Weird menace is asubgenre ofhorror fiction anddetective fiction that was popular in thepulp magazines of the 1930s and early 1940s. The weird menace pulps, also known asshudder pulps, generally featured stories in which the hero was pitted againstsadistic villains, with graphic scenes oftorture and brutality.
In the early 1930s, detective pulps likeDetective-Dragnet,All Detective,Dime Detective, and the short-livedStrange Detective Stories, began to favor detective stories with weird, eerie, or menacing elements. Eventually, the two distinct genre variations branched into separate magazines; the detective magazines returned to stories predominantly featuring detection or action, while the eerie mysteries found their own home in the weird menace titles.[1] Some magazines, for instanceTen Detective Aces (the successor toDetective-Dragnet), continued to host both genre variations.
The first weird menace title wasDime Mystery Magazine, which started out as a straight crime fiction magazine but began to develop the new genre in 1933 under the influence ofGrand Guignol theater.[2]Popular Publications dominated the genre withDime Mystery,Terror Tales, andHorror Stories. After Popular issuedThrilling Mysteries, Standard Magazines, publisher of the "Thrilling" line of pulps, claimed trademark infringement. Popular withdrewThrilling Mysteries after one issue, and Standard issued their own weird menace pulp,Thrilling Mystery. In the 1930s, theRed Circle pulps, withMystery Tales, expanded the genre to include increasingly graphic descriptions of torture.
This provoked a public outcry against such publications. For example,The American Mercury published a hostile account of the terror magazines in 1938, "This month, as every month, the 1,508,000 copies of terror magazines, known to the trade as the shudder group, will be sold throughout the nation... They will contain enough illustrated sex perversion to giveKrafft-Ebing the unholy jitters."[3]
A censorship backlash brought about the demise of the genre in the early 1940s.[citation needed]
