Masked Dog

 book reviews, Gold Eagle, horror, Raymond Obstfeld, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Apr 152013
 

Masked Dog, by Raymond Obstfeld
August, 1986  Gold Eagle Books

Raymond Obstfeld is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. Masked Dog isn’t as great as his Invasion U.S.A. novelization, but it’s a lot of fun, filled with vibrant dialog, strong characters, and plenty of suspense. It’s to the novel’s disservice that it was published by Gold Eagle, lending the impression that the novel’s just another SuperBolan or something. In reality it’s a melding of the suspense, spy, and horror genres.

“Masked Dog” is the code name of a CIA project that has been going on for the past decade: an agency scientist has been injecting a volunteer prisoner with a battery of experimental drugs that have removed all traces of fear from the test subject and have also granted him with superhuman strength. Gee, what could go wrong?? As you’d expect, the test subject, a pedophile pediatrist named Gifford Devane, has broken free and is now loose and looking for a little revenge.

Devane’s main target is a former rock superstar named Price Calender, who now lives a low-level life playing revival concerts and the like. Price worked for the CIA a bit in the previous decade; in a backstory that doesn’t quite ring true, we learn that Price got involved with the agency after a run-in with the law and in exchange for his freedom he agreed to act as a courier during his global tours. Price also eventually married a gorgeous lady named Liza R (no last name), a lady who turned out to be a Commie spy who insinuated herself with Price because he was a CIA goon and because she wanted to get to Devane and the Masked Dog program.

Liza R was a package deal; she came with a daughter from a brief, earlier marriage, a toddler named Rebecca who Price eventually adopted. But again, Liza’s marriage to Price was all just a ruse, and after an aborted attempt seven years ago to break out Devane, Liza carried out a running battle with the CIA, even using her own daughter as a human shield. (The end result being an errant bullet that shattered Rebecca’s knee, so that she now walks with a brace.) Price himself killed Liza…or so he thought. As Masked Dog opens, we learn that due to some commie subterfuge Liza’s death was merely staged, and now she is here with a fellow KGB operative, tracking down the loose Masked Dog.

Again, all this is backstory and it’s doled out gradually and masterfully in the narrative. Price is not your typical Gold Eagle protagonist by a longshot – he’s not a trained agent, and doesn’t even know how to handle a weapon. This is taken care of by Jo, one of Obstfeld’s typically-great female characters, a CIA agent who Baroness style was a woman of high society but grew bored of the jetset life and became a secret agent. Price and Jo have a great “meet cute” and Obstfeld really plays up on the comedy, banter, and relationship that grows between them. And when the expected sex scene comes, late in the tale, it’s unexpectedly explicit – yet another divergence from the typical Gold Eagle fare.

Obstfeld works up the tension and suspense; there isn’t much action in Masked Dog until the end, other than Devane’s brief encounters with old friends and the criminal underworld. Also graced with a quicker mind and photographic memory, Devane wants to advertise himself to the highest bidder as an assassin, so he announces that he will murder a famous East German dignitary, despite the massive amount of security which will surround the guy. Devane’s assassination too is carried out in more of a suspenseful nature than the pyrotechnics you’d expect, and Obstfeld makes it even more tense with Jo being caught in the fray.

Devane also has superstrength and can tear people apart. Obstfeld plays up the dark comedy with Devane coming off like a superpowered Hannibal Lecter, though without the serial killer aspect – his taste veers toward adolescent girls, and over the course of the narrative he catches a few of them, the ensuing grisly deaths only vaguely hinted at. But Devane gradually realizes that something is going wrong…his memory is clouding, he has lost his sense of taste, and it dawns on him that though he can’t feel pain, he can still be killed.

Obstfeld takes his time with the narrative, so that it all comes off as very character focused. All of the characters are given depth, save for maybe Liza R. I love pulpy female villains, but Liza R is just too inhuman, too much of a cipher. Obstfeld provides a backstory that attempts to explain at least a little how she could be so cold blooded (she was raised by leftist American parents who emigrated to the USSR but then abandoned her at a young age), but still she is too cold, too robotic. Obstfeld to his credit makes Liza thoroughly despicable; several times she “tests” herself to see if she might give a damn about her daughter Rebecca, finding each time that she doesn’t care if the little girl lives or dies.

Action scenes here and there liven things up…Devane’s assassination attempt of the German dignitary, or Devane’s scuffles with hoodlums. Suspense takes center stage throughout, particularly a tension-filled scene where Devane sneaks into Price’s empty home and poisons his cigarettes; throughout the ensuing scene with Price, Obstfeld keeps toying with us, mentioning the cigarettes lying there, Price picking one up and about to light it but then getting distracted. Then Jo shows up and the suspense really mounts – all told, a masterful scene. But just one of many.

The action heats up toward the end, like when Liza R and her KGB associates corner Devane, who manages to take out the redshirts and then engages in a duel to the death with a martial arts master, all while Liza coldly watches. The climax takes a page from Stephen King with Devane kidnapping Rebecca and stashing her in an empty fitness center, with Price venturing in solo and taking on Devane by himself. He’s easily outmatched, getting his arms and fingers broken by a nude Devane who swings from the shadows to torment him. All of this actually reminded me of the climax of Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford’s character was similarly tortured by his superpowered foe.

I guess the only problem I had with Masked Dog is it’s a little too long for its own good. The novel is over 300 pages and a lot of it could be cut. In particular the suspense of the climax is a little destroyed because, as Price sneaks through the darkened and creepy fitness center, Obstfeld somehow decides to inform us what the place is like during the day and what Price’s usual workout routine is like. But stuff like this is rare and for the most part the novel moves at an assured pace, really getting us to like its characters to the point where we are emotionally invested in the outcome.

Perhaps due to its publisher, Masked Dog didn’t make much of a dent, it appears…it only had this one printing, and like the other Gold Eagle titles of the time it was probably pulled off the shelves when the next bi-monthly shipment of Gold Eagle stock came in. It’s too bad, because this is a very good novel, one that should have had a larger audience.

And the cover by the way is a die cut, something I’ve never seen from Gold Eagle. Here’s the inner cover:

Rambo III

 Action Movies, book reviews, Glorious Trash Hall of Fame, Jove Books, Men's Adventure Novels, Rambo, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Mar 282013
 

Rambo III, by David Morrell
May, 1988  Jove Books

It’s usually dismissed, but Rambo III is my favorite of the Rambo movies. I place it up there with Schwarzenegger’s Commando as the pinnacle and epitome of ‘80s action movies. People usually complain that Rambo III is too unrealistic, a complaint which I find strange; I mean, who wants realism in an action movie? They should be all about escapism and fantasy, and Rambo III delivers in spades.

However I will admit that storywise the film has less substance than the average men's adventure novel. Rambo creator David Morrell felt the same way; in a recent ebook edition of Rambo III Morrell provides an introduction (which you can read here) where he states that the early scripts the producers sent him featured a more epic storyline, a sort of “Rambo of Arabia.” As the production went on and the script went through more and more changes, Morrell found himself swamped with conflicting revisions and plot changes. He decided to just push forward with his novelization of that earliest script, the final film be damned.

Whereas Morrell’s novelization of Rambo: First Blood Part II offered new and different layers to the iconic film, but still featured the same basic story, his Rambo III is radically different from the actual movie. In the ebook intro Morrell states that his novel was even significantly different from the early script he based it on. The end result is a pretty interesting book, only sharing the same template as the film, but playing out much differently. I don’t think it’s as good as the actual film, but it works fine as a novel, and in fact provides the Rambo character with a fitting end. (Well, about as fitting an end as when he got his head blown off in First Blood.)

The novel opens with Rambo living in Thailand, and Morrell informs us that it’s a year after the events of the previous book/film. Still mourning the loss of Co, still trying to avoid the truth that he’s a natural born warrior, Rambo gains admittance to a Buddhist temple and works in a forge. One of the more iconic (and parodied) scenes in Rambo III is that epic stickfight with the burly Thai martial artist, and it’s here, too, only in the novel it’s Rambo’s first time in the ring. He’s been inexorably drawn here, passing by the arena each night on his way to the forge, until finally he can’t help himself and gets in the ring to fight.

However he’s not here to win. Truly showing the depths to which Rambo has fallen, Morrell has it instead that Rambo only engages in the fight so that he can be punished. He wants to be beaten around, and is in the process of getting thrashed good and proper when he spots Colonel Trautman out in the audience. Trautman instantly figures out what Rambo’s doing – he knows Rambo could easily beat his opponent – and starts yelling stuff like, “Jesus Christ, John!”, just catcalling and jeering Rambo, which I found pretty funny.

Anyway this spurs Rambo to beat the shit out of his opponent, after which he meets again with Trautman, openly acknowledged as his “father” in the previous book. Trautman’s here because he wants to helm a CIA-backed operation in Afghanistan, running guns to the moujahideen warrior-tribes and teaching them how to fight off the invading Soviets. He wants Rambo to co-lead the mission with him. Rambo instantly says no, and that’s that. Just like in the film, Trautman is captured by the Russians a few weeks later, being ambushed after crossing over the Afghani border.

Rambo storms into the US embassy and demands to see the CIA agent in charge of the operation; unlike in the film, Rambo already knows something went wrong due to a strong case of foreboding. He demands that the CIA equip him for a solo mission to rescue Trautman. Once Rambo gets to Afghanistan the novel begins to significantly differ from the film. Hooking up with local contact Mousa, Rambo heads into the desert, where Morrell plays up on the adventure fiction angle he excels at, with the pair up against the elements. One gripping scene here is when Rambo and Mousa are almost buried alive by a massive sandstorm – a scene Morrell states was in the earliest scripts but was later jettisoned.

