James Wan | RVGFanatic

***Richard Lewis | June 3, 1980 | 153 pages***

I hate spiders. The mere sight of one is enough to make me squirm. They’re just so creepy looking, with those eight freaky legs and the way their bodies scurry so erratically… ugh! Arachnophobia? Who, me? Get outta here! Naw, I’ll be the first to admit that spiders simply scare the shit outta me. And I know I’m not alone. Millions of people are afraid of spiders. I remember watching Arachnophobia as a kid in the early ’90s and barely being able to watch the movie without diving behind the comforts of my family couch. Spiders have frightened millions of people for centuries, so it’s only natural for someone to write a scary book about them. And in the summer of 1980, a sick and twisted man named Richard Lewis did just that. Just last week, Spiders celebrated 40 years since it was published. For 40 years it has terrorized readers, and here’s to 40 more!

Poor, poor Dan Mason... — Poor, poor Dan Mason…

The book opens with this alarming statistic

The first page of Spiders introduces us to 67 year old Dan Mason, who retired 2 years ago from a managerial position in the sugar industry. The story takes place in Kent, a county in South East England. I love how this first page paints a perfect picture of late autumn in the Kentish countryside. It really sets the stage for the horrors to come… invading… crawling… swarming…

It doesn’t take long before the first spider comes creeping along. Dan was tugging out weeds in his farmhouse garden when he accidentally unearthed a strange looking spider. He tried killing it but to no avail. I love how Lewis describes the action. How Dan felt an involuntary shiver of fear run down his back as he saw the 8 eyes staring unblinkingly at him… as if the creature was thinking hate. Ugh, my skin is crawling already! Unfortunately for our man Dan, before he can flick the injured spider off his glove, it jumped high in the air and landed on his uncovered arm. The nightmare begins!

But our man Dan manages to survive the stinging bite. However, later that evening, the injured spider and hundreds of his wicked friends decide to pay ol’ Dan a late night visit. The descriptions of the spiders and the way they deal with disposing of humans is vile and despicable. This is trashy pulp horror at its best. It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for damn sure! And with the demise of Dan Mason, we are then introduced to his son, Alan Mason. Soon, Alan and the whole countryside will be fending off the creepy crawlers. It’s a wild and fast-paced ride!

And when I say it’s vile, I mean IT’S VILE. Not even babies and toddlers are safe! The scene of poor Sheila and her little boy, Damien, haunts me to this day. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. This book will make you fear spiders even more! Poor Damien too… all the little tyke ever wanted was to play with the “piedah”…

CLOSING THOUGHTS

What an awesome cover! — What an amazing cover

I first read Spiders last summer and absolutely loved every blood dripping second of it! It is a harrowing and unsettling read from the first page to the last page. And at a mere 153 pages, it won’t take you long to blow through it. Lewis designed the book in a way where it feels like a series of short stories, but they’re all connected with a central plot weaving a common thread (no pun intended). The protagonist, Alan Mason, is very believable and someone you root for. You feel his struggle, his pain and his elation at various points of the story as he attempts to go from dad avenger to nation savior. The spiders are brutal and horrifying. No one is safe from having their flesh ripped apart. Spiders does fetch a fair penny, as copies on eBay currently go for around $20. As a big fan of “when animals attack” pulp fiction, Spiders hit the mark BIG TIME for me. I can’t wait to read its sequel, The Web. If that one is anywhere near as fun as Spiders, then I’d be more than satisfied. Fantastic job, Richard Lewis, you mad mad man you!

Author: R.L. Stine | Published: 1992 — ***Author: R.L. Stine | Published: June 1992 | 164 pages***

R.L. Stine’s Hit and Run holds quite a bit of nostalgic goodness for me. It was the very first teen thriller I ever read, and I’ll always remember it fondly as such. One day in 1995 my dad took me to the local library and I spotted it on the shelf. The covers for the older teen thrillers always used to creep me out a bit, and I guess on that particular night I finally felt brave enough to give one of his “scarier” books a try. I remember feeling excited and a little anxious on the car ride home. I read the blurb on the back feverishly, and couldn’t wait to read it and see how it would compare to his Goosebumps books.

