Thursday, November 10, 2016

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 2

Kung-Fu:

The Association (1974): This Gold Harvest flick is clearly inspired by the sleazy Japanese karate movies of the day (“Street Fighter,” “Sister Street Fighter,” etc), with copious nudity and exploitation. It’s Shanghai, apparently the ‘50s or ‘60s (not sure of the date, but one dude does drive a ‘50s Buick in it), and the movie gets off to a sleazy start with a lecherous creep murdering a rich old man – and then raping his pretty young wife! And this ain’t implied, either; it has all the creepy qualities of a Japanese movie of the day, with rampant exploitation factor, as the guy rips off the gal’s robe and starts pawing her boobs while humping her. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more lurid, the dude strangles her while he’s climaxing!!

Daughter Angela “Enter The Dragon” Mao shows ups just in time to see poor mom and dad dead; she kills the rapist/killer with a brutal head chop that makes his left eye pop out (this bit of gore another indication of the flick’s indebtedness to gory Japanese karate movies). But then our hero, an uptight cop with a sort of Chinese afro, shows up, arrests Angela – and has her shot! So what that he’s in love with her, she broke the law! This chump is our hero. The movie proceeds to get more sleazy and crazy, capped off with an outrageous scene where, with no warning, we cut to a roomful of white chicks in diaphonous robes (wearing nothing beneath them), converged before a demonic statue in a pagan temple. A nude (and very busty) Chinese gal lays on an altar, and the lead white cultist chick does a crazy dance while this awesome jazz-funk tune with blistering acid guitar blares on the soundtrack…for a good three minutes! It’s awesome.

Anyway, this is occuring in the titular “Association,” ie the Welfare Association, and the nude Chinese chick wants an abortion, and the nude dancing chicks are the abortionists! The dance is to lure her into a trance, so they can perform their grisly operation on her – but stoic cop shows up just in time to stop them. More sleaze ensues…we later cut, again with no warning, to a nude Japanese gal making out with a nude blonde gal…including closeups of the Japanese gal sucking on the blonde’s nipples! And it goes on and on, the camera lingering…later we will see this same blonde, nude as ever, riding an obese Chinese dude who has paid for her services.

But while the sleaze is phenomenal, the movie itself is lackluster…Afro uptight is a lame protagonist (the actor did nothing else, apparently), and the kung-fu fights are sporadic. Most notable is a fight between our hero and Hwang In Sik, a Korean martial artist most known for his appearance in Bruce Lee’s “Way of the Dragon.” The sleaze and exploitation goes away in the last third, and digressive plots take over, like boring hero staying with some woman who’s in danger of being the latest victim of a notorious brigand. Also, Angela Mao shows up in another role, playing a mainland Chinese cop who is the spitting image of the murdered character in the beginning of the film – this element is not much explained or explored. Also, humorously enough, after beating up the bad guys, stoic uptight cop struts off into the sunset – and is gunned down by two lowlifes!! Whether he lives or dies is not stated by film’s end, but to tell the truth I could care less. Also featuring Samo Hung as “Tiger,” a fellow cop.

Bionic Boy (1977): You’re an 8-year-old karate champion from Singapore visiting the Philipines, when your mom and dad are killed by thugs and your arms and legs are crushed. What do you do? Why, you get bionic replacement limbs and swear vengeance. This Filipino flick stars 8 year-old Johnson Yap, a prepubescent karate champion from Singapore. Don’t be mislead by the child star into thinking this is a childish movie, as thankfully “Bionic Boy” plays it straight throughout. This is funky ‘70s bell bottom fury all the way through, with fuzz guitar jazz-funk playing throughout – even the theme is a subtle lift of Oliver Nelson’s “Six Dollar Man” theme.

The highlight is the English dubbing, with all of the voices familiar from various Shaw Brothers dubs; in particular the gang of crooks are hilariously dubbed, and their bickering throughout is very funny. They’re a gang of American ‘Nam vets – we’re told some of them massacred entire villages of women and children (the memory of which causes the bastards to chuckle happily!) – and now they’re trying to corner the crime market in Southeast Asia.

The movie doesn’t waste any time on maudlin sap; Johnson’s in the car with his folks when it’s crushed by the villains, and the producers spend about 5 minutes runtime on his bionic surgery. There are no bittersweet tears about dead mom and dad, about how he’s no longer a normal young boy, etc. It’s straight to the slow-motion “bionic” running and kung-fu fighting, with a goofy synthesizer providing the “bionic noise” as Johnson beats up the gang members. He kills too, most memorably when he hurls a coconut at some dude with all his bionic might. Surprisingly, his vengeance is unsated by film’s end, with the boss of the gang escaping – we’re given an unexpectedly poignant finale, with the Bionic Boy looking angrily into the distance. And sadly we never DO get to see if he wreaked his vengeance, as the boss isn’t even mentioned in the sequel!

Bruce, Kung Fu Girls (1977): This Taiwanese kung-fu movie features all you could want from a bell bottom fury flick of the ‘70s. And more! Clearly retitled to cater to the late ‘70s Bruceploitation craze, the movie has nothing whatsoever to do with Bruce Lee. It’s about five cute kung-fu vixens who band together against an invisible criminal. Plus along the way they even get to guard the moon rock! There are five of the gals but only the main one, Polly Kuan, really has any kung-fu skills. She plays the niece of a Taiwan police inspector or somesuch, and she and her four pals (apparently visiting from America, though this isn’t revealed until the last few minutes) help out the cops for whatever reason.

The movie fumbles between chop-sockey and romantic schmaltz; Polly saves a gangly dude from thugs early in the film, and both she and her four friends fall in love with him. Cue bizarre scenes of the girls staring off into the distance while treacly Chinese pop plays on the soundtrack. Speaking of which the soundtrack for the most part is awesome, pirated from various jazz-funk LPs of the day. Three tracks in particular I was able to spot were “Whole Lotta Love” by Dennis Coffey, “Living For the City” by Ramsey Lewis, and crazily enough even a snippet of “Calypso Frelimo” by Miles David (a 30+-minute psychedelic funk tune from his ’74 double LP “Get Up With It”), which plays every time we get to see the main villain’s headquarters. The flick also dawdles too long with goofy “comedy” moments as the gals bicker over the gangly guy, who turns out to be a scientist who invented like some Maguffin serum or somesuch.

Fights break out randomly and awkwardly, with the overall cheap appearance mandatory of these kind of films; most every fight takes place outdoors. The finale gives us all we could want as Polly and pals suit up in fetish-type kung-fu gear (leather hotpants, sleeveless tops, knee-high boots, and wrist cuffs) and take on the bad guys; Polly as usual is the only one who does any real fighting. There’s no gory violence or nudity as you’d see in a Japanese karate movie of the day; for the most part “Bruce, Kung Fu Girls” is a lot of fluff, but it’s still a lot of fun. And the English dubbing is great, featuring a host of voice actors familiar from various Shaw Brothers English dubs.

The Iron Man (1975): Jimmy Wang Yu stars in this average chop-sockey from Taiwan. Somewhere I’d read that Wang Yu had a bionic hand in this one, but that’s a crock – it’s a basic false hand which he covers with a leather glove. Anyway this is a basic revenge tale; it opens in a sepia-toned ‘40s, during the Japanese occupation of China, and young Jimmy watches as his dad is murdered by the Japanese and their Chinese compatriots; afterwards poor mom is raped by the Japanese commander while little Jimmy stands there! For his trouble the kid gets his left hand lopped off by the Japanese captain…and then when everyone leaves, Jimmy’s mom blows her head off! Boy, that’s a rough day. 

Flash-forward to the funky ‘70s and Jimmy, now all grown up, is a kung-fu expert given to wearing outfits with some severe collars. He’s working his way up the chain in vengeance, aiming for the captain. Eventually he makes his way to Japan, where he falls in with a local drunk, his blind sister, and another sister, this one a hotstuff who promptly falls in love with Jimmy. Yet the Japanese captain is here as well, pining for the same gal, and in amid the lovey-dovey stuff we have more kung-fu fights than the average Bruce Li movie. And Jimmy’s just as awkward in the fights. Music cues are stolen throughout, most laughably a bit from “The Godfather.” This one isn’t recommended, even for bell bottom fury freaks like myself. Also notable for a variety of familiar voices from various Shaw Brothers movies on the dubbed English soundtrack.

The Return of the Bionic Boy (1979): This movie’s basically two sequels for the price of one – a sequel to “Bionic Boy,” again starring Johnson Yap, but also a sequel to two other Filipino action movies: “They Call Her Cleopatra Wong” (1978) and “Mean Business” (1979), both of which starred pretty, 20-year-old Singaporean actress Marrie Lee as Cleopatra Wong, a tough female cop. The producers introduce the novel concept here that Cleo is actually Sonny the Bionic Boy’s aunt, and apparently he’s visiting her here in the Philipines. This is an odd relationship for sure, though, with Cleo apparently thinking it’s okay to hang around her apartment with her ten-year-old nephew wearing nothing but a teddy! (Not that I’m complaining.) Even stranger: late in the film a captured Cleo is handcuffed to a rotating, X-shaped cross. When Sonny saves her, he first spins the cross around while Cleo’s still handcuffed to it – and starts talking to her from between her spread legs(!?). 

Despite the more comic-booky tone, the presence of Nazi villains, and even a flame-throwing tank with a dragon head, I actually like this sequel less than “Bionic Boy,” mostly because this one makes the mistake of shoehorning a lot of unnecessary “comedy” into the proceedings. This is mostly carried out via “Benny Hill”-style cranked-up film speeds, or Johnson doing goofy stuff during kung-fu fights, or the bumbling antics of the villains, one of whom is a flaming gay Chinese dude who simpers and prances during the fights. But anyway this Nazi force is doing something, apparently forcing Filipino villagers into service or somesuch, and it’s up to Sonny and Cleo to save the day.

The action’s just as firefight-heavy as kung-fu; whereas the first movie starred Johnson Yap and thus focused on his martial skills, this one cuts over just as often to Cleopatra Wong’s storyline, and thus we see her gunning down various henchmen – at one point she even dons an Afro, like a regular Chinese Pam Grier. The soundtrack this time is wholly composed of library music, and again the movie doesn’t come off like a true sequel to “Bionic Boy,” as Johnson Yap will disappear for long portions of the film and is for the most part incidental to the plot. At any rate this was it for the Bionic Boy’s cinematic adventures – and also it was the last movie with Cleopatra Wong. And both Johnson Yap and Marrie Lee also retired from the acting biz after the flick – indeed, these were the only two movies Johnson Yap appeared in.

Stoner (1974): This sleazy Gold Harvest production supposedly started life as a project between Bruce Lee and George “I used to be James Bond” Lazenby; the two became friends shortly before Lee’s passing, and Lazenby signed a contract with Gold Harvest for 3 films. The first of these was to be a part as a “spiritual adviser” in Lee’s ill-fated “Game Of Death,” followed by a larger role in this project, which after Lee’s death was revised as “Stoner,” with Lazenby in the lead role and Angela Mao Ying brought in to play a cop from mainland China. It’s debatable whether the film would’ve been this sleazy had it actually featured Bruce Lee in it; at any rate there’s plentiful boobs and sex throughout, though be warned most of the flesh is provided by unattractive white ladies who don’t sport the loveliest of shapes.

Stoner is a tough Australian cop who conveniently studied Asian languages in college, thus he’s the perfect man to head over to Hong Kong to figure out where this potent and lethal new drug is coming from. Meanwhile Angela Mao is on the same case, but while Stoner just goes around Hong Kong busting heads (and screwing gangster moll Betty Ping Tei, most remembered today as Bruce Lee’s real-life mistress – whose bed Lee died in, by the way), Angela poses as a simple country girl who keeps running afoul of the villains. Action is sporadic throughout, and as displayed in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” Lazenby is very good with on-screen scuffles and throws real-looking punches.

The soundtrack is pretty great, the acid guitar-tinged jazz-funk I so love, and the movie features a memorable opening in which a cult, led by a black dude in a robe, engage in a group orgy – gross stuff here via an egregious shot of one of those unattractive babes deep-throating a popsicle. The Shout Factory DVD, released as part of the Angela Mao Ying Collection, is notable because it combines the Hong Kong version of the film (which features a lot more footage of Angela Mao) with the international cut. Thus when you watch the English dub (in which Lazenby dubs his own voice) there will be frequent parts in which people are suddenly speaking Mandarin, with the English provided via subtitles. Overall this one’s fun but a bit ponderous at times, and the sleaze is almost equal to that of another 1974 Gold Harvest production: “The Association.”

Grindhouse/Drive-in trash: 

The Doll Squad (1973): Low-budget “Charlie’s Angels” prototype about a squad of somewhat attractive, big-haired gals who work for the government. Michael “career on the skids” Ansarra plays the villain of the piece, a “criminal genius” who appears to be in a flop sweat the entire time the camera’s on him. From his South American lair he’s somehow sabotaging US space rocket launches. The CIA runs it through the computer to see who would be best qualified to handle this menace; the computer suggests “the Doll Squad.” If only real life was like this! Surprisingly there’s no nudity, not even any adult shenanigans, but there is a bit of grindhouse gore. In particular the opening half features a few doomed members of the Doll Squad being killed by Ansarra’s men; one of them is shot in the head and we see a gory exploding quib.

The movie is a bit sluggish and horribly acted; most humorous is when the various Squad members try to talk about past missions. Without a doubt every scene in the film was captured on the first take. The producers even rip off “Mission: Impossible” with “masks” that allow some of the gals to turn into other women (complete with different bodies, naturally), but things don’t pick up until the final half, when the Doll Squad launches an assault on Ansarra’s villa. This stuff is pretty good, with the various gals toting submachine guns and blowing away swarms of henchmen. Unfortunately a lot of the action is shot in the dark or awkwardly directed, but it’s better than nothing. The low-budget aesthetics extend to the explosions, with people and vehicles “blowing up” via badly superimposed flames. It’s a mystery why this one never made it to MST3K. The Squad is clearly ready for another mission by movie’s end, but apparently no more were ever filmed.

