Night-Shriek
by Michael Wolfitt

1983 Granada
Paperback, 223 pages

                I swear I thought I was reading a William Johnstone novel except there was no right-wing agenda and it took place in London, not Louisiana! But holy hell, it’s just as batshit crazy as anything in the Johnstone oeuvre!

 

                A couple, Roger and Hilary, get into an accident on the way home from their friends’ house and wind up in the hospital. Hilary was pregnant and loses the baby. The fetus was a weird looking thing, so the doctor saved it to examine later. The fetus breaks out of the storage cupboard. Cats start spying on people. Nurses die. Everyone involved with the case start dying violently. It seems Hilary had the bloodline of the ancient Cat Goddess Bast. See what I mean?

 

                You know me. I can’t resist cat-horror. There is plenty of feline fear in the pages of this book, be it a sleek black cat staring a victim down through a window or a person actually becoming a cat. The more convoluted the storyline became, the more I had fun with this absolute mess of a book. Egyptology often loses my interest in books but this time, it all worked for me because of the laughably over the top audacity of the story.

 

                I’m not saying this is a terrible book. I found it thoroughly entertaining. Yes, it is batshit crazy, but it never dragged and kept me smiling throughout. And if the cover art by Tim White (actually credited on the back cover!) doesn’t grab you, then I don’t know what will. Filled with kinky sex, mutilations and mind-control… they just don’t publish books like this anymore.

 

Online sources say that Wolfitt is actually Mystery writer/ poet Mike Fredman but I haven’t seen Fredman himself admit that anywhere. I won’t be searching out his recent poetry or any of his Willie Halliday detective novels, but I will cherish this strange little piece of pulp forever.

Joyride By Stephen Crye

Joyride
By Stephen Crye
1983 Pinnacle Books
Paperback, 248 pages

                How do you review a book like Joyride? Do you like slasher movies? Then you will like this book. That is exactly what this is, a slasher film in book form. It hits all of the proper points, and it is a shitload of fun because of it. Brutal and unrelenting.

 

                Robert Atchinson was a high school outcast. Recently orphaned, everybody made fun of him and mentally abused him. Too bad he had such a crush on pretty, blonde Carla. One day, he would muster up the courage to give her the gift he’d bought for her, some bright red hair ribbons. But everything changed after the accident that disfigured him.

 

                Present day, a group of teens are looking to party in the cemetery. They break in and find a remote spot and do the drinking and smoking thing that all high schoolers do. The characters are cookie cutter slasher film fare; the horny ones, the sensible one, the fat one, and the younger brother who tags along. Little do any of them know that the cemetery has a caretaker names Cleats, formerly known as Robert Atchinson, and he has a serious grudge against all of them for what happened in the past. Except one, a pretty blonde who he thinks is Carla.

 

                The story takes place all in one night with flashbacks to Robert’s shitty school life. Crye gets some good atmosphere in the graveyard and the kills are gruesome and memorable. As a groundskeeper, he has many garden tools on hand and puts them to very good use. None of the characters are particularly likeable so we’re all really on Cleats’ side. BEWARE: the first chapter depicts a very gruesome and brutal murder of an innocent dog. It really has nothing to do with the story, it just shows how messed up Cleats is. It’s incredibly disturbing and if you skip right to Chapter 2, you might thank yourself for it.

 

                Is it original? No. Is it well-written? Well, it’s not poorly written. But it’s a blast, a fun page turner full of gore and mayhem. Isn’t that what we all want? Go, Cleats, GO!

 

                On Will Erickson’s brilliant Too Much Horror Fiction blog, he reviews Joyride and got a response from the author’s ex-girlfriend that is full of wonderful information. Crye is Ron Patrick, who was an editor that thought he’d try to write a book just as a goof. This was the result. Evidently, he was a handsome, partying, fun-loving dude who just did it “as a lark”. Under his real name, he also wrote Beyond the Threshold, a title that is in my TBR pile. Sadly, Patrick is now deceased.

 

                And YAY to Pinnacle Books for crediting the cover artists, Somja Lamut and Nenand Jakesovic on the Copyright page!

Water Rites By Guy N. Smith

Water Rites
By Guy N. Smith
1997 Zebra Books
Paperback, 253 pages

 

                This is the last of the Great Scribbler’s horror novels to be released by a major publisher. It is the fourth book from US company Zebra and represents a far more mature writer in Smith than you might be used to if you have only dipped a claw into his early Crabs books. In Paperback Parade #43 (Aug. 1995), Guy announced this then-forthcoming book as The Water Witches.

