The Manitou by Graham Masterton (1975): He Who Devours...

It was a distinct pleasure to finally read this vintage mid-'70s bestselling horror novel and find it tasteless and outrageous fun, taking elements of contemporaneous famous and popular works of the "occult" like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby but then one-upping, or a dozen-upping, them. Graham Masterton has for years been a familiar name to me but I had never read anything by him; I was vaguely aware that there had been a movie version of The Manitou, and that such a thing was some kind of ancient Native American spirit, perhaps like the Wendigo. Expecting little when I sat down to read, I actually finished the book in less than a day - it's a brisk 216 pages in its 1976 Pinnacle Books paperback edition. Masterton, even in this first novel, does a credible job weaving the dated occult aspect of Tarot cards and reincarnation (yawn) together with a Lovecraft-style twist on Native mythology (yay). Damn, I only wish I'd read this years ago!

Behold the inner cover! Artist: Ed Soyka

An attention-getting prelude introduces young Karen Tandy, who's in the hospital baffling doctors with the strange moving tumor on the back of her neck that X-rays reveal to be a developing fetus. A fetus. I know, right? Then Masterton switches to first-person narration by Harry Erskine, a 30-something guy earning his living providing sham psychic readings (are there any other kind?) to little old rich ladies in a wintry New York City. Just before she enters the hospital, Karen Tandy comes to see him about a disturbing dream she's been having.

Her sense of doom and foreboding about it causes Harry to start thinking there might be something to this occult business after all (I don't mind messing around with the occult when it behaves itself, but when it starts acting up, then I start getting a little bit of the creeps). Cue more strange happenings that Masterton makes believably unsettling and convince Harry, and soon comes the big reveal: the fetus developing in Karen's neck is the reborn spirit of the great and powerful Native American medicine man Misquamacus. Of course this being the 1970s and all, that phrase "Native American" is never uttered; instead, we get the charmingly offensive "redskin" or "Indian" or "red man." Ah well.

1977 UK edition

As the tumor grows and the arrival of Misquamacus becomes ever more imminent, Karen's life hangs by a thread. Harry consults the anthropologist Dr. Snow, who tells him about "Red Indian" spirits and how this Misquamacus was able to magically implant himself in Karen's body, to be reborn 300 years after his tribe was exploited, caught disease and run off by Dutch settlers. The "manitou" is his spirit, and we learn everything that exists has its own manitou. Misquamacus now wants vengeance, and his occult powers are virtually unstoppable by modern scientific men. Only another medicine man fully in control of these powers can stop him - and perhaps that is not even possible. Can they even find a modern-day medicine man to fight back?

1982 UK edition - more cover art here

If all this is making you think, what the fuck? you'd be right. But Masterton makes it work. Despite its implausibility, I actually loved how everyone seemed to accept the reality of what was going on: Karen's doctors and parents, Dr. Snow, Harry himself. The only people skeptical are the police, and they come to a very bad and very gruesome - and very awesome - end. Pretty graphic for the era, I thought; a great shock moment.

Tor Books edition, 1987

Masterton's style may sometimes inadvertently belie his Britishness but he really keeps the action going while also touching on broader, more thoughtful concerns. Harry's seeming skepticism about the reality of occult powers is treated with some ambivalence, and at one point Karen's doctor, Jack Hughes, wonders aloud about the inherent guilt the white race must feel about their treatment of Native Americans, and shouldn't they feel at least a little sympathy for Misquamacus? Which, as it turns out, is a terrible idea: as the story races to its climax, Masterton introduces a wonderful Lovecraftian menace as Misquamacus attempts to open the gateway for the Great Old One, aka The Great Devourer or He-Who-Feeds-in-the-Pit. You know that's never good.

But it was not Misquamacus himself that struck the greatest terror in us - it was what we could dimly perceive through the densest clouds of smoke - a boiling turmoil of sinister shadow that seemed to grow and grow through the gloom like a squid or some raw and massive confusion of snakes and beasts and monsters.

The Manitou is a pulpy, funny, gory, and even ridiculous read; like I said, a damn-near perfect example of vintage '70s horror fiction that strikes just the right balance between each of those aspects. Glad I also bought a copy of its sequel, Revenge of the Manitou (1979). So well done Mr. Masterton - I'd say I made my favorites-of-the-year list one book too early!

You were expecting a 1970s horror author to look otherwise?

