The Long Last Call by John Skipp

The Long Last Call Reviews

• 
  Misty Marie Harms

  It is closing time at the strip club when a well dressed man with a briefcase full of money enters the door. He wants to extend closing time and is willing to pay for the pleasure. As the money flows so does the hatred. Tension fills the room as the rage starts to build. Something is seriously wrong with the man and the money he is giving away freely. By the end of the night the depths of evil and degeneracy will know no bounds. This was a wild one. The blood flew easily and soaked the walls.
  
  🐱🐱🐱🐱
• 
  Robert Beveridge

  John Skipp, The Long Last Call (Leisure, 2006)
  
  Let me tell you a little story, given that the average age of Amazon users is low enough that most of you probably think that the only people doing horror between James (either one, take your pick) and Candace Caponegro were King, Koontz, and Barker. We all remember King and Koontz because they were the guys, back in the late seventies, who spawned a ten-year golden age of horror, during which every press in America was jumping to sign up every mediocre horror author they could find. Most of them, for obvious reasons, have faded into obscurity. The downside of that is that many of the really, really good ones have also faded into obscurity. Who remembers Edward Levy these days? And yet he penned two of the most effective horror novels of the early eighties, The Beast Within and Came a Spider. And then there's Clive Barker, the sole remaining popular representative of what was known as the splatterpunks. (Splatterpunks are a lot like industrial bands in that most of those who got the tag argued that their work didn't actually fit, but there you go.) If you travel back to the pre-Barker proto-splat days, back to the Ur-splat, if you will, you find yourself holding one wonderful novel—John Skipp and Craig Spector's now largely (and unjustly) forgotten debut, The Light at the End. It broke so much ground in so many ways. If you read it now it will probably seem dated. You know why? Because pretty much every vampire novel that has come since that isn't slavishly faithful to Anne Rice (whom Skipp and Spector memorably, and humorously, skewer in The Light at the End) has assimilated the new tropes put forth by Skipp and Spector. I read The Light at the End back in the early eighties and became a fan of Skipp and Spector's. (A couple of years later came The Scream, and fandom became a love affair, but that's another review.) At the very end of the golden age, Skipp and Spector parted ways, Barker had gone off to the world of fantasy, and most of the splat pack went to ground, along with most horror authors who weren't selling a million books a pop. John Skipp went into filmmaking. But horror novelists, whatever else they do, cannot stop being horror novelists forever. (I keep telling myself this while waiting for Kathe Koja to write another of the best horror novels ever written.) And thus, John Skipp has returned to the fold, this time with two novellas.
  
  “The Long Last Call” has been described as Needful Things meets... oh, hell, I'm drawing a blank, and I already sent it back to the library. In any case, that's probably all you need to know, as long as you're a Stephen King fan, except the chap in question sets up shop in a strip club. (In his introduction to the book, Brian Keene mentions that Skipp originally wrote this as a screenplay; let me add my name to those who proclaim that I will pay damn good money to see this brought to the big screen, at least as long as it isn't cut down to get an R.) It's your typical Friday night crowd, if a little sparse, when Hank stumbles into the club. He's drunk, he's just burned a picture of his ex-girlfriend (though it's never explicitly stated, I always got the feeling that she'd died rather than dumped him) by accident, he's slightly schizophrenic, and he's looking to forget about all that. Except, he discovers, that one of the dancers looks entirely too much like his ex. The situation is already a little tense when the dark stranger with the attache case full of bills walks in...
  
  “Conscience”, the second of the stories, involves a hit man who's got the job of his dreams—he's supposed to kill a cult leader who not only seduced away the girlfriend of the accountant who commissions him, but his own girlfriend as well. How can he resist? All is well and good until the night before the hit, when he wakes up from a nightmare to hear the shower running. What he finds inside, well, that would be a spoiler.
  
  I can't talk about one of the novellas without talking about both, which is a wonderful thing; the two complement one another in every way. For example, Skipp not only inherited the dark-stranger vibe of Needful Things, but King's writing style as well. (I have to say that I was originally planning on knocking Skipp down a couple of stars for the writing style in “The Long Last Call”; the satire, while way over the top, is also subtle enough that it never occurred to me that Skipp was actually lampooning King.) Where “The Long Last Call” is a hammer to the face, though, “Conscience” is understated, despite the odd ebullience of its main character, who sounds like he's constantly working under a low-level caffeine buzz. (Where “The Long Last Call” is King, “Conscience” is Spillane.) Where “The Long Last Call” glories in Skipp's splat heritage, “Conscience” pushes off into new ground. “The Long Last Call” is a splash of steak tartare, “Conscience” is yuzu sherbet with a shot of limoncello to chase. Either taken by itself is worthwhile, but together they are something more than the sum of their parts. John Skipp truly is back. Horror fans rejoice. *** ½
  
• 
  Daniel Volpe

  Damn, what a wild ride. John Skipp shows he still has the ability to craft a brutal tale. I loved the characters and the plot was excellent. A great, fast paced read.
• 
  Noel Penaflor

  A Short, sick Penny Dreadful involving strippers, paranormal evil, strippers, and also, strippers. Skipp is a master of situational horror and you're only a couple of pages in before it gets to full speed. If you buy this, try paying solely in 1 dollar bills
• 
  Kasia

  When I saw that Fangoria gave this book praise on the cover I knew I had to have it. This is an extremely fast read one can easily finish this in one evening if uninterrupted since John Skipp is a talented writer. His style is very fluid and easy to understand and he doesn't shy away from writing whatever his imagination dictates but I didn't find this terribly scary or over the top gory. I've read heavier books so this was a nice morsel but nothing that would shock me, if anything it was the teasing he did with the reader, luring the mind into his tale without revealing what exactly is about to perspire. I can see how this can be compared to movies such as From Dusk to Dawn, although there are no vampires - there is however a rowdy strip club fight at the end that made for a really fun read.
  
  When a dark stranger walks into a strip club called Sweet Thangs in middle of nowhere, he changes the lives of everyone inside. His expensive clothes, tight leather gloves and suitcase brimming with money are nothing but a façade, a way to get into people's weak mind. The closing hours are winding down but the strippers and everyone inside notice the wealth that came through and no one wants to go home. He enjoys the way he captures everyone's attention as they vie for his riches, little do they know that he brings more than cold hard cash; he's the harbinger of doom in ways that they can't even imagine. I can't say too much; it would spoil the glorious buildup that Skipp masterfully creates but the book was entertaining and explosive, especially towards the end. With names like Ambrosia, Pearl and Kristal, the strippers didn't shy away from being catty and over the top, but it was the money and the mysterious slick residue that coated it that brought out the real freak from inside out, each character in the novel showed who they really were and nothing can mesmerize a human like a dollar bill, or a stacks of hundreds to be precise.
  
  I enjoyed the lovingly written intro for John Skipp, done by Brian Keene. I can see Skipp's influence on his style of writing and why he's such a big fan. It was certainly nice to see what horror writers like to read themselves.
  
  - Kasia S.
• 
  Danger

  I was expecting to like this book (I’m a fan of Skipp) but THIS WAS SO FLIPPING GOOD I can hardly stand it! Economically told, the prose moves like a ballet dancer, from one character to the next, a dozen times, perfectly setting them up - arcs and all - as this gore-filled and revelatory night at the strip club takes a turn for the apocalyptic. There’s not a wasted word on the page, and for all the things this book has to say about love and greed and all the aspects of human nature, it sure doesn’t spare us on the sex and violence! Yes, The Long Last Call crams just about as much as I could handle into its breadth. In a word: EXCELLENT!
  