Rambo’s acceptance by the Afghani moujahideen warriors is more gradual here. First he must prove himself to them in a number of challenges reminscent of John Eagle Expedtior #4, including the mandatory bit where one of the tribal leaders instantly hates and distrusts this foreigner and thus challenges Rambo to a potentially fatal contest. And, as is mandatory, Rambo not only wins the contest but also wins the dude’s lifelong friendship and trust. Interestingly enough this tribal leader, Mossad, bears an eerie resemblance to Osama Bin Laden, described as tall and lanky and with a long, gray and white beard; he’s also the Soviets’s most wanted rebel, and is notorious among them for his terrorist activities.

Trautman meanwhile is getting beaten to death by his Soviet captors who are convinced he’s been sent here by the US government. Whereas the Soviet villains Morrell delivered in Rambo: First Blood Part II were mostly sadistic ciphers, the ones he gives us here are more three dimensional. Only one of them comes off as your basic flat “bad guy” type: Major Azov, who is willing to go to extreme lengths to get out of this “hell” of Afghanistan. But in addition Morrell also gives us Major Zaysan, who is disgusted with Azov’s inhuman torture of prisoners and openly fights against him, as well as Sergeant Kourov, Azov’s chief sadist who himself gradually becomes sick of following Azov’s orders.

Another character Morrell introduces (one that was supposed to be in the film) is Michelle, a “mannish” female doctor from the Netherlands who lives among the moujahideen and tends to their wounded. She develops a non-romantic bond with Rambo, and with the loss of this character Rambo III the film thus had zero female characters – that’s how much of an ‘80s action movie it is! Michelle though doesn’t add much to the storyline, and only plays a central role in the climax, where she endures a grueling escape across Afghanistan and to the Pakistan border alongside Rambo.

After a handful of taut action scenes where Rambo helps the Afghanis defeat small Russian forces, Rambo finally heads to the Soviet fortress to free Trautman. Here Morrell introduces yet another character, a young Russian soldier who has gone turncoat and wants to help Rambo and Mousa get into the fortress. I should mention that in this novel Rambo mostly fights with an M-16/M-203 combo, ironic given how he dismissively referred to it as “something out of Star Wars” in the previous novel, when Murdoch tried to equip him with the gun for his mission into ‘Nam. He also has his customary bow with explosive arrows, which Morrell runs down for us, but thankfully not in the excessive detail of the previous book. And of course he has his knife, which this Jove edition provides an illustration of in the text.

The fortress assault is where the film begins to fire on all cylinders, becoming an endless actionfest from there on out. In the novel the fortress assault occurs a little over midway through, and while it’s very exciting and gripping, it lacks the relentless nature of the film version – though I do like how in the book Rambo covers his face for the night assault with “leopard grease mixed with lampblack;” leopard grease because its scent will scare away the Russian guard dogs. Throughout this scene Rambo silent-kills a bunch of Soviets with his arrows and knife, until the sequence goes full-tilt with Rambo’s timed explosives going off and him mowing down soldiers with his gun.

I can imagine that Richard Crenna was pleased with the many changes the script went through; the role he was given as Trautman in this version of the story is pretty thankless, with Trautman reduced by his torture to a shell of himself, unable to walk or even speak, wholly in need of Rambo’s care as they make their escape. Actually it would’ve been an easy day on the job for Crenna, as all Trautman does from his escape on through to the end of the novel is lay on a stretcher while Rambo carts him around!

Morrell greatly expands the climax. While a maddened Azov gathers his soldiers and moves out in retaliation, the moujahideen split up in different groups and escape. Rambo, who spends this entire portion worrying over and caring for Trautman, insists that the Afghanis leave without him, as he’d slow them down. Mousa and Michelle however stay behind to help. Here the adventure/survivalist fiction stuff comes again with the group trekking across rough terrain as Soviet gunships and tanks gain on them. The situation Morrell describes though is much more hopeless than what Rambo encounters in the film, all of it compounded by the fact that he has to lug along a stretcher-bound Trautman.

As in the film it all leads to a final spectacular battle, with the moujahideen swooping in to assist their brave warrior-brother Rambo, but also Morrell weaves together all of his subplots about the bickering Soviet characters. Rambo himself doesn’t see much action here, too busy struggling to get Trautman to safety, only whipping out his machine gun/grenade launcher at the very end and blowing away some Russians. There is though a great bit where, overcome with battle lust, Rambo hops on a horse and charges down one of the main villains, hurling his knife right through the back of the bastard’s head.

So then, as for what’s in the film but not in the novelization…well, basically everything! The little kid who clings to Rambo and is given Co’s Buddha charm isn’t in the novel, nor are most of the action scenes. The action Morrell does give us is well done and entertaining, but again lacks the fantastic onlsaught of the film. And most unfortunately the novel doesn’t feature my favorite scene in the Rambo franchise, where Rambo takes on the nightvision-equipped Spetsnaz commandos in the caves. There’s absolutely nothing like that in this book, and Rambo’s “one man army” attributes are greatly toned down.

So while there is action, Morrell is more focused on Rambo’s internal struggles, in particular the torment of his soul. Religion is much played up in Rambo III, with Rambo starting off as Buddhist (which the previous novel informed us he learned from a Montagnard soldier during ‘Nam), but slowly coming to “think like a Muslim” due to his time with Mousa and the moujahideen. It seems to me though that Christianity, more particularly Catholicism, is the biggest theme here, with the constant stressing of Rambo’s suffering for others. There’s also a curious focus on how Rambo is always cutting his palms, how they bleed and are then cleaned and bandaged, all of which struck me as a sort of Christlike vibe. (I mean, he did die, after all…he is arisen!)

So could Rambo III be the world’s first action novel/holy text? Probably not, but Rambo does achieve a sort of divinity or at least savior aspect here, coming to this realization after his narrative-long soul struggle. Whereas the film also deals with Rambo’s aversion of his true nature, but then blows it all off at the very end with a witty exchange between him and Trautman (“John, I hate to admit it but I think we might be getting a little soft.” “Maybe just a little, sir.” – Wouldn’t be hard to take that exchange out of context, would it??), the novel follows the theme through with Rambo finally and fully accepting who he is and what he shall become:

The answer came at once. God had fated him to be a warrior. As long as innocent people were brutalized, he had a meaning. He served a purpose.

This actually sets the scene for the sequel, twenty friggin’ years later, where Rambo saves the group of missionaries in Burma in the 2008 film Rambo. One can only wonder what other adventures he had in the meantime (surely the Rambo: The Force of Freedom cartoon series doesn’t count…or does it?). And speaking of that 2008 film, Morrell unfortunately didn’t write a novelization for it; in the Rambo III ebook introduction he states that novelizations are mostly a thing of the past and thus a Rambo novelization would be unnecessary in this age of Blu Rays, DVDs, and etc.

I’d argue though that a novelization by the character’s creator would not be unnecessary. I would’ve enjoyed seeing how Morrell filled out the barebones storyline of the 2008 Rambo. And given that he’s recently been epublishing his novels, I wonder why Morrell never considered doing this latest Rambo film as an ebook-only novelization.

In fact in the ebook intro Morrell states that he was brought in by Carolco early in the production of Rambo III and came up with his own storyline for the film, with Rambo journeying down to the jungles of South America to save Trautman, complete with “a dramatic scene in an eerie Mayan ruin.” It would be great if Morrell just went ahead and wrote this story and published it on its own, but I’d imagine rights issues would be involved, and plus he’s probably not interested in writing yet another story about a character he killed off 40 years ago.

While this was my least favorite of the three Rambo novels (my favorite was actually Rambo: First Blood Part II), it was still great, providing a fitting and satisfying conclusion to the saga.

Rambo: First Blood Part II

 Action Movies, book reviews, Glorious Trash Hall of Fame, Jove Books, Men's Adventure Novels, Rambo, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Mar 252013
 

Rambo: First Blood Part II, by David Morrell
May, 1985  Jove Books

In my novel First Blood, Rambo dies. In the movies, he lives.

With this pithy introduction David Morrell launches into the novelization of the sequel to the 1982 film First Blood. It might sound obvious, but it’s worth noting that this truly is a sequel to the film and not Morrell’s original 1972 bestseller. Beyond the fact that Rambo is still alive (he got his head blown off by Trautman in the book), even the minor details are taken from the movie and not the novel. It should also be noted that this novelization is an excellent piece of work, and shouldn’t just be disregarded as a quickie cash-in.

In a recent ebook edition of Rambo: First Blood Part II (hereafter just Rambo for reasons of laziness…but then, that’s how everyone referred to it until the 2008 Rambo really confused things), Morrell provides an introduction where he explains how he came to write this novelization (you can read this introduction here). Finding that he still had more to tell about Rambo, Morrell crafted this novel from the workprint (he was given a video tape of the already-completed film by the producers), James Cameron’s original script, and his own ideas. Morrell’s intent was to make it seem that the movie had actually been based on the novel, as was the case with First Blood. And he succeeds in every way.

To put my bias out front, I much prefer Rambo to First Blood. In fact First Blood is my least favorite of all four Rambo films. Rambo though is just one of the best action movies ever made, and it’s hard to imagine now the excitement that overtook kids my age when it came out in the summer of 1985. Sure, I was seven or so years younger than the R rating permitted, but as fate would have it my brother’s seven years older than me, and so was able to get me in as my “guardian.” I can still recall the excitement that rippled through the audience in that Frostburg, Maryland theater, and promptly after the film I went out and bought this Jove mass market paperback at a WaldenBooks store.

I read the book then, and about the only thing I remember about that reading is that I got pissed off over the differences from the movie! I guess I was expecting a straight-up transcript, who knows. But anyway I still have my original copy, one of the few books I still have from my childhood (and it’s in practically new shape, a testament to my lifelong book nerdishness). I had a blast reading it again, all these years later. I’d even go so far as to say I enjoyed it more than First Blood itself.

Morrell’s writing here is leaner, tighter. First Blood was tight, too, but parts of it were very literary, very much of its time. Rambo on the other hand is straight-up men’s adventure fiction (obviously though of a higher literary caliber than the genre norm), with none of the John Gardner-esque soul-plumbing of the original novel. Unfortunately it also tones down the metaphysical bent of First Blood, though Morrell does manage to work a bit in with descriptions of Rambo’s Zen-based meditations, where he sort of transfers his consciousness onto inanimate objects.

