the hands of abusive mothers. Morley and Bates both
engage in the killing of women to relieve the inner tension created by sexual
desire for a woman combined with hatred of the mother figure. Morley and
Bates both remain unsatisfied by acts of murder and are driven to kill again
when placed into sexually charged situations. Morley and Bates both fetishize
women’s apparel; for Morley it’s the scarf, for Bates the entire wardrobe. Mor-
ley and Bates both separate their private murderous personalities from their
meticulously crafted public personas, with Bates reaching the point of actual
multiple-personality disorder. Both novels have a male psychiatrist who inter-
venes in the narrative at key points to instruct the reader on psychoanalytic
theory. And so on. The Scarf serves as a conceptual first draft for Psycho.
However, The Scarf in its own right contributes a number of themes and
conventions to later stories about serial murder. Bloch delights in placing the
reader into the first person point-of-view of a serial killer, a technique favored
by generations of writers and filmmakers since, most infamously the cinematic
“slashers” of the 1980s. By forcing this identification for the length of an entire
novel, Bloch leads the reader into a consideration of the miserable psycho-
logical landscape of such a character. First and foremost, the psychology of
the male killer of women, Bloch maintains, is based on fear: fear of one’s own
identity being smothered or consumed by feminine force. At one point, Mor-
ley confesses: “Why is it that women have to mother you, make you over,
suffer for you? Why can’t they let you alone? I might as well admit it. I was
afraid of Hazel Hurley” (44). As described in his private journal, Morley suf-
fers a terrible nightmare in which a walk into a hallway ends in his fall into
“a gigantic red mouth, gaping to fill the entire doorway. The jaws close down, the
teeth rend and tear” (66). The devouring vagina dentata is symbolic of his
intense fear of the loss of identity. The fear generates a backlash reaction of
anger that manifests itself both in physical and verbal violence. This passage
is illustrative of Morley’s murderous hatred masquerading as “hipster” word-
play: “Rap — that was a funny word.... It sounds like rape and then again it
sounds like something else, like wrap for instance, only wrap is something
you do — so is rape, only wrap is more practical; we’ve had our little rape so
let’s have a wrap and not take the rap” (51). Jeffrey Ruppert, the psychoana-
lyst character serving to channel Bloch’s extensive research into psychologi-
cal theory, clearly sees the homicidal rage lurking beneath Morley’s writing
and bluntly tells the writer so: “But you do hate women.... It’s there, in the
book. More than detachment, cynicism, objectivity — I can sense pure hatred
in your descriptions and the attitudes behind them. Actually, you don’t
describe. You dissect. Sadistically.... Are you positive that you aren’t writing
as a sort of safety valve, to keep you from taking more direct action?’ (84).
Lest one mistake Ruppert’s psychoanalytic insights into misogyny as
immunity to its reach, however, his description of his former wife Constance’s
alleged nymphomania is as demeaning toward women as anything Morley
says: “You see, friends never know. They never see the violence, the manic
rages, the frenzied, insensate clinging centered in the womb — the actual womb
that brings hysteria to birth” (91). So if an educated man of science subscribes
to this notion of the corruptive power of the womb, then Morley’s murder of
women is not so inexplicable an action as it may seem in isolation. Certainly
these two men, the psychoanalyst and the actual “psycho,” are the twinned
“blood brothers” in misogyny that Caputi writes of. The irrational fear of the
mysterious, engulfing womb drives men like these to acts of verbal and phys-
ical violence.
As noted by Larson (Robert Bloch 62), Bloch also parallels the craft of
writing and the business of selling one’s writing to the act of fetish-based
murder. Indeed, as Joshi argues, “Words and reality have become inextrica-
bly confused in [Morley’s] mind” (177). Morley’s prelude to murdering a
woman is to become romantically involved with her, write about her to
improve his financial circumstances, and then kill her with his red scarf once
he has exploited her as grist for his fiction. In a very real sense, women are
characters for him, words to be written on a page and then disposed of, as he
says of Rena, a woman he murders in the novel’s first chapter: “I killed Rena
because she was just a story character to me. She wasn’t real. She didn’t exist
at all. It wasn’t as if she had friends, a family, a home.... You get her down on
paper, where she can’t hurt you any more, can’t remind you of anyone — even
herself. She’s on paper, where she belongs. Where you can control her” (17).
Maybe Morley uses a scarf to kill his victims, but he has first symbolically
killed them through his objectification of them as characters in demeaning,
misogynistic stories. For example, he writes a novel, Queen of Hearts, by bas-
ing it on a lover named Hazel. He explains his writing strategy thusly: “Actu-
ally, I suppose there’s no trick in writing a salable novel about a woman. Take
one Cinderella, add a dash of cynicism, sprinkle with sex episodes, mix ten
drops of soap opera, and there you are.... It was all Hazel, every page of it....
I merely had to close my eyes and remember it all. There was a little of Rena
in it, too; but most women are essentially alike” (40). Morley as a writer
essentially preys on the life stories of women to exploit their sensibilities for
the purposes of self-gain. Lou King, a New York publisher, disgusted by Mor-
ley’s treatment of his New York girlfriend Hazel, accuses him of psychic vam-
pirism: “You drained that girl dry, didn’t you, Morley? Drained her like some
goddamned vampire — just to write a cheap book” (96).
If Morley exploits real women to create flat fictional characters that
cheapen the complex inner lives of women, he has little more respect for the
audience of his popular fiction. Rather than remain true to his artistic vision,
he deliberately chooses to pander to what he perceives to be the conventions
of the marketplace: “...if that’s the way they want it written, that’s the way
I’ll write it” (41). Morley reserves his authentic writing voice for a private
black notebook, a diary full of philosophical ruminations about murder.
(Extracts from the notebook are indicated in the text of Bloch’s novel by ital-
ics.) He begins writing it to understand his own psyche. The notebook pro-
vides a glimpse into the role that concealment and repression play in the
continued social functioning of the undetected killer: “Maybe they’d be afraid
of me if they knew what went on inside. I must never let them find out. Write it
down, but don’t tell anybody” (28). But if the purpose in Morley writing the
notebook is to explain his murderous behavior, the project is a failure. Mor-
ley wonders what is wrong with his psyche but cannot find answers: “Calling
myself crazy won’t solve anything. A label isn’t an explanation” (115). Try as
he might, Morley cannot define the word murder and comes to this conclu-
sion: “Maybe this is the answer, the real answer. That murder isn’t a word. It
never is, never was, never will be a word like all the rest.... Murder isn’t a
word. Murder is a deed” (79). Studying the deeds of infamous murderers like
Gilles de Rais and Jack the Ripper for meaning is equally fruitless. In the end,
consumed by fantasies of godlike power over his fellow humans and fully in
harmony with the idea of killing, Morley abandons the notebook as an unnec-
essary reminder of his painful past. He also renounces the power of words in
favor of practical action or deeds, perhaps a peculiar position for a writer to
take but not unusual in consideration of Bloch’s tendency to lampoon or
skewer his own craft.
American Gothic, published nearly thirty years after The Scarf, is a depar-
ture from Bloch’s previous excursions into psychological horror. As Randall
Larson notes, American Gothic “is more a Gothic suspense story, rich in the
tradition of the idealistic woman who is at a romantic crossroads confronting
human evil in a dark and imposing castle” (Robert Bloch 110). Thus, the story’s
Gothic villain is more of a genre convention than a nuanced depiction of a
psychopathic murderer, such as that found in The Scarf. This villain is so das-
tardly that he dismembers murder victims in his basement to burn them more
easily and keeps the hearts of his female victims floating in jars of alcohol in
a cabinet in his bedroom — a decidedly more graphically gruesome set of
behaviors than those ascribed to Dan Morley or Norman Bates. The imper-
iled heroine is Crystal Wilson, a female journalist who finds her fiancée Jim
Frazer’s constant arguments with her over her work so tiresome that she even-
tually throws him over for her editor. Her dissatisfaction with her ordinary
work assignments and her romantic life lead her into the dangerous territory
lorded over by the villain — a journey that ultimately turns out happier for
her than it does for Mary Crane in Psycho.
Like Psycho, the novel is based on the murders committed by real-life
serial killer: in this case, Herman Mudgett, also more widely known by his
pseudonym of Henry H. Holmes. Bloch openly acknowledges in a postscript
to the novel that Holmes served as the inspiration for the novel’s suave con-
man and killer, “Dr.” G. Gordon Gregg, whom Regina Minudri in her review
of the novel calls a “bizarre, ghoulish anti-hero” (116). Bloch also summarizes
the bare-bones facts of the case for the reader, referring to Holmes’s construc-
tion of a castle near the site of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago,
his posing as a pharmacist and physician, his skill in hypnosis, his engaging
in a number of financial swindles targeted at women, and of course his numer-
ous murders. His castle, an architectural monstrosity of labyrinthian passage-
ways and hidden rooms, also served him as a slaughterhouse in which he
killed and dissected any number of unfortunate visitors to the World’s Fair.
Bloch concludes the postscript in characteristically sardonic style: “But all this,
of course, was long ago and far away. Mass murderers, gas chambers and secret
burials and coldblooded slaughter for profit belong to the dim and distant
past. Today we live in more enlightened times. Don’t we?” (246)
Of course, Bloch’s question is rhetorical. He knows very well, as does
his audience, that the history of the twentieth century argues quite persua-
sively against the notion that murder is a thing of the past. Rather, Bloch uses
the novel’s historical setting and its juxtaposition of the castle and the fair-
grounds as a means to comment on the rapacious nature of capitalism and
the dangers of naïve faith in technological progress as an indicator that human
beings have moved away from primal emotions and the savagery that arises
from them. It is the same binary opposition that structures Erik Larson’s 2003
non-fiction bestseller, The Devil in the White City, which contrasts the tri-
umph of architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, director of works for the Chicago
World’s Fair, against the “castle of death” operated by H. H. Holmes in close

proximity to the fairgrounds. Larson’s introductory note to his book could
just as well introduce Bloch’s: “Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this
book ... is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight
and darkness, the White City and the Black” (xi).
Similarly, Larson’s opening description of Holmes would not be out of
place in Bloch’s fiction: “And in Chicago a young handsome doctor stepped
from a train, his surgical valise in hand. He entered a world of clamor, smoke,
and steam, refulgent with the scents of murdered cattle and pigs. He found
it to his liking” (12). By the end of Larson’s account, it is clear that he has
engaged in a work of fiction as well, though he takes great pains to empha-
size the depth of research deployed to recreate Holmes as a convincing his-
torical personage:
Exactly what motivated Holmes may never be known. In focusing on his

quest for possession and dominance, I present only one possibility, though I
recognize any number of other motives might well be posited. I base my
account on known details of his history and behavior and on what forensic
psychiatrists have come to understand about psychopathic serial killers and
the forces that drive them.... Clearly no one other than Holmes was present
during his murders — no one, that is, who survived — yet in my book I re-
create two of his killings.... To build my murder scenes, I used threads of
known detail to weave a plausible account, as would a prosecutor in his clos-
ing arguments to a jury [395].
These words, although more elegant in style than Bloch’s characteristic spare
prose, do not differ markedly from Bloch’s recitation of his own research
methodology at the end of American Gothic: “While certain liberties have
been taken with contemporary events and [Holmes’s] personal history, the
basic facts remain” (245).
Seemingly, non-fiction and fiction authors alike who write about Holmes
cannot resist juxtaposing him and his “Castle of Horrors” against the cele-
bration of civilization’s grandest achievements manifested in the World’s Fair.
Harold Schechter, who has made a veritable literary cottage industry out of
writing hagiographies of serial killers, describes Holmes’s setting up shop on
the border of the White City: “In a booming suburb of Chicago, he erected
his stronghold, a place as imposing in its way as Marshall Field’s dazzling
emporium or the gleaming domes and spires of the Chicago World’s Fair —
the ‘Great White City’ that would arise on the shores of Lake Michigan within
a few years of the monster’s arrival” (3). Of course, this is the identical binary
opposition by which Bloch structures his novel. Schechter also depicts Holmes
as a man representing both “primordial evil” (1) on the inside and “the prodi-
gious energies characteristic of that bustling era” (3) on the outside — again,
just as Bloch does. The convergence of non-fiction and fiction could not be
clearer in the comparison among Larson’s, Schechter’s, and Bloch’s books.
American Gothic is not without its flaws, as its critics have noted. New-
gate Callendar, for one, writes: “Unfortunately, [American Gothic] is not as
good as some of his previous ones. His ingredients are all too familiar: the
evil doctor, the bright girl reporter, the scalpels and the dismemberment
chamber, and so on. The ending contains no surprises, and the writing is not
much above a juvenile level” (33). Given its predictability and clunky style,
at least in the eyes of some critics, the book nevertheless draws out some
intriguing themes. It opens by drawing a parallel between the world of illu-
sion fabricated by Gordon Gregg in the building of his Gothic castle and that
crafted on a much larger scale by the architect Daniel Hudson Burnham,
designer of the fairgrounds and its magnificent buildings. The linkage is made
explicit in this passage describing the technological wizardry on display at the
Exposition: “Electricity. Magic. The modern magic of 1893 — a brave new
world of telegraph and telephones, like the one Gordon had installed right
there in the house on Sunnyside Avenue” (7). Just as the White City gleams
in the sunlight, representing the wonders of technological advancement, so
too is Gregg’s house ironically located on a street named “Sunnyside.” Inside
his sprawling house, Gregg maintains a prescription shop that also offers magic
for sale: “Pharmocopoeia. Vials and bottles and jars, in acrid, aromatic array.
Liquid laudanum, spirits of niter, powdered opium, herbs and balsams and
unguents, chemical concoctions. More magic — the magic of healing” (8). Yet
all of this magic is a glittering façade, deliberately constructed by Gregg to
conceal his true sinister agendas of thievery and murder, just as the magical
wonderland of the Fair masks the true horrors of urban squalor in Chicago.
His wife, Millie, as she arrives at the castle for the first time, recognizes it for
what it is, “only a make-believe, something out of a fairy tale for children.
Real castles didn’t have rooms to rent and a drugstore on the first floor” (2).
She knows the elixirs that her husband sells are medically worthless: “Only
colored water — more make-believe.” Gregg himself is a artificial construc-
tion, possessing no medical degree but passing himself off as a doctor, and
pretending to be a devoted lover when in actually he is a Bluebeard figure,
murdering wife after wife, including Millie in the book’s opening chapter.
However, the world in which Gregg operates is no better in its preten-
sions, as Millie recognizes about her own adoption of the fashions of the day:
“But then, who was she to look down her nose...? The rustle of her bom-
bazine skirt reminded Millie that she was pretending too: beneath her dress,
the bustle and the padding and corseting were false” (2). The World’s Fair,
for all of its exotic allure, is also a sham, a simulacrum of world cultures
crammed into 550 acres for tourist convenience. Rather than travel the globe
to experience authenticity, the fairgoers are content to gaze upon the geograph-
ically contained replicas of Egyptian monumental architecture, a Chinese tea
house, a Japanese bazaar, and a model of St. Peter’s in Rome. If Gregg is a
villain pretending to be something he isn’t, so too by metaphoric association
is the Fair and those who attend it to revel in the triumphs of capitalism. Gregg
speaks to the linkage in the climactic scene, when he finally confesses his
murders to the heroine:
You’ve got to find working capital, that’s the primary rule of economics....
Look at the Fair and you’ll see. The big exhibits — the steel industry, the rail-
roads, textiles, armaments: don’t you think the men behind them had to do
their share of what you call swindling? Banking, insurance, real estate, I don’t
care what it is, you’ve got to look sharp, cut corners, take whatever steps are
necessary.... Where do you draw the line? When a factory shuts down and
workers starve in the streets, what do you call that? What’s your term for the
mortality rate of children working twelve hours a day in the sweatshops? [230].
Gregg attempts to place his crimes within the context of capitalism as a means
of self-justification, but nevertheless there is enough larger truth in what he
says to give the reader pause.
Images of rapacious, murderous capitalism dominate the novel. Typical
is the description of the seedy District area, home to countless number of busi-
nesses catering to the baser instincts of humanity, as a devouring beast: “Pawn-
shop mouths with steel gratings like serrated teeth were flung open to fasten
upon the unwary.... In the end, the beast engulfed them all” (80). Capital-
ism and individual psychosis are linked, as noted by David Punter in his cri-
tique of the book: “On the one hand, we may trace the psychic effects of
capitalism, the implanted need for success and profit, the apparent need to
treat other people as objects in the process of engaging successfully in busi-
ness. On the other hand, we may think about the psychological need for dom-
ination and possession which the castle represents” (102). The insatiable maw
of the businesses preying upon the visitors to the Fair is directly equated to
the trapdoor in the floor of the bathroom in Gregg’s upstairs office, a trap-
door through which Gregg drops the construction foreman Bryan O’Leary
to his death after Gregg has drugged him: “O’Leary’s final glimpse was of the
hole in the floor as he toppled forward. It was deep, dark, yawning. Why, it’s
like a mouth, he thought. Then it swallowed him” (58). The trapdoor opens
up a vertical tunnel that plunges like an esophagus into the bowels of Gregg’s
castle, where the bodies of his victims are “digested” in the furnace. The
upstairs office itself functions as a kind of mouth in which Gregg “consumes”
his victims, such as Thad Hoskins, a criminal accomplice who once helped
Gregg steal bodies from graveyards to sell them to dissection labs and who
now must be dispatched because of his guilty knowledge. The recurring
emphasis on Gregg’s “white teeth in a pale white face” (29) further suggests
that Gregg himself, as a swindler and a murderer, is a devourer of bank
accounts and bodies. The point is made quite explicit in this passage: “Then
the mouth beneath the moustache opened to accept the fragment of [chicken]
flesh, the white teeth tore, the muscles of the lean jaw ripped convulsively,
voraciously. The hands belonged to a surgeon, the face was that of a gentle-
man, but the appetite was animal” (192). Taken in total, the correspondence
between literal consumption and the figurative consumption of capitalism as
a social force, as embodied in one murderer operating with impunity among
the gambling houses and brothels and street crime targeting tourists, carries
the narrative weight of Bloch’s critique of the carnivorous aspect of econom-
ics.
Also under Bloch’s merciless lens is the hypocrisy of men. He goes to
special lengths to lampoon the self-righteousness pretensions of the male fair-
goers in particular. One of the most popular attractions on the fairgrounds
is a building on the recreated Street in Cairo (ironically not far from the
Women’s Building) where an exotic dancer named Little Egypt titillates the
male crowd, who by virtue of trained morality cast disapproving looks her
way but also can’t stop looking at her. Bloch describes her audience as com-
prised of men of all socioeconomic levels: “young hayseeds dressed in go-to-
meeting best ... sports in checked vests ... solid citizens, men of substance”
(21). Insurance agent Jim Frazer, the young fiancée of the novel’s journalist
protagonist, also attends the show to satisfy base instinct: “No use pretend-
ing he was any better than the rest; he’d come to join this grinning, gaping
group for the same reason, and like the others he was grateful there were no
ladies present. If Crystal ever found out he’d come here, he’d feel like a damned
fool” (22). Little Egypt’s show is a ghetto-ized zone of lust, where the Vic-
torian-era men can briefly indulge their sexual curiosity and voyeurism within
severely prescribed limits far from the sight of respectable women. By impli-
cating the female protagonist’s boyfriend in the same seamy milieu as all other
men, within the context of a novel about a male victimizer of women, Bloch
places masculine sexuality on a continuum of objectification of and attrac-
tion/repulsion toward female biology that finds its logical culmination in
serial murder. As Gregg dissects the broken body of his female accomplice
Alice Porter, he muses: “He did what was necessary then, and she was clean
and soft once more. Soft and yielding, the way a woman should always be.
And fair, so very fair. But even clean she is a vessel of uncleanliness, which
must be discarded” (185–6). His thoughts are representative of the misogy-

nist who violently acts out on his fear of women, and remain disturbingly
within the mainstream of cultural attitudes even if his actions do not.
This quasi-feminist authorial agenda may be an attempt in some way to
repudiate Bloch’s earlier career focus on sexual murders told largely or even
exclusively from the point-of-view of the killers, the template for which is
established in The Scarf. In American Gothic, however, Bloch seems less inter-
ested in exploring the distorted sexuality of Gregg than offering a critique of
a sexist, misogynistic culture that incubates killers like Gregg. In this one
regard, the project is not so dissimilar to that of Jane Caputi, who as noted
elsewhere offers strong condemnation of the tendency of writers such as Bloch
who mythologize the sex crimes of Jack the Ripper and other serial killers.
However, what complicates the matter is Bloch’s insistence on undermining
his creation of the strong female central character, Crystal. At first she devi-
ates from all kinds of gender norms. She has a traditionally masculine job,
shows career ambition, flaunts standards of decency by going to a belly-dancer
show and a famous up-scale brothel to observe male behavior, and barges into
male-dominated geographical spaces such as barbershops without regard for
decorum. Eventually, as her name symbolically suggests, that independence
is shattered through a series of plot developments that render her more help-
less and thus traditionally “female.” Beginning the novel as an aggressive jour-
nalist determined to get a good story at all costs, Crystal falls under the literally
hypnotic influence of Gregg and nearly surrenders emotionally and sexually
to him. She finally must be rescued from the Gothic castle by her employer
and editor, Charlie Hogan, who battles and defeats Gregg mano a mano. She
is so swept off her feet by Hogan’s assertive masculinity that she ditches her
fiancée, Jim, for the perceived stronger male. The diminishment of Crystal’s
initially heroic stature is a conventional masculine solution, dramatized in nar-
rative form, to the problem presented by a strong-willed woman crossing gen-
der boundaries.
This story arc is even more striking when one considers that though the
novel is told in stretches from the point of view of male characters such as
Jim and Gregg himself, the majority of the novel’s voices are female. The first
female voice belongs to Millie, one of Gregg’s many wives who comes to an
unfortunate end by being chloroformed and then killed by her husband.
Another voice belongs to Genevieve Bolton, Gregg’s personal secretary who
becomes his lover and also his victim when he saps her strength through con-
tinued doses of arsenic-tainted “elixir” and then kills her when she discovers
him at work with the body of yet another female victim. Alice Porter, an
accomplice of Gregg’s who masquerades as the murdered Genevieve to throw
off suspicion, is another female voice. However, through being murdered by

Gregg, these women drop quickly out of sight in the text. Their deaths are
necessary formulaic prerequisites for creating an atmosphere of dread in which
the heroine can be more effectively threatened and tortured. The novel’s dom-
inant female voice is that of Crystal, a professional journalist seeking to dis-
cover the secrets of the dark gothic castle sitting on the border of the gleaming
White City. Toward that end, she goes “undercover” by posing as the dead
Millie’s niece come to Chicago to visit the Fair and decide some financial
matters left unresolved by Millie’s death. In taking on such an investigation,
the strong-willed Crystal is the genre heir to Bloch’s own Lila Crane, who
traveled to the Bates Motel, posing as Sam Loomis’s wife, in search of her sis-
ter. Bloch thus balances the destroying forces of patriarchy as embodied in
villains like Gregg and Bates with independent female protagonists who cross
into forbidden territories like imposing Gothic castles and isolated rural motels
seeking answers to dangerous puzzles. They are border crossers and hence
transgressors who bring danger upon themselves through the act of transgres-
sion. Arguably, they are punished within the terms defined by the narrative
precisely because they are transgressors.
Crystal is introduced to the reader as she crosses over from the respectable
world of the fairgrounds into the liminal zone of the Street in Cairo, where
the belly dancer Little Egypt gyrates enticingly in front of her gaping male
audience. To shield her identity from Jim, she hides her features beneath a
veil, cementing her in the reader’s mind as an “undercover” investigator. When
Jim un-covers her, he reacts in the male custom of his time, saying that women
“aren’t supposed to see such things,” meaning the partially undraped body of
Little Egypt. Crystal scoffs at his prudery: “Women know all about the female
body. It’s you men who are the ignorant ones.” She will have none of his
excuses as to his presence on the Midway: “Come off it! Why don’t you tell
the truth and admit you were curious, just like all the rest?” (25) She then
defends her profession as a journalist to Jim: “Half the world is female. Women
buy papers just as men do. And we’re just as capable of finding news as we
are at reading it” (26). Crystal is thus established as a spokesperson for “half
the world”— the female half. As part of her project to expand the conscious-
ness of her betrothed, she acerbically criticizes male foibles and proclaims not
only the capability of women to perform any job men do but the purchasing
power of women.
In the same breath, however, she is defined by the same economic con-
siderations that drive everyone else in the novel, which in turns leads her to
evaluate unfavorably her fiancée for his potential as provider. By the novel’s
end, Crystal’s harsh education in the dangerous ways of the world ends with
her falling in love with her editor and employer, the male who proves him-
self the strongest in the narrative by killing Gregg in single combat in the cas-
tle’s dungeon. It should be noted that Bloch attempted to minimize the
importance of this development in a 1974 letter to Randall Larson: “Jim was
originally my hero, just an ordinary guy. Simon & Schuster wanted me to
switch to Hogan, as more ‘gutsy.’ So I made the change, but wasn’t happy
with either character as a result” (quoted in Larson, Companion 62). Regard-
less of the reasons for the change or who was behind it, Bloch’s explanation
does not mitigate against the fact that, wittingly or unwittingly, Crystal’s
endangerment by one male and transference of romantic allegiance from an
“ordinary” love interest to the more “gutsy” alternative begs for a feminist
critique. Rather than consider true independence, Bloch’s heroine turns rather
conventionally to thoughts of just what kind of man really could take care of
her economic needs: “Jim wasn’t the only man in the world. Suppose she were
to marry someone else? Not one of the reporters she knew at work; they were
clods for the most part, notoriously unreliable. But there were others — men
of action and accomplishment, men who weren’t afraid to gamble for high
stakes in the game of life. Men like Gordon Gregg, for example” (39). Her
dissatisfaction with Jim leads her into a dangerous situation where her living
in the castle under false pretenses renders her vulnerable to Gregg’s murder-
ous designs on her. As Gregg performs the part of an ardent suitor to con-
ceal his intent to murder her, she performs the part of a fiancée while trying
to keep him at arm’s length long enough for Charlie Hogan to show up the
castle performing the part of her mother’s attorney. The risk of taking on a
role, of course, is that by acting the emotion one may eventually come to feel
it. This progression is precisely what happens to Crystal when she allows
Gregg to massage her forehead to rid her of a headache. She nearly surren-
ders to him sexually: “And it wasn’t playacting anymore, not when he touched
her and she felt the sudden, terrible vitality flowing from his fingertips; not
when his mouth crushed hers so that their mingled breath became a single
panting of purpose” (216–7). Only the timely sound of Hogan prowling in
the castle’s cellar, which then sends Gregg downstairs to investigate, prevents
the sexual encounter. This encounter demonstrates that such play-acting,
with its potentially lethal stakes, is built upon an economics of performativ-
ity, in which declarations of undying love are hypocritical or self-interested
means to an end: financial gain. As Gregg’s castle burns to the ground in a
fall worthy of the House of Usher, the weeping Crystal composes herself while
in Charlie Hogan’s arms, and her eyes moist in the glare of the fire, declares
her newfound romantic allegiance to Hogan, the better and battle-proven
provider. It is an incongruously happy (or restorative, if one prefers) ending
in the context of all the murders, one that makes the most sense if the narra-
tive subtext is to subvert the independence of the career-oriented heroine by
showing how reliant she truly is upon the physical and financial protection
of a male. Of course, it is entirely possible that Bloch indicts his heroine the
same as everyone else in perpetuating the capitalistic mindset that made a Dr.
Gregg possible.
In summary, Bloch devoted a large part of his lengthy, prolific career to
exploring the psychology of the serial murderer and the social conditions that
contribute to its prevalence in American culture. In doing so, he certainly
leaves himself open to the charge of misogyny, particularly in combining an
obsessive focus on the subject with a sense of humor that many might find
inappropriate or even offensive, given the context. It is important to remem-
ber, however, that whatever else he may do, he excoriates through his char-
acters the kind of capitalistic and individualistic ideology that drives American
collective behavior. If the early phase of his career tends to highlight the role
of individual psychosis in serial killing, the mature and later part of his career
foregrounds the culpability of mass ideologies (particularly of capitalism and
American self-reliance) in promulgating murder. In that the serial killer is
often portrayed in the genre as the sine qua non result of commonly held ide-
ologies, Bloch establishes that template with his fiction.
WORKS CITED
Barr, Donald. “Silken Death.” The New York Times Book Review 28 September 1947: 31.
Berger, Albert I. “Towards a Science of the Nuclear Mind: Science-Fiction Origins of Dia-
netics.” Science-Fiction Studies 16 (1989): 123–44.
Bloch, Robert. American Gothic. 1974. New York: iBooks, 2004.
_____. Once around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor, 1993.
_____. The Scarf. 1947. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1966.
_____. Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of. New York: Ballantine, 1979.
Bloom, Harold. “Robert Bloch: 1917–1994.” Modern Crime and Suspense Writers. Harold
Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1995. 1–3.
_____. “Robert Bloch: 1917–1994.” Modern Horror Writers. Harold Bloom, ed. New York:
Chelsea House, 1995. 48–63.
Caputi, Jane. “American Psychos: The Serial Killer in Contemporary Fiction.” The Journal
of American Culture 16.4 (December 1993): 101–112.
Coville, Gary, and Patrick Lucanio. Jack the Ripper: His Life and Crimes in Popular Enter-
tainment. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999.
Daniels, Les. “Robert Bloch.” Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror: Volume 2:
A.E. Coppard to Roger Zelazny. E.F. Bleiler, ed. New York: Scribner, 1985. 901–07.
Durgnat, Raymond. A Long Hard Look at “Psycho.” London: BFI Publishing, 2002.
Joshi, S.T. The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.
Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That
Changed America. New York: Crown, 2003.
Larson, Randall D. Robert Bloch. Starmont Reader’s Guide 37. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont
House, 1986.
Larson, Randall D. The Robert Bloch Companion: Collected Interviews 1969–1986. Starmont
Studies in Literary Criticism 32. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1989.
McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. New York: ReganBooks,
2004.
Minudri, Regina. “American Gothic (rev).” Library Journal (September 1974): 116.
Schechter, Harold. Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer. 1994.
New York: Pocket, 1996.
Hell Is Other People: Robert
Bloch and the Pathologies
of the Family
Joel Lane
Robert Bloch (1917–1994) is known for the personal style and attitude
that distinguish his novels and short stories. He developed a vein of noir
fiction that was profoundly informed by the supernatural horror genre and
reworked its classic themes as psychological analogues. He wrote in a terse,
nervous style that used wordplay and surrealism to hint at the dark under-
currents beneath the surface of normal behavior. His trademark endings are
starkly expressed revelations that echo comic timing, and are sometimes bleak
jokes in themselves.
For Bloch, the focus of horror is neither mortality nor the unknown: it’s
how these themes are internalized in the human psyche. And while he’s best
known as a portrayer of the deranged and dangerous individual, he never allows
such individuals to stand for “humanity” in the abstract. Rather, like certain
alleged mafia operatives, he immerses them in the concrete. Bloch is a unique
master of the social as the dimension of horror and madness. His stories always
display a corruption of human relationships: love gone sour, families destroy-
ing their members, insane social groups or trends, civilization in crisis.
The key to understanding the pathological character in Bloch’s fiction
is that he or she has internalized the madness of the family or the commu-
nity, distilling it to a lethal essence. The theme of damaged family relation-
ships runs through Bloch’s key works, and the mention of an abusive or
neglectful parent is always a sign that the story is headed for a particularly
intense conclusion.
169
In this sense, Bloch is the most Freudian of weird fiction writers — despite
his relative lack of interest in sex as such. Bloch, who was well-versed in psy-
choanalysis, understood that the importance of sex in Freudian theory derives
from what it means to the individual: a domain of absolute power and
gratification, a chance to be adult and child at once. Bloch’s characters are
motivated not by sex, but by destructive needs arising from the closure of
pathways to love.
Bloch’s thoughtful and revealing “unauthorized autobiography” Once
Around the Bloch (1993) contains no dramatic account of personal trauma to
‘explain’ the pessimistic and violent themes that dominate his work. How-
ever, the book shows us a man for whom life was never easy. Bloch struggled
with poverty and unhappiness for many years. It distressed him greatly that
his parents both suffered painful deaths from chronic illness, and that his first
wife had a disabling health condition. He notes that the image of the
mummified figure in Psycho was derived from his last sight of his mother’s
body (230).
It’s no coincidence that in the sixties, when Bloch’s first marriage broke
up, his short fiction became dominated by the theme of marital conflict. His
second marriage lasted until his death, and the fame that followed the suc-
cess of Psycho eased his financial worries. He was known for his good humor,
personal kindness and unstinting work ethic. He built normality in his own
life as seriously as he crafted abnormality in his fiction. His puns — the only
black mark on his character — were a nervous defense against the conflicts of
reality, a way of inflicting on language the irrational violence that he sensed
in the world.
Fritz Leiber described the Robert Bloch of 1937: “I recall Bob as a slen-
der, serious, sensitive young man, keenly and responsively — sympatheti-
cally — aware of the plight of people, especially young people, ground down
by the Depression and caught up in the fantastic, heartless buying and sell-
ing machinery that was America” (Flanagan 25). These words are worth keep-
ing in mind. Bloch’s depictions of blighted lives were always tinged with
compassion, and his pessimism was the reaction of a secular liberal to a cul-
ture that blended religious faith with amorality.
Bloch’s fiction portrays the family as a microcosm of society — coercive,
abusive and controlling — and the individual as a microcosm of the family.
Conflict and ambivalence run deeply through his perception of the human
condition. This sense of ‘human nature’ as something divided and unstable
is what gives his horror fiction its nervous edge and resonance. His work
dramatizes the breakdown of the key personal roles that define our lives: child,
lover and parent.
Hell Is Other People (Lane) 171
IN LOCO PARENTIS
Bloch’s writing career famously began with a fan letter to H.P. Lovecraft,
written when Bloch was fifteen. The older writer became his friend and men-
tor, and Bloch’s first published stories were overtly influenced by Lovecraft.
At a subtler level, the influence remained important. To see why, it’s neces-
sary to appreciate that Bloch saw Lovecraft’s work very much in terms of the
Gothic tradition.
If one shifts attention from those “cosmic” stories that most critics con-
sider Lovecraft’s primary canon to the strand of morbid horror and black
humor that also runs through his work, the relationship is clearer. Tales such
as “Pickman’s Model” and “The Thing on the Doorstep” combine a fatalis-
tic darkness with a warped and unsettling sense of the absurd. And on that
side of Lovecraft’s output, the dominant themes are family and inheritance.
Fourteen of Lovecraft’s stories relate strongly to the theme of family. For
Lovecraft, the family — or rather, the “clan”— is the key determinant of iden-
tity. The pull of blood ties is often manifest as a hereditary “taint” of mad-
ness, or even of the inhuman. While Lovecraft’s racism plays a part in his
images of genetic horror, he appears quite ambivalent to the concept of a
“pure” blood line. The New England Yankee Charles Dexter Ward is corrupted
and displaced by his amoral Colonial ancestor, Joseph Curwen, who looks
exactly like him. The de la Poer family is, on the face of it, everything that
Lovecraft admired: English aristocrats and slave-owners in the American
South, a breed apart. But their ancestral mansion proves to be founded on
debasement.
One of Bloch’s favorite Lovecraft stories (Flanagan 18) was “The Thing
on the Doorstep,” in which a man falls under the influence of the daughter
of an occultist. When married to her, he realizes that her father’s rapacious
soul has taken possession of her body — and is now trying to take possession
of his. Grim even by Lovecraft’s standards, this story combines the themes of
an unhappy marriage, an abusive parent and the destructive power of family
traditions.
Lovecraft’s influence on Bloch is visible whenever he uses family history
to explore aberrant behavior. Most notably, the discovery of Norman Bates’
mother in the fruit-cellar is an echo of the nocturnal discovery made by
Wilmarth in his friend’s house. The conversation between Norman and his
mother that Marion overhears parallels the whispered revelations heard by
Wilmarth: the oddness of what is heard serves to mask a greater aberration
in the source of the words.
Edgar Allan Poe’s fevered but tightly-woven narratives of erotic and mor-
bid obsession are perhaps the most important literary source for Bloch’s por-
traits of psychotic or psychopathic characters. The narrators of Poe’s quasi-
supernatural love stories are caught between the families they have come from
and the ones they are building. One says of his lover: “Berenice and I were
cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls” (Poe 176). Another
sees his daughter become the perfect double of his dead lover, and follow her
early death. Roderick Usher is consumed by an obsessive love for his sister
that goes beyond the sexual. (Lovecraft commented that the Ushers and their
house share a common soul (399)). Bloch’s characters also confuse desire with
morbidity, and familial with sexual love.
Another key influence on Bloch’s work was the grim and ironic short
stories of Ambrose Bierce, in which the ties of marriage and family give way
unpredictably to violence. Bierce uses puns and other forms of verbal wit to
suggest that reality does not follow the laws of reason or good manners. In
“A Horseman in the Sky,” a bleak story of patricide, he remarks innocently
that “the line of march of aerial cavalry is directed downward” (Bierce, In the
Midst of Life 23). In the shattering “Chickamauga,” a child playing at sol-
diers is interrupted by a group of horribly injured infantrymen; returning
home, he finds his mother’s body in the ruins of their shelled house.
In “The Boarded Window,” Bierce uses a shock ending to reveal the ter-
rible secret behind the solitude of a widower: through a mistake, he has caused
his wife to suffer a hideous death. In “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot,”
the ghost of a murdered woman displays the deformity that led her husband
to kill her. “The Death of Halpin Frayser” portrays an Oedipal relationship
that culminates in a vampiric attack by the dead mother on the living son:
In these two romantic natures was manifest in a signal way that neglected phe-
nomenon, the dominance of the sexual element in all the relations of life,
strengthening, softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The
two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manners were
not infrequently mistaken for lovers [Bierce, Can Such Things Be 15].
Bloch’s apocalyptic story “Daybroke” is clearly modeled on Bierce’s tales
of the American Civil War, while many of Bloch’s terse revelations and black
jokes echo Bierce’s sense of irony. The nihilistic impulse that unites Poe and
Bierce — the desire not only to break taboos, but to leave them broken beyond
repair — is displayed by Bloch at his best: in the psychological novels and
short stories that he wrote between the mid-forties and the mid-sixties, includ-
ing The Scarf, Psycho, The Couch, “Lucy Comes to Stay,” “The Hungry House”
and “Betsy Blake Will Live Forever.”
Other fictional genres impacted on Bloch’s writing, most notably the
sardonic (and not always light) urban anecdotes of Damon Runyon and the
cold Depression-era noir of James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett. The

influence of noir on Bloch’s writing extended beyond his preoccupation with
murder. Bloch is one of the first writers of weird fiction for whom the sepa-
ration of people from the everyday world cannot be taken for granted. Unless
insane, his characters do not live in a world of cosmic reverie or bitter intro-
spection: they live in a world of financial and other real-life worries. Their
universe is the city, and its stars are human.
HOME OF THE GRAVE

