The Devil’s Heart (Devil’s series #2)

The Devil's Heart, by William W. Johnstone

No month stated, 1983  Zebra Books

I actually loved the book. Even though the missed spelled words but what author don’t and the grammar was ok. 

 

-- From an actual Goodreads review 

Eleven years ago I read The Devil’s Kiss, the first volume in the Devil’s series by William W. Johnstone, and at the end of my review I promised that I’d move on to this second volume once I’d sufficiently recovered. Well, it didn’t take me that long, and it’s mostly because I read other Johnstone novels in the interim, but I’m finally now recovered enough to read this second volume of the series. 

And boy, I could’ve just as easily read The Devil’s Kiss again, because William Johnstone writes the exact same story! In fact, he even uses the same character names throughout, even though these characters are the children of the protagonists in the previous book! What’s more frustrating and confusing is that Johnstone bides his – and the reader’s – time for 300+ pages, not picking up the pace until around pg 228…and the novel is only 382 pages long. 

Actually, I shouldn’t say “only.” As with any other Zebra horror novel from the ‘80s, The Devil’s Heart is way too long; as I’ve speculated before, there had to have been some sort of requirement authors had to follow for this publisher. I mean it becomes painfully clear that Johnstone has an ending in mind, but has to waste nearly 300 pages until he can get there. If over a hundred pages were cut out, this would be a much better novel; I kid you not when I say that so many pages are repetitive, with characters worrying how or when something will happen, and some divine or evil force telling them to wait, and they wait, and then it’s the next day, and they wonder “when will it happen?” again, and the divine or evil force tells them to wait…I mean over and over, throughout the entire book! 

To get it out of the way posthaste, I read Johnstone’s horror novels mainly to see how perverted they are, and I’ll say up front that The Devil’s Heart, while sleazy and lurid, is nowhere in the league of The Nursery. And it’s also not as action-packed. The Devil’s Heart is seriously let down by the aforementioned stalling, which goes on, literally, for the entire book. From page one we know that Whitfield, the small town that factored in the first book of this loose “series,” The Devil’s Kiss, will be destroyed…and we’re reminded throughout the book that its destruction is imminent…and 300+ pages later we’re still waiting for it…and then it finally happens like on the very final pages. 

In the interim, we’re treated to a lot of sleaze and filth, but it’s muted when compared to The Nursery. This one is more along the lines of its predecessor, but even The Devil’s Kiss had more going on than The Devil’s Heart, mainly because this one retreads a lot of stuff from the previous book. It’s really as much a rewrite as it is a sequel. That said, I was happy to see that Johnstone slightly whittled back on the “Satanists stink because they don’t bathe, but forget about that while I tell you how hot their women are” schtick. Then again, we are told that they “reek” at points, so it’s still there…just not as OTT as it was in the previous book. 

So what’s it about? Well, it’s a little over twenty years after The Devil’s Kiss, which as we’ll recall took place in the late 1950s. Don’t worry if you didn’t read that book, though, as Johnstone essentially refers to it throughout the entirety of this book and tells us what happened. And the characters from that book are back – even hero Sam Balon, who died in the denouement of the previous book, is back in this one, as a deus ex machina force who shows up to voice vague warnings, suggestions, and other such stuff, appearing as a “ghostly mist” and basically telling all of his old pals they’re going to die in nine days. 

This includes Jane Ann, the young woman Sam fell in love with in the previous book, who now is in her 40s, married to a doctor named Tony King (a Satanist, like everyone else in town), and mother to a 24 year old named Sam, who is the hero of this book, and also of course the son of Sam Balon – so, yes, “Sam” is the star of this book, but it’s not the same Sam as the previous book. 

Warming to his theme, Johnstone has another progeny of Sam Balon, Nydia…who is named after her mother, the Nydia of the previous book…who also appears in this book, but as “Roma!” So the Nydia of this book is not the same Nydia as the previous one…but the old Nydia is here, but has a different name. Not sure why Johnstone didn’t just name the new Nydia “Roma,” but whatever. I’d say he was going for some sort of thematic content, but if so he didn’t execute it very well. 

For reasons of laziness, the “Sam” I refer to in this review is the new Sam, who presumably will be the hero of the next two books in the series (The Devil’s Touch and The Devil’s Cat). He’s basically the same as the previous version, with the exception that this one, obviously, is too young to have fought in Korea. But he’s a former Ranger and saw a lot of action around the globe; unlike his dad, he’s not a minister, but he’s plumb curious about Christianity. 

Then there’s Nydia, a raven-haired beauty like her mom…who, we’ll recall, is an ancient witch who has been granted immortal beauty by the devil and who spent the entire previous book trying (and succeeding) to bed Sam Balon. Well for the past 20 some years she’s hooked up with another immortal black magician, Falcon (who replaces the previous book’s character Black – but don’t worry, there’s another Black in this one), and they have a big estate up in the wilds of French Canada. Unlike her mom, this Nydia is not only a sort of good two-shoes, but a virgin to boot. 

Sam and Nydia meet each other in the first pages; Sam is visiting French Canada with his army pal, Black…yep, same name as the character in the previous book, but this Black is Nydia’s brother, and also the son of Sam Balon and Roma (ie the old Nydia). These characters all basically repeat the scenarios the previous versions of the characters experienced in The Devil’s Kiss. And meanwhile the survivors from the previous book, still living in Whitfield, also encounter the same tribulations as in the previous book, to a lesser extent – for the most part, the Whitfield characters only appear infrequently, and, you guessed it, their appearances are relegated to, “How much longer until the town is wiped out and we die?” 

The Satanists here are typical of those in Johnstone’s other novels; only in the Whitfield scenes do we see a few of the cultists, and they lack the sodomitic fervor of the Satanic reprobates in The Nursery. But despite which the cult members are worse than Satan himself – for, whether unintentionally or not, Johnstone gives us a Lucifer who is prone to yell in frustration, “Can’t I make a joke?” before huffing and puffing about the Almighty. 

Curiously, Satan and God are supporting characters in The Devil’s Heart, and there are several scenes where they will argue with each other. But the thing is, both figures are reduced in their appearances; Satan, as mentioned, comes off like a pompous blowhard, and God comes off as vague and absent-minded. It’s very bizarre, because Johnstone’s depictions of the figures do not correllate with the figures as they appear to their followers – the vague-minded God demands unwilling obedience from his flock, and Satan demands torture and vile acts from his (though, despite us often being reminded that it’s “acceptable to Satan,” the devil isn’t very crazy about homosexuality). 

The God-Satan arguments are just another way for Johstone to pad the pages. Satan insists that God made a promise back in the first volume that Whitfield could become Satan’s one day, but here God tells the devil that the place will be wiped out in nine days. “My team against yours,” Satan challenges, which should be all the indication you need that this isn’t Milton. And yet it seems evident given the goofiness of these exchanges that William Johnstone is not taking the book or himself seriously – he pulled the same trick in Wolfsbane. 

If you look at The Devil’s Heart as an intentional comedy, it’s a great success. For one, despite being a ghost, Sam Balon is able to interract with people and even write them letters; there’s a hilarious bit where he sends his son a handrwitten note from beyond, in which Sam Balon states that “it’s difficult for me to write,” and then goes on to write a four-page letter! 

This extends to the prose style, which trades off between actual quality writing and clunkers like, “Her ears had been listening” and “The feeling of foreboding suddenly became much more intense.” Or even, “Utilizing a hand-held handy-talky.” What’s weird is that there are flashes of actual introspection amid the banality, but Johnstone never sees it all the way through, either due to lack of awareness or lack of ability. Or, perhaps, lack of care – it’s debatable how much he cared for the horror genre. 

And you know how in horror novels where people take forever to realize they’re in a horror novel? Johnstone takes that conceit and runs with it for the entire friggin’ book…folks, from the get-go Sam and Nydia are having encounters with the beyond, from Sam receiving ghostly visits and messages from his father (and even the archangel Michael), and Nydia coming to grips with both her mental powers and the fact that her mom is an ancient witch…and despite this, the two continue wondering “How did that happen??” throughout the damn book!! Or worse yet, each of them will get divine flashes of knowledge – which is to say deus ex machina exposition – and then they’ll be like, “I won’t even ask how I knew that.” 

Really, it’s laughable given how stupid it is. And given the sophomoric nature of God and the devil, one wonders what these two are even fighting for! To his credit, Johnstone has the Satanic figureheads Roma and Falcon asking these very same things…but any profundities are glossed over quickly as soon thereafter we’ll have Falcon ramming his “inhumanly large” dick into some unwilling female, or Roma will be conspiring to bed Sam so she can sire a demon child through him, even though Roma knows the birthing of the demon will kill her. Hey, maybe this is where Danzig got the idea for the Samhain song “The Birthing!” 

Another Johnstone schtick is to have characters act polite and normal to each other, while secretly hating each other or knowing they are divinely-opposed enemies…yet pretending that nothing amiss is going on. This happens a lot in The Devil’s Heart, particularly with Sam being cordial with Roma while thinking “evil bitch!” to himself and the like. And Roma being nice and friendly while wondering, “I wonder if he has his father’s cock?” (Of course she eventually discovers that he does!) This is all well and good, but Johnstone does it for like the entire novel – people pretending everything’s normal to one another and questioning how and why all these strange things are happening, even though they know they’re in the middle of a war between God and the devil and are on opposite sides. 

Oh, and not content with Roma and Falcon being immortal black magicians, they’re also vampires! This isn’t even followed through on, other than either of them randomly displaying their fangs and drinking some blood. This also raises the question of how Roma could give birth to Black and Nydia – and, indeed, why Nydia is of a different age than Sam if she was also conceived by Sam Balon – but Johnstone as ever doesn’t concern himself with the partticulars. 

There are periodic sequences that recall the wildness of The Nursery, which by the way is probably my favorite horror novel, if only due to how wild and depraved it is. Especially a bit where Sam and Nydia with her “full breasts” get it on, in full-on sleaze detail, Sam taking his half-sister’s virginity…but then after they’re constantly plagued with doubt, that they’ve sinned in some way…leading to a crazy bit where Satan intervenes as a test and makes ‘em super horny for each other, complete with Nydia fondling herself as she pleads for Sam to take her, and Sam screaming, “Fight it!” 

But then there is grimness as well, and out of the blue stuff at that – like when Falcon rapes Nydia (off-page), after which Sam makes love to her but has to be gentle because she “hurts.” This is understandable, given that we’re often informed of how inhumanly large Falcon’s dick is. There’s also a lot of grimness in the finale, in which Jane Ann endures the fate she’s been awaiting the entire novel – frequent, constant scenes of the ghostly Sam Balon telling her that her end will be violent – and she’s raped by all and sundry in the town, multiple times, and then crucified. Again, absolutely no reason is given for why Jane Ann has to so suffer for her own (and Sam Balon’s) salvation, given how goofy and unserious God is. Imagine a soldier going off to die in a war that Kamala Harris started, and one might understand the pointlessness of the sacrifice.  

We get that recurring bit of “God’s Warrior” kicking ass on full-auto, but it’s muted compared to The Devil’s Kiss; though Sam uses his dad’s gun, a Tommy subgun, which is “mysteriously” left for him in his room. Cue another of those “How did that get there?” conversations between the constantly-befuddled Sam and Nydia. 

Speaking of our heroes, the novel ends with Sam acting as their minister, just as his father married himself to Jane Ann (again, the book basically retreads its predescessor throughout), and also Nydia is pregnant – but the question is whether it will be Sam’s child or a demon child from Falcon. After stalling for the entire novel, Johnstone brings in a ticking clock finale where Sam’s seed must beat Falcon’s seed, before it’s too late. 

Humorously, Johnstone has stalled for so long that he rushes through the stuff he’s been promising for the entire friggin’ book; he so runs out of time that the old folks from The Devil’s Kiss, the ones who stayed in Whitfield and are told in the opening of this book that they’ll die in nine days…well, their entire fate is summarily rushed through, and Jane Ann’s happens off-page, though we see her in the afterlife with Sam. A scene which, despite it all, actually succeeded in bringing a tear to my eye, as did the off-hand comment that God, after Jane Ann has suffered and still demands to forgive her torturers, knows that “He had chosen well.”

Johnstone ends on a cliffhanger, with a normal baby born to Sam and Nydia, but meanwhile an eleven year-old girl they’ve saved from Satanic sodomy (Janet) is an undercover demon or somesuch, and who knows what might happen next. The story continues in The Devil’s Touch, which I’ll read a lot sooner than it took me to read this one. 

Overall, The Devil’s Heart moved fairly well for its near 400 pages, despite its constant stalling…like a Pavlov’s Dog, I kept reading for another dose of sleaze and perversion, and while the book never reached the heights (or depths) of The Nursery, or even The Devil’s Kiss, it kept me entertained, and it made me want to read the following installment.

Rest In Agony

Rest In Agony, by Paul W. Fairman

No month stated, 1967  Lancer Books

(Original Monarch Books edition 1963)

A few years before he gave us the sleazy masterpiece that was the Coffy novelization (also published by Lancer Books), prolific author Paul W. Fairman turned out this novella-length horror yarn…which, per the copyright page, was first published in shorter form in 1963 by Monarch Books, under the pseudonym “Ivar Jorgensen.” Featuring a ridiculously naïve narrator, an evil Satanic cult, and a cameo by none other than Jesus Christ Himself, Rest In Agony couldn’t be better suited for this Very Special Glorious Trash Christmas Day Post. 

That original Monarch edition must’ve been real short, as this Lancer version is only 230 pages long, with some big ol’ print. Sorry, “Easy Eye” print. The novel is essentially a novella, featuring only a handful of characters and a basic plot that features good against evil. The only curious thing is when it takes place; narrator Hal buries a few clues here and there that the events he is about to tell us occurred a long time ago (“I still remember it clearly to this day,” etc), so either Hal’s in some fictional future and telling us about something that happened way back in 1967 (or 1963, if you’re going with the original Monarch edition), or the events of Rest In Agony occur much earlier in the Twentieth Century. 

To make this even more curious, Fairman gives us no topical details in the novel; it takes place in a bland “Smalltown, USA” setting with zero mentions of popular culture. About the most we learn is that people can take buses to a nearby city, and there are department stores to shop in, so the idea I got was that the novel occurred somewhere in the 1930s. But then, given the lack of any details, it could really take place at just about any time – this is not the Paul Fairman who gave us the no-sleazy-stone-unturned masterwork that was Coffy, unfortunately. This version of Fairman is a barebones, meat-and-potatoes writer at best. And whereas his Coffy was X rated, Rest In Agony would be rated PG at most. 

Further giving the impression that this takes place in a more innocent time than the swinging ‘60s, Rest In Agony is narrated by the most impossibly naïve and pearl-clutching protagonist, Hal, who is 21 in the story but acts more like he’s even younger…or perhaps even older, as he’s a total fusspot, morally outraged, and altogether prudish wuss. Worse yet, the dude’s in love with his sister, 18 year-old Lisa, and Hal informs us that he’s lately been trying to subdue the dawning realization that his feelings for Lisa are a little more than sibling-based. 

“My uncle died in agony.” So Hal opens his tale, dropping a few of those vague clues that all this was so long ago, and we learn that the uncle is Amby, a wealthy gaddabout who is screaming and dying on his deathbed as the novel begins, all while Hal and Lisa sit down below and listen, waiting for the agony to end. But on the day of the funeral, Hal is home alone and the phone rings – and it’s the voice of Uncle Amby, begging Hal for help. 

The supernatural aspect does not return for some time, and per the horror template Hal tries to shrug this off as a hallucination or whatnot – at least, no one will believe him. Then there’s this business about “The Book of Ambrose,” a book Uncle Amby supposedly wrote, at least according to a local sports reporter named Hugh Payson who keeps bugging Hal and telling him he’s doing a paper on the wealthy and famous Ambrose Sampson, and this book of his would sure be a big help for his research. 

There’s also a lot of stuff about dreams; folks, Hal sets a precendent for a narrator who sleeps the most in a book that I’ve yet read on here. No joke, practically ever chapter ends with Hal telling us he’s going to bed, or just about to fall asleep, or even being dosed into unconsciousness and voyaging again into the Satanic palace of pain (where pain is pleasure)…I mean the guy certainly gets his rest in the book. 

The dreams are also fueled by the wanton carnality to be found in the Book of Ambrose; Hal finds this handrwitten journal in Uncle Amby’s room, and reads it in a daze – it’s “filth,” is all our prudish narrator tells us, and it serves to make him realize that there was a wholly different side to the kindly, wealthy uncle Hal knew: in reality, Ambrose Sampson was a thrall of Satan, taking part in a host of vile and horrific rituals (none of which are described at all). 

Hal eventually lets Lisa read the diary, and she too is shocked by it, but she’s more understanding than Hal and suspects there might be more to the story than Hal thinks, and also Hal can’t help but noting how hot and beautiful she is and stuff. Just when the hints of incest become too much to bear, Hal and Lisa are informed that Lisa isn’t really Hal’s sister; she was really the unwanted child of some chick Uncle Amby knew, and Hal’s folks took the baby girl in and raised her as their own, never telling her or Hal…until now! 

Well, all that taken care of, Hal and Lisa are free to go at it…though, again, this is not the author who just a few years later would give us Coffy. There’s some kissing and heavy petting and zero description, and zero sex, but Hal and Lisa sure are hankering for it. All told, this entire revelation that Lisa isn’t really Hal’s sister is wonky at best, and given the brevity of the novel you wonder why the whole “I thought Lisa was my sister” scenario was even included. I mean it only serves to make the narrator look like a prudish wuss who has incestual designs on his sister. 

