Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of Terror (Mammoth Books)

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There are only two other horror anthologies that I think are better than this one, and those two really ARE classics (THE DARK DESCENT and GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL) Not only are the stories in this anthology very good, but offer a very wide variety of horror tales. Many different "flavors" of terror are available in this collection, from nice suspensful terror, to really visceral horror at something unspeakable occurring, to the completely physical revulsion to seeing a living mammal pulped in a feed thresher. Nice touch, that. There are vampires and Things Out of Time, possession tales and Mysterious Strangers. My favorites included: a short gothic horror novel ("Murgunstrumm" by Hugh B. Cave), Lumley's Lovecraftian "The House of the Temple", a real gem by Ramsey Campbell ("Out of Copyright") that ought to make the most jaundiced reader of horror think a little whenever s/he thumbs open a familiar text, and a simply AWESOME story by Lisa Tuttle ("The Horse Lord"). Rober Bloch's "Yugoslaves" shows why he's a master, and "The Jumpity-Jim" by R. Chetwyd-Hayes is a pretty nasty little tale. These are just the very best of the stories there; all of them are pretty good. Stephen Laws' "Junk" deserves mention as well. Jeesh. "The Black Drama" might give away its punchline a bit too soon, but it still provides some nice pulpy entertainment. All in all, this collection EARNS its 11 bucks worth of chills.

This book epitomises the 80-s streak of horror stained by blood & gore. Neverthless, "it is not without a few" stories "of interst". Specially recommended reading: THE LAST ILLUSION and THE YOUGOSLAVS. Stephen Jones had made a stellar beginning with this book and it stands tall till date.

Liked the short stories, a fast read, and good plot lines. A few stories were "dated", or pretty long, but all ended up being very satisfying.
A recommended read for those who love the above average scary story, mystery, and just good ol' spooky fun!

This book was published in 1991 and contained 18 short stories by as many authors. There were 10 from Great Britain and 8 from the U.S.

The oldest writers were Manly Wade Wellman (1903-86), Hugh B. Cave (1910-2004), Robert Bloch (1917-94), Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (1919-2001), David Campton (1924-2006) and Basil Copper (1924-). Among the youngest were Clive Barker (1952-), Stephen Laws (1952-), Lisa Tuttle (1952-) and David Schow (1956-). Others included Brian Lumley (1937-), Charles L. Grant (1942-2006), Dennis Etchison (1943-), Karl Wagner (1945-94), Graham Masterton (1946-), Ramsey Campbell (1946-), F. Paul Wilson (1946-) and David Riley. Many of the authors also wrote in the SF, fantasy and mystery genres.

Most of the stories ranged from the late 1960s to the early 90s, with 11 from the 1980s. There were also two from the 1930s, by the pulp pioneers Wellman and Cave, which together took up nearly a third of the book.

As might be guessed from the cover, the anthology gave a great deal of space to pulp authors, extending from those who wrote for Weird Tales in the 1930s (Wellman, Cave and Bloch, though Bloch was represented by something more recent) to later Britons influenced by Lovecraft (Lumley, Campbell), to those from the 1970s or 1980s whose writing combined horror with graphic violence (Masterson, Barker, Schow). There were also more quiet but effective contemporary horror writers (Copper, Riley, Wagner, Grant, Laws), some of whom included sexual matters in more detail than encountered previously in horror stories.

Most interesting for this reader were Riley's "The Satyr's Head," about a man who became haunted by a satyr, Wilson's "Buckets," which combined a contemporary social/ethical issue and horror in an original way not read before, Masterson's "Pig's Dinner," which was so grotesquely over the top it was hard to forget, and Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreaming," which tried to show psychological dysfunction, among other things. Many of the other stories were too cartoonish or crude, or just didn't capture my interest.

An earlier anthology of somewhat similar work might be Dark Forces (1980).

this is an interesting collection. 4 great stories by Tuttle, Chetwynd-Hayes, and others. a few ok stories here too. that makes it pretty good for an anthology. well picked. not bad invented stories. more plot-driven stories than in most anthologies.