Night of the Black Horror - Victor Norwood

[kooshmeister]

So after finally obtaining this from an Australian seller in a lot with five other Badger books, I can safely say that, yes, everything you've heard about this being a simultaneous ripoff of Joseph Payne Brennan's short story Slime expanded to novel length is 100% true.



But whereas Slime is a horror classic revered as one of the finest blob monster stories ever told, Night of the Black Horror is obscure garbage in its purest form. Norwood doesn't quite rip Brennan off word for word, but, up to a certain point, it really is just a lazy, rushed retelling of Slime, complete with all the same characters but given different names, but all done so without any finesse or sense of proportion, and, par for the course for the kind of crap we love on here, almost every single of the aforementioned characters differs from their short story counterparts in that they're loathsome assholes you want to see get killed.

So, the book begins with a rough and dirty retelling of the slime's origins. Despite looking like a tentacled brain thing on the cover, the thing, as described by Norwood, is pretty much exactly the same as it is in Brennan's short story, which is to say it's an amorphous, inky black blob with no permanent discernible shape. A terrifyingly efficient predator that rules the bottom of the sea, it is cast ashore in Booger's Swamp (!) near the crummy town of Horton's Crossing, which, like the (somewhat) classier Clinton Center of the source material is located... um... somewhere. About the only clue Brennan gave to Clinton Center's location was that it was in the US near Camp Evans. But here, I had no idea what English-speaking country Horton's Crossing was in until the law enforcement turned to be headed up by a sheriff. But even then, Norwood doesn't identify what county or what state. So... Anywhere, USA!

Anyway, the amorphous glob follows the path of its more illustrious predecessor by deciding to take up residence in the saltwater swamp and feasts on whatever animals it can get ahold of plus any humans who happen to cross its path. But right away a few differences rear their head. It doesn't seem like Norwood's monster, despite coming from so down deep in the ocean that light is an alien concept it, doesn't seem to share the almost vampiric aversion to light that Brennan's creature did, at least not that I noticed. Somehow I suspect it also won't be killed the same way Brennan's monster was.

So, first up is homeless man Nate Dooley. Whereas Henry Hossing was a sympathetic man who was known in Clinton Center, Nate is a jerk who's just passing through and is unfamiliar to the residents of Horton's Crossing. Like Henry, he obtains some money as soon as he awakens in the alley the morning after the storm, but he obtains it by robbing and killing the local druggist Tom Coffey. In Brennan's version the druggist is Jim Jelinson and is the only character to hear Henry's dying scream, so it's ironic that here his counterpart becomes the victim of the counterpart of the very man whose death he overheard. In Nate's he didn't intend to kill the guy, he just hit him a lot harder than he intended. He doesn't feel bad about it, exactly... but he at least avoids being a total sleaze-o by at least attempting to tend to the fatally wounded druggist, if only out of self-preservation; he doesn't want a murder charge hanging over him. Only when it's obvious Tom is a goner does Nate abandon attempting to revive his victim and drags him inside his house out of sight.

Don't worry, I won't dwell on every contrasting difference between the two stories, beyond noting one curious improvement over the original.

As noted, in both versions, it's a storm that dredges the monster up and washes it ashore. But in Slime, despite its ferocity, it really only merits a few token mentions from a few of the characters and seems to otherwise have no impact on Clinton Center or the surrounding coast. Here, the storm pretty much kicks the ever-loving crap out of Horton's Crossing, and was so unusually fearsome that Nate considers it an evil omen. He's proven correct when first his robbery attempt goes horribly wrong and results in his victim's accidental death, and then, of course, when he decides to go drink the booze he bought with his blood money in Booger's Swamp, he becomes the first human victim of the thing from the bottom of the sea that has taken up residence there.

So if nothing else, at least the storm that caused the whole thing isn't completely forgotten about after it's served its main purpose to the plot this time.

Meanwhile, we get introduced to a few other residents of Horton's Crossing. Rafe Corteen is a crabby farmer with chronic indigestion who lives near the swamp with his daughter Clara. And then there's Sheriff Brad Regan. But we'll get to them next time. Until then, I'll leave you with a little more details on the demise of our drunken derelict first victim. After boozing it up enough that he no longer feels something akin to remorse for killing Tom Coffey, Nate wonders what to do now. Once Tom is found, he knows the cops will be after him. He considers escaping through Booger's Swamp, but a lifelong fear of alligators and a weird, creepy premonition that somehow his dire, dire fate lies deep within that mucky expanse prevents him from entering it. Not that it matters, as the swamp comes to claim him all the same, as its newest resident decides to do some tentative exploring of the firmer ground at its edges, encountering the thoroughly stupefied Nate. He is dragged to a gooey, smothering fate to be eaten in the swamp's depths just like he feared...

