Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures

I haven't read any Guy N. Smith novels in a while, so you know what that means. Time for me to go on Sabatical...

In the Sabat novels Guy N. Smith attempted to create a memorable lead character that could sustain an ongoing adventure series. Let's face it, Professor Cliff Davenport may be the world's sexiest megacarcinologist, but even the giant crabs tend to outshine him in the personality department. Enter Mark Sabat. Ex-priest. SAS-trained killer. Exorcist. Pipe enthusiast. I don't know if it's a coincidence that he bears a striking resemblance to Guy N. Smith himself, but if he's some sort of wish-fulfillment Mary Sue character it reveals far more about the author than I ever wanted to know.

When the story begins Sabat is tracking down his evil brother Quentin, who is engaging in some sort of apocalyptic black magic ritual. Sabat blows his brother's brains all over the walls but because Sabat's spiritual faith wavered Quentin's black soul still remains, trapped inside him forever. Throughout the rest of the book Quentin telepathically insults and belittles Sabat, trying to break his faith and goad him into suicide, like the worst life coach ever. Quentin is supposed to be the ultimate incarnation of evil, although if that makes Sabat the ultimate incarnation of good then it paints a pretty bleak portrait of humanity.

Sabat has a pretty interesting resume. A mysterious teenage homosexual encounter drove him into the priesthood (I can't wait to read more about that particuar plot point) until he lost his faith and quit. Then he joined the SAS and became an expert killer, until he was dishonourably discharged for having kinky sex with his CO's wife (i.e. being too awesome). Now he's a freelance exorcist, using his powers of astral projection to spy on people doing it and occasionally stop an evil cult from bringing about armaggedon, assuming the local clergy can pony up the cash.

For all his awesomeness, Sabat has one weakness: boners. Any stray sexy thoughts and he enters the bone-zone, even when he's on the astral plane. Just meeting a pretty woman is all but guaranteed to have an erection "straining against the fabric of his pants". Must make for some pretty awkward first dates. Often he's forced to take matters into his own hands, so to speak, and a couple of times it's implied that he spent all night jerking off in bed. It's pretty weird. Is this Smith's idea of an awesome dude? Sabat should really see a doctor. Priapism is a serious condition.

Another thing about Sabat is that he's alarmingly callous about death. There's a strange bit where Sabat plows his car into a random motorcyclist while he is speeding to the rescue. The guy is eviscerated in the crash, spilling his guts all over the road, and Sabat doesn't even slow down. He chalks it up to an act of God and leaves it to some other motorist to call in the authorities. Who do you think you are Sabat, Halle Berry? Motorcycle Guy's connection to the plot is extremely tangential, so the only point of that chapter seems to be to illustrate that Sabat is a complete sociopath. Mission accomplished!

In this adventure the Archbishop calls in Sabat to investigate a small village where a pesky Satanic cult are involved in virgin sacrifices and necrophilic orgies. Sabat snoops about on both the physical and astral planes, and there's a pretty cool bit where he has a psychic battle with zombies in the graveyard, cutting them up with a giant crucifix. He psychically-rapes the lead zombie into submission, recognising her as Miranda, a prostitute he met in the pub. Afterwards he shows up at her doorstep and when she tries to kill him he rapes her for real. It's cool though, he was just doing it to break the spell the cult leader had put over her. You know how it is.

At first this book seemed to be straight up Judeo-Christian good versus evil, but partway through they start casually throwing Voodoo into the mix. I liked the way Sabat interacted with the various Voodoo gods and played them off against eachother, but when the bad guy turned out to be some sort of Satan-worshipping Voodoo priest it all got a bit confusing. There are a couple of gory human sacrifices and a botched demon resurrection. By the end of it all the cult members are dead with hoof prints on their heads, like Satan appeared and delivered unto them roundhouse kicks to the head, Steven Seagal style.

You know, I really liked this book. It's basically everything that makes Guy N. Smith so enjoyably trashy, turned up to eleven. Gory deaths? Check. Strained metaphors? Check. Bizarre sex scenes? Check. Inappropriate boners? Hella checks. All condensed into 160 pages. Mark Sabat makes for a pretty entertaining and memorable lead character, although if you find yourself relating to him on any level then you should probably seek professional help.

Island Claws (1980)

Who brought the lemon butter?

I have a weird amount of affection for the Night of the Crabs series of books by Guy N. Smith. They are trashy and not particularly well written, but they are full of sex and violence and giant crabs and sometimes that's enough. It's prime source material for an entertaining monster movie, but the only film adaptation of the series that I have heard of is this one, the 1980 made-for-TV movie Island Claws. Apparently it's based on Night of the Crabs, but really it has nothing to do with the book aside from the idea of giant mutant crab(s). Selling the movie rights did help pay for Smith's house, so it least something good came out of it.

The movie takes place on a small, idyllic fishing community somewhere on the Florida coast. It must be a pretty slow news week, because a news reporter named Jan Raines (Jo McDonnell) is sent out to interview a team of marine biologists investigating the effect of increasing water temperature on crab growth. Conclusion: Delicious! For the next phase of the experiment they are going to examine the effect of topical application of melted butter. They also discover that higher ambient water temperature can cause vast increases in size and growth rate, and wouldn't you know it, the local nuclear power plant has just dumped a whole lot of super-heated, radioactive water into the bay. Don't worry though, the owner of the plant says that everything is fine and there's nothing to worry about. Phew!

One of the marine biologists is the blonde, square-jawed Pete Adams. He takes a shine to the sexy young reporter, as he reveals on a visit to his surrogate father Moody, the very Irish owner of the local watering hole The Half Shell. Moody is played by Robert Lansing, who had already established his monster movie bonafides in Empire of the Ants a couple of years earlier. Moody raised Pete Adams from childhood after his parents were killed in a drunk-driving accident. The drunk driver in question was the nuclear plant owner Frank Raines and Moody still holds a grudge, so he's not too happy when Pete reveals that he's sweet on Jan Raines, his daughter.

With all this gripping human drama, you might have forgotten that this movie is supposed to be about killer crabs. Clearly this film lacks the kind of budget to show giant crabs rampaging through the town, so for most of the film they have to make do with implied violence and lots of regular sized crabs. The problem with this is that regular-sized crabs aren't particularly dangerous or scary, so to ensure a fatality the victims generally have to act like complete morons. Take, for instance, the first victim, a creepy Deliverance-esque banjo player who presides over the nightly hoe-downs at The Half Shell. He lives in an abandoned school bus, and during the night he is faced with dozens of tiny crabs pouring in the windows and doors. Rather than simply step over the crabs and exit the bus he freaks the fuck out, spilling some kerosene lamps and causing the whole bus to go up in flames.

Similarly for one of the scientists, Lynn, who flips out for no good reason when walking through the forest. While she's running from nothing in particular (although the lighting is so poor it's almost incomprehensible), she trips and lands face first in a pile of innocent crabs. You'd think she'd be used to crabs, being a marine biologist and all, but instead she screams her head off and runs into the claws of a giant crab that is lurking just off screen. Pete and Jan find her and take her to the hospital, where the doctor explains that she might just lose her arm.

Because this movie doesn't have enough subplots already, there's also a part about the tension between local fisherman and some Haitian immigrants that have set up camp in the forrest. The local fishermen blame them for Lynn's injury and put together an angry mob, although it doesn't really make sense that the Haitians would hack up a local's arm for no reason (the fishermen mention voodoo, as if that explains everything). Still, I've got to admit that it's a little suspicious that the Haitians have never been attacked by the crabs even though they've been sleeping outside every night. Maybe the crabs are racists too.

