Rating: 
Summary: Bloodsoaked splatter extravaganza
Review: LADIES NIGHT might not be the most original horror novella, that's for sure, but undoubtable a highly enjoyable splatter epic for gore hounds.
Yes, the story is derivative. Author Jack KETCHUM himself admits it in the introduction and freely cites SHIVERS, Canadian horror auteur David CRONENBERG's first horror movie, as his main inspiration. Of course LADIES' NIGHT's thin plot also borrows heavily from other movies, mostly of the ever popular zombie genre (e.g. the ending in particular ripps off NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD). And yes, this is not great literature. If thÃs is what you are looking for, search elsewhere.
However this brief novella is hugely entertaining. Okay, the plot is thin - so what? Face it, most horror films or novels aren't that original or new, either. And as far as the poor style other reviewers bemoaned is concerned I actually think that the (intentionally) pulpy style works in the book's favour.
Set in New York (which is always a good thing) LADIES' NIGHT's story begins with an horrible traffic accident, which causes a tanker's biohazardous cargo (of course a chemical weapon developed by the military) to escape. A cherry flavoured lollipop smell wafts through the Big Apple's West Side, infecting most women, who turn into homicidal maniacs within hours, attacking every man at random. The book details the desperate attempts of a man to return home to his flat to save his son. Not an easy task, since streets and avenues are full of murderous crazy women, more than willing to kill...
While Tom tries to get home, his son has to defend himself against his mother...
LADIES' NIGHT is one hell of a gory read! It is no exaggeration when I tell you that after the set-up (around 50 pages) the blood never stops to flow. After the 50 page mark there is rarely a page, often not even a paragraph, without over the top violence and mayhem. A woman throws her baby out of the window, another one takes over an abandoned police car and runs over each man in sight, a black man meets a VERY nasty end at the grill of a fast food restaurant (a scene which will likely cause an aversion against hamburgers for squeamish readers), a female teenager douses her parents with lamp oil and sets them ablaze... The variety of things used to kill, maim, mutilate, and hurt is impressive: of course knives and blades of all kinds, guns, bottles, glasses, baseball bat, fire extinguisher, molotov cocktails, pans (!), cleavers, scalding water, poker, fireplace tongs, TV sets (!), bow and arrow, ice pick, axe,...
And in case characters run out of items they could use as weapons they use their bare hands and teeth! The various deaths and injuries are described in all their gory glory. You get the idea.
Despite the continous carnage however it never gets repetitive or boring. The story moves at a breakneck pace and the violence never stops. There is also some sex thrown in for good measure (...). There is an apocalyptic feel to LADIES' NIGHT like in the best zombie movies. The use of the New York setting is great and adds to that aforementioned large scale apocalyptic feel. All in all a clear recommendation for gore hounds and fans of extreme horror!
Rating:
Summary: A Great, Fun, Read
Review: Ladies' Night is quite a departure for Jack Ketchum. The book's intro tells us that he wrote this book in the early 80s and worked on it ever since. And now, the final results has been published. And it looks a lot like an Urban-city version of Night Of the Living Dead. In this book, a strange chemical is realeased in New York city and every single woman becomes a zombie-like creature who is thirsty for blood. And so they go after the men. The book is fun, gory and fast-paced. It is a quick read. It made me grin quite a lot. I love Ketchum's ironic style. He loves to play with words, giving many words or sentences double meanings. And he is not afraid to shock his readers. This book isn't for the faint of heart. Ketchum fans should find this to be a fun read. It's not Ketchum's best, but it's still a Ketchum book.
