The French "Connection"

 

Amazing.

The Breton Butcher (Churchill's Vixens #1)

The Breton Butcher (Churchill's Vixens #1)
Leslie McManus
1976

Well, here's another elusive series that caught my eye sometime last year and I instantly became obsessed with tracking down. Four books in total, only printed in the UK, which means a real pain in the ass for me to acquire as there's no ebook and probably won't be.

Since Vixen is plural, I instantly assumed this was a men-on-a-mission type of thing--but with vixens! Coupled with the gorgeous cover art in WWII, it's the sort of stuff that gets me super pumped. But yeah, the aforementioned continental divide made this tough to find, and after a handful of months and two auction losses I got a hold of the first two, along with another McManus book, Operation Backlash, courtesy of paying out the ass in shipping from Australia.

And, as fate would have it, curiosity got the best of me, at least with this first volume.

As I soon discovered, it appears that each volume of Churchill's Vixens is a self-contained ordeal, with each book focusing on a particular 'vixen'. This cuts right to the chase, and within the first couple of pages we know our French heroine's husband is collaborating with the Nazis. This makes her sick to her stomach, so she finds the first bloated, middle-aged fisherman on the dock and promises she'll sleep with him if he brings her to the UK. His "enormous erection" steals her virginity and then she's in Britain, instantly joining up with the new Churchill's Vixens program.

There's no real explanation how she gets picked, but alas, she's on the team. There's maybe a paragraph worth of information on what she did there and the training she undertook, but I guess she's ready to go. And back to France she goes, this time undercover.

She's teamed up with this just awful American guy that's supposed to be French. They pose as a married coupled and stay in some village. He constantly sexually harasses the heroine, but now that she's no longer a virgin she's starting to like it or something absurd. They play all serious that they've got an important mission to accomplish, but the thin veneer of professionalism and duty is quickly eradicated and they start to frequently have sex.

There's only a few mentions of people they meet up with. They sabotage a train in like a page, then travel around a bit and have some more sex. At one point there's a huge resistance group that I would assume is going to storm this compound, but somehow they sneak in with German uniforms (this isn't explained) and take it with ease. Some tanks show up and they all run for the hills. That's about how the action goes.

Then it's back to frolicking in barns. Just endless, boring sex. Even if you're a simpleton like myself the reader is just given nothing to work with here. There's hips and contours and everyone has amazing, big breasts (a man after my own heart) and then just 'love-making'; simple and sweet, then it's over and onto the next rural location or village hideout to have more bland, vanilla sex.

And that's basically The Breton Butcher, unfortunately. There's a few dim lights that shine, like our heroine summarily executing a traitor in front of a crowd in a bar, but even the conclusion is dull and quick. McManus' writing has no real flow; you're always left just wandering about, unsure of the continuity or the importance of anything, and when things happen they're so poorly executed it's hard to even enjoy.

I'll obviously be reading my other two McManus books to get my moneys worth, but after this I can't say I'm all that eager to do so. 

Borrowed Covers, Part II

Oddly enough, I simultaneously saw two different users in separate Facebook groups post about reading Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, both with this cover from the 60's paperback version, which I had never seen before. Instantly I recognized Mario Bava's Shock, a film I haven't seen in well over ten years and can't quit remember all that well, but I've always enjoyed the poster.

And, not surprising the art was copied over for the film poster, thanks to the, uh... extent of "borrowing" in Italian films, with about a fifteen year gap since the paperback was published. Interesting they took out the jagged wood to give the horned appearance, but I suppose a ghost with a box knife is plenty to get the point across.

I found this image on Tumblr, posted by someone who erroneously claimed it was the "inspiration" for the poster art. Some reverse-googling shows this is actually the art of Anthony Jimenez, who creates collage work out of old posters and VHS covers. Looking at some of his other work, it's obvious these are collages, seeing mash-ups of things like Rats: Night of Terror! and Return of the Living Dead, or the groovy skull surgeon from Death Warmed Up. Pretty rad stuff, regardless!

Crime Covers

Mainly just wanted to document this link for identifying great crime art. Particularly just for myself, as I'm sure I'll forget about with the 200+ tabs across two browsers perpetually open and the thousand(s) of bookmarks I never re-check, and for the off chance someone stumbles upon this junk blog and finds it interesting as well. Plus I recently found this book below locally, which features some amazing art from Harry Bennett, featured in the aforementioned link. Always nice to uncover such things!

