Category Archives: Short Story

Lust to Kill – Jose Vaca (1937)

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sascoverCollins leaned against a ruined doorway and retched in the early Spanish dawn.

In the doorway across the street, a brown abused body of a young woman half lay, half sat.  Clothes had been ripped from her.  A bayonet still clung in the hideous wound between two cold breasts, the butt of the heavy rifle causing the body to sit half-erect.  Rigor mortis had set in long ago.  The nude corpse swayed grotesquely.

Well, this is a new kind of story for this collection.

Ken Collins, the one-eyed soldier-of-fortune is surveying the bombed out town square, but only in 2D.  When three men drive up, Collins goes a little nuts and immediately fires on them.  As two lay dead, he recognizes one of them as his commanding officer, General Gonzalez.  D’oh!

Two women haul the distraught American out of the street just before the man who escaped brings a group of soldiers to seek revenge.

Something just really turned me off on this one.  Maybe it was the knife between the cold breasts, maybe it was our hero murdering his commanding officer, maybe it was the war-time setting.  It just wasn’t the breezy romp with scantily-clad living babes that typifies this collection.

Meh.

Post-Post:

  • First published in March 1937.
  • Also that month:  HP Lovecraft dies.

Valley of Blood – Victor Rousseau (1936)

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sascoverGovernor Mynheer van Stent tells Jim Darrell that his plane cannot cross the mountains.  Two other such aircraft had tried and the pilot’s heads were delivered to the governor by Dyak tribes.  They are responsible for killing men, women and children just for the fun of it.  As usual, their leader is a golden-haired white woman.[1]

Her husband and daughter were killed, but somehow she became queen of the tribe.  She then ordered all other women in the tribe to be killed leaving her alone with 300 men.

Dr. Beyers met her when he was once captured and forced to do a minor medical procedure on her; and prescribe 2,000 cases of K-Y Jelly.[2]  The compassionate doctor says, “they should all be wiped out like wild beasts.”

Darrell doesn’t mention that he found a message scrawled on a leaf in blood:  I am an English woman, come and save me.  There was even a diagram of the mountain range and a crude representation of the path which continued on leaf D-8.

Darrell takes off in his plane with a bearer[3] to find the woman.  The Governor was correct and the plane stalls over the mountains.  Darrell does a controlled crash. Despite the fact that his assistant[3] has been standing on the goddamn wing holding a strut the whole time, both walk away without a scratch!

The two men are met by the tribe led by a woman “with a crown of the brightest hair which hung down to her waist.  A woman, nude but for a loin cloth.  Two breasts superbly moulded.”  The tribe brought spears to a gunfight, but still manage to take Darrell and his side-kick[3] hostage.

Back at the tribe’s HQ, the woman gets Darrell alone and tells him her name is Marian Curtis.  She says only two other white men have found her and she killed them both.  So after giving Darrell a “glorious gift”, she must kill him too.  Darrell has a little trouble getting in the mood since he is facing death afterwards.  Marian leaves him, but her daughter Mary Alice secretly brings him some water.  It was she who wrote the loose-leaf note.

That night, the men will drink a love potion and Marian will choose which ones to “favor”. Although with one woman and three hundred men, I doubt a potion is really necessary. As part of the ritual, Darrell will also be “favored.”  And then ripped apart.  Luckily Mary Alice has a plan for them both to escape.

The plan works and they run, chased by Marian and fifty Dylaks.  Just as all is lost, as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, they run into European forces which mow the brown people down with rifles.[4]

Meh, more of the same.  I’ll say this — the quality is pretty consistent.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I’m not sure whether it is racist or anti-racist that the villains in so many of the stories set in South America, Africa, Indonesia or the Middle East turn out to be blue-eyed, blonde white people.  1936, so I’ll assume racist.
  • [2] No Rx required, but it sounds better that way.
  • [3] Slave.
  • [4] Reviewing the clip, I see they were Indian, not European.  Well, under British rule, anyway.
  • First published in September 1936.

Queen of the Flaming Arrows – Frank E. Marks (1936)

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sascoverLooking through his surveying scope, sinewy Bush Wyman spots a girl on a horse riding bareback — she is bareback, not the horse.

Something warm shoots past his ear.  This is not a Something About Mary moment; a flaming arrow has just missed his head, killed a nearby burro, and the streets ran red with salsa.[1] There is a message attached warning him to come neither further nor farther.  Strangely enough, the message is actually typewritten; apparently on asbestos.