The novel of course follows the template of the film, with additional characterization and extra incidents. Rambo is sprung from prison by Colonel Trautman and sent to ‘Nam, where he is tasked by shady “spook” Murdoch with collecting photo evidence of American prisoners of war, with specific orders not to engage the enemy. Instead Rambo and his female guide Co basically take on every Vietnamese and Russian soldier in sight and save the prisoners, while finding the time to fall in love. Morrell though had nothing to do with the creation of this storyline, and so was limited to adding extra layers to the material in Sylvester Stallone’s revised script and James Cameron’s original draft.

In the intro to the ebook Morrell enthuses over Cameron’s script, which I’ve read (you can too; it’s available online), and I have to say, I don’t get this revisionist appreciation of Cameron’s Rambo. It just feels wrong, and I’m not just talking about its buddy-cop aspect (originally Rambo was to have a partner on the mission, to be played by John Travolta!). If anything reading Cameron’s script made me appreciate Stallone’s writing all the more, as practically all of the memorable moments from Rambo came from Stallone’s script.

Anyway, as I mentioned this novel is really a sequel to the film. Trautman is clearly identified as a father figure for Rambo, the man who trained him, whereas in the original novel it seemed as if the two had never actually met. And also when Rambo reflects back on the incidents in “the town,” it’s always to things that happened in First Blood the film and not the novel, like stitching himself up after getting injured and, you know, not killing everyone. And Rambo himself is clearly described as Stallone, not the “nothing kid” of the original book; he’s also more charismatic, while at the same time indulging in a little self-pity, all just as in the film.

Probably everyone knows Rambo and what happens in it, which means I can avoid my usual digressive rundown of events. It all goes down mostly the same, only with some changes here and there…dialog moved around, scenes rearranged, more backstory, more description. For example, Rambo’s introduction, which Morrell takes from Cameron’s script, has Rambo in a mental institution when he first talks to Trautman. Morrell also adds a bit that informs us early on that Rambo can pilot a helicopter, with his escaping a CIA tail in Thailand and flying a helicopter himself to Murdoch’s command center.

The biggest improvement Morrell makes to the film is adding a wholly relevant subplot that Rambo is returning to the POW camp from which he escaped, back during the war. This was bizarrely downplayed in the film. Morrell has Rambo actually nervous about going back to this hellhole, and he sets up a boogeyman from Rambo’s past, Sergeant Tay, a sadist in the camp who tortured the prisoners and gave Rambo most of his scars. Morrell has it that Rambo has fantasized about getting vengeance on Tay for all these years, and guess what, turns out Tay’s still here, stuck in the camp for allowing Rambo to escape so long ago! In the film, Tay is the thin, moustached Vietnamese soldier Rambo kills with the exploding arrow, and he has none of the backstory of the character in the novel. This was a missed opportunity on the part of the filmmakers; they should've played up more on the fact that Rambo was returning to this hell from which he once escaped.

Morrell also improves on the Rambo/Co romantic storyline. Again using elements from Cameron’s script, Morrell makes Co a widowed mother in her early 30s, rather than the 20-something of the film; her husband killed in the war, her 12 year-old son in America (having been there since he was 5 or so), Co is a battle-hardened warrior-woman who works for the American “spooks” and has a master’s degree in Economics. Her chacter is a lot more fleshed out here than in the film, and her latching on to Rambo doesn’t seem as contrived. You easily understand why Rambo gradually falls for her. Also Morrell makes it clear that Rambo is not a ladies man…we get lots of detail on how he hasn’t been with a woman in several years because he is unable to get close to anyone, and we also learn the fun fact that Rambo sometimes masturbates! See, you’d never learn that from the movie!

Morrell also adds more gore than was in the actual film. During the bit where the river pirates betray Rambo and Co, Rambo chops off one pirate’s head with his knife, then literally blows another in half with a shotgun. (All of which is like the 2008 Rambo, actually.) Morrell also adds a few horror-esque sequences, like having Rambo and Co walk across a ravine filled with the skeletons of American POWs, and a very squirm-inducing scene where Rambo, being tortured by Tay and the other Vietnamese, is dunked in a “slime pit” filled with slugs that crawl over his skin and up his nostrils. The whole scene is as unsettling as the “Rambo walks across a ledge of bats” sequence in First Blood.

The Russian characters are also given a little more depth. The leader, Podovsk (Podovsky in the film), is himself a sadist, and becomes sexually excited in the scene where a captured Rambo is strapped to a bed frame and electrocuted. Podovsk’s dialog with Rambo is more fleshed out, and his fate in the novel is superior to that in the film, with Podovsk, the last Russian standing, attempting to barter the life of the POWs in exchange for his own.

In fact Morrell changes the majority of the finale, again taking much from Cameron’s script, like Co’s fate and Rambo’s destruction of the Soviet gunship. This scene is certainly the most ridiculous in the film, with Rambo blowing the helicopter away with a missile launcher…while the POWs sit right behind him in the enclosed space of the Huey. In reality they would’ve been killed by the RPG’s backblast! Morrell changes it to Rambo using a passenger-safe “Dragon” minigun.

The action however is a bit more toned down in the finale. In exchange though you get more dramatic thrust, in particular Rambo’s long-held desire to kill Sergeant Tay, and also his gaining of vengeance upon Yashin, the Russian hulk who kills Co in the novel. But the novel misses a lot of the film's iconic action moments, like Rambo coming out of the mudbank and slitting the throat of a Vietnamese soldier, or in fact any of his solo war against the Vietnamese search party. Morrell covers this entire sequence in relayed messages that come back to Murdoch and Trautman, or from the point of view of Tay as his soldiers are killed by an unseen Rambo. This adds a thriller sort of tension, true, but it would’ve been nice to see more action from Rambo’s point of view.

Otherwise Morrell’s writing is just as strong as in First Blood. Lots of vivid description mixed with a skill for getting into his characters’s heads. There is however an excessive bit where he baldly exposits on archery and Rambo’s hi-tech bow (which Morrell actually has Rambo think of as a “Ram-bow!!”), including for some reason an actual drawing of the bow inserted into the text. But this is minor and in reality what Morrell has done here is great, taking an archetypal film and adding new elements to it.

I can’t say though that I prefer Morrell’s novel to the actual film; as I say, it misses too many of the iconic scenes. But in exchange you get better characterization, better plotting. And a better finale; in addition to the already-mentioned stuff with Podovsk and the prisoners and Rambo taking on the Russian gunship, Morrell also wisely has Murdoch playing an extra card, sending his henchman off to ambush Rambo as he escapes in the damaged Huey with the POWs -- this too is adapted from Cameron's script. In the film Murdoch just sort of waits for Rambo to come get him. Also with this added (and improved) scene Morrell gives Trautman one of the best moments in the book, saving Rambo before Murdoch’s henchman can launch their ambush (he’s hidden in their chopper and puts an M-16 to the pilot’s head). In fact this scene gives justification to Trautman’s presence; in the film he doesn’t do much except trade banter with Murdoch and promise that Rambo will come back for revenge.

Anyway, Morrell’s Rambo is a definite success, adding new layers to a well-known classic. It isn’t just a great novelization, it’s a great novel.

And in a savvy bit of cross-marketing, this Jove paperback features an ad for the MIA Hunter series! Too bad Morrell never wrote an installment of that…I’d love to have seen Rambo team up with Mark Stone and his POW-rescuing pals.

First Blood

 Action Movies, book reviews, Fawcett Books, Glorious Trash Hall of Fame, Men's Adventure Novels, Rambo, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Mar 212013
 

First Blood, by David Morrell
September, 1982  Fawcett Crest Books

The cover of this Fawcett mass market paperback obviously ties in with the 1982 film, but the Rambo of David Morrell’s novel (originally published in 1972) bears no resemblance to Sylvester Stallone. We learn in the first paragraph that he’s “some nothing kid” with shaggy hair and a mangy beard, and in fact looks more like a hippie, enough so that conservative chief of police Wilfred Teasle is appalled by the sight of Rambo wandering through his little kingdom of Madison, Kentucky and promptly kicks the “vagrant” out.

Teasle’s hassling of Rambo is enough to make even the reader uncomfortable, as within the first few pages you’re already sympathizing with “the kid.” But the reader already knows that Rambo isn’t some hippie; he’s just back from ‘Nam, where he was a Green Beret who won the Medal of Honor. But Rambo was also captured and spent some time as a POW, finally managing to free himself and escape to American territory. During this ordeal though he sort of lost his marbles, and thus was discharged back to the States.

Now he wanders around the country, living off the land, unsure what to do with his life, barely into his twenties. Getting kicked out of small towns by redneck cops is nothing new to him, but this time with Teasle sets off a chord and Rambo vows that he’s not going to back down again. This time he’s going to fight back. Teasle keeps picking him up along the road and driving him to the town limits and Rambo keeps turning around and walking right back in.

Teasle could obviously just give in and talk to Rambo, but he’s a stubborn redneck bastard. Actually he’s more than that, as Morrell will later prove, but the novel hinges on Teasle’s stereotyping in the first pages, and the mistakes he makes thereafter. Actually Teasle comes off as more of the protagonist of the novel than Rambo himself does, with more of the “character meat” one would expect – more backstory, more subplots, more character growth, and more scenes from his point of view.

When Teasle forces Rambo to get a haircut before putting him in a cell, Rambo snaps back to his POW days, grabs hold of a knife, and guts a cop. From there it’s on, Rambo easily escaping the redneck cops and getting out into the woods. Morrell must be an outdoorsman at heart, because there is a lot of forest-life detail here, with vast portions of First Blood coming off like adventure/survivalist fiction as Rambo lives off the land, including a cool part where he kills an owl, hollows it out, and roasts its carcass on a spit! Every once in a while I hear an owl hooting out behind my house, and this novel now has me thinking…

My favorite part of First Blood has always been this opening section of Rambo in the woods, using his superior training and skills to take out Teasle’s cops. The movie neutered all of this. Here in the source novel Rambo is a true killing machine; there’s none of the “I just want to be loved” stuff of the film. He’s here to make a point, and he’ll kill as many cops as he wants. It’s not until later that he begins to regret it. But for now it’s very personal and he wants Teasle to get the message. The novel trades on the personal war that develops between these two men.

