S2E3: Night of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith

The book club takes a breather from cults and controversy to investigate Guy N. Smith's 1976 splatterpunk horror classic Night of the Crabs - a tale of giant man-eating crabs that terrorize a Welsh seaside town.

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome in to all the members present and worldwide. I hereby call this meeting of the Peace of Shit Book Club to order. I'm your dutiful chairman, Death Chesterfield. In each meeting, we do a deep dive into one particularly awful book. Because it's a book club, and that's what you do. You read a book and you discuss it. I guess maybe that's obvious. I don't need to say that. Joining me for today's meeting, we've ass we've assembled a load of lovely logophiles. Let's welcome them in. Chip Wilson. Welcome, my man.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Hey, happy Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

Happy Mother's Day to you too, Chip. Jane Lynch. Jane Lynch.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

And returning for his 13th consecutive episode, I think that's a record. Our resident crustacean expert, Dr. Bo dashing in PhD. Welcome in, Doctor. Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah, thanks for the reminder about uh about Mother's Day. I literally didn't uh I'm frantically tapping myself a note to send it to my mother now. But thank you, Dez.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

You know what I got my wife for her first Mother's Day? It's apropos.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Oh, what did you get?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Unlimited crab feast.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

How does that work? What what does that mean? Like you go, you'll go down to the pier any time any day and haul them out of the ocean and serve them up for her?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

No, it's a fucking dinner. All you can eat crab.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

But are you hauling them out of the out of the drink?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

A dinner at a restaurant I'm paying for. Oh. But who haul them out of the drink? The fisherman.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

Man, Chip Wilson. But it's a a one-time the way you framed it made it sound like it's kind of a year of unlimited crab all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Well, I'm just getting settled. You know, you started it while I was still running around trying to fix some things. Yeah, do you want to read so redo this open?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

There's a few bumbles there, and then you introduced the literally the only person who wasn't on Mike or on the code.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, no, he did that deliberately. Um, no, no, it's all you can eat crab, just like, you know, something we might be discussing today.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Yeah, that's a great segue. So in today's feature book, we take a little breaky from our recent forays into cults, US politics, e-Holocaust, and we pop in on a quaint Welsh seaside town. Picture this it's 1976. The Sex Pistols have just released their landmark album, the economy is melting down with 24% inflation, and an unprecedented heat wave has just led to nationwide water rationing. But none of that really matters when an invasion of giant crabs develops a taste for human flesh. Dear book clubbers, if you love books filled with lazy tropes and graphic sexuality, you'll want to stick around for our discussion of Guyan Smith's Knight of the Crabs. But

The Book Report

SPEAKER_03 2:54

before we crack into that, the book report. Yes, the book report is a regular rundown of news, musings, and happenings in the world of books. And this meeting, because we're under a bit of a time crunch, people have stuff to do, places to be. We're doing it lightning round style. Uh so jump in, boys, but keep it brief.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Wow. I found I finally found uh a piece of shit children's book. If in an estate auction, I bought a shitload of old children's books, and buried in with them is the story of little black Salbo, which is uh a very vile characterization of uh cartoon characterization of African Americans. But what's strange also is that the book is about uh a little Indian boy, but the way they're stylized is in this uh way like deep south picking inny style. Uh so I have that now. Um wonderful. I'm not sure what to do with it. I don't think I'll be reading it uh on to your child on the podcast or to my child, no. But it's something that I just got in a big pile of books.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

It's interesting, like if some sort of tragedy should befall your entire family now and they're picking over your belongings, they'd be like, Chip, turns out he was a massive closet racist.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Starting this child young getting a I'm like one of those weirdos that just like defends that kind of thing, otherwise socially liberal, you know, kind of middle of the road.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, you know, what's funny actually is there's like some subreddit I keep getting pushed now. It's called like Bookshelves Detective. And it's like often people will post like, hey, I'm dating this guy, and like I'm I'm in his apartment, and like here's his bookshelf. Are there any red flags here?

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Well, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

I think about that with like all the books we've been reading in this club. It's like a five alarm fire.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

Zooming in on uh Bo Dashington, I see a bookcase in the back of your video. What would we know from your bookcase if we did bookcase detective on you?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

I don't think there's anything interesting in there, to be completely honest with you. I mean, they're just books, they're interesting books, but unfortunately I don't think there's any anything there for comedy material. No like noted books. Your Turner diaries are like kept under your bed. That's locked away. Yeah, yeah. That's that's gone. Yeah, little black sabbo in the Turner diaries and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

It's definitely the defense of an innocent man is oh, they're just books, you know.

unknown 5:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

I just like the gene lynch, anything to add to the lightning round today?

SPEAKER_04 5:39

Uh no books, but uh, I was on a subreddit and about shitty books, and then one of those comments that is downvoted heavily really caught my eye, and I really like it.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

It just says Wait, would this be our subreddit about shitty books? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_04 5:52

You're cheating on our subreddit. This is an actual book, uh, it is the comment says, Oh, shut your mouths and read what you like. I didn't know it. This was such a contemptuous sub.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Contemptuous. Oh that fits this kind of week's theme of like cheesy Britishness with the host. I don't know if you're Des Chesterfield. You sound like a character from Coronation Street with that kind of name. But uh the book, Night of the Crabs, is British, uh, very British.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Absolutely. And we covered that in the intro. Had you been paying attention. I uh yeah, sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Yeah. Um, something that I've read recently, running through my list pretty quick here. Uh, this book, The Madness of Believing, by this guy Josh Owens, came out last month. This guy worked as a camera operator on uh Alec Jones' Info Wars for about five or six years, and this is like a uh a tell-all memoir of that time. I mean, it's a flawed book. The author spends a lot of time on introspection, kind of navel gazing, trying to justify his willingness to work for Jones for so long. But I am a longtime info warrior and fan of the former knowledge fight podcast, which actually just ended after about 1200 episodes analyzing Alex Jones just last week. And so this is maybe the most complete account of a behind-the-scenes uh nonsense at InfoWars available. So if you have uh an interest in the maniac that is uh Alex Jones in InfoWars, pick it up. Uh some other books that we're keeping an eye on, and again, lightning round, just no holds barred. I'm going through this real quick here. Uh Beyond Life and Death, the Way of True Freedom by Jet Lee. I'm reading from the back cover. After a near-death encounter in the 2004 tsunami, Lee turned inward, deepening his study of Tibetan Buddhism, dedicating his life to philanthropy, though he was at the height of his Hollywood career. He fully links his own story and spiritual journey with actionable insights that anyone can apply to live a healthy and happy life. Uh available came out last week, May 5th, 2796 on hardcover, number one in martial arts biographies.

