MIDWOOD MELODRAMAS by Dave Goode

 

Back in junoir high school I was introduced to " adult paperbacks " by way of Midwood Books. A neighbor's older sister had a collection of these books from the 60s and he would lend them to me.Of course any teenage boy would be attracted to these books with their titillating covers of sexy women in various stages of undress in sexual situations. But I imagined it was the back cover copy with their lurid come ons that got the readers to purchase the books.

 

 

Later I would find out the publisher of Midwood Books was Harry Shorten. Shorten had been a collegiate and professional football star who had become a writer. Working at MLJ Comics as an editor and writer he helped to create such Golden Age characters as the Shield and the Black Hood. The Shield who predated Captain America is regarded as the first patriotic comic book hero. He would also create the award winning syndicated single panel comic There Ought To Be A Law. The Midwood Publishing House was active for over a decade from 1957 to 1968.

 

 

But back to the books themselves. By no means were they pornographic. A guilty pleasure of mine was the television miniseries SCRUPLES starring Lindsay Wagner. I liked it so much I bought a copy of the novel by Judith Krantz that the series was based on. I'm here to tell you that book was closer to porn than anything I ever read from Midwood. The stories inside were titillating. But not dirty. They were lurid melodramas along the lines of Hollywood potboilers like The Chapman Report (1962) and The Carpetbaggers ( 1964 ). They also had a series of lesbian books. Strangely enough they seemed to be written for straight men.The covers of course featured two or more half - dressed women. And the stories usually ended with the heroine in love with a man. So maybe it wasn't so strange straight men were a huge part of the audience for these books. A lesbian friend once told me she and her girl friends stopped reading these books before they got to the last ten pages when the heroine was " converted ".

 

 

Reading these books as a teenager I imagined some of these books being made into Hollywood movies after being cleaned up a little. If it could be done with The Carpetbaggers it could be done with the Midwood Books. On the other hand they could  probably have been more easily turned into grind house flicks.

 

 

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THE VAMPIRE GIRLS by Dave Goode

THE VAMPIRE GIRLS by Dave Goode

The first Mil Mascaras movie that I ever saw was Las Vampiras (1969). Directed by Federico Curiel from a screenplay co-written by Curiel and Adolfo Torres Portillo this may have been Mascaras' best known film to American audiences due to it's constant showings on UHF stations here during the 70s and 80s.The movie is pure psychotronic fun. But with a coven of beautiful female vampires and their muscular henchmen this flick can't help remind one of Santo Contra Las Mujeres Vampiro (1962) , the Gone With The Wind of Mexiluchahero movies.

This one features John Carradine who portrayed Count Dracula in House Of Frankenstein (1944), House Of Dracula (1945) and Billy The Kid Vs. Dracula (1966). Here he plays Count Branus, the vampire king deposed by Aura (Marta Romero) and Veria (Maria Duval) to shapely green-skinned vampire girls. You fans of the masked wrestler movie genre might recognize Miss Duval as the damsel in distress from the previously mentioned Santo Contra Las Mujeres Vampiro a.k.a Samson Vs. The Vampire Women. This time around the damsel in distress is played by beautiful Maura Monti.

This is everything you would expect from a superhero vs. vampires movie with masked wrestler Mil Mascaras teaming up with reporter Carlos Mayer played by Pedro Armendariz Jr. to track down and destroy the living dead. Mascaras is great in this. Nobody is better at playing Mil Mascaras than Mil Mascaras. Built like the lead in a gladiator movie he moves like we imagined a comic book hero would move before the advent of CGI. Maybe not the greatest actor. But like Steve Reeves and Arnold Schwarzenegger he has a presence. I've imagined for years about getting the rights to the Spanish language movie and re-dubbing it into English ala' What's Up Tiger Lilly?.

To along with this week's blog is a comic book cover imagined by Dave Goode and illustrated by Vance Capley featuring the poor man's Mil Mascaras.

