Men’s Adventure Quarterly #10

Men's Adventure Quarterly #10, Edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham

February, 2024  Subtropic Productions

This volume of MAQ focuses on the Vietnam War, and editors Robert Deis abd Bill Cunningham have done a great job, as usual, of selecting stories that run the gamut of the men’s adventure magazine field. There’s everything from factual reportage on the war to the escapist pulp one most thinks of when thinking of men’s adventure magazines, and you get even more of it in The Vietnam Issue, which is longer than the previous volumes of this series. 

I wasn’t sure I’d be as much interested in this one, as I thought Vietnam was a little too “real” for the pulpy stuff I prefer in men’s mags. Also, I’m not as much into military fiction, or war fiction in general. At one point in time I ranked Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers as the greatest novel I’d ever read, and Michael Herr’s Dispatches as the greatest “nonfiction” book I’d ever read, but that was like over 20 years ago. In fact, I reviewed both books on Amazon way back then; I even liked Hasford’s followup, The Phantom Blooper. But really, that Vietnam is not the Vietnam of the men’s mags; the surreal, drug-fueled vibe of Apocalypse Now has been replaced with something more akin to Robin Moore’s The Green Berets, or even the film version, only without the patriotic vibe of the film. The writers in the stories collected here never judge the merits of the war, or dwell on how ‘Nam was “the first rock and roll war,” but instead focus on the hellzones the soldiers had to battle through, on land, air, and under the ground. 

Bob Deis provides one of his typically-informative intros, in which he relates his own personal thoughts on Vietnam. Bob as well does not provide his views on the justness of the war, focusing more on how the growing public distaste with it gradually led to fewer and fewer ‘Nam stories in the men’s mags. That said, even the early stories here aren’t gung-ho in support of the war; it’s clear that even at the time the editors were putting a different spin on Vietnam stories than on the typical WWII combat stories. One thing I was curious about was whether soldiers in ‘Nam – or ones who served early in the war and then returned home – were readers of the men’s adventure mags. Or was the readership mostly limited to WWII vets and Korea vets? It would be interesting to see what insights the publishing companies had on their readers back in the day, but that’s just the marketing professional in me, I guess. 

Oh and Bill Cunningham’s art direction is as usual perfect throughout; one story is even graced with an original duotone that was not featured with the original men’s mag publication. The artwork is reproduced with meticulous care throughout, with even the usual “cover gallery” we’ve gotten with previous issues. That said, the “eye candy” of earlier books isn’t as prevalent this time; what with the focus on combat stories, there is little in the way of the female presence typically expected of escapist men’s mag yarns. But as with Cuba: Sugar, Sex, And Slaughter, I’m sure there had to be a few men’s magazine stories that focused on sexpot girl guerrillas waging lusty war in the jungles of Vietnam. Maybe we’ll read a few of them if there’s ever a ‘Nam MAQ followup. That said, there’s a great pictorial piece on Raquel Welch. 

First up is “The First Gis To Die In Vietnam,” by Jack Ryan and from the January 1963 Man’s Magazine. This long piece is factual in its approach, telling the grim story of the first two American soldiers to die in combat in ‘Nam. Sent there as “advisors,” the soldiers engage in combat with the VC and are injured; the story mainly focuses on the plight of the two surviving soldiers, who are taken prisoner by the VC. This is an affecting story, with the extra impact that it is not the pulpy sort of yarn expected from the men’s mags, again indicating that even very, very early in the war the men’s magazine editors were treating Vietnam differently than other wars. 

But the next tale is pulpy, and it’s not only for that reason that it’s my favorite in the collection – it’s also great because it marks the first appearance of Mario Puzo, under his men’s mag pseudonym “Mario Cleri,” in Men’s Adventure Quarterly. Hopefully someday we’ll have an entire issue devoted to his yarns, as Cleri/Puzo is definitely my favorite men’s mag writer…and I’m not just saying that due to some prejudice over Puzo later becoming a bestselling author. In fact, I’ve only read one Puzo novel, The Godfather of course, and I’ve read it twice…once in high school and then again a few years ago. On this second reading I couldn’t believe how much of a Harold Robbins-type novel it was. 

No, Puzo was just a talented writer, bringing a great touch to his men’s mag stories…and also he was the only men’s mag writer who realized he could expand one of his stories into a feature-length novel, with Six Graves To Munich. The tale collected here, “Saigon Nymph Who Led The Green Berets To The Cong’s Terror Tunnels,” is just as pulpy and fun as the other Cleri stories I’ve had the pleasure to read; it originally appeared in the August, 1966 issue of Male. As ever Puzo packs a lot of story into this one, keeping it fast-moving: we meet a 19 year-old new recruit in ‘Nam as he goes home with a local beauty he just met in a bar, but it’s a trap and wily General Fonh wants the kid, Johnny Blake, to tell all he knows about his older brother, Korea vet Colonel Victor Blake, who serves now as head of counter-intelligence. The kid says no and pays the ultimate price. 

Thus ensues a revenge yarn, but it’s atypical from the format in that Victor Blake, who arrives in ‘Nam shortly thereafter to set up counter-terrorism methods, goes about his vengeance a little more coldly than one might expect. There’s little emotional depth, and he’s more about using his combat-trained intelligence – not to mention his penchant for remembering the odd fact – to gradually set the trap for General Fonh. Hell, the dude even sleeps with the chick who set up his brother for death, the lovely Lilly (with her “dusky nipples,” Cleri as ever serving up the goods expected of men’s mag writers), but we’re told this in an off-hand manner…also, that Blake has to “get drunk” to screw her. The climax sees Blake staging a Green Beret raid on Fonh’s secret village hideout, but the finale itself brings the emotional impact Puzo denied us earlier in the story, featuring as it does a firing line execution that leaves Blake cold, despite his vengeance having been gained. 

“Ambush By The Bridge At Nam Nang,” by Jackson Boeling and from the October 1966 Man’s Life, answers the unasked question: “What if Joseph Conrad had written for the men’s mags?” This 6 and a half-page “Book-length novel” is quite tonally different from the average men’s mag story, featuring Vietnamese natives as the protagonist. The author gives us a glimpse of how war can not only rip a country apart but a family as well, telling the story through the perspective of an older Vietnamese who attended a Catholic school and who sees the war through the prism of the old ways, while his son has joined the Viet Cong. 

“The Million-Dollar Ballad Of A Green Beret” is by Garth Roberts and from the October 1966 Man’s World, telling the tale of how Green Beret Barry Sadler wrote the famous “Ballad Of The Green Berets” and had a hit from it. More interesting by far however is Bob Deis’s intro; decades removed from the original men’s mag story, Bob is able to tell the full story of Barry Sadler’s life, and it all seems to have come out of a John Steinbeck novel, complete with Sadler gaining and losing wealth and fame, even murdering someone later in life and getting away with it. Bob also mentions Sadler’s Casca series, and like most guys my age that’s how I came to know of him; man I used to always see those paperbacks at the local WaldenBooks, but I never read any of them because there were so many of them that I was daunted by the prospect. And also, so far as I can recall, I never came across the first volume, so that further made it all seem like a too-daunting prospect. 

We’re back to the pulpy escapism with “Saga Of ‘Mad Mike’ Kovacs and His Battling Lepers of Vietnam,” by Glenn Infield and from the January 1967 Male. I’ve read and reviewed some other Infield men’s mag stories here on the blog, and also I know his name from various military paperbacks he published, so I appreciated Bob’s intro piece on the author. Otherwise this is an entertaining story of Kovacs, who is dropped into a leper colony to figure out how the VC are smuggling weapons across the Cambodian border, and he uses the lepers as his commando squad. Not much as done with this setup as you might expect, and indeed more detail is placed on the “blunderbuss,” a sled made out of the bed of a helicopter with two .50-caliber machine guns and a grenade launcher mounted on it. Kovacs places this on a path in the jungle and blasts the VC to oblivion in a memorable finale that brings to mind the climax of the 2008 Rambo. 

