JACK THE RIPPER [Blood] SEALED [Bloch/Ellison]AWR-6925

$

39

 1977 ALTERNATE WORLD RECORDINGS Records AWR-6925
STILL FACTORY SEALED ORIGINAL
2 LP
READ BY: ROBERT BLOCH & HARLAN ELLISON

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VINYL is SEALED
   COVER is SEALED shrink tearing [lower right]

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Blood! The Life and Future Times of Jack the Ripper

From the works of and read by Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison

Contains "A Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World," and Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" and "A Toy for Juliette"

1977

If the first album was spare, Blood is a tour de force of both production and vocal expression. There are echo effects on many of the interior monologues and telepathic passages, dramatic amplifications and fades, 1950s-style "vibro" sounds, megaphone filter effects, and a heartbeat under the narrative as Jack slays Emily Matthews.

Ellison wisely lets the producers do most of the work for him; his delivery is understated, less conversational, more antiseptic -- as befits the material. You can just hear the creepy lilt in "and he smiled," the gentlest sniff of distaste in "how hideous" (the thought that he had eaten Kate Eddowes's kidney), a slight pause of nausea in "that filth, she had actually kissed him," and the drop to a whisper on the final word of "He was not evil, he was pathetic."

The only obvious vocal pyrotechnics are his fine inflections: Hernon's avuncular grandfather-who-is-not-old, the haggish gardenia Van Cleef, Rose the rose as a New England housewife, Cashio the phlox as a grizzled gentleman, Nosy Verlag the wild celandine as a snippy queen, and the Cockney of Jack's letter to the authorities, a more gentle version from his mouth in the flashback to Spitalfields, and the heavy, cooing street whore accents of Emily Matthews.

This is about as good as it gets.

(Originally, this was a double LP with two sides of Robert Bloch reading two of his spooky Ripper stories in a cheerful, grandfatherly voice. They also have mostly unintrusive musical backing, although a goofy organ opens "A Toy for Juliette," and playing "Rockabye baby" beneath the climax seems to me hamfisted and in questionable taste. Perhaps significantly, no one is credited. The Ellison story is apparently available alone on cassette from the Harlan Ellison Recording Collection.)

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ROBERT BLOCH (1917 – 1994) An American writer, primarily of Crime, Horror and Science Fiction. Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and more than a score of novels in several genres. His best know story is Psycho, upon which the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name was based. Bloch was a student of H.P. LOVECRAFT, who acted as his literary mentor. Early Bloch stories sold to pulp magazines like Weird Tales. He was also a prolific screenwriter. Bloch was a recipient of the Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, and World Fantasy Awards.
Robert Bloch was involved in television, film and radio. The latter saw his stories adapted as radiod drama. In fact Bloch co-created and wrote scripts for a 1945 syndicated radio program entitled Stay Tuned for Terror. Many of the 15 minute programs were adaptations of his own pulp stories. Unfortunately, none of the thirty nine episodes of this 1945 series are extant.

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