Random Movie Reviews, Volume 19

More Jim Kelly movies: 

Mellinda (1972): I’ve long known about this movie, given that it was Jim Kelly’s first appearance in a film, and reportedly it’s this role that got him cast in the following year’s Enter The Dragon, which of course made Kelly a star. Melinda is also notable for featuring Rockne Tarkington, who was originally cast in the role Jim Kelly would ultimately play in Enter The Dragon; I seem to recall reading, when I was obsessed with all things Bruce Lee twenty-some years ago, that Bruce Lee didn’t get along with Rockne Tarkington, so Tarkington was fired and Jim Kelly got the gig. 

Well anyway, despite this pedigree Melinda has apparently been hard to see for many years. It’s curious the film isn’t more well-known, as it’s actually pretty good – even if Jim Kelly’s barely in it. He only appears in the first few minutes, then disappears until the last several minutes of the picture, where he returns for the final fight sequence. It’s clear why he would’ve gotten the Enter The Dragon role from this, given his martial arts skills on display throughout, but what’s real weird is that Rockne Tarkington got the offer first; Tarkington, who has a lot more screentime than Kelly in Melinda, does absolutely no fighting in the course of the film, and indeed is beaten up by various people! He plays a former pro footballer who is in deep with the mob, but he’s a coward and he simpers more than he snarls – curious then that he would be the first choice for Bruce Lee’s film, and not Jim Kelly. 

Loglined as “Your kind of black film,” Melinda stars Calvin Lockhart as a smooth-talking DJ on a soul music radio station who takes “I’m black and I’m proud” to a whole ‘nother level. His character, Frankie J. Parker, is one of the more arrogant “heroes” you’ll meet in a film, with his rapid-fire come-on lines and endless “I’m cool, can you dig it?” patter, but somehow Lockhart manages to be likable. The film opens with Frankie sparring with his karate teacher, played by Jim Kelly naturally, and it’s all sort of like that “urban black karate dojo” Jim Kelly briefly appeared in when his character was introduced in Enter The Dragon. But I love this stuff because it gives the impression that people just beat the shit out of each other in these inner-city karate classes, then laughed it off and hit the showers. 

Kelly doesn’t have much in the way of dialog, but one can clearly see a star in the making. But as mentioned he’s gone soon and Lockhart carries the picture, doing a fine job of it. The story goes that Frankie meets the titular Melinda (a very attractive Vonetta McGee), a hotstuff babe new in town who initially seems immune to Frankie’s come-on patter, but soon enough they’re getting into some R-rated hankie pankie. Ah, the days of nudity in action films. Meanwhile some hulking black stooge watches them through the friggin’ peephole of the door to Frankie’s apartment, apparently able to see the naughty action clearly enough that he begins to, uh, pleasure himself. It’s true love between Frankie and Melinda, but it’s doomed, and within a day or two Frankie’s world comes crashing down and Melinda is gone. 

It turns out Melinda was involved with high-level Syndicate type (Paul Stevens, whose high-level Syndicate type character is given the very un-villainous name “Mitch!”), and he wants her back – particularly something she hid from him. This brings a mystery angle to Melinda, or perhaps a hardboiled vibe would be a more apt description, as soon Frankie’s being accosted by various enemies (most memorably by a busty white chick in a see-through knit top who tries to take him somewhere at gunpoint), and he learns that some of his supposed friends were involved with Melinda’s fate. In particular Tank, (Tarkington), who turns out to be a “business associate” of Mitch, though Tank’s really into it for the easy women. 

The film seems to have had a nice budget and the acting throughout is good; an hour in none other than Ross “Wonder Women” Hagen shows up, delivering a stand-up performance as Mitch’s top henchman. The way Hagen effortlessly handles the role is fun to see and another reminder that the dude should’ve become a much bigger star. Rosalind Cash also features as Frankie’s ex-girlfriend, Terry, and while her role starts off as thankless (spatting with Frankie when she sees him with Melinda), she ends up having a much larger part in the proceedings, with an especially memorable bit where Terry poses as Melinda and goes into a bank to get into Melinda’s lockbox. Initially I felt this part was dragging on too long – the suspense being whether Terry’s guise would be uncovered – but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the film, with Terry abruptly going ballistic on the bank manager. 

But then that might be why Melinda apparently didn’t resonate with audience of the day…it’s a bit too long and drawn out, coming in at nearly 2 hours. Also I think the title couldn’t have helped matters; maybe if it had been titled “Black Rage” or something similar, it might have resonated more. I mean, “Melinda” certainly doesn’t scream “blaxploitation” to me, so I’d wager this mis-titling factored into the film’s fade into obscurity. Then again, they named the main villain “Mitch,” so clearly titles and names weren’t a strong suit of the producers. This is a shame, as overall I really enjoyed it – oh, and as mentioned Jim Kelly does return, towards the very end, bringing in his karate school to help Frankie kick some mobster ass. But given that Jim Kelly isn’t the star, he’s mostly in the background, knocking down various thugs while Frankie takes on the bigger villains. 

Death Dimension (1978): A year after Black Samurai was released, Jim Kelly reunited with director Al Adamson for another low-budget offering that was destined for drive-ins everywhere, though this one apparently didn’t even cause a ripple, as it’s relatively unknown. Even if it does co-star former 007 George Lazenby. It’s fitting that Lazenby and Kelly would appear in a movie together, as their careers were so similar: starting off strong, reduced to appearing in low-budget crap in just a few years. Kelly even did a Hong Kong chop-socky (below), same as Lazenby. Speaking of Bond, Harold “Oddjob” Sakata also features as the villain here in Death Dimension…the title of which, by the way, doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the plot per se. 

Why exactly Adamson didn’t do another Black Samurai film will have to be a mystery. Maybe he just didn’t want to pay Marc Olden for the rights. Whatever the reason, it’s unfortunate he didn’t, as Black Samurai, despite its faults, is worlds better than Death Dimension. This is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, with “boom mic” audio, lousy direction, and a “soundtrack” culled from library music LPs – same as Black Samurai was, but here the music is laughably at odds with the onscreen action. Like, “smooth dinner jazz” playing in the friggin’ climactic fight scene. 

Also like Black Samurai, Death Dimension was released a few years ago in uncut high definition, though the print is as expected grainy and faded (and also strangely enough it’s sourced from a German print, though we get the original English audio). There are none of the pseudo-Bond trappings of Black Samurai, which is real odd, given that this one co-stars a former Bond, but then who among us could understand the mind of Al Adamson. Instead, star Jim Kelly is here just a cop, one with a penchant for the martial arts, and he gets caught up in a case revolving around “The Pig,” aka main villain Sakata. Lazenby has a thankless role as Kelly’s boss, standing around in a low-budget “captain’s office” with a .38 holstered in the waistband of his pants and playing the straight man to Kelly. 

Very curiously, Jim Kelly doesn’t get much chance to shine in Death Dimension. All told, there is a muddled air to the film, as if everything were intentionally half-assed. Don’t get me wrong, Kelly still gives a fine performance – his natural charisma was enough to save pretty much any film – but the jive-talking hustler of earlier films has been replaced by a dude who is more prone to sit around and brood. His karate scenes are infrequent and poorly staged, though this isn’t Kelly’s fault; hell, the movie even ends with Kelly doing an abrupt jump kick toward the camera – a surreal moment in which the fourth wall is broken for absolutely no reason – and Adamson freezes the goddamn picture before Kelly’s leg is even fully extended. So it looks like Kelly’s practicing a new disco jump for the dancefloor. 

And yes, “disco;” we’re in the late ‘70s now, friends, though truth be told there’s nothing about Death Dimension that seems too “late ‘70s.” But that early-mid ‘70s spark is clearly lost; hell, Kelly’s afro is even smaller, as if he were getting ahead of the game for the more straight and reserved ‘80s. That said, he does sport the occasional track suit in this one, likely Adamson catering to the recently-released Game Of Death travesty that had been ushered into theaters that same year. 

As for the plot…well, I had a tough time figuring it out. The movie has a memorable opening, at least: a close-up of a doctor making an incision in the scalp of an attractive brunette, then implanting a chip of some sort in the incision and sewing her head back up. Apparently this is info pertaining to the evil Pig and his plans for nefariousness or whatnot. Meanwhile, Jim Kelly is a cop teaching other cops how to karate fight, but folks the movie’s so damn lame that Kelly’s character, Lt. Ash, doesn’t even take his own advice. His opening features him teaching students how to kick the gun out of someone’s hand…and this happens to Ash himself late in the movie – someone knocks his gun out of his hand. 

