Line #70 Literature/PaperbacksFromHell


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3	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/paperbacks_from_hell_grady_hendrix.jpg]]
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5	''Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s {{Horror}} Fiction'' is a 2017 book by Creator/GradyHendrix, tracing the revolution in HorrorLiterature started in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Creator/IraLevin's ''Literature/RosemarysBaby'' and ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'', Thomas Tryon's ''Literature/TheOther'' and ''Literature/HarvestHome'', and William Peter Blatty's ''Literature/TheExorcist'', leading to thousands of novels in a variety of genres and ending in the early 1990s, when the publication of ''Literature/RedDragon'' popularized the PsychologicalThriller as a more intellectually respectable alternative to horror.
6
7	!!Chapters:
8
9	* Introduction
10	* Prologue
11	* 1.Hail, Satan
12	* 2.Creepy Kids
13	* 3.When Animals Attack
14	* 4.Real Estate Nightmares
15	* 5.Weird Science
16	* 6.Gothic and Romantic
17	* 7.Inhumanoids
18	* 8.Splatterpunks, Serial Killers and Super Creeps
19
20	!!"Tropes From Hell"
21
22	* AlienInvasion: Quite a few of the books discussed involve alien invasions. Most, but not all, of these turn up in Chapter 5.
23	* ArchivePanic: Invoked in the "Afterword" by Will Errickson.
24	-->"While reading ''Paperbacks From Hell'', you may have compiled a lengthy to-read list. Or you may feel like I did, decades ago, on my first day at my job at a dusty used bookstore with the entire horror section to myself: Where do I start?"
25	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: From the description of ''The Guardian'' series in the prologue:
26	-->"The six Guardian books were about [[LanternJawOfJustice square-jawed]], [[SherlockHomage tweed-and-blackbriar-pipe types]] investigating {{Haunted House}}s, [[OurVampiresAreDifferent underwater vampires]], [[HollywoodVoodoo voodoo]] [[{{Cult}} cults]] and UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}ns".
27	* AscendedExtra: It's noted in Chapter 8 that Franchise/HannibalLecter was a minor character in Thomas Harris' ''Literature/RedDragon'' who became a major character in the sequel ''Literature/TheSilenceOfTheLambs''.
28	* AttackOfTheKillerWhatever: Chapter 3 is devoted to killer animal fiction, as well as the related AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever and the odd case WhenTreesAttack.
29	* AuthorAppeal: Hendrix is fascinated by the SatanicPanic, which returns in this book having been fictionalized by him in ''Literature/MyBestFriendsExorcism''.
30	* AuthorPhobia: A minor example, but Hendrix describes ''Literature/LetsGoPlayAtTheAdams'' as the only book he's only been able to read once and never wants to go back to.
31	* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder's ''Michelle Remembers'', which launched the disastrous SatanicPanic during the 1980s. Michelle claimed, among other things, to have watched a Satanic cult murder dozens of kittens and babies during an 81-day ritual to summon Satan while herself being tortured and sexually abused, and then to have been rescued by the Virgin Mary. Recovering memories through hypnosis is pseudoscience, and Michelle's story is demonstrably untrue (school records show no absences during the time this ritual supposedly took place, there is no building matching her description in Victoria, etc).
32	** While the Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr. murders did happen, the ''Franchise/{{Amityville}}'' series also qualifies for this. In particular, Hendrix is quite scornful of the claim that the haunting "made" the Lutzes abusive to their children.
33	* BigCreepyCrawlies: Chapter 3, which focuses on books about things like armies of giant penis-eating praying mantises, swarms of scorpions invading Britain, and so on.
34	* TheBigRottenApple: Chapter 4 goes into great detail on the "white flight" trend of the 1970s, and how the fear of cities - as well as the anxieties of moving to smaller towns - impacted the horror genre.
35	* BigfootSasquatchAndYeti: Chapters 5 and 7 both describe books involving these sorts of monsters turning up.
