Ravenous By Ray Garton

 

Ravenous
By Ray Garton
2008 Leisure Books
Paperback, 342 pages

 

Another longer, newer horror novel! What has gotten into me? I discovered this title on somebody’s “nature-strikes-back” list. I looked it up and noticed that it didn’t exactly fit the bill; it is a werewolf novel. Still, it looked pretty good, so I found a copy and took a chance. And I’m extremely glad I did. This book is great.

 

The town of Big Rock has a bit of a problem. Unbelievably, there is a werewolf problem. A mysterious stranger seems to have all of the info, but the town sheriff doesn’t know what to believe. But there’s no other rational explanation for the bloody deaths and shape-shifting bodies he encounters. Pathologists and eye-witnesses say wolf… an upright wolf-like creature.

 

Unlike in the movies, lycanthropy is spread via sexual contact in Ravenous. Big Rock has no shortage of philandering husbands, rapists and horny housewives, so the disease is quick to take hold and threaten everyone in town. The characters are varied and believable, the story starts with a bang and never lets up and the blood flows freely. Garton reinvents the werewolf story and makes it all credible. I really can’t recommend this one enough.

 

Garton followed this up with a sequel, Bestial, the next year. In 2021, Ravenous was reissued by Gauntlet Press as a signed, limited edition, boutique release. I’m saving my pennies.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Loch Ness Revenge By Hunter Shea

 

Loch Ness Revenge
By Hunter Shea
2016 Severed Press
Paperback, 141 pages
 

            I love Hunter Shea. I love cryptozoology, monsters, animals killing humans and gore. This is the medium in which Shea works and he excels at it. Of course, I just had to read what he does with ol’ Nessie!

In their childhood, twins Natalie and Austin saw their parents eaten by the Loch Ness Monster. Natalie had made it her life’s mission to find the monster and avenge her parents. Two decades after the incident, she is primed and ready and Austin joins her to mount a war against the lake creature.

This one isn’t as brutal and gory as some of Shea’s other books, but the action and emotions are always blazing like a flamethrower. The characters (the twins, Austin’s pal Heinrik, and monster-hunter/ videographer Rob) are all well thought out and loveable, surprising for such a short book. The banter between the twins is believable and funny. Once again, Shea gives us a strong and capable woman in Natalie, a welcome character who was all but absent in the 80s pulp novels he must love. The story is told in first person by Natalie.

I don’t ask for a lot in a book. Entertain me, thrill me, scare me or make me laugh. That’s what will make me feel like my time was well spent. Hunter Shae usually delivers all four. My time was well spent with Loch Ness Revenge.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Flowers of Evil By Robert Charles

 

Flowers of Evil
By Robert Charles
1982, Bantam
Paperback, 200 pages

 

I love nature when it strikes back. Of course, animals killing humans is the best but let’s hear it for the flora that gets into the action as well! A lesser-known entry in the plant-panic pantheon is Flowers of Evil and it’s a worthwhile read.

Some odd little flowers are discovered near a nuclear fallout zone in Russia and one of the research team grabs a couple of the pretty blooms. She gives one to her seafaring brother before she realizes that they are nourished by blood and very capable of getting it. The plant’s seeds are eventually sent adrift, only to plant themselves on a remote island where a troubled family is stationed for the season. So, we get a bloodthirsty plant epidemic in two places simultaneously.

Robert Charles (aka Robert Charles Smith and Robert Leader) primarily writes thrillers, but he does a great job with this eco-horror entry. It’s not overly graphic but the story development and the characters keep the pages turning and the plants are formidable foes, growing larger with every drop of blood. One thing that really struck a chord with me, an amateur naturalist, was that the remote island was a resting spot for migratory birds, and the plants were decimating the populations as they landed, making the island a tangled, evil mess.

Not as grisly as many horror pulps from the same period, but this is a compelling and well written book that can still be grabbed on the cheap.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Killer Crabs: the Return by Guy N. Smith

 

Killer Crabs: the Return

By Guy N. Smith

2012 Black Hill Books
Made-to-Order Paperback, 149 pages

 

    Twenty something years after Guy N. Smith concluded his original Crabs sextet with Crabs: the Human Sacrifice (1988), the killer crustaceans are back, click-click-clickety-clicking their way back into our hearts and stomachs. El maestro Smith knew what his fans wanted and gave us more mayhem and it’s just what the doctor ordered. Released as an E-book as well as a paperback, it is a very slim volume that can (and should) be read in one sitting. At 149 pages of large, double-spaced print, and the usual crab craziness, the book just flies by.

