Secrets of Chinatown (1935), by Fred C. Newmeyer

A pulp novel come to life, Secrets of Chinatown is simultaneously amusingly bizarre and depressingly racist.

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Book Club of Desolation #22: Leonox, Monstre des Tenebres (1971), by Paul Bera

Last year I took a look at the first of the French Frankenstein pulps. This year, I figured it would be nice to have the Book Club of Desolation return to similar waters--only this time, the book I read was untranslated. That's why I failed in my promise to have a monthly Book Club review up for January (on top of being sick as shit). It took me quite some time to read my way through Leonox, Monstre des Tenebres, the first of Paul Bera's six-volume series chronicling the eternal war between the avatars of cosmic forces known as Leonox and Lisa, but I found it a fulfilling experience, to say nothing of the wonders it did for restoring my knowledge of French. Even with the language barrier in place, Bera's prose reads smoothly and thrillingly, with enough pulp action and supernaturalism to make me seriously consider tracking down the rest of the series, before all the remaining rare copies are snatched up.

Our protagonist is Lacana, a ten-time serial killer constantly on the run from the police. While hiding out in Paris, he feels a compulsion to enter a building, which seemingly contains more on the inside than it does on the outside. This is the headquarters of the mysterious organization known as "Leonox and Co." headed by, as you may expect, a man named Leonox. But Leonox is less a man than he is a demon; he possesses supernatural powers, and is in fact the embittered slave of what may or may not be the cosmic embodiment of evil, known as "the Master" or "He Who Controls Leonox." In exchange for his service, Leonox offers Lacana a new identity, including a new face and set of fingerprints--he'll accomplish this by giving him a whole new body. The first of many catches in this deal is that in order to get this body, he has to share a coffin with it. The process is a success, however, and Lacana becomes instead Francis Dalvant, a famous journalist killed in Vietnam. As part of his operations, "Dalvant" next comes in contact with the mysterious Lisa, a young woman who claims to be able to see Lacana's soul in Dalvant's body. Lisa has frequent clashes with the police for her strange statements and behavior; they think she's a drug addict. Slowly, however, Lacana/Dalvant will learn that she is Leonox's spiritual opposite, a servant of a more benevolent cosmic force known as "He Who Controls Lisa." (It's worth noting that neither of these cosmic forces are truly good or evil, it's just that Lisa is beautiful and Leonox is monstrous, both in a variety of ways.) His encounters with Lisa "reunite" him with Dalvant's old friend, the Principal of Police Princex. In the end, Lisa and Princex reform Lacana, who ultimately takes on the mental traits of Dalvant, who was an intrinsically good man. He and Lisa go after Leonox and successfully kill him after he takes control of the body of Dr. Satelm, who has the power to unleash a world-destroying plague. Lisa takes the rap for the murder, claiming she was Satelm's jealous mistress, and goes to jail--but to Lacana/Dalvant's delight, she escapes, and he begins traveling the world in search of her.

It's amazing how well Leonox, Monstre des Tenebres fits the formula of English pulp stories, and how well it pulls it off too. It's something of a random events plot, yes--now Lacana is poisoned with curare! Now Leonox is trying to unleash a plague!--but it also taps into the vein of worldbuilding which is so vital to pulp storytelling. So many ideas whiz past us at once. Just pages after revealing that our narrator-protagonist is a serial murderer, we are dragged into a world of the magical and inexplicable with the cosmic distortions of Leonox's headquarters. From there we have body-swapping, celestial war, and living burials. Oftentimes, the descriptions of the spiritual aspects of Leonox and Lisa come across as Lovecraft-lite, or Lovecraft processed through fairy-tales--sparkling and glittering, but also vast, unknowable, and perhaps most properly, incomprehensible. All of this is presented in a style which is both simple and compelling.

I really should say how grateful I am for the simplicity of the style. A lot of key points are repeated again and again, which helped me get through the plot in the case of my translations failing the first time around. (I'm still embarrassingly vulnerable to false cognates.) However, this style is also probably the book's greatest weakness--as compelling as it is, the tendency to repeat does get a little silly at times. "It was incredible that I, Lacana, ten-time killer, could be standing here in the presence of the police!" is a phrase that comes up over time and time again. Yeah, I imagine most serial killers would be shocked at rubbing elbows with the cops after making their faces known, but we don't need to be told that so often. Lacana also has a tendency to forget that he is now Francis Dalvant for too much of the book, and he keeps chanting that he has new fingerprints over and over again. These parts can be glazed over once you get the rhythm of things, though.

I keep thinking about how cool it is to have the main character of the book be a serial killer who slowly redeems himself as pieces of another man merge with his persona. I'm pretty sure that Dalvant's spirit is actually coming back and that's what's causing Lacana to take on his traits--eventually their reference to themselves as two people seems to transcend metaphor. Lacana/Dalvant is thus of dual nature, good and evil--though Dalvant wasn't purely good, nor was Lacana purely evil. Setting up this dichotomy furthers the book's themes of good and evil by making our lead(s?) into parallel(s?) of Leonox and Lisa, albeit with human drives that the reader can understand. Bera seems to believe that Good and Evil are important concepts to mankind, but they also have gray areas and spots where they blend--how very '70s of him! It's notable too that Christianity doesn't enter the picture at all; neither of the forces behind Leonox and Lisa are aligned with God or Satan in any way.

I say this is a book that reflects the '70s, but it's also French in a way that reminds me of why I love French media. It makes sense to title the series after Leonox, and to have the protagonist be a reforming serial killer, when this is a story coming from the same country that created not only the Grand Guignol, but Fantomas, the ultimate villain-pulp protagonist and grandpappy to Diabolik, Killing, Kriminal, and all those other groovy, creepy masked thieves and killers who spread through Europe and the Middle East throughout the middle of the 20th Century. France loves its villains, and Leonox was no exception...even if he's largely forgotten today.

