Tag Archives: Spicy Adventure Megapack

Tattooed Blonde – Ellery Watson Calder (1935)

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sascoverA young, lithe and beautiful blonde is on stage at a rally screaming at the crowd.

“You spineless cowards!  Are you going to let the Dixon interests get away with their high-handed methods?  Are you going to let them pay you slave’s wages forever?  Are you going to let them treat your women as they’ve treated me?”

With a dramatic gesture, the girl’s hands went to the neck of her cheap cotton dress.  She ripped at the material — tore it open.  Terry Dixon gasped.  In the nickering flare of the torches that lighted her, he saw her suddenly-bared breasts, unbrassiered, and incredibly lovely.  Across her milk-white bosoms, standing out boldly against the satin-smooth skin appeared the word “Striker”.

Terry Dixon is appalled and knows his family would not have abused the girl like that.  A “huge, hulking man, beetle-browed and powerful” takes the stage — Stanislaus Slavich implores the crowd to strike against Dixon Mill.  After his speech, the girl finally “drew the torn shreds of her dress over her naked breasts.”  Dixon follows her to a one-room shack at the edge of the company compound.

He peers through a window and sees she is alone.  He breaks down the door, ties her wrist and ankles, and gags her.  “With a savage gesture, he tore the cheap cotton dress away from her shrinking shoulders, baring her body to the waist.  For an instance his eyes rested upon her exposed beautiful breasts.”  He grabs a washcloth and begins scrubbing the tattoo, although we are sadly lacking the critical 4-page scene where he soaps her up.

Slavich bursts in and tells Dixon that he has played right into his hands by coming to the shack.  He plans to hold Dixon hostage until his father gives in to the strikers’ demands. Now Dixon is the one with his wrists and ankles tied.  Thankfully, he is not stripped. They stuff Dixon into a car and take him to a cabin in the woods.

The girl sneers, “With this guy captured, his old man will have to agree to the demands of the workers.  If he does, the increased wages will bankrupt him.  If he doesn’t, the men will strike — and the mill will close anyhow.”

Slavich — no rocket scientist — leaves to personally deliver the ransom note.  In his absence, the girl breaks into a trunk and retrieves a document proving that Slavich is an agent for a competing mill.  His agitation for a strike is just to bankrupt Dixon Mills.  The girl reveals that she is a Pinkerton operative who was undercover to get the goods on Slavich.

Unfortunately, as she is cutting Dixon loose, Slavich returns.  Ticked off at being described by the author as beetle-browed for the third time, Slavich lunges at the girl. “He grabbed at her, ripped the tattered dress from her shoulders.  Naked to the waist, she backed away from him, her bared breasts rising and falling swiftly, pantingly.” This girl’s boobs get more fresh air than Bear Grylls. [1]

Dixon manages to get free and beats Slavich to a spicy pulp.  He averts the strike, foils the competition, and gets the topless girl.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Alternatively:  Her bare girls get more fresh air than Bear Grylls.
  • First published in April 1935.
  • As far as I can tell, the girl never has a name.
  • Maybe the only book, short story, poem, movie, TV show, play, or folk song in history where Management is the good guy.

Talisman of Doom – James W. Marvin (1935)

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sascoverFlaming death rattled from Brad Langdon’s gun. Yeah, baby!

In WWI The Great War, when men were men, women were women, and planes were bi, Langdon and his boys are attacked by nine German Fokkers (heh, heh).  Langdon gets his Mann, sending him “screaming to earth in a billowing black cloud of smoke.”

Sadly, one of his mates is shot down and the other is being pursued by the eight remaining Fokkers (heh, heh).  He is able to identify the plane as his brother’s because of the titular talisman fluttering from the strut, “a girl’s brassiere that Rocky had brought triumphantly back to the tarmac with him from his last leave of absence in Paris.”

The Germans shoot down Rocky’s airplane.  He is already dead as he falls from the cockpit and no chute is seen, his last words being, “Yo Ardennes!”  Langdon, in a rage, dives after them, but they retreat back to Deutschland without engaging him. He can see Germans on the ground already swarming over his brother’s crashed craft.