 

    Brock Logan, the son of a crab victim, has been waiting decades for their reemergence to avenge his father’s death and to get a crab for his trophy room. But we don’t really care about Brock. Fans of Smith’s crab books can rest easy; the crabs mean business. “A crustacean banquet had begun.” This time it’s just one big one, a male who is raising and training his offspring, teaching them the joy of devouring human flesh. Parenting done right!

 

    No, this book doesn’t break any new ground; it is just a valentine from Smith to his crab-happy fans, of which I am a huge one. It wasn’t his last foray into crab calamity, thank goodness. Rest in peace, Guy, and thank you for giving us the crabs.

        This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Galaxy 666 By Pel Torro

Galaxy 666
By Pel Torro
1968 Tower
Paperback, 138 pages

    It all started when my friend (and Midnight contributor) Kris Gilpin asked on his Facebook page: “Back in the 70s, a paperback original came out and it was infamous for about 10-15 years for being ‘the worst novel ever written!’” The title turned out to be Galaxy 666 and based on readers’ reviews and a few snippets of prose, I needed to experience it for myself. I landed one from Amazon for about $5.

    What is it all about? A group of four individuals, two scientists and two spacemen, who explore Galaxy 666, a place where all manner of weird shit happens. That’s it, really. They encounter odd lifeforms on the planet, along with all kinds of chaos and a broken spaceship.

     Is it really bad? Yes. Yes, it is, but not unenjoyable. One can picture the author (in reality, Lionel Fanthorpe, prolific hack/ pulp writer) charging to his typewriter with a bottle of booze in one hand and a thesaurus in the other, eager to vomit up space-age verbiage. Every noun in the book gets at least three adjectives, every point gets repeated ad nauseam, and the characters all wax poetic, even at the most inappropriate of times. “Pel Torro” was obviously padding the word count against a tight deadline, and the results are hilarious.

     While reading the book, I was comparing it to an Andy Milligan script, with unending passages of inane dialog, but without the bad acting to sell it. With a film, I can look over at my wife and we can shake our heads together. With the book, I would read her unbelievable passages and she’d tell me to shut up so she could enjoy her own, more respectable book. By the end, it became a chore to finish, even at 138 pages. Not that it wasn’t fun, but I had endured it long enough and was ready to just move the fuck on.

The first printing of Galaxy 666 was from Badger Books (SF-86) in 1963 with a Henry Fox cover.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Doomflight By Guy N. Smith

Doomflight

By Guy N. Smith
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 221 pages

It is well known that I adore Guy N. Smith’s nature-strikes-back books, but when he digs deeper than crabs, ‘gators or bats and their destruction of the human race, it can be hit or miss for me. Doomflight is an ambitious piece of writing and it’s fairly good, but not entirely satisfying.

A huge, international airport is being constructed on the site of a previously failed aerodrome. That one had failed because of countless mishaps. Y’see, the land it’s built upon is the site of a Druid circle, the ritual stones buried deep under the cement of the runways. Naturally, all hell breaks loose, with Druids, sacrifices, ghostly, old-timey airmen and a massive loss of human lives. It’s huge, I tell ya.

Smith tells an intricate tale, and the story builds and builds to a fiery climax. It would make a hell of a movie. Sadly, I got a little impatient waiting to get to that climax. It might be that I had some kick-ass books in my “To Be Read” pile or it was a story that just wasn’t engaging me, but the last third became a bit of a slog. Eh, it happens. Maybe if he threw just one giant crab into the mix…

Still, it’s hard to not recommend any books by the master. Especially with Smith’s recent passing, we have to savor every word he has written. The Les Edwards cover here is worth the price of admission, too!

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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The Snake by John Godey

The Snake
by John Godey
Berkley 1978
Paperback, 280 pages

 

This book is great.

 

An eleven-foot-long, highly venomous Black Mamba is loose in Central Park in New York. That is the premise. The story itself is more about what goes on in New York City while this animal is at large than the animal itself. The different factions of citizens and their different wants and needs and proposed solutions to the problem are what drive the narrative.

 

Suspenseful, humorous, and dripping with cynical social commentary, The Snake works on many levels. The science is top-notch here; Godey’s research was impeccable. No bullshit, made-up anti-snake propaganda here, just facts that the characters (and the reader, for that matter) choose how they want to take it. Oh yes, snake-hating is on display here. It wouldn’t be realistic if there wasn’t, but there are also people who want to save the innocent animal who is, after all, just trying to survive in a foreign and unknown habitat. The Snake is more of a thriller than a horror novel, but don’t let that deter you.

 

Godey nails it, speaking from every angle. The cops who want to end the search, the mayor who makes impossible demands, the herpetologist who wants to save the snake, the religious group who claim it’s the devil incarnate and the reporters looking for a scoop… everyone gets a believable voice. John Godey (which is the penname of Morton Freedgood) also wrote The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 and since I’ve only seen (and loved) the film, I really want to read the novel after finishing this. His writing in The Snake is consistently engaging and entertaining. I even laughed out loud a couple of times. That doesn’t happen often. Read this mofo.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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Dead Inside By Chandler Morrison

 

Dead Inside
By Chandler Morrison
2020 Death’s Head Press
Made-to-order Paperback, 162 pages

 

    This book got a lot of comments on the Books of Horror Facebook page and it piqued my interest. Disgusting, vile, sickening, “I had to put it down”… it almost seemed like a challenge. When I saw it had a necrophiliac character, I happily put it into my Amazon basket.

 

    The main character, a hospital security guard, is indeed a necrophile. His morgue visits were more than just doing his rounds. He eventually meets a maternity doctor, a woman who enjoys eating abortions. He finds out her secret and an oddball romance ensues. That’s right; Dead Inside is a romantic story, and a pretty goddamn funny one, too.

 

    Yes, it’s gross for grossness’s sake, but there is a wicked sense of humor throughout. Told in first person in the security guard’s voice, his bleak outlook of the world and his casual acceptance of what he is drives the narrative and makes for quite a few chuckles. Sure, there is explicit corpse fucking, fetus eating, combinations of the two, skull fucking, slime, ooze, ejaculate and nihilism, but somehow, I could understand the guard’s motives and I’ll be damned if I didn’t agree with some of his thoughts.

 

    Dead Inside is extremely well written and engaging, once you accept the fact that it is an extreme horror book that aims to shock. But shock isn’t the main objective, I don’t think. I’ll be looking for more of Morrison’s books. This one was good. Unlike any other romance novel you have ever read.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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The Hospital Horror By Otto O. Binder

 

The Hospital Horror
By Otto O. Binder
1973 Popular Library
Paperback, 192 pages

 

    The Hospital Horror is a part of the 9-book “Frankenstein Horror Series” published by Popular Library in 1972/73. Not a continuing story like Robert Lory’s “Dracula Horror Series” from Pinnacle, which was being published more or less at the same time, each Frankenstein book was its own story, and only once was it even about the famous doctor and his monster. As the back covers said, “The Frankenstein Horror Series is a group of entirely new stories that follows the fates of the primal monsters and their heirs, as they re-emerge from the Pit of the Unknown, the Unspeakable, and the Undead.”

 

    The Hospital Horror has the distinction of being written by geek-favorite Otto Binder, of the Marvel Family fame. Binder was a long-time pulp and comic book writer, having worked over the decades for Fawcett, DC and even a little for EC. He brings his pulp sensibility to this book, for sure. A daring, brilliant doctor, his love-interest nurse, a hooded, hunchbacked bad guy and many a dark and stormy night. The villain of the piece even proudly refers to himself as “The Hunchbacked Horror”!

 

    Yes, the book is pure kitchy melodrama, and its purple prose may make some roll their eyes, but I ate it up. It’s also set up kind of like a serial, whereas every 3 chapters or so covers another plan and attack by the Hunchbacked Horror. Paying attention isn’t too difficult. The story is painted in broad strokes, the hunchback (who is the one I was rooting for, of course) is pure pulp and the romance is as stilted as anything written in the 30s. So, yes- it’s pretty damn fun. Add to that a cover by comic great Gray Morrow and you’ve got my recommendation.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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The Folly By David Anne

 

The Folly
By David Anne
1978 Corgi Books
Paperback, 156 pages!!!

 

This is an example of the way horror novels should be written: fast, dumb, zero characterization and lots of action and gore. I had previously read David Anne’s Rabid (reprinted as Day of the Mad Dogs), so I was eager to read this one, the only other book of his that I know of. It did not disappoint.