The chronicles of Lisa and Leonox are practically begging for English translations, and I would eagerly snap those up if/when they ever came along. Despite some minor flaws, this was an awesome read and I would love to see what happened next to these characters. Longue vie à Leonox!

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The Primal Essence: The Mudman's Top Ten New Views of 2017

2017 saw a lot of growth for the A-List! I found a comfortable schedule wherein I could squeeze in three reviews a week, and I intend to hang onto that schedule for as long as I can. I opened a Patreon, which has been an exciting experience so far. I posted a bad movie sci-fi novella. I was able to find nine weird books to talk about--not as many as I'd hoped, but that's what next year is for. It was a marvelous time and I can't tell you how glad I was to have this site to go back to whenever the real world came down too hard on me. The fact that so many of you kept showing up week after week made it all the better. I may curate its entries, but it's really you guys who build my A-List...you're all on my A-List of People. You are the finest souls I know.

The movies on this list are the cream of the crop. They tore my heart from my chest and shook up my soul. I hope you track them down if you haven't already because they will reshape your life for the better. Well, actually, it's for the worse. But in a good way. Capiche?

FROM BEST TO BESTEST:

#10 - I AM HERE...NOW, by Neil Breen

It is only out of a stubborn respect for the later entries of this list that Mr. Breen ended up at the number ten spot...otherwise this one would be much higher. I Am Here...Now was the best possible introduction to Breen I could(n't)'ve hoped for. I've seen some pretty bizarre Ancient Alien stories over the years, but this one takes the cake--Breen is a sign that Weird Film is far from dead, even as the Intentional Bad Movies try to take their cut from the legacy spawned by the people whom Breen now succeeds. May self-awareness never touch you, Neil, ol' buddy. I'm so glad I have the rest of your filmography to discover.

#9 - THE PHANTOM COWBOY, by Robert J. Horner / SMOKING GUNS, by Alan James

A dirty stinkin' tie! I knew I had to have one B-Western on here and no matter how much boiling down I did I couldn't pick one of these over the other. Smoking Guns is definitely the "better" movie, but the sheer shittiness of The Phantom Cowboy makes it feel truly alien. I'm starting to doubt I'll find Westerns weirder than these two, but if these are the best there are I'm in good company. I've definitely raised a lot of eyebrows in my time talking about the movies I watch with the people I know in Real Life. They've never been raised higher than when I tried to describe these two.

#8 - DRUMS O' VOODOO, by Arthur Hoerl

'Cause the drums make me happy...drums make me happy...my feelings on the so-called "race pictures" have shifted somewhat since I wrote this review due to some things I've learned about them (i.e. creative control was not in the hands of the actual black performers as much as I thought), but there's no taking away the talent from Drums O' Voodoo's cast. Aunt Hagar is still one of my favorite movie characters of all time, and to my dying day I won't forget the time she fucking sassed off Jesus. At this point, I feel I've seen every voodoo movies there is, but there's something deeply special about this one. I'm (ideally) getting a new copy soon, which may be from a different print...I may have to write something up if it turns out the lost footage is in this version.

#7 - JUNGLE TRAP, by James Bryan

I don't like getting hyped for movies because it's so easy for those sorts of hopes to get dashed. But not when James Bryan and Renee Harmon are at the helm. My heart nearly exploded when I learned this was a thing and it was a tough sweat waiting for it to come out. But it was worth it. Farewell to a pair of great careers...you guys made my life, one last time. Oh, how I wish you still had one left in you.

#6 - SWEET TRASH, by John Hayes

Now we're slipping into the New Weird. For me, that is. I spent so much of my life thinking I'd seen all the greats, but then this year came along and I started to see some trippy fucking shit. Sweet Trash is apparently not overly beloved even among trashsters, which is saddening. This movie dips into territory both grim and hilarious, often without warning, in the best of ways. As far as boggy-surreal nightmares go, this one just barely beat out Disconnected and Euridice BA 2037, which would make a great triple feature with this.

#5 - NIGHTMARE ALLEY, by Edmund Goulding

Gotta have at least one legitimately good movie on here. I guess this Ty Power guy is hot stuff, huh? Well, even if I had known that at the time, I would've been swept off my feet by this movie. A clammy, greasy, disconcerting expose of circus life, this one fits in perfectly with some of my other favorites from this year like The Unknown and The Amazing Mr. X, but this one is the best of all of them. I've been watching a lot of Hollywood dramas from the '40s now in the wake of sitting down for this three times in a row. I hope they won't make me sick.

#4 - BLOODY WEDNESDAY, by Mark G. Gilhuis

When I was writing the list I kept putting this on here for some reason. I'd take it off, asking myself, "Wha...really?" Then I would rewatch it and remember everything. For a while I would just quote that goddamn teddy bear, voice and everything, and sometimes people would hear me and worry about my health. Simultaneously the most depressing and hilarious movie about mental illness I've seen, Bloody Wednesday is so unsure of what the heck it's supposed to be that it becomes a psychedelic trance. I've found for myself a new classic of the slasher (?) genre, which isn't an easy feat these days.

#3 - INFRASEXUM, by Carlos Tobalina

Yes, I like this one more than Flesh and Bullets, because I'm a sucker. It's almost unbelievable to me that this was Tobalina's debut. This is a ballsy film to make under any circumstances, and yet porn is a weird thing, and thus he built a whole career out of this. I wasn't expecting to get a Pseudo-Philosophical Voiceover-Journal Inner-Quest Movie that also had a disembowelment scene, but at this point, I should know better. Art and trash go well together and this is a great example of how they pulled that off in the late '60s.

