In 2019, I read Flesh by Richard Laymon and quite enjoyed it. 2 years later, I read The Cellar. I didn’t like that one, and I’ve steered clear of Laymon since. Recently a friend suggested that I check out The Woods Are Dark. I had read that the first edition of this book had been heavily censored, and I was very pleased to find a copy of the unedited version that Laymon’s daughter had published after her father’s death.
Cemetery Dance – 2008 (First published 1981)
After a freak throws a severed hand into their car, two young females are kidnapped in small town and tied to a tree in a clearing in a nearby forest. There they meet a family of 4 who have met with a similar fate. The kidnappers promptly run away, and it turns out that they were just serving dinner to a tribe of cannibals called the Krulls. Luckily, one of the kidnappers starts to feel guilty because he has fallen in love with one of the girls he kidnapped, so he comes back to save her. He manages to set everybody free, but then the Krulls arrive and things get ugly.
The best part about this book is Lander Dills, the father of the family of 4. The former English teacher goes mad and starts behaving just as poorly as one of the Krulls. His thought process is outlined in one of the crudest lines ever put to paper: “An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A rape for a rape.” The only difference between Lander and the savages is that he quotes Shakespeare while raping and skinning his victims. Apparently this guy’s escapades were the parts that were cut from the first edition. Without him, the book would be very dull.
One of the girls who was kidnapped by the hillbillies manages not only to forgive her kidnapper when he comes back to rescue her, but she actually has consensual sex with him hours later and cries at the thought of not being able to spend the rest of her life with him shortly thereafter. Very realistic.
In truth, I was a little shocked at the level of brutality on display in this book. There’s gang-rapes, and cocks being bitten off aplenty. Also, this is a Richard Laymon book, so there is a lot of tit talk. I did a search through an ebook version of the book, and without counting tits, boobs or nipples, the word ‘breast’ appears 58 times. The Woods are Dark is pure trash, but it was relatively entertaining. I’ll probably read more of the Booby man’s stuff in the future.
I started this collection of short stories knowing nothing about it or its author. I honestly had no idea how much I was going to love it.
This is about 8 ghost stories in the tradition of M.R. James. The narrator is an antiques dealer who keeps coming across haunted antiques. There’s a Satanic clock, some very creepy dolls, and a pervert in an abandoned church. The narrator here is a bit more worldly than James’ guys.
I read a similar collection of Jamesian ghost stories a few months years ago. A.N.L. Munby’s The Alabaster Hand was enjoyable enough, but I didn’t find it scary. Some of the stories in Antique Dust are quite creepy though, the first two especially. You should definitely read this book.
I wrote the above in December of 2022. It didn’t feel like quite enough for a post, so I decided to read more Robert Westall. I didn’t go near him again for well over a year, but I’ve been dipping in and out of his horror fiction for the last few months, and I have thoroughly enjoyed pretty much everything I read by him.
After Antique Dust, I read 2 “best of” collections, Demons and Shadows and Shades of Darkness. Both were phenomenal. These books came out in 1993, but they were reissued in 1999, and while both editions of Demons and Shadows are the same, the newer edition of Shades of Darkness swapped out 2 stories. I managed to track down copies of both editions.
The Best of Robert Westall, Volume 1: Demons and Shadows
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (1994) Macmillan’s Children’s Books (1999)
Rachel and the Angel
Girl sees biblically accurate angel. Must find a good soul or there’ll be another Sodom situation.
Graveyard Shift
Starts off with ghosts appearing to cemetery worker, but things get dark when paedo vampire appears.
A Walk on the Wild Side
School headmaster’s cat brings home a kitten. The kitten falls in love with him but then kills robbers in his house and might be a shapeshifter. Some actually scary passages. So, so god damn good.
The Making of Me
Sentimental story about shellshocked angry grandad. Nothing spooky
The Night Out
Biker boys have fun. Not scary
The Woolworth Spectacles
From Antique Dust
A Nose Against the Glass
Long, kinda boring story, about antique dealer who sees pesky child’s face in his window
Gifts from the Sea
Boy goes to granny’s to avoid blitz. Finds cool stuff on beach then a corpse
The Creatures in the House
Weird vampire creature drains women of their minds. One such woman leaves her haunted house to niece, but niece lets a bunch of cats in who fuck creature up. Good story.
