Savage

by Paul Boorstin

Welcome to the Hotel El Dorado. For photo-journalist Chris Latham, it's the chance of a lifetime. She has been invited to join the Beautiful People from all over the world, and cover the grand opening of a fabulous luxury hotel carved out of the primitive jungle. But while the celebrity guests indulge their wildest fantasies, blood pours like champagne and moans of ecstasy turn to screams of horror. Something is killing them one by one.

Genres: Horror, Thriller

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Paul Boorstin is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and screenwriter whose work has appeared on Discovery, A&E and the History Channel, as well as on NBC, ABC and CBS. A resident of Los Angeles, Paul graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and attended UCLA Graduate School of Film. He has traveled around the world making documentaries for National Geographic, and his screenplays have been produced as motion pictures by Paramount and 20th Century Fox. He is also a blogger for the Huffington Post and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times.
​

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 3 out of 5]

1981 Corgi mass-market (304 pages)*

Savage has a pretty great setup for a slasher novel. There's a grand opening of a luxurious seaside hotel in the middle of a South American jungle, but, sadly, only seven people attend due to the recent terrorist threats and political instability in the fictional country of Panaguas. The rich, semi-celebrity guests don't know that the site was once the stomping grounds of a savage tribe with purported extraordinary strength and supernatural abilities, who were wiped out to make room for the hotel. And now, while the patrons are all drinking martinis and sleeping with one another, some thing starts taking them out one by one, beheading them. Too bad the plane that will take them all home doesn't arrive for a few days, and they're cut off from the rest of the world, surrounded by the ferocious jungle on three sides and the ocean on the fourth. Magazine photographer Chris Latham, assigned by her editor to cover the opening, attempts to unravel the mystery of these inexplicable murders.

Like I said, great setup. Unfortunately it takes about 170 pages or so to get to the good stuff, which is more like 200-plus due to the small font size. The first half is taken up detailing the spoiled guests being inconvenienced by local government officials and military/guards who've taken up residence in the hotel to ensure their safety, and to look for a terrorist/freedom fighter supposedly in their midst. These sections were rather drawn-out and and uninteresting, because the characters weren't very interesting. Boorstin's workmanlike prose didn't help. Of course, I don't mind no-frills writing in a slasher novel, but this had so many different character arcs and mini-plotlines we're supposed to care about, that I felt I needed something more than stock characters and standard, unwitty dialogue.

But once the guests start getting picked off, it's a lot of good, cheesy (and gruesome) fun. Anyone who's read my reviews knows that I love the whole "trapped while being hunted" theme in horror, and this was a decent -- if overlong -- example of the trope. If Boorstin or his editor had cut out about half of the early shenanigans between the government officials and guests, this probably would have been a 4 star novel. Alas, the first half was a bit of a slog to get through, and I nearly gave up before getting to the actual horror. I'm glad I didn't, as Boorstin really ramps up the tension and terror in the latter half.

Still, I would only recommend this to fans of slashers and "trapped and hunted"-type novels, though two other books I've read recently -- Richard O'Brien's Evil and Stephen Crye's Joyride -- are better, more tautly-paced examples from the era, imo.

3.0 Stars

*I don't own this edition, but I thought I'd post the cover anyway (thanks to Calenture on the Vault of Evil boards), as it's pretty awesome. At least my slightly less awesome Berkley mass-market (310 pages) has gloriously gruesome stepback art, which I'll have to take a picture of and post here.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book for reading at your hotel poolside or on the beach during a summer vacation, if you can find yourself a copy. Lapsing frequently into vivid imagery to evoke tropical dreamscapes, the book encapsulates the magic and excitement of summer, as well as the dangers. Immediately coming to mind is a scene where a woman is floating on the shore lazily watching the pink and gold rays of the sun sparkle across the surface while a dolphin protectively watches over her raft like a matronly chaperone as dark storm clouds approach... There is always a sense of foreboding and impending doom lurking behind the seductive beauty of a jungle paradise.

