Poppy Brite’s Most Extreme Novel: Exquisite Corpse

Ok, so I know I said that I was going to get to regular posting 2 weeks ago, but I went camping last weekend and had no internet. I finished this novel, Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse, a few weeks ago, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.

**Gallery Books – 1997 (Originally published 1996)**

I’ve read 3 other books by Poppy Z. Brite. I loved Lost Souls and Swamp Foetus. I didn’t like Drawing Blood so much. It felt more like fantasy than horror, and it was extremely homoerotic. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, and I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to give off “no homo” vibes here. I was able to enjoy the romance between the 2 male characters; I just didn’t like the cum eating. I guess I’m the kind of person who really only enjoys reading descriptions of people ingesting bodily fluids when these descriptions are purposely written to gross the reader out.

Anyone who has read Exquisite Corpse will probably be giggling at my squeamishness right now. Both of Brite’s publishers (Delacorte and Penguin) refused to publish this book after Brite submitted the manuscript. This is one of the most disgusting novels I have ever read.

The plot focuses on the intersection of the lives of 2 gay couples. One of these couples has recently broken up, and the other is comprised of a necrophile and a cannibal. The results are deeply disturbing and depressing. I don’t want to give anything else away, but Jesus this book was fucking grim.

At an early point in the novel, I considered giving up. There were a few chapters that were basically just gay porn. These weren’t just descriptions of what happened. This was clearly erotic writing. I generally skim over lengthy sex scenes in novels, regardless of the genders of the participants. I didn’t do that here because I was half expecting something horrible to happen, but it didn’t, and now I fear that I am a gay man.

I’m joking of course, but I was half right. Extremely horrible things do start happening in this book, and they are written about in such a way that sets them far, far apart from the generic splatterpunk book I have read here before. It’s a combination of Brite’s skill with the written word and the juxtaposition with the sexy parts of this book that make the violence in here so disturbing. At the same time, the actual brutality on display here is full on. There’s nothing left to the imagination. The viscera and gore are upsetting, but Brite also describes the psychology of the sadistic murderers too, and it was those parts that I found most upsetting. There’s one bit that genuinely disgusted me where the murderer is describing how the body of their victim acquiesces to the violence its undergoing with a kind of longing.

This book is seriously fucked up. It’s dark, disgusting and depressing. There were numerous points throughout that made me feel nauseous and made me question my sexuality. All in all, I enjoyed it.

The Haar and Rotten Tommy: Two Novels by David Sodergren

Greetings dear readers. I want to offer my apologies for the disruption of my weekly posts recently. I’ve been away, and I had to prioritize my family over my creepy book blog. I can’t remember another month in my adult life where I did as little reading. I’m back home now, so the scheduled creepiness can now resume. I got my hands on some weird stuff when I was away too, so check in again soon.

The Haar – David Sodergren

I noticed this title on my library’s audiobook section a few months ago. I’ve listened to most of the horror novels available there, and I needed something to read, so I gave this a go. I think used to follow the author on twitter or something as I recognized his name as an indie horror author. I had no real expectations.

I loved this book. I genuinely really enjoyed reading it.

An old woman faces pressure to sell her house on the coast of Scotland so that a millionaire can redevelop the land. I’m assuming he was going to turn it into a golf course, but I can’t actually remember. Doesn’t Trump own a golf course in Scotland? Either way, a fucked up sea monster shows up and things get gory and psychedelic. This probably counts as splatterpunk, but it’s enjoyably written. There’s a story and characters at work here.

Rotten Tommy- David Sodergren

Shortly after finishing The Haar, I sought out another book by Sodergren. Rotten Tommy came out last year. I found it a bit weirder than The Haar. It’s about a woman who finds malevolent video tapes in her parent’s old house that lead her getting sucked into a forgotten TV show with an extremely nasty antagonist. This is definitely horror, but there are strong fantasy and even comedy elements at play. Again, I really enjoyed this book.