The Death of Wizards
Boy saves old man’s life, but old man is wizard. Pays boy back by giving him intimate knowledge of everything around him. Doesn’t want this after trip to supermarket
The Last Day of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux
From Antique Dust
The Best of Robert Westall, Volume 2: Shades of Darkness
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (1994) Macmillan’s Children’s Books (1999)
Woman and Home
Kid skips school. Goes into weird house that’s actually a ghost’s trap. Good.
St. Austin Friars
Priest moves to new rectory in Muncaster. Seems as though the town is inhabited by vampires
The Haunting of Chas McGill
Boy moves to old schoolhouse in countryside during the blitz and meets the ghost of a soldier who deserted first world war.
In Camera
People find roll of film in antique camera. Contains pictures of a corpse. They track down a man from the pictures.
Fifty-Fafty
Sentimental autobiographical story about author’s family.
The Cats
Old man becomes unwell. His wife starts seeing ghostly cats in their house.
The Boys Toilets
There’s a ghost in the jacks. Excellent story.
Portland Bill (1999)
From Antique Dust
The Bus (1999)
Guy gets on a time travelling bus. Very racist man on board. Wouldn’t get published today. Odd that this was added to later edition of the book.
The Red House Clock (1994)
Excellent story about boy who fixes dead neighbour’s clock to get revenge on landlord
The Call (1994)
Samaritan phone operators get a scary call on xmas night.
The Cat Spartan
Kid inherits his grandad’s cat and house, much to his mother’s dismay
Blackham’s Wimpy
WW2 bomber becomes haunted by a German pilot it shot down.
Valancourt 2015 (First published 1991)
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral
Next up, I read The Stones of Muncaster Cathredal. It’s an excellent tale, and the Valancourt edition has an extra short story thrown in for good measure. This book is well worth a read.
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral
Something in the tower of a Cathedral is luring children to their deaths. Nothing to do with the other story set in Muncaster.
Brangwyn Gardens
A lad takes a room and finds a woman’s diary.
Valancourt – 2016
Spectral Shadows
This is a collection of 3 novellas. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Blackham’s Wimpy
I read this in Shades of Darkness.
The Wheatstone Pond
A pond is drained and old toy boats start showing up. Another mysterious box holding something stinky also shows up. These items are somehow linked to a mysterious house nearby, and it’s up the local antique dealer to solve the mystery. There’s good suspense here, but ultimately, there’s too many threads to the story and it gets a bit silly. Still an enjoyable read. This is definitely not children’s fiction. The protagonist has rape fantasies.
Yaxley’s Cat
A woman rents a cottage for herself and 2 kids. Previous owner was a witch. She finds his stuff. Good.
Honestly, every book I read by Westall was excellent. He wrote books for kids, and it seems like his stuff is labelled as kid’s fiction, or young adult fiction, but in sincerity, these ghost stories are top notch. I think older kids would certainly enjoy them, but they’re not toned down in any fashion. If you like good old fashioned ghost stories in the vein of M.R. James, I don’t think I’ve read anything as good as Robert Westall. Any of these books would be a good starting point, all of them perfect for bedtime reading.
When I saw the cover of this book, I knew I’d have to read it. I picked it up a few months ago, but it opens with a quote from another book called Missa Niger: La Messe Noire, and when I looked that book up, I decided to do it before starting on Blood Circle. I read it and wrote a post about Missa Niger, but shortly before publishing it I discovered something intriguing and had to go back to read Blood Circle too.
Sphere Books – 1990
Blood Circle is a nasty horror novel. That cover is not misleading. It’s brutal, sadistic and bloody.
Andrea, a teenage girl, goes to pick some herbs at night, but when she’s out, she runs into a Satanic ceremony where a virgin is being deflowered. Andrea, also a virgin, gets very horny and starts masturbating. Later on in life, she becomes very successful, but the guy who she saw performing the satanic ceremony goes on a killing spree. One thing leads to another and it becomes apparent that they’re going to be reunited pretty quickly. If I go into much more detail, I’ll ruin the story, but I can say that this is extremely nasty stuff. There’s really disgusting parts of this book. Somebody shits on a cross, somebody else fucks their own child, and several people are slowly skinned alive. I was genuinely a bit surprised at how damned unpleasant this book was.