The best death scene in the film by far is that of Moody's dog Trouble, truly worthy of Shakespeare. He totters pathetically onto the beach, smeared with fake blood after an off-screen run-in with the crabs, before collapsing into a heap at Moody's feet. Moody tries to get Trouble to the vet, but he dramatically expires on the passenger seat of his car. Bravo! Clearly everyone else in the film agrees, because the rest of the cast show more energy and emotion over Trouble's death than they do towards any of the other victims in the film. I don't think anyone even mentions the death of the poor banjo geek.

Sadly they could only afford one giant crab, and it only appears in a couple of scenes. Firstly there's a part where it smashes a house trying to get to Pete and Jan, but we only see it's claw. In the last ten minutes of the film you see the crab in it's entirety, and it's a pretty impressive creation. If this film were made these days it would be terrible CG, but here it's a giant animatronic puppet about 20 feet across. It looks pretty menacing but unfortunately it has limited articulation and is clearly stationary. Only a couple of people die during this scene, and only because they were dumb enough to stand motionless within reach of it's claws.

A giant model like this is clearly made to be blown up in a fiery explosion. You can ram it with a truck full of gasoline, cram an LPG tank in it's mouth, or you can go the Jaws: The Revenge route and have it explode for no reason at all. Not here though, as Pete just hacks off it's eye stalk with a metal spike and it keels over dead. Maybe they wanted to keep the model for a sequel, or maybe it had to be returned to roof of Joe's Seafood Shack. Either way it's a pretty disappointing ending.

Of all the criticisms you can lay at Night of the Crabs, and there are a lot, you can't say that it's boring. This movie, however, is. It's boooooring. With five O's. It takes forever for the crabs to show up, and the plot wanders around almost as much as Lansing's Irish brogue. The script reads like they decided to put in all the traditional monster movie subplots (the love interest, the evil capitalist) but then lost interest and failed to follow up on any of them. Unlike Smith's books, the movie doesn't even have an environmental message. Frank Raines never receives his comeuppance, and in fact he only appears in a single scene at the beginning of the film. Sadly it looks like the world is still waiting for an acceptable Night of the Crabs adaptation, although in this film's defense I will say that the clickety-clicking noise of the crabs was just about perfect.

Guy N Smith Book Review - Satan's Snowdrop

Satan's Snowdrop is another entry in the rich tradition of flower-themed horror, which includes The Devil's Daisy, Beelzebub's Buttercup and other titles I just made up. I'm not sure what Smith had in mind when he named this book after the humble galanthus nivalis, but to be fair the main source of the horror is not really a killer flower but instead La Massion des Fleurs, a mysterious mansion in the Swiss Alps that was home to a Nazi torturer who died under mysterious and violent circumstances.

Obviously the locals give the mansion a wide berth, but an American family, Al and Veronica Pennant and their weiner son Tod, express some interest in buying the mansion and shipping it back to America, piece by piece. This part is pretty funny, because during their inspection the real estate agent realises that he just plain forgot to clean up the bloodstains and remove the blood-encrusted torture implements from the wall of the living room. You know how it is; you've got the freshly roasted coffee brewing on the stove, the pamphlets laid out on the table, but you forget to clean up the torture dungeon. It's always the little things.

Al decides to buy the property anyway, but soon strange things begin to happen. There's a horrible smell of putrefaction and horrific visions appear to them in the night, and although such incidents could easily be ascribed to some bad Chinese food, things eventually get worse. One of their party guests dies from a heart attack after a ghostly visitation and one of the renovation workers gets spooked by a ghost and falls off a ladder, breaking his back. Al comes to the Scooby-Doo-esque conclusion that a local is trying to scare them off the property by dressing up like a ghost, and the mansion is shipped back to America with only a prematurely ejaculating cabin boy (don't ask) among the casualties.

Naturally the hauntings continue after the mansion is reconstructed in Long Island. This culminates in their son Tod, and I'm not making this up, being chased through the house by a killer space hopper. Eventually he gets trapped between some undead zombies and the demonic rubber balloon, opting to leap down a third-floor stairwell to his death. I don't know, I would have taken my chances with the space hopper. After this incident Al and Veronica decide to sell the mansion to a family in the UK, the Parlanes, so La Massion des Fleurs gets shipped back to Europe.

Once the house is nestled in the heart of Warwickshire the hauntings continue. The Parlanes' pet Alsation and the local exorcist both die mysteriously, while their son Rusty has frequent visitations from the ghost of Tod Pennant, who warns them of the horrors of the mansion (presumably he leaves out the part where he was killed by a space hopper). The Parlanes put the house up for sale and move out, but no dice; Rusty is still beset by ghostly visions and finds himself blacking out and sleepwalking over to the mansion. Maybe they should have moved a little further away than a few houses down the street.

So far I haven't mentioned the titular flower which, as it turns out, is source of all the ghostly horror. The snowdrop was once at the focal point of a druidic ceremony, absorbing the soul of a human sacrifice. You may wonder why the ghosts are still in the house at all, but in fact they make a point to mention that the flowers from the garden bed have been shipped around the world with the house. This is stupid. Apparently the only way to appease the souls of the damned is to send the snowdrop back to it's original resting place at the peak of Reichenbach falls. Burning down the house? That won't do it. Stepping on the flower? Nope. Why? I don't know, but Tod's ghost says so and that's good enough for the Parlanes. They hop on a plane to Switzerland and do as he asks, but it's only after Mr Parlane is killed by the undead spirits that Ghost Tod reveals that they have to toss the bulb over the falls rather than plant it in the soil. Nice of you to bring this up now that he's dead, asshole. Anyway, they do it. Hauntings over.

The fact that the protagonists in a haunted house story never just pack up and leave is such an entrenched cliche that it's become a cliche to point it out, so it's clever for Smith to split the hauntings between two separate families. True the two families are fairly interchangeable, but the Pennants are slightly more interesting thanks to the tasteful, nuanced portrayal of Americans that we've come to expect from Smith i.e. Al Pennant is an arrogant asshole and Tod eats a hamburger at one point. If you can get past some cardboard characters (and if you've read much Guy N. Smith then you probably can) there's some nice tension and atmosphere and great torture scenes. Quality Smith.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Fiend

The Politburo are left in a bit of a pickle when the Party Chairman, Andre Keschev, keels over from a fatal stroke while on a hunting trip. Beloved by both the party and the public, Keschev's presence is essential at an upcoming world summit in Geneva. In desperation they call on Anton Yafremov, a Russian occultist with an interest in the dark arts. He uses his black magic to bring Keschev back to life, but as we learned from Pet Semetary, when you pull this kind of stunt they never come back quite right. Soon Keschev is building up Russian military power and bringing the world to the brink of war, much to the alarm of the Politburo. There's only one option left. Assassinate Keschev. But how can you kill something that's already dead?

Firstly they assign two top KGB assassins to murder him during the talks in Geneva. Instead of a gun they are instructed to use a wooden stake under the assumption that he is a creature of darkness and firearms would be useless. I don't know, I'd at least try first. Take his head off with a sniper rifle or blow him up with a car-bomb. Let's try a few established methods before going all Van Helsing on his ass. Naturally their attempt fails and Keschev easily slaughters the assassins and blames the whole mess on the CIA. In fact, it's only at the very end of the book that someone has the bright idea of marching into his office and blasting him with a shotgun. It doesn't kill him but it does put a sizable hole in his torso that remains there for the rest of the book. A+ for effort.

Probably the weirdest assassination attempt is when they try to use an attack dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback to be precise, to maul Keschev as he is wandering the grounds. Yafremov uses his black magic abilities (I guess?) to inhabit the body of the dog and attack him, only for the dog to be killed by Keschev and Yafremov driven insane as a result. He gets sent to a mental institution, surprising the staff when he grows a bony ridge along the length of his back. Very Tales From the Crypt but a little out of place amongst all the political intrigue.

