Stone: MIA Hunter

Stone: MIA Hunter, by Jack Buchanan
February, 1987  Jove Books

Some online booksellers mistakenly list this installment of the MIA Hunter series as the first volume, but in fact it falls between the sixth and seventh volumes. Also, this is a double-length tale, coming in at 261 pages, all courtesy our old friend Chet Cunningham, who here turns in his second and final contribution to the series. Rather than filling all those pages with one epic plot, Cunningham instead tells four separate storylines, but even so Stone: MIA Hunter happens to be one of my favorite volumes yet.

The first storyline opens with Mark Stone and his companions Hog Wiley and Terrance Loughlin busting a few POWs out of a camp in ‘Nam; this is a taut, action-packed sequence. Cunningham (who names one of the POWs after himself) gives most narrative time to Commander Farley Anderson, who can’t believe he’s finally free, let alone that it’s 1987. As the group struggles across jungle terrain, desperate to get over the border, they are attacked by unseen gunmen, who mercilessly take out Stone’s Laotian guides. This turns out to be minions of CIA goon Alan Coleman, the series’ recurring villain; he arrives via helicopter and demands Stone and the POWs get onboard.

This leads to the second storyline, as Stone, Hog, and Loughlin are arraigned in Federal court in Los Angeles on trumped-up charges. As a result Stone’s private investigator license is stripped (bet you forgot that’s his day job, didn’t you??) and it looks like the three of them may do some serious time. Hog and Louglin heed Stone’s advice and take off. Stone meanwhile spends some quality time with his girlfriend, Carol Jenner, who we are informed now lives in DC, working for the Defense Department. Funny, because the last we saw her, back in #3: Hanoi Deathgrip, she was on the run from various government agencies!

Stone is informed that this court deal could take a few weeks. Do you think he just takes it easy for a while? Hell, no – Mark Stone is a Man Of Action. Responding to a letter he receives from the widow of an old ‘Nam buddy, Stone checks out the man’s son, Jose Ortega, Jr, and learns all about the Chicano gangs in this area and the drug-running Mexican mob that employs them. In a sequence that comes off like a flashback to Cunningham’s earlier Penetrator work, Stone suits up in black and launches a hard probe on a PCP factory in the desert outside LA.

This whole part is like nothing before in the series, and in fact seems to point in the direction the series would eventually go, with Stone even realizing that someday he might need to branch out from his MIA rescuing efforts and focus on situations closer to home. Anyway he kills a whole bunch of Mexican goons, and takes on El Lobo, the leader of the gang. Here in El Lobo’s hidden crypt Stone discovers hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug money, and he gnashes his teeth over what to do with all of that cash. But before he can decide, the next storyline comes along.

Going home, Stone finds a dying man in his garage. The dude mutters something about a “Rosalyn” still being alive, and then croaks. Stone meanwhile experiences a lengthy flashback to early 1974. We learn here that Stone, in the final days of the Vietnam War, was in love with an Army nurse named Rosalyn James and that the two planned to get married. (It goes without saying of course that we’ve never heard of her before!) Strangely, Cunningham writes this whole sequence like it’s occuring in 1968 or something, with the war raging in full force, but in reality 1974 was in the waning days, as the US was slowly pulling out its forces. 

Anyway, Rosalyn was a medevac nurse, and one night while Stone was on some in-country mission, she took a last-second job for some other nurse, and her helicopter came under heavy fire. Rosalyn ended up falling out of the ‘copter, which later crashed, everyone onboard burnt to a crisp; Rosalyn was listed as KIA. However she survived her fall, and was found by a Vietnamese soldier who ended up selling her to a sadist who goes by the name “the General;” a powerful Laotian warlord who rules a clifftop fortress on the China-Laos border.

Stone only eventually pieces this together. Using his girlfriend Carol’s government resources he discovers that the dead man in his garage was a CIA agent who worked the Southeast Asia field. Also, given that Stone has only ever known one “Rosalyn,” he quickly deduces that she must be the woman the dying man said was still alive! From this leap of logic Stone, who discovers the charges against him have been thrown out of court, jumps right back into MIA Hunter mode; now he just has to track down Hog and Loughlin, who he discovers have taken a job in El Salvador.

This is the next storyline – Cunningham here delivers a sequence reminiscent of a war novel, as Stone ventures down to South America and hooks up with his two pals, who have been training government soldiers to fight against the insurrectionists. This bit is a little plodding and really has nothing to do with anything, but it does lead up to a climax in which Stone, in pure ‘80s action hero mode, hops on a dirt bike and fires LAW rockets while driving it. And judging from the series cover paintings, Stone even wears an ‘80s-mandatory headband, so the picture is complete.

Finally we get to the last storyline, which happens to be the one promised on the back cover. Stone and pals head for Thailand, where they learn more about the General’s fortress. It’s on a 500-foot cliff which can only be scaled by “bucket elevators,” and it’s guarded by a few hundred elite guards. Also, the General makes his money through the poppy fields beneath his fortress, from which he produces heroin. After a lot of worry over how few supplies they can carry, they find an American merc who flies a helicopter that can fly them and all their gear the few hundred miles to the China-Laos border.

Cunningham occasionally cuts over to Rosalyn’s viewpoint, so we can see how her life has gone over the past thirteen years. She runs a clinic in the fortress, where she lives in a “gilded cage” of three opulent rooms. The General has treated her kindly, except for the time she discovered he was a heroin manufacturer; the General escorted her down to the dungeon for a view of his torture chamber, and Rosalyn complained no more. However the General only occasionally “visits” her now, and Rosalyn has taken a lover, a young soldier named Lu Fang who is part of a group that plans to overthrow the General.

Weaving the various plots together in a taut finale, Cunningham delivers an ongoing action scene in which Stone and companions raid the fortress shortly after the doomed rebellion. He even stays true to the pulpy tone with Rosalyn hooked up to the rack in the General’s dungeon and Stone coming to her rescue in the nick of time. The fight with the General plays more on the villain’s weasely nature, so there’s none of the superhuman figtihng of say #4: Mountain Massacre, however Cunningham does drop the ball here because toward the beginning we’re informed that the General likes to dress in ancient Chinese armor and carry around ancient weapons, but our author apparently forgets all of that when the General finally appears.

The MIA Hunter series has never had much continuity, but I’m hoping this installment has repercussions on later volumes. For after a memorable final confrontation with the General in his torture chamber, Stone and Rosalyn (who survives, much to my surprise) spend some quality time together, and the next day escape the fortress. Here though they are attacked by ground forces – only to be saved by the last-second appearance of a Huey helicopter, with Carol Jenner manning a machine gun and blowing everyone away. At first I thought she was going to turn out to be some deep-cover operative, but Cunningham instead has it that Stone’s girlfriend used her smarts to figure out where Stone would be, and hired a helicopter to come rescue him and etc.

