The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman

The Werewolf vs Vampire Woman, by Arthur N. Scarm

No month stated, 1972  G-H Books

Ramble House trade paperback reprint (As The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman), 2007

I’m certain I have a copy of this obscure paperback tie-in somewhere, but I’m unable to find it – thankfully, Ramble House has reprinted The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman, and their reprint might be even superior to the original, as it contains cool interior illustrations by Alan Hutchinson. 

This novelization of an equally-obscure Spanish horror film is probably more well-known today than it was in 1972. In fact it’s interesting that this movie, part of the cycle of werewolf movies starring Paul Naschy, was even slated for a novelization in America; too bad more drive-in fare wasn’t novelized at the time, but at least we’ll always have Coffy. 

I have not seen all twelve (or thirteen, if you count the rumored “lost” film) of the Naschy werewolf movies, but I have seen a few of them, The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman among them, and that’s more than can be said for tie-in author “Arthur M. Scarm,” who clearly has not seen the movie, and here turns in a wholly original novel that is like nothing I have read before…and given the amount of trashy, bizarre stuff I’ve reviewed on here since 2010, that’s really saying something. 

Instead of the Gothic yarn lensed by director Leon Kilmovsky, with Naschy’s werewolf character in rural France and trying to save a pair of cute co-eds from a resurrected black magic sorceress of a vampire, Scarm’s “novelization” is a dark comic epic in comparison, a nasty, mean-tempered, but nonetheless humorous story about a werewolf and a vampire queen, and the havoc they wreak together. 

It’s also insane, and seems to be a booze and/or coke-fueled first draft, jumping wily-nily from one atrocity to another, Scarm laughing madly at the typewriter as he pounds the keys. And yet for all that, there is something to The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman that ascends the nasty nature of the book and instead comes off like the morbid tale of two doomed characters. 

Scarm isn’t content to just make up his own story instead of following the film; he also comes up with a new approach to werewolves and vampires. For the former – well, despite those cool interior illustrations I mentioned in the Ramble House edition, which show “hero” Waldo the Werwolf (presumably Scarm’s version of Waldemar Danisnsky, which is the name of Naschy’s character in the films) as a full-blown wolf man, complete with fur and fangs, Scarm specificies in the novel that Waldo looks for the most part like a normal man…save for a curious “band of hair around his middle,” which is the sign that he is a werewolf. 

As if this wasn’t WTF? enough, we also learn that once a year all werewolves become actual werewolves, ie with the fur and fangs, and Waldo’s night happens to be New Year’s Eve. This is the night the werewolves go really wild and murder with a total bloodlust…not that they don’t kill the same way every other night of the year. Even more strangely, Scarm has it that the werewolves don’t kill by tearing people apart, or by strangling them like Larry Talbot in the old Wolf Man movie; no, Waldo uses stakes, which he carries around in his back pocket and hammers into the hearts of his prey: men, women, and children. 

Vampires in Scarm’s world are also different: they can go out in daylight and they can be photographed and filmed. Actually, Scarm doesn’t mention that this is even notable, giving the impression that he’s not aware that vampires traditionally are supposed to shun daylight and cast no reflection. There are parts where Wandessa, the vampire queen – the same name the character has in the film, though she isn’t referred to as a vampire queen there – looks at her reflection in the mirror, admiring her beauty…not to mention the part toward the end where she becomes a movie superstar. 

I also forgot to mention, but in addition to being “daywalkers” and having reflections/images that can be captured on film, vampires also have “hollow teeth” for fangs, and drink blood direclty through these teeth, like straws. They also don’t seem to be very averse to religious iconography; at least, nothing of the sort is used against Wandessa in the book. 

I’ll refrain from comparing the novelization to the actual film, as there is no comparison. Other than the very beginning, which sees “Waldo” being brought back to life by a foolish coroner who takes the silver bullet out of the dead man’s chest, not believing there’s any such thing as werewolves. As with the film, Waldo kills the man and escapes, and also as with the film, we have a pair of coeds – Genevieve and Elvira – who are interested in the legendary Wandessa, and want to find her for a class project or something. 

It’s here that the novelization deviates, and wildly so, but for posterity, the movie proceeds on an altogether level-headed narrative, at least when compared to Scarm’s story: young Genevieve (hotstuff German actress Barbara Capell) accidentally brings Wandessa to life, and the sexy vampire babe (as played by Patty Shepard) is out for blood – and meanwhile Waldemar and Elivra (big-haired Gaby Fuchs) fall in love. Overall it’s a pretty cool movie, and I’m sure it was a blast to see at the drive-in. 

Scarm says to hell with all that. Genevieve and Elvira are college students who want to find Wandessa, the queen of the vampires, and somehow Waldo the Werewolf hears about this and decides to tag along – that is, when he isn’t banging them, usually both at the same time. Now let me tell you right here and now, while you will often see Arthur Scarm’s The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman described as sleazy, or filled with sex, I want to specify that all of the sex either occurs off-page or is not even described at all. 

Indeed, there is an almost “storytelling” vibe to the tale, a half-assed omniscient tone that gives the impression that Scarm has pulled up a chair and is telling you a tall tale; there is no real attempt at conveying a proper story, and the entire thing comes off more like the booze-fueled recounting of a legend or myth. It also occurred to me that Scarm’s story is like a ‘50s pre-code horror comic, operating as it does in a non-reality, almost fairy tale-like atmosphere, with a vibe that is both vicious and humorous. 

Waldo is certainly a hard character to relate to, and it’s clear Scarm doesn’t intend him to be a hero. Waldo is a murderer, killing hundreds of men, women, and children in the course of the book, if not by a stake to the heart then by other ways. Wandessa is equally as sadistic, though there are several parts where she tries to break free of her vampire ways, “drinking just enough blood” to keep her satiated, but ensuring that her victims don’t die. 

Actually another interpretation of Scarm’s The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman is that it’s a thinly-veiled account of two alcoholics getting on and off the wagon. Waldo is the driver, comfortable with his murderous ways and constantly pushing Wandessa to embrace her bloodlust, and Wandessa will put up a struggle but ultimately fall off the wagon and start killing again. But soon enough they both want to be free of their addictions, leading to crazy parts where they go to a therapist. 

There’s no attempt whatsoever at conveying realism; I don’t expect that from a horror novel, but Scarm sets the novel in an entirely different reality. This is apparent from the beginning, in which a pair of college co-eds want to wake up a vampire queen for their college thesis. Scarm doesn’t even bother much with background material; Wandessa has been “dead” in a coffin since the late 1800s, but cannot remember how she got there, and Scarm never bothers to fill in the blanks. As for Waldo, we have no idea how he became a werewolf, but we know he certainly wasn’t born one, because, in another curious tidbit Scarm relays to us, werewolves are made, not born, because werewolves cannot have orgasms. 

Crazily enough, Scarm sticks to his bizarre supernatural theologisms through the book as if they were holy writ; after reading this novel, I thought maybe I’d missed something and maybe werewolves really did look just like normal people, only with a band of hair around their “middle.” And hell, maybe they do stake their prey instead of strangling them or eating them. Hell, who’s to really say?? 

The first chapter alone is nuts. Waldo comes back to life, hooks up with the coeds, and they go looking for Wandessa’s grave. And as mentioned Waldo has his sexual way with both gals, and while the stuff isn’t explicit we do learn that Waldo has a giant “wang,” which is another indication he’s a werewolf. Oh and there’s a third girl, Ruth, who didn’t even exist in the film, a nurse who fell in love with Waldo when he was brought back to life by the coroner (after which Waldo promptly took advantage of her there in the operating room – but she liked it, of course), and who is now in love with Waldo and wants to go wherever he goes. 

