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Majorettes
THEY ARE YOUNG.
THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. AND
THEY ARE TERRIFIED.
Already two of the girls have been raped and murdered, victims of a brutal knife and a psychotic mind that kills with no apparent pattern and no apparent provocation.
At least, that's what the police say.
But, behind the veil of a murderous psychosis, there works a cold, cruel, calculating logic, with an ultimate goal so obvious that the police should have seen it all coming.
Long before it got this far.
But they didn't, and they missed him—and he's still out there.
THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. AND
THEY ARE TERRIFIED.
Already two of the girls have been raped and murdered, victims of a brutal knife and a psychotic mind that kills with no apparent pattern and no apparent provocation.
At least, that's what the police say.
But, behind the veil of a murderous psychosis, there works a cold, cruel, calculating logic, with an ultimate goal so obvious that the police should have seen it all coming.
Long before it got this far.
But they didn't, and they missed him—and he's still out there.
207 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1979
110 people want to read
About the author
John A. Russo
208 books102 followersJohn A. Russo, sometimes credited as Jack Russo or John Russo, is an American screenwriter and film director most commonly associated with the 1968 horror classic film Night of the Living Dead. As a screenwriter, his credits include Night of the Living Dead, The Majorettes, Midnight, and Santa Claws. The latter two, he also directed. He has performed small roles as an actor, most notably the first ghoul who is stabbed in the head in Night of the Living Dead.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 1, 2015
Fantastic little gem of a horror novel. The great 80s. The 80s were great in many ways, but to me the horror books take precedence in greatness over any time I know. I love them.
This book was made into a movie which is now a slasher classic and available on DVD or youtube for those who would like to watch the movie instead.
The plot is basically about two girls who have "been raped and murdered, victims of a brutal knife and a psychotic mind that kills with no apparent pattern or reason, at least this is what the police believe. However there is a cold, calculating logic with an ultimate goal so obvious that the police should have seen it all coming".
Loved the plot, the characters, the time period "FAB 80S". There are several perverted moments that are so rough you want to throw the book down, but you cant, you must read on, this book is an eagle with talons that will not let you go. Fast paced and a rare jewel. Loved it and it gets 5 stars.
This book was made into a movie which is now a slasher classic and available on DVD or youtube for those who would like to watch the movie instead.
The plot is basically about two girls who have "been raped and murdered, victims of a brutal knife and a psychotic mind that kills with no apparent pattern or reason, at least this is what the police believe. However there is a cold, calculating logic with an ultimate goal so obvious that the police should have seen it all coming".
Loved the plot, the characters, the time period "FAB 80S". There are several perverted moments that are so rough you want to throw the book down, but you cant, you must read on, this book is an eagle with talons that will not let you go. Fast paced and a rare jewel. Loved it and it gets 5 stars.
March 16, 2011
From my blog Rediscovering Horror Fiction.
I tackled John Russo’s 1979 slasher novel The Majorettes as an experiment. I had first read and enjoyed the book around 1980 or so and I wanted to see how well it had held up. I was initially attracted back in the day by the author’s horror cred since Russo was, along with George Romero, co-screenwriter of Night of the Living Dead. The Majorettes was originally intended to be a film, but when Russo was unable to secure funding he rewrote the story as a novel. A film version of The Majorettes, directed by Bill Hinzman, another Night of the Living Dead alumnus, eventually saw the light of day in 1987.
Russo’s novel was released in 1979, just a year after John Carpenter’s Halloween created the template for the American slasher film (although the less high profile slasher Black Christmas was released in 1974). In fact, The Majorettes came so early in the stalk and slash cycle that many of the sub-genres stereotypes had yet to be established. The body count is relatively modest, with only three majorettes and a few bystanders (some innocent, others less so) buying the farm. The “sex equals death” pattern is absent, with both the virginal and the promiscuous falling victim to the killer, but Russo also goes darker than most slashers by having many of the victims sexually assaulted, something that rarely if every happened in the golden age of the slasher film. In fact, this book seems to have more in common with the giallo genre than the slasher.