[kooshmeister]

So, on to our next crop of victims--I mean well-rounded characters. To his credit, if nothing else, despite turning most of the residents of Clinton Center into the despicable hick horrors of Horton's Crossing who seem like they came straight out of Deliverance, Norwood, if nothing else, is making a conscious effort to make me believe that they could be real people. The late and unmourned Nate, for example. As I detailed earlier, the murder he commits is entirely accidental, and while he does earn his sticky demise by robbing the druggist once he's dead, he does actually make something resembling an effort to save his victim's life beforehand, if out of a selfish desire to avoid a murder charge. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing.

This attention to detail continues as we get introduced to the Gowse analogue, farmer Rafe Corteen. He's been given a daughter, Clara. Slime only had one female character of note. Clara Corteen represents the novel's first attempt at actually adding more in a manner that seems natural and not shoehorned in. So, despite this being pretty much a ripoff, it seems that Norwood is at least interested in telling an actual story, however clumsily thrown together using a preexisting framework. Anyway, she and her boozehound dad get up after sleeping late due to the storm to go tend to their hogs, only to find them mysteriously gone! We, the reader, know why; after nabbing Nate Dooley, the slime decided to explore a bit further outside of the swamp and upon coming across the Corteen farm, it couldn't resist the allure of pork. And so those little piggies went wee wee wee right into the bulk of the blob, end up as the thing's rather gluttonous dessert to its main course of Mr. Nate Dooley.

I gotta say, just as with Giles Gowse in the original Slime, the Corteens are lucky that the monster didn't venture further than the hog pens and get them while they were sleeping.

While Farmer Corteen and his daughter are scratching their heads over where their livestock went, we're introduced to county lawman Brad Regan, the sheriff. When Tom Coffey doesn't show up for work at the pharmacy, someone goes to check on him and, of course, finds him dead from a massive head wound. The motive is obvious, considering the amount of money stolen. The somewhat lethargic Regan isn't too inclined to go after the killer, reasoning, correctly if lazily, that he or she is someone who isn't local and has vamoosed and gotten far from Horton's Crossing by now. No sense plunging into the wood and swamp looking for them just now. Not this early, anyway.

Back at the Corteen property, the confusion over the missing hogs continues well into the evening. The Corteens pay a visit to Sheriff Regan, but he has more important things on his plate than missing pigs, like murdered druggists. Though one gets the impression he doesn't want to investigate either crime and is using the unsolved murder as an excuse not to find out what happened to the Corteen hogs. Father and daughter return home irritated as all get-out, mumblin' 'bout those dang do-nothing elected officials.

Weirdly, Rafe and Clara complain about all the excess mud (tracked in by the blob) and the bad stink (our monster's bad body odor; as in Slime, the thing stinks to high heaven) in the pen where they'd kept the missing animals, which is hilarious. The change from a cow isn't doing Night of the Black Horror any favors, the first such time a change is affecting the story negatively; pigs, being known for loving to roll in mud and prone to smelling bad if kept penned up so that they're forced to literally wallow in their own filth, are consequently messy and stinky when employed as farm animals, so seeing Farmer Corteen and his daughter get bent out of shape by the excess mud and slime and the bad smell is kinda strange. I mean, I get that it's a different kind of bad smell, alien, but still.

The farm next door is owned by the Gotch Brothers, Ben and Jake. Hmm. Seems Farmer Barnaby's been split into two characters, or, at least, given a new character as a family member to go along with his rename just like Gowse/Rafe has. Along with their dog Destry, the siblings pay an early morning visit to their neighbors. It's a friendly call. Unlike in Slime, there's no bad blood between the farmers; in fact, the Gotch Brothers are Rafe's frequent drinking buddies. Another subtle little change from Slime. Anyway, they haven't lost any animals, and apart from just stopping by on their way to do some huntin' in Booger's Swamp, they not much help in solving the Great Pig Heist of '61. The sum total of their contribution to their neighbors' investigative efforts is to suggest an alligator ate the missing hogs (!).

As night settles in, Ben and Jake head into the swamp with Destry. Both brothers are armed with hunting rifles and there's a full moon providing good visibility. But they don't end up any better then Rupert Barnaby did. Despite suddenly being overcome with an almost primal fear of they know not what in the presence of the ancient horror from the seafloor, the brothers are big, strong, tough farmers who are unaccustomed to such fear, and so their response to it, paradoxically, is to stand their ground and shoot at the onrushing cloak of slimy darkness rather than doing what Destry the dog does and run away. Two slurped up hunters later, and it looks like the Gotch farm will be up for sale in the near future.

After the Gotches get got(ched), Clara pays a visit to their farm the next day, and finds them MIA. Off drunk somewhere, she supposes. But Destry is there, and he is usually with his owners. Also, he's covered in mud and who-knows-what, and howling terribly as if something's got him scared. So Clara decides to get her father and the Sheriff...