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Bats Out of Hell
Professor Brian Newman is researching into a cure for meningitis. Unfortunately, as a by-product, he accidentally creates a lethal mutated version of the disease which is swiftly killing all the bats in his glass test cage. He knows that his experiments have failed and plans to dispose of the bats as soon as all of them have finally succumbed. But, fatally contaminated bats escape to spread their disease around the country. The only possible way to prevent an epidemic is to locate and destroy every single bat; but bats are small, they don't come out during the day and even a country as relatively small as UK has more than enough area to hide them.
160 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 1978
5 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
About the author
Guy N. Smith
175 books297 followersI was born on November 21, 1939, in the small village of Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale) and she always encouraged me to write.
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 30, 2011
I'm thirty years old as of last month and I have been reading Guy N. Smith since I was fourteen or so (my father lives in Poland and has a huge library full of good horror, stuff from the 80's and beyond which I would read each summer vacation as I went back from NY) so I'm no stranger to his world but this wasn't his strongest, by all means read and enjoy but don't think that this is all he can pull, as a teen when I'd go on vacation to Europe I remember bringing his books on fishing trips and loosing the rods in the water, I would go into a trance and just want to read and read, he has some amazing books out there and this is just another one of his creations, not great but readable for the sheer enjoyment of lite horror. This can probably be read in one sitting which is very gratifying; you really get to spend time with the story when you can devote almost unlimited time for the absorption and enjoyment. Smith isn't afraid to write to his hearts delight, I can see a passion in his stories, and he reaches some really gruesome and far out there topics and makes them shine in a delicious little scary novel, whether its genetically mutated monsters, zombies, woods with creatures that you'd be wise to omit or mummies and devil worshipers he can spin a tale with anything and make it great.
Bats is a story about bats, well not ordinary little cuties that seem to scare so many but about a failed experiment that happened under professor Brian Newman, his cure for meningitis has failed and in result created a group of quite weird baths who seem to be out for blood in the most horrible and violent temper, of course there's an accident and they get out, what else can happen, the speedy telling of the story doesn't leave much time for character development and you pretty much end up caring about the doctor and his two women who he seems to be playing, biggest surprise from the book considering he was such a geek. This reads more like a movie than a serious book, bad things happen and a lot of people die in some very nasty ways, too bad it's hard to care about most of them since not enough time is given to flesh them out. This was a decent read as it was very fast, its not something that takes a week, so it's redeemable in that sense but nothing that will shake the reader the core, just some icky fun with words that's perfect for a lazy weekend.
- Kasia S.
Bats is a story about bats, well not ordinary little cuties that seem to scare so many but about a failed experiment that happened under professor Brian Newman, his cure for meningitis has failed and in result created a group of quite weird baths who seem to be out for blood in the most horrible and violent temper, of course there's an accident and they get out, what else can happen, the speedy telling of the story doesn't leave much time for character development and you pretty much end up caring about the doctor and his two women who he seems to be playing, biggest surprise from the book considering he was such a geek. This reads more like a movie than a serious book, bad things happen and a lot of people die in some very nasty ways, too bad it's hard to care about most of them since not enough time is given to flesh them out. This was a decent read as it was very fast, its not something that takes a week, so it's redeemable in that sense but nothing that will shake the reader the core, just some icky fun with words that's perfect for a lazy weekend.
- Kasia S.
August 10, 2009
First published back in 1978, Guy N Smith’s pulp horror classic ‘Bats out of Hell’ is one of his early horror novels that eventually paved the way for an incredibly prolific career in horror writing.
The tale begins in the Midlands Biological Research Centre where Professor Brian Newman has accidently created a new and deadly virus on a number of his experimental bats. The virus seems similar to that of meningitis in many ways. However, the infected bat later develops what appears to be a state of abnormal madness, with its natural radar sense left completely useless.
The highly infectious virus then leaves the carrier in a paralysed state of rigor mortis until death finally takes hold of the poor victim. Later on that night, Newman’s laboratory helper and lover Susan Wylie catches Newman at a local bar with another young female. It appears that Newman is surprisingly a bit of a ladies man.
The following morning an argument breaks out between the two scientists, escalating until the glass cage that holds Newman’s test bats is broken, and the infected creatures escape from their prison.