Bush suspects a rival oil company is using this strategery to scare them off.  He grabs a machete and goes past the point where the new road has been cleared.  The machete has cut through the brush and also through the skull of a man who attacks him.  Bush identifies the man as one of them white Venezuelan Indians you always hear about.  Or am I supposed to call them Native South Americans?

Bush draws his revolver as the rest of his tribe appears.  He gets off a couple of shots but is captured.  He is taken to the largest bamboo shack in the village.  As he stands outside, a girl comes out onto the veranda “nude except for a girdle of dried twisted flowers and a necklace of fresher blossoms that sheltered her breasts.”  It is the same girl he saw on the horse.  “Her whole body was a symphony of breath-taking loveliness.”

She invites Bush up and says, “So Mr. Wyman, you didn’t heed my message.”  This Indian with the blonde hair and blue eyes says her name is Marjorie Packard.  She was educated in America but came to live here because she was sick of the greed in civilization.  Now the oil companies are trying to destroy her new home here too.  When Bush lays a kiss on her, she has him locked up.[2]

Bush escapes, but turns back when he hears a scream. The tribal chief is telling Marjorie that Bush will be killed unless she becomes his wife.  Bush hears this and busts down the door.  The Chief mis-underestimates Bush and gets his behind handed to him.

As Bush prepares to inflict some shock and awe on the Chief, Marjorie implores him to let the Chief live and rule her people even though he didn’t win the popular vote — she wants to go back to the USA.  “Her breasts throbbed provocatively” as she asks Bush to take her back home.

Bush clasped her quivering body, pressed her tightly, felt her warm against him.  Her firm breasts mashed on his chest . . . She turned up her moist lips.  Bush Wyman’s mouth closed over hers.

Mission Accomplished, baby!

Post-Post:

  • [1] I could have sworn I’ve heard burro as a synonym for burrito.  Seems to be rare to non-existent, though.
  • [2] Yep, she went to an American university alright.
  • First published in September 1936.
  • Also that month:  Buddy Holly born.

Tuffy and His Harem – Nick Anderson (1935)

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sascover“Broad-shouldered, big-muscled giant of a fellow” Tuffy Scott is standing in the stern of a row-boat.  What is it with the row-boats lately? I’m pretty sure they had steam, diesel and the internal combustion engine in 1935.

Tuffy was put into the row-boat with three “almost totally unclothed” babes when the casino boat the four had worked on in different positions — especially the girls — was raided. After the raid, they were somehow left behind, “three girls in tiny red silk panties, and red & white silk bandeaux that barely covered three sets of luscious breasts” and one lucky, lucky dude.

After the horrendous luck of being abandoned at sea with this half-naked titular harem, Tuffy has the even worse luck of spotting a ship almost immediately.  They make their way to the ship by using their only oar.  The process is  described as somehow positioning the oar between a girl’s legs, and being swiveled back and forth.  This is a row-boat, not a kayak, so I’m not sure how this worked.  But I’m pretty sure I know why the girls wanted to take the long way.

They find it is just a scow that broke its towing cable and was left behind.  Tuffy and the girls — Zoe, Mai and Honey — climb on board the deserted barge. After finding a barrel of water, they get some sleep.  Their good luck continues as a hurricane-caliber storm washes off the barge.  The next day they go all HGR (Home & Garden Radio) on its stern, patching the roof of the wheelhouse, caulking the walls, making the interior homey.

The girls — who had been dancers on the casino ship — are so appreciative of Tuffy’s leadership that they decide to put on a show for him.  Tuffy makes like Desi Arnaz on the bottom of a wooden bucket as the girls dance out of the wheelhouse, having completely ditched their skimpy tops.  “Their breasts, snowy mounds that trembled as they moved were free and uncovered . . . the three pairs of breasts seemed to be alive under the moon’s pale light.”  For the girls’ big finale, they one by one tear off their panties and run buck naked to the wheelhouse.  Batman v Superman gets made into a $250M shit-fest while this goes unproduced for 80 years? [1]

Inexplicably, Tuffy takes a while to ponder and reflect at his situation.  By the time he gets back to the wheelhouse, the girls are asleep.  The next morning, they spot a fishing boat.  The Mexican crew seems a little shifty to Tuffy and leers at his nearly naked harem.  They decide to risk it and promise the captain a reward if he will take then to San Diego; and a bonus if they go to the zoo.