Part of England is once again laid to waste by nature, this time by mutant rat-rabbits. If mutant rat-rabbits don’t get you excited, then I don’t know what to tell you. A little bit of legit science is mixed in; it is likely that Anne read an article on the bunny virus myxomatosis and took it from there. In addition to rat-rabbits, you get a mad scientist, descriptive gore scenes, human pus-balls, semi-graphic sex, and hateful, paper-thin characters doing idiotic things… all in just 156 pages!

I read the Corgi reprint from 1980 which has a shitty cover. If you can find it, I suggest the original W.H. Allen print from 1978. It not only has an artist’s rendition of the rat-rabbits on the cover, but it runs 168 pages, a full 12 pages more than the reprint. Extra gore or larger print; either way, it’s a win-win with that cover.

The far superior W.H. Allen cover.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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The Dogs By Robert Calder

 

The Dogs
By Robert Calder
Dell 1986
Paperback, 226 pages

This is not an easy book to read for the animal lover. It speaks of man’s inhumanity towards animals with an unblinking, cold, and clinical voice. Dog lovers will cringe. That said, it does have some satisfying passages and it is quite good, overall, if you can get past the impassive tone.

Dog experiments… creating superior pups. One gets out. Becomes stray, then a pet. Bites brat. Gets admonished.  Goes rogue. Leads dog pack. Kills. That’s the basic storyline and it goes along at a good clip right up to the end. It is at times predictable but delivers the gory goods where you’d want it. Some kids get maimed and killed too, as a welcome bonus.

There is an overlong side-plot about a dog-fighting ring that is the worst offender in the “humans suck” sweepstakes. Yes, I know these assholes exist and they sicken me, and this is where the unemotional prose irked me the most. It’s a very cold and gratuitous section of the book and the pay-off, when it finally comes, isn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped for.

Yeah, every human character in this book is a piece of shit. Calder makes it clear that Orph, the main dog, is the hero. Calder knows a lot about canines (he even edited a tome of dog stories and essays, The Dog Book, under his real name Jerrold Mundis) and their place in the world of humans. Unfortunately, his bleak portrayal of Homo sapien really makes any sort of emotional tie between the two-legged and the four-legged main characters tenuous at best. Let’s face it, people do not deserve dogs.

I recommend the book with reservations. It is well-written and fast moving but it also serves as a reminder of how much the human race really sucks ass.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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Kiss of the Cobra By Peter Tremayne

Kiss of the Cobra
By Peter Tremayne
1984 Sphere Books
Paperback, 182 pages.

                                                 

    Ah, Peter Tremayne. I am of two minds about his work. His books are impeccably researched, thus making the setting perfect for his adventures, but at times it can be to the detriment of the narrative. His Snowbeast (1983) put you right into the Scottish mountains and maintained a good pace with a few chills, but Ants (1980) was a bit tepid because he spent so much time showing his research of Brazil that it deflated the storytelling. Swamp! (1985) is the best Tremayne book that I have read so far. Taking place in the Everglades, he gives us more horror than history lesson and the book is better for it.

    There’s no doubt that Tremayne (real name Peter Berresford Ellis) put a shit-ton of research into Kiss of the Cobra and the fruit of his studies clog up nearly every page of this novel. Yes, he sets the table nicely, putting you right into Indian culture and teaching you dozens of Hindi words but when you get right down to it, there’s hardly any story. It’s the ol’ “open the tomb- suffer the curse” routine with a cobra goddess rather than a mummy and it really doesn’t do much with what little potential it has. It is horror-lite and it seems like Tremayne just wanted to show off how cultured and intellectual he is rather than tell a scary, exciting story. Never has a 182-page book felt so much like a 900-page book.

    I’m not giving up on Tremayne; there are still a few horror titles of his out there that interest me, but I’m hoping for more like Swamp! and less like Kiss of the Cobra. One thing, though… the cover on that Sphere paperback is pretty sweet.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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The Montauk Monster By Hunter Shea

 

The Montauk Monster
By Hunter Shea
2014 Pinnacle Books
Paperback, 347 pages

 

I admit it. I’m stuck-up. I don’t give new things a chance. Any horror novel written after 1990 surely sucks. But while perusing the books at Savers recently, this one caught my eye. Despite being newer (2014) and twice as thick as I like to read, the back cover hype made me give it a chance. A gory monster book for $3; it was worth a shot.

Remember when the mangy, hairless raccoon carcass washed up in Montauk, NY and a new cryptozoological hero was born? Well, Shea took that sensational (if fleeting) story and fleshed it out as reality and the results are phenomenal. Indescribable monsters are flooding into Long Island and shredding everyone in sight. Where do they come from and how do you stop them?