He’s also stupid; it wouldn’t take a genius to figure that this sports reporter guy might not be totally on the level. Anyway, Hal and his friend (who happens to be Lisa’s boyfriend, but the character is so laughably immaterial to the plot that you wonder why he was even included) hop on a bus to go to a neighboring town to check out a store that Uncle Amby did business with…a store where one of Satan’s minions works, a hotstuff babe who runs the cosmetics stand! 

I did appreciate how Fairman made it clear that Satan’s throngs aren’t always like bigwigs or famous people or whatnot, but come on! A sports reporter and a perfume sales lady; surely we are on the lower rungs of Satanic evil. It gets even lower than that; Fairman works in a “rats” angle, where red-eyed rats with keen intelligence begin to populate Hal’s nightmares and show up at odd times…this hit on a personal note because I’ve been drafted into part-time, unpaid rat catching this past year, thanks to my wife’s friggin’ garden. I catch them in a live bait cage, and they’ve ranged from “you’d be a cute little thing if it wasn’t for that damn long tail” to “Oh my living God I had no idea rats could get that big!” 

Well anyway, the way these things go, Lisa is captured, held as bait (perhaps in a live bait cage) until Hal turns over that damn Book of Amrbose. Oh, and the sports reporter reveals himself to be Satan’s Representative…sounds like an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that never was. For once Hal shows some insight when he asks Hugh why he had to take Lisa, given that Hal had already agreed to hand over the damn book…well, it’s because ol’ Satan’s Representative got a look at young Lisa, and now has the hellish hots for her. 

Hal spends the final quarter either sleeping, being knocked out, or experiencing things is a drugged daze. And also, apparently, getting laid – courtesy hotstuff Margo Danning, Hugh Payson’s sort-of Satanic commander in chief. She lures the addle-headed Hal to the ways of the “Prince,” entailing slightly risque parts where Hal witnesses Satanists having orgies and whatnot…all of it written in a very vague, obsfucated style. 

Meanwhile Lisa is there, but to her this opulent place of decadence is really a tacky dump, with white walls and no furniture; the implication is that all Hal sees is only in his mind, and his mind has been subverted by the devil. And also Hal, we are incessantly informed, is too “weak” to fight back – and we’re told this by the friggin ghost of his uncle, who pops up infrequently to gab with Lisa about how pathetic and weak Hal is…all while Hal is lying right there and listening to them! Soon it becomes clear that Lisa is the true hero of the tale, but Hal is the one telling the story. It is Lisa who has the power of pure spirit that cannot be touched by Satan, as memorably demonstrated when Hugh Payson tries to tempt her during a Satanic orgy…and then the heavens open…and Jesus Himself comes down to announce to Lisa how proud He is of her! (And yes, Fairman follows tradition and capitalizes the “He,” and I’ve followed suit.) 

Now I was of course reminded of that part in The Mind Masters #3 where God answered the hero’s prayer…but, as it turns out, Fairman has more up his sleeve. (No spoilers, but Hal for once gets smart and realizes it’s all Satan’s last, most desperate trick.) There’s no action finale; indeed, the finale is pretty lame, with the villains vanishing and also a few of them turning into rats…because meanwhile we’ve learned those red-eyed rats are in reality Satanists who have displeased the Prince and thus have been turned into rodents. But otherwise it’s a great cult to join, I’m sure, with lots of fringe benefits. 

Here in the finale we get one, uh, final reminder that all this was long ago; Hal tells us that “in future” he would always see Lisa this way, as the proud young woman who literally stood up to Satan. Oh, and as for Lisa’s dimwitted boyfriend, the stooge is so immaterial to the plot that the book ends with him still not finding out that Hal and Lisa aren’t really siblings; indeed, the guy spends the entire final quarter off-page, and is only mentioned again because Fairman presumably remembers him at the last moment. 

All told, Rest In Agony is a somewhat fun if overly stilted and melodramatic bit of ‘60s Satanic Panic, not nearly as sleazy or lurid as it would have been if it had been published a decade later. I have no idea how this edition differs from the original 1963 printing, but overall I’d say the novel was passable if ultimately forgettable. And the cover art reminds me of the Berkley editions of Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood! 

Merry Christmas!

Satan’s Child

Satan’s Child, by Peter Saxon

No month stated, 1968  Magnum/Lancer Books

Peter Saxon was a house name used by several British authors; the name is most associated with The Guardians, a swinging ‘60s horror-action series that was much loved by Curt Purcell of The Groovy Age Of Horror. Twenty years ago when I was a regular reader of Curt’s site, I went out and picked up a few of those Guardians books, but boy it appears they have become quite scarce and pricey these days; the same goes for the non-series Peter Saxon books, of which Satan’s Child is one. 

According to the Vault of Evil forum, this version of Peter Saxon was an author named William McNeilly, who turned out a few horror paperbacks, all of which are well-regarded by the Vaulters, with this one in particular seeming to be their favorite. Now that I’ve read this fast-moving horror pulp, I can agree with them; Satan’s Child is a very entertaining read, hitting a lot of high points in its 200-page runtime. 

Seemingly taking place in the 1700s, Satan’s Child is a supernatural-themed revenge thriller, like a Hammer take on Death Wish. But this isn’t a simple “kill my enemies” type of revenge yarn; it’s a “I’ll turn myself into a bull and sodomize my enemy’s wife with my two-foot-long dick” type of yarn. So yeah, this one’s really out there – and seems even more so, given the formal, almost omniscient tone McNeilly tells the story in. 

The novel takes place in rural Scotland, for the most part, and one must be prepared to wade through a lot of painful “Scots” dialog that would even give Irvine Welsh pause. When I see stuff like this, I’m reminded why my ancestors came to America. (Or maybe it was Ireland they left; no one seems to know or care.) This is a Scotland just barely out of the Middle Ages, of backwards villagers and deep-rooted superstitions, the type of people who would eagerly burn a woman for being a “witch.” 

This is how the novel begins, with an attractive young woman named Elspet Malcolm being dragged naked to the fire pit, her husband Magnus dutifully whipping her as women watch from the windows of their homes, commenting on the young woman’s “diddies.” Also watching are Elspet’s children: Iain, 13, and Morag, 11. The man whipping Elspet is not their father; Magnus Malcolm is the bastard’s name, a local who has brought Elspet and her two children from a neighboring town, and now he’s about to burn her for being a witch. 

We are given vague detail that Elspet might have been a little “friendly” with some of the men in the village, and this has put her in the cross hairs of Magnus and the village women, who have used the handy ruse of accusing her of witchcraft to get rid of her. McNeilly does not shy in the gruesome details here, complete with the TMI note that Elspet soils herself in her fear, and the horrors continue when the shell-shocked children go home and decide to run away…only for Magnus to come home and stop them, attempting to rape young Morag…before Iain comes along to defend his little sister with an axe. 

A curious note is that Magnus calls Morag a “spawn of Satan,” but Morag soon drops out of the narrative and it is Iain who grows up to be an adept of the Left Hand Path. Presumably Iain is the titular Satan’s Child, not Morag, but methinks McNeilly knew what he was doing here. At any rate we flash forward some unspecified time – it’s many years later and Iain is now an adult, but he still is treated like a young man, so I’m assuming we’re like 15 years or so out. When we meet Iain again he’s in the Himalayas, in the presence of the Masters of the Cult, where he is about to become an Adept of the Eleventh Degree. 

After a druggy initiation ritual, in which Iain is to have sex with a girl and slice her throat during the act – a scene played more for shock than sleaze – Iain finds himself magically transported back to Scotland, where he now is a powerful mage. Whether Iain actually killed the girl – or even had sex with her – is something our hero debates for a hot second before getting on to the business at hand: doling out supernatural vengeance to the townspeople who killed his mother, “so many years ago.” 

From here Satan’s Child follows what the Vault of Evilers refer to as a “vignette approach,” which is in fact a great description of how McNeilly tells his tale. As I’ve found is common with horror fiction, Satan’s Child doesn’t so much follow a protagonist as he or she goes about his or her business, but instead goes from one character to another – more accurately, one victim to another – as he or she suffers his or her horrific fate. 

The problem is that McNeilly has not properly set up any of the townspeople in the opening sequence. We only meet a few of them – Magnus, of course, and the “pricker” (aka the witchfinder), and a few of the women – but none of them are really brought to life so that we may hate them as much as Iain Malcolm does, so that we may lust for their violent demise as much as he does. This I felt was the ultimate problem with Satan’s Child. 

Another thing is that the characters are fairly boring, because they’re all simple townsfolk living in backwards 1700s Scotland. Regardless, Mcneilly displays a vicious imagination that goes in really bizarre places; in the first “vignette,” Iain turns himself into a woman (how very modern!) so as to sow a jealous riff between a husband and wife, leading to an almost EC Comics denouement. 

Even crazier is next; as mentioned above, Iain turns himself into a bull, and allows himself to be “found” by one of his targets, a man who sells and breeds cows and whatnot. There’s a crazy bit of cow-sex-exploitation here that goes into the realms of bestiality because the reader knows the bull is really Iain, and he literally fucks a cow to death, first chasing the poor girl around the pen and then slamming his two-and-a-half-foot dick into her, to the extent that it ruptures the poor animal’s heart! 

