The Farm (UK: Panther Books. 1984)
Tagline: "Where Gut-Crunching, Bone-Grinding
Horror is the Only Crop."
You are a lone book buyer looking for cheap thrills
and creepy crawler terror. You spot this one. Your
heart pounds. Your stomach feels weak. The
cold/hot sweat of excitement beads your pallid,
sunless face. You can hardly wait to get this beauty
back to your crumbling little house at the edge of
the cemetery. What a cover. It has to be the
ultimate in exploitation horror. You pay the price and
palm the book, loving that blood-red cover and that
Tagline: "Where Gut-Crunching, Bone-Grinding
Horror is the Only Crop."
You are a lone book buyer looking for cheap thrills
and creepy crawler terror. You spot this one. Your
heart pounds. Your stomach feels weak. The
cold/hot sweat of excitement beads your pallid,
sunless face. You can hardly wait to get this beauty
back to your crumbling little house at the edge of
the cemetery. What a cover. It has to be the
ultimate in exploitation horror. You pay the price and
palm the book, loving that blood-red cover and that
grotesque monster-pig snarling at you. It's time for a trip to The Farm and
you couldn't be happier. For you know exactly what you are in store for:
flesh-eating hogs. What more could a lover of nasties and pulp horror really
want? With a near-perfect tagline pitch to entice you, it was time to delve into
what from all appearances would be the ultimate in ghastly, gruesome and
gor-fying horror.
Or was it?
Laurence James (Richard Haigh) was a highly-prolific British author who
wrote everything from biker novels to sci-fi, espionage to post-apocalyptic
thrillers. Unfortunately for us, James died in 2000. As Richard Haigh, he
churned out only two nasties: The Farm and its sequel, The City. Rumor has
it there was to be a third to complete the Pigs Trilogy, that it was actually
written but never published. The idea that it's sitting in a desk drawer
gathering dust somewhere is quite disturbing to someone like me.
When I cracked this one I was expecting full-bore, balls-to-the-walls gore
horror. What I wasn't expecting was for Haigh to be such a damn good
writer. Let's face a few unpleasant things here for starters: a lot of the guys
who knocked out these nasties were not exactly great writers, most were
just cashing in on a craze: functionally competent with a good eye for shock
horror, but little more than that. The best among them brought something
more to the table: talent. And that's exactly what Haigh does. This guy can
fucking write! In a sub-genre where characters tend to be cardboard cut-outs
that exist only to be devoured, Haigh has created wonderful,
three-dimensional characters. I'll be the first to admit there's sadistic streak
in me that loves to see these people get torn apart, but in The Farm I cringed
when it happened. The writing is that good.
The novel. A truck (lorry, if you rather) carrying barrels of chemical
waste--hallucinogens, metabolic agents, anesthetics, and other nameless
stuff--to be illegally dumped gets in an accident in the Welsh hills, overturning
and spilling its toxic cargo which soaks into the earth. Underground, the
chemicals combine creating something like a hybrid chemical warfare agent
that is carried by subterranean springs to a nearby farm, filling a pond which
the animals drink out of. You can see the trouble coming already. Back to the
accident. The truck collides with a flamboyant gay fashion designer in a
sports car, some nuns in a Morris, a school bus, and a camping trailer
(caravan) and its death on the highway. Already thumbs up to Haigh for his
amusing cast of characters.
Back to the farm. Paul Thompson, a doctor who abandoned his
Buckinghamshire practice, is living on the farm with his perky, liberated
American girlfriend. Up on holiday are his brother Richard (a stuffy bank
manager) and his wife and two children, and their aging father and mother.
