Book Review: Brak the Barbarian

Book Review: 'Brak the Barbarian' by John Jakes

 4 / 5 Stars

This slim (160 pp.) little volume of 'Brak' tales was issued by Tandem Books (UK) in 1976. The striking cover art is by Bob Fowke. Some of the stories in this compilation first saw print in the mid-1960s in Fantastic Stories, while others were composed by Jakes expressly for the initial 1968 paperback printing. 

'Brak the Barbarian' has been reprinted in various paperback editions through the years, including a Pocket Books edition in 1977.

In the Tandem Books edition, we get 'The Unspeakable Shrine', 'Flame-Face', 'The Courts of the Conjurer', 'Ghosts of Stone', and 'The Barge of Souls'. 

As I have stated in my reviews of other entries in the Brak franchise, these stories are as good as the Conan pastiches of Lin Carter, with his 'Thongor' stories. In the tales collected in 'Brak the Barbarian' the horror element - and the gore and violence - are considerably more overt, as are the intentions of the beauteous women who try to tempt our hero from his quest to arrive in the shining southern city of Kurdisan. 

Here's an example of the sensibility Jakes brings to the chapter / story 'Flame Face':

Somewhere along the endless corridor on to which the rock pens opened, a prisoner shrieked in the grip of dementia. Guard boots slammed. A bolt was shot back. An argument ensued. The maniacal captive could not be silenced.

All at once, his burbling came sharply to a stop. Coarse laughter and the slower footfalls of the guards indicated that a dagger had served where blows and oaths would not. On more than one occasion the big barbarian had seen a troublemaker thus dispatched in the mines, his corpse flung into the glaring furnaces.

In the story 'The Barge of Souls', Jakes provides a grim and evocative description of the aftermath of a titanic battle:

At highest noon, the sun was but a pale silver-white disc through the murk overhead. Everywhere lay bodies, whole or dismembered, stinking blood that mingled with the richer, redder stuff bled out of horses slaughtered by the hundreds.  Brak saw grisly remains of war engines, and all the paraphernalia of a gigantic combat.

The ground beneath the pony's hooves was loamy. This silt partially covered many of the bodies.....

Jakes's post-pulp approach to the Sword and Sorcery genre holds up well some sixty years after these stories first saw print. If you're a fan of the genre, then having some Brak titles in your personal library is recommended.

At the library sale April 2024

At the library sale 

April 2024

Earlier this month, it once again was time to patronize the annual library sale, held at a shopping center in the northern part of town. 

With each passing year attendance continues to grow, and on opening day, the lines to get in the door are getting longer and longer.

I made a couple of trips, and came away with a decent enough selection of hardcovers and paperbacks.

I was surprised to see that Robert Sheckley had authored an entry in the 'Aliens' franchise, 1995's 'Alien Harvest.' Given Sheckley's penchant for humor in his writings, it will be interesting to see what he does with the sci-fi horror theme that marks 'Aliens.'

The Alfred Hitchcock anthology is a monster of a book, at 631 pages. It has some entries from sci-fi stalwarts such as Barry Malzberg and Ron Goulart, as well as authors more anchored to the crime / thriller / horror genres, such as August Derleth, Bill Pronzini, Lawrence Block, and Brian Garfield.

'Psychlone', from Greg Bear, is an earlier work (1979), so I'm not sure what to expect there.

While I like Bruce Sterling's short stories and novelettes, his longer works can be hit-or-miss. I'll have to see how 'Holy Fire' turns out.

The 1970 Dell reprint of 'Cotton Comes to Harlem' was part of a movie tie-in. And I'm always up for another collection of Shirley Jackson short stories.

And that's the story of the library sale, April, 2024. Quite a lot of inventory for the sci-fi and fantasy section of the floor, but lots of the books were one I'm not overly interested in: many, many Stephen King hardbacks, Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony, Peter Hamilton, Dean Koontz, David Eddings, etc. The dealers usually wind up taking the bulk of those books. 

