Nightshade by Stanley R Moore

This looks to be the only book authored by Stanley R Moore. I guess after reading this people didn’t want Moore.

Eeeeh. Sorry.

Those 80’s horror covers will get you every time. They all just look so intriguing. Skeleton on a motorcycle?? Ok. Tell me more. You envision legions of the undead brought back to life after some scientist or archaeologist makes a cultural misstep into the ancient unknown. Or maybe a biker gang back from the dead to continue terrorizing the community they once terrorized while alive. There seems to be a pretty deep well of creative possibilities just from looking at this picture. Sometimes I think that these books would have been better off if the publishers hired the artist first and then had authors submit stories based on the art.

So what thrilling horror idea is hidden within these pages???

Killer…flies. Come on man. That’s all you got?!

I got to around fifty pages and thought, you know, maybe the killer flies are just the beginning. Like some biblical apocalyptical hell on earth where deadly flies come first, then frogs rain from the sky and then demons or something. Nope. That’s it. Killer flies.

We start in rural Pennsylvania. A boy and his dad go out fishing. Dad is bitten by a fly. He dies. The boy immediately figures out dad was killed by a fly. So dumb. Boy then hides for cover in the woods.

Stuttering small town Deputy Sheriff, Pete Bilyeux (Bi-Loo) is our hero. He has a mentally ill wife who is slowly losing her mind. She worships ancient Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl and has a twin brother whom she had an incestual relationship when she was younger. Don’t worry, it’s important to the story. Oh wait, no it isn’t. None of it has anything to do with the plot. But please enjoy the complimentary incest.

When Quetzalcoatl is first mentioned I was like, ok ok, this could be good. Ancient Aztec gods descending upon current day America to wreak havoc? Yes, please. But nope, just killer flies.

There is a side story where a busload of orphan black children are taking a trip to the nature reserve to have a picnic. The nuns who run the orphanage are almost instantly killed by flies. The children immediately figure out its evil flies killing people and are now fighting for survival, trapped in a bus they can’t drive, in the middle of nowhere. Sound dumb and boring? You’d be right. Don’t worry though because the children speak in a blacksploitation type jive that really classes up the book. Spoiler alert: this also has nothing to do with the main plot.

Cop hero captures some flies and takes them to the Hershey Medical Center. There is a pompously written intro to the chapter about Milton S Hershey, creator of the Hershey candy company and town of Hershey. I’ll just plop in the first paragraph from this chapter so you can really feel the pomp; “The mustachioed rotund wraith of Milton S Hershey weeps over his paradise lost. The last of the great American entrepreneurs and philanthropists, his passage is no longer mourned.” And then it goes on for another page. I’m reading and retaining the information like this sounds important. Like an introduction to a major character or something but no. This overwritten nonsensical drivel was all a roundabout way of telling you that Bilyeux was pulling up into the parking lot of the Hershey Medical Center. It’s so pretentious. It legit made me mad.

The whole book is written with a thesaurus next to the typewriter. Either the author was too intellectual to be writing B grade horror or he was a simple fellow (much like the author of this review) and felt he needed to pepper the book with overwriting and synonyms to sound smarter.

I skipped about 50 pages on the back half of the book. It was either that or quit it all together. I picked the story right up almost as if I hadn’t skipped any pages at all. That’s how much filler is in this thing. The showcase showdown…I guess, involves the mafia and yes, some bikers. Unfortunately, the bikers still have their skin suits on and are not the advertised skeletons on the cover.

If you have a high tolerance for dead end sub plots and a lackluster antagonist, you might enjoy this. It’s very B horror. If the writing was turned down a notch and the pacing picked up it could have been a fun good-bad book but as it is was just so meh.

Onyx 1989

Review by: Nick Anderson