J.J. Madison - The Thing

[vaughan]

AKA: Oh, It Feels Like Dying.



Beautiful ex-movie queen Myra Manning played a vampire in a television soap opera and seemed to have found the fabled Fountain of Youth. People envied Myra: she grew younger looking every day. How were they to know Myra was a real vampire, leader of a vicious cult whose members included some of New York's most glamorous celebrities? Human blood and unspeakable sexual excess kept them young and forever beautiful, but inside their very souls were corroded by evil. And in the end it would destroy them.


And so goes the cover blurb on this one. if the book had actually explored any of the above - the Fountain of Youth, the vampires, and the vicious cult, things might have been better. However, they're given only cursory coverage. After all, there's barely time in this sort 186 book to cover all the hardcore sex. And more hardcore sex. And more sex. And more.

Basically this book is pornography, with a crappy little wrapper of silly vampires and other assorted bits and pieces. Given the blurb, emphasis is clearly given over to the "sexual excess" more than anything else. Whether that's your thing or not will determine whether this is a good buy.

Personally I kept waiting for the horror to kick in. But it never does. There are excursions between sexual acts that include trips to the set of the soap opera, a fight with a dog, and our main character - war veteran Ken Painter - taking photographs. Exciting, huh?

Anyway, if porn disguised as horror is your thing, this will fit the bill. I wasn't convinced. ;D

[justin]

I have the misfortune of having two editions of The Thing by J J Madison. But one point of interest to some vaulters may be who was behind the pen?

Who was the NEL uber-hack with the initials J M, who used pseudonyms beginning with J J, whose surname had the same number of letters as Madison, and had work appear at Belmont Tower in the US?

[dem]

Hang onto your Thing, Vaughan, as it's just become slightly must-have to those of a Skinhead/ Jackboot Girls/ Dracula & The Virgins Of The Undead/ Naked Flame/ Diary Of A Female Wrestler persuasion.

[vaughan]

Thanks for that, Demonik.

I know what not owning a "must have" feels like (having only two Crab books!) and on the one hand it feels like you have something a little "special", and on the other you know there might well be someone out there that would appreciate it at a different level than yourself.

As such - if there are any vaulters who collect titles such as this - and that want this title - I'd be happy to do a swap.

I like.... well pulp horror books. Any old monster will do. ;D

[andydecker]

So I got his cheap on ebay, and wow, this is a trainwreck.

Maybe it was a good idea on paper. You know, Dark Shadows but written like a Beeline novel.
But even if I like such books if they are well done, here the sex becomes old fast. The first part is a bizarre rambling where Moffat writes pages upon pages about the fine points of camera lenses and a telephone booth sting and Vietnam, followed by a lot of sex, bizarre antics of Myra Manning who even has a Oscar on the shelf - yeah, right - and is now doing a horror soap in a two bit warehouse with a crew of six. When she isn´t mixing strychnine into the drink of her lover, the supposed hero, Vietnam vet Ken, to give him a better hard on. Ah, love. Or sucking his blood because she is also a vampire. Sort of. With a master who is called Noire.

Even the end is bizarre, when Ken roasts her on set with some spotlights,bevor getting beat up by the master vampire. Who has the most boring and stupid and unbelievable death I have read in a long time. In panic, because Ken is stronger then he seems, he puts down the gas and doesn´t see the truck coming.

You have to read it to believe it. Or not.

[andydecker]

J. J. Madison - The Thing (Midwood, 1971 under the the title Ohhhhh, it Feels like Dying, this edition Belmont Tower 1978)