Waldo is a bad guy for sure, and to his credit he tells the girls – and us readers – this from the get-go: “Only expect evil from a werewolf.” He treats the girls roughly (though again, they enjoy it), kills to slake his bloodlust, and secretly plots to drive a stake into Wandessa’s heart when they find her because he hates all vampires. “And yet, I was in love with a vampire once,” Waldo ruminates, but this hint of actual backstory is so quickly cast aside that I actually laughed aloud. 

Scarm is like that throughout; he trades between total lurid vileness and soul-plumbing introspection. To be honest, if I hadn’t known better I would’ve suspected The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman might have been an early novel by Len Levinson, as Scarm’s style is not totally dissimilar. Then again, I might be just as inclined to suspect Russell Smith, given the breathless narrative tone and the overall deranged vibe. But as it turns out, according to the sleuthing of Paul Collins, “Arthur Scarm” was really a writer named Leo Guild…who it turns out I’ve reviewed on here in the past, at least a short piece he wrote about Hollywood for a men's magazine. 

Oh and I forgot to mention, but Scarm (I just prefer to refer to him by his goofy pseudonym) gives werewolves all kinds of bizarre powers…like, Waldo can enter the dreams of people, turning the dream into a nightmare, and also he can…shrink a woman’s breasts, which he promptly does to one of the girls, leading to the unforgettable line, “My wonderful breasts!” Not to worry, as Waldo later grows them back, all via black magic…this scene alone is very Len Levinson-esque and would’ve had me emailing Len asap to see if he wrote the book. 

The novel goes from one atrocity to another as Waldo kills all and sundry – even, suprisingly enough, characters we thought were going to be important to the plot. In one instance Waldo gets so mad that one of the three girls tricked him into having sex with her that he bashes her to pieces…then, in one of Scarm’s frequent bizarre interludes, Waldo runs away and disguises himself as a clown, apropos of nothing, and starts following the two remaining girls as they hunt for Wandessa’s hidden grave. He even buys the circus so he can follow them around “without drawing attention.” 

Unlike the film, Wandessa is the co-protagonist of this novelization; upon her resurrection in a graveyard, she hangs out with the group, fighting against or alongside Waldo for the rest of the book. Waldo plans to kill her, but due to comic reasons is unable to put his silver knife in her heart, but after thinking of it a bit he’s happy because the two can team up and kill people together – the first pairing of a werewolf and a vampire, we’re told. 

Eventually, Wandessa is the only recurring character outside of Waldo who remains in the book, and this only furthers the fairy tale nature of Scarm’s narrative; these two are like the center of the universe, despite being impossible to track down by the police. They rove across the country, killing with abandon – and even here it’s not traditional horror novel stuff, with bizarre, darkly comic stuff like the two of them fixing the switches at an intersection, causing a horrific pile-up of cars, and then Waldo and Wandessa going into the wreckage to kill the maimed survivors. 

Scarm shows no limitations with how far he will go, with an especially repugnant scene where Waldo puts his murderous eye on a group of kids, even luring them back to his apartment so he can kill them. Even Wandessa is sickened when Waldo murders a young boy by smashing his head; for her part, Wandessa “only drinks a small amount” of a little girl’s blood, just enough to satiate herself but to not kill the girl. 

Waldo is even more crazed on his “werewolf night,” ie New Year’s Eve, where he turns into your traditional-looking furry werewolf and goes on a kill spree. Even here Scarm follows his own path; on his special night, Waldo is granted additional powers, and indeed can will himself anywhere he wants just by thinking about it(!). So we have crazy horror movie stuff where he’ll just appear on a train and start staking people in the heart, travelers who find themselves confronted by a werewolf that has come out of nowhere. 

Scarm shows a definite talent for keeping the madcap, vicious plot moving, but it seems clear that he writes himself into a corner, as the second half of the novel goes into freefall. First, Wandessa, who like a recovering alcoholic keeps trying to reform, only to be dragged back down by Waldo, sets her “friend” up with the cops and then takes off to hide in Hollywood…and here we go in an entirely different direction, as a naïve Wandessa somehow lands herself a contract with a movie studio. 

Now it’s essentially a Hollywood novel, only our aspiring starlet is a vampire. Of course Scarm has it that she’s starring in a horror movie, as a vampire no less, and soon Wandessa is using her true vampire nature to become a bigger and bigger star – “actually” biting her co-stars and whatnot. Things get progressively goofier when Wandessa tells the director she knows a “real werewolf” and Waldo gets hired onto the picture! 

Now the narrative has changed entirely, and instead of murderers on a killspree, Waldo and Wandessa are big Hollywood celebrities. They’ve also found true love – though Scarm toys with the idea, he never has Waldo and Wandessa become an item – and are about to get married(!), Wandessa to a black actor and Waldo to a butch sort of stunt woman. Meanwhile the cops are closing in…which is itself goofy, as these two commit atrocities throughout the novel, yet are always “hiding” from the cops…cops who can never seem to catch them. 

Not to make this sound like War and Peace or anything – though to be sure, I’d rather read The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman than War And Peace – but Scarm does a good job working in the “doomed couple” nature of Waldo and Wandessa, particularly when it comes to their (super)natural hatred for one another. This plays out in a rushed but memorable climax which sees Wandessa having some hot lesbian lovin’ with Waldo’s fiance…much to Waldo’s fury. 

I do appreciate that Leo Guild/Arthur Scarm took the opportunity to write an entirely new story, yet at the same time it would’ve been just as cool if he’d novelized the actual film. I haven’t seen all the Naschy vampire movies, just the ones from the ‘70s, and The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman is one of the better ones, and a book that actually told its tale would have been welcome. I’m going to bet Naschy himself was unaware that this novelization told a completely different tale than his movie. 

Thanks again to Ramble House for making this bizarre novel available for the masses – head over to their website for your copy today! Guaranteed to be the strangest book you will read this year…or any other year! To be honest, I feel that I’ve barely even described how whacky and disturbed this novel is. 

Here’s the cover for their edition, with artwork by Gavin L. O’Keefe:

Black Dynamite (The Comic Book Series)

Black Dynamite, by Brian Ash, Jun Lofamia, Ron Wimberly, and Marcello Ferreira

February, 2015  IDW Publishing

Somehow I was completely unaware that there was a Black Dynamite comic book tie-in published several years ago, shortly after the release of the movie. I knew there’d been an animated series on Adult Swim, but I never watched it, and likely never will, as judging from the clips I’ve seen it’s nothing at all like the movie. And really, as the years have gone by, Black Dynamite has become one of my all-time favorite movies, if not my favorite ever. It’s a perfect spoof of a poorly-produced, low-budget “Blaxploitation” film of the early ‘70s, while being a very funny movie in its own right. Somehow the producers were able to walk that line, and they did so perfectly, from the “goofs” expected of the former (boom mics showing up in shots, actors blowing lines), to the straight comedy of the latter (the part where Black Dynamite and his pals have a brainstorming session in the diner in particular). 

Sure, Black Dynamite isn’t perfect; I’ve never been fond of the finale, which I think goes too far outside the self-imposed constraints of the film. Black Dynamite fighting Richard Nixon in the White House might sound funny, but it’s not something you’d see in a legitimate Blaxploitation film. Indeed, I’m always ticked that the main plot – a black politician working with a greasy mobster to sell drugs in “the community” – is hastily dispatched in the final quarter, as if the producers decided they needed a bigger finale. The deleted scenes on the Blu Ray even indicate that this storyline was indeed the finale, up to and including a bevy of Dolemite-esque hookers-slash-kung-fu fighters taking on the mob; this scene lasts a mere few seconds in the final film, the producers rushing through it to get to “Kung-Fu Island” and Richard Nixon. 