As one will note, Iain’s goal isn’t just to kill his victims, but to make them suffer psychologically as well. And spiritually, too; the pricker suffers in this regard, as he’s moved on to Paris and has left behind his rural backwoods witchfinder days. This sequence is masterfully written because it’s another indication that our hero is a bit too driven; essentially Iain works with a lower-level left hand pather, and the two run a caper on the pricker, posing as government agents who need the man’s old skills to get a witch to confess – and of course, after the pricker has crushed the poor girl’s fingers and whatnot, he finds out who she really is. A nice twisting of the blade on Iain’s part, but again it lacks much kick because we weren’t given sufficient time to hate the pricker’s guts at the start of the book. 

But this “vignette approach” continues through the breezily-written book…breezily, that is, save for the painful “Scots” dialog we are occasionally assailed with, not to mention the author’s occasional tendency to lecture us from his high horse. But I guess that’s to be expected from a British pulp writer of yore; they just couldn’t help themselves. 

There’s a more elaborate setup where Iain returns to the village and starts up an actual coven, leading to a crazy bit of one guy wearing the skin of another, gradually being crushed to death by the drying skin, Iain killing two of his prey for the price of one. Here McNeilly brings in a new character, a woman who has also come to the village and stays to herself, but employs several of the locals. 

Meanwhile Iain shows off his occult mastery, transforming himself into various animals and killing off more targets, before ultimately setting his sights on his main goal: his stepfather, Magnus Malcolm, who is still alive – and who has remarried, his new wife about to have a child. Here the author leaves no question that Iain Malcolm has gone too far to the dark side, as he plots to kill the baby – only to find himself in a war of magic with a white witch who is determined to save the child’s life. 

As the Vaulters noted in the link above, the climax is somewhat expected, but nonetheless well delivered, and even touching in a way. I also felt certain that McNeilly knew what he was doing with Iain not being the person referred to as “spawn of Satan” by Magnus, but Iain’s sister, Morag, which nicely sets up the finale; Magnus turns out to be wrong in many ways. 

Overall Satan’s Child was a lot more entertaining than I expected it to be, and certainly went in wild directions – perhaps made even more wild given the overal staid approach of McNeilly’s narrative. Supernatural things happen without much fuss, giving the impression of a world much closer to the power of the occult than our own. Now it looks like one of these days I’ll need to check out the other “Peter Saxon” books I have.

Candlemas Eve

Candlemas Eve, by Jeffrey Sackett

May, 1988  Bantam Books

A few years back I reviewed Mark Of The Werewolf by Jeffrey Sackett; checking my review, it seems I mostly had an issue with what seemed to be Sackett’s overly passive and casual narrative style, which did little to convey any sort of suspense, drama, or tension. Well, friends, it’s almost as if an entirely different Jeffrey Sackett wrote Candlemas Eve, as this earlier novel of his does not suffer from that humdrum writing style, and also features a lot more in the sex and violence departments. 

That said, at nearly 400 pages of small print, the book is still too long for its own good, but that’s common for ‘80s horror paperbacks. And yes, Sackett does dwell on lame stuff too frequently, and also commits the usual “1980s pulp horror novelist” mistake of making his “heroes” incredibly lame losers that you can’t stand and can’t wait to see gutted and sent off to hell, but then maybe that’s intentional. I’m willing to forgive these things, given that Sackett injects a bunch of explicit sexual material in Candlemas Eve, something that was sorely lacking in Mark Of The Werewolf. 

The plot is also more interesting: basically, a down on his luck rocker gets involved with a pair of witches, and fame and fortune ensues. The only problem is, one of the witches has a sort of “fatal attraction” for the rocker, and has a tendency to kill anyone who gets in his way. And then when the rocker turns on her, she really goes batshit crazy. 

The rocker is named Simon Proctor, in his “midforties,” a guy who has managed to barely hang on in the music biz since the ‘60s. Sackett is guilty of misleading the reader in Simon’s intro; Candlemas Eve actually has two fakeout openings. For one, we start off in the 1690s, as a pair of hot whores lure a guy to their place, have super explicit sex with him – complete with the detail of one of them taking his, er, essence in her mouth and then spitting it into a cup – and then the girls slit his throat, mix his blood with his essence, and commit his soul to Satan and whatnot. 

This sequence is more OTT than anything in Mark Of The Werewolf, and we’re only a handful of pages in! Then Sackett pulls back on the camera, as it were, and we discover that all of this is a movie, one that is being broadcast to a live studio audience(!!). I mean seriously, it’s straight-up hardcore, and we’re supposed to believe that not only was it shown to a TV audience, but also the filmmaker, rock star Simon Proctor, sunk a few million bucks into the movie and hopes to make a windfall upon its release in theaters. 

Okay, I know we must suspend belief when it comes to horror fiction, but come on! In what world would an adult movie get a theatrical release and be previewed for a studio audience? Sackett sort of brushes the movie under the narrative carpet – it’s only mentioned sporadically from here on out – but it’s really hard to believe. 

But Sackett commits an even greater sin immediately thereafter. Simon is on this talk show to debate a panel of fellow guests, among them a Tipper Gore type and also an old German guy who is a professor of comparative religion, and this guy mocks Simon’s “silly story” of 17th century witches that cannot be based on fact, despite what Simon insists. And Simon Proctor keeps demanding that he is indeed a witch, descended from a man named John Proctor who was hanged for witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s. 

But here’s the thing: we readers will soon learn that Simon, who dyes his hair jet black and who paints his face with “ghoulish” makeup and wears pentagrams and whatnot, really is just a fraud, as the professor of religion accuses him of being; Simon does not believe in the devil, or any witch stuff; he’s just doing it for the money, because it’s what “the kids” are into these days. 

This I felt was a big misstep, one that Jeffrey Sackett is unable to get over in the ensuing novel. While it is fine as-is, Candlemas Eve would have been immeasurably superior if Simon Proctor was the character initially presented to us: a stern-faced practicioner of Satanism. But it’s just an act, and Simon will prove to be a total loser: neurotic about his failing fortunes and his growing age. 

It gets even worse: after the talk show, Simon performs for an audience of ten thousand in New York City – which sounds like a lot to me, but we’re to understand it’s nothing compared to the audiences Simon and his band, Witch’s Sabbath, used to pull in. But after the show, Simon wipes off his makeup and drives himself home to New Hampshire, moping all the way. I mean at this point I was wondering what the hell sort of “Rock Novel” I was reading…what self-respecting rocker drives himself home after a gig? 

It gets even worse (again): Not content to just write a rock novel, Sackett also wants to bring in the horror-mandatory “family and kids” aspect, so he can have more drama. Simon lives on the old family inn with his daughter, 16 year-old Rowena, his son, 22 year-old Lucas, and his father, old Floyd. (There’s no wife, and Lucas and Rowena have different mothers, both of whom are long out of the picture.) 

So yes, we also have this family drama dynamic, because in addition to Simon’s kids there’s also Lucas’s girlfriend, Karyn (who is pregnant), and Lucas’s best bud Jeremy, who is the nephew of the local minister and who also carries a torch for Rowena. These will be the characters Jeffrey Sackett focuses on in Candlemas Eve; the members of Simon’s band only appear infrequently in the narrative. 

The character of Floyd is especially hard to take. He’s an old prick who spends the narrative either berating Simon or mocking him, or telling him how disappointed he is in him. This only further serves to make our hero, who is supposed to be a Satanic rocker, seem like a chump. I mean honestly folks, it’s like Frasier, only with Kelsey Grammer replaced by Alice Cooper. 

Things improve greatly with the appearance of Gwendolyn and Adrienne, a pair of young witches who show up one night and tell Simon they’re going to make him a star for Satan. We readers however know these two are something else entirely: the spirits of two witches who were hanged back in the 1690s. One of them – the current Gwendolyn, formerly Abigail in the 17th Century – is in love with John Proctor, Simon Proctor’s ancestor (ie the man who was hanged for witchcraft), and the devil has brought her back to life so that she can be with him again; Simon, we are told, is the spitting image of his ancestor John. 

It all sounds muddled, and really it is, but Sackett does a good job of making it all sensible in the novel itself. The important thing is that Gwendolyn, who is a smokin’ hot brunette with an incredible body, says that Satan will make Simon Proctor a star; there will be no more of the fakery. So she and Adrienne – who is mousy and scrawny – take up their lutes and perform some 17th century tunes, and Simon can’t help but think how good they’d sound if they were rockified, sort of like “the Byrds used to do.” 

I have to give Jeffrey Sackett credit: by not giving a shit about what was going on with rock in the era in which he was writing (ie the late ‘80s), he managed to make Candlemas Eve come off as timeless. Indeed, the only rock groups Sackett mentions in the book are the Byrds, Jethro Tull, and Donovan(!). In other words this novel could just as easily take place in the 1970s; there are no topical ‘80s details, and the revamped Witch’s Sabbath, with the two actual witches Gwendolyn and Adrienne on “amplified lutes,” comes off more like Fleetwood Mac with Satanic overtones than any ‘80s metal band. 