SPEAKER_04 8:04

He has a YouTube channel as well now that he uh Is that right? Yeah, where he talks about all this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

I will forever love him for the Hong Kong classic meltdown. It's kind of a send up of the of Die Hard. Right at the beginning of the movie, there's a bus full of his family and children, mostly children, uh, and there's a bomb on the bus, and the Hong Kong police are trying to defuse the bomb, and the whole, and you're like, oh, of course they're gonna defuse it, and then boom, the Hong Kong, the whole bus just explodes and kills like dozens of children. And then, as the title suggests, Jelly has a meltdown and just goes like bananas. A great film. We're also keeping an eye on Suicidal Empathy, Dying to Be Kind by a fellow named Gad Sa'ad. Number one bestseller in medical applied philosophy. A reading for the back cover. What happens when a society elevates victimhood to a virtue decides that punishment is cruel? You get the disease Dr. Gad Sa'ad calls suicidal empathy, and the West may be terminally infected, which is that's pretty scary. Uh the results are everywhere from coddling violent criminals to protecting rapists to branding self-defense as toxic behavior. We are witnessing a civilization rapid decline. Lunatic policies are instituted because we prefer illegal immigrants over our own legal citizens and veterans. Permit drug addicts to threaten children's safety in parks and elevate transgender women above biological women in sports. Suicidal empathy is your wake up call. Stop ignoring your survival instincts in the name of political correctness. This comes out a couple days, May 12th, 3212 on hardcover.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Sounds a little bit more like gad mad. You know what I mean? Not gad sad.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

But a chang.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Well, it sounds like shit.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

Yeah, okay. Uh, last book we're keeping an eye on here. Lightning round. Lightning round. We're going through this quickly. The healing power of holographic sound. Unleash the power of the universe within by Dr. Paul Hubbard. PhD. So a fellow PhD. Number one, new release in the energy healing category. And uh reading the blurb here. Experience the multidimensional vibrations of higher consciousness and uncover the hidden connections between sound, consciousness, and the fabric of reality. Witness the miraculous impact of holographic sound on your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. In 1991, having received a profound message from spirit or higher consciousness, Dr. Paul embarked on an exploration into sound healing slash therapy, exploring the transformative power and blending of vocal toning slash harmonics and crystal singing bowls. Dr. Paul Hubbard, PhD, is a multidimensional sound master and founder of the Institute for Holographic Sound and Inner Balance. Paul integrates his expertise as a Reiki master, crystal power grid worker, and certified hypnotherapist. It's a deal. $12.96 on paperback. Nice.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

I don't know if that was it was like a is that similar similar to holographic sound? No, it's a but it's a sound for the crystal seaming bulbs. Yeah, it's like where they where they hit tuning forks on something and then they like push to the like the end and they hold it against parts of your body, and the vibrations are supposed to help heal you. Didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

This is the result of growing up on the island, kind of thing, yeah. Pretty much. Sort of woo-woo sort of.

SPEAKER_04 11:34

Knowing hippie people and like just kind of hanging out. Um Reiki uh tuning fork and uh and the I guess cups as well, but those kind of do things, kind of you know, the what are those called? Bogwar?

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Is that what it's called? Chinese cupping? Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, I mean, I won't criticize that, but yeah, tuning forks, Reiki, all bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

When I when I was in uh Ladakh in northern India years ago, I was uh staying at this hotel kind of guest house place and hanging out with a bunch of people. This one, a couple of them, but one woman in particular was like, Oh yeah, I've just been like taking this energy healing course. Do you want to go to your, you know, to my room and practice? Because I'm like looking to, you know, practice my skills. And I was I was just like, I was kind of like I was stoned and sort of dismissive. I was like, I don't know, yeah, I'm gonna pass on that lady. And then like the next morning, I was like, oh that I think I passed up a bang.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Like she might have been your twin flame.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Could have been my twin flame. Yeah, you could be driving around a Rolls Royce right now.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

Yeah, so blew that one, but um, at the same time, may have also dodged a bullet. All right, well, anyways, we're getting off track here. This is uh lightning round. Uh, so goes the book report.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

What can I speak about the book report? Yep.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

All right, yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say I actually had a book that I'd recommend that I thought was really good that I was reading over the last week. It's called Wasteland, uh The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by a guy called W, like an American, I think, by W. Scott Poole. And it's it's basically the the conceit is the of the book is basically that like horror in in 20th century literature and film is drawn from the experience in the trenches in World War I. And he basically, it's really well written, looks at lots of like classic films, classic books. Everything from like Kafka to like Fritz Long, who made you know M and Metropolis and famous movies like that. Um, it basically his argument is that the experience with death in the trenches like really informed how they then thought about death in the movies, um, and not just visually, but just in the conceptual kept conceptualization of like the dead body uh and the fear of it as being like the origins of our interest in vampires and zombies and ghosts and all these other things, which are death coming back. But anyway, just a really interesting book fitting in with our theme of horror this week.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Interesting. Yeah, no, I heard that was a bad one. That's uh World War One.

unknown 14:00

Definitely.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Yeah, we got a thumbs down. Yeah, big time. Uh all right, so and my deepest apologies for skipping you. That's why we have Robert's rules. Like you could have called a point of order and uh inserted your yourself into that segment.

Discussion: Night of the Crabs

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Anyhow, let us now transition to our feature segment. I shall turn it over to who's doing this, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Point of order. Uh it's me.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

I shall turn this over to the lovely Dr. Bodash and PhD to guide us through Guy M. Smith's Night of the Crabs. Take it away, Doctor.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And yeah, our feature this week is a creature feature. And I think the first thing to say about this book is I don't consider it a piece of shit. Um, I'm not sure if you fellas who who read it would agree. Like, this is just a fun book to read and talk about, but the author isn't running some type of scam. He's not in any way deceptive about what the book is. This is pulp fiction trash at its pulpiest and trashiest, and that's it. I really, really enjoyed this book. This is the second time you've read it, right? Yeah, we we read it for the blog uh in the old version of the piece of shit book club. And the plan for this week was we were gonna read a book which is a six or seven hundred-page book written by a 15th century German witch hunter. And then when I actually looked at it, I was like, man, fuck this. Um, and we jumped on this as like a quick alternative. But man, it sent me into this like I really went down the uh the rabbit hole or the crab hole uh on this one of like, man, I got hooked on reading these books. There's like so there's this really weird trend in the 70s and then in the 80s of these these cheap pulp fiction horror books that are all kind of creature feature animal attacks in a genre that, as I learned, is called splatter punk. Um, so I ended up reading the crabs one. I read one called Slugs by Sean Hudson, Rats by James Herbert, and I'm looking forward to picking up Blowfly or maybe worms. But they're all kind of they're all this trashy pulp fiction shit. But we're here for the moment to talk about uh Night of the Crabs, which is the first in a long series of crab books. There's uh at least half a dozen or so of them. What I thought we'd do this week is kind of go through the plot of the book and then obviously stop at key points of it. So, as you know, Des said in the introduction, this book starts in a in a Welsh town on the coast. And you know, at the beginning we've got a couple of teenagers, a couple of Welsh teenagers, Ian and Julie, who are like very many other people in this book, sort of extremely horny. And they're and their only goal is to try to have try to get a bit of nookie. It's a trope I'd never really thought about before. But the book starts as if no we don't know what's coming, and we don't know if there's a monster out there. So the first scene is they get they get horny on the beach, then they go for a swim, maybe the skinny dipping, but then there's a big giant snip, and then uh Ian realizes he's lost a leg, and then he gets snipped again and loses his other leg, then he gets snipped and loses his arms and then and then his head. And that's basically how every crab attack goes. They lose their limbs, then they lose their head, and then the crab eats them.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

Can I read a short passage from that scene? Sort of predates the attack, but it's just it's really I don't know, it struck me as funny. Julie Coles was a strong swimmer too. She even matched Ian for speed, and after ten minutes or so, there was still a good fifty yards between them. Of course, she had got a good start on him. He increased his efforts, clawing the salt water as he strove to narrow the distance. Ten minutes or so later he paused. Damn these waves. He couldn't see her. Turn, you fool, turn, he swore inwardly. We're far enough out to see. Still, she persevered with a direct course. Stupid bitch, he gasped aloud. You'll be out too far.