Newman attempts to convince his superiors, Professor Haynes and Professor Rickers, that these escaped bats could mean an outbreak of a new deadly virus that could build into an epidemic of catastrophic proportions. Alas, after a number of tests are performed, the two Professors come to the mistaken conclusion that the deadly virus never really existed.
Soon enough, a local family are infected with the deadly virus when they encounter the bats sheltering in their horse’s stables. Next to fall victim to the erratic and lethal bats are the pupils of St Chad’s Cathedral School during a service held by their headmaster. Mayhem ensues, with the highly contagious bats infecting a large number of the boys.
By now the press has got hold of the story and a nationwide panic is underway. When a bat gets into the highly secure confines of the Bank’s Treasury, located in the heart of Birmingham city, the government moves in and declares Birmingham and its suburbs to be a quarantined area. No one is to enter or leave the whole of this area. The government enlists the help of the armed forces, the police forces along with employing a volunteer service named the BVF, to maintain this authority.
Before long riots are breaking out in the streets of Birmingham, with vigilante groups targeting those seen to be in authority. A number of thugs attempt to take their revenge on Newman, when word gets out that it was him and him alone who is responsible for this deadly outbreak.
With pandemonium everywhere, Newman has his work cut out for him if he is to either find a cure for the virus or find a way to kill off all of the infected bats. When mice and rats show signs of carrying the disease, drastic measures are needed to save the population of the UK.
The novel is relatively slow to start off with, as Smith lays down the premise for the storyline. Once the bats are finally loose and infecting those who come into contact with them, the novel takes up a non-stop fast pace, with one dramatic event proceeding another.
Each sighting that takes place takes on a greater and greater amount of victims, until the moment when the area of Birmingham is secured by the government. At this point the novel takes on a whole new angle, with an almost post-apocalyptic situation of urban rioting and warfare taking dominance of the storyline. Smith delivers pages of bloodthirsty violence and mob rule madness that will have you perched on the edge of your seat throughout.
With sheer chaos around every corner, the tale adds further weight to the desperation towards Newman’s work. The suspense builds as small but carefully intertwined sub stories bring a clever reality to the brutal streets of Birmingham.
Like within his classic novel ‘Nigh of the Crabs’, Smith almost back-headedly inserts a very helpful answer to the deadly virus that quite clearly should have been incorporated at an earlier stage within the storyline. Still, this somewhat weak development to the novel does not really detract from an otherwise well delivered ending.
The characters throughout the novel are clichéd in places, apart from Newman who is a peculiar mix of many character traits. Smith focuses more on the action packed sightings of the bats and the ensuing panic around them, rather than dwelling on the intricacies of the characters involved. This works well with such an action packed and unashamedly over-the-top tale.
From the moment of the first ‘bat attack’ Smith has delivered a truly incredible piece of pulp horror literature. The novel barely ever lets up from the fast paced action, mounting to the crescendo of pandemonium madness within the streets of Birmingham. This novel really is an absolute must for all fans of pulp horror or splatterpunk.
The novel runs for a total of 157 pages and was first published by New English Library.
The tale begins in the Midlands Biological Research Centre where Professor Brian Newman has accidently created a new and deadly virus on a number of his experimental bats. The virus seems similar to that of meningitis in many ways. However, the infected bat later develops what appears to be a state of abnormal madness, with its natural radar sense left completely useless.
The highly infectious virus then leaves the carrier in a paralysed state of rigor mortis until death finally takes hold of the poor victim. Later on that night, Newman’s laboratory helper and lover Susan Wylie catches Newman at a local bar with another young female. It appears that Newman is surprisingly a bit of a ladies man.
The following morning an argument breaks out between the two scientists, escalating until the glass cage that holds Newman’s test bats is broken, and the infected creatures escape from their prison.
Newman attempts to convince his superiors, Professor Haynes and Professor Rickers, that these escaped bats could mean an outbreak of a new deadly virus that could build into an epidemic of catastrophic proportions. Alas, after a number of tests are performed, the two Professors come to the mistaken conclusion that the deadly virus never really existed.
Soon enough, a local family are infected with the deadly virus when they encounter the bats sheltering in their horse’s stables. Next to fall victim to the erratic and lethal bats are the pupils of St Chad’s Cathedral School during a service held by their headmaster. Mayhem ensues, with the highly contagious bats infecting a large number of the boys.
