Chills

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30965, 22 January 1966, Page 4

Chills

The Boris Karloff Horror Anthology. Souvenir Press. 190 pp-

“Shock," says Boris Karloff, “must come out of a good story line. With full knowledge, I look forward to being scared out of my wits.” Unfortunately not all the 12 (why not 13?) tales in this collection measure up to the standard the editor claims to have set himself in his introduction.- Easily the best is the one that will be familiar to most readers —Edgar Allan Poe’s little masterpiece, “The Cask of Amontillado,” which stands out sharply, particularly in contrast with an attempt at a sequel also included here—“ The Opener of the Crypt,” by John Jakes, written in 1952.

This latter tale, like many others in the collection, falls back on a crude use of the supernatural, a device Poe did not find it necessary to use. The best tales here are those that extract a sudden chill from the most ordinary circumstances without resort to ancient Egyptian gods or monsters that “walk the winds.” There is a powerful shock from the unnatural in the midst of summer sunshine in Roald Dahl’s clever little tale. “Man from the South,” which begins from a trivial bet over a cigarette lighter beside a swimming pool in Jamaica.

Some of these tales are hardly “horrible” at all. Theodore Sturgeon, represented by “The Graveyard Reader.” is much more interested in exploring the difficulties of communication between people than in setting his readers quivering. Edmond Hamilton’s bitter sweet little story, “Child of the Winds,” is closer to the early science fiction of H. G. Weils than to the vampires, ghouls and monsters which people most of this book. All the writers represented, except Poe, are from the last 30 years, and all the tales have been published before. Two of them gain an extra piquancy from the contemporary events which set them off —a game of cards in a Korean trench and the nuclear tests at Bikini atoll. But overall, there is little here that measures up to the performances of Boris Karloff himself. Perhaps there are only ,a limited number of possible "horror” devices and their effectiveness has been diminished by overwork, not least by the old master’s own horror films.