Zulu Blood (Soldier for Hire #1)

Zulu Blood (Soldier for Hire #1)
Robert Skimin
1981

At a cover glance, Zulu Blood looks like it has it all: a discontent hardass protagonist with the silver likeness of Lee Marvin; people getting shot on the cover; implications of mercenaries; and of course, all taking place presumably in Heart of Darkness Africa, with some sort of pulp Zulu influence. These things are indeed all present, but it was a read that quickly showed its true colors of being quite a slog. I've been coming quite acquainted with Zebra's paperbacks lately; or, more so the size of them. Most of what I own is all horror, and despite somewhat large-ish print, they're still quite the tome. No exception here for their action line, and it certainly reads that way.

Zulu Blood starts off strong with the entertainment, but maybe not in the intentional way. Our hero, JC Stonewall, instantly starts going off on insane page-length rants about America's involvement in the Vietnam War--and not in the generally universal "we shouldn't have been there" view, but more so how we fucked up and didn't do it right. Liberals and commies instantly become interchangeable to hilarious extents. He know his flaws and how his dad was a no good drunk, but goddammit, he was a good American. This sort of comical jingoism permeates the entire novel like classic WWII propaganda posters, which, while funny at first, can start to fluff out the text.

The story stars with JC taking on a job from a white plantation owner in Africa. Her daughter and zany father are missing and, naturally, she's a MILF, which JC takes full advantage of after his brash introduction charms her into submission. Dad and daughter left to join up with a crazy warlord, as they feel like his leadership is good for the area or something, leading JC to bring a few of the Milf's workers with him to infiltrate the camp undercover as a reporter.

The biggest problem with Zulu Blood is that there's not a whole lot of action in between the exposition and sex. When it does happen it's pretty violent, like when JC mows people in half with his Uzi, then unloads the clip into the corpse while screaming a rebel yell. I'd take that stuff all day, but it's fairly sparse. A large portion of the book is spent arguing politics, like complaining about women's liberation and 'Red' China. JC's old buddy, a black fellow, appears partway through the book, which JC jokingly calls racial epithets at every chance he can get -- since they're such good buds and all. It's all pretty absurd, and while I do love this sort of insane writing it really grates through, simply because there's just so goddamn much of it, at times reading like actual propaganda. And yeah, I could obviously bat an eye at this and chuckle, but there's simply not enough action to balance it out. There's sponge-baths and blowjobs and some ritual torture, but even the finale lacks a good action resolution at the end of this padded monster.

I won't throw in the towel just yet on Stonewall. Some of these other volumes by other writers sound a bit better, but I probably won't be going out of my way to find any anytime soon. The recent library sale held one volume of the series, but sadly it was just Zulu Blood again. We'll see what the future holds for Solder for Hire.

Hell Raiders (Pasukan berani mati)

Hell Raiders (Pasukan berani mati)
Imam Tantowi
1982/83

Hell Raiders is a great title. A few films share that same name because it's so good. For this one in particular, the Indonesian titled Pasukan berani mati, Hell Raiders seems to be its dubbed counterpart. I've seen it translated as Soldiers Are Willing to Die, and Google translate tells me it's Death Squads. All pretty nice titles in my book. There may be a few versions out there, but this dubbed version I watched was just over two hours, which syncs up pretty well with the original Indonesian language track version. IMDB claims it's an hour and forty minutes, so who knows if that exists even.

And speaking of its length, Hell Raiders could certainly use some trimming. It's a pretty serious tale, and a real one at that, based on Indonesia's war against the Dutch empire for their independence, but it's still pretty standard Indonesian action fare for the time. Rapi films was primarily known for their exploitation style filmmaking, but they definitely go all out for this. There's plenty of explosions, military vehicles, and loads of extras that perish in the fighting that comes.

However, at two hours there's a lot of padding, because while the budget's bigger they still can't manage to blow up enough military camps or frankenvehicles for that duration. In between you get a lot of characters introduced and some inner turmoil emotion, all of which is whisked away due to sporadic light humor and the exploitative action you crave.

