Back when I was a young horror fiction fan in the early 90s, I thought that gratuitous violence and gore in the genre got its start during the splatterpunk movement, initiated by the likes of Clive Barker and Skipp & Spector in the mid-80s. How very wrong I was. That was before I discovered the British nasties of the late 70s/early 80s, when seemingly everyone was trying to mimic the success of James Herbert's Rats, resorting to all kinds of havoc-wreaking creatures: crabs, worms, cats, jellyfis

Back when I was a young horror fiction fan in the early 90s, I thought that gratuitous violence and gore in the genre got its start during the splatterpunk movement, initiated by the likes of Clive Barker and Skipp & Spector in the mid-80s. How very wrong I was. That was before I discovered the British nasties of the late 70s/early 80s, when seemingly everyone was trying to mimic the success of James Herbert's Rats, resorting to all kinds of havoc-wreaking creatures: crabs, worms, cats, jellyfish, slime, ants, slugs, etc. One of the better examples I've come across recently, Childmare features, yes, maniacal children. And the bloodshed and carnage here would probably make many of those splatterpunks blush.



Some sort of food poisoning has caused all the young students of a British school to suddenly turn into ruthless, indiscriminate killers who come up with increasingly brutal and sickening ways of dispatching their victims. AG Scott (aka Nick Sharman*) has a way of making the violence much more disturbing than the typical nasty writer. I mean, don't you think that being forced to lie back on a desk, forearm being held out off the edge, then having it bent backwards at the elbow is much more horrifying than someone's head being cut off? I sure as hell do.



But violence and gore isn't really what I look for in horror. I'm more interested in the fear factor, and while I wouldn't call Childmare overly scary, it does deliver its fair share of chilling scenes, such as when the teachers first start noticing the children's "dead" eyes and their emotionless gaze, and realize that they're in for a world of trouble. But the novel became a little repetitive after a while, even for a sub-200 page book. I'm not a really big fan of zombie novels, and this strayed a little too close to that sub-genre, though this was published well before that became an actual thing. Still, it was a quick, fun read overall.



Any fan of nasties and zombie-type fiction would probably have a great time with this. This is no-holds-barred horror, with several scenes that are honest-to-god hard to get through. So, if that's your thing...



3.0 Stars



*Childmare was published in the UK under the name Nick Sharman, who has a number of horror novels under his belt. No idea why this was published under a different name here in the states.



ETA: And thanks to Will Errickson of Too Much Horror Fiction for tipping me off on this one.