SPEAKER_04 17:58

I was thinking about this. I wanted to read this one too. He's not wrong if they've been swimming for over 15 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever, straight out into the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

It's so funny because it's they're like a total change. They're flirting, they're having a good time, then they're going swimming. It's the first time in the book that she's out of earshot, he's just like stupid bitch. It's like about like the is it like the Bechtel test or something? It's like uh yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

The classic Bechtel test is if there's two women who have a conversation about anything other than one of the male characters. And I think like the yeah, the secondary Bechtel test should be how how quickly their men resort to just misogynistic insults of the women as soon as they step off uh step off screen.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Book fails on both accounts.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

It's the crab the giant crab test. Misogyny is definitely a theme in this book, and I don't know, but maybe we'll get to we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

We'll get to it, whether that's just a product of the times or this book in specific and and neck cracking tonal changes, not to jump ahead, but this isn't the first time that they're just something, you know, something's happening, and then all of a sudden, boom, it's just like all right, we're we're into either misogyny or graphic sexuality or bloody crab attack. But I I'm getting out of it. Or all three.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Or all three at once. Exactly. Yeah, even the disc the descriptions are so like I was gonna read a quote from the the attack scene, he's suddenly he staggered back, his own piercing scream muffled by the water as his head went under. He fought to free himself from whatever it was that had a hole on his leg that could only be compared with a pair of giant garden shears with serrated blades. Well, there goes your only metaphor. But yeah, the so the crab's kind of it's it's snip snip snip. Um, and and these two these two are are are lost to the waves. But then we cut to kind of like our main character, who is a man named Cliff Davenport. I swear I remember that name of that guy having hosted this podcast at one point. But Cliff, he's always referred to as well as Cliff Davenport, which is also great.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

It it must be like 60 or 70 times throughout the book that use his full name, like every possible opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

It's Cliff Davenport. Cliff Davenport is described as like he's a senior professor, he's an older man, he's like he's described as being like a statesman with like gray hair and a long mustache, but he hasn't even hit his 40s yet, like he's in his 30s, and so it was part of me was just thinking, holy shit, people aged badly back then. He's just English. But also, like, oh man, this like super old character is like quite a bit younger than me.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

But but he's also a bit cheeky too, because he told his uh his nephew to have a good old dirty weekend with his uh his girlfriend. So he's not a total square, this guy.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

He's the world's foremost sea botanist, and why he's a botanist and not a biologist, I don't actually know, but the book never explains that. Like you think the author might just have got that one wrong. But Cliff Davenport just immediately knows what's going on at all times. Immediately. Just so to the next day, it's where did Ian and his is his hot date go? Where they find their clothes on the beach, and then he sees some marks in the sand along the tide lines, and he just immediately knows that we've got a bad case of giant crabs. It's like, what else could have done it?

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Yeah, it's it's that that fantastic trope we've seen a million times in movies, books, whatever, where the sort of lone scientist knows exactly what's happening before anyone else, but nobody will believe him.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

The Independence Day.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

Yeah, Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum. He knows it's coming.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

It's also funny because the first time he finds evidence of them, of course, he's investigating the the death of his nephew. But as soon as he finds like the tracks, he's just like, You bastards. You got these giant crabs. And it's like You know, if he's a marine biologist or sea botanist, I think he'd be like, wow, this is amazing. We got to protect these things. We got to, you know, he'd be so excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

And he during this scene as well, he just, this is an important plot point for those who haven't read the book. Jane, I'm assuming you haven't read the book. He just kind of casually mentions that he's just walking past this um this top secret military base, which has these new pilotless planes. I mean, they're drones, but at the time I guess they're called pilotless planes. Um, and it's a secret military base that apparently you can just walk into because he does, and the police tell him to go away, but he basically tells them to fuck off and then they leave him alone because he's Cliff Davenport. Claff Cliff Davenport doesn't take shit from anybody. But file that one away for later. We'll bring that one back.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

The British military. I mean, what are they gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 22:43

It's he's on good terms with uh Sir Ronald Bradley at Whitehall, so that's one phone, one phone call.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

And this is Chekhov's top secret military base, though. So let's just remember that it's in the scene, it's in the background. Yes. Um but he goes back to the pub. Oh fuck, what are we gonna do with these giant crabs? Goes back to the pub for where he's staying for dinner, and the the wench who runs the place uh doesn't have a table for him, and so she's like, sorry, but you're gonna have to sit next to this uh this woman, and you're gonna have to eat dinner with a woman, which he's a little bit annoyed about at the beginning. But then he takes a look at her, and this is how the narrative describes her. Um his eyes looked at her, at this dark-haired petite girl who sipped a tomato juice, a wistful expression on her face. She was wearing a cotton blouse above a tartan skirt, and he saw the outline of her small, firm breasts. It wasn't often these days that he'd noted such things. He put her age at about 25. And she's our secondary character, Patty Jones.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

Pat Benson. Pat Benson.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Pat Benson, sorry. Pat Yeah, that's the secondary Pat Benson. Jones is the uh the wench. But the one important thing to know about uh Pat Benson is by profound and extraordinary coincidence, she just happens to be an amateur crab specialist. Because in her youth, she liked to go down to the beach and study the crabs.

SPEAKER_04 24:06

Point of order. If I was gonna recognize Jane Lynch. If I was gonna be fighting a bunch of giant crabs, I think I'd want more than an amateur. An avid hobbyist, at least, like someone that's someone that's actually been put in the work, studied, you know. Didn't didn't you hear the description about her small firm breasts?

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah, I think you're you're confused about Cliff Davenport's priorities here.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

She has a slim, perfectly proportioned figure.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

They don't waste any time, they start bagging pretty much right away. Um, after she suggests they work together to fight the crabs. And this is one of the big themes of the book, is just like really creepy, really creepy, awkward sex.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

They go down to the beach to investigate said giant crabs, and they're they're under threat of giant man eating crabs, and then they start banging.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

They're in like the beams overlooking the beach, kind of kind of hidden. That's right. The the first encounter. I think it's at that point. I know you're gonna get to the the sex, but just before that, there's I love this quote where I think it's at this point where they're waiting to look for the watching, watch the giant crabs come out. No, this is before she goes with him, and she's like, I'm coming with you. Make no mistake about that. Cliff goes, now look here. Now look here, uh, said Cliff sternly, grasping her by the shoulders. This is no job for a woman. Like giant crabs are men's work.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

Cliff Davenport. And he and you have to imagine that Cliff Davenport also just stunk because earlier in the book it describes him, well, he's he's sitting around waiting for the police to call him back so he can get news about his missing nephew. And it describes him smoking an ounce of tobacco a day. Now, I don't know what an ounce of tobacco looks like, but I know what an ounce of pot looks like, and it's a tremendous amount of pot to be smoking in a day. And and tobacco is only bulkier than weed. I mean, you know, weed can be kind of compressed, so like it's gotta be just like a mountain of tobacco this guy was hauling on.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah, yeah. And he's just he's just like stumbling around the beach covered, you know, stomping around looking for crab tracks. Stinking, stinking of old-fashioned tobacco. You you gotta lay out this first romance scene. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I've got multiple quotes. I'm reading my notes now, trying to determine which quote I should read first. But one of them that I really like, which connects to like inexplicably people often being referred to by their full names rather than just a single name. But after they get going, her fingers were active. Cliff felt that thrilling sensation of his zip being pulled down, her fingers groping inside the open vent, and then the coolest of the night, and then the coolest of the night air on his warm moistness. He gasped with pleasure. Pat Benson certainly knew what she was doing.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

But what is sexy about opening a man's fly and discovering his warm moistness? Why is he moist? Why is he moist? That's what I don't understand.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

The whiteness of her thighs was in itself seductive in the soft moonlight, the darker triangle of soft fluffy hair between them, seeming to withhold secrets from him. Secrets of men who had lain there, men who had been sexually satisfied beyond their wildest dreams. Cliff rolled in between her open legs. She still had a grip on his hardness. Now she was guiding it down to where she wanted it, bathing it first in her warm river of desire, and then sliding it down further until it disappeared inch by inch into her.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

It's such a funny line. Like every time that I'm about to hook up with a new woman, you know what really turns me on? Thinking about all of the guys that she's pleasured in the past that have enjoyed her.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

And it's also just every time it's just immediate penetrative sex. Yeah. Yeah. Notice that. And then it's just no foreplay, straight penetration, and then you're not done.

SPEAKER_04 28:03

Yeah. I don't think foreplay existed in the 70s.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Especially in England. A light spanking, perhaps. Yes. They also haven't discovered shaving your bush because every bush is described in intimate, and I do mean intimate detail, and everybody's got one.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

I think that's the most graphic sex scene we've come across since we started doing this podcast. Even the the Sean Avery hockey book didn't have I don't think anything as graphic.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Yeah. This this sex scene also closes with what I think is my favorite line in the whole book, and also it's the end of a chapter. So as soon as it's finished the description of them banging, and Cliff Davenport just goes, hmm, says, I'm more than glad I let you come with me tonight. He whispered as he zipped himself up again. I'm afraid though that we must still keep an eye out for those crabs.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

And and then he's not wrong because immediately after they finish banging, immediately after they finish banging, the what's his name? Um Bartholomew. This Bartholomew, yeah, this deaf and dumb beachcomer who is quote simple in the head gets taken out by the giant crabs in extremely graphic fashion. I don't know what's more graphic, the death of Bartholomew, or they're banging on the beach.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Being a simpleton is really dangerous in this genre of literature. They get the simpletons are the first to go.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

He has, quote, loping, lopping, shambling gait, a deformed body, long matted hair, and an unkempt beard. Uh, and then he's brutally dismembered and eaten by the crabs right after they finish banging. Just as he finishes doing up his zip, putting away his warm moistness, drying off.

SPEAKER_05 29:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Um yeah, that that Bartholomew is like blind, deaf as a limp. He's like, when he gets killed by the crabs, they see him, you know, they're they're up on the dunes, they're looking down, they see Bartholomew Bartholomew alone uh looking for stuff, and he's like crawling around on all fours. The way he's described this like a feral animal. Yeah, I was thinking about like how if this came out today, or if it was like a movie or something was made today, this would be like the thing that everyone took issue with because he's this total innocent that is just brutally killed by the crabs.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Why is he crawling around the beach at night? What the hell? He's a beach crowd.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

He's doing his own thing, yeah. He's a beach, he's a beach crawler. But the crab, it's worth kind of pointing out at this is the first scene I think where we really see the crabs and we see them. And and by the way, our main couple are in the dunes watching this happen. They've literally finished banging and they look down at the beach and see Bartholomew sand crawling along, and then the crabs emerge from the from the deep. Um, and we get a description of them. And they're basically like most of them are about the size of sheep, and that's the comparison that comes up like a dozen times in the sheep? It's a crab the size of a sheep. Yeah, I thought they were like the size of cars.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Well, British cars.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

The crabs actually, I don't want to ruin this. I don't know if you you touch on this later, Bo, but the crabs seem to grow with each appearance in the book. So they're compared to sheep, but then later they're compared to cows, then they're compared to horses, and then at one point at the end of the book, they're quote, the size of a fucking house.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, houses are pretty small here.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Um, but yeah, this is why are bar why are farm animals the only comparison?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

No, and a fucking house and a house.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

Um, but they're trying to warn Bartholomew, like they're shouting from the dunes after just like you know, in the refractory period, and they're like, right, y'all right, mate. Bartholomew's like he's deaf and deaf. He can't hear anything. They just they come up and just devour him from behind.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, they snip off his limbs and then eat him. But there's most of the crabs are the size of sheep or cows or whatever. Um, but there's one crab which is just is is extra large. It's a really, really big crab, and it's just referred to as the king crab. Just decided that's king crab, and it gets referred to as king crab. Um, but the other, and this maybe this is a small point to notice, um, but he always the author always described their eyes as glowing redly. I don't know if redly is a word. It's kind of like what was Trump's thing? Bigley, like bigly crabs. Anyway, Bartholomew gets snipped and he gets eaten. Then some fisherman gets gets snipped as well when he's out to sea. And this is a particularly weird scene because the guy gets snipped, he gets his hand bitten off by a crab as he reaches over the side of his boat. And then he basically goes, Well, fuck this, I'm gonna die. And he throws himself into the sea because he because he Sam Owens. Sam Owens, that's him. He he wants to wants to die, die the way he always dreamed he would, like with a mouthful of salt water. And so he jumps into the moist of the sea, and then he get, of course, he gets snipped.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

It's it's established early that the king crab controls all the other crabs. And how do they know he's like he's their general and he's the one ordering the attacks and things like that? The description of him says to quote, this one was the very personification of evil. Davenport sees this crab and he's like, This is the most evil fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. This this giant crab.

