Fearsome Five: Five Action Movie Horror Reads

Gunfights! Judo throws! Dogs! John Wick is not only what many cite as a rediscovery of Keanu Reeves (a Keanussance, if you will), but it also represents a reinvigoration of the action genre. By leaning into the video-game like gunplay and outlandishly badass characterization, the John Wick series has created a franchise that can be both a satire and a love letter to the action genre. John Wick 3: Parabellum continues the trend with a bounty on John Wick’s head, meaning those trying to collect that bounty will only collect . . . DEATH!

Some people prefer their horror quiet, with creaking doors and evil whispers, while others like their horror big and loud, a cacophony of explosions and keening screams. For those that like their horror as loud as the shootout in Scarface, here are some horror stories that aren’t afraid to crank the volume all the way up to . . . DEATH!

5) Vampire$ by John Steakley. Fans of the movie might remember James Woods famously asking a priest if he’s “getting a little mahogany,” but the book the movie was based on is a fun, hard-boiled exploration of the lives of vampire hunters for hire. These vampire hunters aren’t in the mold of Van Helsing, even Hugh Jackman’s turn as Van Helsing seems quaint compared to the hard-drinking, motorcycle-riding, Church-sanctioned vampire hunters of Steakley’s novel. Rather than go in at night, nervously clutching crucifixes, these hunters barrel into vampire nests in broad daylight when the monsters are at their most vulnerable and most combustible. Leader Jack Crow and his team are very good at their job until an ambush leaves the team’s ranks decimated. That leaves Jack, with a new team, looking for revenge and the vampires still out for blood.

4) Little Heaven by Nick Cutter: This 80’s movie in book form begins with a trio of mercenaries being hired to rescue a woman’s nephew from the religious settlement called Little Heaven. Things happen, people and not-so-much-people die, and the mercenaries go their separate ways trying to forget what they’ve seen in Little Heaven. However, what they failed to kill in Little Heaven still wants to make their lives a living hell, and these mercenaries must get back together and finish one last job. No movie of this, but I could see this easily starring a young Arnold Schwarzenegger featuring a script by Robert Rodruigez. Finally, Clive Barker comes in to do a little script doctoring, adding a few CC’s of nightmare fuel to this tale of cosmic horror and good, old-fashioned revenge.

3) Fury from the Tomb by S. A. Sidor: If this were a movie, it would be what would have happened if John Carpenter got a hold of the Indiana Jones script. If that had actually happened, Indy would never have survived a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator because he would have left the franchise screaming before Crystal Skull was even conceived. The year is 1888 and young Egyptologist Rom is the only survivor of an expedition that has uncovered a collection of mummies. One mummy in particular is of particular interest to this expedition’s benefactor, so Rom must transport his cursed cargo by train, which is then hijacked. Joining with sidekicks ranging from a dead-eyed Wild West marksman to an orphan Chinese boy, Rom encounters flesh-eating ghouls, evil monks, and hopping vampires. And then there’s what’s really in those sarcophagi.

This book is part of the Institute of Singular Antiquities series, the next book being The Beast of Nightfall Lodge.

2) The Running Man by Richard Bachman: Sure, the movie had Schwarzenegger but it also had Hunters that looked straight out of a Toys R’ Us action figure aisle. The book by Stephen King’s angrier alter ego is a much more boiled-down bit of dystopia, featuring Ben Richards, a man at the end of his financial rope who submits to be part of The Running Man series, where he is hunted while a studio audience and viewers at home are watching. The movie amps up the game show feel, particularly with Family Feud’s Richard Dawson as showrunner Killian, the host, but the book is a more pointed commentary on social inequality and how the human race is more likely to allow suffering if that suffering is entertaining. Think of the last time you watched a video of skateboarding kids wiping out on the hard concrete or people “Ghost Riding the Whip,” only to have the cars they were supposed to be driving go out of control, and you can see that the themes in this story are still all too relevant.

1) Throttle by Joe Hill and Stephen King: I discovered this homage to the novella “Duel” in He Is Legend, an anthology of stories honoring one of the pioneers of fantastic fiction Richard Matheson. Regardless of your feelings about remakes and remakes of remakes, Hill and King capture what made Matheson’s “Duel” such a classic of slow-building tension that soon feels like it’s careening downhill to an explosive conclusion. Sure, this father-and-son homage involves bikers, and there’s also a father-son dynamic between Vince, leader of the motorcycle club The Tribe, and his upstart son Race.  But what’s kept at the piston-pumping heart of this tale is the relentless semi-truck that barrels down on the bikers like an avalanche of Detroit steel and the dynamic battle of wits and of wills between Vince and the trucker, the singular mind in charge of an 18-wheeled weapon. Be on the lookout for this one in Joe Hill’s upcoming collection Full Throttle.