  Bonus: The edition of the book I had also contained the novella Conscience, published later as the title story a stand-alone collection, by which you can read my review here:
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
  
• 
  John Bruni

  When I was a kid, my friends and I would make fun of cover blurbs. We couldn't help it. They always seemed so silly. There was one for Dean Koontz that said, "Sleek like a bullet!" That was our favorite target. Here's the thing, though: The Long Last Call is just that. Sleek as a bullet. Economically told. It plays out like a chaotic song building to a crescendo. A rich, handsome stranger stops in at a down-n-out strip club and starts doling out money. It's slimy money, but they're all willing to grab at it. The things they stoop to in the name of greed is truly astounding, but it is the perfect way to view our country today. The 1% keeps draining the rest of us just for the sake of accumulating more wealth. It's sheer insanity.
  
  And then there's the additional novella, "Conscience." Skipp plays with an interesting concept: the 1st person narrator speaking about the reader/his conscience as a 2nd person narrator. I know I butchered that explanation, but you'll understand when you read it. It's great to live inside the narrator's greasy, slimy mind as he talks about all sorts of horrid things and converses with terrible people. It plays out pretty majestically. You need this book in your life.
• 
  Phil

  Nice to see a relatively new book by Skipp! This is really two novella-- "The Long Last Call" and "Conscience." The Long Last Call is pretty straight forward-- the devil walks into strip club in BFE somewhere just before last call. We are first introduced to the characters in the club and their travails which is fun, and then the devil starts tossing money around and the strippers go crazy trying to get some. The Devil has a briefcase full of cash (funny cash, with a slimy feel, but looks legit). Things start to get a little crazy when the devil pays up to have an after hour's party...
  
  Conscience concerns a hit man on a mission. We follow him to L.A. where he meets his employer and takes care of some side business. With a fair amount of flashbacks, we learn of his childhood and where he has gone, but things get a little crazy when he meets his Conscience...
  
  Overall, Skipp proves he can still write with the best, giving us a pair of fun (and at times gruesome) stories from one of the founders of splatterpunk. Brian Keene's intro is quite good as well. These are quick reads, but have a lot more depth than most short fiction, especially with character development. 3.5 stars rounding up.
• 
  Adamus (Like Adonis, but with a M)

  This book had 2 really good novellas in it. Both story's were really unique & the characters were really interesting. There is also a really cool introduction by Brian Keene another really great author & a favorite of mine. This is only the second book I read from John Skipp & I'm definitely a fan. His writing style is like no other & he's also a legend in the splatter punk genre. I definitely look forward to reading more of his books.
• 
  Brennan LaFaro

  John Skipp’s The Long Last Call has a little bit of Needful Things to it, but separates itself and ultimately succeeds because of limited setting. Taking place during the course of one night at a strip club/dive bar, Skipp lets us get to know everyone from the owner, to the girls, to the house mother, to the regulars, to the guy just passing through. Every last one comes to life and boy does it pay off when the blood starts to fly.
  The dark stranger says it best. He brings out the worst of what’s already in these people. A blood-soaked and no holds barred affair.
• 
  Trina

