Tag Archives: Spicy Adventure Megapack

Cave of the Criss-Cross Knives – C.C. Spruce

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sascover“T-4, meet R-8.”  As opening sentences go, it’s not The Return of the Native.

Let’s dispense with this silliness right away and move on to other silliness.  T-4, like T-3, is a hot blonde — a Secret Service agent named Lilandry “Lil” Sweeney.  R-8, a male agent improbably named Toridzone “Tod” Kinley, is probably also hot, but really, who cares?

The Chief is sending them to the tiny Pacific island of Perambi.  It has never been charted because it is so “small, jungle-covered, fever-ridden” and fictional.  Naturally, the US government has a fueling station there. Recently a supply ship discovered the two soldiers posted there were murdered and there was no sign of the two dozen natives that lived on the island.  Replacements were left on the island, but they were also killed with the exception of one man who was turned into a raving madman.

Lil and Kinley are given purple dye to stain their bodies and knives “about 14 inches long and all but 2 inches of that was blade.”  The Chief says at least one of them will be dead soon.  Ladies and gentlemen, Knute Rockne!  They review the insane testimony of the survivor.  He  babbles of purple gods of the sunset, cave of the criss-cross knives, a coal altar, and Trump for President.  The name Peretti appears several times — a known mercenary.

Lil and Kinley prepare for the mission by going to Kinley’s place to smear the purple stain all over their bodies.  She strips down to her bra and panties so he can grease her up.  He helpfully suggests that the bra will leave a white stripe so she removes it with her back to him.  “How could she know a man’s man like Kinley had a mirror in the house? How could she know it was directly in front of her?”  I don’t know, by opening her eyes?  It’s directly in front of her!

Frustratingly, he only got to watch as she “spread more dye, kneading it into the yielding resiliency of her snowy breasts.”  He is left to spread the purple dye on himself.  Luckily his balls are halfway there already.

Their orders are to “find Piretti, discover for whom he is working, and destroy him.” They fly to the island, strip naked and skydive to a clearing in fabulous purple parachutes.  The two naked agents land in the middle of several natives and draw their unwieldy knives. Outnumbered, they follow an old man to the titular cave of the criss-cross knives.  At the bottom of the extensive cavern, sitting on an oil can, they find Piretti.

He has Lil and Kinley bound, then selects a lucky participant from the audience.  “The nude howling woman was pushed onto the coal altar.  Arms and hands were fastened until she was spread-eagled across the pile.”  A medicine man comes forward and cuts her in half.

Lil tells a cock-and-bull story (although mostly bull) about how she and Kinley arrived on the island.  Piretti reciprocates by telling her that he was hired to break the United States’ hold on this island.  Like every James Bond villain, he drones on and on.  He researched the island and the natives.  He determined his best course was to dye himself purple, strip naked and be their god.  Lil reminds him that the natives also expected a goddess in addition to the god.  She and Piretti start making out as Kinley is still caged.  And frankly, I don’t understand what happens next.  After the sex stuff, I mean.

Kinley’s cell door is opened. “He and he alone was called upon to judge the fate of Piretti and Lil who were captives now.”  What the hell?  How did Kinley go from prisoner to head purple-guy in charge?  Nelson Mandela had a longer ascent to power.

Naturally, since Piretti had been making out with Lil, Kinley has the natives strip him even more nakeder and toss him off a cliff.  Well, that was their mission, and he did order that woman cut in half . . . but I think banging Lil was what sealed his fate.

These stories really are just snapshots — the good kind with topless babes.  There isn’t a lot of room for nuance or character development.  Maybe that’s why there seems to be a page missing from this story that explains Kinley’s rise to power.  The adherence to formula has worked for me so far — another fun story.

Post-Post:

  • First published in April 1935.
  • Also that month:  Erich von Däniken born, paving the Naza Lines for the Ancient-Alien-Industrial Complex.  For a dose of reality, here is an awesome debunking.
  • Third consecutive story to mention “step-ins.”

The House of Weird Sleep – Charles R. Allen

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sascoverFive wealthy young women have disappeared in Panama City (the one in Panama) and the police are stumped.   Sitting in a bar, reporter Ken Newman and cop-wannabe Nick Carson notice Doris Chamberlain, niece of banker Henry Carmody being led out by a man with a scar. Sensing trouble, and more importantly a reward, they follow the couple to a dark house.