#2 - GRETTA, by John Carr

No explanation. It's not even based off the book--it just exists. It's like 35 movies got stuck in a blender and the director drank the result, and the camera implanted in his brain recorded everything he saw afterward. Or, alternatively, it was originally an 8-hour mega-epic like von Stroheim's Greed and they cut out too many reels. Why should we care about this occasionally-creepy romance when there are killer beetles...and vice versa? Better yet, it has a "sequel." If you count movies that recut other movies to make them even more confusing as "sequels," that is.

#1 - THE TELEPHONE BOOK, by Nelson Lyon

The best. The Holy Grail. This is why I got into reviewing movies. I laughed, I screamed. I could go on forever but The Telephone Book is really good, okay? Every new scene brought fresh surprises that I could never have expected--which is really what cinematic media is meant to be about. For a movie about sex, it felt like sex...it kept building, and building, and building, and then there was that ending and there was such joy. A vulgar, mind-boggling cartoon brought to life, I'll never see anything like it again; but then, I was lucky enough to see it in the first place. 

AND THE BOOK OF THE YEAR IS... *DRUMROLL PLEASE*
...
...
...

THE UNHOLY THREE, by Tod Robbins

Man, I sure read a lot of bullshit this year. How could the Book of the Year be anything but this when the competition was Space Jason and voodoo sharks? The Unholy Three is a weirdly kinetic pulp pseudo-masterpiece, whose presence on this list means I can live with myself for not including The Unknown. Lon Chaney is a powerful figure even when he's not directly involved; and besides all that Tod Robbins is an accomplished enough writer to keep me hooked. Next year I'm gonna grab a copy of Robbins' "Spurs" to take a look back at the origin of Freaks, and this book will get a mention, as I've said, when I get to touching on Todd Browning's The Devil-Doll. Robbins also wrote a book called Mysterious Mr. Martin, which looks like a delight. More to follow!

So that's 2017! See you next year! I loved all the time we spend together and I can't wait to start again soon. In the meantime, you can check out the $1 tier on my Patreon to hear some of my Movie Thoughts. Otherwise...keeping dreaming, true believers!

Book Club of Desolation #20: The Unholy Three (1917), by Tod Robbins

Now for something a bit closer to type. This year has seen me show off my love of Lon Chaney Sr., and while it is not strongly remembered today, one of Chaney's big hits was a movie called The Unholy Three. Well, technically two of his big hits were movies called The Unholy Three: Todd Browning directed a silent version in 1925, while a talkie remake was shot in 1930 by Jack Conway, both starring Chaney as the ventriloquist Professor Echo. The films were based off of a 1917 novel by Clarence Aaron "Tod" Robbins, who also wrote "Spurs," the short story which Todd Browning would adapt as Freaks. I found both versions of the movie to be an awesome showcase of Lon Chaney's talents, but the story always threw me. It's a confusing tale, not because of any particular complexity, but because the character's personal decisions are...weird. As it happens, it looks better on paper. The Unholy Three is a surprisingly good crime pulp with enough idiosyncrasies to it that it overcomes some of its notable flaws. It's a great book to continue our Bookvember reading experience with.

We open at a circus, where a performance is being held starring Tweedledee the midget, Hercules the strongman, and Echo the ventriloquist. Tweedledee is a genius but prone to a violent temper, and when he is insulted for his height too many times he attacks his heckler, and the three are forced to escape. Tiring of an existence as sideshow freaks, the three decide to pool their unique talents as Mind, Body, and Voice to take life by the horns and be free. This amounts to them opening a pet shop supposedly owned by Echo, who disguises himself as an old woman named Irene Blake. Tweedledee poses as her infant grandson Willie, but actually runs the show, while Hercules takes care of tasks around the shop as Cousin Harry. They make a small fortune selling cheap birds that seem to be talking parrots, thanks exclusively to Echo's ventriloquism. However, Tweedledee also has a practice of encouraging families to adopt him so that he can kill them and take their valuables. Such is what befalls the family and family-to-be of Hector McDonald, a young man who earns the Little Person's ire by blowing cigar smoke in his face. First he attacks Tommy, the nephew of Hector's fiance Dorothy Arlington; then, he frames Hector for the murder of his Uncle Tobias. In the end, Echo has had enough--this life of crime is not the adventure promised to him. He betrays his Master and calls upon the Voice of God Himself to save the day.

This is basically a Villain Pulp--see the Valley of the Zombies review for what I mean by that. We have our title characters, and they are evil, and the book sympathizes with them just as surely as it does with their victims. The Three are indeed very interesting. Tweedledee suffers from a rather stereotypical case of Little Man Syndrome, but at the same time he really does live up to his title of "the Mind." The film makes it clearer that the plot the trio undertake is eccentric primarily because such a scheme would be unbelievable in the eyes of the police; I suspect that's why Tweedledee chooses the modus operandi that he does in the book as well. He goes back and forth between a cold, philosophical predator and a manic storm of raw emotion--while his body is far from helpless, he is most unfettered in the mental realm. It's fascinating to me that he is the mastermind in the novel, while the two films place leadership of the trio on Echo's shoulders--probably because Echo was played by Lon Chaney, who is much more believable as a master villain than the high-pitched/German-accented Harry Earles. Echo is reduced to an almost child-like role as Tweedledee's servant, and he may be intended to be mentally disabled in some way. His ventriloquist dummy, "with legs like a goat and a face like an old man," apparently talks to him. (This may be one of the earliest "demonic" ventriloquist dolls I know of, as it predates Hugo from Dead of Night by almost thirty years; even if Echo's doll probably isn't really possessed.) The idea of a ventriloquist using their talents to impersonate God is a great idea and I'm disappointed I didn't think of it first. This is a pretty clever deus ex machina, in a rather literal sense. Book!Echo is also much more sympathetic than movie!Echo, who is much more sinister but still gets off easy. Really, a lot of the issues I had with the plots of the films come from the fusion of Tweedledee's character with Echo's. Hercules is the least fleshed-out of them, which is also a fact in the movies, but he presents some interesting enigmas. He's extremely loyal to Tweedledee almost to the point of seeming child-like, as Echo does, but he's also well-spoken. His idealism, the source of his loyalty to his Master, contradicts the brutal nature of his base strength. In some ways you can feel bad for him, because he's the one Tweedledee scams the most.

