QUICK SHOTS: The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan

I'm going to be honest with you folks. I read The Hawkline Monster months ago and didn't think I'd review it. I sorta didn't think I didn't think I could really review it. It was something I read very fast. It's very different than the usual thing I review here (though in some way very much the same) but mostly I think it just took me a few months to truly digest it. I don't think I still got it fully digested but that's a problem for future me.

I was writing a movie (that I'm now making) at the time. It's a horror film with a character that can massage and shift your reality and surprise, surprise, the universe gave me the right book at the right time. A book that sorta massgaes reality. Things work out like that sometimes. I have had a copy of The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan on a shelf since my teens (seems like a long time) and I've always meant to read it. I have to be in the right mood for westerns. I have to be in the right mood for horror novels. A horror/western? Talk about the right mood.

But The Hawkline Monster called to me. Much as it calls to the characters within the novel and I pulled it off the shelf and read it nearly in one sitting. That's no great accomplishment. It's a slim, fast read of a book and the words seem to just float on into your brain. It's what I would call a bawdy novel of the 70s with supernatural and metaphysical touches. It's also a parody of tough-guy westerns and gothic horror stories, buts it's also very unsettling. See it's got its cake and it's eating it too. 

Richard Brautigan was a counter-culture writer of the time, with some scores to his name. Somewhere along the way he wrote The Hawkline Monster. I've never read any of his work before, but I've been aware of him for a long time, and I recently picked up his mystery novel Willard and His Bowling Trophies, and it got me thinking about Hawkline. Cameron and Greer are two guns for hire; they carry rifles and revolvers in a big trunk and get hired (in a whorehouse) to come to a house and kill the monster that lives under the joint in some "ice caves," by Magic Child, the native American woman/girl (she changes like everything in the book) who takes them to the spooky house.

Once they get to the place they find Miss Hawkline the owner, a spooky butler and well something about the house clouds folks minds. It's something in the air that prevents them from going on and getting to the monster killing. Mostly it's sex that distracts them. Good distraction. Everything past this is a series of funky scene strung together before Cameron and Greer shake off enough to grab their guns and go down into the caves.

In a lot of ways this is a hippy-dippy take on a B-movie. Several B-movies, a poverty row western mixed with a monster/mad scientist movie then the whole thing was dipped in acid and left to soak, oh, and add a "dirty movie" in the soup for good measure. It's a crass and crude book that at times feels like a dirty Belmont-Tower paperback then will swing into something gonzo. It's a book that that's not for everyone, and honestly, I think the whole thing was a bit of a joke Brautigan was playing on the readers, but it's a good joke if you're in a joking mode. I was and I loved it.

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

They Call Her Death Movie Review Plus Book Recommendations

I've spent the weekend in one of my natural habitats, the film festival I wander through them like a Bigfoot in the woods. In case you're wondering the other natural habitat is "used bookstore," for obvious reasons. My brain is fried from film, late-nights, free-drinks and a million new friends and conversations, but I'll do my best to be coherent. My first feature film that I wrote and produced, Arrive Alive, had its premiere at the Tallgrass Film Festival. It's the hometown fest and its WONDERFUL! Better than some much larger fests that I've been too, with a caring and cool staff and solid movie choices. Besides a murder's row of great movies to watch film fests are an incredibly fun place to meet new film-minded buddies. But more on that later. 

Early on Thursday of the fest I had my mind blown by a fellow Kansas filmmakers Austin Snell's new movie, They Call Her Death. A homage to my early (and continuous) film love, Spaghetti westerns. It was shot on glorious 16mm with vintage equipment and completely captured the style, grit, grim, blood and love of an Italian production from the late-60s. I think a lot of people have the wrong notion that Italian movies (outside of Fellini, Antonioni and the like) were all cheap knockoffs of American movies and are mostly jokes due to the dubbing, the Italian sense of humor and the Grand Guignol leanings of their violence. They were big dogs in the world film market, pretty much second only to the U.S. They were professional filmmakers bending the lines of filmmaking and crafting a new visual landscape out of necessity and artistic leanings. Obviously, Leone was quick accepted as the genius he was, but the rest had to struggle for their world-wide expectance. It's just in the era of boutique Blu-Ray levels are we seeing some wonderful new reappraisals of oft-looked-over directors and series. I'll watch the 100th Django knock-off or a Fulci cosmic-gore-picture over most modern film any day.