Rating: 
Summary: Zero stars is more appropriate
Review: This book is awful. Even Friday the 13th looks like a masterpiece when compared to this piece of trash.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good but way to short
Review: This book is very underdeveloped. The characters never really have time to grow, and in the end you care little what happens to them. And the thing is that this book was originally 400 pages, and included a much larger back story, but was trimmed down for sake of pacing (all in the introduction). What this book does have going for is great pacing, extreme action, and feels so cinematic that it seems so perfect for the silver screen (which is actually happening, and is being directed by Stuart 'Re-Animator' Gordon). Once this story starts it never stops, and that is one of its greatest assets, and also the thing that brings it down the most. Because of the pacing most charcters are left sevearly underdeveloped, and almost seem like they aren't needed in the book, and a lot of situations are also very predictible (especially one characters demise). Plus the book features several grammer and spelling errors that should have been corrected before the book was published. A good quick read for horror fans, but don't expect anything deep or overly involving. This is just a perfectly written 'Resident Evil' type book that has a jet pack attached to it. *-This book is not for the squimish or prudish. There are several graphic sexual scenes, attempted incest, and more gore than you can shake a stick at. Also, most of the violence is against women, but is all in the form of self defense, rather than for domestic reasons. There is also a few scenes of violece against younger children, both male and female, but again for self defense reasons, and not domestic or explotative reasons.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good but way to short
Review: This book is very underdeveloped. The characters never really have time to grow, and in the end you care little what happens to them. And the thing is that this book was originally 400 pages, and included a much larger back story, but was trimmed down for sake of pacing (all in the introduction). What this book does have going for is great pacing, extreme action, and feels so cinematic that it seems so perfect for the silver screen (which is actually happening, and is being directed by Stuart 'Re-Animator' Gordon). Once this story starts it never stops, and that is one of its greatest assets, and also the thing that brings it down the most. Because of the pacing most charcters are left sevearly underdeveloped, and almost seem like they aren't needed in the book, and a lot of situations are also very predictible (especially one characters demise). Plus the book features several grammer and spelling errors that should have been corrected before the book was published. A good quick read for horror fans, but don't expect anything deep or overly involving. This is just a perfectly written 'Resident Evil' type book that has a jet pack attached to it. *-This book is not for the squimish or prudish. There are several graphic sexual scenes, attempted incest, and more gore than you can shake a stick at. Also, most of the violence is against women, but is all in the form of self defense, rather than for domestic reasons. There is also a few scenes of violece against younger children, both male and female, but again for self defense reasons, and not domestic or explotative reasons.
Rating:
Summary: WORST JACK KETCHUM NOVEL EVER!
Review: This is the absolute worst novel Jack Ketchum has ever written. I don't know what these readers that gave it such a high rating require in their reading material, but evidently, not much. It has no plot, no character development, mindless, senseless violence, and makes absolutely no sense. I am a Jack Ketchum fan and have read just about every novel he has written, and I can't believe he wrote this drivel.
Rating:
Summary: WORST JACK KETCHUM NOVEL EVER!
Review: This is the absolute worst novel Jack Ketchum has ever written. I don't know what these readers that gave it such a high rating require in their reading material, but evidently, not much. It has no plot, no character development, mindless, senseless violence, and makes absolutely no sense. I am a Jack Ketchum fan and have read just about every novel he has written, and I can't believe he wrote this drivel.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out for Women
Review: This Jack Ketchum novel is one of the few that doesn't require a second mortgage on your house in order to procure a copy. I think people selling copies of his novel "The Girl Next Door" are now requiring a buyer to give them their first-born son for a copy. After reading this book, "Ladies Night," I don't really understand what all of the fuss is about. I should admit that this is the first Ketchum novel I've read, so I can't confirm his greatness in the eyes of many based solely on one slim book. Apparently, Stephen King mentioned him in his book on writing, and now thousands are going crazy trying to snap up Ketchum novels. Despite many errors in the book, I did like "Ladies Night." In the preface to the book, Ketchum relates several amusing anecdotes about how the book came about. "Ladies Night" came out in the late 1990's, but Ketchum says he wrote it in the early 1980's. Despite the immense amount of time Ketchum spent writing the book (detailed outlines, research, in-depth character analysis), every publisher rejected the book due to the high level of pornographic violence. It is not difficult to imagine the chagrin Ketchum felt when his carefully crafted 400-page novel failed to reach publication. Ketchum then hooked up with a screenwriter/playwright who made significant reductions in the size of the original novel. After this failed to produce results, Ketchum began to circulate the story around to movie studios in an attempt to get the tale to the big screen (or at least a straight to video release). Eventually, the book made it into print. This 160+ page novella is the result. The plot of "Ladies Night" is one we've seen many times, with slight variations, in both books and movies. A tanker truck involved in an accident spills an unknown fluid in the streets of New York. Unfortunately for the men of New York, the odor of this fluid causes a majority of women to develop rather unusual symptoms, including hypersexuality and a propensity to kill, horribly, any man they can lay their hands on. The main character, Tom Braun, must get home in order to save his son Andy from his mother, Susan. This is easier said than done, however, as the streets of New York rapidly slide into bloody chaos. Packs of women roam the streets, killing and maiming pedestrians, spouses, and cops. Several side stories describe, in more than graphic detail, the omnipresent murder and mayhem. Bottles are broken in faces, eyes soar out of sockets, heads are caved in, men are run over by cars, people are set on fire, and necks and chests are torn to shreds during the course of the story. Bodies topple with frightening consistency as Tom battles his way home to save his son. The gore quotient increases rapidly as the book nears its bloody, and grim, end. This book is not sunshine and smiles. While the story is definitely entertaining, mostly due to the battle of the sexes theme, there are a lot of problems with the book. First, I think I would like to read the original book he wrote in the 1980's. If what Ketchum says is true, I think the original would clear up a lot of the problems I had with the book. With this kind of apocalyptic story, I want a lot of background on the events. I want to see the actual breakdown of society and I want to discover why it happened. You don't get that depth here. We never find out where the liquid came from or who made the fluid. Ketchum says in his preface that he covered this in great depth in the original. If Ketchum is as popular as his book prices warrant, why can't we see the original? Second, the character development is flat as a pancake. The only real insight we see in the book is with Andy, Tom's son, and even that is scarce. I realize that in a book like this, the gore is often the main character, but other authors do more with characterization in books that are just as gory. Ketchum, if he developed his characters, would achieve greater shock value when they die suddenly, as several do in the course of the story. Unfortunately, the attempt at brevity sacrifices the characters. Third, I would like to know who edited this book. They should be fired. You know it's bad when you feel like picking up a pen or pencil to mark in commas and correct misspelled words. I know my grammar isn't great, but when I read something that is a published work, I expect a lot more than what I found here. I would be embarrassed if I wrote a story that had this many errors. I started to wonder if this is the condition the story was in when Ketchum turned it in for publication. If it was, Ketchum needs to buy a few grammar textbooks and spend some time working with them. Overall, this is still an entertaining book. I spend a lot of my time reading classic literature and history books, but I shall always have a weak spot for horror novels. In "Godfather III," Michael Corleone once said, "I try and get out and they keep pulling me back in!" That's me with horror novels and films. I'll read more Ketchum, but I am not going to pay the exorbitant prices some of his books command to do so. Bring back the mass-market paperbacks!