I’m also happy to report that Sackett is a rock novelist who actually describes the music…at least he sort of does. There are several concert sequences, and we’re told that characters will play guitar solos or lute solos, and the lyrics are reprinted throughout…but otherwise it’s not properly conveyed what the music sounds like. We do know that it’s not heavy metal, per se. I think the implication is that it sounds wholly different from anything else going on at the time, and for that reason – not to mention the notoriety Gwendolyn generates – the band becomes a huge success. 

I had a hard time buying this; I mean the hardcore mainstream movie was one thing, but it’s entirely another to think that “the kids” of the late ‘80s (of whom I was one!) would go for the ornate lyrics-cum-poetry that Sackett strings through the novel. The most curious thing is that none of the lyrics rhyme, and there’s no hook to any of the songs; I also got a Comus vibe from how Sackett described Witch’s Sabbath, and Comus was a cult band at best. 

In this regard Candlemas Eve greatly resembles The Armageddon Rag, with Witch’s Sabbath becoming more and more popular as they go along, with the caveat that Sackett doesn’t work in a subplot that they are generating evil in their audience and threatening the status quo. Rather, Candlemas Eve revolves on more of a personal space, with Gwendolyn becoming increasingly evil and controlling and Simon becoming increasingly anxious about her. 

Well, sort of. It’s actually Simon’s daughter, Rowena, who distrusts Gwendolyn. Simon Proctor is more focused on the money and the fame; he’s such a dimwitted “protagonist” that you can’t help but root against him. With her penchant for wearing revealing clothes, proclaiming to all and sundry that she is a Satan-worshipping witch, and also giving Simon blowjobs right in front of his teenaged daughter, Gwendolyn easily steals the novel – and, what’s more, the reader sort of roots for her. Sure, she’s an agent of darkness, and murders several innocent people in the course of the book…but at the same time she died for love, and is reborn for love, and commits herself to Simon Proctor. 

In a way Candlemas Eve is like Bewitched; a mega powerful witch falls in love with a mortal man who doesn’t realize how lucky he has it. Just like Darrin would always shame Sam for using her witchcraft, so too does Simon Proctor constantly tell Gwendolyn that she’s not “really” a witch, that the Devil doesn’t exist, that it’s all fantasy. Yes, folks, it’s another of those horror novels where the characters don’t realize they’re in a horror novel. 

It must be stated that there isn’t much “horror” stuff per se for the majority of the novel. Other than a bit where Simon – this time with Gwendolyn – goes back on that talk show, and Gwendolyn kills the religion professor via witchcraft voodoo (of course people think the guy just had a heart attack, as no one else realizes this is a horror novel, either), Candlemas Eve is more of a rock novel, with Simon and Witch’s Sabbath practicing new songs and taking them on the road. 

As mentioned this time around Sackett doesn’t shirk on the juicy details; being a Satanic witch and all, Gwendolyn isn’t one to stand on ceremony, and gives herself to Simon on the night she meets him. First there’s a humorous bit where she smokes dope with him, uncertain what this “weed” is he’s referring to. Sackett does a good job of showing how out of time Gwendolyn is with the twentieth century, though her awkward, oldstyle English gets to be annoying after a while. Ie, “Know you not” and the like. But anyway, when Simon and Gwendolyn get down, Sackett leaves no juicy stone unturned – a marked difference from Mark Of The Werewolf. Yes, I realize I used “marked” and “Mark” in the same sentence. 

Sadly the sleaze is minimal after this, other than a bravura bit where Rowena, Simon’s killjoy daughter – who despite being a killjoy is always on the road with the band – comes in on an in-progress orgy, with all the Witch’s Sabbath guys banging various babes and her dad getting that aforementioned blowjob from Gwendolyn. Even the pregnant girl, Karyn, is in on the festivities! Sackett shows a dedication to sleaze that I would not have expected; he even opens the novel with a preface stating that readers who frown on sexual explicitness should not read the book!

But otherwise the novel is tame on that regard, and also the frequent cutaways to what really happened in the seventeenth century became obtrusive. I had no interest in Adrienne and was not eager to read about her sad sack life in the 1690s and how she ran afoul of jezebel Abigal, ie the future Gwendolyn. I also kept wondering what happened to the two “actresses” who played Abigail and Mary in the opening sequence of the novel, ie the full hardcore movie based on John Proctor’s life, but as mentioned Sackett sort of drops the movie angle. 

Instead, the focus is on the fame the band has generated, and this really brings in some similarities with The Armageddon Rag. Their audiences become bigger and bigger with each city, the fans really eating up their overly wordy Puritan-era lyrics and songs, praising Satan and whatnot, but if Gwendolyn’s goal was to spread the word of her “Master” through Simon’s music, Sackett drops this subplot, focusing more on Gwendolyn’s growing evilness. 

Now as I’ve said before, I love my hot Satanic chicks. Gwendolyn as presented is the ideal woman: a stacked beauty who is totally devoted to her man and, what’s more, is superhumanly powerful, and will use her superhuman power to protect and empower her man. But dullard Simon doesn’t appreciate this; again, it’s what I call the Bewitched Conundrum. And Gwendolyn is totally fun, other than her penchant for killing ministers, that is. 

She’s surely more fun than Simon’s deadbeat daughter, and she’s more fun than sad sack Adrienne, and she’s a helluva lot more fun than old pisspot Floyd Proctor. Either Sackett had so much fun writing Gwendolyn that he didn’t realize how likable he was making her, or his tongue was in his cheek and he knew exactly what he was doing. 

The horror element slowly creeps in, beginning in the final quarter when Gwendolyn finally tells Simon the truth – that she is the spirit of Abigail, a witch who has been dead for 300 years, and who is currently possessing the body of a modern girl thanks to her master, Satan. You win a no-prize if you guess that Simon doesn’t believe her. What’s more, he’s such a piece of shit that, when Gwendolyn begs to marry him, Simon agrees to go along with it…but secretly plans to just fake it, and also to secretly record it, to add it as a bonus to a video he’s making. Because “the kids” will love it. Now honestly, what kid in 1988 would “love” to see their rockstar idol get married at the end of the video? I mean it’s like if that longform 1990 Danzig video ended with a Satanic wedding ceremony…come on. 

Gwendolyn is truly the villain in the final chapters, as even she can no longer take Simon’s shit and thus vows to kill him – along with all the other Proctors. Sackett again proves his horror credentials by killing off characters the reader would think is safe; the finale is particularly gruesome, with eviscerated zombies shambling around under Gwendolyn’s control, people being turned into flame, and corpses who are invariably possessed by either Satan or by kindly ghosts. 

Given the plot, it’s not surprising that Sackett brings in a religious theme, and Candlemas Eve features a saccharine “you’ve proved the goodness of your soul” finale that isn’t too heavy on the treacle, much to Sackett’s credit. But man, given the people who are bloodily butchered in the finale, you wonder how any of the survivors are going to be able to cope. 

Overall I really enjoyed Candlemas Eve, with the caveat that all of the characters were for the most part unlikable, save for the friggin’ villain. But again, I like my hot Satanic pulp horror chicks, so it was only natural that Gwendolyn would be my favorite character. The novel was much, much better than Mark Of The Werewolf, and I’d recommend it if you are in the mood for some horror reading this Halloween season. 

That said, thanks to my son I myself am in a horror mood – he’s been bitten hard by the Halloween bug – so I’ll have more horror reviews up this month.

Raga Six (Doctor Orient #2)

Raga Six, by Frank Lauria

December, 1972  Bantam Books

The second volume of Doctor Orient picks up some time after the events of the first volume; indeed, it appears that a whole novel’s worth of stuff has occurred in the interim. When last we saw him, Dr. Owen Orient was taking down a Satanic cult in New York City, in between meditation sessions with his colleagues in his swank, three-floor townhome. But here in Raga Six, author Frank Lauria dispenses entirely with the setup of that first volume. 

But as mentioned, Orient has had another adventure since we last saw him; working with another doctor, one named Ferrari, Orient apparently cured the Vice President’s daughter of her lifelong paralysis of the legs and the girl can now walk again. But this is only infrequently mentioned in the narrative or in dialog; it all has happened after Doctor Orient ended and before Raga Six begins. Humorously, this material – which was never even covered in the first novel – is brought up more often than the actual plot of the first volume. In fact the events of Doctor Orient are only referred to once, in passing. 

The bigger focus here is that Dr. Orient has decided to let go of all of his worldly trappings: the three-floor home, the deluxe antique car, etc. Wanting to get back in touch with the world, Orient dispenses of all his wealth, as well as his retinue. In the previous book I remarked that there was certainly the vibe of a 1930s pulp to this series, with Orient the wealthy occultist leading a Doc Savage-esque team of followers. 

