Croak

by Robin Evans

As darkness fell, four clammy fingers parted the dank earth... and a loathsome horror passes over the land.

Croak. Some lonely marshland is disturbed by a freak whirlwind.

Croak. A beautiful woman and her young lover are horribly butchered in her bedroom.

Croak. A man is mysteriously suffocated in the open air outside his country mansion.

Croak. There follows an increasing spate of weird murders and sexual outrages. Coincidence... witchcraft... or sheer insanity?

Croak. And what has all this to do with toads—'the Devil's creatures'?

Genres: Horror

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 10, 1981

Reviews

[oddo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A highly bizarre Hamlyn nasty that isn't so much a novel of killer toads as it is of killer toadspawn. Croak opens with a graphic chapter of toad sex but doesn't truly begin until a freak whirlwind sucks up a pond of spawn at the precise moment a vis major occurs in the form of a lightning strike, spreading the eggmuck all through the treetops albeit with new, parasitic properties. Passersby and unlucky vacationers accidentally ingest said toadspawn and begin to exhibit strange amphibian traits, amongst them, an aversion to light, a predilection for consuming insects, and a slimy sexual appetite. Recommended for originality alone, but self-sabotages with a rushed climax that still manages to be as dark as the rest of the book—lots of unfortunate victims here.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a freak storm, centred over a small pocket of Leefields Park, Gloucestershire, drains a stream in a mini-tornado, the toad-spawn that gets sucked up is zapped with an electrical charge. Later deposited in some trees, the now mutated spawn lies in wait for a host.
A Hamlyn Horror from 1981 (with a lyric quote from The Doors, no less), this is a proper old-school paperback original, brisk and gruesome and revelling in its silliness and gore. Featuring a wide range of characters - ruthless PR consultant Hamilton Saunders is having marital issues, Phil Lawson and his girlfriend Trish find themselves in the middle of the storm, Terry Gellner and his sister Alice are not looking forward to school and Richard Lawson - Phil’s brother - is bumping heads with his psychiatrist mentor. Sexual and dopey, gruesome and amusing, this has enough characterisation that it does exactly what it’s supposed to, puts people into grim situations and then turns the screws. Evans gives it a good pace, the gory set pieces are well handled (nasty bit of ocular trauma made me flinch) and if the ending rushes by, that’s a minor quibble. If you’re not a fan of this kind of sleazy early 80s horror, you might not like it but I did - downbeat and good fun, it doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not and that’s my kind of book.

[Warrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A typical example of English 'creature' horror literature, but not up to the same level of a Guy N Smith. The story kicks off with a storm creating mutated tadpoles. As with stories of this type, a variety of people will become infected and eventually if lucky the evil is defeated. I wont say if this does happen here, but some of the threads required some big leaps to bring them together.

If you like this sub-genre of horror, it's a good way to spend an afternoon. If you don't then I suggest looking elsewhere as there are better examples to start.