High school nerd and photography enthusiast Tommy Harvack has a serious crush on majorette Nicole Hendricks. She’s several notches above him in the social hierarchy, so when Nicole invites Tommy for some alone time in a secluded area of the woods he should realize something is up, but his teenage hormones refuse to listen. Nicole is pregnant by a scummy biker named Mace who wants her to have an abortion. She figures she can blame the pregnancy on Tommy, but the two teens are suddenly attacked and brutally murdered.
Two constantly bickering police detectives, Braden and Martell, are called in but don’t really accomplish much. Jeff Halloway, the quarterback for the high school football team informs the police about Nicole’s relationship with Mace, which makes Jeff a target for Mace and his biker pals. Meanwhile, Nicole’s fellow baton-twillers start biting the dust. The killer, whose identity is not revealed until late in the book, has some pretty twisted views on morality and sex, but there’s also a conspiracy behind the killings.
Sadly, this novel did not hold up well for me after three decades. When I first read The Majorettes I was closer in age to a lot of the characters, so I guess I could better identify with the teenage mindset. Probably the biggest problem is that the book has no clear protagonist and it suffers from the lack of consistent perspective. It seems that Detective Roland Martell and his girlfriend Marie Morgan who is also the majorette coach are being set up as the central characters, but we don’t end up seeing a whole lot of them. There’s even an extended scene in which Marie finds that her home has been broken into, implying that she too is a target, but this is immediately forgotten.
Apparently I was also more forgiving of bad writing when I was younger. Often it seems like Russo is a student of the tell rather than show school of fiction writing, which is the first thing they tell you not to do in creative writing class. Exposition is delivered clumsily, often via stilted dialogue. The scene in which Vicky explains to her friends that the guy she calls Dad is really her stepfather is cringe-inducingly unnatural sounding. It seems like the author put a lot of thought into the Tommy Harvack character, which makes sense since he is the first victim and having his character well fleshed out gives his death a real kick. Aside from Tommy, though, it’s hard to care about anything that happens to anyone in the book.
There are also some pretty unforgivable lapses in logic. Detective Braden says at one point “These killings may not be totally random.” Well, we have two murder scenes, each with a dead majorette, so no, Detective, they aren’t random. There’s also a seen in which Mace and his goons are interrupted while beating up Jeff, but the police don’t pursue them because it would be unsafe to do so in a residential neighborhood. Again, I call bullshit.
Russo had a few other novels I was fond of, specifically Midnight and The Awakening. After this disappointing trip down memory lane, though, I don’t think I’ll be revisiting them any time soon.
From my blog Rediscovering Horror Fiction.
I tackled John Russo’s 1979 slasher novel The Majorettes as an experiment. I had first read and enjoyed the book around 1980 or so and I wanted to see how well it had held up. I was initially attracted back in the day by the author’s horror cred since Russo was, along with George Romero, co-screenwriter of Night of the Living Dead. The Majorettes was originally intended to be a film, but when Russo was unable to secure funding he rewrote the story as a novel. A film version of The Majorettes, directed by Bill Hinzman, another Night of the Living Dead alumnus, eventually saw the light of day in 1987.
Russo’s novel was released in 1979, just a year after John Carpenter’s Halloween created the template for the American slasher film (although the less high profile slasher Black Christmas was released in 1974). In fact, The Majorettes came so early in the stalk and slash cycle that many of the sub-genres stereotypes had yet to be established. The body count is relatively modest, with only three majorettes and a few bystanders (some innocent, others less so) buying the farm. The “sex equals death” pattern is absent, with both the virginal and the promiscuous falling victim to the killer, but Russo also goes darker than most slashers by having many of the victims sexually assaulted, something that rarely if every happened in the golden age of the slasher film. In fact, this book seems to have more in common with the giallo genre than the slasher.