Unfortunately, the middle third of the book doesn't focus on its eponymous figures as much as we'd like, meaning that their confusing plan becomes even more random-seeming due to the fact that we see it from the perspective of their victims instead. It doesn't help that Hector, his uncle, and the Arlingtons are not particularly interesting characters compared to the Three. They also don't really possess any unique skill or trait that helps them overcome the Three--it takes Echo turning on Tweedledee to secure the victory of our "heroes." Fortunately, the entire book is very well-written. Robbins busts out the finest pulp purple prose to produce bombastic and memorable imagery. It gets a little cloying at times, much in the same way that you can get poisoned from too much Lovecraft, but it's hard to dislike the long description near the beginning of Tweedledee viewing his body as a grotesque cocoon, hoping that someday he will climb out of himself as a giant, with the strength to destroy his foes. We also get some pithiness through Echo's parrot-ventriloquism in a long bit which contains such gems as, "The worms are our fondest friends even when we are cold to them." Despite the complexity of his metaphors at times, Robbins leaves the plot very easy to follow, so it seems a little unnecessary that The Events Thus Far are summarized by Echo at the end.

There is racism in the book. There are a few descriptions of Jewish characters which might be antisemitic. In the early carnival scenes, too, the Wild Man of Borneo is described as a "half-wit Negro," which highlights the fact that these sorts of carnival shows were hugely exploitative. We need look no further than Nightmare Alley for this, but the low-budget nature of these shows meant they had to cut corners, which meant enslaving, abusing, or otherwise taking advantage of their performers. Hiram W. and Barney Davis, the two Little People who are the most famous historical examples of people exhibited as "Wild Men of Borneo," were mentally disabled--whether or not their act under P.T. Barnum and other show heads was exploitative is open to debate. In any case, the book's racial politics are uncomfortably dated, but there is nothing shriekingly hateful compared to what I've read recently.

The Unholy Three is definitely an imperfect book. It's a pulp, so I'd expect no different. But if you are a pulp fan and/or an enthusiast for extremely unusual crime thrillers, this will not let you down. Plus, you can probably get a kick out of the movies, as well, which differ substantially from the book. I'll return to this book somewhat when I finally get to Todd Browning's movie The Devil-Doll, as you'll see an echo of Professor Echo in that film's lead. This book once left powerful ripples in pop culture--maybe it's due for rediscovery.

If you want early access to reviews like this one, help me pay the bills on Patreon! Plus, you can like the A-List on Facebook to get updates!

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Image Source: Amazon

New Book Out!! DEUS MEGA THERION & THE DIVINE MRS. E ARE HERE!!!

I have some exciting news! My double-sided party in paperback has been published by Odd Tales Productions! Check it out here on Lulu!

Publisher's Description: "DEUS MEGA THERION tells the tale of Jagged Skull, an '80s heavy metal band who runs afoul of a Satanic cult presided over by the sinister Edward Tamaron. Forced to play a string of concerts for the cult, the band members learn more about themselves and the world they live in. 

THE DIVINE MRS. E (Or, the Adventure of the Textual Lacuna) is the story of an actress who must solve a murder on the set of one of her films. But she is not who she seems to be, and her adventure will bring her face-to-face with fiction, femininity, and the divinity of both. 

This paperback features two excellent covers from James Bezecny, and has awesome flipbook action, meaning it can be read no matter what side is up. An Odd Tales Productions exclusive!"

An ebook version and a video trailer will be coming soon! And thank you!!

P.S. There will an extra review this week as Wednesday sees the release of James Bryan's long-lost soon-to-be-classic Jungle Trap. GET PUMPED!

Book Club of Desolation #14: The Ant with the Human Soul (1932)/Night of the Trolls (1963), by Bob Olsen and Keith Laumer

There was no way I was passing up a book with a cover like that.

I don't read as much straight sci-fi as I should outside of comic books, and I've meant to change that all my life. Fortunately, the Book Club of Desolation may be my chance to get on the right track. I recognized in my childhood that I always leaned towards the softer side of the Sci-Fi Hardness Scale, and a lot of the big names in classic sci-fi--Asimov, Anderson, Heinlein, Hubbard He Who Shall Not Be Named--had the bulk of their work on the harder side of things. Because they seemed to comprise so much of the iceberg, I dodged the genre except when it was scientifically "easy." I have other reasons for not enjoying these authors, which I won't bother to go into here, but I'm an older person and frankly, I'm becoming bored with the limits of my comfort zone. So maybe it's time to delve back into the things I didn't like as a kid and see what surprises await me.

But this really is all just incidental. I really did buy The Ant with the Human Soul exclusively for that cover.

Bob Olsen's '30s pulp adventure tells the story of Kenneth Williams, who is suicidal after his college experiences have made him doubt his Christianity. He is rescued from a drowning attempt by the sinister-seeming scientist Dr. De Villa, who suggests that perhaps an uncommon experience will help remind Williams of the beauty of life. And by "uncommon experience," he means "having his brain transferred into the body of an ant." How, you ask? Why, for that matter? Well, De Villa has perfected a ray which can cause ants to grow to the size of people. From there, it's simplicity itself to splice Kenneth's "memory center" into the ant's brain, while Kenneth's body is kept in suspended animation. The ant containing his brain-chunk will then be shrunk back down and returned to its colony, and Kenneth will record all of the ant's experiences as his own, all for the purpose of solving the secrets of ant colony behavior.