Anyway, Stone: MIA Hunter ends with Mark stone in the center of a veritable love triangle, choppering out of Laos with his one-time fiance, having been saved by his current girlfriend. Cunningham doesn’t provide a clue which way it might go, though he does seem to indicate that Stone decides Rosayln is the one for him. I’d love to say we’ll find out in the next volume, but I’m not holding my breath.

The Hard Corps #1

The Hard Corps #1, by Chuck Bainbridge
December, 1986  Jove Books

I was only marginally aware of the 8-volume Hard Corps series; I knew it was your typical team-oriented ‘80s men’s adventure series about a group of former ‘Nam soldiers who moved on into mercenary work. But then I read Zwolf’s great review of this first volume on The Mighty Blowhole (where he also kindly provided a scan of the unintentionally-funny inner cover) and knew I’d have to track the books down.

And just like Zwolf, I couldn’t believe how much I actually enjoyed The Hard Corps #1. Also like him I had zero expectations for the book, figuring it was going to be a Gold Eagle-styled troll of gun-porn and endless action scenes with cardboard characters. And while that’s somewhat true at times, the overall impact is pretty great – I mean, the book is pulpier and just plain more fun than those dour damn Gold Eagle novels. Also, it’s cartoonishly violent, with the gore level of say David Alexander or GH Frost, and that’s always a good thing!

As Zwolf noted, the series is pretty much identical to Phoenix Force; we’ve got five hardened warriors with various specialities and enough quirkiness to make them slightly more than cardboard cutouts. I’m guessing Jove Books must’ve seen how well Gold Eagle was doing with Phoenix Force and figured they should jump on the bandwagon. And if that’s true, they made a very wise decision by hiring William Fieldhouse to serve as their author, ie Gar Wilson himself.

“Chuck Bainbridge” was the house name for The Hard Corps, but it looks like Fieldhouse wrote the majority of the novels, with a British author named Chris Lowder coming in for the final few installments. This concerns me, as according to Justin Marriott Chris Lowder was the “Jack Adrian” who wrote the first half of Deathlands #1 before Laurence James came onboard as “James Axler” to finish it (and continue on with the series), and Deathlands #1 was so bad that I never even bothered writing a review of it. (But then, I think the Deathlands series in general sucks, each volume coming off like a lame ripoff of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger with an added layer of Gold Eagle-mandated gun-porn.)

Anyway, the Hard Corps is made up of five dudes who are basically psychotics; I mean, we’re informed that they loved warfare so much that after ‘Nam they basically suffered withdrawal symptoms and thus decided to go it as mercenaries. Now, several years after officially forming in 1975, they charge one million dollars per job and live on a sprawling complex deep in the forests of Washington state, where they are both self-sustaining and also have a massive arsenal with a few helicopters.

The Hard Corps is comprised of:

William O’Neal – Leader of the group, a Green Beret captain who climbed the ladder in ‘Nam due to battlefield commissions until he was in charge of the special forces unit called “the Hard Corps.” He joined the army despite the left-leaning beliefs of his parents and never looked back.

Joe Fanelli – A demolitions whiz from Chicago who constantly bucks against authority. Thrown in the brig and kicked out of the army multiple times, he eventually found his way into O’Neal’s outfit and proved himself as a courageous warrior.

James Wentworth – The second in command, a balding scion of several generations of military bigshots. Wentworth has Fieldhouse’s stamp all over him, as he’s enamored of Japanese culture and enjoys going into combat armed with a samurai sword.

Steve Caine – Basically, the Rambo of the group; that is, David Morrell’s original interpretation of the character, as seen in First Blood. Caine even has the “unkempt beard” Morrell’s Rambo sported in First Blood, and like Rambo he sort of “went over” during ‘Nam and lived with the Katu montagnard tribe, learning their jungle warfare tactics and how to kill silently and etc. In short, Caine is the most interesting character of the group, basically a ninja type who moves like a shadow and prefers bladed weaponry, despite being the best marksman on the team. Like Rambo he goes for a wicked survival knife, which he uses to cut up people real good. He gets the best scenes in the novel, in particular a bit where he sets up a plethora of fatal traps.

John McShayne – In his 50s and thus a few decades older than the rest of the team, McShayne is a veteran of Korea and serves as “mother hen” for the Corps, taking care of the base, munitions, supplies, and etc while the team is off on missions. A funny recurring joke has it that McShayne keeps all of the storage sheds locked due to his fear of bears getting into them.

This first volume basically plays out like Invasion U.S.A. meets your average ‘80s ‘Nam movie. Reversing the customary story of American soldiers in Vietnam, Fieldhouse turns it around and has Vietnamese soldiers invading the US! They’ve snuck over the US/Mexico border to kill Trang Nih, a well-known Vietnamese refugee who goes about the free world as a crusader against Communism. In charge of this Vietnamese strike force is the KGB-trained Captain Vinh, an infamous assassin known for his warfare skills.  Trang Nih has come to the Hard Corps for help, and just as he arrives in their secluded forest compound Vinh’s men attack.

The Hard Corps #1 is basically comprised of the ensuing battle between Vinh’s endless supply of Vietnamese soldiers and the members of the Hard Corps. Yet the book, the reader will notice, is 325 fat pages – of very small print! No doubt due to the editor or publisher’s request, the novel is rendered as an epic, when it would be much better served at under 200 pages. Instead Fieldhouse delivers long backstories for each member of the Hard Corps…even for Vinh and some of his underlings! It’s this stuff in particular that comes off like Vietnam fiction, given that so much of it is set during the war. And speaking of which, the ‘Nam sections with the Corps almost comes off like an installment of the Black Eagles – another Fieldhouse series, by the way.

But other than these elaborate (and usually arbitrary) flashbacks the novel sticks to its only plot: the Hard Corps versus Captain Vinh. The unit comes off like Phoenix Force meets Able Team, with the multi-skills of the former and the goofy chatter of the latter. One difference though is a lingering military protocol, with the lesser-ranked members of the Corps referring to O’Neal and Wentworth as “sir.” But at no point does the novel come off like military fiction, even though characters not once but twice poke fun at Rambo and the fantasy aspect of action cinema. Yet for all that the novel’s about as “realistic” as a Cannon film of the ‘80s…I mean, it’s all about an army of Vietnamese commandos launching an assault on a compound deep in the Washington forests!

And the gore level is through the roof – every time someone’s shot we read about their “steaming organs” blowing out or their brains wetly slapping against the nearest wall. Guys are blown up, gutted, decapitated, chopped apart, strangled, sliced and diced, impaled, and just plain shot, and each and every death is rendered in super-gory detail. In other words, it’s awesome! Almost as exploitative is the gun-porn, with reams of egregious detail doled out anytime someone whips out a gun, even if it’s some nameless gunman who just showed up long enough to get blown away.

