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Post by franklinmarsh on Oct 19, 2007 20:36:41 GMT
Slugs - Shaun Hutson. First published in Great Britain by WH Allen & Co Ltd 1982. Sphere 1990. "They slime, they ooze, they kill... One female slug can lay one and half million eggs a year - a fact which holds terrifying consequences for the people of Merton. As the town basks in the summer heat, a new breed of slug is growing and multiplying. In the waist- high grass, in the dank,dark cellars they are acquiring new tastes, new cravings. For blood. For flesh. Human flesh..."
P. 129 - Foley nodded. 'Should we tell the police?' 'What the hell can they do? Arrest the damn things? Besides, if we went to them and said that there was a plague of killer slugs in the town they'd probably lock us up.' 'I wouldn't blame them, ' said Foley, sardonically.
There we have both the joy and despair of Hutson's entry into the Animal Attack genre. The premise is ludicrous, absurd and unbelievable. But slugs are so disgusting, Hutson moves the story along at 100 mph and its just so much revolting fun, who cares if its a load of cobblers. True to genre convention we start out with Ron Bell, loser extraordinaire. Boredom with his marriage led to some extra-curricular humping. Discovery led to his Mrs' departure. And even his floozie has bunked off. Ron hits the bottle, loses his job and is facing eviction from his by now dump of a house. The house is in such a state of disarray that Huzzah! an army of big black meat-eating slugs have been limbering up in the foul cellar. To cope with his problems Ron gets pissed and passes out in his living room. When he wakes up, he feels something damp on his chin and wonders if he'd puked. The something damp starts sliding into his mouth and he bites it in half. Yep! A career changing moment for SH as he discovers something he's good at and the reading public struggle to hold on to their latest meal. We're off in to reassuringly familiar territory as characters begin to be introduced, either to recoil in horror at slug traces or to suffer slimily horrible and gory deaths. Nominal hero Mike Brady, Merton Council's Health Inspector, is taking an age to notice somethings wrong with the local gastropods - but that's all the better for readers as the body count increases. At just over 200 pages this little charmer is the ideal length, and however tosh it seemed, it did rate a sequel - Breeding Ground - rated highly by Rip, no less.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 31, 2007 10:01:55 GMT
I still get people coming up to me saying 'are you the guy that wroteSlugs? Herbert's got the same problem. He's always going to be known for The Rats. Either one of us could win the Booker Prize, but we'd still be remembered for those books. But it doesn't matter, because as long as I'm remembered, that's OK with me. It would be nice, though, to be remembered for something with a more intricate plot than the gross-out of something like Erebus. Shaun Hutson talking to Jerry Ewing, The Return Of The Renegade, Terror #1, Jan. 1992. It's the "Either one of us could win the Booker Prize" bit that gets me. After Slugs, I went through quite a number of his novels - Erebus (If there's one book he's written that's ghastlier than Slugs, it has to be Erebus ... ), Assassin, Spawn (the walking abortions will inherit the earth if I remember correctly?), Shadows, Victims - it didn't matter. None of them had anything like the same insane power as Slugs. The rubber glove episode is one of the few moments in horror literature where I really didn't want to find out what was going to happen next, and the death of that likable bloke - from the sewage company, I think - who doesn't notice the slight tear in his protective clothing - eeeuw!
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Post by erebus on Feb 1, 2009 21:13:06 GMT
Could be my all time favourite book cover that. Added my views on this great author in the BREEDING GROUND thread.
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Post by lemming13 on May 10, 2011 13:12:05 GMT
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Post by Johnlprobert on May 10, 2011 21:22:22 GMT
Always did like this extraordinarily gross book. And last night I watched the movie with the younger spawn (I was worried about the sex scene but apparently the sex education classes at school are much more explicit, and the language substantially less obscene than the dinner hall - gore was never a problem for Mini-me). We had to pause the dvd several times so we could recover from the painful fits of laughter. From 'pervo slugs are watching humans screw' to the final shot - 'survivor slug WILL HAVE HIS REVENGE! Just very, very slowly...' - it was a huge barrel of fun. I was going to say they don't make 'em like that any more, but actually, we have watched Mega-Piranha quite recently... I saw the world premiere of Slugs - The Movie at the Scala cinema in London and it brought the house down! Shaun Hutson was, I think, speechless. But he should have known what he was in for seeing as director Juan-Piquer Simon also directed the similarly delirious 'Pieces' for Dick Randall!
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Post by erebus on May 11, 2011 8:50:32 GMT
Ahhh Pieces, a trash classic. Worth a watch just for the scene were the killer enters the lift with a chainsaw hidden behind his back. The victim oblivious.
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Post by lemming13 on May 11, 2011 9:53:26 GMT
I had forgotten that one - another one added to the list! At least once the youngest and I have finished trawling through the B Movie Collection. Last night was Rats, with Ron Perlman, which was surprisingly good despite cruddy CGI work and the odd outbreak of pure daft. Why she refused Elvira, I don't know, but looks like we're on for either Creature or Return of the Killer Tomatoes tonight...
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