New English Library's Monster Mag

If you've ever wanted to yell "You're a damn fool!" at something other than a human, I suggest you consider the above exhibit.

New English Library, arguably the greatest pulp horror publisher in Britain, unleashed this abortion on the public in '76.

With the by-line, "It's a ghastly giggle", they were targeting silly schoolboys and (perhaps) readers of the American Famous Monsters, a schizophrenic mag that took horror half seriously, even though its editor F.J. Ackerman took it quite seriously.

This mag's editor and resident funnyman, "Gruesome", got the show rolling with an editorial filled with more shit than a Presidential address.

The tone is set with a claim that "(he) was born with a silver thigh bone in (his) mouth." What a knee-slapper that is.

He then introduced his staff, Gilbert and Mildew. Gilbert, he explained, was a corpse, and Mildew was a black cat.

Are you Rolling On The Floor Laughing (ROTFL), or didn't that happen until the internet?

Next up, Gruesome announced a competition in which 100 "dangerous" Vampire Kites (!!!) could be won.

You heard it right. Vampire Kites.

Yes, those things that flap in the breeze on the end of a long piece of string and end up crashing to the ground.

I may be alone on this, but I've never worried too much about being attacked by a "dangerous" Vampire Kite.

Have you ever been woken in the middle of the night by a Vampire Kite flapping and tapping on your window ? I haven't. And I don't think it's in my future, either.

Vampire Kids I can understand. Creepy. Vampire Kults. Yes. Vampire Korpses. Why not. I may even be able to work up some anxiety over a Vampire Klit. But not a Vampire Kite. No, no, no.

"Please, win a vampire kite today," the ad urged readers, "and save Ghoul from extinction."

Well, Ghoul never did make it to a second issue, so I assume those 100 Vampire Kites are still hovering in some warehouse waiting to scare the shit out of kite-fearing kids of a new generation.

The next nail in this one-issue coffin was Gruesome's invitation to readers to submit models and sculptures for the "Preymate of the Month" competition.

The monstrosity above was meant to inspire creativity?

Fuck me!

Even when I was 14, I thought this stuff was beyond lame.

The torrent of wrong-headed bullshit continued with the mag's newspaper-within-a-magazine, the "Ghoul Gazette".

This crap feature came across like an early stab at the hilarious Weekly World News with the difference being it wasn't funny, amusing, or worth the tree felled for its publication.

To be fair, it was first. Weekly World News hadn't been invented yet.

As Gruesome insisted, the "Ghoul Gazette" was "the only paper by monsters for monsters".

Jesus, save me.

The back cover of the mag (above) was, in fact, my favorite part. Although it was an advertisement, it featured the lurid covers of nine NEL paperbacks, some of which I was yet to get my hands on.

I spent hours just staring at these like a hungry zombie, imagining the horrors loose between the covers.

More than anything, Ghoul was a huge missed opportunity.

At the time, New English Library was THE leading publisher of horror paperbacks. They had an amazing stable of writers including James Herbert, Guy. N. Smith, Errol Lecale, Martin Jensen, Stephen King, R. Chetwynd-Hayes (possibly the uncredited skipper of this venture) and Robert Lory. The cover of Ghoul was swiped from the NEL cover of Lory's Dracula Returns, for Chrissakes.

So why didn't the editors of this mag use the NEL connection to create a mag featuring interviews with NEL authors and artists? That would have encouraged sales, cross-promoted, and provided readers with incredible access to authors.

Why in God's name didn't they follow in the footsteps of another NEL publication, Science Fiction Monthly, a successful, tabloid-sized mag that fully exploited their stable of science fiction authors and artists?

Who knows why they totally underestimated their readers? Believe me, most NEL horror readers were not morons who ran screaming from Vampire Kites or beat off to "Preymates (give me a fuckin break!) of the Month".

I was an addicted NEL reader, and I thought Ghoul sucked elephant dicks.

Well, mostly sucked.

The "Celluloid Screams" section was alright, even though the inclusion of The Land That Time Forgot was specious.

The only truly worthy piece in this first and last issue was Walter Gillings' overview of Edgar Allan Poe.

Featuring a beautiful (uncredited) portrait of the author, it came across as authoritative and mature.

How it ended up being included is, I'm sure, a tale of mystery and imagination.

Despite this, I have to say it, and say it loud: GHOUL, YOU'RE A DAMN FOOL!

Guy N. Smith and the People Who Love To Fuck

There's a big Guy N. Smith revival on the way... and not before bloody time, either!

I've been with Guy since the beginning. I picked up the 1st NEL edition of Guy's Werewolf By Moonlight in 1974 for the bargain basement price of $.95. I was twelve years old.

Issued in September, it came out two months before James Herbert's The Rats changed the face of British horror.

The book was and is a true original.

There is nobody but nobody who writes like Guy.

Guy has always understood that great pulp entertains first and lectures last.

His productive output is testament to a fertile mind that has never gathered dust or moss.

What I really admired about Guy and Herbert (James) back in those formative days is that they weren't shy about having their characters fuck.

By including short but rip-roaring sex scenes, they acknowledged that human love to fuck.

I don't like books that pretend that fucking doesn't exist. I don't like authors who justify their steering away from sex with sorry excuses such as "It's all been done before" and "It detracts from the story."

Not if done right it doesn't, pussy!

And "all been done before"? I say "Bullshit." You can never get enough sex. It's not a well that runs dry.

As a male, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn when I say that, if a man (unmarried, of course) were driving home from an orgy in which he had had sex with two hundred and thirty three women, he would still be turning his head in the direction of every pretty girl who walked or cycled by.

