Slimer (UK: Star Books, 1983)


Tagline: "...and death was only the beginning!"

If you read my earlier review of Harry Adam Knight's
The Fungus, you'll know that I think that old HAK was
one of the better nasty writers and that I had high hopes
for this one. To begin, that cover is priceless. Where
others might see cheap, lurid exploitation and turn up
their effeminate noses at it, I (and probably you, too)
see cheap, lurid exploitation and know I'm in for some
fun. I think it's worthwhile at this point to give you an
idea of the wonderfully lean, effective blurb copy

on the back of this one:

                                     SLIMER
         On a deserted oil rig lurks the ultimate horror--

                                     SLIMER
         A genetically-engineered killing machine that cannot be destroyed--

                                      SLIMER
         And only six people stand between it...and you!

Good stuff. It gives up a bit of the plot but we're not about to get all girly about
something like that here at Guilty Pleasures. Let's get into this one and see what
good old HAK has in store for us this time around. From the front cover illustration
and the back cover copy, you already know this is a monster story. And, really, isn't
that why you would have bought this book in the first place? So, before we get into
secondary things like plot and character, let's take a peek at our beastie:

"The face, if you could call it that, was long and smooth except for two large round
eyes that seemed horribly blank and lifeless. At the bottom of the 'face' there was
an eruption of small, squirming tentacles which parted suddenly to reveal an
impossibly wide mouth full of triangular teeth."

Hmm. Intriguing, you say? I agree. Now to the plot. What we have is basically six
people floating on a life raft out in the North Sea after their yacht went down...along
with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of heroin the six had invested in to give
them the easy life or a piece of it at any rate. Out of the fog and darkness comes an
oil rig. Problem is, how do they get aboard? Unless you're a U.S. Navy SEAL or a
British SBS commando, climbing oil rigs in foul weather is not recommended.
Then...a crane swings out and down comes a cage. Rescue! They hop aboard and
ride up to the platform and find themselves on a deserted oil rig. But WHO lowered
the cage?This is where HAK really starts having fun as he channels The Thing and
Alien and makes the oil rig as menacing as an isolated Antarctic outpost or a drifting
industrial ghost ship. And now that he has given us a wonderfully claustrophobic
setting, he builds upon his characters which run the gamut from total asshole (Alex)
to wimpy addict (Mark) to selfish whiner (Rochelle) to morally ambiguous poutypants
(Chris). The other two, Paul and Linda, seem decent...in fact, too decent to be
involved with the others. It doesn't take long before they realize that the oil rig is a
biological research station and something has begun to invade them:

"The awful tingling sensation was in her left leg now as well. She saw it was
covered with a black, glistening liquid and that a long tendril of the same substance
ran across the floor. She remembered the woman with the black, slimy worms
hanging out of her mouth..."

The interpersonal relationships are pure HAK. Alex, who has Mark under his control
by addicting him to heroin, is a sex-crazed pervert. When Mark goes into
withdrawals, Chris (his girlfriend) begs Alex to give him heroin. But Alex wants sex.
He tells her to take her shirt off which she does with hardly any hesitation and when
he tells her to get onto her knees and perform oral sex on him, again, she does not
hesitate. Okay...so Chris acts like an extra in a porno film. Oh well. Alex never gets
enough and goes on a wild spree wanting to rape all the women on the rig. That's
when the scientists start showing up...or something pretending  to be them. One of
them happens to be a very sexy woman and Alex goes right after her. He ends up
running from her. Then he meets up with his own girlfriend and as he seduces her:

"Choking, and overwhelmed with panic, he struggled like a mad man to break free
but Rochelle held him fast. More and more of her tongue forced itself into his
mouth. It was like a giant worm burrowing its way down his throat. He could feel it
going down his esophagus, slimy and cold..."

Poor Alex. Meanwhile, the other characters have watched a VHS tape they found in a
lab that points to the most grotesque sort of genetic engineering experimentation.
Soon enough, they meet one of the scientists. They are in danger, he tells them. He
and his team--some thirty people, all gone now--created an artificial gene that would
invade a host body and make it adapt to any environment. They called it the Phoenix
unit. Now, in the body of a host it converted, it's on a rampage and it only wants to
eat, to survive. Not only does it ingest people, but it turns out perfect copies of them,
also absorbing their minds. The novelty here is that most of these clones don't seem
to realize they're not the real thing and are as surprised as anyone when the black
genetic matrix goo bursts out of them. Now it's a matter of survival of the fittest. The
ending to Slimer is not your typical blow-up-the-monster sort of thing, but something
quite unusual and unique (even funny in places) and I won't ruin it for you.


Pros:  Fun from beginning to end. Cool monster. Atmospheric setting. Wonderfully
stupid one-dimensional characters.

Cons: Well...maybe the characters whose motivations are murky at best.

Overall:  At a brief, fast-paced 156 pages, this is a near-classic nasty with just about
all the elements in place. Go grab a copy. Not quite as good as The Fungus, but it
still merits--

Four skulls out of five.



Next month's Guilty Pleasure:

"Only death could live and move in that dark, still place."