After shipping all the Russian Jews off to concentration camps (this is not a particularly subtle book) Keschev starts purging the Christians. This hampers the conspirators' efforts to arrange an exorcist, especially when their prime candidate, the head bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, is driven completely batshit by demonic forces. Keschev then goes about systematically murdering all of the members of the Politburo he suspects of conspiring against him, which is everyone. One gets trampled to death by a wild boar, another gets eaten by rats (scrotum first), others are crucified in Cathedral of St. Michael, it's a complete mess. Who can stop the Kremlin Beast?

The main character, if there is one, is Sergey Prokop, a KGB operative turned Kremlin paper pusher, who is blackmailed into assisting a beautiful British spy named Ursula Ramanninov. She is a famous Russian dancer and he falls in love with her even though he rightly suspects she's a honey pot. She's certainly an improvement over his fat drunken bitch of a wife, whose born again Christianity soon earns her a date with the secret police and their spiked dildo of doom. Ramanninov and Prokop gradually piece together the truth of the situation and formulate a plan to kill Keschev. However, with tensions rising and Soviet troops marching through Afghanistan and beyond, can they complete their mission before the world erupts into nuclear war?

Usually Smith's protagonists are misogynistic and one dimensional, but at least they're proactive. Prokop, on the other hand, does pretty much fuck all except get ordered around by other people and mope about his horrible wife. At one point he is assigned to protect a politican during a visit to Keschev's dascha. After completely failing at that task, a prostitute confides in him about her fear of Keschev. His response is to give her a knife and wish her luck, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Also, during the climax of the book Prokop just sits around biting his nails while Ramanninov does all the work. What an asshole.

Like in Warhead, Guy N. Smith tries to combine cold war tension with supernatural horror, but I think he's more successful here. The Russian perspective was interesting and it's always scary to have a crazed madman with their finger on the button. It's one of Smith's longer books and while the cat-and-mouse between Keschev and his conspirators is quite enjoyable it does gets a little repetitive after a while. Some decent suspense is generated as the cast of characters is whittled down and it ends in a decent and somewhat surprising climax. This is a pretty good one.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - The Wood

The residents of the sleepy English village of Drow have but one rule: Never go into the woods... alone! Shrouded by fog and filled with boggy marshes, Drow wood claims the lives of many unwary villagers every year. Sure, nature fucking blows, but there are worse horrors that await those who enter the woods. It is also home to evil spirits that roam the mists looking for living souls to terrorise.

The first person to fall victim to the living forest is Carol Embleton. She is forced to hide in the wood after she is assaulted by a crazed rapist named James Foster. Her attacker chases after her (he doesn't even bother to dress so they are both bareass naked) and pretty soon they are both completely lost. The next day there is no sign of her so her boyfriend, nature expert Andy Dark, heads into the woods himself and soon the police are on the lookout for all three of them.

The first thing the police do is contact Thelma Brown, BFF with Carol Embleton and the last person to see her alive. She is asked to take part in a re-enactment of the crime but they aren't filming it so I don't know what they expect to achieve. Unfortunately as soon as they approach the evil woods the police officer is driven insane by it's dark energies (or something) and tries to rape her. Thelma too runs off into the woods and, to cut a long story short, gets raped to death by a zombie in a pit of filthy swamp water. There's a lot of raping going on in this book. If I had to sum this book up in a word it would probably be "rapey".

Eventually the would-be rapist policemen comes to his senses and tries to find Thelma but he is killed in the process. Serial rapist James Foster gets his just desserts at the hands of some undead Druids who roam the forest. Carol and Andy are captured by Bertie Hass, a German fighter pilot who crashed into the woods during WWII. You see, the forest exists in a place outside of time, undead souls from all periods of history are caught in a perpetual time loop, doomed to live out the last few moments of their lives for all eternity. The worst of them all are the customs officers, brutal thugs who in times' past captured smugglers and dragged them back to Drow House where they suffered horrific torture.

It's a pretty good idea and Smith is in his element when it comes to describing spooky natural settings like this, so there's plenty of atmosphere. Unfortunately there isn't much of a plot. A bunch of spooky shit happens and that's pretty much it. The ending is a bit of a let down in particular, the survivors manage to escape the spooky woods by basically running in one direction for a long time. Well done guys, but why didn't you do that 150 pages ago? Basically, it's typical Smith: Lots of incomplete sentences, spooky ellipses and whenever something exciting happens he starts using italics, but it's probably one of his more atmospheric ones and it tops out at 170 pages so it's a really short read.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Warhead

Here's an interesting one. How many books have you read where the Soviets use the power of Voodoo to infiltrate a US-controlled nuclear missile base in the UK? It's got to be less than five. It begins unassumingly enough, with three University students, Mel Borden, Marc Sallus and Keith Widdington. They are celebrating the end of exams by playing with a Ouija board, because apparently they are 13 year old girls at a slumber party. The board spells out "DEATH" for Widdington both literally and figuratively and he burns to death in a fire that night. Is it a coincidence or have Marc Sallus' childhood experiences with the Houngan in the Carribean left him tainted with their Petro Voodoo black magic?

Many years later Mel Borden has found work at Caerlaverock, an American nuclear missile base situated on the Scottish/English border. Everybody working at the Caerlaverock lives under Draconian security measures, including constant surveillance and libido-dampening drugs, and the base operates with complete autonomy from the local police and military. Tensions are running high and the constant reminder of the nuclear threat has rattled the local villagers. I don't know if Smith has met many Americans because the ones in this book have some of the silliest names I've ever heard (eg Sax Blurton) and they are enormous assholes and massively racist to boot.

Meanwhile Marc Sallus has found work at an organic food company where he befriends a Slavic fellow named Ivan. Eventually Ivan reveals himself as a Soviet spy and that he wants to use Marc's Voodoo powers and his spiritual connection with Mel to gain access to Caerlaverock. He blackmails Marc with photos of him engaged in homosexual shenanigans which will threaten his position with his extremely conservative employer. Marc claims they are doctored and that "the very thought disgusts me". He doth protest too much, methinks. The two of them drive to a Scottish castle near the base and make their first attempt to summon the Petro gods.

One of the main gods they summon is Erzulie. She is typically seen as an earth mother and goddess of love but in this book she takes on a slightly more evil flavour, using her eroticism to entice and manipulate men. When their first attempt at summoning her fails, leaving them with supernaturally blue balls, the two guys strip off all their clothes and writhe around on the ground while masturbating. There was probably some awkward breakfast conversation the next day. Pretty soon Erzulie visits Mel Borden on the missile base, manipulating him into sabotaging the missile launch by enticing him with sexytimes.

The book also focuses on the nuclear threat that looms large over the village. One of the residents is an old retired Army Major who runs daily air raid drills, leading a procession of bored housewives into an underground bomb shelter. This goes horribly wrong when a nasty young delinquent, in the kind of nonsensically cruel behaviour typical of Smith books, decides to throw a petrol bomb into the packed bomb shelter, incinerating himself and everybody inside. Subsequently all of the depressed widowers rally behind a mysterious man who blames Caerlaverock for the incident, as a symbol of the nuclear threat. All of the suicidal men march on the missile base and barbecue themselves on the electric fence in protest. Pretty grim.

Eventually Marc kills the sinister Ivan but that only leads to an even more evil and ruthless Soviet spy taking his place. They take up residence in the burned out bomb shelter and eventually the dark forces they have summoned become beyond their control, demanding more and more blood sacrifices. This leads to a fairly ridiculous part that made for a bit of unintentional comic relief. One of the villagers walks into the bomb shelter to look for his missing son only to find him crucified by Marc and the evil Soviet Voodoo priest, sacrificed to the Petro gods. In a violent rage the man tears the enormous crucifix off the wall with his son's corpse still attached and throws it at the men. Who would do that? Pretty soon the Voodoo spirits are running wild all through the missile base with only one goal on their mind... nuclear apocalypse and the extinction of all mankind!

Coming off the heels of Manitou Doll and Doomflight, this book is even more gloomy and pessimistic but it's probably one of Smith's more ambitious books, combining cold war tension with supernatural horror. He tries to tie together a lot of different plot threads, juggling the villagers, the people at Caerlaverock, the Americans, the Petro gods and all of the conflicts between them. I think he's mostly successful (I think things got a little muddled towards the end) although it's generally lacking in trademark Smith silliness.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Manitou Doll

Wow, it's been a while since I've reviewed a Guy N. Smith book. It's not that I've run out of books, in fact I've got a stack of unread Smith books piled higher than a giant mutant crab, it's just that I typically read in bed before I go to sleep. That nightly ritual has since been supplanted by my Nintendo DS, the siren's song of ScummVM and my collection of Lucasarts adventure games being too strong to resist. Well, with Halloween coming up it's the perfect time to dive back into the blood-soaked world of death and clumsy sex metaphors that is the Smithiverse.

Of course Smith is best known for his horror books, but he has also written a lot of Westerns and Manitou Doll starts with a prologue that allows Smith to briefly indulge his taste for that genre. In 1868 Kansas, a Native American (or "Red Indian" as Smith puts it in his book) named Mistai is raped by a bunch of genocidal US Cavalrymen after they wipe out her village. She prays to Manitou for retribution, but I guess Manitou is kind of a dick because he curses her bloodline. Cut to the present day (ie 1981) and we are introduced to a woman named Jane (just Jane), a direct descendant of Mistai who has been passed down a gift for woodcarving, an ancient curse and an intense hatred of the white man. So she emigrates to the UK, go figure. She finds employment doing fortune telling (gypsy, Native American... close enough) and woodcarving at Shaefer's fair, one of those seedy seaside funfairs that British people flock to during Summer and pretend to enjoy. It's an excellent place to set a book like this, too. Ramshackle quayside shops offering fatty, overpriced snack foods. Ill-maintained carnival rides staffed by surly inbreds. Pasty, grumpy British holidaymakers complaining about the weather, the prices and that they should have gone to Spain this year instead. Truly, it is a horrifying creation.

The book opens on a particularly suspenseful moment. For some reason two rival biker gangs have decided to make Shaefer's fair the epicenter of a large-scale brawl. Things finally boil over when a small child accidentally sticks some fairy floss in the face of a particularly nasty biker named Fat Fry. The guy goes apeshit (maybe he's diabetic) and in a particularly graphic sequence he punches out the boys mother, sending blood and teeth flying, and knocks the kid over onto a protruding nail which pierces his spine, crippling him instantly. The funfair immediately erupts into violence and in the chaos Fat Fry and his friend manage to slip into Jane's tent for some light gang rape. They get their comeuppance though, that evening they are decapitated when their bikes slam into the rear of a truck.

With all of the bodies and blood cleaned up, Roy and Liz Catlin and their deaf daughter Rowena arrive at the seaside resort, determined to have an enjoyable holiday despite the shitty weather. Rowena heads straight to the fortune teller's tent and takes an immediate shine to Jane, who gives Rowena an ugly carved doll. Rowena forms a strange attachment to the doll, but Liz finds it deeply disturbing. Soon it becomes apparent that Shaefer's fair has become the focal point for strange demonic forces, giving Jane's carvings supernatural powers and causing bad things to happen whenever it's convenient to the plot.

Roy and Liz are pretty vile protagonists. Roy is a wet fish who is led around by his boner like it's a divining rod and Liz is a hysterical superbitch. The two of them seem to have no control over Rowena whatsoever, she slips away at every opportunity to, for instance, take a ride on a ghost train with a creepy child molester. Jane is the only likable character out of the three but she is shoved into the background for most of the book. She is trotted out occasionally to provide some cryptic clues or an exotic love interest, and typical of the Smithiverse there's some weirdly retrograde gender dynamics. The curse was enacted not because Jane was raped by a white guy but because she enjoyed it. Roy gets a boner when she reveals that she orgasmed during the rape (creeeepy) and then they totally do it too. Unfortunately her copulation with whitey shames her ancestors even further. Way to go, Jane.

There's also the usual parade of paper-thin characters, set up like bowling pins to be knocked over in ridiculous, gory ways. One guy is fed up with his fat, annoying girlfriend so logically he attempts to rape her on the Big Dipper while it's still in motion and packed with people. He's unsuccessful thanks to some teenage girls who hold him still while his presumably-now-ex-girlfriend literally rips his balls off. Unfortunately their act of vigilante justice is interrupted by a freak accident that tears everyone on board to shreds. Smith gets some good mileage out of carny stereotypes too. A description of an inbred hunchback is lifted wholesale from one of Smith's crabs books, but I prefer to imagine it's the same character, traveling from book and book dispensing vague threats and ominous warnings to Smith's protagonists.

Smith's books are at their most entertaining when they reach the heights of silliness and luckily there are a few parts of this book that are ri-goddamn-diculous. The most hilarious parts of the book involve Rowena's evil doll, which make the Zuni Doll story from Trilogy of Terror look downright sensible. One guy gets lost at sea and is pummeled to death by the tiny wooden doll. Another couple taste his miniature fists of fury during a fishing trip, the doll somehow managing to pulp a man's entire head. That naughty little doll, always running off and getting into shenanigans. One of the highlights of the book is a sequence involving the best Punch and Judy show ever. I defy you to read these chapters with a straight face.

I thought this one was pretty good. Rather pessimistic and nasty in parts, especially the great opening scene at the fairground. Nothing else in the book quite matches the awesomeness of Fat Fry, but it still had enough silly moments to hold my interest. Like a seaside funfair, Manitou Doll is seedy and predictable but it's still a fun day out if you don't take it too seriously.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Abomination

The Earnshaw family (Les, Diana and daughter Emma) are a group of organic farmers who live on a farm known as the Dingle in the village of Pen-Y-Cwm. Unfortunately, Pen-Y-Cwm is also home to Roeder Agrochemicals, a laboratory that develops and tests exotic pesticides. Although they claim that the fallout from testing is at safe levels, everything goes pear-shaped with their latest pesticide, which goes too far, crosses the line man was not meant to cross, etc. It operates on the same principle as systemic weed killers, causing the pests to outgrow their food supply and die off. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work according to plan, and the fallout from testing causes local insect-life (and some amphibians) to turn into monstrous freaks. It also gives them a craving for human flesh, for some reason. What will this mean to the residents of Pen-Y-Cwm and the Dingle?

While we are on the subject of dingles, I think the story reaches a peak for me when our furious hero bursts from his front door dressed only in tighty-whiteys and brandishing an axe, in order to confront a congregation of slightly-larger-than-average frogs. That's the level of ridiculousness I hope to get from my Smith books. Now, I don't know if Guy N. Smith has a severe case of ranidaphobia, but let's face it, frogs aren't exactly the most menacing creatures. I don't care how big they are. When Emma is terrified by a giant frog I can buy it, since she's a little girl, but one woman is suffocated to death by a group of giant toads when they stuff themselves into her mouth (which is, as far as I can tell, the only way they could possibly kill her). Even though she is handicapped by a couple of broken legs, it's a pretty pitiful (not to mention unbelievable) way to die.

Aside from the frogs, all other manner of creepy crawlies are inflated to larger-than-life proportions with appetites to match. Snake sized worms gross everyone out at a funeral, a couple of horny teens are dispatched by enormous leeches, a church congregation is menaced by kamikaze stag beetles and an old woman gets extra-large earwigs in her vagina. You know, the usual shenanigans. A couple of nasty school-board administrators are also introduced and dispatched over the course of a chapter and it's a pretty elaborate death too, with vivid descriptions of insects crawling in every available orifice and eating them alive from the inside out. In a classy touch that is pure Smith, one of the victims has an orgasm as the ants eat her alive (love life getting stale? Try flesh-eating insects!)