Robert F. Dorr provies the realistic war fiction he would become known for with “MIG Bait Over North Vietnam,” from the February 1968 Man’s Magazine. This one features Major Paul Gilmore getting in an aerial dogfight with a MIG over ‘Nam in 1966, and is very much in a “military fiction” style – and, per Bob’s insightful intro, is based on a real event, as typical of Dorr’s men’s mag work. 

“Mission Imperative: Smash The Cong’s Terror Tunnels” is by Eric Breske and from the November 1968 True Action; despite the sly callout to a famous TV show of the time in the title, this one’s not a spy yarn, but instead focused on the famous “Tunnel Rats” of the war. Here we read the claustrophobic tale of Captain Horten and his 3-man Tunnel Rat squad as they chase Charlie beneath the Earth, encountering incredible heat and fire ants and booby traps. A tale that again brings to light the plight of the average soldier in ‘Nam, and what was expected of them, and also one that concludes on an unexpected emotional touch with the note that Horten’s squad – as well as others – often adopted children who had been orphaned by the war, making them the “official mascots” of their squads and such. 

Likely the most gripping piece in Michael Herr’s Dispatches is the long, surreal piece on Khe Sahn, which I believe was originally published in Life or something, years before Dispatches came out. The next story here, “Ambush! The Horror At Khe Sahn,” provides the men’s mag take on this nightmarish siege. It’s by Dave Graham and from the June 1969 Bluebook. While not capturing the psychedelic soul-horror of Herr’s piece, Graham’s nonetheless documents the “hell in a very small place” that was Khe Sahn, where American soldiers at the titular base endured a four-month siege. 

This MAQ ends on a downbeat note with “Uncle Sam’s Universal Shafting Of Viet Vets,” by Ed Hymoff and from the November 1972 Saga. The author tells us of the dispirited post-war lives of vets who gave so much in the war, “shafted” by the very government they gave so much to. But again it’s Bob’s intro that has the most impact, telling from his own observations how vets were ignored back in the day – compared to how they are given their due today. 

In addition to all the above there are some great pieces throughout, like one on Army comics of the war by Bill Cunningham, and also Paul Bishop serves up a great piece on the Vietnam-focused men’s adventure paperbacks that were ubiquitous in the ‘80s. As mentioned before, I quite remember this as well, and indeed had a few volumes of The Black Eagles (if for nothing other than the covers!), and also I had several volumes of Eric Helm’s Vietnam: Ground Zero, which I got every other month in a package from Gold Eagle, but I never, ever read a single one of them. 

So, once again this volume of Men’s Adventure Quarterly is a winner, so I highly recommend you pick up a copy of MAQ #10 yourself! 

The Iceman #5: Spinning Target

The Iceman #5: Spinning Target, by Joseph Nazel

October, 1974  Holloway House

I recently came across this fifth installment of The Iceman and thought I’d check it out, even though I haven’t been the greatest fan of the previous volumes I’ve read. But as it turns out, #4: Sunday Fix was the last volume I had, and this one follows right after, with even a cursory mention of that novel’s events, so I figured I had nothing to lose. All told Spinning Target is on par with the other three volumes I’ve read. 

Joseph Nazel again doles out a Blaxploitation yarn in what is for the most part a humdrum, meat-and-potatoes style, comparable in some ways to that of Ralph Hayes or Dan Streib. Particularly the latter, in that once again Nazel has made the curious decision to deliver a story featuring a protagonist who literally runs a whorehouse and “loves” all of his women – women who constantly tell him how much they want him – and Nazel delivers absolutely zero sex, similar to how Streib would also ignore all the explicit stuff in his series novels. The Iceman is almost PG, which is baffling. Compare to contemporary Blaxploitation paperback series Dark Angel, which was consistently raunchy; one wonders why Nazel even bothered with the entire “million-dollar cathouse in the Vegas desert” setup of the series. And yet, this is the domain of series hero Henry Highland West, often called “The Iceman,” but more often than not just referred to as “Ice.” 

That said, I do enjoy the “seventies sci-fi” vibe of the Oasis, Ice’s Vegas bordello, with its “electronic brain” Matilda that is run by one of the resident girls. This at times gives The Iceman more of a futuristic vibe than other ‘70s sci-fi series, and curiously an “electronic brain” also factored into another Blaxploitation paperback of the day, The Gravy Train Hit. In another sci-fi bit, we learn that Ice’s Cadillac is “hot,” in that he can activate a low-wattage electrical forcefield around it to zap any would-be carjackers. Interesting then that it was the books with black protagonists that had more of a high-tech basis…oh wait, sorry. That should be “Black,” with the capital “B,” which is how Nazel writes it throughout…while “white” is never capitalized. I’d make fun of this, but sadly this has essentially become standard practice among the propaganda peddlers who work for mainstream “news” outlets these days. And their explanation for why they do so is humorously racist. (Bonus points if you guessed – correctly – that the person who wrote that explanation isn’t even black.) 

But then, the “Black” stuff only adds to the charm of The Iceman, given the overall empowerment angle of the series and Holloway House publications in general. Nazel constantly reminds us of the hardscrabble roots of his black characters and the harsh world they had to survive to become who they now are. The opening in particular conveys this, as Ice and his usual entourage – jive-talking Christmas Tree, soul-sister Solema, and “Japanese” sisters Kim and Jan – head down the red carpet at a big Hollywood premiere for a big-deal “Black movie” that is supposed to be worlds beyond “the typical Black exploitation cinema” of the day. In other words Nazel is specifically calling out “Blaxploitation” movies, though not using that term (I believe the term came about in the ‘90s, didn’t it?), which I found humorous given that he wrote the novelization of the Blaxploitation flick Black Gestapo. And you’ve gotta think the dude at least hoped The Iceman would receive a film treatment, right? 

If a movie had been made out of it, though, one would hope Nazel wouldn’t be the one who wrote the screenplay. Simply put, Spinning Target is the work of a writer who is exhausted from the relentless pace of writing an action series. The book is a study in how to draw out scenes past the breaking point, particularly scenes where nothing happens. There are endless sequences where characters stand around and talk…and talk…and talk, then we’ll break away to another group of characters who are talking endlessly, and then we’ll cut back to the first group, who talk some more. I’m not even really exaggerating. Action is infrequent, and when it happens, it too is weighed down by a curiously-deflated tone, as if Nazel were going through the motions. And as for the naughty stuff? Absolutely zilch! Hell, the female characters are barely even described, let alone exploited. 

Ice’s blue-colored vehicles and gadgetry are downplayed as well; in truth, Spinning Target could just as easily be the novelization of a ‘70s TV show, and one filmed on the cheap, too. The biggest setpiece occurs in the opening, and is depicted on the cover: after the big Hollywood premiere, which stars Ice’s old childhood friend Gwen (who has since become a famous singer and now actress), Ice is lured away on false pretenses and a gang of thugs try to kill him with a bazooka. This setpiece though is more of an indication of the page-filling trickery Joseph Nazel will give us throughout: it goes on for like 40 pages, and most of that runtime is given over to the hapless thugs arguing with each other, as if they’re twenty years early for a Quentin Tarantino movie. Some of it is funny, though, but boy it goes on. 

And another thing we learn here is that Joseph Navel POV-hops like a mother. By which I mean, we’ll be in the perspective of one character, and in the next paragraph we’re suddenly in the perspective of another, with absolutely nothing to warn us. This makes for a bumpy read as the reader is constantly knocked out of the narrative due to confusion: I mean Ice will be obliviously driving his Caddy in one paragraph, then in the next we’re abruptly in the thoughts of one of the hit-men who is waiting to kill him, then suddenly we’re in the thoughts of Gwen (who isn’t even there), and then we’re back to Ice…it’s like that through the entire book, so be prepared for some confusion if you attempt to read Spinning Target. This sort of thing drives me nuts, but others might not care as much. 

Ice manages to turn the tables on the bazooka team, but from here on out it’s more of a looong-simmer mystery as Ice tries to figure out why Gwen is acting so weird. So basically Gwen grew up on the streets with Ice and Tree, but now she’s bigtime, only we readers know she’s hooked on heroin by her manager, Parsons – who himself is under the gun from his white Syndicate backers. Parsons is the one behind the opening hit on Ice, though really the job was forced on Parsons…and the dude doesn’t make for the most compelling villains. There’s a nigh-endless part midway through where Gwen tries to break away from him…and nearly kills the hulking guy, who is more than twice her size, beating the shit out of Parsons with an ash tray and other items. This scene though is another indication of how Nazel will take something and stretch it past the breaking point, with the two arguing, fighting…arguing some more, then fighting, then Gwen escaping…then stuff with her escaping with the kindly old black doctor (who despite being kindly has been secretly dosing her with junk per Parsons’s orders), and just on and on. 