As mentioned, the book runs 325 pages, and roughly 90% of it is comprised of various battles, with members of the Hard Corps taking out Vinh’s soldiers on their own or together. Somehow Fieldhouse manages to drop some comedy (mostly via banter) and even suspense into the tale, but for the most part it’s just an endless aciton fest. Stephen Mertz mentioned once that Fieldhouse was part of a “Rosenberger Circle” of writers, and that’s very apparent here – while the writing style is vastly superior to Rosenberger’s own, the action scenes do tend to go on and on, with a special focus on hand-to-hand combat.

But again, given the almost cartoonish level of gore, one can hardly complain…the book was almost like a writing exercise on how many ways a writer could describe a character getting killed. I’ve picked up most of the rest of the series, and happily it looks like future volumes are much shorter – meaning they can focus more on the carnage and less on the arbitrary and needless backstories.

MIA Hunter #6: Blood Storm

MIA Hunter #6: Blood Storm, by Jack Buchanan
October, 1986  Jove Books

I’m really taking a trip down memory lane this time – I remember reading this installment of the MIA Hunter series shortly after it was published. In fact I have a vivid memory of watching my Commando VHS and, still in need of an action fix, heading into my bedroom to read this book! Other than that I have no memory of Blood Storm, whether I enjoyed it or not, but I can say with this reading I thought it was very good, definitely on par with the rest of the series.

But the biggest news here is that recently I’ve gotten in touch with Stephen Mertz, a genuinely great guy who edited the MIA Hunter series and wrote most of the later installments. Stephen has informed me who wrote each volume of this series, something I don’t believe has previously been known…in fact Stephen told me he had to dig through his files to find out, as even he wasn’t sure!

Thanks to Stephen we now know that William Fieldhouse wrote this installment. And an even bigger thanks to Stephen for letting me know that it was actually Fieldhouse himself who wrote the letter from Gar Wilson I received so long ago – Stephen told me that he recently spoke to Fieldhouse about it, and Fieldhouse remembered writing the letter to me!

William Fieldhouse is most known for writing the majority of the Phoenix Force series, and as “Gar Wilson” he was my favorite writer when I was a kid. But I hadn’t read a Fieldhouse novel since then, so I was anxious to see how I’d enjoy Blood Storm this time around. But then, Fieldhouse was the guy who got me into the men’s adventure genre in the first place, thanks to the 18th Phoenix Force novel, Night of the Thuggee, which I discovered sometime in late October 1985 at a Waldenbooks store. So I knew I’d at least find something here to enjoy.

I’m not sure if it’s due to Stephen Mertz’s behind the scenes editing, but Fieldhouse’s novel actually reads almost exactly like the previous installments. I’ve read six of these MIA Hunter novels so far, and one could easily be fooled into believing there was a real “Jack Buchanan” behind the work, as none of the volumes have been much different from one another so far as the narrative goes. Only in the minor details can you notice a difference: for one, there’s a bit more gun-porn here, likely thanks to Fieldhouse’s long tenure at Gold Eagle, and for another Fieldhouse is the first of any of these “Jack Buchanans” to give Terrance Loughlin a personality!

The plot of course follows the series template: Mark “MIA Hunter” Stone gets wind of yet another group of American soldiers held prisoner, this time in Laos. Stone gets his information from a group of Laotian freedom fighters and quickly puts together a team. In the first instance of continuity yet in this series, we learn that Hog Wiley was so injured in the previous volume that he’s unable to go on this mission. Stone settles upon an unruly replacement named Leo Gorman, an American merc who allegedly once had ties with an opium kingpin here in Laos – an opium kingpin who supposedly wants Gorman dead.

Gorman is a very entertaining character, foul-mouthed and prone to violent outbursts. He basically steals the novel from Stone and Loughlin, but the problem arises that Stone would have to be out of his mind to hire such an unstable character. Stone keeps giving the lame reasoning that they need a seasoned soldier on this mission and Gorman, despite his rampages, can keep a cool head in a firefight. This is proven when the trio are attacked by masked gunmen mere moments after their first meeting with Gorman, Fieldhouse providing a running battle that is only the first of many. But when Gorman and Loughlin get in a huge fistfight themselves, you’d think Stone would wise up and find some other merc for the job.

Blood Storm has a lot more going on than previous volumes. Fieldhouse runs two subplots in addition to the main one, gradually bringing them all together. In the first subplot a Thailand-based detachment of CIA operatives determine to finally track down Stone and bring him to justice. And in the second Gorman’s old opium kingpin boss discovers that Gorman is coming into Thailand – Gorman’s plan is to sell out Stone so as to get back in the kingpin’s good graces – and plans to kill Gorman and then capture Stone and his team, to ransom them to the government. In fact this last subplot takes up most of the novel, with the actual POW rescue occurring midway through and being a fairly easy task for Stone et al.

The majority of the second half of Blood Storm sees Stone himself captured – Gorman’s old kingpin boss ambushes them in the jungle and takes them all prisoner. Here the novel appropriates a sort of tortune porn vibe, with several unsettling scenes of the kingpin taking sick pleasure in torturing a bound Stone, beating his back with bamboo sticks, burning his toes and fingers, etc. Meanwhile an old friend comes for Stone, resulting in a total deus ex machina rescue, an action scene that ends with yet another martial arts battle, this one between Stone and the kingpin. It really goes on for quite a while.

As mentioned Fieldhouse brings more gun-porn to the series; a variety of firearms are named off, with manufacture and ballistics detail provided. Also there’s a huge amount of martial arts included – there’s almost as much kung-fu fighting in Blood Storm as the average volume of Mace. Stephen Mertz has told me that Fieldhouse was part of a “Rosenberger circle” of writers, and I can easily see that here, as the amount of hand-to-hand fighting is almost as overwhelming as the amount of gun fights. Luckily Fieldhouse's action scenes are a whole lot more entertaining than Rosenberger's. And he doesn’t shy on the gore, with plenty of exploding guts and brains.

In fact I was impressed with how much story Fieldhouse was able to put in here despite the wealth of action sequences. He brings to life the many characters and gives each of them colorful dialog – the reader will note that the heroes have developed a sudden tendency to curse this time around. (Speaking of profanity, there’s a profane amount of spelling and grammatical errors in this book!) Fieldhouse also delivers a few reversals and surprises, in particular the appearance of a particular character just in the nick of time.

But despite the plethora of action scenes, Blood Storm somehow doesn’t come off like an endless battle sequence, and overall the novel is an enjoyable read. In fact this turned out to be my favorite volume of the series since #3: Hanoi Deathgrip, but unfortunately this was the only installment Fieldhouse wrote.