Yeah, I don't know if it's a side-effect of the chemicals or what, but the insects seem to have a bit of a genital fixation. If you're ever attacked by giant earwigs, cover your scrotum (or labia) because that'll be stop number one on the all-of-you-they-can-eat buffet. Every victim is penetrated (guess where?) and/or says some variation on "Holy crap, they've eaten my genitals". Actually that'd be a great name for this book or indeed many of Guy N. Smith's books. Feel free to use it if you're reading this, Mr. Smith.

Interspersed with the random insect munching is a few brief chapters about the evil Roeder and his two subordinates. They've been lying on their reports, and now the government has caught wind of their situation and is going to shut them down. One has a change of heart but he is eaten alive by insects as he is fantasizing about being a woman (long story), while the other gets in a scuffle with Roeder that ends pretty badly for all involved. The story is wrapped up with little to no human intervention and certainly no action from our (by default) heroes. Let's just say it involves exploding frogs.

This is a pretty terrible book, but it leapt so far over the line of ridiculous that it became enjoyable again. All the Smith trademarks are present and accounted for: paper-thin characters, utterly ridiculous deaths, heroes who are as such simply by virtue of surviving until the final page, and vivid descriptions of gore and sex, usually occurring simultaneously. This is probably one of Smith's most entertaining nature-run-amok books, but he's written about fifty million of them so I can't say for sure. The message is clear though: Screw with nature and it will fuck you up. Seriously. If you want to dip your toe into the ocean of Smith books, this is a pretty good place to start.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Throwback

When I started reading this book I was expecting something like Cannibals. Some people stumble across a bunch of cannibalistic cave-dwelling savages in the the remote Scottish highlands, violence ensues. Instead I got something quite different, a piece of survivalist horror kind of like Night of the Living Dead.

An unknown virus (possibly a Russian viral bomb, it's never really explained) has swept across most of the Western world, turning the vast majority of the population into cavemen (or "throwbacks"). They grow lots of hair, become squat and muscular and lose all capacity for reason. Like rugby players. They also become obsessed with sex, chasing down any woman unfortunate enough to cross their path. Also like rugby players. Even the animals aren't safe: Dogs turn into mutant wolves and geese turn into, I don't know, cave-geese. Crazy stuff. The survivors manage to force the cavemen into the forest, where they form small tribes and start building primitive huts, hunting and fishing (I really think that this kind of stuff is learned behaviour, but the books suggests it's instinctual).

Most of the book is spent with Jon and Jackie Quinn, a married couple who own a small organic farm in Shrewsbury. Jackie was separated from Jon when the virus hit, and quickly succumbs to it's effects in the opening chapters. Jon, meanwhile, survives it's effects and is shacked up with the promiscuous Sylvia, all the while pining for his lost wife. The book skips between these two characters, detailing Jackie's attempt to fit in with her new caveman brethren while clinging to what little remains of her humanity, and Jon's attempts to keep himself alive in a world that's turned wild.

Jackie ends up going by the more caveman-friendly moniker Jac, and pretty soon she's shacked up with the tribe's alpha male, Kuz. She's one of those super-hot cavewomen, like Rachel Welch in One Million Years B.C., so she's hot property. Unfortunately for Jac, much like in real life, the alpha male is a huge asshole, so Jac escapes along with a human prisoner of theirs named Phil. Will she end up finding her way back to Jon? Can their love bridge the gap of a few million years of evolution and the serious need of a Lady Bic?

The book also follows a few other characters, including Sylvia's husband Eric, who still longs for her despite his metamorphosis. Eventually he tracks her down and busts into their cottage, they immediately start fucking on the kitchen floor. He nearly concusses her on a table leg and it's all over in about ten seconds before he runs away. Doesn't sound very romantic if you ask me, but it's enough to convince her to run away and live the life of the wild with him.

In most books of this type, you don't really care about the monsters because, well, they're monsters, but here the menace is much more human. Several chapters are written from their point of view and much attempt is made to humanise them. Most of the time they are scared, fleeing in terror at the sight of modern technology but when they get angry they are merciless and brutal. There is a chapter where a bunch of soldiers get ambushed by some cavemen and some of them are quite conflicted about shooting them. The remaining authorities try to flush them out of the cities and send them into the countryside, but that only creates more trouble when it's discovered they probably won't survive the harsh British winter. It probably isn't explored as much as I would like, but it's an interesting dilemma.

The book is also scattered with chapters about a callous scientist named Professor Reitze, who captures the cavemen and performs cruel experiments on them to try and find a cure. He injects them with experimental chemicals that make their eyeballs swell up and burst and liquified brains to pour from their fractured skulls (don't read chapter 14 if you've just eaten is what I'm saying). At first he rationalises his cruelty to himself, figuring that by performing these experiments he is trying to save civilisation, but by the end of the book he's gone completely off the rails, torturing them for fun and relieving stress by heading out to the woods and hunting them for sport. While doing so he curses them out with some hilariously profane insults including "pig-fucks", "fuck bastards" and "shitfuckers". Throughout the book there are many mentions of him smoking Camels, the cigarette of choice for sociopathic scientists everywhere.

This one was pretty good. An interesting survival horror story broken up with Smith's trademark sex scenes every couple of dozen of pages. Most of the book was pretty meandering, just trying to tell the stories of both sides through the eyes of a few different characters. There isn't a strong narrative and it's pretty bleak in tone, but this is one of Smith's better ones.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - The Resurrected

Merryn is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. With only weeks to live, she marries her fiance Bernie Oldroyd, who travels far and wide to try and find a cure. Medical science proves to be useless, so he seeks the help of Natalie Newman, a pracitioner of white magic. He is unhappy with her inability to promise hard results and is subsequently contacted by a shady man named Richie Howe, a former disciple of Natalie's who has fallen to the dark side. In desperation he agrees to hire his black magic services. After Richie gropes her naked body (not sure whether this was part of a Satanic ritual or just for fun) he promises that he can fix her. "She'll live" he intones ominously "but first she has to die."

The next day she is completely healed, baffling the medical community, but she has come back a changed woman, with nasty halitosis and B.O. that smells like death. She is a zombie, but a zombie with a twist. While most zombies have an insatiable appetite for human flesh, Merryn has an insatiable appetite for dick. I should add that she doesn't actually eat the dicks, she has sex with them (and by extension the people attached). As Doctor Markham states: "This doomed girl had not only risen from her deathbed but she had also turned into a nymphomaniac."

Unfortunately for her husband, as the promiscuous gay rooster once said, "Any cock'll do", and pretty soon she's sitting around all day masturbating and hitting on any dude who is unlucky enough to cross her path. She's also completely under the spell of Richie Howe, and is bound to do whatever he commands, such as participate in Satanic orgies, make human sacrifices to the demon they worship, turn tricks on the street etc. As well as fucking tramps in filthy back alleys, she also becomes increasingly cold and distant to her husband. Typical woman, am I right fellas? Bernie realises that although she is bound to him eternally, she doesn't love him. In desperation, he attempts to kill her by pushing her over a cliff, but he wakes up the next morning with her cold, wet body next to his. After this he gives up, which I consider a pretty poor effort. At least try a decapitation, buddy.

Eventually the demon demands more and more from Richie and his coven, until his control over his demonic powers begins to unravel. His power over Merryn loosens long enough for her and Bernie to formulate a plan to kill him. Only then can she be free of his control, but what will happen to her with Richie's power destroyed?

