Talia By Daniel J. Volpe

Talia
By Daniel J. Volpe
2021 Self-published
Paperback, 211 pages

 

Blood makes the best lube!

                Evidently, Talia is a prequel to Volpe’s 2020 book Billy Silver, but I didn’t know that going in and it certainly made no difference to me, the reader. If you haven’t read that one yet, you’re still good to go.

                Talia is a midwestern gal transplanted in New York searching for fame in the bright lights of the big city. Well, she finds fame (of a sort) after being taken under the wing of Mike (never a name one should trust!), an underground specialty pornographer. She performs her jaw-dropping sleaze on camera for Mike and his psycho henchman Sally with no complaints until it gets bloody. Y’see, Mike has started to make snuff-porn. And if you don’t like it, Sally’s razor has something to say.

                Volpe lays the sleaze on thick and the fluids and depravity flood from the pages. The porn is gratuitous as fuck but we’re not reading Bambi here, kids… this is Splatterpunk Supreme. I mean, the first line in the book is “The strap-on dildo was nearly the size of a fire extinguisher”. Not just blood is splattering here, either. Once it does, however, the story became a lot more interesting for me. In my horror eyes, blood > cum.

                Admittedly, with little backstory on Talia (maybe there is some in the previous book), she sure seemed to get into the swing of things in the heavy-porn scene for such an innocent farm-girl. But she is badass and after a run-in with Sally, she gets even more violent. The book takes a supernatural turn that leaves the pages dripping with gore and satisfying revenge.

                Talia is filled with various bodily fluids, rape, murder, torture, gore, and nihilism… just exactly what you want when reading an extreme horror book. This one can be torn through in a sitting or two. Volpe is a heck of a nice guy in person but has one fucked up and twisted imagination. Soon to be a certified National Treasure.

                This edition has a nice, eye-catching cover by Mr. Michael Squid.

Killstreme By Rayne Havok

 

Killstreme
By Rayne Havok
Self-published, 2020/21
Paperback, 80 pages

 

                This book (and author) came to my attention when I heard that Amazon had banned a few extreme horror books, this one included. Naturally, I immediately wanted to support this book and author, so I put it on my wish-list and kept checking back to see if it was still “unavailable”. Eventually, sanity prevailed, and the book was again for sale on that billionaire’s website. I bought it.

 

                A slender volume, it is. Just over 70 pages of story, double-spaced; it would be about a 30-page story in a normal anthology. But that doesn’t bother me. I like ‘em short. And sweet. And violent. I’ll admit that got a little nervous when I started the story; as with many self-published efforts, a good proof-reading was needed. The first chapter is a mess of punctuation and sentence structure errors, but as the story went on, I either stopped noticing or they weren’t present.

 

                But that’s just the editor in me. Story-wise, this is loads of fun. A sick fuck gets a chance to make his own snuff film. He goes to a secluded film-site and begins his torture/ murder in the vilest ways imaginable. And then the tables turn…

 

                Havok gleefully describes painful torture on the male anatomy and I fucking love it. After so much misogyny in the genre, it’s nice to see uncompromising male genital torture. Read ‘em and weep, fellas. The extremity and over-the-top violence were obviously a lot of fun to write and it sure is fun to read.

 

                I will definitely look into her other work, but I will also hope that she hooks up with a worthwhile proofreader/ editor. Her great ideas deserve to be properly presented.

               

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Sock it to Me, Zombie By F.W. Paul

Sock it to Me, Zombie
By F.W. Paul

1968 Lancer Books

Paperback, 189 pages

 

                Brett Steel is the Man from S.T.U.D., a hard lovin’ super-agent whose missions frequently lead to sexual escapades. This tale takes him to a remote island (eventually) where a movie is being filmed and one Mama Mia is making zombies and voodoo dolls.

 

                This is the first in a series of Man from S.T.U.D. books written by F.W. Paul, who is really sci-fi author/ editor Paul W. Fairman. During the James Bond craze, there were zillions of knockoffs, and these books took the sex to the extreme and the comedy just about as far. Everything (including his agency Special Territories and Unique Developments) gets a clever anagram, like the Confidential Reports Analysis Panel (CRAP) that he reports to, or the film production company Trans-World Art Tapes (TWAT). Every scenario has tongue firmly planted in cheek, sometimes almost literally.

 

                The sex, which is most of the 189 pages, is a lot more explicit than I was expecting but with some of the terms used (a hard dick is a prong, fucking is yencing), it’s hard to get flustered in any way. There is bestiality, homosexuality, adultery, rape, misogyny, huge dicks, horny Amazons… hell, there’s pretty much anything you can think of in this book, and it’s played for laughs. Your mileage may vary.

 

                But when all is said and done, it does get a bit dull, knowing Steel will be fucking this one and that one, including his hot pilot Burma, who is doing a lot of fucking of her own. Look, I like humorous medium-core pornography as much as anyone, but it does get to be a bit too much. I kept thinking “Get to the zombie-fucking part!” And enough with the “she likes rape” shit.

 

                Despite the flaws, I will be seeking out one more Man from S.T.U.D. book, because there’s one called Orgy at Madame Dracula’s and I want to read it. Perhaps, I get a prong out of it, but I doubt it.

                    This review  originally appeared in Strange World #3 (Fall 2022)

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Dead Inside By Chandler Morrison

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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The Coming of the Rats by George H. Smith

 

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

Priority Books

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

                    

                                Pike Books #203                                My favorite retitling! PBR# 802

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

 

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