Then again, the imperfection kind of adds to Black Dynamite’s charm. The biggest mystery is why it wasn’t a hit, and why it isn’t better-known today. Director Scott Sanders wonders the same thing in the Introduction he provides for this trade paperback, which collects five comic books that were published by two different imprints from 2011 to 2014. This intro, which is the highlight of the book, is very insightful, as Sanders explains the origins of Black Dynamite (essentially, it was an idea of star Michael Jai White’s), as well as the writing of the script (White with the concept, collaborating with Sanders and fellow star Byron “Bullhorn” Minns, who per the intro is the one who ensured they got all the Blaxploitation tributes/parodies correct). 

Sanders tells us how an early cut of the film got a lot of industry attention, and how the final film was expected to do so well. And then, “crickets” upon the premiere…and Black Dynamite only even played in a few theaters. Sanders is clearly at a loss to understand what happened, and conveys this in his intro. He does try to find a silver lining; he tells us of a special showing in a Hollywood theater, sometime after the film’s general release, where he and Michael Jai White were the featured guests, and the two were surprised to see that most of the audience came dressed up as characters from the film. I wonder if this special showing Scott Sanders is referring to is the one at the Red Vic, for which an artist named Dave Hunter created a blacklight poster – a poster which I have and showed here on the blog fourteen years ago. (And for the past fourteen years, that blacklight poster, framed and ready to be hung, has been in the exact same spot on my study room floor, leaning against the wall and waiting to be hung up!) 

Scott Sanders also finds silver lining in how Black Dynamite has become both a cartoon and a comic book character, even speculating that he maybe should’ve been a comic character all along. Unfortunately, it appears that even Black Dynamite the comic bombed, as the “series” only lasted 4 issues, with a one-shot coming out before it, and this trade paperback is out of print and overpriced on the used books marketplace. Again it is curious that Black Dynamite didn’t resonate more. I concur with Sanders that it seemed like a pre-packaged success, even down to Adrian Younge’s pitch-perfect soundtrack. One can easily get wrapped up in the world of Black Dynamite, and the producers even gave us fun stuff that should have further guaranteed social media interest, like those PSA spots. These comics should have just added to that. Maybe it’s just a case that Black Dynamite came out at the wrong time. 

I’ll say right now though that the comic does not, and could not, compare to the film. Black Dynamite works mainly due to Michael Jai White’s performance, and the conceit that White is “really” a former pro footballer named Farrante Jones who has become an actor. (Furthering this conceit is the idea, which I read somewhere, that “Farrante’s” football career was cut short due to a neck injury, hence why Black Dynamite has such stiff upper-body movement – again, it is things like this, things you wouldn’t even notice until your fourth or fifth viewing, that make the movie so special.) The writer of the comics, Brian Ash (who apparently also wrote and produced the animated series), clearly has his work cut out for him, trying to mimic this “serious but not serious” vibe. His failure is that he even tries. That said, I did appreciate how Ash tried to stay true to the “Farrante Jones” conceit, with fake ads throughout the book of Michael Jai White as Farrante Jones, sporting some product. 

To me, the biggest failing of Black Dynamite the comic is that Brian Ash doesn’t play it straight. He should’ve just written a straight Blaxploitation caper featuring a studly and virile black protagonist, and left the funny stuff to the dialog or to the characters. Instead, Ash occasionally goes for humorous plots, or will have characters making fun of plot developments, which is never a good idea. Again, it works fine in the movie – one can clearly see Michael Jai White as “Farrante Jones playing Black Dynamite” struggling with the dumb-ass script and terrible lines he’s been given, not to mention the bad actors he has to work with – but in a comic it doesn’t work very well at all. 

Curiously, Ash also has a strange tendency to take Black Dynamite out of his element. Surprisingly, only one of the five comics here features Black Dynamite in his typical urban environment. The first three issues of the series, in fact, don’t even seem to take place in the ‘70s, and have him traveling around the world and fighting the Illuminati; the third issue in particular is head-scratcher, featuring Black Dynamite up against genetically-bred giant insects and lots of gore. Humorously, it’s as if Ash realizes he’s lost the plot, as despite ending on a cliffhanger, the events of issue three are ignored in issue four (which was the final issue). And of all the stories here, #4 has the most in common with the movie. Indeed, the fourth issue even sort of rips off the movie; whereas Black Dynamite concerned an evil white plot to contaminate malt liquor, Black Dynamite #4 concerns an evil white plot to booby-trap tennis shoes. 

But of all the comics in the collection, it is the first one, the one-shot Black Dynamite: Slave Island, that is the best; it was originally published in 2011 by Ape Entertainment. And no wonder this story is the best in the collection, as per the credits the plot is courtesy none other than Michael Jai White and Scott Sanders! So then, Slave Island may give an indication of what Black Dynamite II might have been like. If so, then perhaps Brian Ash isn’t the one to blame for consistently taking Black Dynamite out of his element in the ensuing comics, for White and Sanders set the trend here. Slave Island is essentially a take on the “slavesploitation” films of the ‘70s (Arthur “Roots” Haley himself even has a cameo in the comic), with Black Dynamite pointedly referred to as a “Mandingo” at one point. 

The concept is interesting, but perhaps a little too one-note for a film, so maybe it isn’t fair to judge Slave Island as a movie that never was. It concerns Black Dynamite becoming aware of an island off the coast where black people are still held as slaves. He gears up and heads there, only to end up being washed up on the coast sans all of his equipment. From here it’s Black Dynamite in a loin cloth – again, the funky ‘70s trappings are for the most part gone in the comics – as he attempts to lead a rebellion among the cowed slaves. And it turns out “Slave Island” is actually a tourist spot, with wealthy white vacationers paying to come here and see how “things are supposed to be.” 

None of the slave characters get much of a chance to breathe, what with Slave Island only being around 48 pages. The slave who gets the most attention is a sexy, scantily-clad Pam Grier-type who harbors rebellious tendencies, but she isn’t in the story nearly as much as she should be. Black Dynamite, who is quickly caught and thrown in with the slaves, will spend the rest of the story taunting the white owners of Slave Island that a revolution is brewing – that is, when he isn’t being bid off to a wealthy white matron who engages the “Mandingo” in several nights of off-page lovin.’ Oh and I should mention here, despite looking exactly like a 1970s comic, Slave Island features rampant cursing and even a little nudity, just like the movie Black Dynamite. It also features the wonderfully economical plotting of a ‘70s comic; unlike modern-day comics, where an entire issue or more can be devoted to plot setup, Slave Island tells the beginning, middle, and end at a rapid clip. 

There’s a lot of stuff here that one could imagine making its way into the movie sequel that never was, like Black Dynamite punching a shark after being capsized in the ocean. Also his leading the slaves in revolt is pretty cool, but again a little rushed, as is typical for a comic. But Slave Island is mostly interesting in how creators White and Sanders apparently wanted to broaden the character of Black Dynamite, taking him out of the inner-city; unfortunately, Sanders doesn’t give much background info on Slave Island in his intro. It’s interesting to wonder if he and White did indeed conceive of it as a potential storyline for Black Dynamite II. 

Another big thing going for Slave Island is the artwork, courtesy Jun Lofamia. Per a brief, uncredited postscript at the end of the trade paperack, it’s noted that the goal for Slave Island was for it to look exactly like a comic from the ‘70s, and it was a struggle to find a modern artist who did not have a modern comics style. But, as it turned out, Lofamia was a comic artist in the ‘70s, thus his style here is identical to something you might’ve seen in a Marvel comic of the ‘70s. It’s great, and one can tell that the book was a labor of love on this front, down to the muted color palette and the faux-yellowing of the pages. Slave Island is also good because Brian Ash refrains from too much spoofery, other than occasional “humorous” stuff, which usually involves dialog; one of his recurring shticks is having characters misunderstand each other. 