Unlike most of Smith's books, The Resurrected focuses on a very small group of characters. This doesn't really play to his strengths, as I don't think he's particularly good at creating fleshed-out and compelling characters. He's at his best when he's introducing and dispatching characters within a dozen pages or so. I liked the opening chapters, I really bought Bernie's desperation and I can understand why he'd be driven to seek help anywhere he could find it.

There's a tonne of sex in this book, if you're into that. It's pretty gross though, I mean, she's dead. I don't care how hot she is, I think this goes beyond some listerine and air freshener. There's not a lot of killings, but what's there is very graphic. For instance, there's a detailed description of a woman getting skinned like a rabbit.

I expected the book to end with Bernie giving a tearful goodbye to his wife and learning to accept her death, but instead it ended with an ironic punishment straight out of an old Tales From the Crypt comic. I liked that Smith didn't go for the expected option. I actually found myself creeped out, which certainly didn't happen when I read Night of the Crabs. I've certainly learned my lesson, though. If one day my wife suffers from a fatal illness I don't think I'll resurrect her with the help of a Satanic coven, or if I do, I will seek legal counsel before comitting to anything.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - The Black Fedora

Although trilbies have seen a comeback in recent years, largely thanks to that slimy weasel Pete Doherty, the fedora is still the quintessential men's hat. Classy yet functional, it was once seen as an essential component of formal and business attire. It's also a very masculine hat, the down turned brim lending the wearer a mysterious edge when compared similar, flat-brimmed hats, such as the homburg. It's popularity amongst movie stars and gangsters alike have solidified it's place as the hat of choice for men everywhere. I think we can all agree that the fedora was a good choice for the protagonist. I doubt The Black Porkpie would have been the runner-up for the coveted Lichfield prize.

Lichfield also happens to be the setting for the book, and it's a buzzing hive of activity. People are gearing up for an historical re-enactment of the Battle of Worcester, the local clergy believe that Satan himself is planning a visit and the Polish premier is coming to town to visit a mass-grave of Polish troops killed during WWII. It's rumoured that he is a descendant of Jack the Ripper, which people seem to take quite seriously despite the fact that Jack the Ripper was never identified. He is, however, a known war criminal, and rumoured to be targeted for assassination by the French assassin known only as the Wolf. What's more, a bunch of hippies have ridden into town to protest his arrival. Damn those filthy peaceniks, what have they got against genocide anyway?

Among their number is a man in a black fedora known only as Haggard. Not sure why he doesn't make much of an attempt to blend in, but his lack of facial hair or comfortable footwear attracts the ire of the commune's leader, Benjamin. Shouldn't he be called Moonbeam or something? He gets into several petty arguments with Haggard and is frequently on the verge of beating his girlfriend senseless. Man, he's pretty uptight for a hippie. His girlfriend takes a shine to Haggard and really there's no contest. Haggard's wiry, athletic physique is contrasted against Benjamin's nasty rolls of belly fat at every opportunity. Benjamin pimps her out to the rest of the commune, while Haggard tenderly makes love to her on a blanket under the stars. Plus Haggard carries a gun, and you know what that does to the ladies.

Benjamin also has plans to deface the priceless Lichfield gospels because the parchment was made from animal skins. That sounds like a pretty flimsy justification to me, but he has another motive in that he thinks he's Satan (spoiler). He spray paints the gospels (which turn out to be a replica) with an inverted cross and a pentagram. Actually Smith uses the word "pentagon" but I'll assume Benjamin is obsessed with satanic symbols and not five-sided polyhedrons. Things get even worse when a copper gets knifed in the back and a local prostitute gets her throat slashed and dumped in the river.

How are all these incidents connected, and what does it have to do with... the man in the black fedora? Dun dun duuuun! Well, the focus on Haggard makes it pretty apparent that he's not the villain of the piece, but they cheat on the cover by depicting him as a weird mutant surrounded by flames. The ending is pretty interesting as Haggard fucks it all up spectacularly. A heap of people die, but luckily most of them are communists so it's alright. Haggard's motives are kept in the dark until the very end where, in typical parlour mystery fashion, he blurts out several pages to the police chief explaining what he was doing and how he managed to piece it all together.

As you may have guessed, with this book Smith tries his hand at a mystery/thriller rather than the usual gore horror. People expecting the buckets of gore and sex of his horror books might be put off by the book's pace and focus. I mean, there's no giant crabs in sight, unless you count the ones nesting in the pubes of those filthy hippies. Did I mention how filthy and lazy those hippies were, because Smith did, many, many times. As a mystery it's not bad, but the book would probably be improved by the addition giant, rampaging crustaceans. But that can be said about most books.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - The Master

Art teacher Ann Rawsthorne can't believe her luck when she gets a job at Hurst College, an exclusive boarding school for wayward rich kids in the remote Scottish highlands. However, when she arrives she immediately notices that something is wrong. The teachers are all glassy eyed zombies, the students are obsessed with sex, athleticism seems way more important than academics, and the headmaster is a lecherous jerk. Well, so far it all sounds normal, but it's also home to an undead deformed dwarf and a Satanic cult that worships him.

Headmaster Lazenby is the black priest of this evil cult, and the congregation is comprised of the school's top students. Together they perform the usual Satanic shenanigans: sacrificing chickens, gangbanging virgins etc. Basically they need to impregnate a virgin so the Master can be reborn. You see, several hundred years ago the Master was the Laird of Hurst, a deformed dwarf who tortured and tormented the peasants. I guess he was such an asshole than even Hell didn't want him, and he's now a skeletal zombie living in the crypt underneath the school's chapel, waiting to be reborn.

Lazenby rules over the students with an iron fist, ensuring that his cult remains a secret from the teachers and from the outside world. I think this is a bit of a shortsighted plan. What happens when they graduate? One student tries to escape, and when that fails he hangs himself. In order to hide any evidence of wrongdoing, Lazenby insists that he be buried on school grounds. And his father agrees! Another girl dies of a burst appendix, and when her parents insist on taking her body home with them, Lazenby steals it from the morgue. Both bodies get offered to the Master, and eaten up I guess.

I should add that the police are bunch of useless morons. They show up after the students die and again when a local crofter, sick of students stealing his chickens for use in Satanic rituals, tries to burn down the chapel but ends up burning himself down as well (then the dogs eat his barbecued corpse). The cops act all suspicious, and then shrug and leave.

Now it's up to Ann and Phil Cumbes, the PE teacher who takes a liking to her for some reason, to piece together the evidence. Too bad Ann is as dumb as a bag of hammers. She doesn't find it overly suspicious when the headmaster asks her if she's a virgin (correct answer: "Fuck off"). Even after discussing the possibility of students being involved in a Satanic cult and finding a book of Satanic rituals in the chapel, she agrees to go to a midnight service in the underground crypt. When she arrives she finds everyone dressed in black robes, everything draped in black cloth and she still thinks the inverted cross behind the altar is the result of clumsy carpentry. Jesus, lady!

By now it's too late, Lazenby is babbling about the Master and forcing chicken blood down her throat. They pull out the ceremonial Fucking Couch and start stripping, even the Master crawls out of his crypt, eager for a bit of undead action. He even regenerates his undead wing-wong somehow. Thankfully Phil shows up just in time and starts blasting the naked Satanists with a shotgun. They escape just before the crypt collapses, burying the Master and his followers under several tonnes of rubble.

