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Adam Cesare
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Video Night: A Novel of Alien Horror Kindle Edition

by Adam Cesare (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 639 ratings
See all formats and editions
Who better to repel a body-snatching alien invasion than a group of teenage horror nerds?

Billy and Tom are best friends, but each knows that at the end of the school year they'll be moving in different directions. But why not go out with a bang and throw one last video night? They can invite some girls over, order a pizza, then maybe try and fight the alien infection that's taken hold over their suburban town.

It's The Breakfast Club meets The Night of the Creeps in this slime-drenched '80s horror romp.

"Hit that first chapter. It’ll hook you, and the next time you look up, you’ll have swallowed the book. It’ll be nesting inside you like a seed, like an egg, like an invasion." -Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels

"The momentum keeps building. The stakes keep escalating. The monsters just keep getting worse and worse, the catastrophic mayhem more juicy and hopeless. Best of all, the writing moves like a greased torpedo, compulsively readable as it rockets through your brain." -Fangoria

"If you put together the gore, action, monsters, and sense of excitement that made '80s horror movies so great, you'll only have about half of what makes Video Night a must-read tome for horror fans." -Horrortalk
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  1. Print length
    250 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    January 8, 2017
  5. File size
    3653 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
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  8. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Too often modern horror is mired in self-importance and pretension, which is why Adam Cesare's Video Night is so refreshing. Video Night seeks to entertain first and foremost, a goal it achieves with spectacular success. It is also very well-written and is populated with characters who are realistic and relatable. Video Night was the most enjoyable horror novel I've read in quite some time, and Adam Cesare is one of horror's brightest new talents. Highly recommended."--Bryan Smith, author 68 Kill and Depraved
Praise for Adam Cesare:

"Mercy House is 100% distilled nightmare juice. Adam Cesare notches up the horror to nigh-unbearable levels. Even my skin was screaming by the end of this book."
--Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and Little Heaven

"Of all the new writers busting out on the scene, Cesare's the young guy with the greatest encyclopedic gorehound know-how, blistering cinematic pace, unquenchable love of both fiction and film, and hell-bent will to entertain. Cesare does just about everything right."
--John Skipp, Fangoria

"Sick and sardonic and just plain brilliant."
--Duane Swierczynski, author of Revolver, on Tribesmen

"The prologue of The Summer Job is one the best and scariest openings to a horror novel I've ever read...The rest of the novel is equally great."
--LitReactor

"The textbook definition of a nail-biter. The Summer Job is a kissing cousin to inbred classics from masters like Ketchum and Kilborn. Cesare's best novel yet."
--Bloody Disgusting

About the Author

Adam Cesare is a New Yorker who lives in Massachusetts. After studying English and film at Boston University, he decided to stay in the area to work and write. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including Shroud Magazine. His nonfiction has appeared in Paracinema, Fangoria and other venues.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01MS5HGFJ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Black T-Shirt Books; 2nd edition (January 8, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 8, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3653 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 250 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 639 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Adam Cesare

Adam Cesare

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Adam Cesare is a New Yorker who lives in Philadelphia.

He is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Clown in a Cornfield series, the graphic novel Dead Mall, and several other novels and novellas including the cult hit Video Night. An avid fan of horror cinema, you can talk movies with him on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and the rest of his socials.

www.adamcesare.com

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
639 global ratings
Perfect Horror Beach-Book
4 Stars
Perfect Horror Beach-Book
Adam Cesare 's VIDEO NIGHT is my kind of beach book. 80's nostalgia, fun horror, just enough campy gore, and characters that are well developed and relatively angst-free.
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Top reviews from the United States

William
5.0 out of 5 stars Horror ripped straight from the 80’s
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2019
Verified Purchase
Video Night is a book that I’ve seen often on social media lately. Between photos of it at Scares That Care and fellow NightWorms talking about it, I did some further investigation. No sooner than I read the back cover description “John Hughes meets John Carpenter”, did I immediately purchase this book. I wasn’t disappointed.

