The Bighead [Paperback]

Edward Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997

This version is not available in e-book format! This is the original unexpurgated edition! This is the author's preferred version which includes the original twenty-page ending that was intended and being published here for the first time. Who, or what, is the Bighead? Could it be a supernatural psychopath? Whatever it is, it's on a roll now, raging out of the Virginia backwoods and leaving atrail of blood and horror in his wake.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Edward Lee is to horror novels what Spain and S. Clay Wilson were to Underground Comics over twenty-five years ago--funny, evil, perverse as it is humanly possible to get...and gleefully outrageous about it. I'd say we got us a whole new sub-genre goin' here, boys and girls-- splatterspunk! -- Jack Ketchum, Award-Winning author of Off Season, The Girl Next Door, and Red

A demented Henry Miller of horror. Sexually revolting, outrageous, disgusting, THE BIGHEAD is the sickest piece of fiction I've ever read! -- Douglas Clegg, author of Goat Dance, Children's Hour, and The Halloween Man.

An outrageous, over-the-top gross-out! A must for any reader who thinks s/he's shockproof! Should carry a warning: do not read on a full stomach.... Far and away the grossest novel I've ever read! -- Lucy Taylor, author of The Safety of Unknown Cities, Close to the Bone, and Spree

Never have I been so ashamed of myself for laughing so hard at something so utterly depraved! -- John Mason Skipp, co-author of Light at the End, The Bridge, and Animals.

The grossest book I've ever read, an all-you-can-stomach fictive fanfare of nonstop perversity, pulp horror themes yanked inside-out with a vengeance, forabsolutely shocking entertainment. THE BIGHEAD would make the Marque de Sade wince! --T. Winter-Damon, author of Rex Miller: The Complete Revelations, and over 250 stories --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

Edward Lee is a writer who pulls you in from the first line. The Bighead is a horror novel. It is graphically extreme and not for the faint of heart. With that said, when you read this novel, you will also recognize that Edward Lee can tell a story. Okay, so you've got your local yokels in this tale that are not nice guys,( but they get theirs, don't worry). And some innocent people do get in the way, but Lee's story telling keeps those pages turning, and there are many stories wrapped up in this novel. By the time he's grabbed your attention you've just got to know what's going to happen with Jerrica. Will Father Alexander keep his faith? What is going on with the grave in the woods? And who in their right mind let The Bighead loose on the world? All this and more as you read on. And remember: This is the "Author's Preferred Version" the original novel that is seeing print for the first time. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Necro Publications; 1 edition (June 1997)
• ISBN-10: 1889186031
• ISBN-13: 978-1889186030
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,409,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How do I love Lee, let me count the ways, February 14, 2004

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Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bighead : Author's Preferred Version (Paperback)

The Bighead is one of those mutant in the backwoods tales that screams to be glorified on film. I can already feel the cheese crawling off the movie version with barely restrained anticipation.

As typical with Lees more masterful pieces, this is a disgustingly gruesome, gross, violent, barf-inducing tale that the squeamish must stay away from at all costs. Only those with strong stomachs and iron wills should pick up this tasty morsel.

The Bigheads grandpappy dies, and so Bighead heads out from the lower woods to find The World Outside, what his grandpappy always talked of. He is called the bighead because of his hydrocephaly: a head shaped like a watermelon, one eye the size of a grapefruit and the other the size of a tennis ball, an awl shaped mouth filled with jagged sharp teeth, and a low intellect that understands nothing but eating and mating, neither of which Bighead does daintily.

With Bighead headed towards The World Outside, Charity Wells was heading back towards the town she was born in, a tiny place called Luntville nestled in the Appalachian mountains, heading home to be back with her dear Aunt Annie. Advertising for a ride share, she makes the journey with Jerrica Perry, a journalist assigned to write a four piece in depth article about the Appalachians. Charity and Jerrica both have problems, of an exact opposite nature. While Charity cannot seem to ever reach a second date with a boy, Jerrica is a sex addict who cannot stay with only one man, and who is never satisfied.
The two girls stay at Aunt Annies boarding house, Jerrica starting on her article and Charity catching up on old times with Aunt Annie.

Also staying at Aunt Annies is Tom Alexander, an out of the ordinary Catholic Priest who has been sent by the Richmond Diocesan Pastoral Center to re-open the Wroxeter Abby. Once a hospice for terminally ill priests, the church had decided to reopen it as a rehab center for the priests who were accused of alcoholism, gambling addictions, and pedophilia. Tom is out of the ordinary because he does not follow the typical beaten path that one would expect of a priest; he smokes and drinks and cusses. Once a Army Ranger, a killer and rapist in the name of war, he swore off all his previous evils and became a priest. Tom is also a psychologist, which makes him the perfect choice for the task of establishing the rehab center. It also gets him and his embarrassing behavior out of the limelight of the church.

Add in a couple of absolutely pustulant local boys named Dicky Caudill and Tritt Balls Conner, who run moonshine over the state line and terrorize anyone who crosses their paths. Literally terrorize them; rape and murder are as common to Tritt as breathing. There are no holes barred with their depravity and viciousness.