I guess this book was okay. The protagonists are so roughly sketched they might as well be sock puppets, but Headmaster Lazenby was a truly sinister character and about ten times more interesting than the heroes. I was eagerly awaiting the point where he'd receive his just comeuppance, but it never really happened. In fact, the ending seemed rather hasty and unsatisfying for all the suspense that preceded it. I can't say this book made a huge impression on me. Even a brief bout of schoolgirl lesbian experimentation wasn't enough to save it, and that's saying something.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Locusts

City-slickers the Altons have bought a run down house in Shropshire, hoping that some country living will make a man out of their son David. He seems to be more fond of animals, especially his pet rabbit Bunty, than football or other manly pursuits. That's how furries start. They load up the moving van with all their stuff, including, for some strange reason, an enormous crate of half-rotten imported peaches. If you guess that these peaches are full of insect larvae, then ha! You're wrong. No wait, you're right, sorry about that.

David's mother Sheila isn't happy about the move, and has a hard time adapting to country life. She has a terrible fear of insects (the fact that her son collects them isn't helping matters), and soon after she arrives she is having nightmares about grasshoppers. Seriously, grasshoppers? I understand that they are similar to locusts and it's setting up the mayhem that will follow, but you've got to work pretty hard to make grasshoppers seem scary, and Smith isn't up to the task. Her frequent hysterics are dismissed and belittled by her husband Alan, who feels that the countryside is the best place to be raising their child, and that's that.

Basically, their marriage in on the rocks. She hasn't had an orgasm in years and complicating matters is Pat Emmerton, the stable-owner next door, a blonde bombshell and nymphomaniac to boot. She has had her eye on Alan's bulging trouser-front since they arrived. When Pat's portly husband is killed by locusts, she takes the opportunity to throw herself upon Alan while she's naked in the tub. Hey, we all grieve differently. He does eventually succumb to her advances, at which time she demonstrates the full extent of her horsemanship if you know what I mean (she has sex with him). Such wanton behaviour is punished severely in the Smithiverse, however, and she is later killed in a locust attack. Alan makes up with his wife later, though. They have post-locust-attack sex with their son asleep on the foot of the bed, which I think is pretty wrong. What if he wakes up? He's traumatised enough as it is.

Now, Locusts stowing away in a crate of Pennsylvania Peaches and sweeping through Shropshire (during a drought, naturally) sounds pretty unlikely, but I can go along with it. When they reveal that there is a simultaneous attack by a different species of locusts who have flown in from the mainland, my disbelief is officially resumed. I'm not sure why this secondary attack was introduced, it seems like a pretty clumsy way to raise the stakes. Perhaps to lessen the complicity of the main character, who had been feeling pretty guilty about leaving those insect-ridden peaches lying around. Things play out pretty much as you'd expect. Widespread panic, many horrible deaths and their son sneaks away to find his rabbit at the most inopportune time possible. The locust problem eventually resolves itself in a rather ho-hum manner, with no intervention from the hero or indeed, any humans at all.

The awesome cover might make you think that the book is about flesh-eating locusts, but these are just the regular type, eating crops, wood etc. Towards the end they get desperate and have a bit of a nibble on people, and they do eat a baby at one point, but they're pretty much vegetarians. Most of the deaths are caused by having every available orifice jammed with locusts. To add insult to injury, they'll even eat off your clothes. Stark-nekkers with locusts stuck up your ass, what a way to go. Smith also shows his usual talent at wringing exciting, large scale disasters from unlikely source material, such as a fiery pile-up caused by a road slick with crushed locusts. Several tense scenes owe a lot to The Birds, with people trapped indoors as locusts swarm outside, or being forced to walk through fields of sleepy locusts.

This is a pretty decent animals-on-the-rampage book. Aside from one or two positively Smithian moments, it doesn't get too ridiculous. There's no locusts stripping the flesh from people, leaving skeletons in their wake or anything like that (maybe in Locusts 2). The characters are a little more interesting than usual, in that the hero is a bit of an asshole at times instead of a bland everyman. I don't know how accurate the locust facts are, but it seems quite well researched, even if some of the events are likely to stretch even the most generous limits of believability. All in all, I thought this book was pretty good.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - The Origin of the Crabs

It would be hard to the top the massive levels of crustacean carnage in Crabs on the Rampage, so for the fourth book in his epic crab-thology, Guy N. Smith wisely decides to scale down the mayhem and focus on the inhabitants of a small Scottish village.

As it's title suggests, The Origin of the Crabs is a prequel to the other books. You might also (quite reasonably) expect the book to reveal the origin of the crabs. Aside from a brief reference to Russian nuclear testing, it is not discussed at all. Now, I don't really care about the origin of the crabs, but if that's the name of the book you should at least throw us a bone.

Bruce McKechnie has been the laird of Cranlarich estate ever since he murdered his brother for the inheritance. Since then, he has used the grounds to provide hunting and fieldsports for wealthy out-of-towners, much to the consternation of the locals. After a poacher on his grounds has an encounter with a giant crab, McKechnie quickly realises that such news would have a detrimental effect on his business, and he'll do anything to keep the crabs a secret. By which I mean murder.

Since it's a prequel, eponymous hero Cliff Davenport is nowhere to be seen. In his place is the standard Smith hero, the relative-who-is-determined-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-things, John Ryland, who shows up when his brother goes missing in the loch. Christine Blacklaw, resident nymphomaniac, pounces on him immediately. Like most Smith heroines, she keeps herself confined to the background at all times, shouting "No, it's too dangerous!" when appropriate and providing a sex scene when it's time for a break from the gore.

While John Ryland is thoroughly dull, the villain Bruce McKechnie is more interesting, if only for his single-minded determination to keep the crabs a secret no matter how many people get eaten. Luckily for him, the crabs tend to be conveniently shy when the authorities are around. His methods to try to get rid of the crabs become increasingly desperate. It culminates in an attempt to poison the crabs with a drum of powdered cyanide. What's he going to do, spoonfeed it to every one of them? A prominently featured bog provides a prime method of crab extermination, but goes completely unnoticed by everyone until it's way too late.

The book ends bizarrely and abruptly, as if Smith was sitting back examining his finished manuscript (smoking a pipe, naturally) and suddenly thought "Oh shit, it's supposed to be a prequel!" and quickly hammered out an alternate ending that would tie up with the other books. In fact, much of the book has prequel-syndrome, where scenes that should end up in a violent bloodbath (eg a diving team searching the loch in a bathysphere while surrounded by hundreds of onlookers) fizzle out because they are weighed down with continuity.

The plot is weak, and the protagonists demonstrate remarkable lapses of intelligence, such as splitting up in a pea-soup mist populated by giant crabs. However, like Carnivore, the book's focus on gamekeeping and hunting works to Smith's strengths, and he paints a convincing picture of the estate and it's grounds. Highlights include an attempt by the burly gamekeeper, Joe Kinlet, to engage the giant crabs in fisticuffs (spoiler: it doesn't work). Gore levels are high, but do not approach the giddy excess of Crabs on the Rampage.

Like the last book, I picked up the US version and the tagline states "They took England scream by chilling scream. Now they're here!" I was excited to imagine the crabs wreaking havoc across the pond, but the book is clearly set in Scotland. Honestly Dell publishing, between this and the currency issues of the last book, what are you trying to pull?

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Crabs on the Rampage

Clickety-click-click! After a brief Australian holiday in Killer Crabs, the giant crustaceans are back to wreak havoc in the UK. But they aren't content with the Welsh coast this time, they're attacking from all sides simultaneously! What's more, a terrible cancer (crab, cancer, get it?) is causing them to drop dead, and in their final moments they are trying to kill as many humans as they can, even if it means following the waterways inland!

The first victim is a determined oologist (and noted pipe-smoker) who spots the giant crabs dismembering and eating a cow on the Wash. You'd think such a spectacle would cause you to run for your life, or at least alert the authorities, but this guy's lust for the rare and elusive bittern egg proves to be his downfall. After this appetiser, the crabs stumble across a beach full of seaside vacationers, and that's when things start to get interesting.

