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"I call this death thing the bum motel. Stopping crime as it happens. It works, too."
I'm not a nostalgic person in general, but I do miss the cocaine years of cinema. It was an era where storytellers didn't take themselves all that seriously and since film budgets weren't high enough to feed starving African countries for a year, so screenwriters took chances and had fun. Now, it's not like the cocaine years have vanished and I can't watch its movies anymore, but it's always refreshing to find contemporary fiction drawing inspiration from that scared time in storytelling. Andrew Hilbert's DEATH THING could've been a drive-in movie in the early eighties, back when it had gruesome midnight programming for the world to enjoy. It'll make you wonder why they ever stopped doing these.
DEATH THING has several point of view characters. The main protagonist is an old man named Gilbert, who's fed up about having his car broken into by the unruly youth of his neighborhood. So, he designs a booby trap aimed at trespassers that has immediate success. Young and able bodies start hitting the floor in Gilbert's driveway and garage. Sure, his peaceful and caring wife Mary and his cowardly neighbor Larry are freaked out as the violent deaths Gilbert's car is dishing out, but they seem to be the only ones. Gilbert's death thing has a lot of support in town, It's only the beginning for his creation. People are afraid, at war with their own youth and the death thing becomes the symbol of their struggle.
The characters of DEATH THING are one of its two standout aspects. They are the conservative America of Ronald Reagan, expressing their fear through violence and intellectual domination. It's especially rare in literature that a protagonist and his close support case aren't outwardly seductive and surf such a perfectly drawn moral grey line. DEATH THING's structure is also extremely refreshing. Not only it's short, but the storyline evolves along with the car, which was unexpectedly dynamic and fun to read. The modification Gilbert makes on the car each alter its purpose slightly and each time steers DEATH THING in a increasingly darker direction. It's a short read, but there is a purpose to every sentence, every word. It's the sort of detail oriented approach that I like.
Andrew Hilbert brought me back to a simpler, more dynamic time in storytelling with DEATH THING. I guess you could say it's a horror novella with political and social undertones that doesn't take itself seriously one bit. Where else have you read something like that, huh? Craig T. McNeely, editor of Double Life Press, wasn't lying when he said he wanted to publish material that challenged boundaries, DEATH THING is as original and passionate of a work of art I've had the privilege of reading. The mind of Andrew Hilbert is like a deforming mirror for contemporary genre literature, it draws crooked portraits of our reality that displays a truth it would be impossible to see otherwise. Given that DEATH THING is bite-sized material, it sold me to Andrew Hilbert's unique talent. What he does is precise, but he does it extremely well.
"You look like a monster."
Gilbert laughed a little. "This is what crime does, Larry. You can kill a thief but they'll always come back to fuck you in the ass. Help me drag this motherfucker to the shed and take me to a hospital."
The characters of DEATH THING are one of its two standout aspects. They are the conservative America of Ronald Reagan, expressing their fear through violence and intellectual domination. It's especially rare in literature that a protagonist and his close support case aren't outwardly seductive and surf such a perfectly drawn moral grey line. DEATH THING's structure is also extremely refreshing. Not only it's short, but the storyline evolves along with the car, which was unexpectedly dynamic and fun to read. The modification Gilbert makes on the car each alter its purpose slightly and each time steers DEATH THING in a increasingly darker direction. It's a short read, but there is a purpose to every sentence, every word. It's the sort of detail oriented approach that I like.
Andrew Hilbert brought me back to a simpler, more dynamic time in storytelling with DEATH THING. I guess you could say it's a horror novella with political and social undertones that doesn't take itself seriously one bit. Where else have you read something like that, huh? Craig T. McNeely, editor of Double Life Press, wasn't lying when he said he wanted to publish material that challenged boundaries, DEATH THING is as original and passionate of a work of art I've had the privilege of reading. The mind of Andrew Hilbert is like a deforming mirror for contemporary genre literature, it draws crooked portraits of our reality that displays a truth it would be impossible to see otherwise. Given that DEATH THING is bite-sized material, it sold me to Andrew Hilbert's unique talent. What he does is precise, but he does it extremely well.