Video Night is the story of high school best friends Billy and Tom. Despite being polar opposites, they’ve maintained a close friendship, one that is likely to end at the end of senior year. The boys come up with the idea to get Tom’s girlfriend to bring a friend for Billy to hang out with at one of their "Video Nights". Like all of the best laid plans in horror, things don’t even come close to going smoothly. This book, despite being horror, was such a joy to read. Adam Cesare crafted a novel that feels like it was ripped directly from 80’s cinema. Obviously that was the intent, but WOW did Cesare nail it. The book hits the ground running in chapter one, setting forth the events which make up what has to be one of the most fun horror novels I’ve ever read. The characters in Video Night are awesome. Cesare does such an immaculate job of building the characters in this book that you feel as if you know them. YOU could BE one of them yourself. The great characters are also complimented by awesome aliens. The creatures found within these pages are disgusting. Cesare does a wonderful job describing the invaders, really allowing you to picture what they look like and they aren’t pretty. The extra terrestrials in Video Night are ruthless, laying waste to those in their path, hellbent on carrying out their plan. Things escalate from bad to worse in the most wonderful way possible. Towards the end of the book, I found myself procrastinating. Not because I didn’t want to read the book anymore, but because I was sad to see it end. The entirety of Video Night is a masterful display of 80’s horror nostalgia, right through to the satisfying conclusion.

Video Night by Adam Cesare is a must own for any fan of the genre, but doubly so for fans of the 80’s. I’m a sucker for 80’s nostalgia, despite having grown up as a 90’s child. Video Night fills a void in my heart, allowing me to revisit a period in time that I often wish I had been a part of.
10 people found this helpful
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Evin
4.0 out of 5 stars Not Perfect, but a Clever Book
Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2015
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In a lot of ways, Video Night emulated the time period that it sets itself in well. The story does not take itself too seriously and it does not bog itself down in the details. As a book that unabashedly mirrors the horror movies of my youth it so frequently references, it is an entertaining ride.

Video Night it's one part Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one part 80s nostalgia, and one part Scott Sigler's Infected. Without much fanfare it becomes clear that aliens are taking over people's bodies as part of a well coordinated attempt to take over Earth. Meanwhile two mismatched high school friends cling to their friendship as they enter senior year which they know will likely be their last together. Throw in some high school romance and some things from the aliens' point of view and you've got the basic idea.

The book is well written on most fronts. It references the 80's in a demure, quiet way that is far more subtle than something like Ready, Player One and feels lie an authentic representation of the time. The characters are all well written and the high schoolers don't feel either to mature or immature in their dialogue and action. The plot is middling in It's complexity, much like a typical 80s movie, but not in a bad, lazy way. At times the pace lags a bit for my liking and the alien viewpoint sections feel like a they were meant to give away more information than they did, though there's nothing wrong with the level of ambiguity here.

There's little wrong with this story beyond the issues just mentioned. It's a great book, and the only thing keeping it from a full five stars is that there's that X factor, that lurks clever twist that turns a good book into a great one that's missing. I think perhaps the story is a little too restrained, erring slightly too far into the "realistic" end of the genre than it needed to. A few little extraordinary scenes or a slightly grander shore than a small Long Island town would have moved the book part feeling just a little bit constrained when it didn't beef to be.

Despite the wrinkles, it's entertaining, fun, and readable. Well worth a look and well worth checking out the author's other endeavors.
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Stephen Combs
5.0 out of 5 stars Be Kind and Rewind.
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2018
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I always love reading books that are set in the 1980’s. I don’t know why, I’m a child of the 90’s and so the trends and identity of that decade are foreign to me in a way. Video night though was a massive occasion for me and my brother growing up. In my hometown of Irving, Texas we had a great video store called Broyles, and it had a separate closed off horror section. Reading Video Night made me remember those feeling of going to the video store smelling the actual tapes and the cheap popcorn that was sold. I remember walking the aisles and being just unable to settle on 1 movie and it always ended up being that my brother and I would get 4-5 movies. We would stay up Friday nights watching them all and munching on popcorn. This book is awesome. Plain and simple. The relationship between Billy and Tom is fun. The burgeoning relationship between Billy and Rachel is so damn relatable. Cool aliens and fun to see the interaction with the host and aliens. Gory and fast paced. Definitely recommend.
6 people found this helpful
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John P. Collins Jr.
3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable creature feature.
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2013
Verified Purchase
I grew up in the Town of Islip, still live there as a matter of fact, so to see my home town as the setting for this monster fest was a bonus for me.

