Fleshbait (UK: NEL, 1979)
Tagline: "Suddenly...the sea becomes a focus of terror."
All right, let's start out with the good stuff. Cover isn't
bad, hardly as imaginative as many of the UK covers of
the time...but not too bad. Nice shot of a human hand
sinking into a sea of piranha-looking fish, lot of blood
oozing into the water. A for effort.
Next, onto the bad stuff. Let's face it: a lot of us bought
these books for the covers and covers alone. What
Tagline: "Suddenly...the sea becomes a focus of terror."
All right, let's start out with the good stuff. Cover isn't
bad, hardly as imaginative as many of the UK covers of
the time...but not too bad. Nice shot of a human hand
sinking into a sea of piranha-looking fish, lot of blood
oozing into the water. A for effort.
Next, onto the bad stuff. Let's face it: a lot of us bought
these books for the covers and covers alone. What
was inside was often secondary and how many people saw the cover of this
one--or dozens of like titles--and thought, hmm, this looks interesting. I'll buy it.
And let's face something else while we're at it: nobody ever picked up one of these
books looking for anything remotely intellectual or insightful or world-changing. We
expected crap, yes, but we also expected ENTERTAINING crap. This title I did not
read back in the day, as it were. In my never-ending search for old school grue and
gore I came upon FLESHBAIT and was instantly intrigued. Ha! A fish story? Count
me in!
Fuck that. Count me out.
When I was a teenager and blew my eardrums out to Black Sabbath and Judas
Priest and AC/DC my dad, who had been a drummer in swing bands at one time,
would just shake his head and say: How can you listen to that noise? Sounds like
they write it while they're sitting on the shitter. And you know what? FLESHBAIT,
unfortunately, reads like it was written on the shitter. The writing is fair. The
characters unbelievably one-dimensional. The horror barely competent. The
plot...well, no better or no worse than most of these, but it's just handled very
poorly. As you will see.
Okay. Leaking radioactive waste causes fish to mutate. They become not only
smarter (their brains sometimes enlarge so fast their skulls explode!) but they also
become telepathic. You heard me: they can read each other's minds. It's never
mentioned if they can read our minds or not, but that might have been a plus in a
book badly in need of one (I could picture Mr. Spock mind-melding with a herring or
a cod...OHHHH THE PAIN...THE PAIN...THE PICKLING...THE SALTING). I was
expecting the fish to go nuts and eat people but, sadly, this never happens.
Basically, they drown people, wreck boats, make the beaches unsafe. The only
decent scene is an attack by a conger eel, but it's fairly bloodless and tame. You
see, long have the fish been pissed at us for eating them and killing them for sport
and now that they're smarter, aware, and have this groupthink/telepathy thing going
on, they are organizing like a labor union and they're mad as hell and they're not
going to take it anymore!
Our main characters our Mark Neilson, a zoologist, and his hot blonde girlfriend
Kathy Wilding, a marine biologist. Strictly cardboard types. Mark is depressed by
the death of his friend Mike (who we later learned committed suicide because he
was jealous of Mark's love for Kathy...yeah, a little on the gay side, I'm thinking).
Soon, Mark hears about screaming fish and then he and Kathy--a marine biologist
who seems to know very little about fish--swing into action. If you want to call it
that. The real hero of this book is Bobby the Dolphin who warns people of
swarming/schooling bad fish and saves people from them. No, I am not making this
up. Bobby...the...fucking...Dolphin. Apparently dolphins, being mammals, are not
smart enough to be pissed at us for making them perform for dead fish at Sea
World and they harbor no grudge for the thousands of dolphins we've slaughtered
for the sake of Chicken of the Sea and Charlie Tuna. Either that or Bobby is just a
little suckass. This whole Bobby the Dolphin thing is so absurd I have to let you
read it for yourself. Here, he saves a dumb little girl:
"Carefully, so as not to frighten her, Bobby the Dolphin edged in close. Using its
snout, the dolphin eased the little girl back out of danger. As soon as she was
back on the beach, Bobby, with a last wave of his flippers, turned and headed
back out to sea."
The best part of this book is when Bobby the fucking Dolphin gets blown up along
with a radioactive reef that's spreading the contamination that's mutating the fish
and making us read this miserable piece of shit in the first place.
Pros: I can't think of any. The only redeeming quality of this book is that it's short
and you only have to suffer for a few hours.
Cons: See above. I'm still shaking my head about Bobby the fucking Dolphin.