Rating:
Summary: Night of the Mantises
Review: Tom Braun and his wife Susan aren't exactly a picturesque couple. Thus it comes as no surprise that Tom continually spends late evenings in bars and cheats on his wife. Unfortunately, their son Andy is caught in the middle of his parent's childish banter and family chaos. One life-altering evening turns this family's, along with most of New York's, perceptions on the nuclear family and male/female relationships upside down. When a tanker trunk with "Ladies Inc." emblazoned on the side crashes in a quiet area in New York, an area it doesn't have authorization to be in, it liberally spills its contents all over the road and into the surrounding atmosphere. The local authorities deem the contents of the spill to be safe, based merely on the assumption that products coming from a women's label are more than likely benign. Moreover, the smell emanating from the spill is one of sweet cherry, similar to lollipops, which must of course be harmless if not favorable. This aforementioned assumption proves fatally incorrect. The chemical load the truck was hauling procures a discomfiting, bestial effect in women, forcing them to savagely attack males in their vicinity. Be they former friend or foe. Tom, while at a local bar, absorbs the evening's strange turn of events with traumatizing clarity as he witnesses first hand the metamorphosis of surrounding women into gruesomely instinctual brutes and mantis-like predators. He must get home to his son Andy, who is currently alone with his wife Susan. Hopefully before it is too late. This concept is not entirely new in the horror genre. Ketchum weaves his plot in a very Romero-esque fashion, and even admits to drawing from the "Dead" trilogy for this particular tale. However, Ketchum chooses to give women the role of ruthless savage while the males run for their lives. Some unforeseen visceral instinct takes over, and the body count rises in true repulsive zombie fashion. I am certainly one to appreciate some well-placed gore and vivid descriptions. However, I felt as though Ketchum let the grotesque extravagance take precedence over the plot in this particular form of this novel. The extreme horror genre need not be a mere roller-coaster ride of bloodshed and carnage. In his forward, Ketchum states that this 164 page book was originally about 400 pages, and one of the longest books he'd ever written. Furthermore, he states that there was originally slightly more character development and a few additional side-plots woven into the now sparse and thin story line. I, for one, would love to see his original version find its way into print. In addition to the hackneyed, bare-boned plot, this book is fraught with typos and editing errors. Though they don't themselves detract from the plot, they do indeed become a nuisance. I have always been, and will continue to be, a fan of Jack Ketchum. However, this particular book is not his best work.
Rating:
Summary: Night of the Mantises
Review: Tom Braun and his wife Susan aren't exactly a picturesque couple. Thus it comes as no surprise that Tom continually spends late evenings in bars and cheats on his wife. Unfortunately, their son Andy is caught in the middle of his parent's childish banter and family chaos. One life-altering evening turns this family's, along with most of New York's, perceptions on the nuclear family and male/female relationships upside down. When a tanker trunk with "Ladies Inc." emblazoned on the side crashes in a quiet area in New York, an area it doesn't have authorization to be in, it liberally spills its contents all over the road and into the surrounding atmosphere. The local authorities deem the contents of the spill to be safe, based merely on the assumption that products coming from a women's label are more than likely benign. Moreover, the smell emanating from the spill is one of sweet cherry, similar to lollipops, which must of course be harmless if not favorable. This aforementioned assumption proves fatally incorrect. The chemical load the truck was hauling procures a discomfiting, bestial effect in women, forcing them to savagely attack males in their vicinity. Be they former friend or foe. Tom, while at a local bar, absorbs the evening's strange turn of events with traumatizing clarity as he witnesses first hand the metamorphosis of surrounding women into gruesomely instinctual brutes and mantis-like predators. He must get home to his son Andy, who is currently alone with his wife Susan. Hopefully before it is too late. This concept is not entirely new in the horror genre. Ketchum weaves his plot in a very Romero-esque fashion, and even admits to drawing from the "Dead" trilogy for this particular tale. However, Ketchum chooses to give women the role of ruthless savage while the males run for their lives. Some unforeseen visceral instinct takes over, and the body count rises in true repulsive zombie fashion. I am certainly one to appreciate some well-placed gore and vivid descriptions. However, I felt as though Ketchum let the grotesque extravagance take precedence over the plot in this particular form of this novel. The extreme horror genre need not be a mere roller-coaster ride of bloodshed and carnage. In his forward, Ketchum states that this 164 page book was originally about 400 pages, and one of the longest books he'd ever written. Furthermore, he states that there was originally slightly more character development and a few additional side-plots woven into the now sparse and thin story line. I, for one, would love to see his original version find its way into print. In addition to the hackneyed, bare-boned plot, this book is fraught with typos and editing errors. Though they don't themselves detract from the plot, they do indeed become a nuisance. I have always been, and will continue to be, a fan of Jack Ketchum. However, this particular book is not his best work.
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