A lot of familiar faces, like Barry Prima (The Warrior series), Dana Christina (The Stabilizer, Rambu), Dicky Zulkarnaen (Virgins from Hell, The White Crocodile), and many others, so while Hell Raiders isn't always raiding Hell, there's still enough to be entertained by, like slingshots to the face, arrows in the neck, exploding fishing boats where bodies go flying, and even a sacrificial bombing that sends a head flying. Not essential stuff, but definitely enough to like.

Pictures at some point, otherwise this is just sitting in draft hell.

Menumpas Terrorists (The Terrorists)

The Terrorists (Menumpas Terrorists)
Imam Tantowi
1986

I've been wanting to see this a while now after seeing the rad cover a number of times, featuring Barry Prima in a beret (a perennial favorite) holding this insane gun that sadly isn't in the movie. The director, Imam Tantowi is mainly credited with a handful of Indonesian fantasy films, but I mostly see him come up for stuff like Blazing Battle, which also got an English dub VHS, and Hell Raiders, both of which I still need to watch. After watching The Terrorists, it's nigh time to get those watched 'cause this was killer.

I just rambled on two posts ago about my love for disaster and I also live for action. This is a combination of the two, so out of the gate it's already ticking all of the right boxes. I can best describe it as being like Hard Boiled mixed with The Towering Inferno, with the first half of the film being action and the second half a disaster scenario.

So yeah, some terrorists get some bombs from some genius nerd in a shack, then proceed to blow it up and go on the run. The cops find out and a chase ensues, mixing in actual driving with greenscreen where the drivers just shake the wheel back and forth erratically, just like in real life. This looks particularly rough since the greenscreened image is all washed out.

It gets crazier when the terrorists arrive at a hospital, which has also been greenscreened! Things start getting surreal, because parts of the hospital and even the outside of it aren't scaled correctly, so sometimes people look really small and other things absolutely enormous.

The terrorists bust into the hospital and start blowing people away at random. Pretty soon the special forces are called in. Indonesian action star Barry Prima and company are dropped in via helicopter, glad in bullet proof armor, berets, and white gloves. They drop in through the roof and windows and start spraying away into crowds of people to hit the bad dudes with precision accuracy from their MAC-10s.

In one crazy scenario, Prima and his partner Terminator walk down the hall and come face to face with two terrorists, one of which happens to be Advent Bangun, this real hardass looking actor I see frequently in Indonesian stuff. Both groups just stare at each other and then just keep unloading bullets, but Prima and crew just sit there stoically as their armor soaks up all the rounds.

Most of the terrorists are dispatched pretty quickly, but the lead creep runs up the stairs and starts setting off all the bombs, creating the aforementioned disaster scenario. Floors and halls are all on fire now and smoke is everywhere. Patients with bandaged heads and broken legs leap through windows and off the roof, only to fall with a greenscreened background until they slam on the grass below. The police call in the firetrucks (one happens to be a station wagon) and the rescue begins.

Firefighters enter the building and create a chute through a window and start passing in through patients, while above a helicopter picks up groups of people in a giant net. The remaining terrorist cackles and informs everyone they are all going to die, randomly shooting innocents along the way. He makes it up to the roof as well, shoots a few patients, then starts arguing with a doctor and demands that he holds the baby he's cradling. The doctor naturally gives in.

Chaos still ensues, with scenes of patients and staff on fire. In one insane scene some lady is looking for a baby, only for the camera to show a bloody little body being trampled on the stairs! Then we're back to the terrorist on the roof, making insane demands with the police below and randomly shooting people, all while holding a baby that he frequently points his submachine gun at.

This was pretty wild. I was a bit disappointed when the terrorist crew got taken down, but then gleefully excited once I saw what this was turning into. I viewed an old Japanese VHS that was dubbed into English with Japanese hardsubs at the bottom. There's multiple versions out there in multiple languages, including a widescreen print in Indonesian.

Pictures eventually when I'm not a lardass.

Rambo: Last Blood

Ahhhh, finally here, and everything I could have wanted. Caught the first showing on 9/19/19, eager to see one of my many idols murder countless henchmen. And he most certainly does.

