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.

Pestilence By Edward Jarvis

Pestilence
By Edward Jarvis
1983 Hamlyn
Paperback, 158 pages

                                                      

    I really didn’t like Maggots, written by Jarvis three years after this one, despite the amazing cover. Why did I try so hard and wind up spending so much on this, his only other horror book? Do I like pain? Self-abuse? Or am I just one of those pitiful completists? Whatever the reason, I managed to snag a copy of this rare one and decided to dig in right away.

    I was immediately reminded of why I didn’t like Maggots. His dialog is all over the place, more like chatter than a conversation and his prose isn’t much different. Is his tongue in his cheek or hanging out of his mouth with a dallop of drool dripping off of it? The set-up is slow and before too long, the meeting, conferences and phone calls begin to pile up. This is what frosted my balls with the other book.

    Garry, a journalist, loses a couple of fingers while cleaning his drains. He has no clue how that happened, but it falls in place with odd occurrences happening all around the world. A young actress in India loses a leg, ducks and other animals are disappearing and the water is becoming a dangerous place. Garry gets recruited by his pal Miles to head up an investigative unit and from there, phone calls ensue. And meetings. At least Jarvis throws us a few bones in this one though, with a few bloody attacks occurring while they’re still trying to figure out the cause.

Well, after discovering that those vile Russians have done some underwater nuclear bomb testing (tsk tsk!), the eventually find out that giant prehistoric lampreys are the culprits. Real life lampreys can get to almost four feet but these guys double, triple… multiply that by hundreds. One takes down a Blue Whale, another takes down a Great White Shark on Cape Cod (where the exploits of local man Quint and the town of Amity are referred to, in an amusing nod). The names increase as the sizes increase… Giant Lamprey, Mammoth Lamprey, Mega Lamprey… Supreme lamprey!

    OK, I know Jarvis is taking the piss out of the genre, but it is hard to tell sometimes if he is laughing with us or at us. Garry is such a cad; he makes a Guy N. Smith leading man look like a choirboy. The night that he gets news of his wife’s death (by lamprey), he fucks his secretary. Jarvis takes an 8-page detour from the story on page 100 to show us the town of Rye. This book is completely absurd in a Lionel Fanthorpe kind of way. In the end, I have to say that despite the fucking meetings, it was pretty fun and quite bone headed. The ending may be the dumbest ever and for that, I give it extra points.

Thirst II: The Plague By Guy N. Smith

Thirst II: The Plague
By Guy N. Smith
1987 New English Library
Paperback, 160 pages

 
                                              

    Five years after the events that occurred in Thirst (NEL, 1980), the small town of Bryn Gawr is experiencing a bit of déjà vu. I mean, their reservoir that was the site of a toxic weedkiller spill has been cleaned up and declared safe. That horror is but a distant memory. But with a few of the town’s inhabitants going crazy and breaking out with weeping pustules on their skin, it sure looks like the Thirst is back. But how?

    This sequel takes place over just a couple of days, during a massive snow storm that cripples the town. This is where GNS sets up the book’s greatest terrors: people are in total isolation with no way of getting help when the infected maniacs pay a visit. Worst of all is the schoolmaster Sonia, a pretty young woman who is accosted by three former students who strip and bind her. Luckily, they forget to actually rape her, but she is bound and naked in the cold, empty, dark schoolhouse. Chilling in many ways.

    This thin tome is a hoot, and it moves at a break-neck speed, setting ‘em up and knocking ‘em down. You have a crazy cat lady, infected cats and dogs, a bar filled with thirsty, infected maniacs, a busybody who brings horror upon herself and people actually coughing up lungs. For real. The snowstorm and isolation is very effectively written, so much so that as I read it (on a warm Halloween), I actually thought it was snowing out when I looked up from the book. The Master really pulled me in to this one.

    There are rough parts (Sonia’s horrific piece, for sure) and some animal violence but it is all in good pulpy fun, if not good taste, and it disturbs the reader just the right amount. As usual, we get an unlikely romance blooming out of nowhere amidst the violence, but Smith at least reveals that Sonia and Deputy Tony Crane have had undeclared crushes on each other for a while.

    What can I say? This is yet another completely enjoyable, highly recommended bit of horror fiction from my favorite author. Disgusting, full of various bodily fluids, violent and hopeless: a good way to spend a few nights of reading happiness.

