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Buffalo News (25/Sep/1994) - Robert Bloch dies

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Robert Bloch dies

Robert Bloch, the prolific pulp fiction author whose novel "Psycho" became the classic Alfred Hitchcock horror film, has died. He was 76.

Bloch died at home Friday of cancer of the liver and esophagus, longtime friend Harlan Ellison said.

"The death of Robert Bloch closes that door on the Golden Age of fantasy writing," said Ellison, also a noted author. "For 50 years, this man was at the pinnacle. He is always listed as among the masters of imaginative literature."

Using straightforward prose, Bloch described everyday worlds that turned out to be anything but normal. And he liked surprise endings.

In one of his most famous stories, "The Hellbound Train," the devil gives a man a watch to stop time, but the man can never decide when to use it. At the last moment, as he is riding a Hell-bound train filled with drunks, prostitutes and gamblers, he uses the watch — and rides on for eternity.

Although he wrote fantasies, mysteries, essays and humor, Bloch is best-known for his chilling psychological novels of suspense, which inspired such writers as Stephen King, whom he befriended.

Bloch sold his first story at 17 to the pulp magazine "Weird Tales" and was nourished by the pulp magazines of the 1930s and '40s. He went on to write more than 400 stories, more than 20 novels and dozens of film and television scripts. Many of his stories have been adapted for radio, television and film, and won him numerous awards.

He was born in Chicago and, in his youth, he fell under the spell of H.P. Lovecraft, the seminal writer of fantasy and horror. Lovecraft corresponded with him and encouraged his writing.

He moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s to try his hand at film work and wrote television scripts for shows ranging from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to the original "Star Trek," Ellison said.

He scripted a slew of low-budget horror films, becoming an expert on the genre, but he disliked the graphic violence of modern films.

"I'm quite squeamish about them," he admitted in 1991.

Hitchcock filmed Bloch's "Psycho," the story of a demented hotel owner who stabs a guest in her shower and talks to his mummified mother, in 1960.

Survivors include his wife, Eleanor Alexander, and a daughter, Sally Francy of Los Gatos.

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