Take two pretty girls with problems, a renegade priest, two local human monsters, an odd Aunt with a past, a weird little cemetery, a haunted abbey, a bizarre lake, and an inhuman monster trekking cross country towards Luntville, stir them up all together and you have Lees The Bighead. Add rape, murder, vomit, poop, disfigurement, dismemberment, cocaine addiction, sexx addiction, dirty little secrets, and a handyman named Goop Gooder, and you have an un-put-downable, gruesome read that will leave you both satisfied and disgusted. Despite how abhorrant the content is, Bighead is very well written and the storyline flows like a smooth river of blood, and there is some interesting artwork preceding each chapter by Erik Wilson. The Bighead is a five star nightmare that will leave you reaching for your barf bag. Enjoy!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny gross, September 29, 2004

By 

Modern Fix (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bighead : Author's Preferred Version (Paperback)

Splatterpunk God Edward Lee has won the tag line "The Grossest Book You'll Read!" for his novel "The Bighead." Forget "not for the faint of heart" and replace it with "better have a strong stomach." I'm embarrassed to say I laughed at something so completely depraved, since there is NOTHING sacred in this book, but it's so over the top it's down right funny at times. From the priest carrying on with the nympho prostitute and the 2 nuns with "unusual" fetishes he brings out of his dreams, to the hillbilly murderers who provide the most graphic scenes, to the Bighead, a hydrocephalic headed, never been washed, seven-foot tall, monstrosity who kills, maims and eats the brains of the locals, and the Luntville locals with secrets themselves, Lee hits them all. If you're looking for gross-out violence, hillbilly satire, sadistic sex, gore, and some great dialogue and characters, check out "The Bighead."

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love Lessons With The BigHead, June 1, 2003

By 

TastyBabySyndrome "Matthew Lewis, author of M... ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bighead : Author's Preferred Version (Paperback)

Urban legends come in all shapes and sizes and most, as we all well know, are based on an inkling of truth. It is, after all, the movement of information that produces misinformation, the passing down of tales that turns travesties into things that children scoff at before they journey off to sleep at night. The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, they are all one and the same: myths based on fabrications and also on the real. So, when Jerrica and Chastity, visiting a small town in the middle of nowhere, hear the story of The Bighead, a man-beast that devours brains and ravages the living, they laugh as well, knowing that this cant be truth. Sometimes, however, it is that shred of understanding, that cognitive portion spun into something seemingly nightmarish, which is truly of the most fiendish variety.

In The Bighead, Edward Lee decides to pull out all the stops, trying to produce a tale about, amongst other things, a beastly creature that stalks the higher woods on a journey toward understanding and toward fulfillment. After the death of its grandfather/keeper, it has found itself aimless, directionless, killing in the most depraved fashions but, at the same time, empty. It wants to know what lies beyond, in the realms its grandfather told it to avoid, so it begins wandering. And thats when it hears the voice that keeps saying one thing to it. Come.

Herein, Edward produces a quality monstrosity, unleashing it on an unsuspecting world as it enjoys a variety of interactions that are amongst the most wretched types. Because of that, I was pleased. I was also pleased by some of the other characters as well, namely a priest that believes that profanity isnt a sin because it is communion and that also thinks that he sees and speaks with, and a few odds and ends that they inflict on others  in the most gruesome manners. After a time, however, many of the characters and the things that plagued their lives, the little bits that should have made them stand out, began to bore me. For instance, with Jerrica, the uncontrollable libido in human form, there was a constant reminder of what she liked and what she wanted to do, to the point that my mind began fanning through pages to get to the reason behind the story: The Bighead. Other people followed the same methods as well, especially a pair of rurally-challenged killers roaming the land and killing between moonshine runs, with the horrific beginning to wear down and no longer shock this audience. Instead, the comparison of the human monsters versus the mysterious beast began to make me sometimes wonder when the true beast would emerge.

That said, the ending of the book was interestingly odd and The Bighead and Charity, our human main character that seemed without purpose for most of the tale, began to play roles that were somewhat twisted. The Bigheads plight, that of being unsated in the realms of pleasure, found themselves manifesting ends and, despite the fact that many people died that had been worked on for so long without so much as a whimper, I found myself reading on and on. Why? Because there was a curve in the pitch and it hooked my gaze.

For anyone thinking of reading the book, I am of a mixed mind in recommending it. First, Ill have to say that some of the book is pretty disturbing, crafting a lexicon of deeds that would make many quiver while journeying forward. Second, I feel I have to note that there is a repetition of ideas, that the hammer must strike the nail more times than I could contend with, and that this may cause of page skimming. Third, the beast itself, it may not be everything you might want from a monster and, in the end, it may disappoint you. That said, there are a few reasons to read it, namely if you are an Edward Lee reader already, if you want something that is overly graphic and just keeps giving and giving, and because the ending is interesting. If you arent accustomed to the gore classification in books, perhaps you should begin somewhere else. If you are a new reader to Lee, you should also try another book on for size first, easing into the waters before going here. Otherwise, The Bighead might getcha!