I didn't come in hesitantly to visit my old friend, but I had a niggling assumption in the back of my mind that this wouldn't necessarily disappoint, but wouldn't be up to snuff with Rambo from 2008; it would simply just be okay, closing the final chapter on the beloved hero.

But huzzah! All assumptions eradicated, my body sweating in the faux leather theater seats from stifling my squeals as John Rambo shoots off heads with shotguns, breaks bones with his fingers, and unloads half a clip into what is already a corpse stuck in a spike trap.

Cold, brutal dialogue and a sleazy plot that culminates into an action-packed set-piece finale catapult this into classic action fare. Many modern film-goers have already began to fart out nonsense regarding the plot without understanding the element of action, the art of action. Those that question how someone never reloads, how bullets don't pierce objects someone is hiding behind, why all these doves are flying around, will simply never get it; yet for some reason never question other fantastical fare like the infinite Marvel films that endless drool out from Disney's teat. 'Tis a pity.

But oh, Rambo. Thank you for again quenching my action dream world, where endless henchmen die in creative ways and the satisfaction of revenge is the only thing that matters.

Gannon 1: Blood for Breakfast

Blood for Breakfast (Gannon #1)
Dean Ballenger
1973

Ohhhhh man, this was good. I've been on a chase for this for a good while now, first seeing it on the amazing Glorious Trash, then shortly after seeing writer/director Craig S. Zahler review it on Goodreads. I haven't read any of his books yet, but so far I've been enjoying his film output, especially Brawl in Cell Block 99. Naturally, like all things I read about and want, it's terribly rare and expensive. Patience eventually paid off (I wasn't patient; I looked it up almost daily) and eventually a copy surfaced from some random little shop in a different state. Then I said fuck it and dropped way too much money on the other two, but I've convinced myself that it was worth it.

Blood for Breakfast is a real anomaly. It's hardboiled crime set in the 70s, but it retains all the wacky character names and slang dialogue from something like Dick Tracy, but with that 70s sleaze and violence you know and love. Some shithead affluent teens rape a young girl, and despite people seeing it, everyone remains quiet like someone behind the scenes is paying some hush money or issuing out threats. Brother Gannon, a real hardass and ex-soldier hears about this from his Dad and gets furious and decides to leave. He tells his boss he'll be back and he's got some stuff to settle, so the boss gives him a pair of spiked knuckles to get some answers.

Gannon comes to town and starts throwing down some hard cash in some seedy places to get some answers, and when people give him shit he starts throwing those spiked knuckles around, tearing flesh off of faces and even ears. Everyone that comes across Gannon talks to him like a prohibition era cartoon thug, but they all concede because he's a fuckin' tiger, which is frequently repeated. In between searches he gets really horny and finds women to have sex with to calm him down, a bad trait he admits to that eventually causes him some trouble. But he can't help himself, like in one scene: "He grabbed a couple handful of boobs, nice firm absolutely no-sag boobs" before leaving her apartment to go hunt down more thugs. A man after my own heart.

This just never lets up; I haven't read anything like it. When I read something like Mike Hammer I'm always sad the sex is off page and the violence is so tame, but in this it gets downright nasty. Which is perfect. Mike Hammer would strongarm people and talk trash, but Gannon busts into an office and calls a lady, which is frequently narrated as a 'lesbian', to "Shut up, you officious bitch or I'll tear off your tits and slap your face with them!"

I won't go too crazy into the plot, but I read almost the entire thing one sitting and didn't want it to end. Hopefully someday these will at least get a digital collection. I'm not counting on it, but maybe Zahler can make it happen if he keeps it up.

Borrowed Covers, Part 1

I always like finding those posters or covers for ficiton that tend to 'borrow' from artists. Poor Frazetta seems to typically be emulated the most frequently, but due to his popularity and output these are usually pretty easy to spot. There's infinite coverage on game cover ripoffs, like Contra and Castlevania to name a few popular ones, but I don't see a whole lot for books. So huzzah, here we go whenever I find some.

