Showing posts with label WWII. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WWII. Show all posts

Monday, December 11, 2023

Assault #1: The Raid On Reichswald Fortress


Assault #1: The Raid On Reichswald Fortress, by J.M. Flynn
No month stated, 1974  Award Books

A short-lived attempt at a Dirty Dozen-styled action series, Assault only ran three volumes, and might have caused some reader confusion because it was credited to two different authors. Veteran writer J.M. Flynn handled this first volume, and the other two were credited to C.J. Floyd. I’m assuming then that Award Books didn’t consider this series along the lines of Nick Carter: Killmaster, as only one volume was published a year and the series was not credited to a house name. Speaking of which, Flynn gets some imprint in-jokery in, with the mention late in the novel of a character reading “a dog-eared French translation of a Nick Carter book,” though given that this novel occurs in the early 1940s, it must be one of those early 20th century Detective Nick Carter pulps. 

Whatever the story behind the series’ origin, Assault #1 proudly boasts its “in the tradition of” heritage, namechecking both The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare on the back cover. At only 172 pages, The Raid On Reichswald Fortress is a fraction of the length of E.M. Nathanson’s The Dirty Dozen, but like Nathanson, J.M. Flynn spends a goodly portion of the narrative focused on training, with the climactic “raid” almost an afterthought. Hey, it just occurred to me: E.M Nathanson, J.M. Flynn, C.J. Floyd…gee, do you think Award was trying to establish a trend? “Don’t just rip off the plot – rip off the author’s name, too!” 

J.M. Flynn was quite prolific, but in all the years of the blog I’ve so far only read and reviewed his Joe Rigg books, which were published by Leisure after this Award series and were credited to “Jay Flynn.” It’s been so long since I read the Rigg books that I can’t tell how Flynn’s narrative style here in the first Assault compares. He does have a gift for memorable opening lines, and tries to bring realism into his tale. He doesn’t deliver much on the action front, but he does cater to the genre demand for sex, with hero Sgt. Brendan Deasy Jackorowsky (aka “Mister Jack”) scoring with two ladies in the short course of the novel. However, given that Award was a slightly more upscale imprint than Leisure, there’s none of the “I want you in my ass!” raunch of the Joe Rigg books. The sex scenes here are more along what one might find in the Nick Carter: Killmaster books, if only a little more explicit. 

Flynn does bring a little more evocative scene setting to the opening than the typical men’s adventure novel, opening the tale with a young Mister Jack (I refuse to type out his long last name!) as a young man just out of the States, starting his life as a mercenary in the Spanish Civil War. From there he goes to a tenure as the overseer at a plantation in South America, then finally into a six-year hitch in the Marines to avoid prison time. We’re told in almost off-hand fashion of the “dirty tricks” Mister Jack pulls on the Germans as the action starts up on the European front, but again he rubs officials the wrong way and is sent back Stateside, where he becomes a drill sergeant – which is where he picks up the “Mister Jack” title. 

Luckily Flynn doesn’t spend the entire novel on this origin material. We get to the meat of the plot pretty quickly. It’s before the Normady invasion and Mister Jack is called in by an Army general to head up a special project that was dreamed up by the “Psych Warfare Department.” These guys claim that “suicide squads” are all the rage, and that condemned men might fight better and harder than normal soldiers. Given his past, with dirty tricks on the Nazis and his general run-ins with authority, Mister Jack is picked as the man to helm this project, even though he’s a Marine and it’s officially an Army deal, one that’s being run by the OSS. 

All this seems rather heavy-handed so far as setup goes, made even more strange given that Flynn makes a big deal out of the “instant hate” Mister Jack has for his commanding officer, portly old deskbound General Mose Barnum, who misses the days back in the Great War when he ran his own dirty tricks on the Germans. But here’s the thing – despite what Flynn tells us, Barnum and Mister Jack get along pretty much without any trouble. In fact, General Barnum even sneaks his way into the climactic raid, proving his own despite being over the hill. What I mean to say is, it seems Flynn was given this inordinate setup – have a Marine head up an Army job with a commanding officer he hates – but he only sort of catered to it. I mean General Barnum spends the first part of the narrative huffing and puffing at Mister Jack’s various “derelictions,” but then just looks the other way. There’s no tension or confrontation or anything. 

Anyway, as for the project Mister Jack will head up – of course, it’s the Dirty Dozen deal. Flynn’s given various dossiers of imprisoned soldiers and puts together a group of thirty who will ultimately become his “Assault Team.” Flynn only focuses on a few of them – the ones, of course, who will be chosen for this novel’s assignment. There’s Truman Belcher, a black guy who speaks perfect French. And Calvin Justice, a “non-gay” drag queen who was thrown in the brig and has been “raped more times” than he can count by his fellow soldiers because he looks so much like a woman when he’s in drag (a drag queen soldier – how prescient! In today’s Army he’d make general!). There are also a pair of “forage masters” from the South named Eastwood and Dixon who “forage” by stealing things. 

Flynn rather clumsily wields together two subplots: while first coming onto the job Mister Jack goes into the city one night and picks up a hotstuff brunette named Elaine. She claims to be engaged to a soldier who is overseas, but she hasn’t heard from in a while. Mister Jack rather easily breaks down her “I’m engaged” defenses and…she gives him a bj, folks, one of the stranger “first date sex scenes” I’ve yet read, particularly given that Flynn doesn’t go for full-bore sleaze in the details and leaves much to the reader’s fevered imagination. Humorously, Elaine will be there to fulfill the narrative’s need for random sex, as Mister Jack will occasionally head off-base to get some nookie, also successfully breaking down Elaine’s “I’m engaged so I’ll just give you a b.j.” defenses so that they engage in full hardcore shenanigans. As mentioned though the sexual material in the novel isn’t too raunchy, along the lines of “She made love fiercely” and the like. Hey, wasn’t that the title of a Monkees song?

Anyway, here’s the messy subplot-tying: one day Mister Jack is receiving a new batch of GI prisoners from overseas, guys who have ran afoul of the brass while stationed in Europe, and wouldn’t you know it but one of them’s Elaine’s fiance!! Indeed, he’s been arrested for murder. But man, Flynn does zilch with this setup…no spoilers intended, but Elaine’s fiance is out of the novel posthaste and Elaine never even finds out about any of it. In fact, Elaine herself is soon gone from the narrative, but (again apologies for the spoilers) she shows up at the end without much fanfare. The entire “fiance” subplot has no bearing on the plot, and to tell the truth it offended me on a personal level. 

Once his thirty men are chosen, Mister Jack and his second in command Charlie Bates head out to a base in the Nevada desert for even more training! This entails the forage masters rustling up game to eat, others on the team working on the buildings they’ll live in, and in general more training for their eventual dirty tricks missions on the damn Nazis. Finally the job comes up – did you guess it was going to be a raid on someplace called Reichswald Fortress? Some British OSS guys give Mister Jack the mission: it’s in the South of France, and the job entails springing a double agent named Annabelle who has gone missing and likely is being held in the fortress. Mister Jack and a select few of his team are to go in there and rescue her – or kill her if they can’t. They show Mister Jack her file photo and he sees that she is “all woman, with out-thrust breasts.” Ah, the days when you didn’t need to be a biologist to know what a woman is! Simpler times. 

Even here we are denied much action. The team heads over to London – where, coincidence be damned, Mister Jack bumps into Elaine again, for a little more hanky-panky – and then they move to France, where they split off in various undercover roles. The feeling is more of a caper as the crew, even old General Barnum, pose as locals and try to get the scoop on the fortress. The heavy lifting is done, unexpectedly, by the transvestite, as Calvin Justice poses as a local floozie and gets cozy with a Nazi official who is stationed in the fortress – including such memorable stuff as Justice getting the guy too drunk before he can successfully feel up Justice and realize “she” is really a he. 

More heavy lifting is done by Belcher, who poses as “a pimp from Marseilles” and gets intel on Reichswald thanks to the hookers he assembles for his stable. We get our first action scene when Eastwood and Dixon take on a German squad; this happens fairly late in the novel, which should give you an idea of how “action packed” The Raid On Reichswald Fortress is. In fact, the titular raid is over and done with in a page or two, Mister Jack and team wearing hoods with googles and “spraying” Nazis with submachine guns as they swoop in and rescue Annabelle. Of course, she will turn out to be Mister Jack’s second conquest, Flynn so casually dropping the sex scene into the narrative that you suspect he’s meeting an editorial quota. Even more humorous is that we have another vague-ish sex scene immediately thereafter, once Mister Jack has returned to the US and reconnected with Elaine. 

This was it for Flynn’s involvement with Assault, but by novel’s end we learn that Mister Jack’s team is now a “unified assault team” and is ready to go on missions across Europe at the behest of the OSS. We’ll see if C.J. Floyd retains the same setup and uses the same characters for the team members, or if he introduces new ones for each new assignment. I’ll also be curious to see if Elaine is established as Mister Jack’s main squeeze, which definitely is implied at the finale of The Raid On Reichswald Fortress.