Big Orvie

Big Orvie
Din Andrew
1965

If I had to summarize Big Orvie, I'd say it's a bit like Of Mice and Men, just way sleazier and without the mouse petting.  Big Orvie snags you with the sleaze hook from the get-go, as the town floozy is hanging around a gas station, rubbing all over one of the (married) attendants. She moves over to Orvie, who is described as slow and essentially retarded, and sticks her hands down his pants to discover that while he's lacking in the brains department, he certainly isn't in another.

And so begins this odd soap opera in this podunk town. Everyone sleeps around and is generally scum in their own way. The main setting, the gas station, is co-operated by Rad and his partner Flotsky, while Orvie helps out as he can with supervision from Rad, who has watched over him through their entire life from childhood to present.

Unlike Steinbeck's Lennie, Orvie doesn't mean well. He steals from the cash register, manipulates Rad, and even tries to kill Flotsky; yet, somehow Orvie is considered the slow one here. Wife Jo isn't getting any from Flotsky since he's already getting his elsewhere, so she remembers Orvie's massive package and invites him over. They screw for hours, Orvie's endurance seemingly endless. Flotsky comes home to witness this and attacks Orvie, beating him into a corner. Then he goes for his wife, still stuck in sexual nirvana, and beats her with his belt. She's so sexed-up that she gets off on this and they rekindle their relationship. Briefly. Orvie gets fired and heads out to his zealot mother's house, while Flotsky skips town with the aforementioned floozy, leaving his perpetually horney wife and two children at home without any money or food and Rad to man the station -- and eventually his wife.

But Rad has a girlfriend. She's a great gal, a nurse and all, but she just won't put out for Rad, despite his frequent advances. She also quashes his dreams of grandeur of running a chicken farm with Orvie, and instead implores him to become a TV repairman. She promises to remain prude until marriage, and only a TV repairman will do! One night this is too much, so remembering the advances of Jo, he drives over to her house in the middle of the night, thus beginning their sex-fueled fling.

In the meantime, in one of the only genuinely disturbing scenes of the book, Orvie molests an eleven year-old neighbor and is subsequently arrested. Rad bails him out of jail and sends him out of town to start working on the chicken farm. Rad's girlfriend finds out about his affair and they eventually rekindle the relationship, leaving Jo utterly alone without anyone to quench her sexual desires.

So, with no options, it's back to Orvie she goes. She somehow knows where this old farm is and arrives to find Orvie living in squalor, the kitchen covered in trash and dirty dishes full of half-eaten food. Orvie's onto her games and knows what she wants, and Jo is practically begging him to take her to bed. Sensing the desperation, Orvie forces her to drink a murky bowel of leftover food, which is an odd mix of cereal and milk and ketchup and something else. She gags on the filth but keeps it down, winning Orvie over. Again they screw all night, her desires finally fulfilled. But Orvie knows that now that she's satiated she won't return. But he remembers how desperate she was and how he commanded her to drink the bowl of garbage in the kitchen, and soon he realizes what power he has over her and has other ideas, leading to the scene on the cover...

Despite the generally nasty premise, Big Orvie never gets overly graphic. It's all pretty tame compared to what you'd read in an action book from the 70s or 80s, but boooooy is it sleazy. I love these sort of backwoods sexcapades and small-town tomfoolery, so this was naturally a hit with me. Poor Orvie just didn't know any better!

Cheerleader in Chains

Stealthily edited by yours truly, MSPaint extraordinaire

Cheerleader in Chains
Blake Garfield
1988

The other week I was wanting to read something really sleazy. I had plenty of stuff on the shelf that would fit the bill, but was hesitant it wouldn't fully deliver on the goods I desired. Around the same time I inadvertently found an absolute treasure trove of resources over at Lusty Books while researching another book I was interested in, so I dove into the first thing that caught my eye, Cheerleader in Chains.

It wasn't so much an interest initially in something to this degree, as I'd certainly prefer something more horror oriented with the odd sexuality intermingled, but while previewing this book - which kept appearing when you refreshed pages - I happened to read one of the last pages, which was so absolutely depraved and absurd that I went in full force. Beware, because from this point on it gets downright nasty.

I'm not sure what this genre or type of book is called, if anything other than just porn. This company, Greenleaf Books, seems to have been quite the publisher in the field, with a large portion of this digital library comprised of their titles. And the titles are exactly just that; whatever the title is, that's entirely what it's going to be about. They're short and sweet, so with a title like Mom's Dog Rape, you better steer clear, because the entirety of that book is going to be about that poor mom and a canine's carnal adventures, part of their Pet line; while Cheerleader in Chains is part of their Bondage line of books.

And so I was quite surprised when starting Cheerleader, that within the first paragraph we get a little exposition, then it's zero to fuck just like that, burning down the track for the entire duration of its seedy contents of sexual depravity, never ceasing or slowing down with a growing number of fetishes and infinite cumshots.

Our character, a cheerleader from the city, instantly gets picked up after a football game by the rival team's fans, a group of over fifty rednecks. It never feels like the group is that large, primarily focusing on the ringleaders and their cronies, the rest of the group mentioned only to heighten the disgusting nature of what's going on, like when the author needs to detail just how many men just ejaculated on her. In one particular hilarious example of this, eight guys are tit-fucking her simultaneously. How they manage this I don't know!

Initially the character fights the horrible redneck onslaught as they gangrape her over a motorcycle in the street, slapping her gigantic breasts with sticks and verbally berating her. They decide to continue the gangrape to some secluded farmhouse, chaining her to a truck and forcing her to keep up as they drive. Before this they stick over twenty ball bearings into both her vagina and anus, the clacking of these inside of her as she tries to keep up on foot emitting perpetual convulsive orgasms throughout her body, while onlookers in other vehicles drive up alongside her to piss, spit, and throw manure in her face. But it's okay, because she's apparently starting to like it.

At the barn all hell breaks loose after they make her, uh... eject the ball bearings from her anus and vagina into a pan, then scoop them up in her mouth like a dog and wash them clean. More people slap her around and have sex with her, then they take her into the room of Booger, the barn's resident obese redneck. The book at this point had already been nasty, but the hellish domain of Booger is out of control in the sleaze department. Booger himself is just in tighty-whiteys and a wife-beater, which are both yellowed with sweat and emit an odor that only compliments the aforementioned look. The same goes with his bed, which is a disgusting, yellowed mattress. Booger immediately takes the cheerleader into his control and forces her to clean his toes with her tongue and mouth the outline of his privates that bulge out of the vile underwear. She almost throws up a few times, but at this point she's fully obsessed with this degrading torture, which at this point is almost pure, revolting pleasure. Booger then whips out his gigantic package, and to the delight and surprise of everyone, is successfully and miraculously deepthroated by the 'heroine', despite almost splitting her mouth apart.

The excesses from this point are just as crazy as they bring her back out into the main area of the barn, tying her down and gangbanging her more, women forcing oral sex on her while Booger and co. anally and vaginally penetrate her, whilst others just cum everywhere they can. Eventually she's tied up in a trough, where one of the women stick a mop handle TWO FEET inside her, the cheerleader somehow wanting more! All 80+ guys come up and cum all over her in the trough, then piss in it as well. This unholy concoction is detailed to be past her legs. Finally, the main villainess comes up and shits in her mouth, the cheerleader absolutely loving it. They leave her in the barn despite her erotic pleas for more, promising to return tomorrow as she remains chained up.

Kinda like a literally trainwreck, as I couldn't stop reading this drivel. Dunno how often I'll delve into this sort of stuff, because there's almost zero storytelling here; just endless, vulgar sex for pages and pages until its raunchy finale. What a ride.

Ambush at Derati Wells (Soldier of Fortune #6)

Ambush At Derati Wells (Soldier of Fortune #6)
Peter McCurtin (Ralph Hayes)
1977

I got a few of the Soldier of Fortune novels for cheap recently, and while I prefer to start with the first, I went ahead and started Ambush at Derati Wells, the sixth in the series, as it sounded the most interesting at the time. I'm glad I did, because I wound up loving it; and, thankfully, they all seem to be self-contained adventures, so I didn't miss out any continuing arc or continuity. Narrated by mercenary Jim Rainey, and that's all I needed to know.

Thanks to Paperback Warrior for the author correction (actually Ralph Hayes and not McCurtin, as on my cover) and excellent review. Ambush is fast and lean, just like I like it. Seems like there was actually some decent research into some of the resident tribes and verbiage of the land Rainey is currently stationed at, which adds nicely to the setting instead of the typical 'mystical' Africa.

Essentially a treasure hunt in the drylands of Africa, with competing hunters and natives along the way. Rainey teams up with a local African lawyer, a big game hunter guide and two of his customers, and a small group of guides and inventory schleppers, a far cry from the group of M-16 totting red-beret soldiers on the cover.

One thing I really appreciated with the narrative is how matter-of-fact it is. While obviously not a realistic novel, it pulls no punches with the mercenary experience. Main characters are dispatched without batting an eye, Rainey aware of what they signed up for, without excessive ruminating on their passing. It's all part of who they are, and it's hardly described as glamorous. You've got the odd, almost forced into the novel sex scene in the middle of the African desert, yeah, but that only leads to an excuse for more savagery and revenge down the road, so I'll take it. Good stuff.