Rambo III

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

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.

Predator

Predator, by Paul Monette
June, 1987  Jove Books

It seems that in recent years Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 Predator has come to be regarded as his best action movie. I’ve liked it since I saw it in the theater as a kid (this was back in those forgotten days when action movies were actually rated R and if you were under 17 you needed a parent or guardian to get in to see them…or you could just wait for the VHS rental), but I’ve always preferred Total Recall and especially Commando, which for my money is the greatest action movie ever.

I’d read somewhere that the Predator novelization was much different from the film. This is true in most cases, where novelizations are based on in-production scripts that go through changes during filming. Predator is a case where a film went through more changes than most; an interesting bit of trivia is that Jean-Claude Van Damme of all people was originally slated to play the part of the Predator, wearing a costume different than the one finally used in the film. (You can read more about it and see some photos of Van Damme in costume here.)

This novelization though is based on a script even earlier than the Van Damme version, as the Predator here is a very different creature. Not wearing the armor or bearing the sci-fi weaponry that we now know and love, this Predator is more of an anthropologist, a lizard-like being with scaly skin who has come to Earth to study humans, killing them for dissection purposes. It can still only see in an infra-red spectrum, and can also mimic voices like a sampler, but in the novel it also has the ability to take the form of other creatures. Everything but humans, that is; we learn from one of the many scenes from the Predator’s viewpoint that it is unable to refashion itself into human form. However it’s free to take on the guise of a bird and soar over the jungle.

First though it’s worth talking about the author of this novelization, Paul Monette. A gay poet, Monette is the last person you’d expect to pen the novelization of a gun-blazing Arnold Schwarzenegger classic. Monette, who passed away from AIDS in 1995, is most remembered for writing a few volumes of poetry dedicated to his partner, who also died from AIDS. But on the side Monette also wrote movie novelizations (Scarface being another).

This means then that you can expect a fair bit of word painting in Predator. Monette writes with the deft and literate hand customary of a poet, doling out metaphors and analogies and extended bits of introspection with aplomb. He also capably brings to life the stinking, sweaty mire of the South American jungle. I don’t bring it up much because it’s outside the theme of this blog, but I do enjoy poetry, and in fact rank Christopher Logue’s War Music as the best thing I’ve ever read, but truth be told this style of writing doesn’t jibe with action fiction. Which is to say, Monette’s florid description often gets in the way of the guts and gore.

Story-wise the novel is basically the same as the film; it’s only the incidentals that are different. For one the special forces crew is a more “salty” bunch in the novel, more prone to dropping F-bombs and spitting hatred at the world. In other words, they all lack the memorable qualities of their filmic counterparts. Schwarzenegger’s character Dutch Schaefer in particular is a more grim character in the novel, probably a more “realistic” portrayal of what such a person would be like in the real world.

One difference as far as the team goes is here they’re all white, except for American Indian Billy (the unforgettable Sonny Landham in the film) and Poncho (Richard Chaves). I only bring this up because here Blain (Jesse Ventura) and Mac (Bill Duke) are both redneck bumpkins, racist without realizing it, and they both constantly harrass the “minorities,” particularly Dillon (Carl Weather), who in the novel is the only black guy on the team. I’m curious if this was pointedly ironed out of the film by making Mac a black character; whatever the reason, the film again has it better, as Bill Duke was much more memorable in the role he played than the redneck cipher that is the Mac of this novelization.

But if you know the film you know the story: Dillon, Dutch’s old pal and now a CIA agent, has called in Dutch’s team to infiltrate enemy territory deep in the jungle (here in the novel somewhere in the south-east region of Mexico called Balancan). Dillon has been on desk duty for the past decade or so, which serves for more ribbing from the team, more here than even in the film. And when it turns out that the mission is not to rescue hostages but instead to wipe out a small terrorist army, Dutch really gets into a lather, instead of just brushing it off like Arnold did in the film.

Here though we come to Monette’s failings as an action writer, though it could just be the fault of the early script draft he worked from. That action scene where Arnold and team assault the terrorist compound is probably the best sequence in all of ‘80s action cinema, just an awesome blitz of gory deaths, explosions, and one-liners (“Stick around!”). The only sequence I can think of that I like nearly as much would be that part in Rambo III where Rambo takes on the nightvision goggle-equipped Spetsnaz commandos in the caverns of Afghanistan. But really, the scene in Predator is the closest we ever got to seeing a Gold Eagle novel on film.

In the novel however, this raid on the terrorist compound is more low-key, over almost as soon as it starts, and lacks the onslaught of the film version. Dutch still delivers his “stick around” line, but again without the charm of Arnold; like most of Dutch’s dialog in the book, it just comes off as more mean-natured than goofy. However the book does a better job of explaining what Dillon’s purpose was down here; turns out these terrorists were plotting, along with the Soviets, a sort of Invasion USA attack on American soil.

From there on things proceed just as in the film, only with more insight into the characters and their thoughts and motivations; a big beneficiary of this is Anna, the female terrorist who is taken captive by Dillon and therefore endures the Predator’s horrors along with the rest of the team. Here she not only speaks English pretty much from her introduction into the narrative, but we also get more of an idea of how the Predator freaks her out to the point of insanity.

There are also several scenes from the Predator’s perspective, and we see the alien anthropologist going about its grisly work. This entails weird scenes like where it becomes a bird or a tree, monitoring the humans in secret. When in its normal form the Predator goes about with a spear, its sole weapon (something which didn’t debut in the films until Predator 2), and uses it to kill and eviscerate Dutch’s team one by one.

I had a hard time understanding the Predator, though, as its motive and learnings about humans are pretty vague, at least as Monette presents them. He has it that the alien doesn’t realize how it’s snuffing out indidivual lives with each kill, yet as the narrative ensues it seems to take relish in stalking the commandos, playing on their terror, and drawing out their deaths. But in the long run this take on the alien isn’t anywhere near as memorable as the film version, and if the movie had been like this novel I doubt it would be regaled as it is today.

Billy is also given a lot more depth in the novel. Here Billy is expressly described as a shaman, going into trances and seeing the ghosts of his ancestors in the jungle. There’s a vaguely psychedelic scene where he stands on the ruins of a Mayan temple and experiences an extended trip into prehistory. Molette implies that the Predators have visited the Earth in the past, and shamans have been the only ones to stop them. As in the film Billy’s the first to realize that the thing hunting the team is not human, but here in the novel the alien has the same realization about Billy, that he’s the only one that knows an alien is following them.