What makes it frustrating is all the missed opportunities. For one, Gwen. We’re told she became a famous singer and has done albums and all this, but she spends the entire novel running from Parsons and hoping for her latest heroin fix. There’s zero studio stuff and no spotlight for her to do anything. Same goes for Parsons, a mogul who runs an upstart music label with backing from the mob. Instead he spends the novel raging at Gwen, getting beaten up by her, and then hiring various thugs to go get her – thugs he usually spends pages and pages arguing with. About the most interesting thing we get is a brief visit Ice pays to a Los Angeles “jazz DJ” (who nonetheless plays songs by Gwen, which aren’t described as being “jazz;” but then they aren’t described at all) who gives Ice the scoop on pirating and bootlegging albums. Even this doesn’t pander out, however. 

Ice doesn’t do much ass-kicking, either. He blows away the bazooka goons in the opening, then spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out what’s going on with Gwen. Tree, Solema, Kim, and Jan are usually his entourage, but only Tree stands out, mostly due to his affrontery over how Gwen failed to notice him at the Hollywood premiere. Ice does not “make use” of any of the girls, though we’re often reminded that he loves all of them…and plans to give them the goods eventually! It’s all very curious. The girls get in on the other variety of action, though; late in the game they all get out their nickel-plated revolvers and hit the streets of L.A. as they try to help Ice. Nazel has toned the violence way down from the first volume, with gore nonexistent; more detail is placed on Ice’s “nunchaku,” illegal in Californa as Nazel informs us; Ice carries the pair around in his powder-blue suit and bashes in a couple of heads with them. 

The finale is somewhat memorable, with all the characters converging on the Hollywood sign. Here Ice, armed only with his .38, takes on a group of black thugs led by “Big Man,” who is another character that does a helluva lot of talking with not much in the way of action. Big Man however takes up a lot of the novel, bossing around Parsons. Nazel has so much fun with all the “goon chatter” that he can’t help himself; even during a climactic raid on Parson’s warehouse, Nazel briefly features a trio of goons – named, seriously, Rastus, Rufus, and Remus – and gives them a couple pages of banter before Ice shows up with his .38. 

There were a few more volumes after this, and I’d be curious to find out someday if Gwen becomes a recurring character in the series; the end of the novel occurs a few months later, and we’re told that Gwen has not only kicked horse but has also won the Oscar. And also, she’s become part of Ice’s retinue, signing a contract to perform at the Oasis. This could mean that Gwen might become one of the faceless, nondescript female characters who populate The Iceman, but as of now Spinning Target is the latest volume of the series I have, so I have no way of confirming.

Port Wine Stain

Port Wine Stain, by Jerry Oster

August, 1980  Signet Books

Jerry Oster is a prolific crime writer whose work I have only recently discovered; it appears he has reprinted most of his novels as eBooks. Port Wine Stain, a Signet Books paperback original, was his first novel, and it appears to be relatively unknown. It’s never been reprinted and isn’t available as an eBook, possibly indicating that Oster would prefer it to remain unknown. 

But man, once again kudos to the Signet copywriter(s) who handled these early ‘80s crime PBOs. As with Phone Call and The Ripper, the back cover copy goes out of its way to imply that Port Wine Stain is naughtiness of the first order, filled with willing women and graphic sex. Heck, the book’s even sluglined “A thriller for the adult ‘80s” on the back cover, and the copy lends the impression that it’s about a guy with “too many women in his life” who falls in love with an actres he sees in a porno flick. All of which is sort of what happens in Port Wine Stain, with the additional note that there is zero in the way of explicit sex in the novel, and even the exploitation of the female characters is nonexistent. Once again I am impressed with the copywriters of these ‘70s and ‘80s paperback houses and their ability to make any book come off like a sleazefest. They’d probably describe Gone With The Wind as “An untamed woman’s sexual odyssey in the passionate, lust-fueled world of the Antebellum South!” 

Rather, Port Wine Stain is a darkly humorous crime thriller with hardboiled tones, mostly due to the witty rapport Jerry Oster skillfully gives his characters. Indeed the final quarter of the novel seems to be a Thin Man riff, with narrator Charles Ives trading witty banter with his lovely female acquaintance as they try to solve a murder mystery. Dialog appears to be Oster’s strong suit, judging from this novel, with a lot of memorable exchanges between Ives and the people he encounters…most of whom do happen to be women, but again the kinky and naughty stuff is more a product of the Signet copywriter’s imagination. 

Charles Ives is somewhere in his 40s, a newspaper reporter in Manhattan, and he covered the war in Saigon before being pulled from the job because his editor said readers weren’t interested in stuff about far-off places. This Vietnam stuff still serves as a thorn in Ives’s side, and given that he still works for the same editor there’s occasional bantering about it between the two. But here’s the curious stuff. We know the war has ended, as Ives at one point mentions it…but I almost get the impression that Port Wine Stain occurs in the past – meaning, not in ‘80s. If so, then the “thriller for the adult ‘80s” tag on the back cover is also misleading. I say this given that Ives often begins his sentences with “In those days,” or “Something I remember even unto today,” as he recounts to us the story that is Port Wine Stain, clearly giving the impression that our narrator is telling us of events that happened long ago. Or maybe this is a novelistic conceit and the story does occur in 1980, but narrator Ives is writing in some distant future (let’s say 1994 and he’s a big NIN fan!) 

Jerry Oster went on to focus on crime and mystery thrillers, and Port Wine Stain is no different. Ives when we meet him is working night shift and his editor gives him a job to look into a recent murder “downtown.” Ultimately Ives will become entangled with the widow of the man who was killed, a lovely young woman who sports a nevus flammeus mark on her right cheek – the “port wine stain” of the title, as it’s a crimson mark that looks as if the lady has spilled wine on her cheek. Ives will become infatuated with this woman, Pamela Yost, to the extent that he is constantly putting off the advances of his latest casual bedmate, a teacher named Kate. And also to the extent that he’s putting off the advances of the new girl on the paper, a pretty young thing named Ann Roth. 

Yes, Charles Ives spends the entire first quarter of the novel turning down offers of sex, which must have given those Signet editors apoplexy. So much for that “liberated sex” promised on the cover! Kate in particular hounds Ives, at one point even trying her damnest to convince him to invite her up to his apartment for the night. But our narrator is unmoved; he’s too smitten with the “idea” of Pamela Yost, a woman he has only briefly met. But he felt a spark and now is obsessed with her, the fantasy of her that exists in his mind. And this is weird, too, ‘cause when Ives meets Pamela her husband has literally just been killed and he’s feeling the “sparking” between the two of them as they exchange glances and Ives sees that port wine stain and just wants to run his hand over it. This is like an hour or two after Mr. Yost has been shot to death by someone who broke into the Yost’s apartment. 

This obviously makes our narrator seem a bit “sus,” as the kids of today might say, but what’s even more curious is that the other characters don’t make too big a deal out of the fact that he’s smitten with a fresh widow. That is Pamela Yost on the cover, by the way; the uncredited cover artist got fairly good direction, as she is described as lovely and patrician, and the next time Ives sees her is at her husband’s funeral, where she’s dressed in black mourning clothes, as also depicted on the cover. But it appears the artist missed the “port wine stain” bit, unless you really stare at the picture…I mean the cheek is kind of crimson, but it also looks like makeup. There is no mistaking Pamela’s port wine stain for makeup in the novel, and in fact, she unsuccessfully tries to cover it up with makeup in the porno flick she appears in, so as to disguise herself. 

