The Festering by Guy N Smith
Oh wow. This is classic Guy N Smith. Also, look at that cover!!!! I miss the early font design, but presume this was under NEL copyright!
Published in 1989 by Arrow Books in the UK. Set yet again in Smith’s beloved Welsh countryside, the novel starts with a instant sick bag wallop in medieval times as a chap returns to his village dripping in disease, boils, puss, melting flesh, etc. Everyone is horrified and try to throw him out of the place. His disease eventually kills him, swelled eyes and mouth leaking god knows what, and he is buried deep in the ground by the villagers who think it is a curse of the devil of course!
Cut to the modern day ( well 1989) and a couple, Holly and Mike, have moved from the city to the countryside. As seems the norm for a Smith book, there is a 10 year or so age gap between the couple. Also, quite a number of the main male characters in Smiths books either smoke a pipe or have a writing job or both. Not unlike Smith himself. Anyway, they buy a dilapidated cottage with a chunk of land. The plumbing is completely broken, so they must dig a well in the garden.
However, they dig a hole right over the diseased body. A foul stench emits from the hole and the disease is released again, first infecting one of the workers digging the hole. Needless to say, the infection spreads and chaos reigns in the quiet village. The disease not only covers the body in boils and causes the leaking of pus and slime from everywhere, it also ramps up violent and sexual urges. The victims end up wreaking havoc and turning into toxic, disease-ridden creatures unable to control themselves violently and sexually. It’s a simple story that gently leads us into a tale of tension then ramps up the horror in a confined environment. It thunders along with all sorts of pestilence horror and action as it reaches its grim and bleak ending.
This is trashy, over-the-top, gory exploitive pulp horror at its best. Smith knows exactly what he’s doing here and is on top form. He certainly revels in the descriptions of the festering infected , their weeping slimy bodies, various fluids leaking from the poor victims pustules, eyes, ears , mouths and other orifices. These are wonderfully disgusting, reminiscent of the gloopy body horror of the movie Street Trash. He revels in the description of the destruction on the bodies of the diseased victims.
It’s been mentioned a few times that this was a book written in the aftermath of the Aids crisis, so the subject of unknown, rapidly contagious diseases was still on everyone’s minds. Smith even mentions it a couple of times in the novel. Whether or not he had this in mind when writing it, we will never know.
It also throws around a bit of casual misogyny that some may find a bit harsh. I’m not defending it, just warning everyone. It’s a book written in a different time.
If you like your horror with all its wonderful, over-the-top pulp characters and outrageous gore scenes, I can’t recommend this enough. It has to be one of Smith’s finest works.
Its pretty hard to find the actual print version these days. No copies are available on Ebay as of writing this. Below is the original cover for the novel by the wonderful Les Edwards. However, it was rejected for being a bit too extreme. I think they missed a trick! You can actually buy the original work from the artist website
Guy sadly passed away in 2020 and a memorial convention was organised by his daughter. You can read about it on the Guy N Smith Facebook page
There is a great article with some brilliant cover images worth a look at RVG Fanatic, Remembering Guy N Smith
Thanks and look after yourselves!
Dan
