It’s spooky season so my big suggestion for getting your horror fics is to delve into the horror history of the 70s-80s with Grady Hendrix’ Paperbacks from Hell. Clearly written by a fan who knows his horrors and pulps, Hendrix’ tone is full of vivid narrative energy. Whenever I read I feel like I’m on a rollar coaster as his steady rhetoric of gore, demonic babies and killer moths ebbs and rises as he explains the origins and trends of the horror market.

Beginning in the 60s, there was the three punch of Rosemary’s Baby, The Other and The Exorcist, all which spawned popular movies and brought new life to a genre that was previously populated by musty Hammer Films monsters. Now, writers were going into the occult, going into LSD and sex and gore were splattered all over the table because Hendrix intones the writers of paperback followed no rules except one: Don’t be boring.

He pulls in the disparate threads of history that you would realize make sense if you thought about it. Gothic romance influenced the cover art of early horror paperback with its fleeing heroines and dark castles. The Satanic Panic and Helter-Skelter murders brought a deluge of cult freaks to the massess. Each trend and the wild subgenres and imitators are explored and analyzed in eight chapters-Hail, Satan, Creepy Kids, When Animals Attack, Real Estate Nightmares, Weird Science, Gothic and Romantic, Inhumoids and Splatterpunks, Serial Killers and Super Creeps.

Not only that, each page is filled to the brim with lucious and creepy cover art of which he takes the time to put full page asides for such notable artists like Jill Bauman and Jim Thiesen and discuss the distinct characteristics of the choke-crazy William W. Johnstone novels compared to the steady Southern drawl of Michael McDowell’s Blackwater series.

Though he does humorously poke fun at some of the more ridiculous tropes and scenes that defy science, physics and other established natural rules as these authors attempt to out-gross others, he also points to the underlying truth these horrors are founded on. Marasco’s Burnt Offerings speaks to the economic fears of the middle-class, Satanic possession points to the loss of self and who you think you are, and other interesting tidbits of what terror reveals about human nature.

So while I know I’ll never be able to sleep if I read these paperback nightmares, it does offer a steady pile of interesting stories to look into next time you spot a dusty antique pile. You might not be able to rid yourself of images of Gestapochauns and golem creatures, but at least you’ll be entertained.