 Grab a t-shirt of this fantastic art: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/6085394-mr-incognito-meets-the-amazon-devil-queen

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN ANYWAY? by Dave Goode

One of the things that surely helped to make Santo, el Enmascarado de Plata, a Mexican pop culture icon were the Santo comic books. After all before he wrestled against the "principalities and powers of darkness" on the silver screen, he fought the forces of evil in comic books.

The first Santo comics would appear in 1952. The man behind these periodicals was Jose' G. Cruz, a comic book artist/writer, and actor/screenwriter. The first series of Santo comics ran for 6 years between 1952 and 1958 producing 300 issues of serialized stories. Santo's first films Cerebro Del Mal and Santo vs. Hombres Infernales would appear in 1958 about the same time the first comic book series was ending.

In the early 1960s Cruz would produce a second series of Santo comics. This series would run up through the 1970s. And would immediately be followed by the third series. A fourth series began in 1986 and was printed in Columbia. It was the only series that didn't carry Cruz's name.

Each series used the same format. They used photos of the silver-masked
wrestler and other actors/models integrated with drawings of various surrealistic backgrounds giving the comics a nightmarish look. I never read these comics when I was a kid. But I discovered them as a teenager in high school in the 70s. It was in the 70s, about 1974, that the real Santo was replaced in these comics by a muscular model wearing trunks (not tights), wrestling boots and an imitation of the famous silver mask. But with an "S" insignia on it.

The model for this Santo impersonator wasn't another luchador. But was instead a professional bodybuilder. Mr. Mexico 1969  Hector Pliego. Pliego was a muscleman of some note. He also was a contestant in the 1977 Mr. World competition winning the lightweight class. I have to wonder if some Mexican sports promoter ever considered offering the muscleman a wrestling contract.

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"THIS BOLD RENEGADE CARVES A " Z " WITH HIS BLADE." by Dave Goode

This isn't going to come as a surprise. But I'm a huge fan of masked heroes. Comic book heroes. Pulp heroes. Movie serial heroes. And of course Mexiluchaheroes. My first masked hero however was el Zorro. I was introduced to the character through the Walt Disney television series that ran from 1957 to 1959 on ABC. You know. The one with the catchy theme song. It starred Guy Williams in the dual roles of the foppish Don Diego Vega and the masked avenger el Zorro... the Fox.

TV's Zorro, Guy Williams, meets Zorro creator Johnston McCulley

The character first appeared in the swashbuckling  adventure THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO written by Johnston McCulley , as a five - part serial in the pulp magazine All - Story Weekly in 1919. The story would be adapted to the silver screen as a vehicle for America's first great action hero star Douglas Fairbanks under the title  THE MARK OF ZORRO ( 1920 ). In 1924 when McCulley's story was novelized it would be under that title. It was Fairbank's movie Zorro that served as a partial inspiration for Batman.

 

 

 

 

 

MARK OF ZORRO 1920 with Douglas Fairbanks

 

El Zorro is probably best known for his appearances in movies. The character has appeared in a number of feature films and serials. Interestingly enough Don Alejandro Vega ( Zorro's father ) on the Disney television show was played by actor George J. Lewis who appeared in two Zorro serials. ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP ( 1944 ) starring Linda Stirling as a character called The Black Whip. And THE GHOST OF ZORRO (1949 ) starring Clayton Moore who would later go on to portray the Lone Ranger. In the former he was a hero. In the latter he was a villain. Both of these films from Republic were more western than swashbuckler.

 

 

 

To most fans the best Zorro movie was THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940) starring Tyrone Power as the foppish Diego and dashing Zorro. He's equally good in both roles. Especially memorable is the climatic sword duel between Power and the movie's villain played by Basil Rathbone. As another character says to Diego after he vanquishes the villain, " You handle a sword like a devil from Hell." Fun stuff.

