Bloch Booking: A Review of Bill Gillard's "Psycho Century"

This year, I’ve been doing some research on horror author Robert Bloch for an upcoming project, so I was excited to see a recent announcement for UP Mississippi’s new book Psycho Century, which they’re promoting as “the first full literary biography of the writer who shaped modern horror from Lovecraft to King.” 

The author, Bill Gillard, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh whose previous books include The Spark of Modernism: Twenty Speculative Stories and Writings That Defined and Era, 1886-1939 (McFarland 2023) and a collection of lost fiction by Evelyn Underhill (whose 1914 book Mysticism has always seemed indispensable to me). And now he’s written a book about an iconic horror writer, promising to situate Bloch’s work “within the larger landscape of twentieth-century horror while tracing how he continually reinvented his stories for new audiences in television and film.” Bill Gillard is a man after my own heart and I came to Psycho Century with a strong predisposition to love it.

What I was expecting from the book was a deep dive into the connections between Bloch’s life and his stories. I went looking for something similar in Bloch’s 1993 autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, and in the 1995 tribute volume Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master (both sadly out of print). I learned that neither Bloch nor his peers were inclined to get too analytical—even though Bloch spent most of his career psychoanalyzing fictional and nonfictional sociopaths. Bloch freely (sometimes gleefully) admitted that there was a part of him that was equally sinister, but by all accounts the man behind the mask was a mensch in real life. Much more interesting, then, to focus on his stories rather than his biography, right? 

Except, for me, a writer’s life and art are always intertwined in endlessly fascinating ways. 

Happily, Gillard’s perspective on Robert Bloch is informed by a treasure trove of relatively new (catalogued in 2024) primary research materials: the Robert Bloch Papers at the University of Wisconsin. According to Gillard, the donated materials filled nearly 400 boxes! The finding aid alone runs over 600 pages. Bloch was a shockingly prolific writer and he apparently saved everything: manuscript drafts, journals, letters, research materials, clippings, memorabilia…  With such a wealth of materials available, I can’t help thinking that a literary biographer should be able to get into Robert Bloch’s head as deeply as he got into the heads of his characters.

I realize that what I’m suggesting is a little mad. I attempted something similar with a biography of filmmaker Wes Craven, and I got lost down a rabbit hole for nearly four years. And I did not have access to ANY materials preserved by the Craven Estate. I was just gathering rare documents on my own, and I managed to produce a book that runs nearly five hundred pages. And, to me, it feels like just a beginning.

The question that haunts a book like this is “Who’s the audience and what are they looking for?” Speaking for myself, I love the fact that Bill Gillard aims to reassess—and reassert—Bloch’s significance. Psycho Century effectively contextualizes Bloch’s work within the frameworks of American horror fiction (from Lovecraft to King) and film (from silent cinema to slasher movies). In relatively broad strokes, he explains how Bloch’s voice and style evolved from cosmic horror to psychological / sociological horror, and how his evolution reflects the times in which he was writing. The big question is to what degree Bloch was leading and inspiring certain changes that occurred over the course of the 20th century. If he was as influential as Gillard says, then we need many more books like this, to preserve and extend Bloch’s legacy.

Decades ago, Stephen King championed his literary predecessor in Danse Macabre, praising Bloch’s contributions to the TV series Thriller, as well as his “unholy trinity” of early-60s suspense novels (The Scarf, Psycho, and The Dead Beat). King also drew attention to some of Bloch's later novels, including Firebug and Strange Eons, and cited Bloch’s short story “Sweets to the Sweet” as one of the five biggest influences on him as a writer. That particular short story was adapted to the screen in the 1971 film The House That Dripped Blood, one of several horror anthology films scripted by Bloch for Amicus Productions—and another big influence on King (specifically,  King's film Creepshow). 

Having a significant influence on King should guarantee Bloch his place in horror history… so how is it that his work has been so neglected in recent years? Bloch died in 1994, and by the end of the millennium much of his work—not to mention the smattering of books about him—was out of print. The obvious exception, of course, was Psycho. 

