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.

Barbarians on Bikes: Bikers and Motorcycle Gangs in Men’s Pulp Adventure Magazines

Barbarians On Bikes, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

No month stated, 2016  New Texture

A big thanks to Bob Deis for hooking me up with a copy of Barbarians On Bikes a few years ago – I seem to recall it was in early 2020, ie right before the world went crazy – and though I read it at the time, I failed to review it. Well, I recently got back on a biker pulp kick, and it was straight to Barbarians On Bikes that I went for my fix. 

This one is a project of Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle, the fellows who also brought us Cryptozoology, Cuba: Sugar, Sex, and Slaughter, Atomic Werewolves, and so many other deluxe hardcovers devoted to men’s adventure magazines. Unlike those publications, or the Men’s Adventure Quarterly series Bob Deis produces with Bill Cunningham, Barbarians On Bikes is devoid of any reprinted stories and focuses solely on artwork. Thus, the majority of the book is comprised of either full-color reproductions of men’s adventure magazine covers, or black and white splashpages or other interior art from the magazines. 

I recall that when I first read this book, like a total geek I wrote down a list of stories I was hoping Bob would feature in an upcoming book – and ended up listing out pretty much every story in the book! But friends, as usual the titles of the stories are so promising that one can’t help but want to read them…but then again, I’ve read so many of these men’s adventure magazines over the years that I now know that the stories themselves generally do not live up to the promise of the titles. 

Thus, focusing on the art alone isn’t really a bad idea, as the reader is free to use his own fevered imagination to come up with the plot for, say, “Sex Life Of A Motorcycle Mama” or “You Can’t Split From Hell, Chick!” That said, I still hope that someday Bob and Bill do a special “biker” issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, or that Bob and Wyatt do a Barbarians On Bikes followup that includes stories in addition to art.  Though to be fair, we did get a few such stories in MAQ #7. 

The appeal of this book is just flipping through the pages and admiring the incredible artwork of the gifted artists who worked on the men’s magazines. Pretty much all of them are represented here, and as usual our editors have done a swell job of reproducing the art – with, as I’ve said before, a lot more care and love than the original men’s mag editors ever displayed for their product. 

For me the biggest effect of Barbarians On Bikes is that it’s made me decide to read more of the old biker pulp paperbacks I bought years ago and never got around to reading. And also it’s made me decide to do another “men’s mag roundup” of reviews, this time focusing on some of the “hippie killer cult” stories that the latter-day men’s mags specialized in – and there was certainly a carryover between bikers and cults, at least in the world of the men’s mags. 

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Barbarians On Bikes. Looking through it takes you to a long-gone world of virile men, easy women, and leering biker brutes…oh, and I’ve failed to mention the terrific afterword Paul Bishop provides for the book; an exceptional read in which he talks about the time in the late ‘70s when, as a rookie LAPD officer, he pulled over a Hell’s Angel. 

Here are some random pages from the book! 

Biker Cop: Hippie Terror Thrill-Kill Cult

Good news, everyone – a new book has been listed at Tocsin Press. It’s titled Biker Cop: Hippie Terror Thrill-Kill Cult, and it’s by Paul Russ. Here’s the cover:

Terry Shelter, the titular “Biker Cop,” is of course not to be confused with Terry Bunker, the Chopper Cop! And it goes without saying that “Paul Russ” is not to be confused with Paul Ross! 

Curiously though, the events of Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert are frequently referred to in Hippie Terror Thrill-Kill Cult… 

In this one the Biker Cop takes on a cult of hippies who are randomly gunning down people across California…that is, when they aren’t slaughtering rock stars in their own homes. Lots of sex, violence, and chopper-riding action ensues. 

If you like Chopper Cop, or ‘70s men’s adventure novels in general, chances are you’ll “groove” on Biker Cop: Hippie Terror Thrill-Kill Cult!