But this itself is an indication of how lame Death Dimension is. Okay, the guy who knocks aside Ash’s gun is a scar-faced black sadist named Tatoupa (Bob Minor), who – no spoilers – has killed someone Ash cares about. This happens midway through the flick, and Ash knows Tatoupa was the killer, given the signature killing move of a slashed throat, courtesy the special blade Tatoupa wears on his pinkie. Well anyway, the finale features Ash getting the drop on Tatoupa, the man who killed someone Ash cares about we’ll remember…and Ash puts a gun on him and tells him to freeze! And he’s standing so close to Tatoupa that Tatoupa just knocks the gun aside! I mean…wouldn’t Ash remember his own martial arts lesson and stand back a little? Or, more importantly, wouldn’t Ash just want to ice the fucker and not mess around with any “official cop business?” 

Such questions occurred to me, and many more besides. I’ve never been able to find anything positive written about Death Dimension, and now that I’ve finally seen the movie I understand why. To quote dialog from the movie itself: “It stinks!” Actually, “stinks” is a recurring word in the film, usually used in lame puns like, “Something stinks – and it’s coming from the Pig,” or something to that effect, but my hunches tell me the “stinks” line is an audio cue to Jim Kelly’s famous line in Enter The Dragon, of how ghettoes are the same all over the world: they stink. But then I could be wrong and it could just be a coincidence. 

Instead of having George friggin’ Lazenby team up with Kelly’s character and have the two handle the action together like a decade-early version of Lethal Weapon, Adamson instead gives “action co-lead” billing to some dude named Myron Bruce Lee (I kid you not), who portrays Ash’s old kung-fu pal who is a fellow cop ready to help take on the Pig. Lazenby is left on the sidelines for the most part, until an out-of-nowhere reveal in the final quarter that leaves the viewer scratching his or her (or its) head. Even this is handled ineptly; SPOILER ALERT, but Lazenby is abruptly outed as a villain…but instead of having Jim Kelly face off against him, it’s Myron Bruce Lee who takes him on. That said, we do get a humorous “fatality” when Lee’s character kicks Lazenby into a pool, and Lazenby’s character just happens to be holding an electrical cord, and Lazenby gamely contorts and twists his body in the pool as if he were being electrocuted. 

Otherwise folks, there’s not much to recommend Death Dimension. There is a bit of nudity, though, Adamson playing up to his drive-in audience expectations. Ash has a sultry girlfriend of indeterminate race who is attractive in a late ‘70s way and shows off her upper-body goods in a shower scene. But man, given that her part mostly entails lying in bed with Ash and telling him how much she loves him, the viewer can pretty much guess her fate. There’s also a random trip to some cathouse in Reno, and I’m assuming the gals who line up for Ash – likely yet another callback to Enter The Dragon, namely Kelly’s most memorable scene – are the real deal…but boy, they ain’t that attractive. At least Ash picks the prettiest one. Not that he does anything with her; the entire sequence seems to exist to pad the minutes, or for the posters at the drive-in to promise a visit to a brothel or something. Ash just goes into a room with the gal, leaves when her back is turned, scopes out the place…and politely leaves when he’s caught trespassing! Just a lame scene in a movie filled with lame scenes. 

The Tattoo Connection (1978): Released the same year as Death Dimension, and released as “Black Belt Jones II” in England, The Tattoo Connection is further proof of how far and how fast Jim Kelly’s star had wanted, just a few years after his debut. But as mentioned above, this is the same fate that befell George Lazenby. Truth be told, it’s a bit surprising that Kelly even made a movie in Hong Kong; I can’t believe Chinese audiences of the 1970s would have been very receptive to a film starring a black American. Indeed, that Kelly is black is made very apparent throughout The Tattoo Connection, with a girl at one point refusing to have sex with him precisely because he is black. 

This could explain why Jim Kelly is barely in the movie. Hell, it takes him fifteen minutes to even show up, and it’s like as soon as he’s onscreen they can’t get him off of it fast enough. I almost wonder if another version of the flick was shot without Jim Kelly in it at all. Supposedly he’s the star of the picture, but a little editing and a few new scenes and you could make an actor named Tan Tao-ling, who plays a sort-of villain named Tung Hao, the movie’s star. His character even has more of an arc; Tan Tao-ling opens the movie defending himself in kung-fu combat, harbors reservations about being a villain despite being a crime boss’s main thug, and has a change of heart in the movie’s climax. Jim Kelly meanwhile shows up fifteen minutes into the picture, has a couple random scenes, and doesn’t seem nearly as important to the plot. 

As for the plot, like Death Dimension I had no clue what it was about. The titular “tattoo connection” has hardly anything to do with the picture per se; there’s a part midway through where Jim Kelly, who plays a cop or troubleshooter or something, tracks down a gang member in Hong Kong due to the tattoos the man sports. But that’s it. Really the movie seems to be about a diamond smuggling operation, and Jim Kelly, who plays “Lucas” (though more often than not he’s just referred to as “the black guy”), is called in by an old pal to help sort things out. Or something. About the most positive thing I can say is that Jim Kelly dubs himself in the English version, but given that this is a Chinese picture his “sassy dialog” has been toned way down. But even dubbed Kelly’s onscreen charisma is apparent, and he gets more opportunity to play a typical role of his here than he did in the same year’s Death Dimension. 

For one, he smiles a lot more, and also he is clearly having fun. Given that this is a Hong Kong flick, the fight choreography is a lot better than probably any other Jim Kelly movie, with unbroken long shots of him kicking ass; none of the random close-ups and whatnot that ruined the choreography of so many American-made martial arts movies of the time. You can see where the film has been sped up occasionally, but otherwise Kelly holds his own with the Chinese fighters – one of whom happens to be Bolo Yeung, Kelly’s co-star in Enter The Dragon. Curiously, the producers make nothing of this, with Bolo playing a random thug; that said, he and Kelly do get in a fairly brutal fight in the film’s climax, giving us the matchup we were denied in Enter The Dragon. 

I also wonder if The Tattoo Connection was only produced for the international market. Meaning, if it even played in Hong Kong at all. This could explain how Jim Kelly got top billing – and also might explain the copious nudity, as if the filmmakers were catering to the US drive-in market. Now clearly there was nudity in Hong Kong films at the time, but not as much as you’d think in kung-fu movies of the era; not that I’m an expert on the subject, but at a conservative estimate I’d say I’ve seen hundreds of ‘70s kung-fu movies in my lifetime. I remember the days of scouring the racks in stores for kung-fu VHS tapes, and one of the first things I ever did “online” in the early ‘90s was to find people to trade kung-fu videos with. There were indeed chop-sockies that had lots of nudity, like for example the Bruce Li joint Image Of Bruce Lee (that’s me as “Joe909” in the linked review, btw), which is another one that could have been produced for the international market. There’s just as much nudity in The Tattoo Connection, mostly courtesy Japanese actress Nami Misaki, who plays a nightclub stripper named Nana and is one of the main villain’s kept girls, but who is secretly in love with Tung Hao. 

As with most Hong Kong chop-sockies, the soundtrack is lifted from countless uncredited sources. It’s very heavy on the jazz-funk trip, as with most soundtracks of this era; one track in particular I spotted was off Mandigo’s The Primeval Rhythm Of Life. (Once upon a time I had a kung-fu movie with music stolen from The Empire Strikes Back!) The soundtrack is humorously done at times, too, with mega-fuzz guitar blaring when we get sudden extreme close-ups of a person’s face. Overall this gives the movie that “bell-bottom fury” vibe I have always liked, yet at the same time the movie is plodding because it’s more focused on that friggin’ Tung Hao guy. Seriously, he’s the star of the film, and Jim Kelly essentially has a glorified walk-on role. I would love to know more about how he even got involved with the production, and I’m wondering if it’s a case where he was only on location for a few days, hence his relatively small screen-time. 

That said, there is still some fun stuff; like when Nana is tasked with getting Lucas “excited” and giving him a “new drug from America” that will cause him to have a fatal heart attack. Nana is the girl who earlier turned Lucas’s advances down because he was black, but she dutifully takes the job. Yet, no matter what movie he’s in, Jim Kelly is always ten steps ahead of his opponents, so he turns the tables on Nana, switching their drinks. The film seems to forget that the drug is fatal, though, as instead Nana just giggles a bunch and does another strip tease, showing off her very nice upper body for us. The actress even goes all the way with it, kissing Kelly – I bet this one got a lot of gasps in theaters if the movie played in Hong Kong. 

But it’s humorous because they expressly call out the very thing that would go unmentioned in an American film: when Lucas initially puts the moves on Nana, earlier in the film, she bluntly tells him she won’t do it “because you’re black.” What’s also funny is that once she’s said this, it’s like the cat has been let out of the bag; from there on out, Lucas is constantly referred to as “the black guy.” Even the white guy who initially starts off the picture as Lucas’s best buddy starts referring to him as “that black guy!” But Jim Kelly takes it all in stride; he even refers to himself as “a sexy young black man” later in the flick, when Nana’s been dosed by her own drug. However he doesn’t score; the film wants to have a fairy tale happy ending for Nana and her beloved, Tung friggin’ Hao, so Lucas expressly notes that he and Nana haven’t gone all the way together. 