 

                Phil Quiles hated his job. He tended the underground reservoir in Hopwas. His boss was a dick, his future was in doubt and frankly, his place of work scared him. He was sure something was hiding below the dark surface of the water, watching him. Turns out, he was right. Meanwhile, a nutcase who thinks he met the Queen of the People of the Water as a child, prepares for the flooding of the world as foretold by the Queen. He gathers as many followers as possible that would believe him (or at least pretend they do) to become the chosen few to survive the floods and adapt to an underwater life.

 

                But that’s all just a fantasy. Isn’t it?

 

                This one moves along at a brisk pace and is filled with characters that you will hate, some that you’ll feel sorry for, and some that go through such changes (both mentally and physically) that you will cheer them on. Poor Phil is a real schlub, but his fears are justified, and I could kind of relate to his employee/ boss dynamic. You’d love to quit, but you can’t so you just stand there and take the abuse. Another great character is the shrewish, domineering Jocelyn who lords over her family and even fucks with Phil, too. And let’s not forget Mukasa…

 

                For a story that is essentially about mermaids, el maestro manages to serve up a great deal of creepy atmosphere and chills. No, nobody has a gory demise at the claws of a giant crab, but that reservoir does manage to raise a few hackles and the Quiles family’s plight packs an emotional punch, even though both parents seem a bit dumb compared to their kid.

 

                This one is definitely worth a look and the Richard Newton artwork on the cover is worth the price of purchase alone.

Manitou Doll By Guy N. Smith

Manitou Doll
By Guy N. Smith
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 236 pages

                Man, this one starts out with a bang. The first chapter is set in Kansas, 1868, where soldiers are looking to wipe out the Plains Indians. A bloodbath ensues and, true to white-man’s sickness, Indian women are raped. One victim, Mistai, curses them, though she later finds she has become pregnant by her loutish attacker.

 

                Fast forward to the present, to a carnival set up in a seaside town. It is a holiday week, and the place is hopping. Bikers show up and all is well until one gruff individual gets cotton-candy stuck to his beard. He violently beats the woman who accidentally did it and fucks up her kid. Brilliantly violent, it is... damn! Then, he goes on a rampage, eventually raping the American Indian woman working the fortune-telling tent. Bad idea. Didn’t he read the first chapter?

 

                So, that’s the set-up. The fortune teller is also gifted at carving figurines that she supplements her income with. The Caitlin family is on vacation and the deaf child Rowena becomes enamored with Jane, the Indian woman. Jane carves a doll for the girl, starting a chain of horrific events that fucks up the whole carnival and the whole town. Evil forces are killing people and destroying the whole seaside.

 

                Without giving much more away, I’ll just say that this is Guy in top form. Man, those first two chapters had me sweating. The remainder of the book is spent mostly from the family’s point of view and what a messed-up crew they are. The wife is an unsatisfied nag, the husband is a philandering tool, and the child disobeys them at every turn. Guy lays the violence on thick and blood flows freely. The generational curse theme winds its way through the narrative until all is explained.

 

                This isn’t at all what I had expected when I went into this one blind, but it was better than I’d imagined. Nasty rapes aside, this one was just a joy to unravel and wallow in the violence and horror. Top Shelf GNS. Another reason to love him. Get the Hamlyn version with the Punch cover… it’s the best one!

Zombie! By Peter Tremayne

Zombie!

By Peter Tremayne
1981 St. Martin’s Press
Paperback, 183 pages

 

                Do not go into this expecting some Romero-esque gut munching. This is a solid voodoo story taking place on a small Caribbean Island. Fear not, I know Tremayne (Peter Berresford Ellis) tends to overwrite the history and topography of his exotic locales, but he sums up the specifics of St. Miquelon in a few pages.

 

                June Lambert gets a letter from her grandmother with an invite to meet her on the tiny island that her late parents grew up on but eventually fled. June never knew she had a grandmother. With her husband Steve, they make plans to visit Grandma for a tropical vacation with visions in inheritances dancing in their heads. But things aren’t very rosy in St. Miquelon when they arrive. Being outsiders, they aren’t welcome and there is political upheaval in the air.

 

                Well, Grandma is already dead. And has been for a while. Her estate is in ruins and the Lamberts find themselves stuck there. The few friendly townsfolk can offer little help and it seems that June is the key to an intricate plot to strengthen Mama Mambo. When June disappears, it is up to Steve to sort things out. And to try to figure out who is decent and who is a part of the wicked plot as the lines between the two sides blur.

 

                OK, first off… Steve is a dick. He is rude and short tempered, and I disliked him long before I realized he was going to be our hero. Also, I was halfway through the book before I realized that nothing had really happened yet. Tremayne books are very hit or miss with me but this one falls somewhere in between. Not a steaming pile of shit like Kiss of the Cobra but also not a quality read like Swamp or Snowbeast. Zombie! Is middling and kind of boring but not so dull as to give up on it. The ending is the most preposterous bit of convenience that I have read outside of comic books.

