Orrin Grey

Painted Monsters and Other Strange Beasts: Stories
By Orrin Grey
Introduction by John Langan
Word Horde
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

A strange figure looming in the darkness across the street. Decadent revelers inside a decrepit hotel. A dead author obsessed with modern culture's obsession with Jack the Ripper, his wrists slashed in a grisly suicide. The grotesque mingle with the banal in Orrin Grey's Painted Monsters and Other Strange Beasts: Stories. The volume brings together short stories show more previously published in other anthologies. Reading Grey's personal notes after each story provided a peek into his creative process and inspirations.

Grey is a master of the horror short story, setting the scene with just the right amount of menace. If noir is about ordinary folks getting caught up in bad decisions, horror is about ordinary folks encountering something wrong. The wrongness can take many forms: supernatural, monstrous, or human. Something in the established order of things has gone awry. What makes reading Painted Monsters so enjoyable is Grey's gift for imbuing an otherwise normal atmosphere with an amorphous dread. Things seem to occur just out of frame. A character catches a strange figure in the corner of his eye. "The White Prince" is a fractured fairytale, full of slime and lust. "Remains," told through a Cockney narrator, tells the story of Victorian grave robbers working for a university medical researcher. Other stories include Ripperologists - obsessive researchers dedicated to the mythology of Jack the Ripper - and a libertine wastrel throwing his last big theme party before retirement.

My only real quibble was Grey's over-reliance on dream sequences. It seemed like the phrase, "And then I had a dream ..." occurred in every story. For all the innovation and grisly subject matter, these dream sequences made the short stories feel formulaic. It would have been nice to shake up the format a little. Since they occurred with such regularity, it ruined the unpredictable nature inherent within the horror genre. I don't want to know what happens next. At a certain point, the dream sequences were telegraphing. But this shouldn't push you away from Painted Monsters. Grey has the power and the talent to harness that primordial urge, that primitive desire to be shocked and horrified. He plumbs the depths of human depravity. It is easy to become jaded reading horror. Grey provides more than cheap thrills and jump scares. His stories reach for something more, a dark nightmarish gore we try to hide from the world. Orrin Grey has potential for really great work. He taps the vein that fed the work of Clive Barker and Jim Thompson.

Out of 10/8.5, higher for horror junkies.

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I hesitate to call this Grey's finest collection, as some others have. What I would call this recent, themed, anthology containing some reprints and some original work collectively forming Grey's Hollow Earth Cycle is his most thoughtful collection. While I personally enjoy some of his other stories and collections more, they are at most loosely themed collections of his work which contain the possibility of some unintended over-arching themes an narratives. Notes from the Underground is, as show more far as I know, his first 'cycle' style collection.
Do not be thrown off by the Hollow Earth moniker. As Grey himself tells us, this is not the hollow earth of Burroughs or Verne, Halley, Hutton, or Symmes. This is a much darker, weirder, and more Lovecraftian take on the genre. Those expecting monsters from the skeletal master of monsters will still receive some shadowed or shining examples, but those will take a secondary role to the Dreamland like horror of slippery, transitional spaces and lost memories.
In a way, though dark, I would shy away from categorizing these as horror. While unexplained, and certainly disturbing to our human notions, the ultimate fate of many characters is something the seek, long for, and dream of. While not happy in their endings, one might call them fulfilled. Or as Barker once (sort of) said, when we dream, we dream of being monsters. show less

Orrin is another of the great writers delivering excellent work from the heart of the Great Plains. Skeletons, presumably, don't mind the less than ideal climate in these parts. "Black Hill" is even set in these often bleak, flat plains, and has some echoes of Bierce's "The Damned Thing". I would also place him alongside Kenneth Hite in terms of how broadly and deeply knowledgable he is on a wide array of subjects, so whether its this collection or another, if you come across what appears to show more be an allusion or obscure reference, its certainly not accidental. "Count Brass" is a good example, with the title being a callout to one of the still living greats of romanticism influenced epic fantasy, and plenty of references throughout to be appreciated by jazz/blues fans. I believe my exact words about him when I had the opportunity to share his work with Patton Oswalt were, 'He's one of the most erudite people working in horror that I've had the pleasure to talk to.' Oh yeah, and he loves his monsters. "A Night for Mothing" and "Goblins" are some great examples in this collection of his unique, sometimes sympathetic, takes on 'monsters'.
I love a good deal with the devil story, and you will definitely find those here, though the devils in question may be varying degrees of literal. This is one the first of Orrin's collections, and you're going to get a pretty wide range here. Whether its the titular fragment, "Never Bet the Devil", or the near novella length mashup of Mike Mignola comics, universal studios horror, and jewish folklore, "The Mysterious Flame" the pacing in tone and length are not what one might expect but rather the ideal rollercoaster of ups and downs to keep the reader moving along without ever knowing what to expect.
As I haven't yet mentioned it, those looking for evidence of broader representation in modern horror will not want for it here. 'Protagonists' are not the authorial clones of the Lovecraft era. Ethnicity, religious belief, gender, and sexual orientation range widely, and are communicated deftly in a way that informs and enriches the work without making itself a dominant theme. The Barker influenced "Devil in the Box" gives us one such protagonist while reminding us of all those creepy jack in the boxes that those in their 40s-60s might remember from childhood. And "The Barghest", well, you decide what the narrator is.
"Nature vs. Nurture" gives us an interesting, and in some ways sympathetic, take on ghouls. I would love to see juxtaposed with some of McNaughton's ghoul stories in a themed collection someday. The atmosphere, as well as the different (though both masterful) ways in which action is depicted would make good side by side.
"The Seventh Picture" lets Orrin play in the world of what I suspect is his greatest love, cinema. I say cinema rather than a particular genre or era of film for two reasons. One, the love and attention paid to the process of film making itself is evident. Two, this brings together cinematic & literary influences as wide ranging as the gothic and found footage films.
"The Reading Room" is an interesting inversion of the relationship between books and the supernatural. It also should hold some appeal for all of us...after all, who loves to read and *doesn't* dream of having an entire floor of their house as dedicated library/reading space? As someone who loves to read, this has the same nightmare feel for someone like me as "Time Enough At Last" from The Twilight Zone.
"Nearly Human" gives us Wuthering Heights (and really, if you haven't, make time to read such a classic ghost story) meets Matheson's "Hell House" (like Orrin, its also one of my favorite haunted house stories). If you love spooky old houses, secret passages, and the forgotten dead, you'll feel right at home here.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the amazing artwork of M.S. Corley that accompanies each story, at least in the Strix Publishing edition (I'm assuming the original Worde Horde edition as well). Creepy with an edge of humor at times, just like Orrin's writing. show less