Plasmid By Jo Gannon and Robert Knight

Plasmid
By Jo Gannon and Robert Knight
1980 Star
Paperback, 191 pages
                                             

                                                

    First, let’s get it straight. This was originally written as a screenplay by Jo Gannon. Evidently, it didn’t get picked up for a movie, and this book was written by Robert Knight based on Gannon’s screenplay. Surely the fun wordplay here and there are Knight’s, but the story is a good one and knowing it was written for the screen, it really makes me wish it had been made into a film! Sources say that Robert Knight is a pseudonym for Sci-Fi writer Christopher Evans, who wrote other tie-ins, so I’m inclined to believe it.

    Trouble is a’brewin’ at the Fairfield Institute of Genetic Research in Oakhaven, somewhere in England. It seems a patient has killed a couple of doctors and escaped. The patient has chalk white skin and a taste for killing. This brings a lot of unwanted attention to the Institute, especially from Paula Scott, a rabid radio reporter who smells a cover-up. There’s a lot of shit going down and the formula that turned the escaped killer into a mutant is being protected by its shady creator. Meanwhile, everyone that the mutant infects goes plasmid as well. This sets up some fun gore sequences.

    It's great to have the main protagonist be a woman and Paula is no pushover at all. She is a strong ass-kicker who is braver and smarter than those she is up against. Even as a romance blooms between Paula and her boss, she is still a woman of her own means. What is it about crisis in 80s horror books that makes people need to fuck? Well, we get one fairly tasteful sex scene here but otherwise, it’s all business. Paula’s character is the most fully explored, best written in the book, a welcome change from the usual 80s misogyny.

    The last third of the book has the military bumbling their way to the rescue. Their cure might be worse than the plasmid mutants living in the sewer. They plan on pumping poison gas into those sewers, figuring everyone in the city will hear the Prime Minister’s speech telling them to seal up all cracks and holes. I tell you; the doctors and military and government are idiots. That seems to be the main thing Gannon’s script meant to say. Paula gets to tell off the PM nicely, too.

    This is a good, fast-moving and satisfying book, mostly a thriller with mutants. I enjoyed casting it and setting up the camera angles and making my own Plasmid movie. Like most Star books, this one has a cool cover, too.

Dew Claws By Stephen Gresham

Dew Claws
By Stephen Gresham
1986 Zebra
Paperback, 335 pages

    Let’s face it. I wanted this book for the cover. Even though my copy is tattered, a skeleton playing a banjo and wearing a to-the-side baseball cap is a fantastic and hilarious image. Thank you, Zebra. Thank you, artist (William Teason?). But will the book be any good?

    I admit that I almost didn’t make it at first. The lead character is a young boy named Johnny Ray. Strike one. Then, there is a lot of spelled out, thick Southern dialect. I don’t like trying to figure out what is being said. But at about 100 pages in, I realized that I was enjoying the book for what it is… a very well-written, quiet slice of folk horror.

    The afore-mentioned Johnny Ray is out in Night Horse Swamp with his uncle and brothers when everybody except JR gets sucked into the muck and disappear. Soon, he is being fostered by a couple (the Merseys) who operate a daycare, and they become a family. But behind the Mersey’s home lie some thick woods and the swamp. Johnny Ray and some of the other workers have seen things. Spirits, barely visible, and they want the children. JR (as Sam Mercy calls him, and so shall I) has seen his brothers among those cantankerous spirits. They are the Dew Claws, and they are to be feared.

    Gresham works up a nice story of the Dew Claws and lays the Southern Gothic atmosphere on thick. Most of the spelled-out dialect stops, except for the maid Melba, who is very difficult to decipher for my old, addled brain. If I’m being honest, the way the African Americans are depicted made me a little bit uncomfortable but there are some very likeable black characters, so I guess it’s all good. As JR starts to develop a Dew Claw of his own, he sets out seeking a cure and meets a slew of oddball characters who may or may not be able to help. The Chokers are a particular delight as they have an Eastern Indigo snake as a beloved family member named Day Lou. (There is, however, quite a lot of hunting and frog gigging that I could have done without. But I guess that’s a part of swamp living.)

    Not exactly in my wheelhouse of blood and guts or animals killing humans novels, but I’m glad I stuck with this one after all. What does that great cover have to do with anything? Not much. JR plays a banjo and wears a cap sometimes. Good enough for me.

The Undead By Guy N. Smith

The Undead
By Guy N. Smith
1983 New English Library
Paperback, 176 pages

 

                I felt some trepidation at the start of this; the set-up was exactly the same as his previous book The Lurkers. A man who strikes gold with his first novel moves his family to a remote area with xenophobic locals to write follow-up books, despite his wife hating the idea. It’s almost as if the Great Scribbler decided he had a better idea and wanted to reconstruct the same story. Luckily, my worries were unfounded. Yes, the initial set-up is the same but there is so much more going on that by the end, I’d forgotten about any similarities.

