Robert Bloch Biography and List of Works

American crime and suspense writer who acquired fame through his frightening characterizations of psychopaths. The best known is Norman Bates from PSYCHO, a novel whose impact was strengthened by Alfred Hitchcock's stunning film version in 1960. Bloch's writing spans seven decades of the 20th century, and his fiction reflects most of the major trends in the horror fiction genre that occurred during this interval.

"I discovered, much to my surprise - and particularly if I was writing in the first person - that I could become a psychopath quite easily. I could think like one and I could devise a manner of unfortunate occurrences. So I probably gave up a flourishing, lucrative career as a mass murderer."
(from Faces of Fear by Douglas E. Winter, 1990)

Robert Bloch was born in Chicago, Illiois. He was educated at public schools in Maywood, Illinois, and in Milwaukee. Bloch started writing while still in high school, and sold his first story, 'The Feast in the Abbey', to Weird Tales magazine at the age of 17. Many of his early stories show the influences of Edgar Allan Poe, and especially H.P. Lovecraft, with whom Bloch corresponded with from 1932. Most of the fiction Bloch published between 1935 and 1938 falls within or on the periphery of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In spite of the writer's youth, they reveal a mature understanding of human nature, and are usually character- rather than phenomena-driven, depicting petty opportunists with distinctly unpleasant personalities who get their well-deserved comeuppance in gruesome ways. Bloch returns to the Cthulhu Mythos periodically, even as late as 1979, when STRANGE EONS appeared.

After Lovecraft's death in 1937, Bloch broadened the scope of his fiction to include more conventional horror themes, including voodoo ('Mother of Serpent's), revenge ('The Mandarin's Canaries), demonic possession (Fiddler's Fee'), and black magic ('Return to the Sabbat'). In 1939 Bloch self-consciously modern and deliberately comic short story 'The Cloak' launched his reputation as the most capable writer since Ambroce Bierce, to utilise the comic possibilities inherent in the horrible. His humorous approach became an inseparable part of his fiction, as in the tales of Lefty Feep, a perennial loser, whose encounters with the supernatural are derived from slapstick comedy.

In the 1940s Bloch's fiction began to reflect his growing interest in psychopathic killers, who entered popular culture more widely after WW II. In such films as Hitchcock's Spellbound, psychiatric theories are used to explain the behaviour of the characters. 'Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper' (1943) is one of Bloch's most popular novels. "I'm not a butcher, I'm not a kid / Nor yet a foreign skipper, But I'm your own true loving friend, Yours truly - Jack the Ripper." In the story the narrator John Carmody, a psychiatrist living in Chicago, meets Sir Guy Hollis of the British Embassy. Hollis has a theory: the infamous Victorian serial killer did not grow old, and Hollis asks Carmody's help to capture the killer. In an alley Hollis discovers that his hunch was correct. "Never mind the 'John",' I whispered, raising the knife. 'Just call me... Jack.'

Bloch's novels from the 1950s and '60s helped to break down the barriers separating the horror and crime genres. In 1947 Bloch's first novel, THE SCARF, was published,it is narrated by a young man turned into a serial strangler by a childhood trauma. The story begins with the eerie lines: "Fetish? You name it. All I know is that I've always had to have it with me..."

"It may be that someday these three novels, The Scarf, The Deadbeat, and Psycho, will be anthologized as a kind of unified triptych, as were James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce - for in their own way, the novels that Robert Bloch wrote in the 1950s had every bit as much influence on the course of American fiction as did the Cain "heel-with-a-heart" novels of the 1930s."
(Stephen King in Dance Macabre, 1981)

Several years passed before the publication of his next books, but in 1954 Bloch published three novels. In 1959 he made his breakthrough with Psycho. During this period Bloch had already moved to Hollywood and worked on television and film projects. Bloch became a much-used screenwriter in the mystery, suspense, and horror genre. His first scripts were for the Macdonald Carey vehicle, "Lock-Up", but he soon wrote for "Thriller", "Star Trek", "Night Gallery," and from 1955 to 1961 "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".

From 1959 Bloch produced several novels, sripts for films, a number of teleplays and nearly thirty collections of stories. His low-budgeted films have been largely forgotten, but among them were such noteworthy efforts as The Night Walker (1964), directed by William Castle and starring Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck. In the fairly frightening shocker the widow of a executive, who was killed in an explosion, is haunted in her dreams not only by her former husband but a mysterious lover.

Bloch enlarged Psycho into a trilogy with PSYCHO II (1982), in which Norman Bates escapes from the mental asylum posing as a nun, and PSYCHO HOUSE (1990), in which the author suggested that it is the world outside the asylum that has become psychotic.-

"Violence has become not only a cop-out terms of being presented as self-explanatory - 'this is human nature, that's the way it is, folks' - but it is also a drug. When you dose yourself with it, you find that you need increasingly bigger fixes."
(from Faces of Fear)

During his career Bloch won several awards in the field of fantasy (World Fantasy Convention Award in 1975), horror, and science fiction (Hugo Award in 1959), as well as an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1960. In 1970-71 he was the president of the Mystery Writers of America. In 1990 Bloch received the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers of America, and the World Horror Convention Grandmaster award in 1991. Bloch was married twice, first to Marion Holcombe, with whom he had one daughter, and in 1964 he married Eleanor Alexander. Bloch died on September 23, 1994.

