Jonathan Raab and Muzzleland Press serve up another great themed collection. This particular collection focuses on the gothic horror revival of the classic Hammer horror films. The stories here range from inspired by those beautifully coloured early films to fan-fiction esque re-imaginings or continuinations. Mer Whinery's "George Straight and the Black Orchard Grimoire" is coming home/prodigal son story of the former sort, in which plenty of his Little Dixie, backwoods (back plains?), feel comes through. You'll have to imagine the corrupt Oklahoma version of the Irish accent instead of the refined British voices we're used to from Hammer. You'll hear a more pure version of that brogue in Tom Breen's haunted moor meets traditional traditional faerie story, "Taste of Fear in the Night." It gives us fun alternate European and American titles, and as the author notes may be the first Hammer story set in Ireland.
A number of these stories involve female empowerment or flipping the tropes of the Hammer era of heaving bosoms. So many in fact that I would be tempted to call it a second, more subtle theme in the collection. Gwendoline Kriste's "Over the Violets Here There That Lie" Poe tinged feminist tale, as well as Christa Carmen's "Cleaver Castle of Carnage Presents: The Coven Strikes Back" are even set in a meta world in which the filming of those movies is incorporated ala Shadow of the Vampire. Other pieces attempt to update the gender roles and power dynamics of the Hammer films that always approached being ahead of their time but never quite stepped all the way over the line. In "Vengeance of the Blood Princess", Dominique Lamssies gives us a continuation of the Karnstein trilogy, but this time firmly grounded in the feminist empowerment that the original lacked. Heather Levy tries to push the other, possibly negative, boundary of female empowerment in "You Should Smile More: The Blood Coven of Arkana", a modern folk-horror tale.
By contrast, the bulk William Tea's "Diabolus in Musica" seems feels like one of the most perfect encapsulations of the slow burn, atmospheric, gothic feel of so much of the Hammer era coloured by an almost Yellow Wallpaper style domination of the female lead. It the suddenly dovetails (in the best way possible) into scenes that fit right in with the wildest of the Hammer creations.
Tom Breen maintains the gothic aesthetic with a nod to "Dracula" in "Mina's Castle." It uses the same technique to maintain verisimilitude as Dracula, telling the story through a series of letters, but updating it for the modern era and his familiar territory of the integration of technology with the horrific supernatural by using emails.
Matthew Bartlett's "Go To The Devil"and Thomas Mavroudis' "Bloody Cask of Rasputin" feel more like Hammer influenced tales, with the two author's familiar voices and styles still very much dominating.
My favourite inclusion might just be Gamma Files', "The Filthy Creation of Frankenstein." A spectacular, intimate, love triangle retelling of the creation of monsters that both frightens and touches the heart.
While too short to possibly cover all of the delightfully outlandish settings and themes from those films, there are certainly plenty of satanic cults, created monters, and of course, Draculas, here to satisfy. I would add that the only omission I regret here is that Orrin Grey, given his love of cinema and extensive writing in ouvre both fictional and non, didn't make it into this collection. It would have been a match made in...well...an old, cobweb strewn castle. ( )