THE BEAST HOUSE, Richard Laymon’s 1986 sequel to his 1980 hit THE CELLAR, continues with the author’s patented blend of visceral horror and unblushing sex. Twenty years down the road, the combination is still too strong for some readers, but Leisure has just reissued the novel anyway.
Vacationing librarians Tyler and Nora take a detour along the California coastal highway to look up one of Tyler’s old boyfriends, now a small-town cop. Along the way, they link up with Jack and Abe, two recently mustered-out Marines who agree to go along with them.
Arriving at Malcasa Point – mal casa = bad house, cute, huh? – they discover that Tyler’s old beau was killed by the beast of Beast House, a creepy tourist attraction and the location of several gruesome killings over the past 50 years. This is the same place in which Laymon set the action in THE CELLAR, and this book pretty much follows the same pattern as the earlier one: People are warned not to go to the house after dark. People go to the house after dark. People wish they hadn’t gone to the house after dark. People never go anywhere after dark again. Or before it, either.
Complicating the action somewhat is the addition to the cast of Gorman Hardy, author of several bestsellers, all of which are supposedly true, on supernatural and horrific themes. Laymon has some fun with the popular conception that horror writers are as frightening as the stories they tell by making Hardy into a sociopathic killer. It’s his offer of a thousand dollars for photos of the inside of the house at night that sets the climax in motion.
One of the things Laymon’s fans like best is his cinematic quality. This book is structured a lot like a movie about this material would be. Going on the tour of Beast House is not unlike riding through Capt. Spaulding’s murder museum in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES. Like Rob Zombie after him, Laymon was not afraid to pull the trigger.
His weakest point as a novelist is his willingness to introduce characters to play a single scene, and then vanish. Tyler and Nora meet Abe and Jack when a creepy driver forces the women off the road and threatens to rape and beat them. Literally, the Marines show up just in time. The mad driver is never heard from again.
I may be alone here, but I prefer later Laymon, when he moved away from monster stories and devoted more time to writing about human monsters. Stuff like THE BEAST HOUSE is fun and it whips along at a terrific pace, but any fear it may generate comes from gross violations of the human body and not from perversions of the human mind.
Bottom line, though: If you liked THE CELLAR or just have a weakness for hardcore blood-and-guts horror, this book is for you. If you like suspense stories told with unrelenting speed, this book is for you. But if your gag reflex goes into overdrive at the thought of what’s inside you spilling out, forget about it. –Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AFTER MIDNIGHT by Richard Laymon
• THE CELLAR by Richard Laymon
• COME OUT TONIGHT by Richard Laymon
• ISLAND by Richard Laymon
• THE LAKE by Richard Laymon
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I have MUCH love for Laymon’s BEAST HOUSE trilogy of full length novels ( unfortunately, I have yet to get my hands on a copy of his FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE BEAST HOUSE limited edition short novel … ). So much so that I still have a special spot in my personal top ten of all time fav novels for THE CELLER.
A book I was so impressed by when I first read it as a teen WAY back in 1980, that I insisted that if I ever had a son that I’d name him Judgement Rucker. And I was serious as a heart attack!
Thankfully, by the time I did father a baby boy some 18 years later I’d reconsidered. LOL
Just tossing it out there, but it looks like you never read my favorite Laymon books, ‘Traveling Vampire Show’ and ‘In the Dark’. I don’t think the Beast House stories compare.
Nope, I’ve read ‘em both but can’t review them for bookgasm because they were published too long ago and Rod leaves that material to others. “In the Dark” is my favorite Laymon, creepy at a psychological level most horror writers seem to be incapable of reaching.
Thanks for the note.
Doug Bentin