I often find myself running out of things to say when I review modern horror, especially when I’ve enjoyed reading it. There’s a million other reviews out there if you want more details, but I would strongly recommend just reading these books instead. Both of these novels were a lot of fun to read. I will hopefully get around to reading more of David Sodergren’s books in the future.

There’s Always Freaks in the Basement: Ray Garton’s Live Girls and Night Life

I first encounered the writing of Ray Garton in the first Splatterpunks anthology. It contained a chapter that had been from his book Crucifax, presumably for being too edgy. It had a dead baby in it or something, and I wasn’t terribly impressed. Years later, I read that his vampire novel, Live Girls, was considered a classic in the field, so I sought it out and gave it a read.

Live Girls

Yeah, this is pretty good. There’s a peepshow in New York city where beautiful vampire women dance in glass boxes. There are gloryholes in the walls, and when the men stick their dicks in, they get a toothy blowjob that satisfies both their lust and the vampire’s hunger. There’s also a basement full of hideous mutants. This part isn’t explained properly. We’re told how they became mutants but not why they’re trapped in a cellar. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that they’re mutants is a perfectly good reason for them being kept in cellar. This is not high literature, but it’s fast paced and enjoyable. It’s also quite of its time (1987). The following passage had me laughing:

“He thought he was being raped by a homosexual.” he added.
She put her whole hand over her mouth and her eyes crinkled as she tried to hold the laughter in.

I can’t imagine those lines appearing in a modern novel.

Night Life

I waited a week and then read Night Life, the sequel to Live Girls. This was written almost 20 years after the first book. It features many of the same characters, and while it was decently entertaining, it just wasn’t as good as the first book. It’s one of those sequels where the author tries to rewrite new versions of all of the memorable parts of the first book. The vampire hideout in this one is a hotel rather than a peepshow, but the hotel also features a basement full of mutant freaks. There’s more rape in this one too, and it felt a bit vulgar. The rapists in the first book are female vampires. There’s an interesting element of subversion there. Not so in the sequel. I don’t want to come across as a prude here because I willingly read a novel by a writer who was known as a first generation splatterpunk, but the innocent woman being forced into an anal rape gangbang with 13 vampires was a bit silly. The ending was a bit abrupt, and I felt like Garton left it open with the plans to maybe write a third book in the series. Unfortunately, he died last year, so we’ll never find out what happens next.

If you’re going to read Live Girls (and I recommend that you do), you should probably read Night Life too. It’s not as good, but I did actually enjoy reading it. I am probably going to go back to read Crucifax soon.

“I got worms.” – Nick Cutter’s The Troop

I don’t read a lot of recent horror, but somehow I got the idea that Nick Cutter’s The Troop would be worth reading. I got an audiobook version from my local library, and spent a week listening to this as I was lying in bed. I enjoyed it immensely.

A troop of boy scouts is on a camping trip on a remote Canadian island. Unfortunately for them, a man with a minging, extremely contagious worm parasite ends up on the same island and ruins their trip.

I’ve read plenty of books that exist for the sole sake of grossing the reader out. A lot of splatterpunk stuff tries so hard to be disgusting that it completely neglects the elements of suspense and character. The Troop left me feeling nauseous, but it’s also a very enjoyable story. I’ve seen some criticism directed at the fact that the characters are all stock characters (the nerd, the jock, the troubled youth, the nice guy and the weirdo), and while this is a fair criticism, the scouts do have enough depth to make the reader care about them. The novel is partly epistolary, and the chapters are interspersed with newspaper documents and excerpts from a court case. I thought this worked really well in creating tension and setting the tone.

This novel is disgusting body horror done properly. Seriously, one scene (the bit with the monkey) literally made me sit up in bed because I thought I was going to vomit. The Troop is gross and entertaining. I had a great time reading it.

Aron Beauregard’s The Cuck

I saw this cover and couldn’t resist.

Two lads go to a lonely woman’s house to have sex with her. When they get there, an old man watches them. Afterwards, the old man appears any time the lads do anything sexual and convinces them to mutilate their genitalia.

This was published as its own book, but it’s really just a short story. My expectations weren’t particularly high going in, and I can happily say that I was in no way disappointed. This book does contain a perverted old man and some disgusting dick abuse.

