Slugs

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com: https://www.scifiandscary.com/slugs-review/

Confession time before we start. As a teenager, Shaun Hutson was my favourite British horror author. More than Herbert, who I found a bit ploddy at times, his books had a violent energy that really appealed to me. They’re blatantly ludicrous, but so efficiently written that it’s easy to forget that. Hutson never takes himself to seriously, despite the horribly dark themes he often ends up exploring, which gives the books an appealing, b-movie vibe. Hutson is, I would suggest, the Lucio Fulci to Herbert’s George Romero. Probably not objectively as good, but so entertaining and engaging that it’s hard to say for sure. Like Guy N Smith, show more whose books have featured in this column already, he wrote under a number of pseudonyms and in a number of genres. He published war stories and westerns, as well as penning a novelisation of the movie ‘The Terminator’. Director James Cameron supposedly disliked it so much that he refused to let it be published in the US, although it did make it onto UK shelves. It’s great.
Hutson did in fact claim to have been inspired to take up writing after reading Smith’s ‘Night of the Crabs’, saying that if a book that bad could get published he figured he might as well give it a go. He also claims that many of his books took no more than a weekend to write, which feels like it’s probably a credible statement. The common theme in all his work is lots of sex and violence. In a few months I’ll be discussing his infamous novel ‘Chainsaw Terror’, but this instalment focusses on his first book, ‘Slugs’.
That one-word title tells you everything you need to know really. It promises something horribly disgusting and Hutson delivers. The plot is very similar to ‘The Rats’, mutated creatures attack humans in a series of horrific vignettes and an everyman hero takes them on. In this case the hero is a health inspector, and the slugs are even more of an improbable monster than the rats. Hutson realises this and is wonderfully creative with the gore. He does include a few scenes where people fall and then can’t get up for some reason as the slugs slowly advance on them, but also gives them some other tricks. The titular creatures secrete slime that sends anyone who eats it homicidally insane, and infect anyone who accidentally swallows a slug with worms that then burst out of their faces.
It’s fair to say that the gore in this book is ramped up to 11 and it’s all the more fun for it. Hutson rarely lets more than a few pages pass without someone dying and he describes every death with a gleeful aplomb. There’s boatloads of sex too, which may go someway to explaining why I liked his books so much as a teenager. His penchant for the word “cleft” to describe the female anatomy does grate a little after a while, though.
This was a book I remembered fondly, and my reread of it for this review proved that memory to be correct. Measured by normal literary criteria it’s not a good book. The plot is bonkers, the characters are wafer thin and it lacks any real message. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a masterpiece. Vibrant, energetic, memorable and grimly inventive. I loved every oozing, bloody page.

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I first read this as a paperback way back in the mid 1980's (showing my age) and enjoyed it then as I was a big horror fan at the time. Seeing this released as an audiobook I couldn't resist as it meant I could listen while working and driving the work van.
The story itself is quite dated but still entertaining. The narration is excellent and adds to the story, the suspense and the overall enjoyment of this 40+ year old classic.

This has all the essential elements of true trash horror: Gratuitous sex scenes, several loose eyeballs, children biting their parents to death, and slugs devouring a scrotum.

Back to the 80s mit menschenfressenden Killersalatschnecken, inhaltlich und stilistisch schlicht aber sehr sehr blutig und schön schräg unterhaltsam. Im Prinzip der Weiße Hai mit Glibbermonstern, dafür ohne jeden Anflug von Niveau. Ab und zu darf das schon mal sein.

Don't really know what to say about this book.....?

A health inspector finds out that common garden slugs are mutating into maneaters, growing in both size and appetite.

The book reads almost as a number of small stories detailing various residents encounters, many of which end in a grisly death.

The book is a nice easy read with the first half actually quite promising as a 'B' movie style horror, but as the novel reaches it's climax you feel the author has ran out of ideas.

There is also a sequel called Breeding Ground, which i may look at if I ever get that bored....

La petite ville anglaise de Merton subit la progressive invasion d’une étrange race de limaces carnivores extrêmement voraces. Mike Brady, qui travail au service de l’hygiène, découvre petit à petit l’horrible vérité tandis que les morts se succèdent autour de lui et que les limaces se font de plus en plus nombreux… Un postulat extrêmement simple et prétexte à une accumulation de séquences bien crados, de l’horreur basique fonctionnant sur la répulsion naturelle de la plupart des gens pour les petites bêtes gluantes et l’idée d’insalubrité qu’elles entraînent. Simpliste et peu subtile. Efficace ? Oui car Hutson se lâche complètement et livre exactement ce à quoi on peut s’attendre avec une histoire show more pareille ! show less