Back at HQ, Colonel Higgins tells Langdon that three ammunition dumps have been bombed that month.  It is believed German spies are secretly sending intel from France to Germany — written on items of lingerie.  When the Germans see such an item fluttering from a strut, they focus their attack on downing that particular plane to get the info.

Langdon knows the name — Jeanne — and address of the mademoiselle who gave his brother the bra.  He bravely volunteers to remove another bra from this French babe. War is hell.

Langdon goes to her maison and is surprised to see Jeanne is “a girl, half-child, half-woman.”  Which makes sense —  the Germans had tried using more voluptuous women, but their bras made the planes fly in circles.  She gets over Rocky pretty quickly and Langdon stays the night.  She gives him her bra as a souvenir.

The Colonel writes a new message in the bra and Langdon goes on a suicide mission to deliberately get shot down for having a bra on his strut.  If the target the Colonel wrote in the bra gets bombed, then they will haul the French girl in and shave her head; and maybe work on those ‘pits too.[1]

The plan works.  Langdon is shot down, but does not fall like a Rocky — he is able to make a controlled landing in his damaged craft.  Flight Commander Higgins [3] is then able to rescue him before the Germans get to the site.

When the bogus target is bombed, Langdon goes to Jeane’s house.  He tells her he had to abandon the titular talisman she gave him.  She gamely offers the bra off her back to replace it.  He rips the bra off, and for the third story so far, a character exhibits a weird fetish for piercing a woman’s left breast:

  • Talisman of Death: He trained [his service automatic] at her naked left breast. 
  • Black Murder:  The figurette was unmistakable — it was Wynne Dana herself, entirely nude, with white jutting breasts tipped and pointed.  The head was lowered over a long, shiny pin that transfixed the left breast.
  • Suez Souvenir:  Buried to the hilt in the firm white flesh of her young, virginal, rounded left breast was a short oriental scimitar.

One of the better stories in the collection — this one actually had a plot.  This one also did the best job at making nudity actually be both German and germane to the plot — not essential, but appreciated.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I had a link to pictures of French women getting their heads shaved after D-Day for sleeping with Nazis.  Even though they are likely dead and they did offer comfort to the enemy, it seemed a little mean-spirited at this point.
  • [2] On the other hand, I did learn that their act was called “collaboration horizontale”  That’s even more awesome than my idea of “aiding and a-bedding the enemy”.
  • And way, way better than my first draft “providing aid and a comforter to the enemy.”
  • [3] Either this is the same guy as Colonel Higgins, or the service back then was literally a Band of Brothers.
  • First published in April 1935.

Smuggler’s Island – Atwater Culpepper (1935)

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sascoverYou give me four characters in the first three minutes, I’m lost unless their last name is Marx. Let’s get the dramatis personae out of the way: Eileen Curtis, Terry Dale, Dan Mayo [1] & Marcia Mayo.

Our cast is actually cast-aways from a liner that exploded three days earlier.  They awaken on the beach and in only a sentence or two, we get a feel for their personalities.

  • Eileen’s “white dress was hunched up about her hips, and below it extended snagged stockings, water-soaked lace, dangling garters.” So she is the hottie, and if the first seven stories are any guide, she is soon to be topless.
  • Terry Dale’s “face was crusted with salt and blistered with the torturing afternoon sun.  Searing agony seared through his wracked muscles.”  So despite his double girl names, he is the muscular, tough-guy hero and likely beneficiary of Eileen’s toplessness.
  • Dan Mayo is using their few miraculously surviving matches to light a cigarette instead of, say, a signal fire.  “They’re my matches and if there are any good ones left in the lot, I’m going to keep ’em.”  So he’s the jerk — you know, because he smokes.
  • Marcia Mayo seems much more likable than her husband:  “Down on her knees, she blew lustily.”  Actually she is being intelligent and resourceful, trying to start a small fire with the cigarette Terry knocked out of Mayo’s mouth.

On board the ship, Dale had lost a bundle to Mayo playing poker.  Once Dale caught Mayo cheating, there was a scuffle.  Marcia had tried to warn Dale.  Her effort was misinterpreted by Eileen who pulled off the engagement ring Dale had given her.

