Seven book covers that freaked me out

There was a time when the major publishers had no qualms about aiming firmly for the more low-brow aspects of horror. "It's horror, damnit", I can imagine a sweaty, maniacally grinning publicist saying to a crowded boardroom, "so let's give them horror! I mean twisted shit, the sicker the better. Mwuhahahahaaaaa!". And then cut to the crowd, who are revealed to be a hoard of gibbering bald men in stained suits, giggling into their notepads as they scribble down their ideas with insane glee.

Or something very like that.

And I guess it worked for me. Like a lot of horror fans, I have to acknowledge that I have a slightly twisted dark core that is buried deep, deep beneath my calm civilised exterior, that can peer into the (at least fictionally) horrific and not look away. It very often relishes the frisson of horror that trickles down my spine. It relishes the anticipation of that feeling. So for me these covers worked. They certainly made me have a second look.

The best of them showed technically superior commercial craftmanship. The most effective of them, for me, showed a vaguely human visage combined with something gross. My wife likes to read some of my horror novels, and she supplies what I call my "cringe test". If the cover was gross enough she would visibly cringe, but would still be interested in reading it as long as she could fold a piece of paper over the cover.

So here they are, seven cringe-worthy selections form my book shelf.
(Note: these are in chronological order)

Shock! by Richard Matheson
(Sphere Books, 1979. Author copyright:1961)

 

This bloody 1979 cover seems more than a little over-the-top for an author like Matheson. And that's an awful lot of blood for a head that already looks dead. Nevertheless, my very-early-teens self was suitably impressed. This was the first of three volumes, and features short stories that were all written in the 1950s.


The Pariah by Graham Masterton
(Star Books, 1983)

Mictantecutli, the Mexican god of the dead, is the source of evil in this book. I can't remember the exact relevance of the cover, but when a book involves the walking dead I guess any old gross-out corpse will do. An enjoyable piece of entertainment from Masterton, but with a very rushed ending.


Shadow-Eyes by Kathryn Ptacek
(Arrow Books, 1986. Author copyright: 1983)

Freaky demonic eyes, plus a shrieking man with what appears to be blood spurting out of his sockets - effective! Ptacek was married to the talented Charles L. Grant (1942 - 2006) and is an excellent writer in her own right.


Goat Dance by Douglas Clegg
(New English Library, 1990. Author copyright: 1989)

Yes, I've posted this cover before, but it deserves another posting. Even without the mutation of the individual on the cover, the thing trying to pull its way out of its mouth is freaky enough.


The Giant Book of Terror, ed. Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell
(Magpie Books, 1994. Content copyright as 1992, 1993, and 1994, as from Best New Horror 3 and Best New Horror 4)

This strikes me as the most over-the-top of this horrific gallery. Nasty. The story selection within is excellent, featuring the likes of Clive Barker, Poppy Z Brite, and Robert McCammon, and many other top-notch horror authors.


Dead in the Water by Nancy Holder
(Raven Books, 1995. Author copyright: 1994)

Behold... the fish-man! A bizarre piece of altered photography adorns the Raven edition of Holder's Bram Stoker Award-winning novel. Other editions offer a distinctly more sedate cover.


Dark Terrors, ed. Stephen Jones and David Sutton
(Victor Gollancz, 1995)

On the face of it, this is probably less freaky than the other covers. But there's something about clowns, y'know? Especially skeletal ones that are proffering their freshly plucked eyeball. This was the first volume of the Dark Terrors anthology series, and features excellent stories from the likes of Peter Straub and Ramsey Campbell, and many excellent "new voices" as well.


So there you have it. There are a lot of others I could have posted, but I think these are the "favourites", for want of a better term. Will we ever return to the days of books from major publishers displaying their horror origins up front with such gorey abandon? Putting aside the lack of horror from major publishers, in these politically correct days it doesn't seem likely.

The Jigsaw Man by Gord Rollo

Leisure books has a great line-up of horror authors these days, spear headed by the likes of Brian Keene (to name but one). I've been scrambling to catch up with their releases, but one author that has caught my eye is Gord Rollo. His new novel, Crimson, is due out next month, so a few weeks ago I thought I better get to his first mass-market release: The Jigsaw Man (2008, Leisure Books). It clocks in at 289 pages, and the rather excellent cover combines with the title to give a pretty good indication of what to expect...


Michael Fox has hit very hard times. He lost his wife and son in an accident (which he blames himself for), his daughter no longer talks to him, and he lives under a bridge with a couple of bums. But he's not completely beaten – he hatches a plan to have an “accident” in the hope that the insurance money will benefit his estranged daughter and give him some sort of post-mortem redemption.


But before he can hurl himself in the path of a train, he's stopped by an imposing man named "Drake" who has a money-making proposal that doesn't involve being turned into mince meat by several tonnes of rolling steel. Drake represents Doctor Marshall, a surgeon on the cutting edge (pun fully intended!) of transplant science. The deal? For one arm, the doctor is willing to pay two million dollars.


Fox goes along with it, and needless to say, things go a lot further than he could ever have imagined. The arm is just the beginning...


What follows is a story about medical experimentation gone too far. On the surface it's a fun, lunatic ride with plenty of blood, guts and thrills. Deeper than that it touches on more heady themes such as loss, guilt, and redemption, and subject matter such as medical ethics (do the ends justify the means?). The pacing for the most part is spot-on, and the central character's motivations are convincing.

It seems a shame that I do have some mild criticisms for a book I enjoyed so much; but hey that's the review game.


Overall the writing does not seem to be quite as polished as it could be. Some sharp editing could have improved things a little. For example, the final chapter is entirely unnecessary. I know what the intention was – to hammer home the emotional impact – but it's a credit to Gord's writing that Fox's character and motivation is already well rounded enough that a more succinct ending would have had more impact.


There is an overuse of “lucky” moments. I can accept a single occurrence - a variation on the “bullet hitting the bible/hip flask/lucky charm in the top pocket” cliché, but also having something one-in-a-million such as a door being jammed open by a discarded apple core... well, it's a bit much.


The slight lack of polish is more than made up for by memorable villains and sheer audacity. Drake is convincingly threatening, with obscene sexual appetites that match his penchant for physical and psychological cruelty. The doctor is in many respects just as twisted – but his motivations (as revealed to the reader) twist and turn throughout the book. Is he more driven by personal tragedy than sadism? You'll have to find out for yourself!


This book brings out the visceral – in both the figurative and literal sense. Given that the subject matter is vivisection, it's not recommended for the squeamish. Let us just say that it is quite impressive how little a victim can get whittled down to, while still retaining conscious thought!


Essentially it's a modern take on the Frankenstein story, with a little bit of The Re-animator thrown in (well, minus the zombies). In fact, someone needs to give Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna a call, because this is a story that they would be well suited to bringing to the screen. It just had that Gordon/Yuzna insane seedy gore-movie feel to it, which is possibly why it appealed to me so much.


Overall, this a fun ride that bodes well for Gord Rollo's future as a novelist.