[Doc Faustus]

Carlton Mellick III is an author some of you might have heard of. If you have heard of Carlton Mellick III, you have heard that he is a poo-slinging antichrist or else that he is the future of surrealist literature. As one of the progenitors of Bizarro fiction, he can sort of lay claim to both of these. As weird and controversial as he might be, one of his many faces is that of a renegade gorehound with an outrageous sense of humor and a lack of patience for anything dull or derivative. In this, I think most of us see eye to eye with him.
Bizarro fiction, especially works by writers like Mellick and Jordan Krall presents the American consumer with an interesting proposition: you could drop your ten dollars to see a dreadful remake of a 70s gore classic or you can use it to purchase a balls-to-the-wall, dark, hilarious book that takes no prisoners. I tend to feel more inclined to do the latter, and with his new book Apeshit, I think many of you will feel the same. Apeshit' s obnoxious Hollywood style tagline is "Friday the 13th meets Visitor Q". Considering the gloriously transgressive gorefest it is, I think it will feel to readers like the bastard child of Cunningham and Miike, but with a whole lot more to offer.
Apeshit begins with a typical dead teenager setup. Three cheerleaders and three football players head out to a cabin in the woods. Yawn. But, this is a Carlton Mellick book. Each of the characters is funny and scary in their own way, a far cry from the cannon fodder Freddy and Jason types usually encounter. There's Desdemona the punk cheerleader who wants to cover herself completely with tattoos, her former best friend Crystal who has an extremely disturbing fetish, dysfunctional Stephanie with her vagina dentata and horrible past and Rick and Kevin who are both with Desdemona, but would rather be with one another. The six are pitted against a horrific urban legend with crab claws and a particularly hideous mutation, and from there it all goes...well, look at the title. Gorehounds who like the scatology of South Park, the weirdness of Peter Jackson gore flicks and the confrontational brutality of Last House on the Left will all relish this loving homage to a genre that once looked this sick and exciting to Americans. I wholeheartedly recommend it to you, my friends at HDC who have some of the finest bad taste on the planet.