At least he gets to show off his karate skills, particularly in the end. Well, first of all the climax gets off to a bad start, with Lucas lured to a freighter where he’s beaten up and captured. One of the few times you see someone get the better of Jim Kelly in one of his movies. Then he’s let loose and, suddenly shirtless and wearing black pants, he picks up where Bruce Lee left off at the end of Enter The Dragon, even taking up a pole staff at one point and wielding it the same way Lee did. One thing missing though is Jim Kelly’s trademark “OOOO-EEEE!” karate yells; the fights are dubbed standard chop-sockey style, with a lot of grunts and screams, and it doesn’t sound like Kelly dubbed himself in the fights. 

Overall, The Tattoo Connection was interesting to see, because I’ve wondered about it for years (and it’s always been hard to track down), but it was let down by the fact that Jim Kelly wasn’t in it nearly as much as he should have been. Again I would love to know more about the production of the film and whether it was actually released in Hong Kong. Whatever its origin, it clearly didn’t make much of an impact (so to speak), and from here on Kelly would only appear in supporting roles, before retiring from the movie business. A shame, really, and an indication of how short-sighted Hollywood was at the time. The guy should’ve been huge. 

Even if Chinese audiences of the ‘70s might not have been receptive to a black American star, it would appear that Jim Kelly is more embraced by modern-day Chinese. The other month I was at a place called Andretti’s, owned apparently by Mario Andretti, and it was one of those video game/restaurant places. There was a kung-fu video game there called like “Kung-fu vs Karate” or something, and it appeared to be a Chinese production. Sort of a Mortal Kombat deal, only without the gore. One of the characters you could pick was a clear Jim Kelly tribute, even sporting the same Afro, and of course it was this character I played as while I let my seven-year-old son kick my butt as a ninja. It goes without saying that in a real-world matchup Jim Kelly would’ve kicked that ninja’s ass. But I figured he’d also be kind enough to let a kid beat him.

Robert Lory R.I.P.

Some weeks back I was contacted by a person at a talent agency looking for contact information for Robert Lory – apparently someone was interested in purchasing the rights to one of Lory’s books. (Which book in particular I did not find out). The agency rep saw that I had interviewed Lory back in 2014 and could not find any contact info for him. I sent over the email address I had for Lory, noting that I had not heard from him since 2014. 

A few days later I received a response from the agency rep, stating that she had learned from “another blogger who interviewed him” that Robert Lory had passed away in February 2020. 

I have not found this information anywhere online, so whoever this other blogger was who learned of Lory’s death, he or she has not put the info on their blog…leading to the unintentional irony that this blog will be the one to break the unfortunate news. 

But man, Lory passed away over four years ago and no one even knew…that should be an indication of how under-the-radar men’s adventure and genre writers really are. It’s a shame, as I have enjoyed all of the novels I’ve read by Robert Lory, and think he was a fine writer deserving of a wider audience…and in fact this all has made me realize I need to get back to his Vigilante series.

The Lone Wolf #7: Peruvian Nightmare

The Lone Wolf #7: Peruvian Nightmare, by Mike Barry

July, 1974  Berkley Medallion

Boy, the title of this seventh Lone Wolf is no joke; this one’s truly a “nightmare,” even more surreal and fractured than the previous six volumes, with nutjob “hero” Burt Wulff shuffled from one bizarre situation to another with little setup or resolve. In fact he spends the majority of the text being taken into captivity by one group or another, ususally freed by some random act of fate. There is a dreamlike texture to the narrative, to the extent that I wonder if it is intentional on Malzberg’s part, even down to the title of the book, Peruvian Nightmare. 

Malzberg also plays some unusual tricks with time in this one, again furthering the “nightmare” vibe. Events will transpire, then we will go back to how they started, then we will have characters reacting to things that haven’t happened in the narrative yet, only learning later on how those events have occurred. The opening is a case in point: we meet Wulff as he’s being propositioned with an offer to run heroin across the border for a cool two hundred thousand. Wulff, we learn, has been a prisoner in a hotel in Lima, Peru for the past three days – a prisoner of syndicate bigwig Calabrese, who for reasons even Calabarese didn’t understand allowed Wulff to live at the denoument of the previous volume, sending Wulff off to some other country. 

That country has turned out to be Peru, and it won’t be until later in the book that we get the backstory on Wulff’s journey here. The narrative unfolds in such fractured fashion that it takes us a while to even learn the name of the guy looking to hire Wulff here in Peru: he calls himself Stavros, and he owns the hotel Wulff is a prisoner in. Stavros, we learn in the frequent sequences from his perspective, was a Nazi in WWII and now lives in Peru under an assumed Greek name, and he has worked with Calabrese over the years. But Stavros has gotten delusions of grandeur and misses his old days of Nazi power, deciding to start up his own drug line. And he wants Wulff to help him start it. 

So we have a recurring motif picking up from the previous volume: another old man who, for motives of his own, gives Wulff another chance at life. We learn from the many sequences from Calabrese’s point of view that the old Syndicate boss has realized his mistake and now wants Wulff dead – hence, Stavros is saving Wulff from the Calabrese thugs who will be coming for him. But why exactly Stavros would want Wulff, who has dedicated his life to blowing up the drug underworld, to transport pure uncut heroin across the Andes is something Malzberg doesn’t really elaborate on. But then, it’s just another dreamlike quirk in a novel filled with such quirks. 

The Lone Wolf is also a series filled with recurring themes and motifs; one that Barry Malzberg has done in the past, and does three separate times in Peruvian Nightmare alone, is a motif where one character holds a gun on another, and the two trade seemingly-endless “You aren’t going to shoot me/Oh yes I am going to shoot you” dialog, a running gag that always ends with Person B actually pulling the trigger and killing Person A. As mentioned, this happens three times in Peruvian Nightmare: with Calabrese, with Stavros…and with Wulff himself, in a finale sequence which seems to me Malzberg’s final word that his hero is the same as his villains, given that Wulff too toys with and teases his prey before killing him. 

But then, one reader’s “recurring thematic work” could be another reader’s “author lazily repeating himself as he meets his word count.” That accusation could also be levelled at Peruvian Nightmare, particularly given how Malzberg spends the first half of the novel trying to get the story started. We have the open with Wulff being offered the job by Stavros, then we have a flashback to how Wulff began his war on the drug world with overviews of the previous six installments, then we go back to how Wulff got to Peru, then we see how Wulff was initially approached by Stavros for the job. Only then do we pick up from the opening scene, but even then it’s a bumpy ride, with Wulff essentially a McGuffin who is exchanged from one group to another – Calabrese’s men trying to capture him and kill him, Stavros’s men trying to get Wulff up into the mountains so he can acquire the sack of uncut heroin and begin his journey north to transport it across the border. 

Regardless, The Lone Wolf is still a lot of fun, and certainly one of my favorite men’s adventure series, just because it’s so whacky and illogical. Even the action scenes have a strange dreamlike vibe. Like in the bit where we learn how Stavros approached Wulff: Wulff comes back to his hotel room, to find two thugs waiting there for him. They take out their guns, saying how they’re going to kill Wulff – one of the thugs randomly looking down the barrel of his own gun, as if this were a Loony Tunes cartoon or something. It gets even stranger, as Wulff manages to take down both thugs with his bare hands, and steal one of their guns, and meanwhile the two thugs have gotten “tangled” together on Wulff’s bed, and Wulff shoots at “the thing” they have become together, and “it” starts mewling and yelping after Wulff shoots “it.” I mean the entire series is just weird. 

And even after that, only then does Wulff notice that another person is sitting on the bed, this being Stavros; I mean the “little man” has been sitting right there on the bed this whole time, while Wulff was fighting and shooting the two thugs who became one entity after tangling up with each other on the bed, and Wulff only notices the little man is there when the man says something to Wulff. And what the man says is “I like your work,” which is a compliment I could extend to Barry Malzberg himself. It is incredible how out-of-bounds The Lone Wolf is, having nothing in common with the average men’s adventure novel yet somehow being an on-the-level spoof of the entire genre. 

Wulff loses his mojo a bit in this one, sort of shuffling from one incident to another, and another play on the titular “nightmare” is that the air is thin up in the Andes, adding to Wulff’s lack of clear thinking. This elicits another surreal “action scene,” where Wulff is on a bus filled with gasping (and puking) tourists who are trying to adjust to the thin Andean air as the bus takes them to the Incan ruins, and a thug smashes his way onto the bus, trying to shoot Wulff but missing because he too is suffering from the thin oxygen up here. But it’s really like this throughout: Wulff will be on his way somewhere, and someone will come out of the woodwork and try to kill him, and Wulff will manage to turn the tables. But otherwise Wulff himself is not the one who moves the narrative forward; he is cast more into the role of perpetual victim, thrust into one surreal situation after another – which, you guessed it, really plays up on that “nightmare” vibe. 

