Guy N. Smith (1939–2020)

The core idea is solid: something is wrong in the coastal ecosystem, and crabs have become the vector for horror. At a smaller scale, this could have worked as a nasty, grounded creature feature. Unfortunately, the book immediately undermines itself by inflating the crabs to absurd proportions—cow-sized, then larger—at which point biology, physics, and even internal logic quietly leave the story.

Most characters exist only as scenery. People appear, react minimally, die, and vanish with show more little emotional or narrative consequence. The beach feels populated only when the plot needs bodies, otherwise behaving like an empty stage. This makes the danger feel abstract rather than urgent.

Cliff, the supposed marine biologist, is especially frustrating. He never documents evidence (no camera, no systematic observation), ignores basic scientific and safety procedures, and reacts with irritation or hostility when others don’t immediately defer to him. His authority is asserted, not earned. As the novel progresses, the world increasingly bends to validate his instincts rather than challenge them.

Pat exists almost entirely as a narrative convenience: a divorced woman on a break whose primary function is sexual availability and emotional validation. Her presence coincides with Cliff’s disengagement from inquiry, as though pairing off replaces curiosity or responsibility.

Much of the book is unintentionally funny—giant crabs lifting impossible objects, shrugging off fire, being hurled by trains, and finally reduced by weed killer—but that humor curdles as the story insists on taking itself seriously. By the end, the novel leans into a “Cliff is always right, the world is wrong” posture, culminating in a final gesture of incuriosity that retroactively empties the plot of meaning.

In the end, Night of the Killer Crabs isn’t bad because it’s pulpy. It’s bad because it refuses to choose what kind of pulp it wants to be. It gestures at science, authority, and cosmic menace, but resolves nothing, learns nothing, and asks the reader to mistake ignorance for wisdom.

A solid premise, squandered by escalation without rules and characters without consequence. show less

Claws its way up from two to three stars on the strength of self parody alone. A truly awful novella who's vintage gore and soft core porn give it the air of crude naivety today. I can't believe it was thought good even in its own time. The sort of book that would have gotten you in trouble if your mom found it under your mattress. The kind of thing you passed around at camp until the cover fell off and the corners were all blunted.

God only knows why I keep doing this to myself. This is the third Guy N Smith book I’ve reviewed for Carry on Screaming and it’s probably the worst. The first Crabs book was bad but kind of fun, the second was less entertaining but at least had giant crabs. If you’ve ever read Smith, then you know what you’re going to get from his books. He is, at least, dependable. Dependably bad. What he isn’t is a particularly good horror writer. Or a good writer full stop.
‘Bloodshow’ is no show more exception. It plays very much like an episode of Scooby Doo, only with more gore and less wit and intelligence. A newly married couple, the groom a horror fan, spend their honeymoon in a remote Scottish hotel attached to a castle with a dark past. The venue is horror-themed, with grisly waxworks with dotted about it. Naturally, before too long people start dying horribly and it appears that the waxworks are responsible.
I’m not sure I could tell you the answer to the mystery of how the murders are happening. By the time it was revealed I’d lost whatever interest in the plot I might have had at the start. The setup is hokey, the characters are paper thin and the writing is weak. Obviously, the normal rules of literary criticism shouldn’t really apply to a book like this. No-one is going to pick it up expecting great literature, but there were so many other writers in the 80s who did this kind of pulp horror so much better than Smith that it’s hard to see how he managed to make a career for himself. I suspect the answer is simply endurance. He has written a lot of books (getting on for 100 if my count is correct) and the combination of the 80s horror revival and the ease of publishing in the modern world means he is still has books coming out in 2020.
To be fair to him, and to ‘Bloodshow’, the horror scenes are okay in a cheap and nasty kind of a way. The plot allows Smith to include a variety of monsters – vampire, werewolf, cannibal, torturer – and he makes the most of them, mixing up the gore as he goes along. The problem is that it never really feels like he’s enjoying himself. Compared to someone like Shaun Huston who usually seems to be either having a blast or getting some serious shit off his chest, Smith’s books too often feel like they were written to make a quick buck. show less

I rarely make New Year's resolutions because I know how bad I am at keeping any of them, unless they're things like “breathe everyday” or “procrastinate when you get around to it”. This year, though, I decided to try anyway. My resolution was to read more non-fiction books. Specifically to read more non-fiction than fiction. My fiction to non-fiction ratio is usually about 80% to 20%, so this won't be a trivial one to keep. On the other hand I do love learning new things so hopefully show more it won't be too difficult.

Of course, as Jesus said to the Devil, man cannot live by non-fiction alone. So having managed about seven weeks without reading any fiction, what made-up masterpiece did I choose to indulge in? Well obviously there was only one choice: The Slime Beast. I mean, sweet monkey Tuesdays just look at it!

I picked the book up (literally and figuratively) having spied it lying on the ground in the excellent second-hand bookshop in St Nick's Market in Bristol. The title, cover, and £1 price tag pretty much convinced me to buy it, and the blurb, which read like a précis to the world's most hackneyed B-movie, sealed the deal.

But there was more to come. Having got the book home I flicked through the opening pages and discovered more hidden gems. I'm not sure how long the book had been languishing in the shop, but an inventory note left inside the front cover revealed the book had been there since at least 2008. The nearby scribbled out price of 15p suggests it was probably there long before that. I can only assume it had been hidden for most of that time or someone would surely have picked it up.

