Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

by Grady Hendrix

In the early ’70s, being killed by Satan or his spawn seemed a lot less likely than being killed by some corner-cutting, penny-pinching, midlevel employee at a giant corporation. In 1967, the captain of the oil tanker Torrey Canyon took a short cut on his way to Wales and hit Pollard’s Rock, 15 miles off the coast of Cornwall, spilling 25 million gallons of crude oil and unleashing a lethal 270-square-mile slick. In 1969, a blowout on Union Oil’s Platform A off the coast of California coated 30 miles of shoreline with black sludge. Ohio’s Cuyahoga River was so polluted with industrial runoff that it burst into flames. The toxic water of Lake Erie was devoid of life. Suddenly, everyone noticed we were destroying the planet, and so in 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency was created, the same year the first Earth Day was held and Greenpeace was founded. The Clean Air Act of 1970 was followed by the Clean Water Act in 1972, and then the Endangered Species Act in 1973. It was clear that nature needed to be protected from us. But who would protect us from nature?