 

                This one has a wonderful back story about Bemorra, a recluse that was killing children in the town of Gabor (back in the olden days) and dumping their bodies into a quarry pool deep in Gabor Woods. He is caught and hung, and Gabor is forever cursed. In present time, Ron Halestrom moves to Gabor with his reluctant wife Marie to write more books. His first hit was based on the Bemorra legend so he figures the actual location would provide more inspiration. Soon, Marie’s deaf daughter Amanda was to join them.

 

                Throw in a caravan of gypsies, a group of city kids in a program to get them some fresh air, fights, pool ghosts and the hermit Beguildy, who seems an awful lot like Bemorra, and you’ve got quite the stew of confrontation, violence and horror. Deaf Amanda figures prominently in the action as well, with her psychic ties to the evil in the area. The fast-paced narrative keeps the multiple storylines moving at a good clip and the excitement never lets up.

 

                So, yes, there is a bit of The Lurkers in here, but I’d have to say it has much more in common with 1975’s The Sucking Pit. He would revisit some of the pool scenes from this book in the following year’s The Walking Dead, an official Sucking Pit sequel. Steven Crisp’s cover art really sets the tone for this one, with the floating partial-skeleton pool victims and our main villain-ghoul Bemorra. This one comes highly recommended.

 

                Originally published in GNS2: A Guy N. Smith Fanzine by Chris Elphick

Transplant By Daniel Farson

Transplant
By Daniel Farson
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 190 pages
                                               
    OK, the characters are as follows… a loudmouth TV host who bullies his interviewees, a doctor who is a heart transplant specialist, a cemetery watchman named Tom, and an occultist who likes to fart around with black magic. The TV host, after a belligerent interview with the doctor, has a heart problem and needs a transplant. Tom is beaten nearly to death by the occultist for always spying on him and ratting him out. In the hospital, his body is unresponsive, so they use that heart to fix the TV host. Got that?
    
    So, the occultist (The Creep) does some voodoo magic on the now corpse of Tom and makes him come back to life to seek out the person who has his heart. OK, this sounds really good, doesn’t it? The problem is, once Tom is one of the walking dead, he’s pretty much just a normal guy seeking vengeance. He goes barhopping, drinks a lot of beer and for some reason, is really attractive to both men and women. He gets a lot of action.

    In other words, it gets really fucking stupid when it should have gotten really creepy and fun. There is some gore, but Tom just isn’t the scary zombie I was hoping for. The TV guy, Dick Manley (!), becomes a much less hateful character with the new heart and a possible poignant ending is set up but wasted.

    More interesting is the author himself. His granduncle (?) was Bram Stoker, he was a Jack the Ripper biographer, a pub owner, a hotshot journalist and TV interviewer (not unlike Manley) and documentary maker, covering topics that many others wouldn’t touch. He wrote about artists, cryptozoology, the bohemian lifestyle and penned a pair of horror novels, this one and Curse (Hamlyn, 1980). He was a very open homosexual in the 60s when it just wasn’t talked about. It’s fair to say that most of the characters in this book have a little bit of Farson in them, especially the pub-crawling zombie Tom. The Creep even has some of Farson’s books and Stoker memorabilia at his place.

    Overall, not horrible but I was sure disappointed after a spirited first two-thirds of the novel. But looking back at just how stupid it became, I’m thinking it is kind of endearing in a goofy sort of way. It’s obvious that Farson was having fun and knowing his real-life eccentricities shines a new light on the proceedings.

Toy Cemetery By William W. Johnstone

Toy Cemetery
By William W. Johnstone
1987 Zebra
Paperback, 412 pages

 
    Old Scratch is running rampant in a small town in the South and it’s up to a rough and tumble Viet Nam vet to stop the madness! It sounds like every other William W. Johnstone book doesn’t it? But wait, there is much more. So much more that I really have no idea where to begin. This is top shelf Johnstone kitchen-sink madness.

    New York divorcé Jay Clute (the war veteran) has inherited his aunt’s fortune down in Victory, Missouri and he and his 10-year-old daughter Kelly take a trip down to his hometown to settle his affairs. As memories flood him, the two notice lots of strange things going on, not the least of which is little dolls running around. They stay in town, meet up with Jay’s old friends and Kelly meets some local kids. But there is an evil grip on the town that has everyone acting strangely and weird creatures skulk in the shadows.