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #6


Men's Adventure Quarterly #6, edited by Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, and Paul Bishop
October, 2022  Subtropic Productions

Every issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly has been great, but this sixth volume was really up my alley. It’s devoted to heist yarns, and some years ago I personally was on a hunt for men’s magazine heist stories. In fact, a few of the stories I hunted for but never acquired are actually collected here. So once again Bob Deis, Bill Cunningham, and guest editor Paul Bishop have done everyone a great service by bringing these long-lost tales back into print. 

Even better, many of the stories here are from the ‘70s, which to me was the decade that crime fiction was at its best. This also means that the stories here are slightly more risque than the men’s adventure stories of the decades before. It also means the stories are a little shorter; even the “Book Bonuses” collected here are shorter than those from the ‘50s and early to mid ‘60s. All told though, the editors have done a swell job of putting together a great “snatch” (lame pun alert) of men’s mag heist stories. In fact it would be an even sweller idea if they did another heist theme in a future MAQ

A cool thing about the heist stories in the men’s adventure magazines is that they usually lack the fat of a longer novel in the genre. While you still get the planning of the heist and the carrying out of it, the timeline is much accelerated. Also, there’s more than likely going to be a full-breasted babe in various stages of undress (perhaps even more than one such babe) at some point in the story. The protagonists, while criminals, are generally the same square-jawed “Yanks” (as they were always referred to in the original mags) that would feature in the WWII stories the men’s mags were more known for. That said, many of the protagonists are vets; there seems to have been a requirement from the editorial department that the heroes be combat veterans. 

As usual we get nice intros from each editor, with overviews of favorite heist movies and novels. There’s a lot of Bill Cunningham’s usual great art direction here, with movie posters and stills augmenting the text. There’s also a great beefcake section on Angie Dickinson. Completely random TMI moment: I recall seeing a glimpe of Ms. Dickinson in the 1980 movie Dressed To Kill, shortly after it came out and was on HBO or something – my parents had one of those boxes on the TV set that would get HBO or “The Superstation” (aka TBS). I was only six or seven at the time, but man, what I saw was Ms. Dickinson in the shower – I don’t even think she was nude – and we’ll just say I was, uh, moved by the sight. To this day I’ve still never seen Dressed To Kill, but I’ll always remember it for that. 

Well anyway, on with the show. Things start off swimmingly with “The Flying Bank Looters,” by Tom Christopher and from the October 1967 Man’s World. In one of his typically informative intros, Bob Deis notes that “Tom Christopher” was really author Thomas Chastain…and it occurred to me I’ve never read one of the guy’s novels before. Oh and one thing I had to laugh about – the slugline on the splashpage (with art by my favorite of them all, Earl Norem) says that the story features a “whirlpool of greed and laughter” (emphasis mine)! I’m assuming that’s supposed to be “slaughter,” and I’m curious if that’s how it appears in the original Man’s World printing. 

Chastain’s story is a fast-moving piece of crime fiction that dwells a little more on the setup than the other stories collected here. It concerns a dude named Frank Cage, hiding down in Colombia as a ranch hand after some criminal business in the States. He concocts a scheme to heist the “Jetbanco” venture, which is a sort of flying bank for the remote ranches in the area. Cage’s American girlfriend, with her “thrusting breasts,” also shows up for some men’s mag-patented off-page lovin’. All told a fun story that sets the tone for the rest of the magazine, complete with the mandatory “complications ensue” finale. 

Next up is a novella that’s more in-line with the typical men’s mag story in that it’s a long one that takes place during World War II: “G.I. Stick-Up Mob That Heisted $33 Million In Nazi Gold,” by Eugene Joseph and from the November 1967 Male. This is the longest story here, and somewhat reminded me of Mario Puzo’s men’s mag story that became a novel, Six Graves To Munich, in that the framing story takes place after the war, with a long flashback to the war itself. It’s not revenge that centers the tale here, but hero Steve Brock’s quest to collect the titular Nazi gold he hid near the Elbe in January of 1945. 

This one really does read like the typical men’s mag war yarn, with Brock leading his tank squadron against the Germans in various pitched battles. The author works in the mandatory full-breasted babe, in this case a hotstuff “fraulein” who engages Brock in a “brutal bout of love” right on some rubble! I mean the poor girl’s back must’ve hurt like hell! This girl is the one who informs Brock of a stash of gold the Nazis have plundered, and Brock talks his men into routing the Germans and stealing it – even though they’ll have to go up against the Russians, too. 

The “1946” story finds Brock with yet another hotstuff German babe, this one a nurse, as he tries to figure out who among his men is trying to kill him. It’s more on the suspense angle here, but the revelation of who was the double-crosser wasn’t as shocking as the author likely intended. A curious note about this tale is that the yank hero marries the native gal at the end of the story; as I noted ten years ago in my review of Women With Guns, in the majority of the men’s mag stories the yank heroes would bang foreign gals with aplomb, but would generally go back home and marry an American girl in the end. 

“Stop California’s Iron Shark Heist Commandos” is pretty much everything I was looking for in this volume of Men’s Adventure Quarterly. It’s by yet another famous author in disguise: Martin Cruz Smith, credited as Tom Irish in the December 1967 issue of For Men Only. Oh, and that’s another note – all the stories collected in this issue are from the “Diamond Line” of men’s adventure magazines, meaning that the quality of the writing is always good. Cruz Smith proves that here, in a fast-moving tale in which a group of heisters take on a floating casino in Baja. 

Smith also works in a bit of a cold war angle in that the hero of the tale is an undercover agent who infiltrates a specially-selected gang of heisters. After some training they carry out the heist, outfitted in scuba suits and hoisting Stoner subguns. There’s a bit more action in this one but truth be told, I found the writing to be harried, as if Smith had to jettison chunks of plot due to limitations on the word count. The finale is especially rushed, with various reveals and turnarounds happening so quickly that they don’t really resonate. 

Don Honig, one of the few men’s adventure magazine authors still with us today, shows up in another MAQ with “Band Of Misfits,” from the January 1970 Action For Men. I really appreciated Bob’s intro for this, as in it Don Honig himself shares the background on the story, which he came up with while on vacation. This yarn is a bit more smallscale than the previous ones, seeing a somewhat smalltime heister planning to hit a casino in Mexico. But then he runs into a hotstuff blonde divorcee with “huge, soft breasts,” and just as our hero predicts the female presence only serves to “louse up” the heist. Then he runs into a fellow ex-con, which louses things up even more. Overall an enterntaining, fast-moving piece. 

Next up is a story I reviewed here back in 2015, and thanks to Bob for mentioning my review in his intro: “The Great Sierra Mob Heist,” by C.K. Winston and from the December 1971 Male. Now, do not go back and read my review, unless that is you’ve already read the story and know everything that happens in it. Back when I wrote that review, I had no idea that one day Bob Deis and cohorts would be bringing these men’s adventure stories back into print. But I read the story again in this issue of MAQ, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It was my favorite story in the issue, in fact. I also appreciated Bob’s intro, with more background from Don Honig on who exactly C.K. Winston was. 

One thing I noticed in my second reading of “The Great Sierra Mob Heist” was the increased focus on sleaze; “hero” Asherman gets it on with both the nubile babes who are involved in the heist, and author Winston heightens the sleazy vibe of the remote gambling resort with a part where a couple have sex in a sauna – an act of cheap showiness that prudish Asherman doesn’t think much of. There are also minor sleazy details like Asherman putting his hand down the “hot pants” of one of his conquests, and the girl “widen[s] her stance to accommodate him.”  There’s also more violence, like the opening bit of Asherman brutally and gorily killing off an ex-con who recognizes him; an interesting parallel to an event in Honig’s “Band Of Misfits.”  

“The G.I. Wild Bunch” is by prolific men’s mag author Grant Freeling and from the March 1975 Male. This one detours from the heist vibe of the other stories in that it’s more about a guy trying to clear his name. There’s a “Yankee Gang” hitting places in early ‘70s West Germany, and it appears to be a group of American G.I.s behind it. Our hero, Landers, is a ‘Nam vet with a shady past who is set up by the heist mob, falling for a “fraulein” honey trap who steals his ID. This bit contains the phenomenal line: “[Landers] realized, to his astonishment, that the large, round, but thrustingly firm breasts beneath her dress were not supported by a bra. The unseen nipples hardened instantly…” Of course the lovin’ happens off-page, but still, great line. Otherwise this one’s like The Fugitive, with Landers evading the military police while tracking down the heisters who framed him. 

