The City By Richard Haigh

The City
By Richard Haigh
1986 Grafton
Paperback, 191 pages

                The City is the second in Richard Haigh’s (Laurence James’) proposed trilogy of killer pig novels. The first chapter here even refers to the trilogy! Unfortunately, that third book never came out. This first sequel to 1984’s The Farm brings back the Buckland Whites, the breed of killer pigs that were, along with scores of other animals, chemically altered in the first book. The set-up is absolutely amazing.

 

                Britain’s biggest ever agricultural fair is being held at Wembley Stadium. Farm equipment, livestock; everything you would need to have the farm of your dreams under one roof. Including thirty Buckland Whites, “the killer pigs from Hobbs Farm in Wales” as a chief attraction. Fun for the whole family. As expected, an animal rights group ANL (Animals Need Life) plan to disrupt the show with demonstrations and the freeing of the caged animals.

 

                Our hero, TV journalist Jill Wallace is pretty bored with her assignment to cover this dull show but she’s there anyway and cover it she will. Also in the building is a model super-modern farm home with all the bells and whistles, including a family living in it for the duration of the event, a children’s TV show broadcasting live, a surly, racist guard who isn’t afraid to kill, an SAS unit of the army on premises, food vendors (lots of bacon) and, of course, the demonstrators. James really ratchets up the wait, giving you many characters that you need to see become pig chow and holds off for two-thirds of the book until you’re ready to burst.

 

                Then, he hits you with it. Hard.

 

                I haven’t read this much of a book aloud to my wife in my excitement in a long time. You see, Laurence James is an excellent writer, and his bloodletting can be downright poetic. This next passage is worth the cost of this rather hard-to-find, expensive paperback, as the wife in the model home is about to meet her maker… “Her last coherent thought, before she became preoccupied with the mystery of her own dying, was how very loud the crumpling bones of her skull seemed to sound.” Goddamn, that’s good. This book is far less mean-spirited and has less graphic sex than the first one but it too is a corker.

 

                While we enjoy reprints of the first two killer pig novels, (The Farm reprint was released in Spring 2026 by Valancourt Books!), we can dream about what James had in mind for the third book. The ending of The City is a cliffhanger set up for it, but apparently it was never written. James died in 2000. Perhaps, one day, the manuscript for The Continent or something will be found in a drawer and the killer pigs will return. Until then, get and enjoy the first two. Essential reading.

 

                An amazing full view of Les Edwards’ cropped cover painting for this book can be seen in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell (Quirk, 2017). Better yet, Cardboard Coffin's 2026 reprint features the uncut cover!

Cardboard Coffin's 2026 reprint!! 

The Wolfen By Whitley Strieber

The Wolfen
By Whitley Strieber
1979 Bantam Books
Paperback, 275 pages

                This is another one of those classic horror books that I’ve seen the movie of, but I never got around to reading. I took the bait recently when I found two different copies in thrift stores. I bought them both, if only to assure myself that I had to read it. Well, I did and I’m glad. It is pretty great.

 

                Two cops are found mutilated in a remote autobody yard in New York. The city’s finest homicide detectives are put on the case; George Wilson, an older, slovenly, misogynistic, racist curmudgeon who makes up for his lack of social skills with a keen detective’s eye, and Becky Neff, a young but proven cop. This odd couple has the unenvious job of trying to figure out who or what killed these two. The bodies look eaten. There are paw prints. Dogs? Could there have been wolves? Werewolves?

 

                The bodies keep piling up and the duo are starting to lean towards the latter, even though they know such things don’t exist. But something is out there, and they are as smart as man, stealthy and incredibly fast. Ferguson, a doctor at the Museum of Natural History is starting to believe them. He has extrapolated what they might look like from a plaster cast of a pawprint. The Medical Examiner is also on board. But how could it be?

 

                Strieber’s werewolf history works for me here. These canids have been around for a long time and yes, the werewolf legends probably derived from them. But they are so stealthy, and they cover their tracks so well that they have gone almost unnoticed for thousands of years. Passages of the book are told from the Wolfen’s point of view, so we understand a lot about their intelligence and the laws of the pack. I buy it implicitly. This species is so smart, they think of wolves as vacant and dumb. And they know that they have to find and remove the two detectives who could reveal their secret.

 

                Everybody has an opinion on older books and this one gets slammed for being misogynistic. Yes, Wilson certainly is. He’s an old-fashioned dope, but Neff is such a strong and capable character that to me, she erases any negativity that the reader might (incorrectly) surmise. In fact, not mentioned in any of the dozens of online reviews that I compared my own thoughts to, is that Wilson and Neff’s relationship changes and corresponds with that of the leaders of the Wolfen pack that is terrorizing New York. (Though Wilson’s revelation of his romantic love for his partner is unneeded.)

