Cat’s Cradle By William W. Johnstone

Cat’s Cradle
By William W. Johnstone
1986 Zebra
Paperback, 412 pages

 

                Oh, William Johnstone, how I hate to love you. But I just can’t help myself! We would never agree on anything in real life but you sure can write an entertaining horror novel.

 

                Every 25 years, a small girl and her cat, born of the same mother (so I guess they are twins), emerge from hiding to devour a few people and get ready to invoke the big guy… Satan. They are awakened early this time, but the murderous rampage begins anew. Their victims age rapidly, mummify, and dead or not, become instruments of evil themselves. Large groups of cats gather to shred the population. One of the mummified arms starts spewing forth millions of huge, flesh-eating maggots. Pools of curdled blood are passageways for the Old Ones, demon minions of the big guy himself. Man, Ruger County is fucked.

 

                As you can see, this is typical Johnstone kitchen-sink storytelling but by god it never gets dull. When the government (The OSS, Office of Special Studies) gets involved and begins a cover-up, it makes things even more difficult for our manly-man cop hero Dan. With so much going on and a lot of characters, many chapters tell the tale with short paragraphs checking in on different situations happening around the county. I kind of liked this, it kept my lazy brain up to date with the turmoil.

 

                This book doesn’t utilize all of Johnstone’s usual tropes. The action takes place in Virginia, rather than Louisiana, and Dan is ex-CIA rather than a Viet Nam vet. Most of the right-wing viewpoints are saved for picking on an intrepid female reporter; one of the OSS crazies is even called a right-wing fanatic for his overt, dangerous patriotism. But Christianity is still big and is called on in hopes of saving the day. Admittedly, I got confused by all of the characters a few times, but you can’t deny Johnstone’s gory, eyeball melting, flesh-shredding madness. If one bonkers horror scene doesn’t tickle your fancy, the next one will. Or the one after that. Richard Newton's lovely cover has nothing to do with the narrative but it might as well!

 

                Oh, and there’s a phone call from Satan. In the days before caller ID, that was possible.

The Accursed By G.S. Burdick

The Accursed

By G.S. Burdick
1982 Playboy Press
Paperback, 256 pages

 

                I’d had this book on my shelf for over a decade. One night, I just grabbed it and dug in. Hey, wait… no gore? No lurid sex? No dinosaurs? Am I going to like this? Yes, I did.

                More medical thriller than horror, the story follows a pair of divorced (from each other) plastic surgeons whose high-end clinic is having an unlucky streak. A nurse going ballistic on a patient, unexpected heart failure, the woman half of the team, Dr. Rebecca Meehan, getting assaulted, and more misfortunes befall the clinic. Rebecca thinks they are all related but that couldn’t be! Could it? Her partner, Dr. Nicholas Christoff thinks not, but after a few more incidents, even he starts to wonder.

                I’m not sure who G.S. Burdick is; I can find no information or other books by him/ her. The female characters, like Dr. Meehan and Detective Anita Lopez, are brilliantly written, so I’m leaning towards a woman writer. So many nuances, warts and all, are believably written. The re-budding romance between the estranged doctors is handled delicately and with sensitivity.

                So, the cover. A 3-headed dog. Cerberus. Obviously, that’s why I bought the book. Well, he does figure into the story a little, as does a large helping of other Greek Mythology, but it’s not heavy-handed and Burdick makes it work. Not as much suspension of disbelief is needed as you might think when I mention ancient Gods and their descendants, a Cyclops and good ol’ Cerberus.

                Stepping outside of my comfort zone gave me an excellent read and a palette cleanser between nature-strikes-back novels. But yeah, I bought it for that kick-ass cover. I admit it. No idea who painted it, though.

  Midnight Magazine            

The Sucking Pit By Guy N. Smith

 

The Sucking Pit
By Guy N. Smith
1989 Grafton
Paperback, 158 pages

                Another brisk, non-deadly-animal adventure from the master. When Guy N. Smith said he’d written more books than he read, you’ve just got to believe him. This one, first published in 1975 by New English Library, must have been written after thinking up a suitably exploitable title. And true to form, it’s a pretty satisfying read.

