The Woods Are Dark

The Woods are Dark opens with a bang. Two girls motoring their way to Yosemite in an MG slam on the brakes when something crawls out of the woods This monster turns and throws a severed hand into the car. Wow! Unfortunately Laymon immediately blows it. The girls take panicky flight down the road to the next town. Once there do they search out the police? No, they go to a diner and eat burgers while laughing over the onion breath they'll have. This is Richard Laymon folks. If you want rationality you are in the wrong place.

This is Laymon’s take on the ‘City folks go into the woods where Bad Things happen’ horror sub-genre (see Jack Ketchum’s Off Season and Ed Lee’s The Backwoods for other examples). I’m a sucker for this type show more of story so I have probably given this book a higher rating than it otherwise deserves.

In all honesty, the short version of this review would read ‘This is not a very good book’. All of Laymon’s worst predilections are on display here. The characters don’t react in any rational way to the situations they find themselves in. They decide that when being chased through the woods by bloodthirsty, murderous cannibals, a good idea is to get nude and stay that way. Really, the characters aren’t even characters. Except for a guy named Lander Dills, they don’t have any sort of individuality to them. The plotting gives the feeling that Laymon was making it up on the fly. Important plot elements are either unexplained or under explained. At least I only counted the word ‘rump’ five or six times.

So yeah, The Woods are Dark really is crap. But damned if it doesn't grab my attention anyway. At 250 pages I would have finished the book in a single read if life didn't intrude. The book managed to hook me. Richard Laymon was in many ways not a very good writer, but he was a master of breathless pacing and The Woods are Dark is Laymon firing on all cylinders. The characters' lives are constantly teetering on the edge. Unlike a lot of writers, Laymon won’t blink at bumping of a major character two thirds of the way through the book, so you never know what is going to happen next. I tore through the book, wanting to see what would happen.

It's sort of like the book version of one of those bad '80's slasher movies (a Dario Argento movie for instance) that really are terrible, but are fun if you have a taste for that sort of thing. show less

Laymon rewrites Ketchum's [b:Off Season|179734|Off Season|Jack Ketchum|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1321733068s/179734.jpg|584847] as a comedy porno and it's a rocking good time.
Read the whole book in about 3 hours. Very much like watching a crazy batshit insane horror movie. Really not so much horror as pure insanity. This book might be the original "Wrong Turn" as it's very much in a similar vein and tone, and even though an earlier work it's still full of Laymon's signature WTF delights.
Loved it, and highly recommend that if you haven't read it yet, get it - check your brain at the door and run screaming naked through the woods for a few hours with this one.
Make sure it's the restored and uncut version - can't show more imagine this book any other way. show less

"The woods are dark" and bears shit in them. That was my first thought when I read the title to this book. I picked this up mostly to look at different styles of horror writing. Several things struck me about this story. The ending was very poor. It gave the impression of being a book that is sold in airports, where the author has three hours to tell you a story then has to end mid-sentence because the plane is landing in Hawaii.

Ignoring the ending for a moment, the first thing I noticed was that all the women in this book were fondled, raped or generally eye candy thrown in for glamour value. I don't mind reading about all that in context, but it did strike me as a strange approach to take. The language itself - which is mostly what I show more was looking at - was pretty good. There were concise descriptions and parts where I said to myself "Yes, I need to learn how to do that." and there were places where I thought "Has an editor actually read this bit?" In general the language and style wandered from excellent to corny and back again. One of the first scenes is a good example of this, it starts out really well, and frightened the hell out of me, then a moment later it became ridiculous and I laughed out loud. It wasn't supposed to be funny.

The story itself flew along at a good pace. It was entertaining in a rapid-fire, air-flight-entertainment, type of way. The start of the book was frightening, then afterwards it wasn't anymore. It's still a good book but it lacks the finesse of Dean Koontz's flowing prose and seems a bit random at times. show less

While not as complex as some of his latter books, THE WOODS ARE DARK is still an extremely strong novel with a rawness to it that makes for excellent reading. I found out afterwards that the edition I read was actually a reissue of Laymon's second horror novel. The only difference that makes is the previously mentioned rawness that permeates the novel.

The action starts from the first page and comes at you fast and heavy. Three groups of people are attacked by the cannibalistic forest-dwelling family called the Krulls. For centuries, the local town has provided them waylaid travelers as food and breeding mates. The three groups (hikers, a vacationing family and a local) deal with the attacks differently and try to survive as best they show more can.

This is where Laymon is his best. His characters are reduced to their base core, surviving on instincts and reverting to carnal and violent desires. The book is savage and violent and not something that portrays humans in their best light. But hey, maybe this is the best when you find yourself attacked by cannibalistic humanoid forest dwellers. show less

Good ol Richard. Oh how I love thee. I've not read much of Richard Laymon so far but I intend to put that right as soon as possible. He reminds me very much of a well loved old slasher movie, or the best of Hammer Horror as seen through a few decades of rose-tinted nostalgia.

This version was put together by his daughter from his original writings after the original publisher messed up the editing when it was first published. I've not seen the original version but absolutely loved this one. It's not overly original at first glance, being a kind of Hills Have Eyes type of story, but it certainly does manage to surprise as the story moves on and has some very nice little twists and touches that I didn't expect. The main characters are show more portrayed quite well, or at least, well enough anyway, and I'd heartily recommend this to anyone who either wants to try some Richard Laymon or who has a weird love for old, atmospheric slasher movies. The sex isn't actually nearly as graphic as I'd thought it was going to be and somehow even the violence isn't up there with some of the more modern novels you get these days, so it fits right in with that classic slasher feel.

Anyway, very good read. Highly recommended. show less

I read "The Woods Are Dark" sometime back in the '90s and vividly remember how intense and visceral the book was. It was my first foray into the world of Richard Laymon and lead me down a path of spending many hours reading the novels of this horror master over the past two decades. I haven't been disappointed by many of Laymon's books and that is particularly true with this novel. This copy of the novel, by the way, is the unedited version of the book written prior to its original 1981 publishing.

"The Woods Are Dark" grabs the reader from the first page as Laymon plunges his characters into an unknown world inhabited by inbreeds known as the Krulls. You see, the good people of the nearby town of Barlow understand that in order for the show more cannibalistic Krulls to leave them alone, they must supply the creatures with a steady supply of unsuspecting travelers. It a murderous symbiotic relationship.

Laymon's story revolves around the kidnapping of two different groups of travelers who are subsequently offered to the Krulls. Once dropped into the woods, each group is able to fend off the Krulls in various ways and then spend the bulk of the book fighting for their lives. Laymon's standard formula of copious amounts of gore, sexual encounters, and interesting characters is present in spades, in this, one of his first novels.

Laymon fans more than likely have read "The Woods Are Dark" early in their encounters with his work, but for those new to Laymon's style of horror, this book is a definite read. show less

Umm... WTF did I just read here?!? Man, this guy needs his head examined.
Basic storyline of this rag:
Man: "Holy shit, we're being chased by a bunch of wacko crazy inbred rednecks and they want to eat us!"
Woman: "Let's hide in this shack... wanna have sex?!?"
Man: "OK sure"
While civilized man-turned Tarzan discovers his "manhood" with said wacko crazy inbred rednecks" whilst sprouting passages from William Shakespeare and singing along in the forest like he's Tom fucking Bombadil!!!
The only reason why I gave it more than one star is because this would have been such an awesome story if he didn't ruin it with all the carnal lust and ridiculous B-porn crap. What a waste.
Turn away true readers, nothing to look at here.