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.