                On a visit to his secluded cabin in the woods, sweet Jenny find her uncle dying. Before his passing, she gets his gypsy black book into her hands and curiously peruses its contents. She tries a potion. Thus ends Jenny’s sweetness, replacing it with an animalistic sexual appetite and murderous intentions. She and the gypsies that live in the woods make life a living hell for the landowner and for the area in general. The sucking pit? It is a quagmire in the woods, an ancient gypsy burial site and a convenient place to dispose of bodies.

                The book is too short to be anything but an exciting page turner. Smith, as always, leaves out any fluff and gets right to the good stuff. To the detriment of the book’s brevity, there is a romance between two people trying to figure out what is going on at the cabin in the woods that blossoms into true love in just a couple of pages, but that can be forgiven. Who has time for building a budding romance in a book called The Sucking Pit?

                This title, Smith’s second horror novel, has had many different releases over the years with a few different covers. The 1989 edition by Grafton, reviewed here, sports a nice Luis Rey cover painting.

                This book sucks. In a good way. Guy N. Smith is a treasure.

                                            

    Hard Gore Press, 2011 Cover by Rick Melton        Polish Edition, Phantom Press 1991

                                                                                     cover art by Les Edwards, originally

                                                                                     used for Peter Tremayne's Swamp!  

                                                                                                  Sphere, 1985

 Midnight Magazine

The Slob By Aron Beauregard

The Slob
By Aron Beauregard
2019 Maggot Press
Paperback, 128 pages

 

                This book gets a lot of mentions on the Horror Books and Splatterpunks Facebook pages and naturally, that caught my attention. I like to indulge in the extreme stuff and this one was supposed to be way out there. Imagine my delight when I was walking through a local Horror Con and unbeknownst to me, Aron Beauregard was there! I bought a few books from him (and Daniel Volpe), ready to bust my AB cherry. He seemed like such a nice young man.

 

                Having grown up in a squalid setting, Vera became a neat freak, always cleaning to overcome the filth of her childhood. Life hadn’t been easy, but she eventually persevered, married her (disabled) husband and was pregnant with their first child. For extra cash, she became a door-to-door vacuum salesperson and business was booming. In her second trimester, she knew she’d have to give up the job. But just one more day… one more sale…

 

                Then, she rang The Slob’s doorbell. And her life went to hell.

 

                Beauregard is a hell of a good writer, and this book is much more than an extreme horror gross-out. Vera is a fully developed character, flawed (as we all are) and very relatable and I really became attached to her. That is why, halfway through the book, I got the biggest sucker punch in the gut since I read Let’s Go Play at the Adams’. From the point she gets to The Slob’s house till the end of the book, it is pure nightmare.

 

                The Slob is full of horrific violence, various bodily fluids, rape, dismemberment, humiliation, and every sordid action you can (and could never) imagine. Then why do I heartily recommend it? Because it is compelling, very well written and, well yeah… gross as fuck. Not many books make me wake up in the night feeling nervous and lousy, thinking of the protagonist. This one did.

 

                This edition has a lovely cover and interior art by Anton Rosovsky.

 

                And he seemed like a nice young man.

Midnight Magazine

               

Carnosaur By Harry Adam Knight

 

Carnosaur
By Harry Adam Knight
2022 Valancourt
Paperback, 205 pages

 

    John Brosnan was a prolific Science Fiction, comic book (2000 AD), and movie book writer, but when he strapped on the name “Harry Adam Knight” or “Simon Ian Childer” (often co-writing with Leroy Kettle), he let the entrails fly and the world became a better place. The “HAK” and “SIC” (Brosnan was very aware of the words that his pseudonyms were almost spelling) are all great fun and worth the gore-hound’s time.

 

    Carnosaur was one that I had been yearning for for quite some time but prices on old copies of the 1984 Star paperback and the movie tie-in edition from Tor in 1993 have gotten out of hand. Enter Valancourt Books, my Knight in shining armor! Their new release (with a snazzy cover by Lynne Hansen and an introduction by Will Errickson of the indispensable Too Much Horror Fiction blog) made my 2022 suck a lot less.

     

    Were those gory murders committed by a Siberian Tiger that had escaped from a private zoo? Rich zoo owner Sir Penward says yes and has his tiger put down. But one witness, a kid, says something else, setting reporter David Pascal off in pursuit of the truth. To cut to the chase, he finds it. Penward has been extracting DNA from dinosaur fossils and creating his own living dinosaurs. Before you can say “Holy Jurassic Park!,” you need to know that this mofo came out six years before Michael Crichton’s best-seller.

