Some writers dig a single peculiar hole and invite readers down. John Llewellyn Probert, the British horror author behind the gleefully macabre Dr. Valentine novellas and celebrated portmanteau collections like The Faculty of Terror, has spent years excavating a space lined with Hammer horror posters and the ghost of every 1970s anthology series. His latest, Made for the Dark, is the subject of this review.
Published by Black Shuck Books, a press vital to modern British horror short stories, it departs from his usual frame narrative. Instead, each tale arrives with a Serling-style or Dahl-esque introduction from the author himself, transforming the collection into a curated tour through a singular imagination. This structural gambit lands in a moment when independent presses are driving a quiet renaissance for the weird fiction collection.
Probert’s writing has always felt like a room where the furniture has been subtly rearranged: welcoming and yet deeply unsettling. The review ahead considers whether the stories inside, from a Nazi torture chamber filled with Lovecraftian art to a tender Ramsey Campbell tribute, maintain the sharpness that has made Probert such a distinctive voice in modern British horror.
Probert’s voice operates like a genial host leading you through a darkened gallery, each story a new exhibit where the strange and the terrifying are presented with a wink that never quite conceals the sharp teeth behind it.
Made for the Dark by John Llewellyn Probert Review: A Guided Tour Through Horror’s Twilight Zone
I am not closeted in my opinions of John Llewellyn Probert. He’s mad, he’s brilliant, and his brain is one I relish. But I knew his fiction first! Indeed, his is an oeuvre I can more and more blame for my taste in horror, as Probert seems to cater to it in ways I didn’t even know I wanted.
Therefore, a part of me always shudders when he brings out a new piece of writing. I will undoubtedly love it… but what if I don’t? What if the impresario of the idiosyncratic, the man who helped engender my love of horror fiction, has lost his edge? Thankfully, that day is yet to come. ‘Made for the Dark’ continues his streak of high-hitting collections.
It’s worth realising that things are slightly different here than in his previous collections though; rather than an overarching story, a la the portmanteau style, Probert instead provides introductions to each tale as might be given by Rod Serling or Roald Dahl. This is a curated guide around Probert’s mind and his lifelong desire to host his own version of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Or NIGHT GALLERY. Or BEASTS. Or TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. You get the gist.
As such, this will appeal most to anyone yet to escape their 70s childhood or who takes to the peculiar like Jaws did to biting uncomprehending swimmers.
From ‘Made for the Dark’ then, these were my favourites:
The first is ‘Summer Holiday’. Nearly anyone aware of Probert’s fiction will be duly aware of the aforementioned Dr. Valentine novellas. ‘Summer Holiday’ provides Valentine’s only short story outing and is as deliciously niche and eccentric and gleeful as those novellas it has spun off from. Of the stories collected here, it’s the one where Probert’s own voice arguably shines through most, delivering a series of cinematic murders all linked by one of 60s/70s British horror’s most infamous landmarks and a familial vendetta.
Although you don’t need to know these films of course (and some might argue that in the case of DIE, MONSTER, DIE! or THE MUTATIONS you’re best off not doing, even if I would disagree), some foreknowledge does add that extra injection of fun. But if not, never fear: instead, you’ll find yourself shellshocked, smiling, and sent away with a shopping list of Blu Rays to locate. The story itself stands on its own merits for how it traverses wit, bizarre forms of derring-do, cynicism, and a discontent for anything which can’t be killed extravagantly.
‘The Death House’ is next and confirms my theory that Probert has, on the whole, three very distinct kind of stories. First we have the gleefully (but never implausibly) ridiculous; that’s where you find his Dr. Valentine novellas. Second, the invasively sinister; this is where you find his darkest ideas, often with some founding in trauma or medical malpractice, depressing and horrifying you equally. Third then are his dartboard stories, where he links together five or six random strands that have no right to coalesce, and does it as strangely and as cruelly as possible – laughing all the way.
This final category is where you find ‘The Death House’, summarised in the introduction as “a Nazi torture chamber filled with paintings of Lovecraftian monsters”. Somehow, that description (despite its luridness) undersells it. Because this also feels like a long-lost Dennis Wheatley occult thriller, and a strange fable which takes pleasure in going to dark places. It takes all the perfidiousness you expect from any premise involving the Third Reich and torture chambers and a strange MI5-style mission and adds a dreamlike element where half the horror is how much you find yourself enjoying it. Were it not for the presence of the glorious Dr. Valentine in this collection, this would be my overall favourite.
Taking a turn towards the nasty and invective is ‘It Begins at Home’, a disturbing look at the realities of journalism and how even suffering has a quotient. Anyone who has read Probert’s story ‘Health Ensurance’ in the Guy Adams-edited ‘The Thirteenth Floor’ anthology may sense this is a brand of cynicism he has honed. This specific instance is told through the tale of a photographer whose family are struggling to make ends meet and whose Alzheimer’s-enduring father will soon be staying with him. The sorrow is palpable here and if you like your stories domestic and dour this is one for you.
At the nebulous end of the spectrum is ‘The Life Inspector’. Even before you get to the author notes you can tell this premise has clawed its way out of the Black Lagoon of someone’s nightmares: a down-on-his-luck man is visited by a man from the “Department of Life Inspection”, the outcome of which will have dramatic consequences.
The twist builds to you’ll either think is tacky or surprising, there’s a lot of overlap between the two whichever way you lean, and the story’s internal frustration simmers away powerfully, whatever your thoughts. For all there isn’t exactly the violent final punch delivered in the ending, the angst is nonetheless vicious. Because this is a more downplayed outing here, it’s also one where the dialogue is at its most attuned, making your head do somersaults in the same way a Ramsey Campbell story might.