They Call Her Death is about pig-farmer Molly Pray (Sheri Rippel) hits the bloody trail of vengeance after a bounty hunter (Devan Garcia) kills her beloved husband (Patrick Poe). Along the way Molly grows and changes into a masked (shades of 66's Johnny Colt) stone killer as she uncovers the local conspiracy that may have had something to do with her husband's death. There are gunfights, gold bars, awesome miniatures, fisticuffs, explosions, blood and guts (literally) and some wonderful SUPRISING moments. The jolts of humor come from stress-relieve after shocking gore and the "stock" town characters, something EVERY western's needs, drunk dicks, barflies, sassy bartenders, and eventually Dané Shobe as the dedicated deputy who rides along with Molly. It's a hand-crafted movie that works incredibly well. It even veers into uncharted territories, let's just say Italian Horror was also on Austin's mind; to keep you guessing but I'm not spoiling anything.

Obviously, the dedication to the recreation of the feel of Italian cinema is commendable. But without solid characters to latch onto a homage can feel hollow, luckily you feel for Molly Pray. And interestingly she's not a totally innocent character. This isn't the standard "women's revenge" picture, though obviously stuff like They Call Her One-Eye is in its DNA, but Molly's a different kind of lead. She's a hard-bitten woman even before the death of her husband, perhaps a little "nicer" but not an innocent. 

If you're interested in this kind of movie, I'm sure you're aware of Grindhouse, the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint that pushed a lot of these kind of movies to the movie-nerd forefront. It also started a wave of filmmakers to make grindhouse-style films. Some good like Hobo with a Shotgun, others, uh, not good. Good news if that turns you off, because it's not that. It's not all faux-film grain and sepia tone for "effect," it's a well-crafted film with a certain look and it's so much fun that you forget all about the aesthetic and just chug along with the picture. Probably with a smile on your face or maybe wincing at the gore.

To be transparent, I have been hearing rumblings of this movie for a while. The film scene in Kansas is nebulous and small. I know a few of the people in it, one stayed at my house during the fest (Hi, Patrick!) and the other actor dies in my film as well. So, I was ready to see it and luckily it lived up to expectations. Also, I hung out with director Austin, make-up man Jake Jackson and producer Adam Jeffers. All cool dudes, but if I didn't LOVE the movie, I would have slunk into the night and not written this review.  

And here's the good news this week (through November 3rd, 2024) you can WATCH this movie (and mine if you want) buy purchasing a Virtual Pass to watch it before most folks and be super cool. 

Now, while I have occasionally done movie reviews in the past on the blog here, it has mostly devolved into a dedicated book blog, so I can't let you leave without some book recommendations if you watch They Call Her Death and have a hankerin' for bloody, spicy western books, there's some good 'uns. The Joe Millard's for the further adventures of The Man with No Name, George G. Gilman's Edge for their bloody violence, John Benteen's Fargo for some rollicking action, and a double dose of Joe R. Lansdale, one as Ray Slater for its rock-solid western feel and Dead in the West for the touch of the "weird western" sub-genre. 

QUICK SHOTS: The Magic Wagon by Joe R. Lansdale

Champion Joe has darn-near taught me all I know about writing. The man makes it look so easy it can make you wanna spit. Never seems to write a dull bit, never sounds like anyone other than hisownself and cranks out work like a veteran pulpsmith. I've went on and on about how much Lansdale's work means to here and got real wind-baggy about it. So, I won't be boring you about it again. I like his darned books, got it?

"The Magic Wagon" is a slim-little thing; it's a western not like you've ever read before or since, I'd imagine. Where else do you have mummies, sharpshooters, an orphan named Fogg and Albert, an ex-slave traveling the west with a chimp named Rot-Toe? Oh, and this is how the thing starts:

"Wild Bill Hickok, some years after he was dead, came to Mud Creek for a shoot-out of sorts."

Yup. C'mon that's solid gold. Lansdale is the closest thing to Samuel Clemmons in a white linen suit we got today. Albert and Fogg are buddies and they travel with Billy Bob who may or may not be the illegitimate son of Wild Bill with a Medicine Show. They got a nasty storm that by some bag mojo has been dogging them for a long while when they end up in Mud Creek, Texas.

You may remember Mud Creek from Lansdale's Zombie-Western "Dead in the West." Weird stuff seems to happen down in Mud Creek. Anyway, it's an episodic novel where we learn bits and pieces about the characters. It's full of Lansdale, hitting a lot of his hallmarks like the supernatural, racism, tall-tales and colorful language. He really makes you care about Albert and Fogg, then you'll simultaneously like and hate Billy Bob. Lansdale's real good at that. But what will happen when that evil-old cloud catches up to 'em in Mudd Creek? Can't be good.

In that link above you can read my review of Ray (Lansdale) Slater's "Texas Night Riders," Lansdale's attempt at conventual western. I liked "Texas Night Riders" a lot, but this is him shaking off any sort of mental shackles and writing what he wants. He's returned to westerns a few times, I'm thinking about reading his "Lost-Lansdale" book "Blood Dance," which seems to be a conventual western to a point then swerves into something a bit wilder. 