SPEAKER_04 33:27

How do they know that he's the one controlling all the other crabs?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Cliff Davenport's nose. Yeah. It's it's described as like literally walking around and pointing with his pincers, making giving them directions, bonking them in the shell, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's going patent style.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

Pat Benson is something of a something an amateur crab expert too. So, you know, Pat's got a handle on it. But it's clicking, yeah, it's pointing, it's saluting, it's it's commanding. It's saluting, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

But but Cliff Davenport just immediately always knows what's going on, and he's always just kind of chiming in with crab facts of just like jumping into the the conversation to tell people these really weird things that are not actual facts. Like, well, of course, crabs always migrate after a moon, so we got to be prepared. Is that not true? Crabs always migrate after a full moon. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

I mean, I mean, I feel like something to do with tides and moons, yeah. And they they maybe they follow the moon. I'm not, yeah. We could have looked that up, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

I mean, I mean, we're not okay, okay. We're not ocean botanists or whatever the hell Cliff Davenport is, you know. Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Yeah. But he just like he even knows because of course you might start wondering yourself, what the fuck are these crabs and where'd these crabs come from? And Cliff Davenport just inexplicably knows. And there's this one scene where he just starts announcing to people what's going on. It's underwater nuclear experiments that's done it, and there's a colossal crab. I've named him Crib King Crab. Believe you me, he thinks he's cunning. Uh bullets can't hurt them, and they're gonna be coming back. And next time there'll be an invasion on a much bigger scale, and it will hit one of the towns. How would you know any of that? But for some reason, Cliff Badavenport does. He's just that type of guy. But yeah. He calls in the heavies, he calls government, get some soldiers out here. We got a bad case of crabs, and they send a guy called Colonel Good, who is one of the more pointless characters. He arrives, he's described as whiskey was the only love in his life, and the uppermost thought in his mind. He arrives, he immediately goes to get drunk, he gets drunk, and then the next morning he leaves, and that's it. Smart man.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

His quote is people want to learn to swim before they start buggering about in the water. Bring back conscription, I say. Teach them all to swim.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

But Cliff Davenport was right in the crabs attack, and they attack by the army base. Like many other like the Jaws movie, there's the often you know, sound is often used to try to like show that something bad's about to happen. Like the famous Jaws, like doo-doo, doo doo. But in this book, it's just click-click-click-it-y-click. And so people will just be out, and that's supposed to be what inspires fear in you. Like click-click-clickity-click. The crabs attack and they they snip a whole bunch of soldiers. The soldiers go down bravely fighting. Uh, but the crabs, this is where we learn the crabs are bulletproof, and that king crab uh can handle getting a shot even from a from a machine gun or anything. They come clickety-click and they they wipe out all the soldiers. The military is not gonna solve this problem. And then we get more creepy sex. Yeah. Um, Cliff Davenport walks in on what's her name? Pat Benson. Pat Benson. Pat Benson. But he just walks in on her and she's just inexplicably lying naked on her bed, masturbating. Masturbating, yeah. Thinking about him.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

I don't know if if you were gonna talk about it later, but Guy Smith got his start writing porn, like softcore porn, submitting letters to magazines and things like that. It's the first thing he did is his first paid writing kick when he was like a banker before he started writing this kind of stuff. So this is like really where his heart is, I think.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Uh, and I don't know if it's where his skill is, but it's also well known that crises make people very horny.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah, no, I remember that we all remember the pandemic.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

Yeah. 9-11? Remember jacking off for a week after that.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to derail us there. This is important. To Chip's earlier point about how the sex just goes immediately to like like hard penetration. This one explicitly says that. He sees her masturbating and he jumps on top of her. She says, You're in an awful hurry. And she grabs him and helps him to attain immediate penetration. He thrusts madly, unable to hold back any longer. Like he just walked in the room. Like it certainly doesn't sound very nice for her. Sounds rather unpleasant.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah, it's funny when the author just like explicitly warmed up. It's immediate penetration.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

Well, in addition to writing softcore porn letters, he was also he wrote for years for like firearms magazines. So I don't know if it like going off half-cocked. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Full cocked, I guess. Full cocked. Um, what happens next? They decide to go looking for the crabs, and so they have a bit of an underwater caper where they decide to swim down a hole to see if there's crabs down there, and yep, there's crabs down there. And then some of the guys get snipped and they they come up with a big plan to kill all the crabs, which is to put a big bomb in the crab caves and then try to trap them all underwater. And so they do that, and it works. Job well done. Uh, everybody can go home, go back to their uh to their immediate penetration and their warm moistness, uh, because the crabs have been taken care of.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

But one of the odder things about that scene is that like they Cliff Davenport insists on diving solo, and all of the other divers, part of the as part of this operation, are all diving solo. If you're scuba diving, even if you're going down ten feet on a calm, placid reef on a sunny day, you always go down in pairs. One would think that if you're hunting giant crabs underwater, you might want like a diving buddy to go with you. But Cliff Davenport won't hear it.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, wouldn't the bomb be like quite heavy too?

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Hard to maneuver. Yeah, he's used to maneuvering hard things. Uh given how frequently it describes his erection, which it does very I mean, that's a common in these other books I read too. Like there's very frequent descriptions of erections. Um but then we randomly change scene. We got a new character whose name is Day Day Peters, um, who's an old guy working on the trains, and he basically been working, he's like he's just about to retire. He's kind of like picture, imagine Donald, uh, what is his name? Danny Glover from Lethal Weapon. Um the weird thing about this character is that he has crab he doesn't know about the crabs, but he has crab nightmares. He has nightmares about his train falling into the sea and getting eaten by crabs. Bad news for this guy. Uh he's chugging his train along the coast and there's a giant crab on the tracks. He tries to he tries to hit the crab, but the train bounces off the crab and falls into the sea. And everyone on board gets gets snipped pretty bad. And they send lifeboats to find the survivors, and all the people in the lifeboats get snipped and eaten by crabs too.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

So someone's the description there of the train falling into the water is I think my favorite line in the book. Where he says, Amid a pile of falling debris, the train slid into the water like links of sausage being carelessly tossed into a pan. Tasty.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

It really adds nothing to the overall book, though. It seems like it was just kind of filler. Like there was no reason that the train needed to derail. There was no reason that this guy needed to have some sort of like train catastrophe crab premonition every night, waking up just soaked in sweat, screaming next to his wife, that you know, the train's going in.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Well, it does it sets up like the final act because the crabs that the train is full. It's a there's a bridge going over an estuary.

unknown 41:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

And that's sort of when the when the crabs feast there, then they're all concentrated in this estuary for for um.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

I guess it's it's the setup for the climax, but you gotta think about like the local geography, and I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Right. There's a lot of uh story crafting going on here that might go over your head there, Des.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

I'm not I'm not accustomed to reading fine literature like this often.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah, or accustomed to the Welsh coast, you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Not either. Yeah, that I mean that basically sets up the final set piece of the final big climactic battle. The army and the air force and the navy have all come to help, but none of their the crabs attack again. And this is when the book kind of gets a bit repetitive and boring, because there's only so many times the crabs can crawl out of the water and start snipping people. Like most other horror books, you know, the the monster comes at you in different unexpected ways. But here every single time it's like, oh, you well, you went in the water and then you got snipped by a crab. The army, the navy, the air force, they're all going at these crabs full speed, but none of it works. And then Pat Benton, who for some reason is not bothered by what's going on and is reading the newspaper, and she reads a story that says, Child drinks weed killer and dies. And then she points it out to Cliff Davenport and says how sad it is. But it gives Cliff Davenport an idea. He's unlike this woman, he actually comes up with ideas. They decide that they're gonna spray the crabs with poison to try to kill them. But how are they gonna do that? Well, thankfully, there's a military base with pilotless planes right beside them, which for some reason haven't been used yet.