Ives learns of this “adult movie” (which would appear to be a relatively new term, given how Ives is unfamiliar with it) from Ann Roth, the “new girl” on the paper (in a sign of the changing times, Ives informs us that newspapers are “a man’s world” which made me laugh out loud when thinking of the papers of today), as Ann has been given the story of Mr. Yost’s murder. Even though it began as Ives’s story, his wily editor has changed course and given it to Ann (it’s revealed in an unexplored subplot that he’s been courting her, but hasn’t made the sale – meaning even other guys aren’t getting laid in this novel). It’s Ann who discovers that Pamela Yost features in a new porno flick that happens to be playing in the city. This she reveals to Ives by taking him to the movie, and Ives’s realization that the pretty woman with the heavy makeup engaging in onscreen sex is indeed Pamela is so blasé that Ives comes off like a robot. But then, he reacts with a similar blasé attitude to major deaths in the course of the novel. 

This I felt was the biggest failing of Port Wine Stain. Jerry Oster wants his cake and to eat it, too, to borrow a lame cliché. He wants the novel to be acerbic and arch-hardboiled, yet at the same time he strives for an “emotional connection” with Ives slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’s in love with a “fantasy.” This makes for a very self-absorbed narrator/protagonist. To his credit, though, Ives does manage to bed three women in the short, 216-page course of the novel, though as mentioned it is all entirely off-page. Even the “adult film” Pamela stars in is so vaguely described that I had a hard time understanding it even was an adult film, as Ives gives zero details about the movie, or what – or perhaps that should be who – Pamela does in it. But the fact that he beds both Pamela and Ann is almost a passing thought, particularly given the developments of the plot – it makes Ives come off like quite a cad, as he seems quite unconcerned over what has happened to both women. 

Rather, it’s Kate, the schoolteacher who realizes she wants kids, who factors the most in the final quarter of Port Wine Stain, and for those keeping score, Ives, uh, scores with her, too. She is the Myrna Loy to Ives’s William Powell in the Thin Man-esque vibe of these final pages, as the two banter while solving a murder mystery. I should mention that a lot of the dialog is about novels and literary works and characters in novels; in some way the dialog throughout almost reminds me of early Don DeLillo, in how the characters are so insular, talking avidly about subjects the author is clearly interested in. Speaking of “interesting,” there’s a nice bit where Ives and Kate discuss how The Magus has recently received a revised edition, and Ives sniffs that he thinks it’s a bad idea, because “authors should only get one shot.” Perhaps this explains why Port Wine Stain has never been reprinted. 

Because honestly, the finale of the novel is a hot mess, and no doubt it would benefit from some revising. Basically the novel ends, with Ives uncovering who was behind the murder and why it happened – a very hardboiled bit of Ives strapped to a chair and bullshitting his way out of it while trading witty rapport with the bad guy – and then Port Wine Stain goes into freefall for several pages. Because…for some reason, we are treated to a letter Kate has written Ives after leaving him, with her thoughts on their relationship and where she’s going on her trip, and all this stuff that makes the reader scratch his head, because he thought he was reading a mystery-thriller, not a rom-com. 

Overall Port Wine Stain is mostly a success in its witty dialog, some of which made me chuckle. I also enjoyed the topical details, like Ives and Pamela having lunch at Windows On The World, in the World Trade Center, and also there was a super-random Neil Young reference; Ives tells us a jukebox is playing a song with the lines “Love is a rose/but you better not pick it,” and that’s a Neil Young song – actually Linda Ronstadt had the hit with it, and that’s probably the version Ives is hearing on the jukebox, but Young wrote it and recorded it first, even though he released it after Ronstadt. Well, I sort of lost the thread here, so I should wrap it up now.

Richard Blade #25: The Torian Pearls

Richard Blade #25: The Torian Pearls, by Jeffrey Lord

August, 1977  Pinnacle Books

I hadn’t planned to read any more Richard Blade novels after the debacle that was #9: Kingdom Of Royth, which happened to be “new” author Roland Green’s first installment of the series. Given that Green went on to write the ensuing 27 volumes of the series (a one-off author named Ray Nelson contributed the 30th volume), I figured reading more books by him wouldn’t be worth the trouble. But the other month I came across this volume and the next on the clearance rack of a local Half Price Books (which is where I do all my book shopping these days; you never know what you’re going to find!), so I figured what the hell. 

But man, reading this book wasn’t worth the trouble. At 182 pages of small, dense print, The Torian Pearls was a chore to read. And a pulp novel about a sub-Conan getting in swordfights and bedding busty babes should never be a chore to read. It was Kingdom Of Royth all over again, and it baffles me that series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel kept Green on the series. My assumption is Green was just turning in his manuscripts on time. Or maybe the series was selling and Engel decided not to rock the boat, but I’m gonna assume that if Richard Blade did sell, it was mostly due to the era in which it was printed (sword and sorcery being pretty popular in the late ‘70s), and/or the covers were drawing people in (this one being by Kelly Freas). 

Everything that original series creator Manning Lee Stokes imbued the series with is long gone. Richard Blade, while still a brawny fighter and leader of men, has lost all of the macho qualities Stokes gave him. Indeed, Green is once again at pains to point out that Blade “doesn’t kill needlessly,” and there are parts where Blade congratulates himself that he didn’t kill some foe. He also spends an inordinate amount of time worrying that the women he beds in Dimension X won’t get killed or go nuts – both things which have often happened in the past, as Green recounts in the opening pages. 

But let’s face it, by this point Roland Green had written 16 volumes, twice more than Stokes did, so Richard Blade was Roland Green’s series at this point. As evidence of this Green adds a lot of continuity to the series, with the curious tidbit that all the continuity is related to prior Green novels. The first 8 Stokes volumes are ignored, and that Richard Blade is long gone – the Richard Blade who was prone to doubt and brooding in Home Dimension, but who turned into a vicious, almost unstoppable force of masculinity in Dimension X. Roland Green’s Richard Blade is a pale reflection of that earlier character, though it must be admitted he is more of a standard hero. Whereas Stokes’s Blade would kill with impunity, in some cases just to make a point, Green’s Blade is more concerned with keeping peace and helping people. 

Interesting, sure, but the delivery leaves a lot to desire. The Torian Pearls is a sluggish, trying read, everything relayed in bland and unthrilling tones. Even the battle scenes are rendered limp by the mundane narrative style. Midway through the novel I realized what the issue was: literally everything is relayed through Richard Blade’s perspective. The novel could just as well be written in first-person. Each page is comprised of nigh-endless paragraphs of description or the thoughts of Richard Blade; there is seldom any dialog, and absolutely no other characters rise to the surface. In a Stokes novel, there would be interraction with various characters. In Green’s books, the entirety is focused on Blade and his thoughts, and the other characters he meets in Dimension X serve as his sounding boards, having at the most a handful of lines of dialog. Even the women Blade beds – with one falling in love with Blade (and vice versa) and becoming pregnant with his child – are ciphers, briefly emerging from the dense narrative murk to say a line or two before disappearing back into it. 

Seriously though, it’s 182 pages of stuff like this: 

Very seldom does another character talk to Blade and give his or her opinion on things; almost everything is relayed via the narrative, as if we were reading a history book. To add to this, the adventure lasts over several months – one holdover from the Stokes novels – so there’s a lot of “three months passed” and the sort, further making the reader feel as if he’s reading a history book about some guy named Blade, who goes to a new Dimension and starts to align the various peoples into one nation. And really that’s all that happens in The Torian Pearls. The plot is so uninvolving: Blade finds himself in a swampy world, befriends a traveling group of warriors, wins their respect, then leads them in various battles with other warlike peoples in this swampy world, with the goal of unifying the various nations. That’s it, folks. There’s no real impetus to the story nor any goal for Blade; why he’s still being sent to Dimension X in the first place is not even dwelt upon. 

That said, Green it appears has tried to work a sort of continuing storyline into Richard Blade. There’s now some stuff about the “Menel,” a race of aliens who have plagued Blade in past installments – apparently #10: Ice Dragon was the first, but I could be wrong; I’m only guessing this from the narrative. In The Torian Pearls Blade again comes across the Menel, who have spaceships and may also be able to bridge dimensions. But hey, don’t listen to me; here are two pages of typically-dense text as Blade ponders the Menel: 

 

Note that all of that is material Richard Blade could have discussed with someone else. Hell, even if he was just talking to a rock! But the above is another indication of what I’m talking about. The entire damn book is just Blade and his thoughts, which go on for pages and pages with no dialog breaks. I mean, Manning Lee Stokes certainly turned in some padded and boring volumes, but at least the guy gave Blade someone to talk to! The characters Blade encounters in The Torian Pearls are so cipher-like that I once again return to my original theory that Richard Blade isn’t really going to any “Dimension X” at all; the entire series is just the hallucinations of Richard Blade. In other words, it’s all about him because it all is him, like a dream or something. 

