It’s in vogue for horror novels to take place in the 1980s. Fans rightly revere it as the Golden Age of the genre, both for film and fiction. The genre has a long history, but the building blocks of modern horror were laid in the eighties.
Naturally I am fond of the trend. I was an unabashed fan then as I am now. However I am all-too-often disappointed in current horror fiction set in the ’80s.
I’ve seen characters listening to songs that were yet to be released at the time of the story setting. I’ve seen slang used all wrong and misplaced cultural references. Very few really get the details and the feel of the decade.
No, when I want a real ’80’s horror fix, I go back to the real thing. The books written during the period.
I go from loud to soft. Skipp and Spector to Charles L. Grant. Small towns to urban cities. Traditional monsters to psychological nightmares. Bestsellers to low-rent paperback originals.
The Splatterpunk era was a big favorite of mine. Eighties Splatterpunk wasn’t merely about the grossout. It had punk rock and underground metal sensibilities. The anarchic tradition of Grove Press and Bizarre Records sang in its pages. Lenny Bruce and R. Crumb were as influential as George A. Romero and David Cronenberg.
The OG Splat Pack played hard and rough when the occasion called for it, but they also knew when to use restraint.
The big names that come up when one thinks of eighties Splatterpunk are David J. Schow, John Skipp, and Craig Spector. Other writers like Nancy A. Collins (coming in at the last minute in 1989 with Sunglasses After Dark), Richard Christian Matheson, S.P. Somtow, and Ray Garton.
The classic Garton title most go to is Live Girls. It’s widely considered a Splatterpunk classic. With its Times Square setting, the combination of sex and violence and razor sharp prose, Live Girls is as ideal an example of the subgenre you could hope for.
Yet I still think Crucifax Autumn is Garton’s best Splatterpunk novel.
Eighties Splatterpunk’s heart beat to a hard rock and roll rhythm. Some of the best novels, The Scream, The Kill Riff, Vampire Junction, feature cutting edge music. You might even say that hard rock is a character in these books.
Crucifax Autumn was published in a deluxe hardcover by Dark Harvest in 1987. The following year it came out in mass market paperback as simply Crucifax. In classic 80’s tradition the novel was cut for mass consumption. Movies were routinely snipped by MPAA demands. Pocket Books felt an orally-induced abortion and cannibalism scene might be a tad too much for WaldenBooks readers.
I read the Crucifax paperback, feeling cheated the whole time. Like I did when I rented an R-Rated videotape because I couldn’t find the Unrated edition. I liked the novel, but it nagged me.
Now I finally read the true edition. I love the old Dark Harvest hardcovers and I found one for a reasonable price. Macabre Ink has a new edition out in Kindle and trade paperback, but it’s unclear whether it is uncut or truncated. The singular title, Crucifax, leads me to believe it could be the old Pocket cut.
Crucifax Autumn is as lurid, or even more so, than anything by The S Troop (Schow, Skipp, Spector), but it deals with weighty issues. Teen suicide was a huge concern thirty-five years ago, and Crucifax addresses the problem.
The novel is a take on the Pied Piper story. A demonic hard rocker named Mace appears in town and begins to befriend teens. Troubled kids who are emotionally scarred, neglected, abused, or simply angry. Mace enlists a struggling band to sing with, and his headquarters is a chamber down in the sewers. Mace seems to be able to read minds, to know exactly what to say to the wayward kids, and has some very strange pets at his disposal. Hungry pets.
Mace gives his teen friends necklaces and instructs the kids to never take them off. It’s a crucifix with an ax at its base. A clean, quick way to leave the painful world and go off to a better place.
Garton uses a fairly large cast in Crucifax Autumn. There’s the typical nerdy teen, who is probably more than a little like the average horror reader of the time. A nice-guy high school counselor trying to figure out what’s going on, a disgraced reverend, a rebellious rich kid turned metalhead, and a bevy of clueless parents and authority figures.
In true Splatterpunk style, a rock show is the setting for a bloody conclusion.
Garton plays rough here. There’s numerous gory deaths, incest, teen drug consumption, and lots and lots of blasphemy. Yet Ray casts a light over the proceedings, giving a strong moral center to his story.
If there’s a point to Crucifax Autumn, it’s that parents need to listen to their children. Also that children desperately need guidance and emotional support from their families and guardians.
Crucifax Autumn is thick with juicy eighties slang and nostalgic references. Ray Garton took me back in time with this book. I felt like I was at the mall with his characters. Like I was listening to ’80s rock and hanging out with a bunch of radical kids. I don’t think it’s Garton’s best book, but it captures the era better than any other.
It’s been some time since we’ve seen a new book from the inimitable Ray Garton. He was always one of the most reliable talents the horror genre has ever seen. My God, has it really been over ten years? We just got a four-way novella collaboration from Cemetery Dance that featured Ray. I’m ready for a big new book from him.
Mark Sieber learned to love horror with Universal, Hammer, and AIP movies, a Scholastic edition of Poe’s Eight Tales of Terror, Sir Graves Ghastly Presents, The Twilight Zone, Shirley Jackson’s The Daemon Lover, The Night Stalker, and a hundred other dark influences. He came into his own in the great horror boom of the 1980’s, reading Charles L. Grant, F. Paul Wilson, Ray Russell, Skipp and Spector, David J. Schow, Stephen King, and countless others. Meanwhile he spent as many hours as possible at drive-in theaters, watching slasher sequels, horror comedies, monster movies, and every other imaginable type of exploitation movie. When the VHS revolution hit, he discovered the joys of Italian and other international horror gems. Trends come and go, but he still enjoys having the living crap scared out of him. Cemetery Dance has published his nonfiction collections He Who Types Between the Rows: A Decade of Horror Drive-In and He Who Types Between the Rows 2: Horror Drive-In Will Never Die. He can be reached at [email protected], and at www.horrordrive-in.com.