Overall: Overall this is wreckage. I don't know anything about the authors of this
steaming hot pile of excrement--David Holman and Larry Pryce--but I'm thankful
they didn't write any more books. This was enough. You get the feeling they were
probably a couple half-ass editors at NEL looking for a check. My advice to you: go
read some Guy N. Smith. I'll darken your doorway with this crap no longer...
½ a bloody skull out of five.
Next month's guilty pleasure: Just in time for Halloween--
"Sweet little children...crazed with bloodlust."
one--or dozens of like titles--and thought, hmm, this looks interesting. I'll buy it.
And let's face something else while we're at it: nobody ever picked up one of these
books looking for anything remotely intellectual or insightful or world-changing. We
expected crap, yes, but we also expected ENTERTAINING crap. This title I did not
read back in the day, as it were. In my never-ending search for old school grue and
gore I came upon FLESHBAIT and was instantly intrigued. Ha! A fish story? Count
me in!
Fuck that. Count me out.
When I was a teenager and blew my eardrums out to Black Sabbath and Judas
Priest and AC/DC my dad, who had been a drummer in swing bands at one time,
would just shake his head and say: How can you listen to that noise? Sounds like
they write it while they're sitting on the shitter. And you know what? FLESHBAIT,
unfortunately, reads like it was written on the shitter. The writing is fair. The
characters unbelievably one-dimensional. The horror barely competent. The
plot...well, no better or no worse than most of these, but it's just handled very
poorly. As you will see.
Okay. Leaking radioactive waste causes fish to mutate. They become not only
smarter (their brains sometimes enlarge so fast their skulls explode!) but they also
become telepathic. You heard me: they can read each other's minds. It's never
mentioned if they can read our minds or not, but that might have been a plus in a
book badly in need of one (I could picture Mr. Spock mind-melding with a herring or
a cod...OHHHH THE PAIN...THE PAIN...THE PICKLING...THE SALTING). I was
expecting the fish to go nuts and eat people but, sadly, this never happens.
Basically, they drown people, wreck boats, make the beaches unsafe. The only
decent scene is an attack by a conger eel, but it's fairly bloodless and tame. You
see, long have the fish been pissed at us for eating them and killing them for sport
and now that they're smarter, aware, and have this groupthink/telepathy thing going
on, they are organizing like a labor union and they're mad as hell and they're not
going to take it anymore!
Our main characters our Mark Neilson, a zoologist, and his hot blonde girlfriend
Kathy Wilding, a marine biologist. Strictly cardboard types. Mark is depressed by
the death of his friend Mike (who we later learned committed suicide because he
was jealous of Mark's love for Kathy...yeah, a little on the gay side, I'm thinking).
Soon, Mark hears about screaming fish and then he and Kathy--a marine biologist
who seems to know very little about fish--swing into action. If you want to call it
that. The real hero of this book is Bobby the Dolphin who warns people of
swarming/schooling bad fish and saves people from them. No, I am not making this
up. Bobby...the...fucking...Dolphin. Apparently dolphins, being mammals, are not
smart enough to be pissed at us for making them perform for dead fish at Sea
World and they harbor no grudge for the thousands of dolphins we've slaughtered
for the sake of Chicken of the Sea and Charlie Tuna. Either that or Bobby is just a
little suckass. This whole Bobby the Dolphin thing is so absurd I have to let you
read it for yourself. Here, he saves a dumb little girl:
"Carefully, so as not to frighten her, Bobby the Dolphin edged in close. Using its
snout, the dolphin eased the little girl back out of danger. As soon as she was
back on the beach, Bobby, with a last wave of his flippers, turned and headed
back out to sea."
The best part of this book is when Bobby the fucking Dolphin gets blown up along
with a radioactive reef that's spreading the contamination that's mutating the fish
and making us read this miserable piece of shit in the first place.
Pros: I can't think of any. The only redeeming quality of this book is that it's short
and you only have to suffer for a few hours.
Cons: See above. I'm still shaking my head about Bobby the fucking Dolphin.
Overall: Overall this is wreckage. I don't know anything about the authors of this
steaming hot pile of excrement--David Holman and Larry Pryce--but I'm thankful
they didn't write any more books. This was enough. You get the feeling they were
probably a couple half-ass editors at NEL looking for a check. My advice to you: go
read some Guy N. Smith. I'll darken your doorway with this crap no longer...
½ a bloody skull out of five.
Next month's guilty pleasure: Just in time for Halloween--
"Sweet little children...crazed with bloodlust."
| Copyright 2010 by Tim Curran |