 

                The book blows the movie away. The movie could never touch on the inner working of the Wolfen mind, nor could it have survived with the police procedural layout of the book. The film (Michael Wadleigh, 1981) added in extraneous bullshit that takes the souls of the Wolfen away, and that’s one of the book’s most relevant aspects. Good movie, excellent book.

Kingdom of the Spiders By Bernhardt J. Hurwood

Kingdom of the Spiders
By Bernhardt J. Hurwood
Based on the screen story by Jeffrey M. Sneller and Stephen Lodge
1977 Ace Books
Paperback, 180 pages

                Since I adore nature-strikes-back books and movies, I figured I’d better just stick to the novel of this one since I’ve heard that real spiders get injured and squished in the movie. Thousands of Mexican Red-knees were brought to the production and they were not taken care of. I will not watch that. But I do want to read about spiders killing humans, so I grabbed the novelization. I got more- and less than I bargained for with this book. The writing is absolutely abysmal, which caused a few bristling moments but quite a few moments of mirth as well.

 

                Camp Verde, Arizona is readying itself for an upcoming County Fair and the living is easy. Except that a few farm animals have turned up dead. Local veterinarian Rack Hanson and entomologist (rather than arachnologist) Dianne Ashley are on the case and they discover they are dealing with spider bites that are five times more venomous than usual. As the spider population grows, the human population dwindles and the entire town is in danger of becoming tarantula meat. The spiders are hunting in packs (not typical behavior) and are intent on decimating the town. There’s really not much more to the story than this.

 

                OK, first off, Hurwood repeatedly says that the spiders stand there “waving their antennae”, a body part that spiders do not have. Then again, he calls them insects a few times, too, which is also incorrect. It’s hard to know if this gaffe came from the original script by Sneller and Lodge or if it is Hurwood’s non-research. Also, Rack (whose nickname is explained) is played by William Shatner in the film and it reads as though the part must have been written for him. There’s no way to read the character of this bullshit-macho, womanizing letch with a heart of gold in any voice other than Shatner’s. At least he has some sort of characterization; nobody else does.

 

                So, it turns out that I’ve read another Hurwood masterpiece, the cat-horror of Claws written under the pseudonym of D. Gunther Wilde. I enjoyed that one a lot more but this one has its moments, even though Hurwood’s descriptions of the spiders rarely get any more ambitious than “ugly”. The writing is very lazy, perhaps because the author’s scary stories are more suited to children’s books and he isn’t used to flexing his horror muscles. At any rate, this book is pretty crappy but it’s easy to blow through (then forget) in a day or two. There are 16 pages of photos from the movie in the book.

Pitfall By Ronald Kelly

Pitfall
By Ronald Kelly
1990 Zebra Books
Paperback, 320 pages

 

                Don’t be fooled by the lackluster cover. (Whut up, Zebra?) This is a top-shelf animal attack book full of characters that really need to be murdered in the most ghastly ways possible! When a dog-fighting ring is broken up, the lowlife scum that run it go to Mexico to purchase some “pit-devils”, ferocious little killing machines, to bring back to the USA and breed for fights. What could possibly go wrong?

 

                Sulphur Springs, Texas has a whole lot of shitheads for such a small town. Number one asshat is the sheriff who is a letch, a racist, and a potential pedophile. The main pit-devil keeper is a wife- beating drunk with no redeeming qualities. There are a handful of decent folks, however. Bowie Kane, a native American, gets a lot of heat from the small-minded citizens. But not from Lynn Sykes, mother of two, who feels bad for Bowie. Their platonic friendship is, of course, very misunderstood, especially by Lynn’s husband.

 

                Naturally, the pit-devils cannot be contained. What are they? Well, technically, they’re Tasmanian Devils, but Bowie suspects they are more than that, thanks to a fragment of undeciphered Indian parchment. Was this whole thing foretold? Forget anything you might know about Tasmanian Devils. These guys chew through leather, steel, skin and bone and are all but indestructible. The gore flows heavily and with so many shitty people to eat, it’s hard not to cheer for the devils. One thing they don’t eat: eyeballs. Leftover eyeballs sitting in bloody skulls are used a few times to good effect for corpse ID.

