Reviewing the "Rewind or Die" Series: Books 1 and 2

 

In my ears the new year's fireworks were a starting signal for a project I have been longingly waiting for the last few months: the opportunity to read and review the complete “Rewind or Die” series for the Otherland Newsletter; a sum total of 23 retro-horror paperbacks (I recently realized that the series isn't even complete yet, so it's still counting!) inspired by 70s, 80s and 90s horror movies. Ever since I first saw and read Cameron Roubique's Disco Deathtrap from this series I am dreaming about these colorful little books with amazing cover art and extremely over the top storylines. Tongue-in-cheek, bizarro, absurd, gore-splatter, wild ride or pulpy are terms that come to mind describing this incredibly fun series that I will happily read and discuss for you guys in the near future.

Recycling alarm - before you all jump on me; yes, I have already reviewed the first book and published it here among the short reviews last month, so sorry for that. To my defense, only recently did I decide to collect these reviews in their own column and it will only happen this once. On a last note, the Rewind or Die books are availabe at the Otherland Bookstore, of course, they will even send it home to you if you can't or don't want to leave home. Just drop them a line if you live in Germany.

Let's get started then!

Imagine your local movie rental store back in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s - remember all those fantastic covers. Remember taking those movies home and watching in awe as the stories unfolded in nasty rainbows of gore, remember the atmosphere and textures. Remember the blood.

Midnight Exhibit Vol. 1 ed. by Eddie Generous 

WHEN THE RIDE ENDS

SO DOES YOUR LIFE  

Midnight Exhibit Vol. 1 is the book equivalent of 70s and 80s horror anthology movies, usually comprising a frame story, (mostly) three or four thematically connected creepy short movies and a frame story-related epilogue that will give you the shocks. I adore those! The Vault of Horror, Body Bags, Creepshow, Freakshow or The Trilogy of Terror are all films in that tradition that I could watch forever. So of course it was predetermined that I also adore Midnight Exhibit Volume 1 – “a throwback anthology for a new decade” which is at the same time the inaugural work to the "Rewind or Die" series.

In the frame story a middle-aged, upper-crust couple, Eleonore and Tobias, are involved in a car crash on their way home from a party and are offered a ride by the tow truck driver, who looks like the trucker baby of Frankenstein’s monster and Donald Trump (For better visualization: it’s his portrait on the cover.) Too entangled in their marital conflicts, Eleonore and Tobias don’t really realize there’s something not quite right about the situation they’re in and keep on fighting throughout the ride, only interrupted by the driver who every now and then grabs the chance to cut in on their quarrels when hearing certain tag words and starts telling a story revolving around that word. So we get three short stories that gradually augment in intensity and weirdness starting with "Too Little Too Late" the story of a malevolent giant chatterbox (love it!!!) written by Stephen Graham Jones, followed by "Another Pretty Face" by Renée Miller - a veritable macho dystopia paired with Groundhog Day - and finally ending with a very freaky story by Philip Fracassi, "My Love, Do Not Wake" which is about a woman who starts an affair with a man who seems to develop a face on the backside of her husband's head and eventually materializes on his backside. I loved all of them but this last story seriously takes the cake, it is so genuinely revolting I can’t even think about knowing where to start on how to describe my feelings about it. Best is, of course, you read it yourself. I was smitten and honestly find that the only flaw of this anthology is that it's very short and I could have read on and on and on...

 

Infested by Carol Gore
TO THEM YOU’RE FOOD

Number two of the adorably vintage horror series is the kooky little novella Infested by Carol Gore - and I really do hope that that is her real name. The title and the author’s name say it all: this is a bug-and-vermin-infested, buzzing, bloody, glibbery gore-fest with ecological undertones, and I love it.
The Green Swamp Campground has a problem. A literally big one. More and more camp visitors are being attacked and sucked dry, eaten alive or bitten to death by horseflies, mosquitos and bugs who lately have taken gigantic dimensions and grew to five to six times their normal size. Manager Casey Lovitt is determined to solve the problem with the help of her long-time crush, entomologist Dr. Phillip Edwards, but is hindered by the town’s police as well as her own boss, the camp owner Mr. White. Is mayhem avoidable? Will Casey succeed?

Surely this is not meant to be a literary masterpiece and it is very purposefully a bit silly, which is the point and the charm of it, to be honest. Mainly because I learned a lot about insects that I loved reading it, and I'm using reading lightly here, you can swallow this easily in the course of an evening. With precious tactics on how to survive giant insect attacks, Infested promised a much more applicable range of information contrary to the knowledge I acquire from books I usually read. Besides knowing how to fight dinosaurs with magic kungfu in the Cretaceous era; being able to distinguish the requirements, paradoxes and possibilites of time travel just in case or starting to seriously worry if I ever dreamt of great Cyclopean cities of titanic blocks and sky-flung monoliths, I now know to better run for my life should I encounter a gigantic wheel bug some day, because I possess the knowledge of how they inject into their prey an enzyme that will liquify their insides, so they can drink them like a cocktail on a summer’s day. I learned that and a lot more about insects and their hunting and neutralizing methods.

I also greatly enjoyed Gore’s use of shocking imagery reminiscent of the finest B-movies (e.g. “Her eyeballs were nothing more than frothy slime like melted toothpaste oozing from the tube.”) and her subtle sense of humor that permeates the whole story. Infested doesn’t even pretend that in the end the real monster is man – it presupposes that he is!
Next time you too feel like baffling yourself with exploitation clichés, grab for “Infested”, it is as educational as it is entertaining. The book itself may not be giant-sized, but the bugs, the story and the fun sure are.