Well anyway, the plot itself is lame, mostly because there really is no plot. Blade’s been spending some time walking through the woods of Scotland or something when we meet him, reflecting on past Dimension X exploits (only the Green ones), and he heads on back to the Tower of London for his next trip to Dimension X. He comes to in a swampy world and gradually finds himself encountering one after another group of people who are fighting for the ever-diminishing land. The oceans are expanding and land is becoming precious, and it’s a wonder this book hasn’t been discovered and cherished by the climate cultists. But then it’s much too masculine for them…even in neutered form, Blade still gets in lots of fights, eventually becoming a leader of men. 

But it’s all so nauseatingly repetitive and bland; Blade meets one group, he befriends them and wars with them against their enemies; he meets another group, he befriends them and wars with them against their enemies. There’s also a proto-Dances With Wolves/Avatar bit where Blade is not believed to be a true warrior and must prove himself in various native rituals, culminating in a fight against the top warrior. But again it’s all so tepidly described, because the entirety is locked in Bland’s thoughts and reactions (it’s the first jpeg excerpt, above). 

The sexual material is just as bland; Blade hooks up with three women in the book, per the template, but everything is off-page. And the female characters are even more cipher-like than the men, literally only showing up for Blade to bang off-page and then disappearing back into the text. Hey, they’re the perfect women! Seriously though, what’s humorous is that Blade apparently falls in love with one of them, and indeed sires a child with her, but Blade’s gone before he finds out whether it’s a boy or a girl. If I’m not mistaken, in a future volume Blade returns to this Dimension and meets his child, and if I’m further unmistaken it’s a boy and also a grown man when Blade returns, given the loosy-goosy nature of time in Dimension X. It would be interesting to read, but given what I know of Roland Green’s novels, I’m sure it won’t amount to much, as it all will be locked in Blade’s thoughts with the other characters not having the space to breathe. 

The alien Menel only factor in randomly; Blade survives a lot of wild animal attacks, from flying reptiles to water creatures, and he hacks one open and finds a crystal in the brain – apparently the same thing the Menel did in a previous volume. There’s also a Menel UFO that crashes, but Green is maddeningly vague when it comes to describing the aliens. Indeed, Green’s descriptions throughout are maddeningly vague; even female characters are not given the exploitation that is customary of the genre. Instead the novel is like an endless sprawl of Blade thinking this and Blade pondering that as he voyages across the swampy world and unites various groups into one, eventually launching a war against the titular Torians, an empire that is headed up by a hotstuff, wanton babe in her 40s. 

But Green has squandered so much text that he rushes through all this – the queen takes Blade as her plaything and we only learn about it in hindsight, with none of the naughty stuff Stokes would’ve given us. That said, Green does deliver a memorable sendoff for Blade, having him zapped back to Home Dimension while the queen is giving him a blowjob! Speaking of rushing through things, only here in the very last pages are we informed that Blade’s bosses have taken care of a publicity matter, apparently from an earlier volume, in which Blade saved some people from a crashing train, and Scotland Yard were trying to figure out who the “mystery hero” was who’d saved them, Blade having vanished into the shadows to preserve his secret identity. This is literally brought up and dispensed with in a few lines of text on the last pages, so either Green forgot about his own dangling subplot or editor Lyle Kenyon Engel grafted it in to Green’s manuscript. 

Overall, The Torian Pearls was terrible. I went into this one wanting to think that Roland Green had improved after so many volumes, but it seems more apparent that Richard Blade should’ve ended when Manning Lee Stokes left the series.

The Ninth Dragon (Sam Borne #1)

The Ninth Dragon, by E.B. Cross

June, 1985  Pinnacle Books

This obscure late-era Pinnacle paperback was the first of two novels featuring Sam Borne, a secret agent for the mysterious US outfit “The Committee.” But then, Sam (as author E.B. Cross refers to his protagonist) isn’t just a secret agent: he’s also a ninja and he’s a world-class actor who trained with some royal thespian school in England. Sam Borne seems to act mostly in the capacity of assassin for the shadowy intelligence agency The Committee…an agency which remains a mystery for the entirety of The Ninth Dragon, but we are often assured they are devoted to preserving world peace, and Sam is often sent out to kill bad guys. 

At 280+ pages, The Ninth Dragon is clearly intended as a standard thriller and not a men’s adventure novel, yet the trappings are mostly the same. Only the narrative tone is more reserved – despite featuring some outrageously lurid material – and the pulpy conceits are less pronounced. For example, that Sam Borne is a ninja hardly even matters in the story, and the “American ninja” stuff could be entirely removed from the book and not make a difference. There is no part where Sam dons a ninja costume, wields a ninja sword, or does anything ninja-like; we’re just often reminded that he “trained as a ninja” for a few years in Japan after ‘Nam, making him an expert “in the dagger and the dirk” and also learning all the standard ninja tricks. Ninja tricks of which he does not use a single one in the course of The Ninth Dragon. 

I’m assuming “E.B. Cross” is a pseudonym, but I could be wrong. What’s funny is how much the word “crossed” is used in the book. It’s almost like an in-joke. I’m not exaggerating…one could make a drinking game out of the number of times we’re told “Sam crossed the room,” or “Sam crossed back to the other side of the road,” or etc. It’s used a lot, and just made me laugh. The dry, reserved tone also has me suspecting “Cross” was British. The book has that same polish I find in British pulp, lacking the gut-level impact of American pulp; as evidence, all of Sam’s sexual conquests occur off-page, and female exploitation is kept to a minimum. Everyone also speaks more like British people than American, though Cross does acknowledge this in the novel, having Sam reflect to himself at one point that when in a foreign country and speaking English to natives, he unintentionally slips into a formal, British style of speech. 

Cross sprinkles Sam’s background throughout the narrative, but it’s so sloppily done. For example, we don’t even learn until nearly 150 pages in that Sam’s mother was Japanese and his dad was white, an American airborne soldier killed in action in Korea, and Sam was raised from infancy in foster care in Japan. You’d think the fact that our hero was of mixed descent would be slightly relevant and relayed to the reader a little earlier. But then, we never do get a real picture of this guy. The vague backstory is almost ludicrously undeveloped; occasionally Sam will think of the training “his ninja masters” gave him, and we’re briefly told that he spent some time in the mountains learning the ways of the ninja…okay, but why? Is that just standard Committee training? Even more ludicrous is the off-hand comment that Sam is “among the world’s best actors,” given his training in acting in London, which is even less elaborated on than the ninja stuff. 

But then, Sam doesn’t even do much to acquit himself as a world-class assassin, either. Folks, over the course of the first 114 or so pages of The Ninth Dragon, Sam Borne flies to Hong Kong…and is fitted for a new wardrobe courtesy some local tailors who have been hired by the Committee (which always remains off-page, by the way). Sam also tours Hong Kong with a pretty young woman who has been sent by the Committee as his local contact…and he spends more time trying to provoke her anger, then sends her off at the end of the day. Even James Bond in the original Ian Fleming novels would do more than that in 100+ pages! But man, I don’t exaggerate when I say that a lot of The Ninth Dragon is given over to travelogue material about Hong Kong, or Chinese customs, or sundry other things that you wouldn’t expect to read about in a pulp paperback about a superspy ninja. 

Really though, this is all Sam does for the first quarter-plus of the novel. Wait, he also leaves his latest girl in the lurch; the novel opens with Sam on vacation after the latest assignment, where he’s been banging some chick he picked up and reading a whole bunch and etc while he enjoys some down-time between assignments. Then he gets the summons from the Committee and he takes off while the girl’s down at the local market, and she catches him while he’s trying to make a quick getaway, leading to her throwing a hissy fit and chasing him. From there it’s to Hong Kong where Sam gets fitted for clothes and then manages to pick up some lady at a bar, but as mentioned above the naughty stuff is left off page. 