Shea gets it. He knows how to write a nature-strikes-back/ bloody monster story and this one is right up there with the best of this beloved genre. All of my favorite tropes are present: introducing characters that are mere monster fodder, gratuitous gore and sex, snarling, unstoppable monsters and the death of characters that you thought would live. One welcome update to the model that I love so much is an ass-kicking, disabled woman; someone that Guy N. Smith would never have had the presence of mind include in a story.

After enjoying this one as much as I did, I looked up Shea’s other titles and it seems that the cryptozoology monsters are his thing. I look forward to reading more of his work, especially his Skunk Ape novel, which clocks in at well under 200 pages. The Montauk Monster runs a bit long because plenty of explanation is needed for the beasts’ existence, but it still moves quickly, and I couldn’t be happier with my $3 purchase.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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Panther! by Alan Ryan

Panther!
By Alan Ryan
1981 New American Library
Paperback, 212 pages

                To promote his new film Panther, a studio head plans on having twenty live, wild black panthers, freshly imported from Africa, caged in the lobby of the theater on opening night. What could possibly go wrong?

                Granted, I prefer gory action to characterization, but Ryan gives us a collection of good characters to enjoy while we await the inevitable. Once the cats are loose, some (not all) hell breaks loose and Ryan occasionally lets himself slip into Guy N. Smith mode, where he introduces new characters only to dispatch them a few pages later. I live for that shit. Of particular interest is a backfired blowjob scene.

                Considering the mayhem doesn’t kick in until well after the halfway mark, Panther! still manages to stay consistently interesting, if a bit predictable at times. Some plotline shit gets a little convenient by the end, but the story never drags. And I never once rolled my eyes that they were able to capture twenty wild black panthers for this promotional stunt.

                “Black panthers” are a color morph of the leopard in Africa and Asia (and jaguars in the Americas), a fact that is given less than a full sentence in the book. Though roughly 10% of leopards are prone to a degree of melanism, it seems highly unlikely that Ransome, the panther hunter, could have been so successful. But who cares, right?

                So, there you have it… today’s science fact and a thumbs up for Panther! The cover art is by Tom Hallman.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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Cows By Matthew Stokoe

 Cows

By Matthew Stokoe

Made on Demand, 1997/ 2015

Paperback, 206 pages

 

                This is the notorious, gross-out, disgusting novel that has all the kids a’ twitter about how nasty it is. When online discussions about the “most extreme” horror novels pop up, Cows is sure to get a mention. Needless to say, I needed to take the plunge and shell out my hard earned dough.

 

                Steven is a fucked-up guy. His unloving mother (The Hagbeast) routinely abuses him, and he longs for the “real”, happy family life he sees on TV. He gets a job in a slaughterhouse, his first move towards independence, and it fucks him up even more. Soon, a group of rogue cows that have escaped the kill-line are talking to him and indoctrinating him into their underground society, hoping he can help with their cause.

 

Yeah, that’s right. Talking cows. On the surface, it’s just more wackiness in a book that has more shit, vomit, blood, jizz, and other bodily fluids than every other book ever written combined, but it’s all just allegory, and it does get a tad heavy handed at times. Not to say that it doesn’t work, though. The world (and our place in it) is a mess and Stokoe does a masterful job of showing just how bad it could be for some folks. Granted, I’m not going to shit down my mother’s throat to kill her, but I do feel a little alienated sometimes.

 

Is the book a gross-out? Oh, hell yes! Has Stokoe actually eaten shit? Because he goes into great detail about the texture, taste and viscosity of feces that will have your brow furrowing at the very least. His descriptions of the desolate world of Steven filled me with his hopelessness and, as a veggie, the slaughterhouse scenes reinforced my choice of a meatless lifestyle in a massive way. Yes, the book is a gross-out, but it is a hell of a lot more than that. It will make you think about things you’d rather not think about. I made me squirm, laugh, roll my eyes and think. It’s actually quite a deep book.

 

First published in 1998 by Creation Books, Cows is now self-published by Matthew Stokoe.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March 2022.

 

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The Coming of the Rats by George H. Smith

 

The Coming of the Rats
By George H. Smith
1961 Priority Books
Paperback, 158 pages

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    This one threw me for a loop. I thought I was in for a typical post-Nuke killer rat novel, but I got oh, so much more. And less!

 

    The first thing you notice is that the main character, Steve Seabrook, is a real douchebag. Self-centered and eternally horny, Steve is completely out for himself. His only real comrade is his dick. In fact, his drooling over his coworker’s curves is so overt as to be distracting. I wondered just what this book was up to, so I took a break and looked up the author. Smith was a soft-core erotica writer, responsible for such titles as Orgy Buyer and Country Club Lesbians while also trying his hand at science fiction. OK, so I wasn’t seeing things. With that settled I went back and enjoyed the book for what it was: soft-core sci-fi.

 

    Y’see, with bombs imminent, Steve had secured a cave deep in the valley where destruction and radiation would be minimal. He’d been stocking it with essentials, and he just needed an Eve to his Adam. He chose his stacked co-worker Bettirose, for better or worse. Meanwhile, he’s fucking his Mexican friend’s hot 18-year-old daughter, who will be a neighbor in the Valley after the bombs drop. After two thirds of the book is done, the bombs do drop and the post-apocalyptic fun begins, including the long-awaited rat scourge.

 

    Yes, this book is puerile and silly but it’s a ton of fun. The Priority Books edition I have is a study in cheapness, with smeary or faded inks on every page. The cover isn’t as lurid as the original Pike Books cover, which features a blonde maiden being stripped by rats, but the story is just as wonderfully stupid.

Pike Books #203

Check out Tony Shepard's look at the evolution of this story here... it's very interesting and gives you a look at the tale in its original form!

 

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.
 
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Only Child by Patricia Wallace

Only Child

By Patricia Wallace

1985 Zebra

Paperback, 332 pages

    This is another is Zebra’s never-ending line of scary brat books. I usually resist the urge to buy these, knowing they never truly satisfy me but for a few bucks at Savers, I figured what the fuck.

 

    A small plane crashes in Southern California and the only survivor is a young girl who seems almost too perfect to be true. The townspeople all fawn over her because of her plight and her blondeness. It seems that she has amnesia about everything except her first name: Hannah. She’s taken in by the local priest and shit starts going down around town… fires, disappearances and medical maladies begin to stack up. Could it be… young Hannah who is behind these horrors?

 

    Only Child doesn’t pull any punches and as soon as you see the cover, you pretty much know what you’re in for, but it’s not a bad book at all. Wallace makes it super easy to read, with frequent breaks between scenes, a good sense of humor, and enough zest to keep the pages turning. She doesn’t over-write at all, which is a godsend in a book like this. Easy peasy. She churned out a dozen of these books for Zebra and they’re all very readable even if they’re not great. While this one isn’t particularly memorable, it’s an OK way to spend a few nights, reading about other peoples’ creepy children.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

 

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Blight by Mark Sonders

 

Blight
by Mark Sonders
1981 Ace Books
Paperback, 259 pages

 

    Blight is a no-bullshit book about killer moths. On page one, bulldozers clear some formerly protected woods that were the feeding area for rare moths and by page 5, the pissed-off insects are already attacking the human interlopers. Mark Sonders comes off like an excited 15-year-old kid with a good horror idea that he banged out with the glee of a teenager taking revenge on the world. The pace is relentless (until towards the end), and the science is bonkers; just how this type of book should be.

    The residents of Stole Estates are rich and doomed. Their hoity toity community was built on the cleared land that once belonged to the moths. The moths are hungry. And, for good measure, they sting as well. They come in such abundance that they clog everything, including human orifices. Moths are out to fuck you up. One very enjoyable thing in this book? Kids get killed, too.

    There is some priceless prose on hand, too. One victim, a famous entertainer, incredulous that she is being attacked by a usually benign insect makes the author ask, “Didn’t they know who she was? Didn’t they have any idea they weren’t supposed to eat people? What was she, a sweater?” Brilliant! And this line, which is either pure genius or total idiocy: “The last body looked like it had exploded, sending its vital organs and innermost secrets out to an uncaring world.” Just wow.

