The civilization was over in the 80s. What was left was a wasteland of killers, cool vehicles, mutants, big ‘ol guns, and tough heroes. I mean that’s how I remember it. The Post-Nuke Pulp movement introduced a ton of new paper heroes and series, obviously the whole thing was a reaction basically just to the Mad Max movies. They had titles like Swampmaster, Storm Rider, Road Blaster, The Survivalist, Warlord etc. etc. There’s a lot more and some of them like Deathlands well into the 2000s which is pretty impressive. I guess it was the allure of a new west where the thrilling tales of a lawless land and the lone man who tries to tame it must hit somewhere deep in our unconscious. Or people like to read about mutants getting killed…

It all started for the Amityville series in 1974 when Ronny DeFeo Jr. killed six members of his family in their house. Luckily he went to prison for his crimes and ended up dying in jail. It’s an incredibly tragic event that somehow kicked off one of the most famous horror franchises. A jam-packed series of books and films, some of them fiction, some of them claiming to be “true stories.”

In the pantheon (did I just say “pantheon” in an article about Guy N. Smith? Jeez) of British paperback horror writers, Guy N. Smith is one of the top names. His books are slices of 70s/80s pure ridiculousness, with covers featuring deformed ghouls, slime monsters, and killer crabs with knives. To a lot of British horror fans of a certain age I think he was a foundational element in the horror fandom with his thin, sex and gore filled paperbacks that were probably passed around between friends and read without your parents knowing. I wish the fourteen-year-old me had been able to read them. They are just slightly naughty solid horror gold…

Could you as a consumer resist a vampire woman, a beautiful vampire woman from another planet in a skimpy one-piece if you saw it on the cover of a slim paperback on a spinner rack? No. Who could? It’s the 70s and horrors gone groovy and there’s a little love behind it. Some of the people creating this stuff grew up with it and are fans. In comics, stuff has loosened, loopholes formed and things can be gorier again. Stuff can harken back to the EC Comics of the 50s or go in new and different directions. Like Vampirella…

There’s niche markets and then there’s niche markets. Somewhere along the way, and I’m sure much to his surprise, a man named Edward D. Wood Jr. became sort of famous. “Sort of famous” is the best kind of fame you can ask for, and it’s probably even better after you’re dead. He of course was a film director in 1950s Hollywood who made “bad” movies, wore women’s clothing and eventually had a biopic about him made by Disney. Ed Wood had a wonderful imagination, but I bet he never would have thought that one up…

I didn’t know exactly what a “majorette” was before I cracked open this book. I’m fairly sure in my high school experience the majorette was replaced with people who waved flags around. I don’t think there’s any flag-wavers getting slashed book, either. I wouldn’t know, I skipped most football games for pizza and the hundredth rewatch of Evil Dead II or a nasty slice of paperback horror. Much like The Majorettes by John A. Russo…

There’s an interesting bit of time when we, as a nation, really embraced a child murderer as our new pop-culture hero. That time was the 80s (and into the 90s) and that hero was Freddy Krueger. Maybe he was a hero we deserved at the time, maybe we still don’t deserve a hero like the burned child murderer Fred Krueger….

Launching this spring with Return of the Living Dead, the 1978 sequel novel to George Romero’s legendary Night of the Living Dead, SAVAGE HARVEST will reissue out-of-print genre treasures from the 70s and 80s to horrify a new generation of readers!

Do you like goo? Do you like ooze? Do you like jelly? Do you like gloop, glop and guck? Yes? Of course you do. The slimy stuff has long been a staple of horror, adding a little flavor with the “gross-out” scare. It mixes well with the blood and kills I suppose. So, we have determined that you the reader enjoy the gooey parts of horror. What about jellyfish? They are simple creatures, even lacking a brain. Surely, they couldn’t possibly be dangerous, could they? Well, just picture yourself back in the 80s in a time where (at least in a horror novel) that every living thing was out to get us humans. It was just a fact…

David Hagberg is going as David James on the cover and spine of Croc, a fairly slim little Belmont Tower paperback that asks the question “The hunters -or the hunted?” when there’s a crocodile in the sewers of New York City. Belmont was a second (or third) rate publisher in the 70s They churned out whatever the market wanted that month, seemingly. Westerns, crime stories, Men’s Adventure, mystery, gothics, romance, gothic romance, and even horror. They had great covers and good copy written on the back that didn’t always match up to the book inside. They sold books any which way they could…