I really dislike when authors use song lyrics as part of their writing. I don’t mean when they use a lyric as an opening for a chapter, although that does suck. I mean when they actually put the words of the song that the character is listening to into their text. It’s such a lame thing to do, and whenever I see it, I assume it’s because the author was listening to that song at the time. Stephen King does this quite often. It’s embarrassing and unnecessary. Bernard King chooses to do this with one of his characters. He has him listening to Vigilante by a band called Magnum. I hadn’t heard this song before, so I checked it out. Terrible. King describes this as “good strong music” and as having a “powerful sound”. Haha. It’s pure shit.
Blood Circle is pretty good. The author clearly had a good idea of what he was talking about. I liked that the ending wasn’t happy, and there were a few plot twists that actually surprised me. The writing was alright, but the book is only 300 pages and it took me a week to finish. It wasn’t one of those “I can’t wait for the next chapter” kind of novels. I’d say you’ll probably enjoy it if you are a sadistic, satanic pervert.
Ok, so let’s get back to this interesting Missa Niger book that’s quoted at the beginning of Blood Circle. Bernard King also thanks the author, one Aubrey Melech, for allowing him to quote from that book and for helping in his research. He follows this with a brief note about how some of the events described in Blood Circle may actually be happening.
Sut Anubis Books – 1986
Missa Niger: La Messe Noire, A True and Factual account of the principal ritual of Satanic worship The Black Mass – Aubrey Melech
This book claims to be the actual script for a black mass. A mere 500 copies were published in 1986, and at that time, the only other printed version of a Black Mass had appeared in Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Rituals. Melech acknowledges this in Missa Niger but claims that his text is more authentic.
From King’s Blood Circle
In truth, there’s not much in here that I haven’t come across many times before. This is a fairly tame rendition of the black mass. It includes blasphemy and desecration of the Host, but it steers clear of human sacrifice. I suppose the one feature that stood out to me was the inclusion of an altar girl. A kid attends the mass, pisses in a cup and then the priest splashes the audience with the wee. Honestly, if I was conducting an infernal ritual, I’d leave this part out.
This is also a very short book. It’s about 70 pages long, but most of these are taken up with the Latin version of the mass with the English translation on the opposite page. It’s the kind of thing you’d easily read in one sitting.
In the introduction, the author claims that he is publishing this text for scholarly purposes and not for people to use. I can’t believe that anyone would be that naïve, but on closer research it seems that his motivation to put this out may have been even more sinister. There are people out there who believe he did it purely to make money!
Bernard King/Aubrey Melech
A Satanic internet nerd (and I mean that with sincere respect and admiration) compared the two texts and wrote a detailed analysis of them. They are supposedly so similar that it seems probable that they either came from the same document or that Melech plagiarized LaVey’s text. This guy goes on to claim that Missa Niger was created and published by Melech (who is just a pseudonym for Bernard King) to coincide with the release of Angel Heart, the movie version of William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel, a novel about Satanist that features scenes of a Black Mass. He believes that King created the text at the behest of Alan Parker, the film’s director. In The Lure of the Sinister, The Unnatural History of Satanism, the author, Gareth Medway, claims that Bernard King is Aubrey Melech. He says that he confronted King about this and that King said Melech was a Satanic friend, but apparently other people confirmed to Medway that King and Melech were the same person. Medway notes that King is an Odinist rather than a Satanist and suggests that the publishing of the Missa Niger text wasn’t an entirely sincere undertaking. This idea is bolstered by the other books that King put out. Most of his novels are mythological fantasy stuff and his non-fiction books are all about Runes. I was a little disappointed by this. I had hoped that Bernard King was a devout Satanist using his books to spread a doctrine of evil.
I enjoyed reading both of these books, but my favourite part of writing this post was reading the stuff on the Synagoga Satanae website from 2002. I genuinely miss the days of angelfire websites. I only hope that people will be looking back on my website in 20 years time.
Charles L. Grant was a big name in the world of horror fiction during the 80s. He wrote a bunch of horror novels set in an imaginary town called Oxrun Station, and he edited many (many) anthologies of short stories. I read 2 short story collections by him recently, A Glow of Candles and Tales from the Nightside. When you read about this guy online, you always see people throwing about the phrase “quiet horror”. Don’t let that fool you into thinking this is horror-lite or anything like that. Grant just uses atmosphere quite effectively. It’s quiet in the sense that you won’t often see where the horror is going to come from. In truth, there were a couple of times when the horror was so quiet that it seemed to pass me by, and I was left only in a state of mild bewilderment.