I was happy with what I got, it didn't cost me all that much, and with my car insurance and my cable bill going up by big margins this Spring, I'm looking for cheap thrills..............!

Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock's Noose Report

Book Review: 'Alfred Hitchcock's Noose Report'
edited by Robert Arthur

5 / 5 Stars

'Alfred Hitchcock's Noose Report' (191 pp.) was published by Dell Books in August, 1966. The cover illustration is credited to Fred Banbery, who did artwork for Hitchcock's young adult books.

I've previously posted that as I get older, I find these Baby Boomer-era Hitchcock anthologies to well be worth reading, and this certainly is true of 'Noose Report'. All of the stories in the book first were published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine during the years 1957 - 1966. 

My summaries of the contents:

A Home Away from Home, by Robert Bloch: Night-time, and Natalie finds herself alone at a train stop in rural England. Perhaps shelter is available with Dr. Bracegirdle, the psychiatrist ? A well-told tale, with the quality of a story from an old EC horror comic. 

High Tide, by Richard Hardwick: a man in trouble must use his wits. 

The World's Oldest Motive, by Laurence M. Janifer: an ironic treatment of the theme of the unhappy husband.

A Very Cautious Boy, by Gilbert Ralston: Joe Rosetti is the best hitman in the Mob. A new assignment will tax his skills, however.

Something Very Special, by Fletcher Flora: Clara DeForest is coming to terms with being abandoned by her much younger husband.

The Short and Simple Annals, by Dan J. Marlowe: Toland is released from prison, after serving time for a crime he didn't commit. Or did he........?!

Others Deal in Death, by August Derleth: another Solar Pons / Sherlock Holmes pastiche from Derleth. In this story, Pons investigates mysterious deaths taking place in Ross-on-Wye. The explanation of Whodunnit is not as contrived as is usually the case in these stories.

The Promotion, by Richard Deming: Mel Strong's brother is a bank official, and Mel likes ill-gotten gains. It's only a matter of time before these two things intersect........

Contents: One Body, by C.B. Gilford: a nosy landlady comes to some troubling conclusions about one of her tenants.

The Trouble with Ruth, by Henry Slesar: the trouble with Ruth is that she's a kleptomaniac. A tale with a twist at the end.

Make Your Pitch, by Borden Deal: Slim is a skilled con man. But his cons never have involved murder........

The Little Things, by Ed Lacy: a man unjustly imprisoned suffers an unkind fate.

Holdout, by Jack Ritchie: a courtroom drama, also with a neat little twist at the end.

The Late Unlamented, by Jonathan Craig: a standard, traditional police-procedural story. Competent, if not particularly imaginative.

The verdict ? Despite the banal Solar Pons story, 'Alfred Hitchcock's Noose Report' earns a Five-Star Rating. Even though they are limited in word length, the entries are crisply plotted and composed, as one might expect of stories designed to compete with myriad other submissions for publication in one of the most successful fiction magazines of its era. Devotees of well-told tales and detective fiction can't go wrong with this collection.  

Penthouse April 1980

Penthouse

April 1980

April, 1980, and the number-one song in the land is 'Another Brick in the Wall' by Pink Floyd, off their number one LP The Wall. Also in the top 5 is an excellent track from Christopher Cross: 'Ride Like the Wind'.

The latest issue of Penthouse magazine is on the newsstands, featuring Annie Hockersmith, this month's Pet, on the cover.

This issue is a little strange, in that it doesn't feature the traditional softcore photoshoot of boy-girl or girl-girl erotic activity. We do get a feature article about a man named 'Othello', who author Ernest Volkman claims was an FBI operative and informant on the Black Panthers. Although Volkman doesn't disclose the name of Othello, it's likely he was William O'Neal.

There is a fine portfolio of a petite, raven-haired Eurasian woman named Loni 'Haiku' Sanders. I like Loni. I think you will, too.