Seeing no one inside, the two men break into the dark house.  Creeping upstairs, they find “the white body of a beautiful girl . . . Her bare jutting breasts rose and fell symmetrically in apparent sleep.”  It is not Doris and they don’t know if this girl’s uncle is also rich, so they check the room next door.  There they find another girl, clad only in silk pajama bottoms. Both girls had been drugged.

As Nick vows to get the rats behind this, the scar-face man appears.  His henchmen conk Ken on the head and take Nick to the cellar for questioning.  He is strung up with his hands tied above his head.  A henchman produces a rawhide whip tipped with steel prongs.  In a scene that would have been cut from 24 as too unrealistic [1], Nick is able to swing his legs back and belly-kick his tormentor.  Then the ropes are rotten enough that he can break free.

Armed with the cat-o-nine-nails, Nick climbs the stairs to find Scar-face.  He dodges bullets and dispatches a couple more bad guys.  Through blind luck, he discovers Doris Chamberlain. She says they took her clothes away — even though she is the most overdressed women they’ve seen that night — and plan to ship her to South America as a sex slave.

They hear footsteps and Nick actually says, “If they find me here, it’s curtains.”  The men arrive and Scar-face points a gun at Nick’s head.  He manages to distract Scar-face by throwing a pillow at him.  He then grabs his gun and caps off two henchmen. Scar-face gets off lucky with a gun butt to the noggin.

As they are looking for Ken, they see Henry Carmody who is more of an “Uncle Roy” [2] than an uncle to Doris.  In fact, he had tried to force his way into Doris’ bedroom and had ordered her brought here.  Luckily Ken jumps Scar-face from behind and saves the day.

Ken tells Nick that he is sure to be hired by the police after breaking up this gang. Maybe his first case can be to investigate why there seems to be no Panamanians in Panama City.

Post-Post:

  • [1] It is no wonder L.A. is in a permanent drought.  Every warehouse, storeroom and basement where Jack Bauer is cuffed to a water pipe, the pipes are leaky and falling apart so badly he can pull them apart with his bare hands and escape.
  • [2] A character from the early days of SNL so offensive that he has apparently been scrubbed from YouTube.
  • First published in January 1935.
  • Also that month:  Elvis Presley is born.
  • The 2nd consecutive story to feature an article of clothing called a step-in.

Suez Souvenir – Jerome Hyams (1934)

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sascoverWhat the hell?  Another story featuring Cliff Downey of The Consolidated Detective Agency of Chicago?  Cliff, we had some good times, but are you going to pop up in every other story regardless of author?

Shanghai Jester:  Cliff’s hairy right fist was thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, the capable fingers clenched around the comforting butt of a service .38 automatic.

Suez Souvenir:  The detective’s  hairy right fist closed over the cold butt of the automatic in his coat pocket.

Maybe if Cliff Downey had gotten his hands on Babs‘ butt instead of his pistol’s in Shanghai, his hands wouldn’t be so hairy.

This time, he is in Suez searching for an American dame named Wilda Rhodes.  Her parents fear that she has been kidnapped.  Two French girls, a German, and a Brazilian have also disappeared, but Wilda is the only blonde [1] so only she is featured on FOX radio every night.  Downey fears she has been sold into “white slavery”, or as it is also known — slavery.  The US Consul, fortunately not under Hillary Clinton’s watch, is alive to helpfully point him to Azbar ibn Barakah, rumored slavemaster.

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.

There are breast-men (i.e., men), then there are impaled–left-breast-men.  That is 2 out of 3 stories in this collection with that weirdly specific — and creepy — fetish.

Downey finds Wilda tied up nearly naked.  He remedies one of the two problems and they escape the torture chamber.  They are quickly caught and taken to Barakah. When Wilda slashes his face with her nails, he vows to “possess her charms” then kill her. Seeing an ornamental metal chastity belt on the wall, she slips off her few clothes, leaving her “completely, gloriously nude.”  She straps on the chastity belt “encasing her intimate femininity in a shining metal prison.”  Barakah is furious, and frankly Downey is probably also not totally on-board as Wilda locks the device and throws the key out the window.