But this fractured, dreamlike vibe leads to something we’ve never had in The Lone Wolf: an appearance (via flashback) of Wulff’s fiance, whose murder set off Wulff’s war on the mob in the first volume. But even in that initial installment, the girl was dead as soon as the book began, and so far as I can recall we’ve never gotten any flashback material with her…until now. Randomly enough, Malzberg delivers a scene between the two, sixty-seven pages into this seventh volume, a dream sequence in which Wulff flashes back to a time when they discussed how Wulff both hated and loved being a cop, leading to an off-page sex scene. It’s strange that the scene is even here, but again it adds to the strange vibe. Or it’s more indication of Malzberg spinning wheels as he meets that word count; as further indication of this, we even get a ‘Nam flashback this time. 

Speaking of cops, we also have some stuff with Williams, Wulff’s former partner on the force; last we saw Williams, he’d been stabbed by a junkie. Now he’s out of the hospital but he’s still weak, and he wishes he could find Wulff to tell him that he, Wulff, was right – the system doesn’t work, etc. Malzberg as ever finds the opportunity to rant and rave about society in general and random things in particular; Peruvian Nightmare, in fact, features a strange bit where Wulff rages to himself how the shock systems in cars went to hell in the ‘50s…and mind you this ranting and raving occurs during an action scene. There is overall a bitter, dispirited air to The Lone Wolf, but whereas the similarly-downer vibe of Stark made for an equally-dispiriting read, Malzberg is a superior writer and there is more so an air of dark comedy to The Lone Wolf. 

I do get the feeling Malzberg had been to Peru, as he injects what appears to be real-world topical details into the sequences around the Incan ruins. But Mel Crair’s typically-great cover is misleading, as Wulff doesn’t get in a shootout right by the ruins themselves (and there’s no girl whatsoever for Wulff in the novel iself – the one on Crair’s cover doesn’t exist in the book). That said, Wulff does manage to blow up a car during one shootout. Malzberg’s “action scenes” are just as strange as ever, but this time the nihilistic “let’s stare at the corpses and ruminate on life” stuff has been toned down. Instead, the nightmarish effect of taking a life is more pronounced, with Wulff haunted throughot the novel by dreams of men he has killed. 

Not that this lends Wulff any humanity. Indeed, Malzberg seems to be at pains to illustrate how Wulff is just as vile as the “bad guys” he’s after. As mentioned, this is most demonstrated in the finale, in which Wulff taunts a man who is pleading for his life, just as villains Calabrese and Stavros did to their own victims earlier in the novel. The finale of Peruvian Nightmare features yet another of Calabrese’s thugs trying to kill Wulff, but the two end up stalking each other in the pitch-black darkness of a cliff in the Andes. The would-be killer loses his gun and spends a few pages pleading for his life with Wulff, begging that Wulff drop the whole thing and the two work together to survive their situation. But Wulff resolutely responds that he is indeed going to shoot the guy. It’s a bitter scene for sure, particularly given how Wulff, next morning, refuses to “connect” the voice he heard in the darkness with the corpse of the man he now sees…as if Wulff himself cannot face the inhuman killer he has become. One suspects this is the same process Calabrese and Stavros went through in their own journeys to villainhood. 

Even the end of the book rams this home; Wulff comes across an American helicopter pilot and bashes him in the face. “You didn’t have to do that,” whines the pilot, and the reader understands his point; a former Stavros employee, he has no reason to stay in Peru and would have taken Wulff out of the country without being bashed in the face. But then, Wulff states that he had trouble with another helicopter pilot in Cuba, and isn’t about “to make the same mistake” this time. 

Thus Peruvian Nightmare ends, with Wulff presumably on his way back to the United States – and meanwhile the subplot with Calabrese still stands, providing an effective framework into the next volume. Malzberg has developed another theme in that Calabrese seeks to regain his aggressive nature by killing Wulff, leading to a scene where Calabrese bangs his 38 year-old mistress (we’re informed he’s kept her for 15 years) and then starts thinking of Wulff and dreaming of getting hold of him. So yes, yet another dream within Peruvian Nightmare, more evidence of the surreal feeling of the novel – making it up on the fly or not, Barry Malzberg proves again and again in The Lone Wolf that he’s a gifted writer, and I continue to really enjoy this series.

Black Samurai #5: The Inquisition

Black Samurai #5: The Inquisition, by Marc Olden

November, 1974  Signet Books

The most low-key entry yet, this fifth volume of Black Samurai finds our hero Robert Sand trying to rescue the abducted daughter of Sand’s boss, former president William Baron Clarke. But as the narrative plays out, Sand spends more time investigating than he does rescuing. Also, the titular “Inquisition,” a radical group that has kidnapped Clarke’s daughter, isn’t much exploited, and there are less action scenes than any previous installment. Plus, Sand doesn’t even get any nookie. 

The villains are led by Dessalines, a black radical whose Inquisition is a terrorist group that captures wealthy people and holds them for ransom. They also live up to their name and put their captives under an inquisition, accusing them of capitalist crimes and whatnot in a kangaroo court, with a guilty verdict already in mind. (I think a lot of these former Inquisition freaks grew up to start the whole lawfare game.) Twenty-year-old Mary Baron Clarke is their latest victim, and the opening is an effective scene in which they kidnap her on the groups of her college in New York; Olden filters the scene through the perspective of two of Mary’s bodyguards, and we learn that one of them has developed a thing for the pretty young woman. 

It takes a bit for series hero Robert “The Black Samurai” Sand to appear. When we meet him he’s in Japan, where he’s testing himself against the emperor’s bodyguards, something he does regularly to keep himself in fighting prime. As if he doesn’t get enough real-world experience on the job! But then once again Marc Olden somehow manages to make Sand seem human, despite how superhumanly skilled he is. Plus we get some of the series’ mandatory black empowerment, as Sand finds himself squaring off against a racist Japanese who doesn’t believe a black American can be a true samurai. It goes without saying that Sand savagely corrects his way of thinking. 

Olden is also at pains to remind us that Robert Sand isn’t just a man of action; he does a fair bit of investigating in The Inquisition, even staying a few steps ahead of President Clarke in trying to guess what Dessalines is up to, and where Dessalines is keeping Mary. There’s also the respectful rivalry between Sand and Clarke’s top Secret Service man, Frank Pines – wow, a male secret service agent guarding a former president, imagine that! Oh and to continue with my topical real-world allusions, there is a part in this one where Sand, I kid you not, is shot in the head, but it’s a glancing blow that he miraculously survives due to having moved out of the path of the bullet in the nick of time. Sure, Sand doesn’t get up and yell “Fight! Fight! Fight!,” but I still thought it was a crazy synchronicity, given that I was reading this scene right around the time of the incidents in Butler, PA…which happened shortly after I posted a review of Butler! 

But then, Sand does relatively little fighting this time. He acts more as an investigator for the most part, working his way into the underworld to get a lead on Dessalines. The action, like the previous volume, is very urban, and one can almost hear the chocka-wocka wah-wah guitars in the soundtrack that plays in your mind as Sand takes on a roomful of black thugs early in the book; again Olden stresses how Sand is cautious here, uncertain of easy victory, despite being in a completely different league than his opponents. The only real struggle he faces is in Dessalines’ top two henchmen: Swahili, a hulking black fighter, and Machete, a greasy-haired Mexican sadist who enjoys using his titular weapon on prey. As ever with Olden we get lots of scenes with the villains and see these two brutally carrying out Dessalines’ orders on victims, but when it comes to their fight with Sand I didn’t feel that Olden exploited the potential very much. Same goes with Dessalines, whose confrontation with Sand in the finale is anticlimactic. 

As mentioned Sand goes without any tail this time, though Olden teases the opportunity: midway through the novel a female character named Michael Bianca is introduced, an investigative reporter who has a source in the Inquisition and is trying to break the story. We are told Michael is, of course, attractive, and also she’s feisty, and Olden seems to intimate that she and Sand will become an item, particularly given how Michael begins to care about Sand, even after only meeting him briefly. But nothing happens and Michael is another character who initially seems to have more narrative importance than she ultimately will. Sandy Baron Clarke also doesn’t feature much in the novel, other than infrequent cutovers to her panicked state as she sits alone in an Inquisition cell, but we do get the interesting note that she too has a thing for Robert Sand, though it is more of a crush on her part and Sand is seemingly unaware of it. 

