“The Cloak” (Unknown, May 1939)

8/13/2026 5 Comments

“The Cloak” (Unknown, May 1939)

Bloch, Robert. “The Cloak.” Unknown, May 1939, pp. 76-86.
https://archive.org/details/Unknown_v01n03_1939-05_unz.org-sas/page/76/mode/2up

Henderson is a lonely guy shopping for a Halloween costume for a party that evening. He chooses at a rundown shop where the ancient proprietor suggests a vampire costume that he calls “authentic.” Henderson leaves the store with a dusty old cloak that feels cold to the touch. When he puts it on, he is filled with a sense of wellbeing and power. At the same time, the strangers he encounters are repulsed. He goes up in the elevator to the party and frightens the people who went up with him. It must be the cloak, he reasons, that is doing something strange to him. He arrives at the party and startles the people he meets. Even the host—a drunk, jovial guy—marvels at the change in Henderson’s appearance. For Henderson, his host’s neck has become very, very interesting: “Henderson watched the back of Lindstrom’s neck. It was fat and white. It bulged over the collar of his costume and there was a vein in it. A vein in Lindstrom’s fat neck. Frightened Lindstrom” (81). Henderson seeks a bit of peace outside in the hall where he meets Sheila, a woman who is not repulsed. Henderson brims with uncharacteristic confidence, and they hit it off. Henderson has trouble holding it together at the party surrounded as he is by human-shaped bags of blood, and Sheila guides him to the roof where Henderson is alarmed at his urge to attack her, too. He wants to kiss her, but he does not think he can control what the cloak is doing to him. Sheila laughs at his anxiety and says, “I— know— I knew when I looked in the mirror. I knew- you had a cloak like mine-—got yours where I got mine—” (86).

A love story! This is Bloch’s first. It is a fun one, for sure. The change that comes over has all of the potential to be eldritch and arcane, but it goes in the rom-com direction quickly as he meets Sheila, the “angel” to his “devil.” The party is a silly one, as well. Nobody gets hurt, attacked, or even very embarrassed. The two cloaks bring the two lovers together, and the story ends on a Halloween rooftop with lovers embracing. There is a little bit more biting that might be expected, but to each their own! The story was adapted by Bloch in 1971 for the Amicus Productions anthology film, The House that Dripped Blood. The characters have changed and grown more complex. John Pertwee gives a fine performance as an overbearing and pompous thespian with self-affirmed mastery of all things supernatural. The ending is played for laughs, mostly, and Bloch explained that “due credit must be given to the director for deftly turning the final segment into a send-up of my vampire story, ‘The Cloak,’ and thereby improving it a hundred percent” (Bloch Once 353). There is a fine line in many of Bloch’s stories of this vintage between screaming laughter and plain old screaming. His original and revision of “The Cloak” both straddle the line deftly.

5 Comments

Jim Nemeth

8/13/2026 11:46:41 am

In writing about The House That Dripped Blood for a magazine a while ago, I wrote this concerning "Cloak:"

This segment remains a source of great debate for many. Unlike the preceding segments which play as straight horror, “Cloak” sends up the material. While the humor is subtle, it’s a wonder why it was decided to turn Bloch’s straight-on script into tongue-in-cheek—a decision credited to director Peter Duffel. Some fans criticize this decision for “spoiling” the suspenseful mood built to that point. On the matter, I’d rather Duffel had avoided the humor and let the segment play as written by Bloch, thus allowing House to end on a more horrific crescendo.

Regardless, Bloch’s script is faithful to his source only within the overarching plotline of Henderson obtaining a cloak that, when worn, transforms him into a vampire. The author, however, here changes the underlying background from his short story, where Henderson, no actor, dresses as a vampire in order to “shake up” a friend’s typically boring Halloween party. I feel Bloch made the right decision here having the vampiric goings-on occurring while filming a vampire picture is clever and satisfying.

Bill Gillard

8/14/2026 02:17:11 pm

I love what you've written, Jim. There are many readings of this story available. One (and this one appeals to me a lot) is that this is a lonely guy story, one for whom parties are painful obligations. I've ridden in elevators with stranger who recoil from me (or at least I imagine they do). I have arrived at parties where people flee from me in alarm (or at least I imagine they do). I have also made eye contact with that beautiful stranger who unexpectedly did not look for an excuse to flee, someone who talked to me as if I were a human being and not a problem. Completely independent of the cloak, Henderson is me! Or at least that's one way to read the story. Fun stuff!

