FEATURED CREATURES: Stephen King, Bentley Little, Ronald Kelly, and more
PUBLISHER: Cemetery Dance Publications
Somewhat hastily scrambled together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Cemetery Dance Publications, Turn Down the Lights still manages to impress, albeit infrequently. With a lineup that includes Stephen King, Clive Barker, Bentley Little, and Peter Straub, it's no surprise that this anthology was one of CD's biggest sellers upon its publication last December. It is however a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to horror itself; there's something in this book for everyone, which also means there's invariably a story in here that you won't like too. The antho runs the gambit from pulpy creature-features to post-apocalyptic terrors to the strange and almost comical.
King's tale ("Summer Thunder") of what could be the last two people left on earth after a nuclear war is touching but not entirely memorable. The writing is solid as always, even beautiful in places, but seemingly every beat in the story is something that's been done before. Still, it's a new King story that deserves to be read at least once. Bentley Little delivers one of his "Little-iest" stories yet with "In the Room", a definite highlight of the book simply due to Little's extraordinary imagination. It's one of those stories that you read and, unlike the King story, wonder how you've never really come across a story quite like it before. Ronald Kelly delivers my personal favorite story in the bunch, ("The Outhouse") a lean and mean, good old-fashioned monster story complete with a wicked bat creature/demon and Halloween shenanigans. It's one of the shortest and simplest stories in the book, but Kelly sure knows how to tell 'em. Steve Rasnic Tem follows Kelly's story with "Lookie-Loo", another brief story that might be the most memorable in the book. Like Little, Tem writes a gleefully original story that'll make any writer think "why haven't I ever thought of something like that?"
Sadly, it's some of the biggest authors (King notwithstanding) who provide the antho's disappointments. Jack Ketchum gives us "The Western Dead", in which some people in the old West drink and shoot some zombies and then the story ends. Ketchum's writing has always been sparse, but here it, along with the story is just too basic. It reads like a vignette that should have been expanded on. Straub's story ("The Collected Short Stories of Freddie Prothero") is very unique, so much so that it's too unique for its own good, the actual story becoming lost in his stylistic choices. When it becomes a chore to simply read the story and try to figure out what's going on, you know there's a problem. (Straub's story is mainly told from the point of view of a young special needs boy, and the writing is stylized to reflect that.) Clive Barker's "Dollie" is a let-down in it's purest form: the story just doesn't work as even a story. Upon reading it, you'll find yourself thinking "that's it?" Barker feebly tries to shock, but goes nowhere with it.
The rest of the stories are serviceable; Brian Freeman's tale ("An Instant Eternity") has a good plot but falls short at the end, Ed Gorman ("Flying Solo") and Norman Partridge ("Incarnadine") will vary depending on your taste. When Turn Down the Lights is good, it's good, but when it's mediocre, it's mediocre. Were these all newer authors I'd cut some slack but with the amount of talent in here, several stories shouldn't have been so weak. The book as a whole is also pretty short; it tops out at under 200 pages and 10 stories. At 35$ it's a stretch for something you can read in a couple sittings, but some of the writing is good enough to justify the price for horror fans. Great horror anthologies are rare nowadays, a mixed bag like this one will have to do for now.
Grade: C+
Read it for "The Outhouse", "In the Room", "Summer Thunder"
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