 Hi there today on Typical Books it'll be my top five extreme horror. Now of course this is my top five extreme horror so it's up for debate really honestly and this is one of those weird sub genres of horror where there are a lot of opinions and opinions run wild and it is like does Bizarro fit in? Is it all Splatter Punk? Does it need to be Splatter Punk? Are there things that are too far for even extreme horror fans or is nothing off the table? Of course I have a big affinity for like serial killers and slashers or madness and psychosis not so much supernatural. Now the supernatural debate happens within extreme horror as well. Are there many supernatural titles within extreme horror? Well let's see. Number five was hinted at before and there's some wild cards within this list too okay so this one is a short story by Stephen King called Survivor Type and you may be asking you know how can a 70s old-ass story by Stephen King of all people grandpa horror be in among your extreme picks? Well I'd say read Survivor Type or if you want you can head over to Shutter and check out the most recent creep show iteration that is animated that has a story by Joe Hill and story by Stephen King and this one in particular is harrowing. Survivor Type in particular gave me nightmares. It made me wonder how would this be adapted to screen even at a young age. It made me wonder what goes on in the mind of this man. More than any other Stephen King story because a lot of people do I guess reportedly wonder that about horror writers. I wondered that about Stephen King at that moment and that story has haunted me. I think about it all of the time well not all of the time but a lot of the time and I've thought about it year after year after year it's to see it adapted for screen in any way shape or form was fantastic. The story itself to read it again is still harrowing and it talks about a lot of things that we find extreme. The thoughts, the madness, drug use, and auto cannibalism having to you know sawing the foot off in saw that small scene has gotten nothing on Survivor Type so if you haven't read it I definitely recommend picking up Survivor Type finding it somewhere watching the adaptation of it in the animation. Survivor Type is number five on my extreme list. I'd have to say that it really holds that position as being the first extreme thing I ever read and it left me wanting more. Flash forward way later in my life and Jack Ketchum makes an appearance. This is number four offspring and you could lump in a lot of other Jack Ketchum. It depends on what it is that you count as extreme. The girl next door is most definitely extreme horror and a lot of these have to do with things like cannibalism, insanity, and mutations or just the cruelty. It's really the cruelty I think that really sums up extreme horror for me and you'll find that as a thread going forward in a few of these books that I talk about. Anything by Jack Ketchum really is a study on cruelty and I have a theory of course that he takes a lot of true crime stories and turns them into books like even read it seemed had a hint of a true crime story in there. I don't know so much with offspring though. So before you think that it has to be not supernatural and maybe cannibals and true cruelty to be extreme horror I will say enter my third pick. Here we are at number three with Edward Lee the hunter of the threshold. This is take on some HP Lovecraft and he's also got some more HP if you like in Lucifer's Lottery and his whole house Infernal City Infernal Vet trilogy is fantastic and supernatural and delves into hell and is so crude and extreme and it's sort of edging on bizarro with the humor too. Like I'm not the biggest bizarro fan and it is where that crossover between bizarro and extreme is where I really do like to hang out edging more into the extreme. Edward Lee definitely dances that line really well. Then you get you know that cannibalistic savage cruelty and things like Header very famous for Header he was and I really like his novel The Black Train popularized in the United Kingdom under the title Gast. This is the Black Train. It is not necessarily as extreme as most of Edward Lee's things and nowhere near extreme as the books I'm talking about here today but it does deal with some heavy duty themes. Eurination, urophilia I suppose it would be, golden showers as it were, some pregnancy related things and a cessation of pregnancy related things. So it's not as extreme as the other books but it is a wonderful story and I really enjoyed it very much. I found it extremely dark and he writes cruel women extremely well and it has none of the bizarro humor nor the hellscape of his other books. It's the most rooted I think in real world. So if you like real fairly realistic horror and it's somewhat historical horror here too, then this may be for you. It is quite intense, I will say. Now there are a lot of really insane themes. That's the one thing that hasn't really been mentioned, you know, in the survivor type we have some very one person against themselves insanity going on and it is brutal due to the gross out as Stephen King would