Thursday, October 13, 2016
The Secret of Sleed's Castle
And now, the fourth and final story from the April 1952 issue of Mysterious Adventures #7, dig the previous 3 posts for the other tales. This is a better than average Hollingsworth effort, though typically contains some laughable illustrative moments (like the perspective hand problem in panel 4 on page 5), but overall it's still a fun entry in one of the better collections from this precode series. Hope everyone enjoyed another full issue presentation here at THOIA-- lots more on the way for Halloween-- and beyond!
You know, a good half of the misspellings I see in professionally produced media are mistakes of the word "breathe". I find them all the time. In this case, though, I am willing to believe that the letterer was intentionally trying to draw attention away from that effed-up hand you were talking about.
ReplyDeleteMoody story, nonetheless. And it's always nice to see adoring fans name-checking Boris Ratloff.
The Boris Ratloff was a weird thing; did they think Karloff would sue? Or just trying to be clever?
ReplyDeleteThe twist was painfully obvious in this one, anybody that starts off talking about "harboring the maggots of death" is probably somebody you should avoid.
I love how our hero didn't just leave the bed, but instead reached out, grabbed a typewriter, jammed the mechanism, and then escaped.
The woman on the splash looks a lot like Ploog, one of my favorite monster artists.
This one is bizarre by all means. Lizbeth appears to have Bipolar disorder as for most of the tale, she wants our protagonist to not step inside the castle and tries to help him escape, then at the very end she reveals that she's Sleed's daughter and is going to have a blood bath with him. Although I did figure that she had to be undead or something due to the not so subtle of her being rather cold when being embraced.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how does surviving being poisoned and crushed equal worthiness for someone to bathe in your blood? Is Sleed that picky despite the possibility that he hardly gets many guests to begin with since the general population knows that the castle is haunted?
Have to say this one didn't grab me - my heart was spared being gnawed on by the "worm of fear".
ReplyDeleteNever mind hands, Hollingsworth had issues with arms in general - there's some truly bizzare bending going on here.
Just goes to show you - "Never trust a woman!"
ReplyDelete