Look, it's a great book, give it a go. If I explained more about it, it would sorta spoil some of the magic (get it?) of the book. 

Texas Night Riders and Other Drive-In Books: Early Pulp of Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale

I've touched on, more than once, that Joe R. Lansdale is a corner stone in want has made me the reader (and writer) that I am today. Probably, much to his chagrin if he ever caught word. It's an odd relationship reader/writer, it's all a once more personal and less personal of a connection than say being struck by a movie star. You spend a lot of time inside someone else's head when you read a book, but you don't see them, you don't know how they move or what they sound like. After middle school's worth of reading Alexandre Dumas, James Bond and The Saint novels, I had switched my recreation time to horror flicks and vintage muscle cars. The bloodier and the faster the better. 

Somewhere down the two-lane blacktop, I got wind of "Bubba Ho-Tep" which put together of two of my favorite horror-guys, Bruce Campbell and the director Don Coscarelli and it was taken from a short story by a fella named Joe R. Lansdale. An old Elvis fighting a mummy in an East Texas nursing home? Hell, I was sold. My local library had a copy of "Writer of the Purple Rage" that the novella was contained in and boy-howdy I was hooked. Soon, I read most of his stuff I could lay my hands on. Some of them in by dashboard light in my hot rod 1968 Plymouth Fury coupe. I must have been out on the highway avoiding The God of the Razor and staying out of weird Drive-In's. 

Lansdale was the first writer I encountered that seemed to understand life in the small-town/country way with a vernacular to match to boot. I knew guys and gals in flesh in blood like the ones in Lansdale's words. When I read a Hap and Leonard novel, I imagine my late-father as Hap, he was cut from the same country-boy/hippie cloth. An ass-kicker too, 'natch. I guess Lansdale taught me that writing can sound like anything, that it doesn't have to come from the pen of an English ex-spy or some other stuffed-shirt. And he wrote all the things I liked, mystery, horror, sci-fi you name it and it all sound exactly like Joe R. Lansdale talking to you, spinning yarns making you laugh and then turning it on its head and making a shiver run up your spine.

"Texas Night Riders" came out in 1983 from Leisure books with Lansdale writing under the name Ray Slater and it's an all-out tale of western revenge in under 200 pages. Before this he wrote a porn novel called "Molly's Sexual Follies" as Mark Simmons (with Brad W. Foster) and his shattering novel "Act of Love," which is one helluva book. Then came out with a one-two punch of "The Magic Wagon" and "The Nightrunners." Whew. Anywho, "Texas Night Riders" might seem like a typical western. Farmer Jubil Rains used to be a solider in the Confederate army and now is living peacefully with his wife and son...you see where I am going with this, right? 'ol Jubil has his son murdered before his eyes by three bandits and plugged buried alive in the coffin of his recently deceased wife. Well, Jubil does what most cowboy heroes would do and straps on his six-guns and heads out with revenge on his mind. Along the way he comes across the baddies now leading a pack of the titular Texas Night Riders, masked riders out to push people off of their land. Jubil takes up with big time farmer, Brennan and his men in order to kill the nasty Thorton who ran his son through with a saber.

Jubil is a fairly conventual western-type hero, a quiet man out for personal revenge. Lansdale's leads are usually more colorful and interesting characters, but this after all was written for a Leisure pulp-paperback and Lansdale gave them a pulp-paperback hero. He's certainly not a bad character, he's just Clint Eastwood on the page. Thinking about it, what more do you need? This is still clearly a Lansdale novel; his quirks and themes seep in through the mud and the blood. The farmer's daughter, Mattie is a tough lady, like a lot of Lansdale's ladies, who can handle the action with aplomb. While all the side characters are stock players, Lansdale makes them tough, funny and wild in their own ways. And the action is all Lansdale, brutal and wild and at times reaching his early "splatterpunk" levels of gore. There's a hint of horror in the mix, early on the town drunk refers to Jubil as a zombie, all dead inside but walking. There's a bit of "The Night of the Living Dead" as the Night Riders siege a walled-up farm in the dead of night. It's not a book that is going to be amongst the best of Lansdale's work, but it's a fascinating look into the foundation of the writer he became and what was always in there. 

A couple of years later Lansdale returned to the western, albeit with a less traditional tale with "Dead in the West," starring a rascal of a preacher-man named Jebediah Mercer who lands himself in Mud Creek, TX to try to get some soul saving done. It's a good thing he's a pistol-packin' preacher cause soon the dead start to rise, and he's got to stand up and fight. "Dead in the West" is a wonderful little book, seriously little, the only drawback is that there's ain't much of it and you want more of it. It seems like it's ripped out of the pages of "Weird Tales," a fever dream about putting Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Roy Rogers and George A. Romero in a blender then spill it out over a typewriter. Little tips of the cowboy hat to "The Necronomicon" and such put you in the right mindset. The voice is (as always) pure Lansdale. It's funny, it's profane, its gross and blood. So, you know...pure Lansdale and boy howdy how I had fun with this one.