Kenneth ends up undertaking more than one lesson in ant-hropology, though one has to wonder how many times a single person can have their brain chopped up and transplanted in a week. In his first expedition, he is sent to a colony of common garden ants, where he sees that ant society is uncannily similar to that of humans, albeit with ant-like twists. Sure, it's a rigid caste society where automaton-like drones constantly search for and carry food to and around the colony, there are also bars, dances, and funerals. Next, he is sent to a more violent type of ant, one which spends a lot of its time drinking liquor and holding wrestling matches. Finally, he is sent to a colony of farmer ants, where he learns the joys and hardships of raising bug "cattle." And, following this adventure, the book decides to stop, so he gets a happy ending with his girlfriend.

The Ant with the Human Soul starts really strong and slowly declines. As the frontispiece for the book states, Bob Olsen was noted in his prime for his lighthearted approach to sci-fi prose. That shows itself quickly, because even in the face of depression and suicide, there's a pluckiness to the book, where everyone, even the mad scientist, behaves in a sort of golly-gee-gosh manner. This helps the audience forgive the stunning weakness of the book's attempts at hard science explanations, which admittedly may have been something Olsen intended. Olsen is skilled enough at using this tone that when the book's theme starts emerging it doesn't seem to come out of nowhere. Unfortunately, the themes of Ant are where the book kinda shits the bed. After the second ant encounter, it becomes clear that the different species of ants are supposed to represent different social circles of humans. The first ants represent an example of the middle class's conception of a stable society, while the second represents the criminal element. But then, when Dr. De Villa starts describing the farmer ants in the setup for the third incident, Olsen makes it overwhelmingly clear that it's not morality he's meaning to examine, it's race. He says that the criminal ants of the second incident are basically ant black people, while presumably the first group of well-behaved ants are the white ones. Meanwhile, this third group represents the "semi-primitive nomadic races." Bleccchhhh. The fact that the ending tries to claim this whole thing was about the evils of atheism makes it even lamer. While there's plenty of great stuff in the beginning with the improbable science, and the suggestion that Dr. De Villa is, y'know, Satan, it's all discarded in the end in favor of something that makes it all feel like a waste of time.

There's also something that really started bugging me, but in that way that makes me laugh. Dr. De Villa puts a lot of stock into how his exposure of ant behavior will secure him his place in history, but the man already has inter-species brain transplants and a growth and shrink ray. How, in any way, could discovering the secrets of ant social structures add to the scale and possibility implied by inventing things like those? The neurological medicine that could be derived from De Villa's understanding of the brain, to say nothing of how space-altering rays would affect the struggle for resources, is way, way more important than figuring out if ants put their dead in caskets or not. Again, this annoyed me, but the more I thought about it, the more hilarious it became. I guess I don't get it because I'm not a scientist. Anyway: this probably won't be the last ant-related book I feature on here, because I also own a copy of Spiridon, a French philosophical novel about a human-intelligence'd ant, and something called The Ants of Timothy Thummel, which appears to be the Bible, but with ants. Huh.

Armchair Fiction was also kind enough to include a second story in their publication of The Ant with the Human Soul. Keith Laumer's Night of the Trolls is the first novella of his Bolo series, which centered around a series of super-scientific tanks. An astronaut named Jackson awakes from suspended animation to find the world destroyed in a holocaust. He learns of his wife's death, and believes that his son and astronaut unit have also perished. He learns that some of those folk are still alive: one of his fellow astronauts, Toby Mallon, has set himself up as "the Baron," the mysterious dictator of the land that was once Jackson's home city. Mallon has ruled the land so ruthlessly that people have fallen back into superstitions, believing the colossal Bolo tanks he controls are Trolls. (This also lands Mallon the title of "the Trollmaster," which is pretty fucking cool.) It will take all of Jackson's wit to get his hands on one of the Bolos and stop the Baron before he can conquer what's left of civilization.

This was a good one, and not simply good for trash purposes. Night of the Trolls has a punchy and quick pace that's so efficient and effective that it makes one realize how stodgy Ant with the Human Soul really was. In about 70 pages, Laumer is able to bringing an engaging and straightforward plot that actually has some good character scenes. The Bolos themselves, and how they fit into the world Jackson left behind, are interesting enough to merit the sequels the story got. I don't know if I'd feature any other Bolo books on the site, but I will almost certainly be reading them.

Hey, look, you can tell it's good because the review is short and relatively free of spoilers. A lot of the trash material I talk about I talk about rather freely because, well, if this blog is meant to chronicle the unique feelings that stuff gives me, skimping on details is counter-productive. I give spoilers because I'm a bad person. The only out I've given myself on that is that a lot of these are absurdly hard to track down, and so if people want to know what actually fucking happens in them, they can know for themselves. While I'm fine with spoiling some details of The Ant with the Human Soul because I don't really if it's worth your time, I will leave the read of Night of the Trolls to your own discretion. It's not a deep or complex work of fiction, but...check it out. Tackle Ant if you consider yourself a trash-lit master.

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Image Source: Armchair Fiction

Book Club of Desolation #9: Weasels Ripped My Flesh! (2012), by Robert Deis et al.

Even if I was a man, I wouldn't get men. I didn't get men when I did feel like I was a man. That's why I turned out not to be one.

I don't claim to get women, either. I don't claim to get humans. That's why I'm a shitty writer. Well, ordinarily, I would say that. Apparently, there's not great necessity to understand human function to be a good writer. I mean, the business is chiefly based around lying, and I like to think that I'm decent at lying when I do have to say I know people. And that lying, I think, empowers me. And I like the fact that writing gives me infinite power. It gives me the chance to use my imagination and it's meant that exact thing to billions of humans throughout history.