Bloch’s first-published short story, “The Feast in the Abbey” (1935),
appeared when he was seventeen. It’s quite a debut. A traveler in France, try-
ing to reach the village where his brother lives, gets lost in a forest at night
and comes upon a somber abbey where a celebration is in progress. The monks
are eating and drinking without restraint. They tell the narrator the local leg-
end of a ruined abbey where the ghosts of blasphemous monks return to feast.
Then they lift the lid from the last remaining platter: “It was the head of my
brother” (The Early Fears 211). The story is a pulp-horror retread of Black-
wood’s “Secret Worship,” but its conclusion is pure Bloch: the stark word-
ing, the violation of taboo, the invocation of family in a nightmare context.
“Mother of Serpents” (1936) is another family story: a Haitian political
leader, inconvenienced by his mother’s voodoo practices, kills her and makes
a candle from the fat of her corpse. The candle, when lit, becomes a snake
and chokes him. The casual racism of this story is not characteristic of Bloch’s
mature work, and neither is the stupidity of the plot. However, matricide is
a striking choice of theme for a teenage writer — and the symbolism of a man
being strangled by his mother resonates with some of Bloch’s later work.
As Bloch matured and his perspective darkened, human relationships
emerged as his core theme. “The Fiddler’s Fee” (1940) tells the story of a
Faustian pact that ends with an insane musician playing in a concert hall on
a violin constructed from the bones and hair of his dead sweetheart. “House
of the Hatchet” (1941) has an entirely contemporary setting and style. An ill-
matched young couple visit a possibly bogus “haunted house” set up as a
roadside attraction. It finally proves to be haunted, but only by the violence
that has taken place between them.
In “The Hungry House” (1951), a young couple discover their first home
has an occupant who can only be seen in mirrors. Following a disastrous
party, the couple are left alone with the entity. Their disorientation builds to
a violent conclusion. “For a moment he started to tell her about it, and then
he realized she was gone. Now there were only the two of them left. He and
it” (The Early Fears 439). Soon there is only it: a figure that “capered and pos-
tured” while dabbling its fingers in a pool of blood. “It had the face of an old
woman and the face of a child, the face of a bearded man, and his face, and
her face, changing and blending” (The Early Fears 440).
In this remarkable story, Bloch created a weird metaphor for the fam-
ily: a maniacal and infantile creature that destroys individuals, taking every-
thing for itself. The story may have influenced Ramsey Campbell, another
weird fiction writer with an ambivalent view of the family — see his “Napier
Court” (1971) in particular.
Another Bloch story from this phase, “Lucy Comes To Stay” (1950), is
often seen as a precursor to Psycho. The narrator is a young alcoholic woman
whose best friend or sister, Lucy, has killed someone in order to get her out
of trouble. Unable to show the doctor where Lucy is, the narrator points to
a mirror. “We just stood there against the bars, Lucy and I, laughing like
crazy” (Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of 80). This represents a crucial point
of departure for Bloch: by depicting madness as the internal replication of a
troubled relationship, he created a psychological analogue of the ghost story.
Other stories depict the vulnerability of children to adults. In “Sweets
to the Sweet” (1947), a young girl uses black magic to take revenge on her
abusive father. His image of her as a “witch” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” (1951), the best of Bloch’s overtly
Lovecraftian stories, a child’s viewpoint is used to depict the corruption of
home and family. The man who claims to be the narrator’s cousin is an impos-
tor, and something inhuman follows him to the house. The monstrous enti-
ties that lurk in the woods are metaphors for the adult world to which the
betrayed child is given up.
“I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell” (1955) explores the theme of the psy-
chiatrist as father-figure. The protagonist, Bromely, is a PR agent adrift in a
world of insincere catch-phrases. He visits a psychiatrist to help him recon-
nect with himself: “Dr. Fell listened as he told him about his father and
mother and about the peculiar feeling he now had — the feeling that Dr. Fell
reminded him of his father and mother” (Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of
99). Fell tells him that this is Bromely’s own office, and that he is there alone.
Confused, Bromely falls asleep — and awakes as Fell. The father-figure has
taken over to fill the void of a disintegrating identity.
Another of Bloch’s psychiatric stories, “The Screaming People” (1959),
is an ambitious take on the classic noir themes of amnesia and hypnosis. The
narrator, Steve, is an amnesiac who has been helped by a psychiatrist, Dr.
Wagram, to build a new life. Wagram runs a private hospital based on the
therapeutic properties of regression to the womb: “The orthodox analyst

becomes a father-image. I extend that: I become the mother-image as well”
(Chamber of Horrors 65). His hospital is full of psychotic patients in a long-
term state of hypnotic regression.
It emerges that Wagram is using post-hypnotic suggestion to make Steve
and other patients commit crimes for him. Ostensibly a healer, he is a con-
troller and user of people. After his death, Wagram’s patients revert to a state
of violent psychosis — with terrible consequences. While the plot is indebted
to Cornell Woolrich, the tormented protagonist is a typical Bloch character:
his only conception of peace is a pure isolation where “No one can get to me,
not even myself ” (Chamber of Horrors 52).
Parental issues loom large in Bloch’s superb noir story “Betsey Blake Will
Live Forever” (1958). Steve, an unsuccessful screenwriter, rents a Hollywood
beach house and becomes friendly with Jimmy, a struggling PR agent. One
night, Jimmy turns up in an excited state. He has been commissioned to pub-
licize the films of Betsey Blake, a once-famous actress whose career faded due
to alcohol and ageing. Blake is missing and presumed dead — a golden oppor-
tunity to revive her stardom. Then a drunken middle-aged woman turns up
and greets Jimmy as an old friend. She claims to be Betsey Blake, returning from
a protracted misadventure in another country. Jimmy offers to walk her home.
The next morning, the woman’s body is found at the foot of a cliff.
Jimmy claims that she was not Betsey Blake. Steve realizes he has killed Blake
to preserve his own career opportunity as the man who made her immortal.
He says bitterly to his friend: “Why, you’d murder your own mother for a
story.” As the police arrive, Jimmy replies: “That’s right. How’d you guess?”
(Blood Runs Cold 95). The ending transforms the whole story: a bleak inner
narrative is suddenly laid bare.
After the success of Psycho (1959), Bloch devoted more time to novels
and screenplays than to short stories. In the sixties, his short fiction belonged
mostly to the crime or mystery genre; but in the seventies, he returned effec-
tively to both supernatural and psychological horror.
“The Animal Fair” (1971) is a grim revenge story. A hitcher visits a car-
nival where he sees a sickly gorilla being forced to dance. Later, he hitches a
ride with the gorilla’s owner and hears his story: how he brought up a niece
who, at the age of sixteen, was raped and fatally drugged by a gang of hip-
pies. He killed one of the gang, but their leader escaped. After a spell in
prison, the animal trainer resumed his career. Finally, the hitcher sees the
gorilla in the back of the caravan raise its arms, revealing crude stitches.
Bloch notes in Cold Chills (1977) that his antipathy toward hippies was
based on bad personal experiences (97). None the less, this bitter story is
implicitly a defense of conventional morality against the challenge of the

counterculture. Above all, it shows the continued power of the family as an
emotional trigger in Bloch’s writing.
By contrast, “See How They Run” (1973) is another story of a madman
with a destructive family background. The narrator is being treated for alco-
holism, and keeping a diary that shows his mental disintegration. He dreams
of taking revenge on his abusive mother, but reacts violently when his doc-
tor talks to him about his feelings. The only escape from these conflicts is
regression to an infantile state, in which he kills his girlfriend and tells the
doctor “I was a bad boy” (Cold Chills 172).
Bloch’s ambivalence towards the family is dramatized in the chilling
“Nina” (1977), where a married man on a business trip in Latin America has
a passionate affair with a native Indian woman who, he is told, belongs to a
snake-worshipping sect. When he returns to his wife and their newborn son,
Nina follows him. In the hospital, he finds his wife crushed to death and the
baby missing. Nina has been sighted getting onto a boat, apparently preg-
nant. This story, in Freud’s terms, shows the “bad mother” triumphing over
the “good mother.”
“The Rubber Room” (1980) is among Bloch’s most uncompromising
portraits of madness. Emery develops a paranoid fear and hatred of Jews,
rooted in the teachings of his possessive mother: “Behave yourself or the Jew
man will get you, Mother said” (Midnight Pleasures 7). After his mother’s
death, Emery starts to research the “Jewish conspiracy” and becomes a com-
mitted Nazi. While in police custody, he tells a lawyer how he killed a Jew-
ish child to stop her betraying him to them. Alone in his cell, he imagines a
terrorist coming for him: “behind every ski mask was a Jewish face” (Mid-
night Pleasures 7). Then the figure of his nightmares becomes real. Emery is
found dead in the cell where another patient had recently killed himself: “the
crazy terrorist guy in the ski mask” (Midnight Pleasures 16).
At one level, this ending merely grafts a supernatural element onto what
is essentially a portrait of psychosis. But it also symbolizes the connection that
Bloch drew repeatedly in his later work between the madness of individuals
and the madness of society. The fear may be personal, but the terror is col-
lective.
MY SON THE KILLER

For better or worse, Bloch’s name will always be associated primarily
with his fifth novel. Psycho (1959) is a concentrated noir masterwork that bears
comparison with the novels of David Goodis or Jim Thompson. It blends

subtle characterisation with stark horror, undermining the reader’s sense of
reality. The layers of normality that disguise Norman Bates are peeled away
until the madness of his life is laid bare.
A telling early moment is when Bates complains to Marion Crane about
his mother’s irrational behavior, and she suggests that perhaps his mother
would be better off in an institution. Rising to his feet and knocking a cup
to the floor, Bates cries: “She’s not crazy!” (Psycho 27). But what we make of
this denial has to be reassessed later. Neither this moment nor any other rep-
resents the “real” Norman Bates. His comment that “I think perhaps all of us
go a little crazy at times” (Psycho 27) prompts agreement from Marion, but
she cannot see what he really means. The brutal pun that describes Marion’s
death has the purpose of bringing the reader face to face with unreason.
Another pun arises when Norman is thinking about his mother: “It was
getting so he couldn’t handle her alone any more. Getting so he couldn’t han-
dle himself, either. What had Mother used to say about handling himself? It
was a sin. You could burn in hell” (Psycho 32). These abrupt shifts of mean-
ing are as close as we get to understanding Bates from his own thoughts.
Another striking comment relates to Bates’ reading, a mish-mash of pop-
ular science and occultism: “He was a grown man, a man who studied the
secrets of time and space and mastered the secrets of dimension and being”
(Psycho 67). Which may be intended as a rebuke to some of Lovecraft’s more
obsessive fans, though it more probably reflects Bloch’s distaste for cults and
their followers.
The novel’s moment of truth is Lila’s discovery of the mummified body
of Norma Bates in the fruit cellar. From that, it becomes clear (as in a Love-
craft story) how the ruin of Norman’s identity has played out in time and
space. Like Oedipus, Bates has blinded himself— but only in his mind. He
has successfully buried his passion for his mother and its consequences, but
only by creating a grotesque facsimile of the life they had.
Bloch undoubtedly intends us to recognize in Norman Bates’ false home
an exaggerated form of the price we all pay for stability in our personal lives.
Hence Lila’s comment: “We’re all not quite as sane as we pretend to be” (Psy-
cho 125). This sense of Bates as a warped everyman underlies the success of
the Hitchcock film, which has given the Oedipus complex a face in modern
popular mythology.
The virtues of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) are numerous. However, we
should remember Hitchcock’s own admission that the film “all came from
Robert Bloch’s book” (Once Around the Bloch 228). The film plays on the sym-
bolic geography of the house and the motel, which represent the id and the
ego. It realizes Bloch’s description of Norma Bates’ room perfectly. It trans-

lates the physical horror of the novel’s grimmest moments into memorable
images.
The main failings of the film stem from Hitchcock’s lack of interest in
motivation. For example, the fact that Marion’s theft is a revenge on a man
who has offered her money for sex is omitted from the film — thereby losing
the key point that her crime is driven by emotional forces, not by rational
self-interest. Some details that build up our understanding of Norman Bates
are left out, with the insights being saved up for a lengthy and rather prosaic
final explanation. The film accentuates the visual at the expense of the ver-
bal.
It’s clear from Bloch’s comments (in his autobiography) that he and
Hitchcock respected each other. He notes, however, that the director “was
not the kind of person anyone would call ‘Al’” (Once Around the Bloch 335).
I take this to imply that differences in their socio-economic background made
it difficult for the two men to socialize on an equal basis.
A generation of film critics have shown their appreciation of Hitchcock’s
Psycho by denigrating Bloch’s novel. For them, the novel is the mass of lead
that Hitchcock transmuted into cinematic gold. It doesn’t even matter that
the ideas all came from Bloch: he only put them in a book, whereas it took
the genius of Hitchcock to make them part of a film. Critics like that make
me very angry. So angry I could just ... never mind.
The iconic significance of Norman Bates was reflected in the recent
British TV comedy program Goodness Gracious Me, which explored the expe-
rience of the Asian immigrant community in the UK. In one sketch, two
proud mothers were competing as to which had the most dutiful son. One
declared: “My son is so besotted with me that on his wedding night, he sent
his bride to the hotel in a taxi and spent the night in a cot at the foot of my
bed.” The other retorted: “That’s nothing. My son is so hopelessly Oedipal,
he dresses up in my clothes and pretends to have conversations with me when
I’m not there.”
It’s instructive to compare Bloch’s Psycho with Philip Roth’s infamous
novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1967). Both are novels by Jewish-American men
that deal with the fallout from the Oedipus complex. While Roth’s perspec-
tive is more overtly comic than Bloch’s, the former is clearly aware of the
Gothic potential of his material. Portnoy remarks: “The macabre is very funny
on the stage — but not to live it, thank you!” (Roth 125). When discussing his
parents’ ignorance of sexual deviation, he states: “There are men who screw
stiffs! You simply cannot imagine how some people will respond to having
served fifteen- and twenty-year sentences as some crazy bastard’s idea of
‘good’!” (Roth 141). Closer still to the nightmare logic of Norman Bates, he
declares: “Doctor, maybe other patients dream — with me, everything happens.
I have a life without latent content” (Roth 291).
Some readers have accused Roth of misogyny, based partly on the cor-
rosive dislike of women expressed by Portnoy. But the latter is a character,
and the comparison with Norman Bates is not so far-fetched when you read
the sour closing chapters of Roth’s novel. Having degraded several non–Jew-
ish women in abusive relationships, Portnoy attempts to rape a Jewish woman
because she looks like his mother. He fails to commit the crime only because
he becomes impotent. There is a dark aspect to this novel, and the pathol-
ogy of its protagonist cannot safely be ascribed to its author.
One important difference between the two novels is that Roth creates
many parallels between Portnoy and himself, whereas the only overt similar-
ity between Bates and Bloch is their age in 1959 (about forty). Norman Bates
is an archetypal small-town Protestant, and his Oedipal tendencies are embed-
ded in a narrative of secret madness and violence. The pathology of Alex
Portnoy has to be read between the lines of a wildly comic rant about the fail-
ings of Jewish-American culture. This helps to explain why Portnoy’s Com-
plaint is something that Roth has had to live down, whereas Psycho was the
critical highlight of Bloch’s career. I don’t know whether the two writers read
each other’s books.
By the time he came to write Psycho II (1982), Bloch had spent two
decades being known as “the author of Psycho.” He had also seen the mass-
production of “slasher” films and novels in which the “psycho” had become
a quantifiable performing unit. The title of Psycho II is itself probably ironic,
as the novel not only examines the commercial exploitation of Norman Bates
as an “icon,” but also shows would-be imitators of Bates proliferating in a
manner reminiscent of a famous scene in Spartacus.
The opening chapters present a somewhat caustic “What did you expect?”
scenario: Norman Bates kills a nun who is visiting him in the psychiatric
institution where he is now a trusted patient. He rapes the corpse while think-
ing about his mother. Then he disguises himself in her clothes in order to
escape. Thereafter, as the narrative shifts to the Hollywood studio where a
horror film about the Bates case is being made, the reader is kept guessing
about who is responsible for a series of atrocities. Is it the middle-aged actor
who is desperate to “get into role” as the killer? Or the scriptwriter with a
deep-seated antagonism towards the film? Or the Italian director with his
own psychosexual demons? Or Bates himself?
These characters represent different facets or alternative versions of Nor-
man Bates, like a purpose-built dysfunctional family. Roy Ames, the
scriptwriter, conceals violent impulses behind a charming façade. Paul Mor-

gan, the actor, researches the sexual ambiguity of Bates by working as a gay
hustler. Santo Vizzini, the director (who is not, in any way, meant to resem-
ble Dario Argento) has built his reputation on a series of misogynistic hor-
ror films in the giallo tradition. He is also hiding a personal trauma: as a boy,
he became sexually aroused when he witnessed his mother being gang-raped
by soldiers.
The only person who tries to understand Bates as a whole person is his
psychiatrist, Dr. Claiborne — who turns out to be the mystery killer, Bates
having died not long after escaping from the hospital. Psycho II is a savagely
comic dissection of the cinematic myth-making process, with childhood trau-
mas and family secrets at its heart. It suggests that a pathological state of
arrested development is the norm not only in the film industry, but in soci-
ety as a whole.
Psycho House (1990), Bloch’s last novel, is neither comic nor particularly
horrific. Instead, it defects to the mystery side of the border. Long after the
death of Norman Bates, a Fairvale businessman decides to reconstruct the
motel as a commercial attraction. The project is dogged by objections from
the community — and then a series of real murders take place at the “motel.”
In direct contrast to his portrait of Hollywood, Bloch depicts a small-town
culture dominated by bigotry, religion and fear of the modern world. Is the
violence due to city folk coming along, or is its source home-grown?
Whereas Psycho II explored facets of Norman Bates, in Psycho House
Bloch depicts two characters who seem to represent facets of himself. Hank
Gibbs, the local newspaper editor, is a friendly individual whose mordant
jokes reveal an underlying anger. Charles Pitkin, a Jewish lawyer, is an imag-
inative creator of business plans and media campaigns. Put together, they
would make a plausible composite of Robert Bloch. And together, as it
turns out, they have been responsible for the deaths: Gibbs did the killing
and Pitkin the covering up, guided by their joint plan for the success of the
motel.
Steiner, the psychiatrist who realizes what Gibbs and Pitkin have done,
pictures them as the twin masks of comedy and tragedy. He also knows that
Pitkin, whose wife died many years before, has been hiding the secret of an
incestuous relationship with his adult daughter. The whole town is a dys-
functional family, with its buried secrets and its code of denial. At the end of
the novel, Steiner points out of the window and says the asylum is “out there”
(Psycho House 217). So is the Bates motel.
BLOOD TIES AND OTHER NECKWEAR

The same themes run through other Bloch novels: destructive families,
love turning to hate, the insights of psychoanalysis — and always, murder as
a failed attempt to break the chain of re-enactment. Bloch’s characters rarely
kill for practical reasons. The murders are rituals, the sacraments of a private
religion. They are psychological analogues of black magic, just as the mother
or father as a presence in memory is a psychological analogue of possession
by spirits. Bloch’s fiction gives a new meaning to the word “possessive.”
The Scarf (1947) was Bloch’s first novel. I’m not sure how different the
revised 1966 edition is from the original (apart from a mention of Bob Dylan,
(30) who was a child in 1947), but I assume some of the 1966 book’s sexual
frankness to derive from the revision (though probably not from Bob Dylan).
Whatever its exact developmental history, The Scarf is a brilliant and chilling
portrait of a psychopath whose manipulation of women is guided by an infan-
tile urge to dominate and destroy. His murder weapon is a personal talisman:
a maroon scarf.
Dan’s “Black Note Book,” a private diary, gives us a window into an inner
life that he effectively hides from those who know him. The second entry in
it details an episode from his childhood when he was harshly punished by his
mother for playing “Doctor” with a girl at the age of nine, and then acciden-
tally saw his parents having sex. The punishment included having his hands
tied to the bedposts. This episode is symbolic of the mixture of anger and
desire that he feels towards his mother.
Later, Dan notes: “I had a nightmare about a Medusa with red serpent
locks, locks that coiled about me and strangled me as a wet mouth pressed
mine. And all the while Medusa was giggling” (41). (It’s interesting to note
that this image is clearly influenced by C.L. Moore’s classic Weird Tales story
“Shambleau,” which Bloch read and admired as a teenager (Flanagan 19)). In
the last installment of his diary, he records images of the women he has killed
decomposing — a reversal of his own sense of being dead and helpless.
Bloch is not necessarily suggesting that Dan was “turned” into a killer
by an abusive mother. Her cruelty towards him was fairly normal for that
generation. His past is not an “explanation,” but rather a Rosetta stone that
allows us to interpret the symbolic meaning of his crimes as the acting out of
destructive fantasies.
Firebug (1961) is the story of a personal apocalypse. While on the track
of an arsonist, a man with a profound fear of fire relives his own past trau-
mas. The compulsion to start fires is explained by a psychiatrist as arising from
a “bad family situation” (88): the disturbed child grows into a sexually inca-
pable adult for whom burning down buildings serves as a ritual of cleansing,
a surrogate for sexual release and a revolt against parental authority. The nar-
rative, in which a series of urban cults are targeted by the arsonist, suggests
that Bloch has religion in his sights. The arsonist turns out to be a young
woman fuelled by rage at her mother’s sexual promiscuity.
The Couch (1962) is a terse, dislocated novel about the ruined psyche of
a serial murderer. It is Bloch’s most literary work, reflecting both the mod-
ernist noir fiction of Jim Thompson and the bitter plays of Tennessee Wil-
liams. An image that occurs to Charles tells us much about the mood Bloch
is in:
He got the funniest picture of an actor with a trepanned skull, leaning for-
ward towards a dressing-room mirror, reaching into the great hole on top of
his skull and applying powder and rouge to the gray, pulsing sponge of his
brain to make it presentable to the public [21].
Charles’ inner life revolves around his feelings towards his sister and his
father, the most significant memory being of a Halloween night when his sis-
ter wore a witch mask. His imagination transforms this image into a “dead-
white” face with “blind eyes” and a “marred mouth” (79). In a disturbing
scene, he takes his girlfriend to the derelict family home, where the gazebo
seems to embody his fears:
Its pillars were carved white statuary figures of robed females. Angels, per-
haps. Leprous angels, with pocked, noseless faces [77].
Eventually, Charles’ psychiatrist teases out the key memory: that when
he and his sister Ruthie were teenagers, their father caught him touching her
hair in a way he interpreted as sexual, and beat Charles for it. The emotions
surrounding the memory make it clear that he did have incestuous feelings
for Ruthie. After reliving this memory, Charles begins to identify the psychi-
atrist with his father.
While its storyline does not quite live up to its more intense passages,
The Couch is a striking example of Bloch’s ability to reach beyond the scope
of the conventional murder mystery. Novels like this demonstrate the poten-
tial for cross-breeding between the crime and horror genres, as well as the rel-
evance of Gothic themes — incest, obsession, ruins — to the modern
psychological thriller.
Bloch’s novel Strange Eons (1979) is a return to the Lovecraftian themes
of his earliest stories. Despite the lack of any “cosmic” perspective, it is remark-
ably effective. Bloch focuses on elements of Lovecraft’s work that relate
strongly to his own: cults and conspiracies, manipulative leaders and blind
followers — and the use of a relentless downward-spiralling narrative. Far from
taking refuge in pulp nostalgia, Strange Eons is a stark portrait of a society on

the edge of chaos.
Lori (1989) is another story of a personal apocalypse. The teenaged Lori
loses her parents to a fire that appears to have been started deliberately. Her
dreams put her in touch with an inner voice that speaks of struggling towards
birth. A self-styled clairvoyant finds a disturbing object in the ruined house:
a college yearbook with a picture of Lori under a different name. In the end,
the person she trusts most — her psychiatrist — deceives her. He is one of the
creators of a conspiracy that saw Lori’s actual mother buried in a psychiatric
hospital with no death certificate. He may even be Lori’s biological father.
While Lori lacks the narrative cohesion and internal logic of Bloch’s most
successful novels, it makes an ambitious attempt to blend psychological and
supernatural elements. And it shows Bloch in his seventies still grappling with
a theme that had preoccupied him throughout his writing career: the pathol-
ogy of the nuclear family, with the façade of normality disintegrating to reveal
a far less comforting pattern of relationships and identities. There is, in the
end, no easy answer to the question Dr. Fell asks: Who are you? (Such Stuff As
Screams Are Made Of 105).
NO ASYLUM HERE
Bloch’s weird fiction is nothing if not social. Human relationships are
always the primary source of madness and despair in his stories. However, he
rarely adopts the kind of polemical stance characteristic of Harlan Ellison.
Rather, Bloch’s stance is usually ironic and non-committal. Is he a tormented
idealist like Poe or a jaded cynic like Bierce, a radical like Hammett or a reac-
tionary like Lovecraft? Potentially he is all or none of these: his work never
identifies a core “human nature” underlying the opposed elements whose end-
less war he dramatizes.
Even setting the juvenile “Mother of Serpents” (1936) aside, one might
suspect from such stories as “The Cure” (1957) and “Nina” (1977) that Bloch
followed Lovecraft in attributing lethal unreason to non-white races. How-
ever, it’s more likely that the conception of these stories simply worked back-
wards from their macabre conclusions. Bloch does not usually look beyond
white America when depicting examples of barbarity and superstition. Cer-
tainly “The Warm Farewell” (1977) is a fierce denunciation of the KKK and
its beliefs.
Bloch is recurrently critical of capitalism, whether he is talking about
the film industry or the lives of impoverished city people. In American Gothic
(1974), a psychological horror novel set in the late nineteenth century, a man
who kills for profit is described as “A businessman, dealing in death. A sales-
man, dedicated to making a killing” (206). At the end of Psycho House, Dr.
Steiner points the finger of blame at “The demons that possessed Hank Gibbs
and continue to possess so many others. Greed. Avarice. The real demons that
are taking over this world” (217).
Bloch is also subtly critical of religion. In Firebug and elsewhere, he
mocks the claims of religious cults and their messianic leaders. By describing
the superstitious rituals of psychologically damaged people, he invites the
reader to follow Freud’s identification of religious faith with neurosis and
fanaticism with psychosis. In “The Rubber Room” (1980), the murderer Emery
repeats over and over that “the Jews killed Our Saviour” (Midnight Pleasures
5, 6 and 9). The dogmatism of the American Right is satirized in the grim
anti-war story “Daybroke” (1958).
Where Bloch steers closer to the wind of conventional opinion is in the
area of sexual morality. The condemnation of hippies in “The Animal Fair”
(1971) echoes similar attacks on beatnik culture in “The Big Kick” (1959) and
the novel The Dead Beat (1962). In the latter, a sociopath is identified as one
of “the Beats” by a character who explains: “There’s more to the Beat Gen-
eration than sitting around in coffee-houses digging cool sounds.... Being
Beat is simply an attitude towards life.... An attitude of me-first, of anything-
for-kicks” (170). I hope I can be forgiven for not recognizing the underlying
psychopathic selfishness in Ginsberg’s passionate, tender elegies for friends
and relatives, or in Kerouac’s melancholic quest for spiritual answers in the
American night.
The family is a crucial theme for Bloch because it mediates between civ-
ilization and the individual. The family is a microcosm of society: a complex
mesh of authority, revolt, conflict and interdependence. The individual is a
microcosm of the family, divided against itself. As a writer of weird fiction,
Bloch is concerned with violence and unreason not as symptoms of an exter-
nal “evil” but as integral features of the human identity.
In Bloch’s fiction, few human bodies and fewer minds make it to the
end of the story in one piece. But Bloch’s body of work, taken as a whole, is
neither headless nor heartless. Amongst the grim jokes and violent acts, there
is a persistent search for the Kantian ideal of ethical reason.
NOTE
The dates given for stories and novels in this article are the dates of first publication,
based on Graeme Flanagan’s bibliography and other sources. The dates given below are those
of the copies I have referred to, which are mostly not first editions.
WORKS CITED
Bierce, Ambrose. Can Such Things Be. London: Jonathan Cape, 1927.
_____. In the Midst of Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 1964.
Bloch, Robert. American Gothic. London: Star Books, 1975.
_____. Blood Runs Cold. New York: Popular Library, 1962.
_____. Chamber of Horrors. New York: Award Books, 1966.
_____. Cold Chills. New York: Leisure Books, 1977.
_____. The Couch. London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1962.
_____. The Early Fears. Minneapolis: Fedogan & Bremer, 1994.
_____. Firebug. Evanston: Regency Books, 1961.
_____. Lori. New York: Tor, 1989.
_____. Midnight Pleasures. New York: Tor, 1987.
_____. Mysteries of the Worm. New York: Zebra Books, 1981.
_____. Once Around the Bloch. New York: Tor, 1993.
_____. Psycho. London: Corgi Books, 1977.
_____. Psycho II. New York: Warner Books, 1982.
_____. Psycho House. New York: ibooks, 2003.
_____. The Scarf. London: New English Library, 1966.
_____. Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of. New York: Ballantine, 1979.
_____. Strange Eons. Los Angeles: Pinnacle Books, 1979.
Campbell, Ramsey. Dark Companions. Glasgow: Fontana, 1982.
Flanagan, Graeme. Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography. Canberra: Graeme Flanagan, 1979.
Lovecraft, H.P. Dagon and Other Macabre Tales. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1986
_____. The Dunwich Horror and Others. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1982
Moore, C.L. Northwest Smith. New York: Ace Books, 1981.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. London: Everyman’s Library, 1955.
Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. London: Corgi Books, 1977.
Programming Bloch:
The Small-Screen Career
of Psycho’s Creator
Matthew R. Bradley
When Robert Bloch died at the age of seventy-seven on September 23,