Thrown into the mix is a stiff-lipped Welsh farm manager and his slutty
teenage daughter. All of them on 200 acres of farmland with cows, geese,
wild cats, rabbits, goats, dogs, and...oh yes...127 ferocious-looking, tusked
hybrid pigs known as Buckland Whites. All of the animals drink from the
pond. The people get their water from a tanker truck that shows once a
week because of the drought. Haigh takes his time setting up. If Shaun
Hutson had written this there would be a body count by page 20, but that's
not how Haigh does it. He uses the old Stephen King approach of developing
the characters then turning the monsters loose. And when he does, dogs kill
people. Cats eat people. Goats ram people. Geese gore people. You get
the picture. It's like Orwell's Animal Farm on Angel Dust. All of it setting the
stage for those nasty, nasty pigs that encircle the farm and allow no one to
leave and when they try:
"A Buckland White, eighteen months old, weighs something over two
hundreds and forty pounds. As the girl fell one of them squealed angrily,
stepping on her outstretched hand. Cracking the bones of the back of her
wrist, snapping fingers like breadsticks. The animal stumbled, rolling half
on top of the child, breaking her ribs, the splintered ends of bone tearing
into her lungs.
She tried to scream. Really tried, but she was choking. Drowning on her
own life-blood as it flooded into her nose and mouth.
Then the rest of the pigs closed in, pushing at each other in their frenzy to
taste blood and meat."
Or as another young lady discovers to her horror:
"The creatures were both pulling at the same arm, tearing at it until it was
attached only by stretched sinew to the shoulder. One of the Bucklands let
go and went to root under the shattered rib-cage of the teenager, emerging
with the loops of greasy intestines, yellow and fouled, tangled about it
snout."
Yes, nature has surely gone berserk and our cast of characters are trapped
by the marauding animals. The characters lives are wonderfully intertwined
and seem real. Some are likeable and some--like the farm manager,
Pentecost, with his perverted relationship with his daughter--are not. They die
in great numbers and you're sad to see them go. Who survives the
onslaught? Read this one and find out!
Pros: This book is loaded with them. From the characters to the plot to the
smooth, professional writing, this is a keeper.
Cons: The only slight criticism I can give this one is mere on the three G's
scale: Ghastly, Gruesome, and Gor-ifying. I would have liked to see more
bloody carnage. Those pigs are ugly, fearsome creatures.
Overall: Great read. Definitely worth your time. I look forward to the sequel. I
wish Haigh (James) had lived longer for, of course, the sake of his family and
friends, but also so I could have interviewed him about his interesting career
and particularly...these pigs. The third book was rumored to unleash the pigs
in Australia...does it still exist?? We can only hope...
Four bloody skulls out of five (and only because I wanted more blood).
Next Month's Guilty Pleasure we get all wet:
"Don't go near the water!"
you couldn't be happier. For you know exactly what you are in store for:
flesh-eating hogs. What more could a lover of nasties and pulp horror really
want? With a near-perfect tagline pitch to entice you, it was time to delve into
what from all appearances would be the ultimate in ghastly, gruesome and
gor-fying horror.
Or was it?
Laurence James (Richard Haigh) was a highly-prolific British author who
wrote everything from biker novels to sci-fi, espionage to post-apocalyptic
thrillers. Unfortunately for us, James died in 2000. As Richard Haigh, he
churned out only two nasties: The Farm and its sequel, The City. Rumor has
it there was to be a third to complete the Pigs Trilogy, that it was actually
written but never published. The idea that it's sitting in a desk drawer
gathering dust somewhere is quite disturbing to someone like me.
When I cracked this one I was expecting full-bore, balls-to-the-walls gore
horror. What I wasn't expecting was for Haigh to be such a damn good
writer. Let's face a few unpleasant things here for starters: a lot of the guys
who knocked out these nasties were not exactly great writers, most were
just cashing in on a craze: functionally competent with a good eye for shock
horror, but little more than that. The best among them brought something
more to the table: talent. And that's exactly what Haigh does. This guy can
fucking write! In a sub-genre where characters tend to be cardboard cut-outs
that exist only to be devoured, Haigh has created wonderful,
three-dimensional characters. I'll be the first to admit there's sadistic streak
in me that loves to see these people get torn apart, but in The Farm I cringed
when it happened. The writing is that good.