First Blood comes off like an action-adventure take on Moby-Dick, with Rambo and Teasle acting as both Ahab and the whale for one another. It operates on that vibe that powers Great Literature, with multiple readings possible in what is presented as an oridinary story of two men in a battle to the death. In Morrell’s hands this becomes a masterful theme, especially in how he makes neither Rambo nor Teasle the hero or the villain.

Teasle gets the majority of the narrative time, and as the story progresses you see more and more the nightmare he’s unleashed. As the bodies rack up Teasle begins to, correctly, realize that it’s all his fault. And yet you also feel sorry for the stupid old hick. He loses men he’s worked beside for decades,he loses his foster father, and he’s just lost his wife, who’s moved out and gone to California. But after escaping Rambo in the woods, Teasle becomes so obsessed with Rambo that it’s all he can think of, the wish to see “the kid” brought to justice being pretty much the only thing keeping him alive.

The middle half of First Blood is very heavy on the adventure/survivalist fiction vibe. One of the more memorable scenes in the novel has Rambo figuring out he can escape down into an abandoned mine – making this discovery just as he’s about to surrender himself to the National Guard – and then working his way on and on into the pitch-black shaft. Morrell proves his mastery with prose in a squirm-inducing scene where Rambo must get over a ledge filled with flesh-eating beetles, “putrid goop” all over the ground, and swarms of bats looming above him.

An interesting thing to note is that the character Trautman is much different in the novel. He has none of the “father figure” quality that Richard Crenna brought to the character. In fact, it’s implied that Rambo has never even met Trautman – Trautman was just the trainer of the trainers, not Rambo’s direct trainer. There are no moments where Rambo and Trautman meet face to face, and Trautman comes off as more cool and aloof, very much the professional soldier. As in the film he’s been brought here to help, but he doesn’t offer much assistance – Morrell understands his characters well enough to know that Trautman would in fact be proud of the hell “his boy” has unleashed, and indeed he is. It isn’t until the very end that Trautman sees that Rambo has gone too far, and thus decides to step in.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge that the novel has a vastly different ending than the film. Would it be considered a spoiler to give away the ending of a 41 year-old novel? In case it would be, I’ll leave it that both Rambo and Teasle have different fates here than in the film, the only fates Morrell has left possible for either of them. One thing I forgot to mention is the metaphysical bent Morrell also gives the tale, with Rambo and Teasle becoming so in tune with one another that they gradually find themselves dipping in and out of each other’s minds, with both knowing what exactly the other is thinking. This progresses to the point where Teasle even feels that he can see out of Rambo’s eyes. The metaphysical aspect finds its fullest realization in Rambo’s final moments, a scene which is downright touching.

Obviously the film version changed the majority of the novel. For one, Rambo doesn’t kill everyone in the movie, let alone the different fate he experiences. The film version of the character is also thoroughly softened around the edges. There’s no argument that the film version of Rambo is more charismatic and human. Not to say the novel version isn’t charismatic, but he’s been honed into such a killing machine that he operates most of the time on pure training, with none of the mercy the film version would show. Even toward the very end of the novel, when Rambo shoots a guy in the arm and doesn’t kill him, it turns out that it’s just a mistake – Rambo was really aiming for the guy’s chest, but his aim was off.

As for other stuff in the film but not in the novel…well, Rambo doesn’t stitch himself up here, so there goes that memorable scene from the film. In fact he suffers from swollen and possibly broken ribs throughout, and does nothing to repair them. He doesn’t have a survival knife, and there’s no point where he commandeers a National Guard truck or appropriates an M-60. No soul-barring moments between Rambo and Trautman, no protracted “man to man” dialog between Teasle and Trautman. In fact the entire second half of the film is different from the novel, and you guessed it, the novel is superior in every way. But then the two are wholly different animals and should be treated as such.

Morrell’s writing here actually reminds me of now-forgotten author John Gardner (of Mickelsson’s Ghosts and The Sunlight Dialogues, among others). Maybe it’s due to Morrell’s talent for getting in the heads of his characters, or how he brings to life Small Town, USA. But then even the style itself reminds me of Gardner, from the topical detail to the way the story unfolds. The only difference though is that if Gardner had written First Blood, the book would’ve been a bloated excess. Morrell is skilled enough and smart enough to keep it at a lean and mean 250+.

In the “you’ll never believe this” department, Morrell was actually contracted to write the novelization of the 1985 film sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II. I bought that one fresh off the racks at a WaldenBooks store in 1985, and still have my copy, which I will be reading next. I guess it would be a re-read, as I read it back then, but given that I was ten years old at the time I don’t remember much about it.

The Stallion

 book reviews, Harold Robbins, Pocket Books, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Mar 112013
 

The Stallion, by Harold Robbins
January, 1997  Pocket Books

It bears his name, but there’s no way in hell The Stallion is the work of Harold Robbins. I’ve been told that the last novel Robbins himself wrote was 1991’s The Piranhas, and after that the books published before his death in 1997 were actually the work of his last wife, Jann. Even if I hadn’t known that before reading The Stallion it still would’ve been obvious that another author was behind this novel.

For one, the writing is too polished to be Robbins. Too much characterization and scene-setting and topical detail, and also the novel doesn’t appear to be a coke-fueled first draft. But then on the other hand, the writing lacks that weird fire that burns so brightly in Robbins’s real work, and hence comes off as flat and lifeless, something you could never say about Goodbye, Janette or Descent From Xanadu. In fact, The Stallion is incredibly, utterly, irredeemably boring. An outright friggin’ snoozefest on par with Eric Lustbader’s The Ninja.

Anyway, the novel passes itself off as a sequel to Robbins’s earlier bestseller The Betsy. It comes off more like a piece of fan fiction, though. And I guess with Jann Robbins posing as the author, maybe that’s just what it is – the ultimate piece of fan fiction, even published under the original author’s name. In fact it looks like sequels to earlier Robbins novels were Jann’s speciality, given that the first book she produced under the “Harold Robbins” mantle was 1994’s The Raiders, a sequel to Robbin’s first major hit The Carpetbaggers.

But man, if The Raiders is as boring as this, then avoid it like the plague. This novel is just so bad in so many ways. For one, there’s this pedantic need to fill us in on every damn year that passes between The Betsy’s end date of 1972 and The Stallion’s original publication date of 1996, making the book come off like a breathless recap of the years. This alone is different from the real Robbins books, which would just hopscotch between eras, never to the obsessive level of this. I mean, there are “chapters” for years in which absolutely zilch happens, just there so the author could chalk say “1986” off of her list.

The plot is one thing, but the characters are another. They have nothing in common with the people we met in The Betsy. Other than their names, that is. Angelo Perrino, the star and occasional narrator of the previous novel, is here transformed into a Harlequin Romance-style cipher who literally sleeps with every female character in the goddamn book. (And by the way, the entirety of The Stallion is in third-person, so there too goes Robbins’s old penchant for arbitrarily jumping into first-person.)

The character to receive the biggest overhaul is Cindy, who as you’ll recall was a racing car groupie in The Betsy, a coke-snorting, Harold Robbins-type gal who orgasmed at the sound of roaring engines, which she’d blast on genuine quadraphonic speakers. Within the first several pages of The Stallion Cindy is transformed into a completely different character; turns out the “racing groupie” schtick was just a fad, and Cindy’s really a wealthy socialite who just wants to marry Angelo, bear him tons of children, and run an art studio!! Throughout the novel she acts nothing like her character in The Betsy, and it sure doesn’t come off as “character growth;” it just comes off like a totally different character. Which it is.

But (Jann) Robbins isn’t content to stop there. Number Three, aka Loren Hardeman the Third, Angelo’s nemesis, also transforms within the first several pages (which, remember, take place right after The Betsy) into a spineless fop who runs home every night to perform cunnilingus on his new wife Roberta, after which she whips him, Loren of course getting off on the whole bit! You won’t be surprised to know that Roberta is of course a wholly new character, one who manipulates Loren while also working with Angelo on the side, a domineering shrew who is intended as a Jackie Collins-type of character but just comes off as boring.

In fact, female characters take up the brunt of the narrative here, likely due to the female author; they make the decisions, do the deals, and of course, screw Angelo. Betsy, Loren III’s daughter and the inspiration for the previous novel’s titular car, is a case in point; in Harold Robbins’s original novel she appeared sporadically in the narrative, usually as a dope-smoking teen. Yep, she too is overhauled, this time into a determined young woman with an unfailing business acumen who is, guess what, completely in love with Angelo and also manages to have a child by him. (Angelo has a ton of kids in this damn novel; Cindy is also transformed into a veritable baby-machine, churning them out nearly by the dozen.)

Oh yeah, there’s sort of a plot here. Angelo grudgingly goes back to work for the Hardemans (who, remember, had him nearly beaten to friggin’ death in the previous novel), first designing for them a new sports car, and then later the first electric car. That Loren III ordered Angelo’s death in the previous novel is just sort of brushed under the narrative carpet. The storyline is just as flat and boring as the characters, complete with yearly recaps of what’s going on in the automotive world, board room meetings, business room squabblings, and backroom deals.

Here the novel does seem like a genuine Harold Robbins production, as you learn to endure this shit because you know it will get you to the good stuff. And there’s lots of sex in The Stallion, but it’s so boring, so juvenile. Mostly innuendo, with (Jann) Robbins having the characters talk dirty to one another and then fading to black before the action starts. Compare this to the real Robbins, were the sex scenes were so outrageous and unexpected. Because, that’s exactly what the sex is in The Stallion: predictable.

