South Florida, 1965: the birthplace of underground cinema. Grindhouse director Sheldon Meyer is cultivating an obsession. He has just one hellish week to shoot Crimson Orgy, seventy-six minutes of mayhem destined to become the world’s most notorious cult movie . . . and just maybe the first true “snuff film” ever made. Struggling to cope with a reluctant starlet, a booze-ravaged leading man, a backwoods cop bent on revenge, a mutinous crew, a devastating hurricane, and his own inner demons, Meyer relentlessly pursues a vision of unrivaled box office horror. He gets what he’s after, but at a price no one could imagine.
Crimson Orgy opens up an ultra-vibrant slice of American pop culture, weaving a fictional tale of murder and madness seeped in little-known fact. Wickedly funny, brutally suspenseful, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever read.
“An authentically seedy, almost charming tale of zero-budget horror moviemaking morphs cleverly into a genuine splatterfest in Williams’s unnervingly enjoyable debut . . . horror film buffs should be delighted and chilled in equal measure.” —Publishers Weekly
“Most writers of horror fiction join in Clive Barker’s famous declaration: ‘Give me B movies or give me death.’ In Crimson Orgy, Austin Williams delivers both… a mystery in which the fantasy and reality of madness, murder, and mayhem blur into a nightmare with one color: red. (Warning: Readers will not be admitted during the last fifty pages of this book.)” —Douglas E. Winter, Film Threat
“A fascinating look at the exploitation film industry . . . the tension builds as we move toward the conclusion and we know that something really bad is going to happen. It’s a book that will leave you twitching uncomfortably when you finish.” —Don D’Ammassa, author of Narcissus and Dead of Winter
“Crimson Orgy uses the lowest of the low budget cinema as a platform from which to shape an engaging tale of human greed, fallibility and darkness with prose that invokes Jim Thompson’s relentlessness, Elmore Leonard’s offbeat humor, and Ramsey Campbell’s atmosphere.” — Daniel R. Robichaud, Horror Reader
“Crimson Orgy is the rare book that you seem to be watching rather than reading, because it’s so visual that it will remind you of those bloody horror films that played at the drive-in forty years ago, only with more intelligence and intentional humor. ” —Danny Peary, author of Cult Movies
“Fans of urban legends, splatter cinema, and sharp tools will want to get it on with Crimson Orgy. Austin Williams’s debut novel pays respect to the cinematic trail blazed by H.G. Lewis—with sex, storms, and suspense.” —Rod Lott, Bookgasm