By now the press has got hold of the story and a nationwide panic is underway. When a bat gets into the highly secure confines of the Bank’s Treasury, located in the heart of Birmingham city, the government moves in and declares Birmingham and its suburbs to be a quarantined area. No one is to enter or leave the whole of this area. The government enlists the help of the armed forces, the police forces along with employing a volunteer service named the BVF, to maintain this authority.
Before long riots are breaking out in the streets of Birmingham, with vigilante groups targeting those seen to be in authority. A number of thugs attempt to take their revenge on Newman, when word gets out that it was him and him alone who is responsible for this deadly outbreak.
With pandemonium everywhere, Newman has his work cut out for him if he is to either find a cure for the virus or find a way to kill off all of the infected bats. When mice and rats show signs of carrying the disease, drastic measures are needed to save the population of the UK.
The novel is relatively slow to start off with, as Smith lays down the premise for the storyline. Once the bats are finally loose and infecting those who come into contact with them, the novel takes up a non-stop fast pace, with one dramatic event proceeding another.
Each sighting that takes place takes on a greater and greater amount of victims, until the moment when the area of Birmingham is secured by the government. At this point the novel takes on a whole new angle, with an almost post-apocalyptic situation of urban rioting and warfare taking dominance of the storyline. Smith delivers pages of bloodthirsty violence and mob rule madness that will have you perched on the edge of your seat throughout.
With sheer chaos around every corner, the tale adds further weight to the desperation towards Newman’s work. The suspense builds as small but carefully intertwined sub stories bring a clever reality to the brutal streets of Birmingham.
Like within his classic novel ‘Nigh of the Crabs’, Smith almost back-headedly inserts a very helpful answer to the deadly virus that quite clearly should have been incorporated at an earlier stage within the storyline. Still, this somewhat weak development to the novel does not really detract from an otherwise well delivered ending.
The characters throughout the novel are clichéd in places, apart from Newman who is a peculiar mix of many character traits. Smith focuses more on the action packed sightings of the bats and the ensuing panic around them, rather than dwelling on the intricacies of the characters involved. This works well with such an action packed and unashamedly over-the-top tale.
From the moment of the first ‘bat attack’ Smith has delivered a truly incredible piece of pulp horror literature. The novel barely ever lets up from the fast paced action, mounting to the crescendo of pandemonium madness within the streets of Birmingham. This novel really is an absolute must for all fans of pulp horror or splatterpunk.
The novel runs for a total of 157 pages and was first published by New English Library.
May 5, 2020
Maybe it was the wrong time to read a book about a deadly plague spread by bats, but never mind. This has some memorable scares and set pieces, especially when the bats nest in my home city of Birmingham, and lay waste to various city landmarks. The scale of destruction and the hopelessness of dealing with them is effective and nasty.
On the other hand, I had no real empathy for the doctor character trying to solve the plague after he cheats on his girlfriend, threatens her with violence which accidentally releases the deadly bats in the first place (so killing thousands of people), and she still comes crawling back to him?
On the other hand, I had no real empathy for the doctor character trying to solve the plague after he cheats on his girlfriend, threatens her with violence which accidentally releases the deadly bats in the first place (so killing thousands of people), and she still comes crawling back to him?
July 25, 2017
Well that escalated quickly
April 30, 2018
Bats seem more logical for instilling fear than crabs, Guy N. Smith's go-to animal baddie. Maybe that's why this book is more satisfying than the first three installments of the Crabs series. At least here we get an origin story. The well-meaning Dr. Andrews is experimenting on bats in search of a cure for meningitis. Instead, he winds up killing most of the subjects, while others remain alive, carriers who will not die but who can spread the virus.
Better make sure they're kept under tight lock and key. Under no circumstances should you do something as silly as, oh, maybe get into a physical altercation with your girlfriend after she's just caught you running around with another woman. Oh, and probably a bad idea to leave the windows open in the lab.
You see where this is going. Aside from playing into every piece of bat folklore that exists (most, if not all of it being incorrect), this book is interesting because it truly explores the potential horrors of meddling with nature. More than once comparison to the Bubonic Plague is mentioned, and overall there's a body count of over 10,000.