Policewomen (1974): Offering everything you could want in ‘70s grindhouse/drive-in trash, “Policewomen” is basically a more lurid version of Angie Dickinson’s TV series “Police Woman,” only with cursing, violence, and nudity. Our hero is a busty redhead policewoman who takes a special assignment to stop a female gang. First though she must deal with the usual harrassment a female cop must endure from her male colleagues, but mind you all this is done in a fun spirit and with none of the noxious “female empowerment” mandatory in today’s action crap. For our hero, Lacey Bond, has a sense of humor. The movie does, too, with most of it played with tongue in cheek; save for an egregious part where genre stalwart William Smith shows up as a gym trainer who gets his ass kicked by Lacey, the film never becomes a comedy.

The producers stick with the right vibe throughout, and while the violence is never too bloody they are sure to give us several glimpses of naked ‘70s boobs and butt. Also it must be mentioned that there are some super-foxy ‘70s gals in the female gang, which is run by a decrepit old lady and her young bodybuilder boyfriend. The stuff with the gang is the best, particularly its intro, in which a black member tries to join, much to the dismay of an Asian gal. The racial slurs fly fast and furious, and then so do the feet, fists, and claws in an awkwardly-staged brawl. Sondra Currie, as Lacey Bond, also shows off her very nice bod as she hops in bed with the craggy-faced cop she gradually falls for; the movie ends with these two being set up as permanent partners, but unfortunately there was no sequel.

There are no violent shootouts and for the most part the action is relegated to clumsy “karate” fights, but it must be stated that Lacey sure has an enjoyably ferocious smile on her face when she beats people up! She takes her own beatings too, in particular a somewhat-unsettling bit where the bodybuilder beats the shit out of her for a few minutes of screentime; humorously, all Lacey has afterwards is a small trickle of blood coming from her mouth. Overall this is really fun grindhouse flick, filled with that early ‘70s look and feel I love so much, and I really enjoyed it.

Monday, November 7, 2016

The Spider #14: Death's Crimson Juggernaut


The Spider #14: Death's Crimson Juggernaut, by Grant Stockbridge
November, 1934  Popular Publications

Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page delivers a rather muted Spider which once again sees driven hero Richard Wentworth suffer great injury. Last month he was shot more times than rapper 50 Cent; this time he gets dosed with poisoned tear gas that almost permanently blinds him. But as ever Wentworth doesn’t sweat the small stuff, and goes in with dual .45s blasting.

In the most minor of mentions to that previous volume, we learn here that Wentworth has fully recovered from his gunshots, and as a bonus he got to spend a lot of “quiet time” with ever-suffering fiance Nita van Sloan, who by the way has yet to achieve the narrative importance as in later volumes. Nita here is still reduced to spending the majority of the novels off-page, usually seeing to some menial task for Wentworth. The same can also be said of Wentworth’s loyal servants Ram Singh and Jackson, who also go nearly the entirety of Death’s Crimson Juggernaut unseen, each of them relegated to a sentence or two.

It’s all Wentworth’s show, once again, and by page one he’s already deep in the latest threat to New York City. People – men, women, and even children! – are being stripped and hammered to crosses in tenement buildings in the grungier areas of the city, left to die in misery. This horror element will ultimately go away – as most such elements usually do in the Spider novels I’ve read, replaced by endless action sequences – but the story begins as Wentworth is saving a young woman who is about to become the latest victim of these “Torture Killers,” as Wentworth dubs them.

For once in his Spider costume – ie the cape, hunched back, and ghoulish face – Wentworth makes short work of the would-be crucifiers. The girl he’s saved is Caroline Davis, pretty young blonde granddaughter of a man who has been wrongly jailed as the leader of the Torture Killers. This subplot will quickly be lost in the shuffle of the breathless narrative, which for the most part follows Page’s usual format: Wentworth will take on the threat early, chase down various red herring leads, be unjustly accused of the crime himself, lose contact with his friends and associates, become handicapped in some fashion, and finally pull it all together and kill everyone, exonerating himself. 

One thing missing here is the memorable villiain. I’m beginning to miss the whackjob costumed Spider villains; it’s been a while since we’ve gotten a good one, and the last costumed one was The Fly, who I didn’t really even like. Even though Wentworth, as is his wont, starts coining his own name for the mastermind of this latest threat – The Masterkiller – we don’t actually see such a character, and Page as usual forgets all about it. Toward the end he introduces the idea that the bad guys have their own Spider, and while this guy does appear in the final few pages, he isn’t properly exploited. This volume really could’ve benefited from a more visible villain.

It does though have a bit of a shudder pulp vibe, at least in the opening pages; when Wentworth finds poor Caroline, she’s nude and about to be hammered onto a cross, and here Page briefly recounts the gruesome fates of other women in the city, all of whom were nude and mangled and crucified. But as mentioned this stuff goes away and it’s on to business as usual, with Wentworth in his Spider getup gunning down hordes of gangsters; as ever the “Torture Killers” have a veritable army at their disposal, and it’s up to Wentworth alone to stop them.

Given their penchant for crucifixion, the Torture Killers don’t have the mass carnage-dealing attributes of the typical Spider villain. Page takes care of this posthaste, with the escaping gangsters blowing up a train track. Periodically Page will inform us of the villains committing greater misdeeds, even sinking steamers with all hands on deck, but these bastards really don’t reach the height of villainy of previous enemies. But as usual they already know Wentworth is the Spider, even if old pal Commissioner Kirkpatrick only suspects it; gangsters even try to kill Wentworth in his penthouse suite, leading to the John Woo-esque moment of Wentworth hurling a grenade into an almost-closed elevator and pulping the men inside.

Speaking of Kirkpatrick, he’s already fired as commissioner a quarter of the way through, for no other reason than warning Wentworth – again per the norm, the Spider is wrongly accused of the crucifixions and the bombs going off in the tenement district, with many witnesses even coming forward. Strangely, the cops all seem quite aware that Wentworth is the Spider this time, even though usually it’s more of a cat and mouse thing. Anyway an assistant DA named Harry Boise takes over Kirkpatrick’s job, and becomes one of the many people Wentworth supsects of either being the false Spider or the leader of the Torture Killers.

Kirkpatrick gets a chance to save Wentworth, midway through; our hero as mentioned becomes blinded by poison tear gas or somesuch, and gradually loses his sight. But this isn’t enough for Page, who as ever just keeps piling it on our hero. Blind, surrounded, Wentworth finds himself in a just-bombed tenement building and must escape without sight. Then he runs into a child, who pleads that her mother is about to be burned alive but won’t wake up, overcome by the smoke. Wentworth struggles with his own convinctions in a sterling sequence – how many times has he been willing to sacrifice Nita, he asks himself, despite her being the love of his life? If so, then what does some stranger and her daughter matter? But within moments he’s already forcing his way into the room and hoisting the unconscious woman on his shoulders, spiriting her and her child to safety with his silken web – yet another stirring moment in a series full of them.