Naturally, it is about five minutes before the crew wants to turn the rescue mission into a pleasure cruise.  Tuffy, with the girls’ help, kills one of the crew before the captain points two revolvers at him.  One of the girls slips Tuffy a knife which he is able to whip Jack Bauer-style into el capitán’s el necko.  Holding the rest of the crew at gunpoint, he sets course for San Diego.

The group separately recovers with friends.  Famous from their ordeal, the girls decide to take a show on the road and invite Tuffy to be part of the act.  Still clearly suffering from heatstroke and dehydration, Tuffy says, “I wouldn’t be no good in that sort of life.  All I’m good for is swabbing decks and such things.”

A model for such stories.  Sexy, scantily-clad then naked girls, strong sailor, danger at sea, action with the fishing boat.  Bravo.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Of course, Hollywood would botch this too by casting Ben Affleck as Tuffy.
  • First published in August 1935.
  • Also that month:  Meh, August 1935 is the new April 1935.  Was that the only two months this magazine was published?  I’d subscribe now.

The Isle of Monsters – Jane Thomas (1935)

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sascoverA row-boat carrying a butchered man washes ashore in Montaba, India.  The man has no ears, no tongue, and his heart has been ripped out of his chest.  Chief Investigator Juan  Anthony somehow recognizes the body as Morris and vows to get to the bottom of this.

Morris had been looking for information on the High Priestess Vishnaw who was thought to be living on the titular Isle del Monstruos.  Anthony reaches into Morris’s loin-cloth and finds a book.  Dude, use a rolled up sock like everyone else!

Morris wrote that he witnessed the horrible Dance of Fertilization.   Doesn’t really sound that horrible.  Unless it was like that time when I woke up one night and saw Tony banging Carmela on the Sopranos. Yeah, that was kind of horrible.

He reads Morris’s description of Vishnaw.  The legendary Indian deity is naturally described as “caucasian . . . flaming red hair.”  Anthony and his sidekick Hack Larson row to the island to get the scoop.

The search gets off to a good start — after the three hours of back-breaking rowing, I mean.  Their boat is suddenly surrounded by naked blonde babes in the water.  The girls with their “firmly molded breasts” make the men’s dingy move like they were motor-boating. They are propelled to the shore.

They continue rowing into a subterranean river where they hear a “groan . . . a low, sobbing sound,” then the sound suddenly stops —  sure sounds like a Fertilization Dance to me.  They see a set of stairs carved into the stone and tie up the boat.  The moaner was a bloody man now laying dead on a raised alter.  The tall blonde High Priestess has cut off his ears and ripped out his heart as “20-30 of her nearly naked disciples” look on with 40-60 bare breasts.  Within seconds, Anthony and Hack are captured.

Anthony awakens and is surrounded by vestal virgins.  He is hailed as the returned Great White God Vishnaw, and is being prepped for a union with the beautiful High Priestess. After having lots of the sex, Anthony understandably dozes off.  Only after he wakes up does he remember, oh yeah, wasn’t there another dude with me?  Yeah, the poor sap I saw dragged into a pit by some long hairy arms.  Anyhoo, wonder where that High Priestess babe got to?

In the darkness, Anthony sees something creeping toward him.  “A huge, hairy body with welts across its shoulders slithered toward the divan.  Two great eyes like balls of fire gleamed evilly from its glistening skull.  It left a slimy trail behind it like some enormous slug emerging from the bowels of the earth.”

As the thing gets between Anthony and the High Priestess’s “firm breasts, slowly rising and falling abdomen . . . the slimly tapering heads and legs,” he jumps on and starts a-wrasslin’.  Once again, he is knocked unconscious.

When he wakes up this time, he is not surrounded by blonde virgins, but six or eight ghastly beasts; well, they’re probably also virgins.  The things are chowing down on the dead man he saw earlier.

Anthony escapes and finds his gun.  He witnesses Hack being brought in as the next sacrifice.  Anthony goes all Travis Bickle and rescues Hack from being de-eared, de-tongued, and de-hearted.  They row away from the island after leaving a massive explosive charge. This story is so old, it was probably C-1. [1]

A fairly mediocre offering from this collection.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The first C-4 was just called C and developed in WWII.
  • First published in August 1935.
  • Also that month:  Will Rogers killed in plane crash.
  • Isle of Lucy