Review: College coeds reinact Blue Lagoon & B-movie spiders attack in John Everson's VIOLET LAGOON
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 12, 2013
B-movies. You love them; you hate them; or you stare blankly at one on a Saturday night (when the Star Wars marathon isn't on). Many of them feature crazed monsters. And, if you focus on the last quarter of the twentieth century, you'll find more than a handful of heroines screaming about some animal or insect that is going to make a meal out of her. JAWS (1975) revitalized the "critter's gonna eat me" genre for the modern era.What does that have to do with literature? Where one form of media goes, the imaginations of other artists follow. John Everson has attempted to pull from both the palettes of the film fan classics BLUE LAGOON (1980) and ARACHNOPHOBIA (1990) to make his own brand of horror. However, when an author copies a niche form of film in prose, there are bound to be problems; "B"-movies are considered second-rate for valid reasons.Most applicable to VIOLET LAGOON is the "B" lack of horrific surprise. Each step of the coeds is predictable in general terms. There is no mystery, and the intended suspense becomes a guessing game of "Did I get that death right?"For the sake of orginality, I have to admit that mixing college coeds in beach movie cosplay and purple flying spiders would never have crossed my mind. Perhaps there is someone out there who would want to read a short story just to see highly-sexual consenting adults die horribly- and that be all to the plot- but I'm not that person. I want to see more from my authors than a B-movie Saturday night, whether or not I receive the novel free via a giveaway.This short story is intended to prequel/companion:Violet EyesIn my review, I mentioned these films:JawsThe Blue Lagoon (Special Edition)Arachnophobia