Customer Reviews

Ladies Night

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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!

When certain chemicals are applied to the opposite sex's visage, specific emotions are brought into fruition. Sometimes its a feeling of heightened bliss and attraction, other times its love and devotion, and still other times its safety and a feeling somewhat like home. When chemicals that have been manufactured for warfare are applied, however, all deals are off and, for the men of New York City, its run for your lives time.

Basically a B-movie in practice, this story focuses around the lives of one character, Tom Braun, and the people surrounding him as all the women that come into contact with a certain mystery chemical become primal killing machines. These individuals include his son, his wife, his infatuation, the bartender he keeps to cope with his infatuations, and other people met along the way, all struggling for some way out of the nightmare that has fallen on them in a twenty-four hour period (and that smells like Cherry lollipops, for anyone interested in holding their breath). It is because of this that I thought the book was good but, at the same time, that it also lacked in some regard as the streets slicked with gore. The characters were noticeable and the effects were gruesome and sometimes even applaudable, but the outside world ramifications weren't really focused on at all. The setting sometimes teemed but more than often were just barely touched, and some of the momentum is lost toward the last portion of the book. Still, the last statement made in the book was something that, in many ways, I found to redeem much of that.

For someone looking for a quick read that is slicked with the internals of the unfortunate, this might be something that you might be interested in. It has quite a few little deaths that seemed, well, painful, plus it goes into detail about random acts of violence going on all about the city. If you need the backgrounds painted for you and the city described in more than a minimalist perspective, it might be something that you might want to save for later.

I'm now starting to get into what I call "Splatter" novels (that's "horror" and "suspense" fiction with excessive violence and gore, not mention a strong sexual content). I've already purchased several books by Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, and Simon Clark, to name a few. I've also quickly discovered that sometimes too much violence and sex disrupts the flow of the book, while at other times it seems to be just the right amount, moving the story along at a break-necking speed. Such is the case with Jack Ketchum's LADIES' NIGHT. This is a relatively short novel, running at a 167 pages. It's fast paced, tense, and definitely not for the squeamish. The story begins when a tanker truck is involved in a traffic accident in the middle of New York City's West Side. The unknown contents of the truck spills out into the streets, and its cloy, sweet cherry scent spreads throughout the inner city, infecting most of the female population. By nightfall, the women of NYC have become sexually aroused with a powerful blood lust that leads them to want to kill every man in the city. When Tom Braun and his wife notice a beautiful dancer masturbating herself with a broken wine bottle during a roof party at the top of their apartment building, it's the first sign that the night is going to get even stranger. After the party is over and the demented dancer has been subdued by security, Tom decides to visit the local bar for a nightcap. Within a couple of hours, the women in the bar are brutally murdering as many of the men as possible, while Tom and the bartender, Phil, fight their way outside to the street, stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire. The sounds of the night are filled with the screams of dying men and the demonic laughter of vengeful females. Tom realizes that the women in the city have gone totally crazy and that his young son, Andy, may be in danger back at the apartment. It's going to be a battle to the death as he and other men fight their way through the streets in an effort to save Andy...a boy who may already be dead at the hands of his mother. LADIES' NIGHT is one of those fun reads that reminded me of movies like Night of the Living Dead and Halloween. It's popcorn entertainment that thrills and makes you jump in all of the right places. Mr. Ketchum doesn't hold back on the blood and gore in his descriptions of men and women being killed in the streets of New York City; yet, rather than being a turnoff, it actually works for me. There is no in-depth character development here, but who cares? Most of the characters in this novel are going to be dead by the end of it. This is a short roller-coaster ride of death and destruction that's to be enjoyed for its pacing and intensity. I liked LADIES' NIGHT enough that I intend to purchase some of Jack Ketchum's other novels, THE LOST, HIDE & SEEK, OPEN SEASON, and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. Naturally, this novel isn't for everyone. If you're not into "splatter" fiction, then save your money for something else. If, however, you want to read some dark, violent, sexually oriented fiction that can make you laugh at different times, then give this novel a shot!

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.

First of all, take the warning on the cover that this book contains upsetting, graphic subject matter seriously. I'm a longtime horror reader, and while I read and enjoy many authors, only a handful of them have disturbed me to the point of giving me nightmares after I read their work. Jack Ketchum, aka Dallas Mayer, is one of them. If you're a JK fan (or have read and finished Off-Season or The Girl Next Door), you'll know what I mean. And if you love JK, pick this up fast if you haven't already. It's one of his best and most memorable. It's also one of his most cold-blooded, which Ketchum readers will know is saying a lot.

Ladies Night (great title, by the way) takes place over a short period of time-about 24 hours, actually. The plot reminded me of Cronenberg's "Rabid", Romero's Dead trilogy, and Phillip Nutman's "Wet Work". A virus that the government developed, presumably as a weapon, leaks out and quickly begins to effect females only. The chemical/disease causes women to slowly but completely lose their minds (note: insert PMS joke of your choice here). The main symptoms are women becoming homicidally violent, with their hormones and sex drive also going berserk (and not in any sort of a fun way). The plotline mainly focuses on the residents of one apartment complex, but also carries into the insanity on the streets as well. It's almost a twist on "Night of the Long Knives", with women as the ones who gang up and take over.

One of the more upsetting elements of the story is that families are quickly and completely torn apart. Sons, brothers, boyfriends and husbands have no choice but to defend themselves against the woman they love most in the world, and one of them is going to have to die in almost all these cases. Also, a few rare women are immune, so they have to defend themselves against other women and also men who might think they're a threat.