 

                First published in 1981 by Sphere Books, I grabbed 1987 St. Martins edition (1^st US printing) thanks to the gaudy and misleading cover of a savage rotting zombie. I do not know who the artist is, but I figured it was worth the $3 price tag. Not a great book, not a bad one. I’ll keep it for the cover.

Michelle Remembers By Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, M.D.

Michelle Remembers
By Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, M.D.
1981 Pocket Books
Paperback, 334 pages

    This is a tough book to review now, over 40 years after it was first published as a true memoir. The book inevitably caused a lot of problems for a lot of people as it was the launching pad for the widespread “Satanic Panic.” Back in the early Eighties, my wife at the time read it and bought it hook line and sinker and urged me to read it. I did and even the wide-eyed and stupid, more gullible me only believed it to a point. Now that the whole thing has been thoroughly debunked, I can only go into it reading it as a horror fiction novel. Which is essentially what it is.

    Michelle Smith has been having bad dreams following a miscarriage and seeks help from her psychiatrist whom she had been seeing for four years. Her doctor, Lawrence Pazder, M.D., helps her go back 22 years to when she was 5 years old to uncover her terrifying past that she had hidden away from her consciousness. Her mother had offered her up to a group of satanists as a catalyst to raise Satan himself for the Feast of the Beast. She was beaten, caged, defiled, burned, poked and prodded for 81 days straight, all in the name of Satan. The horrors she witnessed would drive anyone insane, but being just a child, she could rely on her goodness and innocence to help her survive.
    
    There is some pretty heavy stuff going on for sure. Kitten slaughter, fetuses cut up and rubbed on Michelle, possessed people, horrid rites, shit, piss and blood. It really is some horrifying stuff. I could tell exactly where it was back in the early Eighties where I stopped buying it… when they actually summon Satan. Yeah, right. But up until then, sure, why not? Child abuse is a very real a terrifying thing and I can certainly see a bunch of losers torturing a kid in the name of a fantasy that they believe in. I might not have even finished the book back in the day; the last hundred pages are a chore, with Satan and his annoying rhyme-talk and other fictional religious characters making appearances.

    Whether or not I believed it, a lot of people did, and the age of Satanic Panic was ushered in. Most of you will remember it from heavy metal records being thrown under the bus. Thank Smith and Pazder. Much like the Salem Witch Trials, people were being arrested with no evidence and being turned in to the police on the accusation of kids being coached by money hungry psychiatrists. Eventually, it all died out and Michelle Remembers was discounted as fiction, though Pazder (who died in 2004) and Smith (who divorced their spouses and married each other shortly after the book’s publication) have never admitted that it was a hoax. But it made a lot of money for them, and they gave a lot of money to the Church to play along.

    I recommend Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor’s 2023 film Satan Wants You for an in-depth look at the book and its repercussions.

The Walking Dead By Guy N. Smith

The Walking Dead
By Guy N. Smith
1986 New English Library
Paperback, 160 pages

 
                                                  

    Ten years after the Great Scribbler’s second horror novel The Sucking Pit (1975), Smith returns to the Pit along with the previous book’s hero, Chris Latimer. The Sucking Pit was filled and the land around it has been razed and flattened, the evil buried deep in the ground. A rich and greedy land developer plans on building on the flattened terrain. A bulldozer starts to slowly sink into the sand in the old Pit spot… and gets sucked in completely and releases the trapped evil spirits of The Sucking Pit.

    This one starts right up with a bang and never relinquishes its fevered pace. When that machine and its operator are below surface in the Pit, Smith raises plenty of hackles with his imagery. Once that ground has broken through, the Pit refills and unleashes its evil spirits on everyone around. A gang of cycle kids fall under its spell and do a lot of damage at a local bar in one grueling scene. The man who OK’d the building on the Pit gets under its influence and savagely murders his wife with an axe only to be murdered by Grafton, the man who bought the land.

    Damn, this one gets brutal; GNS holds nothing back in the over-the-top violence. Gore flows freely and the sacred vow of marriage gets pissed all over with blood. Only Chris and his new girlfriend Pamela seem to be safe, though as usual, the Pit makes people’s carnal desires rise to a sadistic level as well. Nobody who sees the black, still waters of The Pit can control what happens to them. The old Romany burial ground’s inhabitants are looking to fill the pit back up with bodies.

    This being a sequel, Smith makes references to the first book and annotates them thusly, but I do recommend reading The Sucking Pit first. Just don’t wait ten years between readings because you’ll want to reward yourself with this brisk, bloody tale of vengeance as soon as you can. Many of the victims of the Pit from the first book play a part in this and you’ll appreciate the story more knowing where they came from. Top shelf GNS, this is, and it is vicious and cruel, just how you want a horror story by the Master to be.