Berkley – 1981Arkham House – 1981
Both books were published in 1981, but I read A Glow of Candles first. It’s actually labelled as “darkening horror” on the cover. Some of the stories in here are more sci-fi or fantasy than horror. I feel like this stuff would fit into the same category as Ray Bradbury’s early stories. The second collection, Tales from the Nightside was published by Arkham House. These stories are more straightforward spooky in nature, and I don’t mean that in a negative sense at all. I enjoyed this collection more. Also, this book has the same cover as one of my favourite albums.
The below are brief summaries of the stories in these volumes. These are mostly for my own reference. Some of the stories appear in both, so I have just included them in the order I read them in.
A Glow of Candles
A Crowd of Shadows
Robot murderer child of real parents is actually real boy of murderer androids parents.
Hear Me Now, My Sweet Abbey Rose
Family goes to Oxrun on vacation. Daughter gets murdered. Ghost returns for a sentence.
Vietnam vet adopts kid. Neighbour kills kids pony. Kid gets neighbour with jungle magic.
The Three of Tens
Pretty good story about a man selling curse boxes at fairground that creates murderous stalker corpse
The Dark of Legends, the Light of Lies
Set in future, a writer tries to write, but people are too educated to read horror fiction so he kills people. Not sure if I got the point here.
The Rest Is Silence
Ghostly stalker murderer in Oxrun. Kills journalists friends
White Wolf Calling
Kid across the road has werewolf parents
A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn’s Eye
An actor kills some directors and goes on the run because drama is dying. Futuristic sci-fi that isn’t really sci-fi. Very similar to the art story beforehand. Not good.
Caesar, Now Be Still
Principal not happy with teachers thing on Julius Caesar. Teacher decides to quit, but then turns into vampire?
When All the Children Call My Name
Good story about an ex-cop who starts working at a playground where really weird killer kids play.
Secrets of the Heart
Car crash victims arrive at house of psychic magic child. Also psycho. Kills them.
Tales from the Nightside
Coin of the Realm
Toll booth workers are depressed and summoned by Egyptian god of death
Old Friends
An abused child makes friends with the darkness in the cellar where he is punished.
Home
Weird neighbour has little darlings (creepy child monsters) who eat pets and people. Reminded me of another story by this guy. (When All the Children Call my Name)
Night of Dark Intent
Reporter goes to seance for a story but the people there turn out to be dead zombies
If Damon Comes
Weird neglected kid comes back from the dead
The Gentle Passing of a Hand
Crippled kid wants to become magician but his sleight of hand tricks kill and reanimate people
From all the Fields of Hail and Fire
Creatures are coming out of the ground and setting fire to houses and kidnapping children. Local child takes matters into his own hands
The Key to English
Kid is uncomfortable at creepy school. Breaks into storeroom and finds the schools staff secret
Needle Song
Old woman plays music that drains neighbours of happiness. Some kind of vampire
Something There Is
A horror writer cant find his muse. Too airy fairy. Not much plot
These stories were pretty good. I’m not going to rush out and read more Charles L. Grant, but I definitely won’t rule out coming back to him in the future. The main reason that I don’t want to check out his novels is that they’re mostly set in the same place, and I reckon if I were to read one of them I’d have to commit to reading the rest. While I haven’t read any other Grant, I read one of his wife’s novels a few years back.
I’ve been doing a lot of non-fiction recently, so here’s a couple of novels about the Devil:
Falling Angel
Warner Books – 1986 (First published 1978)
Falling Angel is a classic. There’s at least 70 editions of the book, and it was turned into a big Hollywood movie in the 80s with Robert DeNiro and Mickey Rourke. I’ve had a copy on my bookshelf for a long time, but I only sat down to read it recently. It was great. I had seen the movie years ago, and I had an idea where it was going, but I still found the book very suspenseful and very enjoyable.
Harry Angel is a private detective who has been hired to find a missing popstar named Johnny Favourite. The guy who hired him is a rich weirdo named Louis Ciphre. Harry finds himself in a world of murder, voodoo and Satanism pretty quickly.
