THE MAN FROM HELL is a new collection of nine stories by Arthur Leo Zagat writing as Morgan LaFay, one of those pulp writers who is known by every fan of the form, but is completely unknown by everyone else. Which is a shame, because at his best, Zagat wrote well, at times even approaching a Bradbury-esque poeticism. Seven of the stories in this volume were originally published in SPICY MYSTERY between 1936 and 1938, and the final two are from THRILLING MYSTERY in ’36 and ’39.
SPICY MYSTERY was a weird-menace pulp plus sex. In weird-menace stories, the supernatural doings would be explained away at the end as the machinations of a villain out to get the money/girl/property/MacGuffin for himself. Think of it as SCOOBY-DOO with Daphne and Velma flashing their boobs all the time. Mmmm … Daphne and Velma flashing their boobs …
Sorry. I went away for a moment, but I’m back now.
If that type of story doesn’t appeal to you, but the horror element does, this may be the anthology for you, as Zagat frequently pulls the rug out by not explaining that the spooky stuff has a natural cause. In the title story, for instance, a writer who is camping in a swamp to accumulate color for his new book is seduced by a woman who seems to have the ability to transform into a snake. Her presence is the result of human tampering, but maybe she’s for real.
In “By Subway to Hell,” a young woman suddenly finds herself pursued by green, glowing men through subway tunnels. Zagat sends this tale out of the gate at full speed and it never slows down until we learn the truth about these subterranean monsters. Honestly, it doesn’t make much sense, but who cares? The yarn is an exercise in momentum and atmosphere.
“The Horror in the Crib” seems to start out as a psychological study of a young mother who is losing her mind. We see her in the beginning leaning over her baby’s crib with a pair of scissors in her hand, looking as if she intends to stab the child. Then we realize that this is no normal human infant:
“Her hands clutched the crib’s top bar and her eyes stared down into it. Her slim body was sheathed with ice and a scream ripped from her throat. Tiny reptilian eyes blinked up at her from the beribboned pillow, hooded eyes in a green, grotesque head that was long and flat and triangular, a head split by a fang-serried, malignant grin.”
A couple of other stories in the book also feature human children who are most bestial than your average rugrat. Or maybe that’s just what they are. Human rats. If Zagat had any kids of his own, I wonder what they thought of their old man’s visions of childhood.
I usually read one story a night when I’m working on a single-author collection, but I ripped through this one in two evenings. Good stuff.
And don’t be misled by Zagat using a pen name for these stories. He wasn’t hiding his real name because he was writing for one of the SPICY titles. He was just so prolific he had to use several “nom de pulps” so readers would think they were getting stories by a variety of authors.
One writer, however, was afraid that he might miss sales to the higher-paying slick magazines if their editors knew he contributed so much to the SPICY line, so Hugh B. Cave, just in case, signed his SPICY stories as by “Justin Case.” You gotta love it. —Doug Bentin
Related posts:
- Spicy Mystery Stories: May 1936
- Spicy Mystery Stories: Feb. 1936
- Hellboy: Emerald Hell
- Satan’s 3-Ring Circus of Hell
- Hell Hollow