It all leads to the same finale, with the individual deaths playing out mostly the same as in the film, though again the Predator kills solely with its spear rather than an arsenal of exotic weaponry. After making Anna “get to da choppa,” Dutch stages his solo war on the Predator, here too accidentally discovering that mud makes him invisible to the alien’s sight. Also Molette points out that Dutch goes into his final combat nude, which really brings home the savage, primordial nature of the conflict. And Molette makes clear something the film only implies, that Dutch has appropriated Billy’s mantle as the shaman-warrior who must kill the alien.

Speaking of that early action scene in the terrorist compound, I read somewhere that it cost so much to stage that the producers had to scuttle the planned finale with Dutch storming the alien’s ship. The novelization obviously doesn’t have any concerns with budget, so here Dutch does actually track the Predator back to its spaceship after he’s wounded it in their battle (in the novel he hurts it by lobbing a grenade at it). The Predator’s death is super goofy, though; as it hobbles into its ship, Dutch snatches up its dropped spear and hurls it, impaling the Predator just as it enters the doorway…and then the spaceship explodes!

The film ends with a memorable shot of a silent Arnold sitting in “da choppa” as it takes off, Anna by his side (and the black helicopter pilot, by the way, is Kevin Peter Hall, who played the Predator in the film). Molette extends this a bit from Anna’s point of view, having it that she’s fallen in love with Dutch after this awful experience and plans to be with him, no matter what.

This novelization is interesting mostly as a curiosity piece, just to see how many changes the Predator and its details went through between the script stage and the final film. In every regard I find the film to be stronger, and I’d wager that most every other reader would feel the same. Something just feels “off” about this novelization, like it’s half complete or missing something. Again though I don’t think this is all Molette’s fault, as likely the script he’d been handed had a lot of issues of its own.

MIA Hunter #5: Exodus From Hell

MIA Hunter #5: Exodus From Hell, by Jack Buchanan
February, 1986 Jove books

The MIA Hunter series gets another shot in the arm with its latest version of “Jack Buchanan,” who turns out to be none other than our old friend Chet Cunningham of the Penetrator series. Cunningham’s prose here is a little more polished than that earlier series, but make no mistake there’s still his patented sadism and characters who do bizarre things with little explanation.

As I’ve mentioned before this series is very repetitive. Each novel is basically the same as the one that came before, only the minor details are different. And what with the repetitive story angle and the revolving cast of journeyman ghostwriters (most of whom only stuck around for two novels or so), there’s no continuity or any sense of a building narrative. It’s just Mark “MIA Hunter” Stone once again sneaking into ‘Nam to break out some prisoners of war, along with a team of natives and his ersthwhile partners Hog Wiley and Terrance McLoughlin.

Actually that’s not fully true. This time Stone goes into Cambodia, not Vietnam. Already then the novel is worlds different from its predecessors. Okay, enough sarcasm. The country-change doesn’t make much difference at all. What’s funny though is that Stone and his team have freed the POWs within the first forty pages of the novel; Exodus From Hell is really about Stone and his team’s long journey back through Cambodia as they try to avoid enemy patrols, pick up a missionary (who is of course gorgeous) and her flock of orphans, and even encounter pygmies.

The reason they have to hoof it through Cambodia is because Stone’s helicopter is destroyed after they free the POWs. Speaking of which it’s here that Cunningham gets to unleash his trademark sadism, as one of the prisoners, Patterson, relishes the opportunity to mess up the camp commander pretty royally, basically butchering the guy. But after this pretty great opening scene the novel settles into more of an adventure-fiction flair, with the team trying to survive the elements.

Cunningham also indulges in his other trademark, the infrequent stream-of-consciousness material where he can jump into a character’s mind and go from topics A to Z in the course of a single sentence. He does so here with Patterson, who as we meet him is strung up in the camp for some minor infraction; he does so again later in the novel with Hillburton, the other freed POW, one who is close to losing his sanity.

Another constant with this series is the endless onslaught of action. Exodus From Hell is no exception. It starts off pretty well, with the expected skirmish as Stone frees the prisoners and then makes his escape, but gradually the book wears you down with nonstop scenes of Stone et al bumping into some Camodian (or Vietnamese) patrol and getting into yet another firefight. Stone by the way uses an SPAS-12 combat shotgun this time, newly introduced by Cunningham, as in the past Stone basically stuck with a CAR-15. However Cunningham plays it conservative with the many action scenes, not dwelling on the violence and gore as he did in say Bloody Boston.

One of the many goofy charms of Cunningham’s entries in the Penetrator series was hero Mark Hardin’s frequent encounters with nubile women, most of whom would throw themselves into his arms with almost a reckless abandon. It actually happens here as well, with Stone scoring with that missionary gal, an actual virgin named Mary Eve who has taught orphans in Cambodia for the past decade. The scene where she gives herself to Stone – while the rest of the team is apparently just a few feet away – is especially chuckle-inducing, mostly because it’s just so hamfisted and hard to believe. But at least Cunningham put some sex in the book, a rarity in the sterile, gung-ho world of ‘80s men’s adventure novels.

There’s a definite air of desperation as Stone and his men realize they’re up shit creek without a paddle. Cunningham works some tension into the narrative as they begin the dangerous journey back the way they came, and along the way they take a lot of damage. Loughlin gets hurt early on, but since he’s more cipher than man you quickly forget about it. But Hog really gets hurt, to such a point that they have to construct a rig to carry his massive frame – all of which adds to the futility of their plight.

The action scenes, while too frequent, are nevertheless well done, with Stone and team using their better equipment and training to take on much larger forces. Cunningham also jumps often into the POVs of the native guides, in particular Sen, a Cambodian woman who serves as interpreter before Mary Eve arrives on the scene. (Another hallmark of Cunningham’s is the sudden dropping of characters with no warning or reunion, as if he forgets about them before finishing the manuscript; Sen just drops out of the tale and we keep waiting for her to return but she never does.)

I think Cunningham also wrote Stone: MIA Hunter, ie the unnumbered volume of the series that was published after volume #6, but I’m not sure. Who all served as “Jack Buchanan” is something of a mystery, and it would be great if series honcho Stephen Mertz could someday shed light on it.

What In The Hell Is "The Rat Bastards?" By Len Levinson

As I mentioned in my review of The Last Buffoon, Len Levinson's WWII series The Rat Bastards has been released in Ebook format, and all 16 novels in the series are available on Amazon. Back in April Len sent me the below essay, all about the creation of the series and his thoughts on it. As he mentions, the essay was for a Rat Bastards blog that Premier publishing was going to launch, but here we are four months later and the blog has not materialized.

So, with Len’s permission, it’s my pleasure to post the article here. Enjoy!

WHAT IN THE HELL IS "THE RAT BASTARDS?"
by Len Levinson

THE RAT BASTARDS is the overall title of a series of 16 novels by John Mackie (one of my 22 pseudonyms), originally published in paperback by Jove beginning 1983, and describing the progress and regress of a U.S. Army platoon of oddballs and badasses in the South Pacific during World War Two, starting with the landings on Guadalcanal, and continuing to Bougainville and New Guinea.