1994, he left a lasting legacy of literary, cinematic, and televised terror that
spanned six decades and encompassed two dozen novels — including the inspi-
ration for Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Psycho (1960)— countless radio, TV
and film scripts, and more than a thousand short stories. Conducted shortly
before his death, my interview with Bloch was published in Filmfax #40, and
focused primarily on his feature films, most notably those written for William
Castle (Strait-Jacket and The Night Walker, both 1964) and Amicus: The Psy-
chopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1967), Torture Garden (1967), The House
That Dripped Blood (1970), and Asylum (1972). But like many of his friends
and fellow writers such as Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison,
George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, and Jerry Sohl, Bloch also
plunged enthusiastically into the then-burgeoning medium of television,
where he was an almost constant presence for thirty years.
Surprisingly, Bloch’s television career began outside the fantasy genre in
the fall of 1959 when his friend Samuel A. Peeples invited him to Hollywood
to write a teleplay for Lock-Up, a series that appealed to Bloch as an alterna-
tive to the Westerns then dominating the airwaves. Produced by the low-
budget ZIV studios, known to genre aficionados for such seminal SF series as
Science Fiction Theater and Men into Space, the show featured Macdonald
Carey, formerly the romantic lead in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943),
as Herbert L. Maris, a real-life Philadelphia attorney who specialized in free-
186
Programming Bloch (Bradley) 187
ing those wrongly convicted. Peeples recommended Bloch to the story edi-
tor, and not only agreed to provide a script himself if Ziv was dissatisfied with
what he submitted, but also offered to put him up while he completed the
assignment. Bloch ended up contributing a half-dozen episodes, including
“Murder Is a Gamble,” “Voice of Doom,” “Death and Texas,” “Beau and
Arrow,” and “Abandoned Mine.”
Along the way, he also acquired a membership in the Writers Guild of
America, an apartment across from the former Republic Studio, and an agent,
Gordon Molson, who would represent him for the next twenty-two years
until Molson’s death. Because of his feature-film work, beginning with The
Couch (1961), Bloch’s contribution to television initially consisted mostly of
selling stories to be adapted by other writers, but he did eventually try his
hand at a Western with “The Poet and Peasant Case” (8/28/61), an episode
of the Audie Murphy series Whispering Smith that Bloch tailor-made for actor
Alan Mowbray. Production of the series began in 1959 but was halted due to
an injury to co-star Guy Mitchell; it aired at last on NBC from May to Sep-
tember of 1961.
Aptly, the man who will be forever identified as the “author of Psycho”
was most closely associated on television with the long-running anthology
series hosted by its director, first in a half-hour format as Alfred Hitchcock
Presents (1955–62) and then as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962–65), shut-
tling back and forth between CBS and NBC over the years. While Bloch was
working on Lock-Up, his stories “The Cure” and “Betsy Blake Will Live For-
ever” were acquired for Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the latter was first retitled
“Is Betsy Blake Still Alive?” and eventually televised as “Madame Mystery”
(3/27/60). That and “The Cure” (1/24/60) were the first of a whopping sev-
enteen episodes of the Hitchcock series to be written by Bloch and/or based
on his work during the show’s ten-year run, more than his friends Beaumont,
Bradbury, Ellison, Matheson and Sohl put together, although fellow contrib-
utor Henry Slesar provided more stories and teleplays than any other single
writer.
Published in Playboy in 1957, “The Cure” is set in “the godforsaken back-
waters of Brazil” (The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 2, 94)
where Jeff is hiding out with Mike, his partner in an armored-truck robbery;
Marie, his girlfriend; and Luiz, his devoted Indian servant, who has brought
them to his village while they wait for a Cuban, Gonzales, to exchange the
loot for pesos and send their share. Driven mad by weeks of waiting in the
hot, rainy, bug-infested jungle, Marie slashes Jeff ’s ankle with a machete
before she is subdued by Luiz, who obligingly offers to kill her, and Jeff agrees
to Mike’s suggestion that he and Luiz take her to a psychiatrist in Belém while
Jeff ’s ankle heals and he waits for the runner from Gonzales to arrive with
their money. When Luiz at last returns alone, he reveals that Mike had received
the money before leaving and plotted with Marie to kill him, but after the
money fell in the river during a fight in which he killed Mike, Luiz took all
too literally Jeff ’s desire that the captive Marie be brought to a “headshrinker,”
and proudly produces the shriveled proof of his “good job” (The Complete
Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 2, 96).
The first of Bloch’s stories to appear on Alfred Hitchcock Presents was
adapted for the screen by British playwright Michael Pertwee, whose brother
Jon later became the third incarnation of Dr. Who on the BBC’s eponymous
long-running science fiction series, and starred in the segment of The House
That Dripped Blood based on Bloch’s “The Cloak.” Formerly a dialogue direc-
tor at Warner Brothers from 1944 to 1951, director Herschel Daugherty was
now launched on a twenty-year television career that encompassed episodes
of thirty-odd series such as The Man and Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek, The
Time Tunnel, Mission: Impossible, Ghost Story (aka Circle of Fear), and The Six
Million Dollar Man. Perhaps best known for Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront
(1954), Israeli actor Nehemiah Persoff starred as Jeff Jenson in the televised
version, which somewhat blunted Bloch’s theme of thieves falling out and
receiving their just deserts by depicting Jeff and Mike (Mark Richman) as
exploring for oil in the Amazon, and Marie (Cara Williams) as Jeff ’s wife.
German-born Hollywood veteran John Brahm directed “Madame Mys-
tery,” as well as two subsequent Bloch-related Hitchcock teleplays and a
record-setting twelve episodes of the original Twilight Zone, while William
Fay adapted the show from Bloch’s “Betsy Blake Will Live Forever,” which
was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1958. Strug-
gling writer Steve (Harp McGuire) is working on his novel in a beachfront
cottage when his neighbor, young studio flack Jimmy Dolan ( Joby Baker),
offers him a lucrative job helping to build a legend around “Madame Mys-
tery,” a secretive star killed in a speedboat accident, to maintain public inter-
est until her last film, Splendor, opens in three months. Steve reluctantly agrees,
but after Betsy Blake (Audrey Totter) appears at the cottage, having survived
the crash and been rescued by a fishing trawler, Jimmy pushes the drunken
slattern to her death to protect his p.r. campaign, and when Steve observes
while dialing the police, “You’d kill your own mother to be a big man at
Goliath Studios,” Jimmy reveals he just has.
Gordon Molson and his associates had already started to take the fledg-
ling fortyish screenwriter around Hollywood and introduce him to produc-
ers and executives at various concerns, including the staff of Alfred Hitchcock
Presents at Universal Studios. Psycho was still being shot at that time (the late
fall of 1959), so its success had nothing to do with launching his screenwrit-
ing career, and a brief visit to the soundstage a few days later marked his only
personal involvement with the making of the film. Ironically, the show’s pro-
ducers wanted to hire Bloch to adapt another writer’s work, Frank Mace’s story
“The Cuckoo Clock,” rather than his own.
Hired by Hitchcock as his personal secretary in 1935, producer Joan
Harrison had worked her way quickly up through the ranks from continuity
assistant and script consultant to dialogue writer; graduating to scenarist with
Jamaica Inn (1939), she shared Oscar nominations for Rebecca and Foreign Cor-
respondent (both 1940), and also co-wrote Suspicion (1941). She was brought
back into the fold to oversee the series, having struck out on her own as a
producer after Saboteur (1942), while associate producer and former Mercury
Player Norman Lloyd, who essayed the title role in the same film, succeeded
her as executive producer when she left yet again to devote more time to her
marriage with author and screenwriter Eric Ambler. Likewise, the show’s story
editor, Berlin-born Gordon Hessler, later succeeded Lloyd as associate pro-
ducer, and directed The Oblong Box (1969), Scream and Scream Again, Cry of
the Banshee (both 1970), and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) for Amer-
ican International Pictures (AIP) in England before returning to U.S. television.
Bloch enjoyed an unusually cordial relationship with these key staff mem-
bers, and in “My Hitch with Hitchcock,” an introductory essay he wrote for
John McCarty and Brian Kelleher’s book Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An Illus-
trated Guide to the Ten-Year Television Career of the Master of Suspense, he
related:
the British custom of four o’clock tea was scrupulously and sumptuously
observed in Joan Harrison’s private office. It was a far cry from the usual pro-
ducer’s offer of instant coffee in a paper cup. I had other reasons to be grate-
ful to my hosts and hostess. Early on in our relationship, a writer living three
thousand miles away popped up with a claim that my story “The Cure” was
a plagiarism. At that time I was still pretty much of an unknown quantity as
far as the Hitchcock team was concerned, and they could have been under-
standably forgiven had they ended our relationship then and there....
But once I assured them of my innocence they rallied to the rescue with-
out further question. Upon investigation they discovered that the charges were
completely unfounded. There was no litigation and my reputation ... remained
unsullied. The same held true after they bought and filmed a published story
of mine which I scripted, “The Sorceror’s [sic] Apprentice.” When the net-
work censors viewed the teleplay there was thunder from on high; this show
was simply “too gruesome” to be aired. Nobody called me on the carpet
because of this capricious decision — and as a matter of fact, when the series
went into syndication my show was duly televised without a word from the
powers that be.
Bloch added that Hitch himself, while rarely in attendance, “was nonetheless
a palpable presence [whose] taste and standards” were always considered.
Also directed by Brahm, “The Cuckoo Clock” (4/17/60) begins as the
widowed Ida Blythe (Beatrice Straight) and her daughter Dorothy (Hitch-
cock’s own daughter Pat, who also appeared in Psycho the same year) stop for
supplies en route to their remote summer cabin and learn from the loqua-
cious shopkeeper, Burt (Don Beddoe), of an escaped mental patient. Dorothy
reluctantly leaves Ida alone for the weekend, and when she returns to the
cabin after fetching some firewood, Ida is shocked to see Madeline Hall (Fay
Spain), a high-strung young woman who says she was frightened by a mys-
terious man watching her while she was painting nearby, and insists that it is
he who knocks on the cabin door soon afterwards. An Oscar winner for Net-
work (1976), Straight superbly portrays Ida’s terror as she becomes convinced
that Madeline is the mental patient, and when the knocking at the door
resumes, she opens it to a man (Donald Buka) who warns her that the patient
is female and dangerous, only to learn too late that it was indeed he as the
man forces his way inside and kills Ida.
With the acceptance of “The Cuckoo Clock” and the offer of further
work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bloch’s career as a budding television writer
seemed at last to be off and running, and then just as quickly stumbled with
the announcement of a strike by the Writers Guild, which would begin on
January first of the following year. This delayed his plans to bring his first
wife, Marion, and their daughter, Sally, out to Hollywood from Weyauwega,
a small town in upstate Wisconsin, forcing him to return to writing stories
and articles while he waited for the strike to end, which took almost six
months, and for Psycho to provide him with his first feature-film story credit.
As related in his delightful “unauthorized autobiography,” Once Around the
Bloch, at a private pre-release screening, he told the director, “Mr. Hitch-
cock, I think this is either going to be your greatest success or your biggest
bomb” (250). The film’s now-classic status provides an unequivocal answer,
and its success spurred sales of the novel as well.
That same season, Bloch also joined the writing staff of Thriller, another
series produced by Universal’s television arm, with similarly suspenseful sto-
ries, an instantly recognizable host in Boris Karloff, and many of the same
personnel (e.g., Daugherty and Brahm, who with fifteen and eleven episodes,
respectively, were its most frequent directors). Matheson adapted his only
Thriller episode, “The Return of Andrew Bentley” (12/11/61), from a story by
August Derleth and Mark Schorer, while Beaumont contributed a pair of tele-
plays, “Girl With a Secret” (11/15/60) and “Guillotine” (9/25/61), the latter
based on a story by noir legend Cornell Woolrich, as was Hitchcock’s classic
film Rear Window (1954). But as with Alfred Hitchcock Presents and England’s
Amicus studios, which filmed Bloch’s “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” as
The Skull (1965) before hiring him as a screenwriter, Bloch was recruited for
Thriller— which initially aired immediately following the Hitchcock show on
the same network, NBC — only after three of his stories had been adapted by
others.
Stephen King called Thriller “probably the best horror series ever put on
TV,” noting in Danse Macabre that “after a slow first thirteen weeks, [it] was
able to become something more than the stock imitation of Alfred Hitchcock
Presents that it was apparently meant to be ... and took on a tenebrous life of
his own” (King 224). According to Alan Warren’s This Is a Thriller: An Episode
Guide, History and Analysis of the Classic 1960s Television Series, many of the
show’s early problems can be traced to uncertainty regarding its direction and
the tensions between creator Hubbell Robinson and his original producer,
Fletcher Markle. Writes Warren, “Markle’s Thrillers rank among the poorest
of the lot; they indicate he saw little difference between the new series and
the long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” of which Markle’s associate pro-
ducer and story editor, James P. Cavanagh, was a veteran screenwriter; both
men were soon supplanted by two new producers, Maxwell Shane and William
Frye, brought in to handle Thriller’s crime and horror episodes, respectively.
Both anthology shows relied primarily on previously published mate-
rial, with the Hitchcock series drawing frequently from Ellery Queen’s Mys-
tery Magazine and the host’s eponymous counterpart, although some episodes
of Thriller, like writer-director Shane’s “Rose’s Last Summer” (10/11/60)—
made before his promotion to producer — were originals. Shane, who had
already adapted Woolrich’s work onscreen in Fear in the Night (1947) and
Nightmare (1956), left after “Papa Benjamin” (3/21/61), the first of three
episodes based thereon, and Frye, the show’s sole credited producer for the
remainder of its two-season run, soon gave it a distinctive flavor by mining
the pages of the famed fantasy pulp, Weird Tales. It was there that Bloch had
initially encountered the work of both H.P. Lovecraft, his mentor, and Der-
leth, a future friend and fellow protégé, and it quickly became his best-known
magazine outlet, although not his first: contrary to some reports, his first sale,
at the ripe old age of seventeen, was to Marvel Tales, where his story “Lilies”
appeared in 1934.
Directed by Brahm and written by the show’s most prolific contributor,
Donald S. Sanford, “The Cheaters” (12/27/60) marked one of only two
episodes — the other being the Poe adaptation “The Premature Burial”
(10/2/61)— that were actually introduced with the host’s frequently quoted
tagline, “As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this is a Thriller!” Based on a
story first published in the November 1947 issue of Weird Tales, it follows a
pair of sinister spectacles inscribed with the Latin word veritas (truth) from
owner to owner, like the dress tailcoat in the all-star anthology film Tales of
Manhattan (1942), and shows how each is brought to grief by their supernat-
ural powers of mind-reading and self-revelation. Henry Daniell had enjoyed
one of his best roles opposite Karloff in Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher
(1945), and appears in the prologue as sorceror-scientist Dirk Van Prinn
(alluded to only briefly by Bloch), who invents the yellow-lensed “cheaters,”
tries them on in front of a mirror and then, overcome with terror at what he
sees, hangs himself.
Years later, junkman Joe Henshaw (Paul Newlan) buys the contents of
the house, and in a secret compartment of Van Prinn’s desk he finds the spec-
tacles, which reveal his wife, Maggie (Linda Watkins), and his young helper,
Charlie (Ed Nelson), as “cheaters” who plan to kill him, so he bludgeons them
both before a policeman ( John Mitchum) guns him down. Two-time Oscar
nominee Mildred Dunnock, who had appeared in Hitchcock’s The Trouble
With Harry (1955), is Miriam Olcott, an elderly kleptomaniac who buys the
glasses at a demolition sale of Joe’s inventory and learns that her nephew,
Edward Dean ( Jack Weston), and Dr. Clarence Kramer (Dayton Lummis)
are plotting to murder her for her inheritance. After she stabs Kramer with a
hatpin and dies in an accidental fire, the nouveau riche Dean dresses as Ben
Franklin and dons the spectacles for a costume party, at which he denounces
a “cheater” during a poker game and is killed in the mêlée by writer Sebast-
ian Grimm (Harry Townes), who pockets the glasses and then smashes them
after repeating Van Prinn’s error.
Bloch’s “The Hungry House,” published in Imagination in April 1950,
was adapted by another Twilight Zone veteran, writer-director Douglas Heyes,
as “The Hungry Glass” (1/3/61), which Warren identifies along with “The
Cheaters” as “two of the strongest horror entries,” airing consecutively after
a string of mediocre episodes, primarily crime dramas. “To this day,” he writes,
“‘The Cheaters’ is considered by some to be the high-point of television hor-
ror; ‘The Hungry Glass’— which [fellow Thriller historian] Jay Allen Sanford
considered the ‘turnaround’ episode, establishing the show’s district [sic]
image — featured a strong performance by a young William Shatner.” Shat-
ner later made his only other Thriller appearance in Bloch’s first-season finale,
“The Grim Reaper,” and coincidentally, he also starred in a pair of Mathe-
son-scripted Twilight Zone episodes, “Nick of Time” (11/18/60) and “Night-
mare at 20,000 Feet” (10/11/63), before landing the role of Captain James
Tiberius Kirk on Star Trek, another series to which both Bloch and Mathe-
son contributed.
Donna Douglas, later the delectable Elly May Clampett on The Beverly
Hillbillies, plays lovely Laura Bellman in the prologue, and yet when a knock
at the door interrupts her preening before multiple mirrors in her New
England home, it is an old hag (Ottola Nesmith) who answers it and begs,
“Leave me alone, can’t you? Leave me alone with my mirrors.” Years later,
Gil Thrasher (Shatner) and his wife Marcia (played by the director’s own
wife, Joanna Heyes) buy the old Bellman place, and while waiting for the real-
tor, Adam Talmadge (Russell Johnson), and his wife Liz (Elizabeth Allen) to
arrive, they learn from the crusty locals that the house now contains no mir-
rors, and “comes fully equipped with visitors.” Laughing off the rumors and
the absence of mirrors, attributed by Adam to several accidents involving bro-
ken glass, they attempt to settle in despite a series of unnerving incidents in
which shadowy figures are glimpsed in reflective surfaces, until Marcia finds
the missing mirrors — which reflect her like a bug’s-eye view from The Fly
(1958)— locked up in the attic.
Interestingly, Shatner’s fine performance contains echoes of both of his
Twilight Zone episodes: like businessman Bob Wilson in “Nightmare at 20,000
Feet,” the shell-shocked Korean War vet Gil begins to doubt his sanity, and
his bantering relationship with Marcia, which becomes strained as the terror
encroaches, recalls the newlyweds in “Nick of Time.” A photographer, Gil
captures the image of a little girl on one of his negatives, and when pressed,
Adam reveals that the disappearance of young Mary Lou Dempster was yet
another tragedy chalked up by the locals to the crazed Laura Bellman, who
supposedly lived on in her mirrors when they were taken from her and she
died by dancing through a windowpane. Hearing screams, Gil races up to
the attic and finds Marcia being pulled by ghostly figures into a large mirror,
which he smashes with a poker, but sees when Adam subdues him that he
has killed her, and while Gil sits in shock with the Talmadges soon after, Mar-
cia’s reflection beckons him in a window and he crashes through to his death
on the rocks below.
Best known as the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, Johnson appeared in
several of producer William Alland’s genre films, including It Came from Outer
Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), and The Space Children (1958). As he
told Alan Warren in This is a Thriller
It was a powerful show, and I enjoyed very much working with Douglas
[Heyes] and Bill Shatner. I’d worked with Shatner before, a number of times,
and he’s always a good actor to work with, for me, anyway; I really enjoyed
the give and take with Bill. I thought it was a good script, I really did, and
Douglas is a good director. I thought the cast was really good: his wife was
one of the women in the show, and the other was Elizabeth Allen, who had
been one of the poster girls for Jackie Gleason — a good actress. That aired,
as a matter of fact, on Thanksgiving night one particular year when every-
body was home watching television, and everybody was home in Hollywood,
too. So the next day my agent called me and said, “My God, the phone is
ringing off the hook, and I’ve got more people, more offers....”
In the meantime, Bloch continued to turn out teleplays for Alfred Hitch-
cock Presents, starting with the first he based on his own work, “The Chang-
ing Heart” (1/3/61), and then adapting both Bryce Walton’s “The Greatest
Monster of Them All” and Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady,” published in Ellery
Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The New Yorker, respectively. Airing back-to-
back with “The Hungry Glass” the same night, “The Changing Heart” was
directed by Robert Florey, who along with Bela Lugosi had been handed Uni-
versal’s Poe film Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) as a consolation prize when
they were pulled off of Frankenstein (1931), and featured Anne Helm, later
the co-star of Bloch’s movie The Couch. Engineer Dane Ross (Nicholas Pryor)
falls for Lisa (Helm), the granddaughter of clockmaker Ulrich Klemm (Abra-
ham Sofaer), but when he is transferred to Seattle the overly protective Klemm
forbids them to wed, and Ross returns months later to learn that before suc-
cumbing to illness himself, Klemm saved the lovesick girl’s life by giving her
a clockwork heart.
The most prolific of the directors to work on the Hitchcock series, and
the only one to win an Emmy Award thereby (for “The Glass Eye” [10/6/57],
starring Shatner), Robert Stevens had more than thirty episodes to his credit,
including “The Greatest Monster of Them All” (2/14/61), and also worked
on The Twilight Zone, but directed only a few films. As low-budget producer
Hal Bellew (Sam Jaffe of Gunga Din [1939] fame) seeks a subject for his next
monster movie, his writer, Fred Logan (William Redfield), suggests that they
eschew the giant insects then in vogue in favor of a comeback vehicle for
retired horror star Ernst von Kroft (Richard Hale), billed in the 1930s as “The
Greatest Monster of Them All.” But when the film opens, the star is shocked
to learn that director Morty Lenton (Robert H. Harris, who had ironically
starred in AIP’s How to Make a Monster [1958]) has dubbed him with a Bugs
Bunny soundalike, and Fred races to the set just before the vengeful von Kroft,
who has killed Morty in a simulated vampire attack, leaps to his own death
from a catwalk.
Airing a week later, “The Landlady” (2/21/61) was directed by Austrian
actor Paul Henreid, immortalized as Victor Laszlo in Casablanca (1942), and
featured former child star Dean Stockwell, celebrated for the title role in
Joseph Losey’s antiwar fable The Boy with Green Hair (1948), as bank clerk
Billy Weaver, newly arrived in an English provincial town. An Academy Award
nominee for The Little Foxes (1941) who had also played the mother in Hitch-
cock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Patricia Collinge is the eponymous land-
lady, who says that she is very particular about the young men she takes in,
and when Billy sees the names of her two other unseen lodgers in the regis-
ter, he finds them both naggingly familiar. Plying him with tea, the landlady
tells Billy that it will soon be time to go upstairs and meet the others, and
after wondering whether he hadn’t read that one of them had disappeared, he
compliments her on the incredibly realistic stuffed animals in her parlor and
then sinks into paralysis, clearly poisoned and poised to become the next
addition to her macabre collection.
Undoubtedly Bloch’s best-known story, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”
has been oft anthologized and dramatized in various media since it was first
published in Weird Tales in July of 1943, and depicts an ageless Ripper who
maintains his youth by committing regularly recurring series of six identical
murders as blood sacrifices to the Lovecraftian “dark gods.” Barré Lyndon
was eminently qualified to adapt this story for Thriller, having written The
Man in Half Moon Street, a stageplay about an elderly physician kept youth-
ful with periodic glandular transplants, and although remade by Hammer as
The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), it was first filmed by Ralph Mur-
phy for Paramount under its original title in 1944. That same year, Lyndon
scripted the psychological thrillers The Lodger and Hangover Square, both
directed by none other than John Brahm and starring Laird Cregar; the for-
mer was the second sound remake of Hitchcock’s 1926 classic, and featured
Cregar — fresh from appearing in a CBS radio version of Bloch’s story on The
Kate Smith Hour— as the Ripper.
Richard Matheson related in an interview with the author (published in
Filmfax #42) that years later, seeking an antagonist for intrepid reporter Carl
Kolchak (Darren McGavin) in his sequel to the record-setting TV-movie The
Night Stalker (1/11/72), “I wanted to make the guy in the second one Jack the
Ripper, who was still alive and had come over to this country, but I’m a friend
of Robert Bloch’s, and I called him and asked him if it would disturb him if
I did that, and I could sense that he felt that it would, so I didn’t do it. Then
of course right afterward, on The Sixth Sense, they did the same thing any-
way, but at least I didn’t do it.” Nonetheless, the eponymous killer in The
Night Strangler (aka The Time Killer, 1/16/73) has a strikingly similar modus
operandi, albeit more scientific than supernatural, and both Matheson’s script
and Lyndon’s teleplay invoke the ageless alchemist the Comte de St. Germain
(although Bloch’s story does not), while ironically, the very first episode of
the subsequent series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, was “The Ripper” (9/13/74).
Actors Ray Milland and John Williams, who had appeared together in
Hitchcock’s Dial “M” for Murder (1954), were the director and star, respec-
tively, of “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (4/11/61), which opens in Victorian
London as the unseen Ripper claims his latest victim, while outside a street
singer ( J. Pat O’Malley) performs the macabre title tune. In the present, Capt.
Pete Jago (Edmon Ryan) listens skeptically as former Scotland Yard pathol-
ogist Sir Guy (Williams), a medical liaison in the British Embassy, explains
his outré theory regarding the Ripper, complete with chart (“They always
have a chart,” cracks Jago), to the police department and its consulting psy-
chiatrist, Dr. John Carmody (Donald Woods). Believing the Ripper has an
artistic bent, Sir Guy seeks him in the bohemian community to which ex-
sculptor Carmody still has ties, but after Hymie Kralik (Adam Williams)
proves to be a red herring and his model, Arlene (Nancy Valentine), becomes
the next victim, Sir Guy is lured into an alley and stabbed by Carmody, who
tells the dying man, “Not John — Jack.”
“The Devil’s Ticket” (4/18/61) became the next episode of Thriller after
“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” and starred none other than Macdonald Carey,
who also appeared in Hammer’s The Damned (aka These Are the Damned) that
year. It was Carey for whom Bloch had written those half-dozen Lock-Up tele-
plays when he started in television, “and yet for some inexplicable reason the
two of us weren’t ever in the same place at the same time,” he related. Then,
“a period of thirty years went by. And one day as I sat signing copies of my
latest novel in a Westwood bookshop, in walked Macdonald Carey. And pre-
sented me with a copy of his third book of poetry! It was a joyful reunion for
two people who had never met” (Once Around the Bloch 367). Directed by
Jules Bricken, a veteran of two previous Thriller episodes and a contributor
to the Hitchcock series who later produced John Frankenheimer’s The Train
(1964), the episode was faithfully adapted by Bloch from his own short story,
which had originally been published in the September 1944 issue of Weird
Tales.
Robert Cornthwaite, the ill-advised scientist from The Thing (1951),
appears in the prologue as pawnbroker Spengler, who has sold his soul, and
by the time impoverished artist Hector Vane (Carey) arrives there to pawn
one of his paintings, the Devil ( John Emery) has claimed the screaming Spen-
gler in a cloud of smoke and is now running the shop by himself. Vane pawns
his soul in exchange for fame and riches, agreeing in return to paint a pic-
ture for the Devil, who has him sign a contract and gives him a ticket
redeemable at sundown in ninety days, yet when the suddenly successful Vane
comes to offer him a landscape the Devil refuses, insisting on a portrait that
will capture — and allow him to claim — the model’s soul. The unfaithful
artist paints a portrait of his wife, Marie ( Joan Tetzel), but after his jealous
mistress, Nadja (Patricia Medina), unwittingly slashes it, Vane repents and
renders the Devil instead; believing he now has the upper hand, he returns
at the appointed hour, only to learn as the Devil demands his ticket that it
was in the pocket of an old overcoat burned by Marie.
Bloch’s teleplay, the music of Morton Stevens (who along with future
Oscar winner Jerry Goldsmith scored forty-two of the sixty-seven Thriller
episodes, including all seven of Bloch’s), and Carey’s performance are all
superb, especially the mixed emotions on Vane’s face as he paints Marie’s por-
trait, believing that he is dooming her to eternal damnation while at the same
time rekindling much of the love that had been lost between them. Shortly
before his death in 1994, Carey told Warren in This Is a Thriller, “I thought
[“The Devil’s Ticket”] was one of the best things I ever did.... It’s a hell of a
good show. They don’t make them like that any more! Everybody is good in
it — it’s done impeccably, it’s written well, it’s produced well. It should be
revived, but I don’t know how you would do it.” Emery, who appeared in
Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), was Tallulah Bankhead’s only husband, while
Medina, also seen on Thriller in “The Premature Burial,” was married to
Joseph Cotten from 1960 until the actor’s death in 1994.
As with the Hitchcock series, Bloch enjoyed a warm relationship with
the Thriller staff (producer William Frye, associate producer Douglas Ben-
ton, and story editor Jo Swerling), eventually contributing seven scripts and
several stories adapted by other writers. As a result of his work on feature films
and those two shows, he never became involved with The Twilight Zone, which
was written primarily by Rod Serling and what Bloch called the “Matheson
Mafia,” including Beaumont and George Clayton Johnson. “Universal was
closer to where I lived and Thriller offered a close approximation of ideal
working conditions. For one thing, there was a wider choice of material than
other shows allowed: Hitchcock would use nothing supernatural or science-
fictional, while Twilight Zone used nothing else. On Thriller I had the oppor-
tunity to vary my work, just as I did for publication purposes. In a number
of instances my scripts were shot from first draft. Whatever rewriting seemed
necessary was the result of mutual discussion and decision” (Once Around the
Bloch 279).
Bloch’s only collaboration with Brahm on Thriller, “A Good Imagina-
tion” (5/2/61), also marked one of the most dramatic retoolings in both the
tone and content of its original source material, a story by Bloch that first
appeared in the January 1956 issue of Suspect, and ironically resulted in an
episode that would not have been out of place chez Hitchcock. In the story,
Logan is a mild-mannered man (neither his first name nor his profession is
ever specified) with a literary bent, who looks to Edgar Allan Poe for inspi-
ration while seeking revenge on his wife, Louise, and her lover, George Parker,
the handyman who tends to more than just their summer house while Logan
is at his business in town during the weekdays. Asking George to wall up an
opening in the cellar with quick-drying cement, he then tells the terrified man
that he has just suffocated a bound and gagged Louise, and after making sure
the police subsequently see her alive, which will provide him with an alibi
and send George to a madhouse, Logan tears open the wall and consigns
Louise to the exact fate he described.
As filmed, however, Bloch’s grim original becomes merely the final act
in a macabre comedy, with Edward Andrews in a characteristically zesty per-
formance as Frank Logan, a dealer in rare books who uses his “good imagi-
nation” and literary inspirations to rid himself of not only his wife’s two lovers
but also anyone who might be able to bring him to justice. His first victim,
Randy Hagen (William Allyn), is killed with an antique battle-ax taken from
his own wall in a simulated burglary, and when Louise (Patricia Barry) tells
her brother, Arnold Chase (Britt Lomond), that she suspects Logan, allegedly
attending a book dealer’s convention in Philadelphia at the time, Arnold hires
a private eye, Joe Thorp (Ken Lynch). Logan then disposes of both Thorp,
who tries to blackmail him after cracking his alibi, and Arnold with a bottle
of poisoned liquor, but in a newly ironic twist ending, once Logan has walled
up Louise, the Sheriff ( Jim Bannon) arrives with George (Ed Nelson, echo-
ing his obnoxious “other man” role in “The Cheaters”), hoping a look at her
will snap him out of it.
Meanwhile, back at the Hitchcock ranch, Bloch adapted “The Gloating
Place” (5/16/61) from his own short story, which was published in 1959 in
Rogue, a Playboy wannabe that employed such friends and fellow writers as
Harlan Ellison and Frank M. Robinson, for which he also wrote a monthly
column, “Basic Bloch.” Susan Harper (Susan Harrison), an unpopular stu-
dent at Shamley High School — playfully named after Hitchcock’s own pro-
duction company — decides to “make herself important” by fabricating a story
about a man in a mask and gloves who tries to attack her in the park, an
account which is dutifully investigated by the somewhat skeptical Lt. Palmer
(Henry Brandt). Bumped from the headlines by a climbing accident that kills
two fellow students, she renews interest in her story by strangling her roman-
tic rival, Marjorie Stone (Marta Kristen, the future Judy Robinson on Lost in
Space), only to have her father’s fears of a copycat criminal borne out when
she goes to her “gloating place” in the park and is killed by a masked man.
Harrison subsequently appeared as the Ballerina in the classic Twilight
Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” (12/22/61), and is the
mother of Darva Conger, who in February 2000 briefly became the ill-fated
bride selected by comedian Rick Rockwell on the notorious, headline-mak-