36	* {{Blaxploitation}}: Chapter 1 describes how the Satanic Panic trend in horror literature had a blaxploitation subgenre, often involving generous helpings of HollywoodVoodoo.
37	* BlackAndGrayMorality: Hendrix describes most of the splatterpunk genre as this, with there being little separation, morally speaking, between heroes and villains (for example, he describes one book, ''The Kill Riff'', in which a man takes revenge on a rock band after his daughter is crushed to death at a concert of theirs that went wrong, but it turns out that [[spoiler: he was sleeping with (ie, raping) his daughter, and his tragically dead wife didn't commit suicide, he killed her for finding out about it]], making him no better or sympathetic than his victims).
38	-->
39	%% * CampbellCountry: Chapter 4
40	%% * CatsAreMean: Chapter 3.
41	%% * ConsultingAConvictedKiller: Thomas Harris' ''Red Dragon'' and ''The Silence of the Lambs'' in Chapter 8.
42	* CosmicHorrorStory: Several references to Creator/HPLovecraft and his work, including covers for reprints of ''Literature/TheDunwichHorror'' and ''Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace'', and works that carried on his influence.
43	* CoversAlwaysLie: Chapter 8. Despite the cover and title, ''Christmas Babies'' takes place in February, in Florida.
44	* CreepyChild: Chapter 2, "Creepy Kids", is all about this trope in horror literature.
45	* CreepyCatholicism: Chapter 1 discusses how a lot of Satanic Panic literature made use of Catholic imagery and often portrayed the Catholic Church as, if not a full-on ReligionOfEvil, then at least one rife with corruption, often of a specifically satanic nature.
46	%% * CrossesTheLineTwice: Invoked several times.
47	* {{Cult}}: Naturally in Chapter 1, with the acknowledgement that writing about "Satanic cults" really took off following the arrest and trial of UsefulNotes/CharlesManson.
48	%% * DarkerAndEdgier: Lots and lots.
49	* DealWithTheDevil: Jaron Summers' ''Below the Line'' in Chapter 8, about a man so desperate to make his movie that he ends up pledging his wife and children as collateral.
50	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: From the Introduction:
51	-->"In these books from the '70s and '80s, doctors swap smokes with patients, African Americans are sometimes called 'negroes', and parents swoon in terror at the suggestion that they have a 'test tube baby'."
52	* DemBones: MANY covers featured living skeletons. There's even a two-page spread devoted specifically to skeletal doctors, who Grady jokes are the worst kind of doctor.
53	* DemonicPossession: Prominently featured in Chapter 1, of course (most famously with ''Literature/TheExorcist''), but this also turns up elsewhere in the book.
54	%% * {{Eagleland}}: Very much type 2 in Chapter 7
55	* EverybodyHasLotsOfSex: Quite a bit, starting in Chapter 1, where it is often of the DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu variety.
56	* FollowTheLeader: Invoked throughout, since once one novel caught on, others tried to capitalize on its success, to FranchiseKiller and even GenreKiller degrees.
57	* ForTheEvulz: ''Literature/LetsGoPlayAtTheAdams'', with teens torturing their BoundAndGagged BadlyBatteredBabysitter.
58	* GaiasVengeance: Type 2 in Chapter 3, which showcases novels about killer animals and the anxieties of the then-new ecological movement.
59	%% * {{Gaslighting}}: Mentioned by name in Chapter 2 in the description of Brenda Brown Canary's ''The Voice of the Clown''.
60	* GeniusBruiser: Chapter 1. Philip St. George III, the hero of Michael Avallone's ''The Satan Sleuth trilogy'', is described as "one hundred and eighty pounds of whipcord muscles" with "a mind bordering on [[UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein Einstein]] IQ."
61	%% * GenreAnthology: Several short-stories collections
62	* GenreBusting: Chapter 4. Joe Cunningham's ''The Abyss'', about a dying mining town in Tennessee coal country, where it's revealed that the mine was closed because the miners accidentally dug into {{Hell}}, Hendrix compares the effects of opening the mine to "a [[Music/BruceSpringsteen Springsteen]] song mashed up with ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Dante's Inferno]]''."
