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Post by franklinmarsh on May 30, 2009 20:54:08 GMT
Dragon Skins - Richard Allen. NEL January 1975. Cover illustration : Lucinda CowellThe 'Skinhead Squad' tackle their most dangerous assignment - against a crooked Kung Fu master! When ex-skinhead Boots Welling joins a Kung Fu club he finds he has been selected for extra-curricular activities. But what his trainer, Jack Hooper, doesn't know is that Boots has forsaken his lawless aggro days. It is possible to change so much, to lose a taste for soccer hooliganism. Boots Welling accordingly does not like the sound of Hooper's plan to make master criminals out of a group of malcontents. So he calls in Steve Penn to solve his problems. But by the time Steve Penn infiltrates the Kung Fu mob the first big job has been planned - to pull the takings of Shalforth Greyhound Stadium. The odds are most definitely stacked against the 'Squad', but the martial arts prove more effective when used against the villains. The worst Richard Allen ever? Yes! Check out the cover - where's the photo? How can you have a NEL aggro novel with a realistic photo cover? You can't! Poor Lucinda Cowell - I think she was responsible for one of my other least fave NEL covers - Guy (N) Smith's Werewolf By Moonlight. Nothing personal. It seems like a great idea - NEL weren't slow to exploit almost any form of violence, and in the early to mid 1970s Britain went kung fu krazy, martial arts mad. David Carradine held the small screen with the Western set KF tv series giving hope to every bullied schoolboy by soaking up intense pushing around, reflecting on his training by the bloke with the ping pong ball eyes, thinking pure thoughts and then kicking the shit out of his aggressors in slow motion at the end of each episode. Bruce Lee was setting the big screen ablaze and ensuring cult immortality by conveniently dying just as he attained superstardom with the Hollywoodised Enter The Dragon. (Both are namechecked by Allen). Scores of paperbacks, magazines and instruction manuals made the newsagents shelves groan; Carl Douglas stormed the charts with Kung Fu Fighting ensuring a pension as Martial Arts revivals kicked in years later. Even the Brits managed to take the piss with 'Arold and Albert harking back to an earlier form of Oriental fighting with the Seven Steptoerai and The Goodies lampooning the whole shebang with the Lancastrian martial art of Ecky Thump (not to mention the French martial art of Hoh-Hi-Hon.) But what was going on at NEL's aggro central? Either there had been a backlash at the hooligan antics, or Moffatt had decided to try and show his characters in a more angelic light. The rot started to set in with Terrace Terrors - great title, lousy cover (even if it is a photograph) and an awful story about Steve Penn's ex-skinhead terrace patrol preventing trouble breaking out. I mean, how can you live vicariously through this stuff if they're all goody-goodies and there's no sex and precious little violence? Dragon Skins continues the dire Terrace Terrors trend. Boots Welling isn't apologetic about his past, but it is the past. He's got a job and is looking to get married. The Kung Fu club provides an outlet for his now repressed urges, but he soon realises old lag Hooper is putting together a special class of former aggro merchants, be they reformed skins or ex-bikers. This sounds great but Allen goes nowhere with it. There's a small flurry of fisticuffs during the Stadium raid, but it's negligible and right at the end. In fact there's precious little Allen about this at all.
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Post by killercrab on May 30, 2009 22:57:12 GMT
Typical - of the only two Allens I own - this is one - the other Suedehead - please don't tell me that's naff too ! KC
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Post by dem bones on May 31, 2009 16:59:39 GMT
Well, if i have this right, after Skinhead, Suedehead is considered to be the "essential" Richard Allen, but don't let that raise your hopes. Really enjoyed your potted history of Britain's early 'seventies Kung-Fu mania, FM. One sinister leftover from the phenomenon, which certainly made it onto the terraces, was the 'kung fu star', industriously manufactured behind the teachers back in metalwork classes up and down the country. They flew like a frisbee and sliced through flesh something lethal. Lucinda Cowell did the Panic O'Clock cover where everyone jumps off a cliff and the pig-man sitting down to dinner for Bedside Book Of Horror, so obviously that goes in her favour but this one is lame. It's like after the early rush they declined at the same ratio as the novels themselves although the Knuckle Girls girl certainly gives it her all.
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Post by allthingshorror on May 31, 2009 17:27:47 GMT
Lucinda was also Terry Gilliam's right hand woman when it came to helping out with the art direction on Holy Grail and they did a really good book together called Animations of Mortality. I tried looking for her last year, but no dice.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 1, 2009 7:20:30 GMT
Thanks for proving Lucinda's worth, chaps. The Bedside Book is genuinely creepy, and I used to have Animations Of Mortality. Ade - there is one piece of genuine Allen in the book - the description of Steve Penn's fiancee. I was going to reproduce it in the 'review' but I'm glad I didn't now - at least it'll give you something to look out for as you snooze through this. Suedehead is bizarre. It's the first Allen I read and, compared to the Hells Angels shenanigans it was a let down, but its grown over the years - and, along with Chopper, is my fave NEL cover.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 1, 2009 7:37:19 GMT
That happened to me, except it's Bootboys not Suedehead in my case. While i was reading it, i was thinking this is really grim, not much fun at all, but i've not been able to forget it, unlike several novels i've read and enjoyed far, far better, and the cover haunts me as if it were Confessions Of A Shop assistant!
*FM, a certain Lord Kitchen-knife left a nice message about you at the Pendennis Occult Library .....*
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