It’s more of a hard-boiled detective novel with supernatural elements than a straight horror novel, but that’s what makes it so great. There’s lots of suspense, and I got through it in a couple of sittings. It’s a really fun book to read. It made me realise exactly what Richard Jaccoma was going for when he wrote his werewolf novels. (The first of those books came out a year after Angel Heart, the movie version of Fallen Angel, and I doubt this was a coincidence.)
If you haven’t read Falling Angel, you should.
Angel’s Inferno
No Exit Press – 2020
More than 30 years after Falling Angel was published, Hjortsberg started work on a sequel. He finished Angel’s Inferno shortly before he died in 2017. It wasn’t published until 2020.
It wasn’t great. It starts where the last book left off, and the main character is now on the run. He heads to Paris and buys a lot of expensive clothes and eats some fancy food while plotting revenge. The characters and their interactions are enjoyable enough, but the suspense and mystery of the first book is almost entirely absent. The plot is modelled on that of the first book too, but the twist ending here was just a bit too ridiculous for my taste. This book was far longer too. It wasn’t absolutely horrible to read, but it pales in comparison to Falling Angel. I’m glad I didn’t spend 40+ years waiting in anticipation for this.
When I saw Altered States in my early 20s, I was blown away. It was a big budget Hollywood movie about a scientist who took psychadelics until he turned into a monkey. I also realised it was the source of the “my heart is being touched by Christ” sample from that Ministry song and the cover of Godflesh’s first album. Cool!
A friend told me that the movie had been based on a real set of experiments that had been performed in the 60s, but I wasn’t sure of what these experiments actually entailed. I hadn’t thought about this for years, but I was recently reading a book by Robert Anton Wilson that mentioned John C. Lily and his sensory deprivation tank experiments, and I realised these were what Altered States was based on. John C. Lily did write some books on his experiments, but I think they focus on using the tanks to speak to dolphins as opposed to turning into an ape, so I decided to read the horror novel instead.
It’s at least 15 years since I saw the movie, but as far as I can remember, the book is pretty close to the film. I read that there was conflict between the author, Paddy Chayefsky, and Ken Russell, the director, on the set of the movie. Chayefsky got so mad that he had his names removed from the credits of the movie.
The book is pretty good. The main character is such a dickhead that I was rooting for him to die the whole way through. The author uses a lot of technical jargon for effect, but all the multisyllabic words in the dictionary don’t change the fact that this is a book about a man who gets so high that he turns into a giant slug. I was going to write a more detailed plot synopsis, but there’s really no need.
The visuals from the movie make it a more memorable version. If you’ve seen that and really enjoyed it, give the book a go.
One night, when I was 11 or 12 years old, my parents left me downstairs in front of the TV. I didn’t concern myself with what they were doing because I had the opportunity to potentially see some boobs on the tv. I switched on to MTV, and to my great delight, I found a show that was basically a compilation of videos that MTV wouldn’t play during the day. I remember it had Come to Daddy by Aphex Twin and that black and white, sexy Wicked Game video. This was incredible. This was the best stuff I had ever seen. The next video that came on was for a song called “Devoured by Vermin” by a band named Cannibal Corpse. I’m assuming most of the people who read my blog what death metal is, but as a child growing up in 1990s Ireland, I did not. The “heaviest” music I had ever heard at that point had probably been the Red Hot Chili Peppers or something similar. This video was the most disgusting, depraved thing I had ever seen. It didn’t make sense to me. Why would a person make those noises? This wasn’t singing! This wasn’t music! This was evil. This was sick. I hated it. I remember going out with my friends the next day and telling all about it.
too much for 12 year old me
A few years later, I started getting interested in classic rock. Then I moved on and got some White Zombie and Korn cds. I liked that stuff, but I kept thinking back to that Cannibal Corpse song I had heard. My musical tastes were getting heavier, but I would never listen to that crap. It was just too much.
Then I got the internet. I spent about a month downloading the video for Devoured by Vermin off of Kazaa. I showed it to one of my best friends, and he was repulsed. I showed it to my cousin. She hated it. Their response was exactly what mine had been. Seeing this, I started to enjoy it. Part of it was seeing how people reacted, but another part of it was googling the band and reading their lyrics. Good grief! I very quickly became a fan of death metal.
Ok, but this is a book blog, why am I harping on about this music video?
Well, recently, I read James Herbert’s The Rats, a super influential horror novel from 1974 about a bunch of rats that attack London and start eating people. It only took a couple of chapters to realise that this book was the inspiration for the death metal song that got me hooked.
