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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Books of Horror

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!

Midnight Magazine

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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Books of Horror Facebook Page

Let Me Explain...

 I have been writing short (250-350 word) reviews of horror books for Midnight Magazine for a few years and I figured that I might as well save them here, too. I will only post them after they have been run in the magazine.

I like the old 70s and 80s Nature Strikes Back Pulp the best but I open my mind up every now and then for other stuff. Some inspiration comes from the Books of Horror Facebook page.

I only started these reviews in 2019 so most of my beloved classics will not be represented. If and when I revisit them, I may add them