Provincetown

Provincetown, by Burt Hirschfeld

June, 1977  Bantam Books

By the late ‘70s Burt Hirschfeld was still trading off between hardcover publications and paperback originals. Provincetown was one of the latter, sporting a nice cover that opened into an even better inlay (below). Plotwise the story is like a longer variation on Hirschfeld’s earlier Acapulco, in that it’s about a film company coming onto location and all the soap opera dynamics that ensue. But Provincetown is longer, slightly more risque, and also features a biker as one of the (many) characters, which is pretty cool. But then Hirschfeld also wrote Bonnie, so he was familiar with the biking scene. 

If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect Burt Hirschfeld had been reading some William Hegner. While Hirschfeld’s affected prose style is still apparent in Provincetown (ie, sentences that keep elaborating on themselves), Hirschfeld tells a lot of the tale via dialog, a style more used by Hegner, with the characters expounding back and forth to one another. There’s also a slightly more raunchy tone, but still nowhere in the league of Hegner. Actually, most of the sex is off-page in Provincetown, but there’s a definite focus on oral sex and even gay sex (the biker, you see, goes out of his way to be mean and cruel to convince himself that he isn’t attracted to men…which totally isn’t cliched at all, folks!). This “raunchy talk,” coupled with the Hollywood vibe, just brings to mind the contemporary work of William Hegner. 

It just isn’t as good as Hegner. Here Burt Hirschfeld, who by 1977 had penned scads of trash fiction novels, proves out Dean Koontz’s dictum: that “Big Sexy” authors will eventually reach burnout. Such would seem to be the case here, as Hirschfeld appears to be going through the motions in Provincetown. Perhaps I’m thinking this due to the various means he resorts to in filling up the 300 pages; there will be periodic faux-newspaper clippings about the movie, or interviews with the characters that take place after the novel’s events, and none of this stuff does anything to add to the plot. Also, the large cast of characters or course resembles Hirschfeld’s biggest success, Fire Island, only none of the ones here are as memorable as the characters in that earlier book. 

And the plot is kind of a mess. Provincetown is about a film company that heads to Provincetown in Cape Cod to film a movie titled…you guessed it, Provincetown. This movie is based on a novel by a guy named Tom Reynolds (one of the many characters in the book), which is about an older woman falling in love with a younger man. I mean that’s it. Yet the director of the flick, a former bigtime Hollywood talent named “Little John” O’Day, is certain this plot is going to be box office dynamite. However Pike, the creepy producer of the movie, has his own plans, and as the shooting progresses Pike starts demanding that more sex and violence be added to the film. It all just comes off as very hard to buy; I mean we’re to believe that O’Day, who goes back to the old studio days, would be willing to go on location and shoot a film in which several roles haven’t even been cast yet. I found this unbelievable. 

As usual for a novel with a large cast of characters, the opening pages are a bit bumpty until you figure out who’s who. And as with Fire Island, not all the characters are truly integral to the story; for example, the stuff with Mario the yacht captain could’ve easily been cut. But so far as the main characters go, there’s O’Day, 60 and concerned his best work is decades behind him, hoping to get his name back with this film; Vicky Pierce, a onetime box office star of famous beauty who herself has retired from the movie biz and is looking to Provincetown as a way back into the big leagues; Sexton, an alcoholic painter given to street fighting who himself was once involved with the movie business; Sandy Hayden, hotstuff young wannabe starlet who will screw anyone who helps advance her career; Kiley, the aforementioned biker whose savagery is a mask for his homosexuality; and finally Tom Reynolds, author of the novel the film is based on who hopes to become rich and famous. 

There are sundry other characters in addition to these, some of them more important than others, some lost in the shuffle: chief in this regard would be Joe Crespi, a willowy young “actor’s actor” who can’t handle the action scenes producer Pike insists on adding to the script. Oh, and Crespi’s gay, too, as we learn in his intro, but he sort of disappears from the novel after that until midway through. Only to return late in the book where he is the sudden object of Kiley’s wrath…not just because Crespi is the star of the movie (which Kiley feels he himself should be), but because Crespi is gay, and of course that just works up the in-the-closet Kiley all the more. 