But that setup is now gone; Frank Lauria proves himself fearless of smashing apart what came before and starting anew. Which essentially is the vibe that drives this second volume of the series. I should note however that Dr. Owen Orient is not a driven protagonist, particularly not in this installment: his focus is more on “following his fate” and taking it one day at a time, with no exact goal or objective that he is working toward. 

This certainly lends Raga Six a laissez-faire vibe so far ast the plotting goes. After reading mostly men’s adventure novels for the past several years, it was a bit hard for me to adapt to a protagonist who was not driven to save people, or to get revenge, or who had some other goal he was working steadfastly to achieve; Owen Orient is driftless and aimless, and this extends to how the novel plays out. 

For example, even when he encounters evil, Orient is not driven to stop it. Like early in the book, he comes across a Satanic cult that operates out of the Lower East Side. Instead of smashing it, like your average men’s adventure protagonist would, Orient instead bides his time to figure out what is going on, and only gradually decides to perform an exorcism to save the two people who have been possessed by a demon. So yes, he does save these people, but what I mean to say is that he is not driven to do so; it takes him a while to figure out what is going on, mostly because Orient once again seems curiously incapable of noticing signs of the supernatural, a plot contrivance that stymied him in the first book. 

In a way Raga Six can almost be read as a standalone. Most of the characters who were so important in Doctor Orient aren’t even in this followup, and Orient himself is a different man. And as mentioned Lauria does not refer back to that previous book. Orient walks away from everything, and on a whim heads to the Lower East Side. It’s been five years since I read the first book, but I recall it did a phenomenal job of capturing all the details of the Groovy Age, complete with a psychedelic nightclub in Manhattan. 

In Raga Six, however, the Groovy Age is replaced by the Hippie Age; Orient, in his early 30s, spends the first quarter of the novel in the company of a group of Lower East Side hippies. Lauria really takes his time with the narrative – it runs to 277 pages of small, dense print, and is not a quick read by any means – and allows these characters to breathe. In many ways Raga Six has more in common with the low-simmer potboilers of Burt Hirschfeld and other contemporary popular authors than it does with horror; this is not a fast-moving horror tale in the least. 

While he might not be the most action-prone series protagonist, Dr. Orient still at least gets laid. This is courtesy Moon Girl, a sexy hippie chick Orient encounters during an East Side music festival that quickly devolves into a riot, with cops tear-gassing the hippies who refuse to leave the area. Curiously, Lauria makes it clear that the hippies are the ones who start the riot, refusing to comply with the police and then throwing things at them. I found this quite prescient in our post-“summer of mostly peaceful but fiery protests” world. 

Moon Girl has a five-year-old son named Julian, and soon enough the two are living with Orient. This seems to set up an entirely new cast for the series, but Lauria will change his mind and drop both Moon Girl and Julian for the majority of the text. More focus is placed on Cowboy, a drug dealer who puts Orient to work, having him manage the various deals and payoff schemes and whatnot. As mentioned, the plotting here would be more at home in a piece of hippie lit than a book with “horror” labelled on its spine. 

Through Moon Girl, Orient finds out about a strange group operating out of a storefront on the East Side. Moon Girl has a friend who has been acting weird lately, and Orient goes to visit her – and gradually suspects she is being inducted into a Satanic cult. He also meets the mysterious man who runs the place, a guy who goes around in a black rubber suit and carries a whip, along with the guy’s wife, a beautiful young woman who during seances will channel the voices of dead people for a paying clientele. 

There follows a great sequence where Orient gains the employ of an acquaintance, a heavyset woman who is famous for giving readings in the city, and the two contrive to perform an excorcism on the possessed husband and wife without their knowing it. Lauria has certainly done his occult rituals homework, and as with the first book, Raga Six is filled to the brim with arcane lore, particularly here where Orient banishes the demon that has possessed these two. 

But here’s the thing – what would have been enough for a single novel is over and done with in a few chapters, and never mentioned again! Instead the wily-nily plotting has it that Orient is soon off on a ten-day voyage via freighter to Tangier(!), sent off by Joker, who for plot-contrivance reasons has flown the coop and left Orient with a ticket for this ocean voyage. And, because he has nothing else to do, Orient just goes along with it. 

It’s quite brazen how Lauria jams so many separate plots together into the novel; soon enough the previous quarter of the novel is immaterial, as everything now focuses on Orient’s fellow passengers on the ship, in particular the mysterious Dr. Aleistar Six and his retinue. Among them is the titular Raga Six, Dr. Six’s wife: a lovely woman with pale skin, yellow eyes, silver hair, and “full breasts.” The latter concession surprised me, as Frank Lauria is not the most exploitative of authors; as with Doctor Orient, lurid and sensational details are minimal, the author going for more of a reserved tenor in his narrative. 

There’s also Pia, a beauty who seems to be a “potential,” meaning she harbors latent psychic abilities. Orient is interested in her, but the overbearing Dr. Six seems to have a firm grip on Pia. Regardless, Dr. Orient enjoys himself a good ol’ three-way; one night Pia calls him telepathically and Orient goes to her, but ends up in bed with both Pia and Raga. Again Lauria does not dwell on the sleaze, instead doling out lines like, “he sunk into her honeyed depths” and whatnot. (For some reason I’m suddenly hungry for Honey Nut Cheerios!) 

There is a great liberal vibe to Raga Six, and of course I mean the traditional definition of “liberal,” in that Orient approaches everything with an open mind and a lack of judgment. I miss liberals like that, don’t you?? So Orient’s three-way with Raga and Pia is just another event in his easy-going, wherever-fate-takes-me life, with no hangups or judgment or condemnation. This extends to Orient’s drug usage, but that is minimal in this volume. We do however get more scenes of Orient and others staring into the tips of their cigarettes as they smoke, something we were told incessantly in the previous book. 

Only gradually does Lauria bring any kind of tension or “horror” into this interminable sea voyage. It’s mostly centered around Dr. Six and his possessive attitude toward Pia. This comes to a head when Orient’s young cabin mate, Presto, runs off with Pia in Tangier, and Six goes off in rage-filled pursuit…and Orient shacks up with Raga for several days. Again we are more in Burt Hirschfeld territory, as Lauria focuses on their growing love and their plans to be together, once Raga divorces Dr. Six. 

Horror material does not return until Six comes back into the narrative and retrieves Raga, a submissive Pia in tow, and off they go to Six’s clinic in Italy. Now as we’ll recall, Orient is in love with Raga Six and knows something strange is going on with her husband. He also suspects some misdeed has happened with his young cabin mate; Dr. Six claims he left Presto in a drug coma in Marrakesh. So Orient goes there to check on him…and ends up spending a month working on his meditation skills and such with a guy there who is one of the Nine Unknown Men, and who trained with Orient’s own master, Ku. 

This is what I mean about the laissez-faire plotting. You’d expect Orient would be gung-ho to find out what the hell was going on with Dr. Six and to claim Raga as his own, but instead the next chapters are all focused on Orient astrally voyaging to find out what happened to Presto, who truly is in a coma, but one that does not seem to be drug induced. 

The plot changes again when Orient finally goes to Italy and hooks up with Sordi, his former chaffeur. A girl in Sordi’s village has come down with a “sleeping sickness,” which of course made me wonder if Stan The Man Lee read this novel and copped the idea for The Virtue Of Vera Valiant. Orient tries to figure out if this could be a supernatural menace, then at great page length tracks down Dr. Six’s clinic – and there’s a rushed action scene as Orient frees Pia and Raga from the now-maniacal Dr. Six. 

Again, a normal novel would end here, but instead Orient receives a telepathic message from one of his students, Argyle, a black American who factored into the previous book and is an actor; he’s in Rome shooting a cowboy movie, and what’s more Moon Girl and her son Julian are with him. Dr. Orient heads there…and learns that little Julian is lost, having disappeared a few days before while they were visiting the Coliseum. 

So what does Orient do? He starts meditating while Raga offers to make sandwiches. It’s kind of impressive how Lauria consistently refrains from injecting any kind of tension or drama into his tale. Instead of freaking out and canvassing the city, Moon Girl is content to wait while Argyle and Orient voyage to the astral plane to see if they can locate her son. There’s even a part where they discover they have more success in the morning, so they decide to break for the rest of the day and start again the next dawn! 

I admit, this leisurely approach to the plot can be a little wearying, especially if one wishes for a more proactive protagonist. Also, it must be mentioned that Orient is very much a master of the metaphysical; the extent of his physical abilities would be meditation, and it’s not like he happens to be a karate master on the side or anything. He’s not tough at all, is what I mean to say, and the finale is especially grating because it consists of Orient sleeping due to the psychic attacks of the monster who turns out to be behind everything. 

Yes, sleeping – Orient spends the final pages either in bed or struggling to keep his eyes open. That is when he isn’t turning on faucets or throwing around salt as banishing rituals to ward off the psychic attacks. It might be “legitimate” so far as the occult stuff goes, but it makes for a very lame “action finale.” Indeed when you visualize what Orient does in the finale – struggling not to sleep, even so lethargic at one point that he passes out while trying to chase a villain into the woods – it becomes quite clear why there was never a Doctor Orient movie. 