More G.I.s-turned-heisters hijinks ensue with “G.I. ‘Hayseeds’ Who Pulled A $2 Million Gold Heist,” by Frank Porter as told to Michael Cullen and from the July 1975 Male. This one rides on the rednecksploitation vibe of the mid-‘70s, with a “hayseed” narrator telling us all the misadventures he and his two buddies endured while trying to hijack some counterfeit coins up in Canada. An interesting note about this one is that it’s the only story here without a female presence. Instead, things play out more on a dark comedy nature with the narrator telling us how one thing after another goes wrong in the heist, as it turns out the coins belonged to the Mafia. The “G.I.” nature isn’t much played up in the actual story, and is just more indication that these men’s mags tried to cater to a readership likely made up of ex-G.I.s. 

The final yarn is even more oddball in its riding of current trends: “Arizona’s Incredible ‘Kung Fu’ Vengeance Heisters,” by Grant Freeling and from the November 1973 Male. This is another longish yarn, and also the second story in this MAQ by Freeling, who has always been one of my favorite men’s mag authors. Here Freeling combines three setups: a heist, revenge, and kung-fu. He also gets the sleaze in, with the story opening with hero Hal Brice checking out a “voluptuous” blonde. Of course, within a few paragraphs he’ll be in bed with her, this being a men’s mag story. 

In his intro Bob Deis notes how Bruce Lee’s image was ripped off for the story’s splashpage, but I couldn’t help but notice the similarity of the hero’s name, as well: I mean, Hal Brice. He too is a former G.I., and in quickly rendered backstory we learn how his father was rendered destitute by an evil land baron. This guy had teenaged Brice beaten up, after which our hero went to ‘Nam – where he, of course, learned kung-fu – and now Brice has returned to the States to get a little revenge. The voluptuous blonde is part of his vengeance scheme, being as she is the secretary (and of course mistress) of the evil baron. 

This is the rare men’s mag story that also makes reference to the more liberal times; one of Brice’s associates is a former ‘Nam pilot who now does marijuana runs across the border, but has had to stop due to the recent crackdown. This is relayed bluntly, with no condemnation or anything. Now that I think of it, how I wish there was a men’s mag story about dope-running pilots. Hell, maybe there is – Bob Deis would know. Anyway, the kung-fu stuff only factors in the frequent action scenes, with Brice insisting “no guns” and using only hands and feet during the heist of the baron’s coffers. But like so many other stories here, the tale ends with a surprise betrayal or two. Overall, this was a great way to round out the issue. 

It came out a few months ago, but Men’s Adventure Quarterly is still available at Amazon, and would make for perfect escapist summer reading. These stories can be brain-rotting, though. This is also TMI, but one day I was at work, and I’d just been reading this issue of MAQ in the morning, and this lovely young coworker happened to walk by my desk, with a tight top showing off her ample charms (which us male coworkers aren’t supposed to notice, of course, I mean the toxic masculinity of it all). No lie, friends, but the phrase “jutting breasts” popped unbidden into my head. Unfortunately, she did not saunter over to my desk to offer her services in whatever heist I might be cooking up. 

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #5


Mens Adventure Quarterly #5, edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham
June, 2022  Subtropic Productions

Every issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly has been great, but this one focuses on the wild WWII yarns the men’s mags were mostly known for. In this regard I feel that Men’s Adventure Quartlery #5 most captures the vibe of an actual men’s adventure magazine. The sort of thing vets read twenty years after the war, while they were on a break at their factory jobs or trying to tune out their nagging wives. “Ah, those lace-panty commando broads – the good old days!” 

This issue is set up differently than the previous four; it’s almost two separate books. The first half is along the lines of those men’s mag-themed trade paperbacks that were popular some years ago, more focused on the art, artists, and photography. The second half is like the previous issues of MAQ, featuring stories. One thing missing this time is an intro for each story, which I missed. But all told this volume is longer than the other four, with as mentioned more of a focus on art in the first half. I found this first half interesting, but I’ve always been more about the stories in men’s adventure magazines; in fact, I usually don’t pay much attention to the covers or the interior illustrations, other than to momentarily appreciate them. 

It’s all visually arresting, though – and I don’t just mean the beefcake photos of ubiquitous men’s mag model Eva Lynd! Bob provides an interesting overview of her career, and we see more of Eva in some artwork courtesy Norm Eastman, the men’s mag artist most known today for his illustrations for “the sweats,” with women in bondage or being otherwise sorely mistreated. There’s a lot of photography and artwork in this first section, to the extent that I really does come off like a separate book…sort of a “making of” peek into how the men’s adventure mags were produced. A cool piece on war comics by Justin Marriott can also be found here; a bit disconnected from the Eva Lynd/men’s mag art material, but still pretty cool if you are into war comics. Especially British ones! Unfortunately I’m not, but as usual Justin’s enthusiasm is enough to make one interested in the subject. 

After an article from a wartime-era issue of True on “The Filthy Thirteen,” the real-life inspiration for The Dirty Dozen, we get to the stories. First up is the story featured on the cover, “The Wild Raid Of Gibbons’s Lace Panty Commandos,” by Jim McDonald. I reviewed this one several years ago as part of my Girls With Guns men’s mag feature. My copy is in a reprint from the December 1973 issue of Man’s Story, which also featured “Lace Panty Commandos” on the cover. Bob and Bill don’t include this later cover in this issue of MAQ. Here it is: 


What’s interesting is that this cover is so inaccurate: at no point in the story is Gibbons captured and tied to a chair, to be saved by those lace panty commando babes. In fact that would’ve made for a nice story element, but McDonald’s tale is woefully short and unexploited, something I noticed in my previous review but really came home on this re-reading. I’ve said it a million times, but I have no idea why more of these men’s mag authors didn’t farm out their tales into actual novel-length paperbacks. “Lace Panty Commandos” would make for a great war-pulp paperback, but it barely has space to breathe in the few pages McDonald gives it. My previous review gets more into the nitty-gritty, so this time I’ll just leave it that, despite the too-short length, it’s still a fun tale and, with its “hookers turned commandos” angle, epitomizes the “Dirty Mission” theme. 

Next up is another fairly short one – as most of those non-“Diamond Line” men’s mag stories were – that follows the same vibe: “The Desperate Raid Of Wilson’s Lace Panty Guerillas,” by Chuck McCarthy and from the March 1963 World Of Men. This one’s so similar to McDOnald’s yarn that it could almost be the same story. We meet Lt. Pete Wilson as he’s hiding out behind enemy lines, using a group of French hookers to smuggle weapons from the Nazis the girls service. As with the previous stories, the “lace panties” themselves are not actually worn in the action scenes, as the misleading art would imply, but at least they are given mention – in the fourth paragraph, in fact: “…a pair of black silk panties,” worn by a French hooker Wilson just enjoyed. 

As with most of these early ‘60s stories, the naughty stuff is minimal at best. And so too is the action. But this story at least has a little more to it than the previous one. Actually it’s more about the buildup than the story itself; we’re told that Wilson was all the way over in Iwo Jima before special orders came in which had him shuttling around the globe in record time, to be deposited in Occupied France, where he was “to serve as beachmaster of the Allied landings on the eastern bank of the Rhine when the time came.” But he’s ignored orders to lay low and has been using the girls to smuggle in weapons. The story rushes to a climax when the girls are uncovered, and the Nazis show up, and Wilson has them all run up to the roof so they can fight back. It’s a pretty goofy finale, but it does feature some relatively bloodless action, complete with Wilson and the girls tossing grenades at the Germans. 

Next up is one I’ve wanted to read for a long time, to the extent that I almost dropped the money on a copy of the issue that contained the story: “Free The Girls Of Love Captive Stalag,” by Charles Kranepool and from the the December 1967 Men. This then is a “Diamond Line” story, and the higher quality of these particular mags is immediately noticeable. In fact, of all the stories in this MAQ, this is the one that should’ve been turned into an actual novel. Kranepool delivers a cool story that almost opens like a prefigure of Inglorious Bastards, with a squad of American Indian soldiers silently killing off a few Germans outside a castle in novel ways: bow & arrow, garrotte, and even a tomahawk. 

But the “Indian soldier” stuff doesn’t even turn out to be relevant to the tale per se; instead, it’s all setup for the goofy illustration, of a Nazi painting a girl’s body…! The sadist! Bob Deis includes a cool intro in which he traces this particular painting, and how it was repurposed for another story. This is another of those bits where it’s plainly obvious the author was directed to include this particular incident…and got it out of the way as quickly as possible in the actual story. I mean, the “sweat mags” were known for outright torture stories with Nazis doing horrible things to their female prey; having one that does no more than bodypaint them seems lame at best. But Kranepool features it, as no doubt instructed – and then the commander of the American Indians (who per the genre is a white guy, of course) blows him away so as to cause a distraction, and he and his men free the particular girl they’re here for. And of course it goes without saying that this guy also gets the chance for a little (off-page) fun with the girl. Overall a very entertaining story, with that economical style of pulp writing I so enjoy. 