say and the brutality of it all and the viscera and the descriptions of that viscera and that sort of thing is what's hard to keep reading. With the Jack Ketchum stuff there is a lot of rape and cruelty and domination. It's very very well written that way and it's harrowing. We get a lot of all of that with Edward Lee and he writes some really degrading stuff and it's a very scatological urology. All of these horrible messy gross dirty squishy squelchy things alongside you know full on decapitations and crazy things with the dead human bodies like all sorts of insanity is going on there and I would hesitate to say that there's necessarily violence against women. He has violence against everything. Violence against everybody. There's violence equally distributed amongst men and women and it is all horrible and vile, rotten and grotesque. I really love Edward Lee. He is the king of Splatterpunk in so many ways. Now it's a real toss up for position number two between Wrath James White. It's The Resurrectionist is the Wrath James White book that I have that ties number two with Ryan Harding and Ryan Harding's genital grinder just a beautiful study in depravity and there's some very dark places here having to do with the sex trade and underground porn snuff films and just some very crazy backwards insanity going on with a degrading depraved death and I really enjoy Ryan Harding's style and I think that there's like a new wave of the Splatterpunk or people trying to keep Splatterpunk undead and he really is one of my favorites as far as the newer crop and not to say totally new he has a lot of workout up there with Edward Lee and Jack Ketchum and all of the other big names as far as extreme horror go and this does not delve into bizarro necessarily. It is straight up horror. There's no supernatural really leanings in this particular collection. It's a very short collection and you'll notice this is from Dead Eye Press. If you're interested in extreme horror and want to get into that bizarro not so much the supernatural usually just depraved human on human insanity. Dead Eye Press is really the place to go. A lot of Harding and Wrath to be found there. Like Wrath James White the person not Wrath the feeling but there is Wrath all kinds of Wrath. And number one extreme thank you girth ennis. I've never read anything quite as insane as crossed. The first editions and some of the books that we have here this is crossed psychopaths still in the plastic so it's all shiny. I took these out of their boards just for this but we've got quite a bit of crossed hanging out in this house. Crossed is something that blew my mind. Way back when when I read Survivor Type I didn't think I could really read something quite as insane and then later on I discovered Jack Ketchum and thought oh my that has been breached. I've never read something quite as insane and then I started reading further into some Edward Lee territory and you could say you know into layman territory as well thought oh wow I've never felt like I've read something so dangerous and then I discovered some of the newer splatter punks and then Wrath James White came into my radar and Ryan Harding of course and I thought oh my god I've reached the zenith of insanity on paper and then I read crossed. A friend of mine that worked at a bookstore was surprised they had crossed and when he saw it there he said oh my gosh you have got to read this. It took me a little bit to get around to it but I could understand why he was surprised that it was allowed in the bookstore and you can find it in the bookstore. I've picked up quite a bit of crossed at black squirrel books here in Ottawa and you can order it of course like a normal book. All of these books are not taboo. They are not on the list of banned materials by any means. They are viable literature in every way shape or form and this is a viable art. I'd say crossed is some of the most beautiful and depraved and fantastical and insane and grotesque horror I've seen on paper. Maybe since Hellraiser. Hellraiser was a very beautiful looking comics and these are very beautiful as well but if you like zero day zombie insanity and things like Hater by David Moody that I was talking about last video my last tag video reminded me quite a bit of crossed and crossed is like that to the nth degree with some really just insane near supernatural depravity going on in crossed. So I really do recommend it especially if you like short form insanity and really good artwork you know definitely look up crossed. It is a really good addition and it kind of goes face to face with survivor type as far as short sharp insane little tiny grotesque horror and you have that trajectory for me anyway from survivor type just its mind bending relentless gore to something like crossed which is just balls out insanity. So there you have it my five top extreme with sort of a tie between Raph, James White and Ryan Harding. I hope you enjoyed that. If you've read a lot of these authors let me know if there is some extreme horror out there that I'm missing entirely then let me know in the comments below and have a nooky spooky day.