SPEAKER_03 42:54

She's reading the story, and then he's like, Stupid bitch, I got it. And he's like, We'll get them with the pesticides or the herbicide. And he's just like, he's a hundred percent sure that this is gonna work. It's back to back to independence day again, where they're gonna upload the virus to the alien spaceship, and it's a hundred percent gonna work, and that's how they're gonna wipe them out. There's no there's nothing indicating that this is gonna work any better than the countless tank shells, bombs, uh, you know, heavy artillery that they've used on the crabs previously. But the crabs are immune to fire as well.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Yeah, oh yeah, we forgot that fire doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

But to be fair, on coming up with the idea, like Pat Benson is only an amateur when it comes to crabs, so this it's it's pretty it's consistent at least.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

She's no sea botanist. She's also a woman, so uh yeah. But yeah, so they spray the crabs with poison, and it just kind of works, I guess. It it it annoys the crabs, and they don't like it, so they start to leave. And as they go, the king crab raises his claw, a gesture of defiance, waving at them. An expression of unbelievable malignance. He might be thwarted, but he refused to concede. He moved, scarcely able to drag himself down to the edge of the water. Then he was gone with scarcely a ripple to show that they that they had ever been there. And someone asks, probably Pat Benson, someone's stupid, asks, like where they went. And Cliff Davenport postulates that there's a you know how there's secret elephant burial grounds in Africa or secret elephant graveyards. He's like, well, there must be one for the crabs, too. And that's where they've gone, that's where they've gone to die.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

It's a stupidest ending. I mean, I guess they're intentionally setting it up for the load of sequels that came after this first book, but there's no indication that this herbicide was effective in killing the crabs, but they're celebrating like they just defeated the Nazis, and it's like a sure thing that they've all been wiped out. But not a single dead crab ends up washed up on the beach. They don't see any dye in front of them. They'd all just kind of, as you say, retreat back into the uh the murky deep.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Why didn't they use crabicide instead?

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Like when you when you get the itch, like uh down below?

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Oh, I was wondering how long it would take for us to make joke? Yeah, I could have done that.

SPEAKER_03 45:08

With all the sex in this NYX, I think is the product.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

I wouldn't know. I'm sure you know better than I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Um I heard. So are you gonna say something, Bo?

SPEAKER_00 45:18

No, I was just gonna jumping on Des's comment about how this is the wor the greatest thing since beating the Nazis. It's bigger than that. Cliff Davenport even says that the king crab is the most cutting enemy the world has ever met. I love that line.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

He's so convinced that this crab is brilliant. Like it's Napoleon. I love just I love the last line of the book as well. You know, they're they're resting. Uh Cliff and Pat are riding off into the sunset. I think they're gonna get married. And it goes, I wonder, Pat mused. I wonder what lies out there deep down on the seabed. Cliff dropped his left hand to her thigh and squeezed it gently. Perhaps it's better not to know, he replied. The secrets of the deep are better left undisturbed. Which is such a funny concluding line for a marine biologist.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Sea botanist.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

What's going on down there, Cliff? I'll fucking know. Yeah. I I love how like one thing I think is really funny about this book, but it's the same about all these types of books, is how extremely parochial it is. Like the world doesn't care that there's giant crabs crawling out of the sea attacking this Welsh coastal town. Like, there's not reporters showing up. There's not, you know, it's not a major international, like, nobody really cares, and the public are extremely fickle about it. Like they know there's giant crabs, but they still want to go swimming and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

It's it's it's a trope of like a sort of a closed circle trope where yeah, it exists in this small isolated island, and there's no real world beyond that. They do allude to the fact that it's in the newspapers in London, but yeah, nobody else seems to be showing up. It's like it's kind of a bit like you ever see Roadhouse, that fantastic movie from the 80s, where there's like open warfare going on, explosions, killings, just like want and violence, but the police never show up. It kind of just exists in this kind of alternate universe where you know it's isolated from the outside world and nobody else really cares.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

Whenever there's a four-hour break between giant crab attacks in the town, it's like all the they call them holiday makers come back.

unknown 47:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

All the everyone's immediately back on the beach. It's great. Yeah, nobody cares about the crabs.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

It's such a fun read. Like I had such a good time with it. And this guy is like kind of like a a legend, I guess, of British pulp horror. Yeah. I don't know if you're gonna go into his like career a little bit otherwise, but uh yeah, let's let's let's pivot to that.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

He's uh I mean the first thing to note is that he's uh he was British pipe smoking champion. I'm sure you guys saw that. And uh actually didn't see that. No uh how many ounces a day is that? I was assuming it was uh it was a pun or something.

SPEAKER_03 48:11

No, because if you look at photos of him, there's like tons of him just puffing away on a pipe, just like looking stinky as all hell.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Yeah, he he looks like a guy like if you ever seen a picture of him even without a pipe, he looks like the kind of guy who's like sits around on his own in his dank like office smoking a pipe and writing softcore porn. He just look fits that image to a T. I think this was the one that made him famous, but he he would just churn out books constantly. And he got onto this like creature feature theme. Um, he wrote a book called Snakes and one called Alligators, Bats, Carnivores, Locusts, just all this type of stuff. But the best title of any book he wrote is he wrote a book called The Sucking Pit, which if we ever want to return to this genre, we should definitely it is actually about a woman who's uh becomes hyper sexualized and she sucks men. She doesn't suck on them, but she kind of sucks them off into this giant pit, and the pit kind of sucks them off into uh into hell. Okay, that's a lot of sucking off. Okay, there's a lot of sucking off in that book, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:11

You might say it sucks, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Uh here we go. I quite uh you say that's his best. He also did uh very early, he wrote into magazines, he wrote short letters that were like sexy confessionals and things. This is like, you know, on the pornography side of his career. And then later he did this series of uh serialized magazines. Sexy confessions of a window cleaner is one of them. I thought that was a pretty good title. It's all sexy confessions. You got sexy confessions of a bank clerk, sexy confessions of a secretary, and so on and so forth. But curious about that window cleaner one.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Saw some dirty stuff, or he just wanks on the windows. I think he just wanks them. Well, he wanks on them, then he cleans them.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

That's true.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

It's the perfect scam. It's interesting too because in the last couple years, uh he was embezzled by a former cleaning woman. Um, so I don't know if the two are the last he passed away.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

He died in 2020. Yeah, he's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 50:06

Yeah, that's right. But she was she was prosecuted after his death in 2022 because this cleaning lady um sucked some of his money off. He looks like kind of like a working class British pervert, like the kind of guy who's into white swapping or like what do they call it over there? Dogging?

