1. The Dark Masters Trilogy

 By Stephen Volk

The Darkmasters Trilogy was featured as one of the “100 Novels about Cinema” in the August 2018 issue of Sight and Sound.                                                                                                                                     It sounded VERY promising.  Stellar reviews.  Author Stephen Volk wrote the screenplays for Ken Russell’s Gothic, which I saw on VHS back in the day, and the excellent Ghostwatch - the first film I streamed on Shudder.                                                                                                             On March 1, 2020, when something like a global pandemic seemed like a distant and inconceivable threat, I placed an order on Amazon for a hardbound copy to be delivered to my workplace.  The ETA was March 20-April 5 since it was coming from the UK.  In the coming days, I remember my company encouraging people to WFH.  Most of my team and myself continued to work at the office because of our hardware dependencies.                                                                                                               On March 12, while at work, I cancelled our family ski trip to Lake Placid with my in-laws because of a looming travel advisory.  By Friday, March 13th, school closures were announced for the following Monday and everyone in my company was ordered to WFH.  

My book arrived at work on Friday the 13th, the day my company announced that the office would close on Monday.  I didn't even have a chance to pick up my book at facilities because everyone was so busy getting organized to WFH.  I also naively assumed I'd be back at work in a few weeks, or at worst, a few months.  

It wasn’t until June when I lost remote access to my linux workstation.  I had to get approval to enter the office building the following day in order to manually boot my machine back up.  It was a beautiful warm day, so I rode my bike, taking my usual route to work.  I wasn’t even sure whether I’d be able to retrieve my book as it was likely locked inside the facilities office.  By a stroke of luck, Alain, the friendly facilities coordinator, happened to be there too.  I spotted him just as I was leaving and asked if he could open the facilities office.  He obliged.  Yay!

When I got home, I opened the package and to my dismay, saw water damage on the spine.  Fortunately, the cover absorbed most of the moisture and bore an ugly stain on the top part of where the spine would be.  But there was still slight water damage on the book spine itself.  I wrote to the vendor and after receiving the photo they requested, they responded saying that I could return the book.  However, there weren’t any more copies of The Darkmasters Trilogy online anymore for the same price – the ones available now cost twice as much (I paid around $45 for it).   So I decided to keep it.  It’s too bad, since it’s a really nice hardcover.  I imagine it would have some value in the future. 

Knowing that the book was slightly damaged put me off from reading it right away.  I think it was November when I finally started reading it.

Here is a nicely written summary:

The Dark Masters Trilogy brings together three novellas, Whitstable, Leytonstone and Netherwood as a trio of dark tales of fiction constructed around a quartet of celebrated horror and occult figures from the 20th Century’s cultural past. Hammer legend Peter Cushing takes the lead role in Whitstable, a juvenile Alfred Hitchcock in Leytonstone and we get a twofer in Netherwood with both horror novelist Dennis Wheatley and Occultist Aleister Crowley squaring up to one another.

Whitstable was really well-written, but ultimately, a bit of a letdown.  The portrayal of Peter Cushing seemed authentic in terms of biographical details and believable in establishing empathy for Cushing in his grief over the loss of his wife.  The misty setting of his seaside home was nicely done too.   BUT, the narrative ploy of the vulnerable child being abused by his working class stepdad, who ends up being saved by the protagonist is already overused in American television.   

As soon as I saw how this device was going to play out, the narrative lost much of the magic that was carefully established at the beginning.  But Volk is a skilled writer, and he managed to make it work, but it was still a letdown. The realistic and empathetic portrayal of Peter Cushing was the saving grace.

Leytonstone was the weakest story of the three -- not surprising for the middle story.  Simply put, it was boring and expositive, and like Whitstable, I didn’t buy the premise.  I can’t explain it, but I was unconvinced about Volk's portrayal of young Alfred Hitchcock.  Volk took more liberties with Hitchcock than he did with Cushing.  Perhaps this was because he was writing about Hitchcock’s unhappy boyhood, which was probably not so well known.  I even googled whether Hitchcock spent a night in jail, as was depicted in the story – it turns out Hitchcock only spent 5 minutes locked in a jail cell!  

Volk’s reimagining was that Hitchcock’s night in jail traumatized his young psyche and turned him into a conniving sociopath.  This did not interest me.  What would’ve interested me was having young Hitchcock witness a crime, and him knowing the person who committed it as a charismatic but deeply flawed person who ends up getting away with murder.  This eye-opening life lesson would have made given fodder to the kind of crime films Hitchcock would end up making.

On top of the disappointment was perplexity as there didn’t seem to be any connection (real or fictional) between Hitchcock and the other Darkmasters figures.  There was an obvious link between Cushing and Wheatley via Hammer Studios but with Hitchcock, he was the outlier.

I was beginning to wonder why The Darkmasters Trilogy was so highly praised when I got to the final novella, Netherwood.   Praise Satan, the best was saved for last!  Aleister Crowley was probably the figure I knew about the least compared to Cushing and Hitchcock.  Being unacquainted with his life and work, I had certainly never heard of Dennis Wheatley either.  Olman had heard of him, as he knew Wheatley wrote some Hammer films, as well as his most famous novel, The Devil Rides Out, but Olman had never read any of his books.

Unlike the two previous stories, Netherwood was gripping and humourous.   The relationship and repartee between Wheatley and the elderly Crowley were well-executed and sharp.  The plot and how the unlikely pair go about defeating Crowley’s former apprentice turned evil nemesis with magick was also nicely done.  Most importantly, it had the dark, supernatural occult elements I was expecting from a book titled Darkmasters and from a story featuring Aleister Crowley.  It also had a delightfully devilish twist at the end that I didn’t see coming.  Everything fell together quite satisfyingly for Netherwood and this final story was what made The Darkmasters Trilogy worth keeping after all.

As for the pandemic, I'm still WFH after more than a year.  I think the last time I went to work was last April or May, when I had to ask a coworker to help me bring home my Mac Pro workstation in his car because I got tired of losing remote access to it.  But there is no way in hell I'd be able to also fit my linux box in the tiny corner of my bedroom, so it stayed at work.  Another coworker had to drop off a Black Magic Design box for me, so I now have a mini menagerie of hardware in the bedroom.