ing Fox fiasco Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Director Alan
Crosland, Jr., had an equally interesting family history: a stage and silent film
veteran, his father and namesake had directed both the first feature with syn-
chronized music, Don Juan (1926), and the first talkie, The Jazz Singer (1927),
for Warner Brothers before dying in a car crash in 1936, while his mother was
silent star Elaine Hammerstein. Before beginning his prolific television career,
which also included episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as Men into Space,
The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and The Sixth Sense, Crosland
had been a Hollywood editor since the mid–1940s, and his final credits in
that capacity included one of Harrison’s few feature films, Sweet Smell of Suc-
cess (1957).
Herschel Daugherty directed Bloch’s next four Thriller teleplays, start-
ing with “The Grim Reaper” (6/13/61), starring a veritable “who’s who” of
previous Bloch-based episodes: Shatner and Elizabeth Allen from “The Hun-
gry Glass,” Daniell and Paul Newlan from “The Cheaters,” and Robert Corn-
thwaite from “The Devil’s Ticket.” Bloch told Alan Warren that when he
loosely adapted Harold Lawlor’s short story “The Black Madonna,” which was
first published in the May 1947 issue of Weird Tales,
“The Grim Reaper” (in the short story, it’s a Madonna portrait that sheds tears)
was, as you say, just a taking-off point for what ended up as my teleplay.
Somehow the original concept didn’t fit my image of what a Thriller episode
should be, so I replaced the sad Madonna and her sighs with [a portrait of ]
the Grim Reaper and his [blood-dripping] scythe. And to anyone who affects
to sneer at the pun, let me say that this is exactly how I got the idea — by
word (or in this case, sound) association. I’m susceptible to influence from
rhyme or assonance, and think this is true of most writers.
Once again, Daniell appears in the prologue, this time as Pierre Radin,
who in 1848 finds that his son Henri has hanged himself just after complet-
ing the titular canvas; a century later, Paul Graves (Shatner) warns its latest
owner, his Aunt Beatrice (Natalie Schafer of Gilligan’s Island fame), that the
painting bleeds before each owner meets a violent death. An eccentric, pub-
licity-hungry mystery writer, Bea laughs off the curse, as does her fifth hus-
band, television actor Gerald Keller (Scott Merrill), from whom Paul eagerly
solicits an autograph, although Gerald has eyes for her secretary, Dorothy
Linden (Allen), who repels his advances, and soon the alcoholic Aunt Bea is
found dead at the bottom of the staircase. Sgt. Bernstein (Newlan) deems her
death accidental, yet Dorothy suspects Gerald, especially when Bea’s lawyer,
Phillips (Cornthwaite), reveals that he inherits her entire estate, but the real
culprit is Paul, who poisons Gerald after duping him into “autographing” his
own suicide note and will inherit as Bea’s only living relative, only to fall vic-
tim to the curse himself.
From “The Weird Tailor” (10/16/61) on, Bloch adapted his own mate-
rial on Thriller, in this case a story published in Weird Tales in July 1950, and
according to Alan Warren, he “expanded the story line and added characters,
including Nicolai and Madame Roberti (and also worked in his own forbid-
den volume De Vermis Mysteriis [Mysteries of the Worm]).” Gary Clarke, who
had played the teenage werewolf (replacing Michael Landon from AIP’s epony-
mous 1957 film) opposite Robert H. Harris in How to Make a Monster, appears
in the prologue as the drunken young Arthur Smith, who sets the story in
motion when he literally stumbles into a black magic ritual performed by his
father (George Macready) and is killed. Seeking to bring him back, the wealthy
Smith visits a blind fortune teller, Madame Roberti (Iphigenie Castiglioni),
and in turn is sent to Nicolai (Abraham Sofaer), a dealer in used cars under
the sobriquet of “Honest Abe,” who for a million dollars sells Smith one of
only three remaining copies of De Vermis Mysteriis, which contains the sor-
cerous spell he will require.
Character actor Henry Jones, whose many memorable film roles include
the sarcastic coroner in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), plays the titular tailor,
Erik Borg, who is hounded by creditors and abusive to his neglected wife,
Anna (Sondra Kerr), and to whom Smith offers $500— on delivery — to make
a suit using a strange, colorless fabric and precise instructions. While he works
by hand, only at certain specified dates and times, the pathetic Anna turns to
a tailor’s dummy with a cracked head, which she has dubbed Hans (embod-
ied by an unbilled mime, Dikki Lerner), as her only friend, but by the time
Borg brings him the suit, Smith has exhausted all his wealth in his efforts to
revive Arthur, whose frozen body Borg discovers. Believing Smith is a mur-
derer, the terrified tailor stabs him when he tries to take the suit by force and
orders Anna to burn it before he goes out and gets drunk, returning to find
that she has placed it on Hans instead, and as Borg attacks Anna, who plans
to go to the police, Hans comes to life and kills him, telling Anna, “From
now on, just you and I will be together.”
A decade later, Bloch revamped the same story as a segment of Roy Ward
Baker’s Asylum, one of three anthology films he scripted for Amicus, each
based on a quartet of his published works and beginning with Torture Gar-
den, directed by Baker’s fellow Hammer veteran, Academy Award–winning
cinematographer Freddie Francis. The other segments, also based on stories
from Weird Tales, included “Frozen Fear,” with Richard Todd as an adulterer
who chops up his wife, only to be killed by the neatly wrapped portions of
her frozen body, and “Lucy Comes to Stay,” a precursor to Psycho in which
the murderous Lucy (Britt Ekland) is revealed as a figment of Charlotte Ram-

pling’s imagination. Here allotted less than half the running time of a Thriller
episode for “The Weird Tailor,” Bloch removed the elements he had hitherto
added and reduced the tale to its essentials, with Peter Cushing — himself
recently bereft of his beloved wife, Helen — as Mr. Smith and Barry Morse,
best known for such series as The Fugitive and Space: 1999, as Bruno, the tai-
lor.
Oscar Homolka, an Academy Award nominee whose films ranged from
Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936) to William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus (1961) and
whose wife, Joan Tetzel, had appeared in “The Devil’s Ticket,” was the star
of the memorable episode “Waxworks” (1/8/62), adapted by Bloch from a
story published in the January 1939 issue of Weird Tales. Pierre Jacquelin
(Homolka) is the proprietor of a waxworks depicting “fifty of the world’s
most diabolical murderers,” where a young art student named Irene (Amy
Fields) apparently falls victim to the figure of an executed killer, as does Sgt.
Dane (Alan Baxter) when he begins to take a romantic interest in Pierre’s
niece and assistant, Annette (Antoinette Bower). As with Sir Guy and the Rip-
per, Col. Andre Bertroux (Martin Kosleck) has followed a trail of waxwork-
related deaths for years, and only after he and Det. Mike Hudson (future
Tarzan Ron Ely) also die does Lt. Bailey (Booth Colman) learn that the dis-
guised Pierre killed for fresh blood to animate Annette, molded over the body
of his wife, an executed murderess.
Like “The Weird Tailor,” this episode was subsequently remade with
Peter Cushing as a segment of an Amicus anthology film, The House That
Dripped Blood, directed by Peter Duffell and adapted by Bloch from four of
his published short stories, and once again the feature-film version was, of
necessity, significantly shorter than its televised counterpart. Here, however,
they are substantially different, with the former hewing much closer to his
original story, as retired stockbroker Phillip Grayson (Cushing ) becomes
obsessed with the hauntingly familiar figure of Salome holding the head of
John the Baptist, which Jacquelin (Wolfe Morris) explains was modeled after
his wife, executed for murdering his best friend. Neville Rogers ( Joss Ack-
land), an old friend and former romantic rival, visits Grayson and together
they go to the waxworks, where Salome has the same effect on Rogers; ulti-
mately, each man winds up with his head on the platter — as Bertroux did in
the story — courtesy of Jacquelin, who had framed his adulterous wife and
now jealously disposes of her “admirers.”
However, Duffell told Mark A. Miller, author of Christopher Lee and Peter
Cushing and Horror Cinema, that he had substantially rewritten this segment,
which as scripted by Bloch was closer to his Thriller teleplay:
the “Waxworks” story was basically nothing more than a ... contrivance to get
Peter Cushing’s head on a plate and this gave me the greatest problems. I
decided to try and give the story a little resonance on the strictly human level
by building up the loneliness of the character, taking refuge from the disap-
pointments of life in his books, music and memories, and by introducing the
theme of the unhappy love for the unattainable dead girl [whom Rogers had
also loved] [Miller 234].
In a letter to Miller, Bloch countered, “I didn’t care for the improvements on

‘Waxworks’— with the emphasis on the Peter Cushing’s [sic] character’s yearn-
ing for his lost love and the subordination of the role of the waxworks pro-
prietor. The version I wrote for Thriller ... was — I think — much stronger.
Oscar Homolka was memorable as the waxworks keeper” (Miller 234).
The Amicus “Waxworks” was bookended by “Method for Murder” (pub-
lished in Fury in 1962), in which writer Denholm Elliott believes his fictive
strangler has come to life, and “Sweets to the Sweet” (Weird Tales, March
1947), with Christopher Lee as a cold, neglectful father whose daughter (Chloe
Franks) makes a voodoo doll of him and throws it into the fire. Interestingly,
when writing the last and best-known segment, “The Cloak,” Bloch appar-
ently drew from his Hitchcock teleplay “The Greatest Monster of Them All”
as well as his story, published in Unknown in May of 1939, in which the ill-
fated Stephen Henderson purchases a “genuine” vampire cloak for a Hal-
loween party in the sinister shop of an unnamed costumer. The movie’s Paul
Henderson ( Jon Pertwee) is a horror star who wants realism in the cheap films
he is forced to make, echoing Ernst von Kroft in the earlier script, and after
buying the cloak from Theo Von Hartmann (Geoffrey Bayldon, who also
appeared in Asylum), he comes to believe it is turning him into a vampire and
even bites his co-star, Carla (Ingrid Pitt).
Bloch did give Duffell credit in his autobiography “for deftly turning
the final segment into a send-up of my vampire story, ‘The Cloak,’ and thereby
improving it a hundred percent” (Once Around the Bloch 353). The volup-
tuous and vivacious Pitt starred in Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers and Count-
ess Dracula that same year, and is perfectly cast as Carla, who later dons the
cloak and sprouts fangs herself, telling the terrified Paul before she bites him,
“We loved your films so much, we wanted you to become one of us forever.
Welcome to the club!”
Himself an actor, John Newland directed “Bad Actor” (1/9/62), an
episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents adapted by Bloch from a story by Max
Franklin, and had served in the same capacity for all ninety-four episodes of
ABC’s allegedly fact-based supernatural anthology series One Step Beyond (aka
Alcoa Presents, 1959–61), which he also hosted. Airing the night after “Wax-
works,” it starred Robert Duvall in one of his first roles — more than a year
before his Twilight Zone episode “Miniature” (2/21/63)— as alcoholic actor
Bart Collins, who gets carried away during an altercation with Jerry Lane
(Charles Robinson), his rival for both a plum upcoming role and the affec-
tions of Marjorie Rogers (Carole Eastman). Like the adulterous actor getting
too far into character in “Method for Murder,” he strangles Jerry, dissolving
the body with acid, but when Lt. Gunderson (William Schallert) comes to
his apartment to question him, Bart’s suspicious behavior leads him to dis-
cover Jerry’s head in the ice bucket, echoing Emlyn Williams’s twice-filmed
Gothic stageplay, Night Must Fall.
Henry Jones returned in the leading role of undertaker Carl Somers in
“’Til Death Do Us Part” (3/12/62), and even more than “A Good Imagina-
tion,” Bloch’s three-page original story, published in the January 1960 issue
of Bestseller Mystery, was but the merest acorn from which a more elaborate
Thriller teleplay grew, with the story serving as a twist ending. Carl’s wife,
Abbie (Frances Morris), learns that he has corresponded through a matrimo-
nial bureau with Celia Hooper (Reta Shaw), so he strangles her and heads
out West to wed Celia, only to find that she not only is grossly obese but also
comes complete with a suspicious brother, Elmer (Philip Ober), and a sister-
in-law, Myrtle ( Jocelyn Brando, sister of Marlon). Daugherty’s droll direc-
tion matches the material as Carl blackmails a shady sawbones, Dr. O’Connor
(Edgar Buchanan), into giving him some ineffectual poison, then strangles
Celia and conceals her in a coffin beneath Myrtle when the latter dies sud-
denly, but later the Marshal ( Jim Davis) says that Elmer may have murdered
Myrtle, so he must exhume her.
Many pinpoint Newland’s “Pigeons from Hell” (6/6/61), adapted by
John Kneubuhl from a story by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan and
Kull (which had been published posthumously in the May 1938 issue of Weird
Tales), as not only the finest episode of Thriller but also the single most fright-
ening story ever done on television. Stephen King offered a dissenting opin-
ion in Danse Macabre:
My own nominee for that honor would be the final episode of a little-remem-
bered program called Bus Stop (adapted from the William Inge play and film).
The series, a straight drama show [for which Inge was also the script super-
visor], was canceled following the furore over an episode starring then rock
star Fabian Forte as a psychopathic rapist — the episode [“A Lion Walks Among
Us” (12/3/61)] was based on a Tom Wicker novel. The final episode, how-
ever, deviated wildly into the supernatural, and for me, Robert Bloch’s adap-
tation of his own short story “I Kiss Your Shadow” [3/25/62] has never been
beaten on TV — and rarely anywhere else — for eerie, mounting horror [King
227].
In his autobiography, Bloch related that when his agent arranged a screen-
ing of the pilot for a proposed series entitled Nightmare, he was surprised to
see that it was an adaptation of “I Kiss Your Shadow,” which had debuted in
the March 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and been
included in his Arkham House collection Pleasant Dreams.
Twentieth Century–Fox had bought the story directly from [August] Derleth,
and was under the impression that he owned theatrical rights to everything
that Arkham House [which he co-founded] ever published. That was definitely
not the case, and Gordon Molson exhibited my original contracts as proof.
The studio offered an embarrassed apology and a thousand dollars for the use
or misuse of my story. What they offered to Derleth I wasn’t told, and he never
offered an explanation. Suffice it to say that Nightmare didn’t become a series
[Once Around the Bloch 257].
Pace King, the Bus Stop episode was actually adapted by Barry Trivers,
a prolific if undistinguished screenwriter in the 1930s and ’40s, and interpo-
lated the recurring characters of Sheriff Will Mayberry (Rhodes Reason) and
D.A. Glenn Wagner (Richard Anderson) into Bloch’s tale of Joe Elliot (George
Grizzard) and his fiancée, Donna Gibson ( Joanne Linville). After the posses-
sive Donna is killed in a car accident with Joe driving, he tells her brother,
Doug (Alfred Ryder), that her “shadow” has begun visiting him in the cot-
tage where they were to live, and although he makes some progress with a
psychiatrist, Dr. Barton (Stefan Schnabel), the haunted young man soon loses
his job and begs Doug, “Make her stay dead!” When Barton plunges to his
death from his office window, Doug deduces that Joe pushed him because he
got too close to the truth, and after admitting that he felt smothered and killed
Donna with a wrench, Joe runs to the cemetery and is found dead, slumped
over her casket (which, in the story, also contains a newborn infant appar-
ently conceived after death).
Coincidentally, Newland also directed that standout episode, as well as
Bloch’s final Thriller teleplay, “Man of Mystery” (4/2/62), but while it is cred-
ited as “based on his story,” Bloch told Alan Warren,
“Man of Mystery” was written at a time when eccentric billionaire Howard
Hughes was very much in the news. I’d already written a short story [“Show
Biz,” published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1959] predicting that
actors might be chosen and groomed as political leaders (which, of course,
came true!) but then I got to wondering why the same setup couldn’t apply
to financial tycoons.... So instead of writing another short story, I chose to
present this one as a teleplay. And that’s how “Man of Mystery” was born.
In the prologue, public relations man Harry Laxer (William Phipps) finishes
an exposé of his secretive former employer, the “international playboy and
financier” Joel Stone, but before Laxer can deliver it to the publisher, he and
the manuscript of Man of Mystery are both burned by an unseen assailant.
Later seen in Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969), John van Dreelen is Stone, whose
“faithful shadow” is the deaf-mute Lucas (Walter Burke), and who buys a
nightclub run by Rudy (Ken Lynch of “A Good Imagination”), hoping to make
singer Sherry Smith (Mary Tyler Moore, then in her first season as Laura
Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show) his next conquest. Small-time comic Lou
Waters (William Windom), who loves and fears for Sherry, visits Jill Naylor
(Mercedes Shirley), hoping that Stone’s erstwhile inamorata can talk some
sense into her, but Jill too is killed before she can blow the whistle on Stone,
and the magnate invites Sherry to fly to Mexico with him after picking up a
“retirement fund” at his hunting lodge. There he is killed by Lucas, who sud-
denly speaks to reveal that he is Joel Stone, having hired a charming and
attractive actor to front for him, and when Lou breaks in to confront him he
observes, “we three are all that’s left that know the secret”; soon, Lucas and
“Harlan Croft” (Lou) are running the company, after Sherry reportedly killed
Stone and then herself.
Like the previous season’s “The Gloating Place,” Bloch’s “The Big Kick”
(6/19/62) was also directed for Alfred Hitchcock Presents by Alan Crosland, Jr.,
and based on another of his stories published in Rogue in 1959, which served
as a not-too-subtle satire on the so-called “beat generation,” with its hip dia-
logue and its free-living and -loving protagonists. Two beatniks, Mitch and
Judy, live only for the sexual thrills they call “the big kick,” until he needs
money to go to the Coast and join a combo, so he suggests that Judy get
friendly with a well-off “square” named Kenny, but when the diamond bracelet
he gives her turns out to be stolen and Mitch is arrested, Judy learns that Kenny
gets his “big kick” with a knife. The Hitchcock version — Bloch’s last to be
broadcast in the half-hour format — stuck to the story faithfully, and featured
Anne Helm (who had played Lisa in “The Changing Heart”) as Judy Baker,
minor sagebrush star Brian Hutton as Mitch, and Wayne Rogers, best known
as Capt. John F.X. (Trapper John) McIntire on the first three seasons of
M*A*S*H, as Ken.
Originally scheduled as Hitchcock’s seventh-season opener on October
3, 1961, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is perhaps the most memorable entry in
the television career of Polish director Josef Leytes (variously credited as Joseph
Leytes, Joseph Lejtes, or Józef Lejtes), a filmmaker in his native country prior
to World War II and in Israel immediately afterwards. An Academy Award
nominee for Shane (1953) and the star of “Pigeons from Hell,” Brandon De
Wilde plays Hugo, a retarded runaway orphan who is taken in by the kindly
carnival magician Victor Sadini (David J. Stewart), and quickly comes to
revere Sadini’s tart-tongued wife and assistant, Irene (British bombshell Diana
Dors), whom Hugo regards as an angel. The less-than-angelic Irene is carry-
ing on with the high-wire artist, George (Larry Kert), and persuades Hugo
that the Satanic-looking Sadini really is the Devil, but after stabbing him the
well-meaning youth accidentally knocks Irene unconscious and, believing
that Sadini’s wand has given him “the Power,” decides to prove it by sawing
her in half, with gruesome results.
Bloch’s first teleplay for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Annabel” (11/1/62)
reunited Dean Stockwell and director Paul Henreid from “The Landlady,” as
well as featuring a return engagement by Henry Brandt of “The Gloating
Place,” and like Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), it was also based on
a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Sweet Sickness. Chemist David Kelsey
(Stockwell) refuses to accept that his relationship with Annabel (Susan Oliver)
is over now that she has married Gerald Delaney (Brandt), and posing as
“William Newmaster” he buys a house in the country as a surprise for her,
where David’s Manhattan roommate, Wes Carmichael (Gary Cockrell),
believes he is visiting his father on weekends. Learning the address from
David’s co-worker, Linda (Kathleen Nolan), Gerald warns him at gunpoint
to stop pestering Annabel, but “Newmaster” kills him, telling the Sheriff (Bert
Remsen) that he was a drunken intruder, and then lures Annabel there, stran-
gling her when she has learned the truth so that they may enjoy their beau-
tiful house together forever.
“A Home Away from Home” (9/27/63) was Bloch’s last Hitchcock tele-
play to be based on his own work (a prize-winning story that had appeared
in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1961), and the only one directed by
Daugherty, with Ray Milland now moving in front of the camera. The wife
of filmmaker Sydney Pollack, Claire Griswold appeared with Robert Duvall
in “Miniature” and here stars as Natalie Rivers, who arrives from Australia at
the Norton Sanatorium, little dreaming that Dr. Howard Fenwick (Milland),
himself a patient, has just strangled her uncle and only relative, Dr. Norton
(Ben Wright), whom she has never met. Unlike the reader, the viewer knows
her predicament at the outset as Fenwick impersonates Norton, saying, “Give
[a mental patient] a role to play in real life and he’ll accept the challenge,”
and puts his own book Permissive Therapy into practice, presenting Miss Gib-
son (Virginia Gregg), Martha (Connie Gilchrist), and Nicky Long ( Jack Searl)
as his staff. Discovering Norton’s body in the dumbwaiter and his assistant,
Andrew (Peter Leeds), in a cell upstairs, Natalie learns the truth at last and,
accompanied by a beautiful Bernard Herrmann score, escapes her literary
counterpart’s grim fate when “Inspector” Roberts (Brendan Dillan) takes his
assigned role too seriously and alerts his colleagues in the police.
Allen Warren writes in This Is a Thriller,

When Thriller left the air in July 1962, the most immediate and obvious
beneficiary was the venerable Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This show promptly
moved from NBC to CBS, expanded to a full 60 minutes, and was retitled
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Its stories became noticeably more macabre....
Ironically, the show that Thriller had once patterned itself after now seemed
like an imitation. Many episodes were notable ventures into the supernatu-
ral virtually indistinguishable from Thriller. “The Sign of Satan,” scripted by
Robert Bloch and based on his story “Return to the Sabbath” [Weird Tales,
July 1938], featured Christopher Lee as a European horror star reluctant to
make his American debut because of a cult bent on killing him. It was an
atmospheric episode with a memorably creepy denouement.
In fact, Brahm’s work on the Hitchcock series predated Thriller, and that
story, like “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” was adapted by Barré Lyndon.
“The Sign of Satan” (5/8/64) was directed by Robert Douglas, an English
actor who had himself appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and in a notable
case of life imitating art, his countryman Lee was now making his own Amer-
ican debut. Soon after arriving in Hollywood, Lee recalled in his memoir
Tall, Dark and Gruesome,
the phone rang and I heard an English voice I knew, the actor Bob Douglas
who was often a heavy in remakes in the Prisoner of Zenda class. I was sur-
prised.... He said we’d be seeing a lot of each other in the next two weeks. I
was even more surprised. Then he explained, “I’m directing the film.” “Isn’t
Alfred Hitchcock directing it?” I asked. “Good heavens, no!” laughed Bob....
“He’s only the host.... He never directs [sic]. He has a staff of directors, and
I’m one.” After the immediate pang, I thought this would be fine, and never
had cause to reverse my opinion.
One day ... as I was cycling from the stage to the commissary a large black
Cadillac went by, and behind its tinted glass I could see Hitchcock.... He was
real. That was all I needed to know. Altogether, that was a good day. [Lee
193–5].
Actress Kitty (Gia Scala), director Max Rubini (Gilbert Green), assis-
tant Ed Walsh (Adam Roarke), and public relations man Dave Connor (Myron
Healey) view footage from an obscure Austrian film financed by a cult, in
which former stage actor Karl Jorla (Lee) is resurrected by devil worshippers,
installed as their arch-priest, and then killed once again by his own acolytes.
An Academy Award nominee for The Country Girl (1954), who later shot
Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), John F. Warren provides suitably atmos-
pheric photography for these scenes, reminiscent of those in Lee’s memorable
British chiller City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel, 1960), which helps to off-
set the overly familiar, uncredited stock score.
Both Jorla and his director, Fritz Ohmmen, have been hiding out in
Paris since they made the film, which the cult never intended to be seen pub-
licly, and Ohmmen, who sold a pirated copy of it to Dave, warns him to be
careful where he shows it for fear of reprisals, but Max, determined to use
Jorla in his next horror movie, has him brought to Hollywood. Lee, whose
German credits include the title role in Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des
Todes (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, 1962), affects an accept-
able accent as Jorla, shunning publicity that would reveal his location and
insisting that the sign of Satan, soon found branded on Ohmmen’s strangled
body in a Paris attic, is genuine and ubiquitous. Jorla vanishes after an attempt
on his life, yet reappears when Max tries to shoot around him and Kitty con-
jures his character of “Baron Ulmo” (in a slow-motion shot worthy of the
great Mario Bava), murmuring an address in Topanga Canyon, but when the
negative is developed he is nowhere to be seen, and at the address the police
find his body, dead for three days.
After being turned down by the editors of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Mag-
azine and several others, Bloch’s story “Water’s Edge” was published in Mike
Shayne’s Mystery Magazine in 1956; amusingly, it was not only included in the
anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV the
following year but also, perhaps inevitably, done on TV ... for The Alfred
Hitchcock Hour. Scripted by Alfred Hayes, who shared Oscar nominations for
Paisà (1946) and Teresa (1951), “Water’s Edge” (10/19/64) was directed by fea-
ture-film veteran Bernard Girard, as was Matheson’s “Ride the Nightmare”
(11/29/62).
Later the sinister husband in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and a three-time
Academy Award nominee (once each as director, writer, and supporting actor),
John Cassavetes is well cast as convict Rusty Connors, whose cellmate Mike
Krause (Rayford Barnes) killed his best friend, Pete, in a payroll heist and
waxes rhapsodic about his wife, Helen, a blonde beauty. Just before dying of
pneumonia, Mike reveals that the money is still with Pete, whose body was
never found, so upon his release Rusty tries to track down the payroll by seek-
ing out Helen, yet as played by fifty-five-year-old Ann Sothern, a fellow nom-
inee for The Whales of August (1987), the fat, frowsy waitress in a small-town
diner is hardly what he expected. Backed by a Herrmann score similar to that
in Vertigo, he seduces Helen to secure her help, but after finding the money
and Pete’s skeleton in a rat-infested boathouse they turn on each other, leav-
ing Helen — who had deliberately let herself go in order to camouflage her
eventual departure — dead with a boathook in her back and Rusty bound and
gagged, awaiting the rats.
John Brahm’s only Bloch-related episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,
“Final Performance” (1/18/65) was adapted by Clyde Ware, dropping the ini-
tial article “the” from Bloch’s title, and starred Franchot Tone, an Oscar nom-
inee for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) who would die of lung cancer in 1968,
as crusty old ex-vaudevillian “Rudolph the Great.” Best known to genre fans
for Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and The Return of Count Yorga (1971), Roger
Perry is Cliff Allen, a television writer flagged down en route to Hollywood
by the underaged Rosie (Sharon Farrell), although she denies asking for a ride
when he is stopped by the Sheriff (Kelly Thordsen), whereupon Cliff ’s ailing
auto promptly packs it in. While it is fixed he checks into a motel, where
Rosie works for the possessive Rudolph and begs Cliff to take her away, but
when she fails to make their rendezvous he confronts her in Rudolph’s
makeshift theater, and after Rosie professes her love for Rudolph and sends
Cliff away, we see that “the world’s greatest ventriloquist” has turned her into
a grisly “dummy.”
Best known for Alland’s This Island Earth, Hollywood veteran Joseph
M. Newman directed “The Second Wife” (4/26/65), which Bloch based on
a story by Richard Denning, with June Lockhart, later Marta Kristen’s mother
on Lost in Space, as mail-order bride Martha Hunter and John Anderson, the
used car salesman in Psycho, as her husband, Luke. Finding her new home
both literally and figuratively cold, Martha is unnerved to learn that she had
a predecessor who died mysteriously while visiting Luke’s relatives, and even
more so when she finds a coffin-shaped box concealed in the garage and hears
her miserly husband digging at all hours in the locked cellar, so she buys a
gun to protect herself from him. Martha’s fears seem justified when Luke
abruptly suggests that they visit his relatives, and demands that she take a
look at what he’s been working on down in the basement before they go, but
after the terrified woman shoots her apparently homicidal husband, she
descends into the cellar at last and finds the brand-new furnace that Luke
intended as a wedding present.
The final episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Off Season” (5/10/65),
was adapted by Bloch from a story by Edward Hoch, and marked both a
beginning and ending of sorts, as it was among the first directorial credits of
William Friedkin, later an Academy Award winner for The French Connec-
tion (1971) and a nominee for The Exorcist (1973). “Bill [Friedkin] often says
that it was Hitchcock who discovered him, but that was plainly not the case,”
as Norman Lloyd, who by then had become the show’s executive producer,
told John McCarty and Brian Kelleher in Alfred Hitchcock Presents. “I hired
Bill Friedkin after seeing a documentary he made at a Chicago TV station
about a convicted murderer named Crump. Joe Wizan, an agent at MCA
[Universal’s parent company], brought him to my attention, and I assigned
him to direct ‘Open [sic] Season,’ one of the last Hitchcocks, with John
Gavin, our [then] present ambassador to Mexico.” Gavin, of course, is best

known as Sam Loomis, the lover (and posthumous brother-in-law) of the ill-
fated Marion Crane in Psycho.
Here, he plays Johnny Kendall, a big-city cop who loses his job because
of his itchy trigger finger and moves with his girlfriend, Sandy (Indus Arthur),
to a small resort town, where Sheriff Dade (Tom Drake) hires him as his new
deputy, albeit one forbidden to wear a gun and relegated to checking on empty
summer homes during their eponymous off-season. Learning that the previ-
ous deputy was fired for carrying on with women in one of those homes, Johnny
begins to suspect that he is having an affair with Sandy, and after strapping on
his prohibited pistol and finding the ex-deputy dallying in the dark, he kills
them both, only to discover that the woman was not Sandy but Sheriff Dade’s
wife, Irma (Dody Heath). Sadly, none of the Bloch-related episodes were among
the eighteen that Hitchcock himself directed for his anthology show, and a sub-
sequent attempt at collaboration on a feature film foundered as well after he
offered Bloch an open-ended contract to develop a story with him in the mid–
1960s, as Stephen Rebello relates in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.
Rebello writes:
Hitchcock summoned ... Bloch to hatch a successor to Psycho. Bloch met
Hitchcock to discuss the director’s notion to graft elements of the real-life
murder cases of seductive British murderers Haigh and Christie of the forties
onto an original suspense narrative that might form a long-hoped-for “pre-
quel” to the classic Shadow of a Doubt ... Bloch — by that time the recipient
of an “Edgar” Award from The Mystery Writers of America for Psycho, and a
prolific screenwriter — found himself unable to agree to the terms of Hitch-
cock’s contract. The arrangement proposed by Hitchcock meant that Bloch
was to be paid only when and if he were to come up with an approach that
pleased the director. Bloch moved on. No one dared reject Hitchcock. When
the writer’s name came across Hitchcock’s desk on a short list of writers for
a later project, the director wrote next to it: “Too many pictures for William
Castle”— a reference to the director for whom Bloch had written Strait-Jacket,
a low-budget shocker featuring Joan Crawford as an apparent axe-murderess
[188].
Directed by John Rich and adapted by Stephen Kandel from Bloch’s

story of the same name, “There Was a Little Girl” (4/6/66) was a first-sea-
son episode of the groundbreaking show I Spy, in which Bill Cosby became
the first black actor on American television ever to star in a dramatic series,
playing Alexander Scott opposite Robert Culp as Kelly Robinson. According
to an episode guide on I Spy— The Definitive Site (http://i-spy.150m.com/),
“Scott and Robinson are assigned to play babysitter for the teenage daughter
[played by Mary Jane Saunders, who was actually in her early twenties at the
time] of an American VIP during her Mexican vacation. Trouble finds them
all when she buys a pre–Colombian mask at a gift store originally destined
for New York, USA. What is in the mask which would cause such panic and
why would the pursuers want to give the girl a painful yet humiliating death?”
Bloch also reportedly wrote one or more teleplays for Run for Your Life, another
adventure series that ran concurrently with I Spy (1965–68) on the same net-
work, NBC, and starred Ben Gazzara.
In 1966, Bloch accepted an invitation to work with Shatner, producer
Gene Roddenberry, and story editor Dorothy Fontana on their new series
Star Trek; Fontana had previously been the secretary to Sam Peeples, who
scripted the show’s second pilot. The late James Goldstone had helmed that
pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (9/22/66), and in Cinefantastique’s
thirtieth anniversary tribute to the series, Robin Brunet wrote, “When the
pilot sold, Roddenberry wanted Goldstone to remain ‘part of the Star Trek
team,’ but Goldstone politely declined — a career in feature films was about
to take off. Goldstone did return during year one, as a favor to Roddenberry,
to guide [Bloch’s] ‘What Are Little Girls Made Of?’ [10/20/66] out of trou-
bled production waters, but doesn’t care to elaborate on the nature of the
troubles or recall ‘a single shooting day of it’” (44).
Roddenberry’s future wife, Majel Barrett, was cast as “Number One,”
the second in command of the Enterprise, in the show’s abortive and unaired
first pilot, “The Cage” (later incorporated into the two-part episode “The
Menagerie”), and after being displaced by Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) at the
network’s insistence, she returned as Nurse Christine Chapel. In “What Are
Little Girls Made Of ?,” the crew locates her fiancé, medical archaeologist
Roger Korby (Michael Strong), on the frigid planet Exo-III, where he reported
finding underground ruins left by its former inhabitants before losing con-
tact five years ago, and giant Ruk (Ted Cassidy) kills the first of the show’s
ill-fated “red shirts,” Matthews (Vince Deadrick) and Rayburn (Budd
Albright). Kirk and Chapel are welcomed by Korby, his assistant Dr. Brown
(Harry Basch), and the attractive Andrea (former child star Sherry Jackson,
the stepdaughter of Twilight Zone director Montgomery Pittman), but when
Brown forbids them at gunpoint to contact the ship, he is shot with a phaser
by Kirk and revealed to be an android, as is the indigenous Ruk.
Using the records of the “Old Ones,” who left Ruk tending their machin-
ery centuries ago, he and Korby built Brown and Andrea, and Korby assures
the jealous Chapel that the latter has no emotions before demonstrating the
alien technology by creating an android duplicate of Kirk, which interacts
with the original by way of a seamless split-screen effect. Kirk had, of course,
come face-to-face with himself before when a transporter malfunction divided
him into his good and evil selves in Matheson’s “The Enemy Within”
(10/6/66), but Korby now proposes to grant him effective immortality by
transferring his consciousness into the emotionless android, an honor that the
flesh-and-blood Kirk is none too eager to accept. Deducing that the Old
Ones were killed by their own machines because their emotions were consid-
ered illogical and unacceptable, Kirk encourages Ruk to turn on Korby, who
is forced to destroy him before being exposed as an android as well; con-
vinced of their inferiority to humans when Andrea mistakenly slays the faux
Kirk, he sacrifices them both with a phaser.
Perhaps understandably, Barrett who played Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek:
The Next Generation and also gave voice to the ship’s computer, was dismis-
sive of her new character, noting in her commentary for the Sci-Fi Channel’s
Special Edition of this episode:
I’ve never been a real aficionado of Nurse Chapel. I figure she was kind of
weak and namby-pamby. I mean after all, here she was a doctor, and in order
to find a lost fiancé she takes a reduction in rank and pay and signs on board
this ship and goes out to find her fiancé. She finds him, he turns out to be an
android, now he’s not going to do her any good. She immediately signs on
board this ship again for another five-year mission ... falls in love with a Vul-
can who only comes in heat once every seven years [as revealed in “Amok
Time” (9/15/67)]— now, this woman is a loser! ... I kind of reject women who
are that way ... in real life....
A former stage and screen actor who had appeared in Joan Harrison’s
production of Nocturne (1946), Joseph Pevney went on to direct many films
for Universal-International during the 1950s, most notably the histrionic Lon
Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), and a baker’s dozen episodes
of Star Trek, including Bloch’s two remaining scripts. “Catspaw” (10/27/67) was
the first episode produced during Star Trek’s second season, although its broad-
cast was delayed until just before Halloween, and marked the introduction of
the youth-oriented navigator Ens. Pavel Chekov, played by Walter Koenig, who
at that time was wearing a wig while his hair grew to its more recognizable
Monkees-style length. Emerging from the corpse of crewman Jackson ( Jimmy
Jones), beamed back on board from a landing party to Pyris VII that included
Chief Engineer Scott ( James Doohan) and Helmsman Sulu (George Takei),
a disembodied voice intones to Kirk and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeFor-
est Kelley), “There is a curse on your ship. Leave this place or you will all die.”
Beaming down to the planet’s fog-swept surface with Spock, Kirk and
McCoy are again warned away by three witches (Rhodie Cogan, Gail Bon-
ney, and Maryesther Denver), dismissed as illusory by Spock, and enter the
castle that is the source of the lifeform readings they are tracing, where they
follow a black cat and fall into a dungeon, awakening in chains. Released by
entranced “catspaws” Scotty and Sulu, they find themselves in the presence
of Korob (Theodore Marcuse), who conjures up items with a “transmuter”
wand and converses with the cat, in reality his sensation-seeking colleague
Sylvia (Antoinette Bower, also seen in “Waxworks”), and her sympathetic
magic seals the Enterprise in an impenetrable force field. The aliens, who also
invoke the Old Ones, try to force the captives to reveal their scientific secrets,
while Spock theorizes that they have inadvertently tapped into the universal
myths of our racial subconscious, and when Sylvia menaces them as the now-
giant cat, Kirk destroys the transmuter, banishing the illusions and return-
ing the aliens to their true, dying forms.
Barrett’s metamorphosis from Number One to nurse was not the only
distaff demotion in Star Trek history. As Sue Uram noted in her Cinefantas-
tique episode guide to the series,
Looking at the chain of command in this episode, there is a question of who

