Mafia: Operation Porno

Mafia: Operation Porno, by Don Romano
October, 1973  Pyramid Books

Delivering just the kind of ‘70s sleaze I demand, Mafia: Operation Porno is yet another paperback original copyright Lyle Kenyon Engel, the man who gave us such series as The Baroness, John Eagle Expeditor, Richard Blade, and on and on. However Mafia: Operation isn’t really a series, moreso just a group of five unrelated novels offering “inside looks” into the world of the mob, all branded under a series title and house name.

The books were each credited to “Don Romano,” a house name which according to this site belonged to three authors: Allan Nixon, Robert Turner, and Paul Eiden (who around this time was also working for Engel on the Expeditor series). Operation: Porno was written by Nixon and Turner, and man if this book is any indication, their other two contributions are must-reads. This one’s all about the mob’s venture into the lurid world of “skin flicks,” and it pushes all the right sleaze and exploitation buttons.

Our nominal protagonist is Luigi Canello, a 40 year-old New York-based mobster who oversees the Acme corp, one of the Mafia’s many legal enterprises. Canello is tasked by aging Don Appolito with boosting the family’s lackluster peepshow sales. After a bit of research Canello discovers that not only is the guy currently running the peepshow business skimming the profits, but he’s also been shooting such cheap footage, with junkies and burned-out whores, that he’s forced customers to move on to porn that’s more pleasing to the eye.

There follows one of the novel’s many enjoyably-sleazy scenes where Canello screens some of these cheaply-filmed “loops” for the don and his men, the authors explicity detailing each and every act, even how blowjob moneyshots are faked. Canello promises that for a ten thousand investment, he can go to Hollywood and put together a XXX-rated film that will rake in piles of cash; he’s even figured out how to make extra profits off of it, like selling stills to the porn mags that publish “beaver shots.”

Canello turns out to be such a screwed-up character that you can’t help but laugh. For immediately after the Don leaves, Canello lays down to nap…and the authors casually inform us that he wakens from an “erotic dream” about his own daughter! Yes, Canello is totally in lust with his gorgeous, 16 year-old “Lolita” of a daughter, all of it starting the other month when he caught her masturbating. Perhaps you’re now getting a picture of how sleazy this novel is. And it gets sleazier, as the authors not only document how Canello watched secretly as his daughter played with herself, but how he now sates his shameful lust on a hooker who looks just like her, paying her $200 a session so he can vicariously fuck his own daughter!

The authors open up the mob world for us a bit with the brief introduction of Jim Croce, a young ‘Nam vet who, Joe Skull style, has become a hitman, as he takes out the poor sap who was previously running the family’s peepshow business. In true pulp style the guy gets a near-sexual thrill from murdering. And the lurid stuff continues as we meet 18 year-old Helga Ryan, a super-busty blonde from Smalltown, USA who waitresses in a diner and, of course, dreams of Hollywood stardom. Naïve and good-natured, Helga is about as all-American as you can get, other than her first name, which is courtesy her Swedish mother.

Helga is sweet-talked into riding cross-country with a truck driver named Mack, who claims to be cousins with an up-and-coming director. This is actually true; the cousin’s name is Howie Jamison, and in Canello’s storyline we learn that he is the director who through various means gets the porno gig. Meanwhile Helga falls in love with Mack, who is the first guy to bring her to orgasm – cue a very explicit sex scene. In fact she wants to get married, and figures they’ll do so once they get to Las Vegas.

But the dark comedy ensues, as Mack brings along a co-driver, who one evening sneaks into Helga’s bed and fools her into thinking he’s Mack! After screaming rape she starts to enjoy it royally, and the two world-wizened truckers try to inform Helga that she’s a sex maniac and doesn’t need to worry about marrying Mack just because he can get her off, etc. And it of course leads up to the expected three-way, with the two guys getting Helga nice and drunk before double-teaming her.

So basically, a lot of the novel comes off like a more streamline, more lurid variation on Norman Spinrad’s Passing Through The Flame, with the good-natured sexbomb getting into hardcore porn. The authors spend quite a bit of time with Helga, so that you almost forget about Canello, who meanwhile goes about cementing his Family’s porn distribution network. Howie Jamison meanwhile turns out to be a hirsute “artiste” who thankfully has no pretensions about his art – he knows he does great work, and has won awards, but is willing to do anything commercial if the price is right.

The Mafia’s lack of mercy is displayed when Canello runs into any trouble. If he meets any pushback, a simple call back to the Family in New York and an “accident” will befall the troublemaker. Canello’s biggest run-in is with the a pair of brothers who have gone rogue from an LA Family. These guys run their own porn ring, and beat Canello near to death. After this the Appolito Family retaliates by hiring a group of notoriously-deranged bikers to crash the brothers’s next porn filming.

