Customer Reviews

Gallery of Horror

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This 1996 republished collection is the same collection as The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror published in 1983, just with a new cover and shorter title so buy whichever one is cheaper.

Some of Horror's best authors are in this collection but to be honest these are not their best stories. Saying that though, fans of horror legends Stephen King or Bernard Taylor will still want to read the inclusions by these masters. So will David Morrell fans with his sensational story The Typewriter, although this story has appeared in a few different collections so you may well have come across it before. I have to be honest and say there are a fair few fillers in here as well so I wouldn't be paying a collectors item price for these stories. A far better short story collection by the same editor (Charles L. Grant) is titled Final Shadows which also has Bernard Taylor and other authors who appear in this one. A modern day anthology worth owning is Death Do Us Part which is full of high quality stories with only two average stories in the whole collection. Dangerous Women is also very good.

Anyway the best tales within The Gallery of Horror are Out of Sorts by Bernard Taylor, a classic werewolf tale about a woman who discovers he husband is having an affair and decides to do something about it. The Typewriter by David Morrell about a writer who finds a hideous old typewriter in a junk shop. Whenever he types something on it the keys type something else. Nona by Stephen King is all right but not in the same league as The Mist from Skeleton Crew or any of the stories in Four Past Midnight. Nona is the story of a hitchhiker wronged by those he comes across who meets a female also in the same predicament and they decide to turn the tables in a bid to get where they need to go.

The other stories include tales about an evil old man mentally torturing a little girl, an antique bookstore owner disappearing in his overgrown backyard, a domestic argument being constantly interrupted by the terrifying attacks of a centipede, a group of people planning a trap to kill the Easter Bunny and a Nazi worshipper in a padded cell, vampire tale set in World War II, and victim of racism who decides to take revenge by killing jumping from a tower. Stories and authors are -
Something Nasty by William F Nolan
Canavan's Backyard by Joseph Brennan
The Conqueror Worm by Stephen Donaldson
Death to the Easter Bunny by Alan Ryan
The Rubber Room by Robert Bloch
Petey by T.E.D Klein
The Sunshine Club by Ramsey Campbell
Down Among the Dead Men by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
The Crazy Chinaman by John Coyne
Nunc Dimittis by Tanith Lee
Derelicts by Steve Rasnic Tem
In Darkness Angels by Eric Van Lustbader
The Arrows by Theodore Sturgeon
Aim for the Heart by Craig Shaw Gardner

This is a reprint of the Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror from the early 1980's. There are a number of stories which stand out but "Down Among the Dead Men" by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann in particular. This is a story you will not soon purge from your subconscious. There is also the classic "Canavan's Back Yard" by Joseph Payne Brennan which is one of the master's best. Seek out other collections from Jospeh Payne Brennan, he is one of the unknown masters. This is a collection which deserved to be reprinted although they marketed it as if it was a new collection. Highest marks!

This interesting book is a collection of some twenty horrific short stories, all written by great authors. As with any anthology, this one is a mix of great, good and merely OK stories. I suppose it depends on your tastes.

As for me, my absolute favorite was Down Among the Dead Men by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann. In it, a Nazi concentration camp inmate discovers that one of his fellow prisoners is a vampire. But, with such horror occurring all around him, what does it mean to be a monster? My second favorite was Petey by T.E.D. Klein - I love monsters stories.

Overall, I thought that this was a very good book, one that kept me up late each night reading. I highly recommend it to you.

Well this book is a mixed bag. Some of the stories I really liked and were really well written, yet others I just didn't like at all. I loved the chilling story of "Canavan's Back Yard," and I thought "The Rubber Room" was an interesting tale of a paranoid man thinking Jewish people had a conspiracy against him. Also, "Out Of Sorts" is a clever werewolf story. And as other have mentioned, "Down Among The Dead Man" is an excellent WWII vampire story (while that may sound bizarre, it is written so well you won't even notice just how odd this seems). However, like I said, I did not like some of the other stories. Like "Death To The Easter Bunny," for example. I just found this story repulsive (if you've read the book, you'll know what part I'm talking about.) And "The Crazy Chinaman" also seemed very out of place in this book. But in this book, the good outweighs the bad. I would recommend this book to fans of horror in general or fans of any of the authors.

This book has good stories and bad stories. No, there is no bad written story. There are some stories very difficult to believe, like "Death to the Easter Bunny!" By Alan Ryan. At least, I can read another Stephen King, "Nona". But it is not enough to get a 10. Paulo Sunao

hi