was next in line. With Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott and Sulu on the planet,
Uhura should be the next in line. D.C. Fontana once said that, as the script
supervisor, she had tried to put Uhura in command of the ship while all the
other regulars, except Ensign Chekov, were on the planet Pyris VII ... but was
not allowed to do so. The producers promoted semi-regular, Lt. DeSalle
[Mike Barrier] to the position of Assistant Chief Engineer for the purpose of
having him outrank Uhura. Roddenberry did not include a communications
officer among the proposed regular characters in the format and Uhura did
not appear in either of the pilot episodes [65].
Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) debuted in Sohl’s superb “The Corbomite Maneu-

ver” (11/10/66), directed by Joseph Sargent, which was the first episode pro-
duced after the second pilot.
In addition to “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” Bloch also portrayed the
character in his novel The Night of the Ripper and his Star Trek episode “Wolf
in the Fold” (12/22/67), and credited Dorothy Fontana with not only sug-
gesting the latter but also giving him considerable help with the teleplay. In
his autobiography, he graciously added, “in the hundreds of thousands of
words I’ve read about Star Trek since it became a cult phenomenon, I seldom
saw a scriptwriter give credit to Dorothy or another member of the staff,
though I know that in some instances the writers taking the bows lent little
more than their names to the shooting script” (Once Around the Bloch 336).
Sohl, in contrast, had his name replaced with the nom de plume of Nathan
Butler on “This Side of Paradise” (3/2/67) after Fontana drastically rewrote
his original submission, “The Way of the Spores.”
Scotty is on therapeutic shore leave with Kirk and McCoy on the hedo-
nistic planet of Argelius, trying to overcome a total resentment toward women

since one caused an explosion that threw him against a bulkhead, and after
Argelian dancer Kara (Tania Lemani) is killed, Scott — seemingly ill-fated
while on terra firma — is found standing over her body with a knife. He
remembers nothing, and chief city administrator Hengist ( John Fiedler), a
native of Rigel IV, investigates to no avail, so the prefect, Jaris (Charles
Macauley), plans to have his wife Sybo (Pilar Seurat) use her ancient ances-
tral gift of Argelian empathic contact to reveal the past, and Kirk has Lt.
Karen Tracy (Virginia Aldridge) beam down with a psycho-tricorder. She too
is killed while conducting a “twenty-four hour regressive memory check” on
Scott, who once again remembers nothing and is the most likely suspect,
notwithstanding Kara’s jealous fiancé Morla (Charles Dierkop), and Kirk
rejects Spock’s suggestion that they use the ship’s computer to learn the truth,
preferring to let the case be resolved by Argelian law.
Before becoming the next victim, Sybo senses “fear, anger, hatred. Anger
feeds the flame. Oh, oh, there is evil here, monstrous, terrible evil, consum-
ing hunger, hatred of all that lives, hatred of women, a hunger that never
dies. It is strong, overpowering, an ancient terror. It has a name — Boradis,
Kesla, Redjac — devouring all life, all light.... Redjac!” Agreeing at last to use
its technology, Hengist and Jaris beam aboard the Enterprise, where the com-
puter informs them that Redjac (Red Jack) was another name for the Ripper,
actually a formless alien entity that subsists on the emotions of others,
specifically fear, a mass of energy consisting of a highly cohesive electromag-
netic field that can assume physical form. A series of Ripper murders stretches
through time and space from Victorian London to Rigel IV, exposing Hengist
as the killer, but when subdued he collapses and Redjac takes over the com-
puter, trying to terrorize the crew by threatening all manner of destruction,
until driven back into Hengis with an insoluble math problem and dispersed
in space with the transporter.
Like Serling before him, Roddenberry was determined when launching
Star Trek to use the finest fantasy/SF writers as contributors, and in addition
to Ellison and the usual suspects of the “Matheson Mafia” these included
Jerome Bixby, whose story “It’s a Good Life” became a memorable Twilight
Zone episode, and genre giant Theodore Sturgeon. But as the Enterprise’s
“five-year mission” (truncated to three by the show’s cancellation in 1969) wore
on, the involvement of these luminaries lessened and Bloch became increas-
ingly disenchanted, later telling Dennis Fischer in Cinefantastique,
I rewrote all three shows as is accustomed in second draft.... I understand from
what George Clayton Johnson [whose Star Trek teleplay “The Man Trap”
(9/8/66) was the first to be broadcast] said that on the final episode I did ...
they wanted a rewrite and they called George in, asked him if he could make
certain changes in it, and he flatly refused.
So that was it for any changes in the rewrite; nothing was done by George
or anyone else.... [Television executives], by and large, are not themselves cre-
ative. They don’t write, they don’t direct ... their only function is an execu-
tive one.... Now I ask you ... suppose you were in one of those 27 slots? You
were getting scripts daily, and you read them, and you say, “That’s very good,”
and you pass it on. After a month, don’t you think somebody above you would
say, “What do we need this yo-yo for? All he’s doing is saying, ‘Yeah, I like
it.’” So they have to make a meaningful contribution in the form of some
kind of criticism ... [99].
Hammer Films owed much of its early success to theatrical adaptations of tel-
evision series and serials, but as Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio note
in their invaluable Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Checklist:
Because of Hammer’s success at the box office, there was really no need until
the late sixties for the company to become seriously involved in television.
However, Hammer’s success in the theatres began to wane ... and the com-
pany’s association with 20th Century–Fox led to the production of a televi-
sion series, Journey to the Unknown.... [T]he series went into production at
Elstree Studios and lasted through most of 1968. In all, seventeen stories were
filmed.... The episodes ... premiered on the ABC network on September 26,
1968. The series ran until January 30, 1969, but made little impact in Amer-
ica [389].
Harrison invited Bloch to London, where he adapted “The Indian Spirit

Guide” (10/10/68) from his own story and “Girl of My Dreams” (12/26/68)
from one by Matheson. Peter Sasdy directed the latter and other episodes, as
did Alan Gibson before they graduated to feature films with Hammer’s Taste
the Blood of Dracula and Crescendo (both 1969), respectively; Robert Stevens
and Hammer veterans Roy Ward Baker and Don Chaffey also contributed to
the brief series. Later combined with Gibson’s “Poor Butterfly” (1/9/69) in
the ersatz TV-movie Journey into Midnight, “The Indian Spirit Guide” was
directed by Baker (later of Asylum) and features Julie Harris, an Academy
Award nominee for Fred Zinnemann’s The Member of the Wedding (1952) and
the star of Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), as Leona Gillings.
Scheming secretary Joyce (Tracy Reed) persuades Leona to hire her lover,
private eye Jerry Crown (Tom Adams, the strangler in “Method for Murder”),
to help contact her late husband Howard, but after Jerry exposes cross-dress-
ing “psychic sensitive” Mrs. Hubbard (Dennis Ramsden) and mystic Edward
Chardur (Marne Maitland) as frauds, he aims to marry Leona. She meets
medium Sarah Prinn (Catherine Lacey), an old acquaintance of Howard’s, and
when Sarah’s Apache guide, Bright Arrow ( Julian Sherrier), appears during
her séance and says that Howard wants to warn Leona against Jerry, who was
only using her for her money, the skeptic tries to expose him and winds up
dead with a trio of arrows in his chest.
“Girl of My Dreams” was adapted by Bloch and television writer Michael
J. Bird from a story that was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction in October of 1963; as Matheson, who had already writ-
ten several screenplays for Hammer Films, mused in another interview with
the author (published in Filmfax #75–76), “I don’t know why they didn’t let
me do it, because it was an easy thing to adapt.” American actor Michael
Callan, whose credits include the genre film Mysterious Island (1961), stars as
unscrupulous photographer Greg Richards, who obtains money in exchange
for specific information that will allow people to prevent various catastrophes,
as revealed in precognitive dreams by his reluctant and emotionally depend-
ent wife, Carrie (Zena Walker). When she dreams that the son of wealthy
Mrs. Wheeler ( Jan Holden) will be run down by a van, Greg thinks he is
onto the big score at last, but after the guilt-ridden Carrie gives Mrs. Wheeler
the information for nothing, Greg fatally injures her during a violent alter-
cation, only to learn with her dying breath of his own impending murder —
date and time unknown.
While he never wrote for The Twilight Zone, Bloch was ironically cho-
sen to novelize the ill-fated 1983 feature-film version, which incorporated
remakes of Johnson’s “Kick the Can” (2/9/62), Serling’s “It’s a Good Life”
(11/3/61), and Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (10/11/63)— all scripted
by Matheson himself— plus an original segment by John Landis. Bloch did
contribute to Serling’s second anthology series, Night Gallery, basing “Logoda’s
Heads” (12/29/71) on a story by Derleth, and would have been an obvious
choice to adapt the work of their mutual mentor, but oddly enough, Love-
craft’s “Cool Air” (12/8/71) and “Pickman’s Model” (12/1/71) were scripted by
Serling and Alvin Sapinsley, respectively. When the show was cut to thirty
minutes for syndication, its multiple segments of varying length were often
butchered or padded with miscellaneous footage, and in this case actor Tim
Matheson (no relation to Richard) had to be brought in to record new nar-
ration, explaining the presence of several minutes from Curt Siodmak’s
Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956).
The syndicated version is an unbelievable mishmash, with Matheson
explaining in a voiceover to the hilariously mismatched footage how the
brother of his character, Henley, and a female colleague, Dr. Irene Winston
(actually Beverly Garland in her Curucu role of Dr. Andrea Romar), disap-
peared on an expedition into jungle territory controlled by Logoda. The story
proper begins as Henley and Maj. Crosby (Patrick Macnee) visit the witch
doctor (Brock Peters), who claims that his shrunken heads have told him the
missing anthropologist drowned in the river, and a young woman from the
nearest village, Kyro (Denise Nicholas), tempts his wrath by revealing that
the kindly white man was killed while seeking Logoda. Crosby and Henley
take her to the residency for safety, but when they are summoned to his hut
the next day they find Logoda’s torn body, and Kyro tells Henley, “I knew
Logoda killed your brother, but I couldn’t prove it, so I have avenged him in
my own way.... Logoda could make the heads speak, but my magic is stronger.
You see, I know how to make them kill.”
“Once a series has been cancelled, it’s like carrion,” lamented Jeannot
Szwarc, who directed both “Cool Air” and “Logoda’s Heads,” in Mark Phillips
and Frank Garcia’s Science Fiction Television Series. “The vultures do what they
want. I never saw the episodes in syndication, but I’m sure the overall result
was awful” (319). Night Gallery’s woes had begun even earlier, however, with
Serling (who outlived the show by only two years) trying to remove his name
despite two of his scripts, “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” (1/20/71)
and “The Messiah of Mott Street” (12/15/71), garnering Emmy nominations.
To its credit, the series boasted the involvement of future filmmakers like
Steven Spielberg (who directed one segment of the 1969 pilot and the first-
season episode “Make Me Laugh” [1/6/71]), Szwarc, John Badham, and
Leonard Nimoy (who made his directorial debut with “Death on a Barge”
[3/4/73]), as well as Twilight Zone veterans Douglas Heyes, Sr., and Ralph
Senensky, and featured adaptations of works by a host of respected genre
authors.
Bloch declined a lucrative offer from William Castle, who had since pro-
duced Rosemary’s Baby, to serve as the story editor for his anthology series
Ghost Story, but did agree to contribute to the show after finishing his novel
Nightworld, and submitted a modern-day version of Hansel and Gretel that
Castle retitled “House of Evil” (11/10/72).
Its witch was a kindly grandmother whose cookies ... took on the powers of
voodoo dolls; harming them brought harm to the humans they were molded
to resemble. My dual-natured wicked witch and lovable old lady was writ-
ten with someone like Bette Davis in mind.... But Bill Castle made a slight
witch-switch.... [H]e transformed my grandmother into a grandfather and
gave the role to Melvyn Douglas.... Another wave of the cigar Bill used as a
magic wand, and my cookie-dolls no longer represented specific individuals.
There went the supernatural logic of my story. And after the show was aired,
there went I, trying to distance myself as much as possible from the necessity
of doing any further scripting [Once Around the Bloch 354–5].
TV movies proliferated during the early 1970s, and Bloch collaborated
with producer Douglas S. Cramer, formerly executive vice president in charge
of production for Star Trek, and director Curtis Harrington on a pair of

telefilms that he scripted for rival networks ABC and NBC, The Cat Crea-
ture (12/11/73) and The Dead Don’t Die (1/14/75), respectively. Harrington
had made a noteworthy debut with Night Tide (1961), starring a young Den-
nis Hopper, and continued his association with its distributor, AIP, by cob-
bling together Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965, as “John Sebastian”) and
Queen of Blood (1966) to utilize effects footage from two Soviet films pur-
chased by Roger Corman. Harrington has attracted more of a cult following
than major boxoffice success through such off beat genre films as Games (1967),
What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), and Ruby (1977), and starting with The
Cat Creature he has directed primarily for television, later working with
Cramer once again on episodes of Wonder Woman, Dynasty, and The Colbys.
The Cat Creature, on which Bloch shared the story credit with Cramer
and his associate, Wilford Lloyd Baumes, has an extremely checkered history,
as he recounted in John Brosnan’s seminal study, The Horror People.
I’d done this script for a made-for-TV horror film and at a late stage they
changed the leading lady and brought in a rather big-name star [Diahann Car-
roll, who then had a contractual commitment with the network]. So I had to
do a certain amount of rewriting, just to make sure that the new characteri-
zation didn’t clash with the fantasy elements of the show.... Then they decided
that since she was a star the story would have to change.... Now the normal
course of the story called for her introduction in the second act but no, I had
to write in a sequence that would introduce her at the beginning. So I restruc-
tured it ... but it destroys the careful build-up in a suspense story when you
have to arbitrarily change things.
The ludicrous thing is that [having fulfilled her contract, Carroll] didn’t
play the role after all but they still had to shoot it that way. And they had cut
out a great deal of what I had written because it was running too long, they
said, but when they shot it they discovered that they were twelve minutes
short.... If they’d left what I had put in so carefully ... they would have had a
perfectly realized script. But they discovered this when they saw the rough-
cut and by then the sets had been struck, the actors who had been hired ...
were gone — and they had to add twelve minutes. So they recalled two actors
and they had part of one set left and part of another; then they contacted me
and said that they were shooting in two days time and wanted twelve min-
utes of script. And do it, they said, in such a way that it integrates with the
story and doesn’t affect the flow! I did it but it certainly didn’t improve the
story [Brosnan 209–10].
The story opens with appraiser Frank Lucas (Kent Smith, the star of Val
Lewton’s Cat People [1942], to which the film was an homage) inventorying
the estate of Hiram Drake and finding a mummy with a gold and emerald
cat amulet, but when he leaves the room it is stolen by Joe Sung (Keye Luke),
and a cat emerges from the sarcophagus and kills Lucas. After unsuccessfully
trying to fence the amulet to Hester Black (Gale Sondergaard), Sung leaves
the briefcase that had contained it at her Sorcerer’s Shop and she gives it to
her sales clerk, Sherry Hastings (Renne Jarrett), who on her way home finds
the cat and is hypnotized into jumping from her balcony, so Hester hires Rena
Carter (Meredith Baxter) to replace her. Asked to aid Lt. Marco (Stuart Whit-
man) in his investigation, archaeologist Roger Edmonds (David Hedison)
finds the sarcophagus defaced as if by claws and bearing the symbol of the
cat-headed goddess Bast, whose priests could turn into cats and were buried
alive for making human sacrifices for which she granted them eternal life, and
together they seek the amulet.
Hester points them to Sung, Drake’s former gardener, but like Lucas he
is killed and drained of blood while Marco questions the clerk ( John Carra-
dine) at his Skid Row hotel, and when a ticket in Sung’s shoe leads them to
a pawnbroker (Peter Lorre, Jr.), who is found dying with a knife in his back,
Marco suspects Hester and has her shop staked out. The cat hypnotizes the
policeman on watch and kills Hester, who had the amulet sewn into the lin-
ing of her cape, and Roger learns from his colleague, Dr. Reinhart ( John
Abbott), that it was used to hold something captive rather than to worship
Bast, its inscription reading, “Beware the Seal of Kur-ub-Set, for he who
dares to remove it will open the Gates of Hell.” Roger tells Rena that the cats
gathering around her apartment recognize her as a priestess of Bast, and after
he refuses her offer of immortality she changes again and attacks him, but he
puts the amulet around her neck and Rena, revealed in full priestess regalia,
stumbles outside and reverts to her mummy form, which is soon shredded
by the cats and crumbles into dust.
The Dead Don’t Die was based on Bloch’s story from the July 1951 issue
of Fantastic Adventures, and although he applauded the veteran character
actors who filled the supporting roles, he was less than enthused with the per-
formances of leading man George Hamilton and villain Ray Milland. Set in
1934, the film version was produced by frequent Cramer colleague Henry
Colman, with Cramer and Baumes now serving as executive producers, and
opens on Death Row in the Illinois State Penitentiary. Don Drake (Hamil-
ton) promises his brother Ralph ( Jerry Douglas) that he will find out who
really murdered his wife, Frances, and after Ralph goes to the chair, claim-
ing he had blacked out at the time of her death, a mysterious woman later
revealed as Vera LaValle (Linda Cristal) attends his lonely funeral.
Don visits Jim Moss (Milland), at whose Chicago dance marathon
Frances was killed, and learns that trainer Frankie Specht ( James McEachin)
found the body but vanished before the trial; later, as Vera warns him to leave
town, Don sees Ralph in the street and follows him to an antique shop, where
Don accidentally kills the owner, Perdido (Reggie Nalder). Knocked uncon-
scious by Perdido’s employee, Levenia ( Joan Blondell), Don awakens with
Vera, who says she rescued him at gunpoint after the evil Varek lured him to
the shop, and when Don demands to see him, Vera takes him to a funeral
parlor, where in a chilling scene Varek raises Perdido’s body and through its
mouth tells Don, “The dead are my children.” Lt. Reardon (Ralph Meeker)
dismisses Don’s story, especially when a visit to Perdido’s shop reveals him
apparently alive and well, so Don flees and takes refuge with Moss, and while
the latter is out looking for leads, Vera appears and says that although she
disobeyed his orders to kill Don, she can only belong to Varek, whose voodoo
brought her back to life.
Like Ralph, Vera was executed for a murder she did not commit and ini-
tially served Varek out of gratitude, but the shock of finding out that he
framed her by having one of his zombies kill her employer enabled her to
regain her free will, and when the as-yet-unseen Varek senses her betrayal he
destroys Vera, burning a doll in her image with a blowtorch. Finally Varek is
revealed as Moss, who manipulated Specht into killing Frances and now has
Perdido run him over, yet Don dashes his plan to take over the world by
shocking Ralph back to his senses, and upon learning that he was framed, the
dead man strangles Moss and hangs his body up on a meathook in the cold
storage warehouse where he kept his zombies. Interestingly, one of the most
significant alterations made by Bloch in adapting his fifty-page novelette for
the screen was to the nature of its protagonist, originally a writer of horror
fiction amusingly identified as “Bob,” who meets the condemned and unre-
lated convict while working as a guard at the penitentiary and trying unsuc-
cessfully to write a book on the side.
Bloch shared story credit with Robert F. O’Neill, who co-scripted with
fellow producer Frank Telford, on “Minotaur” (9/30/76), the second episode
of NBC’s SF series Gemini Man, featuring Ben Murphy as diver Sam Casey,
a secret agent with the power to turn invisible for fifteen minutes at a time
as the result of a freak underwater explosion. Known to genre fans as Hey-
wood Floyd in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), William Sylvester was cast as
Sam’s boss, Leonard Driscoll, while Ross Martin of Wild, Wild West fame
guest-starred as Carl Victor; director Alan J. Levi also helmed the eponymous
pilot film (5/10/76), written by Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens and syn-
dicated as Code Name: Minus One. The show itself had a curious history,
beginning life in 1975 as The Invisible Man, which like a 1958–59 British
series of the same name was inspired by the H.G. Wells novel, and when it
was cancelled after only a dozen episodes, it was revamped by the same pro-
duction team the following fall as Gemini Man, only to die an even quicker
death a month later.
Victor is a scientist fired by Driscoll for turning the A-73, designed as
a purely defensive surveillance system, into an uncontrollable offensive
weapon, and after vanishing along with the robot he has dubbed Minotaur
(Loren Janes), whose power he demonstrates to Sam, now threatens to level
a skyscraper unless he is paid a half-billion dollars in cash. Learning that Vic-
tor is being aided by his daughter Nancy (Deborah Winters), who believes
him to be working for world peace, Sam follows her to his secret lab, which
is surrounded by a maze, but as in Greek mythology he is trapped inside the
labyrinth with the Minotaur and, detected with infrared in spite of his invis-
ibility, knocked unconscious and captured. His power temporarily neutral-
ized, Sam opens Nancy’s eyes to her father’s madness and true intentions, and
when Victor threatens to destroy the headquarters of Driscoll’s organization,
Intersect, the robot rebels and goes after Sam, who joins forces with Nancy
to disable it by lassoing Minotaur with an electric hoist, leaving Victor men-
tally shattered by its betrayal.
Bloch’s early Lovecraftian story “The Mannikin,” which also refers to
“Ludvig Prinn’s infamous Mysteries of the Worm” (The Early Fears 50), was
adapted as an episode of the 1977 anthology series Classics Dark and Danger-
ous, produced by the Ontario Educational Communications Authority in
association with Highgate Productions and the Canadian Broadcasting Com-
pany. The nameless narrator of the story, published in Weird Tales in April
1936, expresses his growing concern over the condition of his erudite but mis-
shapen and misanthropic friend Simon Maglore, shunned by his fellow resi-
dents of Bridgetown because of the hump that disfigures his back and the
rumors of witchcraft in his family dating back for generations. Increasingly
isolated as his hump grows and his mental and physical health deteriorate,
he embarks upon progressively arcane studies that also alarm the narrator,
who at last breaks into his house to find the unfortunate Simon dead, the vic-
tim of a grotesque, sentient figure growing from his back, which controlled
his will and bit him to death when he tried to rebel.
Directed by Donald W. Thompson (billed as Don Thompson), best
known for a series of fundamentalist apocalypse films beginning with A Thief
in the Night (1972), the uncredited script updates the story to the present and
transforms Simon into a singer, Simone; Ronee Blakley starred and wrote her
own songs, as she had in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975). Following the
death of her mother, who along with the sinister housekeeper, Miss Smith
(Pol Pelletier), had forced her to participate in séances as a child, Simone
Maglore is plagued by mysterious voices and a recurring pain in her back, so
Dr. Paul Carstairs (Cec Linder from Goldfinger [1964]) refers her to a psy-
chologist, David Priestley (Keir Dullea of 2001 fame). Now bearing a hump,
Simone returns to her hated childhood home, where Miss Smith frees the
manikin, but when a concerned David traces her there he is dismissed by the
suddenly serene Simone, and as he drives away, planning to return the next
day with Carstairs, he is killed by the bug-eyed green monster, which has con-
cealed itself in the back seat of his car.
An old adage holds that the quality of a script is inversely proportional
to the number of writers involved, so perhaps the less said the better about
executive producer Irwin Allen’s miniseries The Return of Captain Nemo (aka
The Amazing Captain Nemo), an unsold CBS pilot shown theatrically in
Europe, on which Bloch was but one of six credited screenwriters. For the
record, the others were Norman Katkov, Preston Wood, Robert C. Dennis,
William Keys, and Mann Rubin — all television veterans, as was director Alex
March of Allen’s series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, while the show was
broadcast in three parts: “Deadly Blackmail” (3/8/78), “Duel in the Deep”
(3/15/78), and “Atlantis Dead Ahead” (3/22/78). Awoken from a century of
suspended animation by Navy divers Tom Franklin (Tom Hallick) and Jim
Porter (Burr De Benning), Jules Verne’s hero ( José Ferrer) pits the Nautilus
against the supersub of Prof. Cunningham (Burgess Meredith), who plans to
destroy Washington, D.C., and, recalling Captain Nemo and the Underwater
City (1970), seeks lost Atlantis.
Hosted by the author himself, the British anthology series Roald Dahl’s
Tales of the Unexpected debuted in 1979 and initially featured dramatizations
by Ronald Harwood of his celebrated stories, many of which had already been
done on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including a remake of “The Landlady”
(10/6/79) starring Siobhan McKenna in the title role. When John Houseman
replaced Dahl, the title was shortened to Tales of the Unexpected (not to be
confused with the short-lived NBC series of the same name), accommodat-
ing works by other writers such as an adaptation of Bloch’s “Fat Chance”
(11/15/80), which was published in Keyhole in 1960 and concerned “a typical
middle-class American couple” (The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch,
Volume 3, 35) John and Mary. In the story, John becomes disgusted with
Mary’s obesity and begins carrying on with her best friend Frances, but after
conspiring with the shady Dr. Applegate (played on TV by the seemingly
ubiquitous Geoffrey Bayldon) to poison Mary while Frances is on a trip, he
learns that she has unwittingly given the arsenic-laced chocolates to Frances
as a farewell present.
During the 1980s, numerous attempts were made to return to the anthol-
ogy show format on network, syndicated, and cable television, including exec-
utive producer Steven Spielberg’s high-profile flop Amazing Stories and equally
ill-fated revivals of both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, but
none proved as enduring as the originals. One of the first, and one of the
quickest to leave the airwaves, was ABC’s Darkroom, which was hosted by
James Coburn and, like Night Gallery, featured multiple stories of varying
lengths in each of its seven hour-long shows, including a remake of the Thriller
episode “Guillotine” (1/8/82) and adaptations of works by Davis Grubb,
Robert R. McCammon and Fredric Brown. Christopher Crowe, who pro-
duced the series with Gemini Man alumnus Robert F. O’Neill, faithfully
adapted William F. Nolan’s ghoulish story “The Partnership” (12/25/81), and
Nolan himself, according to whom the episode was their highest-rated, wrote
a teleplay based on another of his stories, “The Party,” but the show was can-
celled before it could be produced.
Bloch adapted three of his own stories, starting with “The Bogeyman
Will Get You” (12/4/81), which was published in Weird Tales in 1946, and just
as Jodie Foster, later an Oscar winner for The Accused (1988) and The Silence
of the Lambs (1991), had appeared in “House of Evil,” this starred Helen Hunt,
a future recipient for As Good as It Gets (1997). Directed by sometime cine-
matographer John McPherson, the show depicts Nancy Lawrence’s growing
conviction that Phillip Ames (Randolph Powell), who is writing a book in
the cabin across the lake from her parents and appears only at night, is a vam-
pire, especially after she finds the murdered body of her missing friend, Julie,
in the lake with its throat mutilated. Her search of his cabin reveals that he
has no mirrors and is studying demonology (including a copy of De Vermis
Mysteriis, complete with worm), yet when Phillip finds her looking for clues
in the boathouse, he gazes into a mirror to prove that he is not a vampire,
but sadly says that she will have to be silenced anyway, and reveals that he is,
in fact, a werewolf.
Based on a brief story from his 1965 collection The Skull of the Marquis
de Sade, “A Quiet Funeral” (12/18/81) brought Bloch back together with Cur-
tis Harrington, once again effectively using a funeral parlor setting, and starred
Robert F. Lyons and Eugene Roche, who had appeared together earlier in the
genre telefilm The Ghost of Flight 401 (2/18/78). “A small-time hood with big
ideas,” Marty Vetch (Lyons) learns that Charlie the Printer (Roche), a con-
summate counterfeiter and forger, will be making a delivery one stormy night,
so he forces Charlie off the road, wedging him inside under the smashed steer-
ing wheel, and takes the briefcase containing $50,000 before pushing the
vengeful victim’s car over a bluff. Hiding out in Vegas with his girlfriend Leda
(Misty Rowe) to establish an alibi, Vetch sees a notice of Charlie’s funeral in
the Detroit paper and returns to keep up appearances, but at the oddly empty
mortuary Charlie rises from the coffin, revealing that he survived the crash
and forged the obituary, and locks Vetch inside the casket, where his screams
will soon cease.
“Catnip” (12/25/81) was directed by executive story consultant Jeffrey
Bloom, who later adapted V.C. Andrews’s Flowers in the Attic (1987), and
considerably updated by Bloch from his story, published in the March 1948
issue of Weird Tales, in which fourteen-year-old protagonist Ronnie Shires is
trying to influence the outcome of a school election. Here, Ronnie (Cyril
O’Reilly) is a motorcycle-riding drug dealer who kills a reputed witch, Mrs.
Mingle ( Jocelyn Brando, who appeared in “’Til Death Do Us Part” almost
twenty years earlier), with a bomb intended for her hated black cat, rather
than burning her home with a carelessly-tossed cigarette butt as in the story,
but in both versions his fate is the same. After Mrs. Mingle’s death, her venge-
ful cat follows Ronnie everywhere, eventually entering through his bedroom
window when he returns home to attack him as he opens his mouth to scream,
whereupon his mother (Lynn Carlin), calling him from downstairs with no
response, utters the quintessentially Blochian punchline, “What’s the matter,
cat got your tongue?”
Debuting in 1984, the syndicated series Tales from the Darkside was the
creation of Laurel Entertainment, in which writer-director George A. Romero
was then partnered with Richard P. Rubinstein, his producer on Martin, Dawn
of the Dead (both 1978), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), and Day of the
Dead (1985), after which Romero left Laurel. Rubinstein then became closely
associated with Stephen King, who had written Creepshow and contributed
stories to Tales from the Darkside in both its television and 1990 feature film
incarnations, and Rubinstein went on to produce the adaptations of King’s
Pet Sematary (1989), The Stand (1994), The Langoliers (1995), Thinner (1996)
and The Night Flier (1997). Several of Bloch’s stories were featured on the
series, including “A Case of the Stubborns” (12/2/84), published in The Mag-
azine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1976, which was directed by Jerry Smith
and adapted by James Houghton; best known for the irreverent comedies he
made with writer-director Preston Sturges, Eddie Bracken starred as Grandpa.
Widowed Addie Tolliver (Barbara Eda Young) and her son, Jody (rising
heartthrob Christian Slater, who later appeared in Tales from the Darkside:
The Movie), are mourning the passing of her father Titus the night before when
Grandpa himself comes downstairs, dressed in his funeral suit and demand-
ing breakfast, too stubborn to acknowledge his death. Despite Doc Snod-
grass (Bill McCutcheon) detecting no heartbeat and showing him his death
certificate, Grandpa — already starting to turn in the hot weather, courtesy of
Ed French’s makeup — rejects the suggestion of Rev. Peabody (Brent Spiner,
three years before playing Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation) that “now
it’s time to lie down and call it quits.” Finally, the desperate Jody goes to
Spooky Hollow and consults the Voodoo Woman (Tresa Hughes), who gives
him a bag of strong black pepper to put in Grandpa’s napkin, and after sneez-
ing his nose off, he finally accept this as irrevocable proof and goes voluntar-
ily upstairs where, as Addie tells Jody, “He done laid down his burden at last.
Gone to glory, amen.”
In 1985, five years after the director’s death, NBC revived Alfred Hitch-
cock Presents, which ran for a single season executive produced by Darkroom
veteran Christopher Crowe (with new episodes produced for the USA Net-
work two years later), using colorized versions of Hitchcock’s wraparounds
from the classic series and a mix of original episodes and remakes. Among the
latter were “Method Actor” (11/10/85), a retitled version of “Bad Actor” star-
ring Martin Sheen, and “The Gloating Place” (1/5/86), which was directed
by Christopher Leitch, who helmed the recent TV-movie remake Satan’s School
for Girls (2000), and adapted from Bloch’s story by David Stenn, subsequently
a supervising producer for Beverly Hills, 90210. Subverting Bloch’s concept,
Samantha Loomis (Isabelle Walker) recounts an encounter with an existing
killer and is made into a minor media celebrity by TV reporter Carl Cansino
(Stephen Macht), but when her rival, Debbie Spooner (Christie Houser),
reports a similar attack, Sam mistakenly assumes she too has lied, and both
girls are killed by Carl himself.
While recovering from various eye surgeries during the mid–1980s, Bloch
took a temporary hiatus from writing novels in favor of a return to what he
called “more fragmentary fiction” (Once Around the Bloch 397), and one of
these latter-day efforts, written in 1984, was filmed as a third-season episode
of Tales from the Darkside, “Everybody Needs a Little Love” (2/22/87). Pub-
lished that same year in Bloch’s collection Midnight Pleasures, the story is told
by an unnamed narrator who meets another recent divorcé, David Curtis, in
a bar, and when he suggests taking advantage of a bargain rate for couples on
a trip to Las Vegas, Curtis pilfers a window dummy from the department store
where he works to be his traveling companion. Unnerved when Curtis dubs
the dummy Estelle and begins treating her like a person, the narrator learns
that his supposed ex-wife, also Estelle, disappeared, and sees a car race from
his apartment with the dummy at the wheel; later Curtis is found stabbed to
death, with the dummy nearby, in the gravel pit where he had buried his wife
after killing her the same way.
The television version was written and directed by John Sutherland, a
longtime Laurel employee better known as John Harrison (under which name
he also scored this and several other episodes), who had acted in Dawn of the
Dead and Knightriders before graduating to both a composer and Romero’s