Next came the list of Guy Smith's other novels, all of which sound like either magnificent monsterporn or parables on venereal diseases.

Next, and still not at the story, came the dedication: To MBS – memories of many wildfowling trips to the Wash. So here's the thing, the blurb mentions some archaeologists searching for King John's treasures in the east coast marshes. Reading this in the bookshop I assumed it meant the east coast of the US. I can only blame a lack of sleep for this, because obviously it meant the east coast of the UK. For one thing King John's lost jewels are not going to be found floating off the US coast. And for another thing I grew up around the marshes of the east coast. But apparently my brain was too tired to connect these dots. Only when I saw Guy Smith mention the Wash explicitly did it all finally click.

With so much excitement before I even reached page one, how could the story possibly hope to compete? Was it as good as the hype in my head had suggested? Well by golly gosh with a cherry on top, fuck yeah it was.

Think of every B-movie trope and cliché you can. This book has them all raised to the power of eleven. The main characters aren't really characters so much as they're walking exposition dumps with the obligatory personality traits demanded by the genre. There's The Stud. (I don't remember the characters' names, despite finishing the book a matter of hours ago. It's that kind of book.) The Stud is a twenty-something archaeologist. Or we're told he is. He spends a few hours digging during the first chapter, doesn't find anything, and is ready to give up and head back to London. Methinks he's in the wrong profession.

Next is The Babe. She's a twenty-year-old college student and would rather be off tanning her “beautifully proportioned body” than digging up jewels in the marshes. Also she's a virgin, which is apparently important. Or rather she's a virgin in chapter one. By chapter two she and The Stud are totes in love and busy skoodilypooping at every opportunity. Been a long day? Time for skoodilypooping! Attacked by a monster? Time for skoodilypooping! Nearly been raped only for the rapist to be horribly killed in front of you? Time for skoodilypooping! Lest you think she's only in the novel for titillation and exploitation you should know this book is from the seventies and her progressive attitudes highlight this. I mean, she tries to get pregnant with The Stud's baby the third day they've known each other (“Give it to me properly, like every woman wants her man!” she says, maybe even with a straight face). But she doesn't think about marriage until the fourth day they've known each other.

Completing the triumvirate is The Professor. He's also an archaeologist, leading this enormous three-person expedition to find King John's crown jewels. You can tell he's a proper scientist because he hates everyone. You can also tell he's batshit insane because just after finding the hibernating eponymous Slime Beast he decides he'll have to straight up murder his colleague The Stud and niece The Babe so he can claim the Beast's mysterious Power for himself. Since the Beast's main superpower seems to be making everyone around it vomit continuously I'm not sure what he's referring to. Oho, no, wait, sorry, I accidentally started thinking logically there for a moment. Won't happen again!

Logic isn't really in abundance anywhere in the story. At one point The Stud and The Babe drive several miles to the local pub to relax. They stay for about three lines of dialogue then figure that's enough relaxing and drive all the way back to the marshes. I'm not sure they even get a chance to sit down. After the beast's first grisly murder of a local bird watcher the pub landlord proclaims to his customers that it's all the fault of those damn out-of-towners, and that the killings won't stop until the locals do something. Something like kill all the out-of-towners. Fortunately this is 1970s Lincolnshire where that kind of thing wouldn't happen; it's not some backward hick paradise like 1950s Lincolnshire. Just kidding! A torch-bearing farmyard-equipment-wielding mob turns up later to murder the menfolk and rape The Babe. One of the mob is so excited he gets a little confused about the proper order of things, rushing The Stud despite having “already pulled down his zip and exposed himself in eager anticipation.” Protip if you're ever in an angry mob with a penis: wait until you're safely back home before whipping it out.

The story may be bewildering, but the writing is incredible. As in I couldn't believe it. The first paragraph had me laughing out loud at how teeth-gnashingly dramatic it was trying to be. Later we're treated to powerful if nonsensical alliteration like “Slowly the silence came surging softly back.” A section told from the perspective of a flock of birds ends with the earnest statement that “It was apparent that this was no longer the domain of the pinkfoot goose.” Some of the dialogue deserves multiple readings, if only to see if it parses properly on any of them. The Stud's philosophical musing that “Too many people have died as an indirect cause of our excavations” had me nodding sagely before I realised I didn't have the faintest idea what the hell he was talking about. Did he mean consequence rather than cause? Or was he saying like, you know, aren't we all excavating indirectly because of our deaths? Deep, man.

Everyone knows the “B” in B-movies stands for “Bloody hell this is awful.” But a true artist makes something so awful that it wraps all the way around and becomes great again. The Slime Beast certainly does that. In fact once it reaches greatness it still has plenty of bad left over, enough to sink back down to awfulness, and still keep going, completing a second orbit and finally exhausting itself back among the greats. The normal rules don't apply to it. Even Mr Grumble would like it, and he barely likes anything.

What? No, Mr Grumble! I was sure that even you would enjoy yourself with this one!

Oh, Mr Grumble! You're such a cad.

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P.S. No doubt you're sat there saying “To hell with The Slime Beast, is Night of the Crabs as amazing as it sounds?” Well based on the advert at the end of the book, I'm going to guess that yes, yes it is.

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