John Halkin

2.5 stars

After all, it was only a moth: wasn’t it?

This starts off with a twelve year old breaking into a research facility and stealing a box of caterpillars to later take back and impress his friends. But alas, crime doesn't pay and when a caterpillar breaks out of the box and starts biting him, he falls down screaming in pain. It's a free for all then as the other caterpillars attack and start burrowing into the little boy. Back at the facility they notice someone broke in but a cat gets blamed when it's dead body is found broken on the caterpillar cage. A kid and an animal dying in the prologue?? I thought I was in for a squelchy good time but the story then jumps a few months, have to give time for the caterpillars to become moth airborne killers, and then we meet, Ginny. She just quit her job as a director on a soap opera series, broken up with her boyfriend of three years, and going to try and find herself in the outskirts of London in a little cottage.

Normally she didn’t like creepie-crawlies, yet here she was now – completely calm, for all the world as though she were receiving visitors.

Ginny encounters a moth at the cottage right away but there's this almost bond between them as she doesn't kill it but gently brings it back outside to fly away. Readers see a different side of the moths as the ex-bf that helped her move in is attacked when he's driving as the moths seem to try to kill him. This starts the murderous little cut scenes as caterpillars and moths attack people who are alone or only in groups of two while we always come back to Ginny and her desire to bang her brother-in-law.

Her body lay twisted unnaturally on the grass with fat green caterpillars – six at least – gorging themselves on her.

Ginny's cottage is by her sister Lesley and her doctor husband Bernie. Lesley gets bitten by one of the caterpillars and ends up in the hospital. But don't worry, Ginny realizes that sleeping with her sister's husband while in she's in the hospital would not be the thing. They wait until the caterpillars and moths start attacking larger groups of people and people start running scared. Lesley takes her kids and goes a few towns over. Ginny and Bernie bang that night. In Lesley's home. In Lesley's bed. The story then takes a disaster movie turn and it's carnage, the caterpillars and moths are slaughtering a hundred people at fêtes and church get togethers. They're making their way to London!

Calmly she went about the task of slaughtering those moths one by one, bringing the hoe blade sharply down on each to sever the wings and crush the body.

The sister finds out about the affair, a slap to the face, and then a couple more months go by where the caterpillars are doing their thing until they turn into moths and Ginny has convinced herself still sleeping with her sister's husband will be ok (at one point she wonders if Lesley won't mind sharing???). A renegade pilot enters the picture, he has the hots for Ginny (I forgot to mention the seventy year old Reverend that also had the hots for Ginny) but when the caterpillars/moths make their murderous return he's fighting along side Ginny and others to save people. The government wants to try and keep things hush-hush (???) about the murderous rampage making it's way to London but ol' renegade pilot gets on to something and he renegades, by bringing in a plane full of monitor lizards from Africa. Just as the caterpillars/moths are doing their charge he comes back, crashes the plane and releases the monitor lizards! The lizards gorge and save the day. Bernie dies. England advises people to keep monitor lizards as pets from here on out.

Or did they get them all? The ending has Ginny in her cottage communing with a moth.
(there was also Ginny writing a movie script about the whole thing and the renegade pilot shipping it to friends in America and her possibly getting a movie deal for a true author wish fulfillment ending)… (mehr)

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com: https://www.scifiandscary.com/carry-on-screaming-slither-review/

After the disappointment of the retro jungle adventure ‘The Ants’ last month, I’m please to say that August’s Carry on Screaming entry is a straight up rip off of ‘The Rats’ and therefore much more satisfying. ‘Slither’ replaces Herbert’s rats with giant, carnivorous aquatic worms, but aside from that there are a lot of similarities to the 1974 shocker. After last time’s giant ant confusion, I should point out that when I say giant I don’t mean ‘Dune’ or ‘Tremors’ style nasties. The worms in ‘Slither’ range from finger-sized to three feet long, but no matter what size they are they all have teeth. And eyes, which John Halkin goes on about A LOT for some reason.
Like ‘The Rats’ it feels very contemporary. There is lots of talk of unions disrupting things, along with groups protesting against explicit content on TV – 1980 being a time when the activities of Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers and Listeners Association were at their height. There is also mention of a royal wedding, which is a bit odd as the book came out in 1980 and Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer didn’t marry until 1981.
Far more important than any of that, of course, is that the book features lots of people getting attacked by worms. In fact, the first sentence is someone getting attacked by worms. No build up, no preamble, just straight in there with the flesh eating creatures. Halkin never quite matches Herbert’s levels of creative nastiness, and in fact quite of a lot of the victims just lose a finger or two rather than dying, but there are still some memorable scenes. A swimming pool full of naked party goers getting chomped, a woman devoured by worms pouring out of the taps of her bath. In fact, in ‘Slither’ you can pretty much guarantee that if someone takes their clothes off they’ll end up as worm food.
Halkin’s hero through all of this is a TV cameraman, the guy who gets attacked right at the start, who believes in the threat of the worms even when no-one else does, and fights them to the bitter end. He’s similar to one of Herbert’s heroes in his straightforward determination, although the book does take a weird detour into fashion-design when he sets up a company making belts and other accessories from the iridescent skins of the monster.
All in all, ‘Slither’ is a pretty solid entry in the low rent British horror canon. It’s never as good as Herbert, but it’s often a lot of fun and I powered my way through it in a day.
… (mehr)

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com: https://www.scifiandscary.com/slime-review/

I enjoyed John Halkin’s previous book ‘Slither’ despite its many flaws. It was a silly, fun horror novel in the classic 80s Brit horror mould. Slime’ was a disappointment by comparison. It’s incredibly similar to the earlier novel, with another hero who works in the TV business and another set of aquatic monsters. Unfortunately, it fails to capture ‘Slither’s’ cheesy fun and it left me cold.
This time around the hero is an actor in a popular soap opera. He witnesses an early attack by a new species of jellyfish (replacing the water worms of ‘Slither’) and becomes vaguely involved in the fight against them as they spread like a plague around the British coast. He also sleeps with a lot of different women because he’s ruggedly handsome.
The plot covers the gradual escalation of the jellyfish threat, with the normal formula of new characters being introduced and then killed off. Eventually the creatures get into the water system, prompting the great copy line “Turn on the tap…and die of terror”. Halkin never makes the most of this though, the attack scenes are dull and lack the gory entertainment value that they might have had in the hands of someone like Shaun Hutson.
The book is just too long as well, nowhere near justifying its 250 pages. Much of it is taken up with descriptions of the hero’s love life and failing marriage, both of which are far less interesting that people dying slimily.
… (mehr)