What is Splatterpunk Horror: The Ultimate Guide

What happens when horror takes off its gloves and throws a punch straight to the gut? Enter Splatterpunk, a subgenre that doesn’t just aim to scare but to shock, revolt, and provoke. Are you ready to confront the most extreme and unfiltered form of horror?

What is Splatterpunk Horror?

Splatterpunk is a horror subgenre characterised by visceral and graphic descriptions of gore. It is violence and horror at its most extreme. That explains the ‘Splatter’ in the portmanteau splatterpunk, but what about the ‘Punk’?

The ‘punk’ refers to the revolt against the traditional horror of the past. By this, traditional horror tells the story where some threat ruins equilibrium, and the hero must restore it. Whereas in Splatterpunk, equilibrium never existed. Rather, the threat is a dystopian universe manifesting to boiling point.

Paul M. Sammon further cements this sentiment in Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge (1995, p. 17-8), claiming that to write splatterpunk is to “remove the barriers of society and ‘good taste’ [that are imposed] on fiction. […] Add a healthy dose of shock, plus the influences of schlock movies and the screaming guitar licks of the world’s best metal bands”. That’s his thoughts on style.

But what about the substance? This is the ‘punk’. Sammon continues:

Now stir in courage. Honesty. A strong awareness of pop culture. Add hot, steaming issues – real world concerns – and season with a no-bullshit attitude.

Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge, 1995, p.18

A repugnant, yet morbidly intriguing cocktail, Splatterpunk may at first glance look like it’s all style and no substance. Yet the subgenre and its authors have a lot to say. It is not just bloody violence and gore. It is not just GRAPHIC CONTENT! It twists the scalpel into society’s most defenseless and sensitive pain points. Twisting and cutting deep. Through sheets of white-hot agony, you will realise the world’s tumors being exhumed. Here, society’s cancers are antagonised, quantified, and accounted for.

Horror fiction is where you will most likely see the Splatterpunk genre. Despite it being primarily a written art form, you will see it explored in horror films and graphic novels. Now, let us look at the key features of Splatterpunk in more detail.

What is the point of Splatterpunk?

Before delving into what makes the subgenre, it’d be useful to understand first why Splatterpunk exists.

According to Splatterpunk author Paul M. Sammon, the point of the genre is twofold:

• To rebel against the artistic establishment. Specifically within the traditional horror genre, there is a focus on blood, guts, and agony. Whilst doing this, suspense and eerie atmospheres are completely rejected – which was the norm.
• To explore the darker and crueler side of human nature

In reference to Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror (1990), The New York Times explains Sammon’s thoughts on the point of the literary movement:

Paul M. Sammon offers the movement’s deceptively serene manifesto: “Like surrealism before it, splatterpunk was a specific revolt against an artistic establishment — in our case, the traditional, meekly suggestive horror story.” Accordingly, “Splatterpunks” is full of fiction unconcerned with spooky atmospherics or suspense; most of the collection’s stories are about cruel humans and the violence they commit.

Paul M. Sammon, Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror

Aspects of Splatterpunk

Transgressive Sex and Violence: A focus on the body

While violence and gore are the background noise of the horror genre as a whole, Splatterpunk places a larger emphasis on detail. Such scenarios could appear in depictions of torture and/or dismemberment. These depictions frequently go beyond what is deemed acceptable in mainstream horror. As author John Skipp said on the subject, “blood is not enough”.

Splatterpunk also frequently examines taboo or controversial topics, such as sex and drugs. Such works are known to include graphic portrayals of all forms of violence. Sex and violence in cinema are both considered mainstream. But, it is in the manner in which they are depicted. The detail of these portrayals is what Splatterpunk makes them transgressive.

In this same vein, the body is usually depicted as vulnerable, and fragile. Any violence through this meaning is a violation of the body, commonly attacking the body’s most vulnerable parts, such as the eyes, mouth, genitals and ears. This can be a metaphor for the vulnerability of the human condition in a brutish world.

Transgressive violence is not only used as a device to explore what is acceptable in horror, but it also explores the limits of the human experience. A preoccupation with physical sensation and viscera shocks and disturbs the viewer/ reader.

Anti-establishment Attitude

Splatterpunk was also a reaction to the conservative climate of the time it emerged. The US political environment was preoccupied with traditional values and social norms. This is what Ronald Reagan championed in his policies – a return to family values, free-market capitalism and a stronger sense of law and order.

The UK had some similarities with the US climate under the rule of Thatcherism. It too emphasised free-market capitalism, in addition to a strong national defence and individualism. All these policies were often criticised by the left as callous and uncaring. This criticism was similar to what the Republican party received during the same period.

The UK also was dealing with a recession, rising unemployment and social unrest, particularly in Ireland. The repressive and heavy-handed responses by the Tories fueled alienation and disillusionment amongst younger people.

In this context, some authors and artists in the United Kingdom, such as Clive Barker, started to explore themes of horror, violence, and societal decay in their work. However, “Splatterpunk” was not a widely used term in the UK as it was in the United States.

Anti-Heroes Used as Subversive Critique of Societal and Political Norms

Anti-heroes are a staple of the Splatterpunk genre, being deeply flawed and/or immoral. In tandem, it is their actions that drive the plot of the story forward. Typically, they resort to extreme reactions to protect themselves or loved ones. This can even be at the cost of their own humanity.

They also often embody nihilistic or anarchic attitudes. Their actions often serve as a critique of the political and social climate of the time. In contrast to this, Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho (1991) is not trying to protect anything. His actions are the logical conclusion of the excesses and decadence in which he lives. Another example of an anti-hero is the main character Steven from Matthew Stokoe’s Cows (1998). Steven throws himself into a life of killing and torture to gain the courage needed to end his mother. A mother ominously dubbed the ‘Hagbeast’.