Matthew Bradley link

8/27/2026 12:17:28 pm

Good stuff, as always, gentlemen.

I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing both Bloch and Ingrid Pitt, who played the female lead in "The Cloak." In my interview with Bloch (which Jim has very kindly included elsewhere on this site), he amplified the positive remarks in his "unauthorized autobiography," praising the "film-studio touches, the atmospheric bits such as the background shot of the blood-donor campaign poster—these are proof positive of what an imaginative director can do to transform somewhat heavy-handed melodramatics into light comedy. But the trick is to do it with subtlety rather than the in-your-face techniques of today’s efforts; I think Peter Duffell knew exactly what was needed."

Pitt responded to that quote: “What an incredible thing to say! That is fantastic….There is a thin line between making a dramatic subject witty and slipping over the edge into plain silliness. I think [he] managed this…but I think one has to give credit also to…Pertwee. It was just so amazing, because I wanted [to appear in] a different episode. It’s too absurd, actually. I thought the first episode [“Method for Murder”] might be better. But Peter Duffell took me to Jon Pertwee’s house, and we had this hysterical lunch. His son, Sean, who’s now becoming a bit of a star, rolled around on his tricycle and bumped into the furniture, and it was all so funny. We started reading through the script, and Jon was adding bits here and there and making insinuations, so in the end I wanted to do that episode more than anything else in the world. When I saw the film, it was just wonderful that the first three were dramatic stories, and then it finished up with the big laugh.”

It's also interesting to observe that in adapting the story for the screen, Bloch apparently drew from his Alfred Hitchcock Presents teleplay “The Greatest Monster of Them All,” based on the story by Bryce Walton, as well as his own "The Cloak." As played by Pertwee, whose playwright brother Michael adapted Bloch’s “The Cure” for the Hitchcock series, the cinematic Henderson is a horror star who desires realism in the cheap movies he is forced to make, echoing Ernst von Kroft in the earlier script. In an in-joke, the cinematic cloak is labeled, “Property of Shepperton Studios.”

Descending further down the rabbit hole (my apologies), Bloch's "Greatest Monster" teleplay also drew on the story he had originally called “The Clown at Midnight,” a title he later repurposed for a nonfiction article in Rogue (March 1960) after changing the story's to "Sock Finish.”

Bloch’s anonymous agent/narrator arranges a comeback for silent comedian Artie Ames in Dick Melvin’s next production, a story of 1920s Hollywood, their build-up including a May-December romance with star Miss Swivel-hips. He is horrified at the screening of a chase sequence assembled in advance for an Ed Sullivan appearance, speeded up, full of ironic sound effects, drastically cut, dubbed with a “nasty, subhuman vocalization…this Looney Tune noise.” Shooting his final, contractually obligated pie-wagon scene, Artie exceeds Melvin’s wishes for a “sock finish,” riding the wagon over a cliff to his death—after throwing a pie he’d filled with TNT at his leading lady, who’d just been using him.

Bill Gillard

8/31/2026 05:09:40 pm

This is an amazing list of connected stories and processes. I am so happy to read about your interview with Bloch and Ingrid Pitt. (And I wish I had seen it for the writing of my book. Alas!) I think I said in the blog entry that I did not find Bloch's original particularly frightening--or at least on a par with a typical day as any young adult navigating the dating world. I love both versions of it the way I love "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as both horror and teen comedy.

As somebody who tries to write creatively myself, I do recognize my own practice of recasting, revising, reusing pieces that have either not worked or worked in one way and using them later--sometimes years later--in a different way. Thanks for pointing out Bloch's treasure box of ideas in action!

Coincidentally, I read "Sock Finish" for the first time about a month ago. Some of my favorite flavors of Bloch include ruminations like that story on changes to the film industry in only a few years. "Sock Finish" was published in 1957, which means that Bloch had only a small connection to Hollywood. His move west would come a couple of years later, and yet he had insight beyond his experience living in Weyauwega. Great stuff!!

Matthew Bradley link

9/1/2026 10:06:39 am

Thanks, Bill. My only regret about the Bloch interview (Jim's link is below) is that he elected to provide his answers in writing, precluding the give and take and follow-up questions that can elicit wonderful material in a phoner. But I was grateful for what I got, believe me!

https://www.robertbloch.net/heart-of-a-small-boy-interview.html

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