Posing as a streetside violinist (one of his favored disguises), Wentworth briefly meets with Nita, and then is saved by Kirkpatrick, who pulls him out of yet another trap and hooks him up with his own private doctor, who gradually fixes Wentworth’s eyes. But meanwhile the fight goes on, thanks to Nita’s loyal Great Dane, Apollo, who has a bigger part here than normal, serving both as Wentworth’s seeing-eye dog and as a soldier, even ripping out throats! Once Wentworth gets his sight back, the story loses a bit of its manic pace and becomes more of a plotting-counterplotting bit, Wentworth drafting the aid of an old millionaire named Meriwell who has been caught up with the Torture Killers.

The finale is a bit underwhelming. Wentworth’s big plan is to get himself and Meriwell on a steamer, to act as bait for the Torture Killers, whom we learn have been bombing the tenement areas so as to clear out land to build on! But the plot backfires and the crew has been replaced by gangsters; somehow it all ends up with Wentworth and Kirkpatrick both bound on a reef while various gangsters with machine guns come to kill them. Here the false Spider finally appears, but he doesn’t do much other than shoot down one of his fellow villains. It’s up to Apollo to once again save the day; even the false Spider is given a cursory sendoff, his fake Spider Web unable to keep him from falling to the rocks as he tries to scale a steamer.

What makes Death’s Crimson Juggernaut enjoyable is Wentworth himself, who is especially unhinged this time, at least in the opening. He pulls off several goofy acts, my favorite being when he mimicks a young woman’s voice when the cops find him standing by the latest victim of the Torture Killers. The cops immediately assume the Spider has just nailed the woman to the cross, but after a brief firefight Wentworth mimics a female voice and fools the cops into thinking the woman’s still alive, insisting they leave so he can help her down! Even crazier is later on when Wentworth, surrounded, brands his own head with his Spider mark and throws himself out into a corridor, flopping onto the ground like a dead body. When the ruse is foiled, he then takes the only recourse possible – he pretends to be a zombie!! And Page goes all the way with it, with the dumb gangsters cowering and running as Wentworth staggers toward them.

Oh, and the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the story, which is a pity. I was looking forward to reading about a little greenish-gray dude trying to pulverize the Spider with a tank.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Glorious Trash meets Len Levinson


June 8th, 2016 was the day of the “Summit Conference,” as Len Levinson called it; my wife and I happened to be in Chicago for a convention she had to attend, and since Len lives not too far away he hopped a train and met me at my hotel for a day of walking around the city and talking.

In fact we walked a helluva lot that day (17,000 steps, according to the pedometer on my phone), which is why I look so worn out in the photo above. (Len meanwhile probably could’ve kept right on walking!) We covered a couple miles as Len walked with me to my favorite record store, Dusty Groove. I’d ordered countless LPs from their website over the past 15 or so years but had never been to the actual brick and mortar store; unfortunately, it was a smallish place, and everything in the store was already listed online! I was hoping for like a store-only discount bin.

It was great to meet Len in person after so many years of exchanging emails, not to mention reading his books. And we really discussed his work; when I first saw him down in the lobby, he was busy doing some copyediting on the new edition of Shark Fighter, put out by Destroyer Books. Throughout the day Len even made periodic references to The Amazing Frapkin, which I enjoyed. 

In person Len is just as funny, insightful, and good-natured as he is in his emails and writing, and also he gave me a lot of fun backstories about the unusual assortment of people he’s known in his life. In particular I really enjoyed hearing about somewhat-famous fantasy author Lin Carter, whom Len first met in the early ‘60s, where the two were employed writing jacket copy for various how-to books at Prentice-Hall Books. In addition to providing Len with a lot of inspiration to get started in his own writing, Lin Carter himself almost seemed to have walked out of one of Len’s actual novels. Len’s stories about him nearly had me wanting to check out one of Carter’s many novels, something I’d never considered before. And in one of those instances of synchronicity, just a few days later I happened to come across one of his Thongor books.

Len also patiently waited for me while I flipped through the countless boxes of LPs at Dusty Groove, where I spent way too much money on obscure jazz-funk albums. He was a perfect guide to the city, having visited Chicago many times over the years; it was the first I’d ever been there, and the longer we walked the more I kept wondering if we’d maybe taken a wrong turn. I should’ve known better than to ask, though, as Len was correct – the store was just a lot farther from my hotel than I’d thought!

But this gave us ample time to discuss practically every subject. Ironically, one of those subjects was the obscure novel The Horrors Of Love, which I’d recommended to Len a few years ago and which he enjoyed. I say “ironically” because The Horrors Of Love is a novel that is entirely about two guys walking around a city while discussing practically every subject.

We talked about Len’s old novels and the ones he’s currently working on, and we also discussed politics in great detail. We also had some Frapkin-quality commentary on the lovely ladies of Chicago. And speaking of which, Len got to meet my wife, who found us in the lobby in the evening when she returned from her convention, still engaged in deep conversation. She snapped this photo, with us holding my just-signed copy of Without Mercy (which Len informed me was actually a Canadian edition).

Anyway, I really enjoyed meeting Len, and I couldn’t have had a more enjoyable day out.

Monday, October 31, 2016

The Devil's Brood (Universal Monsters Trilogy #2)


The Devil's Brood, by David Jacobs
June, 2000  Berkley Boulevard

Two years after Jeff Rovin* published Return Of The Wolf Man, the Universal Monsters trilogy continued with this sequel courtesy David Jacobs, which takes its title from the original script treatment that eventually became the 1944 film House Of Frankenstein. Providing perfect Halloween reading, Jacobs accomplishes in The Devil’s Brood what Rovin did not – be drags the Universal monsters kicking, screaming, and clawing into modern pulp horror, with all the mandatory gore and sadism one could want.

Not that I hated Rovin’s novel; I just didn’t enjoy it. It was a little too hamstrung by Rovin’s clear enthusiasm for the monsters, and also by his fan fictionish penchant for chasing various “who cares?” leads from old Universal movies. I mean when you have pages and pages devoted to what happened to the characters Abbott and Costello played, you know you’re in trouble…not to mention that 30 or so-page sequence devoted to the inspection of the haunted castle the novel’s irritating heroine inherited.

Speaking of that irritating heroine, Jacobs must’ve disliked her, too, as she’s gone without a trace in The Devil’s Brood, and so much the better. In fact, none of the characters from Return Of The Wolf Man are here! I’ve seen reviews from fans who raved about Rovin’s novel complaining that in this sequel Jacobs only delivered “second stringer” Universal monsters. This is ironic, given that Rovin killed off all the main monsters in his novel!!