first assistant director on Creepshow and Day of the Dead. Sutherland play-
fully dubs the narrator “Roberts” ( Jerry Orbach) and substitutes a suitably
Blochian twist ending, veering sharply away from the story at the point where
the literary Curtis throws a bottle at the narrator during their last meeting;
here, Roberts is hit on the head from behind with the bottle, later awaken-
ing to find Curtis (Richard Portnow) stabbed. His narration is revealed to be
an interrogation by Lt. Mann (Don Peoples), and as he insists that “the man-
nequin did it,” a woman at first shown only in shadow — and ultimately
revealed as “Estelle”— implicates him by telling another detective (Philip
Lenknowsky) that he was fooling around with the real Estelle, whose rotting
remains were found under Curtis’s sink.
As he approached seventy, Bloch became frustrated with the travails of
writing for the film and television industry, which was increasingly dominated
by youthful executives who wanted to work with those in their own age
bracket, and he was further soured by the failure of an abortive project with
producer George Pal. He then agreed to work on a pilot inspired by Stephen
King’s novel Salem’s Lot and the miniseries based on it but, as he wrote in his
autobiography:
Just how one would go about doing a series was another matter, since recy-
cling a dead town and an undead villain hardly seemed like an original idea....
[M]y initial qualms were partially dispelled when I learned that the producer
of the opus was Doug Benton, whom I’d worked with back in the days of the
Thriller shows. I evolved a story line, had it approved, and emerged with a
script. But upon learning that thirty-seven copies of that script were to be
distributed to network personnel on both the west and east coasts, I realized
the project was foredoomed.
His subsequent sales to television were of stories scripted largely by other

writers for Tales from the Darkside and its successor, Monsters, although he
did agree to adapt “Beetles” (9/27/87), which was directed for Darkside by
Frank De Palma, from his story published in the December 1938 issue of
Weird Tales. Arthur Hartley (Rod McCary) dismisses a warning from Hamid
Bey (Sirri Murrad) about the curse of the beetle god after smuggling a mummy
out of an Egyptian tomb. His cottage increasingly infested by scarabs, which
have hollowed out and hidden inside the mummy, the greedy grave robber is
found dead with bugs emerging from his mouth, a gross-out effect already
borrowed by King et alia in a segment of Creepshow.
Rubinstein kept Laurel going into the mid-nineties, and with longtime
associate Mitchell Galin, who had also produced King’s Golden Years (1991),
later formed New Amsterdam Entertainment to take its place; when Tales
from the Darkside left the air in 1988, they quickly created a similar series,
Monsters, with many of the same contributors. Based on Bloch’s story and
directed by Jeff Wolf, “The Legacy” (12/3/88) was written by the aforemen-
tioned “John Sutherland,” who under the Harrison name later went on to
direct Tales from the Darkside: The Movie but has continued to work prima-
rily in television, adapting and directing the SFC miniseries Dune (2000)
from the Frank Herbert classic. Researching a book on Lon Chaney–looka-
like Fulton Pierce, Dale (David Brisbin) rents the house he once owned and
becomes convinced that instead of just donning greasepaint, Pierce could
“make-up his mind” to embody the monsters he portrayed, and his girlfriend
Debbie Curzon (Lara Harris) arrives to find he has unleashed Pierce’s spirit
from its makeup box.
The Monsters episode “Mannikins of Horror” (5/20/89) was directed by
the multi-talented Ernest D. Farino, at various times a title designer, anima-
tor, special visual effects supervisor, and writer, and adapted by Josef Ander-
son from Bloch’s short story, which had been published in Weird Tales in 1939
and previously filmed as the final segment of Asylum. The Amicus version was
incorporated into the framing story that ties the segments together, as aspir-
ing employee Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) comes to the titular madhouse, and
is told by Dr. Lionel Rutherford (Patrick Magee) that the job is his if he can
identify which of four patients is his associate, “Dr. B. Starr,” who has now
been taken over by a new personality. Ex-neurosurgeon Byron (Herbert Lom)
constructs human figures with perfectly proportioned brains and internal
organs, and after making one in his own image and imbuing it with his con-
sciousness he sends it to kill Rutherford with a scalpel, but Byron dies by
remote control when Martin crushes the figure, only to be strangled with a
stethoscope by the real Dr. Starr.
With almost double the running time of the Asylum segment, and Oscar
winner Dick Smith as its special effects makeup consultant, Monsters was able
to visualize Bloch’s story in more — and more gruesome — detail, albeit reset-
ting it in a futuristic “new society,” and restored the original character names
now that the “B. Starr” plot device was unnecessary. Dr. Colin (William
Prince, a longtime soap opera star also seen in Hitchcock’s last film, Family
Plot [1976]) opines that the sympathetic Dr. Jerris (Glynis Barber) should
have been named the new director of the institution instead of arrogant young
Dr. Starr (Brian Brophy), who scoffs at Colin’s notion that he is “coming
apart,” and yet will live on in his clay men. Starr orders Colin restrained and
the figures removed, but when one of them comes to life it plunges a letter
opener into Starr’s eye, and after finding the body and crushing the face of
the figure resembling Colin, Jerris hears screams coming from his room, where
she herself winds up screaming uncontrollably after seeing the mangled face
on the figure in his bed.
Bloch penned two sequels to his original novel, Psycho II (in which he
killed off Norman Bates) and Psycho House, but he was not involved with the
subsequent screen incarnations that began with the unrelated Psycho II (1983),
written by Tom Holland of Fright Night (1985) fame and directed by an Alfred
Hitchcock protégé, Richard Franklin. Anthony Perkins himself directed the
second sequel, Psycho III (1986), and interestingly, while he continued to play
Norman until shortly before his death of pneumonia brought on by AIDS in
1992, another actor, Kurt Paul, started his own lengthy association with the
same role as a stunt man in both Psycho II and III, presumably doubling for
Perkins. Paul spoofed the character as “Norman Baines” in a Knight Rider
episode, “Halloween Knight” (10/28/84), and as “Norman Blates,” the coro-
ner on the series Sledge Hammer!, even getting a shot at the real McCoy when
the Bates canon, such as it was, moved to the small screen with the TV-movie
Bates Motel (7/5/87), which Perkins boycotted.
Richard Rothstein wrote and directed this unsold NBC pilot for a pro-
posed series that mercifully never materialized, which ignored the events of
the theatrical sequels and starred Bud Cort, best known for his title roles in
Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud (1970) and opposite Ruth Gordon in Hal
Ashby’s delightful black comedy Harold and Maude (1971), as Alex West. Pick-
ing up more or less where Psycho left off, Bates Motel opens in black and white
in 1960 as Norman (Paul, strongly resembling Perkins but given no dialogue)
is sentenced to the state mental hospital at Dunsmore, where he is soon intro-
duced by Dr. Goodman (Star Trek’s Robert Picardo) to Alex, a withdrawn yet
sympathetic young boy who killed his widowed and abusive stepfather. By
1987, Norman has become the father the boy never had, while seeing the adult
Alex (Cort) as a younger version of himself, so in order to ensure that he will
have a second chance when he is released, Norman bequeaths him the motel,
redecorated by Alex with a southwestern motif and obviously intended as the
setting for a variety of unrelated stories featuring various guest-stars.
After securing a loan from skeptical banker Tom Fuller (Gregg Henry),
who urges him to develop the desirable real estate instead, Alex reopens the
motel with the help of Willie (Lori Petty), an actress living in the unoccu-
pied property while working as a chicken-suited mascot at a fast-food restau-
rant, and Henry Watson (Moses Gunn), a former handyman for Norman’s
mother. The bodies of both the latter (here christened Gloria) and her cheat-
ing husband Jake, apparently killed by Mrs. Bates, are dug up during the ren-
ovation, and inevitably Alex’s sanity comes into question when he begins
seeing their ghostly manifestations, but with equal inevitability these are
revealed to be the work of Fuller, who is trying to manipulate Alex into

defaulting on the loan. There is, however, a genuine ghost at the motel, known
only as “A Friend” (Khrystyne Haje), who tries to talk the thrice-divorced
Sally (Kerrie Keane) out of killing herself, and does so with the help of Tony
Scotty ( Jason Bateman) and a group of other teenaged suicides from the late
1950s and early ’60s, appearing at the motel as attendees of a prom-night party
to dissuade Sally.
Joseph Stefano, who had adapted Bloch’s novel after Alfred Hitchcock
fired James P. Cavanagh, returned thirty years later for both Psycho IV: The
Beginning (11/13/90), a made-for-cable sequel-cum-prequel, and Gus Van
Sant’s recent remake of the original, recreated shot-for-shot with a new cast,
a slightly updated script, and Herrmann’s classic score. Although arousing the
ire of many fans (and, understandably, Bloch himself ) by consistently down-
playing the importance of Norman’s creator, while Hitchcock correctly
observed that “Psycho all came from Robert Bloch’s book,” Stefano did return
the character to its roots in his teleplay for Psycho IV: The Beginning by explor-
ing the history hinted at in the novel. Like Richard Rubinstein, with whom
he collaborated on The Stand, director Mick Garris has gone on to become
the foremost interpreter of Stephen King’s work on the large and small screen
with the films Sleepwalkers (1992) and Riding the Bullet (2004), the minis-
eries remake of The Shining (1997), and the TV-movies Quicksilver Highway
(1997) and Desperation (2006).
A slim, boyish twenty-seven when he first played Bates, portrayed as fat
and forty in the novel, Perkins stars as the apparently cured Norman, whose
post-incarceration exploits are wisely downplayed as he calls radio host Fran
Ambrose (CCH Pounder) to discuss her talk-show topic du jour, matricide
(with the ubiquitous Kurt Paul as a paroled mother-killer, Raymond Linette).
He relates the circumstances that led to the many murders at the Bates Motel
and the twisted relationship between himself and his mother, Norma (Olivia
Hussey), with the teenaged Henry Thomas, best known for E.T.: The Extra-
Terrestrial (1982), well-cast as the young Norman and Warren Frost as psy-
chiatrist Leo Richmond, played by Simon Oakland in the original. Richmond
recognizes Norman, who calls himself “Ed” in an obvious nod to the real-life
case of Ed Gein, which inspired the novel, and announces his intention to
kill his wife and former therapist, Connie (Donna Mitchell), because she car-
ries his “aging bad seed,” but ultimately he is persuaded to renounce violence
and finally frees himself by burning down the house.
The flashbacks depict Norma as a sexually repressed, mentally unstable
widow whose ambivalent attitude towards her son alternates between behav-
ing seductively with him and castigating him for his inevitable arousal, call-
ing him a girl and locking him inside a closet, where he is forced to wear a
dress and lipstick to make him forget about his “filthy thing.” As before, the
jealous Norman uses strychnine to poison his mother and the lover she plans
to marry, but in a small yet significant bit of revisionism, he is now bartender
Chet Rudolph (Thomas Schuster) rather than the man who originally talked
Norma into building the Bates Motel, identified by Bloch as Joe Considine
and invoked if not named in Hitchcock’s film. Unfortunately, the sequel
lacked that classic’s subtlety and restraint, featuring partial nudity and full-
color violence as well as several other gratuitous murders, and as Bloch noted
in his preface to a thirty-fifth anniversary edition of the original novel, issued
in 1994 by Gauntlet Publications, “In this instance I’m quite happy, even
eager, to give [Stefano] full credit” (Psycho 17).
In his last years, Bloch ceased writing for film and television, but even
as recently as four years after his death, his work was still being brought to
the screen, as demonstrated by both the Van Sant version of Psycho (1998)
and “The Lighthouse” (2/20/98), an episode of the Showtime cable network’s
erotic anthology series The Hunger, hosted by Terence Stamp. As adapted and
updated from 1796 to the present day by the show’s story editor, Bruce Smith,
the story “The Lighthouse” is credited solely to Bloch, who actually wrote
approximately eighty percent of it. He revealed in his autobiography that its
fascinating history began with his pastiche “The Man Who Collected Poe,”
which was memorably filmed with Peter Cushing and Jack Palance as a seg-
ment of Torture Garden.
I deliberately inserted sentences taken directly from [Poe’s] “The Fall of the
House of Usher,” combining them with my own just to see if anybody would
notice. One of the few who did was Professor Thomas Ollve [sic] Mabbott,
of Hunter College, who was putting together a collection of Poe stories for
publication. In the course of his research he encountered Poe’s final and
unfinished tale, “The Lighthouse,” and wrote to me, suggesting that I might
complete it....
It proved quite a challenge to pick up the story where Poe had left off [after
a mere two pages] and continue it in such a manner that the reader wouldn’t
detect any change of style. Poe was considerably more difficult to imitate or
emulate than Lovecraft. I kept at it until the result was reasonably seamless,
and “The Lighthouse” found first publication [in January 1953] in Fantastic
[Once Around the Bloch 212].
Directed by Darrell Wasyk and Tom Dey, the episode featured Bruce
Davison, best known for the title role in Willard (1971); Canadian co-stars
Simone-Élise Girard and Vlasta Vrana both appeared in Scanners II: The New
Order (1991). Seeking solitude while writing a novel, Davison takes a job as
a lighthouse-keeper and with his mind conjures up a rose and an ideal woman,
Angelica, but when a friend reveals the rose as a piece of seaweed Davison
kills him in a rage, and after seducing him Angelica lures him to a watery death.
“I have the heart of a little boy,” Bloch used to say, adding that he kept
it in a jar on his desk, and this was all too evident from the wicked glee with
which he invested his tales and teleplays, the good humor he maintained even
into his final illness, and the countless kindnesses bestowed on everyone from
aspiring colleagues like Matheson to anonymous fans. Despite his reserva-
tions about the restrictions of the medium, television was able to introduce
generations of viewers and readers to his literary works, some of which had
been published before they were born, and in rare instances like Thriller, it
brought his scripts to life with more fidelity to his original intentions than
many a motion picture producer or director did.
WORKS CITED
Bloch, Robert. The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 1: Final Reckonings. New
York: Citadel Twilight, 1990.
_____. The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 2: Bitter Ends. New York: Citadel
Twilight, 1990.
_____. The Complete Short Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 3: Last Rites. (New York: Citadel
Twilight, 1991.
_____. The Early Fears. Minneapolis: Fedogan & Bremer, 1994.
_____. Midnight Pleasures. New York: Doubleday, 1987.
_____. “My Hitch with Hitchcock,” in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An Illustrated Guide to the
Ten-Year Television Career of the Master of Suspense by John McCarty and Brian Kelle-
her. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
_____. Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Tor, 1993.
_____. Psycho. Springfield, PA: Gauntlet, 1994.
Bradley, Matthew R. “Momma’s Boy: A Conversation with Robert Bloch,” Filmfax #40
(Aug./Sept. 1993), pp. 78–82.
Brosnan, John. The Horror People. New York: Plume, 1977.
Brunet, Robin. “Directing the Pilot,” Cinefantastique 27:11–12 ( July 1996), pp. 43–4.
Fischer, Dennis. “Robert Bloch,” Cinefantastique 27:11–12 ( July 1996), p 99.
Johnson, Tom, and Deborah Del Vecchio. Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Checklist. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland, 1996.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley, 1983.
Lee, Christopher. Tall, Dark and Gruesome. Baltimore: Midnight Marquee, 1999.
Matheson, Richard. Telephone interview with the author, August 3, 1991, published in an
editedform as “And in the Beginning Was the Word... : An Interview with Screenwriter
Richard Matheson” in Filmfax #42 (Dec. 1993/Jan. 1994), pp. 40–4, 78–82, 98.
_____. Telephone interview with the author, January 12, 1999, published in an edited form
as “Enter The Twilight Zone with Richard Matheson” in Filmfax #75–76 (Oct. 1999/Jan.
2000), pp. 78–84, 125.
_____, and Ricia Mainhardt, editors. Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master. New York:
Tor, 1995.
Miller, Mark A. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema: A Filmography of
Their 22 Collaborations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995.
Phillips, Mark, and Frank Garcia. Science Fiction Television Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland,
1996.
Rebello, Stephen. Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. New York: Dembner Books,
1990.
Uram, Sue. “Star Trek: The 30th Anniversary,” Cinefantastique 27:11–12 ( July 1996), pp. 24–
111.
Warren, Alan. This Is a Thriller: An Episode Guide, History and Analysis of the Classic 1960s
Television Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996.
About the Contributors
Leigh Blackmore is a writer, editor, manuscript assessor, and occultist, who lives
in Wollongong with his two partners, and several cats. He published and edited, with
B.J. Stevens and Chris G.C. Sequeira, Terror Australis: The Australian Horror & Fan-
tasy Magazine from 1987 until 1992, and edited Terror Australia: Best Australian Hor-
ror (Hodder & Stoughton Australia, 1993). His weird fiction has appeared in the first
two Agog! anthologies (“Uncharted” was a Ditmar nominee for Best Novella in 2003),
Daikaiju 3, various places online including www.ligotti.net and www.writingshow.com
and has recently has his poetry collected in Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses.
He has also contributed to scholarly works on supernatural fiction including World
Supernatural Fiction (edited by S.T. Joshi and Stefan J. Dziemianowicz), and is a co-
editor of Studies in Australian Weird Fiction. The author wishes to record his grati-
tude for the assistance of Michael G. Pfefferkorn of the Robert Bloch website The Bat
Is My Brother http://mgpfeff.home.sprynet.com/bloch.html who provided several Robert
Bloch texts for use in writing this essay.
Matthew R. Bradley is the editor of Richard Matheson’s Duel & the Distributor and
the co-editor of The Richard Matheson Companion, both published by Gauntlet Press.
A revised edition of the latter, entitled The Twilight and Other Zones: The Dark Worlds
of Richard Matheson, will be published by Citadel in 2009. Bradley has also inter-
viewed several of Matheson’s fellow members of the Southern California School of
Writers: Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan,
and Jerry Sohl. His book Richard Matheson on Screen is forthcoming from McFar-
land. Bradley lives in Connecticut with his wife and daughter. His essay previously
appeared, in a substantially edited form, in Filmfaxplus #112 (Oct./Dec. 2006) and #113
( Jan./Mar. 2007). The author wishes to express his very special thanks to the late,
great Brian G. Ehlert, without whose generosity and extraordinary videotape archives
this essay literally could not have been written.
Scott D. Briggs is a freelance writer, essayist and critic who has been active in the
professional, amateur and small press literary fields for over twenty years, specializ-
ing in horror, fantasy and SF literature, film, rock and roll, pop, alternative and mod-
ern classical music, including previous essays for Necronomicon Press and Greenwood
Press on the works of William Peter Blatty and Robert Aickman, reviews and essays
233
234 About the Contributors
for Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction, and various pieces for periodicals
such as The NY Arts Magazine, The Big Takeover and www.sequenza21.com. He earned
a B.F.A. in communication arts and sciences in 1992 from New York Institute of Tech-
nology, Old Westbury, N.Y. Mr. Briggs makes his home in Long Island, N.Y., and is
also a film devotee, an avid 6 and 12-string guitarist, and a collector of books, music,
and films. He, of course, enjoys Italian food, ice cream and playing with cats like one
of his all-time idols, H.P. Lovecraft.
Phillip A. Ellis has published hundreds of poems in a variety of international mag-
azines, journals, fanzines and e-anthologies and volumes; Strange Gardens (2005), 21
Sonnets (2005), The Flayed Man and Other Poems (2008) and the forthcoming Strange
Airs. He is the editor of Calenture: A Journal of Studies in Speculative Verse http://www.
calenture.fcpages.com/ and Wild Grapes: Australian Poetry http://australian-poetry.blog
spot.com/. He is also an accomplished critic of poetry who has appeared in Studies in
Weird Fiction, Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies, Eldritch Dark.com,
and Studies in Australian Weird Fiction to name but a few.
Robert Hood was born on the 24th of July, 1951, in Rydalmere, NSW, and has pub-
lished well over 100 stories as well as two collections of his own work (Day-dreaming
on Company Time, Immaterial and Creeping in Reptile Flesh) and several novels (the
supernatural young adult series Shades). He’s appeared in Karl Edward Wagner’s Year’s
Best Horror, and has been nominated for several awards, including a Readercon award
for best collection, as well as the Ditmar, Aurealis and Atheling awards. During 2004–
2007 he edited (with Robin Pen) three anthologies of giant monster stories, the first
being Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales. He currently lives with his partner Cat Sparks
and a number of small cats on the Illawarra Coast and earns a crust as the graphic
design/publications coordinator of the Faculty of Commerce at Wollongong Univer-
sity.
John Howard was born in London in 1961. He discovered science fiction and hor-
ror fiction as a child, and has been an avid reader, collector, and fan ever since. His
short fiction, solo and in collaboration, has appeared in the anthologies Beneath the
Ground and Strange Tales, as well as the collection Masques & Citadels (with Mark
Valentine). John has reviewed genre books for a wide range of magazines and soci-
ety journals for more than twenty-five years. He has published many articles on var-
ious aspects of the science fiction and horror fields, especially the work of classic
authors such as Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, August Derleth, M. R. James, and the
writers of the pulp era. John’s website can be found at www.waldeneast.com.
Rebecca Janicker is a PhD student in the School of American and Canadian Stud-
ies at the University of Nottingham, with a thesis focusing on the haunted house motif
in American Gothic fiction. Her work on regionalism in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
and Stephen King has been published in Extrapolation and U.S. Studies Online. She
is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth.
S.T. Joshi (BA, MA, Brown University) is a widely published critic and editor. He
is the author of such critical studies as The Weird Tale (University of Texas Press, 1990),
H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Starmont House, 1990), and The Modern Weird
Tale (McFarland, 2001). He has edited the standard corrected edition of H.P. Love-
craft’s collected fiction, revisions, and miscellaneous writings (Arkham House, 1984–
95; 5 vols.), as well as The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (Night Shade Books,
2001) and Collected Essays (Hippocampus Press, 2004–06; 5 vols.). He has prepared
three annotated editions of Lovecraft’s tales for Penguin (1999–2004). His exhaustive
biography, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996), won the British Fan-
tasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. He is
the founder and editor of Lovecraft Studies (1979f.) and Studies in Weird Fiction (1986f.).
Joshi has done scholarly work on other authors of supernatural fiction. He is the
author of a bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1993) and critical study of Lord Dunsany
(Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination, Greenwood Press, 1995), and
a critical study of Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction,
Liverpool University Press, 2001). He has prepared editions of the work of Arthur
Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M.R. James, Arthur Quiller-Couch,
Donald Wandrei, and other writers. In recent years he has turned his attention to
Ambrose Bierce and is the co-editor (with Stefan Dziemianowicz) of World Super-
natural Literature: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2005; 3 vols.).
Joel Lane has written two collections of weird fiction, The Earth Wire (Egerton Press)
and The Lost District and Other Stories (Night Shade Books), and has edited an anthol-
ogy of subterranean horror stories, Beneath the Ground (Alchemy Press). His critical
studies of several modern authors of weird fiction have appeared in Wormwood, Foun-
dation and Supernatural Tales. He contributed an article on Robert Bloch’s The Opener
of the Way to Horror: Another 100 Best Books edited by Stephen Jones and Kim New-
man.
Randall D. Larson has written about horror literature, film music, and popular
culture for more than thirty-five years. A former small press editor and publisher, Lar-
son also writes weird fiction, writes on film music for buysoundtrax.com and cine-
fantastiqueonline.com, and has been the editor of a national trade magazine for the
emergency communications community for 20 years. A Blochophile since his youth,
Larson authored three essential guidebooks to Bloch’s fiction: The Reader’s Guide to
Robert Bloch, The Complete Robert Bloch (bibliography), and The Robert Bloch Com-
panion (collected interviews).
Darrell Schweitzer is the author of about 250 published fantasy, horror, and sci-
ence fiction stories, countless poems (he is infamous for having rhymed “Cthulhu”
twice in a limerick), interviews, etc. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy
Award three times. His books include three novels, The White Isle, The Shattered God-
dess, and The Mask of the Sorcerer, and eight collections, the most recent of which is
Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer. As critic he has been a reviewer and columnist for
numerous magazines, and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Science
Fiction. He has published book-length studies of H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany,
edited numerous symposia such as Discovering H.P. Lovecraft and the Thomas Ligotti
Reader and has been a co-editor of Weird Tales since 1987.
236 About the Contributors
Philip L. Simpson received his BA and MA degrees in English from Eastern Illi-
nois University in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and his doctorate in American litera-
ture from Southern Illinois University in 1996. A professor of communications and
humanities at the Palm Bay campus of Brevard Community College in Florida for
eight years and Department Chair of Communications and Humanities for five years,
he is now serving as academic dean of behavioral/social sciences and humanities at
Brevard Community College. He also serves as vice president of the Popular Culture
Association and area chair of Horror for the Association since 1998. He received the
Association’s Felicia Campbell Area Chair Award in 2006. He is a book reviewer and
elected member-at-large for the Association as well as a member of the editorial board
for the Journal of Popular Culture. His book, Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer
Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction, was published in 2000 by South-
ern Illinois University Press. He contributed the foreword to Dark Parades: The Spec-
tacle of Isolation in Horror Films, by Carl Royer and Diana Royer (2005). His essays
of literary, cultural, and/or cinematic criticism have also been published in journals
such as Cineaction, Paradoxa, Clues, and Notes on Contemporary Literature; encyclo-
pedias such as Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (2005), Twenty-First Century
British and Irish Novelists (2003), Conspiracy Theories in American History (2003), The
Guide to United States Popular Culture (2001), War and American Popular Culture
(1999), and The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film (1998); and books such as Horror
Film: Creating and Marketing Film (2004); The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspec-
tives on Film (2003); Car Crash Culture (2002); Jack Nicholson: Movie Top Ten (2000);
and Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (1999).
Steve Vertlieb, an award-winning writer, film historian, critic, archivist, and poet,
has been writing about motion pictures and symphonic film music in a variety of
books, magazines, journals, and tabloids since 1969 and has been profiled in Who’s
Who in Entertainment in America. He has worked in Philadelphia television and radio
for fourteen years as a film editor, cameraman, floor director, assistant music direc-
tor, and announcer and has also written columns, articles, and reviews for such pub-
lications as L’Incroyable Cinema, The Late Show, Black Oracle, Midnight Marquee,
Home Viewer, Film Music Review, The Thunder Child, and Cinemacabre. He served as
associate editor and frequent contributor to New York’s groundbreaking film tabloid,
The Monster Times, and has enjoyed success as a poet in the pages of such magazines
as Outer Darkness, Songs of Innocence and Penny Dreadful. In 1981, he was awarded
the M.A.F.C. trophy for Best Writer of the Year. Soon after, he was inducted into the
Legion of Honor by The Chapel of Four Chaplains for his volunteer work, recording
programming for the blind community. In 2004 he was honored by Unity Church
of Christ for narrating more than twenty years of twice weekly Dial-A-Prayer record-
ings.
Benjamin Szumskyj is a qualified high school teacher (double degree: BA in edu-
cation / BA in social sciences, minor in English) and currently teaches at a private
Christian high school. He has also achieved a graduate diploma in Christian studies
from Tabor Bible College, Perth, a diploma in library and information studies from
Perth Central TAFE and is currently finishing a bachelor of theology degree. A for-
mer editor-in-chief of Studies in Fantasy Literature and Studies in Australian Weird

Fiction, he has also written dozens of essays and articles on literary criticism for sev-
eral magazines and journals such as Notes in Contemporary Literature, Wormwood:
Writings About Fantasy, Supernatural and Decadent Literature and Star*Line: Journal
of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and has edited books on critical studies such
as Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (2006), Fritz Leiber: Crit-
ical Essays (2008), Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris
(2008) and American Exorcist: Critical Essays on William Peter Blatty (2008).
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Index
A-73 221 Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Andrews, V.C. 224

“Abandoned Mine” 187 Magazine 69, 206, 208 Angela 65
Abbeline, Inspector 146 Alhazred, Abdul 16 Angelica 231
Abbott, John 219 Alland 209 “The Animal Fair” 175, 184
ABC 215, 218, 223 Allen, Cliff 209 Annabel 206
Abraham Lincoln House 7; Allen, Elizabeth 199 “Annabel” 206
see also Milwaukee Jewish Allen, Irwin 222 Anne Radcliffe Award for Lit-
Settlement Allyn, William 198 erature 84
Academy Awards 194 Altman, Robert 221, 228 Annette 201
The Accused 223 The Amazing Captain Nemo Anti-Amusement League 58
“Ace Double” 74, 82 222; see also The Return of Anubis 32
Ace Pocketbooks 74 Captain Nemo Applegate, Dr. 222
Ackland, Joss 201 Amazing Stories 223 Arbogast, Milton 108, 110,
Adams, Mary 78, 79 Amazing Stories Magazine 14, 125, 130
Adams, Tom 215 59, 62, 69, 90, 134 Argelius 214
Agog! 233 Amazon 188 Argento, Dario 180
Aickman, Robert 233 Ambler, Eric 189 Arizona 107
Ainsworth, Lloyd 96 Ambrose, Fran 229 Arkham 34, 36
Albright, Bud 211 America 123 Arkham House 70, 204
Alcoa Presents 202; see also American Exorcist: Critical Arlene 196
One Step Beyond Essays on William Peter Art, Black 58, 60
Aldridge, Virginia 214 Blatty (Szumskyj) 237 Arthur, Indus 210
Alex 228, 229 American Gothic 123–124; As Good as It Gets 223
Alexander, David 74 see also Gothic literature Ashby, Hal 228
Alfred Hitchcock and the American Gothic 86, 147, 151, The Assassin: A Study 97
Making of Psycho (Rebello) 154, 155, 158–167, 183–184 Astounding Science Fiction 62
210 American International Pic- Asylum 20, 186, 200, 202,
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour tures 189, 194, 218 215, 227
187, 206, 207, 208, 209 Ames, Philip 223 At the Mountains of Madness
Alfred Hitchcock Presents 19, Ames, Roy 114, 179–180 (Lovecraft) 3, 24, 34
84, 187, 188, 190, 191, 194, Amicus 186, 191, 200, 201, Atheling awards 234
202, 205, 207, 222, 223, 202, 227 Atlantis 222
225 “Amok Time” 212 “Atlantis Dead Ahead” 222
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An The Ancient Track: Complete Aurealis awards 234
Illustrated Guide to the Ten- Poetical Works (Lovecraft) Australia 83, 206
Year Television Career of the 235 Averonius, Petrus 25
Master of Suspense Anderson, John 209 Avon 74
(McCarty & Kelleher) Anderson, Josef 227 Axis 60
189, 209 Anderson, Richard 204
Alfred Hitchcock Presents Sto- Andrea 211, 212 “Bad Actor” 202, 225; see
ries They Wouldn’t Let Me Andrew 206 also “Method Actor”
Do on TV (Hitchcock) 208 Andrews, Edward 198 Badham, John 217
239
240 Index
“Bah! Humbug!” 54 Bellew, Hal 194 of horror 169; identifi-