 

                This is Ronald Kelly’s second novel, and I give it a huge recommendation. His deep South leanings are on full display here, and you can practically taste the dusty land in and around Sulphur Springs. Unfortunately, there is a fair amount of animal violence in this, as you might expect. The devils are hard to kill but with enough firepower, they can be exploded into mush. Snake collecting and skinning is in there too. It is a sad fact in the real world.

 

                That said, my very favorite part of the book is the opening of Chapter 18, when Lynn’s young daughter Becky is off searching for her missing puppy… “Ruffles! Here, girl! Here, Ruffles!” I literally laughed out loud.

 

                Pitfall was finally reprinted by Macabre Ink in 2023 with a much better cover and a bonus short story, “Last of the Chupacabra”. Since the Zebra original is getting a bit pricey, this is a good way to go.

The Deadly Deep By Jon Messmann

The Deadly Deep
By Jon Messmann
1976 Signet
Paperback, 222 pages

                If you have read any of my reviews, you know that I love when nature strikes back, and animals start killing humans. This one, despite being fairly early in the nature-runs-amok cycle, was not on my radar until recently. I finally discovered it, picked it up and was rewarded with a pretty fun book. Not perfect by any means, but pretty darn good.

 

                Some disturbances have been happening along the Atlantic Coast of the US, like a whale smashing a fishing boat to bits, and lobsters attacking the men trapping them. Aran Holder, a science writer, thinks he may have a hot new lead on something to write about and, after his girlfriend is nipped by sea bass, he contacts his old pal at the Fish and Wildlife Service. Sure enough, shit has been going down and Holder is not only going to write about this phenomenon, but he’s also going to help investigate it.

 

                Yes, there are plenty of meetings as scientists and the military try to sort things out, but Messman keeps things rolling along with fresh attacks as the epidemic spreads around the world. Cephalopods, fish of all sizes and even crabs get into the action. (This book came out the same year as Guy N. Smith’s essential Night of the Crabs so 1976 was definitely a banner year for crustaceans.) Sealife even get together to form a tsunami to wipe out Miami Beach. Well done!

 

                When it isn’t an action set piece breaking up the meetings, it’s a sex scene. While the women in the book are intelligent and key to the plot, they also have boobs and Messman loves big boobs. So do I, as a matter of fact. So, there’s sex, animals killing humans, and a military zealot being humiliated; what’s not to love? Well, Holder is kind of a dick for a main character. He even cheats on his girlfriend that he realizes he’s fallen in love with… to “comfort” a woman he’s working with. Also, the ending was a bit of a fizzle.

 

                Overall, I can recommend this one, especially to fans of animal attack stories. It is more intellectual than many of its kin (Messmann is no dummy) and the book is well-written. The science is even almost plausible, I guess. So, dig in, grab a boob or two and read about lobsters snipping the Gorton’s fisherman to ribbons. I have no idea who painted the somewhat confusing cover, but it’s a dandy.

Nightmare By Lewis Mallory

Nightmare
By Lewis Mallory
1984 Hamlyn
Paperback, 157 pages

 

                This one isn’t terrible, but it feels kind of like a contractual obligation book. The story, such as it is, just meanders along until its somewhat predictable conclusion. There is no passion in the storytelling. Maybe Mallory mailed it in or maybe this is just how he writes: it is the first novel of his that I have read. The book moves quickly enough and there are some excellent set-pieces but many of the settings and characters are paper-thin. But then, I don’t ask for much, so I read on.

 

                The book is about Gideon, a young brat who wants to be left alone, wants things his way, and has the power to make it happen. After torching his parents’ house with them in it, he winds up in a hospital ward, locked away from his sister. She is the only person he has any kind of need for and having survived the fire, she is the key to getting him out. But it won’t be easy as he is fucking weird, and everybody sees it. He remains silent when doctors (or anyone) ask him anything.

               

                Gideon has the power to take a person’s most intimate fear and turn it on them. Policeman Cooper is attacked by spiders, Nurse Simpson has a run-in with a pack of dogs, his sister’s boyfriend Phil was besieged by rats… or was it all in their heads? At any rate, their fear killed them, and nobody knew it was Gideon’s fault except Phil, who survived the rodent rage. Can he make Gideon’s sister see the light before he destroys her, too?

 

                As mentioned above, there are some good set-pieces, such as when Gideon drives his hospital roommate over the edge, and he cuts his own throat with a broken window. The animal attacks are fun: they are the reason I bought the book in the first place. So, while overall the writing seems kind of lazy, it’s still a quick, short novel that delivers the goods as long as you’re not looking for anything too deep. As per usual, Hamlyn gave this a corker of a cover!

