The Thing! (aka Ohhhhh, It Feels Like Dying)

The Thing!, by J.J. Madison

No month stated, 1971  Belmont Tower

(Originally published by Midwood Books as Ohhhhh, It Feels Like Dying)

The copyright page makes no mention that this grungy little paperback original was originally published by sleaze purveyors Midwood Books, but the title page does somewhat confusingly inform us that The Thing! was “first published as Ohhhhh, It Feels Like Dying.” At any rate, the re-titling of this Belmont Tower edition bears no relation to the contents of the novel; The Thing! is not a monsterama creature feature, but is instead what Grandma would’ve called a “stroke book,” with the horror stuff only a secondary concern to the sleaze. 

Which is to say, I loved the hell out of the book. I loved it! But then, I’m a sucker for Belmont Tower at its most grungy. What made this most surprising was the authorship of the book. According to The Vault Of Evil, “J. J. Madison” was in reality British author James Moffat – from all accounts a notoriously “prolific” author whose books are often considered subpar. And yet, I have only read and reviewed one other Moffat novel, the Nazi She-Devil yarn Jackboot Girls, which I really enjoyed, so admitedly I am judging the guy based off of two of his (apparently) three-hundred published novels(!). 

I say this British authorship is surprising because, if you’ve spent any time here, you know I’m not the biggest fan of British pulp. I find it fussy, stuffy, and stodgy. (I just copyrighted that as the title for a new animated series for kids, fyi.) And yet if I had not known a British author wrote The Thing!, I would’ve guessed it had been written by any of the American authors in Belmont Tower’s or Leisure Books’s stable. There is absolutely nothing “British” about the novel, absolutely nothing to give this away, and indeed there is a familiarity with New York City (another commonality with many Belmont and Leisure publications) that gives the impression “J.J. Madison” is a native New Yorker. 

I know zero about James Moffat, but I do see he was born in Canada, so perhaps this explains why his pulp comes off, at least in the two books of his that I’ve read, as more American than British. Then again, a pair of British pulpsters also turned in the decidely “American” Cut around the same time, so who’s to say – these pulp writers were so prolific they could probably mimic a tone when they wanted to, and maybe Moffat’s direction from his editors at Midwood Books was to “sound American.” 

Anyway, I digress, as usual. The Thing! is awesome, truly so, coming in at the usual brief Belmont Tower length (186 pages of big print) and offering all one could want in a sleazy vampire yarn. But those looking for straight horror might come away dissatisfied. To be sure, James Moffat follows a “sleaze first, horror second” approach throughout The Thing!, and folks that’s just fine with me. In fact the sexual material was so frequent and explicitly described, with copious detail on anatomical functions, that I almost started taking notes for future reference. 

But then, there’s just as much time spent on photography, and camera lenses, and how to properly pose models for perfect photos, something the Vault of Evil forum-goers also noted. Moffat adheres to the time-honored method of pulp writers everywhere in how he meets his word count by writing about stuff he’s interested in, even if it has no bearing on the plot. Thus one must be prepared for a lot of detail about photography and proper light and shadow and developing prints and all this other stuff you might not want to read in a novel about a sex-starved vampire babe. 

This, apparently, is the titular “Thing” of the Belmont reprint: Myra Manning, a stacked blonde movie goddess of yore who has gotten a second life in a mega-successful daytime soap opera titled “Deadly Love” which is clearly modelled after Dark Shadows. In the soap Myra plays a vampire, and we readers already know from the back cover that Myra herself is a vampire. Now as as I’ve said before, hot vampire babes are at the very top of the “hot evil women” heap, even higher up than Nazi She-Devils, but friends everyone knows that a hot vampire babe should have black hair, not blonde hair!! 

However, given the zeal with with James Moffat indulges in utter sleaze, filth, and depravity throughout the novel, I was willing to let this one slide. And yes of course, there are exceptions to this rule – I mean good grief, just consider Ingrid Pitt in the 1970 Hammer Films production The Vampire Lovers – but still. It’s a time-worn pulp conceit that good girls have blonde hair and bad girls have black hair, and it’s interesting that Moffat decided to overlook that. 

