Book Review: THE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW by Ben Lathrop

THE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW by Ben Lathrop (Crystal Lake Publishing, September 25, 2020 release date) 

Summary on the Goodreads website . . . . .

Set against the pastoral fields and crumbling meat packing plants of South Eastern Iowa during the fall of 1985, Midnight Horror Show is a Midwestern Gothic Horror story of fairytale shadows, drive-in shocks and VHS era splatter. It’s a story that begins with murder performed for an adoring audience and ends with a young outsider transformed into the monster he thought he wanted to be. 

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     Contained within the pages of this horror novel is an engrossing detective story. As the author describes it, The Midnight Horror Show is “a horror story about a detective” that “doesn’t fit easily into one genre.”  

       The police procedural is a tried and true device that has served as the framework for many popular and acclaimed works. Rather than seem formulaic, when it’s used properly it can move a story along at a page-turning pace as it does here. The difference is in the way the writer develops and portrays the characters and their emotions and responses to what they observe and experience.  THE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW is a story rich in characterization, description, and detail. The detective story serves as the framework. Upon this skeletal structure, the horror elements provide the sinew and fat, the meat that make the story sizzle. 

        The novel transports readers back to 1980’s pop culture nostalgia with spooky film festivals at drive-in theaters and late night horror movies on television. Interest in horror spawned a rapidly-growing market for scary films within the burgeoning videotape (VHS) culture. Remember the public hysteria over heavy metal music, horror films, dungeons and dragons role-playing, and secretive satanic cults during the 1980’s? On a lesser scale, some religious groups and overwrought parental activists went after the more flamboyant television horror movie hosts and sought to censor them. 

   In the backstory to THE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW, one such television host, Boris Orloff, loses his job in 1964 after a concerned group protests his devilish influence on younger viewers of his very popular Saturday Nightmares program. They threaten to pull their advertising support from the local television station in the fictional town of Dubois, Iowa. They do their best to run him out of town, but he resurfaces as the host for Saturday night horror movies at the local Moonlite Drive-In. 

Twenty years later, strange murders begin to occur in the sleepy town.Soon, sightings are noted of a strange dark figure in the shadows and threatening wolf-like animals. Detective sergeant David Carlson is assigned to investigate and the novel follows his narrative as he uncovers one clue after another which leads him to a brotherly friendship with a horror-obsessed teen who may be a prime suspect.  As more information is obtained, the evidence seems to point to the unlikely resurrection of Boris Orloff, who perished in a fatal fire at the drive-in.  

  Author Ben Lathrop knows how to keep readers engaged and builds the tension until the final outcome at a revival of the old Saturday night horror movies with a new Orloff inspired host at the remodeled Moonlite Drive-In on Halloween night 1985.

   In an interview with Lathrop by publisher Joe Mynhart, the author referenced several 1980’s horror films in describing his novel: “It’s kind of like Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II mashed up with Trick Or Treat and set in Twin Peaks. Like those classics, THE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW deals with the darkness that exists inside and the satanic urges to release it. 

At several points the reader may feel that they are watching a movie, just waiting for the jump scares.