63	* GiantEnemyCrab: Chapter 3 discusses Creator/GuyNSmith's long-running ''Killer Crabs'' series.
64	%% * GoryDeadlyOverkillTitleOfFatalDeath: Would you expect anything else?
65	* GothicHorror: Chapter 6 revolves around the revival of gothic and SouthernGothic literature as part of the paperback horror boom.
66	%% * GroinAttack[=/=]BreastAttack: By insects in Chapter 3
67	* HairRaisingHare: One of the many varieties of killer animal to turn up in Chapter 3
68	* HauntedHouse: A few of them turn up in Chapter 4, which is about the many permutations of the NewHouseNewProblems horror setup.
69	* HollywoodExorcism: Exorcisms come up a few times in Chapter 1, since ''The Exorcist'' is the TropeCodifier.
70	* HollywoodSatanism: Chapter 1 in particular is devoted to novels about Satan and Satanists as horror villains. This comes up a little bit in the later chapters as well.
71	* HornyVikings:A [[{{Mummy}} mummified]] one on the loose in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity is the subject of Frank Spiering's ''Berserker'' in Chapter 7.
72	* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday[=/=]TwistedChristmas: Chapter 8 has a whole section on holiday-themed horror novels.
73	* HumansAreBastards[=/=]HumansAreTheRealMonsters[=/=]CrapsackWorld[=/=]DownerEnding: Lots and lots. As if the title wasn't enough of a tip off, don't look here for {{Happy Ending}}s.
74	%% * ImAHumanitarian: Several references to cannibalism.
75	* IndianBurialGround: Chapter 7 discussed how this became a common trope in '70s and '80s horror fiction, and notes the moral queasiness some of these books invoke in modern readers about the (almost always white) heroes exterminating remnants of Native civilizations.
76	* LegFocus: The horror woman is described as having "a willowy, athletic figure with dynamite legs."
77	%% * LouisCypher: The Trope Namer is mentioned in Chapter 1.
78	* MadScientist: Chapter 5, about ScifiHorror novels, naturally involves a few of these.
79	* MagicalNativeAmerican: Very dark examples in Chapter 7, which has a subsection of horror literature with Native American themes, most of which aren't very well researched.
80	* MarsNeedsWomen: Chapters 5 and 7, dealing with ScifiHorror and monster fiction, occasionally feature books where aliens or monsters develop a sexual attraction to human women. Inverted in the ''Literature/{{Blackwater}}'' saga (discussed in Chapter 6), where a [[FishPeople female river monster]] who marries a human man.
81	* MonsterClown: Chapter 2, mostly devoted to CreepyChild novels, also has a section on evil clown themes in horror.
82	* MoustacheDePlume: Inverted in Chapter 2. It's pointed out that Ken Greenhall wrote two novels under the name Jessica Hamilton.
83	* {{Mummy}}: Chapter 7 talks about a few novels that brought back classic monsters like the mummy, though usually in very weird ways. For example, ''Berserker'' is about a ''viking'' mummy going on a rampage.
84	* MusclesAreMeaningful: Chapter 6. The horror man is described as being completely chiseled except for his eyes.
85	* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: As just ''one'' example, from Chapter 4: William W. Johnstone's ''The Nursery'' includes the "Prince of Foulness, Lord of Darkness" and "the Master on Earth of All Things Dark and Ugly and Evil and Profane."
86	* NewHouseNewProblems: Chapter 4 is mostly about the rise of this type of horror novel. The 1970s saw a mass exodus of white middle-class city-dwellers for smaller towns, something that is heavily reflected in the horror fiction of the day: stories where such a family moves into a HauntedHouse or a TownWithADarkSecret, or stories about [[WretchedHive cities as crime-infested hellholes of squalor and decay]] (something that was, unfortunately, becoming a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy as cities started to lose their middle-class taxpayer base).