Revenge of the Manitou by Graham Masterton (1979): If the Kids Are United...

It's no surprise that after the success of his debut horror novel The Manitou in 1975 that Graham Masterton would want to return to his Lovecraft-inspired mythology of Native American medicine men and their attempts to wreak vengeance on the evil, plundering white man. Invoking the unpronounceable names of inhuman gods and demons from the great beyond, these powerful priests are virtually unstoppable, and can reincarnate themselves in unsuspecting humans almost at will. Perfect for sequelization! Revenge of the Manitou (Pinnacle 1982), however, is not that perfect sequel. I felt it lacked the eyebrow-raising absurdity of the original novel, its sense of fun and menace as it dispensed with rational believability in the service of a ripping horror yarn. Revenge was all too easy to put down for a day or two, as it retreads ground already covered in the original, and doesn't really bring any unique characters to the proceedings.

Sphere UK 1980

The story has plenty of potential: a boy named Toby Fenner begins to freak out his parents when he and his classmates start seeing ghostly apparitions, having nightmares, drawing horrendous pictures in crayon, and speaking in guttural voices about nonsense like "the day of dark stars" and "the prophecy buried on the stone redwood." Cue more mysterious and deadly occurrences that convince the boy's father, Neil, that his son is being controlled by the dread Misquamacus, the most powerful medicine man, like, ever. He, and 20 other great old Indian medicine men of enormous occult skills, have taken over the bodies of Toby and his young friends in an attempt to call down, using all their combined powers, those amorphous entities of darkness and tentacles (the most fearsome of which has the oddly familiar-sounding name of Ka-tua-la-hu) that will demand the blood of the white man for all his destruction of the Indian way of life. Masterton puts it all too plainly:

The day of the dark stars begins at noon and lasts through to the following noon. It's supposed to be 24 hours of chaos and butchery and torture, the day when the Indian people have their revenge for hundreds of years of treachery and slaughter and rape, all in one huge massacre.

Tor Books 1987

Uh-oh. Mostly the novel feels a bit half-hearted and even under-written in places, although things pick up with the return of that sham occultist Harry Erskine (and I now see a bemused, cynical Tony Curtis in my head after watching him as Erskine in the movie version of The Manitou) and his pal Singing Rock, the modern-day medicine man who uses his powers for good, you know. The lurid cover of the Pinnacle paperback at top (by Paul Stinson) depicts the climax: a schoolbus on a treacherous bridge with the possessed schoolchildren battling it out against Erskine, Fenner, and Singing Rock, as well as a bunch of unfortunate cops and National Guardsmen (the usual expendables). The climax is violent and grotesque, but simply not as exciting as the original novel's; as I said, seems too much a retread.

If you're a Masterton completist you've probably already read Revenge; if not, I'd say you could maybe skip it. However, I'm still eager to read his other titles like The Djinn, Picture of Evil, and Pariah, but I think I'm done visiting with the likes of Misquamacus. As Tony Curt--I mean Erskine hilariously understates at the end, "I don't want to meet that goddamned Misquamacus again as long as I live."

The Djinn by Graham Masterton (1977): Jean Genie Let Yourself Go!

It's the return of Harry Erskine, Graham Masterton's dry-witted, comic-hardboiled phony "clairvoyant," first seen in the masterful The Manitou. This time Harry's tangling with The Djinn, an Arabian supernatural entity (from which we get the English word "genie"). But this is no lantern-bound wish-granting jokester; it has 40 monstrous manifestations and they're all, well, fatal for humans. A slim and economic 200 pages, you can read it in one night whilst enjoying its vintage-y paperback horror goodness, as seen in its inside cover:

Art by Ed Soyka. Thanks to The Cover Art of Graham Masterton

It begins with the funeral of Harry's godfather, Max Greaves, who committed a horrendous, self-mutilating suicide. Max was a respected amateur scholar and collector of Islamic artifacts who, in his last years, grew increasingly cantankerous and paranoid. Max's widow Marjorie unsettles Harry when she tells him Max wanted their house, a rambling old Cape Cod estate called Winter Sails, burned down, along with all the Arabian artifacts inside, after his death. One item in particular, a very large jar decorated with eyeless horses that Harry remembers from childhood visits, is now locked away at Max's insistence. But with the help of the foxy-eyed woman Anna who shows up at the funeral (whose pants Harry is dead-set on getting into), a Middle East folklore professor, and an old doctor, we get to the very black heart of this Arabian mystery.