I won’t ruin the surprise finale, but it becomes clear who the main villain is, and Orient alone must face this villain. That said, the “thrilling conclusion” is again sort of uninententionally humorous, as it features Orient – again trying not to fall asleep – muttering some words as he stares at a ring on his finger. At least Bantam Books did not market Raga Six as an action thriller, but still. The reader kind of expects a little more. 

The leisurely plotting extends to the final pages, as despite the book ending, Lauria keeps writing, and eventually Orient heads back to New York, where it turns out he still owns his three-floor home. We’re told he spends “months” getting back into the swing of things, working at a hospital and opening up his own practice. Presumably this is all setup for the next volume, Lady Sativa, which came out the following year – and I’ll try to get to it sooner than I got to this second volume. 

Overall I enjoyed Raga Six, appreciating Frank Lauria’s strong writing and his determination to let the characters breathe, but at the same time the lethargic plotting got to be a drag. But then, if you want action with your ‘70s occult sleaze, you’d probably be more happy with the concurrent Mind Masters series (which I think I might read again one of these days).

Men’s Mag Roundup: Satanic Sleaze

 

Boy, it’s been several years since I’ve done one of these men’s adventure magazine roundup reviews. Ever since Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham started up Men’s Adventure Quarterly, I’ve rarely dipped into my collection of men’s adventure mags. But recently I hit Bob and Bill up with an idea for a “Satanic sleaze” sort of MAQ Halloween special, focusing on the lurid “killer cult” tales of the latter men’s mags (ie, from the early to mid 1970s), and then I decided that I’d just read some of these stories from my own collection. 

Yes, as documented in Barbarians On Bikes (which Bob put together with his other co-editor, Wyatt Doyle), as the ‘60s progressed the editors of the men’s mags started looking for more than just the typical “Nazi villain” of the earlier pulps. So there was an increasing amount of stories with biker villains, or cults, or Satanists, or hippie killer freaks. 

First up is this Man’s Story from April 1975. This mag was one of the “sweats,” meaning it traded in more lurid and sensationalistic content than the “upmarket” men’s mags (which were pretty lurid themselves, but still). And the cover is the proof in the pudding, illustrating some Nazi terror. I really love the covers on the later men’s mags, and this one’s great. Though I have to admit, the Telly Savalas-lookalike Nazi in the far corner almost looks like a TV game show host, the way he’s grinning and pointing at that poor blonde. “And you just won – a flaming poker enema!” 

This issue serves up the exact sort of story I had in mind for my “Satanic sleaze” Halloween MAQ special: “Blood Rites Of Satan’s Darlings,” by Chuck Graham. It features a great splashpage, which again demonstrates how cool this latter-era men’s mag artwork was: 

Yeah man, this one is short but it serves up the whole thing. Curiously, it’s written in present-tense, which is unusual for a men’s mag. It would appear that the editors were open to experimentation in the later days. But then again, the drugs were just better back then. The story concerns an unfortunate young American girl named Jan who is on vacation in Mexico (apparently a hotbed for Satanic cult, at least so far as the men’s mags were concerned). 

The story opens with Jan enjoying dinner with the female friend who brought her here and the three people who live in this house: two beautiful native women and an older native man. But something seems off and Jan’s thoughts are fuzzy…yes, folks, Jan’s been drugged, but the drug leaves only her body unresponsive but her mind is cogent, because the Satanists want Jan to know every horrid thing that happens to her. 

We go immediately to the “sweats” stuff, with Jan taken into a cult chamber where the man and four women strip her down to her “nylon panties” and start pawing her up…but some of the “depredations” done to poor Jan are too much for even our author to recount. About the most we know is that she is tortured; the author intimates that the four use her sexually, but does not go into detail. At any rate, Jan’s heart is ripped out, and that’s it for her. 

I first read this story probably around 2011, when I bought the magazine, and the finale made me laugh then and it still makes me laugh now: after recounting all this lurid horror, author Chuck Graham finishes off the story in a faux stentorian style in which he soundly condemns the atrocities of Satanists in the western world…as if he hadn’t just exploited such atrocities in his lurid story! But then, it is quite evident that most of these men’s mag authors had their tongues firmly in cheek. 

Overall this one certainly serves up the sleazy Satanism, but otherwise “Blood Rites Of Satan’s Darlings” is really just a torture story, with no actual plot or anything else. But then, that’s what we want from the sweats. 

Much longer and more enjoyable is “I Joined A Cross-Country Sex Circus,” by Don Peters “as told to Steve Lawton.” From Barbarians On Bikes I know that this story also appeared in the April 1972 Man’s Story. The men’s mag editors were not shy about reprinting stories. (And by the way, that is not my finger, or carpet, in the screengrabs above; these images are from an eBay listing for the magazine I came across many years ago!)  As mentioned above, bikers were also prime “villain candidates” for the mags, as demonstrated here. 

In this first-person tale, “Don Peters” (though our narrator never actually refers to himself in the story) is going across the Denver area in search of a particular biker. His girlfriend you see was raped and killed by a biker, an act which Don witnessed, but was too busy being knocked out at the time to stop it from happening. He only saw a brawny biker push his girlfriend up against a tree, rape her, and then gut her with a knife – Don got to her before she died, saw that she was holding the broken half of a Maltese Cross, and now Don is going around looking for a biker with a broken Maltese Cross. In other words, the biker who has the other half of this broken cross is the biker who raped and killed Don’s girlfriend. 

Well, it’s an okay setup, I guess. Doesn’t really live up to the title of the story, though. But then, that’s standard for the men’s mags. Don thinks he’s found his bikers when he latches onto a group near Denver and hitches a ride with one of them to a party in the woods. Oh, and by the way Don himself is not a biker, which sort of robs the appeal of the story. He’s really more of an aimless drifter; “dude” is how everyone refers to him, including the “mama” of the club’s boss, who promptly slips into Don’s sleeping bag that night for some barely-described hot action. 

Our hero’s kind of dumb, though. He sets his sights on one of the bikers, sure it’s the man who killed his woman, and then gets him to go off on a pretext. But our hero has been played for a fool and is knocked out. This leads to the climax, where Don somehow manages to free himself – memorably taking out one of the bikers by stomping him repeatedly in the balls. There’s a bizarre editorial error, though; our narrator is about to be killed, too weak to fight, and then the boss’s mama kills the man who is about to kill our hero – but the editor goofs and writes “I” instead of “she,” ie giving the impression that the narrator has saved himself, though it’s clear he did nothing. 

“Bride Of The Corpse – The Incredible Terror Ordeal of Lucia Alvarez,” by sweats veteran Jim McDonald, is another torture piece that lives only to illustrate its memorable splash page. Essentially our narrator, Lucia, an actress in an undisclosed South American country, is brought in by the despotic regime as a “traitor,” and after being groped and tortured she’s tossed into the fresh grave of one of her compatriots, being made to sleep with the corpse. This one’s pretty lame and at least has a happy ending, with Lucia being rescued. 

The last story I’ll focus on from this April 1975 Man’s Story is the cover story, “The Hideous Evil Of The Nazi Fire Beast,” by Hal Sommers. This one’s crazy because it starts off really good: the narrator, a German reporter, is in the morgue, looking at the corpse of a man in his 60s who was an arsonist. Indeed, the old man accidentally killed himself in a fire he was setting. But our narrator suspects a Nazi, and sure enough finds the SS code number (or whatever it is) tattooed beneath the corpse’s arm. He identifies him as a beast named Breslaur. 

From there our narrator goes to a war records place, where he reads about Breslaur’s background…and here the story becomes just another sweat. Without warning we are thrust into the first-person recollections of one of Breslaur’s many victims, our narrator listening to her tape-recorded statements. So now the story’s in 1944 and we read as this beautiful young woman outside Paris is sent to a prison where Breslaur rules with an iron fist. 

He’s not only a sadist but an arsonist, a man who is sexually aroused by fire, and there follows lots of sweat mag stuff where Breslaur tortures women with fire and flaming pokers – ghoulish stuff, somehow made even more ghoulish given that the author doesn’t go into full-bore exploitation, though letting us know without actually saying it that some of the women are raped by the poker. 

This poor girl who has become our new narrator is “only” raped by Breslaur in the traditional way, ie not with a flaming poker – but she knows her time is coming, and the author does a good job of mounting the suspense. But man, this one comes to a rushed end; the war’s over, and Breslaur escapes before he can kill this particular girl, and then we’re back to the narrator’s POV and he’s sickened by all this stuff he’s read – more laugh out loud stuff, because the “sickening” stuff is exactly why the author wrote the story in the first place, which is another indication of how these authors had their tongues in their cheeks – and then the narrator figures that Breslaur must’ve accidentally killed himself in this fire he set, a fitting end for the sixty year-old sadist. The end! 