Feeding Ground By John Monsees

Feeding Ground
By John Monsees
2025 Grindhouse Horror
Paperback, 232 pages

 

                How to review a book that is dedicated to me and my friend Eric Wright, the guy who got me started on reviewing paperbacks? Easy! I’ll just review it. Mr. Monsees is a friend, but I can be objective. But he does write directly to my tastes so he always gets glowing reviews! He, along with Hunter Shea, absolutely get it! And yes, the author acknowledges that this book is an unofficial Guy N. Smith crab book and he really gets the flavor down perfectly.

 

                The seaside town of Saltwick in North Yorkshire, England is in deep shit. The fish processing plant has contaminated the water with industrial runoff and it has made the local crabs bigger, more aggressive and smarter. After an attack in that very plant and a few missing vacationers, surely they’ll call off the town’s annual festival! No, the mayor wants to cover it up, in true Larry Vaughn style and that puts every townsperson and visitor in even deeper shit. Giant razor-sharp claws shred, dissect and inspect the many humans who go down in a pool of red. These crabs not only destroy humans, but they’re also studying them, learning how to take over the world to become the top species. In all honesty, seeing what’s going on in the US these days (March 2025), I should think they’d do a better job.

 

                A lesser author would have saved up the festival massacre for the climax but Monsees throws us to the crabs in the middle of the book, stranding our main characters (and plenty of crab fodder) in unsafe buildings and stores and eventually, the labyrinthine tunnels under the city where they’re still very much prone to attack. The crabs had been rebuilding these tunnels for decades. Scientist Emma Carlisle, drunken fisherman Jack, factory worker Danny and others are the  town’s last chance. But good luck, because the crabs are using tactical intelligence, cutting off escape routes, rounding humans up into kill zones. See? I told you they were smart.

 

                This book delivers everything you would want and hope for, and more. Obviously, we come for the gore and Monsees never disappoints in that respect. Entrails spill, blood sprays and limbs are severed. The gore is deliciously rendered with prose that would make Ramsey Campbell proud. Monsees, an American, serves up a British flavor that rings true to my eyes (admittedly, also American). Top shelf writing all around, though I must confess that I thought the word “systematically” got a little overused when describing the crabs’ intelligent actions, but I guess there’s no better word for it. In truth, I felt that the last third of the book lapsed a little into information overload and some repetition. Not that the climax isn’t thrilling but for a few chapters working towards the end, things felt a little bogged down.

 

                But that’s just a small bit of nitpicking. This book is to be relished right up alongside the GNS crab literature and I plan on filing it in the crustacean section of my library with those classics. If you haven’t yet checked out John Monsees’ writing, do yourself a favor and dig in. I can guarantee a good read.

The Web By Richard Lewis

The Web
By Richard Lewis
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 204 pages

 

                When Alan Radnor turns into Richard Lewis, he writes books for me! As Lewis, he wrote a half dozen creepy-crawlies-versus-humans novels and all of them are loads of fun. This one is a sequel to his successful debut critter novel Spiders (1978). Many of his books don’t stick in your head for a long time, but they deliver the goods and are a hoot while you’re digging in.

 

                Of course, James Herbert’s The Rats (1974) started the whole Britain-under-attack genre, but we must also credit the same author’s The Fog (1975) for the folks-going-murderously-insane storyline that also frequently turns up in these books. The spiders that return in Lewis’s sequel are a little different. Sure, some of them devour their victims down to the bone, leaving just a husk, but a mutated form of spider can envenomate their victim and that, my dear, will cause violent insanity. They also enjoy wrapping up humans in tight webs to be devoured later. Evolution, that’s what it is.

 

                Much of the book is just a bunch of brief vignettes, characters set up only to be slaughtered. One fun passage is with the spinster schoolteacher whose routine is broken up after being bitten by one of the new spiders. She goes bonkers on her class of cheeky, young students and starts killing and beating them, as well as anyone who tries to stop her. I love it when bratty kids aren’t spared! Another fun set piece is a prison attack where the trapped convicts are sitting ducks for the arachnid army.

 

                It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read Lewis’s first spider novel; when the action from the first book is referenced, it is notated for your convenience. Since we have new mutations here, consider it an all-new story and enjoy the onslaught. Derivative? Yes. Any new ideas? Nope. Do I recommend it? Hell yes! Fun, gory, stupid, 80s pulp… just the way I like it.