The first quarter of Provincetown isn’t like most other Burt Hirschfeld novels I’ve read. It’s more brutal and crime-pulp in vibe, first with Sexton getting into a savage street fight and then later Kiley, in Greenwich Village, trying to get back his stolen chopper. This part is more grim than the typical Hirschfeld fare, with Kiley first finding a notorious area slut and “banging” her all night to get her docile and subservient, then using her to ensnare the rival biker who stole his chopper. It’s not overly violent but Kiley does toss someone off a rooftop…actually, two people, in one of the more surprising turns of events. But at least Hirschfeld here lets us know Kiley is a savage and not to be trucked with. 

Which makes Kiley’s mid-novel retcon into a wanna be star quite hard to buy. With his muscles and brawn often noted, it’s not hard to see Kiley protrayed as Big William Smith in the movie of Provincetown that plays in your mind. It’s all just a little ridiculous, though. O’Day and company arrive in Provincetown to shoot the movie, and Pike starts insisting on more violence and action. Somehow Kiley, who is hiding in Provincetown after committing murder in Greenwich Village, gets the job as the stunt man on the film. I mean, he’s not a professional stuntman, not in any union…he’s just a muscular guy they hire off the street to handle the on-film action stuff that lead actor Joe Crespi can’t. At least someone on the film crew might have started thinking about liability. 

But from this, Kiley begins to develop dreams of stardom, and begins demeaning himself to gain O’Day’s favor and prove himself as “the better leading man” for the movie. And also he’s got the simmering hots for Crespi over the whole gay thing. Oh and Kiley also becomes the thrall of a Rona Barrett type who comes to Provincetown to drudge up some gossip, but she instead finds Kiley at a party and takes him into an empty bathroom to suck him off. As I say, there’s a definite oral focus to Provincetown, not to mention a part where Kiley unleashes his “monster,” “bull”-sized member and sodomizes a poor character after beating him to a pulp. “He must’ve enjoyed that part of it,” a sensitive character later remarks on the sodomy, given that the victim happens to be gay. 

Now that I think of it, there’s hardly any straight-up screwing in Provincetown. Sexton, who seems to be Hirschfeld’s “main” character, has his chance with former box-office babe Vicky Pierce, but he’s “busted” and no longer able to get it up (due to his drinking or his general pessimism with life – it’s all the same for Hirschfeld), so he ends up dining at the Y. Again, the oral focus! There’s a whole lotta sucking, licking, and lapping going on in Provincetown. But anyway I guess being an alcoholic beach bum who runs an art shop is the way to pick up the ladies, as they’re throwing themselves at Sexton throughout the novel: first Vicky, then later a hippie free spirit type in her very early 20s who latches onto him, trying to prove he’s “not so tough.” 

Speaking of which, despite being published in 1977 there’s actually more of an “early ‘70s” vibe to Provincetown, which of course is fine by me. Other than an errant mention of disco, the soundtrack of the big party scene toward the end of the book is the “throbbing beat” of the Rolling Stones, and also there’s a part where O’Day and Pike meet in what appears to be an acid rock club, complete with strobe lights on the walls and dancing half-nude women. The drugs are also more early ‘70s than late, with grass being the most commonly used drug in Provincetown. In fact I don’t think there’s a single mention of coke, which seems strange for a 1977 book about Hollywood characters. Indeed, in a total early ‘70s bit that aforementioned 21 year-old gal plies Sexton with joints, forcing them on him, and the marijuana defeats not only Sexton’s alcoholism but it also helps him to, uh, “get it up.” 

But the lack of coke and the feeling that a lot of this is imitation William Hegner could however just be more indication that Burt Hirschfeld was falling behind on the times. While I enjoyed the novel for the most part, there was just a feeling here that Hirschfeld was going through the motions and delivering the type of book he thought was expected of him. It’s also interesting that the book’s plot is so similar to the earlier Acapulco, only as mentioned this one’s longer, and also has those gimmicky bits where Hirschfeld will fill pages with an interview with, say, upcoming starlet Sandy Hayden, or another with novelist Tom Reynolds. Which reminds me – Hirschfeld’s plotting is also kind of jacked up. Sandy Hayden is introduced as the mistress of Reynolds, and he’s brought her here to Provincetown for some action on the side (despite also bringing along his wife – and she’s another of the many supporting characters, a bombshell beauty with the mind of a prude). 