Series regular Grizzly Grisedale calls Professor Cliff Davenport (scientist, hero, lover) back into the fray and, well, I guess you know what to expect by now. Random scenes of crab mayhem interspersed with Davenport and Grisedale wringing their hands. They can't use paraquat this time because the areas are too populated, so they basically have to sit tight, wait for the crabs to die out and hope that nobody is stupid enough to swim around in the water. You may be surprised, but it turns out there are plenty of people who are that stupid.

The crabs work their way from the Wash through the river system and into London, killing dozens, if not hundreds of people on the way. They even take out Westminster Bridge! Guy N. Smith shows his usual skill at introducing and dispatching characters within ten or so pages. While you may not care about them, you at least get to know them a little before they are disemboweled by a pincer and their intestines slurped like spaghetti (a simile which Smith is fond of).

He even manages to work in a character with a ridiculous crab-phobia, caused by a childhood incident involving his father, a chisel and a particularly tenacious crab. This is pretty fucking funny, because he runs around setting crab-traps, calling them "oversized fuck-pigs" and thinking things like "Fuck the Protection of Animals Act of 1911!" before getting snipped.

Davenport posits that the crab's cancerous mutations have been caused by underwater nuclear testing, and that their rampage is their final act of revenge against humankind. Or that they're headed to the secret crab burial ground. Or that they're fleeing from an even more dangerous aquatic mutation. Who knows? Guy N. Smith sure doesn't.

The deaths in this book are even gorier than Killer Crabs, which is really saying something. Pretty much any way you can imagine a giant crab killing someone, it's probably described in detail in this book. Even babies get the sharp end of a crab claw. What's more, the crabs' disease means elaborate descriptions of dripping, cancerous ulcers too! Oh, joy! One sad thing about this book is that Davenport gets so little to do. For most of the book he is just sitting around twiddling his thumbs or examining dead crabs (which never turns up anything interesting). I kind of miss Klin, the grizzled co-hero of Killer Crabs (surely he would have done more than Davenport), so it was nice to see him get a look-in in the epilogue.

This book was a hell of a lot of fun, and if the title Crabs on the Rampage doesn't pique your curiosity just a little bit, then I don't know what to do with you. This is probably my second favourite crabs book (top honours is held by Night of the Crabs, naturally) and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys books about giant animals running amok.

Additional note: I bought the US version of this book, in which they'd replaced every instance of the word "pound" with "dollar". Did Dell Publishing consider the idea of a foreign currency too perplexing for our American brethren?

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Deathbell

Over his illustrious career, Guy N. Smith has lent his writing talents to a wide variety of subjects, including killer locusts, killer bats, killer pesticides, killer pheasants and, of course, killer crabs. But how many authors are brave enough to tackle such heady fare as killer percussive instruments?

In Deathbell, a mysterious stranger named Martyn Hamilton moves into the long deserted Caelogy Hall, along with his wife, his Chinese servant-girl Karamaneh and an ornate bell he picked up during his stay in Tibet. After it's installed in the belfry of his chapel, they are ringing it day and night and it is so fucking loud that deaf people can hear it.

Soon the villagers are dropping dead of brain hemorrhages and when his mother is the latest victim, Julian Dane returns to the village, determined to uncover the mystery of Caelogy Hall. The Noise Abatement Society is no help, their instruments show the volume of bell as being well below legal limits. The police are a bunch of useless bastards who refuse to believe the bell is responsible no matter how many people bleed from the ears and drop dead.

To make things worse, the sound of the Deathbell drives people homicidally insane. A local tough rapes and murders a girl. Then the village idiot rapes her corpse. Talk about a bad day! A couple of bank employees have mad monkey sex and then torture and kill their boss (Smith used to work in banking, I wonder if that part's autobiographical?) A bunch of people are killed when the village cathedral's stained glass windows suddenly explode during a packed service.

People are also experiencing visions of robed monks with no ears performing horrific rituals. What's up with that? Eventually Julian gets close to Karamaneh, but Martyn Hamilton always materialises out of nowhere when she's about to say anything. I won't spoil the ending, but it has something to do with an evil Tibetan cult. I wouldn't think Tibet to be a hotbed of Satanic cults, but whatever.

I think Guy N. Smith wrote this one when he lived next door to a guy who played loud techno at 3am. I imagine it would be pretty cathartic. It's pretty gory, even for Smith, and a few sex scenes appear out of nowhere, complete with hilarious turns of phrase e.g. "...nipples stiff and red, like cherries topping a sundae." Smith's characters are normally paper-thin, but they're a good quality 90 gsm parchment paper. Here they're like crumbling newsprint. I barely knew who the hero was, let alone cared what happened to him. He doesn't even find anything out until the last couple of pages, when Hamilton barfs up about two pages of exposition right before he dies (um, spoiler). Anyway, if you care about nitpicking details like characters and plot, this book isn't for you. Actually, Guy N. Smith probably isn't for you either, so why are you reading this?

Apparently there's a sequel called Demons. I hope it's about a Satanic aromatherapy candle called the Deathsmell that stinks out a whole village. People have nosebleeds and drop dead while experiencing visions of monks with no noses. How do they smell? Terrible! (Oh God, I'm so sorry)

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Killer Crabs

Now this is more like it! Killer Crabs is Guy N. Smith's second crab book, and like any good sequel, he takes everything that was great about the first book (gory deaths, explicit sex) and takes it up a notch!

The book starts off the Norwegian coast, where a bunch of fishermen get the ol' snippety-snip. The crabs are on the move! It seems they've understandably gotten sick of the weather in the UK and moved to the Royal Hayman Hotel, a fancy island resort off the coast of Queensland. Because the book is set in Australia, we need a grizzled, no-nonsense hero in khaki shorts. Here it's Klin, a hairy man's man who can't go anywhere without people gasping in awe at his rugged manliness. One day he is out shooting at a bunch of dastardly Japanese poachers, when he spies an enormous crab scuttling along the reef.

Because you can't have everyone believing the hero right away, the events of the first book have been banished to the annals of folklore. I would have thought that horse-sized crabs killing dozens of people would have made more of a splash in the news. Maybe it was overshadowed by the UK winning the 1976 Eurovision song contest with Brotherhood of Man's Save All Your Kisses For Me.

Anyway, after a bunch of local fishermen and a whole boat full of Japanese poachers are turned into crab chow, the Australian authorities start to pay attention. Enter Professor Cliff Davenport, marine botanist, hero of the first book and no stranger to the murderous crustaceans. He is on the first flight over.

The resort is also host to a number of secondary characters. Corder is a portly reporter from the mainland, hoping to catch the scoop on the giant crabs. Harvey Logan is a big game hunter who is looking to bag himself a great white, though his skills may not match his reputation. Caroline Du Brummer, resident high-flier and nymphomaniac, bangs any guy she can find, but has an agenda of her own.

Soon the crabs make their assault on the resort and they are just as invulnerable as ever, barely noticing the blast of a destoyer's 40mm guns. One unlucky crab gets killed by a ricocheting fragment of shell and Harvey Logan, emasculated after a woeful bedroom performance with Caroline, claims it as his kill. Hitherto unmentioned in this review is Frank Burke, a thief on the run. He is in possession of a briefcase containing 20,000 pounds and Harvey, Caroline and Klin all get embroiled in a subplot about the stolen money.

All of this leads up to the finale, where Klin, Shannon (chief shark-patrol officer) and Davenport end up stranded on an island mangrove swamp, and hope to destroy the crabs before they can spawn. The book kind of loses it at the end, but it's a suitably brief and action-packed journey getting there.

The kills in this book are more gruesome than in the last book. No longer content with a simple bisection, characters get their limbs amputated, decapitated and disemboweled in a single sitting. Sex scenes are plentiful and described in Guy N. Smith's lurid yet not quite pornographic style. Two claws up!