As for Clarke himself, he appears in The Inquisition a bit more than in previous volumes. There are several scenes where Sand, Clarke, and Frank Pines sit around and discuss how to get Mary back, with Clarke always doing what Sand suggests. Marc Olden also often reminds us that Clarke, the wealthy Texan former president, has this much respect for a black man. But again, the Black Samurai series never goes to the full-on black empowerment of, say, The Iceman, and Olden’s narratorial tone is just as reserved as Robert Sand is himself. Yet despite this Sand always proves himself to be one of the more memorable protagonists in men’s adventure, and I’m starting to suspect it’s because he comes off as so relatable – at least when it comes to his lack of overconfidence. 

Olden typically tosses too many villains into his novels, and The Inquisition is no different. With the introduction of Michael, we also get the intro of a right-wing gang of ‘Nam vets who have banded together to stop Dessalines and his left-wing radicals. This is a cool subplot but unfortunately Olden spends more time showing these guys trying to intimidate Michael, and then getting their asses kicked by Sand. I was hoping for a couple of pitched battles between ‘Nam vets and leftist scumbag radicals, but it wasn’t to be. These guys turn out to be more of an inconvenience than an item of interest, and ultimately come off as a way for Olden to meet his word count. 

Ultimately I’d have to say The Inquisition was my least favorite Black Samurai yet, but that’s not to say it’s bad or anything. Marc Olden is still invested in the series, and particularly in his hero, but he likely was feeling the burn around this time, what with writing both this series and Narc at the same time. Having read the following volume, I know Olden will get back on track, and in a big way, and in fact I look forward to reading The Warlock again.

The Cult Breaker

 

The Cult Breaker, by Andrew Sugar

No month stated, 1979  Manor Books

With some serious Clint Eastwoodsploitation cover art (uncredited, but I wonder if was by Anthony “Mondo” DeStefano), The Cult Breaker comes off like the first installment of a series, but there was never a followup volume – nor was there ever another novel by author Andrew Sugar. At least, I’ve never been able to find anything published by him after 1979 – under the name “Andrew Sugar” or under the name “Andrea Sugar,” which was the name Sugar was going by at this time. 

 

As mentioned in past reviews of Sugar’s work, Andrew Sugar reportedly had a sex change sometime in the late ‘70s; I learned this back in 2013 when I was briefly in contact with a person who had served as an “expert witness” in a lawsuit trial Sugar had launched on…well, on Clint Eastwood! Sugar felt that Eastwood’s Dirty Harry flick The Enforcer was an infringement upon Sugar’s earlier series The Enforcer, and took Eastwood to court – only, as my contact revealed, at the time of the trial (June of 1980) Sugar was no longer “Andrew Sugar,” but had become “Andrea Sugar,” a rather “handsome woman.” Learning this was kind of revelatory for me at the time, as it cleared up the mystery in the comments section of my Enforcer #1 review, where James Reasoner stated he’d heard Sugar was really a woman, and then a person named Ralph Blanchette, who knew Sugar in the ‘70s, responded that Sugar certainly was a man. The answer, of course, was that Sugar was both! 

Obviously Sugar had little ground to stand on in the lawsuit, no matter what name or gender he was going by. The trial took place after The Cult Breaker was published, and boy it would’ve been great if Clint Eastwood had been aware of the book. He could’ve just brought it into the courtroom as Exhibit A: “Your honor, who is ripping off who??” (Or would that be “Whom?” I don’t know…Clint would probably know, though.) 

But ever since I learned about that Eastwood lawsuit, I’ve kept wondering about the cover art on The Cult Breaker. Was Manor trolling Clint Eastwood? Did they think the trial would get more publicity and so tried to capitalize on it? Or was it just a fluke? 

I guess we’ll never know, but the important thing to note is that the cover is very misleading, as protagonist Johnny Baron is not described as looking like Clint Eastwood, and he doesn’t carry a gun – indeed, at one point he’s offered a .357 Magnum and flatly refuses to carry it or any other pistol. Instead he uses “shunkens,” or shurikens as they are more commonly known – Japanese throwing stars. He has them hidden in the buckle of his belt, and also in special necklace he wears. It’s the sort of gimmick you’d expect a series protagonist to have, but this was the only adventure Johnny Baron ever had. 

I wondered if this was a trunk novel, held off from publication for whatever reason, as there’s a few-years gap between the publication of The Cult Breaker and Sugar’s earlier Enforcer and Israeli Commandos work, as well as the Manor one-shot Yank. The Cult Breaker came out a few years after all of them – actualy, the same year that Manor finally got around to reprinting The Enforcer #4. But The Cult Breaker was clearly written in the late ‘70s, with a lot of topical mentions, and also at one point the date is firmly stated as being 1979. Random guess: Perhaps this book came out a few years later than the earlier books because Sugar was busy with that sex-change operation. 

Regardless of the real-life background, The Cult Breaker has the same macho vibe as Sugar’s other work. It’s also just as ponderous and weighted down with too much talking and bullshitting. Back when I started the blog, I raved about Enforcer #1 in my review, but something I don’t think I ever mentioned was that I re-read the book a few years later…and didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. I found it…well, I found it ponderous and weighted down with too much talking and bullshitting. I meant to do a “second look” review at the time but just couldn’t drum up the energy, and besides wanted my original reaction to speak for itself. 

This one, though, brings back the feelings I had when I read The Enforcer #1 that second time. It just spins its wheels for the majority of its 218, small-print pages, and there are a lot of similarities to the Enforcer series – which itself became more of a standard “suspense” yarn as the series progressed. In fact, The Cult Breaker is labelled “Suspense” on its spine. It’s not an action-thriller by any means, despite being packaged as one, and, just as Alex Jason in The Enforcer, Johnny Baron spends the majority of the text posing undercover, pretending to be who he’s not, as he gradually figures out what nefariousness a particular cult is up to. 

Like Alex Jason, Baron is a rugged individualist who is yanked out of his normal world and thrust into the role of action-series protagonist. For Jason it was because he was dying of stomach cancer and was given the chance to live again in a series of clone bodies. For Baron, he’s a former mercenary turned smuggler who is caught by a “famous detective” and offered two hundred thousand dollars to infiltrate the private island of the Shrine Of The Forgiven and rescue four people who have supposedly been abducted by the cult. The Objectivist leanings of The Enforcer have been toned down, and instead of the Jon Anryn Institute, Baron’s employer, Ashford Cory, runs a global organization with an army of employees and experts and etc at his beck and call. 

The overall vibe is still the same; just as The Enforcer squandered its pulpy setup by becoming more of a slow-going mystery, so too does The Cult Breaker. Indeed the entire plot, of Baron being hired to rescue four captives, is for the most part overlooked, with more focus placed on his infiltrating the cult. The book could’ve just as easily been titled “The Cult Joiner,” because that’s essentially what Johnny Baron spends the majority of the text accomplishing. Andrew Sugar really grinds the gears in this one, and the novel moves a whole lot more sluggishly than you might expect. I don’t exaggerate when I say that most of the book concerns Baron hoodwinking the Shrine of the Forgiven into thinking he’s a convert. 

Even the setup takes a long time to get underway; we meet Baron as he’s flying in to Corpus Christi from Mexico with his latest smuggling run – not drugs, but priceless artifacts that have been disguised as cheap souveneirs. He’s cornered by some men and starts going into kung-fu and “shunken” mode, not killing anyone but hurting them. He’s knocked out and comes to, to discover that it wasn’t cops surrounding him, but the employees of famous investigator Ashford Cory, who puts forth the $200k job. This sequence alone takes up the first quarter of the novel. 

From there it becomes even more of a long-simmer yarn; Baron’s been offered the gig because one of the top Shrine members is a former mercenary pal of his named Danny Lanz. But, per Cory Lanz has gone crazy, as evidenced by grisly photos Cory shows Baron of the infamous killing technique that was used by a native tribe Lanz and Baron served with during their mercenary days in Africa. Also called the “head peel,” the technique involves slicing the flesh at the back of the neck and then pulling the flap of skin up over the skull until the entire face is ripped off, to be shown to the victim, and if the victim has lived long enough to get to this part he – or she – will immediately die of a heart attack. 

Baron can’t believe that Lanz himself would perform the head peel on people, but Cory assures him that Lanz is full-bore nuts now and is not the same man Baron knew a few years ago. So Baron takes the job and heads to New York, where he’s to “just happen” to run into Lanz and pretend to be sickened in his soul and looking for some purpose, etc, etc. In other words, to make himself a target for the cult. The Shrine of the Forviven runs a sort of commune on 50th Street and some nights they give free booze to old vets at a local bar, one run by another old mercenary pal. 

