Showing posts with label Doug Masters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doug Masters. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

TNT: The Missing Two Volumes

As mentioned in my reviews of the TNT series, volumes #7 and #8 of the original French series were not included as part of Charter's English translation. Below I've placed the original covers for these missing volumes, published by Editions Robert Laffont in 1979.

First up is #7: Le Grand Chaperon Noir (aka The Large Black Hood). I have no idea what the book is about, but the lady on the cover certainly intrigues me:


And next there's #8: Les Cobras De Lilliput (aka The Cobras Of Lilliput) which sounds unusual, even for TNT standards; it appears that our man Tony Twin is shrunk to Lilliputlian size in this adventure!


The smart thing to do would be for some publisher to release an omnibus edition of the entire TNT series, adding on new translations of these "missing" two volumes. I for one would love to know what we're missing out on!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

TNT #7: Kingdom Of Death


TNT #7: Kingdom Of Death, by Doug Masters
August, 1986 Charter Books
(French publication, 1978)

Sadly, this was the final volume of the English translation of the marvelous TNT series, but in another odd move by Charter, it was actually volume #2 of the original French publication, where it was titled Le Grand Congelateur (aka The Large Freezer, cover below). But it somehow works, as the first half of Kingdom of Death retains the psychotic drive of the earliest TNT novels.

The opening alone is a throwback to the grim tone of TNT #1, as a team of surgical-garbed terrorists break in on a newly-married couple's honeymoon night, force them to have sex, then take the wife and hang her upside down from meathooks as they drain every drop of her blood. More atrocities follow; duplicate blood-draining killings occur around the world, which of course make the news, but it's only Arnold Benedict and his intelligence chief Corrie Corlington who deduce that all of the victims shared one thing in common: they all had a super rare blood type known as "Bombay Blood."

It turns out that these terrorists -- lead by a mysterious figure known only as "Cancer" -- have killed every known person who posesses this blood type. All save one: the sickly great-grandson of mega-wealthy Aldai Mayflower, an industrialist who has basically run the US from behind the scenes for the past few decades. The boy is hemophilic, among other things, and the slightest cut could kill him; Cancer threatens to destroy all of the remaining vials of Bombay Blood unless Aldai Mayflower pays him an incredible amount. Mayflower, as we know from previous installments, is Arnold Benedict's hero, so Benedict is quick to come to the old man's aid. And Benedict does what he's done in similar circumstances throughout this series: he calls in Tony Nicholas Twin.

Twin however is in the middle of his own investigation -- this is one of the few times in the series in which we see him going about his ostensible "job" as a photo-journalist. Using his connections, Twin has gotten a meeting with a splinter cell of terrorists in French Canada, a distrustful group of murderers who have only met with Twin because he's known as one of the few journalists who won't give away his sources. This leads to one of the funniest moments in the series, as Benedict telephones Twin right in the middle of this high-security meeting; even Twin, lead through the streets of Montreal blindfolded, has no idea where he is, and yet Benedict has found him as simply as that. After an escape with the help of the busty Margo, a gorgeous acquaintance of these terrorists via her imprisoned husband, Twin decides to help Benedict stop Cancer.

Things pick up as Twin is sent to Budapest, where he again meets Margo; she's one of Corrie Corlington's "girls," she informs him, and she's here to assist. Corrie herself is busy putting together a team for a chaotic sidejob Benedict has devised; part of Corrie's team is Valka the Titan, the Russian powerlifter so memorable from previous volumes. (However this leads to a big question about Kingdom of Death, which I will get to below.) In Budapest, Twin discovers that there is one final person who posesses Bombay Blood, the only person Cancer hasn't gotten to; a schoolteacher named Sandra Gyarmati who lives behind the Iron Curtain (remember that?). Twin's mission is simple, then; he must sneak across the border into the USSR, grab the woman, and sneak back across -- and then evade the worldwide network of spys who will be coming after him.

As usual things are a bit more complicated. It turns out that Sandra Gyarmati has just recently died. But her body has been frozen and sent into "The Kingdom of Death," a high-security compound in which the important dead are stored, to be unfrozen and returned to life at some future date, a la Walt Disney. Twin's second female accomplice is Fedora Karon, a doctor in the center which freezes the bodies; after a little sex she "kills" Twin and places him in a coffin which is bound for the Kingdom.

Here the novel becomes like the TNT we know and love. Coming back to himself within the freezing Kingdom, Twin must open the massive doors so a commando squad can enter and steal away Sandra Gyarmati's coffin. But in his daze Twin rips up the wrong controls and the coffins about him begin to defreeze, leading to a crazed moment in which "zombies" stagger to life and come after him. One of the zombies is Stalin himself, who emerges from his VIP section in the Kingdom and staggers toward a panicking Twin. But the commandos enter and blast away, and Twin escapes with Gyarmati's coffin; now he must get it across Hungary and back into the West while evading Communist agents, the CIA, and Cancer's men, who have discovered this ruse.

Sadly, the rest of the novel fizzles, becoming an overdone Eurospy comedy of confused agents and elaborate ruses. There are some colorful moments -- Twin escapes under the guise of a travelling European circus, complete with Valka as an elephant-riding "bearded lady" -- but after the creepy "Kingdom of Death" section and the truly grisly opening pages it all comes off as rather flat (the super-detailed lesbian scene between Margo and Fedora notwithstanding). In fact, this is my least favorite of the TNT series, which is all the more of a shame since it was the final volume.