So Jacobs, showing true creativity, goes for the less famous Universal monsters, and to tell the truth that’s fine with me. To be noted, though, the (amateurish) cover art is very misleading: the Mummy does not appear in this novel, sad to say, and neither does the Wolf Man. The Frankenstein Monster eventually shows up, and as for Dracula…Jacobs does some truly novel things with the character, turning him into a sort-of vampiric Blob! Otherwise, the monsters in The Devil’s Brood are Dracula’s Daughter, The Bride of Frankenstein (who spends the entire novel comatose), and the grandson of the Werewolf of London, not to mention a ton of zombies from the non-Universal picture White Zombie. There are also tie-ins to ‘30s Universal horror films like The Invisible Ray and The Black Cat, but never once does it come off like the connect-the-unrelated-dots fan fiction of Rovin’s novel.

Dracula’s Daughter is for the most part the protagonist of the novel, while at the same time serving as the main villain. Jacobs’s version of the character is a bit more evil than the character in the understated ’36 film, not to mention described as being sexier (though she does retain her preference for female victims, as in the film). She’s also much more comfortable with her vampire nature and indeed is looking to assert herself as the queen of the underworld, now that daddy Dracula is dead – the novel opens with this crazy Satanic rite where Dracula’s Daughter, aka Countess Marya Zaleka, leads her coven of cultists in an art deco chamber somewhere in Eastern Europe, where they channel the blood of sacrificed virgins into an orb that turns into a veritable supernatural television. Here Jacobs relays the climactic moments of Rovin’s novel, and Marya learns that Dracula is dead. 

This stellar sequence is just the first instance where Jacobs capably captures a horror vibe, with the red glow of the orb, the deep black shadows of the chamber, and even with Marya pulling on a robe and hood like in the famous expressionist sequence in Dracula’s Daughter where she attempted to cast off the spirit of Dracula. It also proves posthaste that this isn’t Rovin’s book, which was married a little too faithfully to those Universal classics. Marya here is openly Satanic, her followers are too, and theirs is a nightmarish world of blood and death.

As this is occurring on the same day that Return of the Wolf Man ended, Jacobs jumps over to Isla Morgana, the Caribbean isle upon which White Zombie took place and, per Rovin’s novel, was eventually taken over by Dracula (another of Rovin’s incessant in-jokes, Bela Lugosi having played both Dracula and Baron Latos, ie the villain of White Zombie). Here Jacobs delivers a regular zombie massacre, with hordes of the creatures, freed from their bondage to “Baron Latos” now that Dracula is dead, setting upon their tormentors. It’s very much in the EC Comics mode with the zombies getting revenge on the sadists who tortured, raped, and/or killed them – Baron Latos’s men, we learn, also ran a lucrative sex-slave trade, turning some of their female victims into zombies when they were done with them.

Jacobs also quickly proves he won’t be bound by tradition. This is nowhere more evident than in what he does with Dracula, who as we’ll recall was staked by the Wolf Man at the end of Rovin’s novel. He’s dead for sure when The Devil’s Brood opens, but a “hate cloud” of the vampire lord’s spirit remains behind. Retaining its vampiric tendencies, the cloud eats the green blood of the Frankenstein Monster’s corpse (which itself was gutted by wolves in Rovin’s novel), becoming a “blood-slug.” Jacobs captures an Aurora model feel here (and throughout the book, really), going on about the greenish luminescence of the creature, which to my mind brought forth images of glow-in-the-dark toys and models.

The blood-slug, which Jacobs dubs “Drakon” (Jacobs by the way has a sometimes-annoying tendency to lecture the reader via an omniscient narrative tone), is the Blob-like entity mentioned above. Sounding truly gross, it slithers across Isla Morgana, seeking out human prey – and it ingests humans directly into its luminescent, translucent skin, so witnesses can see the bodies quickly digesting within; Drakon sheds the slimy bones and undigestable innards, and it’s growing larger and larger with each human it eats.

In the other novels I’ve read by Jacobs, he generally proves himself more of a “dialog and characters” writer and not so much a “plot” writer. Which is to say, the books of his I’ve read have started off promising but quickly derailed with new character after new character popping up out of the woodwork and clouding the overall story. This doesn’t happen quite so much in The Devil’s Brood, proving that Jacobs became a more skilled craftsman in time. However, that isn’t to say a reader new to Jacobs’s work might not get a little annoyed with the seeming lack of a main character, particularly given the almost-endless tide of one-off characters in the opening half who become zombie or Drakon victims. But compared to the other Jacobs books I’ve read, this one is downright streamlined.

With the presence of Steve Soto, an American underworld type on Isla Morgana on “business,” the reader thinks he has finally come upon the protagonist. But Soto will come and go in the narrative. I was fine with this, as he seems to have stepped out of a ‘30s Warner Bros. crime movie, and he gets to be annoying; despite the movie occurring in the “present day” of the time of publication, Soto talks like it’s 1939. He’s apparently a Mafia bigwig, though still young, and has a torpedo and an underling with him. He happens to be in Isla Morga when the zombies begin attacking; during this Soto befriends Basil Lodge, an old lush with arcane knowledge, and Dorian, Lodge’s hotstuff young niece with “high breasts.”

The two main plots gradually coalasce as we learn that both Marya and Basil Lodge are seeking the Frankenstein Monster, which is now anyone’s for the taking given that Dracula is dead. Lodge hires Soto to serve as a strongarm on a looting expedition to the ruined plantation which was owned by “Baron Latos,” while meanwhile Marya astrally connects with Wilford Glendon III, the grandson of the Werewolf of London. Another character who could lay claim to the “main protagonist” tag, Glendon is a wealthy London-based professor who has a way with women (his intro opens with a good-looking babe in his bed, though the novel has no sex scenes). He doesn’t realize that he has inherited his grandfather’s curse of lycanthropy.

Jacobs indulges in his own bit of Wold Newtonism by linking Werewolf of London with The Invisible Ray, The Black Cat, and even The Bride of Frankenstein. Glendon’s grandfather, the hero of Werewolf of London, was colleagues with Bela’s and Boris’s characters from the first two films, and Dr. Petronius from the third film; Marya has learned by strange means (namely, slicing off the head of a dying mad scientist servant and then bringing the brain to life via dark magic!) that the Bride can only be resuscitated via the “moon-ray,” ie artificial moonlight.

Glendon’s grandfather created a device which replicated moonlight, the Moon-Ray Projector, something which we’re informed Dr. Petronius employed when he helped Henry Frankenstein create the Bride. This is why no one has ever been able to bring the Bride back to life – and who those other would-be Bride revivers were, Jacobs doesn’t elaborate. At any rate the Bride, despite being blown up at the end of her film, is whole in one piece, and spends the majority of the narrative lying asleep in a glass coffin in Marya’s massive headquarters – Jacobs again delivering on the lurid horror with the tidbit that the Bride is fully nude, her otherwise-lovely body horrifically scarred from its patchwork construction.

Marya’s goal is to use the Bride and the Monster to propagate a new super-slave species or somesuch, so first she needs to awaken the Bride, and for that she needs Glendon. By visiting him in his dreams, she subconsciously prompts Glendon to travel to Visaria, the fictional Bavarian country in which the Frankenstein movies took place. Glendon as mentioned doesn’t know he’s a werewolf – there are times throughout where he changes, and Jacobs skillfully writes the scenes from Glendon’s perspective, with him chasing after people (even killing some would-be robbers in one memorable sequence) and not realizing anything strange is going on…and then not remembering anything when he wakes up the next day.