Funnily enough, there’s also a heavy focus, at least in the early chapters, on ass licking. I mean, literal ass licking. But the sadomasochistic stuff with Roberta and Loren III is just boring and cliched, and all of the other scenes are just the same damn thing: some woman, usually Betsy, will make a deal with Angelo, to be capped off by a little friendly screwing, after which the woman will of course tell Angelo that he’s the best she ever had, and from then on the woman will pine for Angelo and do anything to be with him. Betsy will even follow him around the globe, surprising him in his hotel room in the middle of the night, while Angelo’s wife Cindy is back in the States having their umpteenth kid.

And given the pedantic need to fill us in on every damn year, those kids eventually do enter the tale; one of Angelo’s sons for example becomes a model, and (Jann) Robbins wastes more of our time with his boring story. She also wheel-spins with some of the other Perrino brood, as well as bringing us up to date (as if we were expecting postcards) with the rest of the Hardeman clan offspring. It’s all just so tepid and boring and unrelated to anything in the earlier Harold Robbins novel.

So does any of the book have much to do with The Betsy? Sort of. The first quarter of the novel comes off like straight-up fan fiction, devotedly and obsessively filling in all the gaps from the previous book. Like, how long did that old bastard Loren I live? His fate is the only part of The Stallion that seems to come from a true Harold Robbins novel, with his revelation to Betsy on the night of his hundreth birthday that he’s been taping people having sex in his oceanside resort, culminating in his reveal of a tape featuring Betsy herself and Angelo. Betsy does us readers a favor by smothering the old bastard with a pillow, and Number One’s death is written off as a heart attack. But this murder bears hardly any repercussions on the narrative, and the novel never again rises to such trashy heights.

And man, what happened to the drugs??  There is absolutely zero drug use in The Stallion, very strange given that it bears the Harold Robbins by-line. We’re talking here about an author who would deliver characters that would snort coke, smoke dope, and pop amyl nitrate capsules under their noses during sex – and that would just be on a slow day! There’s none of that here, the drugs reduced to alcohol and the occasional cigarette, usually from a post-licked Roberta. As I say, the spark is gone, all the bizarre charm of a true Harold Robbins novel is missing, neutered into your average piece of PC ‘90s dreck.

The funniest thing is that “Harold” dedicates The Stallion to Jann – and if it’s true that she actually wrote this book herself, then that’s pretty damn hilarious. For in reality The Stallion is a total washout, a waste of your time. And it’s odd because it appears that none of the industry reviewers at the time of its publication seemed to realize that this was not the work of the man who’d given the world say The Adventurers; probably they did realize it, they just didn’t give a damn.

The Fifth Angel

 book reviews, Men's Adventure Novels, Pocket Books, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Mar 042013
 

The Fifth Angel, by David Wiltse
January, 1986  Pocket Books

The cover of this mass market paperback edition references First Blood, but The Fifth Angel doesn’t hold a candle to Morrell’s classic novel (twelve years after reading First Blood I still find myself recalling scenes from it). But then, David Wiltse’s novel is more of a thriller/character study sort of thing, more given to dialog and introspection. What can’t be denied is that it has one hell of a premise:

It’s 1979 and Mark Stitzer, a ‘Nam-bred Special Forces badass, is part of a covert team which is being trained to sow terrorism in Moscow in the event of a nuclear assault on the US – in other words, a vengeance strike force. But while on a training mission Stitzer is buried alive for a few days and goes insane. Cut to 1984, and Stitzer has spent the past five years in an insane asylum. He escapes and heads for New York City, which he believes to be Moscow, ready to carry out his objective.

Given this description I envisioned scenes of a Rambo-type stalking around the inner-city streets of New York, blowing away mohawked punks who appeared in his blasted mind’s eye as Russian soldiers. But nothing of the sort occurs within the pages of The Fifth Angel. Unfortunately Wiltse is more concerned with delivering a “real” novel instead of the lurid aciton blitz I wanted. He’s also not concerned with delivering likable characters, either, particularly with our Rambo analogue Stitzer.

One thing that made Morrell’s novel great is that Rambo, despite being a killing machine, was still a character you cared and rooted for, even as he was blowing away redneck cops. Stitzer though is a homicidal maniac. This is of course Wiltse’s intent; his theme is that Stitzer has been trained to be a terrorist by the US military, and now he is loose upon the US itself. But Stitzer has none of the charisma of Rambo, none of his humanity. We never get a sense of who he was before he went insane, other than through the reflections of those he knew, and hence the novel loses the “fallen warrior” angle that could’ve made it so much stronger.

The other characters aren’t much better, mostly because they lack backbone or interest. Carl Thorne shoulders the brunt of the narrative, a young reporter who is Stitzer’s nephew. As the novel progresses we learn there is more to this; Stitzer basically raised Carl from the time he was twelve, after Carl’s parents were killed in a car wreck. Now Carl looks to Stitzer both as an uncle and a father, and still pays him monthly visits in the insane asylum.

I had a hard time figuring out Stitzer’s psychosis, and Wiltse leaves it vague. In fact, we don’t even learn what his training objective was until halfway through the novel. But Stitzer seems to think everyone he sees is a “copy,” and Wiltse infers that Stitzer is now so delusional that he thinks he is in Moscow, surrounded by duplicates of people he once knew and loved, who despite their perfect English and resemblance to his family and friends, are in fact Russians. And then later when he escapes, he clearly knows he’s in upstate New York and must get to New York City…yet somehow he still thinks of it as Moscow??

As I say, it really makes no sense, but I guess that’s a given when you’re dealing with the insane. At any rate this doesn’t stop Stitzer from coldblooded murder once he’s free, pulling stuff that firmly takes him out of the heroic realm. In the course of the narrative he kidnaps a guy, smashes out his teeth so as to fool CSI into thinking they’ve found Stitzer’s teeth, then kills the guy and feeds him to starving dogs. An even more unsettling moment comes when Stitzer, now living undercover in NYC with a lonely woman and her young son (why Stitzer’s doing this Wiltse doesn’t explain), murders both of them when the woman realizes that the man the police are searching for is Stitzer. As the novel progresses Stitzer murders more and more, even blowing up hundreds of people at a New York parade.

What’s frustrating is that throughout it all Carl Thorne can’t let go of his uncle/daddy issues and keeps wanting to stop the Feds from killing Stitzer. And to muddy the waters further, Carl is now sleeping with Stitzer’s ex-wife, aka Carl’s aunt. Not a blood relative, though; she’s only ten years or so older than Carl and married Stitzer long after Carl was being raised by his uncle. Still though this whole romantic triangle storyline is given too much focus in the narrative, Wiltse providing several sex scenes to take up more pages.

About the only interesting character is Stroup, the Trautman to Stitzer’s Rambo. Stroup was the major of Stitzer’s strike force and, to cue the old cliché, “taught him everything he knows.” Retired, Stroup comes in to help the Feds track Stitzer down, telling them they don’t have a chance in hell – they’ll never find him and he’ll kill hundreds, seeing his mission through. Stroup’s a mean bastard and is the only one who appears concerned with stopping the threat that Stitzer poses.

There are precious few action scenes; not until the end does Stitzer, launching an attack on a parade, get hold of a gun, which he uses to blast away a few cops and Feds. Most of his attacks occur “off-camera,” Stitzer planting bombs or poisoning water supplies. But all of this is generally relayed in backstory, and very rarely do we get to see Stitzer at work. The story is mostly told through Carl’s viewpoint, and hence is overlaid with his rampant introspection, doubts, and guilt.

A generally gripping story, with perhaps Stroup hunting after Stitzer, is therefore lost. Proof of this is given with the few scenes from Stroup’s point of view, in particular where he appropriates a shotgun, saws it down to lethal size, and goes out on the streets of NYC to hunt his prey. But again, there are precious few of these scenes, and the eventual Stitzer/Stroup confrontation loses power due to its being relayed from Carl’s wimpy point of view.

Wiltse’s writing is okay, good with the introspection and backstory and florid detail. He is however a wanton POV-hopper, sometimes jumping perspective between characters in the same damn paragraph. This always results in a demerit on my scorecard. He is however good at building tension and suspense; the scene where Stitzer kidnaps a poor security guard and slowly starves him is particularly nightmarish.

But still, I felt that a better novel lurked within this premise. Perhaps the biggest success of The Fifth Angel is that it made me want to re-read First Blood, which I plan to do posthaste.

Also worth noting is that the dust jacket of the original 1985 hardcover edition of The Fifth Angel features a blurb from none other than Burt Hirschfeld.

Edward Berner Is Alive Again!

 book reviews, Herbert Kastle, Sci-Fi, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Feb 282013
 

Edward Berner Is Alive Again!, by Herbert Kastle
No month stated, 1975  Prentice-Hall

In 1964 Herbert Kastle published the paperback-only novel The Reassembled Man. In 1975 he published this hardcover-only revision. It’s almost a complete rewrite, and I’m not sure why Kastle didn’t just publish it as its own novel. But then, only the first hundred pages are new – after which the novel is basically just a complete reprint of The Reassembled Man. At any rate Edward Berner Is Alive Again! is maybe the most obscure of Kastle’s books, garnering only this hardcover edition in the US. (In the UK it was published both in hardcover and paperback under the title The Three Lives Of Edward Berner.)

The previous incarnation of this story started at the beginning, with Ed Berner leaving his house for a drive and then finding himself, days later, standing before some human-sized beetles from outer space. Space beetles calling themselves The Druggish who offered to make all of Ed’s dreams come true. Edward Berner Is Alive Again! dispenses with this and throws you right in, so that, like it’s protagonist, you’re not really sure what’s going on for a hundred pages or so.

This time though Ed has been given the chance to relive his childhood – the novel opens with Ed finding himself in his 15 year-old body, sitting in a class room in Brooklyn in 1938. He retains his memories, memories which span decades, of his wife and his kids and all that’s happened in his life, but he can’t understand how he knows such things, or how he came to be here. Every time he tries to ponder the issue, a sort of “calming hand” brushes his mind and the troublesome thoughts go away.

