FORGOTTEN BOOKS #443: PAPERBACKS FROM HELL: THE TWISTED HISTORY OF ’70S AND ’80s HORROR FICTION By Grady Hendrix


Remember those cool (and creepy!) horror paperbacks from the 1970s and 1980s? Well, Grady Hendrix presents over a hundred paperback covers and provides entertaining facts about the writers from that era. The Horror genre was huge back in the 1970s and 1980s. Part of the appeal was the wild and weird covers on those paperbacks. Hendrix picks many of the representative covers (but he forgot Good-Night Moom, the Bill Crider classic–maybe it will show up in the sequel!).

Clearly, this is a labor of love. Hendrix loves these horror novels and shows why the lurid covers only made the books more popular. If you’re a fan of paperbacks, Paperbacks From Hell is a must-buy! Do you have favorite horror novel? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION 7
PROLOGUE 10
CHAPTER 1: HAIL SATAN 10
CHAPTER 2: CREEPY KIDS 46
CHAPTER 3: WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK 78
CHAPTER 4: REAL ESTATE NIGHTMARES 102
CHAPTER 5: WEIRD SCIENCE 124
CHAPTER 6: GOTHIC AND ROMANTIC 144
CHAPTER 7: INHUMANOIDS 168
CHAPTER 8: SPLATTER PUNKS, SERIAL KILLERS, AND SUPER CREEPS 192
SELECTED CREDITS AND PUBLISHER BIOGRAPHIES 226
AFTERWORD 234
CREDITS 237
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 248
INDEX 250

26 thoughts on “FORGOTTEN BOOKS #443: PAPERBACKS FROM HELL: THE TWISTED HISTORY OF ’70S AND ’80s HORROR FICTION By Grady Hendrix

  1. Jeff Meyerson

    No GOODNIGHT MOOM? No KEEPERS OF THE BEAST “kids in cages” cover? I demand a recount!

    But does he have Guy N. Smith? NIGHT OF THE CRABS? THE SUCKING PIT? Or James Herbert’s RATS trilogy?

    I’ve been meaning to order this.

    Reply
      1. george Post author

        Rick, I’m not too sure how many libraries will order PAPERBACKS FROM HELL. It’s published by a small press, Quirk Books, which probably isn’t on most libraries’s radar. And the limited appeal of Horror paperback covers might discourage them from buying.

  2. Michael Padgett

    I read tons of this stuff in the 70s and 80s , and looking through this book was a great nostalgia trip. It’s almost embarrassing how many of the pictured books I’d read, especially the really awful ones. The book now sits in the TBR stack for a full reading, as opposed to just looking.

    Reply
  3. Rick Robinson

    I never gave these trash paperbacks a first look, let alone a second one. Satan yesterday and Hell today. You’re on some kind of scary role, George (no pun). I’d no more buy this book than I would porn or a bomb-making manual. BAH! DOUBLE BAH!

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Rick, I might not buy (or read) these horror paperbacks today, but back in the 1970s and 1980s, they appealed to me (and millions of other readers). Today, that genre has pretty much vanished. Love your Double BAH!

      Reply
  4. Todd Mason

    Goodness. Well, be that as it might, if I’m to name my favorite horror novels (as opposed to suspense novels such as PSYCHO or SOME OF YOUR BLOOD, though the latter is trying something else different there, too), my choices tend to run to CONJURE WIFE (and YOU’RE ALL ALONE and OUR LADY OF DARKNESS) by Fritz Leiber, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson, A STIR OF ECHOES by Richard Matheson or KINDRED by Octavia Butler.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Bob, somehow the cultural milieux of the 1970s and 1980s supported Horror fiction to large extent. Today, only Hollywood movies–like IT–continue the tradition.

      Reply
      1. Todd Mason

        Well, I think that’s less true than publishers noted that between Ira Levin, Wm. P. Blatty, Stephen King, V. C. Andrews, Peter Straub, Thomas Tryon, Frank De Felitta, John Saul, Brian Herbert, Anne Rice, the ever-slowly-growing popularity of Lovecraft and the residue of the supermarket gothic audience that there was gold to be mined, and those (often newly owned by conglomerate, even more bottom-line-conscious than previous, entities were certainly encouraging them actively or passively to mine it in the ’70s-earliest ’90s. And the influx of mediocre or worse work, from the likes of Onyx and particularly Zebra but even Tor on occasion as well as nearly everyone else, along with all kinds of good to brilliant work diluted in the flood, left the horror lines not long for the world, but nonetheless there’s still a fair amount of horror being published, even if a fair amount is or is published as YA or under other labels.

        Cap’n Bob doesn’t like Joe Lansdale? My cited quartet plus two above? Elizabeth Hand? Always impressed when someone says they can’t find Anything to like in any field of literature.

      2. george Post author

        Todd, you’re right about the great Horror writers of the Past. Stephen King is still writing, but it’s been years since Peter Straub published a great book. I pick up every John Saul paperback I run across (there are a lot of them!), but Thomas Tryon, V.C. Andrews, and William P. Blatty are missed (at least, by me).

  5. Jeff Meyerson

    Cap’n Bob would love some of these covers, I’m sure. My copy from Amazon came in one day. It’s a $25 book and I paid $15, free shipping. Looks good.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Jeff Meyerson Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *