Post by Bartwald on May 5, 2004 15:28:19 GMT -5
Guy N. Smith [glow=red,2,300]Night Of The Crabs[/glow] (1976) *1/2
The idea of giant crabs attacking people does appeal to me, but I'd rather they had more encounters with single unarmed humans instead of being put against tanks and soldiers (maybe because the crabs crawling steady towards the tanks firing at them is a bit too much to swallow?).
Obviously then, I liked the beginning of this book most: two unfortunate guys travel to some Welsh island and mysteriously disappear. An uncle of one of them travels to the locations they were last seen on and very soon he sees a) traces of giant crabs, b) the giant crabs themselves, c) a sexy young woman he can have gratuitous sex with when the crabs have a break in their eating schedule. It's Guy N. Smith, people, so saying things happen FAST ain't enough: sex, blood, silly small talk, blood, sex, blood, more blood... soon you don't even know how long the poor uncle has already been staying on the island. Fast, well, I have no problem with fast. That is, unless there's still some place for SUSPENSE somewhere and Guy seems to be having major problem with this - the only recognisable moment of suspense is when the main character dives deep to find the hiding place of the crabs and is trapped there with his oxygen running lower every minute. The rest is just action and blood with the supporting characters being nothing else than raw meat for the crabs.
Also, Guy N. Smith sports huge amounts of his usual wickedness of logic in this book (his first one) and some of his descriptions are laugh-out-loud. Which is not always bad, of course - if we like cheesy horror movies why not like some cheese in our horror books? Anyway, I couldn't resist noting down some good examples of Mr Smith's style as shown in Night Of The Crabs, here they are:
When spotting one of the crabs in the morning mist a character thinks:
'Christ! That was no cow. A cow is smaller than that. And the shape's different, too.'
In a moment of desperation one of the characters says:
'If we don't use the nuclear weapon against then I don't have any other ideas. And probably even this they would survive!'
When the two main characters spot the man-eating crabs on the beach, one of them says:
'Come. We'd better get going. It wouldn't be good to fall asleep here, with all those creatures wandering around'.
And a nice example of logic-lapse in an underwater scene when a diver is sent to look for the main character, Cliff:
'He was swimming much faster than Cliff. He didn't have to search for crabs, after all. His task was to find a man'.
Mind you - the crabs were the cow-size on average and there were hundreds of them underwater!
And a cool sentence pronounced by Cliff, the professor of biology, that nicely sums up the story we have to deal with here:
'The crab king was waiting for this. He's the most cunning enemy the humanity ever stood against.'
Usually it's much easier to enjoy B-movies than B-books because they don't take so much of our time. Smith, though, being one of the most cunning writers of the horror genre made it easy for us to enjoy his bloody books - he made them even shorter than a normal 80-minutes long trash horror movie; Stephen King wouldn't even call most of Smith's books novellas as they seem to be shorter than many of King's short stories (The Mist, for one). And I've no problem with that, no - let'em be short, but - for godsakes! - they have to have at least SOME tension in them! And more than just ONE likeable character! And none of that military mumbo-jumbo, dammit!
OK, I'm calm now. I didn't like this book too much although it made me smile many times and it made me plan a reading marathon through all the rest of the Crab books (there are five more). It's Guy's first book so here's naive hoping he got better after this one.
Note: the excerpts are taken from the Polish translation of the book, so if any of these scenes makes more sense in original - let me know!
The idea of giant crabs attacking people does appeal to me, but I'd rather they had more encounters with single unarmed humans instead of being put against tanks and soldiers (maybe because the crabs crawling steady towards the tanks firing at them is a bit too much to swallow?).
Obviously then, I liked the beginning of this book most: two unfortunate guys travel to some Welsh island and mysteriously disappear. An uncle of one of them travels to the locations they were last seen on and very soon he sees a) traces of giant crabs, b) the giant crabs themselves, c) a sexy young woman he can have gratuitous sex with when the crabs have a break in their eating schedule. It's Guy N. Smith, people, so saying things happen FAST ain't enough: sex, blood, silly small talk, blood, sex, blood, more blood... soon you don't even know how long the poor uncle has already been staying on the island. Fast, well, I have no problem with fast. That is, unless there's still some place for SUSPENSE somewhere and Guy seems to be having major problem with this - the only recognisable moment of suspense is when the main character dives deep to find the hiding place of the crabs and is trapped there with his oxygen running lower every minute. The rest is just action and blood with the supporting characters being nothing else than raw meat for the crabs.
Also, Guy N. Smith sports huge amounts of his usual wickedness of logic in this book (his first one) and some of his descriptions are laugh-out-loud. Which is not always bad, of course - if we like cheesy horror movies why not like some cheese in our horror books? Anyway, I couldn't resist noting down some good examples of Mr Smith's style as shown in Night Of The Crabs, here they are:
When spotting one of the crabs in the morning mist a character thinks:
'Christ! That was no cow. A cow is smaller than that. And the shape's different, too.'
In a moment of desperation one of the characters says:
'If we don't use the nuclear weapon against then I don't have any other ideas. And probably even this they would survive!'
When the two main characters spot the man-eating crabs on the beach, one of them says:
'Come. We'd better get going. It wouldn't be good to fall asleep here, with all those creatures wandering around'.
And a nice example of logic-lapse in an underwater scene when a diver is sent to look for the main character, Cliff:
'He was swimming much faster than Cliff. He didn't have to search for crabs, after all. His task was to find a man'.
Mind you - the crabs were the cow-size on average and there were hundreds of them underwater!
And a cool sentence pronounced by Cliff, the professor of biology, that nicely sums up the story we have to deal with here:
'The crab king was waiting for this. He's the most cunning enemy the humanity ever stood against.'
Usually it's much easier to enjoy B-movies than B-books because they don't take so much of our time. Smith, though, being one of the most cunning writers of the horror genre made it easy for us to enjoy his bloody books - he made them even shorter than a normal 80-minutes long trash horror movie; Stephen King wouldn't even call most of Smith's books novellas as they seem to be shorter than many of King's short stories (The Mist, for one). And I've no problem with that, no - let'em be short, but - for godsakes! - they have to have at least SOME tension in them! And more than just ONE likeable character! And none of that military mumbo-jumbo, dammit!
OK, I'm calm now. I didn't like this book too much although it made me smile many times and it made me plan a reading marathon through all the rest of the Crab books (there are five more). It's Guy's first book so here's naive hoping he got better after this one.
Note: the excerpts are taken from the Polish translation of the book, so if any of these scenes makes more sense in original - let me know!