From the title, ‘Girlfriend School’ may lead you to expect sleaze. You’d be wrong. This is about Alice, one of the collection’s better realised main characters, whose date with Brian (a reviewer whose critiques go to the nth degree, not unlike a Ginger Nuts of Horror reviewer on far too much cocaine) takes a creepy and bizarre turn. The narrative is one of two halves – the first unnerving dialogue, the second a weird ghoulish atmosphere.
Although the latter half does have a distinct echo of the author’s acknowledged favourite director, Jesús Franco (in that you sense you should only read it during those liminal twilight hours where nothing is fully coherent and even just vague musings turn into perverted thought experiments), this is one of those stories that takes a routine formula and adds morbid layer after morbid layer. The concluding twist is not an unpredictable one, but from the setting (a deserted school) to its Sadean images it possesses a kind of sophisticated seediness that feels almost delirious.
Next up is ‘The Girl with No Face’ and it provides classic Probert melodrama. Occasionally this is to its detriment since it adds a sense of predictability, as the story could be considered an adjunct to 1952’s Hammer film STOLEN FACE; but for the majority it means you get overwhelmingly delicious prose and a Siamese twin of noir and horror tropes, from mad science to female robbers with guns, all within a mansion in the middle of nowhere where a variant on a witness protection scheme is about to unfold.
If you aren’t sold at this point, you’re missing the point of the entire collection really. The sole thing left out is a butler who moves as silently as the grave.
‘The Man Who Loved Grief’ has a similar tone to ‘The Girl with No Face’, the landscape being one begging to be underscored with the words “On a dark and stormy night”. Probert’s more poetic – and yet more grounded – predilections bubble to the fore here. Is it a romance? Is it a story of weird fetishisation?
Frankly, it’s both and none and altogether bleaker. It hasn’t the customary, savage mirth of most of the fiction here, so it does lose its pace nearer the end, yet the build-up – done as a two hander between a man who, surprise surprise, loves grief, and a woman whose fate is to absorb said emotion – is both rich and lamentable. The emotions it evokes are very cutting, though it’s should be noted they’re sadder than they are horrific.
Penultimately, we have ‘Out of Fashion’, another medical horror story – this time, where a surgery to change women’s figures in the name of vanity is rampant, and as such corsets have started doing bizarre things – though one which carries itself off with an almost Krimi-style spin. Again, none of this is surprising if you know the author or his adoration of the works of Edgar Wallace, Cornell Woolrich, etc., although the final few pages may take you by surprise given their scope.
The late 1800s atmosphere and the body horror elements lend the proceedings the air of Hammer horror which has been assaulted by the direction of Frank Henenlotter. Certainly if you like your main characters to be boffins with more letters after their name than in them you’ll find much to enjoy here. Alternatively, if you like your climaxes disgusting then fetch your sick bags and in you dive!
The last one truly to stand out was the final story, ‘Blood and Dust’, which Probert describes in the introduction as “a tale of monsters and high adventure set in the Wild West in the 1800s”, which isn’t far wrong, even if I might argue that at points it’s better summed up as a Professor Challenger story gone on holiday in the Sword and Sorcery oeuvre of Karl Edward Wagner. It hops, skips, jumps, and threatens to twirl between various landscapes where even the invisible monsters are somehow as vivid as an acid trip.
Parts disturb, others soar with action, and the characteristic charm (especially in the best main character never played by Clint Eastwood, John Summerskill) is there; were this actually a TWILIGHT ZONE episode you can imagine it being the segment deigned worthy of inclusion in the eventual feature film (although with far fewer on-set deaths than the infamous John Landis segment of the 1983 film and a much better story). Perhaps not in the spirit of the rest of the collection, nor the highest note here, but a high-octane bookend to this outing, nevertheless.
‘Author? Author!’ is also worth a mention. You’ll know whether this scares you before you’ve even finished the “Serling” intro to the story, but that’s not the point. It stands as a beautiful tribute to Ramsey Campbell, man, author, legend, from the bookshop setting to meta references to the style it’s written in. But to say any more than that would ruin it – so you shall simply have to read it and discover how!
The élan which is present in Probert’s portmanteau collections doesn’t manifest in quite the same way in ‘Made for the Dark’. It isn’t that his choice of tales here is any less considered, yet because there isn’t something so concrete enmeshing them, one or two tales here feel superfluous – although, I suppose that puts it on a par with a lot of anthology series, where there’s always a budget-saving episode slipped in, or one where the script was written at short notice!
Ultimately though, you can’t deny that you get a remarkable breadth of tones and energies and characters here, despite the obvious obsessions blinking at you in neon. Something gloriously infectious lurks at the heart of Probert’s thinking. The voices these stories speak through make you want to read on, hence ‘Made for the Dark’ will undoubtedly provide a lovely addition to anyone’s TBR pile.
Made for the Dark by John Llewellyn Probert
Back in the 1970s, when most little boys were busy dreaming of being an astronaut or a train driver, John Llewellyn Probert wanted to be Rod Serling or Roald Dahl, introducing a different tale of terror on television every week. Now, Mr Probert gets to achieve that lifelong ambition in prose form, as he acts as host to both previously uncollected tales and brand new horrors. He sincerely hopes his dreams won’t give you nightmares. Well, not so many that you’ll stop coming back for more…