Sugar often doles out a lot of trash-talk and arrogant posturing in the overly-macho dialog he gives his male characters, and that’s on full display here. But things liven up with the appearance of Oy, an attractive brunette who shows up at the bar and is there to serve as a paramedic but is part of the cult. This scene goes on and on with Baron drinking as part of his guise but getting progessively drunker and afraid he’ll blab too much, then Danny Lanz shows up – wilder looking but still happy to see Baron and get drunk with him – and the “macho dialog” runs rampant as they try to outdrink each other and bet on who pukes first and etc. 

Sugar goes for a poetic approach in the inevitable sex scene between Baron and Oy – like talking about their bodies becoming “one” and such – and also dials way down on the breast obsession seen in the earliest Enforcer novels. In fact, Oy is hardly exploited at all, and about the most we get is she’s pretty and a former hooker who was saved by the Shrine. She will also be Baron’s sole conquest in the novel, and in fact essentially becomes his girlfriend, having him live with her when they repair to the Shrine’s private island in the Bahamas, Eden Cay. But Sugar has a hard time explaining who Oy is, as she isn’t a brainwashed sheep like the other cult members on the island, and seems to do her own thing. 

Meanwhile there’s the cult leader, Uncle Ted, whose schtick is he “looks like someone’s uncle” but can hypnotize you with his eyes, and also insists that everyone toast each other with a special drink of milk every morning. We get lots of stuff about Baron puking his guts out when drinking this milk, given his allergy to dairy or some such shit…it really gets to be a bit much. Plus the dude’s real slow on the up-take because he wonders why every cult member seems so fazed and then only at the end of the novel does he put it together that it’s the damn drink literally everyone on the island drinks every single day. 

But the “cult life” stuff just goes on and on. Baron exploring the island, getting the lay of the land, seeing how the cultists are split into different jobs and etc. And also meanwhile he gets the gig of helping Danny Lanz with island security…but man, even the subplot about Lanz isn’t really exploited. Sugar seems to get bored with it and quickly resolves it just a little over halfway through the novel, with a bizarre shootout Lanz and Baron get in with some rivals in upstate New York, and Lanz going crazy suddenly for no reason. We don’t even get an explanation for the “head peel” stuff, which also is brushed under the narratorial carpet. 

Most importantly, the four people Baron’s supposedly here to rescue aren’t even mentioned. Instead the plot changes to a “doomsday device” Uncle Ted has apparently put together, using toxic waste or something. Suddenly we have stuff where Baron knows how to defuse bombs because he was a demolitions expert in the army and then, with the word count quickly approaching, Sugar does a whole Jonestown Massacre thing with Uncle Ted abruptly revealing that some senators are on the way to the island. Just a few pages later and the senators are dead and Uncle Ted is forcing his flock to commit suicide; I mean it’s like Jonestown on speed. 

Even here Sugar loses the plot thread and instead focuses on Baron trying to defuse that damn doomsday device. In the hugest miss of all, Baron takes no part in the action finale; in fact, a pair of women do all the work (hmmm…), toting guns and blasting at their former cult-friends as Baron tries to take care of the doomsday device. Seriously, Baron hardly does anything action-like in the finale, instead directing a few cult members who miraculously show up out of the woodwork and have just the skills Baron needs a that time – medical, military, etc. Worse yet, the main villains are dispatched off-page, and not even by Baron. 

It's all very underwhelming, and perhaps the indication is that nothing more came from Sugar because he’d lost the spirit. The Cult Breaker is listless and confused, starting off in one direction before veering off in another, sort of like a certain political figure I won’t name. Even the finale is confused, but humorously so. Baron passes out a few times in the final pages, and the very end of the novel features him about to be put under for some quick surgery for injuries he’s sustained, and he’s certain he’ll wake up from it. But the novel ends cold here, and given that Johnny Baron never appeared in another novel, one gets the impression he really didn’t make it through the surgery. 

Back in 2013 James Reasoner and I discussed Andrew Sugar via email, and James turned up the info that an “Andrea Conrad-Sugar” had died in 2010, in New Windsor, New York, which is near the Hudson River – and Ralph Blanchette commented on my Enforcer #1 review that Andrew Sugar had lived in the Hudson Valley. Conrad-Sugar was born in 1933, which seems to line up with Andrew Sugar’s supposed age. James pondered if Andrea Conrad-Sugar and Andrew Sugar were one and the same. But unless we hear from one of Sugar’s children, I guess this will just be a mystery, as Sugar himself – or herself – disappeared from the publishing world after the publication of The Cult Breaker in 1979.

Butler #6: Killer Satellites

 

Butler #6: Killer Satellites, by Philip Kirk

No month stated, 1980  Leisure Books

This was the last volume of Butler written by series creator Len Levinson, and it’s clear that Len intended Killer Satellites to be the final volume of the series, as it wraps up the storyline of hero Butler, essentially taking him full-circle from where he started in the first volume. There is also a focus on telling us more about Butler this time – we even learn his first name! – as well as giving him a Happily Ever After. Which of course makes it all the more frustrating that Leisure Books continued the series in 1982 – without Len’s involvement or awareness – farming it out to some unknown writer(s) for an additional six volumes. 

But honestly, I have no intention of seeking out or reading those later Butler books; this was Len Levinson’s series, and his volumes are the only ones that exist in my world. So basically there’s a “Len six” and a “Ghostwriters six” for Butler, and curiously it’s the latter six volumes that are the most overpriced on the used books marketplace, indicating that they had scarce print runs. It’s funny that they even exist, as Killer Satellites is clearly a send-off for Butler, courtesy his creator. 

This one picks up a few months after the previous volume, and Butler is still with the CIA. In fact there is no mention whatsoever of the Bancroft Instititute, and as mentioned above it’s the first volume of the series that is most often referred to in the narrative – particularly, that Butler was fired from the CIA by series regular FJ Shankham in that volume, “two years ago.” (Though in the typically-poor editing of a Leisure publication, on the very next page we’re told this happened “a year ago.”) But now with this sixth volume, Butler is so ingrained in the CIA that he’s spent six months studying how to speak Russian (and curious spoiler alert, but he never even gets a chance to speak Russian in the course of the novel!). The Bancroft Institute setup is dropped, as is recurring enemy organization HYDRA. 

The back-cover copy as usual tries to heighten the “thriller” elements of the story, but more than any previous volume Killer Satellites is less concerned with action than it is with Butler’s soap-opera life. When we meet him he’s boarding a small plane for a vacation in nearby Cape Cod. As I’ve mentioned frequently in past reviews, Len Levinson’s protagonists are unique in the men’s adventure field in that they try their damnest to pick up women; an inversion of the usual pulp template of the lady throwing herself at the protagonist. Butler hits hard on an attractive young woman on the plane (she looks, we’re informed, like Faye Dunaway), as usual saying stuff that would get a guy at least slapped in the real world. For instance: “You’re rather attractive, and I’m rather horny.” 

And, as usual for Butler, he’s rebuffed; the girl, Mary Ellen, has no interest in him, and just wishes to read her novel. In a curious miss on Len’s part that drove me crazy, we never learn what novel the girl is reading, despite Butler incessantly asking her what the title is! I was hoping Len would do a little in-joke and have Mary Ellen reading one of his own books. Anyway, it’s not that they have much time to really talk, as the front of the plane explodes and it crashes into the ocean – moments after we’re informed Butler is afraid to fly. But Butler’s able to keep his wits and swims to safety, rescuing the girl as well. The plane was intentionally crashed – though how is curiously never stated – and Butler soon learns that a host of his CIA colleauges have also been killed. Oh, and Mary Ellen vows that she will be Butler’s “slave” for having saved her life. 

Soon Butler is made the director of the CIA by whiskey-sipping President Smith; there’s a super-goofy part where Smith, in the bunker beneath the White House, bluffs on the phone with Premiere Brezhnev in the USSR about a satellite being shot down. This part again confirms that Butler is essentially a comedy series,with the assembled joint chiefs of staff even taking off their hats and yelling “hooray!” when the Soviet satellite is shot down. All this, by the way, is in retaliation for a US satellite that was destroyed, and I love the way Len has these heads of state calling each other directly and bluffing one another, making idle threats, etc. There’s also a goofy recurring joke about the Albanians. 

I really get the impression Len was winging his way through this one; the plot changes willy-nilly, with Butler thrust from one crazy situation to another. So he’s made director of the CIA because everyone else was killed, and his first act in this capacity is to call back onto duty the love of his life, Wilma B. Willoughby, who quit after the caper in the previous volume and now teaches at UCLA. In the meantime we are almost casually informed that Butler’s first name is Andrew – his full name is Andrew P. Butler – by a radio announcement Butler listens to while shaving in the shower, announcing that he’s been made the new director of the CIA. Butler’s first name has always been a mystery and no mention is made here that Butler hates it, something that was often remarked upon in previous installments. But the very fact that we’re told Butler’s first name this time could be another indication that Len intended Killer Satellites to be the series finale. 