I have yet to talk to a male who has read this book. My husband doesn't read fiction, but if he did, I know this would scare the you-know-what out of him. Come to think of it, with all due respect, I can't imagine any man not being disturbed by this book, for obvious reasons. Men who have an especially moody spouse or close family member...maybe they should read a different title instead. I think women readers will also be scared by a whole different element. Every woman has probably felt on the verge of losing it completely and felt a fear that they might lose control and hurt someone. It's a cliche, but especially during one week of the month. Women know they have this inside them, and the book plays on that fear.

Before I read this book, there's a couple pieces of information I already knew from my college majors of Women Studies and Deviant Psychology. One is that both PMS and pregnancy have both been used successfully as a legal defense for murder charges. The other is that women as a rule fight more viciously and nastily than men. "They just want to do the most amount of damage in the shortest time possible, and they'll fight dirtier than any man to do it," as a Jerry Springer security guard said in an interview when asked who they were most scared of getting between in fights. These facts seemed amusing to me (though not to any men I told) before I read this book, but now I'm not seeing any humor in it at all. It came to my mind over and over while reading "Ladies Night", and I remember having to shove it to the back of my mind because the book was already scaring the ... out of me enough.

If you're a Ketchum fan, this is a must read. It's up there with The Girl Next Door and Off-Season as one of his most disturbing and memorable works. I think that most Ketchum readers will agree that there are scenes or images from these books that have stuck with them and even haunted them for a loooong time. I first read this book years ago, and it still gives me the creeps to think about. Like TGND, I re-read it because the prose and plotline had such a strong, lasting effect on me...and I realized it was just as upsetting, if not more, as the first time. I'll never forget the son fighting desperately for his life against his formerly loving mother, and the ending was one of those that actually jumped out and smacked me in the face. I don't recommend this book for anyone that is easily upset or disturbed, or anyone who is already afraid of women. If you like your horror fast, hard, and nasty, then this is for you. I recommend it strongly for horror fans, both male and female, who want a novel that they'll never forget.

Intrigued by what I had read about the author, inspired by the reviews contained on this website, I couldn't wait to read LADIES NIGHT. And the first of the book doesn't disappoint, as Ketchum masterfully sets the stage for pending disaster, develops the plot and inserts interesting sub-plots of tension and conflict among all of his characters. The table is set for a grand seat-squirmer...

...and then the book goes over the top. Do you remember the scene from the movie, "The Shining," the scene where the elevator doors open and a river of blood comes cascading out to bathe the lobby with gallons and gallons of crimson? Such is the case with LADIES NIGHT, as horror and suspense are carelessly cast aside in favor of mindless gore, gore, and more gore. Halfway through the book the reader becomes so desensitized to all the blood and guts it is impossible to care what happens to the characters. Instead of being wrapped in the story, I found myself chuckling after each grisly scene, asking myself, "OK, what kind of mutilation are we going to see next?" Ketchum is, if nothing else, imaginative when it comes to chopping, stabbing, smashing, cleaving (insert any verb you want) people to pieces.

I take back my earlier statement: this is a seat-squirmer, but only because of the discomfort caused by all the glaring typos and inept editing. (It would appear that the copy editors at Gauntlet have never heard of a comma, colon, or semi-colon.) Save your money if you're wanting a nailbiter: LADIES NIGHT starts off with much promise then fizzles into a bloodsoaked whimper.

pretty crazy book. not very gory as led to believe. still, if you ever are curious to know what would happen if every woman in the world went pyscho, check this book out!!!!

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 thís 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!

I've been looking for LADIES NIGHT for several years and finally resorted to doing something I almost never do: buying a book new, at retail. This was worth it.

LADIES NIGHT is set in Manhattan during a very short time span. A chemical truck overturns in a residential neighborhood. The driver and a woman in a Buick are killed instantly. Goo spreads over the streets: it smells like cherry lollipops. We don't know exactly what the compound is, but it's nothing nice.

That evening the weather is warm and pleasant, but women begin to behave strangely. Soon the streets of the city are soaked with blood as women literally from ages eight to eighty are turned into killing machines with men as their targets.

Ketchum sets strict discipline for himself. Some of the women exposed to the toxin were just passing through the city, so they'd be in the suburbs or on their way to other places. Mayhem is probably erupting many miles away, but he has the good sense to limit himself to a small geographic area and let us imagine what's going on elsewhere.

Eventually we see the main character, Tom, embark on a quest to redeem himself after being a rotten husband and indifferent father. He needs to travel a few blocks to his apartment to find what condition his wife, Susan, is in and to check on the safety of his teenage son.

Ketchum admits the influence of several sources on the story. Obviously, Romero's film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and Cronenberg's film THEY CAME FROM WITHIN. I was reminded, too, of another of Cronenberg's films from the seventies, RABID.

There are lots of unanswered questions that I'd like to know about. As order begins to be restored, the police are told to use their own judgment in shooting any woman on sight if they suspect her to be infected. Would the toxin wear off eventually, or does it completely change brain chemistry? What would be the probability of an antidote? Are there any women who are immune to to unusual estrogen levels or other health conditions?

Somewhere there's a 400 page version of this, and I'd love to read it. As is, I'm doing something I very rarely do: I finished LADIES NIGHT at 2 this morning, and today I started over from the beginning.

Two warnings before I'd recommend this book to anyone: it is brutally violent. Don't think that this character or that is immune to being slaughtered: that doesn't hold here. And it's not a finished product: there are too many errors that a proofreader should have caught.

Darn. There's got to be some way we can get our hands on that 400 page version. Ketchum can advertise it like when the uncut version of Stephen King's THE STAND came out: It's the book THEY wouldn't let you read.