Walking Dead by Guy N Smith

New English Library 1984

Guy N Smith was a UK horror writer who lived from 1939 to 2020. His early writing career started with writing articles on shooting and firearms. He then appropriately wrote for Men’s Adventure Magazines. He opened a used book business called Black Hill Books. His first published horror novel was Werewolf by Moonlight in 1974, published by the infamous New English Library. His name is synonymous with pulpy 80s horror. He is responsible for all those Crab books. Night of the Crabs, Killer Crabs, The Origin of the Crabs, Crabs on the Rampage, Crabs’ Moon, Crabs: The Human Sacrifice, Crabs Fury, Crabs Armada, Crabs Unleashed, Killer Crabs: The Return and The Charnel Caves: A Crabs Novel.

Basic Premise: The Walking Dead is the sequel to his 1975 book, The Sucking Pit. Our hero Chris Latimer has sold his land, which included the Sucking Pit. The new owners made it into a quarry. But now it’s sold again, and the new owner is developing the land for homes. While a digger is cleaning up debris, he starts sinking into the sucking pit. Evil ghost Jenny and ghost gypsy king show up in the muck and terror ensues.

I originally purchased both the Sucking Pit and The Walking dead at the same time without realizing they were connected. I did read The Sucking Pit and enjoyed it. The ending was pretty well concluded so I was surprised when I started reading The Walking Dead and realized it was a sequel. I don’t usually read the back synopsis after I buy them, I like to just grab a book and be surprised. And yeah, it says it on the cover but I didn’t notice, ok?

The main character Chris Latimer was the original protagonist, Jenny’s, boyfriend. After Jenny succumbs to the Sucking Pit…wait a minute, I didn’t tell you what the Sucking Pit is. The Sucking Pit is a big hole in the ground that gypsies threw bodies into that has a supernatural force inside of it. Ok, so, Jenny is gone and Chris, her ex-boyfriend who has been hooking up with Jenny’s landlord’s wife since Jenny was banging the landlord for rent free living. The landlord is now at the bottom of the Sucking Pit and Christ Latimer has married, the now deceased landlord’s wife and inherited the property with the Sucking Pit on it. Got it?

That wife is now out of the picture. Either she died or just ran off, I didn’t write it down and it doesn’t matter. He sold the place, and they made it a quarry. A new developer guy has bought it and is going to build a housing development. Chris Latimer is back in town, reliving his Sucking Pit glory days when it starts happening again.

This is a crude and rude gore fest with almost zero plot. There is a swampy hole in the woods with evil spirits that hypnotizes people to commit murder and then jump in the pit. Ghostly Jenny makes a few appearances, usually as a sexy siren who then turns into a decaying corpse that likes to show off her rotted undercarriage. I got to say, I feel bad for the Jenny character. She was a total innocent who got manipulated into evil in the first one and now she’s some hot to trot lifeless sack dying for someone to get it on with. They really just dehumanized this poor woman. I mean, the way it’s written is schlocky and hilarious but at the same time you’re like, come on man.

It's really formulaic. Scene after scene of a new character getting entranced by the Sucking Pit and killing their loved ones. It is pretty damn funny though. There is a part where this middle aged dude sees a young lady (not Jenny, they mixed it up for some reason) hanging out by the Sucking Pit. She tells him to kill his wife. He goes home, grabs an ax and heads upstairs. On the way he realizes he has a boner, so he pops it on out and stats rubbing it with his finger and thumb. He opens the door to his wife. She's like, what the hell?! He ax hacks her with his raging boner swinging around and then flops down onto her eviscerated corpse and just kind of rolls around in the entrails.

If that sounds good to you, well, good news, you’ll love this, because that’s all it is! Another amusing point worth mentioning. There is an asterisk on page 105 and at the bottom of the page there is a note to “see Sucking Pit.” HA!! Dude. You’ve been referencing the Sucking Pit the entire fucking book. Why asterisk now??

It’s fun. A little boring once you see it’s the same thing over and over again but it’s really short at around 150 pages so it’s still enjoyable. The books have a certain appeal to them that other “bad” horror books don’t have, and I think a big part of that is the page count. It’s too short to have filler. It’s kill after ridiculous kill. For as simple as this was, I’ve read worse climaxes with bigger build up. Ultimately, I feel like Guy N Smith was like, yeah sure whatever, here is the ending. Not much was explained but I don’t need it explained. It’s a pit in the woods that’s evil.