Up next is another Diamond Line story, a “True Booklength” piece that’s the longest story here: “Savage Comrades” by Donald Honig, from the September 1969 Male. Honig has had a story in each volume of MAQ and every one of them has been good. I’m surprised I never came across any of his men’s mag work prior to readidng Men’s Adventure Quarterly #1. First of all, the splash art for this one, by Bruce Minney, was repurposed in another men’s mag I have. I’m too lazy to pull out my copy and check, but I’m fairly sure it was used for “Traitors Die Slow” by Grant Freeling. Or maybe it appeared in the original version of the story, which was titled “They Crippled Hitler’s D-Day Defenses.” Or maybe I’m just wrong on both counts. 

As mentioned “Savage Comrades” is the longest story here, and thus has the most “meat” to it. But surprisingly the female presence is nonexistent, and in fact – shockingly enough – there isn’t even a sex scene in the story. Not even off-page! But we meet our hero, Lt. Bill Craig, a hotheaded Texan, in the process of trying to get lucky, at least, hitting on a girl who happens to be dating a General. Craig ends up punching out the General, but he gets out of the brig because he’s “been specially trained for a certain mission.” What exactly makes Craig so instrumental to this mission isn’t really made clear, as it’s the guys he’s been given to command who are the most important. The “savage comrades” of the title, it’s a trio of Germans who have been arrested by their countrymen for various things, but given their various specialities the US Army wants to send them back into Germany on the assumption that the three will be willing to shoot fellow Germans. 

So already the entire premise is absurd: I mean one of these guys is a terrorist, known for bombing places and killing many. The other is a brawny boxer, and the last is a guy who would “make love to wealhty women, get money from them – and climb mountains.” I mean these are the three “specialists” the army wants Wilson to take into Germany, along with a lieutenant who just punched out a general. The goal is to blow up a refinery near a mountain where the Germans are perfecting the fuel for a new rocket or somesuch. The story itself is more concerned with Wilson and the Germans – plus another American who might as well be wearing a red shirt – heading into Germany and trying to avoid detection. There’s a completely random part where the boxer guy slips off to reunite with his wife, only to find her shacked up with a Nazi, and he goes ballistic. 

It all works up to a big finale where the team attacks the refinery and the base near it. It’s a well-done action scene, not very bloody as per the norm, but the problem is there’s too much unity in Wilson’s team. The entire aspect of these Germans being criminals who might stab Wilson in the back is given short shrift, and it comes off like any other war yarn. For that matter, the boxer feels bad for almost jeopardizing the mission by killing his wife! But otherwise that’s it for “Savage Comrades;” for a True Booklength yarn it’s a bit anemic so far as the plotting goes, and personally I would’ve preferred if the previous story had been expanded. Those three American Indian soldiers were way cooler than the three Germans in this story. 

We’re back to the grungier line of men’s adventure mags with the next story: “The Vengeance Raid Of O.S.S. Carter’s Death Doll Platoon,” by Jim Arthur and from the February 1972 Man’s Story. This is another I reviewed in my Girls With Guns feature. It’s also a longer story, and does a better job bringing to life the “lace panty commando” vibe than Jim McDonald’s story did. (For that matter I wonder still if Jim Arthur and Jim McDonald were one and the same.) I already wrote my thoughts on this one in the previous review, but reading it again this time I found myself really enjoying the story. And also got a chuckle how, in my previous review, I noted the slightly more explicit tone of the story, when compared to earlier men’s mags – in particular the “oral” stuff. The same thing jumped out at me when I read the story this time. I guess my mind’s just always been in the gutter. 

One thing that became clear this time was that the titular OSS agent Carter is a bit of an idiot. A big portion of the story is given over to his training of the women who have escaped from a castle of Nazi sadists, despite the protestations of the girls themselves – they want to parachute in and kick ass pronto. But due to his delays for training, Wilson ends up getting them all captured or killed – he’s taken so long to actually launch the mission that reinforcements have shown up at the castle. This allows Arthur to work in some of the “sweat mag” stuff Man’s Story specialized in, with the girls being tortured in the dungeons. But it’s all off-page and it’s not even described what exactly is being done to them, which makes it somehow more unsettling. Overall though, “Death Doll Platoon” is one of the better stories here, and I’m glad it’s now available for more people to read. 

We’re back to the Diamond Line with “The 5 Wild Missions Of O’Brien’s Submarine Commandos,” by Len Guttridge and from the November 1973 Stag. There’s nothing misleading about this story’s title, as it’s basically just a recounting of five missions undertaken by a submarine team during the war. Guttridge goes for more of a dry “war reporting” vibe than any other tale here, and like Honig’s story there isn’t even a sex scene! Instead the entire story is comprised of various sub attacks. Naval fiction isn’t much my thing, so I wasn’t really into this one. There’s another sort of sub-themed “dirty missions” men’s mag story I reviewed here, “The US Navy’s U-Boat Hit Men,” which is very much in the Dirty Dozen mold, so if there’s ever another “Dirty Mission” issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly hopefully it will be included! 

Last up is a story I’ve bugged Bob Deis about for years: “G.I. River Rats Who Blasted The Nazis’ Sex-Circus Villa,” by Walter Kaylin (under his “Roland Empey” pseudonym) and from the November 1974 issue of Male. Years ago I asked Bob if he planned to include this story in the Kaylin anthology he published in 2013 with Wyatt Doyle, He-Men, Bag Men, & Nymphos, but the story didn’t make the cut. And to be honest, it’s easy to see why, as Kaylin doesn’t do much with the outrageous title, and probably the best thing about the story is Earl Norem’s awesome splashpage. (Norem’s always been my favorite of the interior illustrators.) Regardless, I still think “River Rats” is a lot of fun and it’s probably my favorite story here if for no other reason than I can finally read it – there were times where I almost dropped those absurd amounts of money for the November ’74 issue of Male just to read it. 

But like most of the latter-day men’s mag stories, “River Rats” is pretty short, and is more about the setup and harried conclusion, with none of the depth you’d get even in “Savage Comrades.” However it must be said that Kaylin still manages to deliver a bonkers story that has very little to do with realism. Even though the title and Norem art have you expecting some crazed frogman action, the majority of the story is about an undercover Yank who fights a bear in the plush cathouse of an Italian madam, for the entertainment of assembled Nazi elite. All sort of similar to Joaquin Hawks #2. The plan is to wait for someone really big-time to show, like Himmler. But D-Day is approaching so there’s no time to waste, thus we get a quick conclusion in which a bunch of Nazis are drowned by frogmen who are hiding in a lake – the drunk Nazis willfully jumping in, per the goofy setup Kaylin somewhat makes believable. 

And with that this expanded edition of Men’s Adventure Quarterly comes to a close. I’ve recommended every volume yet, but Men’s Adventure Quarterly #5 was definitely my favorite – and I’m not just saying that because I got to write an intro for it!

Monday, November 15, 2021

Women Without Morals


Women Without Morals, by Richard F. Gallagher
No month stated, 1962  Avon Books

Check it out, an entire book devoted to my favorite kind of women! Seriously though, Women Without Morals is yet another vintage men’s adventure magazine anthology, this one featuring stories by Richard Gallagher, whose men’s mag work I’ve reviewed here over the years. Interestingly, the book is copyright Gallagher, implying that at least some of the authors who worked for the men’s magazines retained the copyrights on their work; I was under the impression that all of the stories would be copyright the various publishers (with those copyrights now having expired). 

Gallagher is a good writer, and like the better writers in the field he worked for the so-called Diamond Line of magazines, ie Male and Stag and the like, which is of course where the stories collected here are taken from. Another note: the copyright page lists which issues the stories came from, however as it turns out they are not listed in order. Thus I had to do a bit of research to determine which stories came from which magazines, and I’ve noted this below, as well as their original titles. Also worth noting is that Women Without Morals did well enough to receive a second printing, the cover of which I’ll place below; I prefer the cover of this first edition, with the Nazi She-Devil-esque topless babe wielding a whip…a scene that sort of occurs in the first story collected here. 

And in fact, this first story is the closest we get to a Nazi She-Devil tale in the entire book. This I found perplexing; the Nazi She-Devils were the epitome of “women without morals” in the world of men’s adventure magazines, yet I’m assuming Gallagher didn’t write too many stories in the subgenre. At least, so far I’ve only read one story by him that nearly fits in the category: “G.I. On The Ship Of Lost Frauleins.” The story in this book, though, “Hanne Jaegermann, The Sweatered Fraulein,” is actually more of a Nazi She-Devil yarn than that later one, even though the titular Hanne is not specifically stated as being a Nazi. But really it’s just splitting hairs, as gradually we learn that Hanne has attained her position of power thanks to her casual affair with none other than Goebbels. So I’d say she’s a Nazi She-Devil by default. 