But this leads me to the "problem" I mentioned earlier. This installment was published second in the original French series, and Valka is a main character here, familiar with Twin and already working for Benedict. However, Valka didn't meet Twin or Benedict until The Beast, which was published third in the original French series. So I can only assume that in the French version of the series, TNT #3 actually took place after TNT #2. Either that or for the English publication Charter Books and translator Victoria Reitter changed things around between the two novels.

At any rate, here is the cover for the original French publication, Le Grand Congelateur:

Monday, September 20, 2010

TNT #6: Ritual Of Blood


TNT #6: Ritual Of Blood, by Doug Masters
March, 1986 Charter Books
(French publication, 1980)

Ritual of Blood was #6 in the 7-volume US publication of the TNT series, but it was actually the ninth and final volume of the original French publication, where it was titled Le 10e Mari De Barbe-Bleue (aka Bluebeard's 10th Husband, cover below). So, even though there was one more installment of Tony Nicholas Twin's wild adventures in the English version of this whacked-out series, as far as the original French was concerned, this was it; this was his last ride.

This is probably my favorite volume of the series. It's like the psycho-sexual horror version of the series, TNT gone giallo, injected with a healthy dose of dark comedy. Taking the war of the sexes to surreal extremes, Twin's enemies this time out are a cabal of men-hating women: half of them giant-sized freaks with beards, the other half call girls with stupefying bodies. Their modus operandi is to ensnare multi-millionaire men (shortly after their families have died in some "accident"), marry them and overcome them with a little kinky sex for a few months, and then murder them. Sordid enough, but add into the mix a host of s&m hijinks, mazelike corridors in the guts of the earth which become death-traps, and a shadowy monster which lurks in a pit of darkness and feasts on the severed heads of beautiful women.

The opening half's a bit busy; unlike previous volumes, which were separated into three separate "books," Ritual of Blood narrative-hops for the first hundred pages or so, jumping from Twin in Ireland, to his boss/archenemy Arnold Benedict in Japan (and later an overseas flight), and to a gorgeous, nameless woman currently posing as two different wealthy wives in New York City -- "Bluebeard" herself, this installment's "she-who-destroys-men" (every volume of TNT has had one) -- who is busily ruining the lives of her latest conquests.

Benedict learns via an uber-wealthy acquaintance that a handful of men with over 200 million dollars to their name have gone missing over the past few years, each of them shortly after having married an incredibly attractive woman. These women also disappear shortly thereafter. It all appears to be the work of a mysterious group called Matrix, a sort of Women's Lib movement gone Nazi, women who are dedicated to eradicating male control and putting women in charge of everything (Rush Limbaugh probably read this novel at an impressionable age). The aforementioned "Bluebeard" is the beauty and the brains of the outfit; the brawn comes from Hester Dragut, a seven-foot-tall bearded Turkish woman who commands a similar army of freakish, monstrous women.

Benedict's first thought is to use Twin as bait, to set him up as a millionaire and wait for the Matrix women to swoop in for him. Twin meanwhile is performing his own investigation. In a grisly scene early on, Twin and his "assistant" Clare Hallam visit Twin's multi-millionaire friend in rural Ireland. There they find the entire family murdered. Even the man's children are dead, each of them shot through the mouth. Decapitated bodies litter the mansion and the surrounding countryside. Twin's millionaire friend still lives however, and Twin promises to help find out who committed this atrocity. But after getting to New York City, meeting a dwarf prostitute named Evangeline Tombs, and nearly drowning in a metal maze of congealing plaster, Twin finally relents and takes part in Benedict's scheme.

Here's where Ritual of Blood really gets enjoyable. You can tell this was the send-off for the original series, as all of the supporting characters reappear and interract in ways highly entertaining for longtime readers. For Benedict's plan is for Twin to pose as a millionaire named "John Wayne:" Dawlish, the English soldier nutcase of previous volumes, poses as Twin's older brother as well as the family idiot; Valka the Titan, the hulking Russian powerlifter from The Beast and Killer Angel, poses as Twin's "littlest" brother.

The Matrix gals close in, launching a late-night assault on New York City's Waldorf-Astoria. Suddenly it's as if "Doug Masters" is a pseudonym of Thomas Pynchon; a truly bizarre sequence occurs in which gorgeous call-girls who serve Matrix take on the gorgeous call-girls who work for Corrie Corlington (Arnold Benedict's head of security and a former call-girl herself), blasting away at one another in the plush surroundings with crossbows and silencer-equipped submachine guns. Twin meanwhile meets Bluebeard; her beauty is such that she stuns even Twin, who by this point in the series has had sex with around 200 women or so.

The novel becomes even more surreal. Bluebeard shows Twin that she has four million dollars of her own -- she doesn't want him for his (fake) money. She wants him for a night's pleasure. What follows is one of those over-the-top TNT moments: Bluebeard has had a special "mirror bed" created for the occasion, a bed made of thin mirror which has been attached to a helicopter. The 'copter lifts them off and Twin and Bluebeard have sex on the fragile glass as nighttime New York City glitters beneath them.

Ritual of Blood climaxes with the usual TNT disdain for reality: Twin is taken to a Medieval-era castle which has been rebuilt in the Arizona desert; he is caught in a giant spider web and combats giant spiders and a family of "spider-men;" Corrie Corlington leads a call-girl cavalry charge on the castle, complete with a bugler; Hester Dragut exacts jealous revenge on Bluebeard; and meanwhile Arnold Benedict stumbles around in a full suit of Medieval armor.

Here's the cover to the original French publication, Le 10e Mari De Barbe-Bleue:

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

TNT #5: Killer Angel


TNT #5: Killer Angel, by Doug Masters
January, 1986 Charter Books
(French publication, 1978)

Once again the order of the US and French publications of the TNT series matches up -- Killer Angel was the 5th installment of the series both here and in France, where it was titled Les Jeux D'Hercule (aka The Hercules Games, cover below).