Then a few little years later Lansdale took the western vibe into the apocalyptic future filled with zombies in "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folk." It's a novella which is its only downfall, there should be more of it, there should be a near endless supply of stories in this world. I read this many, many years ago and in rereading it (and knowing more and more about Men's Adventure fiction) now it makes me long for a Lansdale M.A. series penned in the 80's about this bounty hunter named Wayne and his '57 Chevy wandering the new terrifying west. It's a place of (somewhat) domesticated Zombies, lawless border towns, the vague aftermath of the "Chevrolet/Cadillac war" and all measure of scoundrel. If you're not aware Lansdale did contribute to the "M.I.A. Hunter" series with always excellent Stephen Mertz but if Lansdale had had his own series product the Post-Apocalyptic Men's Adventure genre would have been the one, he was most suited for, even over an action series or an adult Western. Sigh. If only. A reader can dream. The novella itself is top-shelf, naughty, vulgar, non-stop action fun piled to the brim with exuberance and wild little touches. Shit. There need to be more of it.

There's no other writer like Joe R. Lansdale. I'd imagine there's folks that wouldn't dig what he is putting down. There are always wrong people in the world. In digging further in his back log I'm stuck by the ferocity of his work. Not just what he puts on the page, then emotion behind it. They read like something he HAD to put down on paper. The young and hungry author syndrome. Lansdale has kept the spark throughout the years, though he's gotten a bit more respectable and written some books that a truly brilliant, easily better then pretty much whatever the "big literary" books are (I'm looking at you, "The Bottoms" and "The Ticket") but he always never lost his spark of weirdness, thank God.   

QUICK SHOTS: Fargo #7: Valley of the Skulls by John (Ben Haas) Benteen

It's really damned surprising that it's taken me this long to talk about a Fargo novel on the blog. I've really had a blind spot in my reading history with westerns, it's something I plan on working on this year (because of a project I'm working on) and I'm sure you (the reader) will see more and more westerns being reviewed, especially because I've been buying 'em the bucketful. John Benteen was the guy that started turning me around on westerns. Not that I ever disliked them, I just usually got my western fix from the movies. But it's nearly impossible not to like Fargo if you are into action/adventure fiction. The series is damned near perfection after all. 

Ben Haas was a writer who could do about anything, westerns, Doctor romances, espionage tales, sports, fantast, humor, a pro's pro. He could do them all well too. I don't think it was possible for him to not string the right lines together. And after a try-out writing Lassiter #5 "A Hell of a Way to Die," Haas turned his gunsights toward creating his own hero, I use the term loosely, in Fargo for Belmont-Tower. Now, I'm sure most of you know that Fargo owes a lot to Fardan as played by Lee Marvin in 1966's "The Professionals." Right down to the campaign hat. Plus Frank O'Rourke's novel its based on. But there's more Fargo's, so who's winning?

"The Valley of the Skulls" is in the wild and wooly Fargo mold. It sends the soldier of fortune down to Mexico at the behest of an asshole millionaire in order drag the millionaire's son-and-a solid gold cannon out the jungle from a temple of skulls build by the ancient Mayans. To do it he joins up with a dangerous English gunman and his private army, tangles with the decedents of the Mayan's, the nature of the jungle, asshole sons of asshole millionaires, scientist just trying to do stuff for science, pretty scientist daughters and falls in love with a cannon. Along the way he gets plenty of opportunity to use the cut-down Fox shotgun that Teddy Roosevelt gave him and his Colt .38 Army, not to mention the solid gold cannon. Fargo is a real hardcase, but he's nearly superhuman in his capabilities in every situation, but never much worried about 'ol Fargo, it's his enemies you got to worry for. 

The only problem with this book is that it ended. Well, it did seem a little rushed towards then end (it's a pretty thin spined entry in the series) but Haas still managed to wrap everything up nicely. If you are kind of put off by westerns, I'd still recommend Fargo to you. Sometimes the books are more traditional westerns and sometimes they are pure adventure stories. They feel to me like a spiritual cousin to Peter McCurtin's Jim Rainey-Mercenary books. An ultra-tough man goes around the globe with guns and problems to solve for hard cash. Haas is one of the best paperback writers. The original editions are sometimes hard to track down (there's a few individual titles that seem to be more common) but luckily Piccadilly Publishing has republished the Haas books in the series (there's a few outliers) as eBooks. The also published "A Hack's Notebook" Haas's unfinished autobiography that is a fun, interesting read that should be on your bookshelf. Oh, the all the Fargo's should be too.