The back had me hooked from the start. I knew it was going to be more intense than any of his Goosebumps, but just how much was the question. I remember running into my room as soon as we got home. My brother recently moved out into the bedroom down the hall because we were old enough to have some privacy of our own. And boy, was I ever glad for that. I would be able to devour this book in peace and quiet. Though I loved Boyz II Men and Selena almost as much as the next guy, it’d be awfully difficult to read a book while my brother blasted Dreaming of You or End of the Road for the 150th time.

By the way, I always got a real kick out of spotting the blood stained “Thriller” label on these teen books. It was always like a quick instant adrenaline pump. It was a simple symbol that gave me that extra jolt whenever I saw it on the shelf.

I also loved how at certain angles the fancy embossed title and R.L. Stine’s name appeared silver…

… while at other angles it appeared purple. I must have wasted 5 minutes gawking at this color change before I began reading the book in 1995! Good times.

And who could forget the classic list of other teen horror books at the back of these novels? It was fun to see all the titles and even check off the ones you have read. Sad but true: I own all of those titles above

Hit and Run is about four high school friends who love to play ribs on each other. Cassie Martin is the only girl in the group — her 3 friends are Scott, Eddie and Winks. From the first page we find out that Cassie has a crush on her friend, Scott. One of the biggest differences between these YA (Young Adult) thrillers and Goosebumps was that the characters are older and they do things teenagers in high school would do, such as kissing. I’m pretty sure the kissing scene between Cassie and Scott was the first time I read about two characters lip locking. Needless to say, as an 11 year old I remember thinking I was reading something that maybe I shouldn’t. It’s super tame now looking back on it, but that was all part of the fun and innocence of it back then reading it as a kid.

One wild night while the 4 friends are out driving, they hit a creepy looking guy on an isolated stretch of road. Stricken with panic that their futures would be over if anyone ever found out, they decide to make a pact to keep it their secret. A deadly secret that each of them would take to the grave. Only, they soon find themselves terrorized by the man they supposedly killed. But the dead can’t come back to life… or can they?

I read it in one long sitting back in 1995 and absolutely loved it. After finishing it I could almost feel the sudden growth of a few whiskers on my chin! Just 2 short years later, I Know What You Did Last Summer came out with basically the same premise. I remember thinking that they stole their ideas from R.L. Stine’s Hit and Run…

What a star studded teen heart throbby cast!

Four young friends (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr.), a hit and run, one supposedly dead body and a pact to take it to the grave. But soon thereafter they’re relentlessly stalked. Yeah, stop me if you’ve heard that one before! It was only in recent years that I found out I Know What You Did Last Summer was based off the book of the same name by an author named Lois Duncan. Oops, so much for being a copycat of R.L. Stine’s Hit and Run! Maybe it was the other way around…

Lois Duncan was a popular writer of teen thrillers back in the ’70s and ’80s.

I bought this book last year and it’s on my to-be-read list, along with like 5,000 other books! I’m curious how similar it is to the 1997 movie.

Speaking of Lois Duncan, that wasn’t her only teen thriller converted into a movie. In 2018, Down A Dark Hall was converted from the page to the screen. Of course, I bought this book last year as well, but I digress

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I see you, Newton. Nice way to sneak it in! — I see you there, Newton…

I recently read Hit and Run for the first time in 25 years. Like a total dork, I read it late at night and tried to blow through all 164 pages in one sitting like I did when I was 11, as if to recapture some long lost magic. Alas, I had to tap out about halfway as Mr. Sandman came knocking on my door. I finished it the very next morning. It was a nostalgic read and hardly anything more. Being Stine, you can expect plenty of short paragraphs, tons of dialogue, cliffhanger chapter endings and fake out “scares” galore. He had a formula that worked for me when I was a kid. Now as an adult, clearly nowhere near the target demographic range, I didn’t enjoy Hit and Run as much as I did 25 years ago. It definitely loses something reading it as an adult, but I enjoyed the trip down memory lane nevertheless. You can see the “twist” coming a mile away, and I’m tempted to give it a ho-hum middle of the road (no pun intended) 2.5 out of 5 stars rating but for nostalgic reasons I’ll bump it up half a star.

3Stars

Tag: James Wan

Spiders (Richard Lewis)

Hit and Run (R.L. Stine)