KILLER CRABS!

[killercrab]

[franklinmarsh]

Killer Crabs - Guy N Smith NEL May 1978
To Hugh Hudson (?)

Ade's biography! Nope - as The Rats found their Lair and the Slugs, their Breeding Ground, GNS' crustaceans have found their Mangrove Swamp.
This is an odd one. The 'lost' Crabs book? I found a spare copy and after a GNS fan on his site gave it a rave I thought I'd better get back to it. It's a fast-paced entertaining read but somehow just misses the truly great award.
Four years on from Night Of and we start promisingly with a prologue aboard a Scandinavian fishing vessel who land a four foot crab in their catch...the book proper kicks off in Australia at the Great Barrier Reef. Hayman Island to be precise. Home of rich person's place to be The Royal Hayman Hotel. Also home to hunky beach bum Klin, sweaty journo Corder, pert,pouting sex mad Caroline Du Brunner (who is not all she's made out to be), Captain Manton (who?) and Harvey Logan - the last of the big-game hunters, who's turned up to bag a Great White - but a monster crab will do. Klin's a fisherman, part time shark spotter and bit of rough for Ms Du Brunner who's very interested in what's hidden in his tatty denim shorts. He's also seething about Japanese fish poachers, and after a close encounter with them, unites all the island fisherman and sends them out to deal with the fiendish orientals. The Japs gun down the Aussie leader and sail away laden with fish - the hapless fishermen end up in the pincers of the crabs,but, fear not, GNS equals things up by sending in more crab battalions to deal with the ecologically unsound Eastern anglers. After a break enabling Klin and Caroline to get jiggy and Professor Cliff Davenport (Huzzah!) to get called in.
The crabs mount a boffo attack on the jet-set hotel defying the might of the Australian Navy and Marines. What's with the suitcase stuffed with money? Horny Caroline is bedding whichever male gets within five yards of her. A lucky shell from a destroyer in Barbecue Bay snuffs an unlucky nipper and Harvey Logan is claiming the credit. Prof Cliff's worried. It's crab spawning time and if the dirty little devils make like Ms Du Brunner there'll be millions of the bastids. Where is that infernal Mangrove Swamp? GNS loses it towards the end but, for once in an FM review I thoroughly recommend the finale - a near as dammit 'natural' outcome. A great page-turner but still the least involving of the crabs stories.

[antmusic]

Are there Crabs related short stories in Guy N. Smtih's self published short story colelctions? I couldn't help but notice that one has a Giant Crab on the front of it. If they are related, do they have returning characters? New Crab information? etc?

Thanks,
Antmusic

[dem]

Hi antmusic

I'm not sure if they're included in his books but two I've found are The Decoy (Fear #13, Jan. 1990) and Crustacean Revenge in Graham Masterton's anthology Scare Care (Tor, 1989), both of them very entertaining. In The Decoy. Dugan uses the corpse of a beautiful girl to lure one of the Killer Crabs from hiding. They're not as stupid as they look! Crustacean Revenge features Klin in his final encounter with Queen Crab!

[antmusic]

Wow! Thanks for the information! Does any one have a list of the stories that are in those Short Story collections... I noticed them on his "official" website available to order, and I am going back and forth on ordering them.

[antmusic]

I ordered the four story collections anyways (they didn't have the collections ones he wrote as a child anymore).... I hope I don't get screwed over by the site. Has anyone else ordered from them? They will probably send them slow-boat-to-china mail to me and I will get them in about 8 months to 9 years.

[funkdooby]

I know there was one crabs story (called The Crabs), which seems totally unrelated to the main series. Three people are trapped in a room and get devoured by big (but not massively so) crabs. Years since I read it, can't really remember much about it. I've got it in a collection somewhere.

GNS came up with assorted synopses for crabs stories which never actually got expanded. Some of these were detailed in Graveyard Rendezvous 3 (back in the days when Andy Hurst put virtually the whole mag together single handedly), and Guy himself sent me some along with assorted others when I was doing the Smithology series for GR.

I have a vague notion GNS may have written an original crabs story for GR at some stage, but I could be mistaken. I used to have an intimate knowledge of almost everything he'd done at one point, but my interest has waned in recent years.

