Book Review: 'Softly Walks the Beast' by Thomas O'D. Hunter
'Softly Walks the Beast' (205 pp.) was published by Avon Books in December, 1982. The cover artist is unattributed.
This is the only published novel by Thomas O'Driscoll Hunter (1932 – 2017) whose Wikipedia entry states that he was an actor in European films in the 1960s and 1970s. His memoir, 'Memoirs of a Spaghetti Cowboy: Tales of Oddball Luck and Derring-Do' recounts his experiences in that trade. He was co-writer of the screenplay for the 1980 sci-fi movie The Final Countdown.
'Softly' is set in April 1988, five years after World War 3 has devastated the US. Fifteen survivors, representing a variety of ages and ethnicities, have taken up residence on the grounds of a former insane asylum in rural Georgia. Their leader, Dr. Frank Alden, keeps everyone alive and healthy via regular injections of a compound that staves off radiation sickness.
Despite the psychological trauma that comes with the awareness that They Are the Last People on Earth, the survivors enjoy a comfortable lifestyle; their only main concern is the sterility besetting the younger women, a sterility that bodes ill for any future for Mankind.
As the novel opens two young men, Sonny and Billy Bob, decide to embark on a motorcycle trip into neighboring Florida and the Atlantic Coast. There are scenes of poignancy as they traverse deserted villages and towns where nature is well under way in reclaiming the Earth. However, when the boys stop to explore the ruins of an ICBM silo, they catch the attention of a sentient being lurking in the nearby undergrowth..........a being with malevolent intent.
All too soon, the survivors will find themselves in a life-or-death struggle against a new form of life that has persevered despite exposure to lethal levels of radiation and biological agents. Unless Frank Alden and his assistance Eric can find a vulnerability in the horrors attacking them, a grim outcome is assured.........
Is 'Softly Walks the Beast' a classic Paperback from Hell ?
Nope.
It's something of a dud. It doesn't help matters that the novel takes an indolent approach to setting things up; indeed, the monsters don't make an appearance till page 65, nearly a third of the way through the book.
After that, the narrative adopts the tone of a teen slasher film from the late 70s and early 80s, in which suspense is enabled by the willfully idiotic behavior of the potential victims. This behavior includes having horny teenagers groping one another in dark and empty places, a trope so cliched that it signals that the author was winking at the reader.
Given that Thomas Hunter was a screenwriter, it shouldn't be all that surprising that 'Softly' is constructed like a screenplay, but the regular veering from horror to facetiousness starts to wear thin well before the novel's half-way point.
Toss in passages in which our besieged survivors sing hymns to bolster their courage against the monsters fumbling at the doors, later followed by passages in which they sing sea shanties (?!), along with additional set pieces clearly designed to represent tongue-in-cheek homages to horror movie tropes, and I finished 'Softly' more from a sense of duty rather than because it was very entertaining.
The verdict ? Unless you are fixated on acquiring and reading every horror paperback published during the 1980s, 'Softly Walks the Beast' can safely be passed by.
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