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Post by dem bones on Oct 23, 2007 17:14:47 GMT
Guy N. Smith - The Wood (Nel, 1985) The Living died but the Dead lived on. You only have to see that unutterably brilliant tag-line to know you've come to the the right place. Carol Embleton has decided to ditch her conservationist boyfriend, Andy Dark, because he's always looking at badgers instead of showing her a good time. Thoroughly miserable, she decides to go to the village disco alone and run away to the London the following day. After an evening's boogieing to Status Quo (it's the 'eighties) she heads off home. As its sheeting down rain, against her better judgement she accepts a lift from a passing motorist. It's not her lucky night. The good Samaritan is sex-killer James Foster and his idea of a chat up line is to display the handkerchief he's just jerked off into. Faced with death, Carol succumbs to his lust, then legs it naked into the woods with the repulsive Foster in pursuit.. Carol has never been in Droy Wood before, but she's heard all the talk. The locals murmur darkly of the Droy family of a few generations back, landowners who tortured smugglers to death in their now derelict mansion. Of a Nazi fighter pilot who parachuted into the evil-reeking bog-land and, despite a huge manhunt, was never seen again. Local wisdom has it that, when a mist descends on the wood unpleasant things happen and you're well advised to stay clear of the place .... One Long Spoiler Local wisdom was right for once. Droy Wood has the uncanny knack of replaying evil deeds from days past and, if you're caught in there when a mist falls you're not coming out. Carol is taken prisoner by Bertie the Nazi and shackled in the rat infested dungeon of the Droy house. Meanwhile, Andy is apprehended by brutal Customs men from centuries past after witnessing them torturing a boy smuggler - he's dumped in the same cell as his girlfriend. A police man-hunt has no luck in finding Foster, so they decide to use Carol's best friend Thelma in a reconstruction of her abduction to see if it jogs any memories. Unfortunately, the cop who picks her up is possessed by the rapist so we have another naked girl loose amidst the "rancid marsh odours". It's not as if what's left of Foster will be of much help to the police in any case because he's fallen into the clutches of the Oak Priests, a druid-like sect with a thing about human sacrifice. As you would expect, the deaths come fast and furious and all the disparate parties get to try their hand at murdering somebody. In one memorably gruesome episode Thelma - who really goes through a rotten time of it - meets Elsie, a little girl in curiously old-fashioned clothing, who insists on taking her off to meet her father - a rotting, animated corpse flaying around in a pit of slime. Elsie pushed him in the bog after he chopped up her mother with an axe. And now the child has it in her head that Thelma was her father's lover. And she detests her father's lover. How to rate it? I thought it was fab, actually, reminiscent of his feted squelch-fest The Sucking Pit in many ways, with some very decent gory deaths to keep you on your toes. My only disappointment was that GNS didn't make more use of the pub, The Dun Cow which, after showing some early promise, disappears from the story altogether. Thanks Ade!
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Post by swampslimer on Apr 3, 2008 6:41:15 GMT
I enjoyed The Wood. My favourite parts were the scenes involving Droy House - very well done.
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Post by funkdooby on Apr 4, 2008 11:43:50 GMT
At last - someone else who liked The Wood. I was beginning to think I was the only one
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Post by swampslimer on Apr 4, 2008 21:33:15 GMT
I assure you you're not the only one - how could anyone not love The Wood?
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Post by andydecker on Apr 20, 2008 12:47:09 GMT
After reading here about it, I pulled it from the to-read-pile. Great novel; I kick myself for not reading earlier. When Smith was good, he was really good, and some of the scenes are really spooky and gruesome. This one would have made a great B-movie. Alone the scene with the little girl and the rotting corpse in the pit is worth the price alone. GNS hits here all the right notes, from the horrible to not overexplaining the strange happenings. And he even goes for a happy end - well, kind of -, which seems somewhat out of character. But it kind of makes sense here, as all the other unsympathetic characters meets their well deserved bloody ends. Unfortunatly I have the american Dell edition which has one of those little-children-in-distress covers. Maybe this is the reason I parked the novel so long. It pales in comparison with the british cover and is f**k**g terrible.
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Post by sean on Apr 21, 2008 9:34:16 GMT
Speaking of the cover, here's a translation of Ramsey Campbell's 'The Influence' from the Netherlands (1989): It's obviously filed away somewhere as 'generic child (female), threatened #03' or something!
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Post by swampslimer on Apr 22, 2008 2:30:18 GMT
That cover is really f**king terrible. The US cover of Deathbell is awesome though (see my avatar.)
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Post by funkdooby on Apr 22, 2008 7:13:07 GMT
After reading here about it, I pulled it from the to-read-pile. Great novel; I kick myself for not reading earlier. When Smith was good, he was really good, and some of the scenes are really spooky and gruesome. This one would have made a great B-movie. Alone the scene with the little girl and the rotting corpse in the pit is worth the price alone. GNS hits here all the right notes, from the horrible to not overexplaining the strange happenings. And he even goes for a happy end - well, kind of -, which seems somewhat out of character. But it kind of makes sense here, as all the other unsympathetic characters meets their well deserved bloody ends. Unfortunatly I have the american Dell edition which has one of those little-children-in-distress covers. Maybe this is the reason I parked the novel so long. It pales in comparison with the british cover and is f**k**g terrible. Never seen that cover before - for which I'm grateful No wonder a lot of British horror fails to sell in the States
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Post by swampslimer on Apr 22, 2008 9:42:24 GMT
Not only is that cover horrible, but it is completely inappropriate - what does it have to do with the story?