But somehow Sandy ends up with the lecherous press agent Pike has hired for the movie, and it’s almost as if Hirschfeld’s forgotten that she was introduced as being Reynolds’s kept woman. Regardless, Sandy’s storyline is a mirror of Kiley’s, in that she feels she should be a big star and is willing to do whatever it takes to get there. So, like Kiley, we have a lot of parts where she tries to catch O’Day’s eye, so that he’ll cast her in the movie…the movie that he’s already filming. It just all seems so goofy and unbelievable. Not to mention that O’Day, in his own scenes, is shown to be a bitter old cynic who doubts his ability to do anything worthwhile; he’s so similar to Sexton that the two are easily confused, particularly in the early pages. 

Now that I think of this, it seems Hirschfeld’s theme was clear: the oldschool studio-days film people are bitter, cyncial, lost, and, in the case of Sexton, alcoholic. They want to get back into the bigtime but don’t know how. The newschool actors, ie Sandy Hayden and Kiley, are willing to do whatever it takes to make it – in Kiley’s case, to kill, in Sandy’s case, to screw whoever will help her career. So in other words, the theme is pretty similar to most of the other “New Hollywood” trash paperbacks that were published in the era. But man. If only Hollywood people like this still existed…or at least were the ones who were making movies today. 

The novel works up to a nightmarish conclusion, with yet another main actor in the film getting raped – but this one is also murdered. This spirals us into a too-quick finale in which fate dispenses some justice…and also again via those egregious “industry articles” we learn that Mario, the fishing captain, is thrust into stardom due to his role in Provincetown. WTF? Also Sexton suddenly seems to have a plot that is separate from the main novel; the book concludes with him going around Europe with his new 21 year-old gal and finding himself or something. Meanwhile the stuff on Provincetown the film is almost rushed through. 

Overall this was a fairly quick read, and entertaining due to the fact that Burt Hirschfeld seemed to be pushing himself in new directions. But the center didn’t hold at times, lending the impression that Hirschfeld didn’t put as much of an effort into the writing of Provincetown. 

Here’s the uncredited inlay art spread: 

Men's Adventure Quarterly #7 (plus She Devil OST)

Men's Adventure Quarterly #7, edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham

January, 2023  Subtropic Productions

The seventh installment of Men’s Adventure Quarterly was perfectly timed for me; its focus on “Gang Girls” was in-line with a CD I purchased shortly before Xmas (more on which anon), so I dove right into this latest issue of the series. And it’s another great publication courtesy Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, providing ample stories and art. We also get informative editorials from the two and co-editors Jules Burt and Andrew Nette; the latter gives a cool rundown on ‘50s juvenile delinquent pulp, particularly focused on the novel that kicked the genre off, The Amboy Dukes. But man, I was bummed he didn’t mention that Ted Nugent took the title of this novel for the name of his first band – and their mega-skewed Zappa-influenced prog-acid 1970 LP Marriage On The Rocks is one of my favorites. 

As ever Bob Deis provides an informative overview for the entire issue, and then separate intros for each story. I was impressed that he was able to find so many “juvenile delinquent girl” stories in the men’s mags; I had no idea there were enough to fill a book! I’ve said it before, but Bob could’ve made a good living coming up with themes for book publishers back in the day. It’s worth noting though that toward the end of MAQ #7 we get out of the j.d. girls theme and into a “biker chick” theme, but that’s fine by me – also worth noting that in one of the various artwork spotlights in the issue they show the poster for the biker-chick flick The Hellcats, the obscure novelization of which I reviewed here a few years ago. In fact I think “biker chick” would be a great theme for a future issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly. 

“The Vicious Girl Gangs Of Boston,” by Henry S. Galus and from the August 1954 Man To Man, starts us off, about the “Violent, insane, brutal thuggery” of the titular girl gangs in Boston. “Female punks are causing a menace never equaled in our history,” Galus tells us in this exploitative expose that’s delivered more as a standard reporting piece than the typical men’s adventure yarn. 