The story first appeared in the February 1959 Stag, where it was titled “Fraulein Barracks.” As with the other stories collected here, it’s fairly long, running to around 40 pages of small, dense print, and it was labelled a “True Book Bonus” in the original magazine edition. Those Diamond Line mags didn’t short-change their readers, that’s for sure. Also, this story, like the others collected in Women Without Morals, is written in third-person. (As usual though the illustrations that graced the original magazine editions are not featured here.) Taking place in the last months of the European theater of WWII, “The Sweatered Fraulein” concerns Sgt. John Leonard, an injured airman who, along with other Allied prisoners, is taken to a prisoner of war camp in an old fortress called Alpenhaus, in the Bavarian Alps. 

Alpenhaus, Leonard soon discovers, now serves as a “cat house,” a rather beaten-down one at that, reserved for Nazi VIPs. It’s patrolled by old guards, most of them vets of the First World War who have little interest in Hitler but are “doing their duty” for Germany. But most importantly it’s overseen by Hanne Jaegermann, a young, beautiful, and built blonde (her hair so blonde it’s almost white, we’re informed) who likes to wear tight sweaters that are always either white or black. And in true “Nazi chic” fashion her apartment in the fortress is decorated solely in black and white. There’s an old vet here who is officially the commandant, but Hanne is clearly in charge, and this puzzles Leonard. He soon runs afoul of the woman, though; when he’s called into her presence because he speaks fluent German, Hanne demands that Leonard act as her official translator for the American prisoners. When Leonard refuses, he soon understands he’s made a powerful enemy, one who will enjoy toying with him. 

So begins a twisted sort of psycho-sexual tale in which Hanne constantly abuses and humiliates Leonard – making him scrub the floor and then dumping the bleach-filled water on his face, having him beaten up by her sadistic henchman, punishing (and killing) other prisoners as a warning to him, and etc. While Hanne toys with Leonard, saving him “for a rainy day,” she is even more brutal with the other prisoners; she has a few people taken down by her Dobermans (one of the victims a young prostitute who refuses to sleep with a certain Nazi official), orders some other people shot, and in the most harrowing example she has one guy stripped and then beats him to death by smashing him in the groin with a sharpened belt buckle! This is his punishment for trying to kiss one of the hookers in the establishment. 

With her ground rules set that this will be the treatment for any prisoner who tries to touch one of the women, Hanne then sets upon toying with Leonard. In another memorable bit she calls him to her apartment, strips nude, and has him read Faust to her – but as Leonard soon learns, she’s really trying to arouse his lust so that he can try to touch her…and then be beaten to death for it. In another bit she calls Leonard once again and both she and some of the establishment girls are all nude or half-nude, and again Leonard does his best to avoid them. Suprisingly though, Leonard never does have his way with Hanne; Gallagher I’ve noticed tries to be relatively realistic in his stories, all things considered. While Hanne is certainly a smokin’ hot babe, Leonard is more concerned about his safety and thus never falls into her trap. 

Overall this was a very good, very fast-moving story, coming off like a twisted take on Hogan’s Heroes. It doesn’t get as wild as you’d like, though, save for the parts where Hanne is dispensing her twisted brand of justice. Even the parts where the Nazi elite come over for an orgy or two are relatively tame, Gallagher focused more on Leonard’s broiling anger than the sleazy fun. Speaking of which the finale is very memorable, as the Americans arrive in April 1945 and Leonard takes the opportunity to get his hands on Hanne and beat the living shit out of her. Certainly one of the few stories I’ve ever read that ended with a male character beating a female character unmerciful, up to and including slamming her face into a brick wall several times. However Hanne manages to live, and in the epilogue we’re told she was sent to prison, then later to a sanitarium for the violently insane. 

Next up is “Meiko Homma, The Japanese Iwasaki Maiden,” which originally appeared as “Imprisoned For Six Months In Japan’s Secret Female Garrison” in the June 1960 Stag. It also appeared in the first Male annual, in 1963, and I reviewed it a few years ago here. This one also stays relatively realistic throughout, despite the giant birdcage the American soldier is kept prisoner in, but a big difference between this story and “The Sweatered Fraulein” is that the hero of this tale scores with the villainous babe. 

The third story is “Bandana Husseini, The Lebanese Guerrilla Girl,” which originally appeared as “Nude Girl Raiders Of Beirut” in the January 1959 Men. This one’s notable in that it’s shorter than the other stories in Women Without Morals, is the only story in the book that doesn’t take place in WWII, and also features a female protagonist. This would be the titular Bandana, a “beautiful Arabic-looking girl” with “hair in pigtails” and “sport clothes from Paris.” It’s early 1957, and Bandana has made waves in Lebanon for her bandit activities – plus the rumor that she carries “a tommygun with a rose-colored cartridge clip.” This is another one that would’ve fit in the Women With Guns anthology, but Gallagher already had another story in that one. At any rate, “The Lebanese Guerrilla Girl” also has a different tone than the other stories here, almost coming off like a fable; there’s no real peek into the mind of Bandana Husseini, as there is with say John Leonard in “The Sweatered Fraulein;” instead the focus is on her wild deeds, with the anti-heroine coming off like a mythical figure at times. 

Bandana is in her early 20s, the daughter of a wealthy Lebanese man and a graduate of an American university, but when we meet her she’s in jail for having stolen to give to the poor. She escapes, finds safe passage with an old merchant who ends up raping her (his two drivers also getting in on the act), and then ultimately falls in with a group of rebels led by a guy named Hulim. From here she gets her own tommygun, painting it red, and begins a series of brazen acts against the establishment. Per the original men’s mag story title, she often does so in the nude, her and her two female accomplices in the group stripping down for their various commando missions. The story’s most memorable scene has Bandana getting revenge on the old rapist, orchestrating his fall off a bridge and waiting patiently for two days for him to die. Otherwise “The Lebanese Guerrilla Girl” doesn’t have the “meat” that the other stories here do, coming off more like a quick, action-packed tale with a wild child protagonist. 

Next is “Claire Molyneaux, The Commandant’s Wife,” which originally appeared as “Madame Penal” in the June 1959 Male. This is the longest story in the anthology, coming in at almost 50 pages. It’s another prisoner of war yarn, and a bit too similar to “The Sweatered Fraulein.” While it’s a fine story, I think it was a mistake including this one in Women Without Morals, as it’s inferior to that previous story, mostly because this one lacks the twisted psycho-sexual subtext of “The Sweatered Fraulein,” coming off more like your typical prison camp yarn. But given the theme of the anthology, the sadistic commandant is of course a woman, in this case Claire Molyneaux, young wife of the official commandant of a French prison camp in Latakia, Syria (Latakia being one of the places where Nick Carter gets the tobacco for his special cigarettes, at least in the volumes by Manning Lee Stokes – random factoid alert!). 

It’s 1939, and the brief intro informs us that merchant seaman Joseph Kolinsky, of Chicago, has been arrested in French territory on false chages of being an Axis ally, this being shortly after France and Germany have declared war. Along with other falsely-accused prisoners he’s hauled off to this prison camp in the middle of the desert. Soon enough he encounters Claire Molyneaux, the hotstuff commandant’s wife who is given to wearing a military tunic, shorts, and high boots; curiously though we’re informed she isn’t that hotstuff, but still pretty enough to attract attention. Her husband, the supposed Commandant Molyneaux, is old and enfeebled (we’re informed he married Claire just a few years ago and is desperate to keep her), and Claire runs roughshod over the camp, ruling the soldiers and brutalizing the prisoners. But the focus this time is much more on the hardscrabble life of Kolinsky in the prison, losing all the pulpy nature of “The Sweatered Fraulein.” 

At least, Kolinsky is a bit more of a rugged hero than John Leonard, and spends most of the novel fighting back, whereas Leonard didn’t put up as much of an effort. It’s become clear after reading several stories by Richard Gallagher that his protagonists are for the most part normal guys…perhaps a bit too normal, as they lack the square-jawed, ass-kicking virility one might expect from men’s adventure magazine protagonists. Thus, instead of swinging into action, Gallagher’s characters are more introspective and, while they will initially put up a fight against their tormentors, ultimately they will decide that life is more important than dignity. Indeed there’s a part in “The Sweatered Fraulein” where John Leonard suddenly understands why millions of cowed German Jews obediently allowed the Nazis to cart them off to the death camps: because there was always the promise of living another day. The parallels to today were quite strong, here – the hope that someday, as we continue to give up one individual right after another (all for “our safety,” of course), things will get better…despite the grim certainty that things will only get worse. For, as the stories collected in this book demonstrate, once tyrants get a taste of power they will never give it up. 