As a result, in the 21st century, readers mostly know Robert Bloch as the author of Psycho rather than as a seminal literary figure who authored more than 30 novels and 100 short stories over the course of five decades and remained very popular with audiences for at least three of those decades. In 2024, Valancourt Books made a herculean effort to revitalize awareness of the author by republishing six (so far) of his most highly-regarded works: The Opener of the Way, The Scarf, Pleasant Dreams, Strange Eons, The Night of the Ripper, and Midnight Pleasures. The publisher has vowed to keep releasing additional titles as long as readers are buying them.

A book like Psycho Century can only help the cause. For me, the most compelling sections of the book focus on Bloch’s later novels—Night-World, Strange Eons, The Night of the Ripper, Psycho 2 and Psycho House. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t read the Psycho sequels, but Gillard’s summaries have convinced me that those books must have been a source of inspiration for filmmakers behind the ongoing Scream series as well as the recent Halloween reboots. (Much to his chagrin, Bloch was at one point credited with the rise of the slasher film—but he should perhaps be recognized instead as originator of the anti-slasher narrative.)

I wish Gillard spent more time with some of Bloch’s earlier and more obscure novels (The Will to Kill, The Kidnapper, The Dead Beat, Firebug, The Couch, Terror, The Star Stalker, Sneak Preview)… but, when dealing with a creator as prolific as Bloch, it’s almost impossible to be comprehensive. Gillard says right up front that Psycho Century does not aim at “completeness,” but focuses instead on a careful selection of stories that the author revised over the course of his career. This is a worthwhile (if occasionally frustrating) approach to the material at hand. It allows the author to show how Bloch’s voice and visions, sensibilities and psyche changed over the course of his life, by illustrating the changes he willfully made to his own creations. In chapters on Bloch’s Amicus collaborations, for example, Gillard compares strikingly different drafts of the stories “Waxworks” and “The Weird Tailor.”

At the outset of each chapter, Gillard lists “things to read and watch,” providing a starter kit for the uninitiated. There is a chapter on the short stories that foreshadowed Psycho, and a chapter on Bloch’s contributions to the original Star Trek series. (I had no idea.) The goal of Psycho Century is to draw readers and viewers to Bloch’s work itself, either for the first time or with new context that will help fans see it with new eyes. Although I think the book falls short of being a “full literary biography” of Robert Bloch, it is still a very welcome guide for any serious horror fan. 

I should add that Bill Gillard’s notes pointed me toward a Robert Bloch resource that I somehow managed to overlook—a 1986 monograph by Randall D. Larson, published as part of Starmont’s Readers Guide series. I was already well-aware of Starmont, which in the 1980s published critical works by some of the best (Douglas E. Winter, Michael R. Collings, S.T. Joshi, Darrell Schweitzer, Tony Magistrale, Tyson Blue, et al). Sadly, most of Starmont’s works are long out of print. Thank the Elder Gods for Internet Archive. I found Larson’s book there, and found it to be a very accessible—also, appropriately wry—overview Bloch’s literary universe. Larson doesn’t attempt to psychoanalyze the author but he successfully analyzes Bloch’s work. Which reminds me of something that one of Wes Craven’s family members once said to me: “The work is the true biography.”

Psycho Century: Robert Bloch, American Horror Master will be released by the University of Mississippi Press in October 2026. You can order it here:

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/P/Psycho-Century

Bonus: If you pre-order before July 22, you can get 50% off. Details here: 

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Collections/Summerween

In the meantime, Bill Gillard is blogging about every single Robert Bloch short story, in chronological order, on the official Robert Bloch website. As I said, he’s a man after my own (disembodied) heart...

Remembering Jerry Harrell (Doctor Madblood)

In the Fall of 2004, I was 25 years old and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I’d worked for about three years at a pair of TV production companies in the Hampton Roads area, and I’d just published my first book. Feeling secure, I bought a condo in Virginia Beach. Then I lost my job. Suddenly, I had a mortgage and no job prospects. If I wanted to keep working in television, I knew I had to move to New York or Los Angeles. But I wasn’t ready.