Four henchmen take Downey and Wilda back to the torture room.  Barakah threatens to blind Downey with a branding iron and melt the chastity belt off of Wilda before handing her off to the henchmen.  As the men take the German girl’s dead, naked body off the rack to be disposed of, Downey is able to smash his padlock with a conveniently placed rock.

When Barakah returns, Downey catches him by surprise, lassoing him with the chain that had bound him “smearing eyes and nose and mouth into gory jelly.”  Downey beats the man to death and takes pistol from him to kill his henchmen.  He frees Wilda, although doesn’t go as far as tossing her a shirt or anything.  Barakah’s torn clothing reveals him to actually be a white dude.

Downey tells naked Wilda that he knew it all the time — that Barakah was actually the American consul with make-up and a beard.  He explains to naked Wilda how the consul kidnapped hot babes.  He further explains to naked Wilda how he caught on to the deception.  He picks up naked Wilda “in his strong arms and carried her upstairs.” He takes naked Wilda out into the street. Finally at that point, he takes a burnoose off a dead Arab and gives it to the nude woman standing naked in the street to cover up.  And really, how much material could be in a burnoose? [2]

Downey suddenly remembers her chastity belt.  It’s not like it was covered up or anything. Wilda says she only pretended to toss the key, that it was hidden in her hair. She says, “I wanted you to have it, always.”  See, by “it” she means her vagina.

Much better than Black Murder.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Wilda is later described as having coal-black hair, so the interest in her disappearance is inexplicable.
  • [2] I thought a burnoose was just Arab head-dress, but it is actually the entire cloak.
  • First published in September 1934.
  • Also that month:  Bridget Bardot and Sophia Loren both born.  But Bridget will always be a week younger.

Black Murder – Carl Moore (1935)

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sascover

Well, I didn’t get too far into this story set in Haiti. First sentence:

Thunder rumbled and crashed, reverberated across white-topped distant mountains.

Was the author under the impression that it snows in Haiti?  John Martin isn’t thinking about the snow in them thar hills, he is more concerned about the voodoo drums, the tom-toms.

A year later John’s brother Don arrives in Haiti with John’s fiancee Wynne.   Don is searching for his older brother and is led by the police to his deserted home.  There the couple is left with two guards — Dumonnier and Manbrun — for protection.

Once inside the house, “their bodies fused, her lips restlessly on his, his arms encircling and crushing her loveliness.”  Say, isn’t she John’s fiancee?  How hard are they really looking for him?  Wynne says she just thought she loved John, but that it was really Don all the time.

That afternoon, the voodoo drums start again, or maybe it is just Bolero on the stereo. Overcome, Don carries Wynne to the bed.  It is already occupied by a naked clay figure of Wynne with a pin through it.  There is no no time for a menage-a-trois as they hear demonic laughter and find Dumonnier sprawled on the lanai, “his sightless eyes staring straight ahead, his bloodless lips grinning and mocking.  His head was split open as if from the blow of a great axe.”  Also, it is mentioned that his hat is missing.

Manbrun howls, turns on the couple, then charges into the jungle.  Don and Wynne think maybe they’ll just head out and come back when Sandals has built a walled compound in Port-au-Prince.  They run back through the jungle, their clothing slashed by thorns and sharp branches.  Don is conked on the head and he wakes up with in captivity with Wynne and his brother John.

There really is not much to the rest of the story.  There is a dance that seems to go on longer than The Matrix Reloaded rave-in-the-cave, a priest and priestess, and John Martin fakes being in a trance so he can facilitate their escape.

Later, as they are standing with police, John says, “Take me home, Don.  The spell is broken at last.”  Yeah, but I think it is going to be an uncomfortable moment when they decide who gets to ride in the back with Wynne.  John might even call shotgun.

These stories are so simplistic that they almost defy criticism.

Post-Post:

  • Published in Spicy Adventure, April 1935.
  • Also that month:  Erich von Däniken born, paving the Naza Lines for the Ancient-Alien-Industrial Complex.  For a dose of reality, here is an awesome debunking.