Tor reprint 1988

Brimming with pseudo-scholarship and ancient mythology - for which I'm a total and complete sucker when featured in horror fiction - Masterton's novel is simple and fast-moving. Passages about the fearsome djinn and their unholy powers fascinated me. They are also utterly repulsive in that outrageous '70s way:

"The Arabs used to say that Ali Babah had made a pact with a strange and evil sect of necromancers who lived in the hills. These wizards performed extraordinary and quite obscene rites, one of which was said to involve carrying around a young girl on top of a long pole which had been pushed through her vagina. This sect is sometimes known as the N'zwaa or the Unswa, and sometimes by an unpronouncable name which means Those-Who-Adore-The-Terrible."

Star UK edition 1977

Oh hells yes. You can probably guess at some of the mayhem that's coming. Or maybe you can't. Masterton writes without extraneous plot or detail, but with lots of corny/snarky comments from Erskine (Not that I was frightened or anything like that, but I prefer to meet the supernatural on my own terms - in broad daylight, with running shoes on), entertainingly clunky dialogue from everyone else, and a mounting dread that culminates in a graphic and bloody good climax. The Djinn is no Manitou, but it's certainly a fun, though minor, example of '70s horror fiction (comparing it to 'Salem's Lot is of course ridiculous). Thanks again, Graham!

Mr. Masterton

Walkers by Graham Masterton (1989): Just Wanna Walk Right Out of This World

You know what's really crazy about this absurd cover art for Graham Masterton's 14th horror novel Walkers? It's completely accurate. It is! Walls and floors are somehow horribly alive, thanks to artist Joe DeVito. Masterton's penchant for making the ridiculous seem plausible is in full effect in this violent, quick read. Going by the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, Walkers seems to have a pretty good reputation in the Masterton canon, which is why I chose to make it my second novel of his after I absolutely loved The Manitou, his 1975 horror debut. While it isn't close to being as much fun as that horror-fiction classic, it follows the same formula: ridiculously horrible thing happens for no good reason - oh, wait, it's some kind of ancient religious mythology! In this case, the Druid myth of earth-walkers: men whose spiritual powers allow them to walk inside the earth, inside walls, floors, glass, etc. I don't even know if that's a real Druid myth and kinda don't care. There is some bosh about ley lines, as well.

There is a very good haunted-house style opening in which Jack Reed discovers an abandoned, decrepit building called the Oaks, hidden from view for decades and forgotten. Jack wants to turn it into a country club, and in his effort to buy the place learns that 60 years ago, it was an asylum for the criminally insane - but one night they all disappeared. The ostensible criminal "leader," a truly despicable human called Quintus Miller, found Druid spellbooks in the warden's library - but of course - and in an attempt at freedom, led his fellow inmates into the very walls themselves. However, they were trapped by Father Bell, using his own Christian brand of hocus-pocus, and Quintus vows revenge, and "kidnaps" Jack's young son Randy by pulling him into the walls. But of course. Quintus wants out, wants some kind of eternal Druidic godhood, and plans on sacrificing not only Jack's son but hundreds of other innocent people. Masterton really knows how to ante up.

1991 UK paperback

Novels like Walkers are essentially critic-proof; what can I say about it? It's the sort of thing you'll like if this is the sort of thing you like. There's no depth or real thought here, no overarching theme or human concern, nothing to really talk about other than the many scenes of graphic horror which are, yes, cringingly gruesome and lovingly detailed. Masterton's characterization is crudely succinct and rather unimaginative: the blue-collar regular guy, the shrewish wife, the busty blonde who wears high heels everywhere, the resourceful British scholar. Masterton doesn't waste time trying to make dialogue believable, or even having his characters behave believably (particularly Jack's reaction after he realizes his son is missing, as well as the final chapter). But he's good at pacing and conjuring up a storyline solely for the payoff of those big, bloody scenes of horror: people getting dragged into walls and floors and through the bottoms of cars by the imprisoned madfolk and Masterton, as ever, spares us no grisly detail.

Walkers isn't bad at all; it's fun but disposable, definitely one for fans of trashy '80s horror and Masterton himself. Just like The Manitou, there are moments of dated cultural insensitivity and a couple head-smacking bits of obvious dialogue. It's also got a crazy final showdown between Jack and Quintus and the rotting corpse of a two-headed dog. If you like that sort of thing. And I kinda do!