Bailey, Lt. 201 Bellman, Laura 193 cation with Dr. Jekyll and
Baines, Norman 228; see also Beneath the Ground (Lane) Mr. Hyde 14; novels 5; pri-
Bates, Norman 234, 235 vate persona 14; protago-
Baker, Joby 188 Benton, Douglas 197, 226 nists 16; see also Blake,
Baker, Judy 205 Berenice 172 Robert; individual titles
Baker, Roy Ward 200, 215 Berkeley 48 Bloch, Sally Anne 70, 74,
Ballantine Books 141 Berlin 189 190
Bankhead, Tallulah 197 Bernstein, Sgt. 199 Blondell, Joan 220
Bannock, Harry 82 Bertroux, Col. Andre 201 Bloom, Harold 150, 155
Bannon, Jim 198 The Best of Robert Bloch 141, Bloom, Jeffrey 224
Barbara, Sister 113 148n1 Blue Book 69
Barber, Glynis 227 Bestseller Mystery 203 Blythe, Dorothy 190
Bardon, John Franklin 101 “Betsy Blake Will Live For- Blythe, Ida 190
Barker, Clive 9 ever” 172, 175, 187, 188 “The Boarded Window”
Barr, Donald 155 “‘Better the House Than an (Bierce) 172
Barrett, Majel 211, 212, 213 Asylum’: Gothic Strategies The Body Snatcher 192
Barrier, Mike 213 in Robert Bloch’s Psycho” “The Bogeyman Will Get
Barry, Patricia 198 ( Janicker) 10, 121–133 You” 223
Barton, Dr. 204 Beverly Hills, 90210 225 Bok, Hannes 64
Basch, Harry 211 Bey, Hamid 226 Bolton, Genevieve 165
“Baseball” 40n1 Bierce, Ambrose 172, 183, 235 Bonney, Gail 212
“Basic Bloch” 198 “The Big Kick” 184, 205 Boradis 214
Bast 25, 219 The Big Takeover 234 Borg, Anna 200
The Bat Is My Brother 233 Billy 195 Borg, Erik 200
Bateman, Jason 229 Bird, Michael J. 216 Boston 38
Bates, Gloria 228 Bixby, Jerome 214 Boucher, Anthony 153
Bates, Jake 228 Black, Hester 219 Bower, Antoinette 201, 213
Bates, Mrs. Norma 102, 108, “Black Bargain” 35 The Boy with Green Hair 194
109, 110, 125, 126, 128, 129, “Black Barter” 63, 66 Bracken, Eddie 224
130, 131, 132, 132n5, 150, “The Black Lotus” 8 Bradbury, Ray 186, 187, 233
171, 176, 177, 229, 230 “The Black Madonna” Bradley, Matthew R. vi, 11,
Bates, Norman 10, 18, 72, (Lawlor) 199 186–232, 233
102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, “Black Magic Holiday” 63 Brahm, John 188, 190, 191,
110, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, “Black Notebook” 72, 92, 195, 197, 207, 208
119, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 181 Bram Stoker Awards 235
132, 132n5, 150, 153, 156, Black Oracle 236 Bram Stoker Life Achieve-
159, 165, 171, 176, 178, 179, Black Spell of Saboth 25 ment Award 9, 21
228, 229, 230; see also Blackmore, Leigh vi, 10, 68– Brando, Jocelyn 203, 224
Baines, Norman; Blates, 88, 233 Brando, Marlon 203
Norman Blackwood, Algernon 110, Brandt, Henry 198, 206
Bates Motel 228 173, 235 Brazil 187
Bates Motel 107, 116, 119, 127, Blake, Betsy 188 Brevard Community College
165, 229, 230 Blake, Robert 14, 27–28, 33, 236
Baumes, Wilford Lloyds 218, 34, 37, 58, 69 Brewster McCloud 228
219 Blakly, Ronee 221 Bricken, Jules 196
Bava, Mario 208 Blates, Norman 228; see also Bridgetown 221
Baxter, Alan 201 Bates, Norman Briggs, Scott D. vi, 10, 102–
Baxter, Meredith 219 Blatty, William Peter 233 120, 233–234
Bayldon, Geoffrey 202, 222 Blind Bill 81 Bright Arrow 215
Beat Generation 85 Bloch, Eleanor Alexander 14, Brimstone 65
Beatrice 199, 200 84 Brisbin, David 227
“Beau and Arrow” 187 Bloch, Marion 74, 84, 104, British Fantasy Awards 235
Beaumont, Charles 51, 186, 190 Broadway 62
187, 190, 197 Bloch, Raphael Ray 7 Bromely 714
Beddoe, Don 190 Bloch, Robert: awards given “The Brood of Bubastis” 28,
Beelzebub 64 to 9, 21–22, 57; books 9; 32
“Beetles” 13, 226 as character in own fiction Brooklyn 144
Beléz 187 27; color and horror fiction Brophy, Brian 227
Belgium 83, 86 20; critical studies 5; focus Brosnan, John 218
Index 241
Brown, Dr. 211 Casey, Sam 220, 221 City of the Dead 207; see also
Brown, Fredric 8, 223 “The Cask of Amontillado” Horror Hotel
Brown University 234 81 Claibourne, Dr. 113, 114–115,
Browne, Howard 61 Cassavetes, John 208 116, 117, 180
Brunet, Robin 211 Cassidy, Ted 211 Clampett, Elly May 193
Bruno 201 Castiglioni, Iphigenie 200 Clarke, Gary 200
Buchanan, Edgar 203 Castle, William 186, 201, Classics Dark and Dangerous
Bugs Bunny 194 210, 217 221
Buka, Donald 190 The Castle of Otranto (Wal- Clayburn, Mark 82, 83
Burke, Walter 205 pole) 122, 132n1, 132n2, Clemens, Valdine 132n1,
Burnham, Daniel Hudson 132n4 132n2
159, 161 The Cat Creature 20, 218 “The Cloak” 62, 188, 202
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 59 Cat People 218 “The Clown at Midnight” 15
“The Burrowers Beneath” 28 “Catnip” 65, 224 Clues 236
Burt 190 “Catspaw” 20, 212 Coburn, James 223
Bus Stop 20, 203, 204 Cavanagh, James P. 191, 229 Code Name: Minus One 220
Butler, Nathan 213; see also CBS 187, 207, 222 Cogan, Rhodie 212
Sohl, Jerry The Celluloid Muse (Higham Colavito, Jason 124
buysoundtrax.com 235 & Greenberg) 103 The Colbys 218
Byron 227 Central State Hospital 105 Cold Chills 175
Chambers, Sheriff 108 Colin, Dr. 227
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 20 Chandler, Raymond 98, 100, Collected Essays (book series;
“The Cage” 211 106, 110, 118, 155 Lovecraft) 235
Cain, James M. 100, 106, 110, Chaney, Lon 212, 227 Collinge, Patricia 195
111, 173 “The Changing Heart” 194, Collins, Bart 203
Caldwell 77 205 Collins, Patricia 94, 96, 97,
Calenture: A Journal of Studies Chapel, Nurse Christine 211, 98, 100
in Speculative Verse 234 212 Collins, Steve 78; see also
Calgary, Joe 81 The Chapel of Four Chap- Kolischek, Stanley
“The Call of Cthulhu” lains 236 Colman, Booth 201
(Lovecraft) 1, 3 Chardur, Edward 215 Colman, Henry 219
Callan, Michael 216 Charles 182 Colossal 86
Callendar, Newgate 161 Charlie 192 Columbian Exposition 159
Camp, L. Sprague de 62 Charlie the Printer 223, 224 Compendium Daemonum 25
Campbell, John W. 62 Chase, Arnold 198 The Complete Robert Bloch
Campbell, Ramsey 9, 37, 111, “The Cheaters” (short story) (Larson) 235
173, 235 13, 16 Conan 203
Canadian Broadcast Com- “The Cheaters” (television Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 145
pany 221 drama) 19, 191, 199 Conger, Darva 198
Cansino, Carl 225 Chekov, Ensign Pavel 212, Conjure Wife (Leiber) 62
Captain Nemo and the Under- 213 Connecticut 233
water City 222 Chicago 3, 7–8, 17, 69, 71, Connor, Dave 207, 208
Caputi, Jane 152, 157, 164 91, 93, 117, 136, 142, 147, Connors, Rusty 208
Car Crash Culture 236 151, 159, 160, 161, 165, 209 Considine, Joe 108, 125, 230
Carey, Macdonald 186, 196, Chicago World’s Fair 154, Conspiracy Theories in Ameri-
197 159–160, 161–162, 165 can History 236
Carla 202 “Chickamauga” (Bierce) 172 “Cool Air” (tv episode) 216,
Carlin, Lynn 224 Child, Jack 4 217
Carmichael, Wes 206 Christie, John 210 “The Corbomite Maneuver”
Carmody, John 138, 139, 140, Christopher Lee and Peter 213
141, 151, 196 Cushing and Horror Cin- Corgi Books 112
Carnoti, Dr. 40n1 ema (Miller) 201 Corman, Roger 218
Carpenter, John 108 Cinderella 158 Cornthwaite, Robert 196, 199
Carradine, John 219 Cineaction 236 The Corpse in My Bed
Carroll, Diahann 218 Cinefantastique 211, 214 (Alexander) 74
Carstairs, Dr. Paul 222 cinefantastiqueonline.com Cort, Bud 228
Carter, Randolph 32 235 Cosby, Bill 210
Carter, Rena 219 Cinemacabre 236 Cotten, Joseph 197
Casablanca 194 Circle of Fear 188 The Couch 20, 84, 172, 181,
“A Case of the Stubborns” 224 Citadel 233 187, 194
242 Index
Count Yorga, Vampire 209 Daikaiju 3 233 Derleth, August 44, 190, 191,
Countess Dracula 202 Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales 204, 216, 234
The Country Girl 207 234 d’Erlette, Comte 25
Cover (Ketchum) 47 Dale 227 DeSalle, Lt. 213
Coville, Gary 151–152 Dallas 106 Desperation 229
Cramer, Douglas S. 217, 218, The Damned 196 Detroit 223
219 Dane, Sgt. 201 De Vermis Mysteriis 17, 28,
Crane, Lila 106, 108, 113, 115, Dangerous Visions (Ellison) 32, 35, 36, 200, 223; see
126, 129, 130, 165, 176 143 also Mysteries of the Worms
Crane, Marion 17, 103, 107, Daniell, Henry 192, 199 Devil 64, 65, 196, 197; see
171, 176, 177, 210 Daniels, Les 80, 153–154 also Satan
Crane, Mary 106, 107, 108, Danse Macabre (King) 110, The Devil in the White City
109, 114, 115, 125, 126, 191, 203 (Larson) 159
128–129, 159 “The Dark Demon” 13, 27, Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly
Crawford, Joan 20, 210 28, 33 (Bardon) 101
Crawford, William F. 8 Dark Parades: The Spectacle of “The Devil with You” 63, 66
Cream, Dr. Thomas Neil 72 Isolation in Horror Films “The Devil’s Ticket” 196,
Creatures at Large 61 (Royer & Royer) 236 197, 199, 201
“The Creeper in the Crypt” Darkroom 223, 225 De Wilde, Brandon 205
34 Data 225 Dexter, Dr. 33
Creepshow 224, 226 Daugherty, Herschel 188, Dey, Tom 230
Cregar, Laird 195 190, 199, 203, 206 Dial “M” for Murder 196
Crescendo 215 Davis, Bette 217 Dial Press 71, 74
Crippen, Dr. H. H. 72 Davis, Jim 203 Diana 34
Cristal, Linda 219 Davison, Bruce 230 The Dick Van Dyke Show 205
Croft, Harlan 205 Dawn of the Dead 224, 225– Dierkop, Charles 214
Crom 38 226 Dillan, Brendan 206
Cronenberg, David 104 Dawson, Bill 64 Diminutive Society of the
Crosby, Maj. 216, 217 Day of the Dead 224, 226 Catskill Mountains 60
Crosland, Alan, Jr. 199, 205 “Daybroke” 172, 184 Discovering H. P. Lovecraft
Crosland, Alan, Sr. 199 Daydreaming on Company (Schweitzer) 235
Crowe, Christopher 223, 225 Time (Hood) 234 The Disenchanted (Shulberg)
Crown, Jerry 215, 216 The Dead Beat 10, 37, 40, 100
Crump 209 68, 77, 84–86, 110, 184 Dissecting Hannibal Lecter:
Cry of the Banshee 189 The Dead Don’t Die 218, Essays on the Novels of
Cthulhu 38, 235 219 Thomas Harris (Szumskyj)
Cthulhu Mythos 9, 16–17, The Dead Zone (King) 104, 237
25, 27, 32, 37, 38, 40, 45, 111 Ditmar awards 233, 234
104, 106 The Deadly Bees 20, 186 “‘Do You Love Mother, Nor-
“The Cuckoo Clock” (Mace) “Deadly Blackmail” 222 man?’: Faulkner’s ‘A Rose
189, 190 The Deadly Percheron (Bar- for Emily’ and Metalious’s
Culp, Robert 210 don) 101 Peyton Place as Sources for
Cultes des Goules 17, 25–26 Deadrick, Vince 211 Robert Bloch’s Psycho”
Cunningham, Prof. 222 Dean, Edward 192 (McDermott) 121
Cupertine, Sister 113 “Death and Texas” 187 Dr. Who 188
“The Cure” 183, 187, 189 “The Death of Halpin Dolan, Jimmy 188
Curtis, David 225, 226 Frayser” (Bierce) 172 Don Juan 199
Curtis, Estelle 225, 226 “Death on a Barge” 217 Doohan, James 212
Curucu, Beast of the Amazon De Benning, Burr 222 Dors, Diana 206
216 Delaney, Gerald 206 Douglas, Donna 193
Curwen, Joseph 171 de la Poer family 171 Douglas, Jerry 219
Curzon, Debbie 227 Del Ray, Lester 141 Douglas, Melvyn 217
Cushing, Helen 201 Del Vecchio, Deborah 215 Douglas, Robert 207
Cushing, Peter 20, 201, 202, Dempster, Mary Lou 193 Dracula (Stoker) 107
230 Denmark 82 Dragons and Nightmares 63,
Denning, Richard 209 66
Dade, Irma 210 Dennis, Robert C. 222 Drake, Dena 37
Dade, Sheriff 210 Denver, Maryesther 212 Drake, Don 219, 220
Daemonolorum 28 De Palma, Frank 226 Drake, Frances 219
Dahl, Roald 194, 222 Derby, Edward 36 Drake, Hiram 218
Index 243
Drake, Ralph 219, 220 Ely, Ron 201 Feep, Lefty 58, 59–60, 61,
Drake, Tom 210 Emery 176, 184 65, 66, 67
Drayton, Mike 76 Emery, John 196 Fell, Dr. 174, 183
The Dream-Quest of Emmy Awards 194 Fenwick, Dr. Howard 206
Unknown Kadath (Love- The Encyclopedia of Novels “The Fiddler’s Fee” 173
craft) 31 into Film 236 Fiedler, John 214
dreams 29 Encyclopedia of the Documen- Field, Marshall 160
“Dreams in the Witch House” tary Film 236 Fields, Amy 201
(Lovecraft) 3, 31, 34 “The End of Your Rope” 61 Fields, W.C. 57
Dreelen, John van 205 “The Enemy Within” 212 Film Fun 76
Driscoll 114 England 86, 189, 191 Film Music Review 236
Driscoll, Leonard 220, 221 Engstrom, Sheriff 114, 116 Filmfax 186, 195, 216
Duel & the Distributor “Enoch” 71 Filmfaxplus 233
(Matheson) 233 USS Enterprise 211, 213, 214 “Final Performance” 208
“Duel in the Deep” 222 Estelle 225, 226 Finland 86
Duffell, Peter 201, 202 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial 229 Firebug 84, 181, 184
Dullea, Keir 222 Europe 123 Fischer, Dennis 214
Dune 227 Even More Nightmares 19 Fiske, Edmund 33
Dunsany, Lord 235 “Everybody Needs a Little “Five Characters in Search of
Dunsmore 228 Love” 225 an Exit” 198
Dunstable, Eric 117 evil: and good in crime The Flayed Man: And Other
“The Dunwich Horror” fiction 98; nature of 26 Poems (Ellis) 234
(Lovecraft) 3, 37, 39 Evolution of the Weird Tale Florey, Robert 194
Durgnat, Raymond 153 ( Joshi) 43, 44 Florida 236
Duvall, Robert 203, 206 Exo-III 211 Floyd, Heyward 220
Dylan, Bob 100, 181 The Exorcist 209 The Fly 193
Dynasty 218 Extrapolation 234 Fonda, Jane 66
Dziemanowicz, Stefan 68, Fontana, Dorothy 143, 211,
70, 77, 85, 233, 235 The Face That Must Die 213
(Campbell) 111 Foreign Correspondent 189
“The Eager Dragon” 63, 66 “The Faceless God” 13, 30, “Foreword: The Heart of a
The Earth Wire (Lane) 235 31, 40n1 Child” (Hood) 1–4
Eastern Illinois University Faces of Fear (Winter) 103 Forte, Fabian 203
236 Fairvale 106, 108, 113, 116, Foster, Jodie 223
Eastman, Carole 203 118, 180 Foster, Polly 83
Edgar Allan Poe Award 84 “The Fall of the House of Foster Brothers 78
Edmonds, Roger 219 Usher” (Poe) 230 Foundation 235
Edwards, Blake 84 Family Plot 227 Fox, Larry 84, 85–86
E.E. Evans Memorial Award Famous Monsters of Filmland France 82, 83
for Fantasy and Science 45 Frances 222
Fiction Work 84 “Fane of the Black Pharaoh” Francis, Freddie 200
Egypt 34 32, 33 Frankenheimer, John 196
Egypt, Little 163, 165 Fantastic 69 Frankenstein (film) 194
Ehlert, Brian G. 233 Fantastic Adventures 59, 60, Frankenstein (Shelley) 107
The Eighth Stage of Fandom 61, 62, 63, 65, 69, 90, 134, Franklin, Benjamin 192
50, 51, 70 219 Franklin, Max 202
Ekland, Britt 201 “Fantasy and Psychology” 97 Franklin, Richard 103, 228
Eldritch Dark.com 234 The Fantasy Fan 24 Franklin, Tom 222
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Maga- Farino, Ernest D. 227 Franks, Chloe 202
zine 188, 191, 194, 204 Farley, Ralph Milne 8 Frazer, Jim 159, 163, 164,
Elliot, Doug 204 Farrell, Sharon 209 165, 166
Elliot, Joe 204 “Fat Chance” 222 Frazer, Miss 71, 73, 91–92,
Elliott, Denholm 202 Fawcett 73 93, 94, 97, 155, 156
Elliott, Dr. Jeffrey 148n1 Fay, William 188 “Freddie Funk’s Flippant
Ellis, Markman 132n4 Fear in the Night 191 Fairies” (Yerxa) 59
Ellis, Phillip A. vi, 10, 41–56, “The Feast” 25 French, Ed 224
234 “The Feast in the Abbey” 3, The French Connection 209
Ellison, Harlan 143, 183, 186, 13, 25, 26, 69, 173 Freud, Sigmund 29
187, 198, 214 “The Feaster from the Stars” Friedkin, William 209
Elstree Studios 215 28 “A Friend” 229
244 Index
Friend, Oscar J. 77 Golden Age of Science Fic- Haines, Amy 116