Realizing he’s been given a second chance, Ed (referred to as “Eddie” throughout these opening 100+ pages) vows to make life better for his family. He lives in a crumbling apartment building with his parents; his dad barely makes a living collecting payments for his office, and his mother is a housewife. Neither of them know how to cope with Ed’s sudden personality change; whereas just a few days previously (for them) Ed was your typical sullen teenaged punk, he’s now an overly-caring individual who asks them how they’re doing, kisses his mother on the cheek, and tells them he plans to work through the summer.

Kastle is a master at narrative and character, and he shines throughout this opening half of the novel, bringing to life the 1930s New York City which Kastle himself grew up in. His only failing is, again, Ed Berner himself. I said in my review of The Reassembled Man that the novel would’ve been stronger if Kastle had shown us more of Ed’s life before he became a Druggish-powered Superman, but even here, where the first hundred pages focus on Ed before he gains his superpowers, he still comes off as being obsessed solely with money and sex.

Never once does Ed sit back and relax and rejoice in the fact that he now has an opportunity to be a kid again, to not have to worry about going to work or paying the bills or taking care of the kids. Instead he bolts into action, realizing that with his decades-spanning knowledge he could become a titan in the business world of the 1930s. The only problem is, he has no money to start off his big dreams.

Here the novel sort of resembles Ken Grimwood’s later (and superior) novel Replay, with Ed winning money on bets – betting on sports outcomes with his future knowledge. Soon Ed has gotten thousands of dollars this way, a veritable fortune in late ‘30s New York, but it rings false because Ed bets on all kinds of sports stuff…horse races, track and field stuff, boxing matches, etc, winning against impossible odds each time because he knows who’s going to win. But it’s just goofy to believe the guy could retain that much trivial information over so many decades…ie, that the 1975 Edward Berner could remember who won the long-jump in a Brooklyn match in 1938.

Another thing consistent about Ed’s characterization in the two novels is that he’s too stubborn and doesn’t pause to consider his rashness. It’s obvious he’s heading for misery with his rampant betting, pissing off the local toughs, but Ed pushes on heedless, using an 18 year-old college student to do the betting for him. Ed couldn’t care less, though, because he’s also busy chasing his other main interest – sex.

In this ’38 sequence Ed does not have the “equipment” and hypnotic powers he’s graced with later in the book and in The Reassembled Man, but he still does nicely for himself, managing to talk the attractive lady next door into sleeping with him. Quite a feat for a 15 year-old…and, due to his future knowledge of how to please a lady (something Kastle states the average ‘30s guy was oblivious of), the lady can’t get enough.

Ed also chases after his lifelong love, a girl his age named Sheila who is currently dating an older boy. Throughout this section Kastle does a great job of having Ed do all those things he wishes he’d done…like using his future-learned judo skills to beat up the school bully and anyone else who gets in his way. In this fashion he’s able to win the heart of Sheila, taking her out and spending exorbitant amounts on her.

Kastle as you know is a dark comedy master, and always has something up his sleeve…like when Ed finally achieves his lifelong dream and gets intimate with Sheila; he suddenly feels like “an old man” feeling up a teenaged girl, and basically goes nuts on her. Kastle’s also smart enough to make clear that you can’t go home again, with Ed discovering to his horror that the reality is nothing like the fantasy.

Another of Kastle’s strengths is weaving a bunch of webs and then pulling them together for a dark and unexpected ending, and he does so here, having Ed’s life spiral out of control, all the bad things he tried to prevent happening regardless, and indeed happening earlier than they did in his previous life. And just as it looks to be the end for Ed himself, he blacks out and comes to in a metal room surrounded by human-sized beetles from outer space.

Yes, it turns out that this entire opening section was nothing more than a dream, one made possible by Druggish technology. Ed, once again in his 52 year-old body, is irate – he remembers everything now, and he’d thought he would really live his life over, not just dream it, so he accuses the Druggish of screwing him over. But the Druggish make it clear that there’s no way they could reverse time for the entire planet, and in fact they argue that they upheld their end of the deal. Turns out though that this was just a trial run of sorts, and they still want Ed’s assistance: they want him to become a recorder of human life, and in exchange they will grant Ed’s wishes.

From here on the novel basically reprints The Reassembled Man, with only the most minor of changes and deletions. The dichotomy is pretty obvious because Ed never once reflects back on the 1938 section and indeed all of it comes off as superfluous to the rest of the book. But then, the Druggish have erased Ed’s memory of them, so there’s no way he could remember that trip back to his childhood. So, though it makes sense narrative-wise, it still comes off as troubling that we’ve read over a hundred pages that have ultimately no bearing on the rest of the book – which itself is just a reprint of an earlier novel.

Kastle does add one new page to this reprinted section, at the very end. Instead of ending on the “happily ever after” note of The Reassembled Man, he expands it to show that Ed, even though all of his dreams have been realized, will still always be plagued by doubt and “what could have been” fantasies; surely a little bit of commentary from our author.

So then, Edward Berner Is Alive Again! might be the superior of the two novels, if just for the opening sequence in 1938, which really is enjoyable, and doesn’t fall into the “new woman to sleep with” predictability of The Reassembled Man. And throughout Kastle’s writing is superb, bringing to life even the most minor characters, gripping the emotions and making the reader think. The guy was a hell of an author, and it’s a shame he’s so unknown today.

Invasion U.S.A.

 Action Movies, book reviews, Glorious Trash Hall of Fame, Men's Adventure Novels, Pinnacle Books, Raymond Obstfeld, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Feb 252013
 

Invasion U.S.A., by Jason Frost
October, 1985  Pinnacle Books

Who would’ve thought there would be a novelization of Invasion U.S.A.? A movie so stupid that it borders on genius, Invasion U.S.A. is probably the only Chuck Norris movie I can stand to watch – even as an action-obsessed kid in the ‘80s, I still thought Chuck’s movies were bottom of the barrel. I only watched them out of a misguided sense of obligation, given that for a few years I studied tang soo do in the Norris-fronted United Fighting Arts Federation.

However Invasion U.S.A. I actually liked; even as a kid I realized it was just so goofy and campy. Watching it now it’s mindblowing that the film was even released, as it’s almost surreally underwritten and underperformed; scenes aren’t set up or resolved, shit just happens for no rhyme or reason, the barest of plot elements are not described, and Norris waltzes through the proceedings with his standard blank expression (his only expression, actually), magically appearing to save people at the last second, like some micro-Uzi bearing Superman.

But the novelization is great!! Credited to “Jason Frost,” Invasion U.S.A. was actually written by Raymond Obstfeld, a seriously talented writer who’s churned out a plethora of novels, both series and standalone, starting in the 1980s. He even penned a few Executioner novels for Gold Eagle, a few of which I read back then (of course I didn’t know they were by Obstfeld), so I guess with this novelization I was sort of rediscovering his work. Anyway the Frost psuedonym is one Obstfeld used for the vaguely-post-nuke pulp series Warlord, so I wonder why he retained it for this novelization.

The movie was based on a story by Chuck's brother Aaron Norris and a writer named James Bruner, but the script is credited to Bruner and Chuck himself. My guess is that the script must’ve been a hell of a lot better than the actual film, thus giving Obstfeld a lot more to work with – or it could just be that Obstfeld wrote all of this himself, realizing the movie’s storyline was so bareboned. Obstfeld is known for inserting comedy into his genre novels, and there’s a bunch of it in this novelization, but have no fear it is very well incorporated into the story, so that it all comes off as fun and entertaining, not like some poser-produced spoof.

If you know the movie, you know the story, but again it is delivered here much, much better. Rostov, a crazed Russian commando who specializes in sowing revolution, infiltrates the US with a horde of multinational terrorist commandos in tow. Rostov is old enemies with Matt Hunter, a mysterious former CIA agent who nearly killed Rostov a few years ago, but had to let him live due to the usual politics bullshit.

The novel does a better job of explaining the Hunter/Rostov rivalry. “It’s time to die,” is Hunter’s oft-spoken threat to Rostov (and you have to love how robotically Norris delivers this line…and, well, every other line), and here in the novel we learn that this line is actually due to a sight gag; since he knows he must let Rostov live this time, Hunter takes out his knife and carves an “H” on Rostov’s wrist, right where Rostov wears his expensive watch, so that everytime Rostov checks the time he’ll know that soon it will be time to die.

Now of course Rostov has a burning-hot lust – uh, I mean hatred – for Hunter, and his first order of business before launching his invasion of the USA is to kill him. Cut to the rural sticks of southern Florida, where Hunter, retired from the agency, now wrestles alligators with an old Indian named John Eagle (unfortunately not the Expeditor). The attack comes much as in the film, with Rostov leading a squad of terrorists on air boats as they descend on Hunter’s shack, but in the novel it goes on longer, and better. Hunter actually fights back here, taking out several of the terrorists – and Obstfeld also does a superb job of filling us in on who many of these terrorists actually are, and how they came to be here.

Another thing better worked out is Rostov’s actual plan. In the film it comes off like Rostov just invades Miami and his thugs wander around killing people while the government does nothing. Obstfeld works it up so that Miami is just the entrance and Rostov sends out six-man terrorist squads to each state, where they cause much hell. We learn throughout the book of some of their atrocities, and Rostov’s ultimate goal is to sow an internal revolution so that America tears itself apart. In order to do this he stages racial killings (like sending terrorists dressed like Nazis into a synagogue), attempts to break open prisons, and even has his men impersonate cops and the National Guard, who then murder the citizens who think they are there to help.

Also Hunter’s one-man war on Rostov’s army is given a more realistic showing (comparatively speaking, that is). Instead of Hunter appearing just in the nick of time to waste the terrorists before they commit their latest evil deed, in the novel he follows clues, tracking down Rostov and taking on his various lieutenants in well-done action sequences. Along the way Hunter also must avoid the cops and the Feds, who attempt to track down this “vigilante” who is sowing further dissent in the already-chaotic mire that has overtaken the country.