Livre des Poches de L'enfer: The Cover Art of Marc Demoulin

Lay your les yeux upon the covers of these French paperbacks, translations of well-known horror novels by some of our favorite writers. Part of a series called Presses Pocket—Terreur, which started these editions in the late 1980s. I could find out nothing about the artist, Marc Demoulin, but really, what would you need to know? In most cases it seems he read or at least was familiar with each book's content; I appreciate the little piece of setting featured at the top coupled with surreal horrific imagery. Bon travail!

First up are some Graham Mastertons, Picture of Evil, Wells of Hell, and the first two Manitou titles. Check out American editions here. I love our petit homme!

Next up, mon cheries, are the titles that comprise Anne Rice's monumental original trilogy known as The Vampire Chronicles. I haven't read these three novels in almost 30 years, but man did I dig them back then.

 

A couple James Herberts, The Survivor and The Fog, the latter of which is one of my favorite covers here; that sickly yellowish haze is c’est parfait.

Ooh, how about Thomas Tryon's two early '70s powerhouses? J'adore the skeleton poking out of that scarecrow's pants...

Nightwing was an early bestseller from Martin Cruz-Smith, an author more known for his espionage thrillers and such than horror fiction.

Two of Ray Garton's perhaps most (in)famous novels, one which was comme ci comme ça, while the other was magnifique!

And le finale: Peter Straub's first supernatural horror novel Julia, and his towering Ghost Story: the latter mingles sex and death perfectly and, mon ami, let me tell you, I am ici for it.

The Surrogate by Nick Sharman (1980): Father Do You Wanna Bang Heads with Me

Malevolent doll alert! Yes indeed, that mainstay of '80s horror fiction is at it again, a supernaturally-possessed innocent child's toy goes on a murderous rampage, controlled by the evil whims of a man so hateful and angry and resentful that he operates from beyond the grave. Nick Sharman (aka A.G. Scott, both pseudonyms of Norwegian/British author Scott Grønmark) also wrote Childmare, an intensely grim novel of a teenage riot in the James Herbert tradition. I found that novel to be solid horror entertainment, so have been looking forward to The Surrogate (Signet Books, July 1980) for some time now. The cover is replete with the coming  (and going) decade's hallmark imagery: solitary child, evil doll, leering old man. Oh, and the requisite King blurb at the top, too, almost literally overshadowing the actual author's name!

Unlike Childmare, Surrogate is an intimate affair, with only a few characters and smaller stakes. The prologue is a banger, with a defiant boy being locked in a cellar room with rats for disobeying his terrifying despotic father in their huge estate home. Next we meet 30-something Frank Tillson, that little boy now grown. He is a radio talk-show host and is raising his eight-year-old son Simon alone after the death of wife and mother Kathie. Frank is driving back to the family estate, which he has not visited in many years, after the death of his own mother. Summoned by long-time family caretaker Reece, Frank reluctantly goes to see the old man, now being ravaged by cancer and at death's door. The reason? Why, his father's riches, who is to inherit them? The thought of taking his father's money sickens Frank, but the old man has found a loophole: he will leave the fortune to Simon upon his 18th birthday. Frank thinks the man has gone senile, and flatly refuses to hear of this idea. "When you're gone there'll be no coming back," Frank responds (foreshadowing!). "What you've built dies with you. For God's sake don't try and involve the living."

For awhile Sharman is slow to boil the pot, letting the reader experience Frank's daily life as a single, attentive father and as a popular radio talk-show host. Simon is introduced, a well-meaning, polite boy who quietly still mourns the death of his mother. Watching him read endless comic books, Frank wryly hopes he's not "rearing a pop culture junkie." Frank has never told Simon about his hated relation, ever, and when he does now the boy seems uninterested... until he's accosted at school by a man he doesn't know speaking about an obligation. Frank is enraged but not surprised that his father would stoop to such a trick. He phones Reece, who tells him his father did take a drive, but it proved too stressful and he's now in a coma, death expected soon. "Phone me as soon as he dies, Reece, I want to know my son is safe."

Frank escapes into his work, where we meet his producer Eddie, a likeable, middle-aged man of slovenly appearance and hedonistic tendencies tempered by a solid work ethic. His assistant Angela, a timid woman that Frank holds in some contempt for her incompetence if not her sex (and the mystifying allure she holds for Eddie). Sella Masters, an American beauty, is a psychic guest on one of Frank's shows; Frank is amazed to learn she is sincere about it: "You can't believe all this psychic nonsense. We're all adults here you know. Level with us." She agrees to a demonstration of her sixth sense and, as any astute reader will expect, it turns out gut-wrenchingly horrible when she sees the car accident that killed Kathie as well as her funeral, and at the funeral an old man in black watching Simon...