In Italy on business (whatever that means -- I've yet to figure out what exactly Tony Nicholas Twin does for a living), Twin receives a telegram that his mentally-retarded daughter October is sick. Twin freaks and, unable to reach his home in Ireland due to a storm raging about the Mediterranean, charters a plane to get home immediately. But the plane ventures right into the midst of that storm and it loses an engine. It makes an emergency landing in Albania; the passengers are given temporary shelter by the tight-lipped Communist soldiers about, whom suspect this is some sort of Capitalist trick. Twin freaks again; his constant pleas for a telephone unanswered, he breaks free, killing guards left and right. But he's caught, sent to another compound, this one heavily guarded -- and there he sees, "coaching" a team of sportsmen, Arnold Benedict, Twin's archenemy/boss.

It turns out Benedict had nothing to do with Twin's emergency landing here in Albania. That the two men are here in this exact same place at the exact same time is just a coincidence. And it's a shaky one -- one of the rules of fiction is that coincidence should never rear its head. So then Killer Angel gets off on an unsteady foot. But once this is overlooked it turns out to be one of the best entries in the series.

Twin breaks free yet again and after a harrying chase across an Olympics-sized field he's caught...only to be sprung by Valka, the 600-pound powerlifting Russian last seen in TNT #2: The Beast. There Valka stole the show from Twin, and here he does so again. Benedict has brought Valka along to oversee the sporting events: long story short, Benedict has come to Albania to ensure that this area which is quite obviously a missile silo really isn't a missile silo. But Giallica Kadar, wife of the Albanian president, has turned the area into a state-of-the-art sports complex which she hopes will one day host the Olympics. She's employed a metal-legged freak named Dr. Amadeus who produces records-shattering athletes with his hynpotic training. Giallica is a regular destroyer-of-men, a phenomenally-figured beauty who has sex with men who resemble Joseph Stalin for the amusement of her husband -- who watches it all go down through a two-way mirror.

Giallica Kadar plans to unveil her new sports complex with The Hercules Games, a sequence of twelve events loosely patterned after The Labors of Hercules. But it will be a death-match, Dr. Amadeus's group of hynpotically-trained super-athletes against his first batch of trainees, a group of political prisoners who have been augmented to mutant levels by monstrous doses of steroids. The former will easily defeat the latter in Giallica's deadly events, and Twin vows to help in the cause -- he turns himself over to Giallica and her loyal soldiers and tells them he wants to compete in the Games.

There's a lot of plot-setting afoot but once it's out of the way Killer Angel really gets in gear, reaching a level of lurid sensationalism that nearly matches TNT #1. The Hercules Games are over-the-top in the way that only the TNT series can be: Twin must race against a tank while snipers shoot at him, wrestle juggernaut-sized opponents in complete darkness, and in the best sequence of all evade a scuba-outfitted opponent who chases Twin through an acid-filled tank, firing at him with a napalm-blasting flamethrower.

In the previous volume Twin had sex with 80 women; here he slows it down a bit and has sex with a mere 13. The first dozen are young female athletes whom Twin must bring to orgasm; if he fails, Giallica will have them strangled. After which he must couple with Giallica herself. Benedict has let it slip that Twin is the only man in the world who can have sex with a hundred women in one day, or pleasure a single women innumerable times, and Giallica wants to find out for herself. But Twin, despite his hatred for her, must take Giallica as if he truly loves her -- or else all 12 of the girls will die.

The novel builds to a climax in which the drug-fuelled political prisoners fight for their freedom, inspired by Twin's belief in their cause. There's also a nice twist on one of the Labors of Hercules as Twin saves the day, unblocking the dam which looms above the missile silo.

This is one of my favorites in the series. Good characterization, good writing ("Doug Masters" certainly has a way with describing environment and atmosphere), and despite having a bit more plot than the usual installment, it features one of the best death-maze sequences.

Here's the cover of the original French edition of the book, Les Jeux D'Hercule:

Thursday, August 5, 2010

TNT #4: The Devil's Claw

TNT #4: The Devil's Claw, by Doug Masters
September, 1985 Charter Books
(French publication, 1978)

The Devil's Claw was 4th in the TNT series both here and in France, where it was titled Huit Petits Hommes Rouges ( aka Eight Little Red Men, cover below).

This time Tony Nicholas Twin has more of a personal connection with the mission at hand: while on vacation in the Caribbean with his mentally-retarded daughter October and his "assistant" Clare, freezing temperatures suddenly overtake the sunny locale, to such an extent that a married couple also vactioning with the Twin family dies in the horrific conditions. Unbeknownst to Twin similar freak weather has sown havoc about the world in three different locations. Determined to find out what caused the death of his two friends, Twin deposits October and Clare back Ireland and heads for Germany, where one of these freak weather attacks occurred.

At the same time, Arnold Benedict, Twin's archenemy/boss, has been employed by a wealthy sheik to find out what said sheik's similarly-wealthy cousin/enemy has been up to. Turns out this man is the culprit behind the weather-attacks; from his home base in a fictional village named Al-Wardi in Saudi Arabia he commands a team of young, idealistic scientists (each named after a Peanuts character) who have created the devices which are screwing with the weather. He also employs a team of 8 dwarves, former circus acrobats who like to slice up people with their razors (shades of Black Samurai 6: The Warlock) . Oh, and they're lead by a dwarf named Puffy, who likes to hunt stray cats and eat their guts. And they're all eunuch Muslims!

