Working writer Graham Masterson throws out this disappointing disease thriller that offers up human misery and slack storytelling, as the whole Eastern Seaboard is ravaged by PLAGUE! Masterson is a titan of the horror field, responsible for the smash '70s hit The Manitou and still writing today in his 70s. Will Errickson of Too Much Horror Fiction has several entries concerning Masterson and his genre dominating horror output, but unfortunately it seems like this specific title was tossed off for an easy payday.
Handsome, divorced, wonderful Dr. Petrie (get it?) wakes up to a freaked out father with a sick little boy one fine Miami morning, and things degenerate from there. It seems there's a "super plague" that's been percolating in the raw sewage washing up on shore, and now it's cutting a swath through the city. This plague kills you in hours, which raises the question of how it manages to spread at all. This brings us to one of the glaring shortcomings of Masterson's thriller, the perfunctory plague menace. Neither the wild sci-fi speculation of The Omni Strain nor the grubby realism of The Black Death, this plague is blamed on some vague "radiation" as is the immunity of certain characters like Dr. Petrie (exposure to x-rays) and his daughter Priscilla (watching TV - for real). An unconvincing cast of supporting characters includes a hard nosed union boss, feuding bacteriologists, and washed up, gay as hell Golden Age actor Herbert Gaines, who gets recruited as a spokesman by some hardline New Righters to mount a racialist response blaming blacks and PRs for the plague. Plus ce change, plus c'est la meme chose, I suppose ... Petrie's daughter is referred to by the nauseating nickname "Prickles" throughout, and the back copy should warn you what you're in for here - half-baked, simpering prose about the father/daughter bond and Dr. Petrie's noble suffering through this pandemic that kills millions, as it spreads outside Miami despite the best efforts of the government in true cynical '70s fashion. One rare effective moment is when Dr. Petrie informs a National Guardsman that the "vaccination" he got is pure placebo and he's as doomed as any of the civvies he's threatening. But mostly we get miserable tableaus involving miserable people, from small business tyrant Edgar Paston and his love/hate relationship with young hood Shark MacManus, to Dr. Petrie's irritating, 19 year old girlfriend Adelaide who immediately gets gang-raped by Hell's Angels when she steps out of line and out of Petrie's protective custody. All these miserable people gradually make their way to NYC, some dropping dead along the way, until we congregate in a fancy high-rise and face the third act threat, some ravenous rats, and here we're in pure fantasy land, as any emotional truth or tactical realism has flown clear out the window.
It seems like everyone shits their pants after catching the plague, which is one of the few worthwhile bits throughout along with Gaines' recruitment by fascists. Not much else leaves an impression though. Masterson's writing is serviceable enough, delivering us from set-piece to set-piece until the abrupt, unsatisfying ending. For his miserable, empty end of the world, Masterson's Plague earns ZERO plague doctors out of four!
Graham Masterton has been a versatile novelist since the 1970s. Not only has he written horror fiction novels, he has delved in the suspense, mystery, historical, science fiction, and mainstream fiction genres. Masterton lives in Great Britain, but visits the United States on a frequent basis. A few of his novels have been issued under the pseudonym of Thomas Luke.
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