“Tomboy Jungle” by Wenzell Brown, from the November 1957 For Men Only, is more along those yarns – it starts off as straight fiction, with a guy hitting on some jailbait girl in the city…and walking into a trap set up by the jailbait’s j.d. friends. The girl is a Pachuco, “the fastest growing crime cult in the country.” This is a vicious lot of gang-girls who use their beauty to lure men into allies for a little knife-in-the-back fun. Brown then goes into breathless rundowns of some Pachuco atrocities, surely with his tongue slightly in cheek, like when he tells us how a “young army private” in New York was once abducted by three Pachuco girls, who “compelled him to have sexual relations with each of them.” The horror!

“Zip-Gun Girl” is by Albert L. Quandt and from the September 1958 Man’s Illustrated. This is probably the longest story yet featured in an issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, running to nearly thirty pages (though admitedly I’m missing the sixth volume of MAQ, which might have had even longer stories). This is because “Zip Gun Girl” is a condensed version of a novel titled Zip-Gun Angels. Usually I skip abridged stories in men’s adventure magazines, figuring I’ll read the original novel someday. But I’m not planning on reading Quandt’s novel any day soon, so this condensed version sufficed. It’s not nearly as lurid as the title would imply. 

This one’s about Pebbles Jackson, a teen beauty (“the fullness of her sweater was heaving”) with an ex-con father who has just moved into the city. She finds herself in the middle of a gang-war between the Tigers and the Buccaneers. There’s also a cop named Grieg who takes an interest in Pebbles – who meanwhile befriends gang-girl Blackie (so named due to her hair color). The titular zip guns are used by the two gang members, and at one point Pebbles’s dad gets hold of the gun. It’s pretty involved and clearly a novel instead of a fast-moving piece of pulp. Quandt’s writing is good, but like I said I think this abridgement will do it for me and I won’t be seeking out the original novel. 

We’re back to the fast-moving pulp, plus our first first-person narrative in this MAQ, with “Street Queens Are Taking Over,” by Jack Smith and from the January 1962 Wildcat Adventures. This one’s more of a sweat yarn than the more polished men’s adventure stories of the Diamond Line (ie For Men Only, Male, etc); it’s the sort of short, fast-moving sleaze the mysterious Pep Pentageli collected in his own men’s adventure anthologies (ie Soft Brides For The Beast Of Blood). It also has my favorite art in this issue, with a hotstuff brunette gang-girl about to whip a blonde. We even get two versions of this illustration, the cover piece and the splashpage, both courtesy Charles Frace (again, Bob Deis’s intros are very informative). This whipping is the centerpiece of the story, given that “Street Queens” isn’t very long. It’s an exploitative piece in which the narrator tells us about Margie, the sadistic boss of the West Side Dragons, who per the illustration whips a blonde girl named Shirl, who slept with Margie’s man (whose nickname is Jack the Ripper!) – and, since this is a sweat, Margie whips Shirl to friggin’ death. This one was probably my favorite in this issue. 

The luridly-titled “Lust On Our Streets” is another sweats yarn, by Allan Hendrix and from the September 1963 Wildcat Adventures. As with the previous story it’s another that trades on exploitation; the entire story is the buildup to a teen girl getting raped by a gang of j.d.s, lured into an alley by her new “friends” in the city. This one’s in third person, though, and concerns two rich teens who move to New York, hanging out in the slums with some j.d.s because they seem cool; the delinquents bait them with talk of a new dance called “The Leash,” which turns out to be j.d. code for taking the two teens into an alley and whipping them, then raping the girl. As with most of these sweats the author’s tongue must be in his cheek, as the entire thing is just lurid exploitation, then abruptly morphs into a concerned polemic on this national problem in the final paragraphs. Features another “great pair” of cleavage-baring illustrations (note the clever pun) by Charles Frace. I can already see the sweat mag editors of yore enthusing over this guy’s work; in my mind they’re sweaty, heavyset lechers with cheap cigars in their mouths: “Get that Frace guy – he does jugs like nobody!” 

