Horror, Fantasy, and other non-sci-fi genres...

[Dead & Messed Up]

I read the past couple pages, which has me excited to read Robert E. Howard. Right now, I'm working through a Clark Ashton Smith collection called The Maker of Gargoyles. Like most, I was drawn to him via the Lovecraft connection, but Lovecraft's stories were dominantly about curious scientists and artists who confronted beings of cosmic size and indifference (or miscegenated horrors). The short story "The Maker of Gargoyles" is much more about carnal temptation, and I was shocked and delighted by how far it went

An excerpt (with potential spoilers):

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He would have said, if asked for the reason of his satisfaction, that he was proud of a skilful piece of handiwork. He would not have said, and perhaps would not even have known, that in one of the gargoyles he had imprisoned all his festering rancor, all his answering spleen and hatred toward the people of Vyones, who had always hated him; and had set the image of this rancor to peer venomously down for ever from a lofty place.

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It felt to me like the story would've been a perfect fit for Corman during his Poe streak; I imagined the story as Gothic and technicolor and gloriously over-the-top. Cast Peter Lorre as the sculptor, invent a corrupt priest role for Vincent Price. Argh, what could've been.

The other stories I've read are solid but less impressive. In descending order. "The Abominations of Yondo" is an imaginative weird fantasy. "The Nameless Offspring" is an effective Machen/Lovecraft ode to miscegenation. "Thirteen Phantasms" and "The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake" are unexceptional-but-respectable horror stories.