Unfortunately, Black Dynamite the series is a whole ‘nother thing. Published by IDW, the series only ran from 2013 to 2014. Given that Brian Ash was involved with the animated series, I have to wonder if his Black Dynamite comic series is a take on that; even the artwork of the first three issues is similar to the cartoon, courtesy Ron Wimberly in issue #1 and Marcello Ferreira in issues #2 and 3. Their artwork has that same “street” look as the cartoon, and I don’t like it at all. Apparently the concern over finding an artist who was not influenced by modern comic art was not a concern for the series, as it had been for the Slave Island one-shot. And not only is the artwork “modern” in these first three issues, so too is the storyline, which bears no similarity to Black Dynamite the movie. 

Actually, what the storyline of Black Dynamite #1-3 most reminded me of was the COMCON mini-series Gerald Montgomery wrote in 2000 for The Executioner. As with that Mack Bolan storyline, here Black Dynamite discovers a secret organization of evil white people that is heavily equipped and intent on taking over the world. The brevity of Slave Island is gone, with Black Dynamite #1 essentially nothing more than setup for the ensuing two issues – and it’s clear that more than two issues were intended for this storyline, as the “Illuminati” plot abruptly (and thankfully) comes to a halt after issue #3. 

Things get off to a bad start with an opening in which Black Dynamite is kicked out of “the community,” the very same community he saved from drugs in the movie. One thing going in this first issue’s favor is that the time is clearly stated (1976), and also the events of both the movie and Slave Island are mentioned. But otherwise there is no feeling of continuity. Black Dynamite is asked to leave by the locals because his ass-kicking has caused unintentional consequences for the people of the community, and they just want him gone. So, like Cain in Kung-Fu, Black Dynamite sets off to walk the Earth. 

One suspects he walks a helluva long time, because almost all the 1970s trappings of Black Dynamite are gone from here on out. The funky fly threads are gone, and Black Dynamite’s afro is even shorter. The villains all seem to have stepped out of the ‘90s; their leader is a bald white guy in a black three-piece suit, as if Lex Luthor has come over from DC Comics. (Actually the villain, dubbed “The Man,” looks a lot like famed comics writer Grant Morrison.) If Slave Island was a broadening of the Black Dynamite canvas, then the storyline in Black Dynamite #1-3 is a shattering of it. Tellingly, neither Michael Jai White nor Scott Sanders are credited for the plot of this storyline; it’s all the work of Brian Ash. 

Wandering the world, Black Dynamite is confronted by a squad of black-armored goons who take him off to a secret, high-tech facility. That’s the entirety of issue #1; so much for the economical storytelling of Slave Island. In issue #2, Black Dynamite meets “The Man,” the aforementioned Lex Luthor/Grant Morrison lookalike, who gabs that this high-tech army is part of “The Illuminati” that secretly runs the world, and what’s more they want Black Dynamite to join. But Black Dynamite picks up a bazooka that is conveniently lying there and blows the place up. After this he hooks up with a multi-ethnic resistance group – none of whom are named, but one of them is a sexy Asian gal – and he becomes a fighter against the Illuminati. 

With the Illuminati stuff and the ragtag band of guerrilla fighters, the parallells to Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles are very evident. In fact, what with the Morrison lookalike as the villain, I wondered if Black Dynamite #1-3 was intended as a spoof. But it doesn’t work, and what’s more it’s all rushed (the Asian gal isn’t even given a name, I believe), and The Man is not an interesting villain. And the plots are wholly unlike what one might expect from a Black Dynamite storyline.  And Ferreira’s art more so conveys the ‘90s. Again, like The Invisibles. 

The third issue is where it gets real puzzling, with Black Dynamite going to the Himalays and encountering a temple of monks who have these genetic insectoid monsters at their disposal; for some reason, Ash and Ferreira decide to add a bunch of gore to the world of Black Dynamite (and yes, I realize the film had a few gore affects as well), with the insectoids tearing people up and exploding. The finale is especially gory, with The Man having his head surgically implanted onto the neck of a black man (and then ordering the black man’s head gorily sawn off); certainly a tribute to the Blaxploitation movie The Thing With Two Heads. 

Fortunately (and humorously), Black Dynamite #4 ignores all that bullshit and gets back to what readers want: a story that feels like Black Dynamite. Also fortunately, Slave Island artist Jun Lofamia is back, again turning in artwork that seems to have come right out of a 1970s comic, once more even replicating the muted colors and the yellowed pages. Whereas issues #1-3 took place (presumably) in 1976, the fourth issue is stated as being in 1972. No mention is made of the previous three issues, as if Brian Ash himself wants to forget about them. 

Shockingly, this is the only story in the collection that has an inner-city setting. Black Dynamite is in the audience as a famous, Dr. J-type basketball player does some stunts on the court – and then the b-baller somehow explodes. While the news lies about what happened, Dynamite – after “balling” the guy’s sexy widow (lame pun alert) – investigates and learns that it’s all an Anaconda Malt Liquor-style plot. Evil Whitey is tricking out a new shipment of sneakers in the latest plot to take down the black man, and Black Dynamite kicks some ass. This one is a self-contained storyline, not as good as Slave Island, but certainly better than the Illuminati storyline. The only problem is that Brian Ash treats too much of issue #4 as a comedy. 

And thus Black Dynamite the comic comes to an ignoble end. This trade paperback collection is only notable for the insightful intro by Scott Sanders, and the tantalizing possibility that Slave Island might have been the plot for Black Dynamite II. And now that I’ve written so much, here are some random pics of the pages – take note particularly of Jun Lofamia’s pitch-perfect 1970s comic artwork recreation. 

Phone Call

Phone Call, by Jon Messmann

May, 1979  Signet Books

After the men’s adventure market dried up in the mid ‘70s, Jon Messmann started turning out lurid one-shot mystery thrillers, this being one of them. Unfortunately for the most part these books are overpriced on the collector’s market, but I managed to get a copy of Phone Call for cheap. This one’s interesting because it’s actually a film tie-in, and indeed is copyright a pair of screenwriters, Michael Butler and Dennis Shyrack, though the film itself didn’t come out until 1982 and was titled Murder By Phone. But make no mistake, this novel is clearly the work of Jon Messmann, written in his unique style, even though the copyright page might fool you into thinking “Jon Messmann” was a pseudonym. 

I’ve never seen Murder By Phone and have no intention to. But it’s interesting that this novel came out three years before the film (a low-budget horror) was released, indicating that Messmann’s novel was based off the script and not the actual movie. In fact, online synopses and reviews of Murder By Phone describe an almost entirely different story, with different characters, but the same general setup. Whatever the background, the novel itself is all very much in-line with Messmann’s usual output, and one could just as easily assume it was an original story of his. It’s less horror than it is a thriller, though there are horror elements to it, particularly given the threat our hero must face: namely, that phones in New York City are randomly killing people by blasting them with a sort of white lightning. 

The novel is very much of another era, then, with the first kill happening at a phone booth, and throughout the novel there’s lots of mystery over whether the phone might ring, or who might be on the other line – things hardly anyone at all would worry about in our modern era. That said, Messmann does introduce answering machines into the narrative at one point, so at least these characters in the late ‘70s have that safeguard. But for the most part the victims in Phone Call are hapless losers who do nothing more than answer the phone and then are zapped into hell. 

At 214 pages of small, dense print Phone Call is similar to most other John Messmann novels in that it turns out to be a much longer read than the page length might indicate. This is because, as was often his wont, Messmann has turned in a sluggish tale that’s more deadening than thrilling. In fact the book was a chore to read at times, and I almost got the impression Messmann himself was struggling with what was, really, a lame setup. I mean “phones killing people” isn’t exactly Jaws, is it? 

Not helping things is the protagonist we’re saddled with, Nate Bridger. Sure, he’s the typical cantankerous Messmann “hero,” quick to anger and lashing out…but what really annoyed me was that the dude was a “crusading consumer advocate” per the back cover…whereas in reality he’s a an environmentalist. From his intro, where he’s listing off all these companies he’s pestering due to their various infringements upon poor old Mother Earth, I was ready to magically transport myself into the book to punch the guy in the face. He’s basically the ruggedly virile macho male version of that shrill modern-day teenaged Scandanavian eco-harpie who’s constantly telling us the world’s about to end. Hell, we even learn that Nate, as Messmann refers to his hero, doesn’t like air conditioners! But at least it’s because he prefers “fresh air,” so it’s not like he gives a speech in the book where he says air conditioning is more dangerous than ISIS or whatever. 

