By no means his best, but certainly a most enjoyable slick, sick read and the descriptions of the Schreck movies (there are 13 in all) arrive with such frequency that there’s never any time for the action to drag.Feature Books – 1990 (Originally published 1980) The absurd, poetic justice ending is maybe pushing credulity too far, but it gives the whole a neat EC feel to it. Laymon writes like a speed-freak and, despite the unsettling snuff theme, Out Are The Lights finds him at his most playful. That’s pretty much the pace of the thing. She kicked and convulsed and turned blue and died. He tore open her dress and stabbed her with a fork.Īt last, she choked on a mouthful of scorched flesh. He pinched her nostrils shut so she had to open her mouth. I call it Face Marinara.”įreya watched, disgusted and fascinated as Schreck threw Chelsea to the floor and forced her to eat. Lightly simmered visage over steaming linguini, topped with a delicate tomato sauce. And that’s how she comes to land female lead in SCHRECK THE INQUISITOR … The Schrecks are grainy, fifteen minute shorts and, as Brit watches the girl having her throat torn out in SCHRECK THE VAMPIRE, she can’t help but think she looks an awful lot like her old room-mate, but surely she’d not become an actress ….? Brit investigates. Each night, in addition to the regular features, you’ll witness the evil, delicious exploits of Otto Schreck, the madman – a new depravity each and every week.” The Haunted Palace theatre are running a season of gory horror flicks( The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Rabid, The Night Of The Living Dead and Freaks are name checked) “Plus a special treat available only at the Haunted Palace. This novel, more than any of his others, is the one to give to people who despise Laymon, just so as you can gloat over their howls of disgust and righteous indignation. Movie buffs especially admired the grainy amateur look that must conceal true art.

This was the horror series to end all horror series.

The audiences, growing by the week, clamoured for more. SCHRECK THE INQUISITOR had followed: spiders dropped onto the naked spreadeagled girl, crawling over her terrified twitching flesh while the tall hooded figure loomed over her. The girl, trapped and screaming, had died in a welter of blood as the vampire bit clean through her jugular. The man, hurled down the stairwell, had thudded to a splattered death. the audience shuddered, screamed and loved ever moment. Richard Laymon – Out Are The Lights (Nel, 1982) Trevor Jones on Justin Marriott – A Visu…

The cellar laymon