The book moves fast and Moffat does a great job of making it horror, yet at the same time never explicitly states that there is anything supernatural about it; again, this could be disappointing for someone looking for a standard type of horror novel, but there is absolutely nothing standard about The Thing!. It’s a dirty, smutty, yet undeniably fun little book, mostly because I got the strong mental impression of Moffat drunkenly chortling to himself as he pounded at his typewriter. 

We know what we are getting from the start, as Moffat opens the novel on the set of “Deadly Love,” as an episode of the soap is filming, with Myra as a vampire biting a man – and, when the cameras are turned off, the man complains that Myra has really bitten him. Moffat also shows a Hollywood that is long gone, with hardbitten, foul-mouthed veterans of the studio age who bitch at each other with no concerns over the “inclusion” of today; Myra’s poor co-star is raked over the coals for being gay, and Myra likes to strip in front of the director, displaying her “heavy breasts,” and taunting the gawking director: “You’re about to come in your pants.” 

Next we are introduced to the hero of the tale: Ken Painter, a ‘Nam vet who has no qualms with hitting dogs and roughing up women – another reminder of how “unsafe” 1970s pulp is in our modern era. Our intro to Ken is a harbinger of the type of book The Thing! will be: a several-page sex scene that leaves no sleazy stone unturned as Ken explicity boinks a woman he’s shacked up with in the Midwest…a woman who runs a gas station her dead husband left her, and who came across a stash of cocaine that spilled on the highway after a pharmaceutical truck crashed(!?), and who now spends her days in a dark room with the TV running, in a cocaine daze…and Ken has blissfully joined her for a few days of rampant coke-fueled sex. 

Friends, this is how you introduce your protagonist. 

Ken (as Moffat refers to him throughout the novel) was a combat photographer in Vietnam, and now he wants to make his living as a professional photographer, but he’s a penniless vagabond. He leaves the coke-sex girl and heads for New York, where we have another protracted sequence where Ken jury-rigs some pay phones in the Port Authority, and then runs afoul of the mobsters who run the payphones. Again, none of this has anything to do with the horror genre, but it does bring to life the grungy, crime-ridden New York of the early ‘70s. 

But after running into Myra Manning in Central Park – where Ken mauls the woman’s guard dog and nearly drowns the poor animal, all because it ruined his shot and got water on his camera – Ken is given a new opportunity: to be the personal assistant for famous actress Myra, who promises she’ll get a publisher who will do a book of photos of Myra, photos taken by Ken. 

First, though, the two enjoy an exuberant sex scene that is only a precursor of the wild sleaze we will encounter as the novel progresses: 

Moffat foreshadows that there is more to Myra Manning than there seems: she’s a beauty with a perfect body, but Ken was a “kid” when she was a Hollywood queen and also there’s that pale-faced former assistant of hers with a bandage on his throat who slinks out of Myra’s penthouse apartment on Ken’s first day, trying to throw Ken a meaningful look… 

But really, at this point it’s a Hollywood novel, with a lot of stuff about the filming of Myra’s soap opera and the squabbling that goes on behind the scenes. That is, with a lot of material about photography…and a lot more explicit sex, as Myra begins to “initiate” Ken into something unstated, first by secretly dosing him with strychnine and then engaging him in yet more super-explicit shenanigans: 

But it’s not all drug-fueled super sex with the beautiful Myra who has almost superhuman control of her womanhood (cue those anatomincal notes I mentioned): in between the memories of sexual bliss Ken is haunted by scenes from “a nightmare,” with Myra wearing a “half-mask” with “canines,” and the feeling of blood flowing down Ken’s side as she feeds from his neck, but Ken is sure none of this could be real. Still, there’s this band-aid on his throat, and Myra’s insistence that he not remove it so that it can heal properly…claiming that Ken was so drunk he cut himself shaving… 

Then there’s Noire, Myra’s professor friend who is a mountain of muscle with a shaved head…the impression is he’s an Anton LeVay type after a few visits to the gym. He’s a specialist in all things vampire, and has been teaching Myra about it, and there’s a lot of stuff about historical vampires, and Noire’s insistence that such creatures existed…but, again, there’s nothing here that they are supernatural creatures, ie the living dead as you’d encounter in traditional vampire fiction. Instead, the impression Moffat gives is that these “vampires” are humans who drink blood to stay young. Moffat leaves it vague enough that the reader could take it either way, but the fact that Myra is a famous TV actress who often admires herself in the mirror should tell you right away that the traditional vampire lore is not being followed here. 