In the final quarter Basil Lodge raids the Baron Latos plantation, taking along Soto, his underlings, and some dirty Isla Morgana cops, as well as Dorian and a mother-son pair of “witches.” (Oh and meanwhile Soto’s scored with Dorian, but Jacobs keeps it all off page, dammit.) This sequence features Dracula’s three undead brides (like Dracula’s daughter, given sexier makeovers in this modern novel, down to the detail that they wear lingerie!), his wolves, and his bats, not to mention more of those damn zombies. Jacobs gets wild again with Lodge using black magic to resuscitate the Frankenstein Monster – his goal by the way is to make the Monster a zombie! – capped off with the memorable image of Lodge shoving a still-beating human heart into the Monster’s mouth.

In fact, there’s a lot of good horror stuff throughout. The zombie massacre in the opening is so “EC Comics” it could’ve been illustrated by Johnny Craig or Graham Engel. There’s a nice part where Marya and her mad scientists try to bring the Bride back to life while a supernatural thunderstorm rages, and Marya’s salvaging of one underling’s brain – turning him into a sort of oracular severed head – is very cool. Throughout Jacobs does his best to capture the Universal feel, greatly setting up each and every scene, as if this were the novelization of a real film (if only!). That being said, some of it can be overdescription at times, with Jacobs occasionally being guilty of dragging scenes on past the breaking point.

Jacobs takes unexpected directions with the final quarter. For one, the fate of Steve Soto, which isn’t anything like I expected. Skip the paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers. Anyway, during the raid on the plantation, Soto is killed – shot several times by his own lieutenant, who lusts for Soto’s power in the Mafia. But Soto somehow keeps walking and talking, despite being dead. Turns out Lodge’s spell affected him, as well, bringing life not only to the Monster but Soto. He helps Dorian escape; no idea if she appears in the sequel. However I have a feeling that’ll be it for Soto.

In the final several pages we get a return of Dracula – Drakon it turns out wasn’t just a Blob riff, it was also a Mothra riff, as the “blood-slug” has secreted itself into one of Dracula’s hidden coffins, beneath his castle on Isla Morgana…and that very night the coffin bursts open and Dracula comes out, “more powerful than ever.” Jacobs again demonstrates how his monsters are more cruel than the versions in the original films, with Dracula, in giant bat form, spending the entire night feasting on humans, killing scores of them, usually for no other reason than the sport of it.

Jacobs pays tribute to the climax of Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, with Dracula running into the reborn Monster, which has now broken free of Dracula’s decades-long mental control. The Monster by the way is apparently possessed by demons now, or something, Lodge having broken the “magic circle” that surrounded the Monster during the rite, thus resulting in a blood-crazy, demonic Monster, one who even rips off human heads (including the spinal columns!). It’s a brief fight between the two main Universal monsters, ending with them both buried in the rubble of Dracula’s collapsing castle, but there of course will be little surprise when they each return next volume.

Marya again proves herself as the main character in the finale, chaining the captured Glendon to several corpses and performing yet another black magic rite. She summons the ghost of Glendon the first, ie the original Werwolf of London, and badgers him into providing the secret to his Moon-Ray Projector, which Marya needs to reawaken the Bride, and thus “spawn a race of super-slaves.” And here The Devil’s Brood ends, with Glendon III the unwilling colleague of Marya, and a reborn Dracula over on Isla Morgana looking to reclaim his title of Lord of the Underworld.

As yet another too-long review will attest, I really enjoyed The Devil’s Brood, and I eagerly look forward to reading Jacobs’s sequel, The Devil’s Night, which was published a few months later and wrapped up the trilogy.

*Imagine my surprise when, shortly after I finished reading this novel, Jeff Rovin himself popped up in the news, as yet another footnote in the crazed story that is the 2016 Presidential Election; turns out Jeff Rovin claims he worked as a media “fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton!  I haven't read too much about this story (and admittedly it’s only the right-aligned news outlets that have even reported on it, which in itself isn’t surprising), but still I thought it was a crazy little bit of synchronicity.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Soundtrack for Halloween 2016


Just in time for Halloween, Real Gone Music has released the soundtrack to the 1985 movie The Return Of The Living Dead on glow in the dark vinyl!

Limited to 500 copies, the LP is still available at the time of this post, and I highly recommend it. The vinyl is super thick and radioactive green, even in the daylight. Sound quality seems good to me, and the packaging replicates the original release, only with the Real Gone Music label on the back cover.

As you can see, the glow fades quickly. I had to switch on a light midway through to recharge it. Next time I’ll try to charge it up a bit more with some direct light on it for an hour or so.  (“I can see the electric company rubbin’ their mitts together right now!” – Frank Barone)

The track is “Party Time (Zombie Version)” by .45 Grave. The album features punk and “death rock” by the likes of The Cramps, Roky Erickson, and The Damned. About the only thing that could’ve made it better was if Samhain was on it – or better yet The Misfits, but they’d broken up two years before.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Soldier For Hire #7: Pathet Vengeance


Soldier For Hire #7: Pathet Vengeance, by Mark K. Roberts
No month stated, 1983  Zebra Books

The penultimate volume of Soldier For Hire has blowhard hero JC Stonewall heading into Laos to square up an account from his days in ‘Nam. If you’ve ever wondered what it would’ve been like if Mark Roberts had written an installment of MIA Hunter, look no further. This is especially ironic given that MIA Hunter creator Stephen Mertz himself appears in Pathet Vengeance.

While he still kills a bunch of “commie pigs” and engages in the usual illicit sex, Stonewall is a bit subdued this time around. He rarely displays the lovably stupid jingoism of previous installments, and for the most part operates like a regular men’s adventure protagonist. Which is to say there’s very little of the assholic blowhardy typical of the dude. And while this volume sees Stonewall settling a score with an old enemy, a commie one at that, there’s only sporadic bursts of the usual “a good commie’s a dead commie” vitriol.

Anyway, Stonewall’s origin story – as apparently created by the series’s original author – has it that “the one woman he ever loved,” a Eurasian babe named Angilique, was raped and gutted by the commies in Vietnam. This was a personal attack overseen by the Pathet Lao. Stonewall we learn now refuses to take any jobs in Southeast Asia, thus he’s shocked when his handler Trojan insists that he, Stonewall, consider rescuing a few of Trojan’s captive operatives in Laos – not to mention a few ‘Nam POWs who are also kept in the same prison. Stonewall is pressed to consider it because the man who runs the compound, a sadist named Colonel Boupha, was the leader of the Pathet Lao squad that raped and murdered poor Angelique.

