'The Devil's University'!

 

A relatively short lived 'shudder pulp', Mystery Tales put out nine issues to an irregular schedule between 1938 and 1940.  Published by Red Circle - that put out a wide range of pulps aimed at the lower end of the market, including Star Detective (to which Mystery Tales was intended as a companion), Uncanny Tales and Marvel Stories - it was clearly designed as a rival to the likes of Horror Stories and Terror Tales.  Like those publications, it employed lurid covers and equally lurid story titles which undoubtedly promised more than they could ever deliver.  I have to say, judging by the covers on 'Shudder pulps', there must have been quite a market for bondage sex fantasies in the thirties and forties - Mystery Tales alone, featured variously semi naked young women tied to torture devices or being menaced with branding irons, being whipped by midgets, etc, on every one of its covers.  Clearly, readers had some pretty wild and violent fantasies back then and, of course, no internet to cater to them, having to rely on these pulps instead.

I'll hazard a guess that this cover painting illustrates 'The Devil's University' by Donald Dale.  I have to say that if this illustration is an accurate representation of the sort of stuff on its curriculum, then these days it would be highly unlikely to get accreditation.  Indeed, if anything like that had been offered at any of the academic institutions I attended, then there would have been student protests and sit ins.  (Although I strongly suspect that the Devil's University would have resolved these by pouring boiling oil on the protesters).  The other title cited on the cover, 'Daughters of Lusting Torment' by Russell Gray, also sounds like the sort of thing that wouldn't be approved of nowadays, clearly implying a link between sex and violence. (as Hammer films were told by the Chairman of the BBFC in the late sixties, 'you can have the sex and you can have the violence, but not together').  Mystery Tales entered the 'shudder pulp' game relatively late in the day, just as sales for this sort of magazine started to tail off significantly in the forties.- perhaps the increasing real life horrors being reported in the news as World War Two got underway quelled the public appetite for fantasy horrors. While they lasted, though, the 'shudder pulps' produced some highly memorable cover art, (of which I'm very fond), if nothing else.