  I enjoyed this quick horrific read from start to finish.
• 
  Dark Recesses

  THE LONG LAST CALL
  By John Skipp
  
  Last year, we saw the triumphant return of John Skipp, editor extraordinaire, as he bagged a Stoker for MONDO ZOMBIE-- a project roughly thirteen years in the making. This year, John Skipp, the proud Splatterpunk Papa, returned to the fiction arena with THE LONG LAST CALL, a tale of demons and strip club dancers, of innocence and bloated lusts.
  Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if Skipp wasn’t busting his butt in the world of horror and beyond. Since the late 90s, he’s been busy editing, writing collaborations with others, making music videos, short films, and even adult movies (for which he won an AVN), and writing screenplays. But to his fans, his return proper was a moment of truly bizarre dichotomy.
  A sense of expectation, for sure. Finally, the man who made some of us want to be rock n’ roll horror writers was coming back to the fold.
  But many wondered if that old Skipp magic was still there?
  Could he pull off another ANIMALS or THE BRIDGE?
  This reviewer is here to allay any such fears. Despite the relative short length, THE LONG LAST CALL is vintage Skipp, but with a whole new wisdom.
  Written initially as a screenplay for a film that Skipp intended to produce, he cleverly keeps that cinematic vision throughout the story, moving from one character to another with an editor’s eye for continuity and pace. After introducing the reader to Hank, an angst ridden young country boy, who might just be a little less than sane, we’re escorted into SWEET THANGS, a strip club off the beaten trail. Using a technique rivaling the famous opening tracking shot in Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL, we meet the assorted cast of dancers, a sleazy drugged out club owner, a muscle bound bouncer with plans of his own, a trio of local dollar tipping rowdies, and the wallflower stripper mom. Enter The Dark Stranger, loaded with cash and big plans for a night’s not-so-innocent entertainment.
  If you’ve ever been lucky enough to attend a Skipp reading, you’ll recognize the loose and easy style of writing as the same way in which he reads aloud for his eager fans. It’s as if your favorite uncle is sitting across from you, relaying the damnedest story from his checkered past. The litmus test of a true craftsman is how easily Skipp is able to keep the breakneck pace, layer the violence and sex to a heady pitch, and still load the story with pathos and emotion.
  If THE LONG LAST CALL is any indication of what the future holds for Skipp fans, we all have thanks to give to whatever writing gods convinced him to come back again.
  All Hail the Splatterpunk King.
  
  --Nickolas Cook
  
• 
  Mark

  According to the introduction, this bizarre short novel started life as a screenplay and that’s evident, from the various POV changes (each sentence begins with …) to the highly amusing amount of times characters or actions are REPRESENTED IN BLOCK CAPITALS. The story details the night that a stripper bar in the middle of nowhere literally goes to hell but, to be honest, it doesn’t work too well. It’s very slight, the bulk of the characters are little more than fodder, there’s no real explanation for what happens (either why or, indeed, where the god-like creature comes from) and it’s not entirely clear what happens to the folk who are ‘touched’ (apart from they’re called monsters and look a bit like Cro-Magnon’s). Bearing in mind Skipp’s pedigree (Splatterpunks and on), this is more than a little disappointing.
• 
  Chris

  This book is composed of two novellas - although, at 185 pages, the title story might actually be considered a novel. I am a fan of John Skipp's earlier works (with Craig Spector) and wholeheartedly welcome him back to print but I am not very impressed with the title story in this set. As noted in the introduction, it was originally written as a screenplay which is evident in the pacing and action sequencing. I prefer stories with a bit more depth. This one reminded me of the second half of the film, From Dusk Till Dawn. The second story, Conscience, is far superior to The Long Last Call and itself is worth the price of the book. It was true to the form of John Skipp's most noteworthy works - a thought-provoking idea married with crisp writing and an in-your-face attitude. Classic John Skipp!
• 
  Craig DiLouie

  I am now officially a huge John Skipp fan. He’s amazing. In THE LONG LAST CALL, he delivers all of his trademark elements–an enclosed space with no way out, a demonic murderer with a violent familiar, great characters you care about, tons of splatter, and few people standing at the end–wrapped in his equally trademark lyrical, conversational, breathless style.
  
  The novel tells the story of the people who inhabit a strip club in the middle of nowhere, from the strippers to the owner hyped up on coke to the bouncer with a mean streak to the customers who come in to drool and spend their dollars on their favorite girls. Then a well-dressed stranger walks in with a briefcase full of cash. And every dollar he spends stirs up a little more anger, a little more hate, until the pressure builds, builds, explodes.
  
  If you like straight up splatterpunk, this one’s for you.
• 
  Nick

  A dark stranger pulls into a seedy strip club parking lot dressed to the nines with devilish good looks and a briefcase packed to the gills with cash. He starts spreading the wealth amongst the entertainment and clientele, but a few brave souls see through his facade. This man is an agent of evil and with his mere touch the demon within comes out to play.[return][return]This is my first experience with John Skipp and as I read the other reviews here I find that The Long Last Call is sort of a "welcome back to the splatterpunk genre" release. The book was graphic and entertaining enough, but more importantly it has sparked an interest for me to go back and look for some of his earlier work to see how it compares. I would recommend this book to fans of extreme horror.
• 
  William M.