Interrupting this scene of awkward horror there's a phone call for Frank: it's Reece. The old man is dead. One of the enjoyable aspects of the novel is the vintage manner in which everyone drinks and smokes after a shock or while debating supernatural phenomena, and that's just what happens now. And more mysterious events pile on: a spooky figure in some photographs (Frank's a cranky sort, thinks of complaining on his show about a shop that can't develop photos right); malfunctioning radio equipment that screeches in the voice of an angry old man; a wad of cash mailed to Simon; a terrible dinner with Eddie and Angela that leaves Angela screaming and saying she saw a corpse climbing out of the bath; all that sort of thing, all rendered in a staid, realistic style that's neither pulpy nor literary.

1981 New English Library ed with different doll, 

not sure why, does Raggedy Andy not translate?

Soon, sadly, Frank begins to suspect Eddie and Angela are behind these spooky intrusions into his and Simon's lives, sort of Scooby-Doo style, even while Sella the psychic is telling him that Simon is in real danger from his grandfather who is now on the other side, or what have you. He will not be denied! Frank's not crazy about that explanation: "The supernatural doesn't fit into my pattern of beliefs." "Screw your beliefs, Frank!" Sella half-shouted. "We don't have time for that pompous bullshit. You've seen things, for Christ's sake. You've been attacked by a frigging doll!" Ah yes, the doll! Wow, I won't spoil it, but that attack scene is pretty sweet, written in that tone that refuses to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the scenario. Sharman goes it with dead seriousness, knowing that any wink will deflate the horror (The doll glided toward him along the carpet. There were no individual limb movements, it just... glided). The toy once belonged to Kathie when she was a child, so its possession is extra obscene.

The climactic confrontation between father and son successfully brings together all that has come before, and doesn't overstay its welcome. We learn some horrible stuff about Frank's parents' relationship, the death of his mother, that sort of thing. The supernatural explanation seems the only rational one after Simon disappears, and Frank has to make a final trip to the family home he so despises. Some violence and gore, racy sex scene, not bad. The final pages is dark stuff, man. "What's worse than death, Sella?" he demanded again, fury building up inside him. "The boy's alive, Frank," he heard...

Sure, the reader will notice lapses in believability, like even though Frank is desperate to find his son, there are moments when he's like, "Oh he's probably back at the apartment" or something along those lines. These child-in-jeopardy plots don't work today; we can't really exploit them for suspense any longer since the reality is so unbearable. Dialogue, too, is creaky, the old amateur mistake of having every character say each other's names a dozen times in one conversation. The novel would've made a cracking good flick during its day, certainly not a classic, maybe in the style of adaptations of The Sentinel and The Manitou, with a virile British lead (Alan Bates? Albert Finney?) and maybe Jane Seymour or Jenny Agutter as Sella (doing a half-assed Yank accent). The novel is barely 250 pages, and even that's padded out some, but for a diverting vintage horror read, The Surrogate is a solid choice. 

Frank then saw another narrower passage leading off to the left. The stench was thickening. It was almost tangible, as though the basement complex were his father's diseased insides and he [was] approaching nearer and nearer to the center of corruption.

Misquamacus and the Summer of Sleaze

The Summer of Sleaze at Tor.com is nearing its end; today my article on Graham Masterton's wonderful first novel The Manitou (1976) is up; be sure to check it out!

Cry for the Indians, Die for the Indians

Unlike darker Native American spirits the manitou and the wendigo, Malsum apparently only made an appearance in horror fiction via this 1981 title, by unknown author Gerald John O'Hara. Malsum sounds like a pretty nasty guy, so I can see how he'd have his own horror novel. Except "malsum" is a tribal word for "wolf," (it is also of course the name of a Swedish black metal band) so I don't know why the publisher decided to go with this utterly freaky portrait of a rabid, mutilated, blank-eyed deer. Nice work though.