The Beast of Kane By Cliff Twemlow

The Beast of Kane
By Cliff Twemlow
1983 Hamlyn
Paperback, 190 pages

                Do yourself a favor and acquaint yourself with Cliff Twemlow (1933-1993). The best way is through the 2023 film Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow by Jake West. Twemlow was an actor, screenwriter, bouncer, musician and all-around creative dynamo. He wrote a couple of horror novels, too; this one and The Pike (reviewed here) and I’ve gotta say, the guy was a pretty damn good novelist.

 

                This one takes place in Kane, Canada, seventy miles north of Quebec during a cold and frosty winter. The Gordons want to get their son David a dog for his birthday, and he wants the massive, black Elkhound at the shop. His folks are nervous about the vicious looking beast and say no. No worries… the dog breaks out and comes to David on his own, selling himself to the family. All is well, it would seem, but the local priest thinks otherwise. He thinks the dog might be the devil himself, fulfilling an old prophecy. Even the family vet says the dog is a throwback that seems to have… human blood running in its veins.

 

                Of course, everyone thinks the priest is a crazy old sop. Until the local farm animals get decimated. Wolves are found mutilated. And then the good folks of Kane themselves start getting eaten by the local dogs. Even by the ones who were the victim’s pets! It seems old Elk is their evil leader and they do his bidding. This makes things sticky for the Gordons who really don’t want to crush their boy’s love for his pet. A pet that is using him as his familiar.

 

                This one moves along very quickly and Twemlow has a good grasp of small-town life in the Canadian heartland. The characters are all pretty believable and well formed and when shit goes down, you can feel what the townsfolk do. This book also points out that a drink of whisky will help you get over pretty much any hardship. Even death in the family and madness.

 

                No, it’s not a perfect book but it is a lot of fun at times, especially when the canine attacks are in full bloom. The gore is poured on nice n’ thick, the way I like it. A word of warning, however: there is a lot of doggie-death at one point that might have you reaching over the pet ol’ Rover a little more vigorously. But it’s nothing that two fingers of whisky won’t help you get through.

 

                Both The Pike and The Beast of Kane have been reissued by Severin Films and Encyclopocalypse Publications to coincide with the release of the Cliff Twemlow movie box set!

Dog Kill By Al Dempsey

Dog Kill
By Al Dempsey
1976 Tor Books
Paperback, 203 pages

 

                What a cover! Hats off to Jon Ellis, the artist! And to Tor for commissioning such a dynamic cover!  But fuck you, Tor, for the bait and switch. There are barely any killings in this book; the dogs seem to merely irritate the local farmers and law enforcement. But Dog Annoy wouldn’t have been as good a title as the one we got.

                A group of students release a bunch of test dogs from the University lab. OK… we’re going to have a roving pack of genetically altered mutts tearing up children! No, all but one of the dogs die in short order. The leftover one eventually forms his own pack with the help of Mitzie, an abandoned beagle in heat, whose scent brings all the boys to the yard. They move into a cave in a park and eventually get up to no good.

                OK, this book starts off with a note from the director of the American Humane Society. I was ready for some heavy stuff. As Blackie, the lab dog builds his tribe, each dog is introduced with a Humane Association “Animal Control Study” card. Then, we meet the dog’s owners and the dog. After 100 pages and far too many characters for me to remember who the ones at the beginning of the book were, the pack is complete. And the book is half over.

                The dogs kill some farm animals and some bunnies and, in an unnecessarily graphic scene, a fawn. But I was like “yeah… when they get to humans, it’s going to be amazing!” I was wrong. While there is an attack on a playground ballgame, the body count isn’t what I was hoping for, and the gory details are few. Too much time is spent on a blooming romance between park ranger Mel and Mary Ellen, a poor little rich girl that he has nothing in common with, but she has blonde hair and a good body. Deep. The other characters of note are pretty cut and paste… the yokel sheriff (nick-named Greasy!), the park director acting like the mayor in Jaws and local farmers puttin’ their gun hats on.

                Dempsey obviously knows a lot about dogs; all of the breeds get a lot of historical description. I guess this makes the actions ring truer. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of any kind of story, action or suspense. We already know that humans do not deserve dogs and every one of the dogs in one way or another are not responsible for their predicament. Humans, as always, suck.

                So, yeah… shitty book. Also, the print isn’t justified and that drove me apeshit. Great cover, though.

Gila! by Les Simons

Gila!
By Les Simons
1981 Signet
Paperback, 166 pages

    

    By now, everybody knows that Les Simons is actually Kathryn Ptacek, author of many horror and romance novels. Simons is one of her many pen-names and Gila! was her first published horror novel. Having grown up in the Southwest, Ptacek sets a believable tone for this tale of giant, people-eating, mutated Gila Monsters. In real life, despite being called "monsters", Gilas are slow moving animals and really not much of a threat to humans.

