KEN RUSSELL’S DRACULA

Fiction

As an admitted Ken Russell fanatic I’d like very much to say this screenplay is an unqualified triumph, and to be sure, it does contain some impressive things.

HELOISE

Fiction

Sometimes, to get to the really good stuff the horror fiction buff must look outside the horror shelves for mislabeled genre fiction. One example would be this “surreal fairy tale,” an impressive 100 page exercise in contained apprehension.

FRIGHT NIGHT

Fiction

Skipp & Spector (who as of the early 1990s have gone their separate ways) were always at their best in unflinching and intense prose, which you won’t find here.

THE DELICATE DEPENDENCY

Fiction

To be sure, a lot of crap was published during the horror boom of the 1980s, but some real gems also made their way to publication during that period, and were inexplicably lost in the shuffle. Examples of the latter include the early novels of Jack Ketchum, which have only recently gotten the attention they deserve, and Michael Talbot’s THE DELICATE DEPENDENCY, an unassumingly packaged paperback original that has yet to receive its full dues.

Count Dracula’s Canadian Affair

Fiction

In the seminal “Fantasy Five-Foot Bookshelf” feature in THE TWILIGHT ZONE Magazine, R.S. Hadji places this dreadful novel at number 3 on his “Worst Stinkers of the Weird” list. I believe he was being overly generous, as I’d probably move it up to number one.

Banshees

Fiction

The idea of a satanically endowed rock band isn’t new, but in the hands of author Mike Baron (of 2013’s SKORPIO) it assumes a terrifically pulpy grandeur. BANSHEES has an epic world-spanning scope that incorporates black magic, vampirism, zombies, and, perhaps most horrifying of all, an entirely convincing portrayal of the corporate rock scene.