Described as The Hills Have Eyes set in Snowdonia, Hellbound Media’s Slaughterhouse Farm is certainly not for the fainthearted. With the final part of its four-issue arc now available, let’s see if this little piggy matches up to its three predecessors.
To get you up to speed, the first issues of this delightfully demented tale – which we reviewed here – focussed on a young couple tasked with taking a group of ASBO kids up to the lovely landscape of Wales’ Snowdonia National Park. Unfortunately, though, while some rest and recuperation and the usual team building was the order of the day, the bunch didn’t bargain onf meeting the ominous Pigfucker! With all but one solitary figure – the apparent ‘Bride of Pigfucker’ – now dead, the gloriously gory tale is heading for a finale that you won’t forget.
As we pick up the story here, sole survivor Frankie awakens to find herself wearing a wedding dress as her hunter eyes her up as his twisted life mate. With the odds stacked against her, poor Frankie must fend of the hulking Pigfucker and fight her way out of the hellhole he calls home. And just to add further spice to this already tasty number, Slaughterhouse Farm IV delves back into the murky history of its brutal behemoth and lets us see the humble beginnings of the tormented Pigfucker.
If you’ve read and enjoyed the previous three Slaughterhouse Farm outings, there’s no way you won’t adore this pulsating conclusion. Full of the gore, gratuities and humour that you’ll have come to expect by now – including an early shot of a severed testicle that will make any man (and some women) wince! – Slaughterhouse Farm IV is a blood-soaked, brutal final chapter for a title that should be a must-have for any longtime horror hounds out there. With its influences once more worn like a badge of honour, this is an issue that is pitch-perfect for what it needed to be, and it again reiterates just why the guys at Hellbound Media are such prime examples of why horror comics are far from dead and why you should be adding the four-piece Slaughterhouse Farm set to your collection as soon as possible… if you’ve got the stomach for it.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FARM IV / WRITER: MATT WARNER, AJ BALLARD / ARTIST: ARFON JONES / EDITOR: MARK ADAMS, MATT WARNER / PUBLISHER: HELLBOUND MEDIA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW