World War X - Ring One, Round One

 

Carter Brown, Terry Harknett, Crime Does Not Pay, Ryder Stacy, Tim Waggoner, Laurence James, Frank Rich, and Leo Kessler stay in ring one for round two.

Blood and Ice by Leo Kessler

Blood and Ice (aka Frozen Mountain)
by Leo Kessler (Charles Whiting)
1977, Futura

I've seen this listed as either 7 or in 8 in the SS Wotan and/or Dogs of War series. If it followed a larger group, at this point the series is down to Sergeant Major Schulze of the SS. Schulze, leading green European conscripts, moves through the mountains of Budapest in a suicidal diversionary action. When defeat is certain, Schulze leads a group of deserters and teams up with Jewish refugees to evade both the Soviets and Germans on the way to Austria.

Violent and sleazy, though a titch tame when compared to other 70s British historical exploitation. The scale of the story jumps back and forth between blow-for-blow action and high level summarizations - kind of inevitable in war fiction, but felt more abrupt than usual. 

The book didn't exactly glamorize the Nazis, but the author clearly had a lower opinion of the Soviets. Schulze gets more anti-hero cred than I'd like to see a Nazi get, but it's not like any of this is morally defensible. Schulze hates Hitler and the Nazi establishment, but is a virulent racist in his own manner. 

Available from Amazon

Jake Straight 1: Avenging Angel by Frank Rich

Jake Straight 1
Avenging Angel
by Frank Rich
1993, Gold Eagle

The Jake Straight series is set in a pseudo-communist dystopian future, more punk than cyber (Joe Strummer was Prime Minister at some point). After the world was torn apart in the Corporate Wars, the Party, led by corrupt officials, have taken tenuous control, opposed by more radical factions, fascist skinheads, wino crusades, and corporate remnants.

Straight is a Bogeyman, a semi-official executioner styled as a hardboiled private detective. Straight prides himself on only going after the worst criminals, but is tricked into assassinating a poet wanted on a political warrant. He goes after the truth, and his fee, and of course some dames are involved.

Aside from a gyropistol which acts like a modern gun, and various synthetic food substitutes, not much in the way of technological advancement. The plot is pretty basic, ending abruptly after a dramatic build up, but works to showcase the setting and characters.

Jake Straight himself is a complicated character, a former soldier who was supposed to die in a suicide mission, not fitting into the Party establishment nor the counter-culture, dealing with PTSD, and of course being drunk most of the time.

The 2007 reprints use the same artist (Tim Bradstreet) and I think the same model (Tom O'Brien) as the early Garth Ennis Punisher run, though not the exact same shots.

From Amazon

The Brood by Richard Starks

The Brood
by Richard Starks
1979, HarperCollins

A couple is going through a rough divorce, with the wife getting controversial therapy for the childhood abuse she received from her mother. Their kid has signs of abuse and hubby tries to get custody, and to get his ex away from her therapist. Meanwhile, his mother in law is killed by a child-like humanoid.

Somehow, the therapy is causing the wife to spawn physical manifestations of her rage, which go on a killing spree. Hubby tries to reconcile, saying they need to be a family again, and failing that he strangles her, the end.

Novelizations of horror films often suffer from pacing problems, with background and exposition taking up more page space than the horror elements, and this is no exception. Has no resemblance to a horror story for well over the first half, and makes no attempt to describe Cronenberg's visuals.

I haven't seen the movie, but if it's like the book, Cronenberg abandons all pretense at subtext and just openly fantasizes about murdering his ex. The story is based on his own divorce and child custody case, to the point of casting lookalikes. This may beat out Taken for the most divorced film ever made.

Overpriced at Amazon https://amzn.to/47jZoes , listen to the Audiobooks of the Damned version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyFF4GMjyg

Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley

Devil Rides Out
by Dennis Wheatley
1935, Hutchinson

Some good guy magicians are in spiritual battle with foreigners and the disabled. One level it kind of reminds me of the magic battle of Asian cinema, except that it's boring and almost nothing happens. Wheatley is capable of writing engaging thrillers, but this wasn't one of them.

Mostly just Duke de Richleau spitting out a random hodgepodge of supernatural knowledge: More candles! The sheets must be white and absolutely clean! The Germans did no wrong!

Standing out is one effective sequence involving Saiitii manifestations, which seems to be an homage to William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories.

"A dim phosphorescent blob began to glow in the darkness; shimmering and spreading into a great hummock, its outline gradually became clearer. It was not a man form nor yet an animal, but heaved there on the floor like some monstrous living sack. It had no eyes or face but from it there radiated a terrible malefic intelligence.

Suddenly there ceased to be anything ghostlike about it. The Thing had a whitish pimply skin, leprous and unclean, like some huge silver slug. Waves of satanic power rippled through its spineless body, causing it to throb and work continually like a great mass of new-made dough. A horrible stench of decay and corruption filled the room; for as it writhed it exuded a slimy poisonous moisture which trickled in little rivulets across the polished floor. It was solid, terribly real, a living thing. They could even see long, single, golden hairs, separated from each other by ulcerous patches of skin, quivering and waving as they rose on end from its flabby body–and suddenly it began to laugh at them, a low, horrid, chuckling laugh."

Overpriced on Amazon https://amzn.to/4asuXW9

Killer Flies by Mark Kendall

Killer Flies
by Mark Kendall
1983, Signet

Escaped genetically altered flies eat people and later mutate into giant flies before being stopped by organ music. I guess flies can bite, but this is one of the less plausible animal attack books. More pages are devoted to romance. A rancher widow's child dies in the fly attacks and she spends her time wondering if she should hook up with the scientist who killed her daughter or if she should keep banging one of her employees.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/48aIMXs

Bunco Brawl: Hand Two

 

Breed is quicker on the draw and wins hand two