A few weeks ago my literary agent Barbara Lowenstein requested that I write a blog about THE RAT BASTARDS, which recently got resurrected thanks to her efforts, published by Premier as e-books under my real name, Len Levinson, available at Amazon.

Barbara said e-books sell better when authors go on the internet and hustle. So get ready, ladies and gentlemen - here's comes my digitized cyberspace hustle:

Actually, I could never in a million years hustle THE RAT BASTARDS as well as paperback jacket copy on #1:

Start with an insane sergeant with a genius for leadership and a lust for blood. Add a bank robber. A racketeer. A guy who goes berserk on the battlefield. A gun-happy Texan. A silent Apache. A movie stuntman who swings from trees. Put them all together and you have the killing machine known as:

THE RAT BASTARDS

You can't kill 'em, and you can't take 'em alive

How did a mild-mannered, philosophical dude, namely me, get involved with such a savage, bloody project?

I confess that I created and wrote THE RAT BASTARDS because I'm fascinated by war, probably because I was raised on it, only four years old in Massachusetts when Germany invaded Poland, and six when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

As my mind formed, it filled with news of war, including regular reports of local men killed and wounded. Often it seemed that the Allies were losing, and America would become occupied by fanatical Nazi murderers and/or diehard Japanese head-choppers.

The home front was not disconnected from the war. Metal and paper collections were common, ration books issued, air raid drills regularly occurring in schools, women working in munitions factories, and victory by no means certain. An atmosphere of desperation pervaded the land, intensified by many serious reversals, including one-third of the U.S. battle fleet demolished at Pearl Harbor.

Not only was World War Two impacting me daily, my father was a World War One veteran, having served with the famed Second Division in six major battle engagements, and wounded at Chateau-Thierry. A two-inch diameter sunburst scar on the left side of his forehead near his temple was obvious to his dying day.

We lived together alone, my mother having passed on. Pops managed our apartment like a barracks, he the sergeant and I the private. As I grew older, I read many articles and books about war, trying to make sense of how and why nations went to war, and how and why soldiers could bring themselves to kill total strangers.

I enlisted in the Army at age 19, during the Korean War, because I wanted the G.I. Bill for college. Peace talks were underway at Panmunjon, so I assumed the war would end officially soon, and I'd enjoy a peaceful military career in some exotic post like Tokyo, wearing my snazzy Ike jacket, surrounded by beautiful women.

Instead, we 'cruits were taught that North Koreans and Chicoms were treacherous, the ceasefire wouldn't last, and we'd better pay attention to instructors because our next assignments probably would be the front line in Korea, with actual bullets whizzing through the air, and artillery shells exploding nearby.

Bayonet attacks had been fairly common in Korea. During bayonet practice, it occurred to me that physically stronger soldiers probably would prevail. Not very muscular myself, I concluded with dismay that I'd almost certainly get killed by a bayonet in the guts, instead of attending college.

During training I fired .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, threw live hand grenades, became semi-deafened occasionally by artillery blasts, followed huge, lumbering tanks into mock attacks, and crawled across the muddy infiltration course at night, live machine gun fire overhead. I learned that war was not at all glorious, but dirty, noisy, bloody, brutal and grotesque for frontline soldiers.

Sergeants thoroughly indoctrinated us in the combat mentality. Often I fantasized about killing people, or about me getting machine gunned, or blown to smithereens by an artillery shell. Soldiers were indoctrinated to follow orders instantly, without thinking. I fell in line like virtually all 'cruits, because hellhole stockades seemed far worse.

I'm convinced that the threat of harsh punishment actually deters crime, because it firmly controlled us young men pumped to our eyeballs with hormones, trained to excel in mayhem. I lived in fear of going to the stockade, where a newcomer would be warmly welcomed with a blanket party, in which a blanket would be thrown over him, and everybody beat and kicked the blanket, while guards looked the other way. I personally met soldiers who'd been in stockades and confirmed these practices.

After training I was assigned to the 53rd Infantry Regiment in Alaska. Around six months later, I got transferred to the 4th Engineers, who were combat engineers, constantly training to build and blow up bridges in hotspots, and laying and detecting minefields, often at night. The British call such soldiers sappers.

Soldiers in Alaska constantly were reminded forcefully that we sat only 20 minutes jet time from Siberia, therefore a Russian parachute division or two could drop on us at any moment, so we'd better stay ready to ride trucks into the tundra and fight.

Incessant frenzied preparation for imminent conflict produced lots of anxious young guys with rifles running about the landscape. I too became highly stressed, and one evening got involved in an argument with a soldier from Buffalo, New York, who was built like a buffalo, and getting on my nerves, leading to an actual fistfight in a quonset hut at Fort Richardson.

I landed the first hard punch, which rocked him on his heels. If I had possessed the true killer instinct, I would have zeroed in for the kill, but as half-baked intellectual, became amazed at the sight of him backpedaling, trying to clear his head. I thought: Wow - did I really hit him that hard?

As I marvelled at my own strength, the buffalo regained full consciousness and proceeded to knock me out, causing headaches for around a month.

During my three-year enlistment, I met many veterans of World War Two still on active duty. One of my sergeants had survived the Bataan Death March. After a few beers, or during chow while on maneuvers, sometimes old sergeants told stories. All were very tough guys. Many actually had killed people. I admired them greatly and still do.

After mustering out, I continued reading about war. When I became a novelist, naturally I wanted to write a war novel. My first was DOOM PLATOON by Richard Gallagher, published by Belmont-Tower, set during the Battle of the Bulge, which led to THE SERGEANT by Gordon Davis, six novels published by Zebra and Bantam, about a sergeant in the European Theater of Operations, based on memories of my former sergeants and of Walter Zacharius, President of Zebra, who'd been a sergeant himself and participated in the liberation of Paris.

After THE SERGEANT, I felt inspired to write THE RAT BASTARDS, which became a massive cauldron of jungle fighting, swamps, malaria, snakes and leeches, told from viewpoints of both American and Japanese soldiers and officers, including guest appearances by historical figures such as Major General Alexander Vandegrift and Lieutenant General Harakuchi Hyakatuke. I tried to be fair to all sides and true to history, while recognizing that history fundamentally is a succession of ironies and black comedies illustrating the laws of karma.

My editor was classy Damaris Rowland, only woman I ever met who truly understood male-oriented action-adventure fiction, perhaps because her father had been an officer on General George Patton's staff, and she grew up on army posts all over the world.