We come now to the biker girl era with “The Passion Angel Cycle Girls,” by Clinton Kayser and from the December 1967 Men. Illustrated with photos of bikers and their chicks acting crazy for the camera, this one purports to be first-hand accounts by the titular cycle girls, talking mostly about what drew them to the biking life and how they like to get it on with bikers. As Bob Deis notes in his intro, it’s likely all the product of “Kayser’s” imagination; in his intro Bob also mentions another men’s adventure mag story, one I’ve been interested in for a long time, which features one of the greatest “topless biker chick” illustrations you’ll ever see (courtesy Earl Norem, my favorite of all the men’s mag artists): “Sex Life Of A Motorcyle Mama.” Bob, please consider this story for a future MAQ! 

The last yarn in this very special “Gang-Girls” issue is “Latest Teen Terror Craze: Cycle Girls On Wheels,” by J.R. Wayne and from the June 1970 Man’s Conquest. Originally from 1965, this one goes back to the more “factual” vibe with a rundown on what draws certain young women to the motorcycle scene. 

After this we get some artwork spotlights on j.d. and biker movies – as ever, Bill Cunningham does a great job on the art in this MAQ. And Bill’s layouts are so much easier to read than the original men’s adventure magazines, which ran triple-column pages of blurry type, to the point that I’ve often wondered how their target audience of WWII and Korea vets could even read the damn things. But then, they were probably buying them for the cleavage-baring illustrations. And who could blame them? 

Back to the CD I mentioned at the start; while reading Fuel-Injected Dreams I was on a momentary ‘50s rock kick, and went looking for something “new” to listen to. Last year I picked up a CD titled Terror From The Universe, released in 2020 by UK label Righteous, produced in “Glorious Crampovision.” What this meant was that dialog from ‘50s sci-fi movies was sprinkled between (and sometimes over) exotica and rock music of the era, and each track was a long sequence of several songs blended together, like a DJ set. While it wasn’t the type of music I’d generally listen to, I liked the concept of the CD. So this past November I saw that Righteous, in 2018, had released a similar compilation, titled She Devil OST, the “soundtrack” to a nonexistent 1950s juvenile delinquent movie. Here’s the cover: 

Following the same setup as Terror Beyond The Universe, She Devil features dialog samples from ‘50s j.d. films – with a focus on “gun girls.” And the music featured is much better – none of the exotica of that later Righteous release, but more on the rock spectrum. Well, I played it and I liked it…and meanwhile my six-year-old son loved it. One of the coolest things about being a parent is seeing the stuff your kid gets into. When I ordered She Devil OST, I had no idea that it would soon become my son’s favorite album. Man, he plays this thing all the time – I converted it to MP3 so he could blast it on a Bluetooth speaker. On weekends or when he’s off from school, he demands we play his “full album” (his name for the CD), so I’ve heard She Devil OST multiple times now. 

And I have to say, it makes for the perfect aural accompaniment to Men’s Adventure Quarterly #7. Like the stories Bob and Bill have collected here, the songs on She Devil OST aren’t just relegated to the 1950s, but go into the (early) ‘60s as well. They’re for the most part raw and wild, with none of the saccharine schmaltz you might expect of ‘50s or early ‘60s rock. Best of all, I hadn’t heard any of these songs before – Righteous, which seems to have a focus on releasing CDs with themes centered around the punk band The Cramps, generally sticks to under-the-radar releases. My favorite song on the CD is “Tongue Tied,” by a singer named Betty McQuade; apparently it was the B-side of a 1962 single only released in Australia. Like I said, under the radar sort of stuff. But man, this track is almost proto-punk, at least in how Betty McQuade snarls out the vocals. 

Meanwhile my son’s favorite song is “Motorcycle Millie,” by Garrett Williams; he surely must be the only 6-year-old kid who goes around singing, “Motorcycle Millie – she’s my girl.” And also he’s real big on the goofy 1960 oddity “You Been Torturing Me,” by The Four Young Men, which goes on about all the ways the singer is going to get violent revenge on the girl who broke his heart – “I’m gonna stomp you on the top of your foot/And hang you from a big long fishing hook/And drop you plumb to the bottom of the sea,” and etc. To tell the truth I’m half afraid my kid’s gonna start singing this one in his kindergarten class, and next thing you know the school counselor will be giving us a call… 

Anyway, wrapping up – this is another highly-recommended issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, and I hope Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham keep publishing this series for many years to come!

