House of Blood
With a title like HOUSE OF BLOOD, at least you know what you’re getting into. And sure enough, Bryan Smith’s debut novel opens with five young people headed back from a botched Florida vacation toward homes that most of them will never see. En route, an argument leads to an ill-fated pit stop, and soon only three of the friends are back in the car, which naturally is low on gas in the middle of nowhere. On fumes, they drive to … wait for it … the House of Blood!
Inside said house lies unspeakable terror, torture and a little something Smith likes to call “the sex magic.” But a majority of his twisted tale takes place below the house, where a cavernous hell exists, full of guards and shapeshifters and human slaves plotting a revolution. It’s this latter point that comprises the final act – one of which I felt veered off focus too much. It includes a heavy dose of astral projection and other dimensions that neither fits all that well with what comes before it, nor is explained with enough rhyme or reason to make much sense.
But up until then, HOUSE OF BLOOD is a cheerfully gory mishmash of horror scenarios celebrated in movies like HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and even a little bit of MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE. With unapologetic lines like “An unlatched metal door beckoned like a street-corner whore in stilleto heels and a miniskirt” and lots of deviant devil sex, Smith’s work is an unapologetic shot of adrenaline. Albeit clearly an over-the-top one; the female lead is named Dream Weaver, for chrissake!
Therein lies Smith’s sense of humor and, above all, fun, which most horror sorely lacks. In general, horror stories with the word “house” in the title are worth the time, and this HOUSE heralds a new voice for the genre, and I look forward to whatever he does next.
BONUS XXX-CERPT! From page 178: “And she sat on his face, wedging the pink slit of her sex against his open mouth. He worked her with his tongue, determined to pleasure her as no one else had.”
I’ve been waiting on Leisure to improve their line. I was a member of their Horror Book Club for a couple of years but was driven to the brink of madness trying to wade through their poor editing. Sometimes the material was strong but the product felt rushed to me.
I think the last straw was Ed Lee’s INFERNAL ANGEL. How that got past anyone’s desk is a mystery to me. Since then I’ve avoided books with the “Leisure” imprint.
But I know I shouldn’t judge any book by its spine, so I might give this one a try. Sounds quick and fun.
I’m currently a member. Some months the choices are great (THE GIRL NEXT DOOR was paired with CITY OF THE DEAD, I believe), and other months, the choices can be far from it and get returned immediately.
But as a member, I appreciate I can order a bunch of old titles at about $4 a piece and get one free for every five. I’ve pretty much mined the back catalog of all the good stuff in three orders flat.
Plus, it looks like they have some good stuff coming up in early 2006, so I’ll stick with it for a while longer.
Thanks for the cool review. I’m always especially happy when people get the very deliberate Manos link. Things like MST3K and Monty Python are every bit as influential for me as works of classic horror fiction, if not a little more so.
[...] January brings Tim Lebbon’s corpse-laden BERSERK and Ray Garton’s creepy-kid tale THE LOVELIEST DEAD, while in February, a writer faces supernatural terrors in Mark Morris’ THE IMMACULATE and J.P. Gonzalez’s extreme horror outing SURVIVOR – about a snuff film – is unleashed to the general public. March offers AFTER MIDNIGHT, another Richard Laymon novel, and DEATHBRINGER, Bryan Smith’s zombie-filled follow-up to HOUSE OF BLOOD. [...]
[...] Of course not. Which is why you’re either going to love or hate DEATHBRINGER, Bryan Smith’s follow-up to HOUSE OF BLOOD. That 2004 title was purposely cartoony and over the top. So’s this one, but it lacks … well, the cohesive sense of fun, even despite the occasional gem of a line like “The head on the dashboard was trying to talk.” [...]
[...] Welcome to Bryan Smith’s THE FREAKSHOW, the only novel you’ll read this year in which evil clowns deflate like bloody balloons! In which complete strangers are forced to have sex in front of an alien! In which a two-headed woman vomits “puke jelly” into a guy’s freshly empty eye socket! In which a girl is raped by a car’s shape-shifting stick shift! In which one sick scene follows another, which would be fine if you were clued in as to what the point was, but that doesn’t arrive until the last 50 pages. Interjecting a sci-fi angle helps keep this more interesting than it would be otherwise, but ultimately lost me to indifference. A little too freaky, with not enough freaks, THE FREAKSHOW is more along the lines of Smith’s silly DEATHBRINGER (although much better than that bomb), instead of the hardcore horror promise behind his debut, HOUSE OF BLOOD. [...]