As I scan THE RAT BASTARDS now, the novels seem incredibly ferocious, gory and profane, but I persist in believing that's the truth of war for ordinary soldiers at the front. No matter how mild-mannered a soldier, regardless of background, he soon learns that he needs to become extremely vicious ASAP if he wants to remain alive. Nice guys cannot possibly survive hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, knives, axes, shovels, rocks, and anything else lying around.

Consequently, THE RAT BASTARDS continually presents blood, guts and curses flying through the air, along with occasional heads and other body parts, amidst deafening artillery explosions, and machine gun and small arms fire, and many Japanese night-time suicide attacks.

I never wanted to sanitize or glamorize war, but still believe that unheralded acts of heroism are common at the front, because soldiers tend to look out for each other. They also develop sardonic senses of humor, rather than go bonkers.

Sometimes G.I. Joes get wounded and land in hospitals, where they encounter women nurses who themselves are traumatized to varying degrees by never-ending streams of mutilated men. Close contact among lonely young guys and gals under pressure inevitably explodes into occasional fleeting, bittersweet romance amidst the horrors of war, probably better than no romance at all.

During World War Two, Americans didn't refer to the Japanese as the Japanese. We referred to them as Japs and hated them intensely for Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March, among other atrocities. Meanwhile, the Japanese considered Americans weaklings, cowards and fiends, while viewing themselves as honorable warriors in the service of their Emperor, whom they believed was an actual god.

For the sake of accuracy, wrathful attitudes are reproduced faithfully in THE RAT BASTARDS, which might jolt sensibilities of gentle souls who believe everyone should love everyone.

Be advised: these are not bedtime stories for little girls. They're rough and raw as the Pacific War itself, and represent my supreme effort as a World War II novelist. I received many fan letters, but paperback sales weren't exactly terrific, perhaps because no advertising or PR campaign at all.

I'm very grateful to Premier for republishing all 16 of THE RAT BASTARDS. I hope these novels will go viral and make me a millionaire, so I can relocate to Paris and date dancers from the Follies Bergere.

Individual titles:

#1. HIT THE BEACH
#2. DEATH SQUAD
#3. RIVER OF BLOOD
#4. MEATGRINDER HILL
#5. DOWN AND DIRTY
#6. GREEN HELL
#7. TOO MEAN TO DIE
#8. HOT LEAD AND COLD STEEL
#9. DO OR DIE
10. KILL CRAZY
11. NIGHTMARE ALLEY
12. GO FOR BROKE
13. TOUGH GUYS DIE HARD
14. SUICIDE RIVER
15. SATAN'S CAGE
16. GO DOWN FIGHTING

According to original jacket copy:

Tanks can't stop them. Malaria only slows them down. The enemy fears them. Their own army hates them. A stockade can't keep them penned up. They steal, lie, kill, never respect the rules. On the battlefield, you'd better steer clear of ...
THE RAT BASTARDS

The Guardians #1

The Guardians #1, by Richard Austin
February, 1985 Jove Books

Here's a series I was aware of but just never read. An example of the post-nuke pulps that sprouted up in the mid-'80s, The Guardians was written by Victor Milan, under the house name "Richard Austin;" it's my understanding Milan wrote the first fourteen volumes, before being replaced by some still-unknown ghostwriter(s) for the last two volumes. But this is a post-nuke pulp more in the paramilitary vein of Gold Eagle books, lacking the crazed fun of Doomsday Warrior or Phoenix. In fact this first book's a bit too dour and repetitive for its own good.

Taking place in the early 1990s, this first novel sets the stage for the ensuing volumes. The Guardians are a four-man team comprised of hotshots from the four branches of the US military, their mission to safeguard the president in the event of a nuclear war. Headed up by Billy McKay, a gruff Marine, they supercede the authority of the Secret Service and military brass. They are even beyond the authority of the president; their mission is ingrained Terminator-like into them, and they will overcome any obstacle to achieve it.

The other members are Casey Wilson, a laid-back Air Force top gun, Sloan, a Navy hotshot who actually outranks McKay but who has taken a junior position in the Guardians, and finally Rogers, an Army green beret who has as much covert ops experience as McKay. POV-wise Milan mostly stays with McKay, with the occasional jump to one of the other Guardians. Actually Milan POV-hops throughout the novel, from paragraph to paragraph, which is something I guess I just have to get used to in this genre, and who knows, maybe someday I will.

In this first novel the shit hits the fan as Russia, after losing a conventional war, launches a nuclear strike on the US. But rather than the immediate insanity that would ensue in a Ryder Stacy novel, Milan instead has the structure of the US government remain in place. In other words, we don't get roving gangs of leather-clad street punks or mutants or whatever. The survivors do panic, and the novel opens with McKay blasting away civilians who, in their terror after the catastrophe, attempt to storm the White House, but all in all the novel lacks the manic, OTT nature I prefer in the post-nuke genre. It's all just so depressingly "realistic," which again harkens back to those dour Gold Eagle books.

The Guardians get the president out of the White House and onto the road in a trio of advanced armored personal carriers. Get used to them, because these damn things are basically the sole setting for the rest of the novel. Pretty much the entirety of Guardians #1 takes place inside one of these "Super Commandos" as the Guardians escort the president over the blasted wastelands of the United States. Their destination: a fortress in the midwest known as Heartland, where the president can safely guide the US into recovery. To get there though they will have to deal with bandits, traitorous National Guard soldiers, and the CIA.

Milan works a larger threat into the storyline with the presence of a shadowy Russian type who has already conquered Europe. We learn in brief snatches that this man controls the CIA and has even brought the USSR in tow (Russia was hammered by the US's retaliatory nuclear strike, by the way). Now he wants the president, preferably alive, so he can bring the US to heel. This lends the novel a much-needed comic book sort of vibe, because otherwise it's hard going.

As mentioned, Guardians #1 is very repetitive. There are so many scenes of our heroes sitting around in their APC as they head for their destination. The action scenes, too, are kind of repetitive, and even worse I found some of them hard to follow. Milan also has a tendency to write these sequences like military fiction, again playing up a "real world" vibe. But nothing stands out. In fact there are two scenes where an armored helicopter attacks the APCs, and both scenes are pretty much identical. The only highlight is the climatic assault on a high school overrun by sadistic National Guard troops.

The heroes themselves suffer as well, a bit too bland to care about. McKay is the only memorable one, which is understandable given that he takes on the brunt of the narrative. His sentiments throughout the book mimic those of the reader, as he tries to figure out why the hell the Guardians were put together -- not to mention from all walks of the military. Why in the world would you need a ship's captain for a drive across the midwest? The Guardians make their journey with a detachment of Secret Service agents, all of whom bicker with the "show boating" Guardians. We are reminded, again and again and again, that there's a lot of rivalry between the two groups, and after a while you just get sick of it.