In cinema, the anti-hero is Kirsty Cotton, in the first two Hellraiser films. She is not a traditional hero by any means. This is because she is driven by her own self-preservation (rather than helping others). In Hellraiser (1987), Kirsty makes a deal with the Cenobites, sacrificing another to save her own skin. She also endangers herself and others in the second film, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988) for her own benefit.

Who invented Splatterpunk?

According to Robert R. McCammon, David J. Schow coined the name in 1986 during the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. Reflecting on why he invented the term, Schow claims:

I made up the term to describe hyperintensive horror — the Clive Barker ‘there are no limits’ variety — [back] when it mattered. If Stephen King is comparable to McDonald’s, then splatterpunk — in its day — was akin to certain varieties of gnarly mushroom, the kind that could open new doors of perception, or, in noncompatible metabolisms, just make you puke.

David J. Schow cited by Robert R. McCammon

From this, it appears that because the horror subgenre is so extreme in surpassing the original boundaries of horror – both in visceral imagery and it’s message – a new term was needed to encapsulate it. Interestingly, the term has been recognised in the Random House / Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language since 1996, something of which David J. Schow is “perversely proud of”. In further recognition of David J. Schow’s achievement, he has also been dubbed “the Father of Splatterpunk” by Richard Christian Matheson.

The Origins of Splatterpunk Horror

So we know who invented the term, but a genre that disregards societal norms and explores the darkest parts of the human psyche does not emerge from a vacuum. What were the pre-splatterpunk works that we can look back to, and recognise as the subgenre’s primordial mucus?

Paul M. Sammon dubbed Harlan Ellison as the godfather of Splatter Punk (Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, 1990, p.316). Harlan Ellison’s proto-splatterpunk works were published in the 1960s and ’70s. Fusing “extreme sex and violence with white-hot anger”, the following films (Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, 1990, p.316) are recognised as pre-Splatterpunk by Sammon:

• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967)
• The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World (1967)
• A Boy and His Dog (1969)
• Along the Scenic Route (1969)
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs (1973)

It was in this cinematic zeitgeist that the first novel of the genre emerged. Paul M. Sammon in Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror (1990, p.288), pinpoints the birth of Splatterpunk with the publication of The Exorcist (1971) by William P. Blatty. Sammon explains that the novel was everything Splatterpunk “is today”. America had not seen anything like this book before: it was “explicit, adult, confrontational, and unafraid” (Paul M. Sammon, Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, 1990, p.288).

Also in the 1970s, specifically 2 works in particular by James Herbert can be classed as an influence on the Splatterpunk genre. Herbert’s first novel The Rats (1974) “used the symbol of mutated rats pouring out of London’s East End to stand for the neglect and dismissal of an entire lower class of English society” (Paul M. Sammon, Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, 1990, p.318). However, it was his second novel, The Fog (1975), that would emulate the visceral imagery portrayed within Blatty’s The Exorcist. James Herbert went on to publish works within the same vein throughout the 80s, and has been noted to be an early influence on Clive Barker (a well-known Splatterpunk).

The final major commercial effort directed at the splatterpunk audience was 1995’s Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge. This was an anthology of short tales that also featured articles on horror movies and an interview with Anton LaVey. By 1998, one analyst stated that interest in splatterpunk was waning, stating that it “seemed to have reached a peak” in the mid-1990s. The phrase is still occasionally used for horror with a strong horrific aspect, such as Philip Nutman’s work Cities of Night.

Wait… this is a 90s Horror website. Didn’t Splatterpunk emerge in the 80s?

The golden age for Splatterpunk was the late ’80s and early ’90s. Whilst the horror genre did not die a death – it is very much alive and well still today – many critics perceived its decline in the 1980s due to its formulaic narrative. As I said before, Splatterpunk was a rebellion against the mainstream – and that also included horror itself.

A new generation of creators emerged to challenge the established tropes and conventions of horror. Whilst the subgenre was a reaction to the political environment of the 1980s, this carried on into the 1990s, where readers and viewers wanted the catharsis that only Splatterpunk could offer. Many successful (and original) horror flicks and books were made in the 80s – films such as Evil Dead 2 (1987), The Shining (1980), and Creepshow (1982). However, most of the hoard remained homogenous in its predictability and lacked originality.

Notable Splatterpunk Authors and Books Published in the 90s

Notable Splatterpunk Horror Authors:

• Clive Barker
• William Joseph Martin (formerly Poppy Z. Brite)
• Jack Ketchum
• Richard Laymon
• Matthew Stokoe
• J. F. Gonzalez
• Shaun Hutson
• Joe Lansdale
• Brian Keene
• Richard Christian Matheson
• Robert R. McCammon
• Shane McKenzie
• Wrath James White
• David J. Schow (dubbed “the Father of Splatterpunk” by Richard Christian Matheson)
• John Skipp
• Craig Spector
• Edward Lee
• Michael Boatman
• Kathe Koja

Splatterpunk books from the 90s:

Some of the best published additions to the subgenre include David J. Schow’s The Shaft, William Joseph Martin’s (formerly Poppy Z. Brite) Exquisite Corpse and Kathe Koja’s The Cipher. If you would like to know more about the best splatterpunk books published in the 90s, we have them listed here on the 90s Horror Blog!

Notable Splatterpunk Films Released in the 90s

• Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth (1992)
• Hellraiser 4: Bloodline (1996)
• Audition (1999)
• Dead Alive (1992)