OLYMPUS
This is kinda fun, a whiz-bang graphic novel about a bunch of goofball college students on a research project in the Aegean Sea.
NIGHT OF THE CRABS
I can’t imagine how anyone could not get a kick out of this novel’s premise of giant flesh-eating crabs rampaging through a British seaside community.
JAWS
JAWS, one of the most iconic bestsellers of its time, was the debut novel of Peter Benchley.
HELL HOUND
Now that I’ve finally managed to excavate a copy I can understand, at least partially, why HELL HOUND by Ken Greenhall has been so widely ignored.
GRIZZLY
The surprise, then, is how well-written this novel is, with admirably clutter-free descriptions, a semi-successful attempt at three-dimensional characterizations, and convincing descriptions of the psyche of the title character, a mutant grizzly bear.
FERAL
Killer kitties? That’s the subject of this novel, one of the first of the “nasties” that would come to define the 1970s horror fiction market.
DR. BLACK AND THE GUERRILLIA
This wildly satiric and surreal novella is one of several Connell tales centered on the character of Dr. Black, “polymath and great phytographist, foremost of amateur nephologists.”
The Dragon
This irresistibly goofy novel, by a writer better known these days for his nonfiction publications, reads like the wildest B-move ever. THE DRAGON is a damn good time, in other words, even if it won’t make anyone’s list of the great novels of the 20th Century.
THE DOGFIGHTER
Here we have, according to the front cover, “A Novel of Ultimate Violence” that “Makes JAWS Read Like a Bedtime Story!” Ultimate violence is indeed what this novel contains, it being a grungy and altogether repellent glimpse into the world of Southern-fried dogfighting, as seen through the eyes of a slimy redneck named Lenny.
DEATH TOUR
These days it’s common for would-be filmmakers to turn their unproduced scripts into novels, although I’m not sure how prevalent that practice was back in the seventies. Yet reading David J. Michael’s DEATH TOUR, a largely forgotten but fairly potent seventies horror fest, I couldn’t help but picture it as a low budget movie: it’s extremely action heavy and has a tightly contained setting, not to mention a distinct three act structure.