Ruthless gnawing vermin, feed Cleaning off my bones while I breathe Stenching greasy rodents, swarm My body is losing its form
– Cannibal Corpse
While I can’t find anything online stating that the book was the inspiration for these lyrics, it is well known that Alex Webster, bassist and lyricist for the band is a huge horror fan, and the words to the song could be describing several of the scenes in this infamous book.
The Rats
Signet – 1975 (First published 1974)
Like the song it inspired, this book is not subtle. It’s extremely violent to the point. I had read Herbert’s The Fog before, and while I enjoyed parts of it, I felt it dragged a little bit. The Rats is less than 200 pages, and they’re all good. There’s no surprises with this book. It’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. Go read it if you haven’t already.
Lair
New American Library – 1979
Lair is a very predictable sequel. It’s 4 years after the first rat attack, and the rats have migrated to a nature reserve outside of London. None of the characters from the first book appear except for the rats. It’s so derivative of the first novel that I’d call it pointless if it didn’t contain the scene in which a priest is seen vomiting into an open grave where a bunch of mutant rats are eating the corpse of an old woman. Total redemption! While I definitely enjoyed Lair, it’s easily the worst book in the series.
Domain
New English Library – 1996 (First published 1983)
Domain is a much more ambitious book than its predecessors. Not only are the rats back, but 5 nuclear bombs have also fallen on London for totally separate reasons. This is a post apocalyptic disaster novel where the protagonists have to be as wary of other humans as they do with the hideous, mutated, blood thirsty rodents that are trying to eat everything. This is highly enjoyable trash. I read these books in quick succession, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this one.
The City
Pan Books – 1994
The final entry in the series is a comic book called The City. I really enjoyed it, but it feels more like a separate work that was inspired by the trilogy of novels rather than a continuation of the story. The rats here are no longer just eating the humans; they have now become our masters. It’s horrendously bleak, and the art is cool. Definitely read this one if you get a chance.
This series, particularly the first book, is both infamous and influential in the field of horror literature, so I don’t feel pressed to say too much more about it. I’ve mentioned a few times when reading other horror novels about killer animals that I assumed they were rip-offs of Herbert’s work. I can now confirm that most the “animal attacks” books by John Halkin, Simon Ian Childer, Harry Adam Knight, David Anne and Nick Sharman that I have read are all knock-offs of The Rats. I feel like I’ve read a lot of these silly animal books in the last few years, and I’m planning on giving this particular genre a break for a while. It took me about 4 years to get around to The Rats after finishing Herbert’s The Fog, but I don’t think I’ll wait that long before returning to his work. I had a lot of fun reading these books.
I saw Jaws 3 at a friends house when I was 5 or 6. I don’t remember anything about the movie, but I know that it left me permanent fear of swimming in the sea. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I saw the original movie, and I never bothered watching the sequels. I have read that each sequel is significantly worse than the movie that came before it. Over the last few years, I have read a lot of books about killer animals. It’s not a good genre of literature, but its rise in popularity seems to have stemmed from 2 novels published in 1974, James Herbert’s The Rats (review of this series forthcoming) and Peter Benchley’s Jaws. While Benchley never wrote a sequel to Jaws, Hank Searls wrote novelisations for two of the Jaws movie sequels.
Jaws – Peter Benchley
Doubleday – 1974
Jaws was a bestseller when it came out, but its fame is largely due to the movie version that came out a year after its release. Spielberg’s classic is significantly different to the novel. The basic plot (giant shark attacks small town) is the same, but the focus of the book is more on the characters than the killer fish. There’s more politics and adultery going on. I know some people think that the book pales in comparison to the film, but it has been so long since I’ve seen the film that I was able to read and enjoy the book as its own entity. After finishing, I did go back and watch a few clips, and I’m quite sure the film is more important than the book, but the book is still a decent read.