Marcia’s resourcefulness continues as she catches a crab for dinner.  Mayo does the manly thing — i.e. diminishes his wife’s achievement and takes credit.  Marcia soldiers on and pulls a metal clasp from her garter.  She gives it to Dale to fashion into a fishing hook because Mayo would just turn it into a roach-clip and use up more matches. I give credit to Eileen, though, for gamely chasing down more crabs.

After catching a couple of fish, Dale decides to explore the island.  None of the others leap up to join him, but Marcia does later catch up to him.  She finds that her clothes are being ripped up by the trek through the jungle, so gamely strips down to bra and panties to continue.  I have misjudged Marcia as she is the first to be topless.  She and Dale begin forming an alliance right there on a rock.  Unfortunately, Eileen and Mayo decided to follow them after all.

That night, Dale hears voices but doesn’t see anyone.  The next morning, he finds footprints and a cigar stub.  Down the beach, he sees a disturbance in the sand.  Dale begins digging and finds a bundle containing drugs.  Mayo is ready to destroy them, but Dale wisely points out that the men who left them might be back.

They do indeed come back three days later.  Eileen and Dale are able to circle back and board their boat.  In getting to the boat, Eileen’s sheer, wet bra splits open, airing out the last remaining breasts on the island. so the story is really over anyway. Yada, yada, the Coast Guard shows up, or maybe it is the Navy, and captures the smugglers.

Another quaint little story, but nothing special.  C’mon, I paid $.99 for this collection!

Post-Post:

  • [1] Off topic, but Zack Mayo can go to hell.  When Sgt. Foley breaks him and he screams “I got nowhere else to go”, why isn’t he tossed out immediately?  This is treated as some sort of revelation, a turning point in his character.  In reality, this is like telling your wife you settled for her because you couldn’t do any better.
  • First published in April 1935 — like most of these stories.  Either this was the most lazily curated anthology in history or April 1935 was the 1939 of pulp.
  • Yet another story mentioning step-ins.  They must have been all the rage in the 30’s.
  • Thunder Island

The Moon God Takes – Robert Leslie Bellem (1936)

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sascoverThis is the third story I’ve read by Bellem, and I’ve enjoyed all of them.  Even though the three are each very different, this one stands apart. Blood for the Vampire Dead was just as matter-of-fact as the title suggests.  The Shanghai Jester had the same stripped-down prose but with a noirish detective flavor to it.  The Moon God Takes is more romantic and has literary pretensions that the others don’t even hint at.  I was caught off-guard, but it hooked me.  The ending regresses to the mean, but it is still fun.

John Salvar is watching a woman dancing naked in the moonlight before a large grey rock. She reminds him of his late girlfriend Helen.  “Hungry he was for the lovely dancing girl . . . Strange, weird unearthly was the girl’s dance.”  If there is a deleted scene of Yoda at a titty-cantina, this would be his dialogue.

Salvar had lived in the cottage on the cliff for a year and had never noticed the big rock. Who is the woman who seems to him like a Moon-Goddess?  And not just when she has her back to him.

He watches her dancing naked before the stone for an hour before approaching her with some singles. He asks her name and she replies, “My name?  I have no name.  I dance in the moonlight. I belong to the Moon-God.”  Salvar says he is a sculptor.  She says she wishes she were a sculptor so she could carve the large stone to look like the Moon-God.

Salvar offers to sculpt the stone into the Moon-God for her if she will come live with him in his cottage.  Since Salvar has never seen the Moon-God, the girl directs his sculpting. Salvar begins chipping away the stone, but discovers it feels like he is carving flesh.  He is repulsed, but the girl strips naked and threatens to leave, so he continues.

Days later, when he finishes the sculpture, he steps back.  “My God!  It’s foul!  It’s monstrous!  It’s blasphemy!”   It sounds like a modern art masterpiece, but Salvar tries to destroy it.  The girl stops him.  When she tells him that the Moon-God is actually Satan, “maggots of horror ate into his heart.”  She strips naked again and he is suddenly cool with the devil-worshipping.  That’s her answer to everything — her excellent, excellent answer.