This is one sadistic sequence. The chapter encapsulates practically everything in ‘70s sleaze, opening with details on the porno filming, which is being shot on a large farmland. The 80 year-old owner is so excited by the activities that he bangs one of the girls while the crew watches – and then the bikers storm the property, blowing the old man away mid-orgasm. They butcher the other men, then line the still-naked women up. Hopped up on speed, the bikers have even less mercy than the mobsters; when one of the girls is too shocked to have sex, a biker jams his gun into an unexpected place and blows her away. It’s all so twisted that by the time they’re finished with the women, even the bikers have sated themselves – not that this stops them from lining up the girls and killing them.

For the most part, though, long portions of Operation: Porno come off like Hollywood-set trash fiction, with Helga introduced to the high life by Howie – that is, after he’s taken some nude photos of her and then had sex with her. The trash fiction vibe is particularly strong in a party sequence at some millionaire’s place, complete with famous faces, lots of drugs, and open sex all over the premises, including a “humping room,” where an orgy takes place. After a joint – her first ever – Helga loses all inhibitions and goes from modelling a fur coat with nothing on underneath it for the millionaire, to throwing herself among the orgiasts and taking part in the group sex.

But this is a dark tale, and Helga’s used by everyone she meets in Hollywood. A female casting director shows interest in her…and soon enough is trying out her new vibrators on her. An ad agency bigwig promises to make Helga the face of a new hair product, but only after the expected sexual favors. And Howie too uses her, in a bigger way, inviting Helga over for a “party” which is really a secretly-filmed portion of his porn film, Howie urging Helga to get stoned and “have fun” with the other men and women in the room, each of whom are paid actors who know what’s going on. When Helga sees the footage and throws a tantrum, Canello takes care of it by getting one of his women, a “friend” of Helga’s, to get Helga hooked on heroin.

The novel gets darker and darker, like your typical “true Hollywood story” taken to absurd degrees; in a blur of weeks Helga has become an addict, starring in so many porn flicks that she can’t even remember them. Soon she’s so messed up that she’s useless, and Canello unceremoniously fires her; now she’s out on the streets. Canello proves himself truly merciless, dispensing with Howie in even more ruthless fashion when the now-drunk of a director could prove to be a liability if Canello’s porn-producing company is ever taken to court. In fact Mafia ruthlessness becomes more and more pronounced as the novel goes on, the authors doing a great job of swindling you in the opening half into thinking they might not be such bad guys, after all. 

And it all builds to an even darker finale, with Helga, now as mentioned reduced to a heroin-blitzed street dweller, getting ripped on junk and deciding she wants a little revenge. Coming across a handy bayonet, she stumbles down to the porn studio’s set (where “Hotpants Henrietta” is being filmed), bullshits her way inside, and starts slicing and dicing the nude actors and actresses! It’s all so sleazy and dark and disturbing that you can’t help but laugh. And of course it builds up to a suitably-dark finale, at least for everyone but Canello, who blithely goes on with his life, more concerned that this latest teen girl he’s being sent photos of will look more like his daughter. (Turns out though it really is his daughter!)

If there’s any problem with Mafia: Operation Porno, it’s that too many characters and subplots are given sharp focus early on, only to disappear. For example Canello’s daughter-fixation. This is introduced early on, and is such a bizarre moment that the reader can’t help but want to read more about it. However it’s ignored until veritably the final page. Same for other tidbits throughout the narrative, like Howie’s galpal Annette, who seems as if she’ll be important to the story, but also disappears, only showing up again in that doomed Hotpants Henrietta shoot, where the authors off-handedly inform us that Annette has taken over Helga’s mantle as the “queen of the pornos.”

However, this is just a minor complaint. Otherwise the novel’s an excellent trawl through ‘70s trash and sleaze that doesn’t hold back on the graphic nature. The sporadic scenes of violence are very bloodthirsty, and the sex scenes are just as exploitatively detailed. The authors have a gift for doling out sleazy and memorable characters, and they capably bring to life the lurid underbelly of Hollywood. I’ll certainly read their other two contributions to the series, Operation: Cocaine and Operation: Hit Man.

The authors were an interesting pair of guys: Robert Turner was a prolific pulp writer, and seems to have churned out many stories and novels before his death in 1980. Allan Nixon, who died in 1995, also published many paperback originals, from the lurid private eye series Garrity to a handful of trashy Harold Robbins-esque potboilers in the late ‘60s, one of which I have and will definitely read: the wonderfully-titled The Bitch Goddess, from 1969. Nixon was also an actor in the ‘50s and ‘60s, starring in B-movies like 1960’s Prehistoric Women.