Otherwise this issue of Man’s Story is filled with the usual sex articles of the later men’s mags, not to mention a whole plethora of ads for sex toys and sex services and sex books. It’s interesting that none of the ads have nudity in them; the nipples are usually blacked out and the actual penetration is also blacked out, so no doubt the concern was Federal charges for sending out porno in the mail. 

I reviewed this December 1974 Man’s Story before, but at the time my focus was on the WWII pulp action story, “OSS Carter’s Death Doll Platoon,” which later made its way into MAQ #5. That’s a good story, but I’ve read it a few times, now – and reviewed it on here twice – so this time I’ll focus on the other stories in this issue. This time I’ll focus on the Satanic sleaze! 

“Helpless Virgins And The Night Of The Slithering Horror” is by Mark Powers “as told to Ted Harper,” and serves up the sleazy Satanic goods. Indeed, this one would be an even better candidate for my imaginary MAQ Hippie Horror Halloween Special. Our narrator is a writer who is visiting Mexico, where apparently he discovered the corpse of a young woman, who appeared to have been killed by snake bites. But the local cops disbelieve him and tell him he’s imagining things. The narrator is content to bang his native girl; cue some of the slightly-more-risque material of the later men’s mags. 

But as I mentioned above, Mexico was apparently a Satanic Disney World in the ‘70s, and you guessed it – there’s a friggin Satanic snake cult operating out of the area, and our narrator saw too much when he came upon the murdered girl. So now the cult abducts his girl, leading to the splashpage illustration where the robed and cowled cultists are about to kill her with a bunch of snakes. But we’re in the world of the men’s mags, thus our hero’s able to get out his gun and start blasting away – a fairly graphic bit where he blasts out the brains of one of the cult leaders. 

A notable element here is that the narrator goes off to a happily ever after with his native gal; as I noted before, the white heroes of the earlier men’s mags were all well and good with having sex with native gals, but rarely if ever stayed with them. But our narrator assures us that he’s staying with his native Nina. Well, that’s progress! That said, there’s an unintentionally hilarious editing snafu where Nina becomes “Linda” for a paragraph. 

“Rape Rampage Of The Sex Cult Savages” is by Rod Brady, and is the title piece of this issue. The most interesting thing about this short and rough story is how the author strives to cater to the splashpage (and cover) illustration; it seems clear that he either saw the artwork, or he was given thorough description of it. Otherwise this is another story that really hinges on sadism and nothing else – but again, that’s what we expect from the sweats. 

A curious thing about this story is that it goes into second-person later in the tale, an unusual stylistic gimmick that you don’t see very often. Outside of Choose Your Own Adventure books, at least. (And yes, I used this exact same joke in my previous review of this tale, but so what! At least I steal from the best!) This grungy little tale, which could almost be a cheap drive-in flick or something that played on 42nd Street, concerns Herbie, a loser who lives with a trio of other losers in Alphabet City, in New York (not referred to that way in the story, but that’s where they are – off Avenue C). Oh, and one of the group is named “Batman!” 

Well, the group has often “gang-banged” women and done other outrageous things, but so far as Herbie’s concerned, all the women have been in on it, or enjoyed it, or were whores and were probably so strung out they didn’t even care. But this time it’s different! The group has picked up a young woman who was waiting for the bus, and they’ve taken her off in van, and now they’re stripping off her clothes and one of them’s carving her initials on her leg…and basically all the other stuff that is shown on the memorable cover/splashpage art, so again it’s clear the author was trying to cater to that. 

But Herbie doesn’t like it, and after a few pages of describing the girl’s horror as she’s pawed and raped – including that aforementioned strange bit where the narrative goes over to “you thought this,” “you thought that,” and other second-person narration – Herbie decides to do something about it, and steps in to save the day. A short, nasty tale, but commendable for actually trying to live up to the artwork, which is something too few of these men’s mag stories ever do. Yet at the same time, it is another indication of how the plots of the actual stories seldom if ever lived up to the potential of the titles.

Otherwise in this issue we have “The Nazi War Who Made War On The Maidens Of The Maquis,” which I also reviewed previously, as well as the usual sex-based articles and ads. One of the ads really made me chuckle, though: 

Well, as the cover will attest, we’re now in a totally different men’s mag world. And yes, I did block out the ta-tas in the above screengrab; don’t want the blog to get hit with another random sensitive content warning. But boy, the pulpy thrills of the early days are for the most part gone; this December 1976 issue of Male is printed on slick paper, not the pulpy paper of earlier men’s mags, and it features full-color interior photography. And boy, folks, we’re talking straight-up Penthouse sort of stuff. The models who pose for us are fully nude and, uh, fully spread, so absolutely nothing is left to the imagination. 

In a way it’s a sad end to the men’s mags; the cool “I’m an honest vet who fought for my country and now I just wanna work at my blue-collar job and go home to read about virile yanks banging big-boobed broads during the war while I have a smoke and a drink” vibe of the early days is completely gone; this is porn, and sleazy porn at that. The market had clearly changed, and the men’s mag editors were desperate to cater to a readership that wanted Hustler instead of quality tales of military action. For, believe it or not, Male was one of the “upmarket” men’s mags I referred to above, offering stories and articles that were much better than the grungy stuff in the sweats. But reading this December, 1976 issue of the magazine, you’d never guess that. 

That said, they still managed to get some fairly good fiction into the pages, and “Ex-MP Who Became The Sex-And-Crime King Of Europe” by Jerry Trumbalt is a case in point. In fact I think this story is the reason I picked up this issue many years ago. It’s a heist yarn, about a moral-lacking MP who heists the Army payroll with a team he puts together, and then goes into the slave-trade business outside of Tangier. 

As with many of these stories, it’s framed as a nonfiction piece; Harry Malone is an MP with a mind for an angle and he gets responsibility for all the payrolls in a part of Germany. He puts together a team from the stockade and they pull the heist – but all that is sort of told in summary. The meat of the tale is Malone taking the money and starting up a lucrative sex-trade business, which he runs on a ship in the Tangier area. He also enjoys testing out all the girls he will sell: 

“Anal sex was something she held the patent on.” Now there’s a line that needs to be stolen for a book. More focus is placed on Malone and his run-ins with the abovementioned Arabic criminal, culminating in a firefight by some ancient Roman ruins in the desert. Overall a pretty good story, but not as long as such a story would have been in an earlier men’s mag. 

Earl Norem, my favorite of all the men’s mag artists, handles the nice splashpage for “The Rape Hunt Brothers,” by Anthony Farrar, another short piece that harkens back to the men’s mags of yore. This one’s a fairly short revenge piece about a group of five scumbags in Baja California who drive around in a “high-powered car” and enjoy raping female American tourists. And beating their men to a pulp. 

But the group, which manages to evade arrest, sows its own fate when one of the rape victims goes back home and tells her three brothers to get revenge for her. So now these good ol’ boys head down to Mexico to find the scumbags and make them pay…though, for vague reasons, their sister wants it all to be “legal.” Okay, whatever. This grim setup doesn’t prevent the author from “inserting” a random sex scene: 

As you can see, the sexual material has become more risque in the later years. The revenge angle is given short shrift, with the brothers catching the scumbags in action – as illustrated by Norem in his splashpage – and then shooting at them as they drive away. 

The sexual material is even more risque in “Porno Girls And The Casting Couch,” by Eugene Grant, which purports to be another nonfiction piece, the author interviewing a few porno actresses, but this is really just the framework for a bunch of explicit sex scenes: 

It’s like this throughout; the author will introduce a girl “in action,” then spend some time talking to her about how she got into the porno biz – and even here sex is factored in, as the girls all got into the biz after having sex with a guy (or, in the case of one of them, sex with a gal). This story too suffers from an abrupt finale, as if the author hit his word count without expecting it. 

Then there’s “Secrets Of A Whore House Detective,” by George Harris “as told to” Simon Koch. Note the title: It’s “Whore House Detective” here in the magazine, whereas it’s shown as “Cat House Detective” on the magazine cover. Again, methinks the concern was over what could and could not be shown on the cover, due to these magazines being sent out in the mail. This is another pseudo-nonfiction piece, about a detective who works for a “consortium” of health insurance companies – his job to root out “pockets of infection” in the prostitution world. 

The detective is currently in NYC, where a shipment of fifty whores have been sent in by “the Chicago Syndicate” to entertain the delegation that’s come in town for a Democrat convention(!!!). Word has it that a new strain of syphilis or whatever has broken out, and this detective’s job is to find the infected hooker(s); the consortium isn’t concerned with morality or legality, they’re just sick of paying out for men who contract STDs from infected hookers! So this detective’s job is to find an infected whore and report her to the cops, to keep her off the streets. 

Other than that, this issue of Male features the usual sex exposes, not to mention a lot of full-color photographs of fully-nude women (one of whom sports very unattractive hairy armpits!), in a manner more Hustler sleazy than anything you’d see in Playboy. It’s no surprise that the men’s mags would soon wither away.