Meanwhile Stonewall’s busy getting laid. Roberts again delivers his over-the-top sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination, with Stonewall initially scoring with his “liberal” girlfriend, Karol. (“Am I a better lay than my sister Karen?” she asks him!) Post-lay Stonewall as expected brushes the girl off and focuses on Trojan’s offered mission. The POW camp is at the Temple of the Moon Goddess in Laos, and when Stonewall learns that Boupha is in charge of the place, he can’t say no. He contacts series semi-regulars Hank Polanski and Tommy Mitsu to go along with him.

Roberts pads out the page count with arbitrary cutovers to the POW camp, where we learn that one of the ‘Nam prisoners is named Rob Randisi, Roberts again displaying his penchant for in-jokery. But the prison camp sequences get to be a chore, with lots of arguments between Boupha and his Russian overseer, Boris Zmeya, who tangled with Stonewall back in #5: Libyan Warlord and hopes to settle his own score with our hero. There’s also lots of lurid torture-porn stuff as we read about the sadistic camp torturer going to work on the captured Trojan operatives; the dude even brings along his two prepubescent sons to watch, one of whom gets off on the torture!

Speaking of getting off, Stonewall hooks up on the Japan Airlines flight to Laos; he hits on a sexy stew named “Mico” (should be “Miko,” btw) whom we’re informed is not only super hot but has bigger boobs than the average Japanese gal. From having already read #8: Jakarta Coup I knew this was going to be headed for some sleazy stuff, as Stonewall was still fondly recalling his encounter with Mico in that later installment. After a night on the town in Laos Mico takes Stonewall back to her hotel room: “Slowly, delightfully, she played her love melody on his satiny instrument.” It only proceeds to get more outrageous, with bonkers likes like, “His lips fluttered over her lush jugs.” Then there’s Mico’s penchant for kinky sex: “With each upthrust, Mico inserted a handkerchief knot into his anus.” Which ultimately leads to, “What started as a powerful ejaculation turned into a gusher.” No wonder Stonewall was still thinking about it next volume!

The usual method of sex scenes in men’s adventure novels is that the girl disappears promptly after screwing the protagonist, so we can get back to the manly stuff. Roberts takes this to ludicrious extremes, with Mico’s head getting blown off mere seconds after engaging Stonewall in another bout. This is courtesy a group of Laotians who break into the room, gunning for Stonewall; when our hero dodges the blast of a would-be killer, the bullet goes right through Mico’s opened mouth and blows out the back of her head. Stonewall spends a hot second mourning the poor girl, then figures out how to get rid of her corpse without compromising his cover.

All of which serves to piss off Trojan’s man in Laos, none other than “Steve Mertz.” Humorously, Mertz spends the majority of his “screen time” bitching at Stonewall, particularly for even getting an innocent young woman involved in the first place. But no worries, as there’s another sexy babe on the horizon: Arlene Farrel, a gorgeous blonde with Stonewall-mandatory big breastesses who is another of Trojan’s operatives, but who was able to escape while her comrades were captured and thrown in Boupha’s compound. Mertz introduces the two, and also tells Stonewall that he will have to listen to Arlene’s demands that she go along with the team to the prison camp.

More in-jokery ensues when Steve Mertz ridicules Tommy Mitsu for carrying around a sword, referring to him as “the Six-Gun Samurai.” “Hey, you read them too?” Responds Tommy. “Hell of a series.” Six-Gun Samurai was another series Roberts wrote at the time, under the house name Patrick Lee, William Fieldhouse being another writer for it. At any rate our heroes head off into the jungle for Boupha’s camp, and Roberts doesn’t waste any time getting to more of the good stuff: Arlene has the hots for Green Berets, and makes her interest in Stonewall quickly known.

“You’re a beautiful broad, Arlene,” Stonewall the ladies man says as Arlene slips into his tent that night. The initial boffing is, surprisingly, a fade to black affair, but later on Roberts provides the juicy details during another bout, Arlene becoming a frequent visitor to Stonewall’s tent (“My God, Stonewall, you really know how to use that economy size member you’ve been equipped with.”). For once Arlene is a female character who sticks around, even learning to kill in the novel’s periodic action sequences as the group is attacked by varios communist Laotian forces.

Speaking of action, Roberts finally lets loose with Stonewall’s customary anti-Red sentiments when they are attacked: “Bodies. Everywhere the ripped and splattered bodies of dead commies. God, how he loved it!” But as usual with the series, the action comes off more like military fiction than men’s adventure, with BRDM scout armor giving Stonewall and crew the most trouble. Which is to say, there isn’t much of the usual lone wolf stuff common for the genre; it’s more about Stonewall leading various “fire teams” of mercenaries and Laotian guerrillas against enemy armor and artillery. In fact there isn’t even any action until midway through, first with a big battle when the group first enters Laotian red territory, and later when they arrive at Boupha’s camp.

The liberation of the camp prisoners very much has the spirit of the later MIA Hunter series, even with the freed American POWs taking up arms and blowing away their former captors. Meanwhile Stonewall settles his account with Boupha, first engaging him in a digressive kung-fu fight and then chopping off his left arm and leaving him to bleed to death. Apparently Stonewall didn’t just put a bullet between his eyes because Roberts intended to bring Boupha back some day; in fact as I recall, in Jakarta Coup Stonewall figured he’d once again track him down. Unfortunately the series ended with the eighth volume, so Stonewall’s revenge went unsated.

Even Boris Zmeya escapes, and in fact assists Boupha, who would’ve died otherwise. The raid on the prison camp is over by page 164…and we still have like 50 pages to go. As with another Roberts novel of the era, Hanoi Hellground, the narrative free-falls in its final quarter, given over to an overlong chase scene through the jungle as Stonewall and the freed prisoners try to escape while the commie forces pursue them. Along the way Roberts delivers even more in-jokery, courtesy Stonewall: “I read some books by a guy named Joseph Rosenberger. He calls [communists] pig farmers, like they were peasants, up to their knees in pig shit. It fits, but it’s too simplistic.” I’m unsure if this is really what Rosenberger’s Death Merchant had in mind with “pig farmers,” though.

The climactic ambush sees Boris Zmeya possibly being killed by Stonewall; it’s left vague, with the horribly-injured Russian stumbling off into the jungle. Meanwhile he’s succeeded in hurting Tommy Mitsu to the point that the Japanese sword-wielder is unable to assist Stonewall in the next volume. Speaking of which, after another bed-tussling with Arlene Stonewall receives a new mission briefing from Trojan, who asks Stonewall if he’d be interested in heading over to nearby Indonesia for another job.

And here ends Pathet Vengeance, which also turns out to be my own personal end for the series, given that Jakarta Coup was the first one I read. Overall this one was on the level of the others, but it missed some of the OTT right-wing stuff, with the caveat that the sex stuff was actually more outrageous than the series norm – save, that is, for Jakarta Coup, which was the most OTT in all departments, and thus was by far my favorite of the series.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Snowman


Snowman, by Norman Bogner
February, 1978  Dell Books

Norman Bogner typically traded in trash fiction – his biggest hit was the paperback blockbuster Seventh Avenue – but in this instance he tried his hand at paperback horror. However Snowman really isn’t so easy to categorize, as for the most part it too comes off like a bit of trash fiction, only to later morph into adventure fiction, before finally wrapping up on a horror angle.