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Dogging is when you have dogs that fight. Dogging is like training your dogs to fight each other.

SPEAKER_03 50:32

Well, what's the one where you're banging in public beside the highway then?

SPEAKER_00 50:39

I honestly don't know.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

Grabbing, yeah, it's grabbing. No, I got it right. Dogging is banging in public. You're our resident UK expert, you're supposed to know these things. Dogging? Yeah, dogging. It's very popular. Like you go to like a car park or like a wooded area or like uh a lay by, and um, it's sort of like exhibitionism, and then other people watch you, so there's like a voyeuristic component to it as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Um you're describing it like you'd see this like guaranteed on a three-day trip to England.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

100%. Yeah, yeah, I think it's very popular. I mean, I don't it may have fallen out of fashion, but like it's just kind of gone the way of the traditional pub culture. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Kind of falling out of fashion a little bit, sadly.

SPEAKER_03 51:26

Where has England gone?

SPEAKER_00 51:29

Yeah, anyway, I can't I can't uh I don't know, I don't have a lot to say about dogging women by the roadside on on British roadsides.

SPEAKER_03 51:36

He did die of COVID, but not just COVID, but a UTI. I didn't even know like a man could get a UTI.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

I mean when you're like 80, you can get anything, I think. Especially if you're smoking an ounce of tobacco a day and you've got COVID. And you're dogging. Kaine Smith, amateur softcore porn writer and enthusiastic dogger, uh, taken from us, allegedly uh taken from us uh too soon. But I did I went into kind of a deep dive on this literature because I I found literature, it's a generous term on these on these books because I found it so as Chip said, it was so fun reading this book that I actually read um the second uh crabs book um by Guyan Smith and his uh his series of of many, many books. Um Killer Crabs is the title, and I can tell you that be very glad you didn't read this one because this one is not fun. Um there's a lot of just straight up rape in this book, in the second one. By crabs or by men? By by men. Uh thankfully not the crabs. Um, but it's like that type of like what I think of as like James Bond rape. Like if you ever watch the old Sean Connery uh movies, he basically just it's like women say no, but then you full keep forcing them. You literally grab them and hold them and force yourself on them, and then they suddenly realize they really like it. Um, and there's there's a lot of that.

SPEAKER_03 52:58

They hadn't invented consent yet.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

No, no, no. Science hadn't discovered consent. Um they it's basically for inexplicably, the tr the crabs show up in Australia, and Cliff Davenport says, just as I suspected, and uh good news, Cliff Davenport is back. Um, and they realize the the big twist at the end is the king crab is actually the queen crab, and she's the one laying eggs all over the place. Oh they lure they lure them onto an island, they poison them again or fight them with fire, but then it's the same thing. Uh the queen kind of crawls away uh so that she can come back in book three. Well, I mean, despite all the rape, that's pretty progressive, I suppose.

SPEAKER_03 53:39

Oh yeah. We should have seen it coming the whole time, though. Having a matriarchy?

unknown 53:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

Because when you go crabbing, those are the ones that you gotta throw back. You always gotta toss back the lady crabs.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

That's right. What about when you go dogging?

SPEAKER_03 53:52

When you go dogging, I don't know. Yeah, I think you keep the ladies.

SPEAKER_00 53:55

If that's what you're doing, yeah, I guess. I also read like the cover, the front cover of Night of the Crab says, in the tradition of the rats, um, which is referring to a book called The Rats by James Herbert. And so I I actually dived into that one as well. And I'd never heard of it, but this guy is like one of the best-selling horror authors of all time. And his The Rats book, like he sold like 60 million books or something insane. Um, and his book, The Rats, basically was an insensation when it came out in the 70s, and it's basically about London being attacked by gigantic sewer rats. Um, there's not really much more to say than that. Uh, there's also rape in that book, which seems to be a bit of a theme uh in those books. And I also read uh a book called Slugs, which also has rape in it. Um, and unfortunately, that that one has slug rape of people getting raped by slugs, and so that's when I decided I think I've had more than enough of these books, and I shall no longer read any of them. You were so excited about like, hey, this is an awesome genre to just have fun with. It sounds like you're really burned out on it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 54:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

That is a kind of I mean, same so I think for like when I when I watch like old cheesy horror movies or something like that. It's like the all the sexual assault is like, I can't really stop, I can't stomach this, you know. Like but there's like the fun, you know, fun gore and cheesy stuff. You're like, oh, that's that's that's all in pretty bad taste.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

But after reading all these books, I drew up a list of what I kind of think are kind of like some of the guiding principles if you want to write a 1970s misogynistic creature feature um about your animal of choice.

SPEAKER_03 55:29

I mean, I heard there's a lot of money in it. That might be the scam that we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

Yeah, there you go. I mean, that's how Gaion Smith was buying his ounce of tobacco per day. Tobacco's uh not cheap, not cheap these days. Although back then it was affordable. The protagonist in all of these books is obviously always a man, but it's always a man with really solid erections. In all of these books, the erection is always described as being extremely hard. Um, but the erection is only for one specific lady. He doesn't have erections for everybody, just for one lady who is always surprised when she touches his dick at how hard it is. Let's be clear here.

SPEAKER_04 56:10

No man with a limp dick has ever saved the world.

SPEAKER_03 56:14

Yeah. No, you might be right about that, I think. Maybe it's true.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

Promiscuous women die, obviously. If they sleep with more than one person, they all die pretty quickly. So do simpletons and homeless people and vagrants. They're the they're always the first to go in like every one of these books.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

Rats opens with like the death of a vagrant just getting completely overrun. Did you read it? No, I'm just looking at the summary online.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

You know, in a cruel world that is sort of realistic.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

In a in a way. They're not writing it that they're not really deliberately making any commentary there, but it's uh No.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Now the Rats opens with a it's Rats kind of a bummer as well, because it opens with the story of like in another kind of trope in these books is that people who suffer have to have a reason for why they're suffering, so that you don't feel sorry for them. Because if you feel sorry for them, then you're not going to enjoy the book. So the vagrant who dies at the beginning is a is a gay dude who's basically thrown his life away by being gay. Um and because he's gay, he's now he's now homeless and everybody hates him. And an alcoholic. And he's an alcoholic, and then he gets ripped apart by rats. And so at the time, I think it maybe would have seen been seen as like like, well, yeah, well, that'll learn him or something like that. But you read it now, it's just like it's just yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:31

Um logic.

SPEAKER_01 57:33

He was yeah, he was he was a sodomite.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Yeah, exactly. The women all have gigantic bushes and they talk about their moisteness too much. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Can I ask the I just want to bar from from Night of the Crabs, what did Bartholomew do wrong? He's a simpleton. Just for being a simpleton, yeah, excellent. It was still crawling through the sand. I guess yeah, because it was still actually kind of like eugenics, late eugenics kind of mentalities and things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:01

He wasn't a contributing member of society. Yeah. I take it back.

SPEAKER_03 58:06

Well, because they they even say in the book, it's like we'd rather not have him around, but he doesn't really hurt anyone, so we can't do anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Yeah, and obviously the the other things are like the public needs to be very fickle. In all of these books, the public never reacts to the fact there's rip there's rats ripping people apart or slugs crawling up people um and crawling inside them. Um anyone who gets drunk. So the the the protagonist has to drink and drink a lot, but not get drunk. If they get drunk, then that means they're sinful and they get and they get ripped apart by the crabs or slugs or or whatever. There's always a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 58:37

Most of these books follow this sort of the trope of the uh the lone professor who has to convince everyone that there's this crisis and and then he has this revelation at the end, uh the sort of grand solution.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Yeah, except in the in the rats book, it's a school teacher who sees the whole thing play out. Um when, you know, because he sees some of his kids get get bitten by the rats. And in the book, if you get bitten by a rat, you catch this disease and die in horrible agony. But it's okay because the kids who get attacked are shitty kids who like are like lippy to him and they're a bit cheeky, so it's okay you don't feel sorry for them.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

I believe it. I mean, probably a bunch of some of those like kind of like aggressive chav kids, you know, with asbo kind of issues.

SPEAKER_01 59:21

Yeah, like when there's like a 13-year-old that's just swearing like a sailor on the bus, you know.

SPEAKER_03 59:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

Yeah, who hasn't fantasized about a kid like that getting torn apart by rats or slugs or giant crabs, you know.

SPEAKER_00 59:32

So the swarm of animals always has a clear leader. So there's like a king crab, there's a queen rat, there's a gigantic evil slug. That's one of the other ones. And of course, ambiguous ends to allow for endless sequels, but like really creepy sex. They've all got really, really unsexy, creepy sex, talking about moisteness and dogging and yeah, all sorts of awful stuff.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

Do you think that there's any sort of political or cultural commentary within these books? Or is it really just kind of shock horror, slightly cheeky, kind of tongue-in-cheek, just for fun, you know, for blue-collar kind of masses? Yeah, no, I think it's just pulp fiction.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

Back when books are books. Back when books are books. Like, I'm a big fan of when books and movies like you think about a movie like Dawn of the Dead, which is uh on the face of it about zombies, but is a commentary about like consumerism and does it really well. This book is not doing anything like that. There's no commentary. It's not the crabs are not a metaphor for for communism or capitalism or feminism. Maybe it is actually for a metaphor for immigrants. Oh immigrants, although they yeah, they the the invading monsters are always immigrants, they're always from somewhere else, right? But I mean yeah, no, there's no from deep under the sea.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

I don't think the crabs the only like light social commentary is they like persistent, like, oh, the government's incompetent or something, you know, but that's just hardly social commentary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

Does it capture sort of a pessimism about UK society and uh collapsing standards, or it's it's just escapist? I think it's purely escapist.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

A lot of these books came out around the time of Thatcher and stuff like that when things were pretty bleak. But yeah, I don't think it touches on any of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Well, you know what? At the end of the book, there's a ad for his upcoming book that's something about truckers and like the secret lives of truckers. It says like learn about learn about the secret life, the wild lives of truckers as seen in recent popular hit songs. And he's talking about that convoy song from 1975.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:39

That was a hit song, it was a hit song.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

It's just a stupid, like uh like comedy song. So I kind of think that a guy like this just writes about anything. Like he he heard a song on the radio and he's like, you know what? I'm gonna do a fun little story about that. I don't think there's any, you know, motive, there's like no socio-political motivations or anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

He also wrote for Disney. I forgot to mention that before. He wrote like Sleepy Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and stuff. I think just like the book versions, not the original. Obviously.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

I have I have this truckers in front of me. So uh the truckers, colon the black knights, for the men in the big trucks, life is a hard grind of endless roads and insatiable women, whether behind the wheels of their lorries driving dangerous loads or valuable shipments, trying to outsmart rivals and the companies that seek to exploit them. The world of the truckers is a lonely savage and always exciting. So, yeah, you might be right. You just this was a time when uh Burt Reynolds was king, Smokey and the band. It was like turning it up, or it was burning it up at the box office, and yeah, he's just like trucks, trucks is where it's at. Glory.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

Um the author, like he I he'd hear a jingle in a commercial and just like run straight to the typewriter. You know what? Speaking of music, I've been doing music pairings for my my readings for the book club the last few books we've read. I I try to find some music that is like of the era and like thematically related. For example, um Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I listened to Wagner the whole time. But for this one, I did uh Brian Eno. Uh what was it? Another green green world. So I had that soundtrack on the whole time reading this. It was awesome. So I'll have to listen to that.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:24

I mean, music for airports is one of my favorite ambient albums. It's it's terrific.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

Kind of fun when you pick out a book from an era to try and like do a bunch of music pairings of that time. Just totally immerse yourself in the you know, the world of a man who just picked up Night of the Crabs off the shelf and is just gonna read it alone, maybe get a little horny, get a little excited, get a little scared. So that's wait.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:48

Your music, your music is for the reader, not for the characters or the setting of the book. So you it's some sort of meta exercise where you're imagining what a reader of this book might listen to while they read the book. Yeah. What the characters would listen to.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:04

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

Like uh for Twin Flames, I was listening to was it Edward Sharp and the Magic Magnetic Zeros. That's funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:14

Well, I don't know that a child reading I don't know that a child reading Boy in the Striped Pajamas is gonna listen to Wagner. He's gonna be listening to uh whatever 12-year-olds listen to. Brittany Spears.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

Yeah, I mean I'm not always consistent, but I try to find something.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:29

All right, well, I'll I'll give that a a thought uh the next time we uh reread a book for the book club. Well, anything else that we wanted to touch on today? This has been a really interesting discussion.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:40

Yeah, no, not uh keen to go off and do some more reading about dogging and finding out where it happens in my neighborhood, but uh no thoughts other than that. Speaking of which, how is your dog these days? You talking about my wife?

unknown 1:04:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

Yikes. It's Mother's Day. Gosh goodness, holy macaroni.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

My my actual dog. Yeah, your dog. He's doing pretty good. He's chilling. Trying to teach him to do these little backflips. He he like does these like jumps and like spins around in the air. So I'm trying to get him to do like a jump and spin in the air, like a little backflip. He's he's almost doing it. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:14

All right. Well, I want to thank the esteemed Dr. Bo Dash and PhD crustacean expert for leading us through that uh insightful discussion of our book this week. That was um Guy Ann Smith's Night of the Crabs. I also want to thank all of the other book club members who attended today. Chip Wilson, thank you so much for your contributions. Jane Lynch, thank you for your service. I am your esteemed chair, Des Chesterfield, inviting you to join us fortnightly for a new book club meeting released across all major platforms. You can visit our website, posbookclub.com. We just released 80 old book reviews from the Vault. So check that out. They're online right now. We are on Reddit at RPC Book Club. Uh, otherwise, um, check us out on I don't know what YouTube, TikTok, whatever. It's all coming together, it's all exciting stuff. But until next time, uh, hang in there. I love you, you're beautiful. Thank you so much for being a book club patron. We'll see you next time. Good night.