    I’ll let Deva, Jay’s high school sweetheart, and her sarcastic retort to Jay’s suggestion that it must be an explainable phenomenon reveal some of the weirdness… “Grown men and women are thrust into near-incestuous relationships with their kids; creatures roam the night; toys come alive; and the personalities of nearly everyone in town have been altered. Explainable phenomenon. Sure, Jay.” All this and more and yes, Johnstone goes there with a lot of incest, rape and pedophilia in this one.

    Truthfully, this is so chock-full of strangeness that it gets confusing but it’s all good because the gore splats freely and despite the cringey mean-spiritedness of some parts, there is no shortage of intentional humor. My favorite character is old man Milton, Jay’s next-door neighbor who rocks in his rocker, cheerfully calling Jay and his crew assholes every time he sees them. There is an explanation for everything, and it slowly unfolds during the course of this overstuffed tome but don’t worry about logic; this is Johnstone at the peak of his batshit craziness. Just go along for the ride and try to picture the author tapping away at the typewriter, chopping out this stream-of-consciousness prose, wondering himself where it’s all going to end up.

    Johnstone will never be mistaken for a great writer, but his work is fun as hell and this one is as over the top as it gets. And even though good ol’ God is mentioned a number of times, he doesn’t play a huge role in this novel. Thank Him for that!

Siege on Dome 17 By Nick Young

Siege on Dome 17
By Nick Young
2024 White Mountain Pub.
Paperback, 239 pages

    This is Young’s debut novel and it’s fair to say that he’s off to a fairly auspicious start. The many characters’ (some are super unsavory) actions all have an effect on each other in one way or another and the story is multi-faceted, but that’s not to say that Young doesn’t know what we’re here for. Gore and bodily fluids flow and splash aplenty. Blood, plasma, claret, urine, vomit, pus, jizz and entrails leave bodies in every chapter… and there are 41 chapters!

    Ten years have passed since the bombs dropped and the world is a dead, radiated desert and the surviving humans live in steel domes. Dome 17 may well be the last dome with anyone alive. Some remaining humans have become mutants, covered with boils and pus-filled sacs who become crazier over time. Taft is the man in charge of killing the mutants once they lose their humanity. A shitty job indeed. Three housing blocks are in Dome 17 and the A-block is all mutants. The survivors are running out of everything and things are breaking down, including the dome’s retracting roof. It’s turning into a war between the humans and the A-block and things are about to get even worse.

    Giant insects are getting into the dome and the car-sized ants and huge wasps don’t care who they’re killing and eating. One vengeful mutant is feeding victims to a massive spider. The humans have to find a way to curb the insects and the mutants and save their asses, but the rag-tag team of heroes seem like a very unlikely crew to handle the siege. Descriptive violence ensues and the viscera is knee-deep in no time. As with the 80’s pulp horrors that this book is inspired by, inappropriate sex is also graphically depicted.

    Young has a ton of fun with his killings, with guts sliding out of impaled bodies and the above-mentioned fluids spraying far and wide. The characters include a pedo/ child-murdering reverend, a mourning mom, a German co-worker of Taft’s that I pictured looking like Ted V. Mikels, a useless, dog-killing Dome Mayor, a mutant with revenge on his mind, the mayor’s very capable wife who become Taft’s main squeeze, and a plethora of folks, both good and bad, who are trying to survive. They are all worthwhile characters that help push the story along.

    As with most small press books, it could have used another pass by an editor. A character named Arthur become Albert after a few pages and there are some typos throughout but overall, in that respect, this book is in better shape than 90% of the self-published/ small press books that I encounter. Young sent me a review copy with a barf-bag that he thoughtfully included as a bookmark. I didn’t have to use it but I can see where some might! The splatter is heavy, the gore is plentiful and the sick bastards that live in this book just might make you puke! On a side note, I wonder if Young’s idea for the domes came from Skydome in Toronto.

                                              It's a barf-bag! It's a bookmark! It's a barf-bag bookmark!!

The Camp By Guy N. Smith

The Camp
By Guy N. Smith
1989 Sphere
Paperback, 288 pages

    Just what did Guy N. Smith have against vacationers? He set loose his crabs on them, he sicced a manitou doll on them and this time out, things get even weirder! Thank goodness he held some kind of grudge against people on holiday. We got a lot of great stories out of it.