Every Which Way But Loose

Every Which Way But Loose, by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg

January, 1979  Warner Books

Here’s another one to file under, “They did a novelization of that?” The Every Which Way But Loose tie-in is kind of special, though, in that it was written by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, who not only wrote the script but also had a minor role in the film as a biker. Kronsberg also wrote the script for the 1980 sequel Any Which Way You Can, but didn’t write a novelization for it (and also didn’t appear in the movie). 

I’ve never seen Every Which Way But Loose, or if I did I was very young and don’t remember it. I was aware of it and the sequel, though. Actually, it’s the sequel I was probably more aware of, as I was 6 in 1980 but only 4 when Every Which Way But Loose came out in late 1978. I knew the name of the movie, though, and also that there was an orangutan in it. I grew up in West Virginia, and you can just imagine how popular these movies, with their country music-listening heroes and redneck shenanigans, were with us “poor, illiterate and strung out” West Virginians. I seem to recall these movies making a big impact at the time, and I probably just figured they were along the same lines as The Dukes Of Hazard, which I also wasn’t really into. 

Despite the rural vibe, the movie (and novel) takes place in Los Angeles, and Kronsberg brings the place to life, calling out specific spots and locations. But really it feels more like a smalltown than a big metropolis, particularly given that so many of the characters are redneck yokels. For one there’s hero Philo Beddoe (Clint Eastwood), a truck driver of sorts who listens to country music on a radio he’s taped to the dashboard. When he isn’t truck-driving he’s either working on cars at his place or getting in fights in country bars. He’s tall and described as being more brawny than Eastwood himself was (6’4” and 220 pounds); in fact, with the redneck vibe and muscular protagonist, I got the impression that Every Which Way But Loose was more suitable for Burt Reynolds. I had a hard time picturing Clint Eastwood in many of the scenes in this novel, but obviously audiences didn’t, as I’ve read that this was his highest-grossing film. 

But then, that could be just because the movie so tapped into the zeitgeist. Every Which Way But Loose, at least in the novel, is very ‘70s; not so much in the sleazy shag rug aspect, but in its loosey-goosey approach to “plotting” and its burned-out, mind-fried characters. I was well into the novel before I realized there really was no plot, and in fact what passes for one is cribbed from innumerable country songs: a guy keeps getting burned by his untrustworthy girlfriend, all while other problems pile up on him. The problems are a gang of bikers, a pair of sadistic cops, a hot-tempered old lady, his girl’s jilted ex-boyfriend, and a horny orangutan. Philo deals with all this stuff while trying to get his woman back – that’s pretty much the entire plot. 

Kronsberg treats his story on the level in this novelization, but it’s clear he’s intended it as a light comedy. Those sadistic cops, for example; while at one point they get some guns with the intent to take out Philo permanently, there’s never a moment where you are concerned for our rangy hero. And for that matter, Philo’s frequent – very frequent – fights, while almost apocalyptic at times, are never overly violent or have any repercussions. I mean the dude walks through the movie getting in a jillion fights without barely a dent, sort of like the average Bruce Le movie (that’s Le, not Lee, ie the star of the most bottom-of-the-barrel Bruceploitation flicks). But then the novel doesn’t become a slapstick farce, either, as despite the lack of tension things actually matter to the characters themselves. 

And Philo is a very ‘70s hero; he’s so comfortable in his zero-goal life that he’s achieved a sort of zen. He doesn’t even have his own place, living in the back yard of his toothless pal Orville and Ma, Orville’s grumbling mother who spends the entire novel trying to get a driver’s license. Then of course there’s Clyde, Philo’s orangutan, which he won in a fight. Philo fights for money, but really for “fun;” in a rare bit of backstory we learn that he could’ve gone a professional route, but prefers fighting for self-entertainment or such. There’s no bitter history or personal loss Philo’s hiding from, as there would be in one of today’s over-thought films; he’s just a guy who likes to listen to country music, drink beer, and get in fights. That all changes the night he sees singer Lynne Halsey-Taylor performing at a country club. 

