Some publishers and titles were pretty nasty, but usually mixed with tamer stuff. Often a specific story in a book gives great fame to that book (the tongue cut tale in Lawbreaker's Suspense Stories #11) or chef Francois and his cooked innards in Mysterious Adventures 20) - BTW Mysterious Adventures IS a pretty grisly title.
But here is what you should do - and Fellow Freaky Forumites, reFrain From Furrowed Foreheads at my repeat suggestion to all new who ask about a pre-code overview...anyway, wdb, here is what you do.
Go to the New England Comics web site:
Tales Too Terrible To Tell
SET OF TALES TOO TERRIBLE TO TELL W/#1 (2ND ED) EBAY SPECIAL! - ignore the ebay special part. Just order it from the web site. And they take Paypal as well.
What you will recieve, for $20, is an incredible set of eleven, comic book sized books. Each issue focuses on one or two publishers and goes into detail on the books they printed. They also have b&w reprints of many stories - but for me the best part was always the many pages of publisher/title detail. Unfortuantely they stopped publishing it at issue 11 - it was supposed to cover every pre-code horror publisher and title. And more treats as well.
But even though incomplete - for the price of one average, low grade pre-code book you will find a wealth of information, scenes, stories, cover galleries (back cover has nice 4-color galleries. Inside has many B7W covers) covering the world of precode horror.
I really do always recommend this to anyone who is newly expressing info on pre-code horror and I absolutely guaranty you will be blown away by these books. They will give you a fine grounding in precode and they DO highlight some of the more gruesome tales and titles. But rather than just giving you a bland list of this or that book - spend the twenty and get what is probably the finest overview of precode horror around. I like them even beter than Mike Benton's Horror Comics book, which I also consider a must-have.
Two thumbs way up! Great suggestion!