Guy N. Smith (1939–2020)

God only knows why I keep doing this to myself. This is the third Guy N Smith book I’ve reviewed for Carry on Screaming and it’s probably the worst. The first Crabs book was bad but kind of fun, the second was less entertaining but at least had giant crabs. If you’ve ever read Smith, then you know what you’re going to get from his books. He is, at least, dependable. Dependably bad. What he isn’t is a particularly good horror writer. Or a good writer full stop.
‘Bloodshow’ is no exception. It plays very much like an episode of Scooby Doo, only with more gore and less wit and intelligence. A newly married couple, the groom a horror fan, spend their honeymoon in a remote Scottish hotel attached to a castle with a dark past. The venue is horror-themed, with grisly waxworks with dotted about it. Naturally, before too long people start dying horribly and it appears that the waxworks are responsible.
I’m not sure I could tell you the answer to the mystery of how the murders are happening. By the time it was revealed I’d lost whatever interest in the plot I might have had at the start. The setup is hokey, the characters are paper thin and the writing is weak. Obviously, the normal rules of literary criticism shouldn’t really apply to a book like this. No-one is going to pick it up expecting great literature, but there were so many other writers in the 80s who did this kind of pulp horror so much better than Smith that it’s hard to see how he managed to make a career for himself. I suspect the answer is simply endurance. He has written a lot of books (getting on for 100 if my count is correct) and the combination of the 80s horror revival and the ease of publishing in the modern world means he is still has books coming out in 2020.
To be fair to him, and to ‘Bloodshow’, the horror scenes are okay in a cheap and nasty kind of a way. The plot allows Smith to include a variety of monsters – vampire, werewolf, cannibal, torturer – and he makes the most of them, mixing up the gore as he goes along. The problem is that it never really feels like he’s enjoying himself. Compared to someone like Shaun Huston who usually seems to be either having a blast or getting some serious shit off his chest, Smith’s books too often feel like they were written to make a quick buck.
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This one was better than I expected it to be. It follows the normal Smith formula of a simple idea, a rambling plot and lots of sex and violence, but managed to make it work better than is often the case. I didn’t have a clue what was going on a lot of the time, but the horror scenes were well executed and effective. Don’t let the title deceive you, it’s not actually a zombie novel, instead it’s about a malignant marsh (The Sucking Pit - this is a sequel to that book) and ghostly Romanies that rise out of it to bewitch the living.… (more)

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com
‘Killer Crabs’ is the first sequel to Guy N Smith’s ‘Night of the Crabs’ which I reviewed back in April. The action moves from Wales to a luxury resort on a small island off the coast of Australia, but aside from that the action is pretty similar. It’s got giant crabs, it’s got determined heroes, and it’s got a plenty of dismemberment.
Plucky scientist Clifford Davenport from the first book makes a reappearance. He’s joined this time by macho, unpleasantly racist, highly sexed, local fisherman Klin. I’m not sure Klin is actually a name, but that’s what he’s called. Klin bears a remarkable resemblance to Quint, the grizzled boat captain in ‘Jaws’. Only with more casual racism (against the Japanese) and even casualler sex, the latter with saucepot hotel resident Caroline du Brunner. Klin walks around with a permanent erection, a fact Smith chooses to refer to frequently. So much so, in fact, that it’s amazing that Klin can stand upright enough to actually fight the crabs.
You get the impression that Smith has thrown the sex in to keep the punters happy, rather than because his heart in really in it. If Herbert’s depiction of sex in books like ‘The Spear’ is bad, at least he tries to be sexy. Smith doesn’t even seem to bother. One memorable section in ‘Killer Crabs’ reads:
“Klin was watching her thighs closely. They had parted slightly, no more than inch or so, just sufficient for him to see part of the damp pinkness which lay beneath the dark hair…
’I like big things,’ she was still staring down at his erection, stroking it through the soiled cotton.”
Fortunately, the gore is more inventive than it was in the first book. In one great scene, a fisherman who has survived an attack by the crabs that has destroyed his boat, grabs a piece of driftwood to keep himself afloat, only to realise it’s his own severed leg.
The plot is somewhat better than that of the first book, there’s no spy shenanigans this time, instead the sub-plots revolve around some stolen money and the fact that some of the characters aren’t who they claim to be. It’s all very silly, but it succeeds on its own terms. It’s a pacey, gory piece of pulp fiction that’s diverting enough to spend an afternoon with, even if it’s not going to leave a lasting impression.
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