    This time out, we’re at Paradise Holiday Camp. It has everything. Chalets, amusement parks, bars, restaurants, and a covert project where certain campers are being tested on a new mind-altering drug. The project gets mixed results; one couple thinks they’re in the new ice age (in the middle of a hot summer), one woman thinks she is a prostitute while her abusive boyfriend doesn’t even know her, and one older woman thinks she’s pregnant. Jeff Beebee fares better. Ann, the woman who is to dose his food with the drug, kind of falls for him and she is reluctant to administer it.

    We have a little soap opera here, too. Ann is the (older) drug scientist’s mistress, and Jeff’s girlfriend has just dumped him at the Camp. We also have a little classism as the more affluent guests stay in better digs than the riffraff (you know, like me). GNS throws a lot of different characters into the mix, and they are all well-rounded, even if only through their hallucinations. There is some shocking violence and plenty of frustrating moments where you just want to yell and let people know what’s happening to them.

    The book chugs along at a good pace but slags a bit going into the last 50 or 60 pages. It is almost as if as he was in the homestretch, Guy thought up a better ending and tried to tie everything up before getting to it. If that’s the case, then I’m glad it happened because the ending is a fiery, violent burst of mayhem. It is hard to not recommend any GNS book and The Camp is another winner. Les Edwards’ cover captures the angst and horror admirably, too.

    Originally published in GNS2: A Guy N. Smith Fanzine by Chris Elphick

The Totem By David Morrell

The Totem
By David Morrell
1979, Fawcett Crest
Paperback, 255 pages

                                               

    Boy, I really wanted to like this book more than I did, but you just can’t win them all. It’s got everything I usually like; possible monsters, possible rabies scare and possible good story-telling. But overall, this became a slog to get through for me.

    One big problem? The main character’s surname is Slaughter. The author even comments how it’s a silly name, unbefitting the character, but it still managed to bug me. Anyhoo, Nathan Slaughter left the police force in Detroit for a quieter life in a small town in Wisconsin. When the job of Sheriff became available he took it, figuring he’d be living an easy life. Until bodies started stacking up.

    The bodies show signs of rabies and eyewitnesses describe some sort of monster with antlers. The bodies, however, don’t stay dead. They get up and start a reign of terror. This is no ordinary rabies. When a rabid young boy becomes an instrument of terror, biting his mother, the town is on high alert.

    I do like when Morrell is telling the tale from the monster's point of view, whichever infected being it might be at that time. Called only “it”, it’s nice to see what is going through the head of the victims of this plague. Some pathos is worked up for the kid who turns. The main characters, Slaughter, the doctor who is trying to sort out a lot of shit with very little information, and Slaughter’s old pal, the drunken reporter, are all right, if at times a little predictable. It’s just that by the half-way point, I became a little agitated and bored with the book. I mean, it’s OK, but I just didn’t get absorbed.

    Morrell, the man who invented John Rambo, had his original manuscript cut down before publication, so maybe some tidbits of story got the axe but I don’t think I could have made it through the book if it was any longer. The longer, original version was published in 1994, bumping it up to over 400 pages. No thanks. Admittedly, I grabbed this Fawcett edition for the groovy cover, which is far less spoilery than the images on other editions.

The Lurkers By Guy N. Smith

The Lurkers
By Guy N. Smith
1982 Hamlyn
Paperback, 158 pages
                                            

    The Master covers familiar territory with this one, with a family of outsiders facing the hatred and wrath of the small-town locals, but he throws enough variations into the short page-count to keep the story fresh and exciting.

    Peter Fogg was a working class nothing who wrote a book in his spare time. It got published and turned out to be a big hit. He got greedy and moved his wife Janie and his son Gavin to a secluded rental house deep in the Welsh Highlands to write another book. Janie hated it; she could sense something evil in the woods around the house. Gavin hated it because being English, he was the target of his Welsh schoolmates’ ire. And there was that old stone circle up on the hill, visible from the house.

    Smith sets up the story and lets the dread seep in slowly, from the townsfolk making no bones about how unwelcome the Foggs are to the slaughter of their pet cat and rabbit, whose remains are found at the stone circle. Are the townsfolk responsible or are the ghostly druids back, making sacrifices in the name of Old Scratch? Janie has had enough and takes Gavin back to civilization, leaving Peter on his own against whatever evil forces are at work. There is something out there.

    Guy N. Smith’s daughter has said that the house in this book was based on their own home. It sounds like a lovely place, except for the brewing evil! Fogg’s stand against whatever is out there is a suspenseful stake out in the middle of a crippling blizzard and Smith really ramps up the feeling of isolation. Many twists unravel and this satisfying book can be plowed through in a sitting or two. A highly recommended non-crab book from a legendary writer.

    Originally published in GNS2: A Guy N. Smith Fanzine by Chris Elphick

Roadkill Girls By John Monsees

Roadkill Girls
By John Monsees
2025 Grindhouse Horror
Paperback and Kindle, 132 pages

                                             

    It’s not every day that I get a review copy of a book but I’m honored to have received the first book from Grindhouse Horror. I know John Monsees primarily as an illustrator but his move into writing is a lucky thing for lovers of pulp horror. He gets it, he’s good at it, he understands what readers want, and he delivers it in a big way.

    Jinx. Spider. Viper. Roxy. Four women on motorcycles, fleeing from the police after a bungled robbery leaves a dead body. The desert roads offer them no respite so they go way offroad, lose the pigs and find themselves at a diner in the middle of nowhere. But the people running the diner are cannibals! They soon learn that their problems are just beginning. There is something else there. Something monstrous. Something underground. Something that wants to eat them.

    That’s right, things pile up for our anti-heroes quickly. We want the kitchen sink and Monsees gives it to us. The characters are beautifully developed; Jinx is the small gang’s leader, an ex-con and the one with the most level head, though she’s feeling she is in over that level head. Spider is an ex-military tech specialist, also a convict, and has the ability to work gadgets to the gang’s advantage. Viper is nuts, no worries about her own life or death and is responsible for the murder that put them into hot water. Roxy is just a kid; 18 years old and running away from an abusive home, joining the others and feeling like she has her first real family. I developed a lot of feelings for these badass women in the short running time of this book.

    Of course, we’re here for the pulp sleaze and Monsees lays the gore on thick with slicing, dicing and biting, from both a drug-addled Viper and the massive underground worms that are the ultimate challenge for the gang. The worms are part Tremors (Ron Underwood, 1990) and also they reminded me of the annelids in Peter Tremayne’s hard to find book The Morgow Rises (Sphere, 1982). They’re tough to kill but easy to be killed by. But Monsees offers far more than a gorefest. As mentioned, the main characters aren’t just fodder. When anything happens to them, we care.

    There are also plenty of brilliant, Raymond Chadler-esque passages that made me stop reading and go back to reread and admire the line. This novel wasn’t just banged out; it was lovingly created. Not everything is perfect (two Harleys and two Kawasakis become four Harleys later on and they evidently got a fill-up at the diner, but I didn’t read it) but this is a highly recommended debut. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t mention the cover. It is tweaked Artificial Intelligence and I promised myself that I’d never promote something (book, movie or record) using AI, but it’s not an egregious use of it (like that shitty, shiny, cartoony garbage) and Monsees only takes the illustration gig away from himself, so I’ll turn the other cheek here. This review copy also includes a sneak peek at Monsees’ next release, a “shameless love letter to Guy N. Smith” and yes, it will be crabs. I am beyond excited for that one!
    
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Inhuman By John Russo

Inhuman
By John Russo
1986 Pocket Books
Paperback, 221 pages

                                                 

    John Russo is no stranger to horror fans. The co-author of Night of the Living Dead should need no introduction. His novels have been inconsistent, in my opinion, but Inhuman is very good, despite horrid online reviews. In fact, it is one of my favorite non-Dead ones so far.

    There's a lot going on in the first hundred pages. An old, dying woman predicts "Great big snakes are a-comin'. To Kill us!" Her religious family don't know what to make of that. Meanwhile, a pair of married psychiatrists are preparing their remote and beautifully maintained Manor House for a marriage encounter for five troubled couples. Meanwhile, again, a bank in New York has a hostage situation, with an SLA offshoot group of fanatics, the Green Brigade, killing off the innocents until their leader and his comrades are freed from prison. They demand a plane to Cuba and get it.

    OK, set-up complete, the fun begins. Of course, an over-zealous FBI agent does not want the plane, full of terrorists and hostages, to make it to Cuba. His plan is to get to such a high altitude as to knock out the passengers, with only the pilots having access to oxygen. They try to implement that plan, but a grenade makes it irrelevant. The pilots do their best to land safely and preserve the lives of the hostages. The landing is more or less successful and most of the passengers survive. But… the lack of oxygen when they were up there has had some nasty side-effects.

    Sure, the resultant story is heavily influenced by Night of the Living Dead, with the remote plantation house being under siege by the brain-damaged and heavily armed terrorists. Russo even says, with a wink, that the basement is the safest place and should be a last resort. While none of the characters are particularly likeable, the suspense is still thick, and the “automatons” are relentless.

    No, Lisa Falkenstern’s brilliant cover has nothing to do with the novel. The brain-damaged folks have a “reptile instinct” in that they want to hunt and kill and won’t stop until they do. Not sure I’ve met many reptiles who act like that, but then I’m higher on the food chain, I guess.

    Good book, great cover. Add it to your collection.

Cat’s Eye By William W. Johnstone

Cat’s Eye
By William W. Johnstone
1989 Zebra
Paperback, 397 pages

                                                   

    Anya and Pet are back! The huge maggots are back! The Old Ones are back! God and his old buddy Satan are back! William Johnstone strikes again with this, his sequel to Cat’s Cradle. Fasten your seatbelts, you’re in for another ridiculous ride.

    The events that happened in Ruger County, Virginia have not been forgotten so when shit starts going down a few counties over, in the town of Butler, it all had a familiar ring. Carl Garret, the bodyguard to Dee, a writer, also happens to be a self-proclaimed coven-buster. He is a one-man Satan-stopping dynamo, and he recruits police and townsfolk (that have not yet been turned into satanists) to fight for good.

    This book isn’t quite as wacky as the preceding one, but it is pretty nuts. I thought for a moment that we’d actually have a strong female character in a Johnstone novel, but Dee turned out to be really good at making coffee and being protected by Carl. Yes, somehow, the bodyguard runs the whole show because he was familiar with the happenings in the previous book, and he has a chip on his shoulder because he’d lost his father there. But we still have the flesh-eating maggots, possessed cats, rape, living severed heads, people turned into unrecognizable demons and all sorts of evil shit.

    One thing that makes this sequel a little bit of an eye-roller is the mentioning of God on every other page. Yes, I realize this is a good versus evil tale and it’s God versus Satan, but the Christianity is pretty heavy handed. Carl even cries “God, guns and guts!” as the means to beat the devil. That’s just fucking silly. Lots of things, including… wait for it… heavy metal music (!) are signs that one is turning to Satan. And, once again, there are so many characters that I got lost a few times, wondering just who I was reading about at the time. This entry wasn’t nearly as well laid out as the first one, and Anya and Pet are mere bit players here.

    If you dare to delve into the wild world of William W. Johnstone and this sounds like it would tickle your fancy, I suggest you read Cat’s Cradle first as this book refers to that one’s story frequently. By the way, that wonderful, embossed cover image (art by Richard Newton) has nothing to do with the story. That’s unfortunate, but…

    … you do get Satan farting.

Junkyard By Barry Porter

Junkyard
By Barry Porter
1989 Zebra Books
Paperback, 284 pages

    At first, I didn’t think I was going to like this book. The main characters are four teenage boys (not my favorite creatures), and the author was giving them very detailed back stories. I was saying to myself, “get to the horror part!” Then, a side-character got a full backstory and after rolling my eyes, my distress turned to joy. Everything was shaping up nicely after all.

    Four pre-teens built a huge clubhouse/ hideout in the local junkyard. Now, four years on, as their lives and interests are changing, the Pit, as they call it, is pretty much only used by Larry and Mark to watch porn and drink beer. Now one of them, Nick, has asked to use it on Friday night for his date. He wants to lose his virginity to Pauline. The fourth Pit member, Ray, has a long-time crush on Pauline and hates that plan. Larry wants to make a peephole in the Pit to watch live porn.

    Meanwhile, the junkyard owner knows there is something big and hungry on his property; he lost three Dobermans to something savage in there. Larry has an encounter one night, as well. Will the gang believe him? Deputy Gavel would. He’s been leaving the remains of his pedo-sexual murders for the beasts to eat for a while now! All of the characters plan to be in the yard on Friday night. Larry and Mark want to spy on Nick and Pauline, Ray wants to find and slay the monsters to prove his manhood, the owner wants to get revenge for his doggie “children” and the cop needs to get rid of remains that he was unable to earlier. Friday night is going to be a hoot!

    Part Stand by Me, part Food of the Gods and part American Psycho, this book strikes a lot of chords and with patience it really pays off. The clashing friendships of the boys as they wrestle with adolescence adds the emotional layer needed to pull the story off and the slow reveal of the flesh-eating beasties works very well. The pedophile, murderous cop could have been a gratuitous cartoon character, but he isn’t, much to the author’s credit. The Pit, a huge, cavernous construct made of cement, stacked tires and a Buick, is a character in and of itself.

    I thought this book was pretty well-written; I don’t understand the brickbats that some reviewers throw at Porter online. It was a little plodding in the first third but after finishing the book, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. The great cover (Perkins? Barkin?) has nothing to do with the beasties in the book but is also a huge selling point.