Western England is plunged into an anarchic state of rioting and death while all semblance of civility is erased. Unlike the crabs books, there are some real consequences that linger here as the narrative begins to take on a post-apocalyptic feel.
How to stop the diseased bats? Well, I'll just say sometimes the cure could be worse than the symptoms. The novel ends on a note of foreboding.
Better make sure they're kept under tight lock and key. Under no circumstances should you do something as silly as, oh, maybe get into a physical altercation with your girlfriend after she's just caught you running around with another woman. Oh, and probably a bad idea to leave the windows open in the lab.
You see where this is going. Aside from playing into every piece of bat folklore that exists (most, if not all of it being incorrect), this book is interesting because it truly explores the potential horrors of meddling with nature. More than once comparison to the Bubonic Plague is mentioned, and overall there's a body count of over 10,000.
Western England is plunged into an anarchic state of rioting and death while all semblance of civility is erased. Unlike the crabs books, there are some real consequences that linger here as the narrative begins to take on a post-apocalyptic feel.
How to stop the diseased bats? Well, I'll just say sometimes the cure could be worse than the symptoms. The novel ends on a note of foreboding.
September 4, 2011
Guy N Smith, like Dennis Wheatley before him, may not ever be classed as a writer of great literature, but what they both do very succesfully is crank up the excitement and tension and write bloody good stories. The art of great storytelling is sadly underrated by many (most of whom are critics or judges of literature competitions).
June 21, 2016
Fun and unprententious little book about what happens when some mean scientists do nasty research on bats that of course escape. A couple of logical flaws here and there, but still an enjoyable read :-)
January 17, 2017
A fun, fast read
Read
August 7, 2019Recording the fact that I read this book either in the late 1970s or early 1980s
March 15, 2025
Wanted to love this, since I like Smith, and this is probably still in the upper half of his stuff that I've read, but only just.
All this stuff--the horde of rampaging animals set loose by dodgy scientific tampering with the natural order, the quarantined population descending into anarchy, the B-movie science fiction plots to kill the animals and cure the disease--hasn't just been done better, it's been done better by Smith. And what's worse is that there's not a lot of it, not compared to some of his masterpieces like Thirst or Abomination, which are just packed full of memorable scenes and graphic lunacy. In fairness, this is earlier in his career than either of those, while he was still getting established in the paperback nasty pantheon, so it might be that he didn't have the time or the editorial pull to flesh this one out.
Instead we spend a bunch of time with one of the most unpleasant examples of the Smith/Herbert Brit pulp horror protagonist, a womanizing asshole who sets the destruction of the United Kingdom's people and animals in motion when he starts a fist fight with one of his mistresses in the biolab, then spends the rest of the book being annoyed when half the population of Britain tries to kill him for screwing everything up.
It's never quite *bad*--every Smith novel is guaranteed to have at least a couple memorable bits--but it feels like it could've been a lot better. Go track down Thirst or Abomination instead, and see what GNS was really capable of.
All this stuff--the horde of rampaging animals set loose by dodgy scientific tampering with the natural order, the quarantined population descending into anarchy, the B-movie science fiction plots to kill the animals and cure the disease--hasn't just been done better, it's been done better by Smith. And what's worse is that there's not a lot of it, not compared to some of his masterpieces like Thirst or Abomination, which are just packed full of memorable scenes and graphic lunacy. In fairness, this is earlier in his career than either of those, while he was still getting established in the paperback nasty pantheon, so it might be that he didn't have the time or the editorial pull to flesh this one out.
Instead we spend a bunch of time with one of the most unpleasant examples of the Smith/Herbert Brit pulp horror protagonist, a womanizing asshole who sets the destruction of the United Kingdom's people and animals in motion when he starts a fist fight with one of his mistresses in the biolab, then spends the rest of the book being annoyed when half the population of Britain tries to kill him for screwing everything up.
It's never quite *bad*--every Smith novel is guaranteed to have at least a couple memorable bits--but it feels like it could've been a lot better. Go track down Thirst or Abomination instead, and see what GNS was really capable of.
