Paperbacks from Hell

Big, glorious coffee-table book full of color pictures of the book covers from a bygone era. I was just an impressionable kid in the 70s-80s, but I remember looking up at the shiny, weird book covers that I wasn't old enough to read and wondering about the dark mysteries contained within. Hendrix gives the full scoop on these books with humor, sarcasm, criticism, admiration and affection. He also gives details about a lot of the artists responsible for creating these flashy, fun, and cheesy covers.

Hendrix breaks down the history of the 70s-80s boom, beginning in the 60s when horror was considered a kids genre. Adult spooky stories were marketed as “weird” or eerie but not horror. Three books from the late sixties/early seventies changed all this because they were marketed to and popular with adults. According to Hendrix, these are: Rosemary's Baby (Ira Levin), The Other (Thomas Tryon), and The Exorcist (William Blatty).

Suddenly, it became a marketable adult genre. Hendrix organized the book into chapters by topics like satanic/demonic, creepy kids, haunted houses, gothic and romantic, scary animals, weird science, and so on.

This shows the development of the genre as well as how the authors and publishers latched onto various trends. These books were transparently put out to make money. Authors didn't pretend to write “literature,” but all were writing sensational, and most importantly, entertaining stories.

Some of Hendrix' descriptions of the plots are absolutely hilarious. Just knowing books like this were written and read is a mind-blower. Just open nearly any page in this book and find something like:

“In Barney Parrish's The Closed Circle thinly veiled versions of Robert Redford, Elizabeth Taylor, Ann-Margaret, and Jackie Gleason pick up hitchhikers and murder them to praise Satan and stay famous. And they would have gotten away with it, too, if not for a darn psychic pursuing a “university-level” course in weaving who can tune into their telepathic wavelength.”

The haunted house trend also covered “urban nightmares” and “country paranoia,” as he put it. These reflect fear of crime in the city and people who had enough money to move out into the country to get away from it. ( Fort Privilege by Kit Reed) The country paranoia stories were about a living hell for the city folk who dared to invade. (Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon.)

Also keeping with the times were the stories about technology from the 1980s. Lots of stuff with computers possessing people or taking over their lives. (Little Brother by John McNeil) Exploiting the fear that technology controls the people who invented it, in this case by melding with some supernatural element.

The books I personally remember best were the gothic books, VC Andrews and Anne Rice. I especially remember the shiny foil Andrews covers with dye cuts that opened to another picture underneath. I also have a fond memory of the kids line of Dark Forces horror books.

According to Hendrix, the 70s-80s boom of horror ended in the early 90s with Silence of the Lambs and thrillers becoming the hot item instead. Suddenly horror books had to be literary and blended with true crime instead of the supernatural.

A few remnants of the time were horror marketed to kids and short story anthologies still sold well. He also mentioned the Abyss line of horror books that sprung up in the 90s with new writers who wrote psychological horror and horror that crossed genres with Sci-Fi.

As a horror fan, this book brings home the message that the genre is dead. The books covered here had the freedom to use lots of imagination, too much gore, and prioritize telling a scary story over social and political messaging, even while they exploited concerns and trends of the times.