The “nightmare” stuff becomes more extreme as Myra continues dosing Ken with strychnine – which leaves him fuzzy-minded but super-aroused, capable of all-night action – and also throwing orgies where Ken witnesses such craziness as a young girl being ravaged by Noire’s massive “phallus.” As I said, the depravity is just off the charts. 

Only gradually does Ken realize what’s really going on: Myra is a vampire and she’s using him as a meal on legs. Ken finds salvation in another group who works on the soap opera, and with their help he escapes Myra’s clutches…and also he also helps a guy with some pointers on photography; even in the climax Moffat still indulges in page-filling, but it’s so well-written and quick-moving that I didn’t mind. 

More importantly, here Ken finds true love, courtesy brunette hottie Carol, an up-and-coming starlet on the soap who initially gave Ken the cold shoulder. Moffatt again displays his penchant for sizzling shenanigans when Carol gets Ken to do a nude photo session of her – for a play she’s interested in, naturally – and then she essentially throws herself on him, leading to a sex scene just as explicit as those with cougar Myra: 

SPOILER ALERT: Skip this and the next four paragraphs if you don’t want to know the finale, but given the obscurity and scarcity of The Thing!, I thought I’d note what happens for posterity. Basically Myra and Noire go the expected route and take Carol prisoner, so like a true Belmont Tower hero Ken goes out for revenge. Yes, I know Midwood originally published the book, but Midwood was a Belmont Tower imprint, so it still works. 

So Ken goes after Myra and, having seen how she “ages ten years” in just a few minutes without her amphetimines (again, the connotation is that Myra is not a traditional vampire, but just a human who has vastly elongated her life by drinking blood and taking uppers), Ken strips Myra and ties her to a chair in the empty studio and then he essentially broils her with high-watt studio lights placed directly on her nude body. Curiously Moffat does not have Myra break, even as her body shrivels in the intense heat, and Ken at length even begins to respect her strength. 

From there to a brief confrontation with Noire, who is about to rape Carol with that massive phallus of his; a fight which sees Ken nearly get ripped apart, and features a finale that seems like a rip-off until you think about it and realize Moffat has pulled off a neat trick with proper setup. Essentially, Noire is about to escape with Carol in his car and he puts Ken’s face up against the exhaust, trying to smother him. Then Noire gets in his car, thinking Ken is dead – but Ken opens the door and pulls Carol out. We recall then the opening setup, in which we were informed that Ken was drummed out of ‘Nam because he’d developed a tendency to hyperventilate when nervous. Thus, when Noire was “smothering” Ken with the exhaust fumes, the carbon monixide was actually helping Ken control his hyperventilation! I’m not sure if the science is legit, but Moffat certainly writes it with confidence. 

That said, Noire’s sendoff is laughable – in his haste he barrells out of the parking lot and runs into a truck, killed by the steering wheel slamming into his chest! And at novel’s end we learn that the withered hag that was Myra Manning has “disappeared” from the world, and, safely knowing that her legend will live forever, she plans to dose herself with strychnine, rip out her teeth and cut off her fingertips, and then douse herself with gasoline and immolate herself “before the tremors” make muscle movement impossible! 

And meanwhile Ken and Carol head off for a happily ever after… 

End spoilers. Yes, the finale is rushed, but hell, what Belmont Tower doesn’t have a rushed finale? I was satisfied that James Moffatt even told us what happened to all of the characters. All told, I loved the hell out of The Thing!, but I will be the first to acknowledge that your own mileage will vary. 

Here is the cover of the original Midwood edition, from 1971, which does a better job than any of the reprints of depicting the actual contents of the book...though note the artist at least also agreed that hot and evil vampire babes should have black hair: 

And here is a link to Too Much Horror Fiction, where you can see a few other covers Belmont Tower graced this book with over the years; according to a comment Andy Decker made at the Vault Of Evil forum, the copy I read, the cover for which is shown at the top of the review, might actually have been from 1978. If so, the copyright page itself only states 1971. My assumption is Belmont Tower just took the actual Midwood Books printing from 1971 and affixed different covers to it over the years.