Off Season
by Jack Ketchum
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Book Reviews of Off Season
Book Review: Off Season
Summary: 4 Stars
You remembered the first time you watched Chainsaw Massacre? That rawness you felt when Leatherface appears with the chainsaw and starts laying down terrible mayhem? And do you still remember watching The Evil Dead? The violence, the claustrophobia? Off Season is a hybrid of both and, in many ways, certainly a homage to all slasher flicks that have come before. Like in these films, there are no pretensions about the violence and all the underlying moral poverty here. There are no facades or attempts to keep the status quo. In fact I don't even think it is even possible for a Ketchum book to have any sort of a status quo. What Ketchum hopes to achieve is to let us see the evil things, the creatures that go bump in the night, and keep that image forever etched in our hearts. Like The Girl Next Door, the evil things are often in the hearts of mankind and the creatures are simply ourselves. Ketchum has no desire whatsoever to water down the depravity of humankind, no desire to make things look okay when they aren't. In this regard, Ketchum is admirable.
Sure, this book is scary. That certainly goes with the territory. Imagine The Night of the Living Dead but with cave dwelling cannibals as the undead and you wouldn't be far off with the premise of this book. There's the group, Carla, Marjie, Dan, Nick, Jim and Laura (you will be shocked by their relationships or rather, the complexity of them, which brings me back to the point of Ketchum not adhering to any sort of status quo) and they were attacked by these...well, whatever you might call them, you will simply know them as the bad guys, the creatures that go bump in the night, and you know that things aren't going to turn out well for these pitiful New Yorkers who just happened to be at the wrong place (Maine) at the wrong time (during Off Season).
Which brings us to the question of Ketchum's intended aim with these cannibals. Are they mere ciphers in the bigger canvas of Ketchum's metaphor depicting mankind's depravity? In a way they are, but if you just look at Off Season from a purely entertainment perspective, you will find lots to enjoy here. Ketchum's prose is readable and in some parts, almost beautiful. Like a good thriller Off Season keeps on ticking and there is an interesting and exciting vibe in reading about the characters' resilience. But you get a sense that it's all been done before and, with an exception of a few plot twist 'curve balls', the book feels rather predictable. You know everyone's going to die sooner or later and the violence waiting to befall them will be brutal, but there's nothing here to be afraid of plot-wise. What you will likely be afraid of will be the brutality itself and I feel Ketchum should've expanded upon that dynamic, instead of the usual 'people are bad' approach he opted to go for this book.
It is still enjoyable and the book is brutal, so much so that I felt disgusted, genuinely disgusted by the things these cave people do to normal human beings. But there's an oddly soothing feeling reading that, and you know Ketchum's intentions well enough to appreciate the moral lessons you get out of this book.
Could have been much better if Ketchum made a little more effort with the plot but otherwise a good read for horror fans and possibly beyond.
Book Review: Unspeakably bad (and that means GREAT!)
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack Ketchum (the pseudonym for Dallas Mayr) is a deranged, and completely whacked-out writer. I love it! This is my first full book by Mr. Ketchum after reading his story "Sheep Meadow Story" in the three story collection called "Triage" and I am very pleased with it.
The premise of this book is the terrorizing of an coastal Maine town called Dead River by a "family" of cannibalistic backwoods people during the tourist "off season." An unsuspecting group of friends made up of former and current lovers rents a vacation home outside this nice coastal town only to have their relaxing plans completely (and I mean completely!) ruined with the horror of an invasion of unfathomable proportions.
Talk about graphic! This book breaks new ground, for me at least, on the level and intensity of horror, and yes, gore (a tactic used by too many hacks for shock apeal, but here is an integral and necessary ingredient). I turned each page with dreadful anticipation of what was to come next. This is a great way to experience a book. I have missed a real "page turner" and I have never really used that term before to describe a book. I never really knew what that meant, but this book has defined it for me. If you are at all squeamish, you should definitely read this book! Ha! Actually, I found myself reading with my mouth agape more than once and that's no easy task for a writer to get me to do. Artful (if you can call it that, and I think you can) description of the horror of an unbelievably horrible scenario.
To top it all off, this publication (the only version I would recommend reading by the way) is somewhat of a victory dance for Jack Ketchum as he explains in his Afterword. You see, this book was originally published with some key details omitted and a very key change from his original vision. This is his victory over admittedly somewhat of a forced yet self edit. The ending is great in this form and I'm very happy I didn't read the "original" published version.
Nothing in this book follows a formula, and that's truly refreshing. Who is the hero in this book? Well, you have to read it, and that's all I can say. You will be surprised by what you find, or don't find. Don't expect anything... or maybe you should expect everything!
Stephen King calls this guy, Jack Ketchum, the scariest guy in America!
"Who's the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum, the outlaw
horror writer whose terrifying first novel, Off Season, is finally available
uncut." - STEPHEN KING
I have to agree with Mr. King, in more ways than one...
-=R=-
Book Review: Ketchum's Off Season is brutal, horrific and exploitative to the nth degree.
Summary: 5 Stars
I was first introduced to Jack Ketchum's Off Season by a friend who'd noticed that I was reading books by Bentley Little, Edward Lee and Richard Laymon. He told me about Jack Ketchum and his early work titled Off Season. At the time I was told the book itself was out-of-print and used bookstores sold them at a premium. The moment I received word that Amazon started offering the novel again I was quick to order my copy. I thought I knew what extreme horror literature was all about. I had thought Lee's Bighead was the epitome of extreme horror, but I was mistaken as soon as I began reading Off Season.
Jack Ketchum's Off Season takes the old Scottish folklore of the cannibalistic Sawney Beane Clan which supposedly had terrorized the Scottish coasts during the 15th-century. This was not the first time this infamous clan of inbred cannibals' legend has been adapted for modern times. Wes Craven had used the same folklore to base his 70's exploitation horror film The Hills Have Eyes. Ketchum's Off Season is much closer to the legend of the Sawney Beane Clan and Ketchum describes in detail the violence and cannibalistic scenes by which the inbred clan inflicts on vacationing and traveling strangers. Off Season also owes abit to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead in the chapters dealing with the siege on the cabin by the clan.
Jack Ketchum pulls no punches and makes the reader believe that scene of carnage and horror inflicted on the characters Carla, her sister Marjie and the men of their small group. The horror is not just the one scene through the eyes of the cabin renters, but also those scenes within the clan's coastal cave abode where children behave more like ravenous animals than civilized human beings. There's also a brutal and frank description of the incestuous practice the clan has devolved to in order to propogate their clan's numbers.
In the end, Jack Ketchum's Off Season is not a book for just anyone to read and enjoy. In actuality, Off Season is not even a book to enjoy but more of a novel to survive through. I was barely able to get through the novel, not because it was badly written but due to its extreme nature. I'm actually proud to say that I'd survived reading through the novel. I would turn around and do what my friend did for me and recommend this harrowing, brutal and violent tale of survival, cannibalism and horror to fans who think they know what extreme horror is all about. They'll be in for a shocking surprise if they ever pick up this book to try out.
Book Review: Uncensored Version
Summary: 5 Stars
Originally published as his first book in 1980, Jack Ketchum had to compromise and basically rewrite the book for editting to get it published. He agreed and changed numerous items within the story. However, now that his name is semi-known, Ketchum was able to re-release Off Season in 2006 with his original thoughts and story intact. Most horror novels fall short on the horror and get watered down turning them into less-than-gruesome rides. Here, however, you get a novel that is disturbing but not over-the-top to where you have to use supernatural powers to create the antagonists. Think Lord of the Flies to the extreme in which there is a group of humans that are so de-evolved that they are little more than intelligent animals that crave human flesh.
Ketchum wastes no time and throws you right into the horror from page one. He jumps off traditional story-telling plotlines by killing off characters that you really expect are going to be the survivors. What makes this story so dang good is that, as remotely as the chance is, it's as believable as cannibalistic in-bred hillbillies living in the Appalachians of West Virginia (Wrong Turn. It borders on the believable of undiscovered sub-human creatures from a South Pacific island feasting on and raping humans (The Beast House and Castaways). It's at that edge of "Well I suppose it could happen". There's no ghosts, aliens, zombies, unkillable slashers, or killer robots going on, it is entirely feasible that in the natural world, this could happen and that is what makes it a great horror story.
This version of the book is off the wall with intensity and you just can't stop reading, waiting for what will happen next. As a first novel, it's a homerun but unfortunately, not all Ketchum's books hold up against it. None-the-less, it's ten year later sequel, Offspring is almost as good. Especialy good to read while camping out in the woods.
Book Review: Almost Sickeningly Graphic, but Extremely Well Written
Summary: 3 Stars
When Stephen King gave his famous National Book Award acceptance speech in 2003, he kept mentioning the author Jack Ketchum. He pointed to Ketchum's 1980 novel OFF SEASON and claimed it "remade the face of American Popular Fiction." He later stated that it was tragic that a novelist of Ketchum's importance was so obscure.
King's speech motivated me to buy the mass market version of OFF SEASON when it was re-released by Leisure Books this year. This novel has a enthusiastic blurb by, you guessed it, Stephen King, who is clearly a big fan of this novel.
I didn't love OFF SEASON, but I found it undeniably effective. The plot is very simple, almost like a slasher film. A group of six people are in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and are ambushed by a group of wild cannibals. Ketchum then describes, in incredibly violent detail, their desperate quest for survival. Needless to say, not all of them make it.
Contrary to what some of the other reviewers have said, I think Ketchum is a very good writer. Most of this book is written in a highly vivid, gripping style. The plot is tightly paced and I kept turning the pages. I also disagree with the criticism that the characterization in this novel is poor. I personally thought that most of the characters in this book were pretty well fleshed out. Indeed, Ketchum spends most of the first half of the book on describing the main characters and their personalities. I thought most of the characters turned out relatively three-dimensional.
The major downside is that many of the characters in OFF SEASON are not particularly mature. All of the major characters are over thirty years old, but most of them act like sex-crazed, self-absorbed teenagers during the first half of this book. Perhaps Ketchum was trying to make a statement about the primal nature of human beings, even after they achieve maturity. Or perhaps he thought sexing up the book would lead to more sales.
This book is not for the squeamish, and I must admit I didn't find it an entirely pleasant experience to read. Still, this novel is undeniably effective and I recommend it to hard-core horror fans.