Meanwhile, as if from an entirely different book we have the lurid doings of Dr. Sun Sun, an obese and overly disgusting drug kingpin based out of Vietnam. Sun Sun is in fact an American, an officer who went rogue during Vietnam and now runs a drug empire, his servants exclusively midgets and his fields worked by American POWs. In other words it’s Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now as played by the main Harkonen guy from David Lynch’s Dune. The midgetsploitation in this book is beyond belief; even the first-page preview is a glimpse of the climactic battle, in which Sam takes on these midgets in the tunnels beneath Sun Sun’s compound in Vietnam. We’re told these midgets came with the compound; trained for tunnel warfare by the VC, they now work for Sun Sun, but there’s no chief midget henchman, which seems a curious miss on Cross’s part. 

Indeed, the novel really focuses on just three characters: Sam Borne, Doctor Sun Sun, and Honey Pot (a Fleming name if ever there was one), a lovely Vietnamese lady who is with Sun Sun because he has her siblings in bondage or something. Otherwise there are no other characters who rise to the surface; even the American POs who toil in Sun Sun’s opium fields are faceless cardboard cutouts who do not have subplots of their own. The only time we see one of them is in a horrific sequence where Sun Sun’s midgets capture a POW who tried to escape, and Sun Sun “operates” on him, recording it all on video – gruesome stuff, like slicing off the guy’s scrotum. And, uh, feeding the bits and pieces he cuts off to the horde of rats who live beneath the compound. There is a definite lurid element to The Ninth Dragon, some of it kind of shocking at least when compared to the overall dry tone of the book. 

Speaking of Honey Pot, her intro is also lurid; she’s required to watch as a snuff flick is filmed on the compound; Sun Sun enjoys filming all of his sadistic deeds, and we’re treated to a long bit in which Cross recounts the orgy that ensues, which is followed by a guy putting a noose around the neck of each girl in a sort of Russian Roullette game. Here though we get our indication of Cross’s overly dry tone, as despite the insanely sordid proceedings, he recounts it all in a bland, placid narrative tone. The author is more concerned with Sam Borne’s errant observations on Asian culture and customs. The sadistic stuff really comes out of nowhere, and all of it features Sun Sun, who is himself a very Bond-esque villain, an arrogant blowhard given to grandiose speeches. 

E.B. Cross doesn’t do much to exploit his own setup, though. I mean, he’s got an obese psycho ex-‘Nam officer who heads his own drug empire, staffed by a legion of killer midgets, and he’s up against a superspy who happens to be a friggin’ ninja. Anyone who just read that sentence could probably come up with a better book than E.B. Cross has. The Ninth Dragon is more of a pseudo-Bond thriller, complete with the motif of the gabby villain with delusions of world domination. Even the cliched stuff where Bond will temporarily be caught in the villain’s trap is repeated here, twice: first when Sun Sun hooks Sam to a harness and tosses him out of a ‘copter in mid-air as “training,” then toward the end of the novel when he puts Sam in a human-size champagne glass that slowly fills with water. (Seriously!) 

Worse yet, Sam Borne doesn’t do much to prove his ninja badassery. He doesn’t even get into a fight until over a hundred pages in, where he takes out a group of Russians in Hanoi. His “thespian” setup is also poorly developed; his cover has him posing as a drug-runner based out of Harvard who hopes to get a job with Sun Sun’s organization, and this entails sitting around and being bullied by the brother of the latest chick he’s picked up here in Vietnam. Sam does fairly well for himself with the ladies, like a true sub-Bond, but as mentioned it’s all off-page. Well anyway, for reasons never even much explained, Sun Sun learns of Sam’s duplicity, thus resulting in the various traps he soon puts our hero through…meaning that we never even get to see Sam’s “world-class acting skills” put to the test. 

The finale is similarly muddled. For one, Sam falls in love with Honey Pot after some (you guessed it) off-page hanky-panky, and the final confrontation with Sun Sun is almost an afterthought. That said, it does at least involve those rats again, but otherwise it’s handled a lot more quickly than I would’ve assumed. Instead, more focus is placed on Sam and Honey Pot escaping the compound with the rescued POWs, taking on the underground army of midgets – a bit that includes the memorable mental image of Sam blowing scads of midgets to pieces on full auto. But yes, Sam does all his fighting with guns in this one…seriously, I almost think the “American ninja” stuff was grafted on by Pinnacle because they were trying to catch on to the fad. 

I was mightily unimpressed with The Ninth Dragon, but Sam Borne returned in the following year’s The White Angel, another paperback original, published by St. Martin’s Press instead of Pinnacle, so I figure I’ll go ahead and read it anyway sometime.

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!

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 19

More Jim Kelly movies: 

Mellinda (1972): I’ve long known about this movie, given that it was Jim Kelly’s first appearance in a film, and reportedly it’s this role that got him cast in the following year’s Enter The Dragon, which of course made Kelly a star. Melinda is also notable for featuring Rockne Tarkington, who was originally cast in the role Jim Kelly would ultimately play in Enter The Dragon; I seem to recall reading, when I was obsessed with all things Bruce Lee twenty-some years ago, that Bruce Lee didn’t get along with Rockne Tarkington, so Tarkington was fired and Jim Kelly got the gig. 

Well anyway, despite this pedigree Melinda has apparently been hard to see for many years. It’s curious the film isn’t more well-known, as it’s actually pretty good – even if Jim Kelly’s barely in it. He only appears in the first few minutes, then disappears until the last several minutes of the picture, where he returns for the final fight sequence. It’s clear why he would’ve gotten the Enter The Dragon role from this, given his martial arts skills on display throughout, but what’s real weird is that Rockne Tarkington got the offer first; Tarkington, who has a lot more screentime than Kelly in Melinda, does absolutely no fighting in the course of the film, and indeed is beaten up by various people! He plays a former pro footballer who is in deep with the mob, but he’s a coward and he simpers more than he snarls – curious then that he would be the first choice for Bruce Lee’s film, and not Jim Kelly. 

Loglined as “Your kind of black film,” Melinda stars Calvin Lockhart as a smooth-talking DJ on a soul music radio station who takes “I’m black and I’m proud” to a whole ‘nother level. His character, Frankie J. Parker, is one of the more arrogant “heroes” you’ll meet in a film, with his rapid-fire come-on lines and endless “I’m cool, can you dig it?” patter, but somehow Lockhart manages to be likable. The film opens with Frankie sparring with his karate teacher, played by Jim Kelly naturally, and it’s all sort of like that “urban black karate dojo” Jim Kelly briefly appeared in when his character was introduced in Enter The Dragon. But I love this stuff because it gives the impression that people just beat the shit out of each other in these inner-city karate classes, then laughed it off and hit the showers. 

Kelly doesn’t have much in the way of dialog, but one can clearly see a star in the making. But as mentioned he’s gone soon and Lockhart carries the picture, doing a fine job of it. The story goes that Frankie meets the titular Melinda (a very attractive Vonetta McGee), a hotstuff babe new in town who initially seems immune to Frankie’s come-on patter, but soon enough they’re getting into some R-rated hankie pankie. Ah, the days of nudity in action films. Meanwhile some hulking black stooge watches them through the friggin’ peephole of the door to Frankie’s apartment, apparently able to see the naughty action clearly enough that he begins to, uh, pleasure himself. It’s true love between Frankie and Melinda, but it’s doomed, and within a day or two Frankie’s world comes crashing down and Melinda is gone. 

It turns out Melinda was involved with high-level Syndicate type (Paul Stevens, whose high-level Syndicate type character is given the very un-villainous name “Mitch!”), and he wants her back – particularly something she hid from him. This brings a mystery angle to Melinda, or perhaps a hardboiled vibe would be a more apt description, as soon Frankie’s being accosted by various enemies (most memorably by a busty white chick in a see-through knit top who tries to take him somewhere at gunpoint), and he learns that some of his supposed friends were involved with Melinda’s fate. In particular Tank, (Tarkington), who turns out to be a “business associate” of Mitch, though Tank’s really into it for the easy women. 