Benedict of course uses Twin to take out this global threat (he doesn't like it that Twin is already trying to do so; Benedict only wants Twin to do things because Benedict has ordered him to!). So Benedict has Clare kidnapped...and sold to a harem, one operated by a six-foot-plus lesbian named Ingrid Katt who works for our evil sheik. With the stalwart Dawlish (seen in previous volumes) at his side, Twin heads for Al-Wardi. All of the action takes place here, particularly in the "dead zone" which surrounds Al-Wardi and in which the villains have built "The Devil's Claws" (plural, unlike the title) which have caused the weather-destruction: a sequence of machinery which lurks inside an underground fortress in the middle of the desert.

The Devil's Claw by far has more sex than any previous TNT novel. Twin has sex with a whopping 80 women in this book -- one of them the afore-mentioned titanic lesbian Ingrid, the other 79 (!) the members of the harem...each of whom Twin couples with back-to-back...and each of whom he does over again immediately thereafter! Wilt Chamberlain could've taken lessons from this guy.

The harem-sex is rendered in the usual anasceptic style of previous TNT sex scenes; despite the lurid nature of these novels, they're usually written (or perhaps I should say translated) in a non-lurid tone. (Ie, the narrative never focuses on the graphic nature.) However the scene with Ingrid is deliciously over-the-top, as Twin both seduces and extracts information from the gorgeous Nordic blonde who "has never known a man."

The villains in The Devil's Claw sow more destruction than any previous villains, apparently flooding entire cities and blowing places off the map in the finale, but strangely the narrative skirts over this. That being said the villains are particularly loathesome in this book, especially the annoying Peanuts-named scientists. But as usual the denouement is skirted over; these novels never really deliver the hero-versus-villain scene which is required of the genre. Instead Twin, the enigmatic cipher who is pretty much inhuman, stalks his prey and tears them apart "off-screen" without breaking a sweat. Dawlish comes across as a much more vibrant character, insisting that all of his enemies are "Russians," even if they were born and bred in Saudi Arabia.

This novel's a bit different than previous volumes in that there's no death-maze Twin must navigate through. He does infiltrate the Al-Wardi palace (where he comes upon the harem), and the climax features him and Clare trying to escape the flooding underground complex, but there are no bizarre mazes of death such as in previous installments.

All told, despite the herculean sex scenes and the malicious villains, The Devil's Claw left me a little cold. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the three previous volumes -- but it's still miles beyond the typical men's adventure novel. Here's the cover for the original French edition of the book, Huit Petits Hommes Rouges:

Thursday, July 15, 2010

TNT #3: Spiral of Death


TNT #3: Spiral of Death, by Doug Masters
July, 1985 Charter Books
(French publication, 1979)

The madness continues in volume 3 of Charter's TNT series: Spiral of Death. This story was actually volume 6 in the original French series (where it was titled Terminus Eldorado, cover below); I can only assume that Charter placed it earlier in the series because it comes close to recapturing the insanity of the death-maze from TNT #1.

This time Tony Nicholas Twin goes undercover to join a terrorist army deep in the jungles of Bolivia, one under the control of a self-styled "Napoleon of Terrorism" who has assumed the name Torquemada. Along the way there's Eldorado, a lost city of Incan gold; a death-maze called "The Death Spiral" from which only mauled, half-dead victims emerge; and a sado-masochistic woman named Epifania Galvan who wears a gold chain, one end wrapped about her neck, the other piercing her vulva, each link of the chain representing a man she has "conquered." (You can be certain Twin joins the ranks...and what with his sexual insatiability, he impresses Epifania so much that she deems the chain representing him should be made of a "more malleable material.")

Spiral of Death jettisons the template of the previous two entries; here, Twin navigates the obligatory death-maze halfway through the book rather than at the end. This is the "Death Spiral," a snail-like structure in the heart of the jungle devised by the Black Army terrorist faction. Twin is sent in with a group of other recruits; those who survive get to join. Talk about boot camp hell! The Death Spiral is nearly as twisted as the death-maze in TNT #1.

Contestants must roll electronic dice to determine their path, which means that luck plays just as much a part in surviving as their skills do. The death-maze features rooms filled with circular saws, pits of acid, poisonous gasses, flame throwers, and in one memorable sequence a dome filled with bees; Twin makes his way across while covered in several layers of them. When two constestants land on the same square one must kill the other, otherwise the computer which monitors the maze will release poisonous gas which will kill both of them.

This would be enough for most books, but Spiral of Death has just gotten started. Twin emerges to discover the terrorist camp is deserted. The Black Army leaders have turned against their employer Torquemada and have stormed into the jungle, determined to find his gold-filled Eldorado. In the carnage Twin comes upon the still-alive but injured Epifania and, since she alone knows where Torquemada is, they go into the jungle together.

Eventually they discover Eldorado, an idyllic paradise beneath the jungle floor, populated by descendants of Conquistadors and whores (they're equally proud of both) who wear no clothes, have sex all day, and know nothing of the outside world. In a stroke of narrative genius, Arnold Benedict happens to be there, having come to Eldorado in a very enjoyable sideplot. Benedict the germophobe can't bear these "indicent heathen," and to make it all the more entertaining he's unable to speak to any of them as they only know Spanish. And in a final twist of the blade, since Benedict is overweight they make him wear clothes.

But it's not all paradise, as the turncoat Black Army is closing in...

