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

by Grady Hendrix

Mark Washburn and Robert Webb’s The Predators,

Enraged tuna (Fleshbait, 1979), mutant lampreys (Pestilence, 1983), and even the lowly jellyfish (Slime, 1984) all worked together to make people the catch of the day. But the stars of this feeding frenzy turned out to be killer whales. As Arthur Herzog (author of bee-attack best seller The Swarm) reminds readers repeatedly in Orca (1977), killer whales are the only animals besides humans that kill for revenge. Peter Tonkin builds a better Jaws with Killer,

Night of the Crabs (1976).

Stomp, about killer elephants.

Whether in Peter Tremayne’s The Ants (1979), Edward Jarvis’s Maggots (1986), or Shaun Hutson’s Slugs (1982), tiny beasties seem united in their hatred of humanity.

Pierce Nace’s wildly amoral Eat Them Alive (1977),

Michael R. Linaker’s scorpions (technically arachnids, but still likely to invade England, so basically insects) focus their attacks on women’s breasts when they aren’t spreading mayhem at the nearby circus. John Halkin’s caterpillars in Squelch (1985) home in on a police constable’s groin. And the seemingly benign moths of Mark Sonders’s Blight (1981) are full of surprises, as one young mother discovers when she is swarmed to death:

In Blood Worm (1987),

Maybe that’s why they hate us. We spend so much time swatting, slapping, spraying, and squeezing them to death that we never really take the time to get to know them as individuals.

Old ladies putter about in their gardens, farmers lovingly tend their crops, and when we celebrate our most romantic occasions, we want our plant buddies with us, so we rip off their arms and bring them along.

When John Wyndham’s subjects turn their stinging vines on humanity in his 1951 novel Day of the Triffids,

(Gwen, in Green; 1974),

Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1880 short story “The American’s Tale,” about a killer Venus flytrap in Montana.

1898 story “Purple Terror” or “The Man-Eating Tree” of 1899.

1973’s The Secret Life of Plants.

The Sentinel (1974), a model moves into a brownstone…from hell. In The Shining (1977), an economically strapped family takes a last-chance job in a hotel…from hell. In The House Next Door (1978), nouveau-riche suburbanites build the contemporary home…from hell. But it all started with Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings (1973),

Marasco was a high school English teacher, so his illusions about human nature had long ago been stomped to death.

If social and political anxiety spawns zombies, then economic anxiety births haunted houses.

The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and Hell House (1971)

Marasco was the first American writer to bring anxieties about class, mortgages, and equity to the forefront of the haunted-house novel.

Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror (1979) and Stephen King’s The Shining (1977)

The Amityville Horror II (1982)

Amityville: The Final Chapter (1985)

“One day,” author Ken Eulo said in an interview, “I read The Amityville Horror and I thought to myself, oh Christ, I could do this in my sleep.” And so he wrote The Brownstone (1980),

Jay Anson, a jobbing writer brought on board to write the original Amityville book, wasn’t allowed to rest in peace. His 666 (1981), effectively a smudged photocopy of The Amityville Horror, was published under his name a year after he died.

Johnstone wrote two hundred books, most of them Westerns and men’s adventure stories. But with his five-part Devil series (1980–92) written for Zebra Books (The Devil’s Kiss, The Devil’s Heart, The Devil’s Touch, The Devil’s Cat, The Devil’s Laughter),

The Nursery (1985),

Toy Cemetery (1987)

Reading this book is like driving through a dust storm while in a post-concussion haze: the harder you try to focus, the more everything slips away into an insanity vortex.

(The Owlsfane Horror, 1981), a witch hanging (Maynard’s House, 1980), or a Native American massacre (The Curse, 1989),

(The Searing, 1980),

(The Turning, 1978),

(Effigies,...

In The Stepford Wives (1972), Ira Levin

The Other, Thomas Tryon wrote another classic, Harvest Home (1973),

Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer

Maynard’s House

The Abyss (1984),

Manhattan Ghost Story (1984), T. M. Wright

Kit Reed’s near-future Fort Privilege (1985)

(Rooftops, 1981)

(Death Tour, 1978).

Klein’s novella “Children of the Kingdom,”

John Shirley’s Cellars (1982).

Our Lady of Darkness (1977), Fritz Leiber

Thomas Monteleone’s Night Train (1984)

Campbell’s stories feel like week-old newspapers, swollen with water, black with mold, forgotten on the steps of the abandoned tenement. His titles scream like headlines: The Face That Must Die! The Doll Who Ate His Mother! The Parasite!

(Embryo),

(Heads, 1985),

(Fatal Beauty, 1990).