 

    Brosnan (writing alone as Knight this time) gets a lot of action going with an exciting pack of dinosaurs. Featured most prominently are Deinonychus, Tarbosaurus, Megalosaurus, and Plesiosaurus, but there are others, as well as big cats and bulls and other things that can fuck you up. Goddamn, this is a lot of fun. If the dinosaur doesn’t get you, the panther will. Gore, sex, cartoonish adversaries, and dinosaurs. It really doesn’t get much better than this.

 

    If you’ve only seen Roger Corman’s production of the film adaptation, you haven’t enjoyed this story. While I enjoy the film (and its sequels), it just doesn’t have the scope of the book. Buy this, read it, and thank me later. No, thank Valancourt Books for the wonderful work they’ve been doing bringing these kinds of books back from the dead.

 

Update: Since writing this review in 2022, I have obtained the original Star Books edition and the movie tie-in from Tor in 1993. Enjoy these covers!

                       

                                           Star Books 1984                                          Tor movie tie-in 1993

Midnight Magazine

Killer Flies By Mark Kendall

 

Killer Flies
By Mark Kendall
1983 Signet
Paperback, 159 pages

 

                Mutated insects, paper-thin characters, sex at inappropriate times, oozing gore, wildly unbelievable situations, a huge concert they won’t call off despite the risk… this book is a blue-print for bad, pulpy 80s Nature-Strikes-Back books. In other words, it’s fucking great.

 

                A truck carrying a government experiment overturns, releasing a swarm of genetically mutated flies loose in New Mexico. They eat everything in sight, including the main character’s daughter. With the help of her hunky ranch hand, she gets over that little bump in the road pretty quickly, but vengeance is on her mind. With the help of the scientist who unwittingly created the insect horde, they try to find the answers and the way to end this assault. Will they find the answer, or will the love triangle get in the way? You’ll wonder all the way to the risible ending.

 

                Featuring some of the worst “men writing women” instances of all time, it is with great pleasure that I learned that Mark Kendall, his colorful biography and all, is a pseudonym for Melinda M. Snodgrass, a serious science fiction writer (most notably for Star Trek: the Next Generation TV show a few years later) and, quite definitely, a woman. She took the gig to pay bills and turned in one of the better examples of animals-amok horror filled with titillation, gore, and silliness. It seems very possible that she wrote this as a satire on the genre. Whatever the case, I read the book quickly and with a smile on my face the whole time.

               

                The book has recently been reprinted and recorded as an audiobook by Encyclopocalypse Publications, thus bringing Snodgrass’s skeleton-in-the-closet to a whole new generation of thrill-seekers. Even though Snodgrass doesn’t mention her work as Mark Kendall (this is the only one) in her bibliography, it is a book that does exactly what it says on the tin. It delivers the gruesome goods.

Midnight Magazine

Books of Horror Facebook Page

Wolfcurse By Guy N. Smith

 

Wolfcurse
By Guy N. Smith
New English Library, 1981
Paperback, 176 pages

 

                This is one of my favorite non-Crab books by Guy N. Smith. Everything works. It’s a fresh idea and Smith barrels into it and doesn’t let up until the last sentence. The entire book follows the main character’s actions as his life falls into chaos.

 

                Ray Tyler is a milquetoast; a henpecked banker who is suddenly going through some changes. After beating up a trio of young thugs, he starts standing up to his wife, his neighbors, and his boss. In fact, he starts turning into a really violent asshole. A murderous asshole. He thinks he might be turning into a werewolf, thanks to a book on Folklore that he had recently purchased. Surely that would explain his sudden, violent bloodlust and overcharged sex-drive.

 

                GNS never really tips his hand as to whether Tyler really is a werewolf or if it is all in his head and that is part of what makes this book so readable. Stone cold crazy or bloodthirsty werewolf? He doesn’t skimp on the gore or sexual violence. In fact, the rape scenes are very vivid and made me squirm quite a lot. Not pleasant in the least. That is to say, very real and scary.

 

                This is GNS at his very best. The cover painting of the New English Library paperback is of a werewolf who is a dead ringer for Paul Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky, too! This book gets my highest recommendation.