Lovecraft on Film Appendum: Two Panthers.

For reasons outlined in my previous post, I‘m unable to show off any vintage Lovecraft paperbacks which include ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’ amongst their contents, so failing that, now seems as good a time as any to share these scans of two rather battered remnants of Panther’s early ‘70s UK horror range, which I recently added to my collection.

Both are blessed with hugely evocative wraparound cover illustrations which I think capture the feel of the contents pretty well, in its own idiosyncratic fashion. The artwork for ‘The Haunter of the Dark’ (1972 printing) is unmistakably tbears the seal of the great Ian Miller (who is still working to this day, and was producing Lovecraft-inspired canvasses as recently as 2014), but an artwork credit for ‘The Tomb’ (1969 printing) sadly eludes me.

“It’s not often you get a Lovecraft for 20p,” I recall the lady behind the counter in Michael’s Bookshop in Ramsgate remarking, but a glimpse at the eldritch sigils inscribed upon the interior pages, together with their general condition, certainly helped justify this uniquely affordable price-tag.

‘Haunter of the Dark’ meanwhile is in slightly better shape, but still has a badly cracked spine, leaving pages ready to fly to the four winds as soon as some poor soul actually tries to read it. Ah well. Nonetheless, I’ve tried my best to take some scans of the full, wraparound covers, which can be enjoyed or downloaded by clicking on the images below. Apologies for the slightly blurriness on the ‘Haunter..’ scan – it was difficult to get it lined up on the scanner without further damaging the binding.