Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale by David Case

Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale Reviews

• 
  Jack Tripper

  
  
  Here's the cover of the 1970 Lancer Books mass-market paperback
• 
  Orrin Grey

  A fairly delightful Gothic tale that inspired the 1973 Amicus film And Now the Screaming Starts! (which remains one of the best titles around). Fengriffen is a little less lurid and a little less unpleasant than its cinematic counterpart, whether that's a plus or a minus, and it also eschews the crawling hand angle, though makes good use of some severed fingers in its place. A quick and atmospheric read in the "learned men dismiss a woman as hysterical, inadvertently enable a much worse tragedy" vein, with plenty of wonderfully Gothic descriptions and some surprisingly proto-Ligottian takes on psychology and humanities place in the grand scheme of things: "The mind is a descendant of the thumb and the vocal cord, and a malformed child it has always been, a mistake of evolution with the unique ability to bring its own extinction."
  
  The lovely folks at Valancourt Books have released a
  nice edition with other stories by the author, though the one I read was an older hardcover that just contained Fengriffen...
• 
  Michael

  This odd little novella was the source for the Amicus studios horror film called "And Now the Screaming Starts." The actors were somewhat put out (evidently) when they learned about the title change, somehow being in a movie called "Fengriffen" was more respectable, although the reality is that "Fengriffen" would not have sold well in the film market of the 1970s. The movie has a small cult following today, but the novella would probably be utterly forgotten had not the movie been made. I certainly wouldn’t have read it, for one thing.
  
  The story is narrated by “Dr. Pope,” a late-nineteenth century English doctor who has studied the new science of Psychology at Leipzig (whose school of Psychology opened in 1879, so that does work, unlikely as it may be). He has been summoned to a classically Gothic castle to attend the new bride of the Lord of the Manor. She has been showing symptoms of mental distress, and Fengriffen believes that she no longer loves him. As Dr. Pope investigates, he discovers the classically Gothic curse on the family line, and struggles to free Catherine and the house in general from its grip, but finds that his scientific methods cannot prevail against something so irrational.
  
  The blurb on the dust jacket says that the author “proves himself a master of the genre developed by Poe, LeFanu, and Lovecraft.” I was surprised to see Lovecraft’s name listed on a book published in 1970 – at that time he was largely unknown outside of serious horror and fantasy circles, and certainly unlikely to have been a selling-point. But, if the author himself had anything to do with the blurb, it seems to make sense. While this story has the above-listed classically Gothic elements (borrowed more from LeFanu than Poe), it also has distinctly Lovecraftian characteristics as well. In spite of the century, the protagonist is a “modern” rationalist and a man of science, who finds that human science is inadequate to deal with the horror he must face. He often balks at describing events which he finds “unimaginable,” although adequate hints are present to suggest those events to the audience. Much of his inability to deal with the situation derives from his own Victorian sexual repression, in spite of his Freudian training.
  
  To the degree that the story works, I would say that it is this element that is most interesting. Although Dr. Pope is the narrator, the real center of the story is Catherine Fengriffen, who is the survivor of a rape. It is the inability of the male characters to understand, believe, or even listen to her that is the source of the real horror of the tale. Men in this world simply deny her pain, and placate her by assuring her that she has imagined what happened to her. When the truth is finally revealed, her husband only makes matters worse, while Dr. Pope denies reality right up to the final pages. In fact, there is more than one monster on the loose in this story, and one of them is patriachal culture itself.
• 
  Philip

  Often a film will lead me to its source material - such is the case with FENGRIFFEN, which was filmed by Amicus in 1972 and, after a title change, released in 1973 as ...AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS - it wasn't a half-bad gothic thriller with, according to audio-commentator Darren Gross, supernatural elements (such as a dismembered hand) added for the film.
  
  The book (actually, at 133 pages, more of a novella) is long out-of-print, but to my surprise I discovered that it's still in my library's system - two or three clicks of my computer's mouse, and it was available for me to pick up this morning. And from the layer of dust on the book's top edge that blew off in a cloud, it's been a long time since this copy was checked out!
  
  After 74 pages, one thing can definitely be said for David Case: he knew a lot of obscure but very interesting words! I finally had to start writing them down: "Antepenultimate" "Vermicular" Necrophagous" "Laodecian" "Acedia" "Grume" "Dichotomous" "Flagitiousness" "Mendicants" and "Fuscous" to mention a few (the last three occur within a space of about 8 to 10 lines!). Some of them aren't very pleasant!
  
  4/22: A nice little Gothic thriller indeed, with a thought-provoking ending.
• 
  Chris Browning

  Less of a book and more a pitch for the inevitable seventies horror adaptation (which surprisingly for a book that puts carnal relations at the centre of so much of the plot came from the usually pretty sexless Amicus, probably in a moment of late panic that they were losing a natural audience). It’s definitely from the same school of pastiche as Chetwynd Hayes, who always seemed more comfortable a match with Amicus, and has almost exactly the same pleasures as the film version: heavy on the gothic atmosphere, a bit of campness, light on actual dread but heavy on sun Heyer regency romping. I imagine I’ll forget I ever read this as it’s so close in every way to the film that I’ll struggle to differentiate them successfully
• 
  Arka Chakraborty

  3.9-4* (I want to give this a solid 4 !)
  
  There's no doubt that Fengriffen is a good Gothic horror. The writing's beautiful, not unnecessarily cluttered with abstract images. It's difficult to rate this one. I could predict what would happen after the child was born, but the tension between the psychological and supernatural, and supernatural beating the former hands down wasn't what I was expecting. That revealed the true meaning of the curse and the cyclical nature of the story. The back story's kind of fucked up. I have to read some more works by this man. I'm hoping that he wouldn't let me down.
• 
  James S.

  A classic case where a book's obscurity makes it seem much more desirable than it really is. In reality, Fengriffen is a mostly silly and dull pastiche of the Gothic tale. The only innovation is that it is more explicit than most Gothic stories; other than that, it's just a tired rehash. "Sardonicus" by Ray Russell is much more lively (and it's shorter, too!).
• 
  Tanvir Moushum

  gothic horror with tons of suspense
• 
  Jay Rothermel

  An outstanding neo-gothic had-they-but-known cursed-criminal-ancestor tale.
• 
  Deborah

  The lord of Fengriffen comes home with a new bride, so all should be well within the great hall. 'Tis not to be. Upon her wedding night, the bride is attacked by a mysterious figure. She notices husband pats on her head and tries to assure her all is well, but incident upon incident tells her something sinister walls the corridors of Fengriffen.
  
  Cracking good dark house tale.
• 
  Robyne

  Enjoyable, fairly short gothic tale of terror, similar in tone to Poe et al. It kept me hooked to the end, even thought it was fairly predictable. As another reviewer mentioned, the vocabulary sent me to the dictionary more than once - I do love learning new, if arcane, words!
• 
  Texv Velis

  I really enjoyed this book I read it because of Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire a writer I love recommend it. It is scary and has some really nice poetic language in it. Here is a link to Mr. Wilum's review of it.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kevwDR...
• 
  Jim

  Awesome Gothic Horror
• 
  Ridhwaan

  Spine Chilling... Devoures the pages of this book.