Video Night is a fun, wet, slimy creature feature that starts off fast and never really lets up till the end . Novels that try that pace usually sacrifice character development and logic but this novel doesn't have that problem. The characters are well drawn and for the most part realistic.
I imagine that the author grew up on 1980`s horror films because this would make great film.
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Top reviews from other countries

Andrew Dott
5.0 out of 5 stars Fun throwback B-movie horror.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book is just pure fun. It’s creepy, it’s gory, it’s unsettling, but it’s also hilarious, exciting and actually pretty heartwarming. Adam Cesare is a horror fan and it shows. Littered with movie and genre referenced, it’s clear that he is one of us and we’re in great company here. This is a horror book by a horror fan, for horror fans. Like the kind of movie you might stumble across late at night on one of those channels you didn’t even know you got, or that the broadcasters churn out 2am, assuming nobody will watch, yet the thrill of finding and experiencing it is like no other, almost like you’ve stumbled on a secret. I mean all of that in the best possible way. Great pace, great characters, great writing. My only negative would be that it ended a little quickly for my liking, I’d have liked a bit more finality, however in hindsight it does kinda echo the kinds of movies I spoke about above, so in that sense the ending was fitting. Definitely reading more from Adam Cesare. I’ve pre-ordered his latest and will be working my way through his back catalogue as a matter of greatest urgency!
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Short, gory and full of nostalgia
Reviewed in Canada on March 7, 2018
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I've had this book in my library for a long time. I don't know why I waited so long to start it. Awesome book. It was like the best classic 80's horror film in a novel .
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Zachary Ashford
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in Australia on September 19, 2019
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When it comes to great horror, it’s no secret that some of the best movies and books out there mine the fertile ground furrowed by the titles that came before them. When that’s done by skilled creators, the result is usually a whole lot of fun. That’s exactly where Adam Cesare’s Video Night sits.

Even though I’ve already reviewed Tribesmen, this was the first Cesare book I read, and to put it simply, I bloody loved it. Cesare’s a great dude who wears his passion for his genre as a badge of honour. Whether you’re watching Project: Black T Shirt, his YouTube channel, or you’re reading his fiction, it's obvious the guy is steeped in a love of horror. That, my friends, is a damn good thing. His work comes from a place of real honesty and enthusiasm. Couple that with his skills, and you just can't go wrong.

Video Night starts with a bang. Pun intended. In a manner that harks back to the greats of screen – and of parody – that bang is not going to end well for the hapless couple who’ve just been to see A Nightmare on Elm Street 4. Without providing too much detail, Cesare wastes no time getting to the gore, and the scene is set. With an alien invasion underway, things are about to go down.

And that’s where our main character comes in. Billy Rile is a gun on the Nintendo and a total sci-fi and horror geek. He’s just not that good with the ladies. His best mate Tom Mathers, however, is a rough around the edges stoner. If you’re picturing a more sociable version of Kevin Dillon’s Brian from The Blob, you’re probably on the right track. For these two, every Friday night is Video Night. Put simply, monster movies in the converted basement at Billy’s place.

For this particular Video Night, Tom’s bringing his girlfriend, much to Billy’s chagrin. He’s also got hold of some pills that aren’t exactly what they say on the tin. Without ruining too much for prospective readers, in the way of all good body horror and classic horror like Night of the Creeps and Slither, once the aliens are inside, the tension's about to escalate. Amongst all of this, there are some awesome side-plots involving other families in the street, ‘body-snatchings’, a school bully, and, of course, a love interest for Billy.

With the plot and the premise all wrapped up, it’s important to note that Cesare’s writing is great. Cleverly characterising his cast with brief introductions, he injects humour and pathos into his fast-paced story, but never loses sight of his inspiration and creates a novel that’s representative of those influences at the same time as he lays down gory action-packed kill after action-packed kill.

With multiple threads of conflict beneath an overarching narrative arc that speaks to the best 80s horror films, Cesare’s Video Night is great fun, an easy read and a worthy addition to any horror fan's bookshelf.

5 Stars
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Eddie E
4.0 out of 5 stars Closer to 4.5 stars.
Reviewed in Canada on October 4, 2022
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I really liked this book. Just wish that it had been longer. Fun and fast read.
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Mark West
4.0 out of 5 stars 80s horror!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 1, 2023
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Who better to repel a body-snatching alien invasion than a group of teenage horror nerds? Billy and Tom are best friends, but at the end of the school year they’ll be moving in different directions. They hold one last video night, order a pizza, invite some girls and then end up fighting alien infection that's taken hold over their suburban town.
I was a teen of the 80s, I love 80s set stuff and I have very fond memories of the horror films of that era, so this suited me down to the ground. The characters are well realised (the friendship dynamic of Billy and Tom especially), the girls are much better represented here than they were in the films of that time and the story moves at a real pace. With plenty of gleefully described gore, some memorable monsters and a real sense of the period, this worked really well. I thought the ending was a bit odd - took a while to get there, then an epilogue rounded stuff up quickly - but otherwise this is well worth a read and I’d definitely recommend it.
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