rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2019-10-07 11:04 am
rachelmanija) wrote2019-10-07 11:04 am
Paperbacks From Hell, by Grady Hendrix
The Gilgul honors the beautiful traditions of the Jewish people with the story of a young possessed bride who sprays blood from her nipples.
I hope some day I can meet Grady Hendrix, buy him a drink, and talk for a while about terrible and surprisingly good paperbacks with lurid covers, because he and I are clearly sisters under the skin when it comes to a fondness for bizarre books.
Behind every successful soap star and ballerina is a controlling skeleton who doesn't understand personal space and gets 15% of everything she makes.
Hendrix had a series of reviews of 70s and 80s pulp paperbacks up at Tor.com as Freaky Fridays, plus a similar series he did with Will Erickson there as Summer of Sleaze. If you enjoyed any of those or enjoy my reviews of strange books, you will enjoy Paperbacks From Hell, which is based on those series and explores the history of 70s-80s horror paperbacks, with tons of gorgeous/WTF color cover illustrations.
Essentially medical thrillers in the vein of Coma, these novels stopped at every station of the genre and genuflected deeply.
He explores some of the social concerns underlying themes in the books with insight and humor:
A lot of fear surrounded pregnancy and childbirth, but fortunately horror paperbacks were there to address every new parent's fears with a resounding "Yes!" Yes, having sex will cause your baby to die, especially if that sex included female orgasm (Crib, 1982.) Yes, having a baby will cause a woman's breasts to look "as though a vandal had defaced a great work of art" (also Crib). Yes, you will be confined to a locked mental ward after giving birth (too many books to list). Yes, if you have an abortion the remains will be buried in a shallow grave behind the hospital, where they will be struck by lightning and reanimated as brain-eating babies who telekinetically explode your womb (Spawn, 1983).
He has some genuinely excellent brief histories of publishing houses, authors, and cover artists. Way more of the artists were women than I had realized. One artist sculpted a monster head to use as a basis for his cover painting; another used an anatomical drawing of a circulatory system that was so accurate that the editor booted it back for being too complicated.
Skeleton doctors are the worst doctors.
I also enjoyed his takedown of much of the splatterpunk movement, which he generally sees as a 2 Edgy 4 U boys' club.
(While reading it, I thought that perhaps the spiritual heir of this era of trashy horror is self-published Amazon romance. It certainly shares the attributes of being cheap, widely read, often completely batshit, and sometimes unexpectedly actually good.)
Some of the books he describes sound genuinely good, though frustratingly, many of those also seem completely unavailable. Others are just fun to read about:
Karen's neck is pregnant!
If you like this kind of thing, and I know I do, the book is an absolute delight. Also, I now have a rather long reading list and have bought a few books via Kindle, which you will eventually get to read about when I review them. If you've read this book, have you read anything because Hendrix mentions it?
Finally, a piece of wisdom for the ages:
Most important, try not to have sex with Satan.
Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction
I hope some day I can meet Grady Hendrix, buy him a drink, and talk for a while about terrible and surprisingly good paperbacks with lurid covers, because he and I are clearly sisters under the skin when it comes to a fondness for bizarre books.
Behind every successful soap star and ballerina is a controlling skeleton who doesn't understand personal space and gets 15% of everything she makes.
Hendrix had a series of reviews of 70s and 80s pulp paperbacks up at Tor.com as Freaky Fridays, plus a similar series he did with Will Erickson there as Summer of Sleaze. If you enjoyed any of those or enjoy my reviews of strange books, you will enjoy Paperbacks From Hell, which is based on those series and explores the history of 70s-80s horror paperbacks, with tons of gorgeous/WTF color cover illustrations.
Essentially medical thrillers in the vein of Coma, these novels stopped at every station of the genre and genuflected deeply.
He explores some of the social concerns underlying themes in the books with insight and humor:
A lot of fear surrounded pregnancy and childbirth, but fortunately horror paperbacks were there to address every new parent's fears with a resounding "Yes!" Yes, having sex will cause your baby to die, especially if that sex included female orgasm (Crib, 1982.) Yes, having a baby will cause a woman's breasts to look "as though a vandal had defaced a great work of art" (also Crib). Yes, you will be confined to a locked mental ward after giving birth (too many books to list). Yes, if you have an abortion the remains will be buried in a shallow grave behind the hospital, where they will be struck by lightning and reanimated as brain-eating babies who telekinetically explode your womb (Spawn, 1983).
He has some genuinely excellent brief histories of publishing houses, authors, and cover artists. Way more of the artists were women than I had realized. One artist sculpted a monster head to use as a basis for his cover painting; another used an anatomical drawing of a circulatory system that was so accurate that the editor booted it back for being too complicated.
Skeleton doctors are the worst doctors.
I also enjoyed his takedown of much of the splatterpunk movement, which he generally sees as a 2 Edgy 4 U boys' club.
(While reading it, I thought that perhaps the spiritual heir of this era of trashy horror is self-published Amazon romance. It certainly shares the attributes of being cheap, widely read, often completely batshit, and sometimes unexpectedly actually good.)
Some of the books he describes sound genuinely good, though frustratingly, many of those also seem completely unavailable. Others are just fun to read about:
Karen's neck is pregnant!
If you like this kind of thing, and I know I do, the book is an absolute delight. Also, I now have a rather long reading list and have bought a few books via Kindle, which you will eventually get to read about when I review them. If you've read this book, have you read anything because Hendrix mentions it?
Finally, a piece of wisdom for the ages:
Most important, try not to have sex with Satan.
Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction
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I find this book such a delight. It's a great blend of humor, insight, and amazingly lurid covers, and I'm glad both Hendrix and Erickson seem to have gotten a career boost from it--and maybe even more glad that this book led to two (and possibly counting?) series of reprints of some of their favorites.
I have it out on the coffee table right now being an actual coffee table book, just so I open it from time to time and check out the covers. It's where I heard about The Nest and other amazing things that I added to the TBR pile immediately. Though the first one I checked off was When Darkness Loves Us, by Elizabeth Engstrom, because who could resist Medea crossed with underground cave-dwellers? I've also read Pin, Brain Child, and Fishing Touches, all of which showed up here, and all of which were at least worth reading.
Purchased and still on the TBR pile: The Amulet, The Tribe, Elizabeth, The Cormorant, The Delicate Dependency, and Burnt Offerings. On the general wish list/TBR list: too many to count.
Erickson also has a great solo blog here.
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It's a perfectly competent cozy mystery...with a talking skeleton. And I see I'm like 2 books behind.
edit: The best part is that you know the author wrote this while teaching classes as an adjunct because the realities of adjunct life are SO REAL.
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Both of these facts are excellent.
Some of the books he describes sound genuinely good, though frustratingly, many of those also seem completely unavailable.
Which ones are you interested in reading for value and which ones just for fun?
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