Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

Horror is a woman’s genre, and it has been all the way back to the oldest horror novel still widely read today: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, daughter of pioneering feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novels (The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian) made her the highest-paid writer of the late eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Charlotte Riddell were book-writing machines, turning out sensation novels and ghost stories by the pound. Edith Wharton wrote ghost stories before becoming a novelist of manners, and Vernon Lee (real name Violet Paget) wrote elegant tales of the uncanny that rival anything by Henry James. Three of Daphne du Maurier’s stories became Hitchcock films (Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The Birds), and Shirley Jackson’s singular horror novel The Haunting of Hill House made her one of the highest-regarded American writers of the twentieth century.

Of course, every mother thinks her baby is perfect, but at some point, as her home fills with dead bodies, she has to face facts and admit that the fruit of her womb is a face-eating beast spawned from the deepest recesses of hell.

Hating clowns is a waste of time because you’ll never loathe a clown as much as he loathes himself, but a magician? Magicians think they’re wise and witty, full of patter and panache, walking around like they didn’t deserve to be shot in the back of the head and dumped in a lake. For all the grandeur of its self-regard, magic consists of nothing more than making a total stranger feel stupid. Worse, the magician usually dresses like a jackass.

What danger signs should patients watch for when selecting a skeleton doctor? Well, if the doctor refers to patients as “poor unlucky bastards,” be careful. Also, doctors who turn abandoned mental institutions into their own private research facilities are probably up to no good. Especially when the entrance to said clinic is “an underground passageway behind the morgue.” Most important, just remember that whenever a skeleton does science, innocent people wind up getting hurt.

Marasco was a high school English teacher, so his illusions about human nature had long ago been stomped to death.

Things change, flesh rots, houses decay and fall into disrepair—there’s no point complaining. But the lost creativity makes you want to scream and pound on the inside of your coffin lid as it’s being nailed into place.

Every book was “better than Rosemary’s Baby,” “more terrifying than The Exorcist,” and “in the tradition of The Other!” Read in the right order, the titles painted a grim portrait of Satan marching from free-spirited young demon to middle-aged ennui: Satan’s Holiday, Satan’s Gal, Satan’s Seed, Satan’s Child, Satan’s Bride, Satan Sublets, The Sorrows of Satan, Satan’s Mistress, Satan: His Psychotherapy and His Cure.

But how do I know if the man I’m dating is the devil?” I hear you ask. Here are some warning signs learned from Seed of Evil: Does he refuse to use contractions when he speaks? Does he deliver pickup lines like, “You live on the edge of darkness”?

Automatonophobia is the name smug people who’ve never been chased by witch marionettes give to the irrational fear of inanimate objects that resemble human beings: puppets, robots, mannequins, dolls.

writer Alain Robbe-Grillet said, “What do little girls dream about? Knives and blood.

Babies can be fussy , and the fussiest babies have a body count . Of course , every mother thinks her baby is perfect , but at some point , as her home fills with dead bodies , she has to face facts and admit that the fruit of her womb is a face eating beast spawned from the deepest recesses of hell .

If social and political anxiety spawn zombies, then economic anxiety births haunted houses.

Because after all the monsters have flown away, hope is what’s left at the bottom of the box.

The most expressive parts of her body are her nipples. They noticeably harden when she is aroused, surprised, confused or meeting new people. They are practically prehensile tentacles, capable of lengthening, thickening, unfurling, budding, flaring and swelling.

First came Jaws by Peter Benchley, a novel about a stressed-out great white shark suffering from portion control issues. It sank its teeth into the New York Times Best-Seller List and hung on for an astonishing forty-five weeks.

Johnstone piles incident on incident, trope on trope, and if something isn’t working he keeps on piling. When time itself needs to be brought to a screeching halt, Jay Clute just pulls out his gun and shoots a clock. Because clocks make time, right? In William W. Johnstone’s world, why not?

In Brain Watch (1985), superpsychic powers are the result of splitting a doctor’s noggin into a quadruple brain, unlocking his ability to project illusions, become superstrong, and control the pigment in his skin to ensure a really great tan.

In The Vampires of Finistere, their best adventure, a young bride-to-be is abducted from under her boyfriend’s nose during a mysterious pagan fertility festival in Brittany. Underwater vampires are to blame,