Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

The late ’80s were a growing nightmare for adult horror writers. Author after author failed to earn out advances, and agents unleashed tornadoes of bad advice that ripped through the trailer park of publishing, leaving destruction in its wake: “Write big fat novels because that’s what sold last week.” “Write like Michael Crichton.” “Write like Stephen King.” But the market was glutted and returns were often at 60 percent. The industry was trying everything to stop the bleeding, but the patient wouldn’t leave the table alive.

As the ’90s approached, the seemingly insatiable kid’s market emerged as horror’s last hope. R. L. Stine launched his teen horror series Fear Street in 1989, which included seasonal offerings like Silent Night. Around the same time Christopher Pike began turning out Lois Duncan–esque teen thrillers, proving to publishers that kids had a ravenous hunger for horror. Adult readers were left in the dust, while Stine and Pike went on to found the best-selling series Goosebumps in 1992 and Spooksville in 1995, respectively. At long last, Whitney Houston’s words rang true: the children were the future.

Horror titles aimed at kids tended to feature young people’s interests on the covers: hangin’ at the beach, rock and roll, computer games, peering into creepy mirrors, and gazing over the edge of a cliff. Credit 172

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Hang Your Stockings and Say Your Prayers

It’s the night before Christmas and all through the town, someone is chopping up pregnant coeds, stabbing babysitters in the brain, and decapitating divorced ladies. Even more so than Halloween, Christmas is horror’s favorite holiday, full of psycho Santas leaving red-and-green-wrapped heads under each and every Christmas tree.

Black Christmas (1983) is an Italian giallo-style thriller, with a faceless black-gloved killer terrorizing a tiny snowbound town. Its stalk ’n’ slash set pieces can be stopped only by inexperienced Sheriff Bud Dunsmore, who is not only overwhelmed by the murders, he hasn’t even bought his daughter a Christmas present yet. Slay Bells (1994) ups the yuletide ante with a deranged lunatic dressed like Santa stalking a snowed-in shopping mall, where he murders teens to avenge his grandfather’s defeat in a long-ago fly-fishing tournament.

But, mostly, holiday paperback horror turned out to be that terrible boyfriend who wraps an Applebee’s coupon in a Tiffany’s box or slides a subscription to Ladies’ Home Journal into an iPhone case. Its savagely seasonal covers concealed a distinct lack of Christmas carnage inside. No enraged, fire-shrouded snowmen appear in Slumber Party. And not only are no evil elf-babies born in Christmas Babies (1991), but the novel takes place in February. In Florida.

Books that delivered true seasonal slaughter typically didn’t advertise that fact on their covers. Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for WASPs, and WASP horror novels (you remember them from chapter 2) include plenty of Christmas carnage for every boy and girl.

Weirdly enough, it was by way of Christmas that the Satanic Panic spread its infection from heavy metal and role-playing games to horror movies. In 1984 TriStar Pictures released Silent Night, Deadly Night, and television ads for this touching tale—about a tiny orphan who dons a Santa suit and murders everyone in sight—featured a bloody St. Nick waving an ax. That image earned so many protests, and resulted in so many tots picketing movie theaters with WE LOVE SANTA signs, that the distributor pulled the film from theaters after barely a week. It was a lesson that horror writers learned well: mess with Santa and risk getting axed.

While Black Christmas and Slay Bells are indeed set during the holidays, there’s no yuletide terror to be found in Christmas Babies or Slumber Party. Credit 175

Death Rattle

By the early ’90s, the coroner had called it and the medical examiner was zipping up horror’s body bag. But one last twitch was left in the corpse.

In 1990, a sales rep at Dell claimed there was room for more paperback horror because everyone was getting out of the market. This would be like someone in Jaws noting there’s plenty of space on the beach. Barely thirty years old, editor Jeanne Cavelos was bored of cursed Indian burial mounds and imitation Stephen King, so when her boss asked her to pitch a horror line, she was ready.