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"I've Heard The Natives Mention Him. He's Quite A Guy According To Them." by Dave Goode

 

Back when I first discovered "men's sweat mags" as I was entering puberty my favorite stories found within were the jungle adventures. Probably because they reminded me of Jungle Jim. The Johnny Weissmuller movies based on the Alex Raymond comic strip from King Features and not the comic strip itself. They were two different animals. Of course the stories in the sweat mags featured very a little bit more violent. And had a lot more sexual content. But the stories were more or less like the ones you found in the Weissmuller flicks produced by Sam Katzman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite flicks from the series was THE LOST TRIBE (1949). It stars Weissmuller, Elena Verduga, Myrna Dell, Ralph Dunn, and Ray "Crash" Corrigan as Simba the Gorilla. The screenplay is by Arthur Hoerl and Don Martin.

 

It's a formula jungle adventure revolving around a lost city and it's hidden treasures. Plenty of stock footage and cheesy dialogue. It's a wonder that the  MSFT3K crew never got a hold of this. Former Olympic swimming champ Weissmuller fights a lion, a shark, an alligator, and a gang of modern day pirates. Weissmuller is at his two-fisted best in this one. He even gets tied up and worked over the bad guys. Not great art. But a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funny thing is I was re-reading the Frank Frazetta - illustrated jungle romance tale "Untamed Love" when it struck me that the "great white hunter" in that story reminded me of Victor Mature in the jungle adventure SAFARI (1956). Made me think that Mature might have made a good Jungle Jim in a big budget production. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another actor I can see playing the jungle adventurer was Rory Calhoun. Calhoun had played big game hunter Jonathon Kincaid on an episode of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND that spoofed The Most Dangerous Game, Richard Connell's classic short story.

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Thanks for stopping by...see you next week!

ATLANTIS,THE LOST CONTINENT by Dave Goode

When I was a young fan-boy back in the early 60s I was fascinated by the legend of lost Atlantis found originally in Plato's writings Timaeus and Critias. Atlantis was a highly advanced island-nation that was sunk beneath the waves by the gods for the hubris of it's rulers. I of course learned of Atlantis from it's image in comic books. That of an advanced metropolis protected beneath the ocean depths by a huge glass dome. As always the continuity in DC Comics left me a bit flustered as that there were two different underwater cities called Atlantis in their Silver Age comic books. The one found in Superman family comics featured mer-people. While the Atlantis Aquaman ruled over was populated by bi-pedal humanoids. Over at Marvel Comics , Prince Namor ruled over an Atlantis populated by bi-pedal humanoids. Albeit with blue skin.

However most movies about Atlantis don't deal with underwater civilizations. Instead they deal with the destruction of Atlantis. Of these my favorite was ATLANTIS,THE LOST CONTINENT (1961). This sci-fi peplum movie was produced and directed by George Pal with a script written by Daniel Mainwaring and Gerald Hargreaves. The movie starred Anthony Hall as a Greek fisherman named Demetrious and Joyce Taylor as Princess Antillia of Atlantis. Useless trivia time. Anthony Hall was songwriter Sal Ponti who wrote Fabian's first recorded song " I'm In Love ". The storyline followed the events leading to the sinking of Atlantis. This was a good Saturday matinee type film. And I enjoyed it in my youth. I still enjoy it. But I think it would have been even better as a sinew & sandal flick starring Ed Fury and Bella Cortez.

And speaking of sinews & sandals Edgar Rice Burroughs would contribute to the Atlantis mythos with the Lost City of Opar in his Tarzan stories. I've said in the past that a lot of Burroughs' Tarzan tales came across like Maciste stories. These are some of them. In these stories Opar was an outpost of lost Atlantis now populated by beautiful women and ape-like men. Opar and it's beautiful high priestess La would appear on both the movie and television screen going back as far as the silent age of movies. But I always thought a perfect casting of Tarzan and La might have been Mike Henry and Martine Beswick. Which leads to our new Golden Adonis comic.

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