As mentioned, this was the sixth volume in the original French publication of the TNT series. Even without knowing this the reader may suspect that Spiral of Death takes place long after TNT #2: The Beast -- for example, midway through the novel Twin has a brief conversation with Dawlish, Benedict's right-hand man whom we last saw in The Beast. Twin and Dawlish are familiar with one another and discuss past missions they handled together, and yet the cagey reader will recall that Dawlish and Twin never met in The Beast.

Twin is a more dynamic character this time out -- and he engages in quite a bit of action (not just the sexual type). He still doesn't use any weapons, but there's a great sequence in the end where Twin, nude and covered in gold dust, uses his ability to see in the dark to pull a night-time raid on the terrorists, stalking and killing his prey one by one.

And speaking of Benedict, whereas in the previous two volumes he had to force Twin on his missions, here he literally begs him to take on the job -- and Twin finally agrees to it. No threatening from Benedict, no kidnapping Twin's daughter October and forcing Twin to comply...no drugging Twin up and placing him in a SR-71 Blackbird on autopilot. Obviously the relationship between Twin and Benedict is no longer as strained as it once was; further sign that Spiral of Death occurs well after The Beast. Again, I'm uncertain why Charter switched around the order of the volumes; it would be interesting to someday re-read these in the proper order.

Here's the cover of the original French publication, titled Terminus Eldorado:

Friday, June 25, 2010

TNT: The Movie

By now my obsession with the men's adventure series TNT should be quite obvious. So let's pursue that obsession even further...

One thing that's always struck me as strange is how few movies were ever made from the once-ubiquitous "men's adventure" novels which were all the rage in the '70s through the '80s. I mean, there was never a Mack Bolan movie, never a Death Merchant movie. Sure, in '85 we got Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, a lame film adaptation of the Destroyer series...and in '77 we had Black Samurai, starring Jim "Enter the Dragon" Kelley, but why weren't more of these books snatched up by quickie film producers? I can't imagine the rights would've cost all that much.

As I detailed in my review of TNT #1, the series was originally published in France before coming out in English translations here in the US, starting in 1985. So let's say someone decided to make a movie of these things...let's say production started around 1986, right at the pinnacle of the '80s action phenomenon. I'd imagine it would be the Canon Group, or some other direct-to-video production company; it would be easy to imagine some big-budget realization of the series but let's keep this fantasy based at least a little in reality.

So, who would play Tony Nicholas Twin -- aka the "TNT" of the series?

Twin is described in the novels as tall and very thin, with long hands and a feline grace. Apparently he's handsome enough to be popular with the ladies, but when he's pissed his features can instill terror in his enemies. But all told Twin is established as a mostly nondescript guy -- which, really, is the point character, as this air of unimportance masks his super-powers.

The anonymous cover artist at Charter Books said to hell with this description and gave us, basically, a faux Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean, nondescript leading characters don't sell men's adventure novels, do they? TNT #1 was published in January, 1985. Who was at the top of the action-movie field in 1985? Arnold was, that's who. Charter Books knew what to do.

The cover of TNT #1 seems, to me at least, totally indebted to the famous promo shot of Arnold from the first Terminator. Just compare:




















Seems pretty similar to me...but then again what do I know about crass marketing moves?

Like I said, if the TNT series had been adapted into film, I think it would've been more of a low-budget sorta thing, so Schwarzenegger's out. As low-budget as they look today, Arnold's films at the time were major features. Who then could play our title character?

Since I first saw these TNT covers in the mid-'80s, one other actor has come to mind besides Schwarzenegger -- Brian Thompson. One of those supporting-actors you might know when you see, even if you don't recognize the name; you might remember him best as the pantyhose-masked, axe-wielding cult leader "The Night Slasher" in Stallone's ultra-violent, men's-adventure-novel-esque Cobra.

Take a look and see for yourself, comparing a headshot of Thompson with the cover of TNT #6: Ritual of Blood:




















Now there's a Tony Nicholas Twin. Same handsome yet fearsome looks, same square jaw, same haunting eyes. Even the same cadaver-like sunken cheeks!

I first became aware of the TNT series as they were being published in '85/'86, and when I saw Cobra (in the theater with my mom -- who walked out of the showing because Thompson and his fellow cultists scared the shit out of her, believe it or not), even then I thought this guy resembled the character depicted on the TNT covers. (Of course at the time I hadn't even read the series, but I was aware of it.)

And besides, given our '86 production date, Arnold was busy with Raw Deal, right?

Of course, Twin would have to be an American in the film version...can't have an Irish lead character in an '80s action film, can we? And despite the character's aversion to weapons he'd have guns blazing at all times.

So who'd direct? I'd recommend either James Glickenhaus (who gave us the very men's adventure-esque The Exterminator) or George Cosmatos, director of Cobra. Both of these guys knew how to deliver lurid, fast-moving tales with gunfire and blood squibs to spare. And the soundtrack would be the usual Radio Shack-sounding synthesizers heard in every mid-'80s action film.

Well, it's nice to dream, at least.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

TNT #2: The Beast


TNT #2: The Beast, by Doug Masters
March, 1985 Charter Books
(French publication, 1978)

Tony Nicholas Twin returns in The Beast, the second volume of Charter Books's TNT series. Even though it was #2 here in the US, this was actually published as volume #3 in the original French series (as Le Bete Du Goulag, aka "The Gulag Beast," cover below) . But this is immaterial, because like with most men's adventure novels, each volume of TNT is pretty much self-contained.