Bob Guccione was an artist and appreciative of art, so it's not unusual that we get a large portfolio of 'erotic' art as created by everyone's most famous eccentric artist of the early 1980s, none other than Hans Rudi Giger. 

Giger was more than a little calculating in the way he presented himself to the public, and he doesn't disappoint here, with his bizarre remarks that accompany the portfolio. Whether it's 'erotic' art, is up to you to decide. Personally, I think it's stuff that is just too fucked-up to be published in Omni or Heavy Metal.

There is a lengthy excerpt from actress Brit Ekland's memoir, 'True Brit'. In the excerpt, Brit tells us about her boyfriends Warren Beatty and Rod Stewart. While Warren was a come-and-go affair, Britt fell deep for Rod the Mod, despite his skin-flinty approach to money. 

Unfortunately for Britt, Rod (who called her 'Poopy') had too many side chicks, and Brit eventually left him for a man with more self-control.

Let's close with a couple of cartoons that likely would not pass muster nowadays..........

And that's how it was, in the pages of Penthouse, 44 years ago............

Book Review: Eclipse

Book Review: 'Eclipse' by John Shirley

2 / 5 Stars

John Shirley (b. 1953) was an established novelist of science fiction and horror titles when, in 1985, he entered the genre of cyberpunk with his trilogy, 'A Song Called Youth', that consisted of the novels 'Eclipse' (1985), 'Eclipse Penumbra' (1987) and 'Eclipse Corona' (1990). All three books were issued in paperback by Questar. The Questar edition of 'Eclipse' (310 pp.) features cover art by Joe DeVito.

Perhaps the most economical way to access the trilogy nowadays is via the omnibus edition, titled 'A Song Called Youth', published as a trade paperback by Prime Books in 2013.

'Eclipse' is set in 2020. Western Europe has been devastated by a 'limited' nuclear war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and amid the ruins, NATO has abdicated local authority in favor of a Blackwater-style mercenary outfit known as the Second Alliance (SA). The SA, in turn, is operated by Rick and Ellen Mae Crandall, a brother and sister pair of evangelical, fundamentalist Christians (during the 1980s, fundamentalist Christians were favorite villains of sci-fi writers, the only exception being Mike McQuay's 'Jitterbug', where the villains are - gasp ! - Muslims). The SA is a fascist entity, dedicated to restoring white supremacy over North America and Europe through means both overt and covert.

A Marxist organization called the National Resistance (NR) is determined to bring down the SA. Led by the enigmatic Steinfield, the NR maintains revolutionary cells throughout western Europe, these cells conducting low-level guerilla warfare against the better-equipped and better-funded SA.

'Eclipse' documents the antics of a large cast of characters belonging to either the SA or the NR. Few, if any, of these personages are heroes in the traditional sense, as all have flaws of one sort or another, but Shirley makes clear that the morally upright party in this contest is the NR.

'Eclipse' has its moments when the cyberpunk ethos comes through in a stylish way:

His name was James Kessler, and he was walking east on Fourteenth Street, looking for something. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. He was walking through a misty November rain. The rain sharpened the edge of the cold wind that slashed at his acrylic overcoat. The street was almost deserted. He was looking for something, something, the brutally colorless word something hung heavily in his mind like an empty frame.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the novel is a disappointment. There are too many subplots and characters competing for attention and as a result, just when it seems as if the narrative finally has gained momentum, the action cuts away to another thread and so doing, restores inertia. William Gibson has the ability to craft a cyberpunk novel where the simultaneous subplots work in concert, but Shirley isn't as adept.

The most interesting character in the book is Rick Rickenharp, an alienated rock guitarist and a stand-in for John Shirley himself. However, Rickenharp is on-screen only for limited portions of the novel. Much text is devoted to the goings-on aboard 'FirStep', a space colony, where a rebellion by the workers against management allows Shirley to expound on Class Struggle. But this sub-plot doesn't contribute all that much to the book, serving more as filler than content that improves the novel.

