Name: Paperbacks from Hell
Rating: 4.428571428571429 (28 reviews)
ISBN: 9781594749810

Grady Hendrix

the twisted history of '70s and '80s horror fiction

Paperbacks from Hell

Tim Pendry

I would not underestimate this book simply because half its pages are filled with lurid paperback cover art. It is a clearly written and well researched history of an important part of the popular publishing industry and its intersection with popular culture. It is a story of hack and not-so-hack writing, popular taste and commerce. The author has a great deal of affection for his subject but is perfectly capable of good judgement. He is not afraid to offer us all the insanity of American horror (and incidentally of British writers writing for American markets) in witty decriptions that come close to disbelief not at what man is capable of but of what man is capable of writing. The book takes us thematically but also chronologically through the history of horror fiction as a mass market from the Gothic romances of the 1960s (the 'Dark Shadows' era) through fascinations with Satanism, children and animals as threats, urbanites in rural settings and suspicion of what doctors and scientists get up to. From there, we return to the gothic-romantic world of the vampire (Anne Rice) which moves us into the different genre of dark fantasy and various monsters expressing fear of the alien to the splatterpunk of the 1980s and the late obsession with serial killers before chronicling the death of the genre as more than cult hobby by the 1990s. The sadness (as so often) is that, amidst the schlock of Nazi leprechauns and berserker zombie vikings, a lot of fine writing has probably got forgotten even if some works such as The Exorcist, writers such as King and Rice or franchises such as Hannibal Lecter's never really threaten to go out of print. And, of course, some of the more creative work is now being published uncertainly just when the great popular wave has receded and other media (notably cinema and television in the Netflix age) are plundering the huge back catalogue for ideas but are, in turn, becoming exhausted. Horror fiction seems to have died not because the emotional drivers have disappeared (although terrorism and pandemics are covered by the thriller and serial killers have been absorbed into procedural crime) but because the mass production of psychological faux-'abreaction' has shifted to video games and other visual media. All the ground work for popular visual horror seems to have been laid down by hundreds of people beavering away trying to put bread on the table as writers, following publishers' acute sense of what was in the minds of readers and watching each other for clues as to what they could invent that was 'new' and would sell. We see a wave of memetic creativity, all of which could be traced in turn back to more isolated works of fiction with their own inheritances (Rice to Stoker to Varney to Serbian folklore) and to social changes and events in the real world. These have created a huge store for plundering by the mega-entertainment corporations of today. The question arises, of course, what happens when the mega-entertainment system begins to exhaust itself as print publishing did. Already Netflix' massive production process is faltering on repetition and variation to the point of predictability much as publishers would do as the market became saturated with creature features. Will mega-capitalism, having bottom-trawled and over-fished, start looking for new species to hunt to extinction or promote increased factory-farming just to feed demand? Whatever! Horror is not dead in fiction but it is rarer and more subtle now ... A related question is what will frighten people most in the wake of the pandemic. Another pandemic? Terrorism never really frightened the way vampires frighten because it was just another iteration of politics and easily slipped into the faux-realist thriller tale. Vampires fed into deeper anxieties as do maggots and puppets. Ecocatastrophe? Well, clearly there are a lot of people who want us to be frightened by it and its concerns constantly slip into the horror genre but it is more likely to be the preserve of the earnest type trying to write something meaningful and boring the pants off most of us so we go 'tut-tut' rather than turn on the light. I suspect horror has to return to the central problems no one seems to want to face openly - the fact that no one can know another mind no matter how close they appear to be to us and the related fact that most of the world we create is manufactured by us and that we do not know what lies behind what we see. Add to that the natural fear of a lonely death or a death that comes from something we cannot control and that we do not really know what our own bodies are doing and that our minds and our bodies seem disconnected as soon as we think about the connection and there is still fertile material for fear and so horror. It is odd to say that this book of sometimes insane and occasionally truly repulsive horrors was a pleasure to read but Hendrix makes it so. The text not only helps us to build a reading list where we are interested in some sub-genre but Will Erickson's personal recommendations at the end add further value. And the illustrations are great!

The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

I have to accept that reference works and coffee table books are no longer a thing, but this bits and pieces monologue of a six hours is not an appropriate replacement 

Paige LeBook

Maggie Gordon

Paperbacks from Hell is an overview of a little acknowledged area of literature: mass market horror books from the 1970-90s. Hendrix goes over the different subgenres and highlights some truly hilarious examples of stories one could once find at the supermarket. The book is beautiful with many full colour images of book covers. I would have liked a bit more analysis. Hendrix says some interesting things about, for example, haunted house stories drawing on the real estate politics of the time. I would have liked more of that! But definitely a worthwhile read if you want to know more about the wonders of the largely forgotten horror genre of the past.

Patti Reinheimer

Too much fun for anyone with a taste for cheesy paperback horror!

Anastaciya

That's a great work. A beautifully made book

Seth

Novel Ideas

An affectionate, nostalgic, and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of the 1970s and ’80s Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of two iconic decades . . . if you dare. Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs! Read shocking plot summaries that invoke devil worship, satanic children, and haunted real estate! Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers killer commentary and witty insight on these trashy thrillers that tried so hard to be the next Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby. Complete with story summaries and artist and author profiles, this unforgettable volume dishes on familiar authors like V. C. Andrews and R. L. Stine, plus many more who’ve faded into obscurity. Also included are recommendations for which of these forgotten treasures are well worth your reading time and which should stay buried.

Paperbacks from Hell the twisted history of '70s and '80s horror fiction

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