    These radiation-born ones mess up the homo sapiens in a big way. The body count is very high and to a killer-animal reader, that is of the utmost importance. It's not just gore and rampaging reptiles, however; Ptacek manages to squeeze out some pathos, none more than in the visceral fairground scene. (This chapter is so great that it inspired Tom Hallman's paperback cover.) Check it out..

    A mother is relaxing while her five children are enjoying a safe, family friendly County Fair on their own in different spot on the fairground. When the Gilas come, she faces the dilemma: which child to save? Heart wrenching! She makes her decision (a bit of Sophie's Choice there) and... 

        "Hypnotized, frozen, Julia could not take her eyes away. She saw the mangled body of her son fall from the lizard's mouth, saw that only half of it was there and that the upper part of the torso, the shoulders and the head, remained in the lizard's mouth." 

 Hot diggity, that's some excitin' writin'!

    Unlike many animal-gone-amok novels, Ptacek's science isn't completely absurd. I mean, we're dealing with giant Gila Monsters that crave human flesh, created by bombs in the desert. You can't get more 50s Sci-Fi than that, but she obviously knows a good deal about the real-life animal and thus makes a potentially silly idea work. For me, Gila! is one of the finest rampaging reptile reads around. Gore, humor, emotion and action; what more could you ask for? Evidently, Ptacek herself is fond of her first horror novel: for a time, she published a writer's market newsletter called Gila Queen's Guide to Markets, a publication with an eye on the horror and fantasy genres.

    Obviously, I'm not the only fan of this essential tome. Centipede Press released a deluxe, signed hardcover of Gila! and Macabre Ink have issued it as part of their Resurrected Horrors series, both released in 2025. And, of course, you need Grady Hendrix's indispensable Paperbacks from Hell (Quirk, 2017) for many reasons but especially to get a peek at Tom Hallman's rough cover sketch.

                                               
                                                         Centipede Press, 2025

This review first appeared in a slightly different form in Midnight Magazine #1 (MCE 2018)

Killer Croc By Grahame Webb

 

Killer Croc

By Grahame Webb

1982 Fontana
Paperback, 249 pages

 

                Professor Grahame Webb is a noted zoologist who has specialized in crocodilians for decades and he is well versed in Aboriginal culture, having worked with the people for many years. It seems that when Peter Benechley’s Jaws (1974) became a best-seller, it was irresistible to Webb to put his expertise into a fiction story about an oversized Saltwater Crocodile running amok in the waters of Northern Australia. Published by Aurora Press in 1980, the hardcover was called Numunwari, the name of the sacred crocodile in the story. Obviously, Fontana wanted something with a little more zing and changed the title to Killer Croc and had Wilson Buchanan whip up some Jaws-esque cover art, though it looks more like a swipe of Roger Kastell’s cover art for Creatures (Pocket Books, 1979).

 

                In Arnhem Land, Oondabund is driving a boat for fisherman, poacher and all around bad guy John Besser when they see a massive, 30 foot crocodile. Oondabund recognizes it as an animal sacred to his people while Besser wants to kill it. Besser goes back for it later and gets two of his mates killed. Now, the croc is a maneater and will have to be destroyed. Steve Harris is put on the case to take care of the beast but he is friends with Oondabund and knows the deal. When the croc heads towards the city of Darwin, Harris is pushed by politician Rex Barrett to destroy the federally protected croc. A cop gets eaten and the shit hits the fan. What to do? Well, Oondabund says capture it. It is his spirit animal, literally.

 

                Yes, you have all of the necessary characters for an animal attack book, the crooked politician, the bad guy(s) and the good hearted Harris, but you also get a main Aboriginal character and his people and that is a flavor that I had not tasted before. Oondabund’s broken English is well written (and it never got on my nerves like when some authors try to write phonetically) and Webb reveals a lot of the culture to the reader. Best of all, he imparts a ton of knowledge about the crocodiles and the conservation efforts to keep them safe. While most animal attack books show the animal attacking as a monster, Webb (and Harris, who really is Webb, I think) portrays the croc, Numunwari, as a sentient being with every right to live its life.

 

                For being Webb’s only attempt at fiction, I have to applaud his writing skill. Though it gets a bit long in the third act while trying to catch Numunwari, Webb writes a cracking adventure full of suspense and excitement, with real human characters and a lot of heart. I got miffed when a new character was introduced with 50 pages to go but soon saw the error of my ways; it’s an absolutely essential plot point. The book was adapted into the film Dark Age (Arch Nicholson, 1987) which stayed fairly loyal to the book even while condensing things and rewriting for more action. The exception is Harris’s love interest: in the book it is Oondabund’s (black) daughter while the film has him with a lily white former lover working with the Aboriginal people. Meh!