Once again Twin is forced against his will into some harebrained impossible mission; we meet him as he awakens from a drugged stupor to find himself strapped into a SR-71 Blackbird, flying at a few hundred thousand feet over USSR-controlled Kazakhstan. It appears he's been kidnapped, drugged, and deposited into this plane by Arnold Benedict, Twin's archenemy-cum employer from TNT #1. Benedict is as twisted as ever; contacted by Chinese operatives, Benedict accepts their request to spring the leader of a mysterious terrorist cell from an impregnable prison in Kazakhstan. One so super-guarded that escape from it is so impossible as to be laughable. Benedict's price for this mission? A few Ming-era vases. (This is only our first reminder that TNT is not your normal men's adventure series; Benedict could care less about politics or global security.)

Whereas TNT #1 operated like two novels in one, with the first half the origin of Twin's heightened abilities (seeing in the dark, sexual insatiability, etc) and the second half his navigating a death-maze in South Africa, The Beast is more of a unified piece. And it also moves faster; TNT #1's first half came off like a belabored game of cat and mouse, with Benedict hounding Twin on down through America and into Mexico. It was entertaining, to be sure, but filled with ultimately pointless bits like Twin meeting a Mexican beauty who staged live snuff plays in her home. The Beast opens with Twin strapped alone into a Blackbird flying on auto-pilot over Soviet airspace and it doesn't let up until the final page. The novel takes place over the course of a hectic few days and the narrative snaps along accordingly. And whereas TNT #1 spanned the globe, The Beast takes place in Kazahkstan and Iran (where we get confirmation that the events in the novel take place before the 1985 US publication date, as the Shah is mentioned as still being in control of Iran...meaning The Beast occurs before the 1979 Iranian revolution).

Twin's mission this time is to enter a secret base in Kazakhstan which serves as a high-security prison, one run by a blind KGB colonel who wears mirrored sunglasses and can "see" people via their aura-patterns. (Due to which the soldiers in the base have nicknamed him "The Bat.") He's also inhumanly cruel and enjoys the smell of freshly-gutted corpses. Benedict's employers want a Kazakhstan rebel freed from the prison; the CIA also approaches Benedict, asking him to free a man they want escaped from the prison, this one a Soviet scientist named Vilunskhas who has created a pink metal which is paper-thin but indestructable. He's also created a super-weapon named "The Beast," but no one knows what exactly it is.

Twin parachutes from the self-destructing SR-71 and, after escaping a few regiments of Soviet soldiers who just happen to be performing night-time wargames in the dropzone, meets up with his Kazakhstan contacts. One's an attractive Kazakhstanian who calls herself "Arkady" and who claims to be Twin's "Trump Card." The other's a massive Russkie named Valka who can deadlift nearly 700 pounds and who wears green curlers in his red beard. But as in TNT #1, Twin doesn't appreciate being forced to do things against his will and escapes; a well-done chase scene follows, one in which Twin ensconces himself in a tanker full of caviar, but, as in TNT #1, it's all rendered unecessary.

Finally Twin is sent into the Kazakhstan base/prison. Like TNT #1, this is really just a death-maze, one Twin must navigate to achieve his goal. If however The Beast is inferior in any way to its predecessor, it would be here -- for the death trap in this novel is nowhere as bizarre or horrifying as the one in TNT #1. But then again, how COULD it be?

TNT #1 had a death-maze called "The Seven Circles of Hell;" here Twin has to travel through a few thousand feet of underwater pipeline into the inner heart of the prison, where after a few detours he finds himself in a football field-sized space from which dangle the corpses of prisoners. It's here that Twin has his one sexual interlude of the tale (not with one of the corpses!); the sex scene is more detailed than those that occured in TNT #1. But still The Beast retains the almost clinical narrative of TNT #1; gore is minimal despite the occasional gunfire, and when people are killed it's dealt with in an almost perfunctory level. And here again Twin himself never handles a weapon; instead the few times he kills he does so with his hands, smashing men's heads into walls or "severing" their spinal columns with a karate chop.

Buried within the prison is "The Beast" itself: a massive, rolling construction of that indestructable pink metal, weighing several tons, floating on an air cushion, and powered by a nuclear engine. Twin and his comrades escape on it, rolling through several thousand miles of Soviet terrain, destroying everything in their wake and surviving all manner of attacks. For the metal truly is indestructable. After a while this wears a little thin -- drama is about struggle, and it's no fun when the hero can just roll away untouched from the mouth of hell. But Doug Masters is a better writer than that; the Soviets finally unleash their ultimate weapon on The Beast, and its occupants suffer the consequences in a horrible way. This is another facet of Masters's genius; when his characters do suffer or die, it always leaves a bitter taste of remorse in the reader's mouth. Strong characters make strong impressions.

Because beyond the good writing, surreal plots, and outrageous developments, one thing that sets "Doug Masters" apart from the men's adventure lot is his characters. To a one, each is memorable. Only Twin himself comes off as boring, but I'm certain this is just another of Masters's tricks. For unlike other men's adventure leads like Mack Bolan or The Butcher, men who are driven to madness to perform their duties, Twin takes part in his missions against his will, and indeed goes about things with an almost blase lack of care. At one point he even appears to fall asleep while Arkady's relating how dangerous the prison is he's about to be sent into. A recurring joke is that everyone assumes he's American, no matter how many times he insists he's Irish.

