Horror Favourites – Christopher Brett Bailey

Fear and Loathing meets South Park in a screwball horror novella from the twisted mind of Christopher Brett Bailey. Part romance, part buddy comedy, part bizzarro body horror,

‘I Saw Satan at the 7–Eleven’ is a dark-as-night tale from a phenomenal new name in literary fiction.

Two miles north of Hell, a nameless deadbeat narrator spots Satan buying soy milk at the 7–Eleven. Satan’s a washed-up has-been, who’s totally lost his edge. That is until he falls in love with our narrator, and the two embark on a debauched misadventure, by turns slapstick, violent, whimsical, dreamlike and tender.

Outside in the parking lot, Satan was polishing his windshield. Satan drove a Corvette, obviously. I went outside, kept my distance, eyeballed him wiping dead bugs from his wing mirrors. Clocking me, he struck a rebel pose, one foot up on the bumper, and called out, “I’m not a hippie. I’m lactose intolerant.” “What?” I said… to Satan, “Are you talking to me?” “Yes, I’m talking to you. I saw you eyeing up my soy milk and I want to set the record straight. I’m. No. Hippie.”

Below author Christopher Brett talks about his favorite horror film of all time Tobe Hooper’s 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre:

“My favourie horror movie is also the first one I saw. The first cut is the deepest, they say, especially if that cut came from a chainsaw…

I can’t remember whether I was 9 or 10 or 11 when I first saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Accounts vary. But what everyone agrees on is I was “too young”. My dad rented it and we watched it together. He’d seen it back in ’74 and somehow misconstrued it as a comedy. He still laughs when we talk about it, he does the chainsaw noise, bugging his eyes, “Vrrrrrr! Vrrrrr!”, chortling and snorting. Because I watched it with him, I saw it through his eyes; as a comedy. I didn’t find it scary. “It’s only ketchup” he said of the bloodshed. And that was some excellent Dadding. It defanged cinema violence and taught me an important lesson about the difference between reality and fiction… “it’s only ketchup”.

Texas Chainsaw… is, of course, a beloved classic. All the more special for being the directors’ first, and maybe only truly great work. Which makes him kinda the Orson Welles of horror. But I’ll use this platform to plug the sequel as well… I avoided it for decades because people say it’s crap. But you know the thing about people, right? They’re often wrong. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is an outlier in the world of sequels, it jettisons the style of the first movie and instead is a high camp slapstick knockabout funtime flick. More indebted to Laurel and Hardy than to the slasher films that Texas Chainsaw Mk. 1 inspired. The old adage goes: first as tragedy, then as farce. Well, hats off to Hooper for following that wisdom to its illogical conclusion!”

The book is available now right HERE. A film adaptation by Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Monty Python) is currently in development.