Meanwhile, Mary Ellen has come to Butler’s home in Georgetown to be his slave, leading to the typical XXX-rated sex scene of the series. I found myself laughing out loud, though, because even in the sex scenes Len goes for laughs – in particular Mary Ellen bluntly asking Butler, “Do you want me to kiss your dicky?” To which a shocked Butler responds, “I beg your pardon?” Len has a lot of fun with this sequence, as it’s a reversal of the earlier scene betwee the two, when Butler was hitting on Mary Ellen on the plane; here it’s Mary Ellen who must convince Butler to have sex with her. Finally he does, in full-bore detail – only for Wilma to come in and catch them together and throw a hissy fit, calling Butler a “pig” and leaving. 

Again we get indication that this is the final volume when Mary Ellen explains to Butler that Wilma is only upset because she clearly loves Butler. Otherwise why would Wilma be so angry to find Butler in bed with another woman? Butler realizes this must be true, but meanwhile Wilma is kidnapped on her way to her hotel. When Butler finally figures out she’s been captured the following day, he decides to make none other than FJ Shankham the deputy director of the CIA, to handle the administrative side of the job while Butler goes out in the field to find Wilma. Here’s where we have the reverse setup of Butler #1, with Butler reflecting on the irony of his being in charge of the man who fired him “two years” (or was it one year?) ago. 

But man, it seems evident that Len was winging his way through Killer Satellites. Subplots are brought up and cast aside within a few pages. Like for example Mary Ellen. Despite pledging herself as Butler’s “slave,” she’s quickly removed from the narrative, Butler insisting that she go home so he can figure out who has been killing his fellow CIA agents. Then next thing you know, Butler is in his red Corvette and driving cross-country; his goal, apparently, is to act as bait for the people who kidnapped Wilma, but still…I mean he literally just drives across the country. We even get more of Butler’s random attempted pickups when he hits on an attractive female bartender who (per the template) turns Butler down, given that she’s married. But if you haven’t noticed, this is how the plot constantly changes in Killer Satellites; just a few chapters ago he was conferring with the President on how he could stop the “killer satellite” business, and now he’s on a cross-country road trip. 

Even what appears to be the big villain reveal is brushed aside after a few pages; Butler does indeed get captured by the same people who took Wilma captive, and they turn out to be…right-wing Canadian extremists. From their hidden location deep in the wilds of Canada they have a missile silo and have been taking down US and USSR satellites in the hopes of causing a war between the two superpowers…but man, like just a few pages after all of this is revealed, US planes come out of nowhere and bomb the place to the ground and Butler and Wilma escape into the snowy forest. The entire “Canadian radicals” development only takes up a handful of pages, and again the focus is placed more on Butler’s love life. 

But still, it’s very funny. Butler and Wilma hide in a cave and Wilma makes it clear that she has no intention of sleeping with Butler, even though we know from the scenes in her perspective that Butler’s the best lay she ever had, and she still dreams of the previous times they made it, etc. But as usual Wilma plays it tough, not wanting to look a “fool” for Butler, and she makes him sleep on the other side of the cave. Butler, sure that Wilma will shoot him with her machine gun if he tries to go over to her, decides to jerk off…no mention is made, by the way, of the “vow” Butler made to himself to never masturbate, as stated back in the fourth volume. Meanwhile Wilma, who is impatiently waiting for Butler to come over to her, looks over and sees “a piston” pumping beneath Butler’s sleeping bag, and angrily realizes he’s jerking off. So she has to take matters into her own hands, so to speak, leading to a sex scene between the two that takes up several pages of text. Even here it’s a payoff on those earlier sex scenes between the two, with Wilma finally giving herself in full to Butler and not pretending like it all was a “mistake” or etc. 

More finalities – on the morning after their idyllic tryst in the cave, Wilma informs Butler that she is saying goodbye to him forever, because she’s too crazy about him, and knows she’ll do nothing but have sex with him all day. (This after Butler asks her to marry him!) We also get the interesting backstory that Wilma was a hippie in the late ‘60s and dropped out of school to screw her boyfriend all the time, and she’s afraid she’ll do the same with Butler, because she likes him even more. So again, despite the “killer satellite” setup and Butler being in charge of the CIA and whatnot, it’s more about Butler moping around and wondering if he’ll ever find true love – not that this stops him from scoring again. In another humorous XXX passage, Butler goes up to Canada to look into the leader of the Canadian radicals, and ends up banging the secretary at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police HQ. 

Here we have another of Butler’s don’t-try-this-at-home pickup lines: “You’re the kind of woman a man would love to go down on.” This is stated mere moments after the woman happens to sit by Butler in the park, and soon enough Butler’s gotten it out of her that no one’s ever gone down on her and etc. So they go back to his hotel where they go down on each other, then have sex, all of it in the usual explicit detail of the series, but again a lot of it’s funny because of the dialog Len gives the characters throughout. But also, none of it has any real bearing on the plot, and is another indication of the ever-changing nature of the storyline; just twenty or so pages ago Butler was the captive of some right-wing Canadians in the woods, and now here he is dining at the Y with a slim secretary who looks “like the actress Lee Remick.” 

It all moves so quickly that Len has to go for a finale that is more out of a mystery than an action thriller, with Butler exposing who secretly funds the Canadian satellite-killing radicals. SPOILER ALERT, so skip this and the next two paragraphs if you don’t want to know, but given that Killer Satellites appears to be so scarce I thought I’d be comprehensive in my review for the people who can’t find a copy. Anyway, it turns out that FJ Shankham has been behind the plot, financing the Canadian radicals – and here we have a reprisal of the first volume, with Shankham again the manipulative bastard who holds Butler’s fate in his hands. But in another strong indication that this was intended as the final volume of the series, Butler literally blows Shankham’s brains out, blasting him point-blank in the forehead with his pistol. 

Even in the final pages subplots are brought up and cast aside within the span of a few paragraphs. Butler meets with President Smith again, and none other than Brezhnev calls in and offers Butler an all-expenses paid trip to Moscow as thanks for preventing WWIII, insisting that Butler come to Russia within a few weeks, and Butler accepts. Meanwhile President Smith floats the idea of making Butler the ambassador to Russia (and curiously, at no point in this entire exchange is it mentioned that Butler now speaks fluent Russian)…but a page or two later Butler’s already decided he’ll turn down the offer. 

The biggest indication that Killer Satellites was intended to be Butler’s send-off comes next: Butler goes back to his pad in Georgetown…to find Wilma waiting there for him. Wilma tells Butler she loves him and would “rather go crazy with him than without him,” and the book – and series – ends with the two having sex. In fact the last line of the novel is Wilma’s “OOOH!” as Butler gives her the goods – and speaking of which, we’ve learned earlier in the book, courtesy a ruler Mary Ellen puts alongside Butler’s erection, that Butler measures eight-and-a-half inches; which is “only two-and-a-half inches more than the average,” Butler argues! 

This of course is a fitting finale for Butler, given the strong focus on XXX-rated sex since the beginning, not to mention that Butler’s been hooked on Wilma since the beginning. (And apparently vice-versa.) For decades Len Levinson thought this was it for Butler, until I happened to mention to him when we talked on the phone in 2012 that the series had continued on for six more volumes. I still recall how flabbergasted Len was; “That was my series!” he kept saying. A commenter named TrueAim left a note on a previous Butler review that at least some of those non-Len volumes tried to retain the feel of the original six books…so if anyone else out there has read them, please let us know. I’m curious if Wilma even factors into the books. 

But again, I’d say those latter six installments are alternate-reality Butler. The series clearly comes to a close with Killer Satellites, and I’d say overall I really enjoyed these books. Again, the cover illustrations and back-cover copy are all misleading; Butler is more of a humorous affair than an action thriller. As usual with a Len Levinson book, it is the personality of the author that most stands out, and no doubt given that Butler was his own creation, Len’s personality is very evident as the series progresses. Indeed, parts of Killer Satellite, in which Butler reflects on his life or the sad state of his romantic affairs, could almost come straight out of Len’s decades-later autobiography, In The Pulp Fiction Trenches. I also appreciated the glimpse into Butler’s personal interests; this time he has a sudden interest in jazz music, with mentions of The Jazz Crusaders and Ramsey Lewis…I got a chuckle out of this, given that Len had to patiently wait while I shopped for Jazz LPs when I met him in Chicago in 2016. 

If I recall, only the first few volumes of Butler were reprinted as eBooks a few years back. Hopefully the time will come when all six volumes will be available again as paperbacks. Personally I’ll miss Butler and his madcap adventures, but I’m happy that Len gave him a proper send-off.

