Alana K. Drex's New Horror-Comedy Novel 'Fridge Goop' Is Rad Throwback To '80's-Era Fun

For those who don’t remember or were too young to experience the decade first-hand, the 1980’s were rad. Those Regean-era years of MTV and Miami Vice, Molly Ringwald and Michael Jackson, “Smooth Move, Ex-Lax” and “Where’s the Beef?”, yuppies, punks, skinny ties and larger-than-life hair were a New Coke (and Columbian coke) fueled head-rush of day-glow pop-cultural kitsch unrivaled unto the current day. In theaters it was the age of soon-to-be immortal icons: Freddy and Jason, Doc and Marty, Bill and Ted, Mr. Myagi, The Goonies, The Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing, Rambo, John McClane, and Ah-nald.

During the twenty-first century, throwback nostalgic interest in the ‘80’s has reached fever-pitch, permeating and influencing music, fashion (who could’ve predicted the mullet would ever stage a catwalk comeback?), and film. In the microcosmic realm of horror flicks it’s become hip to reverently recreate the vintage ‘80’s feel (see: Ti West’s The House of the Devil and Jason Eisner’s Hobo With A Shotgun); that revivalist trend extends to literature, too (see: Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism), as most recently embodied in the new effort (available on Amazon June 21) by indie author Alana K. Drex, the deliciously malicious horror-comedy novel Fridge Goop.

It’s June, 1987, and in the Boise, Idaho suburb of Craneville, good-natured comic book D&D nerd Robbie endures existence at the bottom of his high school pecking order, hassled by other students, a sadistic bus driver, but most of all by his asshole Alpha Jock brother Bill, whose primary goal is making Robbie’s life as miserable as possible. All that changes the night a mysterious refrigerator appears on the corner of their quiet neighborhood; as fate would have it, elderly identical twin sisters Edna and Ruth Olstadt, who live in the house across the street, notice the appliance the same time as Robbie does. With their own fridge on the fritz and dishes for her impending pot luck social going rapidly rancid, Edna moves the abandoned appliance into her kitchen, where she learns the refrigerator already has an owner: a sentient, ever-expanding gelatinous mass of (possibly extraterrestrial) goo with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The Goop God, as Edna soon dubs the entity, quickly establishes a telepathic link with her, and after learning of its regenerative properties (along with its Julia Child-level culinary prowess), she willingly feeds unsuspecting victims to her new deity in exchange for a fresh lease on youth. Robbie, meanwhile, has his own theories regarding the refrigerator; having witnessed The Goop devouring roadkill and worried it may have something to do with his brother’s untimely disappearance, Robbie and his friends launch an investigation that puts him directly in Edna’s newly vigorous crosshairs—and in danger of being goopified!

Fridge Goop is a sloopy, slippity-sloppity literary love letter to the garish ‘80’s VHS era, oozing the subversive dark humor and multicolored mayhem of movies like Street Trash, The Stuff, and The Blob straight onto the printed page. Doubling down on the offbeat absurdity of her previous novel, Oops, I Killed My Boyfriend (co-written with Billy J. Middleton, Jr), Drex solidifies her status as the reigning champion of indie splatstick with scenes that gleefully give the backhand to the recent trend of ‘elevated horror’. While some literary snobs may find the novel’s breezy style superficial, they’d also be missing the main point. Sure, Fridge Goop isn’t Ulysses, but it isn’t supposed to be, either. It’s supposed to be fun, and in that regard succeeds beyond all measure. Cannily deriving humor from the outrageous situation rather than throwing cornball jokes at the audience, Drex also wisely takes the time to endear her central cast to readers so they (gasp!) care about their fate. Each character is bequeathed a well-defined personality; for example, anyone familiar with the attendant pains (and joys) of adolescent geek-dom will find a kindred spirit in main man Robbie and his unabashed love of Iron Man comics and role-playing games; similarly, Edna isn’t some rote B-Movie lunatic, but a well-rounded figure with very real anxieties about aging who finds a way to reverse the process. Her subsequent murderous behavior, appalling as it may be, also serves to highlight a distinct morality-play angle in Fridge Goop; in a certain way Drex is confronting her audience with a simple question: If you were in Edna’s position, what would you do? We’d all like to believe we’d don the white hat and resist The Goop, but with everlasting youth as a reward, how many would give in and reap the benefits, even at such a high cost?

At 96 pages, Fridge Goop makes for a fast, lively read. With its playful ‘80’s setting, unabashed razor wit and gloriously glooptastic indulgence in bloody food preparation, Drex has crafted a comedic horror classic more than worthy of a 4 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale. All Hail the Goop God!