The only thing that confused me was the title. The old man is not actually married, so he isn’t really a cuckold. It’s funny to call people (or demons) a cuck, but multiple characters arrive at this appellation independently. Weird. Again though, I didn’t expect much in terms of sensibleness when I started this book.

The Cuck was not high literature, but it gave me a few chuckles.

On a marginally related note, I came across this book online a few days ago. There’s no ebook versions and hard copies cost about $100, so I’m probably never going to read it, but it looks seriously bizarre. (If somebody wants to buy it for me, I will review it here!)

Be careful. There are clearly some real sickos out there.

Devoured by Vermin: The Brutal Horror of James Herbert’s Rats Series

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.

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

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

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.

IRA vs. Gilles de Rais: Shaun Hutson’s Renegades

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.)

Renegades is pure trash, but I really enjoyed it. May you have a snake-free Saint Patrick’s day. If you’re interested, I’ve written about quite a few other books set in Ireland, about Ireland or by Irish authors over the years.

Up the Ra!

Wrestling Splatterpunk: Edward Lee and John Pelan’s Goon

I’m on my holidays at the moment, and I actually seem to have less time for reading than I usually do. Here’s a quick review of a quick little book that I quite enjoyed.

**Overlook Collection – 2003 (First published 1996)**

I haven’t read anything by Edward Lee since I gave up on his Bullet Through Your Face collection in 2020. I don’t mind vulgarity, but the amount of cocksnot in that book was tiresome. I recently came across a free copy of Goon, a book he co-authored with John Pelan, and it was short enough to convince me to give Lee another chance.

This is a brief splatterpunk novel about a serial killer/professional wrestler. It actually contains less wrestling than I was expecting.

I read 2 of the 3 stories in Bullet Through Your Face, but I gave up when I got to The Refrigerator full of Sperm, a story that was taken from Lee’s Splatterspunk: The Micah Hays Stories collection. You can imagine my disappointment when Micah Hays showed up as a character in Goon. Fortunately, it’s only a brief cameo appearance.

Things get weird at end (as they usually seem to in Lee’s books), but most of the plot of Goon is pretty much what you’d expect. There’s an instance of race-baiting in here that dates the book. I don’t think the authors were espousing racial hatred, but I don’t see two (sane) white guys feeling comfortable putting the same words to paper in 2023.

If you like wrestling and gross stuff, you’ll probably like Goon. It was quite a silly book, but it was short enough that I enjoyed it. It contains just the right amount of cocksnot, not too much, not too little.

Maggoty Bodily Fluid Soup: Michael Green’s The Jim-Jams

The Jim-Jams – Michael Green

Pocket – 1994

As soon as I heard of this rare, disgusting work of cosmic-horror, it jumped straight to the top of my to-read list..

Blue Turtle Island is an isolated holiday resort for old people. The small team of staff working there are in for a rough weekend. Not only has a gang of thugs sailed over with plans to mug the visitors, but there’s a weird… thing in the woods, and it’s having some rather strange effects on the creatures that come into contact with it.

It feel from the sky, and it seems to mess with the DNA of all lifeforms who encounter it, altering their physical structure and behaviour. Insects and small animals seem to morph into each other, and people get really messy. There’s lots of swelling, tumours, fluids, new orifices and more. Oh and there’s bugs in everything.

A plot centering on a bunch of old people is novel, but the real fun of this book lies in it’s relentlessness. It’s really gross. Think of all the horrible things that can happen to a human body, and then imagine most of them happening at once to the same body while that body is being infested with worms and spiders. There’s no great build-up here either. Things get gooey early on, and they never dry up.

There’s weird references to other horror writers in here. Different bugs are referred to as koontzes, bradburys and straubs. One character is called Farris too. Also, there is a direct reference to another horror author that had me laughing. One of the characters sees a mutated freak and assumes it’s an alien.”Feeling almost faint with excitement, Lana strove to keep in mind the courageous example of Whitley Strieber, a man she admired more than any other, an ambassador for all humankind who endured so many hardships during his encounters with Visitors from other worlds.”