It was only after I finished the novel that I realized Kronsberg was likely parodying the subject matter of most country songs, as Lynne is forever leaving Philo in the lurch and he’s always going after her. She is a very curious lead female character, as she has none of the expected qualities: she’s self-involved, she lies, she’ll drop Philo without a moment’s notice or even an explanation. But at least she’s pretty, and apparently this is why Philo becomes so hooked on her; plus he enjoys her singing. Ultimately we’ll learn that Lynne is from Colorado and has a goal to open her own bar, where she’ll of course be the featured entertainer, but she needs a few thousand dollars for the down payment. She’s always in search of this, while Philo is always in search of her. 

We get an idea that this won’t be your standard romance when Philo meets Lynne after he sees her singing, and they hit it off, and she invites him back to her place…and then informs him when they get there that she has a boyfriend, but Philo can come on in anyway. A stunned Philo backs off, and spends the next several pages pining over Lynne and trying to figure out how he can steal her from her boyfriend. Meanwhile he runs afoul of various people: first the Black Widows, a biker gang, and then a pair of cops who get in a bar fight with Philo. In both cases the other parties start it: first the Black Widows throw a cigar in Clyde’s face, and later the two cops are drunk and start hassling Philo. However they’re not in uniform, and the fact that they’re officers is only revealed later. 

In each case Philo is so superhuman that, again, there’s no tension. The “action scenes” are the only part of the novel that truly approach slapstick; for example, when the two bikers toss a cigar at Clyde, Philo rounds them up, beats the stuffing out of them, and jams them headfirst into a garbage can. Later on, when the cops finally track down Philo and grab their guns to wipe him out permanently, Kronsberg plays out the scene for laughs, with Philo about to land a big trout and more annoyed at the interruption than concerned about being shotgunned to death. And once again, his fate isn’t at all in doubt. No one’s killed in the novel, and in fact blood is rarely mentioned. It’s basically just a goofy comedy about a guy who enjoys fighting a lot, and doesn’t have any of the darker connotations that such a story would have today. 

Even the sexual material is inexplicit; when Lynn and Philo actually “do the deed,” it’s kept off-page. Kronsberg for that matter doesn’t much exploit his female characters, and overall the novel has a very PG mentality. It’s almost like a slightly more “mature” Dukes Of Hazzard, now that I think of it. Much of the narrative is taken up with Philo and Orville trading goofy banter, but there are also several sequences from the perspective of lesser characters, for example the Black Widows. In many ways the novel reminded me of Sylvester Stallone’s novelization of Paradise Alley, not in content but in tone. Both books are almost liked warped representations of reality in which street bullies grow up to be adults but keep acting the same. There are no real-world concerns and everything can be solved by an old-fashioned fight. 

Kronsberg opens things up with a multi-state journey in which Lynne abruptly takes off, Philo follows after her (Orville and Clyde coming along – and on the way they pick up a hippie-country chick named Echo, who takes to Orville), and meanwhile both the cops and the Black Widows follow after Philo. Even here the romance doesn’t pan out as you’d expect; there’s no emotional reunion between Philo and Lynne (she literally just drives by him as he’s walking along a road), and the untrustworthy babe again leaves Philo in the lurch. She’s a quite unlikable character and it’s hard to understand Philo’s obsession with her. 

We also get a nice climax in which Philo takes on the legendary bar fighter Tank Murdoch, whose legend is occasionally mentioned throughout the text, Kronsberg craftily setting up the novel’s climactic confrontation. This is the only part of the book where Philo shows much depth, as he realizes that, if he were to win, he’d be plagued with endless challenges, like Tank himself now is. Otherwise there’s no big wrap-up for Every Which Way But Loose. Overall the novel was pretty good, and I appreciated the downhome, easy-going way Kronsberg told his downhome, easy-going story, but truth be told the novelization didn’t have me raring to finally see the movie itself.