Hot Blood: Tales of Provocative Horror (Hot Blood )

This is a great collection of shorts some feel a bit dated but, having grown up in the era of excess there's a certain appeal (and creepiness) to the decadent sex and violence of these stories. Being a big fan of horror fiction and horror films it's rare that i stumble across anything new and unique, this is one of the rare exceptions. Taking it's cue from the old pulp novels and horror comics these stories are all about what goes gravely wrong when you pursue the wrong vice. Some of the stories are truly horrifying simply 'cause these are the worst case scenarios that rumble around the back of your mind when you decide to pick up an attractive stranger or go home with a "new friend" from the local pub. I was so impressed i sought out the nearly entire collection (11+ collections at this point the newest are contemporary and still spooky as hell!). Great Stuff!!!

This is the first entry in the successful erotic horror series, now reprinted with better cover art. I've read three of these so far (out of order) and this is the best one. Here's an idea of what you'll find: In Graham Masterton's "Changeling," a traveling businessman falls for a mysterious, irresistible woman, and then finds out what life is like from her perspective. It has some interesting developments, but at times reads like a feminist tract on how hard it is to be a woman. Fortunately it gets back away from that and redeems itself in the end. In Richard Matheson's "The Likeness of Julie," a college student finds himself fixated on one of his classmates, without knowing why. The infatuation turns darker when he's unable to shut out thoughts of all the things he'd like to do to her. "The Thang" by Robert R. McCammon is about a man with a small personal problem. It wants to be funny but is simply grotesque and cartoonish. It's the only story in this collection that's actually bad. A gardener and a housekeeper carry on an affair as they care for a hideously crippled old woman in "Ménage a Trois" by F. Paul Wilson. But their employer is not as helpless as she seems. "Mr. Right" by Richard Christian Matheson portrays a session between a woman and her therapist. Like most short-shorts, it reads like an extended joke with a punch line, but the author plays nicely with the readers' preconceptions about doctor/patient roles. You'll want to kick yourself for being taken in by it, but you'll enjoy it all the same. Lucid dreaming takes a deadly turn in Chet Williamson's "Blood Night." The protagonist of Mick Garris' "Chocolate" finds himself inexplicably experiencing the desires, feelings and finally the actions of a woman he's never met before. Ramsey Campbell's "Again" finds a man trying to help a lost old woman, and the horrors he encounters after he succeeds. This is easily the most frightening story in the book, which surprised me because I've always found Campbell's work very dull. Apparently there's an exception to everything. The quality of the stories here, as good as most of them already were, steps up a notch with this one. A young woman arrives to spend some time with her aunt and meets her strange young companion in Lisa Tuttle's "Bug House." It's a chilling examination of predator/prey relationships. A couple of thugs assault a helpless married couple in Theodore Sturgeon's "Vengeance Is." But which party is really the more dangerous? A more subtle kind of revenge is at the heart of "The Unkindest Cut" by J. N. Williamson. A man his haunted by the girl he mistreated twenty years ago in Michael Garrett's "Reunion." In "Footsteps" by Harlan Ellison, a child of the night meets her match in a fast-talking Frenchman, and receives the shock of her eternal life. A sorority girl is obsessed with a very foreign classmate in Mike Newton's "Pretty Is..." Gary Brandner's "Aunt Edith" is a witch who would just love to put

Great! Great!! Great!!!