VATHEK

Poisoned Pen kicks off its Haunted Library of Horror Classics with a berserk Orientalist fantasy that’s the best-known work of Beckford (1760-1844).

Vathek, Caliph of the Abassides, is a prince seriously addicted to gambling, feasting, and fits of rage. A visit from a stranger from India who renders him ill and then heals him opens his eyes to the possibilities of further decadence beyond the five palaces he’s already dedicated to the delights of the senses. But the stranger is actually a Giaour—that is, an unbeliever—in the service of Eblis, the monarch of hell, whose goal is to tempt Vathek to damnation by getting him to break more and more taboos. It’s a project in which his unwitting target participates enthusiastically. He renounces the teachings of Islam, sacrifices 50 innocent children to death, and agrees to worship the Giaour on the strength of the Giaour’s promise to bring him to “the palace of subterraneous fire” where Soliman Ben Daoud has stored the talismans that will allow him to rule the world. His attempts to steal the seductive Nouronihar from Gulchenrouz, the cousin to whom she’s been promised, are so persistent that Nouronihar’s father, the emir Fakreddin, is driven to drug both lovers so they’ll appear to have died—a plan that falls through despite Fakreddin’s best efforts. One of Mahomet’s Genii asks permission to approach Vathek in the hope of changing his mind before it’s too late, but it’s too late, and he’s condemned to the eternal fires.

A series of overblown set pieces waiting for Cecil B. DeMille or Industrial Light and Magic to bring them to life.