Jaws 2 -Hank Searls
Bantam – 1978
The relationship between the movie version of Jaws 2 and its novelisation seems to be the inverse of the relationship between the original book and its adaptation. I haven’t seen Jaws 2, but the consensus online seems to be that it’s a pointless, if moderately entertaining, retelling of the first movie without Quint, the best character. It’s the same story as the first installment, but this time the shark is even bigger. The novelisation is based on an early version of the screenplay that’s supposedly quite different to the movie, and this book is supposedly better than its film version. I really enjoyed most of it. It’s scarier than the original book. There was one part where the sharks shows up that genuinely frightened me. Searls seems to have had a better understanding of the thrill that a reader wants from a book about a killer shark than Benchley did. The only problem with this book, and it is a big one, is the Deux ex machina ending. The suspense ramps up and up and up, and then suddenly it’s all over. This probably wasn’t Searl’s fault. If it was in the screenplay, he would have had to stick with it. Still though, he could have set it up a little better. As we will soon see, Searls was well capable of adding to the source material to make it more entertaining.
Jaws 3 was not based on a book, nor did it get a novelisation. Again, I haven’t seen it in more than 30 years, but I’ve read that it’s utter shit. I was delighted that I didn’t have to read it.
A few weeks ago, I decided to treat myself to a day of book-shopping. I took the train into town so that I could look through all of my favourite second hand bookstores. Most of them have closed down, and the ones that are left are trash. You’d be lucky to find a few Dean Koontz books in their horror sections. I think I went to 4 different shops and found fuck all. On my way home though, I found this on a wall beside the train station. I thank the trash Gods for looking down kindly on me that day!
Jaws: The Revenge – Hank Searls
Berkley – 1987
Jaws 4, or Jaws: The Revenge, is an infamously bad movie. It’s about another giant shark who is trying to kill off the Brody family specifically. (Brody was the police chief who killed the sharks in the first two movies.) Somehow another giant shark is able to follow Ellen Brody from Amityville to the Bahamas so that he can kill her. Think about that. A big fish follows the path of an airplane to kill one of its passengers because her husband killed some other fish in the past. It doesn’t make any sense, and the movie’s tagline of, “This time it’s personal.” is truly hilarious when you think about it. How did Searls make sense of this in his book? Voodoo and cocaine!
Jaws: The Revenge is a stupid book. A few years ago, I would have said that if this wasn’t the novelisation of a Hollywood movie, it wouldn’t have been made. Since then though, I have actually read lots of horror novels that are significantly worse than this. The story was sufficiently entertaining to hold my interest, but reading this book has the added appeal of watching an author struggle to make a coherent story out of a bloody squirt of shark shit.
So another shark comes to Amity and kills Brody’s son. Then Ellen, the dead guy’s mom, flies to the Bahamas to be with her other son who is working as a marine biologist. It turns out that he has insulted a local witchdoctor, and the witchdoctor has summoned a spirit to possess a shark to kill him. This doesn’t really make sense though. Why would the witchdoctor summon a shark in Amity when his enemy is in the Bahamas. How would he even know that his enemy had family in Amity? Also, the shark is the son of the shark from Jaws 2. What are the chances?!
In the second book, Searls describes how a sharks consciousness is limited mostly to the instincts that help it feed. The shark in The Revenge is a fan of reggae music and cannot resist a tropical calypso beat. He also feels seriously miffed when he is harpooned.
Apparently, the voodoo aspect was included in an earlier version of the movie’s screenplay but it was deemed “too corny” to actually film. I can’t comment on whether this was a good decision or not. I went back and watched some clips from Jaws 4 after finishing the novel, and I am quite certain that the novelisation, although deeply silly and not “good” in any sense, must be a lot better than the film.
I have a fondness for reading the book versions of my favourite movies, but I’m not a fan of doing things the other way around. If I’ve read the book, I usually don’t have any interest in seeing the movie. I definitely feel the same about the Jaws sequels, especially when I read that the books are supposedly better than the movies. These books were alright, but in truth, the movie version of the original Jaws is the only version of any of these stories that you need to witness.
Happy Saint Patrick’s day. I’ve read a few horror novels set in Ireland over the years, but I’ve been saving Shaun Hutson’s Renegades for a special occasion. I bought this book a few years ago because the back of it mentioned Irish terrorism, ultra violence and Gilles de Rais. I was looking for something to read the other day when I took it down for another glance. Again I was intrigued by the blurb on the back, but when I saw the author’s portrait on the inside I started to read immediately. Holy shit, look at that bad-ass!
A dissident group of terrorists shoot up a political meeting in Belfast with the aim of stopping peace talks. They are being paid to do so by an English arms dealer who has been profiting from the conflict. Sean Doyle, an English counter terrorism operative with a very Irish name is sent in to Ireland to kill the bad guys.