But then, the average Jon Messmann hero is supposed to be annoying, and generally argues with everyone. So then, in his very first scene, Nate is in his homestate of North Dakota and is being given a celebratory luncheon by local businessmen, who congratulate him on his tireless work for the environment…and then the absolute bastard gets up on the podium and says thanks, this is nice and all, but it would’ve been swell if you’d used all the money you paid for this shindig and instead funnelled it to environmental causes, or sent some money to my office, ‘cause we need it there. I mean point taken, but this is our hero, folks. 

And his involvement with the story, which occurs in New York City, is sketchy at best. Nate’s heading into New York for, good grief, an eco-forum or some shit, and while leaving he’s stopped by some slackjawed yokel whose young daughter recently died, under unknown circumstances, in New York. We readers know how, of course – she was the first phone victim, randomly answering a ringing payphone in the subway tunnel and getting zapped to hell for her politeness. Nate says he’ll look into it, and heads off to New York…and there really are frequent scenes where he’s at this week-long convention, getting up on the podium and making speeches about the environment, or listening to others talk about it. Not my thing, but interesting from a modern perspective in that Nate doesn’t want to hector businesses, but instead wants to teach them the benefits of “saving” the planet.  Which doesn’t seem to be the goal anymore. 

Meanwhile random deaths continue in the city – only we readers gradually learn they aren’t random. Messmann neatly introduces the killer by only referring to the yellow Adidas sneakers he wears as he rides his bicycle across the city. Basically if he runs afoul of someone, and the person is rude or whatever, this guy will go back home, find the person’s phone number through mysterious means, and then give him or her a phone call, zapping the victim over the phone line with his special contraption. In the course of this the phone receiver on the other end is fried, and Nate Bridger is the one who slowly discovers this – and also that the New York phone company is hiding it all, and keeping the murders under wraps. 

This elicits several scenes where Nate storms into the phone company main office and starts yelling at the prissy office manager…and, the way these things go, it’s also how Nate manages to pick up what will be the main female character in Phone Call: Beth, a pretty girl in the front office who seems to also believe her company is hiding something big. There’s also stuff with a hardheaded New York cop Nate keeps confronting, with a lot of tantruming between the two, the cop scoring most of the points with his witty put-downs of “cowboy” Nate. 

This brings me to one of Jon Messmann’s more curious authorial quirks: his strange tendency for bonkers dialog modifiers. By which I mean stuff like “he said,” or “she said,” or the like. I’m pretty sure these are referred to as “dialog modifiers,” and generally they are kept innocuous, so as not to distract the reader from the importance of the dialog itself. But Jon Messmann missed this lesson. Instead, he puts all the attention on his goofy modifiers. Rarely ever is it “Nate said,” or even “Nate yelled,” but something more showy like, “Nate threw out,” or, the greatest of all, “Nate slid out.” I mean that’s an actual tag at the end of a line of dialog in Phone Call, but otherwise the book isn’t sleazy at all. Indeed, the two sex scenes are entirely off-page, which is surprising for Messmann and indicates to me he was catering his manuscript to spec. 

The horror stuff is limited to one-off characters, each of whom are given inordinate set-up material, ultimately answering a ringing telephone and getting fried. There is though a great scene where the killer hits a live-on-the-air telethon, zapping the hapless volunteers at the phone banks, but this one’s handled with such melodrama that you can tell Messmann had his tongue in his cheek. In fact the feeling was clear to me that he thought the whole thing was dumb but gave it the old college try – but the only problem is, Messmann’s tone is as every dry and overly serious, making the story seem a lot more ponderous than it should be. The same of which could be said of his other horror paperback of the day, The Deadly Deep. 

Nate works with Beth and a few different cops to track down the killer before he can make another deadly phone call, but Nate Bridger is not the action hero of Messmann’s earlier series paperbacks. He doesn’t really do anything “action” at all in the novel, and doesn’t carry a gun. In fact he pulls one of the dumbest moves ever…he manages to figure out who the killer is and chases him solo, cornering the guy and actually roughing him up a little. The guy agrees to go along with Nate to the cops, but asks if he can change his friggin’ shirt before they go…and Nate lets him! Would you be surprised to learn the dude runs away? 

This at least sets up a goofy finale in which the phone company people come up with this reverse-engineered contraption that will fry the killer when he calls someone, which takes us into an overly suspenseful finale where Nate must call the killer at a certain time…and listen to his inordinate demands. Speaking of which, right before this we lucky readers have “enjoyed” Nate’s own inordinate demands, in a looong closing speech he gives to the eco-forum about man’s threat to the world and etc, etc, to the point you figure John Kerry must’ve read this book when it came out and took notes. Copious notes. 

Overall I found Phone Call middling and glacially paced, and the eco-sermonizing didn’t help matters much. But I only paid a few dollars for the book, so I can’t complain too much.

Duffy

Duffy, by Harry Joe Brown, Jr.

October, 1968  Dell Books

One of those movies that seems to be completely forgotten, Duffy was a caper film that tried to tap into the late ‘60s zeitgeist and starred James Coburn as the titular character. The only reason I ever heard of it was many years ago when I was into the work of Donald Cammell, who later wrote and directed Performance. I’ve still never seen Duffy, but now I’ve read the novelization – which was written by Harry Joe Brown Jr., who was the other writer of the script. 

So far as I can tell, this is the only writing credit for Brown, and also Duffy appeared to be his only movie. He died in 2005, and was born into “Hollywood Royalty.”  But man, having read this book I can see why he didn’t do any other movies. Duffy is a dud, even in book form…and I have the suspicion that Brown wrote the original script before Donald Cammell was brought in to rewrite it. Further, I suspect that, like Paradise Alley, this novelization is a reflection of the author’s original screenplay…I’ve browsed online for reviews of the film, and have found mentions of scenes that aren’t even in this novel, so I’m guessing this was stuff added by Cammell that did not exist in Harry Joe Brown Jr.’s draft of the script. 

Essentially the novel is a basic heist yarn, only very drawn out, and made relevant with a “groovy” Eurotrash vibe. It’s a lot like the film version of The Adventurers by Harold Robbins, only without the saucy stuff. It’s short, too, coming in at 140 big-print pages. This is because there isn’t much story. Basically it’s about two half-brothers who decide to rip off their mega-wealthy father, and Duffy is an American expat they go to for help in the caper. There’s also a hotstuff American girl named Segolene who gets caught up in the mix. But it takes forever for anything to happen, and when it does, it’s not very memorable. 

One thing the novel seems to make clear that the movie might not is that the characters are all European, save for Duffy and Segolene…but then the latter is presented as one of those annoying American girls who goes overseas and starts acting “continental,” with a fake accent and etc. Plus her name is confusing; you’d never guess she was an American. The mega-wealthy father being heisted is named Calvet, an Onassis-type who was played by James Mason in the film (where he was renamed “Calvert”). The plotting half-brothers are Stefan, Calvet’s 20 year-old French son, and Anthony, Calvet’s half-British son of a previous marriage. The gist is that Stefan, as Calvet’s “main” son, has all the family wealth, whereas Anthony, as the “former” son, has nothing and must work. The two men hatch a scheme to heist Calvet’s ship, The Osiris, which will be hosting “currency transfers” around Tangier. Anthony needs the money because he has none, and Stefan wants to pull a heist just for the fun of it. 