Overall the book feels more like trash fiction than horror. This is mostly due to the setting: a posh mountain resort in the High Sierras of California. The first quarter of Snowman occurs here, and Bogner delivers a veritable Burt Hirschfeld-type deal; I haven’t yet read Hirschfeld’s Aspen, but I figure it’s probably a lot like this. The owners of the corporation behind the resort hope to rake in the cash thanks to the opulence of the place, however little do they know that the friggin’ Abominable Snowman has moved in.

Bogner does open the novel with a brief horror prologue, which takes place in Himalaya in 1966. Daniel Bradford, a Rhodes Scholar/Olympic skier/expert mountain climber, is leading a search of the mythical Yet, aka the Abominable Snowman, or just “Snowman,” as Bogner refers to the monster throughout. And boy does Bradford find him; the novel opens as the Snowman is ripping apart the Sherpas in Bradford’s crew, decimating them to a man, with only Bradford and his loyal Sherpa pal Pemba escaping.

Bradford’s Yeti is more like something out of a ‘60s Japanese giant monster movie than anything else, coming in at over 25 feet tall, with armorlike gray hide, gnarled horns on its skin, and glowing, radioactive-like eyes that can burn snow. Curt Purcell was accurate when he wrote that Bogner’s Snowman is described very much like future Superman villain Doomsday. New English Library presented an accurate depiction of Bogner’s creature on the cover of its 1978 hardcover release:


Now, 11 years later, the Snowman has made its laborious way to the Sierra mountains of California. We learn that it actually hates snow, and it’s the snow that drives the monster to fury, pushing it out of its hiding places and into the wilds to hunt. The monster can mimic the noises of other animals, and usually feeds on bears and the like, but it has developed a taste for humans. This is displayed posthaste when it feasts on a blonde bimbo named Janice, the recently-nominated “Snow Queen” of the Great Northern Resort.

As mentioned this is all very Hirschfeld-esque before the Snowman makes its first kill. We read a lot about “chestnut haired” beauty Cathy Parker, PR director for the resort, and how she must deal with the bitchery of Janice. There’s also the studmuffin ski instructors, in particular alpha male Brad, whose exploits here very much recall William Hegner’s The Ski Lodgers. But despite how unpleasant she is, the reader still feels bad for Janice when she becomes Snowman prey, captured while alone on the chair lift high up in the mountains, snatched right out of the sky by the 25-foot tall monster in the middle of a blizzard.

Bogner doesn’t get too outrageous with the gore. Usually it’s from the perspective of whatever character is being eaten, and they’re more in shock and/or denial; later the other characters will come across the mutilated remains, but still it’s nothing too gruesome. Save that is for poor Janice’s strewn bodyparts, which are enough to make cops puke. Given the abbreviated nature of the novel, Bogner doesn’t waste too much time – the financial backers of the resort want to avoid any further deaths and the bad publicity that would ensue, thus they give in to the demands of local newsman Ashby.

An old WWII vet who has remained in Sierra to report on small town affairs, Ashby has a growing pile of obscure dispatches in his archives. Thus when he sees the strange triangle-shaped tracks in the snow near Janice’s remains, his memory is sparked and eventually he finds the news item from over a decade before about Bradford’s disastrous Himalayan expedition. Here we learn that Bradford’s story was discredited and he eventualy disappeared into seclusion.

Turns out Bradford, now with long hair and refashioned into some sort of New Ager, lives on an Indian reservation in the California desert. Bogner throws in a bit of Carlos Castaneda material with the Yaqui, Bradford’s Don Juan-esque guru. This doesn’t go much of anywhere other than the Yaqui’s occasional vague pronunciations, and Bradford’s sort of “go with the flow” mindset…not to mention the occasional amamita muscata magic mushroom trip. Bradford listens to Ashby’s story – the newsman having realized that he could become famous for breaking this story – and the two meet with the resort backers, who will pay Bradford and a team $250,000 to go up onto the glacier, kill the Snowman, and keep it all from the media.

Bradford puts together his team. Years before, he was hired by the army to train special forces soldiers in mountain climbing, and he seeks out Packard, a Green Beret sergeant who himself recommends black demolitions specialist Spider for the team. Next they get Jamie, a young Indian from the reservation whom Bradford has also trained. Finally there’s Pemba, the Sherpa survivor from the ’66 climb. The soldiers want weapons for the job, but Bradford warns that heavy firepower might risk an avalanche.

So there’s only one option, friends – friggin’ crossbows with nuclear warheads!! I kid you not. You know you’re in pulp heaven when our heroes visit a weapons supplier in San Diego and brainstorm on how such a crossbow might be created. Eventually they will be supplied with crossbows that fire warheads that stick to the target and then implode, causing the target to disappear. A lot of time is spent on this, and also Bogner takes us back to the resort stuff, again heavy on the Hirschfeldisms, particularly with Cathy’s growing interest in Bradford – an interest which eventually leads to some ‘70s-mandatory sex, which is only somewhat explicit (we learn that Cathy gets off, at least).

Finally, with fifty pages to go, Bradford and team head up the mountain. Even here it’s more adventure than horror, with lots of mountain-climbing stuff shoehorned in; Bogner has clearly done his research, and he wants us to know it. The text is rife with mountain climbing lingo: sangar, curque, serac, etc. In fact Bogner peppers the narrative with many fancy turns of phrases, and he’s very fond of ten-dollar words. The higher the team gets the more signs they see of the Snowman, and Bradford becomes more accepting of his realization that he will finally die at the claws of the Yeti, only having temporarily escaped his fate of 11 years before.

The horror fiction element only gradually inserts itself in these final pages, as the massive Snowman preys on Bradford’s team. It’s all sort of like Predator a decade early, only with a 25 foot-tall monster with radioactive eyes. The kills go down as expected, and again Bogner doesn’t get very gruesome, usually with action relayed from the victim’s perspective as he’s suddenly snatched by an unseen giant claw and swept high up into the air before being tossed into a gaping mouth with rows and rows of massive teeth.

We get to see those snazzy nuclear crossbows in use, first on an attacking bear (which disappears), and later in the climactic battle against the Snowman – entire parts of the gigantic creature disappear, but the Snowman keeps on attacking. And just as in Predator, it comes down to our main protagonist to finally square the account with the Snowman; the badass Green Berets on the team don’t really amount to much, sad to say. But at the same time I wanted a bit more…the Snowman is just too massive, too much of a monster, so the finale comes off like one man vs Godzilla or somesuch, and it just doesn’t have the action impact it deserves…more along the lines of Bradford thinking the Yeti is dead, and then the Yeti smashing out of the ice and attacking again.

But at a little over 200 pages, Snowman at least keeps moving. And the trash fiction vibe is pretty nice in the resort sequences. Bogner also scores points by killing off an annoying little shit of a kid who makes Cathy’s life miserable for a while before he runs into the titular monster. Anyway I’m surprised a movie was never made of this one; it could’ve been like the giant monster equivalent of The Dark.