Saurian By William Schoell

Saurian
By William Schoell
1988 Leisure Books
Paperback, 368 pages

 

                Suspension of disbelief is of the utmost importance while reading this book. It gets pretty goofy but if you play along, you can have some fun with this dinosaur stomping tale of aliens and alcoholism.

 

                In 1957, lil’ Tommy Bartlett is a loner of a kid, content to read comics and monster magazines alone (sounds like me). His folks are useless; his father a drunk and his mom a woman who has given up. Bribed by his mother to play with the local kids, he acquiesces and through them, finds a hidden lake in the woods with a creepy house on the other end. He rows over to the house on his own (the others are chicken) and gets a scare from a weird man in the house. That night, a massive dinosaur levels the Florida shanty town Tommy lived in, leaving the boy the only survivor.

 

                Onward to 1988, and Tom co-owns a bar (odd since his father’s drink is what destroyed his childhood) on the Florida coast. He is drawn back to his childhood area and finds it all built up into an expensive property. He bravely goes back to the hidden pond and found that area developed, too. He’d forgotten the tragedy that befell him back in the Fifties but piece by piece it comes back. The weird man, the massive dinosaur… how does it all fit?

 

                OK, I’m not going to say too much. The dinosaur scenes are tons of fun. The beast is massive, it swallows Blue Whales whole for a snack. It levels cities, hurls boats and licks human remains off the bottom of its feet like you’d suck honey off your finger. Impossibly huge, savage and yet with a human intelligence. So how does this tie in with the weird old man in the house? Don’t worry… kooky exposition lady Mistress Dunn will tell all. Now, even with a completely open mind, I found this to be really dumb, but I carried on and let Schoell tell his story. It’s a lot to swallow but it’s a fun ride.

 

                A few notes: considering his father was consumed by alcohol, Tom drinks a fuck of a lot, even though he says he has no problem. Maybe that’s the author’s point, that addiction sneaks up on you. Tom’s girlfriend in the latter chapters is an alcoholic as well. Lots of drink talk. There is also a lot of padding, as is the case with a lot of Leisure’s horror novels. Some of the well-rounded characters have nothing to do with the narrative, they just add color. That’s fine but a tighter book might have been a little more satisfying. Still, this is a fun, if silly, creature feature. It is well written and easy to blow through.

The Woodlice By G.P. Nedloh

 

The Woodlice
By G.P. Nedloh
2025 Self-published
Paperback, 131 pages

 

 

                When I was a kid, I called them Pill Bugs (I still do). I’d also heard Roly-Polies and Sow Bugs. The author of this book introduced me to Chuggy-Pigs. There are over two hundred nicknames for this innocuous isopod, but a woodlouse by any other name is still a woodlouse. Author Graham P. Nedloh is a massive fan of Guy N. Smith and even thanks GNS for the inspiration in the book. Every word in this novella is a tribute to Smith and I found it to be a blast!

 

                The discovery of a deceased cow covered with woodlice gets Jack Fuller, a gamekeeper in the wonderfully named town of Bramblehurst, and the vacationing Dr. Sarah Brapples (another great name!) on the case. The woodlice, normally herbivores, seem to be eating the flesh of the carcass and are bigger than normal. When a couple of teens are found dead in the same manner, it is clear that there is a real problem in Bramblehurst. And possibly beyond.

 

                Genetech was developing a hormone to enhance plant resilience, but it seems that it affected other species as well. Like woodlice. So, we have the culprit but just how do you stop something like this? That is Jack and Sarah’s problem to solve. Meanwhile, characters are introduced and eaten, just how GNS would have done. Really, Nedloh checks all of the boxes, and I couldn’t be happier. Inappropriate sex scene? Check! Potential romance between two people who didn’t hit it off at first? Check! Best of all, mutated nature getting the taste of human flesh in all of its gory glory? Check, check, check! This is a valentine to fans of Smith’s work. You and me.

 

                Nedloh isn’t just aping the Great Scribbler, however. There are plenty of new ideas, my favorite of which is a woodlouse attack on a couple who had just started to peak on an acid trip. A ten-year-old torturing a bird gets a lovely and well-deserved comeuppance that had be jumping for joy. This being his first book, I would say that Nedloh is off to an auspicious start. Hopefully, he will keep at it and bless us with another tome inspired by my favorite author. And I enjoy the word “chitinous”.

 

                No art credit for the cover. It doesn’t LOOK like A.I. and I hope it’s not because I will not support any book with an A.I. cover.