The novel. A truck (lorry, if you rather) carrying barrels of chemical
waste--hallucinogens, metabolic agents, anesthetics, and other nameless
stuff--to be illegally dumped gets in an accident in the Welsh hills, overturning
and spilling its toxic cargo which soaks into the earth. Underground, the
chemicals combine creating something like a hybrid chemical warfare agent
that is carried by subterranean springs to a nearby farm, filling a pond which
the animals drink out of. You can see the trouble coming already. Back to the
accident. The truck collides with a flamboyant gay fashion designer in a
sports car, some nuns in a Morris, a school bus, and a camping trailer
(caravan) and its death on the highway. Already thumbs up to Haigh for his
amusing cast of characters.
Back to the farm. Paul Thompson, a doctor who abandoned his
Buckinghamshire practice, is living on the farm with his perky, liberated
American girlfriend. Up on holiday are his brother Richard (a stuffy bank
manager) and his wife and two children, and their aging father and mother.
Thrown into the mix is a stiff-lipped Welsh farm manager and his slutty
teenage daughter. All of them on 200 acres of farmland with cows, geese,
wild cats, rabbits, goats, dogs, and...oh yes...127 ferocious-looking, tusked
hybrid pigs known as Buckland Whites. All of the animals drink from the
pond. The people get their water from a tanker truck that shows once a
week because of the drought. Haigh takes his time setting up. If Shaun
Hutson had written this there would be a body count by page 20, but that's
not how Haigh does it. He uses the old Stephen King approach of developing
the characters then turning the monsters loose. And when he does, dogs kill
people. Cats eat people. Goats ram people. Geese gore people. You get
the picture. It's like Orwell's Animal Farm on Angel Dust. All of it setting the
stage for those nasty, nasty pigs that encircle the farm and allow no one to
leave and when they try:
"A Buckland White, eighteen months old, weighs something over two
hundreds and forty pounds. As the girl fell one of them squealed angrily,
stepping on her outstretched hand. Cracking the bones of the back of her
wrist, snapping fingers like breadsticks. The animal stumbled, rolling half
on top of the child, breaking her ribs, the splintered ends of bone tearing
into her lungs.
She tried to scream. Really tried, but she was choking. Drowning on her
own life-blood as it flooded into her nose and mouth.
Then the rest of the pigs closed in, pushing at each other in their frenzy to
taste blood and meat."
Or as another young lady discovers to her horror:
"The creatures were both pulling at the same arm, tearing at it until it was
attached only by stretched sinew to the shoulder. One of the Bucklands let
go and went to root under the shattered rib-cage of the teenager, emerging
with the loops of greasy intestines, yellow and fouled, tangled about it
snout."
Yes, nature has surely gone berserk and our cast of characters are trapped
by the marauding animals. The characters lives are wonderfully intertwined
and seem real. Some are likeable and some--like the farm manager,
Pentecost, with his perverted relationship with his daughter--are not. They die
in great numbers and you're sad to see them go. Who survives the
onslaught? Read this one and find out!
Pros: This book is loaded with them. From the characters to the plot to the
smooth, professional writing, this is a keeper.
Cons: The only slight criticism I can give this one is mere on the three G's
scale: Ghastly, Gruesome, and Gor-ifying. I would have liked to see more
bloody carnage. Those pigs are ugly, fearsome creatures.
Overall: Great read. Definitely worth your time. I look forward to the sequel. I
wish Haigh (James) had lived longer for, of course, the sake of his family and
friends, but also so I could have interviewed him about his interesting career
and particularly...these pigs. The third book was rumored to unleash the pigs
in Australia...does it still exist?? We can only hope...
Four bloody skulls out of five (and only because I wanted more blood).
Next Month's Guilty Pleasure we get all wet:
"Don't go near the water!"