    As pulpy good as this, it does start to bog down towards the end while one character is making a long, introspective escape attempt, but I can forgive that as well as the abrupt non-ending. The sheer jubilance and excitement the book is written with (as well as the fairly large print) made this one an easy book to plow through in no time. Evidently, Mark Sonders is a penname for computer-game designer and part-time sci-fi author Michael Berlyn. Sadly, this is his only horror novel. I wish he wrote twenty more.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #7 (Jan. 2021)

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The Dark by James Herbert

 

The Dark

By James Herbert

1980 Signet

Paperback, 314 pages

 

    I first read Herbert’s The Rats as a teen way back when and I fell in love with it. For a while, I grabbed every book of his that came out. The problem is, apart from the subsequent rat novels (Lair in 1979 and Domain in 1984), much of Herbert’s work doesn’t fully satisfy me. I find that he is prone to overwriting; a problem for someone like me with the attention span of a two-year-old.

    I only recently got around to The Dark; a novel considered to be a masterpiece of horror fiction. And it is very good. It is filled with gruesome set-pieces and enough gore to satisfy even a jaded gorehound like me. The Dark is essentially the collected evil of humans, an energy force that feeds on a person’s own insecurities and bad thoughts. Obviously, this can lead to psychosis, murder, suicide and just downright nasty behavior. There are some truly cruel ideas in this book. That is a good thing. This is a horror novel. Look for the main character’s mental-hospital-resident wife fucking with his head while under The Dark’s influence. Brutal.

    True to form, however, Herbert overdid it just a bit. The climactic ending starts with 100 pages left in the book and I started struggling; I just wanted to see how it ended. This caused me to put the book down and go to sleep a few times while in the stretch run. But overall, I give The Dark a thumbs up. In my worthless opinion, it is probably his best non-rodent book.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #7 (Jan. 2021)

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Books of Horror

The Wood by Guy N. Smith

The Wood
by Guy N. Smith
1985 New English Library
Paperback, 171 pages

A little something different from the master. While he is untouchable with nature-strikes-back novels, it is always interesting to read Smith step outside his comfort zone and stretch his imagination. The Wood isn’t perfect, but GNS always spins a powerful tale and this book goes by very quickly.

Beware Droy Wood when the mist comes in from the sea…

Droy Wood stood between the town and the sea and everybody avoided it. Lots of shit went down there through the years and the past never really went away. The Wood is technically a ghost story… characters from the past who met their demise in the woods hanging around to terrorize and kill the living who are unlucky enough to venture into the woods on a misty night.

Sure, some of this sounds pretty familiar (can you say The Fog?) and despite Smith’s descriptions of the horrors within the woods, the specters really take a back seat to the modern day horror that sets the story into motion, i.e. a rapist/ murderer’s abduction of a woman on a dark, lonely road. It’s hard to take the Nazi ghost and old-timey apparitions in pantaloons too seriously after that grueling scene.

But with the victims, the rapist, ghosts, mind control, dank bogs, befuddled police and small-town fears, there is a lot to keep you going in this book. It’s not as satisfying as a giant cancerous crab, but The Wood  has a lot to offer when you’re in the mood for something different. Be sure to grab the New English Library edition with the nice Les Edwards cover!

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #7 (Jan. 2021)

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The Pike by Cliff Twemlow and Devour by Paul Adams

Something a little different here: a whole article on books featuring Northern Pikes as the monster. This appeared in Midnight Magazine #6 as "Comin' Down the Pike". 

It is a walloping understatement to say that Peter Benchley’s Jaws inspired dozens of knock-off killer shark books and movies. Hell, it pretty much spawned the entire nature-strikes-back genre, at least it’s phenomenal 1970s resurgence. Ah yes, sharks: the world’s deadliest fish. Stay out of the ocean!

 

Luckily, in the days before River Monsters was on TV, there were a couple of writers who strayed a bit from the norm and did enough research to find something different. Ignoring the salty sea and looking into freshwater, two books came out a year apart championing the Northern Pike as a worthy killer.

 

The pike is indeed a formidable fish. They are large (they can reach sizes of up to four feet long) and have a mouth full of very sharp teeth. They can be aggressive, and they are fast. They don’t blink! Sounds like pulp horror monster royalty to me.

 

Part time actor, musician, screenwriter, and bouncer Cliff Twemlow mercifully set aside some spare time to write The Pike, which was published by Hamlyn in 1982.  This quick horror novel (just 160 pages! Perfect!) is about a twelve-foot-long pike swimming loose in Lake Windermere in England, shredding everything in its path. This, of course, pulls a lot of thrill seekers to the shores of the lake, hoping for a glimpse of the fish or a body part or two.

