Horror World Reviews RED & NECROTICA
Once upon a time, there was a British speculative writer named Paul Kane, who was well respected in the United Kingdom with his short story collections such as Alone (In the Dark), FunnyBones (one of my personal favorites) or his novellas Signs of Life, The Lazarus Condition and his novel The Afterblight Chronicles: Arrowhead — getting praise from such giants of the genre in England as Clive Barker, Simon Clark, Jeff Mariotte and Graham Masterton.
Then one day, Kane wrote a devilish little novella named Red and decided to get it published across the pond, in a faraway land called America, with the maverick small press publishers Skullvine Press. He even dared to do a retelling of the popular Grimm Brothers fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood” (you know the yarn – “grandma what big eyes you got” “the better to see you with,” “grandma what teeth you got…”) but this time around puts a twisted horror spin to it, with even a fair amount of social criticism thrown in for good measure; due to mature themes, you’ll want to keep the kids away from this one.
Red is a tale about Rachael Daniels, a caseworker traveling through the modern jungle – a crime-ridden, gang-banging city, to help an elderly lady. Red not only tips it hat to “Little Red Riding Hood,” but “Peter And The Wolf,” and “Whose Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf” and every werewolf type motif in between. The novella is bloody brilliant — clever, classy and bound to chill you to the bone. Kane does an incredible job of combing horror and humor into one tasty morsel.
- Michael McCarty
Necrotica, by Hallam Heathcoat; Skullvines Press; www.skullvines.com ; 152 pgs; $17.95
If Edger Allan Poe or The Brothers Grim were inclined to insert pornography into their short fiction or fables, I would think that the results would be a lot like the stories in Necrotica. The thirteen short stories in this release are for the most part a mixture of fairy tales and turn of the century horror tales but with some of the most explicit sexual horror you could imagine. There’s even a blurb on the back cover stating the contents are “not suitable for children and most adults”. And a truer blurb has not been written.
I’ve read elsewhere that one of Ms. Heathcoat’s sources of inspiration is Ed Lee and it is very apparent in these extreme tales where every sexual taboo is assaulted head on and then embraced with a vengeance. As the title implies, characters have all kinds of sex with the dead, but in Heathcoat’s world, having sex with the dead is where the story should start. For instance, a young girl not only gives a blow job to her father, she can’t wait until she can do it again in Heathcoat’s story, Necrotica: A Fable of Lust. Heathcoat doesn’t leave bestiality out of the mix either. Remember Little Red Riding Hood? Well, getting eaten by the Big Bad Wolf takes on a whole new meaning in her story, Young Maiden Red.
Heathcoat doesn’t repeat herself in these stories as each one has something originally vile to offer the reader. In Severed, a young man falls under the spell of a disembodied female head. In Phallic, we discover that what’s in a young boy’s chest isn’t his heart, it’s his penis. We read about a young man who is homosexually assaulted by a dead man who ejaculates black semen into his mouth in Ménage a Trois. The story, When A Girl Dies shows us what nasty things can happen to a young lady when she passes away in the street (watch out for those strapping young school boys!). We also learn about a young boy lusting after his sister in Revenant: Curse of the Vampire. There’s more, but I think you get the drift.
Fans of Ed Lee’s extreme small press work should love Necrotica, and I bet they would think she has done the master proud.
- T. T. Zuma