The film seems to have had a nice budget and the acting throughout is good; an hour in none other than Ross “Wonder Women” Hagen shows up, delivering a stand-up performance as Mitch’s top henchman. The way Hagen effortlessly handles the role is fun to see and another reminder that the dude should’ve become a much bigger star. Rosalind Cash also features as Frankie’s ex-girlfriend, Terry, and while her role starts off as thankless (spatting with Frankie when she sees him with Melinda), she ends up having a much larger part in the proceedings, with an especially memorable bit where Terry poses as Melinda and goes into a bank to get into Melinda’s lockbox. Initially I felt this part was dragging on too long – the suspense being whether Terry’s guise would be uncovered – but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the film, with Terry abruptly going ballistic on the bank manager. 

But then that might be why Melinda apparently didn’t resonate with audience of the day…it’s a bit too long and drawn out, coming in at nearly 2 hours. Also I think the title couldn’t have helped matters; maybe if it had been titled “Black Rage” or something similar, it might have resonated more. I mean, “Melinda” certainly doesn’t scream “blaxploitation” to me, so I’d wager this mis-titling factored into the film’s fade into obscurity. Then again, they named the main villain “Mitch,” so clearly titles and names weren’t a strong suit of the producers. This is a shame, as overall I really enjoyed it – oh, and as mentioned Jim Kelly does return, towards the very end, bringing in his karate school to help Frankie kick some mobster ass. But given that Jim Kelly isn’t the star, he’s mostly in the background, knocking down various thugs while Frankie takes on the bigger villains. 

Death Dimension (1978): A year after Black Samurai was released, Jim Kelly reunited with director Al Adamson for another low-budget offering that was destined for drive-ins everywhere, though this one apparently didn’t even cause a ripple, as it’s relatively unknown. Even if it does co-star former 007 George Lazenby. It’s fitting that Lazenby and Kelly would appear in a movie together, as their careers were so similar: starting off strong, reduced to appearing in low-budget crap in just a few years. Kelly even did a Hong Kong chop-socky (below), same as Lazenby. Speaking of Bond, Harold “Oddjob” Sakata also features as the villain here in Death Dimension…the title of which, by the way, doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the plot per se. 

Why exactly Adamson didn’t do another Black Samurai film will have to be a mystery. Maybe he just didn’t want to pay Marc Olden for the rights. Whatever the reason, it’s unfortunate he didn’t, as Black Samurai, despite its faults, is worlds better than Death Dimension. This is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, with “boom mic” audio, lousy direction, and a “soundtrack” culled from library music LPs – same as Black Samurai was, but here the music is laughably at odds with the onscreen action. Like, “smooth dinner jazz” playing in the friggin’ climactic fight scene. 

Also like Black Samurai, Death Dimension was released a few years ago in uncut high definition, though the print is as expected grainy and faded (and also strangely enough it’s sourced from a German print, though we get the original English audio). There are none of the pseudo-Bond trappings of Black Samurai, which is real odd, given that this one co-stars a former Bond, but then who among us could understand the mind of Al Adamson. Instead, star Jim Kelly is here just a cop, one with a penchant for the martial arts, and he gets caught up in a case revolving around “The Pig,” aka main villain Sakata. Lazenby has a thankless role as Kelly’s boss, standing around in a low-budget “captain’s office” with a .38 holstered in the waistband of his pants and playing the straight man to Kelly. 

Very curiously, Jim Kelly doesn’t get much chance to shine in Death Dimension. All told, there is a muddled air to the film, as if everything were intentionally half-assed. Don’t get me wrong, Kelly still gives a fine performance – his natural charisma was enough to save pretty much any film – but the jive-talking hustler of earlier films has been replaced by a dude who is more prone to sit around and brood. His karate scenes are infrequent and poorly staged, though this isn’t Kelly’s fault; hell, the movie even ends with Kelly doing an abrupt jump kick toward the camera – a surreal moment in which the fourth wall is broken for absolutely no reason – and Adamson freezes the goddamn picture before Kelly’s leg is even fully extended. So it looks like Kelly’s practicing a new disco jump for the dancefloor. 

And yes, “disco;” we’re in the late ‘70s now, friends, though truth be told there’s nothing about Death Dimension that seems too “late ‘70s.” But that early-mid ‘70s spark is clearly lost; hell, Kelly’s afro is even smaller, as if he were getting ahead of the game for the more straight and reserved ‘80s. That said, he does sport the occasional track suit in this one, likely Adamson catering to the recently-released Game Of Death travesty that had been ushered into theaters that same year. 

As for the plot…well, I had a tough time figuring it out. The movie has a memorable opening, at least: a close-up of a doctor making an incision in the scalp of an attractive brunette, then implanting a chip of some sort in the incision and sewing her head back up. Apparently this is info pertaining to the evil Pig and his plans for nefariousness or whatnot. Meanwhile, Jim Kelly is a cop teaching other cops how to karate fight, but folks the movie’s so damn lame that Kelly’s character, Lt. Ash, doesn’t even take his own advice. His opening features him teaching students how to kick the gun out of someone’s hand…and this happens to Ash himself late in the movie – someone knocks his gun out of his hand. 

But this itself is an indication of how lame Death Dimension is. Okay, the guy who knocks aside Ash’s gun is a scar-faced black sadist named Tatoupa (Bob Minor), who – no spoilers – has killed someone Ash cares about. This happens midway through the flick, and Ash knows Tatoupa was the killer, given the signature killing move of a slashed throat, courtesy the special blade Tatoupa wears on his pinkie. Well anyway, the finale features Ash getting the drop on Tatoupa, the man who killed someone Ash cares about we’ll remember…and Ash puts a gun on him and tells him to freeze! And he’s standing so close to Tatoupa that Tatoupa just knocks the gun aside! I mean…wouldn’t Ash remember his own martial arts lesson and stand back a little? Or, more importantly, wouldn’t Ash just want to ice the fucker and not mess around with any “official cop business?” 

Such questions occurred to me, and many more besides. I’ve never been able to find anything positive written about Death Dimension, and now that I’ve finally seen the movie I understand why. To quote dialog from the movie itself: “It stinks!” Actually, “stinks” is a recurring word in the film, usually used in lame puns like, “Something stinks – and it’s coming from the Pig,” or something to that effect, but my hunches tell me the “stinks” line is an audio cue to Jim Kelly’s famous line in Enter The Dragon, of how ghettoes are the same all over the world: they stink. But then I could be wrong and it could just be a coincidence. 

Instead of having George friggin’ Lazenby team up with Kelly’s character and have the two handle the action together like a decade-early version of Lethal Weapon, Adamson instead gives “action co-lead” billing to some dude named Myron Bruce Lee (I kid you not), who portrays Ash’s old kung-fu pal who is a fellow cop ready to help take on the Pig. Lazenby is left on the sidelines for the most part, until an out-of-nowhere reveal in the final quarter that leaves the viewer scratching his or her (or its) head. Even this is handled ineptly; SPOILER ALERT, but Lazenby is abruptly outed as a villain…but instead of having Jim Kelly face off against him, it’s Myron Bruce Lee who takes him on. That said, we do get a humorous “fatality” when Lee’s character kicks Lazenby into a pool, and Lazenby’s character just happens to be holding an electrical cord, and Lazenby gamely contorts and twists his body in the pool as if he were being electrocuted. 

Otherwise folks, there’s not much to recommend Death Dimension. There is a bit of nudity, though, Adamson playing up to his drive-in audience expectations. Ash has a sultry girlfriend of indeterminate race who is attractive in a late ‘70s way and shows off her upper-body goods in a shower scene. But man, given that her part mostly entails lying in bed with Ash and telling him how much she loves him, the viewer can pretty much guess her fate. There’s also a random trip to some cathouse in Reno, and I’m assuming the gals who line up for Ash – likely yet another callback to Enter The Dragon, namely Kelly’s most memorable scene – are the real deal…but boy, they ain’t that attractive. At least Ash picks the prettiest one. Not that he does anything with her; the entire sequence seems to exist to pad the minutes, or for the posters at the drive-in to promise a visit to a brothel or something. Ash just goes into a room with the gal, leaves when her back is turned, scopes out the place…and politely leaves when he’s caught trespassing! Just a lame scene in a movie filled with lame scenes. 