Mindbridge the novel was published beforehand, but this specific re-release was in 1978, the same year of Eyes of Laura Mars. Maybe stretching it, but seems too coincidental.

Another similar case, both released in 1984. This one gave me quite a laugh. At a quick glance I swore that was Albert Finney.

 So I think this one is a bit of a reversal. Pigs was released in 1973, and any poster or release for it was quite a bit different until DVD, when the art started to adopt this cover from 1986, Richard Haig's The City (sequel to The Farm), which appears to be edited for its release. The good folks over at Vault of Evil posted the unedited image, borrowed here below, which these editions of the film have appear to been using.



The unedited art, courtesy of Vault of Evil boards.



I rented Pigs in middle-school and haven't revisited since, so seeing this now get a Bluray fairly recently was pretty exciting, although I'm not sure it's all that worth getting excited for! And same goes for The City, which took me a fair bit to track down, along with its prequel, The Farm, which I read last year and was quite underwhelmed with. A bunch of farm animals get all jacked up on PCP and there's sort of a siege situation on a farm. Sounds like the stuff of dreams, but it's mainly a lot of buildup to a pretty weak payoff. Pearls before swine or whatever.






The Touch of Hell

Original British cover that's fairly accurate.

The Touch of Hell          
Michael R. Linaker
1981

I really love chaos in fiction. Things exploding, people running around in a daze, everyone just trying to survive from this sudden disaster or whatever incident. I like the little scenes and descriptions that compliment the chaos, like this random dude in in Richard Laymon's One Rainy Night that runs out in the street and shoots an arrow at the protagonist's car, then disappears; or how when Anthony Edward's character in Miracle Mile returns back to the diner where it all started and it's in ruin, the people gone now and a coyote by the bar. Irwin Allen's big productions, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno really excelled at this too, especially with how it dispatches its big name cast without warning. And nothing really compares to those two in film. There's obvious budget constraints to all these practical things falling apart and exploding (just look at the horrible elevator effect in Earthquake), but modern disaster films skip the random group of people. It's usually a family or a small group, and from the get-go you know who's going to survive, so there's no impact or emotion when someone bites it.

So yeah, novels are where it's at in that regard for the most part, and I've been fancying a lot of British stuff lately where chaos runs amok, like Nick Sharman's kids on the rampage novel, Childmare, and the heart of this review/rant, Michael R. Linaker's The Touch of Hell, where people do indeed bite it.

The Touch of Hell takes place entirely in a small English village, so it's more low-scale disaster I suppose, but the small village/small town trope is always an arrow to my heart. You get your introductions to this guy and that girl and their little going-ons for a few brief chapters, then disaster strikes. A monstrous American cargo plane suffers some sort of malfunction and crashes straight through the village during a traffic jam. Cars and semis are flung every which way, houses topple and crumble, and a giant jet fuel conflagration breaks out in the city, instantly immolating almost all in its path. The scene is terrible: bodies blackened and fused to their melted cars, buildings completely destroyed or in flames, and families and sexed-up affairs separated through the confusion.

Really bizarre cover, and the version I have. Makes it look like this dude  caused the entire catastrophe.

Before long the military is called in, but it's not just for cleanup efforts. Something was in that American plane, and its gotta be contained before it spreads to the neighboring villages and London. Well, someone gets ahold of whatever it is, and pretty soon it starts to slowly spread. Think Emil from Robocop, all boiled up and mutated and falling apart, shambling around the street, and that's a pretty good description of what happens to a select few that come in contact with the stuff.

And that's where it unfortunately drops off a bit. The disaster doesn't reach full-scale dreamworld chaos that I desired, where bubonic mutant folk descend onto London. It's more of a countdown to containing this so it all doesn't go to hell, with most of the madness ending after the initial explosion/conflagration.

But not to be too harsh, because it's a quick read, and for the most part it delivers the goods, with descriptions of lovers being smashed under concrete and hardass military men having to gun down their best buds after they contract the bad stuff. I guess I always want things to go south and never come up for air.