It's through Stefan that we get most of those “groovy” period details. He likes to smoke joints and is prone to spouting New Age hippie philosophy, like how time is meaningless and whatnot. His girlfriend is blonde American model Segolene, but Segolene is a free spirit and not truly attached to him. This is another of those topical details, but the problem is Brown makes Segolene seem more like a narcisstic whore than a free-spirited, free-thinking woman. But then, perhaps that was precisely Brown’s intent. Susannah York played her in the movie, while future Performance co-star James Fox played “Stefane,” indicating that another name was changed from Brown’s original script. John Alderton played Anthony. 

Duffy meanwhile is described as a beach bum in his thirties, a former Navy man, who now makes his living as an artist in Tangier. Reviews of the movie have it that his pad in Tangier is decorated with tacky sculptures of the female anatomy, but none of this is present in the novelization. Rather, Duffy is a cipher with no real motivation…perhaps more commentary on the hippie mindset, for Duffy is clearly identified as a hippie. Dell Books was very intent on getting this across, with a headline announcing “Take a trip” on the first page of the book. Otherwise Duffy’s hippie-ism is mainly evident in how he has no real life intentions, other than lazing in Tangier and creating art. He doesn’t even display much of a libido. 

Brown is in no hurry to tell his tale. None whatsoever. There’s also no real drive to the heist. The two brothers want to hit their father’s ship, and go about their leisurely plotting of the job. Brown’s also in no hurry to introduce Duffy, who doesn’t even appear in the narrative until page 33. Here we are told he’s 32, with sandy brown hair and “Bogart-ish” looks. Duffy previously worked for Calvet, thus the brothers know of him, and ultimately they hit upon the idea of using him in the heist. Even the way Stefan and Anthony bring Duffy into the caper is lame; they essentially hang out with him for a bit and get into a “daydream” discussion about hitting a boat in the ocean and stealing four million bucks off it, and how such a job could be done. 

In the meantime there’s a lot of stuff with Segolene, who is more annoying than arousing, at least in the book. Stefan sort of puts her on Duffy, as a honey trap I guess, but even here it’s just more “hip” dialog, like her admission that “Stefan calls me a whore. I guess I am a whore.” How shocking! It takes a while, but Segolene does eventually give in to Duffy’s virility: “Slowly, fully, she let him enter her.” A clever thing here is how after their initial boink, there’s a part where Duffy and Segolene awake in bed and Duffy muses how, in books, sex scenes are often glossed over, with the author jumping immediately to the post-sex material…which is exactly what Brown does in Duffy. I thought this was funny, particularly given how I always note in my reviews if the sex scenes are off-page; Harry Joe Brown Jr. was noting the same thing in 1968, it appears. 

But Duffy’s still a bit of a square; when he wakes up next morning to find Stefan and Anthony standing over the bed, Duffy feels uncomfortable, given the fact that the two clearly know that Duffy’s been having sex with Segolene, ie Stefan’s “woman.” But man, it’s the late ‘60s! Get with it! And plus, as Segolene insists, she belongs to no one. In other words, she’s a “slut,” as Duffy calls her shortly before their sex scene. Now that’s how you get a woman! Anyway, at this point Duffy is as expected in on the heist, which sees him disguised as a Bedouin and the two brothers also disguised as they board their father’s ship and then rob it with “Israeli submachine guns,” clearly Uzis, though Brown never identifies them. 

The heist is bloodless and more on a suspense angle, but only takes up several pages and really isn’t much to get hung up about. Indeed, it’s the post-heist material that takes us into the climax, with a “shock twist” reveal that one of the plotters is actually working with Calvet…for reasons that aren’t even made clear. But Duffy gets the last laugh; having figured out the duplicity, he “finds” the money that’s been heisted and returns it in a public setting, ensuring plenty of media coverage and making himself look like a hero. It’s a clever ending, only undone by the fact that Duffy hasn’t done anything clever before this. 

All told, Duffy wasn’t so much a “trip” as it was a “bore.” I doubt I’ll ever see the film now, and if I want some Donald Cammell material I’ll just watch Performance again…or The Touchables, if I’m really desperate. That one’s only slightly better than Duffy, but at least has a super-mod look and features a cast of smokin’ hot swingin’ ‘60s babes.

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

July, 1968  Signet Books

If I could see just one movie on the big screen it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially if I could see it on the original Cinerama curved screen setup. Every few years when the movie makes it back into theaters for a special screening I either don’t hear about it or forget about it; the closest I ever came to actually seeing it in a theater was when my wife and I were in London in Fall of 2012 and we were out in the suburbs somewhere, I think the place was called Battlesbridge or something like that, and we passed by a theater that had 2001 listed on the marquee. But the start time was only shown as “Late.” When I asked the snotty British ticket-booth guy when exactly “Late” was, he gave me the snotty British answer that, “It’s generally after the sun goes down and it’s dark out.” I admit, that was very funny, but I was like, “Dude, over in America we have this thing called time.” 

Anyway, I never did see the movie – it had been a long day, and 2001 is a long movie (and not the most snappily-paced one), and the timing just wasn’t right. So I had to be content with my Blu Ray, which I admit I only play every few years, if that. But none of this long preamble has anything to do with the novel at hand, which of course is a well-known book written by one of the more noted science fiction authors of the 20th Century. That said, I’ve never actually read an Arthur C. Clarke novel, even at the height of my sci-fi nerd era as a middle school student in the mid-1980s. Some years ago, in a fit of “vintage space books” collecting, I picked up several of Clarke’s ’60s and ‘70s non-fiction books, like for example The Promise Of Space and Report From Planet Three, but still have not read them – though I have thumbed through them. 

And, judging from this off-hand, casual observation, I want to say that Clarke’s novelization of his own 2001 script reads, for the most part, just like one of Clarke’s non-fiction space books. Whereas Stanley Kubrick’s film leaves much to the viewer’s interpretation, Clarke spends the majority of his novel lecturing the reader on philosophy or explaining how and why this or that happens. In many ways it is a guidebook to a “future” that never happened, same as Arthur Clarke’s non-fiction space books of the era were. For the most part Clarke’s 2001 goes out of its way to leave nothing to the reader’s interpretation, thus cutting out the mystery and esotericism that make Kubrick’s film so fascinating to this very day. 

On the other hand, it is neat to see how this world of 2001 actually works; we’re told how the interstellar craft operate, how HAL 9000 “thinks,” and most notably even what exactly the mysterious Monolith is up to in the Dawn Of Man opening. Again though, this undercuts the drama, and I could imagine Stanley Kubrick (to whom Clarke dedicates the novel) seething at some of Clarke’s “explanations,” mainly because they are rather unimaginative. I mean the Monolith chooses the “Moon Watcher” monkey-man in the Dawn Of Man sequence because he shows the most intelligence of the monkey-men; I mean that’s so much more direct and “duh” than how it’s done in the film, where you wonder if the Monolith itself is directing events (which the novel makes implicit) or if it’s merely the presence of the Monolith that causes the monkey-men to begin thinking. 

This is the line Clarke walks throughout the book. We’ll have a little “narrative material,” where the plot will proceed along, then we’ll have a bunch of expository info-dumping about space exploration. I imagine Clarke must’ve been excited to get this material out to those who wouldn’t be so interested in reading a book about space exploration, but the caveat is there isn’t much “fiction stuff” in his 2001. I mean honestly, if we are looking solely at dramatic thrust and an exciting plot, then the novelization of Moon Zero Two is actually superior. This is of course because there isn’t much plot per se in the film, and Clarke of course follows his own script: the Dawn Of Man sequence, the discovery of the Monolith on the Moon, the flight to Jupiter which climaxes in the psychedelic Dawn Of New Man. While Kubrick follows an absorbing pace (or, conversely, a leisurely pace), letting the visuals tell the story, Clarke must fill pages, gussying up a barebones plot. He does so as if he were writing another of his nonfiction space exploration books; be prepared to learn much of the orbits of asteroids, or what the surface of Jupiter is like. 