       

                                    

                 Aurora Press, 1980, Jacket illustration                           Dark Age 1987 VHS, 

                    by Roger Janovsky                                                      Charter Entertainment

The Millfield Terror By John Monsees

The Millfield Terror
By John Monsees
2025 Grindhouse Horror
Paperback, 210 pages

                I received an advanced review copy to… review. So here I go!

 

                The Millfield Terror fits in comfortably with the books released by Hamlyn and New English Library in the Seventies and Eighties but also offers a heavy dose of good ol’ American corruption. It turns out that, even with all mod cons like cellphones and the interwebz, you’re still fucked if mutated nature gets a taste for human meat.

 

                The brain trust in Millfield, Ohio cut corners and hire a shady clean-up crew to take care of a closed chemical plant but their method makes the local centipedes into human hunting, organized giant monsters. Not willing to admit a mistake was made, the councilman who made the call and his brother, the sheriff, initiate a cover-up, despite what locals have seen. The town is sealed off, dooming the citizens, while a group of four believers with evidence (foreman on the clean-up, a doctor, a former scientist and a paperboy) become wanted criminals because they believe in telling the truth. It’s a mad race to stay one step ahead of the rapidly evolving centipedes.

 

                That’s the story in a nutshell but this is a multi-layered story with a town rife with corruption and full of really bad choices, really flawed people trying to save themselves and the town, and intelligent bugs who are far smarter than their prey. Monsees’ science all looks and sounds pretty spot on; my own knowledge is with reptiles and amphibians, not etymology, but it all reads plausible to my eyes. A great deal of writing about the town and its legal (and illegal) dealings also ring true. Obviously, a lot of research went into this and the reader is rewarded with an intelligent and more or less believable tale of giant, mutant centipedes feeding on a small town.

 

The author is a remarkably gifted wordsmith, enjoying some excellent turns of phrases in the vein of Raymond Chandler-meets-Ramsay Campbell. His main characters are all well-formed, behaving believably and the quartet of “good guys” are really worth cheering for. I’m happy to say that, like in our beloved nasties from the past, we get a few small characters introduced just to be bug chow. While the blood and meat does get splattered about and the action is breath-taking, the story really is more about survival, guilt and penance.

 

                Monsees really deserves to be read by a larger audience. It’s tough for an Indy author to gain traction and his writing really has style and panache that should be seen and enjoyed. Give this one a shot and thank me later. The author is responsible for the cover art as well.

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!), they 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.

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.

The Pack By William Essex

The Pack
By William Essex
1987 Leisure
Paperback, 384 pages

                                                    

    Horror author John Tigges adopted the Essex moniker to delve into the nastier side of horror fiction and produced three thrilling ooze-fests. The Pack was the first one and it comes highly recommended by me for all lovers of killer animal books and stories taking place in Iowa.

    A pair of abused and underfed dogs break out of their junkyard confines, tasting freedom for the first time. Five years later, they roam the plains and cornfields of Iowa and their numbers have grown, adding other wayward pups along the way. The black mongrel from the junkyard is the leader and he does not want to ever be hungry again. After feasting on a few farm animals, they finally taste the best meat of all. Scrumptious human!
    
    Pete Reckels is a veterinarian who discovers a few of his clients, both animal and human, have been killed, gutted and eaten. He also got a fleeting glimpse of a pack of dogs in the distance, some 30 strong. He works with the local authorities to try and find the dogs and figure out how to stop them, all while the dogs move closer to the city seeking human meat, particularly penises and breasts. It should be pointed out that most of the humans in the book, Pete included, make a lot of bad choices.

    That is the entire book in a nutshell. I mean, Pete has his relationships with his girlfriend, ex-wife and daughter thrown in there for some pathos and fringe characters get a few pages of introduction before becoming dog chow, but the bulk of this fine piece of literature consists of the dogs stalking and killing and shredding and eating their human prey all the while wreaking havoc of the most explosive kind. Like many Leisure novels, it is a bit padded out (“Make ‘em thick, like Stephen King books!”) and repetitious in parts but that does nothing to detract from the fun. These dogs aren’t rabid, they’re just hungry. And they will eat.