  After the first couple of chapters, even the average horror fan knows exactly where this one is going, but that doesn't stop it from being an incredibly enjoyable and addictive read. Skipp writes surprisingly detailed characters for such a short piece of fiction. He takes out almost all the fat, leaving nothing but lean, raw, fast-paced action, gore, and sex. It's a great ride and reads like the movie it was always intended to be. I understand that Skipp wrote the screenplay to this before the novel, so I'm hoping to see this someday in the theater. The added novella, Conscience, that was included at the end of the book, was a bit disappointing, but the book is still well worth purchasing and adding to anyone's collection because of the lead title. Great stuff.
• 
  Shawn Deal

  A very good splatterpunk novel here, by one of the creators of the genre himself, John Skipp. This was a good if on the short side. I wish he would have gone into a few more details in the title story. The copy I read also has another story to fill out the book called Conscience. This story is as equally good to the first one, which is a bonus. A story about a hitman going through a midlife kind of crisis with a twist. This was as wonderfully intense as the first one was wonderfully bloody.
• 
  A.R.

  John’s still got it, absent Craig Spector. These two novellas—especially the first “title track,” blew me away like a loaded .44 on the streets of New York. Loaded with fascinating characters, shank-stab gore, but with reflective spirituality, the tales grabbed me by the horse collar and didn’t let me go ‘til the living end. If you think John sucks writing by himself, get a clue.
  
  Don’t miss this one!
• 
  Nick

  The back of the book says "Needful Things" meets "From Dusk Till Dawn" and that is the perfect description of this short novel. Closing time at the strip club, the stranger enters and things get weird and violent. To really say anything about the plot would spoil the fun. Just grab the book and enjoy the ride.
• 
  Craig

  This was a fun, fast read about the devil visiting a strip bar. Nothing as epic in scope as the old Skipp/Spector collaborations, but a pleasent diversion.
• 
  Hugo

  Two novellas, both written in Skipp's trademark prose, all screenplay directions and stream of violence, arch commentary and sudden extreme violence: The Long Last Call concerns a last-ditch strip bar in the middle of nowhere, its employees and regulars, and what happens that night the devil walked in, and what such people wouldn't do for money - this hits the ground running and then makes less sense the more it goes on, but it's certainly entertaining.
  
  The second tale, Conscience, features a hitman for a commercial blackmail company, and his change of heart on a night of spiritual awakening and apocalypse - again, less sense as the narrative proceeds, to the point that I assume Skipp is not interested in the how and why, more the who and what next.
• 
  Syon

  A fast paced and entertaining read, with an exceptionally cool villain. The setup was the most interesting part of the story, as it was quite intense and suspenseful. However, I felt the climax to be a bit underwhelming. Everything seemed to end quite abruptly. Nonetheless, this is an above average splatterpunk novel, and is well worth the time of any horror fan. John Skipp is a talented writer for sure. [Side note: There is an included novella titled CONSCIENCE, that I plan to read and review separately]
• 
  Herschell Gordon

  This is my first time reading a John Skipp book and I’m glad that I already ordered some of his earlier work. Both the novel and the novella in this edition went to some dark places but by the end they left me feeling a little happier,at least more than most of the extremely bleak books I’ve been reading lately.
• 
  Cassandra Glissadevil

  4.4 stars
  Skipp goes solo. Better with Spector. That said, this is an excellent horror tale.
• 
  Kevin

  Oddly written, with more unneeded ellipses than any other punctuation constantly slowing down the flow, and making the whole thing feel phoned-in.
• 
  Ryan Sasek

  I loved everything about this book. Fast paced, fun, and wild. Skipp is an amazing writer.
• 
  Katelyn

  This was a “hunka hunka” crap. A short, fast paced story with superficial characters that just “is”.