At midnight, Salvar awakens to see the girl in the scaly arms of the Moon-God.  She will be his mate unless Salvar confesses that he killed Helen five years earlier.  He agrees, writes a confession and flings himself off the cliff to save the girl.

The twist is that the girl is actually Helen’s sister.  She created this elaborate ruse so that Salvar would confess his crime and finally face punishment for murdering her sister. Her husband Ted was a good sport by pretending to be the Moon-God.  Also by allowing his wife to dance naked in the moonlight for hours, to strip naked repeatedly, and to bang Salvar. [1]

What baffles me is why the stone felt like flesh as he carved it.  Was it just his imagination?  Was he flashing back to carving Helen up like a roast when he disposed of the body?

Another fun story in this collection.

Post-Post:

  • [1] There is a similar scenario in Bellem’s Blood for the Vampire Dead where a man is pretty forgiving of his wife being abducted, stripped naked and used as bait.
  • First published in December 1936.
  • Also that month:  Mary Tyler Moore born.
  • Actually, in some alternate R-rated universe, this would have been a good role for MTM.

Hot Blood – Arthur Wallace (1935)

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sascoverI like how we get the authentic flavor of the location by Wallace dropping isolated spanish words into the first few paragraphs — mantillas, senoritas, pica, picador, banderilleros, matador. I could have done without horse being gored by the bull.  But I guess, if you’re going to root for anyone at a bullfight, it’s going to be the bull. The horse is kind of an innocent bystander, though.

“A bugle sounded from the president’s box and four banderilleros moved out to place the gaily colored darts between the bull’s shoulder-blades.  It was short and graceful work and when they were done, the beast stood in the center of the ring, four barbed poles, festooned with bright ribbons, dangling from his withers. The crowd applauded as another bugle call rang out.  It was the signal for Diego, the matador, to make his entrance for the kill.”

What a bunch of assholes.  If Wallace wants to drop in some Spanish lingo, how about pendejo.

Manuel Rivero is understandably pissed at his fiancee Alicia’s admiration of Diego.

“Her hands were cupped about her breasts, fingers digging into resilient flesh with inordinate passion.  As the matador’s sword flashed in the sun, only to be buried hilt deep in the hump of muscle behind the beast’s neck, a long sigh escaped her lips and electric shocks of delirious intensity whipped through her body, shaking her to the very core of all sensation.”

After Manuel goes to bed that night, Alicia calls Diego and invites herself to his hotel room. As his current squeeze Josita is “getting fat and disgusting” he agrees.  Diego treats women like he treats bulls — when Alicia arrives, he smacks Josita, calls her a whore and throws her out of his room.

Josita is not thrilled with this treatment.  She recognizes the socialite Alicia, so she runs to inform her fiance Manuel of her booty call.  Manuel and Josita return to Diego’s room where Manuel plans to kill Diego with his bare hands.

Manuel and Diego begin fighting.  Josita is rooting for Manuel because of the way Diego treated her.  Alicia is ready to stick a blade in Diego for the way he treats the bulls. Unfortunately the house staff is on team-Diego and overcomes Manuel.  Josita says the men have taken Alicia to the home of Don Miguel so they hit the road in pursuit.

At casa de Miguel, Diego puts Josita in the bull ring where she is killed.  Manuel is to be killed next, but Alicia jumps into the ring.  She tears off her red dress, exposing her “naked figure” shakes it to distract the bull — the dress, not her figure.  The bull runs by her and spots Diego and his men.  Sensing that Diego ain’t no PETA member, the bull gores Diego and his men.

Manuel grabs Alicia and puts her in a carriage to go back to Madrid, presumably still naked. Well good luck on that relationship.  First Alicia is drooling over the matador, and goes to his hotel room. Then she is so fickle that she sides with Manuel in a fight because the bullfighter is cruel to bulls.

Another Spanish word Wallace might have chosen to drop in: Loco.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Spicy Adventures, April 1935.  This is the third story from that issue.  It must have been realllly good.  Or in the public domain.  Yeah, that second thing, I think.
  • Fifth consecutive story to mention step-ins.