The 50 From The Fifties collection must be hard to come by these days as it was cut and staple limited numbered and signed edition of 100 (I have number 3). No crab stories in there, but there are some fascinating tales from the beginning of Guy's career.

[antmusic]

I haven't received an order confirmation for my online order the other day yet... hopefully it all went through okay. It would be great to read all his old childhood stories, but I doubt I will ever run accross that book, and I don't have the kind of income it would take to truly collect and read all of Guy's work at the prices I keep seeing online.

[antmusic]

Yay! I got them ... well 3 of the 4 I ordered .... It turns out they had a Hotmail email address (my spam filter blocks all Hotmail, and as an experiment, I turned it off for a week, and I got an email from "Guy N Smith," AKA Annie). They were trying to contact me for awhile. lol

I ordered all four short story books they had on the site, but I didn't get the "Mystery and Horror Shorts - 1st Collection" for some reason. I am emailing them about the missing book now.

[antmusic]

Oh, and the Crabs short stories that are in these are:
In Horror Shorts 1st Collection: "Crustacean Vengence" (featuring Klin) from Scare Care, 1989 (looks like this is the same as "Crustacean Revenge" that you mentioned).

Horror Shorts 2nd Collection has... "The Crabs" from Peeping Tom, 1992 (featuring Ed Billington, Frank, Marie, and Emma).

MAYBE the mystery Collection has "The Decoy", but I don't know.

[dem]

antmusic said:

Oh, and the Crabs short stories that are in these are:
In Horror Shorts 1st Collection: "Crustacean Vengence" (featuring Klin) from Scare Care, 1989 (looks like this is the same as "Crustacean Revenge" that you mentioned).

it is unless he's revised or modified it any in keeping with the slightly altered title. Perhaps The Decoy may even be in there too under a different name? I'm pleased you heard from 'Guy'/ Annie anyhow, and hope the missing Mystery and Horror Shorts is with you soon.

[antmusic]

Well, I heard back from Annie... it turns out one of the emails I did not reveive was that they do not have any more of the Mystery and Horror Shorts - 1st Collection books left....
But it is still on their site for you to order today, for some odd reason.

[dreadlocksmile]

Dreadlocksmile Review:

Following on from the tremendous success of `Night of the Crabs' is the next instalment for Guy N Smith's signature crab series entitled `Killer Crabs'. First published back in 1978 the sequel still found itself as an early novel within Smith's prolific writing career.

The story finds itself located this time within the picturesque setting of Barbeque Bay on Australia's beautiful Hayman Island. Everything is far from tranquil as the giant crabs once again emerge from the sea to wreak their bloodthirsty revenge on humankind.

Our hero Cliff Davenport from `Night of the Crabs' is soon on the scene, joining forces with a local fisherman by the name of Klin. The battle is on to protect the local population from these giant ruthless crabs as the crustaceans wage war on the community.

With the action packed, edge of the seat, crabs rampage now in full swing, a sexy nymphomaniac by the name of Caroline du Brunner is thrown into the equation to add a healthy dollop of sex to the mix. Du Brunner quickly seduces Klin delivering the standard insertion of graphic sex to break up the bloody gorefest that surrounds this over-the-top pulp horror tale.

Realising that the crabs must have a breeding ground of some sort, Davenport et all head to a remote and desolate island just off the mainland in an attempt to rid the crabs from Hayman Island. What was feared to be a deadly mission turns out to be even more harrowing than they could ever have dreamed as they make their way onto the crabs new home.

Taking up from where `Night of the Crabs' had left off, throws the reader straight into the uncompromising bloodshed as Guy's all time favourite monsters return in this unrelenting sequel. In true Guy N Smith style, `Killer Crabs' delivers bucket loads of gore mixed in with elaborate and almost preposterous subplots.

The characters are all highly comical in their delivery, with widely exaggerated personalities and clichéd roles within the storyline. The input of the character of Caroline du Brunner in particular is outlandishly amusing, but adds such a perfect injection of lust fuelled sex to thrill any pulp horror enthusiast.

For the sheer volume of unrelenting crabs action and juicy subplots keeping the pace throughout, Smith has produced one of his best pulp horror novels to date. `Killer Crabs' is possibly the highlight of the crabs series, mixing in so many over-the-top elements to the storyline that not a page goes by without an outlandish twist of the tale taking place.