This would be a fairly straightforward mission only the arms dealer has also recently come into possession of an evil stained glass window inhabited by an evil demon summoned by Gilles de Rais.
There is a supernatural element here, but this is 95% a crime novel. There’s occasional scary bits, but apart from the last few chapters, these ALL turn out to be “oh it was just a dream” sequences. This was written by the author of Chainsaw Terror though, so the whole book is ludicrously violent. Every bullet wound, and there are lots of them, is described in detail.
This book, which is mostly set in Ireland, was written by an English author in the early 90s. I was a little apprehensive starting out. I certainly don’t want to condone everything that the IRA did during the troubles, but let’s remember that they were fighting a foreign force that had stolen their land and oppressed their people. Fortunately, Hutson doesn’t take sides. Everyone is a piece of shit in this book, but it’s the Brits causing all the trouble here.
There’s a few scenes where the Gardai (Irish police) show up and pull their guns on the bad guys. In reality, regular Irish police officers have never had guns.
The protagonist, Doyle, is an unrepentant bad-ass. He quotes heavy metal lyrics, bangs hot babes, kills anything he doesn’t like and generally doesn’t give a fuck. He has long hair, and he’s covered in scars. He’s supposedly based on the author. Scroll up and take another look at that cool motherfucker. Hell yeah! Hutson wrote a few other novels featuring sean Doyle as a protagonist, but I’m not going to seek them out. (I felt similar about his sequel to Spawn.) I don’t think the other Sean Doyle books have any supernatural elements.
Looking back, the supernatural element in Renegades is actually pretty unnecessary to the plot. The lore of Gilles de Rais is briefly summarized, but the demon that appears in this book is a bog standard evil spirit. It kills, eats or possesses everyone in sight. I’m glad it was there though. (If you like trashy novels about Gilles de Rais, I recommend Philip José Farmer’s Image of the Beast.)
I’ve had this one for ages, but a few years ago I read another book by the author that wasn’t very good, and I assumed this would be pretty bad too. When it comes to “animals attack” horror, there comes a point where you know what to expect.
Nothing about this book was unexpected. It was like that book about killer bunnies I read a few months ago except this one was about killer cats, and it didn’t have a plot twist. The Cats is actually very, very similar to any of the three books in John Halkin’s Squelch trilogy. I haven’t read it yet, but I assume all of those books are basically rip-offs of James Herbert‘s The Rats. I’m not just saying that because of the line on the cover of The Cats either. There’s something very formulaic and British about all of these books, and The Rats predates them all. I’ve been holding off on that one because it’s part of a trilogy. I’ll get to it someday.
A science experiment gone wrong leads to an army of cats attacking London and killing everyone in sight. My favourite part was when the president of the USA comes over to England and pours a bottle of acid down a cat’s throat. This book is truly ridiculous. It’s not particularly bad or hard to read, but it’s also not a good book at all.
The above didn’t seem sufficient for a post of its own, so I read another book about killer pussies.
Berton Roueché’s Feral.
Pocket Books – 1975 (First published 1974)
A young couple moves into an old house in a remote neighbourhood on Long Island, but their peace is shattered when they discover that the woods behind their new home is filled with angry, feral cats with a taste for blood. Imagine Jaws but with cats instead of a shark.
It’s also very similar to The Pack by David Fisher. It’s a warning to summer people not to abandon their house pets after their vacation.
The ending turns into a bloodbath, but it never gets as silly as Sharman’s The Cats. Once the humans start shooting, the kitties never stand a chance. There’s fewer characters in here too, and they’re far more believable. Make no mistake, this is a horror novel about evil puddy tats, but Feral is well written and so short that I really enjoyed it.
I saw that there was a retitled edition of Feral that came out a year after it was first released that was also named The Cats. Herbert’s The Rats was released at the same time as Feral, and it seems that somebody decided to give Feral‘s rerelease a similar name to capitalise on the other book’s success. I haven’t yet read The Rats, but I doubt that Feral is very similar. Either way, it seems like a sign that both of this week’s books tried to ride the coattails of Herbert’s infamous novel. I better take a look at those rat novels soon. I’m sure there’s more horror novels about cats out there, but I’m in no rush to read any more. Cats make my hands itchy.
Nocturnal Revelries 