Charnel House by Graham Masterton (1978): His Breath, His Heart, His Blood

Another foray into Native American pulp horror from one of its most ardent purveyors, Graham Masterton! His fourth novel Charnel House delivers in the usual Masterton manner: regular guy first-person narration, ancient evil awoken, disbelieving authorities, wizened elder here to help, lady of various charms threatened by said ancient evil. This is pulp in its '70s incarnation, fast and cheap, but fun and almost charming in its steadfast refusal to stop and ponder, take a breath, or avoid engaging in dated gender and race stereotypes (well, they weren't dated then... but maybe). Nope, Masterton races through Charnel House in his patented hell-for-leather, first-draft style, no need for subtlety or an effort to suspend disbelief.

We start off with what seems to simply be a haunted house, on a sloping San Francisco side street, in a tall Gothic-styled home. The elderly owner, Seymour Willis, can hear it breathing, you see, and he's enlisted the aid of San Fran sanitation worker John Hyatt to find out if the breathing is, you know, normal. It's not, of course, so Hyatt calls up some colleagues and pals and an ex-hippie/occult/Age of Aquarius girlfriend to help piece together the mystery of a respirating house. This all ends badly, ends so badly that the artist for the cover of Tor's 1988 edition was able to choose one of those bad moments for illustrating. Accurately. I mean, woah.

As in Masterton's other mythology-themed novels (The Manitou, The Djinn), the protagonist (not much of a skeptic) looks to a wise old man versed in the supernatural charms and curses of mankind's childhood. George Thousand Names identifies the source of the haunting: a demon of peerless malignity known as The First One to Use Words for Force. He sounds pretty awesome to me, as Mr. Thousand Names describes him thus:

"He was wily and cunning and vicious, and his chief enjoyments were causing hatred and confusion, and satisfying his lust on women. The reason we call him the First One to Use Words for Force is because his tricks and his savagery created in the hearts of men their first feelings of fury and revenge... and when he was asked in ancient days to help place the stars, he tossed his own handful of stars up into the night sky at random and created the Milky Way."

The First One, once banished to the underworld, hid away his vital parts - I said, appalled, "His breath, his heart, and his blood?" - so that he could one day return to life at full power. And that, you won't be surprised to learn, is precisely what's going on at "Charnel House:" he's putting himself back together and using the innocent as his vessels. I love that stuff, really I do, and Masterton doesn't stint on these kinds of macabre legends of torture and woe ("the Ordeal of the Three"!?).

At first I thought the novel might be a crude ripoff of Matheson's Hell House, but it's not at all, just more of the Masterton same. Which is cool with me. Despite the one-dimensional storyline, generic characterization, the leaden humor, cliched attempts at atmosphere and mood, and American characters who speak only in British English while drinking copious amounts of booze, Masterton successfully piles horror upon horror, leading to an action-packed climax at - you guessed it - the Golden Gate Bridge. And I was just there myself, so I had no problem imagining the precise location. Good stuff.

But perhaps the best part of Charnel House are its paperback covers! In fact, I bought the original Pinnacle edition at Powell's Books off a display labeled "Judge a Book By Its Cover!" See more covers here.

The Searing by John Coyne (1980): Now She's Got No Cerebellum

Despite its all-too-glaring titular indebtedness to the vastly superior bestselling horror novel The Shining, The Searing is not a part of any horror fiction tradition as I consider it. There's a slick superficial feel to this John Coyne novel that means one forgets it not long after reading it; already it's drifted from my mind even though I finished it less than a week ago. It may be billed as a novel of unrelenting terror, but it exists in that bland and banal universe of yesterday bestsellerdom. There's no Lovecraftian awe, no attempt to depict "how-we-live-now" of King, nor the prosaic reality of Matheson or the maniacal tasteless glee of Masterton. Spoilers coming so highlight if you know or don't care: The Searing's a thin soup of then-current pop culture "ideas" like telepathy and Uri Geller, sexual "liberation" books about the female orgasm, Von Daniken's ancient aliens BS, and even a nominal nod in the direction of Carl Sagan's Cosmos popularity, all obviously thrown in to get people to part with their money.

1980 Putnam hardcover

Women in a newly-developed suburban enclave in what was once the Virginia wilds outside DC suddenly experience horrifyingly intense orgasms while feeling what they describe as a "searing" in their brains. It proves fatal for some - seared brains blown out noses and such - then the intensity grows and the others fear for their lives. There's also a young autistic girl (constantly referred to as "retarded" reminding you this was the late '70s, folks) who seems to have some connection to it all. Factor in some manly men and passages like this:

He knew he had to control, to make decisions for both of them, and without giving her a chance to protest, he stood and picked her up in his arms. She was lighter than he expected, a child's weight, and he carried her across the living room and up the dark stairs to her bedroom. He would protect her...