Anyway, not a very enjoyable book, but at least ensuing volumes appear to be more entertaining -- and more importantly, get out of the limited setting of this first installment. Milan by the way is still churning out men's adventure novels; indeed he is actually now writing for Gold Eagle itself! I've read reviews of his other books in the genre and they all sound up my alley, so I'm guessing this first volume was just a bit of a misstep as Milan tried to find his footing.

MIA Hunter #4: Mountain Massacre

MIA Hunter #4: Mountain Massacre, by Jack Buchanan
October, 1985 Jove Books

Joe Lansdale turns in another volume of the MIA Hunter series, one that gives double bang for your men's adventure buck: in addition to the customary Rambosploitation of the series itself, you also get the added bonus of ninjas! Not only that, but Mountain Massacre even borrows a page from Apocalypse Now, in that hero Mark Stone's mission is to "exterminate with extreme prejudice" an American soldier, once an MIA himself, who's now a rogue psychopath who commands his own army in Vietnam...an army of ninjas.

Unfortunately the novelty soon wears thin. What could've been a cool bit of WTF? insanity instead turns quickly into tedium, with ninja battle after ninja battle after ninja battle. My understanding of this series is that it was overseen by Stephen Mertz, who a la Lyle Kenyon Engel would send his ghostwriters an outline of each book along with requirements. (For example, per Michael Newton, who penned the first two volumes of the series, each "Jack Buchanan" was always required to insert martial arts into the book). So I'm guessing then that Mertz's outline for this book must've been "Feature ninjas," and Lansdale, after belting back a shot or three of Jack Daniels, grumbled, "Fine. You want ninjas? You'll get 'em."

Anyway, we open with Mark Stone and his two-man team already on a mission in 'Nam, freeing a handful of MIAs. Strangely, Lansdale does not tie up any of the loose ends from his previous volume -- when last we saw Stone in the US, his files were nearly stolen by the CIA and his girlfriend was in hiding. This time out Lansdale doesn't cover any of that, and indeed Stone spends the duration of the novel in Vietnam. At any rate he frees this latest batch of MIAs, but while escaping through the jungle Stone's team is attacked by "bandits." Bandits who are covered head-to-toe in black, with only their eyes visible. Bandits who, despite being armed with assault weapons, choose instead to attack with swords and other bladed weaponry. In short, ninjas.

Stone returns to Bangkok, where he is again attacked, this time by CIA agents, who try to kill him. Of course they prove little match for Stone, who immediately thereafter is given his latest mission -- contacted by an elderly billionaire named Porter who has journeyed here from the US, having gotten wind through his own sources that the famous MIA Hunter Mark Stone is here. Porter's son was a high-ranking officer during the Vietnam war who was marked as an MIA, but was never freed. He also never appeared on any official registries and seems to have disappeared. However the old man believes that his son now commands his own army within Vietnam, one which he is using to cause much chaos and bloodshed.

Putting it all together, Stone suspects that Porter Jr. must be the mysterious leader of the "bandit army" which runs rampant through the jungles of 'Nam and Laos. Stone has seen their destruction first-hand; the ninjas attack villages and kill everyone, even the children and the elderly. Their leader is swathed in mystery, but it is believed he is a practicioner of the "dark arts," ie a ninja, and that he has taught his followers the same skills. Also, his army is quite large, and the leader himself is surrounded by "the two hundred," the top ninja fighters at his disposal, warriors who are claimed to be more demons than men.

Stone and his two stalwart companions (big bruiser Hog Wiley and the still-boring Terrance Loughlin) put together another team of Laotian freedom fighters and head once more into the jungle. Their guide is Kong Le, himself a martial arts swordsmaster; not only that, but his son happens to be one of the ninjas, and Kong Le has sworn to kill the boy, to purge the evil from him. So there's all sorts of stuff going on in Mountain Massacre, but it's soon lost in the shuffle of endless fight after endless fight.

In my opinion, there's only one author who can write endless action scenes and keep them entertaining, and that's David Alexander. Lansdale's action scenes get very boring after a while, the death knell for any action writer. Seriously, as soon as Stone and his team enter the jungle, it's like they're attacked by ninjas on practically every other page. And what makes it stupid is the ninjas keep coming at them with swords, running right into the blasting CAR-15 fire of Stone and his comrades. What makes it even more stupid is that the ninjas themselves carry firearms! But for reasons Lansdale skirts over -- something about a magic potion the ninjas drink, which they believe instills them with invincibility -- the ninjas just continue to run pell-mell right into blazing death, their swords obliviously held high.

The book's a bit over 190 pages, and I don't exaggerate when I say that about 150 of those pages are comprised of action scenes. Porter the insane commander doesn't appear until the final third; Stone and team, on their trek through the jungle, comes upon another village destroyed by Porter's bandit army. One of the men there is a young punk who hopes to join the bandits -- we learn that Porter boosts his army by regularly scouting the various villages and taking away those young men who show some fighting prowess. After getting his ass kicked by Loughlin, the kid agrees to show Stone and company where the hidden bandit retreat is located.

Lansdale brings the otherwise-idyllic retreat to life; in pure Kurtz fashion Porter lives in the ruins of an ancient Buddhist monastery deep in the jungles of 'Nam. Stone launches a dawn raid on the place, but he and his small squad of soldiers are no match for Porter's army of hundreds. Soon enough the whole lot of them is captured, and, in pure Willard fashion, Stone is eventually taken down from his chains for a one-on-one meeting with Porter. You can almost hear the Doors on the soundtrack as Porter tries to sway Stone over to his side -- there's even a swipe on the New Testament as Porter escorts Stone over to a window and gestures at the domain below, telling Stone that all of it could be his if he would just come over to his side.

We can all guess what Stone's answer is. This leads to the thankfully final action sequence in the novel, as he and his men are able to escape from their dank and rundown cell. Once more we're off into ninja-blasting carnage as hordes of the bastards race pell-mell to their doom, swords obvliviously held high. However the man-to-man fight between Stone and Porter is well done, devolving into a flat-out brawl amid the blazing ruins of the temple. It's all very cinematic and indeed the novel appropriates the feel of say Apocalypse Now as made by the Cannon Group, with action choreography by Sho Kosugi.

Curiously, the satirical touch of his previous installment is gone, and for the most part Lansdale plays it straight throughout Mountain Massacre. Also, it got annoying that every single character had to say Stone's full name nearly every time they spoke to him. I will agree that "Mark Stone" is a cool name, but seriously, do characters have to repeat it every other sentence? I figure this must've been another of the "requirements" for the ghostwriters of the series; Newton also poked fun at the tendency of repeating Stone's name in his 1989 book How to Write Action-Adventure Novels. Another funny thing is that Stone and his fellows are here reduced to the level of animals; I lost count of how many times he or his pals would "growl" something instead of just plain old saying it.