Laurence James is an author who I'm probably guilty of overlooking. Partly because he was best known for hippie era SF, which isn't really my thing, and partly because he used so many pen names. It's easy to forget that 'Mick Norman' who wrote all those Hells Angels novels, is also 'James Darke' of the Witchfinder General inspired 'The Witches' series, as well as 'Jonathan May' of the rival Confessions book series. Whatever name he was using that week and whatever genre he was working in though, I’ve found that you're always in entertaining hands with Laurence James.
Here James steps into the guise of 'Richard Haigh'
and gives the likes of Guy N. Smith and James Herbert a run for their money
with this prime piece of 1980s paperback horror in which an isolated farmhouse
in Wales comes under attack from carnage loving pigs. Not willing to put all
his eggs in the one basket, James expands this from being a mere killer pigs
vehicle. Since The Farm also trots out lethal dogs, cannibalistic rabbits,
malicious goats, cows seeking martyrdom and suicidal geese. All putting aside
their differences to gang up against the human race and seek revenge after
their water supply was contaminated by dangerous chemicals.
Speaking of Guy N. Smith, I suspect this book was
doing a little bit more than encroaching on his literary territory. In fact
there seems to be a fascinating, hidden layer of Guy N. Smith references in
this book. The main protagonist Paul is a city boy who was made the dramatic
lifestyle change of decamping to a farm in rural Wales- as Guy N. Smith had
done in real life. Paul's brother Richard works in a bank- an occupation Smith
had held prior to becoming a full time writer. Richard's wife is called Jean-
which is the name of Guy N. Smith's wife. Jean and Richard have two children, a
boy and a girl who are in their early teens- and did the Smiths (technically
they actually had a boy and two girls). Paul is also harbouring the secret that
he used to write erotic fiction for top shelf magazines- as did Guy N. Smith
back in the 1970s. It's way too much to have been a mere coincidence. Smith did
lend a front cover quote to James's horror novel Paradise Lost "mind
blowing terror from a talented new horror writer". So I assume those two
were mates, and these clandestine GNS references should be interpreted as a
good natured poke in the ribs.
Although it has never really attained the iconic
status of The Rats, Night of the Crabs or Slugs, in many ways The Farm is the
absolute embodiment of the 1980s British horror paperback. It's simplistic,
relatively short on page count, delivers crowd pleasing scenes of people
falling foul of bloodthirsty animals and is shameless in its perversity. If you
think Guy N. Smith was often guilty of inserting troubling sexual elements into
his horror books, then Laurence James wants you to hold his beer. Come for the
killer pigs, stick around to be disturbed by the behavior of an underage Welsh
nympho called Gwyneth, who is anyone's for a top up to her pocket money. I dare
say that after meeting a girl like Gwyneth, a Welshman need never look
longingly at a sheep again. For some reason James chooses the scene in which
Gwyneth and another character break the sexual taboo of incest, to go overboard
not only in terms of sexual descriptions but also in terms of product
placement. I doubt The Mirror newspaper, Robertson's Marmalade or Toyah Willcox
were grateful for having their wares plugged in that context.
It could be argued that back in the morally
bankrupt 1980s, books like this were being passed around the playgrounds by
boys who would have been roughly the same age as Gwyneth, to whom she'd no
doubt have been something of a fantasy figure. Still the Gwyneth aspects to the
book are pretty sordid even for that era and don't exactly show James's
character in the greatest light, for a while there it really does feel like
he's writing jerk off material for Jimmy Savile. In another example of this
book time stamping itself to the era, it is such a quintessentially British and
1980s thing for the unnatural relationship in this book to get discovered
thanks to a trade union dispute (you'll have to read the book yourself to
discover how, it's priceless). Perhaps that was another of James's Guy N. Smith
in-jokes, trade union activity being one of Smith's bete noires.
Laurence James always comes across as being a
little bit more hip and in touch with popular culture than your average
paperback writer back then. I seem to recall his Hells Angels books including
Michael Moorcock references, name checking Roger Corman and general having a
satirical, underground sensibility to them. As we venture into the 1980s, The
Farm proves that James still had his finger on the pulse when it came to what
the kids were into. James needle drops songs by Madness, Fun Boy Three and Ian
Dury into these pages. I especially liked that when it came to Dury, James
didn't go for the obvious 'Reasons to be Cheerful' or 'Hit Me with your Rhythm
Stick' and instead has a character listening to 'Spasticus Autisticus' on the
radio. Which might be another example of Laurence James pulling our leg, since the
BBC ban on that song probably meant that Spasticus Autisticus didn't actually
receive much radio airplay back then.
We also get a Famous Five reference, which
initially seems quite old fashioned in that company, but I suspect James was
actually alluding there to the Comic Strip's 'Five Go Mad in Dorset' parody.
Especially as he quotes the famous "lashings of ginger beer" line.
Which was echoed throughout playgrounds after Five Go Mad in Dorset went out,
along with the heavies' blah-blah-blah speeches. I suppose a blah-blah-blah
version of The Farm's plot would go ... blah-blah-blah chemical spillage...
blah-blah-blah government cover-up... blah-blah-blah Welsh jailbait...
blah-blah-blah killer pigs.
James's approach to horror can at times be as
unconventional as his choice of Ian Dury songs. He has an eccentric habit of
ending chapters on a cliffhanger then jumping forward at the start of the next
chapter and only eventually revealing important plot details anecdotally.
Something which takes a bit of getting used to. After a literally explosive
opening that sees James gleefully reduce schoolchildren, nuns and a chickenhawk
photographer to bloody pulp, the book then teases us with a few false starts,
slips into darkness with it's jailbait fixation before pulling it's mind out of
the gutter and unleashing the swine. Once it gets going through, the book comes
out with all guns blazing and The Farm lives up to it's reputation as a better
than average example of the paperback equivalent of the Video Nasties. It's the
type of book that thrived during the late 70s and early 80s, only for public to
grow tired of this sort of horror novel when an influx of below average books
flooded the market at the end of the eighties. My suspicion is that had the
Video Nasties been left alone they'd have met with a similar fate and the
public would eventually have just gotten bored and jaded with an overkill of
cheap horror movies on video. However, because the Video Nasties were taken
away from us they've achieved legendary status and enjoyed a healthy cult
afterlife. Whereas their book equivalents, lacking the allure of forbidden
fruit, have tended to fade into obscurity.
Saying that, The Farm was recently republished by Valancourt's Paperbacks from Hell imprint, followed by the news that James's follow up The City (1986) is being republished by a new company called Cardboard Coffin Press. News that is something to squeal about, since buying original copies of those books at the moment seems impossible without remortgaging your house or taking up bank robbing. I can't help but be amused though that in a recent interview one of the Paperbacks from Hell people ruled out republishing Pierce Nace's Eat Them Alive on account that it "veers on the side of bad, bad taste" and is "super duper rapey" (note: that book contains no rape whatsoever) yet they're perfectly happy to republish Welsh incest porn. Kudos to them for putting The Farm back in circulation, but there's some peculiar double standards going on there.
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