And Claire Molyneaux is certainly a tyrant, lacking even the wanton charm of Hanne Jaegermann. Her custom outfitt, you’ll note, is almost identical to the one Sergeant Homma wore in the earlier story, but unlike the previous gals in the anthology Claire doesn’t seem to have much interest in men…other than torturing them. So begins an overly long but still suspenseful tale in which Claire brutalizes Kolinsky in various ways, often humiliating him. She also often has other prisoners shot, and enjoys making them toil endlessly on the construction of a pointless road in the desert. The focus though is on the lot of the prisoners, and the villainess disappears from the narrative too often. But as mentioned Kolinsky has a bit more backbone than the protagonists in the other prison camp stories here, and at one point tries to kill Claire, but of course he fails and is tortured more. Also at one point she strips and offers herself to him – the story’s sole concession to the sleaze men’s mag readers demand – but Kolinsky won’t play because he knows he’ll suffer. Luckily Claire is drunk and passes out, seemingly forgetting her sexual proposition. 

Gallagher takes an interesting direction in the finale, in which the Germans liberate the camp, France having declared defeat and the Nazis move in. Claire Molyneaux is placed under arrest and put on a kangaroo trial for her transgressions against the prisoners. Suddenly the sadistic harlot looks like a scared little girl, and the story ends with her being pulled in front of a firing squad and strapped to a stake. She’s crying and desolate and Gallagher has it that you start to feel sorry for her. Even Kolinsky, who has finally been granted his freedom, seems to be moved by the spectacle. Claire sees him as he is leaving the compound and screams for his help, pleading with him to stop them from shooting her. Kolinsky goes over to her…and then slaps her in the face and leaves her for her execution! This unexpected gutting of the maudlin sap was the highlight of the story, but truth be told “The Commandant’s Wife” was my least favorite story here. 

Last up is “Colette Le Gros, The French Blonde,” which appeared as “The Castaway Fraulein And Her Strange Partners” in the September 1960 Male. Even though this story also features an American prisoner of war as the protagonist, it departs from the prison camp setup of the other stories, featuring the unusual plot of four men and one woman escaping across the Atlantic in a 30-foot whaleboat. It’s November of 1944 and as the story opens Robert Corti, a downed airman who served as navigator on a bomber, is held at gunpoint as he boards a boat on the coast of France. With Corti are SS Captain Wolfgang Klausewitz, Klausewitz’s bookish aid Leitner, a mysterious Frenchman known only as Pierre (I kept picturing him as the Danger 5 guy), and finally Colette Le Gros, a stacked French beauty (the most beautiful woman Corti’s ever seen in person, in fact) who is Klausewitz’s mistress. 

The shaky setup has it that Klausewitz, knowing Germany is about to fall to the Americans, wants to escape to Nazi-friendly Argentina. The commandant of a war camp, he knows he’ll hang from a noose for the brutalities he’s carried out on his prisoners. He’s plotted out his seaborne escape, but has been waiting “months” for a navigator to be shot down. Corti, finally, is that navigator, and thus he’s been drafted into this escape attempt. Leitner is coming along because he too is a Nazi, and Colette is going along because the French natives will cut her hair off and brand her as a Nazi-loving whore. As for Pierre, his background and motives are mysterious; a former member of the Maquis resistance fighters, he’s only here due to Colette, who has insisted Klausewitz bring him along. Colette also has the thoughtful insistence that Corti, Leitner, and Pierre “have a woman” before boarding the boat, to slake their needs before beginning the voyage – she’s not bound to get on a boat with four horny men, even if she does “love to be loved.” 

It’s kind of goofy…I mean they’ve stocked the boat with crates of food and gallons of water, and lots of liquor and all, but someone’s constantly holding a gun on Corti so he won’t try to escape. But you’d think that he’d get a chance at some point during the 50-day voyage to Argentina. However Corti is another Gallagher protagonist in that he’s not super willing to risk his skin. About the only difference is that he dishes out a lot of passive-aggressive backtalk; Klausewitz, for example, he takes to calling “schmuck,” explaining to the buzzcutted Nazi sadist that the word is American slang for “boss.” Gallagher seems to have more fun with this tale than the others in the book, giving each character a memorable personality; Leitner, for example, bides his time reading from a book of quotations, always trying to find the right quote for the right occasion. 

Given the setting, the lurid angle isn’t as much exploited. Corti’s early tumble with the native French gal Colette finds for him, before leaving on the voyage, is so vaguely-described that you wonder if anything even happened. But once the voyage starts the only shenangians that occur feature Klausewitz and Colette…who enjoy going off in the whaleboat’s sole cabin for a little loud lovin,’ even leaving the door open so the others can see. Colette later informs Corti that exhibitionism turns her on. And, true to the vibe of these stories, she’s often sporting a bikini during the voyage. She’s more along the lines of Bandana Husseini than the other three villainesses in Women Without Morals; she’s not a sadistic commandant, but does enjoy a nice killing or two, most notably demonstrated when a Spanish gunship stops them and Claire frags them – hiding a “potato masher” in a bag and passing it over as if it were their papers of transport. 

But what starts out as a promising suspense yarn turns into a sea survival yarn. I mean it’s good and all, with a lot of cool survival tips – like eating plankton, or a part where a hapless albatross lands on the boat and Corti catches it and they cook it (after drinking the blood and eating the uncooked liver for all the iron). But it turns out that this is the story, not the interesting opening material like who Pierre really is, or what Klausewitz hopes to do once they reach Argentina. Rather, it becomes a sea story, with all the expected tropes: a massive storm knocks out their provisions, including Corti’s navigational equipment, followed by a hardscrabble existence as they try to figure out where the hell in the Atlantic they are. And all the while someone keeps holding a damn gun on Corti, even though he’s literally the only one on the boat who knows how to survive at sea. 

Suprisingly, Gallagher finds the opportunity to include some sleaze; one night Colette comes to Corti and offers herself to him. But once again Gallagher delivers zero in the way of lurid details; indeed, he informs us that, because of the roughness of the wooden deck and the fact that they’re afraid Klausewitz will discover them, the act is “not pleasant.” Furthermore, Gallagher is not an author who tells us much about the ample charms of his female characters. The word “breasts” rarely appears in this book, in fact. For the most part, Gallagher will tell us a woman is pretty, with a nice build, and leave it at that. Even in the supposedly risque scenes – like when Colette strips down, or wears a bikini – he yields no juicy details, just stating the bare fact that the chick’s now in her bra and panties, without any word painting. Perhaps he assumed the artist would handle the T&A and figured his words would just be redundant. 

As I read “The French Blonde” I started to experience déjà vu, and realized that it was similar to another Gallagher story I’d read – “Buried Alive: A Jap Lieutenant, Three Pleasure Girls, An American G.I.” The two stories are pretty similar, despite that one being set underground and this one being set on the sea. Again Gallagher takes a plot rife with exploitative potential – I mean a hot and horny blonde stuck on a boat with five randy guys (one of ‘em a friggin’ SS officer!!) – but ignores the exploitative stuff and goes for a reserved, “realistic” tone. As I say, the writing is fine, and the character touches are great, but the issue is that this “survival” stuff takes over the story and all the promise is ultimately jettisoned. For that matter, the finale is a harried postscript in which we learn that, upon reaching Portugal (once Corti takes the helm…after the others have been incapacitated by the DTs, a shark attack, and a salt water-jammed Luger), Corti split away from the group, recovered for a few months, and returned to England to continue fighting in the war…and he has no idea what happened to Klausewitz, Colette, Leitner, or Pierre! 

And that’s all there is to Women Without Morals, which I picked up some years ago and intended to read at the time. I’m surprised it took me this long to get to it, as it seemed to promise all I could want from a men’s adventure magazine anthology. But as it turns out, Gallagher’s stories are a little too conservative for the men’s mag genre…I mean these particular “women without morals” seem positively saintly when compared to some of the women in, say, Soft Brides For The Beast Of Blood. But on the other hand, as mentioned Gallagher is a very competent writer, providing a lot more character and narrative depth than you’d ever encounter in “the sweats.” Yet personally, if we’re talking of Diamond Line authors, I much prefer the work of Mario Puzo and Emile Schurmacher.

Here is the cover of the second edition:

Monday, May 7, 2018

Underwater


Underwater, edited by Phil Hirsch
September, 1966  Pyramid Willow Books

Curiously, this vintage anthology of men’s adventure magazine stories was published through Pyramid’s “Willow” line, which was intended for juvenile readers. So the stories here were written for an adult readership but later marketed to kids. No fears, though, as the tales in Underwater are pretty tame. According to the copyright page, the stories are taken from Men’s Magazine and Challenge Magazine; no individual issues are credited, just the years 1956,’57,’59,’63, and ’64. Phil Hirsch was the editor of these magazines as well as a host of others; his name appears as editor on about a billion paperbacks.