7/25/24 Update: I received the below email from Len himself, and he asked me to post it here for him!

It is very interesting to read a review of a novel I wrote circa 1979 and barely remember.  So I read the first chapter again to re-familiarize myself, and thought this first chapter simply terrific.

What a great writer I was!  I should have won a Nobel Prize and the National Book Award.  I should be rich and famous and living on the French Riviera with a movie star or supermodel, instead of the small cluttered apartment where I now reside alone in a tiny town way out here on the Great American Prairie.

Many of my books were written very quickly under two-month deadlines.  That’s why they read as if I was “winging it”.  Actually I was winging it, which probably explains why subplots don’t go anywhere and why important characters suddenly disappear.  I also had a tendency to write graphic sex scenes, which probably caused many readers to not take me seriously.

My Butler books were written toward the beginning of my literary career.  I think I got better as I became more mature and gained more experience as a novelist.  Thank you for this very insightful review.  You always understand my books better than I do.

Chrysalis Of Death

Chrysalis Of Death, by Eleanor Robinson

May, 1976  Pocket Books

I’d never heard of this obscure paperback original until I recently came across it on the clearance rack at a local Half Price Books. One dollar, so I figured what the hell. I’ve been watching a lot of ‘70s drive-in movies lately, and the setup for this one seemed really in-line with those, to the extent that I wondered why someone like Roger Corman didn’t option the rights. In a nutshell, Chrysalis Of Death concerns a contagion in the Arizona desert that turns people into Neanderthals. 

But then, the uncredited cover art blows this surprise. Author Eleanor Robinson doesn’t outright state “Neanderthal” or “Cro-Magnon” in the brief, 175-page course of the novel; instead, she goes for a “cinematic” sort of approach, one that does imbue the story with tension and suspense, but one that also robs it of concrete details that allow the reader to understand what is happening. As it turns out, big stuff happens in the course of the novel – like main characters dying – but the reader doesn’t even realize something “big” has happened until later on, given the way Robinson has written the book. 

Also, she jams way too many characters into the novel, but then my impression was she was catering to the disaster obsession of the day. But the effect is, the reader doesn’t really get a grip on who is who, other than a few characters who sort of rise to the top in prominence. Otherwise, the characters loglined on the back cover and first-page preview aren’t given much room to breathe…like the drunkard best-selling novelist, or the Joe Namath-esque football player. Robinson tries to cater to the “large cast of characters” aesthetic of the disaster story, but the effect is limited given how short the novel is. Again, this is what gives the impression that it’s a tie-in for a drive-in movie that never was…the more lurid version of The Poseidon Adventure or something. 

The only problem is…it’s not very lurid! I’ll note the sad fact here that Chrysalis Of Death has zero in the way of sex, and the majority of the violence occurs off-page. Rather it is more of a long-simmer potboiler sort of affair, most reminscent of the contemporary Snowman (which also came off like the novelization of a drive-in movie that never was), with the caveat that Chrysalis Of Death doesn’t even feature a big action finale; the cover art not only blows the surprise of the storyline, but also misleads with the explosions and helicopters circling over the Cro-Magnons. Actually that does all sort of happen, but again it’s a little lost on the reader given the “cinematic” way Eleanor Robinson writes the book. 

By “cinematic” I mean the way Robinson will cut away from action; I did appreciate how she stayed, for the most part, locked in the perspectives of her various characters. This means that the narrative doesn’t jump willy-nilly from the perspective of one character to another, without any line breaks or chapter breaks to alert the reader that such a change is occuring. But this also means that Robinson has a tendency to have something occuring from the perspective of one character, then there will be a break to another character…and we’ll only learn in passing what happened to that previous character, due to the obsfucated way Robinson handles the action scenes. Meaning, characters will die, and we don’t even know it until it’s relayed in dialog later in the book. And these are major characters, too. 

The action begins with a young anthropologist or somesuch named Jeff blasting rocks in the Arizona desert, inadvertently releasing an ancient form of life that will soon infect the residents of nearby small town Lazy Creek  The infection is mostly relayed through the plight of several people staying at an out-of-the-way hotel in Lazy Creek, owned by a new arrival to the area named Henry. How the place stays in business, what with its being off the main road and in the middle of the desert, is something Henry is struggling with, but meanwhile he does have some people staying with him, and Robinson introduces them all without much fanfare, expecting us readers to be able to keep track of all of them. 

The way the contagion works is there are these saclike egg things in the desert, freed from their millennia in the rocks by Jeff’s dynamite, and when torn open little fuzzy caterpillars come out, ones that stink horribly. If you touch them it hurts, and soon your hand will swell, and next thing you know you’ll be puking your guts out for an entire day, in addition to passing out a bunch. Slowly your forehead becomes larger and larger and you become more Neanderthal, with heightened senses and only a modicum of intelligence. Again, Robinson never outright states all of this, just showing the infection first through one particular character as it happens to him, with his of course not even knowing he’s become infected with some super-ancient virus. 

As mentioned Robinson really stuffs the pages with a lot of characters: Henry the owner of the place and his wife; Jeff the scientist (whose wife back home is about to give birth); a young woman who is babysitting for another couple who aren’t even there; a famous novelist gone to seed; a pair of Hispanics who pretend to be brother and sister but are really engaged to be married; an old socialite lady and her minder; a drug courier who is carrying a suitcase filled with money; a sheriff who harbors designs on said suitcase; even if he has to kill to get it; a football player and his entourage, including among them yet another wealthy socialite who has a super-annoying tendency to say “big heap” all the time; and that’s just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I mean all these characters and more – including I just remembered the people who own and work in the local grocery store – all in the brief span of 175 pages. There are even subplots within the subplots, like the football player’s wife who is miserable (eventually we’ll learn it’s because the famous football player is in the closet, though this is “revealed” so hurriedly it barely registers), or even the friend of the football player’s wife who has secretly been stealing jewelry from her “friend” for the past several years. 

Robinson really has it on the long-simmer, with the book occuring over just a few days, so that the horror of the virus becomes slowly apparent both to the characters and to the reader. Gradually we have yet another new character added to the mix: a somewhat-arrogant young doctor who is flown in and who immediately puts Lazy River in a quarantine. Yes, the parallels to COVID are interesting here, particularly given how the Lazy River people begrudgingly give in to the whims of the government during the quarantine…until slowly coming to their senses and realizing the government people have no idea what the hell they are doing. But even when they do rebel, the impact of their action is lost in the way the narrative is handled. For example, a group of the hotel guests plot to hijack a government helicopter that is coming in with supplies. When the attempted hijacking transpires, however, Robinson doesn’t relay it from the perspective of the hijackers or even the people on the helicopter – she relays it from the perspective of someone infected by the virus, whose intelligence has been so ruined that he doesn’t even fully comprehend what he is seeing. 

It's things like this that ultimately sink Chrysalis Of Death, just one wrong narratorial decision after another. There is a lot of setup and little payoff, particularly for the many subplots. And also, some of the subplots are kind of thrust on us with no warning. Like when the sheriff starts searching for the drug courier, and thinks to himself that he’ll deputize the young anthropologist – so it won’t look as suspicious when the young anthropologist turns up dead. This is almost shocking in how casually it’s relayed to us readers, given that prior to this there was no warning our sheriff character would even be a villain. But no, we will gradually learn his own subplot concerns his determination to get the suitcase of money the drug courier might have hidden in Lazy Creek, and he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way. But this subplot too is totally lost in the narrative, with no payoff. Worse yet is the Spanish guy whose wife and child are killed by someone infected by the virus, and who swears revenge – and then disappears from the novel. 

Robinson does well capture the growing horror of the situation, and also she’s good at planting clues that indicate a person might ultimately become infected by the virus, even though they’re acting fine. But it seems that she loses control of her narrative as it nears its conclusion, with a lot of characters dying off-page, and the drama of it totally unexploited. She earns points though for delivering a ‘70s-mandatory bummer ending, which again aligns with the drive-in movie that’s playing in your mind. 

Overall, Chrysalis Of Death was interesting to find on the clearance rack, but not a book I’d recommend. It’s more sluggish than its short page length would imply, and it was a lot of work to keep track of the various characters. Also, the book really could’ve benefitted from some naughty stuff. The editors at Pocket Books really try to make it seem like the book has naughty stuff in it, though; this is one of those instances where you wish the book was more like the back-cover copy would indicate. As for Eleanor Robinson, it appears that she only published one more novel, The Silverleaf Syndrome, another “biological horror” affair that was published in 1980 by Tower Books.  It was also published that same year by Leisure Books as The Freak.

While researching Eleanor Robinson, I came across this 2009 article that tells how Robinson, who apparently passed away some time ago (in 1985, if my math is correct from the dates given in the article), inspired her granddaughter from beyond the grave.