But the supporting characters shine. Valka is especially memorable: bigger than life in more ways than one, getting all the best one-liners despite his broken English. Arkady (aka Marina -- not to go into detail but there's a "surprise" over the Trump Card's real name, one which I felt was uneccessary) is quiet, determined, and despite her youth and inexperience has caused a few nations to nearly come to war. Vilunskhas the scientist has an ego which more than makes up for his small stature, barrelling through the prison once Twin's arrived and bossing everyone around as he gets his vengeance on his captors. There's Dawlish, a Royal Navy operative who works for Benedict, a sterling Brit who cultivates his moustache and reads Rudyard Kipling in between killing countless Iranian and Russian soldiers (though it's taken him a few decades to make it through 90 pages). Benedict himself doesn't appear nearly as much as he did in TNT #1, but when he does appear he's always entertaining. And Twin's mentally-retarded daughter October barely appears at all, only mentioned in passing and then showing up for the happy (for now) ending on Twin's estate in Ireland.

And yet no matter how outrageous the characters are, Masters always finds a way to reign them in on a human level: Valka, despite his bravado, lives in shame that he was banned from the Olympics due to thievery. Marina matter-of-factly relates one of the most horrifying torture sequences I've ever read, one which she endured at the hands of The Bat, and it is her one desire to experience pleasure at least once in her life before dying. All of the characters spring to life, even those who appear for a handful of sentences.

It's hard to convey in words how much I love this series.

As promised, here is the original French cover of this novel -- again, it was published third in the series in France, with the title Le Bete Du Goulag (aka The Gulag Beast):

Thursday, June 10, 2010

TNT #1: The Madness Begins...

TNT #1, by Doug Masters
January, 1985 Charter Books
(French publication, 1978)

I'll start the blog with an example of the most glorious trash of all -- the first volume of the whacked-out TNT series, published from 1985 to 1986 by Charter Books. Comprising 7 volumes, the series was everything at once: quality men's adventure fiction with the requisite sex and violence one would expect, while at the same time a surreal, twisted, over the top parody of the genre itself.

To backtrack a bit: I was aware of the series when it was still in print. As a preteen I devoured so-called "men's adventure fiction;" I subscribed to Gold Eagle's 5-books-every-other-month package, anticipating the latest adventures of Mack Bolan, Able Team, and especially Phoenix Force (more about them and their author in a later post).

At my local library in the podunk little town in which I "grew up," there was a catch-all rack of thrillers/mysterys/adventure fiction; as I recall, many of the TNT books were there. I remember taking one of them home -- they never had #1 in stock, so I started with one of the later books.

I can't remember how much of it I read, or even which volume it was, but I know I didn't like it. Who knows why. Maybe I'd been fooled by the cover. Just take a look at that crass marketing, with the faux-Schwarzenegger glaring out at us -- the same portrait was employed for each volume, series hero TNT holding a different weapon in each. At any rate Charter Books knew what they were doing. What better way to grab action-hungry readers than putting an imitation Arnold on your cover?

But the thing is, those covers are misleading. Because TNT was unlike any of the men's adventure books I loved -- there was no globe-trotting commando action a la Phoenix Force, no loving descriptions of weapons and battlefield gore a la Mack Bolan. Instead, it was just plain weird. So I returned the paperback to my library and went back into the safe world of Gold Eagle books, where I could daily read about various USA-backed commandos blowing off the faces of this month's latest threat.

Obviously, TNT was over my head. Somehow though it remained in my thoughts and only now, twenty-five goddamn years after it was published, I've gone back to see what I missed.

Turns out I missed a lot.

Imagine if say right after their phenomenal Illuminatus! trilogy Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea combined their talents once again, this time to spoof the action genre. A series, with each volume an attempt to push themselves further, taking their hero into the outer depths of genre fiction. Superpowers, twisted and shadowy government operatives, bizarre death-mazes, kinky sex, zombies and reborn Stalins...all of that and more. Actually there's no need to imagine such a scenario, because this is what Doug Masters has given us with TNT.

But then, there is no Doug Masters. In the tradition of men's adventure fiction, the name is merely a psuedonym. Only with TNT there's a bit more to the story. Because, if you study the copyright page, you'll discover in small print: "Translated by Victoria Reiter."

After much digging on my old pal the Web, the truth was revealed: TNT was originally published in France between the years 1978 to 1980. (What's more, it ran for 9 volumes...meaning we non-French readers missed out on two more books of TNT insanity!*) Sporting surreal covers -- none of which made our hero look like some faux-Schwarzenegger -- the books were published under the name Michael Borgia. But it further turned out that "Borgia" itself was a psuedonym -- of thriller/suspense author Pierre Rey and comics author Loup Durand.

So then, here we have a series published in the US under a puesdonym which is a translation of a French series published under its own psuedonym.

And I haven't even gotten to Volume 1 yet.

The first volumes of most men's adventure series usually skip over the hero's origin; we meet them in media res, already set upon their violent, sex-filled course in life. TNT #1 however shows us how our hero became the unusual man he is. Tony Nicholas Twin is his name (other characters poke fun at this, too), and throughout the novel we gather only brief glimmers of his life before the series -- he apparently has some sort of military training, as he can handle weaponry and hand-to-hand combat; he's come across money somehow; he takes on dangerous photography jobs to make even more cash; he has a mentally-retarded daughter named October who is a preteen with the mind of a grade-schooler. Finally, he's Irish.

On his latest dangerous job -- secretly photographing an Army bomb testing on a remote island -- Twin is caught in the explosion. Only, he lives. Over the following months the government monitors him. In a development that would make Stan Lee proud, it turns out that rather than dying instantly, Twin has instead acquired various new abilities: his sense of touch has excelled; just feeling something he instantly knows all there is to know about it. His sense of smell has become inhummanly sharp. His eyes too have changed; he can now see in the dark -- and his eyes are now covered with a translucent film much like a cat's. (Which explains those haunting eyes which stare out at us from the cover.) And finally, he is sexually insatiable, able to keep an erection for endless amounts of time.