87	* NinjaPirateRobotZombie: The novel that inspired this whole book, ''The Little People'', is about psychic Nazi bondage leprechauns.
88	%% * NumberOfTheBeast: Chapter 4. Jay Anson's posthumously-published ''666''.
89	* NunTooHoly[=/=]NaughtyNuns[=/=]NunsAreSpooky: Chapter 1, dealing with ReligiousHorror, naturally has a few examples of corrupt or outright satanic nuns. See CreepyCatholicism, above.
90	* TheOldGods: Chapter 1. The "Older Gods" in Brian [=McNaughton=]'s sex-and-{{Satan}} novels ''Satan's Mistress'', ''Satan's Seductress'' and ''Satan's Love Child''.
91	* OldShame: Invoked. It's noted in Chapter 1 that Joy Fielding later disowned her Charles Manson-inspired novel ''The Transformation''.
92	* OurDemonsAreDifferent: Chapter 1, naturally, features a wide variety of demonic antagonists.
93	* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Creator/AnneRice's ''Literature/TheVampireChronicles'' series, among many others. Chapter 6 acknowledges the initial panic over AIDS and how that led to Rice, Creator/FredSaberhagen, John Shirley and others reinventing vampires.
94	* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Chapter 7 is about the classic monsters, and discusses a few werewolf novels, though they turn up elsewhere as well.
95	* ThePowerOfRock: Music/{{KISS}}'s "Firehouse" is used as a weapon against TheMenInBlack AND TheGreys in J.N. Williamson's ''[=Brotherkind=]'' in Chapter 5.
96	* PrecisionFStrike: Chapter 4. As part of his trashing of the ''Amityville'' series, he writes that the third installment (''Amityville: The Evil Escapes'') expanded from "a simple of meal of possessed homes to an all-you-can-eat buffet of occult bullshit."
97	* PulpMagazine: Chapter 1 states that ''The Exorcist'' was the point where Horror broke away from its pulp influences.
98	* ReferenceOverdosed: What else would you expect from a book chronicling the rise and fall of literary subgenres? There are books and films named constantly.
99	* ReligiousHorror: Chapter 1 is all about religiously-themed horror novels, which Grady contends started the entire horror novel boom that the book catalogues.
100	* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Chapter 3 has a whole section on monstrous reptiles.
101	* RevengeOfTheSequel: Robert Lory's ''Horrorscope #2: The Revenge of Taurus'' is discussed in Chapter 5. ''Horrorscope'' was an ambitious, if goofy, attempt to launch a horror franchise with one novel based around each sign of the zodiac, though they never completed the series.
102	* SatanicPanic: The book talks about the Satanic Panic multiple times, especially in Chapter 1, and covers ''Michelle Remembers'' (a notorious book where a woman claimed she had been ritually abused by her mother and given birth multiple times, had a devil's tail sewn onto her, and the Virgin Mary had come down to rescue her).
103	* SerialKiller: Chapter 8 is mostly about serial killers in horror fiction. In fact, ''The Silence of the Lambs'' being designated as a {{Thriller}} rather than Horror is considered to be what killed the trend of horror novels.
104	* SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll: Chapter 8 involves a few novels about evil rock bands, most of which go all-in on EvilIsCool, which Hendrix finds rather annoying, dismissing a lot of the authors as a bunch of "edgelords".
105	* ShownTheirWork: It's pointed out in Chapter 8 that Jaron Summers' ''Below the Line'' "spends enough of its time laying out film financing and tax shelters in enough detail for any wannabe [[Creator/JerryBruckheimer Bruckheimer]] to follow."
106	* SinisterMinister: A few of them turn up in the ReligiousHorror novels detailed in Chapter 1.
107	%% * SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: All the way at the bottom of the cynicism side.
108	* SnuffFilm: The subject of ''Below the Line'', a horror novel described in Chapter 8.