Fright Night 228 tion 62 Haines, Charlie 75
Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays Golden Years 226 Haines, Eddie 75, 76, 77
(Szumskyj) 237 Goldfinger 222 Haje, Khrystyne 229
Frost, Warren 229 Goldsmith, Jerry 197 Hale, Richard 194
“Frozen Fear” 200 Goldstone, James 211 Hall, Madeline 190
Frye, William 191, 197 Goliath Studios 188 Hallick, Tom 222
The Fugitive 201 Gonzales 187, 188 Halloween 212
Fuller, Tom 228, 229 good and evil in crime fiction Halloween 108
“Funnel of God” 81 98 “Halloween Knight” 228
Fury 202 “A Good Imagination” 197, Hamilton, George 219
203, 205 Hamling, William 65
Gabface, Gorilla 60 “A Good Knight’s Work” 62, Hammer Films: An Exhaustive
Galin, Mitchell 226 66 Checklist ( Johnson & Del
“The Gallows” 24, 42 Goodman, Dr. 228 Vecchio) 215
Games 218 Goodness Gracious Me 178 Hammer Horror 195, 196,
Garcia, Frank 217 Gordon, Edgar 28 202, 215, 216
Garland, Beverly 216 Gordon, Ruth 228 Hammerstein, Elaine 199
Garris, Mick 229 Gothic literature 121–122; see Hammett, Dashiell 100–101,
Gates of Hell 219 also American Gothic 173, 183
Gauer, Harold 40n1, 58 Grand Master Award 21 Hangover Square 195
Gauntlet Press 230, 233 Grandpa 224, 225; see also Hans 200
Gavin, John 209–210 Titus Hansel and Gretel 217
Gazzara, Ben 211 “The Grave” 25 Hanson, Don 37
Gein, Augusta 104 Grave, Paul 21 Hard Case Crime 78, 83
Gein, Ed 17, 104–105, 109, Graves, Paul 199 Harold and Maude 228
152, 153, 229 Grayson, Phillip 201 Harper, Jan 114, 117
Gein, George P. 104 Great Depression 8 Harper, Susan 198
Gein, Henry G. 104 Great Old Ones 2 Harrington, Curtis 218, 223
Gemini Man 220, 221, 223 “The Greatest Monster of Harris, Elinor 85
Generation of Vipers (Wylie) Them All” 19, 194, 202 Harris, Julie 215
126 Green, Gilbert 207 Harris, Lara 227
George 206 Greenberg, Joel 103 Harris, Robert H. 194, 200
Germany 83 Greenwood Press 233 Harris, Thomas 72, 111
The Ghost of Flight 401 223 Gregg, G. Gordon 159, 161, Harrison, Joan 189, 212, 215
Ghost Story 188, 217 162, 163, 165, 166 Harrison, John 225, 227; see
Gibbs, Hank 117, 118, 180, Gregg, Millie 161, 164, 165 also Sutherland, John
184 Gregg, Virginia 206 Harrison, Susan 198
Gibson, Alan 215 “The Grim Reaper” 19, 21, Hartley, Arthur 226
Gibson, Donna 204 192, 199 Hartmann, Theo Von 202
Gibson, Miss 206 Grimm, Sebastian 192 Harwood, Ronald 222
Gilchrist, Connie 206 “The Grinning Ghoul” 34, Hastings, Sherry 219
Gilligan’s Island 199 35 “The Haunter of the Dark”
Gillings, Howard 215, 216 Griswald, Claire 206 (Lovecraft) 14, 27, 28, 31,
Gillings, Leona 215, 216 Grizzard, George 204 32, 33, 34, 37, 43, 58, 69
Ginsberg, Alan 184 Grubb, Davis 223 The Haunting 215
Girard, Bernard 208 The Guide to United States Hayes, Alfred 208
Girard, Simone-Élise 230 Popular Culture 236 Healey, Myron 207
The Girl from U.N.C.L.E 188 “Guillotine” 190, 223 Heche, Anne 103
The Girl Next Door Gulther, Fritz 35, 36 Hedison, David 219
(Ketchum) 47 Gunderson, Lt. 203 “Hell Is Other People:
“Girl of My Dreams” (Math- Gunga Din 194 Robert Bloch and the
eson) 215, 216 Gunn, Moses 228 Pathologies of the Family”
“Girl with a Secret” 190 Gustav Marx Advertising (Lane) 11, 169–185
“The Glass Eye” 194 Agency 17, 70, 74 “The Hellbound Train” 17, 84
Gleason, Jackie 194 Guy, Sir 196, 201 “Hell’s Angel” 64
“The Gloating Place” 198, Helm, Anne 194, 205
205, 206, 225 Hadoth 32 Henderson, Paul 202
Gods, the Elder 4 Hagen, Randy 198 Henderson, Stephen 202
Goldberg, Whoopi 117, 118 Haigh, John 210 Hengist 214
Index 245
Henley 216, 217 Horror Film: Creating and “I’ll Fry Tomorrow” 54
Henreid, Paul 194, 206 Marketing Film 236 Illinois 69
Henry, Gregg 228 Horror Hotel 207; see also Illinois State Penitentiary 219
Henry, O. 70 City of the Dead Imagination 64, 65, 192
Henshaw, Joe 192 The Horror People (Brosnan) Imaginitive Tales 63, 65
Henshaw, Maggie 192 218 Immaterial and Creeping in
Herbert, Frank 227 Horror Writers Association Reptile Flesh (Hood) 234
Hermann, Professor Otto 75, 235 “Imprisoned with the
76, 77 “A Horseman in the Sky” Pharaohs” (Lovecraft) 31–
Herrmann, Bernard 206, (Bierce) 172 32
208, 229 Hoskins, Thad 163 In the Days of the Comet
Hervey, Benjamin 129 Houghton, James 224 (Wells) 20
Hessler, Gordon 189 “The Hound” (Lovecraft) 24 In the Land of the Sky-Blue
Heyes, Douglas 193 Houndini, Harry 32 Ointment (Bloch & Gauer)
Heyes, Douglas, Sr. 217 “House of Evil” 217 58, 60
Heyes, Joanna 193 “House of the Hatchet” 173 “In the Vale of Pnath” 28
Hide and Seek (Ketchum) 47 House of Usher 166 The Incomplete Enchanter
Higham, Charles 103 The House That Dripped (Camp & Pratt) 62
Highgate Productions 221 Blood 20, 186, 188, 201 L’Incroyable Cinema 236
Highsmith, Patricia 206 Houseman, John 222 “The Indian Spirit Guide”
Hindu rope trick 61 Houser, Christie 225 215
Hitchcock, Alfred 7, 17, 18, How to Make a Monster 194, Inge, William 203
19, 84, 102, 103, 104, 109, 200 Intersect 221
121, 150, 153, 176, 177, 186, Howard, John vi, 10, 89–101, “Introduction” (Szumskyj)
188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 234 7–11
195, 196, 197, 200, 201, Howard, Robert E. 203 The Invisible Man 220
202, 205, 206, 207, 209, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life ( Joshi) Iowa 75
210, 225, 227, 228, 229 235 Irene 201
Hitchcock, Pat 190 H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of “Iron Mask” 147
Hoch, Edward 209 the West ( Joshi) 235 “Is Betsy Blake Stll Alive?”
Hogan, Charlie 164, 166 Hubbard, Mrs. 76, 215 187
Holcombe, Marion Ruth Hudson, Det. Mike 201 Israel 205
70 Hughes, Howard 204 It Came from Outer Space 193
Holden, Jan 216 Hughes, Tresa 225 Italy 83
Holland 82, 86 Hugo 205, 206 “It’s a Good Life” (Serling)
Holland, Tom 103, 228 Hugo Award 9, 84 214, 216
Hollis, Sir Guy 138, 139, 140, The Hunger 230
141, 151 “The Hungry Glass” 19, 192, Jack 60
“The Hollow in the Woods” 194, 199; see also “The Jack Nicholson: Movie Top Ten
(Campbell) 37 Hungry House” 236
Hollywood 61, 65, 71, 75, “The Hungry House” 13, Jack the Ripper 8, 10, 95, 96,
82, 84, 86, 91, 96, 97, 106, 15–16, 19, 172, 173, 192; see 106, 134, 151–152, 158, 164,
112, 114, 115, 154, 155, 194, also “The Hungry Glass” 195, 196, 201, 213, 214
209 Hunt, Helen 223 Jack’s Shack 59
Holmes, Henry H. 139, 160; Hunter, Luke 209 Jackson 212
see also Mudgett, Herman Hunter, Marta 209 Jackson, Sherry 211
Holy Grail 62 Hunter College 230 Jacquelin, Pierre 201
“A Home Away from Home” Hurley, Hazel 71, 93, 94, 95, Jaffe, Sam 194
206 100, 156, 157, 158 Jago, Captain Pete 196
Home Savings Bank 7 Hussey, Olivia 229 Jamaica Inn 189
Home Viewer 236 Hutton, Brian 205 James, King 94
Homolka, Oscar 201, 202 Hyde, Mr. 14, 15, 26 James, M.R. 234, 235
Hood, Robert vi, 1–4, 234 Jancovitch, Mark 121, 123, 127
Hooper, Celia 203 “I Do Not Love Thee, Dr. Janes, Loren 221
Hooper, Elmer 203 Fell” 174 Janicker, Rebecca vi, 10,
Hooper, Myrtle 203 “I Kiss Your Shadow” 13, 20, 121–133, 234
Hopper, Dennis 218 203, 204 Japan 82, 83
Horridge 111 I Spy 210, 211 Jaris 214
Horror: Another 100 Best Books I Spy —The Definitive Site 210 Jarrett, Renne 219
( Jones & Newman) 235 “I Was a Teen-Age Faust” 50 The Jazz Singer 199
246 Index
Jeckyll, Dr. 14, 15, 26 Motel: Robert Bloch’s Psy- Larson, Randall D. vi, 5, 10,
The Jeckyll Legacy 86 cho Trilogy” (Briggs) 10, 42, 45, 46, 48–49, 50, 53,
Jeff 187, 188; see also Jensen, 102–120 54, 68, 77, 80, 81, 84, 86,
Jeff Khem 31 134–149, 157, 158, 166, 235
Jenson, Jeff see Jeff “Kick the Can” ( Johnson) 216 Las Vegas 225
Jerris, Dr. 227 The Kidnapper 10, 68, 77, The Last of Philip Banter
Jimmy 175 78–80, 137, 138, 152 (Bardon) 101
John 222 Kilgour, Maggie 132n3 Laszlo, Victor 194
John the Baptist 201 The Killer Inside Me (Thomp- The Late Show 236
Johnson, George Clayton son) 118 Latin 28
186, 197, 214, 233 King, Lou 93, 94, 95, 98 “The Laughter of a Ghoul”
Johnson, Liz 193 King, Stephen 9, 104, 110, 24–25
Johnson, Russell 193 111, 124, 129, 191, 203, 204, Laurel Entertainment 224,
Johnson, Tom 215, 216 224, 226, 229, 234 225, 226
Jones, Henry 200, 203 Kirk, Captain James Tiberius LaValle, Vera 219, 220
Jones, Stephen 235 192, 211, 212, 213, 214 LaVerne 85, 85n
Jorla, Karl 207, 208 Kit 81 Lawlor, Harold 21, 199
Joshi, S.T. vi, 10, 23–40, 41, Kitty 207, 208 Lawrence, Nancy 223
42, 43, 44, 69, 72, 73, KKK 183 Laxer, Harry 204, 205
124, 155, 156, 157, 233, Kleeman 94 Lecter, Hannibal 72
235 Klein, T. E. D. 9 Leda 223
Journal of Popular Culture Klemm, Ulrich 194 Lee, Christopher 19, 202,
236 Kling, Duke 96, 98, 99 207, 208
Journey into Midnight 215 Kneubuhl, John 203 Leeds, Peter 206
Journey to the Unknown 215 Knightriders 224, 226 “The Legacy” 227
Joyce 215 Koenig, Walter 212 Leiber, Fritz 9, 40, 44, 62,
Joyride (Ketchum) 47 Kolchak, Carl 195 170, 234
Judy 205 Kolchak: The Night Stalker Leitch, Christopher 225
Julie 223 195 Lejtes, Joseph 205
Juliette 143, 144 Kolischek, Stanley 78; see Lejtes, Józef see Lejtes,
Juliette (Sade) 143 also Collins, Steve Joseph
Kolmar, Abe 82 Lemani, Tania 214
Kandel, Stephen 210 Korby, Roger 211, 212 Leming, Ron 104
Kane 144 Korob 213 Lenton, Morty 194
Kara 214 Kosleck, Martin 201 Lerner, Dikki 200
Karloff, Boris 19, 21, 190, 191, Kralik, Hymie 196 “Lessons from Providence:
192 Kramer, Dr. Clarence 192 Bloch’s Mentors, Bloch as
The Kate Smith Hour 195 Krause, Helen 208 a Mentor and Bloch and
Katkov, Norman 222 Krause, Mike 208 Fandom” (Ellis) 10, 41–56
Kazan, Elia 188 Kristen, Marta 198, 209 Letters to Robert Bloch (Love-
Keane, Kerrie 229 Kroft, Ernst von 194, 202 craft) 23
Keaton, Buster 66 Kull, King 203 Levenia 220
Kelleher, Brian 189, 209 Kur-ub-Set 219 Levi, Alan J. 220
Keller, Gerald 199 Kuttner, Henry 40 Lewis, Lorna 76, 77
Kelley, DeForrest 212 Kyro 217 Lewton, Val 218
Kelsey, David 206; see also Leytes, Josef see Lejtes, Joseph
Newmaster, William Lacey, Catherine 215 Leytes, Joseph see Lejtes,
Kendall, Johnny 210 Ladies Day/This Crowded Joseph
Kendall, Tom 80, 81 Earth 86 Life Achievement Award 9,
Kennedy, John F. 100 Ladies’ Night (Ketchum) 47 21, 57
Kenny 205 Landis, John 216 Lifetime Career Award 21
Kerouac, Jack 85, 184 “The Landlady” 194, 206, 222 “The Lighter Side of Death:
Kerr, Sondra 200 Landon, Michael 200 Robert Bloch as a
Kert, Larry 206 Landru, Henri Desire 72 Humorist” (Schweitzer)
Kesla 214 Lane, Howard 37 10, 57–67
Ketchum, Jack 47, 53; see Lane, Jerry 203 “The Lighthouse” 230
also Mayr, Dallas Lane, Joel vi, 11, 169–185, 235 “The Lighthouse” (Poe) 74,
Keyhole 222 Lang, Fritz 97 230
Keys, William 222 The Langoliers 224 Ligotti, Thomas 9
“The Keys to the Bates Larson, Erik 159, 160 “Lilies” 8, 69, 191
Index 247
Lincoln High School 8 Lovecraft Circle 33, 58 Man of a Thousand Faces 212
Linda 206 Lovecraft, H.P. 1–3, 8, 9, 10, Man of Mystery 205
Linden, Dorothy 199 13–14, 16, 23, 41, 42, 43, “Man of Mystery” 204
Linder, Cec 222 44, 45, 50, 57–58, 68, 69, “The Man Trap” ( Johnson)
Linette, Raymond 229 90, 91, 103, 104, 134, 150, 214
Linville, Joanne 204 155, 171, 172, 183, 191, 216, “The Man Who Collected
Lion Books 80 230, 234, 235; advice to Poe” 74, 230
“A Lion Walks Among Us” Bloch re: fiction 24–25, 42 The Man Who Could Cheat
203 Lovecraft Society of New Death 195
Lisa 194, 205 England 9 “The Man Who Murdered
“A Literary Tutelage: Robert Lovecraft Studies 234, 235 Tomorrow” 147–148
Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft” Lowery Agency 107 “The Man Who Never Did
( Joshi) 10, 23–40 Lowndes, Mary Belloc 135, Anything Right” 148
The Little Foxes 195 137 Manfred 132n2
Liverpool 111 Lucanio, Patrick 151–152 Manhattan 206
“Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” Lucas 205 Mann, Lt. 226
71, 147 Lucas, Frank 218, 219 “The Mannikin” 221
Lloyd, Norman 189, 209 Lucille 73, 93 “Mannikins of Horror” 227
Lockhart, June 209 Lucky Lady 96 Mao Tse-tung 66
Lock-Up 84, 186, 187, 196 Lucky Larry 82 March, Alex 222
The Lodger 195 Lucy 174, 201 Marco, Lt. 219
The Lodger (Lowndes) 135, “Lucy Comes to Stay” 74, Marcuse, Theodore 213
137 137, 172, 174, 200 Marie 187, 188
Loeb, Stella 7 Lugosi, Bela 194 Maris, Herbert L. 186
Lofficier, Jean-Marc 152 Luiz 187, 188 Markle, Fletcher 191
Lofficier, Randy 152 Luke, Keye 218 Marlowe, Philip 98
Logan, Frank 198 Lumley, William 38 Martha 206
Logan, Fred 194 Lummis, Dayton 192 Martin 224
Logan, Louise 198 “The Lurking Fear” (Love- Martin, Dr. 227
Logoda 216, 217 craft) 24, 38 Martin, Ross 220
“Logoda’s Heads” 216, 217 Luveh-Keraph 25 Marvel Tales 8, 29, 69, 191
Lom, Herbert 227 Lynch, Ken 198, 205 Marx Brothers 57, 62
Lomond, Britt 198 Lyndon, Barré 195, 207 Mary 222
London 2, 136, 144, 147, 151, Lyons, Robert F. 223 M*A*S*H 205
154, 215, 234 The Mask of the Sorceror
Long, Frank Belknap 26, 27 M 97 (Schweitzer) 235
Long, Nicky 206 Mabbot, Prof. Thomas 230 Masques & Citadels (Howard
Long Island 234 Macauley, Charles 214 & Valentine) 234
Loomis, Sam 107, 108, 113, Mace, Frank 189 Matheson, Richard 186, 187,
115, 125, 128, 165, 210, 225 Machen, Arthur 110, 234, 235 190, 192, 195, 208, 212,
Lord Dunsany: Master of the Macht, Stephen 225 216, 231, 233
Anglo-Irish Imagination Macnee, Patrick 216 Matheson, Tim 216
( Joshi) 235 Macready, George 200 “The Matheson Mafia” 197,
Lori 183 “Madame Mystery” 187, 188 214
Lori 183 Madison 105 Matthews 211
Lorre, Peter 75, 97 “The Madness of Lucien Mayberry, Will 204
Lorre, Peter, Jr. 219 Grey” 29 Mayr, Dallas 42, 44, 46, 47–
Los Angeles 18, 106 The Magazine of Fantasy and 48, 49; see also Ketchum,
Losey, Joseph 194 Science Fiction 204, 216, Jack
The Lost (Ketchum) 47 224 Mazonides 25
The Lost Bloch 62, 63, 64, Magee, Patrick 227 MCA 209
65, 103 Maglore, Simon 221 McCammon, Robert 223
The Lost District: And Other Maglore, Simone 221 McCarty, John 189, 209
Stories (Lane) 235 Maitland, Marne 215 McCary, Rod 226
Lost in Space 198, 209 “Make Me Laugh” 217 McCauley, Kirby 111
Lost in Time and Space with The Man from U.N.C.L.E 188 McCoy, Dr. Leonard “Bones”
Lefty Feep 60 The Man in Half Moon Street 212, 213
Lost Worlds: The Journal of 195 McCutcheon, Bill 224
Clark Ashton Smith Studies The Man in the Gray Flannel McDermott, John A. 121
234 Suit (Wilson) 128 McEachin, James 219
248 Index
McFarland 233 Mitchum, John 192 NBC 21, 187, 191, 207, 211,
McGavin, Darren 195 The Modern Weird Tale 218, 220, 225
McGuire, Harp 188 ( Joshi) 235 NecronomiCon 9
McIntire, Capt. F. X. “Trap- Molson, Gordon 187, 188, 204 The Necronomicon 16
per John” 205 Monroe, Marilyn 20 Necronomicon Press 233
McKenna, Siobhan 222 The Monster Times 236 Nelson, Ed 192, 198
McPherson, John 223 Monsters 226, 227 Nemo, Captain 222
Medina, Patricia 197 Monsters in Our Midst 86 Nephren-Ka 32, 33, 34
Meeker, Ralph 220 Moore, C.L. 40, 181 Nesmith, Ottola 193
The Member of the Wedding Moore, Mary Tyler 205 Network 190
215 More Nightmares 19 New Amsterdam Entertain-
Men into Space 186, 199 Morgan, Paul 180 ment 226
Mendota State Hospital 105 Morgan Park Military Acad- New English Library 89
Mercury Players 189 emy 7 New Orleans 32
Meredith, Burgess 222 Morla 214 New South Wales 234
Merlin 63 Morley, Daniel 10, 71, 72, New York 61, 62, 64, 91, 94,
“The Merman” 29 73, 75, 91, 106, 155–156, 211
Merrick, John 145 157, 158, 159, 181 New York Institute of Tech-
Merrill, Scott 199 Morris, Frances 203 nology, Old Westbury 234
“The Messiah of Mott Street” Morris, Wolfe 201 The New York Review of Sci-
(Serling) 217 Morse, Barry 201 ence Fiction 235
“Method Actor” 225; see also Moskowitz, Sam 80 The New Yorker 194
“Bad Actor” Moss, Jim 219 Newlan, Paul 192, 199
“Method for Murder” 202, “A Most Unusual Murder” 144 Newland, John 202, 203, 204
203, 215 “Mother of Serpents” 173, Newman, Joseph M. 209
Mexico 86, 210 183 Newman, Kim 235
Michigan, Lake 160 Mowbray, Alan 187 Newmaster, William 206; see
Mick 117 Mudgett, Herman 139; see also Kelsey, David
Midas, King 60 also Holmes, Henry H. Nicholas, Denise 217
“The Middle Toe of the Munn, H. Warner 27 Nichols, Nichelle 213
Right Foot” (Bierce) 172 “Murder Is a Gamble” 187 “Nick of Time” 192, 193
Midnight Marquee 236 The Murders in the Rue The Night Flier 224
Midnight Pleasures 225 Morgue 189, 194 Night Gallery 216, 217, 223
Mike 187, 188 Murphy, Audie 187 The Night Life of the Gods
Mike Shayne’s Mystery Maga- Murphy, Ben 220 (Smith) 61, 62
zine 69, 208 Murphy, Ralph 195 Night Must Fall 203
Milland, Ray 195–196, 206, Murrad, Sirri 226 The Night of the Ripper 86,
219 Mutiny on the Bounty 209 145, 152, 154, 213
Miller, Mark A. 201, 202 “My Hitch with Hitchcock” The Night Stalker 195
Milwaukee 28, 33, 69, 70, 189 The Night Strangler 195; see
74 Myers, Charles 65 also The Time Killer
Milwaukee Fictioneers 8, 69 Mysteries of the Worm 19, 23, Night Tide 218
Milwaukee Jewish Settlement 25, 37, 221; see also De The Night Walker 20, 186
7; see also Abraham Lin- Vermiis Mysteriis Nightmare 191, 204
coln House The Mysteries of Udolpho “Nightmare at 20, 000 Feet”
Mingle, Mrs. 224 (Radcliffe) 132n4 192, 193, 216
Mingo, Anthony 81 Mysterious Island 216 Nightmares 19
“Miniature” 203, 206 “Mystery, Madame” 188 Nightworld 80, 154, 217
Minneapolis 91, 93 The Mystery Writers of Nile 32
Minotaur 221 America 22, 84, 210 Nimoy, Leonard 211, 217
“Minotaur” 220 Mythologies of Violence in “Nina” 176, 183
Minudri, Regina 159 Postmodern Media 236 Nocturne 212
“The Miracle of Robert Nolan, William F. 223, 233
Weems” 65 Nadja 197 Nork, Dr. 58
Mission: Impossible 188 Nalder, Reggie 220 Northwestern Railroad Sta-
“Mr. Margate’s Mermaid” 63 “Napier Court” (Campbell) tion 7–8
Mr. Sardonicus 201 174 Norton, Dr. 206
Mitch 205 Nashville 221 Norton Sanatorium 206
Mitchell, Donna 229 Nautilus 222 “Notebook Found in a
Mitchell, Guy 187 Naylor, Jill 205 Deserted House” 37, 174
Index 249
Notes on Contemporary Litera- Palmer, Raymond 8, 59, 61, Pleasant Dreams 19, 204
ture 236, 237 62, 65 Poe, Edgar Allan 50, 74, 81,
“Number One” 211, 213 “Papa Benjamin” 191 87, 110, 171, 172, 191, 194,
“Nursemaid to Nightmares” Paradoxa 236 197, 230
63, 66 Paramount Pictures 195 “The Poet and Peasant Case”
The NY Arts Magazine 234 Paris 208 187
Nyarlathotep 30–31, 32, 33, Parker, George 198 Pollack, Sydney 206
37, 38, 39 “The Partnership” 223 “Poor Butterfly” (Gibson) 215
“Nyarlathotep (Lovecraft; “The Party” (Nolan) 223 Popular Culture Association
prose poem) 38 Paul, Kurt 228, 229 236
“Nyarlathotep” (Lovecraft; Peabody, Rev. 224 Popular Library 86
sonnet) 33, 39 Peeples, Samuel A. 136, 186, Porter, Alice 163–164
Nye, Reverend 38 211 Porter, Jim 222
Pelletier, Pol 221 Portnow, Richard 226
Oakland, Connie 229 Pen, Robin 234 Portnoy, Alex 178–179
Oakland, Simon 229 Penguin Books 235 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth)
Ober, Philip 203 Penny Dreadful 236 178–179
The Oblong Box 189 Peoples, Don 226 Post, Ellen 77
O’Brien, David Wright 59 Perdido 220 Post, Leland 77
O’Connor, Dr. 203 Perkins, Anthony 18, 102, Pounder, C. C. H. 229
Oedipus 176 112, 153, 228, 229 Powell, Randolph 223
“Off Season” see “Open Sea- Permissive Therapy (Fenwick) Powell, Robert 227
son” 206 Pratt, Fletcher 62
Off Season (Ketchum) 47 Perry, Roger 209 “Precursors to Psycho”
Offspring (Ketchum) 47 Persoff, Nehemiah 188 (Larsen) 68
Ohmmen, Fritz 207, 208 Perth 236 “Preface” (Szumskyj) 5–6
Oklahoma 107 Perth Central TAFE 236 “The Premature Burial” 191,
Olcott, Miriam 192 Pertwee, Jon 188, 202 197
“Old Ones” 211, 212, 213 Pertwee, Michael 188 Presley, Elvis 85
“Oldies but Goodies” 54 Pet Sematary 224 Price, Robert M. 37, 40n2
O’Leary, Brian 162 Pete 208 Priestley, David 222
Oliver, Susan 206 Peters, Brock 217 Prince, William 227
O’Malley, J. Pat 196 Petrie, Laura 205 Prinn, Dirk Van 192
On the Waterfront 188 Petty, Lori 228 Prinn, Ludvig 25, 221
Once Around the Bloch 7–8, Pevney, Joseph 143, 212 Prinn, Sarah 215
58, 103, 170, 190 Peyton Place 118 The Prisoner of Zenda 207
One Step Beyond 202; see Pfefferkorn, Michael G. vi, “Programming Block: The
also Alcoa Presents 45, 233 Small-Screen Career of
O’Neill, Robert 220, 223 Phantom Books 77 Psycho’s Creator” (Bradley)
Only Child (Ketchum) 47 Philadelphia 198, 236 11, 186–232
Ontario Educational Com- Phillips 199 Providence 1, 2, 24, 28, 33,
munications Authority Phillips, Mark 217 57
221 Phipps, William 204 “The Prowler in the City at
“Open Season” 209 Picardo, Robert 228 the Edge of the World”
“The Opener of the Way” 32 Pickman, Richard Upton 38 (Ellison) 143
The Opener of the Way 40n1, “Pickman’s Model” (Love- Pryor, Nicholas 194
70, 235 craft) 29, 38, 68, 171, 216 Psycho 5, 7, 10, 11, 17–18, 19,
Orbach, Jerry 226 “The Pictures in the House” 20, 40, 57, 65, 72, 73, 75,
O’Reilly, Cyril 224 (Lovecraft) 37 76, 77, 78, 80, 84, 101, 102,
Out of My Head 50, 70 “The Pied Piper Fights the 121, 137, 150, 151, 152–153,
Outer Darkness 236 Gestapo” 60 154, 155, 156, 170, 172, 175,
Outer Limits 17, 199, 220 Pierce, Earl, Jr. 51 176–179, 186, 187, 188, 190,
“The Outsider” (Lovecraft) Pierce, Fulton 227 200, 209, 210, 230
24, 32 “Pigeons from Hell” 203, 205 Psycho II 86, 103, 104, 106,
“The Pin” 147 111, 112–115, 116, 118, 154,
Paisà 208 Pitkin, Charles 180 179, 180, 228
Pal, George 20, 226 Pitt, Ingrid 202 Psycho II (film) 103, 112, 228
Palance, Jack 230 Pittman, Montgomery 211 Psycho III (film) 228
Palladino, Tony 71 Plainfield 104 Psycho IV: The Beginning 103,
Palmer, Lt. 198 Playboy 69, 187, 198 229
250 Index
Psycho House 86, 104, The Return of Count Yorga 209 Rogue 198, 205
116–119, 154, 180, 184, 228 “The Return of Lefty Feep” 61 Romar, Dr. Andrea 216
Psycho Paths: Tracking the Ser- “Return to the Sabbath” 207 Rome 34, 162
ial Killer through Contem- Reynolds, B. M. 43 Romero, George A. 224, 226
porary American Film and Rhode Island 1, 57 Rosemary’s Baby 208, 217
Fiction (Simpson) 236 Rich, John 210 “Rose’s Last Summer” 191
The Psychopath 20, 186 The Richard Matheson Com- Rosie 209
Psycho-Paths 86 panion (Bradley) 233 Ross, Dane 194
Punter, David 121, 131, 162 Richard Matheson on Screen Roth, Philip 178, 179
Pyris VII 212, 213 (Bradley) 233 Rothstein, Richard 228
Richards, Carrie 216 Rowe, Misty 223
Queen of Blood 218 Richards, Greg 216 Royer, Carl 236
Queen of Hearts 71, 94, 95, Richman, Mark 188 Royer, Diana 236
96, 157 Richmond, Leo 229 “The Rubber Room” 176, 184
Questar 147n1 “Ride the Nightmare” 208 Rubin, Mann 222
Quicksilver Highway 229 Riding the Bullet 229 Rubini, Max 207, 208
“A Quiet Funeral” 223 Ridley, John 144 Rubinstein, Richard P. 224,
The Quill 69 Rigel IV 214 226, 229
Quiller-Couch, Arthur 235 “The Ripper” 195 Ruby 218
“Ripping Good Yarns: Robert Rudolph, Chet 230
Radcliffe, Anne 132n4 Bloch’s Partnership with “Rudolph the Great” 209
Radin, Henri 199 Jack the Ripper” (Larson) Rudy 205
Radin, Pierre 199 10, 134–149 Ruk 211, 212
Rais, Gilles de 158 Rivers, Natalie 206 Run for Your Life 211
Rampling, Charlotte 201 Riverside Quarterly 45 Runyon, Damon 59, 63, 172
Ramsden, Dennis 215 Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Ruppert, Constance 71, 95,
Ramsey Campbell and Modern Unexpected 222; see also 96, 97, 157
Horror Fiction ( Joshi) 235 Tales of the Unexpected Ruppert, Jeff 95, 96, 97, 99,
Rational Fears ( Jancovitch) Roarke, Adam 207 156, 157
121 Robert Bloch (Larson) 5 Rutherford, Dr. Lionel 227
“The Rats in the Walls” “Robert Bloch and His Serial Ruthie 182
(Lovecraft) 31 Killers” (Simpson) 10–11, Ryan, Dick 82, 83
Rayburn 211 150–168 Ryan, Edmon 196
Readercon awards 234 Robert Bloch Award 9 Rydalmere 234
The Reader’s Guide to Robert The Robert Bloch Companion Ryder, Alfred 20
Bloch (Larson) 235 (Larson) 235
“The Real Bad Friend” 137 “Robert Bloch: The Psychol- Sabotage 201
Rear Window 16, 191 ogy of Horror” (Vertleib) Saboteur 189
Reardon, Lt. 220 9–10, 13–22 Sadini, Irene 206
Reason, Rhodes 204 “Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Some Sadini, Victor 205, 206
Rebecca 189 Pathological Contexts” St. Germain, Comte de 195
Rebello, Stephen 210 (Punter) 121 St. Peter’s Basilica 162
Red (Ketchum) 47 Roberti, Madame 200 Salem’s Lot 226
Red Dragon (Harris) 72, 111 Roberti, Nicolai 200 Sally 229
Red Harvest (Hammett) 100 Roberts 226 Salome 201
Red Jack 214; see also Redjac Roberts, “Inspector” 206 Sandy 210
Redfield, William 194 Roberts, Judson 76, 77 Sanford, Donald S. 191
Redjac 152, 214; see also Red Robinson, Charles 203 Sanford, Jay Allen 192
Jack Robinson, Frank M. 198 Sapinsley, Alvin 216
Reed, Tracy 215 Robinson, Hubbell 19, 191 Sapiro, Leland 45
Reinhart, Dr. 219 Robinson, Judy 198 Sargent, Joseph 213
Remsbach, Otto 116, 117 Robinson, Kelly 210 Sasdy, Peter 215
Remsen, Burt 206 Robinson, Mark 145 Satan 65, 72; see also Devil
Rena 71, 93, 94, 157, 158 Roche, Eugene 223 Satan’s School for Girls 225
Republic Studio 187 Rockwell, Rick 199 “Satan’s Servants” 30
“The Return of Andrew Roddenberry, Gene 211, 213, Saunders, Mary Jane 210
Bentley” 190 214 Scala, Gia 207
The Return of Captain Nemo Rogers, Marjorie 203 Scanners II: The New Order
22; see also The Amazing Rogers, Neville 201 230
Captain Nemo Rodgers, Wayne 205 The Scarf 10, 36, 68, 71–74,
Index 251
75, 78, 89, 100, 104, 105, Sexual Congress 58 The Skull of the Marquis de
106, 110, 111, 124, 136, 137, Shades (book series; Hood) Sade 223
138, 151, 152, 154, 155– 234 “The Skull of the Marquis de
158, 159, 164, 172, 181; see “The Shadow from the Sade” 20, 71, 147, 191; see
also The Scarf of Passion Steeple” 33, 39, 44, 58 also The Skull of the Mar-
The Scarf of Passion 74; see Shadow of a Doubt 186, 195, quis de Sade
also The Scarf 210 Slater, Christian 224
Schafer, Natalie 21, 199 “The Shadow Out of Time” Sledge Hammer! 228
Schallert, William 203 37 Sleepwalkers 229
Schechter, Harold 160 “The Shadow Over Inns- Slesar, Henry 187
Schiff, Stuart David 112 mouth” (Lovecraft) 24, Sloane, Eva 145
Schnabel, Stefan 204 34, 37 Smith, Arthur 200
Schorer, Mark 190 “Shaggai” 28 Smith, Bruce 230
Schow, David J, 62 “Shambleau” (Moore) 181 Smith, Clark Ashton 110
Schumann, Leo “Specs” 78, “The Shambler from the Smith, Dick 227
79 Stars” 13, 26, 27, 28, 33, Smith, Jerry 224
Schuster, Thomas 230 43, 58, 69 Smith, Kent 218
Schweitzer, Darrell vi, 10, “The Shambler in the Night” Smith, Miss 221, 222
57–67, 235 26 Smith, Mr. 201
Science Fiction Television Series Shamley High School 198 Smith, Sherry 205
(Phillips & Garcia) 217 Shane 205 Smith, Thorne 61, 62, 63, 65
Science Fiction Theater 186 Shane, Maxwell 191 Sneak Preview 86
Science-Fiction World 81 Shapiro, Bishop 58 “A Snitch in Time” 61
Sci-Fi Channel 212 Shatner, William 19, 21, 192, Snodgrass, Doc 224
Scotland Yard 146, 196 194, 199, 211 Sofaer, Abraham 194, 200
Scott, Alexander 210 The Shattered Goddess Sohl, Jerry 186, 187, 213,
Scotty 143, 212, 213, 214 (Schweitzer) 235 233; see also Butler,
Scotty, Tony 229 Shaw, Reta 203 Nathan
Scream and Scream Again She Wakes (Ketchum) 47 Somers, Abbie 203
189 Sheen, Martin 225 Somers, Carl 203
“The Screaming People” Sherlock Holmes and the “Son of a Witch” 60
174 Deadly Necklace 208 Sondergaard, Gale 219
Screams: Three Novels of Terror Sherlock Holmes und das Hals- Songs of Innocence 236
82 band des Todes see Sherlock “The Sorceror’s Apprentice”
Sea Kissed 70 Holmes and the Deadly 19, 189, 205
Searl, Jack 206 Necklace “The Sorceror’s Jewel” 34
Seattle 194 Sherrier, Julian 215 Sorceror’s Shop 219
Sebastian, John 218 The Shining 229 Sothern, Ann 208
Sebek 32 Shining Trapezohedron 34 Southern Illinois University
“The Second Wife” 209 Shires, Ronnie 224 236
“The Secret in the Tomb” 8, Shirley, Mercedes 205 The Space Children 193
13, 25, 26, 69 Shooting Star 10, 82–84, 152 “The Space-Eaters” (Long) 26
“The Secret of Sebek” 32 “Show Biz” 204 Space: 1999 201
“Secret Worship” (Black- Showtime 230 Spain 86
wood) 173 Shulberg, Budd 100 Spain, Fay 190
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 124, “The Sign of Satan” 19, 207 Sparks, Cat 234
129, 130, 131 The Silence of the Lambs (film) Spartacus 179
“See How they Run” 176 223 Specht, Frankie 219
Sekenre: The Book of the Sor- The Silence of the Lambs Spellbound 197
ceror (Schweitzer) 235 (Harris) 111 Spengler 196
The Selected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Robert 51 Spiderweb 10, 74–78, 82, 83,
Bloch 86 Simon and Schuster 84, 166 106, 152
Senensky, Ralph 217 Simpson, Philip L. vi, 10–11, Spielberg, Steven 223
Sequeira, Chris G. C. 233 150–168, 236 Spillane, Mickey 73
serial killers 10–11 Siodmak, Curt 216 Spiner, Brent 224
Serling, Rod 197, 214, 216, The Six Million Dollar Man The Spiral Staircase 101
217 188 Splendor 188
Seurat, Pilar 214 The Sixth Sense 195, 199 Spock, Mr. 211, 212, 213, 214
“The Seven Ages of Fan” 51, The Skull see “The Skull of Spooky Hollow 225
54 the Marquis de Sade” Spooner, Debbie 225
252 Index
Spores from Sharnoth: And Studies in Fantasy Literature Terror Australia: Best Aus-
Other Madnesses (Black- 237 tralian Horror (Blackmore,
more) 233 Studies in Weird Fiction 234, Stevens & Sequira) 233
Spring-Heeled Jack 96 235 Terror Australis: The Aus-
“The Stairs in the Crypt” Stugatche, Dr. 31, 40n1 tralian Horror & Fantasy
28 Sturgeon, Theodore 214 Magazine 233
Stamp, Terence 230 Sturges, Preston 224 “Terror in Cut-Throat Cave”
The Stand 224, 229 Such Stuff as Screams Are 37
Stanwyck, Barbara 20 Made Of 154 Terror in the Night 82
Star*Line: Journal of the Sci- “The Suicide in the Study” Terry 117
ence Fiction Poetry Associa- 25, 26 Tetzel, Joan 196, 201
tion 237 Sulu, Helmsman 212, 213 Texas 107
Star of Sechmet 34 Sung, Joe 218, 219 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 17
The Star Stalker 80, 86 Sunnyside 161 Tharp, Julie 121
Star Trek 20, 84, 143, 152, Sunset Strip 75 “There Was a Little Girl” 210
188, 192, 211, 212, 213, 214, Super Science 69 These Are the Damned 196
218, 228 Supernatural Tales 235 “They’re Tearing down Tim
Star Trek: The Next Generation Suspect 197 Riley’s Bar” (Serling) 217
212, 225 Suspicion 189 A Thief in the Night 221
Starlog 137 Sutherland, John 225, 226, The Thin Man 61
Starmont Reader’s Guide 68 227; see also Harrison, “The Thing” 8, 69
Starr, Dr. B. 227 John The Thing 196
The Starry Wisdom sect 38 Sweden 82 “The Thing on the Doorstep”
State Hospital 113, 116, 126, The Sweet Sickness (High- (Lovecraft) 3, 36, 38, 171
132 smith) 206 Thinner 224
“The Statement of Randolph Sweet Smell of Success 199 This Is a Thriller: An Episode
Carter” (Lovecraft) 38 “Sweets to the Sweet” 71, Guide, History and Analysis
Stay Tuned for Terror 17, 70 174, 202 of the Classic 1960s Televi-
Stefano, Joseph 17, 102, 103, Swerling, Jo 197 sion Series (Warren) 191,
109, 150, 229, 230 Sybo 214 193, 197, 207
Steiner, Dr. 109, 113, 114, 180 Sylvester, William 220 This Island Earth 193, 209
Stenn, David 225 Sylvia 213 “This Side of Paradise” 213
Steve 174, 175, 188 Szumskyj, Benjamin 5–11, Thomas, Henry 229
Stevens, B. J. 233 236–237 The Thomas Ligotti Reader
Stevens, Leslie 220 Szwarc, Jeannot 217 (Schweitzer) 235
Stevens, Morton 197 Thompson, Donald (Don)
Stevens, Robert 194, 215 Tabor Bible College 236 W. 221
Stewart, David J. 205 Takei, George 212 Thompson, Jim 110, 111, 118,
Stockwell, Dean 194, 206 Tales from the Darkside 224, 182
Stone, Joel 205 225, 226–227 Thordsen, Kelly 209
Stone, Marjorie 198 Tales from the Darkside: The Thorp, Joe 198
Straight, Beatrice 190 Movie 224, 227 Thrasher, Gil 193
Strait-Jacket 20, 186, 210 Tales of Manhattan 192 Thrasher, Marcia 193
Strange Airs (Ellis) 234 Tales of the Unexpected 222; Three Stooges 62
Strange Eons 38–40, 80, 104, see also Roald Dahl’s Tales Thriller 19, 21, 84, 190, 191,
182 of the Unexpected 195, 196, 197, 200, 201,
“The Strange Flight of Tall, Dark and Gruesome 207 202, 203, 204, 207, 223,
Richard Clayton” 59, 134, Talmadge, Adam 193 226, 231
137 Tarzan 201 “Through the Gates of the
Strange Gardens (Ellis) 234 Taste the Blood of Dracula 215 Silver Key” (Lovecraft) 32
“The Strange Island of Dr. Taylor, Robert 20 The Thunder Child 236
Nork” 58 Teffner, Phil 94 Tijuana 97
Strange Tales 234 Telford, Frank 220 “’Til Death Do Us Part”
“The Strange Voyage of Hec- Teresa 208 203, 224
tor Squinch” (O’Brien) 59 The Terministic Screen: The Time Killer 195; see also
Strangers on a Train 206 Rhetorical Perspectives on The Night Strangler
The Stray Lamb (Smith) 61 Film 236 The Time Tunnel 188
Street in Cairo 163, 165 “The Terrible Old Man” “Time Wounds all Heels” 60
Studies in Australian Weird (Lovecraft) 34 Titus 224; see also Grandpa
Fiction 233, 234, 237 The Terror 84 Todd, Richard 200
Index 253
The Todd Dossier 86 Uhura 213 Wagram, Dr 174, 175

Toffee” 65 Ulmo, Baron 208 Waite, Asenath 36, 38
Tolliver, Addie 224, 225 Ulthar 4 Walker, Isabelle 225
Tolliver, Jody 224, 225 “Uncharted” (Blackmore) 233 Walker, Zena 216
Tone, Franchot 209 “Under the Pyramids” (Love- Walpole, Horace 122, 132n4
Topanga Canyon 208 craft) 31–32 Walsh, Ed 207
Topaz 205 Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Walton, Bryce 194
Topper (Smith) 61, 65 Suspense 74, 85, 86 Wandrei, Donald 235
Tor 78, 80 United Kingdom 89, 112 War and American Popular
Torcon 97 United States of America 112, Culture 236
Torn Curtain 207 170, 215 Ward, Charles Dexter 171
Toronto 97 Unity Church of Christ 236 Ware, Clyde 208
Torture Garden 20, 186, 200, Universal-International 212 “The Warm Farewell” 183
230 Universal Studios 112, 190, Warner Books 112
Totter, Audrey 188 194, 197 Warner Brothers 188, 199
Townes, Harry 192 University of Chicago 154 Warren, Alan 191, 192, 193,
“A Toy for Juliette” 143, 144 University of Nottingham 197, 199, 200, 204, 207
Tracy, Lt. Karen 214 234 Warren, John F. 207
“The Traditions of Science University of Portsmouth 234 Warren, Mr. 79
Fiction and Conventions” Unknown see Unknown Warren, Shirly Mae 78, 79
53 Worlds Washington, D. C. 222
The Train 196 Unknown Worlds 62, 63, 202 Wasyk, Darrell 230
“Transvestite as Monster: “The Unspeakable Proposal” Waters, Lou 205
Gender Horror in The 36 “Water’s Edge” 208
Silence of the Lambs and Unusual Stories 8 Watkins, Linda 192
Psycho” (Tharp) 121 Upton, Daniel 36 Watson, Henry 228
“The Traveling Salesman” 58 Upton, Richard 38 Waupun 105
Trebor, Dr. Albert 145 U.S. Studies Online 234 Waxworks 81
“Tree’s a Crowd” 60 USA Network 225 “Waxworks” 201, 202–203
Trent, Billie 83 Usher, Roderick 172 “The Way of the Spores”
Trivers, Barry 204 213
Troi, Lwaxana 212 Valentine, Mark 234 Weaver, Billy 194
The Trouble with Harry 192 Valentine, Nancy 196 Weinbaum, Stanley G. 8
True 84 The Vampire Lovers 202 “The Weird Doom of Floyd
Truffaut, François 111 Vane, Hector 196, 197 Scrilch” 60
Tsathogghua 38 Vane, Marie 196, 197 “The Weird Tailor” 200, 201
Turnabout (Smith) 61 Van Sant, Gus 103, 229, 230 The Weird Tale ( Joshi) 234
Twentieth-Century–Fox 199, Varek 220 Weird Tales 1, 3, 7, 8, 13, 14,
204, 215 Vaughn, Vince 103 25, 26, 27, 30, 40n1, 43,
Twenty-First Century British Verna 97 63, 65, 68, 69, 70, 74, 90,
and Irish Novelists 236 21 Verne, Jules 222 106, 124, 134, 136, 151, 181,
Sonnets (Ellis) 234 Vertigo 200, 208 191, 192, 195, 196, 199,
The Twilight and Other Zones: Vertlieb, Steve vi, 9–10, 13– 200, 201, 203, 221, 223,
The Dark Worlds of Richard 22, 236 224, 226, 227, 235
Matheson (Bradley) 233 Vetch, Marty 223, 224 Wells, H.G. 20, 220
The Twilight Zone 188, 192, Victor, Carl 220, 221 “The Werewolf of Ponkert”
193, 194, 197, 198, 199, Victor, Nancy 221 (Munn) 27
203, 211, 214, 216, 217, 223 Victoria, Queen 148n3 West, Alex 228
The Twilight Zone: The Movie Vietnam 100 West, Mae 63
216 Vizzini, Santo 114, 180 West Germany 86
“The Twisted World Inside “Voice of Doom” 187 Weston, Jack 192
Our Skulls: The 1950s Voodoo Woman 225 Westwood 196
Crime and Suspense Nov- Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Weyauwega 74, 104, 190
els of Robert Bloch” 199, 222 The Whales of August 208
(Blackmore) 10, 68–88 Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet “What Are Little Girls Made
Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial 218 of ” 20, 211
Study of Robert E. Howard Vrana, Vlasta 230 Whateley, Lavinia 39
(Szumskyj) 237 What’s the Matter with Helen?
2001: A Space Odyssey 220, Wagner, D.A. Glenn 204 218
222 Wagner, Karl Edward 234 Wheeler, Mrs. 216
254 Index
“Where No Man Has Gone Wilmarth 38, 171 World Supernatural Fiction
Before” 211 Wilson, Bob 193 ( Joshi & Dziemianowicz)
“The Whisperer in Darkness” Wilson, Crystal 159, 163, 233, 235
(Lovecraft) 29, 31, 36, 164, 165, 166 World War II 124, 136, 205
38–39 Wilson, Sloan 128 Wormwood: Writings About
Whispering Smith 84, 187 Windom, William 205 Fantasy, Supernatural and
Whispers Press 112 Winkle, Rip Van 60 Decadent Literature 235,
The White Isle (Schweitzer) Winston, Dr. Irene 216 237
235 Winter, Douglas E. 66, 103, Wright, Ben 206
“The White Ship” (Lovecraft) 154 Wright, Farnsworth 26, 30
2 Winters, Deborah 221 Writers Guild of America
Whitechapel 2, 136, 145, 151 Wisconsin 69, 74, 84, 104, 187, 190
Whitman, Charles 72 105, 152, 190 Wylie, Philip 126
Whitman, Stuart 219 Wise, Robert 192, 215
Whittacker, Jim 86 Wizan, Joe 209 Year’s Best Horror (book
Whittaker, Jill 84–85 Wolf, Jeff 227 series) 234
Who Wants to Marry a Multi- “Wolf in the Fold” 20, 143, Yerxa, Leroy 59
Millionaire? 199 213 Yog-Sothoth 2
Who’s Who in Entertainment Wolfe, Thomas 144 Young, Barbara Eden 224
in America 236 Wollongong 233 “Yours Truly, Daniel Morley:
Wicker, Tom 203 Wollongong University 234 An Examination of Robert
Wild Grapes: Australian Poetry Women’s Building 163 Bloch’s Novel The Scarf ”
234 Wonder Woman 218 (Howard) 10, 89–101
Wild, Wild West 220 Wood, Preston 222 “Yours Truly, Jack the Rip-
Wilde, Oscar 145 Woods 144 per” 8, 13, 20, 69, 90–91,
The Will to Kill 10, 77, Woods, Donald 196 104, 135, 151, 154, 195, 207,
80–82, 104, 106, 110, 152 Woolrich, Cornell 101, 175, 213
Willard 230 190, 191 Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper
Williams, Adam 196 Worden, Bernice 104 14, 19
Williams, Cara 188 World Fantasy Awards 235 “Yours Truly, Jack the Rip-
Williams, Emlyn 203 World Fantasy Convention 9, per” (tv episode) 196
Williams, Herb 40n1 21, 57
Williams, John 195–196 World Horror Convention 21 Zinna, Eduardo 142
Williams, Tennessee 182 World Science Fiction Con- Zinnemann, Fred 215
Willie 228 vention 21, 97 Zkauba 32

Benjamin Szumskyj-The Man Who Collected Psychos - Critical Essays On Robert Bloch (2009)

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Benjamin Szumskyj-The Man Who Collected Psychos - Critical Essays On Robert Bloch (2009)

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THE MAN WHO

Dissecting Hannibal Lecter:

Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

1. Bloch, Robert, 1917–1994— Criticism and interpretation.

British Library cataloguing data are available

©2009 Benjamin Szumskyj. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

On the cover: Photograph of Robert Bloch © by Stathis Orphanos

Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

This book was supported by many like-minded individuals,

Robert Bloch: The Psychology of Horror

“Better the House Than an Asylum”: Gothic Strategies in

About the Contributors 233

“I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf.”

ventions of the Modern Language Association, allowing for footnotes and

Horror” is a bio-critical study of Bloch, showcasing the unquestionable tal-

Benjamin Szumskyj, Editor

of sanity. He must unleash Hyde at the expense of Jekyll, sleepwalking vic-

heroine. Hitchcock’s other masterly decision was to cast Anthony Perkins in

horror ﬁction, he served a term as President of the Mystery Writers of Amer-

If any extant work of Bloch’s can be called a Lovecraft revision, it is

The ﬁgure of Nyarlathotep is one of the most intriguing in Lovecraft —

paints an enormous series of pictures of the years and centuries to come. A

borrowings may well have been unconscious. Hence something so slight as

with a vengeance. Strange Eons (1978) is Bloch’s most extended tribute to

Such a cheerless ending would be unthinkable to many modern weird

for mankind in a boundless universe in which it was an inﬁnitesimal atom.

a mentor, to list, or to look superﬁcially at the greater number of those for

pletely enthralled by everything Bob wrote” (Pfefferkorn). He goes on to note,

One result of Bloch’s mentorship of Larson is his feedback on Larson’s

to make a living.” This emphasizes in part Bloch’s pragmatism, and in part

“prozines,” or professional magazines, such as Weird Tales, or became profes-

What we have examined are some of Bloch’s fan productions, rather

Horror Author Jack Ketchum. 22 October 2008. <http://jackketchum.net/complete

we can deduce their content by Lovecraft’s responses to them found in H.P.

Congratulations on your minstrel success! You certainly appear to have con-

While Bloch’s ﬁrst professional sales were stories of blood-curdling ter-

“Ten minutes for just a drink?”

It is worth mentioning, too, about those early stories, particularly the

The Lefty Feep Series:

He became a political campaign writer between 1939 and 1944, and

individual psychology and made caustic commentary on social and political

His mother ties Morley’s hands to his bedposts as punishment, to stop

And it goes on:

And so on. Then Hermann takes him on the midway:

Such descriptions are portrayed as being from Herrmann’s cynical point

atively innocent protagonist caught up against his will in a web of corrup-

Spiderweb had an Australian paperback reprint by Phantom Books in

THE WILL TO KILL

Bloch had a growing interest in practical psychology and this is evident

One of the important characters in the book is a blind man, known as

ter term more familiar nowadays to modern readers as non-magic practition-

Shooting Star was followed by Bloch’s best-known novel Psycho in 1959,

THE DEAD BEAT

into a hippie — or even a Yuppie? Again I came to the realization that it

THE BLOCH BARGAIN

OPENING THE BLACK NOTEBOOK

Eventually Morley is living in Minneapolis, trying to make a start as a

“PSYCHOLOGY HAS A LOT OF WORDS”

Robert Bloch’s interest in psychology, and the themes that he had

killer, with the associated horror being handled in a completely non-super-