It means that writing has a lot of variety to it. I respect that variety, deeply, and I've tried to read everything. I like a lot of "good" books, and also, as you know, a lot of weird shit. I recently discovered I like some Westerns. I had a chance to read this thing called Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires, which appears to be a political brochure talking about anxiety in Argentina in the '70s which turns into Fantomas fanfiction. The Book Club of Desolation has brought me to a lot of these books, and I started to plan out this month's event, to follow up on the conclusion of Spookyween. I propose thus to the reader a BOOKVEMBER, where the Book Club of Desolation will meet weekly for a month to discuss this great variety in literature. We need to get to something that I never would have checked out before now, because I have mixed feelings about it, even after reading a full volume of it. Get your deodorant ready, bros, because we're diving into the Armpit Slicks--Men's Adventure magazines.

Don't get me wrong, the Men's Adventure genre had pulled at me for sometime, because to be frank, I find that shit hilarious. I've had regrets about passing up 100 Mack Bolans for a dollar at a garage sale. Lord knows that would be a fun piece for this site. And I'll probably end up checking out that Donald Westlake pseudo-James Bond novel at some point. But I will say this, and this is the only time I say it: the lure here is purely an ironic one, or, in more/less pretentious terms, an anthropological one. Most of the content on this site that I appreciate I enjoy unironically. If I'm going to be reading Men's Adventure, though, it has to be because I want to poke fun. For some time, I've known about the original "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" story, which I learned about through the film of the same name. It was convenient of Robert Deis, Josh Alan Friedman, and Wyatt Doyle to entitle this book after that famous story, so that people like me could strike the motherlode with a good intro primer for the Men's Adventure genre. And despite what I may end up saying about this book, I owe all of those fine gentlemen much, because stories like these are valuable and worth preserving. The variety of literature and art is worth preserving if framed in the right context. And yet, also, hanging it out in the air to dry, as it is, for everyone to form their own interpretations--that's important to me too. I guess I should just present this book rather than pass judgment on it--though, incidentally, I will also pass judgment on it.

Usually when I do a short story collection I want to examine each story on its own to the best of my ability. However, there are a lot of stories in this book, and so in general I'll be talking about the book as a whole. There are some common threads between the stories, and the book in turn presents more than just the stories, so it in turn has to be looked at in layers. We'll start with the stories.

I was able to pin down about four basic categories for the stories contained in this book: Killer Creatures, Sociological Studies, Adventure, and Woman-Haters. All of these overlap and interact in some ways, so they're not hard definitions. Killer Creature stories are the namesake of the book and this one has some good ones. It's satisfying to read the original "Weasels" story (which would inspire Zappa who would inspire Schiff), and it's also nice to know that I live in the same universe as a formally published story called "Monkey Madness." These stories probably inspired the wave of animals-gone-berserk movies in the '70s and '80s, like (just off the top of my head) Frogs, Dogs, Strays, Slugs, Grizzly, and Squirm--to say nothing of Jaws. This was seen by some as an opportunity to resurrect the good ol' giant monster flick, leading to movies like Island Claws and Food of the Gods. I'll probably delve into those soon enough with a collection of cryptozoology-themed Men's Adventures put out by the same team. The Killer Creatures are a blast, and it's a good idea to open with one. It drew me even if later elements shoved me back out. Plus, the editors included a master list of all of the animals that have been featured in this kind of story: it included the obvious ones like ants, lions, crocodiles, tigers, sharks...but also anteaters, lemmings, newts, badgers, and iguanas. Excellent.

The Sociological Studies are what they sound like--reports or inside stories about scandalous topics. They vary in quality and, as you may expect have not aged well. Stories about the horrors of Beat culture will be amusing--racism-laden tales bashing Calypso music won't be. I can't properly gauge the lesbian expose stories, of which there are several. These are the literary equivalents of Mondo movies. They are tedious, offensive, and have aged badly, albeit not as badly as some of the other pieces. Have I mentioned this book doesn't support modern values yet...?

The Adventure stories I found to be somewhat boring, though there was a story that was done pretty professionally by Harlan Ellison, shriveled prick through he was. I should say here that if you can imagine the narration from a Something Weird B&W release, you can imagine the prose style of most of the stories in this book. Hardboiled into oblivion. Throw in war stories played straight and you've got me snoozing, and throw in racism and you've got me mad. I don't know what else to say about these ones.

And then we come at last to the Woman Haters. Man, these were a hard sit, but in the trainwreck sort of way. I really had difficulty putting these down even though they were some of the most monstrous stories of the collection--I blame my immunization to such things on having watched so many exploitation movies. Some of these really do give you insight into the sick fucks who were behind a lot of this. I got excited for "Grisly Rites of Hitler's Flesh Stripper" only to be disappointed (when I shouldn't have been) that it was merely an excuse for a nameless, faceless sexy lady to be repeatedly raped and mutilated by a Nazi for x number of pages. While these stories are offensive to basically everyone, sexism is their most prominent issue. And yet there's always something that's compelled me to look into the sick side of our culture, and I know it's not a unique trait. In this case, I don't think I have an explanation for it. I am probably a bad person in my own right.

But, to defend myself somewhat, I do want to step away from the layer of the stories and instead look at the book itself. The editors feature introductions to many of the stories, along with several introductions to the book as a whole--this is also seeded with interviews from some of the guys responsible for the big content of this market, including Mario Puzo. All of this is loaded with a rich history of the genre, showing how fast-moving of a market it was. It's easy for a modern reader to view this material as the Kindle porn market or clickbait "news" sites of the time. And like any sort of "bottom barrel" market, it's an important part of history, because people aren't reading "art," they're reading this stuff. Of course, that won't stop us from writing "art," as well as also writing "this stuff" to pay the bills. Such is the life. Take Mario Puzo for instance: he wrote trash, and yet an adaptation of one of his novels is considered by some to be the best film ever. I'll always walk on the artsy idealistic side of things, but man, do those cynical, realist, "economist-type" writers get the big breaks...