Probably the biggest improvement of the novel is the character of the female reporter, Dahlia McGuire. If you’ve seen the film, then you certainly remember this completely useless character, who bears ultimately zero influence on the film, and indeed seems to only be there so the producers could put a female name on the cast list.

Dahlia sparkles in this narrative, and it’s a damn shame that her character wasn’t given any room in the movie. She has a direct influence over what’s going on, and her interactions with Hunter have much more depth. In the film there’s no depth between the characters, with Hunter saving her in his Superman fashion and Dahlia cursing him out in return, making her character seem pretty despicable. The novel fleshes this out, and there’s even a believable romantic development between the two, complete with the customary sex scene (nothing too graphic, mind you). But again, all of this was gutted from the movie…either that or it was never there in the first place, and Obstfeld added it all himself.

In fact Dahlia makes possible the conclusion…the film climaxes with Hunter wandering around in some business office, blowing away several terrorists before getting to Rostov, and you have no idea how the hell he got there or what’s going on. The novel explains. Dahlia pretends to set up Hunter, so the Feds and cops take him away. This also explains that otherwise nonsensical part in the film where Hunter is arrested while he’s sitting alone in a hotel room watching an old sci-fi flick – even here the character of Dahlia was gutted from the movie. But in the novel it’s her staged set-up which leads to the news announcement that Hunter has been caught and is being held in a hotel room; a news announcement that Rostov of course sees, and he takes the bait and heads for the hotel.

So now, the climax occurs in this hotel, with Hunter taking out Rostov’s goons one by one before dealing with the man himself. (He kills him the same way as in the film, though, blowing Rostov away with Rostov’s own grenade launcher.) But whereas the film ends right here, the novel continues on, giving us an actual wrap-up of what the hell happened to Rostov’s army and what the US is going to do to get a little vengeance. Adams, Hunter’s old CIA contact, informs Hunter that the government intends to form a strike squad, with Hunter as the leader, and the ending intimates that Hunter is going to take him up on the offer.

How about what isn’t in the novel? Well, for one the movie has more carnage – I think I read somewhere that the film has like a killcount of 160. The action scenes here are more smallscale – and by the way, Obstfeld doesn’t play up much on the gore. (Despite which there are actually more action scenes in the novel.) And unlike the film Hunter does not go into combat with a twin pair of micro-Uzis; Hunter does his fighting in the book with either a shotgun or a Hechler and Koch MP5 submachine gun. Some of the more infamous/goofy moments from the film are also absent from the novelization: there’s no scene, for example, where Rostov and his comrades blow up a bunch of peaceful homes with their missile launchers! Also no scene where Hunter saves a school bus of kids, tearing the bomb off their bus while driving – indeed, we learn in a news broadcast in the novel that a busful of schoolkids has been blown up. And most importantly, in the novel Hunter doesn’t have a pet armadillo!

But man, if the film had been like this novel, Invasion U.S.A. would today be considered an ‘80s action classic alongside Commando, a movie this novelization has much in common with – the same kind of one man army protagonist who doesn’t take himself too seriously, the same sort of near-homoerotic burning hatred between our hero and the villain, the same sort of snarky banter between the hero and the female character, the same sort of irreverent spirit mixed with over the top action.

In fact I almost wish someone would just buy the rights and remake Invasion U.S.A., only base it off this novel, and do it old-school style: a solid R rating, no cgi, tons of James Glickenhaus-style blood squibs, and a pulsing synthesizer soundtrack. But that would never happen; instead the remake would be PG-13 and loaded with bad cgi, and for the Matt Hunter role they'd get someone like Channing Tatum, a guy who has all the onscreen charisma of a rectal tumor. (Actually the tumor would probably have more charisma.) But he's young and "hot" and looks like he just walked out of an Abercrombie and Fitch ad, so the producers would snag him because he'd appeal to the target audience of girls and sexually-confused tweener boys who currently rule our entertainment world, and so the remake would do great at the boxoffice, and they’d follow it up with a sequel that would be even worse, and the cycle of bullshit would just continue twirling on.

Sorry, I got a little lost there. I’ll wrap up yet another overlong review by stating again how much I enjoyed this novel – and not just because Obstfeld even found a way to reference Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, having Dahlia read it. Just another indication of Obstfeld’s comedic skill, really, having a character reading a brainiac book in the novelization of an idiotic movie.

The Reassembled Man

 book reviews, Fawcett Books, Herbert Kastle, Sci-Fi, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Feb 182013
 

The Reassembled Man, by Herbert D. Kastle
No month stated, 1964  Fawcett Crest Books

Before he hit mainstream success in 1969 with his “sell-out novel” The Moviemaker, Herbert Kastle published a variety of novels, from literature to genre fiction. As far as I know, The Reassembled Man was his only science fiction novel – but then, it’s only sci-fi in its trappings. In its execution the novel is basically soft porn (and “soft” due to the year in which it was published, I’m sure), not much different than the average Harold Robbins novel.

In fact, you could consider The Reassembled Man the story of how a regular loser becomes an alpha male, Harold Robbins-type protagonist. Our “hero” is Ed Berner, a 38 year-old sap who has been beaten down by life. Married to a shrew, the father of two prepubescent kids, Ed makes a moderate living as a copywriter at a Manhattan ad agency. Yep, just like Darrin on Bewitched -- and really, this novel is very much like a twisted episode of Bewitched. Like, if Darrin had asked Sam to make him ultra-human, and then decided to start sleeping around with every woman he met.

Kastle doesn’t make us spend too long with the loser version of Ed. This in fact might be one of the novel’s failings; Ed’s later actions come off as so self-centered that the book quickly descends into an endless string of softcore sexcapades, Ed living out the dreams previously denied him. But at any rate, as the novel opens Ed goes out for an evening drive, and comes to days later, having driven all the way from New York to New Mexico.

He’s been brought here by the Druggish, aliens who apparently look like Japanese Beetles, only human sized. Kastle well captures the purported experiences of UFO abductees, with Ed coming to himself as he sits in his parked car overtop a hole in the New Mexico desert, out of which pops these giant beetles; the ensuing dialog with the aliens occurs with a sort of casual-meets-bizarre vibe.

The aliens (who initially speak in beatnik, having assumed it was the standard Earth language from their research) inform Ed that he’s been chosen to be their “recorder” of life on Earth. They wanted an average guy living an average life, and Ed fit the bill. In exchange they will grant him his wishes; anything Ed has previously longed for will be given him.

Ed’s checklist is pretty basic. He wants to be better looking, he wants all of his hair back, he wants to be stronger, he wants women to find him attractive, he wants to have a lot of sex, and he wants a bigger dick. Oh, and he wants the ability to persuade people, and maybe even some empath powers to boot.

Ed emerges from this a superman, very similar to Tony Twin, from TNT. Kastle loses me here, though, because the Druggish make it clear that they want Ed to be an “average” human, and though they say they can only boost his inherent potential (in other words, they can’t make him fly or anything, because humans can’t fly), Ed still comes out of this a not-very-human being, able to read and influence thoughts and capable of superhuman feats, from lifting cars with one hand to breaking long-jump records with ease.

The Druggish have removed themselves from Ed’s memory – something they’d told him they’d do, so as to assure an unbiased report from him – so he comes back to himself in this new and improved body here in New Mexico with no idea how he got here. Pretty soon Ed gets to take his new body out for a spin with all the expected tropes; he nearly beats to death a pair of would-be robbers and quickly talks an attractive waitress into leaving work and going to his hotel room for some sex!

This first sex scene is just a taste of what the novel will become, just an endless string of sequences where Ed will meet some girl, affect her thoughts with his own so that she’s overcome with lust for him, and then take her to his place where he will bang her for several hours. Again just like Tony Twin, Ed is insastiable and can last for hours and hours, wearing out women until they’re in a stupor of ecstasy. He also apparently has a sadomasochistic bent, and Kastle hints at “experiments” Ed will put various women through. De Sade is even mentioned. But again due to the era it was published, the novel does not get into details.

Ed quickly discovers he can control others. He takes care of his previously-domineering wife, satisfying her with Herculean bouts of sex to the point where she’s in a daze. Meanwhile Ed sets his sights on Gladys, the attractive next-door neighbor with the loutish husband. This scenario is given the most setup of all of Ed’s conquests, as he goes to great lengths to get the couple over to his place for some barbecue and brandy, ensuring that Ed’s wife and Gladys’s husband pass out so Ed and Gladys can be alone.

His new powers also give Ed an advantage in the workplace. Whereas before he was a nonentity, by the end of his first week Ed has gotten his old boss fired and has taken over the department. This is very Bewitched/Mad Men as Ed hobknobs with wealthy clients and attempts to win over their accounts. But Ed discovers one strange drawback to his new condition – he can no longer handle booze; just the thought of drinking it is enough to make him puke. Which makes it pretty unfortunate that his agency mostly deals with licquor accounts!

Another thing Ed learns is that he quickly becomes sick of women once he’s conquered them. Again, the novel is very repetitive with Ed going from one woman to another, and you’re left with the unpleasant thought that the majority of these women are sleeping with him because Ed has influenced their thoughts. Once Gladys has been moved to the background, the biggest romance in Ed’s new life is Beth, a pretty 18 year-old heiress who is much wiser than her years would imply; after one night with Ed she calls to tell him that, while she likes him, she has a feeling she’s been used somehow. Beth is easily the strongest female character in the novel, and Ed soon becomes self-conscious around her, as she’s the only one who appears able to detect that there’s something different about him.

Meanwhile Ed discovers a much bigger problem with being a recorder for the Druggish. Right before landing a huge account, Ed loses his mind, steals a car, and comes to days later in New Mexico. Turns out his reports to the Druggish will be monthly; when the allotted time is up – which, remember, Ed will never know because the Druggish erase themselves from Ed’s memory – Ed will drop whatever he is doing, find the closest means of transportation, and get to New Mexico, where the Druggish will be waiting for him, all of it timed to their busy interplanetary-traveling schedule.