The Shanghai Jester – Robert Leslie Bellem (1934)

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sascover

Every time Cliff Downey thought of that cablegram, his square jaw jutted, his icy gray eyes narrowed and his mouth became a grim slit in the hard granite of his face.

Downey is following a .38 automatic with his hand on the butt of a “chink” [1] bellhop — no wait, he has his hand on the butt of a .38 automatic and is following a “chink” [1] bellhop. Yikes — I guess that’s not much better!  This is clearly from a different era.

As the “yellow boy” [1] (OK, enough of that — you get the idea) raises his hand to knock on the hotel room door, Downey slaps it away. He is tracking a man named Muller but must be careful as the cable warned him that competitors at The Argus Detective Firm are also on Muller’s trail.  Downy has traced him over three continents to find him here in Shanghai.

Muller stole $750,000 of jewels from the Vandervorts in Chicago of the Chicago Vandervorts who are offering a $10,000 reward.  He doesn’t trust the Argus gang not to let him do the legwork, slip him a shiv, and steal the jewels from him for the reward. Muller does not answer the door, though . . .

He stared into the piquant, youthful features of a girl — a slender, elfin person whose tawny yellow hair tumbled in a glorious cascade over bare and intriguing shoulder, whose hazel eyes were demurely fringed with gentian lashes, whose bee-stung lips were parted to reveal two rows of tiny, even teeth.  Her boyish body was clad in a negligee that had fallen open at the throat to disclose creamy expanses of smooth girl-flesh swelling into twin firm half-globes straining beneath the soft silken restraint of a diaphanous brassiere.

The good news is, she is Muller’s daughter.  She calls her father out and Downey prepares to haul him in.  He asks Downey to wait until his daughter Babs goes to lunch so she doesn’t see her father perp-walked out.  She goes out, presumably after covering up her firm twin half-globes.  Quite the civilized gentleman, Muller tells Downey that he has the jewels, why not just let him go for his daughter’s sake — and Downey agrees.

Downey is no fool, though, and a few minutes later spies on the couple.  Muller tells Babs, who is not really his daughter, to go to Downey’s hotel, slip him some cyanide and steal the jewels back.  Babs braves the rain to go to Downey’s hotel.  In his room, he gallantly suggests she get out of those wet clothes, and she agrees.

Shortly she reappeared clad only in a bathrobe he had handed her.  His eyes drank in her beauty.  The robe had slipped down over her shoulders, revealing more than a glimpse of the firm contours of her bare and jutting breasts.  her unclad legs and creamy thighs peered forth boldly from the robe as she walked toward him.

Babs admits that she is actually Muller’s mistress.  But a girl’s gotta have standards — him being a jewel thief is just unacceptable to her, so she wants out.  You know, now that he’s busted.  She asks Downey to take her back to America and shows off “her smooth body, her perfect breasts, firm and pink-tipped and provocative.” Babs hands him the drugged drink which he covertly dumps; he then pretends to fall into “deadly sleep”.

Back in Chi-town [2], Downey’s boss chews him out because he heard the Argus Firm was handing over Vandervort’s jewels for the reward at that very minute.  Not so, Downey says — he had immediately pegged Babs as the Argus operative even though she was more of a Vargas operative.  The tip-off was that no man would call his daughter “Babs”.  Downey switched out some fake jewels to make her think she got away with the real jewels so the Argus Firm wouldn’t cut off his family jewels.

About what you would expect from a 1934 magazine called Spicy Adventure Stories.

Post-Post:

  • [1] A quote, hence the quotes.
  • [2] This is ironic as he was earlier in Chai-town . . . OK, Chai is a word for tea derived from the Mandarin word chá (茶).  And the Chinese dialect spoken in the titular Shanghai:  Mandarin.  Now that’s weak tea.
  • First published in Spicy Adventure Stories, July 1934.
  • Also that month:  Dillinger shot.  I guess the cops won again.
  • Also, FDR is the “1st sitting president to visit South America.”  What the — is that a wheelchair joke?
  • Robert Leslie Bellem was previously heard from in Blood for the Vampire Dead.
  • Bellem is apparently best known for his creation of detective Dan Turner.  Good article here that makes me want to read more by him.