Weird menace

Magazine cover. A cloaked figure with a raised machete stands in the foreground, over a naked blonde woman being held down on a stone platform. In the background approaches a man in a suit holding a revolver.
Cover of the August 1934 issue of Dime Mystery Magazine

Weird menace is a subgenre of horror fiction and detective fiction that was popular in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and early 1940s. The weird menace pulps, also known as shudder pulps, generally featured stories in which the hero was pitted against sadistic villains, with graphic scenes of torture and brutality.