When reunited with the Druggish Ed remembers all – and instantly realizes that his life will have problems. What if he’s overseas when the monthly call comes to return to New Mexico? Since he’ll have no memory of the Druggish, he’ll blindly go on with his life, not realizing that once a month he’ll be expected to drop everything and get to New Mexico, where he’ll remain for days.

The Druggish give Ed more problems. Since their “recorder” is such valuable property, they instill deep fears in Ed of anything that might kill him; now he’s terrified to fly, and he can only drive his brand-new Triumph sportscar at 30 miles an hour due to his terror that he’ll crash it and die. And forget about taking on armed robbers or bullies anymore. But again, since the Druggish have wiped his memory, Ed has no idea why he’s so afraid of everything, just like he can’t understand how he got this new body and new skills.

But as mentioned, the novel by this point has fallen into a mire of repetitive situations. It’s salvaged though by Kastle’s masterful prose. Also, as would be expected he has more up his sleeve than delivering a wish-fulfillment fantasy. It doesn’t take long to realize that The Reassembled Man is really a morality play, the story of what happens when the male id is allowed to run rampant.

Ed Berner is not a hero, and Kastle doesn’t present him as one. Indeed you soon feel sorry for the other characters he manipulates and takes advantage of. But as the narrative moves on Ed begins to realize the errors of his ways, and also focuses on bettering himself – one advantage of his new form is that he requires little sleep, and so he spends many nights up reading the classics and philosophy.

Just as you realize it can’t go on much longer (sort of like this review), Kastle pulls out all the stops, delivering another of his dark comedy showpieces where Ed must drink a glass of fine brandy as part of the fulfillment of a new account – a scene that goes down with comically disastrous results. From here Kastle quickly wraps up his narrative, with some last-second changes of mind from the Druggish and a better future for Ed.

The Reassembled Man isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s enjoyable. Its biggest failing is that it starts off so strong, with a reborn Ed Berner living out every guy’s fantasy – getting the upper hand on bullies, telling his boss where to shove it, being desired by every woman he meets – but it soon falls into a rut.

Kastle must’ve realized some opportunities himself, as in 1975 he rewrote about 80% of the novel and published it as Edward Berner Is Alive Again!, a hardcover-only obscurity which I’ve just gotten via InterLibrary Loan. I look forward to seeing how different it is from its original incarnation.

Once Is Not Enough

 Bantam Books, book reviews, Trash Fiction  Comments Off
Dec 262012
 

Once Is Not Enough, by Jacqueline Susann
July, 1974  Bantam Books

I’ve referenced her here and there in my reviews, but this is the first actual Jacqueline Susann novel I’ve read. This was also her last published work, the hardcover coming out two years before her death from cancer in 1975. Along with Harold Robbins, Susann ruled the world of mainstream fiction in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and like Robbins she’s been mostly forgotten in the past years – though unlike Robbins her novels have recently been reprinted by a major publisher.

Writing wise I’d say Susann is a slightly “better” author, but she lacks the outrageous firepower of Robbins. But you do get a bit more characterization, and her characters don’t just come off like walking stereotypes. Also she is very much in the soap opera/category romance arena; parts of this book were like a novelized episode of As The World Turns, endlessly detailing the love lives of bland but photogenic protagonists. There are long stretches of Once Is Not Enough that are pretty boring, without even a bizarre-and-unexpected sex scene (as in Robbins) to liven things up.

This is mostly due to the main protagonist, who herself appears to have walked out of a category romance. January Wayne is our hero, and despite being in her early 20s right at the height of the free love era, she has all of the morals and mindsets of a 1950s housewife. This isn’t all her fault, though; coddled by her father Mike, a famous and successful Hollywood producer, January grows up with significant Daddy Issues in that she is so in love with her dad that no other man will ever be able to win her heart.

But this is only one of her issues. Susann opens the novel with a harrowing scene in which January, just turned 18, goes to Italy to spend time with her father, who is shooting on location. Jealous of the Sophia Loren-type actress who is hanging on her father (January’s mother committed suicide years before, jealous herself over her husband’s frequent affairs), January grudgingly goes on a date with an Italian gigolo. When the guy tries to sleep with January but discovers with shock that she’s still a virgin, he races her home on his motorcycle and crashes, and January is seriously injured.

This part is shocking enough, but also serves to draw you in enough that you care about January throughout the book, something that can rarely be said about Robbins’s protagonists. At any rate, she spends a handful of years in some exclusive rehab center in Switzerland, effectively cut off from the rest of the world. While she’s away the ‘60s become the ‘70s and the world changes in numerous ways, though January doesn’t know this. When she can finally walk again and leaves the clinic, she finds the world vastly different than the one she new.

Meanwhile her father has fallen on rough times and has married uber-wealthy Dee, so now he’s a kept man. He’s done all of this so as to save up a nest egg so January can have a nice life – turns out Mike’s luck ran dry right after January’s accident, and after diminishing returns on his next films he found himself without any more jobs in Hollywood so has had to take desperate measures to continue living the lifestyle he’s grown accustomed to.

January wants to make her own way in the world, and gets a job at an up and coming magazine which is run by an old school friend named Lisa, the only character in the book who brings to mind the antics of Valley of the Dolls. Foul-mouthed, opinionated, and sexually carefree, Linda is everything January isn’t, and Susann continuously hammers us with the differences between the two, Linda’s modern woman values (or lack thereof) up against January’s old-fashioned prudishness.

Really though the novel plays out like a soap opera, and January is very much in the vein of a romance comic book heroine. Everything shocks her, she just wants to find true love, and she’s completely in love with daddy. This is the other theme Susann plays up in the book, the true love story being between January and her father, but like the characters this theme comes and goes; Susann often introduces concepts or characters and then drops them for a few hundred pages.

For example, there’s Karla, a Greta Garbo analogue who is a retired and reclusive screen idol; David, Dee’s cousin and January’s ostensible paramour (he takes her virginity one disastrous night but they decide to only be friends) carries on a secret affair with her, but we learn later that Karla is having an affair with Dee, too. But Karla, given so much focus in early chapters (complete with an unecessary and incidental sequence covering her pre-stardom life in Europe during WWII, a sequence which features a wholly-exploitative scene in which a bunch of nuns get raped), just disappears for like a few hundred pages, suddenly reintroduced toward the end as if she’d never left.

January sort of muddles around while life goes on around her, doing her romance heroine schtick and searching for true love. This eventually occurs in the person of Tom Holt, a famous and rugged author who is Hemingway in all but name. But more importantly he’s actually a few years older than January’s dad Mike, so now she has the perfect daddy replacement.

This storyline takes up most of the novel, with January falling in love with Tom and following him to LA and getting sex tips from Linda. It was all very much like a romance novel, and I kept wondering where the Jacqueline Susann I’d read about had gone; where was the lurid stuff, the crazy stuff? Other than January’s addiction to “vitamin shots” (which turn out to be laced with meth), there isn’t even any of the campish charm of Valley of the Dolls.

But in the last hundred pages things change in a major way. After a plane crash takes out some major characters (and I wonder how that plane crash sequence went down with vacation-bound readers of the novel??), Susann apparently regains her sordid powers and launches into overdrive. Coming very quickly here, we have rampant drug use, a ritual orgy, more rampant drug use, and a full-on psychedelic ending which features UFOs!

The ritual orgy is lots of lurid fun, with January attending a hippie party, getting blitzed on LSD-spiked punch, and having sex with some random dude while she and he are hoisted up in the arms of the other hippies, with chanting and clapping going on all about them. I should mention that this random guy is only the third man January has ever had sex with, the other two being David (a one-time only deal), and Tom Holt (who, in pure let’s-skewer-Hemingway’s-rep fashion, lives his roughneck, boozer lifestyle in order to overcome the fact that he has the equipment of a prepubescent boy). The climax of this sequence is the highlight, with January orgasming, screaming “I love you, Mike!”, and then passing out. I can bet you Susann was chortling to herself as she wrote it.

But the UFO stuff is even better. Still frazzled on drugs, January goes to the beach and sees one in the night sky. Through the final hundred pages of the novel Susann works in this theme where January keeps seeing a blue-eyed man in her dreams, a man who bears a vague resemblance to her father. But this ghost proves dangerous, at one point a dazed January almost falling out of her skyline apartment to be with him. And now he appears to her on the beach, beckoning her into the waves…

The finale of the novel sticks with you, and leaves you unsettled. Susann masterfully writes it so that January’s fate is up to you – did she die of drowning, or did she get spirited away to some other world? Interesting to note that Susann’s original ending for the novel was completely different; the Mike-looking figure turned out to be an alien, who took January away with him into space, where the novel turned into a star-spanning love story! And it wasn't just some dream sequence or drug trip; according to the biography Lovely Me, Susann wrote fifty pages of this, most of it taken from her then-unpublished novel Yargo, which was written in the early 1950s but went unpublished until after Susann's death. Indeed, many fans believe that Yargo can be read as the sequel to Once Is Not Enough.

I find it hard to believe that this alternate version of Once Is Not Enough has never been published. I’d love to read it. As vapid as she can be, as lovestruck or spineless as she comes across, you actually get to like January, even to feel sorry for her. As such, you wish she’d been given a happier end. (For Susann’s part, when asked in interviews about January’s fate, Susann claimed it was her interpretation that January died. What a bummer!) But then, the ending Susann delivers does affect you more than anything else in the novel, so it’s a fair compromise.

As for her prose, Susann certainly likes her ellipses and hyphens. I’m not exaggerating when I say this book reads like a 1970s romance comic, like My Love or something; the characters all speak in that same sort of breathless and melodramatic style. Susann’s narrative style reminds me more of Burt Hirschfeld than Robbins, and having read one of her novels I can now see where Hirschfeld got a lot of schtick. (I still prefer Hirschfeld, though.)

Anyway, an enjoyable novel for the most part, but a bit too long for its own good (this Bantam edition is over 500 pages, with tiny print). One of these days I’ll definitely read Yargo, if only to see if it provides “the rest of the story.”
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