Painted monsters is Orrin Grey's second, though by no means sophomoric, short story collection from Word Horde. Monsters are one of Orrin's favorite things, and that sense of wonder and fun comes through in the writing here, making this a great entry point if you aren't familiar with his writing. As is pretty typical of these collections, there are Author's notes accompanying each of the thirteen pieces here, providing context, interesting anecdotes, and/or information on where they have show more previously appeared.
I will admit, the first story is a bit of a bumpy start with the written dialogue preserving the protagonists' rather heavy accent. 'The Worm That Gnaws' originally appeared in audio format on Pseudopod, and regardless of how one feels about that podcast overall I'd suggest giving it a listen. I think the format works better for this story in particular.
The next two stories give us different, original, takes on vampires. I don't know whether the title of 'The White Prince' is a nod to 'The Lair of the White Worm' or not, but I am now sure I never want to know about the vampiric origins of the Hypnotoad. And while Orrin says for him the keynote in 'Night's Foul Bird' is Murnau's Devil, for me the titular Robert Blair quote perfectly encapsulates the outsized dread and menace he builds in this relatively brief story. Which incidentally unites my love of silent horror films and my partner's love of birding (though I doubt they would approve of the fate of some of these birds). As a comedic exercise on a second reading, picture Harvey Birdman in the role of Mr. Birdman.
'The Murders on Morgue Street,' as you might guess, are related to 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.' Which, if memory serves is third or fourth Poe story I ever read, and like all of them left some pretty vivid visual impressions on me. We get a worthy interpretation of it through a series of other inspirational hoops Orrin outlines for the reader. One of which, another personal childhood touchstone for me, are the orange Crestwoood House Monster books. Definitely worth a nostalgia perusal should you come across them.
Like the Giallo inspired 'The Red Church,' 'Ripperology' is one of the few stories set in his home city and be even more timely now than when it was written given the surging popularity of true(-ish) crime. Don't balk at the fact that this is yet another bit of Ripper fiction, non-fiction, or speculation atop the mountain that already exists. This is as refreshing and original as 'From Hell' was in its own time or as my personal favourite, JMS' use of the ripper in Babylon 5.
Amidst the broken memories and hallucinatory imagery, 'Walpurgisnacht' is thickly packed with allusions to the literary canon, cinema, and folklore. You should not only read this, but really unpack as many of those as you can. This is certainly no Fantasia 'Night on Bald Mountain' (though that may have been my favourite sequence as a kid).
'Remains' picks up the tempo a bit as both a short piece and one with a bit of direct man-on-spirit action to go along with fun supernatural investigation, maybe with shades of Matheson's Hell House?
The next pair of stories are both some degree Lovecraft inspired. While Orrin may have thought he ended up closer to Hodgeson's 'House on the Borderlands' than Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories with 'The Labyrinth of Sleep,' I don't know that I agree, or that it matters. The dreamlands stories have actually always been among my favourite of Lovecraft's, and I think they've been sadly passed over as inspiration for a lot modern "Lovecraftian" authors. 'Borderlands' (and to an extent, 'Nightlands') has always felt like it was part of the same milieu to me, so 'Labyrinth' was a nice callback to that particular sub-genre. With 'Lovecrafting' we get a structurally unique tale, mixing film treatment and fragments of stories by a fictional writer. This also kicks off a bit of a mini-thematic arc of stories connected to the creation of films.
The narrator of 'Persistence of Vision' walks us through what the movie version of the ghost apocolypse might look like as he relates it to us. Besides the overt J-horror references here, the image of the mummified medium at the heart of the machine brings to mind Tetsuo the Iron Man and (again for me) the horror of the slaved living beings at the heart of JMS' Shadow-tech. And sticking with southeast asian cinema, those familiar with the crazier than fiction story of Pulgasari are going to recognize a number of elements in 'Strange Beast.'
This arc culminates in the final story in the collection, 'Painted Monsters', telling a tale packed so full of cinema references you'll still be finding easter eggs in November. Its the longest piece here, and clearly one that Orrin had a lot of fun with. Don't worry about not being well-versed enough to appreciate or even notice all the references, this story of a multi-generational family of film makers is still going to be a lot of fun. I'm not nearly as knowledgable about horror cinema as Orrin, and I certainly loved it. show less