For a few months, I was flailing. I wasn’t so much looking for a job as I was looking for mentors. One of the people I sought out was Jerry Harrell, a.k.a. Dr. Madblood. Jerry first donned the wig and persona of the late-night TV horror host back in 1975, when he about 27 years old. By the time I met him, he had been doing his schtick for nearly 30 years. As a horror nerd, I found that incredibly inspiring, so I arranged a meeting at his office at ODU, where he worked as a media manager. We talked for over an hour.

I had recently met filmmaker George Romero, and I remember telling Jerry about that encounter. His eyes lit up, and he proceeded to tell me about meeting two of his heroes, Rod Serling and Forry Ackerman. We talked about the Madblood show, of course, which he described as a family affair. I remember him saying that the main reason he was still doing the show was because he couldn’t bear to disband such an amazing team. He also said the show fulfilled his mission in life: “to tell people that it’s okay to be weird.” 

At the end of our conversation, Jerry invited me to the taping of the next episode. A few days later, I met the cast and crew in a small studio at ODU. And I was in awe. I’d already had enough experience with TV production to know that it’s not all fun and games… but the taping of Dr. Madblood Presents was all fun and games. There was a lot of improvisation, a lot of laughter, and a lot of love. To me, it seemed like the ideal working environment. At the end of the night, Jerry’s cohorts Craig T. Adams and Debra Burrell invited me to return the following week. I said I didn’t want to impose, but I didn’t say no. 

Soon after, I attended the inaugural MonsterFest at Chesapeake Library, where Dr. Madblood was the guest of honor. Someone (maybe head librarian Jim Blanton?) reminded Jerry that I had recently published a book about horror movies, and he immediately suggested using my book in a segment he was recording that day at the convention. Fool that I am, I did not have a copy of my own book, so I didn’t get the free press. But I was tremendously grateful that he wanted to support me in that way. 

I kept going to the taping sessions for Dr. Madblood Presents, and Craig and Debra eventually put me to work... rolling Brain’s fish-tank in and out of shots. I believe I was even credited as “Brain-wrangler” on a few episodes. Those sessions helped me to escape—for a few hours, at least—my overwhelming sense of inertia in life. I didn’t know where I was headed or what I wanted to do, but for the time being I knew I was among friends. That made a big difference.

In the Spring of 2005, things turned around for me. I got a new production job—on a TV series about paranormal experiences, which was right up my alley. I also met my future wife. We took a field trip to scout the real “Madblood Manor” in downtown Portsmouth as a potential filming location for our paranormal series. I wanted to pay homage to my friends—and that’s how Madblood Manor appeared in Season 1, Episode 6 of the Discovery Channel series A Haunting.

When my stint on A Haunting ended, I was feeling confident again, so I immediately wrote a spec script for an original horror film. In the pre-credit sequence of my story, a character watches Dr. Madblood on late-night TV.  I ended that sequence with one of the doc’s famous pronouncements: “This one is going to be a real ker-schtinker!” Was I jinxing my own script? Nah. Coming from Dr. Madblood, that label would have been a badge of honor. 

In the Fall of 2006, my wife and I moved to Los Angeles, where we spent the next fifteen years. Every Halloween, I would watch the Madblood Halloween special online, and post comments in the WHRO website’s chat room. I was always grateful for the opportunity to spend that time with my old friends, even though I was on the other side of the country. In 2009, I returned to Virginia for a MonsterFest screening of my documentary film Nightmares in Red, White and Blue. This time, I was ready for my close-up with Dr. Madblood. Jerry couldn’t have been kinder. He treated me like a pro. More importantly, he treated me like a friend.

In the Fall of 2025, Jerry Harrell took his final bow in the (original?) Madblood wig and lab coat for a 50th anniversary Halloween special. That’s 50 years of telling people it’s okay to be weird! The message resonates more strongly today than ever—which is why Jerry will be dearly remembered and missed. I don’t think he would have wanted anyone to exaggerate the importance of his life or work, so I won’t exaggerate. Jerry Harrell was a beacon of light, for me and so many others. He provided countless laughs and inspiration and refuge and family. Those things will survive for many years to come. For that, we will be eternally grateful.

Goodnight, Doc. Thanks for turning us on.