High school nerd and photography enthusiast Tommy Harvack has a serious crush on majorette Nicole Hendricks. She’s several notches above him in the social hierarchy, so when Nicole invites Tommy for some alone time in a secluded area of the woods he should realize something is up, but his teenage hormones refuse to listen. Nicole is pregnant by a scummy biker named Mace who wants her to have an abortion. She figures she can blame the pregnancy on Tommy, but the two teens are suddenly attacked and brutally murdered.
Two constantly bickering police detectives, Braden and Martell, are called in but don’t really accomplish much. Jeff Halloway, the quarterback for the high school football team informs the police about Nicole’s relationship with Mace, which makes Jeff a target for Mace and his biker pals. Meanwhile, Nicole’s fellow baton-twillers start biting the dust. The killer, whose identity is not revealed until late in the book, has some pretty twisted views on morality and sex, but there’s also a conspiracy behind the killings.
Sadly, this novel did not hold up well for me after three decades. When I first read The Majorettes I was closer in age to a lot of the characters, so I guess I could better identify with the teenage mindset. Probably the biggest problem is that the book has no clear protagonist and it suffers from the lack of consistent perspective. It seems that Detective Roland Martell and his girlfriend Marie Morgan who is also the majorette coach are being set up as the central characters, but we don’t end up seeing a whole lot of them. There’s even an extended scene in which Marie finds that her home has been broken into, implying that she too is a target, but this is immediately forgotten.
Apparently I was also more forgiving of bad writing when I was younger. Often it seems like Russo is a student of the tell rather than show school of fiction writing, which is the first thing they tell you not to do in creative writing class. Exposition is delivered clumsily, often via stilted dialogue. The scene in which Vicky explains to her friends that the guy she calls Dad is really her stepfather is cringe-inducingly unnatural sounding. It seems like the author put a lot of thought into the Tommy Harvack character, which makes sense since he is the first victim and having his character well fleshed out gives his death a real kick. Aside from Tommy, though, it’s hard to care about anything that happens to anyone in the book.
There are also some pretty unforgivable lapses in logic. Detective Braden says at one point “These killings may not be totally random.” Well, we have two murder scenes, each with a dead majorette, so no, Detective, they aren’t random. There’s also a seen in which Mace and his goons are interrupted while beating up Jeff, but the police don’t pursue them because it would be unsafe to do so in a residential neighborhood. Again, I call bullshit.
Russo had a few other novels I was fond of, specifically Midnight and The Awakening. After this disappointing trip down memory lane, though, I don’t think I’ll be revisiting them any time soon.
From my blog Rediscovering Horror Fiction.
September 3, 2012
This was my first John Russo book, so I didn't know what to expect. Not having spent my life in horror fandom with my head in the sand, I know that he was co-writer of the original Night of the Living Dead. That, and I know that Pocket Books published a bunch of his novels in the 1970s and 1980s with shiny silver covers. This was one of them.
This book was just OK. There was some good writing here, more depth than you might expect from a slasher novel. The story follows a number of teenagers, girls who are part of a high school majorette squad and their occasional boyfriends. When the majorettes begin to die, a mystery develops, and the book pulls the readers down a trundling path to discover the killer. After we discover who the killer is, there are about 40 pages left, but honestly I only read them because I'd come that far, not because I was terribly interested in the end beyond that point. There are some stereotypical motorcycle thugs involved, but Russo does a pretty good job of humanizing one of them. There are some "from the killer" POV scenes which were interesting.
My major gripe was that the two cops on the case were really unbelievable. They didn't seem to work hard, nor did they seem particularly smart, and their "banter" was so bad I cringed. Also, the only characters you follow throughout the book, with the exception of the majorettes coach, were pretty smarmy. The rest of the characters go in and out of the story, mostly because they die. This made things feel a little disjointed for me, but not so much that I couldn't follow it. I saw why the story was written that way, I just thought there were a lot of characters crammed into such a short book.
I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone, but this had enough glimmers of promise that I would try another book by Russo.