While the cover gives the impression that the reader will encounter many tales of underwater adventurers facing off against dangerous undersea life, in truth the majority of the tales collected here are about guys being trapped underwater or facing other such desperate situations. Stories with speargun-armed scuba divers facing off against sharks are few and far between. I should note that the men’s mags Phil Hirsch edited were not part of the “Diamond Line,” and instead of novella-length pulp tales it appeared that most of them went for shorter, more “factual” yarns. In other words, it would appear that many of these colorfully-depicted incidents actually did happen.

“Sharkbait Swimmer” by Warren J. Shanahan opens the collection (there is no foreword or anything), and this one is about a daredevil named Fred Baldasare who runs his mouth that he’d easily swim the Messina Straits, which are known for being treacherous. Instead he gets in an arduous scuba swim that goes on for hours, sharks tailing him. He fails, but we learn in a postscript that the experience helped him successfully swim the English Channel.

“Diver Hefling’s Ordeal” is by Jack Dugan and is the first of the “man trapped underwater” stories the collection focuses so heavily on. In this one Frank Hefling is deep beneath Chicago, working on something, when his hand gets trapped, followed by his entire body. It’s a tense tale as fellow divers race against the clock to free Hefling before his air tank runs dry.

“Human Torpedoes!” by Sandy Sanderson is sort of a potted history; it’s all about an Italian frogman squadron in WWII that devised torpedoes that could be ridden all the way to the destruction site. Whereas a similar story in the Diamond Line of men’s mags would flesh this out into a pulpy tale, Sanderson instead goes for a more factual approach. We learn the history of the squad, the determination of its leader Lt. de la Penne, and how they successfully bombed an Ally ship off Alexandria, Egypt.

“Man-Eater!” by Wilbur Fergussen improves things in a big way; this one is in first person, which I don’t like as much, but it at least is more along the lines of what I expected from the collection. Fergussen tells us about how the time he was fishing Dade’s Lake in Arkansas and got attacked by…a shark! The story ends up with him in the lake, defending himself with a knife; a hasty addendum informs us that the shark probably got there due to some fresh water channel, which apparently happens.

We get back to the “trapped underwater” angle with “Nightmare In The Tank,” by Don Dwiggins; this ghoulish tale is about a California diver who gets the bends, and a “civilian rigger” attempts to save him. Instead he’s stuck in a decompression tank with the guy, who ends up dying, and the tale takes on a grisly tone as the rigger’s trapped in there with the corpse for a full day, even as rigor mortis sets in. The moral of the story is that from now on a separate door would be added to decompression chambers in case of similar ghoulish events.

“I was ‘Cuda Bait” is by Frederic Sinclair and is another in first-person. It’s the Florida Keys and our narrator tells us how each morning he’d spearfish for pompano for breakfast. But unknown to him a baracuda was in the vicinity, chasing the very same pompano our narrator set his sights on. He takes a shot at the ‘cuda, misses, and his arm gets snared by the speargun cord. So this one too goes for the “trapped underwater” angle despite the “dangerous aquatic monster” setup; Sinclair ends up offering his own foot as bait to lure away the ‘cuda. It ends up snatching off his flipper, and Sinclair makes it to the surface with his dead arm just in time to pass out. A very grueling tale!

“Dive Or Die” is by Edward Nanas and is another WWII yarn, taking place in Caballo Bay, the Philipines, in 1942. But it just goes on and on; it’s about a few hundred thousand “silver pesos” that have ended up on the seabed, and the “Jap” army drafts some POW American divers to go down and bring up the crates. But those wily Americans begin diverting crates to the resistance movement; eventually they are replaced by Moro divers who are more afraid of the Japanese and thus do a better job. Ends on an open note with Nanas informing us that hundreds of thousands of dollars are still down there.

“Dive Down Niagra” is by Frederic Sinclair, and this one is told like a report. It’s about a daredevil named Red Hill who constructs a tire tube craft which he intends to ride down Niagra. The law tries to stop him, reporters flock to the scene, and Hill dies in the attempt, his brains dashed out on some rocks. The end!

“Death Dive” is by Lyman Gaylor and is another “trapped underwater” story. Navy diver Joe Talarico is deep in the Patuxent River in Maryland when he’s trapped, his lifeline caught, and he has to survive several hours. Another grueling tale, but at this point these stories are becoming repetitive. 

“Devil-Shark!” by Bob Lorenz is the best tale in the collection; another first-person story, it also apparently inspired the cover art. The narrator and his brother have rented a boat in the Gulf of California, piloted by a superstitious Mexican, with the intent of finding a sunken ship and its treasure. But a monster white shark has been tailing them the past few days; the pilot insists that they not kill it, as it would result in bad omens. But our narrator goes down and finds the sunken ship just as a massive storm is setting in; the climax features him against the shark, which finally has closed in for the kill. He takes it out with an explosive-tipped spear. “I hate their guts!” Lorenz ends the tale, referring to all sharks everywhere.

We get right back to the “trapped underwater” angle with “Ordeal Of The Atlantis” by Don Dwiggins; this one I looked up and can confirm it’s a true story. It’s about a researcher named Hans Keller who has devised an “experimental gas” that might allow for prolonged time underwater. He tests it out with a fellow researcher named Pete Small in a diving bell, but things go wrong and both Small and a scuba diver who attempts rescue die. This one’s a grim tale, and pretty depressing. 

“Panic – And I Drown” is by Pete Clark “as told to” Willard Porter, and this one’s at odds with the other stories in that it’s the first-person narration of a surfer riding some hellish Californian waves for the amusement of onlookers. Interestingly the tale is set in ’53, so it’s very early in the whole surfing phenomenon, but again it just doesn’t gibe with the other stories here. But at least it’s not about a guy getting trapped underwater.

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 6

Sci-Fi

Invaders From Mars (1986): I loved this movie as a kid, renting it several times from the local video store. A remake of the beloved 1953 classic, the ’86 “Invaders” hasn’t aged nearly as well; ironically, it’s now almost as old as the original source film was at the time, yet whereas people still recall the ’53 original, the ’86 remake is mostly forgotten. One can see why this is; whereas the original played it mostly straight, the remake goes more for camp, though unevenly so. You’ll have parts of the movie where the main kid is supposed to be scared and runs away screaming, but he’ll be windmilling his arms like he’s in a Three Stooges short and the alien monster looks like something Sid and Marty Krofft created. And speaking of the kid – well, what sinks the ’86 “Invaders” straightaway is the casting of the main kid actor, 12-year-old Hunter Carson. To put it politely, the kid sucks. I mean, his acting is epically bad, and could almost be studied as bad acting taken to an art form. Turns out he was the son of actress Karen Black, who co-stars in the film as the only adult who believes David’s story that Martians have landed nearby (the film takes place solely within Smalltown, California) and are slowly taking over the population.

But the Cold War mindset of the previous film is replaced with more of the vibe of a kid’s movie; Carson, unfortunately, is our sole guide through the film, and thus his horror is intended to be our horror as he watches first his parents and then the other members of his small community turn into mind-controlled Martian underlings. The first hour is quite tedious, and played a whole lot better when I too was just a 12-year-old kid. Watching it now, one can’t help but notice how shoddy the whole thing is, however it would appear that at least some of the actors realized the film was going for a campy vibe. The special effects too look pretty goofy – modern fans try to explain this away by saying the filmmakers intentionally went for bad SFX, so as to pay tribute to the crude effects of the original, but I don’t buy that. No, the monsters look like they just walked out of one of those Sid and Marty productions…which is to say they look friggin’ GREAT!

Because seriously, who wants realism when it comes to alien monsters? These things – and it takes way too damn long to see them – are bulky, bipedal creatures with gaping mouths (memorably, they eat one of the characters…that is, after the character has conveniently fallen into the monster’s mouth) and gnarled, rubbery skin. The Martian leader is a weird brain-type thing whose face reminds me of the mutant leader Kuato in “Total Recall;” in fact I recall this creature being the first thing I thought of when I saw that awesome Arnold flick a few years later. The last half hour is probably the highlight; with realism tossed out the window by this point, it devolves into a long-running action scene of a Marine squad blowing away several of those Martian beasts. The movie retains the dream finale of the original – in fact, one could argue that the surreal, nightmarish quality of the entire film was intentionally done by director Tobe Hooper, right down to the bad, cartoonish acting – but unfortunately the producers put on their “artiste” britches and tried to go for a psych-out climax which only ruins whatever little goodwill they’d earned.

The Tenth Victim (1965): Encapsulating everything that is great about ‘60s Italian movies, “The Tenth Victim” is based on Robert Sheckley’s novel. The movie takes place in an ultramod 21st century in which killing has been legalized, but only if you are a hunter or a runner. Predating such darkly comic action movies as “Robocop” and “The Running Man,” this film is almost surreal in its black humor. It had a pretty nice budget, too, which is obvious. Ursula “Good LORD!” Andress stars as the top killer of the day; you know you’re in ‘60s Italian movie heaven when, within the first five minutes, she’s already stripped down to a sort of aluminum foil bikini and is doing a sensuous dance for a roomful of people. A scene that’s capped off with a crazed ending that was blatantly lifted by Mike Myers in the “Austin Powers” movies.