109	* SouthernGothic: As a subgenre in Chapter 6.
110	* SplatterHorror: Chapter 8 is all about this subgenre, with a lot of gross-out SerialKiller novels (like the ''Chaingang'' series). A few of the animal attack books in Chapter 3 (like ''Literature/TheRats'' or ''Literature/EatThemAlive'' also have aspects of this.
111	* StepfordSuburbia: The Trope Namer ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'' is mentioned in Chapter 4, though this also comes up in Chapter 2, which is partly about the TownWithADarkSecret.
112	* SubliminalSeduction[=/=]RockMeAsmodeus: Discussed a lot. Jacob Aranza's ''Backwards Masking Unmasked'', the rise of the Parents' Music Resource Center, and other MoralGuardians are discussed in Chapter 8.
113	%% * SurrealHorror[=/=]MindScrew: Several cases of writers going out of their way to deliver stories where nothing makes sense.
114	* TakeThat:
115	** Hendrix is usually very jovial and tongue-in-cheek about even the most ridiculous horror stories, but becomes very serious about ''Franchise/{{Amityville}}'', mostly because he considers George Lutz, the original owner of the house, to be not only a lying profiteer who invented the whole thing, but an AbusiveParent, according to the man's son.
116	** He also clearly has a low opinion of a lot of the splatterpunk writers detailed in Chapter 8, dismissing them as a bunch of "edgelords" who "wanted to be in a band" with a "surprisingly conservative core", and there's a whole subheading devoted to how creepily misogynistic a lot of these books were.
117	* ThreateningShark: ''Literature/{{Jaws}}'', the TropeCodifier, is mentioned in Chapter 3.
118	* TitleOfTheDead: C.L. Grant's ''The Hour of the Oxrun Dead'', described in in Chapter 7.
119	* TownWithADarkSecret: Chapter 4 has a lot of novels about moving to such a town.
120	%% * {{Troperiffic}}: To say the least. The book is very over-the-top.
121	* TheVietnamVet: The protagonists of William W. Johnstone's horror novels, in Chapter 4, Chris Stiles of T. Chris Martindale's ''[=Nightblood=]'' in Chapter 6, along with the villain of Alex Kane's ''The Shinglo'', are all characters who are supposed to have served in 'Nam.
122	* VillainousIncest: Horribly, this can be found many times throughout the book. ''The Kill Riff'' (mentioned above under BlackAndGreyMorality) has an especially gratuitous example, while ''The Sibling'' is about an IncestantAdmirer, and ''[=PIN=]'' is about an [[BrotherAndSisterIncest incestuous brother-and-sister pair]] who are "so hyperintelligent they're basically insane".
123	* WesternZodiac: Robert Lory's Horrorscope series in Chapter 5, which was supposed to run to 12 books, each thematically tied to a different star sign. Only four books were published - ''The Green Flames of Aries'', ''The Revenge of Taurus'', ''The Curse of Leo'', and ''Gemini Smile, Gemini Kill''. A fifth, ''The Claws of Cancer'', was apparently written but never published.
124	* WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant: Chapter 2 has a whole heading called "Attack of the Killer [=WASP=]s", about affluent middle-class Anglo-Saxons as villains.
125	-->In horror fiction, every culture has its own supernatural menace. African Americans get [[HollywoodVoodoo voodoo]]. The Chinese get [[AsianFoxSpirit fox spirits]]. And [=WASPs=] (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) get the all-American boy [[JerkJock sporting a varsity letter jacket]] and blinding-white smile that [[DevilInPlainSight mask teh howling maniac on the inside]].
126	%% * WouldHurtAChild: Lots, everywhere.
127	* XMakesAnythingCool: The cover of Anne Rivers Siddons' ''Literature/TheHouseNextDoor'' shown in Chapter 4 has the title printed in red except for the x in Next, which is lit up in white.

Context Literature / PaperbacksFromHell