This book was just OK. There was some good writing here, more depth than you might expect from a slasher novel. The story follows a number of teenagers, girls who are part of a high school majorette squad and their occasional boyfriends. When the majorettes begin to die, a mystery develops, and the book pulls the readers down a trundling path to discover the killer. After we discover who the killer is, there are about 40 pages left, but honestly I only read them because I'd come that far, not because I was terribly interested in the end beyond that point. There are some stereotypical motorcycle thugs involved, but Russo does a pretty good job of humanizing one of them. There are some "from the killer" POV scenes which were interesting.
My major gripe was that the two cops on the case were really unbelievable. They didn't seem to work hard, nor did they seem particularly smart, and their "banter" was so bad I cringed. Also, the only characters you follow throughout the book, with the exception of the majorettes coach, were pretty smarmy. The rest of the characters go in and out of the story, mostly because they die. This made things feel a little disjointed for me, but not so much that I couldn't follow it. I saw why the story was written that way, I just thought there were a lot of characters crammed into such a short book.
I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone, but this had enough glimmers of promise that I would try another book by Russo.
July 10, 2013
I went in expecting this to be nothing more than a cheap slasher, and after an opening stretch that seems to confirm this, it starts unfolding into a surprisingly deep psychological thriller. The cast is very well developed, and while it has heavy hits with rapes, knifing deaths, gang violence, childhood molestation, domestic abuse, and sadistic bullying, it approaches them with a degree of intelligence and maturity I didn't expect from the typically exploitation-driven Russo, and focuses more on the emotional and societal consequences of the acts than it does graphic and lurid details.
This is a lost little near masterpiece, and well worth the effort of tracking down. And my only issues are the occasional clunky line (Russo's prose is otherwise quite nice) and a twist halfway through where the revelation of who is doing this and why contrives the plot a bit beyond its initial realism. But even that ends up pulling itself together by the end for a hell of a climax.
This is a lost little near masterpiece, and well worth the effort of tracking down. And my only issues are the occasional clunky line (Russo's prose is otherwise quite nice) and a twist halfway through where the revelation of who is doing this and why contrives the plot a bit beyond its initial realism. But even that ends up pulling itself together by the end for a hell of a climax.
January 4, 2016
I read this after watching the 80s slasher movie based on it, primarily because it was the first time I had actually seen a slasher film credit that said "Based on the Book by..." Oddly enough, one would think that there would be more plot development in the book. Uh, no. Granted, we're given some background on the pervy killer and how he became both pervy and a killer, but it's just not worth the effort. I do see how this was easily adapted into a slasher film - not once do you ever care about one of the characters or their inevitable demise. The only positive thing I can say about this book was that it was short. Not worth reading any more than the movie was worth watching. Only worth buying if you like retro pulp horror book covers, which I always have. Great artwork, terrible book.
January 16, 2023
The majorettes, blue shirts, white boots, young and beautiful, the cheerleaders. The first majorettes raped, repeatedly stabbed over and over again, mangled meat. The killer wiping the knife on her clothes, zipping himself up. Another majorette, he waited in the closet and jumped her. Penetrating her, making her bleed, his pleasure rising, he wanted to punish these girls, the sick fuck who hated his mother, who was spanked violently, his only pleasure was causing pain. The last third went bonkers, shoots fired into chests, heads, flesh flying through the air. Molotov cocktails exploding, burning flesh. The sick killer ready to seek more pleasure.
January 22, 2017
Russo whittles his story down to shock and melodrama. It's all crudeness mixed with all wholesomeness.
July 9, 2023
Not quite what I expected, although I suppose I don’t know what I expected really
I thought it would be more of a slasher film type novel rather than a pervert with a money making scheme
I find rape scenes in books and novels to be repellent, but it seems a lot of the books from this time period have them
I thought it would be more of a slasher film type novel rather than a pervert with a money making scheme
I find rape scenes in books and novels to be repellent, but it seems a lot of the books from this time period have them
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 25, 2020
What a twisted book. Although it's been a few years since I saw the movie made of this in the late 80's I don't remember it being this fucked up. As with the movie it's left as a sequel to happen but neither did that I'm aware of...the book is from 1979.
Read
August 1, 2020For the most part I liked it.
January 14, 2012
Really short, took a morning to read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews