Crimson Orgy

Readers who gravitate toward the edgier side of fiction, such as myself, are anticipating the release of "Snuff" by Chuck Palahniuk with great relish. I'd strongly recommend all Palahniuk fans pick up a copy of "Crimson Orgy" by Austin Williams at their first opportunity. Seamlessly blending pitch-black humor with suspenseful and horrific elements, this tale of insanity, murder and mayhem offers a distinctly unnerving literary experience. Like Palahniuk's new book, "Crimson Orgy" immerses readers into the urban mythology of snuff movies, but the scope here is much broader than you might initially suspect. Beyond weaving a taut narrative of cinematic malfeasance, Williams masterfully sketches out a vivid portrait of exploitation filmmaking as it was practiced in decades past. Dripping with swampy atmosphere, punctuated by quoatable dialogue and loaded with a shattering sense of inevitability, "Crimson Orgy" will make you laugh and cringe with equal measure. It easily tops my list of recent favorites.

Sheldon Meyer a Underground Horror movie director has a vision for the ultimate Grindhouse Flick. It is called Crimson Orgy and if Sheldons vision is realized it will become the most notorious cult movie ever made and quite possibly the worlds first true Snuff Film. He will encounter some major obstacles in the making of his masterpiece. To start he only has a week to finish the film and with a reluctant starlet, an alcoholic lead man, local redneck cops, a hurricane, and a disloyal crew the deadline is going to be almost impossible to meet. He pulls it off but when the week of shooting is over he will never be the same. His desire to make the worlds most hardcore underground flick will end up costing him more than he could ever imagine. I have always been a fan of the underground horror and exploitation films. I own just about all of them from Cannibal Holocaust to I Spit on Your Grave so when I started Crimson Orgy I knew that I was going to be in for a real treat, and Mr. Williams delivered the goods. Crimson Orgy is a brilliant homage to the classic Grindhouse films of the 60s and 70s. I devoured this story in one long, enjoyable night and even though I missed out on an entire nights sleep I couldn't have been more satisfied. I could not tear myself away from the dark, twisted world Mr. Williams created. Something else I didn't expect when I started Crimson Orgy was how twistedly funny it was going to be. I found myself laughing out loud on more than a few occasions. Mr Williams writes with a style and wit all his own. He also has a dark and twisted sense of humor that even the most jaded fans will enjoy. He is destined to become a major force in the genre if he continues to write stories as stylish and original as Crimson Orgy. To sum up I recommend Crimson Orgy to all Thriller and Horror fans. I can promise that if you give Mr.Williams story a chance you wont be disappointed.

The year is 1965, and Stupendous Pictures is in the boonies of Florida, filming a straight to the grindhouse/drive in film: Crimson Orgy. This production will see no end of troubles for its cast of behind the screen characters. Students of z-grade, grindhouse cinema, fans of human based horror stories, and folks in search of a good, plausible yarn behind the troubled production of a movie that never actually existed (but should) will all find something to enjoy in Williams' novel. It gets a thumbs up from this Horror Reader.

Books that successfully blend jolting suspense with irreverent laughter are rare, but this one delivers that tricky combination in spades. From the disturbingly believable prologue in Crimson Orgy, we learn someone involved with the making of a legendary B-movie of the same title died in a very bad way... possibly in front of the camera. What remains for us to discover are "who, how, and why?" From that juicy premise, we dive into a vividly detailed rendering of a terrible week back in 1965 when it all happened. Each member of the film crew comes to full-bodied life, from the obsessed director and his nervous starlet to the hulking producer and besotted leading man. Over the course of seven strange days the story rushes forward, dragging us along with a sense of looming dread to the final night of shooting when we know the proverbial ax must fall. With its relentless pace and wild setting, Crimson Orgy is a scream from start to finish. It's the most fun I've had being scared in a long time.

The thin line separating fact from fiction gets deliberately blurred in this fiercely entertaining novel that manages to be a subversive dark comedy, suspenseful nail-biter, pop culture history lesson, and blood-soaked horror yarn all rolled into one. The scene is South Florida in 1965. Movie audiences across America have just recently been introduced to graphic violence on the big screen, thanks to Herschell Gordon Lewis's Blood Feast and other grindhouse classics of that ilk. Enter two low-budget Miami filmmakers, Shel Meyer and Gene Hoffman, looking to slice out their own piece of the gore movie pie with a twisted opus called Crimson Orgy. The end result of their ambition becomes the stuff of cinematic legend. Are we witnesses to the making of a snuff film? Is the actor playing the killer as unhinged as he seems? How come the producer carries around part of a corpse in his suitcase? These and other disturbing questions keep the reader on edge all the way to the intense, cathartic climax. Even after the last page has been turned, we have to wonder how much of what we've just read might be true. In the same way that The Blair Witch Project invited audiences to immerse themselves in the possibilities of a "real" urban myth, Crimson Orgy leaves the door of speculation open just wide enough to make us a little uncomfortable. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy a good thriller.