That’s another of those little changes to the text – the second half of the film concerns a trip to Jupiter, but here in the novel Jupiter is just the first stop along the way, with Saturn the ultimate goal. That said, there is a sequence – again as if shoehorned in from one of Clarke’s nonfiction books – in which the ship, Discovery, hitches a ride on Jupiter’s orbit to get a boost in speed. This entire sequence is almost lifted from the real-life Apollo 8 mission, which was the first mission in which human occupants of a spacecraft went around the “backside of the moon,” losing contact with Earth. A total “baited breath moment” if ever there was one, but not nearly as dramatic here in the novel – though Clarke does have monosyllabic astronaut heroes Dave Bowman and Frank Poole silently shake hands when the mission completes successfully and they are set on the proper path without any trouble. Curiously this was exactly what real-life monosyllabic astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did when they landed on the moon over a year after 2001 was published – they silently shook hands. 

All these decades later, 2001 can be seen as its own thing, but it’s clearly intended to be the natural progression of where everyone thought the space race was headed; monosyllabic astronauts Bowman and Poole are terse ciphers, same as their real-world counterparts in the Apollo Program. The Cold War is still on in this 2001, but in the novel it isn’t nearly as pronounced as it is in the film; the only Russian character is a scientist who appears in the brief opening sequence in the Space Station, same as in the movie, but here in the novel we learn he is good friends with Dr. Heywood “Pink” Floyd (not his real nickname, btw). Floyd is our main protagonist after the Dawn Of Man opening (which by the way doesn’t climax with the famous “bone toss” scene of the film), and he too is cut from the same overly-formal and reserved cloth as Bowman and Poole. 

Floyd’s actually less relatable in the novel. The bit of him calling his daughter back on Earth (Kubrick’s actual daughter, I seem to recall) is not in the book, but we do get more about him getting a solo ride all the way from Cape Kennedy to the Moon in a little over a day, all at the behest of the President. Nor is the equally-famous bit where Floyd is introduced, napping in zero-gee on his way to the Space Station, here in the novel. And speaking of which, yes the zero-gee toilet is also in the novel; indeed, we get to see it in action, as Floyd uses it (Clarke focused on the the mechanics of the equipment, I should clarify). We also get a lot more pondering on what the Monolith is, and it’s also carefully explained – several times, in fact – that the Monolith was intentionally buried beneath the surface of the moon three million years ago, and let off a “scream” of radio static when the sunlight touched it upon its excavation. 

In other words, as Floyd explains late in the novel, the Monolith is an “alarm,” one set there by some mysterious race of beings. But otherwise there is a lot of pondering throughout 2001, to the point that the narrative often comes to a dead stop. And it’s all space-geek stuff, too. Like a part where Discovery is coming upon its first asteroid – the orbits of which, we are informed, have carefully been laid out in the navigation so the ship will never encounter any of them on the journey to Saturn – and Poole and Bowman geek out about taking photos of it via missile-launched robot. And this goes on and on, a somewhat thrilling scene…with the caveat that the asteroid is thousands of miles away. But again it’s just a chance for Arthur C. Clarke to show off his knowledge of space exploration and how such things are done, and it’s just more stuff that seems to be shoehorned in from a science journal. 

There is no mystery in Clarke’s 2001. Everything is told in a bald, matter of fact style that comes off as insulting, at least when compared to how the film left so much to the viewer’s interpretation. HAL 9000, referred to simply as “Hal” in the book, also suffers – Clarke is at pains to explain away the AI’s responsibility for the events of the final quarter. Again, the movie leaves it vague; did Hal go nuts, or is it the effect of the Monolith? (Notice how when the Monolith appears, it also teaches how to kill – first the man-apes who kill animals and then their fellows, and later in the film HAL 9000 goes on a killspree.) All the events on Discovery are different in the novel: Poole’s fate, the fate of the scientists still in cryo – even Bowman’s fate is different, as after all this happens, including his shutting down of Hal, he’s on the ship for three more months before we get to the Star Child finale. 

This is what I mean about forward momentum being nil in the novelization of 2001. I mean really. We have this huge catastrophe on the ship…then a few pages later we have Bowman walking around the cleaned-up ship and listening to opera. Even here there is endless pondering and info-dumping; all fascinating if you are looking for science fact, but kind of distracting when you are looking for science fiction. But anyway, I was going on about the explanation on Hal. This is where Heywood Floyd returns to the scene; he calls Bowman (rather than the video briefing Bowman accidentally activates in the film) and tells him that Hal had been programmed with the ship’s true mission, and keeping that knowledge secret caused the AI to go haywire. 

The climax is mostly the same, but instead of a psychedelic lightshow it is, once again, a bunch of info-dumping. Bowman, having reached Saturn and knowing he doesn’t have enough oxygen to surive the years until a new ship can be built to come rescue him, gets in a pod and decides to investigate the massive “Big Brother” Monolith that is floating around the planet. Nearly a thousand feet long, this Monolith is “full of stars,” per Bowman’s frantic last call back to Mission Control on Earth – and no, he doesn’t say anything in the film. But even here, while floating through changing worlds with crashed space ships beneath him and strange sights in the varying skies, Bowman still ponders over everything in a factual, reserved, “man of science” style that is impossible for the reader to identify with. And again it just comes off as several pages of Clarke showing off his knowledge of astrology and science. 

It's also kind of goofy – compared to how creepy the finale of the film is. Here there’s no question Bowman is being watched by aliens as he finds himself in a makeshift cottage…complete with even boxes of cereal! And TV shows with “a famous African reporter” on television! All of it, he realizes, stuff from two years ago, when the Moon Monolith was discovered (neither the film nor the book bother to spell out that the stuff with Heywood Floyd is actually in 1999, not 2001). So Bowman theorizes that the aliens used TV broadcasts of that time to create a perfect little cage for him. Then he goes to sleep(!), and we get a sort of psychedelic sequence where he turns into a Star Child advanced human thing with cosmic powers, Clarke calling back to the finale of his Dawn Of Man sequence earlier in the book: “He would think of something.” 

I’m glad I finally got around to reading Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, but to tell the truth I feel that he took away a lot of the film’s magic. Sure, much of the plot is based around Clarke’s own story ideas and whatnot, but still. His incessant need to explain and exposit just stops the narrative dead at times, and the book has none of the ultramod sixties sci-fi vibe I so love, like the film did…a look which I believe reached it’s apotheosis in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO. Undeterred, Clarke went on to write 2010 and 2061 and others in the series, but I doubt I’ll ever read them – though I will read some of his nonfiction space books.

The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story

The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story, by Jeffrey Cooper

February, 1987  St. Martin’s Press

I’ll start this review with an admission: I have never seen A Nightmare On Elm Street nor any of its sequels. But having read this novelization of the first three films in the series – which is yet another book Robert Mann hooked me up with – I now feel that I have. For my friends The Nightmares On Elm Street is essentially a straight-up, no-frills synopsis of the first two films, with the same blasé narrative approach extending to the third film…though it’s my understanding that the plot for the third film, The Dream Warriors, differs here from the actual movie. 

Each film gets about 70 pages of text, meaning that for the most part The Nightmares On Elm Street reads like a collection of novellas. But that isn’t a problem. What’s a problem is that author Jeffrey Cooper turns in the most bland prose I’ve ever encountered in a book; Paul Hofrichter would consider this book poorly written. It’s seriously a wonder it was even published, but I’m imagining the studio was behind the push. Copyright “The Second Elm Street Venture,” The Nightmares On Elm Street was likely timed to hit bookstore shelves at the same time that The Dream Warriors was released, so I’m guessing speed was more of a concern than quality. To be fair, Cooper does appear capable of putting a bit of an emotional drive into some sections, but for the most part the book comes off like he watched the first two movies and just wrote down what he saw, then took the same approach for the script of the third film. 