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Post by dreadlocksmile on Jun 19, 2009 20:50:00 GMT
Dreadlocksmile Review:First published back in 1985 Guy N Smith's novel `The Wood' was yet another pulp horror novel that cam from the prolific writing career of this pulp horror master. Set in the quiet village of Droy, the novel begins with a WWII nazi bomber crashing into Droy Wood, located on the outskirts of the village. There were no survivors from the crash landing. The tale leaps forward to the present day where Carol Embleton on the way home late at night after dancing the night away at the local disco is forced to hide amongst the dark undergrowth of the woods to escape a sex crazed attacker who is after her. The next day and there's still no sign of Carol, so her boyfriend Andy Dark, a wildlife expert with the glorious title of `Chief Conservation Officer', goes in search of her within Droy woods. The police soon get involved and by now they are looking for all three individuals, Carol, Andy and the crazed sex-killer James Foster. The local girl Thelma Brown was the last to see Carol Embleton and so is asked by a police officer to accompany him to the woods to help locate the missing girl. When they arrive at the woods, Thelma realises that the officer isn't who he says he is and darts off into Droy woods to hide. A thick layer of fog masks the landscape of the woods, and as it does, so the dark secrets that have been lying within its expanse come out. The woods hold more dark and deadly secrets than just the remains of a crashed WWII German bomber. And the secrets it holds are not just dead, they're awake and out for the blood of the living. Atmospherically the novel works well creating an eerie setting for this tale of ghostly hauntings. Smith's descriptive nature towards the dark and foreboding woods is superb, setting down an underlying creepy feeling throughout the tale. Alas, this does not save the novel from the loosely knit and altogether weak storyline that barely supports itself from start to finish. The elaborate array of hauntings are intriguing and imaginative, but are never developed enough to bring out anything truly haunting. Smith's controversial passion for including an undead Nazi is once again present in `The Wood' with the WWII bomber whose spirit still roams the woods. Smith also manages to cram in his usual necessity for a graphic sexual attack or two. This nasty premise adds a further unnerving element to the storyline, keeping the readers heart rate thumping away at a mile a second. However, the one sin a pulp horror novel of this nature should never fall foul of, is to be boring. Pulp horror needs to be crammed with over-the-top violence, unashamed sexual scenes, corny and clichéd characters and above all an action packed and exciting storyline that doesn't once let up. Alas, Smith's `The Wood' drags from one dramatic event to the next, with the intersections too slow moving, making the story as a whole cumbersome and jerky to the reader. The plot is too loose, with far too little direction to keep the reader entertained by the overall premise of the story. Hardly any development to the plot is apparent throughout, as the reader stumbles through a suggestive yet unsubstantiated tale of a haunted woods. That said, Smith manages to throw in brief moments of inspired originality that claw the reader back into the tale. Characterization is mediocre throughout, with barely memorable characters meeting their demise then almost instantly forgotten by the reader. You usually know what you're going to be getting with a Guy N Smith novel. Smith is a master of the intense and wildly over-the-top tales of elaborate horror. His unashamed use of excessive violence and depravity are what makes his tales so damn right entertaining. `The Wood' does still have brief moments of these base passions of Smith's, but without a strong storyline holding these together, the tale unfortunately fails to hold the readers attention. The novel runs for a total of 170 pages, which is a little more than average compared with the majority of Smith's novels. www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2C53AG7V14GQS/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
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Post by killercrab on Jun 20, 2009 1:28:37 GMT
`The Wood' does still have brief moments of these base passions of Smith's, but without a strong storyline holding these together, the tale unfortunately fails to hold the readers attention. >>
Very well put. I think you've nailed exactly why I struggled with this book which took me ages to finish. Your other reviews have been bang on too - so I wonder where we'll diverge on GNS. ;D
KC
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Post by dem bones on Jun 20, 2009 12:46:40 GMT
However, the one sin a pulp horror novel of this nature should never fall foul of, is to be boring. Pulp horror needs to be crammed with over-the-top violence, unashamed sexual scenes, corny and clichéd characters and above all an action packed and exciting storyline that doesn't once let up. We should incorporate that into our Trash Pulp Room 100 club charter. Tremendous work, Mr. Dread.
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Post by marksamuels on Jun 20, 2009 21:20:23 GMT
However, the one sin a pulp horror novel of this nature should never fall foul of, is to be boring. Pulp horror needs to be crammed with over-the-top violence, unashamed sexual scenes, corny and clichéd characters and above all an action packed and exciting storyline that doesn't once let up. We should incorporate that into our Trash Pulp Room 100 club charter. Tremendous work, Mr. Dread. Bloody hell, Mr Dread, you haven't been peeping at my in-progress Nazi Zombie pulp novel have you? Great reviews, btw! Mark S.
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Post by ripper on Mar 16, 2014 11:00:17 GMT
I finished off this one last night and thought it was a bit of a mixed bag. GNS developed a creepy atmosphere around the wood with its mist and boggy dankness, and the variety of phantoms haunting the wood was interesting, though perhaps not as well developed as they could have been. Several posters have commented on the scene with the little girl and I thought it was probably the single best scene in the book. What surprised me was how relatively restrained the book was, or possibly I was expecting more in the way of out-and-out gore and sleaze. There are a couple of moderately graphic sex scenes, but the gore and general sleaze quotient seemed low when compared to other GNS novels. I was expecting that the climax might have involved the mist spreading to the village, enabling the phantoms to run amok among its citizens, with plenty of gory deaths, but it sort of fizzled out, with nature finally destroying the wood in a rather weak ending. I don't know why but each time the german pilot was in a scene I kept picturing him as Herr Flick from 'Allo 'Allo. All-in-all, a fairly middling GNS book, mainly devoid of the fast-paced gore and sleaze that is associated with the author, but a good, creepy atmosphere is developed, and it is fun to have four naked people running around the wood.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 17, 2014 21:07:42 GMT
GNS mellowed with age, like they all do. It not always made for better novels, especially his 90s books.
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