Set in the fictional country of Panaguas, South America, a select group of tourists are invited to a trial opening of a grand beachfront hotel to stir international positive press for the struggling state. However, due to civil unrest, government corruption, and terrorist activity, many of the guests do not arrive--only a hodgepodge of desperate and unstable personalities with their own secret reasons for making the perilous journey. With dense jungle on one side and a vast ocean on the other, the staff and guests of the Hotel El Dorado are isolated from the world until the next supply plane arrives... IF it ever arrives.

What results is a kind of melding of Agatha Christie and Stephen King--an ensemble of damaged and lonely characters in a vast and empty hotel which soon becomes hell in paradise. The narrative is a mixture of political intrigue, spy thriller, mystery, and slasher subgenres stewed together over a witch doctor's fire. I must say I've never quite read anything like it.

The book takes a fair amount of time to get moving, lulling you to sleep with a detached and poetic prose over the steamy heat of it's jungle setting, hints of romance, and musky sexuality all in the relaxed embrace of a high class resort brimming with caviar, expensive perfumes, and fine liquors filling hollowed coconut shells. But once the action gets going, the book takes an abrupt turn into horror, with some disturbing scenes of brutality and gore.

It seems that this novel has something in it for everyone, but perhaps that is why "Savage" fell into relative obscurity--it tried hard to dabble into multiple genres while it was, at heart, a slasher horror. Therefore, the book struggled to find it's audience.

Be that as it may, I do recommend this highly for fans of horror, thrillers, and mysteries. Come visit the Hotel El Dorado, but come armed, stay sober, avoid the sauna, and most importantly, keep your head!

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

...There was a trend in horror literature and film in the early eighties to make the whole slasher genre semi-realistic. That is, instead of using the tried and true mystery formula (you're introduced to a number of folks, and you know one of them did it), the intrepid adventurers out to right the world's wrongs have no connections with the killer, and while we might meet him at various times during the narrative (Rex Miller's excellent debut novel, Slob, is the first good example of this I can think of; the most popular that comes to mind is the last Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool), said intrepid adventurers don't meet the bad guy until the final showdown. The idea certainly has its good points. Aside from the aforementioned realism, it also puts a stop to such dialogical insanities as "So, Professor Moriarty, we meet again!"

That said, a lot of the first attempts to marry the idea to the slasher genre were exceptionally bad. Savage isn't quite as downright stupid as some (my favorite target is a 1981 film, later made into an equally bad novel, called Final Exam)...

Our heroine is an investigative photojournalist, Chris Latham, who is sent by her editor to cover the opening of a new luxury resort that just happens to be situated in a war-torn South American country (named Panagua in the book; the similarities to Nicaragua are a little too obvious to be overlooked). Because of the area's sociopolitical instability, only seven of those who received invitations to the grand opening actually show up. P>

Savage might have actually been salvageable. Had an editor managed to get Boorstin to lop off the first chapter and a half, and had the last couple of chapters been handled just a bit more slickly this might have crossed the line into "good enough to be noticed." As it stands, however, it's been out of print for quite a while, and not really worth going out of your way to hunt down.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finding slasher novels is hard to do, especially when you're looking for a straight-forward one. Here's a slightly convoluted but altogether satisfying gore-fest by Paul Boorstin that will have you cringing in disgust but begging for more. A high body count and a strong cast of characters make this one a must-read.

[James F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Boorstin's 1980 novel, Savage, is a very fast and easy story to spend time reading. It's cast of characters are simply drawn and somewhat stereotypical. Nevertheless, I found it a nice change of pace from other books that I have recently completed. Perhaps because it has been a number of years since I first read this novel, I was still caught off guard by the plausible ending.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book.

[Phrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

🏩🏩🏩🏩/5

Hey everyone, it’s time for another #vintagehorror drunk uncle story with Uncle Boorstin! In this one, a bougie luxury hotel is being built in a South American Jungle. Only problem is, it’s already inhabited by an entire tribe of literal headhunters who are all like 8 ft tall superhumans because their diet is mainly raw human sacrifices. So the best choice would be to choose another spot for the hotel right? Fuck no, the rich & the famous demand howler monkeys greeting their ocean-front terraces. So just slaughter the tribe (but make sure you get all of them! *not a spoiler* they didn’t) and build the hotel over the ashes of them/their land. What’s the worst that could go wrong? It’s not like 9 or 10 b-list celebrities who don’t mind traveling to a war-torn country for caviar & champagne all get massacred. Or bloody, brutal deaths to insufferable people who pretttty much deserved having their heads turned into kitschy little tchotchkes. Right?

Wow that’s a lot Uncle Boorstin, anything else you care to add? Piranhas? A Lesbian sex scene turned cat fight? A sauna death I could SMELL? A super-secret spy mission that almost got thwarted until a vibrator saves the day? Boobs? Breasts? Breasts breasting boobily? Wow uncle, you really found a way to get some kind of line about boobs in there like every other page huh. I’m not sure if I should be disgusted or impressed. Oh well, I asked for it so I guess I got what I deserved. It was pretty fun story. All the death scenes were hella vivid and spared no detail. That sauna body-part casserole scene was pretty gnarly & the piranha pool scene was dare I say…beautiful? and even then…as blood mixed with the water…we heard about her almost dead boobs. Remarkable. A whole lot of fun and a great surprise ending. Keep an eye out for this one, it’s a keeper.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent read, somewhere between the slasher genre that was just developing (Friday the 13th having come out the same year; this book actually seems to predict the shape the series would take) and the disaster genre, as various colorful characters go to the grand opening of an ultra-ritzy resort in a South American banana republic. But one of them... is a murdererrrrrr!

You think it might be the seven-foot-tall native headhunter with the four-foot-long machete? Maybe. I don't like to judge people on preconceptions...

At three hundred pages, it's a bit too long, with a lot of red herring subplots that keep you guessing what exactly is going on, but end up being pretty pointless aside from dragging things out to the point where the book's half over before things really kick off. Then again, that's also space for two threesome-loving lesbians, so you gotta give it to the author--between the gratuitous nudity and the superhuman murderer, he really saw where the slasher movie was headed.

There's also a shrunken head motif, so a lot of the kills boil down to decapitations, which is a little eh. And the writer flagrantly violates horror law by introducing a massive jerk into the plot and then letting him get away scot-free. C'mon, you know you have to give him the worst death of all. It's tradition!

But still, it's always a bit of nostalgic fun to read a horror novel that is just shamelessly bodies hitting the floor. It even has an over-the-top crass depiction of Indigenous peoples where they're both Noble Savage love gods AND vengeful cannibal psychos. Chef's kiss! No notes!

[Gia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now, I read this book years ago, back in high school, so bear in mind that might be the reasoning behind my review.

With that being said, I loved the book.

I don't remember much about the characters, but they were peculiar enough to remember small details about them. From the writer's main character, also an author, to the grotesque couple and finally, the slasher that I didn't expect. The plot twists added to the suspense. And the tiny paranormal allusions added to my personal pleasure as I am a fan of both horror and paranormal genres. The overly sexual descriptions were what threw me off, though it was nothing unbearable.

All in all, this book stays like a very fond memory. It was one of the very first books I've read, I've borrowed it from an acquaintance and I remember loving it so much she ended up gifting it to me.

[Mr Roy Davidson · Rating 1 out of 5]

300 pages

Awful book!

[Darko Kovac · Rating 3 out of 5]

zanimljiva knjiga

[Koštana Krneta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Davno sam čitala, sećam se to mi je nekad bila apsolutna horor knjiga. Ozbiljan triler.