'Hard-Eyes', the closing chapter of 'Eclipse', brings a greater sense of urgency as the subplots all coalesce in scenes of strife and horror amidst the ruined environs of Paris. But the reader has to wade through too much empty prose to get to 'Hard-Eyes', and I finished 'Eclipse' comfortable with a Two-Star Rating, and in no hurry to access the next volume in the series.  

Suburban Grindhouse

'Suburban Grindhouse' by Nick Cato

'Suburban Grindhouse' (2019; 249 pp.) is a print-on-demand trade paperback publication from the UK publisher Headpress. You can order the book direct from the Headpress website, or order it from amazon.com.

This book compiles entries in the ‘Suburban Grindhouse Memories’ column, devoted to psychotronic / trash / transgressive movies, that Nick Cato authored from 2010 to 2018 for the 'Cinema Knife Fight' website (which folded in 2018).

Cato is a trash film fanatic, who has contributed articles both to print, and online, media. He also has written a substantial body of self-published fiction. His Goodreads blog page gives a sense of where he lies in terms of his appreciation for transgressive media (some of his interests are rather obscure).

I don't usually review psychotronic movies, since there are plenty of websites and print media that do this. I occasionally will write a post about a book or magazine devoted to the topic, that I find particularly noteworthy: for example, my post about the magazine Shock Cinema is here, and my post about a biography of Bill Landis is here.

I was motivated to post an overview of 'Suburban' because of its nostalgic character. Cato, who was born in 1968 (eight years younger than me) wisely frames his reviews in the context of seeing the films at any number of theatres in Staten Island (and sometimes on 42nd Street) from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Boomers who remember filmgoing from that era will find much to identify with, in the pages of 'Suburban'.

Cato reviews roughly 80 movies, from a variety of genres, in the pages of 'Suburban', these reviews accompanied by rather low-res scans of advertisements appearing in print media of the day.

Cato avoids letting nostalgia interfere with his judgments of the merits of these films; most of them are Godawful duds and, as Cato advises, will appeal only to those hapless souls who have a quasi-religious devotion to schlock cinema. 

But Cato does have gems in this compilation, and learning (in some cases reminding me) about these productions kept me paging through 'Suburban'. Some of those gems will be familiar to Boomers: for example, Cato gives high marks, and affection, to the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal.

Other gems, of which I am only now aware, include Blood Tide, which features super 80s chicks Lydia Cornell (Too Close for Comfort), Mary Louise Weller (Animal House), and the stunning Deborah Shelton (Body Double, Dallas). 

Also piquing my interest are such films as Chained Heat (a 'women in prison' drama starring Linda Blair), Spring Break, and Friday the 13th Part 2, which I didn't pay much attention to when it came out, but which, according to Cato, is a great slasher film.

One problem that comes up while perusing the films profiled in the pages of 'Suburban', is how to see them. In the 10+ years since Cato first penned these reviews, DVDs have started to recede as a media packaging format, to be replaced by streaming video. (Although, that said, Something Weird apparently is going to cease offering downloads later this year and focus solely on DVDs.)

It's possible to see Blood Tide on YouTube and Tubi for 'free', in its somewhat grainy glory. Chained Heat also is available on YouTube, in a much better quality. For its part, Galactic Gigolo is available for rent from amazon prime for a modest fee ($2), and free at Tubi.

Granted, watching a movie from the grindhouse era on your TV, PC, smartphone, or tablet is nowhere near the same experience as seeing it in a twinplex theatre in the early 1980s, but one must roll with the times, so to speak.........

Summing up, if you're over 50 and you fondly recall those long-ago days when seeing a movie meant going to a theatre with sticky floors, and bits of popcorn mashed into the sole of your shoe, and the at-times agonizing decision about when to run to the bathroom, and miss some of the film (as opposed to peeing in your seat), then 'Suburban Grindhouse' will be a fun read.