I should mention -- the sequence in which the bomb detonates on the remote island is related through the POV of a land crab. (Featuring the staggering line: "It was 10AM, but the land crab didn't give a damn.") Certainly TNT isn't your average men's adventure series, but beyond that, this to me is yet another similarity with Illuminatus!, as that series opened with a sequence related through the POV of a squirrel.

Overseeing the monitoring of Twin is Arnold Bennedict (another spoofy name; Masters/Borgia specializes in them), a shady individual with the power to boss around Navy admirals and other high-ranking military reps. Beyond that Bennedict is a true miscreant -- dark-hearted, cruel, evil. In any other novel he'd be the villain but here he becomes Twin's boss, the Oscar Goldman who sends him on his missions. The first half of the narrative is a belabored game of cat and mouse; Benedit suspects that Twin might be the man for the latest job which has been handed to him, so to test Twin he allows him to escape, to see how quickly and efficiently Twin can get out of the country and evade all of the cops and government agents that come after him.

Along the way we have a vicious and graphic murder carried out by Benedict's two gay (and married) assassins, an escape-via-coffin bit, and a bizarre sidestory about a Mexican woman who stages live snuff plays and who tries to get "revenge" upon Twin by having sex with him, only to find herself worn out and screaming in pleasure. At length Twin and Benedict are reunited in Twin's estate in Ireland; Benedict, after much research, has found out who Twin is. And more importantly, who October is. For the girl is Twin's one weakness; it turns out that he takes his risky, high-pay jobs only to get more cash to pay for a treatment for the girl. His main drive is to cure his daughter, and Benedict uses this; do the job which Benedict proposes, and he will help find a cure for the girl.

The mission turns out to be an old scientist named Michelangelo Piran. An Italian fascist with ties to the Nazis, he now lives in a remote section of South Africa in the depths of a headquarters so protected that Benedict's agency has no idea what's inside. All they know is that every man they've previously sent has not returned. Benedict is certain Twin will be the exception. Piran has discovered the means to make petroleum via natural means -- the result of which could mean the upset of the entire oil industry. A consortium of oil reps have hired Benedict to kill Piran. (Say...when was this book written??)

Transported to South Africa, Twin is set up with a commando squad of locals and British agents and they storm the death-trap which is Piran's home. Here is where TNT #1 becomes something wholly different from the usual men's adventure fiction. Sure, the previous section was unusual in it's own right, but here it becomes downright twisted. Try as I might, there's no way I could improve upon Marty McKee's wonderful synopsis of what happens here, as he writes over on his blog, (Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot):

Twin's job is to infiltrate the underground hideout of a scientist named Michelangelo Piran who can create petroleum from water and kill him. Unfortunately, Piran is guarded by the world's most elaborate deathtrap--seven full stages far beyond anyone's most perverse nightmares. Not only is Twin forced to traverse--completely nude--across a scorpion pit, a greenhouse filled with poisonous plants, an acid bath, a red-hot burning tunnel, a ladder made of razor blades, a bath of warm rotting flesh, and a pitch-black room filled with ninjas (!), but he is ultimately forced into the most bizarre game of checkers ever created.

Six games on an giant board filled with colored lights. On the other side are forty nude women, all either violently psychotic or mentally retarded, each in a separate cage. Whenever Twin loses a game or is forced to crown Piran (who is playing electronically from a hidden location), one cage opens, and Twin has only a few minutes to bring her to orgasm or else he dies. Twin loses every game against the genius Piran, but since he manages to successfully screw all of the women into normalcy, he is allowed to live and face his opponent.

Yes, we are certainly far from the world of Phoenix Force and Mack Bolan.

The sex scenes are not as graphic as you might expect, nor is the violence. Indeed, TNT #1 is almost puritan in its descriptions: cursing is kept to a minimum, there's not much gore, and the horrors of the maze are relayed almost clinically. I must say though that as the maze keeps going on...and on...it begins to overwhelm you. A true sign of a great work; several times while reading this sequence I myself broke out in a sweat, as Twin crawled through a progressively-narrowing series of pipes, dealt with poisonous plants, and especially as he watched one of the men slowly die in horrendous fashion.

There's a dichotomy between the two halves of the novel. Again, though the opening section is surreal in its own right, it doesn't reach the extremities of the latter half, once Twin enters the death-maze. Indeed the latter half seems excised from the rest of the book, rarely referring to earlier events. My suspicion then is that original authors Rey and Durand split duties on this series, one of them setting the plot-groundwork for each volume, the other handling the sureal death-maze sequences. And if I further had to guess how the duties were split, I'd say thriller writer Rey handled the more "normal" stuff, and comics writer Durand handled the whacked-out maze stuff, all of which could come out of the most graphic of graphic novels you could imagine.

And to think -- this was just the start of the series. It only got stranger from here.

As a pedantic sidenote, there's a clue buried within the text which reveals when this adventure takes place. While giving Twin his mission, Benedict states that Piran was 21 years old in 1934, and that "now" he is 67 years old. Unless my math fails me, then that means TNT #1 takes place in 1980. I wonder if Charter Books just missed this or if they left it in intentionally. It's strange, though, because 1980 would've been "the near future" for the original 1978 French publication, but five years in the past for the 1985 US publication.

* Of the final two volumes of the French original of TNT which never made it into English, one was titled Les Cobras de Lilliput. I assume this one was a play on Gulliver's Travels, with Twin shrunk to Lilliputlian size? It's a shame this volume never made it into English...or is it?

As a bonus, here's the cover of the original French publication of TNT volume 1, which in France was titled Les Sept Cercles (aka The Seven Circles):