Guillotine Horror: Weird Tales Oct 1929 Gaston Leroux Cover by Hugh Rankin
The guillotine — instrument of revolutionary terror and gothic macabre — dominates this lurid cover, its blade poised above a severed head tumbling into a wicker basket. A masked figure in a green jacket and striped trousers, sporting a red bow tie, looms theatrically over the execution device against a vivid yellow sky and distant dark castle. The scene illustrates Gaston Leroux's 'The Woman with the Velvet Collar,' invoking French Revolution horror with melodramatic pulp excess.
Holy smokes, a masked villain standing over a guillotine with a severed head in a basket — and it's by the guy who wrote Phantom of the Opera! Mom would absolutely confiscate this if she saw it on my nightstand.
“Weird Tales / The Unique Magazine / The Woman with the Velvet Collar / By Gaston Leroux / Author of The Phantom of the Opera / Other Stories by — / Seabury Quinn / Edmond Hamilton / Robert E. Howard / Arlton Eadie / E. F. Benson / David H. Keller / D. D. Sharp / October 1929 / 25¢ / 30¢ in Canada / Hugh Rankin”