Guy N. Smith understands his readership. He satisfies his own craving to create while simultaneously jerking his reader off with a Fully Erect*-rated pulp combo of sex and horror.

The Sucking Pit (NEL, '75) is possibly the best pulp title ever.

As a thirteen year old schoolboy standing in the horror section of Melbourne's long gone The Bookshop of Charles Dickens, I asked myself: What exactly is being sucked in Guy Smith's pit?

I was very eager to find out.


In this watershed work, I was introduced to a young lady whose name, Jenny Lawson, and authentic personality, have not been been expunge from my psyche by time; she was a salacious, young sexpot who enjoyed fucking. Yes, she enjoyed it! And she had some get-up-and-go in her, too. No shrinking violet our Jenny.

I grew up in a Catholic home, went to a Catholic school, and frequently rattled off inane Catholic prayers translated from Latin. In my Catholic world, one shaped by my mother, women certainly did not enjoy sex.

I remember my mother telling me, at age thirteen -- five years AFTER my first bout of serious sexual experimentation -- that girls who tried to have sex with boys were "bad". Yes, "bad" was the word she used.

Back in those days, I used to hear about a chap named Charles Manson. They said he was a very "bad" man. He was virtually the boogie man. My biggest fear when I was a pre-teen was that Charles Manson was hiding in my closet and would emerge when I was sleeping. Now, if Charles Manson was bad, were girls who "tried" to have sex with boys the same kind of bad as Charlie Manson?

The Charlie who lived in my closet, and Charlie today

Nobody ever answered that one... except Guy Smith.

The answer was no. Actually, the answer was Absolutely Not!

Thanks to Guy Smith and Mr. Herbert, I developed a healthy attitude to all things adult.

The Sucking Pit took place in a bog.

The events of The Slime Beast (NEL, '75) were set in "The Wash", an area of endless marshes, treasure, adventure, sex, and bloodshed.

Although the premise is science fiction, Guy quickly pushes the story into horror territory and, once again, gives us real people who fuck.

I went through a period in which I would put down books if the characters didn't jump into bed, or at least talk about it.

If they didn't fuck, I didn't want to read about them. They weren't real to me.

At the end of the day, if I wanted eunuch literature, I'd ask for it.

As Guy's star rises again -- thanks to British Ghostwriter Publications, a joint venture with Guy himself, and the promotional efforts of hundreds of lifelong devotees of the pipe-smoking Apostle of British Pulp -- I sit here not one bit surprised by this development because...

Few things in life run truer than Mr. Guy N. Smith.

***

We're all indebted to the great Larry Flynt for his
invention of the Fully Erect rating. X-rated reviews in
Hustler fell between Fully Erect and Totally Limp.

Love Letter To A Lousy Bum

I love this filthy, disease-carrying bastard and his vermin brethren.

I've loved him for decades.

When I was thirteen, I took a macro photograph of his yellow-toothed mug and spent a fortune of my parents' money blowing it up to poster size so I could hang it above my bed.

Every time my mother came into my horror-filled bedroom, she'd be confronted by this snarling, plague-ridden poster boy for London vermin.

After a while, she stopped coming.

Where did they find this handsome beast? Did he audition for The Rats cover? Did James Herbert have to approve him? He was an advertising guy, afterall. Those ad guys are real big on approvals and sign-offs.

Who signed off on Mr. Filthy?

This sharp looking prick personified vermin. Perched on the edge of The Thames like the King of England with London right behind him, he was ready to take on all comers and spread his genetic filth far and bloody wide.

That why I loved him.

There was no bullshit about him.

I AM ENGLAND, he seemed to say, AND YOU'RE FUCKED, SUNSHINE.

I wonder how he got those yellow teeth. Did he smoke? Did he have a two pack a day habit?

Most probably.

When he wasn't ripping babies apart or lurking in abandoned houses, he was partying with his filthy mates. Bunch of bloody hoodlums if you ask me. But well groomed hoodlums. Not the riff-raff you get around here.

He stayed on my wall for three or four years. King of All That Was Filthy and Wrong. Arrogant. Cocky. Perverse.

Note the filthy, unapologetic fingernails

Mr. Herbert owes this furry fuck a case of beer or a bucket of aborted babies, at least, for what he's done to boost his career, not to mention his bank balance. A smashing cover is key to a successful marketing campaign. A good cover will have those books jumping off the shelves like... well, like vermin.

I always appreciated Herbert's use of the word "vermin". It was a prejudicial term, no doubt about that, and it did reduce rats to the status of cancer or foot rot; but I don't think Mr. Filthy and his black-haired hoons would have given a flying fuck about that.

If nothing, they were an honest bunch of bastards. They were riddled with every strain of bacteria you could imagine, they got less respect than child molesters, and there were people out there who were dedicating their lives to their annihilation, but they went about their furry, putrid ways like tomorrow didn't matter and today could take a hike. And let's not forget that it will be their kind who'll still be standing (and smiling) when the bombs rain down and the mushrooms bloom.

Perhaps they wouldn't actually smile. No, they'd pull their lips back and show off their nicotine-stained chompers in a collective demonstration of victory.

In 1979, the New English Library (NEL) management invited Mr. Filthy back to their studios for another cover shot. This time he was promoting Lair, Mr. Herbert's excellent sequel to The Rats. The disease-carrying pop star burst through the red lettering and declared: HERE I AM AGAIN, YOU ROTTEN, MISERABLE SODS. LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, BABIES, AND LESBIAN GIRLFRIENDS.

This was a public acknowledgment from the NEL team that Mr. Filthy was Herbert's secret weapon.


God bless the lousy bum.