October 11, 2025
I love Guy N. Smith. Not because he's good - because he isn't. I love his imagination. See Manitou Doll. I love his enthusiasm for utter nonsense. See Satan's Snowdrop. I love his audacity (Is that the right word? Who cares? Guy N. Smith wouldn't). He sent this crap to a publisher. And they published it. WHAT! I love his persistence. He churned out this rubbish for over fifty years. This isn't his worst. It really isn't. So with that thought in mind, just imagine how bad it could have been.
November 11, 2022
Bats out of Hell really has a simple setup and a fun execution. A bunch of doctors are experimenting on diseases & bats, and after two doctors get into a lover's quarrel, they accidentally smash the cage the bats are in. Now, scientifically altered bats are loose in England, passing weird diseases on to people. These are those mad scientist kind of diseases where the symptoms seem to vary wildly from one case to the next. My favorite symptom being the one where the victims go homicidally insane before dying. Anyway, the doctors after causing so much mayhem have to come up with a vaccine and save the day!
This certainly was fun! I loved how the author basically abandoned the protaganist scientists in the back 3rd of the book to focus on the mayhem the bats are causing. Just pages of characters set up...only to be swarmed by bats and it rules. The only downside here is that the bats aren't as compelling, the real danger being the diseases they spread-instead of being the main threat... Still a heck of a quick read and fun time!
This certainly was fun! I loved how the author basically abandoned the protaganist scientists in the back 3rd of the book to focus on the mayhem the bats are causing. Just pages of characters set up...only to be swarmed by bats and it rules. The only downside here is that the bats aren't as compelling, the real danger being the diseases they spread-instead of being the main threat... Still a heck of a quick read and fun time!
May 27, 2023
Short little horror book based around genetically modified bats that get out of a lab and spread a version of meningitis which causes widespread destruction. (Hits a bit too close to home even though it was written close to forty years ago.) I liked the writing, which made it a quick and entertaining read. The horror was well put and verbally really enticing. This book came with some shortfalls though, the pacing was way to fast and I felt that this book could have been much better if it was longer and more thought out. Plot holes happened occasionally and I never really connected with any of the characters. The part where the teenagers raided the house I didn’t like at all. I don’t think Smith really knew the implications of how traumatic those events would have been and how they would have affected the characters involved. The fact that the scene is just not really talked about afterwards is just unrealistic and off putting. It should have been a much bigger deal.
July 20, 2020
Far more restrained than some of Smith’s other works but still a halfway enjoyable creature feature novel of disease spreading bats.
There’s definitely better authors in this sub, sub-genre of horror fiction, but at the same time, there aren’t many who are as prolific as Guy N. Smith. And for that, there’s at least a few things he does right with Bats Out of Hell.
There’s definitely better authors in this sub, sub-genre of horror fiction, but at the same time, there aren’t many who are as prolific as Guy N. Smith. And for that, there’s at least a few things he does right with Bats Out of Hell.
March 17, 2023
Although probably considered pulp horror & a few decades old, this has so much in common with the modern age (out of control virus with questionable origins).
I enjoyed the quick read, science experiments gone awry, and out of control virus.
Slightly outdated with some of the social commentary but enjoyed the book regardless.
I enjoyed the quick read, science experiments gone awry, and out of control virus.
Slightly outdated with some of the social commentary but enjoyed the book regardless.
August 1, 2021
Bloody diseased created Bats on the loose, causes death and panic in the community. Experimenting on animals has a flow on effect with the environment. Good story not your typical gore fest you would expect from Guy but one of his earlier works to enjoy.
February 11, 2021
I got this because of the comparisons between its events and covid, which is predictably kind of a stretch. There's definitely some entertaining campy moments, but it's not crazy enough to outweigh the bad writing.
November 1, 2021
This wasn’t a bad story, and very appropriate this year with it’s virus out of control, but it didn’t work for me. It felt like there wasn’t really an ending, or that it was rushed. The writing did feel dated as it’s an older one, but I expected that. I guess it just wasn’t for me.
November 11, 2019
Sometimes my dalliances into the past lead me astray and I remember something being better than it was - this was one of those times.
maybe I'll never learn.
maybe I'll never learn.
November 1, 2021
An immensely boring tale of bats that carry a virus deadly to humans.
June 29, 2024
An old fashioned scientifically created - virus infected - mutant creature goes on a killing spree story.
Classic, and fun.
Classic, and fun.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews