One of the brightest burning trends of 70s horror paperbacks and low-budget horror cinema was the “killer animal” subgenre. Blame Jaws, but suddenly everything on the planet was out to kill us. Crocodiles, alligators, more sharks, rats, orca whales, giant mutated crabs, grizzlies, etc. etc. But what if they were smaller? What if they were grosser and what if they sorta felt slimy? That’s when the worms attacked or the scorpions or spiders. Or the Ants. Surely the scariest of all the bugs out to get you…

Few authors affect me the way Jack Ketchum does. On the surface it's easy to see how and why. His lean and clean prose style and believable characters sink my brain into and feels REAL. With capital letters. He’s a different kind of horror writer. He leans into strong stuff. Strong emotions, strong violence and strong outcomes. He rarely tackles the supernatural, figuring I assume that there's quite enough evil lurking the hearts of men here now. And of course, he’s right…

MAGNUS TRENCH IS BACK! The Impossibly named lead character of this Post-Nuke Pulp is one of the ages, he’s built like Doc Savage, has more guns than Rambo and hair like Jay Leno. He’s the toughest, meanest and sometimes dumbest hero of the Phoenix books…

The Frankenstein Horror Series came out of Popular Library in 1972 and was done by 1973. It produced nine books from such noted authors as Weird Tales stalwart Frank Belknap Long, the co-creator of Supergirl, Otto O. Binder and Robert Trailins who’s “non-fiction” (heavy quotes) were often utilized in the syndicated 90s hit Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. I imagine it was a confusing paperback line since Frankenstein only appeared in one of the novels. I suppose he was supposed to be the Crypt Keeper-like host of the stories, but a grunting Frankenstien isn’t talking much and the books are all stand-alones…

Now I’ll straight up admit I’m a sucker for a nice turtleneck, sports coat and gun combo. It’s a real good look for a 70s action hero. It’s the exact outfit you want to be wearing while scouring the sewer for evildoers. Then you add the word “cannibal.” Forget about it. The 70s paperback world was pretty well rocked by Don Siegal’s Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood. Tough cops had alway been a genre stalwart but suddenly they could be, well, dirtier. They were meaner and shot more bad guys and mostly just acted like jerks to everyone and everything. The justice system in action, I guess. But it makes for some good slimy reading…

What’s more 80s than Stephen King? Leg warmers? No. Deloreans? No. Walkmans? No. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Yeah, probably. He’s Maximum Overdrive in a person, funny, slightly scary, slightly ridiculous and going at full-tilt. So, in the world of cinema of the 80s Arnie and Stephen were bound to meet up at some point. Luckily it wasn't The Dead Zone or Stand By Me. The muscular Arnie going out to the woods to look for a dead body could have been good. No, it was The Running Man…

Ah, yes Texas. Where everything is a little wild, a little weird and fairly dangerous. It's a place of individuals, good or bad. Who do what they want, whether that’s living a peaceful life or serving an ancient evil called the God of the Razor and slashing people to bits. That’s the kind of place where a horror novel should be set. It just makes sense...

Okay, so this is a review of what is inside of a book,right? We all know that covers captivate people so much that for a lot of collectors it’s solely what’s on the cover that matters to them and not what’s on the page. I’m somewhere in the middle, if I can get a copy of a book with a nice cover, sure, but I’m not too worried about it. Books are the written words to me. Like, people, it's what's on the inside that counts. Right. Right? RIGHT?!?!

There’s times in a reader's life that you have to pause and consider just what the hell you are reading and why. If you read 80s pulp paperback horror, this thought MIGHT pop in your head more often than say if you were reading Dostoevsky or Vonnegut. If you’re reading a William W. Johnstone horror novel the phrase “why am I reading this?” will crop up often, say every couple of pages. And since you think this you ask yourself, “why don’t I stop?” Then you just just keep reading because surely that the worst is over. The worst is never over in a William W. Johnstone novel until you are at the ads in the back for other books from the publisher. It’s a near-constant barrage of terrible things designed to...I dunno maybe scare you? At least it's designed to disgust you. But more on that in a minute...

Big ‘ol guns. Vigilante vengeance. Tough guys. Dangerous dames. Numbers on the covers? It’s the world of Men’s Adventure paperback fiction. The whole mess was started by Don Pendleton back with The Executioner #1: War Against the Mafia in 1969. After that the floodgates opened and every publisher had to have at least one man-o-action in their mitts and on the spinner racks. They morphed from sleazy, violent action crime tales in the 70s to fairly hoorah, go-America action stories in the 80s before fizzling into techno-thrillers in the 90s…