    The sketchy wraparound cover art by Brian Kotzky is more than fitting for this book, with fun little details to be admired. Not as clean as his young adult horror covers for Christopher Pike, this portrait of a blood-drooling canine is perfect. Anyone who sees you reading this one on the subway will stay far away from you!

From Below By William Essex

From Below
By William Essex
1989 Leisure Books
Paperback, 359 pages

    Every once in a while, it happens. You fall upon a book that seems as if it was written for you. While there is no “perfect book” (other than Eat Them Alive!), when you find one that is this close, it makes life worth living. For a while, anyway.

    An electrical storm hits a power station, sending shit-tons of volts into the ground, flash-frying most living things but super-charging the local leeches. (Shades of Jeff Lieberman’s Squirm- 1976.) They reproduce overnight and the ever-expanding wave of 18-inch (3 feet in some descriptions) long, meat-eating, blood-drinking killers grows by day. They strip bodies, both animal and human, down to messy skeletons in a matter of minutes. Driven by hunger, they spend their days in the sewers and travel up toilets and pipes to seek more food.

    Our hero is Ben, journalist in Iowa (!) who is trying, along with the cops, to figure out why there are so many clothed skeletons turning up. Most everyone around him is an idiot or a narrow-minded fool, leaving him to his own devices to crack the case. His girlfriend Norma is a newsletter publisher. At one point she gets to interview horror author John Tigges. Ben and Norma have this exchange about this Tigges guy’s talent…

Ben: “Better than King or Straub?”
Norma: “I’ve read two of Tigges’ and I’d have to say he’s probably the best.”

    William Essex, the author here, is John Tigges. Reference is also made to Tigges-as-Essex’s earlier novel The Pack in a news story as well. I got a good chuckle.

    So, yes, this book delivers everything you need. Huge print, lots of empty pages between chapters and a brisk, humorous writing style make this 359-page wonder whiz by. Of course, we’re here for the gore and we get that in spades! Leeches attack everything with gusto and seem to prefer human genitalia. The science isn’t important here. Essex gives us basic leech science but then tips it on its end because these guys are super-charged and flesh-devouring.

    My only quibble would be that some repetition creeps in. Ben seems to be the only one who considers that the killer might not be a who but a what… and he keeps bouncing that theory around every chapter as if it just came to him. But I can forgive that. This book kicks ass. When I’m on my deathbed, this will be one of the few tomes on my bedside bookshelf, right next to Eat Them Alive!, Slugs, Night of the Crabs, and The Rats.

The Scurrying By Wes Whitehouse

The Scurrying
By Wes Whitehouse
1983 Futura
Paperback, 350 pages

                I’d been after this one for quite a while so when I saw a. cheap one for sale online somewhere, I grabbed it immediately. London gets laid to waste by millions of rats (again). What could possibly go wrong?

 

                Inside the book, there is a blurb saying that this is Whitehouse’s first novel. Searching on the Interwebz brought up only one other book, GLC - The Inside Story (2000). That is a non-fiction account of one of the government administrative bodies in London, and it sounds dry as hell. Sadly, this book has more bureaucrats and politicians than it has rats at any given time. Coming just a year before James Herbert finished off his excellent Rats Trilogy in 1984, this was a pretty ballsy and stupid idea.

 

                There has been an uptick in rat sightings and exterminators are noticing the rat-bait going either unnoticed or eaten. That means either the rats know it is poisoned or they have become immune. So, naturally, they head aboveground in search of eats. When they’re hungry enough, humans will be on the menu. They will also spread disease.

 

                While that sounds all well and good, 80% of the book concerns one department hindering the progress of another department that is trying to solve the dilemma. Politicians are more concerned with looking bad than stepping up to actually help. That all may be very realistic but that is not what one buys a nature-strikes-back book for. We want rats killing people. You get some of that, but not nearly enough. For instance, you get four pages of a minster readying an office for a proper photo-op and two paragraphs for a group of teens getting offed by the rats on a camping trip. The best scene in the book comes from a rabid dog (infected by a rat) who mangles a toddler. (I’ll admit it; that scene is worth the price of admission.)

 

                For a book that had been on my want list for so long, I found this one to be a massive disappointment. Not only is it misogynistic (I know, many books from the time were, but this really feels like Whitehouse truly thinks that women are merely ornamental) with two lovely women being in love with our hero, the pipe-smoking chief of Environmental Health, but the author seems to really dislike rats and shows a little too much joy in doing them in. If the dying humans got as much ink as the dying rats, my review would be more positive.

 

                The nifty cover is signed “Gulbis”. Could this be Stephen Gulbis, children’s book artist? I think it might be. But still, James Herbert this ain’t.