So naturally, the editorial stuff is going to be great for history lovers. The third layer, then, is the art: the team has lovingly reproduced hundreds of vintage covers, pages, and ads from several decades' worth of magazines. This is pure eye candy for fans of the hilarious. Thrill to the things that made your grandparents and great-grandparents hot on the forehead! It's nearly impossible to believe that these images were once printed and sold, and yet more importantly it makes one wonder what will be considered trash-treasure in the future, which we take for granted today?

This is a book where the actual content would fall apart without context. The book itself is so well put together that it's worth getting for the notes and images. It creates a historicity for a genre that we can't take straight anymore--even if the values live on (we need look no further than to our modern politics for that). Deis, Friedman, and Doyle deserve recognition for their work, and to top it all off, Mr. Deis himself signed my copy. If you can survive the horrors of Wanton Witch, you can make it with this one. Try it out if it's your speed. All I can say for now is that I'm hyped for this cryptozoology book.

Bookvember continues next time with a look at English sci-fi...of a very particular brand.

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Image Source: New Texture

TWO New Exciting Releases from Odd Tales of Wonder!!

ODD TALES OF WONDER #2 IS HERE!!!

Odd Tales of Wonder is another project I manage besides the A-List, and I've talked about Issue One on the site before. Issue Two is just as awesome, featuring stories about cannibals, spaceships, and pterodactyls! You really don't want to miss out. Get it in print and on Kindle, and receive three wonderful stories from returning contributors Jonathan Huisman, Rogaard Montieff, and Zachary Rouse, along with two excellent tales from newcomers Patrick Huisman and Katherine Avalon, plus a piece of my own. Check it out!

And that's not all. Odd Tales Productions is pleased to announce that we are performing an experiment in book publishing. Katherine Avalon's short story "Suicide Cult in the World of Cannibals" is featured in Odd Tales #2, but Avalon has also written a screenplay, entitled The Fires of '16: Reign of Emperor Tromble, which serves as the basis for our test. And it's a weird, weird book--to quote the Amazon description...

In this screenplay, Katherine Avalon combines the tastes and stylings of exploitation filmmaking with political parody to weave a story you won't forget...and will hopefully never have to experience! A good read for fans of the Bruno Matteis and John Waterses of this world. Billionaire Woodrew Tromble commences his quest to become the greatest man on Earth...and all humanity pays the price for his terrifying success. Avalon asks the question of how dictators are made while also probing deep into the psychedelic and sleazy underbelly of the human mind!

If you can read between the lines of the name Woodrew Tromble you will see the relevance this book carries today. Check it out HERE on Amazon in Print and on Kindle!

(Hey, you know what I just realized? Books and movies are expensive! But you can help me review stuff by buying stuff and funding my endless online purchases. And as always I do take requests. No shame here...)

ODD TALES OF WONDER #1 IS OUT!!

Hey everyone! In addition to running this site, I also run a fiction magazine called Odd Tales of Wonder! And our very first issue is finally available!

Odd Tales is a pulp magazine for the modern age, featuring an "anything-goes" approach to plot and convention, while still delivering top-notch stories. The pulps of old told tales of horror, heroes, criminals, and broken hearts, and that's what I and five other writers are offering to you. Brian Furman has a story about death called "Stooging"; Jonathan Huisman tells a story of doomed lives in the form of "Clay Lovers"; Rogaard Montieff talks about the monstrosity of frustration in "Fifteen 2 Fifteen 4"; Zack Rouse gives us the first parts of his play Nestled in the Shade of Jackalberry Tree, which is nicely political; James Ruben creeps us the fuck out with "No Explanation"; and I tell the first adventure of New Pulp heroine Bloody Mary in "The Blood Avenger." This awesome first issue can be purchased on Amazon in both print and Kindle formats.

While I'm talking about other projects, I'd like to once again shamelessly advertise my new book, graciously published by Ramble House, whose books have and will populate many adventures of the Book Club of Desolation.

Tail of the Lizard King is one of 'em books what got two books in 'em! In this case, it has Tail of the Lizard King and Kaliwood. The former tells the story of Sinthia, a pot-addicted factory worker who kills her boss, and consequently joins a cult to get what she wants in life. Kaliwood concerns dying filmmaker Karl Denim, whose desire to be remembered as the world's greatest director will take him to India and beyond--to the lair of dinosaurs. If that sounds in anyway enjoyable, you can get the volume HERE from Ramble House and HERE from Amazon. I would like to point out that the publisher does offer a discounted etext version, the only etext available. Whether you love it or hate it, please leave it a review on Amazon! Preferably the same goes for Odd Tales.

Thank you so much for your support--with these publications and with the A-List. I love you all, and I hope you are having an excellent day.

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Odd Tales of Wonder #1 Cover Copyright © 2016 Adam Bezecny
Tail of the Lizard King Cover Art Copyright © 2016 Gavin L. O'Keefe 

Book Club of Desolation #3: Blood Feast (1963), by H.G. Lewis

Blood Feast may not have been the first trash movie I watched in this life. That honor goes to the ever-amusing I Eat Your Skin. But it was just a few short years after my first trembling, awkward encounter with the subgenre that would define my entire rueful, piteous existence that Blood Feast became another famous first. It was my first naive intimation with trash literature. While I only recently embraced the idea that trash literature could really exist, a hunger was born in me on those lazy high school days where nothing seemed bigger than being harassed by my teachers for reading a book with a cover and title like that. In those days, trash movies filled me with a vim and vigor that has maybe faded a little. Day jobs, bills, and mental instability have caught up with me, and now it seems like there is so little time--or energy--for movies. But there is a new chase now, and Blood Feast: The Novel started it all. My descent into trash books has just begun, and just as Blood Feast: The Movie is a great starting destination for the fecund road trip of cinema's most grotesque and bizarre, Blood Feast: The Novel will be show you that your local library can host sideshows too. In H.G. Lewis' prose, you'll be prepared for greater guardians of the deeps, like Ron Haydock. And from there, you'll maybe--just maybe--be safe in making the jump to Harry Stephen Keeler...

The plot of the Blood Feast book is essentially the same as the Blood Feast movie. "Essentially" being the key word. Fuad Ramses is still getting up to the ol' sacrifice-body-parts-to-Ishtar racket, and the police are still chasing him as he schemes to host his deadly Egyptian Feast. The book knows that you know the movie. And so that's why Blood Feast decides not to focus on the plot of Blood Feast at all, instead building intrigue in the world in which the film was set. That's why we spend a solid couple of pages learning about how the police chief killed his brother by accidentally stabbing him with a heroin needle, or how one of Ramses' murder victims once employed a secretary whose boobs were so big that she couldn't use a typewriter. (I assume she was Liliana "Chesty Morgan" Wilczkowska, taking a rest from crushing gangsters' skulls.) By the time we reach twenty pages, we've encountered so many sub-subplots and characters that it reaches DC Universe levels of continuity management. Just as every sentence is backstory, every line of dialogue is a joke of "that kind" of '60s humor:

"'What's that?' Squigg said quickly.

"'My mother's wart,' Thornton said uncomfortably. 'She had one like yours. She had it taken care of.'

"'What's wrong with a wart, Mr. Thordown?'

"'Thornton, Mrs. Squagg.'

"'Squigg, Mr. Thordown. Get it right.'

"'Yes, ma'am.'"

Name mispronunciation! Subtler and funnier here than it ever was in Godzilla '98.

Or how about the list of evil books Fuad Ramses keeps on his shelf: Wyer's De Prestigious Doemonum, Leloyer's History of Spectres, and...Voegtle's Dennis the Menace. (Wait, who's Voegtle?)

There is a new central plot in this one. Thornton and the other police spend a great deal of the book pursuing not Fuad Ramses, but a Mr. Karl Snarling, Cat Hangman Extraordinaire. Indeed, Snarling has committed the horrible crime of putting a poor pussy (a literal cat, I should say) to the gallows, and for that, society must punish him. Never mind the insane cultist with a machete, who was an actual character in the movie

Even as the police ignore Fuad Ramses, we learn much more about him than we ever could have previously hoped for. Fuad Ramses is elevated to the level of pulp villains gods that also hosts Doc Savage's John Sunlight or The Shadow's Voodoo Master. You see, years ago in Egypt, little Fuad's father was a drug dealer for Sphinx Cigarettes, which offer such "brands" as Half-and-Hashish and Cocaine-Cocakola. Fuad was addicted to these sickly cigs for much of his youth, and because the drugs in Sphinxes fuck up your blood pressure, all of his hair fell out. Thus he was known to the criminal underworld as "the Elliptical Egyptian," for the shape of his head. Evidently his floury hair in the movie was a wig, then. In addition to murderously worshipping Ishtar and being a drug dealer, Ramses is also a practical joker, though he pursues these "jokes" out of pure belligerence. The pranks range from scaring housewives with fake ghosts to throwing smokebombs into crowded movie theaters. All in the name of being eeeevil. It is mind-blowing. Indeed, Blood Feast is a pulp novel of the highest caliber, and that exposes a deeper level of its beauty...

Blood Feast serves as a fascinating glimpse into a fascinating man. This is the mind of the man who changed trash-horror and exploitation forever. A mind nourished on the weirdest of yesteryear's pulps, mixed with carny nostalgia and a cartoon sense of humor. The sort of stuff that cannot be properly conveyed on film, not for the sort of money Herschell Gordon was working with. Lensed through a paperback market that barred no content as long as there were books on the shelf and cash flowing in. This wasn't the last of Lewis' expeditions into the world of printed fiction, but sadly later entries were toned down. The director also penned novelizations of his ludicrous Two Thousand Maniacs, as well as the less entertaining duo of Color Me Blood Red and Moonshine Mountain, before reverting strictly to filmmaking guide books. I've yet to find copies of the latter two novels, even if they, like the Maniacs book, don't stray as much from the source material as Blood Feast. If you've got 'em, I'll buy 'em...!

Blood Feast: The Novel reminds one of the essential truth of trash's beauty--it contains splinters of the creator's soul. Stream-of-consciousness has never been purer or stranger, because the consciousness in question has already proved its owner's talent on film. It's still hard to believe this one exists, all those years after high school. Let it take you away.

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Image Source: Amazon

Open Call for Odd Tales of Wonder Magazine!

Hello, everyone. As I've shared recently on Facebook and Tumblr, I'm starting up a new fiction magazine, called Odd Tales of Wonder! We're looking for stories featuring memorable central protagonists (heroes or villains) whose adventures or misadventures might be fun to continue in future stories. It's inspired greatly by the pulps of old, of which many will soon form subjects for future visits to the Book Club of Desolation. Pretty much any genre is acceptable, as is any length--no poetry or nonfiction for now. To get a full outline of how you may fit in, check out our website, or email us at oddtalesofwonder@gmail.com. You can also like us on the Book of Faces.

You'd be doing us a huge favor by passing the word onto writing friends as well. Every time you share, you get a Platonic astral hug from me!

We look forward to hearing from you! I'd love to see what sort of strangeness you can dream up.