On the HahaFiction shelf
Guts
A Comedy of Manners
Hapless scientists and a journalist who is remarkably hard to kill populate this deliberately excessive send-up of horror fiction. Langford and Grant take the familiar machinery of a gruesome thriller and push its bad taste as far as they can.
From the publisher’s blurb
“With even more relentless lack of taste, GUTS spoofs the horror genre.”Read the full description at Ansible Editions
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What makes it funny?
The joke includes the writing itself: inflated prose and horror fights that keep going long after anyone ought to survive them. Christian Sauvé singles out one extravagantly bloody battle as a parody of that implausible endurance.
The comedy at work
Familiar horror shortcuts become the targets. The authors exaggerate stock characters and grisly confrontations until the conventions are as conspicuous as the monsters.
Try this if…
Readers who enjoy British genre spoofs and can take their parody with copious gore have the clearest reason to pick this up.
Good to know
Expect graphic violence and deliberately offensive humor. The subtitle, A Comedy of Manners, is no promise of polite entertainment.
A few distinguishing details
- Horror parody that mocks the prose as well as the plot
More funny horror
Sources & further reading
- David Langford's Guts page for Guts: A Comedy of Manners by David Langford and John Grant
Author commentary
- Christian Sauvé review
Review
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Author commentary
- Publisher
Publisher
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