As long as there has been heroes, there have been villains. However, it was the pulps that took antagonists and rocketed them to the apex of evil. All the best pulp heroes had equally impressive adversaries—The Shadow had Shiwan Khan, Conan had Thulsa Doom, and The Spider faced down an entire army of baddies that included The Living Pharaoh, The Fly, The Red Mandarin, and The Bat Man (no, not Bruce Wayne). But, when it came to the most colorful cruelties of the printed page, nothing could hold a candle to the villains that populated the so-called “weird menace” pulps.
According to pulp historian Don Hutchison, the weird menace sub-genre saw its greatest expression in the 1930s and contained a distinct formulation:
In their nightmare universe it was always a dark and stormy night. Tethered damsels suffered in the clutches of fiends such as hell-mad surgeons, warped scientists, and masked and cowled cultists, eagerly abetted by legions of demented dwarfs and horny hunchbacks. They stripped, whipped, and boiled their curvaceous victims with the enthusiasm of medieval inquisitors. Even the requisite rock-jawed heroes of these stories suffered a purgatory of horrors in order to rescue their brutally treated fair maidens.
Weird menace stories were most often found in the pages of Dime Mystery Magazine or Horror Stories, but other publications, including Weird Tales, dabbled in the genre too. Besides torture porn and outlandish villains, weird menace and shudder stories usually hinted at the supernatural before revealing more materialistic explanations. Think Scooby-Doo here, or more exactly the wildly popular novels of Edgar Wallace. The British Wallace specialized in macabre crime stories set inside of supposedly haunted castles or otherwise hounded estates. And though his villains move with inhuman dexterity, they are almost always revealed to be nothing more than crooks in disguise. That is weird menace to a T.
In celebration of this often overlooked sub-genre of the pulps, I would like to take a few minutes and celebrate some of the better weird menace villains, with a particular focus on those groovy ghoulies who were so popular that they earned their own books, magazines, or special issues.
Belphegor, the Phantom of the Louvre, debuted in 1927 courtesy of the pen of French author Arthur Bernède. Belphegor’s diabolical name alludes to his (or…her?) presence as the arch haunter of the Louvre in Bernède’s novel. Belphegor is the black-hearted specter who stalks the famous Parisian museum after-hours in order to uncover the lost treasures of the French kings (said treasure is supposedly hidden in a statue of the demon Belphegor, hence the moniker). Opposing Belphegor is the master detective Chantecoq as well as the journalist Bellegarde. Belphegor owes an obvious debt to Fantômas, but despite the novel’s lack of originality, it is still a wonderful story featuring midnight murders, a locked room mystery, and at least one aerial duel on the outskirts of Paris.
A. Merritt is most famous for his pulp novellas The Moon Pool and The Metal Monster, but in 1927 he debuted a criminal so fearsome that his name reflects the arch-enemy of goodness: Satan. Merritt’s Seven Footprints to Satan details the troubles suffered by a young American couple who are kidnapped prior to their planned adventure in Africa. The two lovebirds are brought to a dark and spooky mansion full of robbed cultists. Satan is their leader, and he demands that the male be put through a series of seven strange tasks before the end of the night. Until the rather anticlimactic ending, Seven Footprints to Satan is a suspenseful pulp full of uncomfortable suggestions about the prevalence and popularity of criminal Satanists in the United States.
Speaking of Luciferian matters, Paul Ernst, the pulpster best know for creating The Avenger, published eight stories featuring Doctor Satan that ran from August 1933 until August 1934. Doctor Satan is presumably a bored rich socialite who turned to a life of crime in order to kickstart his heart. Bedecked in a red cape, red mask, and red cap featuring a pair of horns, Doctor Satan is a nemesis interested in riches and the outré. In some stories he robs banks, while in others he grows plants from human skulls, makes zombies for twisted kidnapping schemes, and much more. Opposing him are the occult detective Ascott Keane and his secretary, Beatrice Dale. Interestingly enough, the supernatural is real in the Doctor Satan stories, as both he and Keane use magic in order to commit and solve crimes. The Doctor Satan series ended before the criminal’s identity could be revealed. Maybe he’s still out there somewhere…
Wu Fang and Dr. Yen Sin were “Yellow Peril” menaces in the mold of Dr. Fu Manchu, while The Octopus used his mad science to put cities under siege. There were many more caped criminals during the 1930s, but these were some of the most flamboyant.
All told, the super-criminals of the weird menace sub-genre made for entertaining stories. Such stories trafficked in flesh and fantasy, plus they often gave readers a wonderful mélange of horror and mystery. The weird menace stories undoubtedly influenced later comic books, as well as the West German Krimi and Italian giallo film genres. They are an integral part of pulp excellence, and all pulp fans, new and old, should stake out some time, preferably after dark, to give these devils their due.