Psycho: The story depicts a seemingly normal small-town resident, Norman Bates, who runs a hotel,but has a dual life as a psychotic murder, that goes unsuspected by his neighbours and ordinary member of the community. When a series of vicious murders occur, they are attributed to the maniac mother of the young owner. However, the mother is dead... The story is based in part on the Ed Gein affair, in which police, on the trail of a missing woman, were led to a Wisconsin farmhouse, and found parts from the bodies of fifteen middle-aged women. - Film sequels of Psycho: 1983, Psycho II, dir. by Richard Franklin; Psycho III, 1986, dir. by Anthony Perkins; Bates Motel, TV 1987, dir. by Richard Rothstein; Psycho IV: The Beginning, 1990, dir. by Mick Garis, cable network film. NOTE: Janet Leigh's book Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller (1995) chronicles the making of the first film.

Radio Plays: Stay Tuned for Terror series (39 scripts), 1944-45. - Screenplays: The Couch (1962), The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1962), Strait-Jacket (1964), The Night Walker (1964), The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1967), Torture Garden (1967 - includes one story about the resurrection of Edgar Allan Poe), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Asylum (1972), The Amazing Captain Nemo 1979 (with others). - Television plays: The Cuckoo Clock, The Greatest Monster of Them All, A Change of Heart, The Landlady, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Gloating Place, A Bad Actor, The Big Kick (in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1955-61); The Cheaters, The Devil's Ticket, A Good Imagination, The Grim Reaper, The Weird Tailor, Waxworks, Till Death Do Us Part, Man of Mystery (in Thriller, 1960-61); scripts for Lock-Up, 1960; I Spy, 1964; Run for Your Life, 1965; Star Trek, 1966-67; Journey to the Unknown, 1968; Night Gallery, 1971; The Cat Creature, 1973; The Dead Don't Die, 1975; Beetles, 1987.

For further reading: Robert Bloch by Randall D. Larson (1986); The Complete Robert Bloch: An Illustrated, Comprehensive Bibliography by Randall D. Larson (1986); Faces of Fear by Douglas E. Winter (1990); Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Biography by Robert Bloch (1993); Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, ed. by David Pringle (1998).

SEA-KISSED, (1945)
THE OPENER OF THE WAY, (1945)
THE SCARF, (1947)
THE KIDNAPPER, (1954)
SPIDERWEB, (1954)
THE WILL TO KILL, (1954)
TERROR IN THE NIGHT AND OTHER STORIES, (1958)
SHOOTING STAR, (1958)
PSYCHO, (1959)
THE DEAD BEAT, (1960)
PLEASANT DREAMS, (1960)
FIREBUG, (1961)
BLOOD RUNS COLD, (1961)
MORE NIGHTMARES, (1962)
THE COUCH, (1962)
YOURS TRULY, JACK THE RIPPER, (1962)
Script THE CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI, (1962)
TERROR, (1962)
screenplay: THE COUCH, (1962)
THE EIGHTH STAGE OF FANDOM, (1962)
ATOMS AND EVIL, (1962)
BOGEY MEN, (1963)
screenplay: STRAIT-JACKET, (1964)
screenplay: NIGHT WALKER, (1964)
HORROR-7, (1965)
TALES IN A JUGULAR VEIN, (1965)
YOURS TRULY, JACK THE RIPPER / THE HOUSE OF THE HATCHET, (1965)
CHAMBER OF HORRORS, (1966)
screenplay: THE PSYCHOPATH, (1966)
screenplay: THE DEADLY BEES, (1967)
screenplay: TORTURE GARDEN, (1967)
THE LIVING DEMONS, (1967)
THE SKULL OF MARQUIS DE SADE AND OTHER STORIES, (1965)
THE STAR STALKER, (1968)
LADIES' DAY; AND THIS CROWDED EARTH, (1968)
THE TODD DOSSIER, (1969)
CHAMBER OF HORRORS, (1969)
DRAGONS AND NIGHTMARES, (1969)
BLOCH AND BRADBURY / FEVER DREAM AND OTHER FANTASIES, (1969)
screenplay: THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, (1970)
SNEAK PREVIEW, (1971)
FEAR TODAY-GONE TOMORROW, (1971)
IT'S ALL IN YOUR MIND, (1971)
NIGHT-WORLD, (1972)
screenplay: ASYLUM, (1972)
AMERICAN GOTHIC, (1974)
THE BEST OF ROBERT BLOCH, (1977)
COLD CHILLS, (1977)
THE BEST OF FREDRIC BROWN, (1977)
THE KING OF TERRORS, (1977)
THE LAUGHTER OF A GHOUL, (1977)
REUNION WITH TOMORROW, (1978)
THERE IS A SERPENT IN EDEN, (1979)
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF GRAVES, (1979)
STRANGE EONS, (1979)
SUCH STUFF AS SCREAMS ARE MADE OF, (1979)
screenplay: THE AMAZING CAPTAIN NEMO, (1979)
THE FIRST WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION, (1980)
MYSTERIES OF THE WORM, (1981)
PSYCHO II, (1982)
TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, (1983)
NIGHT OF THE RIPPER, (1984)
OUT OF MY HEAD, (1986)
UNHOLY TRINITY, (1986)
LOST IN TIME AND SPACE WITH LEFTY FEEP, (1987)
MIDNIGHT PLEASURES, (1987)
THE SELECTED STORIES OF ROBERT BLOCH, (1987)
SCREAMS, (1989)
LORI, (1989)
FEAR AND TREMBLING, (1989)
THE ROBERT BLOCH COMPANION, (1989)
PSYCHO HOUSE, (1990)
THE JEKYLL LEGACY, (1990)
YOURS TRULY, JACK THE RIPPER, (1991)
PSYCO-PATHS, (1991)
THE SKULL OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE, (1992)
ONCE AROUND THE BLOCH, (1993)
MONSTERS IN OUR MIDST, (1993)
THE EARLY FEARS, (1994)
ROBERT BLOCH: APPRECIATION OF THE MASTER, (1995)
THE DEVIL WITH YOU, (1999)