The most humorous thing is that, reading this book, you’d never get the idea that these movies were violent, R-rated horror flicks. The novel is curiously bloodless and the horror stuff is weak at best, mostly because the prose is so blasé. I mean Freddy Krueger will pop out of the shadows or whatever and there’s zero in the way of terror. I mean it will just be point blank blasé prose, like literally, “Freddy jumped out of the shadows,” and that’s it. It’s lame, is what I’m trying to say, and comes off like the work of an author who doesn’t give two shits about his assignment. In fact, hardly anything is even described. About the most we get is that Freddy wears a “Fedora hat” and has a scarred face. It’s like the author has done the bare minimum requirement to get the novel done. 

So anyway, the book runs to 216 pages, with a section of black and white stills from the first two films. In addition to the novelization of the first three films there’s a several-page “bonus” section detailing “The Life And Death Of Freddy Krueger.” The curious thing is that this bonus section has more bite than anything else in the book; it’s incredibly grim and has the dark humor one would expect from the films, and I wonder if it was even written by Jeffrey Cooper. Otherwise The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story doesn’t have much going for it, and would only be recommended for the collector. 

Actually, the book is almost written on the level of juvenile fiction. Other than a few utterances of “fuck” or the like, it’s PG at best. All the sex is off-page, but this too was humorous because all the protagonists are teens, for the most part. The sex is one thing in the films, where you can tell it’s a 20-something actors playing the role, but in the book it’s another thing entirely when you’re reading about a 15 year-old girl suffering from “sexual tension.” I mean I hate to sound like a reactionary prude but it made me downright uncomfortable at times. But then I flat-out loved the part where the possessed teen gal begged a guy to sodomize her in The Nursery, so I guess maybe it’s just the bland, boring prose that put me off instead of the content itself. That said, Cooper shows no compassion for any of these kids, so I guess that’s what you’d want from a horror novelist, just no holds barred. But then he shows no compassion because all these characters are ciphers at best. 

Well anyway, the novelization of the first flick takes up the first 70 pages, and again one would never get the idea that this was an R-rated horror movie. Nor does the reader get a good picture of Freddy Krueger, meaning that black and white section is a real help, because the photos do the job that Cooper’s prose doesn’t. No attempt is made of establishing the location nor any of the characters; the vibe really is very much that Cooper’s just popped in the VHS of A Nightmare On Elm Street and typed out the events as they transpired onscreen. We do get a brief prologue, though, that “ten years ago” Freddy, the “Springdale Slasher,” was hunted down and killed by residents of the community. 

From there we jump into the novelization of the first film. Cooper makes no attempt at setting the time or the place, but then that only adds to the skewed fairy tale vibe of the novel. Strangely, a gal named Tina seems to be our protagonist, as it’s through her perspective that the novel opens; she wakes from a dream, one in which Freddy was chasing her, and then goes to school and talks to her pal Nancy about it. But as it turns out, Tina will not be in the novel long, and Nancy will be the protagonist of this section – and also will return in the third section, ie the novelization of the third film. 

So I can save everyone the trouble of the belabored rundown: Freddy Krueger is appearing in the dreams of kids in this area and trying to kill them. The novel does not address the span of Freddy’s reach, though it seems to be confined to this specific area of Elm Street. Not that this is clearly established. For that matter, there is the promise of the theme here that Freddy is going after the children of the residents who killed him a decade ago. This theme bubbles to the surface, only to be forgotten; I’m not sure if it’s the same in the film. But at any rate, we do eventually learn that Nancy’s mother was one of the people who took part in the killing of Freddy, and what’s more she has retained a memento of Freddy’s, which she keeps in the basement furnace. 

The only problem is, even in this thin paperback, there are a ton of continuity errors. For one, the novelization of the first film seems to imply that Freddy was killed via fire: he was burned to a crisp by the town residents who cornered him and torched him. But then, the novelization of the third film – as well as the “life and death” postscript – state that Freddy was burned as a child. Also, the theme of Freddy getting revenge is poorly conceived, with no follow-through. When he tangles with Nancy’s mom at the end of the book, there’s absolutely no payoff to the fact that she was one of the townspeople who killed Freddy years ago – Freddy is just concerned with Nancy. 

There are other gaping plot holes besides. Like in the novelization of the first film, Nancy decides to trap Freddy…and there are all these dream sequences where she’s walking around, fully aware that she is dreaming. How Nancy became an expert in lucid dreaming is not explained. It took me personally years to do lucid dreams, and that was through focused effort. (The trick, by the way, is to sleep for at least six hours, wake up and do something – like walk around the house or whatever – and then go back to sleep. You will slip right into the REM stage due to the fact that you were just sleeping, but you’ve jogged yourself awake enough that your conscious mind is still active and will realize it when the dream starts.) 

But the bigger problem is that Nancy also has unexplained superpowers. Not only can she lucid dream at the expert level, but she also has the ability to pull things out of dreams. This happens most notably in the finale, when Nancy manages to pull Freddy himself into the real world. Of course the question dangles at the end whether this is just another dream, but still; the problem is, in the novelization of the third film there’s another teen girl, Kirsten, who is specifically described as a “dream warrior” whose power is pulling things out of dreams. An older Nancy at first can’t believe this is possible, then is shocked to see Kirsten actually do it…and the reader is like, “Lady, you just did the exact same friggin’ thing like a hundred pages ago!” 

But man, it’s all so blasé and half-assed. Nothing is described, nothing is explained. About the most Cooper does is inveigh a sense of doom and foreboding in the perspectives of his characters, but motivations and dialog and all that fall flat. Freddy Krueger suffers the most; he appears infrequently at best, and he conveys none of the menace of his film counterpart. For that matter, he comes off like a fool in the novelization of the third film; Freddy gets his ass kicked regularly by the Dream Warriors, so it’s no wonder this section was reportedly changed in the actual movie. Indeed, Freddy is rendered a sort of non-menace in the second and third sections, only killing a few people in the second novelization and taking pretty much the entire narrative to get his act together in the third novelization. Also worth noting is that Freddy turns himself into a woman in the third film – one of the Dream Warriors is a kid named Joey, and in one of Joey’s dreams a hotstuff, barely-clad girl appears and throws herself at him…and, uh, starts to make out with him…only for the girl to suddenly change into Freddy. I’m betting this is another part that didn’t make it into the actual film! 

I haven’t said much about the novelization of the second film, and it’s my understanding Elm Street fans rank that one as one of the worst in the series. It’s easy to see why, as here in the novelization it comes off more like an outline than an actual story: some teen guy moves into Nancy’s old home, “five years” after the first movie, and soon becomes plagued by Freddy. Apparently Freddy wants to possess the kid, or use him to kill for him in the real world, but it’s all so vague. It’s also confusing, because the reader keeps wondering what happened to Nancy in the first film; and when she does appear in the novelization of the third film, Cooper does little to explain the confusing finale of the first movie. (Spoiler alert: but the novelization of the first film ends with Nancy about to be killed by Freddy, who has trapped her in his dream after all…or something.) 

But then, each novelization ends with a “fake out” surprise twist horror ending, which is uninentionally humorous on the printed page. Maybe Freddy suddenly jumping from the shadows before the end credits made teen viewers freak out in 1980s movie houses, but on the printed page – at least in the blasé prose of Jeffrey Cooper – there is little impact. There is also little attempt at capturing the surreal texture of dreams; The Dream Warriors in particular sounds like a promising idea, with a group of Freddy-tormented teens banding together to fight him on his own turf, but again Cooper does nothing to bring the proceedings to life. 

Overall I’d have to say this one is really for the collectors. There was nothing here that made me want to see the actual films, and the novel did not work as its own separate thing, such as a superior novelization might (ie The Rose). But at the very least, The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story did succeed in one unexpected regard: it put me back on one of my very infrequent horror novel kicks. The last time I was on one was six years ago. Of course this means I’ll soon be reading another William W. Johnstone novel!