For pulp horror fans, splatter-punk enthusiasts, and all lovers of Guy N Smith's other work, this novel is so much of a must that you should stop reading this review now and grab yourself a copy this very second.

Running for a mere 158 pages (somewhat of a standard length for a Guy N Smith novel), somehow so much action and laughable storyline is thrown into so few pages. This truly is a masterpiece of seventies pulp horror.

www.amazon.co.uk/review/R30OS1TULLYSS7/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

[dem]

Craig's review, copied over from the Latest Finds thread:

Killer Crabs Guy. N. Smith
On the top deck of the old German book shop and priced at a nifty 1-50 Euro. Went through a bit of agonising when I laid it down somewhere while browsing around and then had to relocate it by sensory perception.

I think Dem said something like - we love these books because of the good and the bad. This is my first Mr Smith and I have to say he rocks.

The sex scenes are a mix of Confessions of a Window Cleaner and Hustler - late 70's. There are large moments where one is happily being swallowed into the tale and then you sit up and say - its big Crabs he's talking about here?

However, the violence is short and nasty and page 86-7 has a mindbogglingly brilliant psychological portrayal of a drunken wreck going slowly mad. This description would easily fit into so called literature and swept me away with its accuracy and ...well...it was just brilliant.

Not finished it yet but I have a feeling that some of the characters should have stayed in bed.

****************

... and one i just found on Vault Mk I ....

Way back at the start of this thread FM did such a job on Killer Crabs that its difficult to find anything to add. The crustaceans are more indestructible than ever this time - rockets won't dent their impregnable armour plated shells and they only need a couple of paragraphs to take out a Destroyer - so Prof. Davenport, Klin, Harvey Logan the big game hunter and assorted helpers/ hindrances have their work cut out. Suffice to say that whenever the crabs are stage centre the novel is at its best; when they're not trashing boats - they hate boats and ships above all else - or slicing and dicing shrieking victims with their massive pincers, there's always ...

The sub-plot. This provides GNS with plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his way with sleaze and he goes about the task with obscene relish. For starters, that Caroline du Brunner is no better than she should be: "She glanced down at his thighs and legs hidden by the white cotton trousers, idly looking for the first sign of a protrusion behind the zip." Believe you me, "idly looking" is putting quite a gloss on it - her eyes hang out on stalks every time any one of several hundred potential suitors breaks into her room. Much to her disappointment, Logan may have a huge weapon or two but he's useless between the sheets, so she's torn between rapist-by-any-other-name Klin and bank-robber Manton who has a suitcase stuffed with cash to add to his other attributes. As said suitcase changes hands on a frequent basis, so Caroline changes sexual partners, and even then she's not satisfied. Such is her devotion to pleasure that she has to be, uh, dragged away from herself when the crabs launch their impressive attack on the Royal Hayman hotel (There's a great bit where the King Crab hauls his bulk up the stairs and searches the complex floor by floor for anybody stupid or unfortunate enough not to have made a run for it).

Not quite in the same something-to-offend-everyone league as the Splatterpunks, but you can't fault him for trying.

Thanks Steve!

[Craig Herbertson]

Thanks dem.

I finished the rest in about twenty satisfying minutes. Questions kept rebounding in my head.

There was obvious talent in the writing, at times you were utterly swept along: descriptions of guns, fighting, sea beds, mango groves were all rather good. Most importantly, characters were at times utterly believable and well drawn, at times quite wonderfully drawn. But even a few days after, and several MR James stories and a couple of hack SF books into senility, I am still getting certain jarring images in my head.

One is- a giant crab being hit by naval shells and not falling over at least, yet still dying when it gets shot in the eye by a gun.

Another is malevolent crabs leering at people.

There's also a little quiz show in my head over totally believable episodes like - the hero getting a hard-on on the helicopter and hoping nobody notices. This is so realistic but almost entirely unnecessary one feels. Then the heroine just being uninterestingly killed when it looked like there was scope for drama.

At times there were disturbing changes of mood. The protagonists find they are trapped on an island with monsters and face certain death. So they laugh and gather wood for a fire. It's the insouciant laugh that jars.

All in all unforgettable.