Her titular tenth victim is Marcello, a top Italian hunter who is operating as a runner for the first time. He is blasé and aloof and world-weary, etc, but the actor pulls it off with panache. The film is filled with weird touches of humor and the dialog, despite being dubbed in English, is well-performed, intelligent, and often very funny. Ursula Andress though is the star of the show, wearing an assortment of body-clinging ultramod clothes, though nothing beats that crazy bikini in the opening sequence. There isn’t much action per se, just a few random shootouts, but it’s all played on a comedy angle – not a slapstick sort of comedy, but more so just very dark and surreal. And it all looks great on the Blu Ray I viewed.

Eurowar: 

Churchill’s Leopards (1970): For the most part this is a static and uninspired “Dirty Dozen” rip-off, one with a strange twin brother twist. Bland Richard Harrison stars as a German officer (killed in the opening minutes) and also as his twin brother, a British soldier who impersonates him through the movie. Harrison is the vanguard for a squad of British commandos who will parachute in to the occupied French countryside and blow up a dam. Klaus Kinski chews scenery as ever in yet another variation of the sadistic Gestapo bastard he normally played – ironic given that Kinski was jailed in his native Germany during the war years for refusing to become a Nazi. As ever the Italians remember to sex it up, thus we have three incredible Eurobabes: one, a mute hotstuff who seduces the German Harrison twin and indeed kills him while they’re having sex; a vixenish Spanish beauty who is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous and who hooks up with the good British Harrison twin; and finally veteran actress Helga Line, who as usual plays a duplicitous wench.

Otherwise the movie sort of drifts along…Harrison poses as his brother and fools the Germans while working with the British commandos, while meanwhile Kinski becomes suspicious. Midway through we have a tense scene where Harrison’s sultry partisan babe is almost gunned down by Kinski along with a bunch of other natives, but she’s saved in the nick of time – but not by Harrison, who just stands there. Things finally pick up in the final quarter, with a climactic battle along the dam; here we even get some underwater action, as two of the Brits are frogmen who plant the explosives. We also get some phenomenally amateurish “special effects” in the dam explosion, which is clearly a model. Otherwise “Churchill’s Leopards” is not the best exampe of the Eurowar genre, but it is boosted by three incredible Eurobabes.

Dirty Heroes (1967): One of the first and definitely the biggest of the “Dirty Dozen” rip-offs made in Italy, “Dirty Heroes” covers all the war movie bases: it’s a gripping wartime drama with intrigue, a prisoner of war flick, a suicide commando squad flick, and even a heist flick. In fact it has so much that one wishes they’d just focused on one storyline. It certainly had a nice budget, though, and it’s two-hour length puts it in the realm of Hollywood’s WWII productions of the day. The heist stuff takes center stage; hero Sesame is an American con from Chicago who, in complete deus ex machina, runs into his old crime pals in Occupied Europe. One of them’s even posing as a Nazi guard in the POW camp Sesame happens to be in at the opening of the movie! Using the gorgeous Daniela Biancha (“From Russia With Love”), who happens to be married to a German general (played by another Bond film actor, Curd Jurgens, later to play the villain in “The Spy Who Loved Me”).

Too many subplots and “gripping drama” detract from the film, but it features a great underwater sequence where Sesame and pals don frogman gear and swim in the canals beneath Amsterdam. Also on hand is yet another Bond actor, Adolfo “Thunderball” Celli, here playing a Dutch resistance leader who works with Sesame to steal back a bunch of Dutch diamonds from the Nazis. The film climaxes with a big action scene that again tosses reality out the window as our handful of heroes stave off an SS force with just a few submachine guns. But even this peters out into more drama subplots; there’s even a budding romance subplot between Sesame and Daniela Bianchi’s character. Overall “Dirty Heroes” certainly has a nice budget and looks good, and could hold its own with a Hollywood war movie of the day, but I prefer the more streamlined “men on a mission” storylines more common of EuroWar.

Five For Hell (1969) – My favorite example of an Italian “Dirty Dozen” ripoff yet, “Five For Hell” is basically a violent cartoon. Our titular five heroes are American GIs who must retrieve documents from the Nazis deep in Italy. They’re the typical oddball squad: an acrobat (who looks uncannily like Michael Biehn, from “The Terminator”), a hulking stooge, an Italian-American safecracker, and a cowardly demo expert. Their leader is a gun-chewing stoic badass given to hurling baseballs with such deadly accuracy that he can kill men with them. Heading up the Nazis is scenery-chewing Klaus Kinski, who delivers his lines with relish, even dubbing his own voice. British babe Margaret Lee appears as Helga, a Nazi clerical worker who in reality works for the partisans. She’s ruthless, too; when she reveals to a comrade that his cover’s been blown, she whips out a gun and blows him away!

There’s plentiful action as the heroes make their way through Italy, leading up to a break-in/heist in the villa the Germans have taken over – Margaret Lee’s job is to screw Kinski so he doesn’t notice the intruder alarm’s going off. The movie climaxes with a several-minute action scene which sees plentiful submachine gun fire, almost prefiguring Arnold’s “Commando” as the heroes leap across the beautiful villa grounds, gunning down hordes of Nazis. The acrobat even gets in a few flying flips while shooting his grease gun. “Five For Hell” is a stellar example of the Euro War genre, and it’s even more entertaining than “The Dirty Dozen.”

Ice Station Zebra (1968): This isn’t Eurowar, but what the heck; it’s a big, hugely-budgeted Cold War flop that’s most remembered as being one of Howard Hughes’s obsessions (he supposedly wore out several copies of the film, sent to him directly from MGM, watching them over and over). For whatever reason MGM took a simple suspense-action tale from novelist Alistair MacLean and blew it up to roadshow proportions, a la “Ben Hur.” The pacing is as glacial as the ice captain Rock Hudson navigates his nuclear sub through; also along for the ride are Patrick “The Prisoner” McGoohan as a shady government operative, a grim-faced Jim Brown, and a scenery-chewing Ernest Borgnine. The first hour and a half concerns itself with the ponderous voyage of the sub as it heads for the titular ice station, which has gone incommunicado and supposedly has suffered some mysterious misfortunes. 

After the intermission we get to the north pole, which was created on a sound stage, and infamously so – despite the huge budget spent on the set, with swirling snow and big mountains of ice and heavy-duty winter gear for the characters, the breath of the actors isn’t even visible! Despite the fact that it’s well below freezing here. And yet this artificial look adds a surreal layer to the film; in this regard the movie harkens back to the studio-bound sets of Hollywood’s golden age. The whole film seems to be made on the idea that “something might possibly happen!”, but it’s really just endless delays and stalling. Even the final confrontation with the Russian paratroopers peters out into more dialog, with the eventual action scene relegated to some chaotic shooting and none of the marines or paratroopers getting killed. The costumes are cool, though, and despite the lack of thrills I prefer the second half to the first, with cool model work for the Russian jets (which despite it all look like toys – but still better than CGI!). Personally I like to imagine Hughes watched the film so many times because he was delivering his own MST3K-style riffs.

Probability Zero (1969): After the success of “The Dirty Dozen” in 1967 the Italians turned from Eurospy to Eurowar, aka Spaghetti War, WWII films which featured oddball squads on suicide missions behind enemy lines. This is one of the best I’ve seen, shot on location in Norway and featuring a plethora of WWII action. Henry “I’m playing a good guy for once” Silva stars as Duke, a badass American commando whose mission is to retrieve top-secret radar technology from a crashed fighter plane which has been captured by the Nazis and hidden away in an impenetrable fortress. Allied Intelligence gives Duke’s plan to recapture the radar a “probability zero” chance of success. But what the hell, let’s try it anyway. Off Duke goes to put together his oddball squad, from a mountaineer plagued by cowardice to an Italian POW.

Character depth is minimal, with the less-than-90-minute runtime given more to suspense and action. And there’s a fair bit of variety to the action, from a fight on a boat to even an underwater sequence – whereas the majority of these Spaghetti War movies occur in the desert, this one makes the most of its Norway setting with a sequence where Duke’s team suits up in frogman gear and infiltrates the German base underwater. There’s also a Eurobabe in attendance, a blonde who plays a member of the Norwegian resistance. Her assignment is to screw the commander of the German base while Duke’s team is carrying out its mission. In true “Dirty Dozen” style the finale features a lot of fireworks, with lots of good guys buying it alongside the Nazis. While it could’ve used a little more depth, “Probability Zero” is still a fun and short example of Eurowar done right – and it’s everything Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” should’ve been.