In his book Paperbacks from Hell, Grady Hendrix only mentions Bigfoot within a section on the topic of horror novels about alien visitors where he focuses on J. N. Williamson’s Brotherkind (1987), a novel that combines UFO abduction tropes with fairy folklore and Bigfoot cryptozoology. Nowhere is Thomas Page’s The Spirit (1977) mentioned, yet that is the Bigfoot novel chosen for Valancourt Books’ fifth entry in the Paperbacks from Hell series. Given that the Skiffy and Fanty podcast just did the last episode of Torture Cinema on a Bigfoot movie (1976’s Creature from Black Lake, directed by Joy N. Houck, Jr.) it seemed like a perfect time to get up the next in our Paperbacks from Hell reviews.
In his introduction to The Spirit‘s reissue, Grady Hendrix is quick to point out that Bigfoot novels (Brotherkind included) seem to include a lot of Sasquatch sex, and that The Spirit is one of the rare ones (perhaps the only one from the pulp horror days) without this particular kink. I don’t think it’s from that lack, but The Spirit is the first of the Paperbacks from Hell series books that left me generally disappointed. I’m not itching to read about humans and Sasquatch (or humans and aliens/fairies) getting it on, but I have to admit that Brotherkind sounds like a lot more fun, and more fully evoking the horror genre.
The Spirit is basically a character study of comparison/contrast between two men who have turned their lives over to chasing after Bigfoot. The first is John Moon, an indigenous American who served in the Vietnam War, suffers from mental disorder, and is in desperate search for a spirit guide who can give him a name and restore his forgotten identity and native heritage. The second is Raymond Jason, a man with extreme wealth who is searching for a focus for his own meaning and purpose. A violent Bigfoot attack while with friends on a hunting trip proves to Jason that the legend is true, setting him on a mission to find the beast again and kill it.
The novel begins and ends strongly with plenty of action, but the pacing of the middle of it seriously drags as Moon and Jason each independently track the Bigfoot in chase. This part of the novel allows development of the two characters, for Page to compare and contrast their psyches and shared obsession. On the surface this is quite interesting, but the problem I had with it was that I never found Page’s writing style to be impressive and engaging enough. Whether in a section from the point of view of Moon or of Jason, the text sounds pretty much the same, with generally simple, short sentences and not a lot of variation to allow the language to naturally flow. It just became boring to read. Even with my interest in the characters.
The other flaw (from my perspective) for this as a novel within the Paperbacks from Hell series is that it contains very little of what I’d consider horror. There are only a few scenes of violent monster horror. True, the last novel in the series, The Tribe, was similar in this, but that psychological horror and chilling atmosphere in that novel was palpable. One might stretch things to say The Spirit is also psychological horror in the form of two broken protagonists, but any such argument could equally than lead to classifying the film First Blood as horror as well.
Aside from the start and end of the novel, what I did enjoy was Jason’s ruminations with other characters on how a creature like Bigfoot could realistically exist in the world yet stay undetected, as well as the scientific hypothesis for what this creature could be. Although Hendrix is right that the novel doesn’t include any Bigfoot sex, human-other relationships and hybridization end up being in the off-screen history of this all.
A final thing to note about The Spirit would be on its inclusion of an indigenous American protagonist. I don’t know if Page has any native ancestry at all, or if there was just academic familiarity with indigenous history and cultures. I can’t vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of anything in the Spirit. But for its time it does somehow read both relatively enlightened in regards to the subject, yet also severely cliched at times. Hendrix writes a bit about this in his introduction to the novel, with similar impressions if I recall correctly.
While certainly worth reading and a decent novel, The Spirit personally didn’t connect with me as a part of this series as the prior entries did. Like with an anthology book or film, that’s to be expected, and I’m sure there are many out there who this would resonate more with.