The Jim-Jams reminded me of Edward Lee’s Slither. That one was also about people trapped on an island with gross mutating bugs. Both are very silly novels, but there’s enough self awareness and plot to keep them enjoyable. If you like Edward Lee, give The Jim-Jams a read.

This book has been out of print for almost 20 years, and it’s almost impossible to find. There’s no copies for sale online right now. I read it online at the Internet Archive, one of the greatest resources on the internet for people with an interest in books. The Internet Archive is currently in a legal battle with the biggest publishers in the world. You can show your support for libraries here.

Sex, Satanism and Cannibal Freaks: Mark Mirabello’s The Cannibal Within

The Cannibal Within – Mark Mirabello

Mandrake of Oxford – 2005 (first published 2001)

A friend recommended this to me a few weeks back. I found an ebook versio n online, but after reading the fourth paragraph, I ordered a physical copy. This is one I knew I’d want on my shelf.

We may think we are special – holy, honoured, valued – god’s chosen primates – but that is a fraud. The dupes of superhuman forces, we are misfits and abominations. We have no higher purpose – no saviour god died for our sins – we exist, only because our masters are infatuated with our meat.
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Mirabello is an academic. He has a Ph.D, and he has lectured at different universities. His fields of research are fairly wacky, but I have no reason to belief that his research itself is questionable. He has appeared on some ridiculous documentaries and talk shows about aliens and conspiracies. Having an education doesn’t necessarily make a person a good writer, but Mirabello’s credentials, along with what I knew of this book, made it seem very, very intriguing.

The narrative in The Cannibal Within is framed as a memoir that was presented to the author due to his academic standing. A crazy lady walks into his office and gives him a document describing her bizarre experiences. She was abducted by cannibalistic trans-humans after her and her friend performed a Satanic ritual. The unholy freaks eat her friend and then kidnap the protagonist and lock her in a cage in their underground layer for decades. They do really bad stuff to her, but she takes it rather philosophically. While recounting the utterly horrendous abuses she suffered, she quotes from and/or discusses the work of Yukio Mishima, Friedrich Neitzsche, Plato, Aleister Crowley, H.P. Lovecraft, De Sade, Goethe, George Bataille, Octave Mirbeau and Philip K. Dick.

Oh, and there’s a big part at the end of the book that talks about how the trans-humans evolved from brain eating cannibal monkeys. This sounded very familiar to me, and it was immediately followed by a quote from The Beginning Was the End, my favourite book. Hell yes.

Also, the Satanic ritual that kicks things off is supposedly taken from the Red Book of Appin. Anyone remember my post on that mysterious grimoire?

If you’re not familiar with this blog and/my reading proclivities, let it suffice to say that I have an interest in the above authors and texts. I felt very much that Mirabello had somebody like me in mind when he was writing this book. I can’t really say that it’s a brilliant book, but I also can’t pretend that I didn’t enjoy every page. I finished it in an afternoon. I really found it hard to put it down.

When the book isn’t discussing the absurdity of life, it’s shoving giant mutoid cocks down your throat. There’s an awful lot of rape, in here, and the pricks doing the raping are all hilariously large. One of them is described as an “enormous fascist rod”. LOL.

Objectively, The Cannibal Within fails as a novel. It sets the scene, but doesn’t really go anywhere. The ending of the book felt like the point at which a team of marines, armed to the teeth, should have been entering the freaks’ burrow, Aliens style. I don’t need (or want) a happy ending, but I would have liked a bit more conflict. I suppose it would have taken a lot of effort to ramp up the gross-out sequences as a plot developed, but it would take that kind of commitment to make this a real masterpiece.

Mirabello, if you’re reading this, please write a sequel, a long one.

The Cannibal Within is splatterpunk for grad students. If you’re a misanthropic book-nerd with a penchant for the disgusting (and you probably are if you’re reading this blog) you will likely get a kick out of this horrid book. Honestly, I doubt anyone else will get past the first few pages.