Previously-
This gradually trickled in from bits and pieces in my research, and enough little pieces finally tumbled together for a post...
Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel of "Psycho", started out as an H.P. Lovecraft apprentice.
He did a Cthulhu-verse story "The Shambler from the Stars" that had Lovecraft as a character who gets munched by the monster.
Lovecraft loved it, and responded with "The Haunter of the Dark" where he kills Bloch back.
"Haunter" is in that Cthulhu-verse collection I got and reviewed as part 1 of this whole Weird fiction marathon thing.
Bloch evolved away from Cthulhu-verse stuff, but he still sprinkled Easter eggs around.
His story "The Skull of the Marquis de Sade" got made into the 1965 movie "The Skull" with Peter Cushing.
The film has a guy selling Cushing a book bound in skin, and containing the biography of Marquis de Sade. The skin binding in "The Skull" just looks like white leather. Which, properly treated, it probably would.
First, if I had money to burn, and such a thing existed, I would buy the shit out of a Marquis de Sade skin-book. Second, it's obvious this is where Sam Raimi got the idea for his take on the Necronomicon being a skin-book. Even though his looks all fried-chicken-y for the grossout factor.
So, yeah, the idea didn't come out of thin air; Robert Bloch was the middle-step between Lovecraft and Raimi there.
And when you really think about it, the cops in "Psycho" attribute Norman's condition to mental illness, but if you suppose that he's literally supernaturally possessed by his mother, it becomes a sorta-sequel/sorta-remake of "The Thing On The Doorstep".
And, finally, he did the Star Trek episodes "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" "Wolf in the Fold" and "Catspaw".
All three have spooky elements, and "Little Girls" and "Catspaw" both mention "The Old Ones".
So!! Robert Bloch was a busy little beaver!
He was the Stephen King and/or Ramsey Campbell of his day as far as spreading the Lovecraft legacy around.
And now you can Kevin Bacon Alfred Hitchcock and Star Trek into the whole thing. 😉
3 comments:
Scott Adams and Erich Von Daniken in the same week. This is a dark day for fools
I went to look up to see what happened to Adams, like how he died as such, and started to feel bad for all the pain the guy went through and wanted to sort of maybe take back what I just said, then I read this:
"Shortly before his death in January 2026, Adams announced that he intended to convert to Christianity, explaining that he viewed the decision in pragmatic, cost-to-benefit terms, with the potential benefit of eternal salvation outweighing any downside if the belief proved to be false."
....pbblththt.
Re: "Handmaid's" being a modern classic. You wouldn't have known it at the time. The anti-feminist critics had their knives out, and they sounded just like the haters for "Tehanu". They tried to bury it. Good to know those guys lose in history.
Re: "Plague Dogs". Interesting. Doesn't look like it has the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of WD. Don't think 80's HBO played it. They played "Watership Down" "Heavy Metal" and "Twice Upon A Time" though.
I'll keep an eye out for it.
Re: Feminist spinoffs of not-so-feminist stories.
I mean, I just did "Helen's Story". Helen was technically the star of "The Great God Pan" yet she never speaks a single line in that.
Re: Erich von Daniken. I'll put it on the list. Everything that goes on the list gets done eventually.
Re: Scott Adams. Yeah, I'm having a hard time not dancing on his grave.
He harmed comics. I take that personally.
He poisoned generations X and Y to passively accept a rat-race life by teaching them they should just snark at it instead of having a social revolution. The second cubicles started getting put up, there should have been a nationwide universal strike that slammed the stock market face first into the gravel.
CEOs should still have hand quaking PTSD over it.
But no.
As for his cancer...I have someone in my life with it, and I'm glad they outlived him.
I'd genocide a million Scott Adams clones to cure them.
Adams deserves Hellraiser punishment just for how he treated his dead stepson.
For that alone. Before you even add on the Trump stuff.
So, yeah, fuck him.
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