1987 reprint Charter Books

That's an adult woman being carried up the stairs. Blech. Still, Coyne isn't a terrible writer, and the mystery of "the searing" along with a few shocks of violence against infants and women make turning the pages easy, but overall it's just a blurt of hackneyed situations and execution. Much of The Searing reminded me of mediocre '70s Hollywood horror films like Burnt Offerings, The Sentinel, The Manitou, Audrey Rose, etc. In fact I'm sure the movie rights were bought up for this, and that at one time Jane Fonda, say, or Faye Dunaway or Katharine Ross or Farrah Fawcett or Sissy Spacek were, as they say, "attached" to the project. Anyway, it's a diverting read, dated and inconsequential, but by no means a must-read, and really with no connection at all to the horror fiction we all truly love.

Incubus by Ray Russell (1976): Ain't No Devil, Just God When He's Drunk

The town of Galen seems to have more than its fair share of attractive females. Maybe that's how the trouble started.

What's all this then? Small California town invaded by outside evil. Teenage girls on the ripe cusp of womanhood ravaged and murdered. Young men plagued by dreams - memories? - of ancient evils. Steely-eyed men searching for a truth no one else will face. Superstitious old ladies, helpful doctors who drink too much, incredulous town sheriff... and did I mention young women ravaged? Right. Incubus has all the right ingredients for a '70s pulp-horror novel and dishes them out well poker-faced. I started it late one evening and yes, couldn't put it down. Even better, I was barely expecting such entertainment! Comparable to other '70s Too Much Horror Fiction favorites like The Manitou or The Rats, Incubus is definitely a forgotten high point of the vintage horror fiction era.

Author and editor Ray Russell (read a good little bio in his obit here) has got horror cred: why, he discovered Charles Beaumont when working as an associate editor for Playboy. He wrote lots of horror and fantasy and screenplays for William Castle and Roger Corman. His most famous tale, "Sardonicus," is a highly regarded modern Gothic story which Stephen King recommended in Danse Macabre. His stint at Playboy in the late '50s into the '70s becomes quite obvious as you read Incubus. Quite wonderfully obvious indeed.

Ballantine 1961

Back to Incubus: In the seaside California town of Galen, young women - not really innocent - are suddenly being raped and killed. Their bodies are left ripped and torn, leading some to think the perpetrator is not wholly human. But what is driving the deranged individual is not power, but procreation. Yep. Enter Julian Trask, well-known esoteric anthropologist who once taught in the town and returns because he has a terrifying theory about the killer...

The inevitable comparisons made...

Russell's book is pure delightful pulp told with tongue nowhere near cheek. You know King would never note his hero's square jaw or steely eyes, the heroine's small but perfect breasts or her high cheekbones, much less her "fleecy down" and his "ebony thicket." Russell loves these kinds of details and I daresay you will too. There are Middle Ages torture interstices that rival anything the later splatterpunks would produce, perverse sexual goings-on that would shame Bataille, de Sade, or Krafft-Ebing. It's oddly in lurid good bad taste, if that makes any sense, and even a thoughtful moment or two turns up as Julian and old Doc Jenkins debate supernaturalism, agnosticism, skepticism, and whatnot. (And I really liked Doc Jenkins; every time after a crisis he suggested everyone join him at his home or his office to discuss the disturbing events over Scotch whiskey).

Original Morrow hardcover

Considering the debased quality of the story and the many scenes of questionable taste, the Dell cover art for this 1981 paperback (at top) could have been much, much worse, and by that I mean much, much better... although I understand now what's giving that Clairol model the frights. Yikes.

Sometimes I couldn't tell if Russell was satirizing traditional sex roles or, like Playboy thought it was doing in its heyday, embracing them with open fervor and celebrating a healthy lust for, uh, life in both men and women. Was he being sexy or sexist? You decide. Maybe it was just me, but I felt these concerns swirling beneath the sleazy surface. You can take 'em or leave 'em though. Containing all the sensitivity and gender enlightenment of a Spinal Tap album, Incubus is prime '70s horror that never heard of Stephen King.

Here's the awesome John Cassavetes from the 1981 movie adaptation: "I swear to God, there's gonna be a rape tonight."