 

No real explanation is given for the exceptional size of this fish, but none is needed. We just gear up for the next attack. The novel concentrates on the characters in between the killings; the shop owners in the town who are enjoying the exploding economy thanks to the sightseers, the believable romance between the two leads and ol’ Ulysses Grant, the marine biologist who is the colorful Quint-like character in this story. It stays interesting and more or less scientifically plausible throughout and Twemlow doesn’t wait too long between the gruesome deaths.

 

Interestingly enough, Twemlow adapted his novel into a screenplay and things were in motion to make a film version of The Pike. Calling in some friends in high places, he even got Joan Collins on board and the publicity mills were rolling. A giant, mechanical pike was created (for a quarter-million bucks!) and demonstrated on TV and Joan even posed for a few toothy pictures with it. Unfortunately, funding never came through for the movie and, much to our collective loss, The Pike was never made.

 

Relevant to absolutely nothing, Lake Windermere became a cryptozoological hot-spot decades after the pike retired. Since 2006, a large Nessie-like Sea Monster has been sighted many times in the lake. Named Bownessie, the beast hasn’t had much hard evidence reported about it, but a lot of interesting pictures can be found online. It ain’t no pike.

 

Arriving a year before Twemlow’s book, Devour (Futura, 1981) was Paul Adams’ contribution to killer pike literature. A trim, 188-page presentation of pulp perfection, this publication is my preferred pike paperback. Adams’ fish are mutants, evolved from spawning in the polluted waters of Eastern Britain. Chemical dumping is to blame, and Adams preaches the ecological warnings with a heavy hand, which I personally love. You fuck with nature; nature will fuck you up.

 

Devour is far gorier than The Pike and Adams evidently learned how to set up a successful nature-horror story from his friend Guy N. Smith. (Smith even wrote a forward to Adams’ book Extreme Hauntings: Britain's Most Terrifying Ghosts praising his friends’ work. I’m still not certain they’re not the same person!) Like Smith, Adams’ keeps things moving very quickly and Britain gets laid to waste, like in every notable book in the genre. Characters are introduced and dispatched all in one chapter, leaving you wondering exactly who is going to be alive and in charge by the end of the book. The gore is laid on thick and the blood flows freely. These mutated pike can even plop through the mud on rainy nights, hunting their human meals on land. There is nothing that isn’t great about this book. It is a perfect example of why I love this specific genre.

 

Of course, there are sharks, piranhas, octopuses, and all sorts of watery predators in the pages of horror fiction, but these two excellent books really flexed their fishy muscles and showed us how badass the Northern Pike can be. A near miss is R. Carl Largent’s The Lake which features a “garpike” (just a layman’s term for the unrelated, but also large and scary-looking gar) but the fish isn’t the main menace in the book which, like Devour, is also very environmentally conscious. There is also a short story called “The Pike” by Conrad Williams in his collection Born with Teeth (PS Publishing, 2012), but it is really more of a fishing tale. It was reprinted in Nightmare Magazine #72 (September 2018). The pike completist can read it here.

 

While I await someone to write Night of the Guppy, I will continue to revel in these masterpieces from the Seventies and Eighties.

Update- 7-25-2023... a film about Cliff Twemlow!!! The trailer is here!

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Books of Horror

The Ancient Enemy by Donald Thompson

 

The Ancient Enemy
by Donald Thompson
1979 Fawcett Gold Medal
Paperback, 220 pages

 

Trillions of roaches destroy everything in their path as they rip through a desert bordello. Doctors are assigned to find out what happened to the folks at the said bordello and are soon joined by some of the surviving working ladies and two johns who were all away the night of the attack. Soon, they are held hostage in the house of ill repute by a biker gang with automatic weapons.

 

Frankly, if you’re not itching to read this after that description, I just don’t know what to tell you. This book is another super-fast page-turner that doesn’t slow down for a moment. It starts the day after the first roach attack and quickly unfolds in all its nasty glory. The action takes place over a span of less than two days and the unexpectedly lovable group really goes through hell. The male characters are all fully formed, interesting individuals but the women in the story suffer a bit from not getting as much of the author’s attention. Perhaps Mr. Thompson just couldn’t get in touch with his feminine side.

 

But that’s just an observation, not a real knock. I mean, the book has action, gore, sex, torture and roaches. Plus, it has romance! This is one of those novels where a second peril is introduced (the psycho biker gang) to try to make you forget the roaches, but you never really do. They’re always in the back of your mind.

 

Some folks with high standards might think this pulpy trash is poorly written, but I liked it. The Ancient Enemy delivers.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #7 (Jan. 2021)

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