The Tattoo Connection (1978): Released the same year as Death Dimension, and released as “Black Belt Jones II” in England, The Tattoo Connection is further proof of how far and how fast Jim Kelly’s star had wanted, just a few years after his debut. But as mentioned above, this is the same fate that befell George Lazenby. Truth be told, it’s a bit surprising that Kelly even made a movie in Hong Kong; I can’t believe Chinese audiences of the 1970s would have been very receptive to a film starring a black American. Indeed, that Kelly is black is made very apparent throughout The Tattoo Connection, with a girl at one point refusing to have sex with him precisely because he is black. 

This could explain why Jim Kelly is barely in the movie. Hell, it takes him fifteen minutes to even show up, and it’s like as soon as he’s onscreen they can’t get him off of it fast enough. I almost wonder if another version of the flick was shot without Jim Kelly in it at all. Supposedly he’s the star of the picture, but a little editing and a few new scenes and you could make an actor named Tan Tao-ling, who plays a sort-of villain named Tung Hao, the movie’s star. His character even has more of an arc; Tan Tao-ling opens the movie defending himself in kung-fu combat, harbors reservations about being a villain despite being a crime boss’s main thug, and has a change of heart in the movie’s climax. Jim Kelly meanwhile shows up fifteen minutes into the picture, has a couple random scenes, and doesn’t seem nearly as important to the plot. 

As for the plot, like Death Dimension I had no clue what it was about. The titular “tattoo connection” has hardly anything to do with the picture per se; there’s a part midway through where Jim Kelly, who plays a cop or troubleshooter or something, tracks down a gang member in Hong Kong due to the tattoos the man sports. But that’s it. Really the movie seems to be about a diamond smuggling operation, and Jim Kelly, who plays “Lucas” (though more often than not he’s just referred to as “the black guy”), is called in by an old pal to help sort things out. Or something. About the most positive thing I can say is that Jim Kelly dubs himself in the English version, but given that this is a Chinese picture his “sassy dialog” has been toned way down. But even dubbed Kelly’s onscreen charisma is apparent, and he gets more opportunity to play a typical role of his here than he did in the same year’s Death Dimension. 

For one, he smiles a lot more, and also he is clearly having fun. Given that this is a Hong Kong flick, the fight choreography is a lot better than probably any other Jim Kelly movie, with unbroken long shots of him kicking ass; none of the random close-ups and whatnot that ruined the choreography of so many American-made martial arts movies of the time. You can see where the film has been sped up occasionally, but otherwise Kelly holds his own with the Chinese fighters – one of whom happens to be Bolo Yeung, Kelly’s co-star in Enter The Dragon. Curiously, the producers make nothing of this, with Bolo playing a random thug; that said, he and Kelly do get in a fairly brutal fight in the film’s climax, giving us the matchup we were denied in Enter The Dragon. 

I also wonder if The Tattoo Connection was only produced for the international market. Meaning, if it even played in Hong Kong at all. This could explain how Jim Kelly got top billing – and also might explain the copious nudity, as if the filmmakers were catering to the US drive-in market. Now clearly there was nudity in Hong Kong films at the time, but not as much as you’d think in kung-fu movies of the era; not that I’m an expert on the subject, but at a conservative estimate I’d say I’ve seen hundreds of ‘70s kung-fu movies in my lifetime. I remember the days of scouring the racks in stores for kung-fu VHS tapes, and one of the first things I ever did “online” in the early ‘90s was to find people to trade kung-fu videos with. There were indeed chop-sockies that had lots of nudity, like for example the Bruce Li joint Image Of Bruce Lee (that’s me as “Joe909” in the linked review, btw), which is another one that could have been produced for the international market. There’s just as much nudity in The Tattoo Connection, mostly courtesy Japanese actress Nami Misaki, who plays a nightclub stripper named Nana and is one of the main villain’s kept girls, but who is secretly in love with Tung Hao. 

As with most Hong Kong chop-sockies, the soundtrack is lifted from countless uncredited sources. It’s very heavy on the jazz-funk trip, as with most soundtracks of this era; one track in particular I spotted was off Mandigo’s The Primeval Rhythm Of Life. (Once upon a time I had a kung-fu movie with music stolen from The Empire Strikes Back!) The soundtrack is humorously done at times, too, with mega-fuzz guitar blaring when we get sudden extreme close-ups of a person’s face. Overall this gives the movie that “bell-bottom fury” vibe I have always liked, yet at the same time the movie is plodding because it’s more focused on that friggin’ Tung Hao guy. Seriously, he’s the star of the film, and Jim Kelly essentially has a glorified walk-on role. I would love to know more about how he even got involved with the production, and I’m wondering if it’s a case where he was only on location for a few days, hence his relatively small screen-time. 

That said, there is still some fun stuff; like when Nana is tasked with getting Lucas “excited” and giving him a “new drug from America” that will cause him to have a fatal heart attack. Nana is the girl who earlier turned Lucas’s advances down because he was black, but she dutifully takes the job. Yet, no matter what movie he’s in, Jim Kelly is always ten steps ahead of his opponents, so he turns the tables on Nana, switching their drinks. The film seems to forget that the drug is fatal, though, as instead Nana just giggles a bunch and does another strip tease, showing off her very nice upper body for us. The actress even goes all the way with it, kissing Kelly – I bet this one got a lot of gasps in theaters if the movie played in Hong Kong. 

But it’s humorous because they expressly call out the very thing that would go unmentioned in an American film: when Lucas initially puts the moves on Nana, earlier in the film, she bluntly tells him she won’t do it “because you’re black.” What’s also funny is that once she’s said this, it’s like the cat has been let out of the bag; from there on out, Lucas is constantly referred to as “the black guy.” Even the white guy who initially starts off the picture as Lucas’s best buddy starts referring to him as “that black guy!” But Jim Kelly takes it all in stride; he even refers to himself as “a sexy young black man” later in the flick, when Nana’s been dosed by her own drug. However he doesn’t score; the film wants to have a fairy tale happy ending for Nana and her beloved, Tung friggin’ Hao, so Lucas expressly notes that he and Nana haven’t gone all the way together. 

At least he gets to show off his karate skills, particularly in the end. Well, first of all the climax gets off to a bad start, with Lucas lured to a freighter where he’s beaten up and captured. One of the few times you see someone get the better of Jim Kelly in one of his movies. Then he’s let loose and, suddenly shirtless and wearing black pants, he picks up where Bruce Lee left off at the end of Enter The Dragon, even taking up a pole staff at one point and wielding it the same way Lee did. One thing missing though is Jim Kelly’s trademark “OOOO-EEEE!” karate yells; the fights are dubbed standard chop-sockey style, with a lot of grunts and screams, and it doesn’t sound like Kelly dubbed himself in the fights. 

Overall, The Tattoo Connection was interesting to see, because I’ve wondered about it for years (and it’s always been hard to track down), but it was let down by the fact that Jim Kelly wasn’t in it nearly as much as he should have been. Again I would love to know more about the production of the film and whether it was actually released in Hong Kong. Whatever its origin, it clearly didn’t make much of an impact (so to speak), and from here on Kelly would only appear in supporting roles, before retiring from the movie business. A shame, really, and an indication of how short-sighted Hollywood was at the time. The guy should’ve been huge. 

Even if Chinese audiences of the ‘70s might not have been receptive to a black American star, it would appear that Jim Kelly is more embraced by modern-day Chinese. The other month I was at a place called Andretti’s, owned apparently by Mario Andretti, and it was one of those video game/restaurant places. There was a kung-fu video game there called like “Kung-fu vs Karate” or something, and it appeared to be a Chinese production. Sort of a Mortal Kombat deal, only without the gore. One of the characters you could pick was a clear Jim Kelly tribute, even sporting the same Afro, and of course it was this character I played as while I let my seven-year-old son kick my butt as a ninja. It goes without saying that in a real-world matchup Jim Kelly would’ve kicked that ninja’s ass. But I figured he’d also be kind enough to let a kid beat him.