The Schlock Strikes Back! 'White Squaw' and Johnstone's 'Devil' series
Just came from taking a look at Amazon.com, and was surprised to see some books I used to own years ago cropping up. I'm surprised because these were some of the trashiest, bloodiest, most violent and perverse novels ever done. They were also astoundingly fun if you could lock your sense of good taste into a handy closet for a few hours.
First is E. J. Hunter's White Squaw series. The premise is simple enough. A half-breed woman named Rebecca Caldwell sees her whole family (grandfather, mother, and sisters) get handed over to savage Sioux by her outlaw relatives. She gets raised among the Indians, learns how to fight, ride, have sex with any man she sees, etc., and when she reaches adulthood sets out to get revenge on her low-down kin, a quest that carries her through over 2 dozen books...
What makes the series, ahem, memorable to a 14-year-old boy was the nonstop sex and mayhem. Seriously, these were some of the most blood and sex-drenched novels I think anyone ever read. If a whole chapter went by without any knifing, shooting, hanging, or screwing I don't remember it. Torturous deaths and horrid rapes abounded (even more horrid, many of the women wound up enjoying the rapes, except when they got murdered or plotted to castrate their attackers) and scenes of the most jawdroppingly sadistic nature were set on paper with no one batting an eye. And in the midst of all of this was that beautiful, merciless, horny Amazon Becky Caldwell, the White Squaw. Seriously, this woman collected more tail than a hundred fur trappers. She made Max Blackrabbit's Zig-Zag look like a model for chastity.
And not even that was the worst. The author of the series was a big fan of the Confederacy. Maybe too big of a fan. Any black character who showed up was either a skanky ho or had dialogue of the "Tonight we rapes us some waht wimmen" variety. Uh, yeah. Confederates were always heroes, blacks were better off as slaves (after all, whenever they got erections the blood stopped flowing to their brains -- no, seriously, they did this. Yikes.), and 'Yankees' were the scum of the Earth. You did not easily forget one of these books when you read it.
You may wonder why I enjoyed it, aside from the whole "14 years old and it has sex". Basically it was the sheer horribleness that saved it. There was no way on earth you could take these novels the least bit seriously. They were utterly, gloriously unrestrained trash and never pretended to be anything else. And when you were a lonely and frustrated 14-year-old boy, you WANTED someone like Becky Caldwell to show up looking for a room to stay in!
On to the next. We go from a bloody, depraved vision of the Old West to a bloody, depraved vision of modern America... modern America as seen through the lens of the Satanic Panic by way of Dirty Harry, that is! Basically, cults of unholy Satanic sorcerors and their vampire and werewolf minions (the latter of whom reproduce by raping men and women, shown in loving detail, which transforms the victims into more werebeasts*; how did furry fandom ever miss this?) are running rampant across the country. Entire towns are running Satanic orgies complete with human sacrifices on a scale that would make the Aztecs shudder.
Of course, no one knows anything about this, even the non-Satanic people in the controlled towns. No one -- except for Our Hero, ex-Green Beret turned Protestant Preacher Sam Balon. The series starts with Sam and eventually goes on to his son. Hapless innocents get raped and massacred by Godless Satanists; the Godless Satanists then get mowed down in wholesale lots by the Gun-Toting Christians. This series has it all -- rape, sadism, rape, cannibalism, rape, incest, rape, massive shootouts, rape, rape, rape, and rape. Did I mention they have rapes? Because they do. Man, do they ever. What with all the scenes of lovingly-detailed rape and mass sexual perversion, accompanied by graphic sadism and Black Masses held by naked and voluptuous high priestesses o' evil, one gets the sneaking suspicion that the author was working through some of his own kinks.
Seriously, when describing this series, the word steamy comes to mind. Creepy is another, and not in any good way. The nonstop sexual brutality gets numbing after a while, as does the fact that every woman subjected to this either becomes a pure and devout Christian (by the standards of the series, that is; these are not "Christian Lit" by any stretch of the imagination) or becomes one of the sluts of Satan, eagerly doing the nasty with her father and the rest of her male relatives at the drop of a pitchfork.
The plotting is cringeworthy at best. At one point, there are 3-4 versions of the Anti-Christ running around, with one of them a smokin' hot Satanic witch. But that's okay, as the forces of good give the hero and his wife a son who can shoot golden death beams at evil people that turn them into demons before incinerating them. It's all in Scripture. Um, yeah, dude, whatever.
This series has to be a satire. I mean, even bad writing has its limits, doesn't it?
Doesn't it?
Man, I have to get some of those books again. Ah, the innocent days of yesteryear...
* -- Basically, the werewolf stand-ins (the Beasts) are anthro wolves who are forever kidnapping women who they then infect with their dread seed via wild werewolf sex, transforming them into more anthro wolves/werewolves. There was at least one such scene per book, all in loving detail. For a bonus, the morphed woman sometimes got to eat her former boyfriend/husband afterwards! Again I ask, just how did the furs miss these books?
First is E. J. Hunter's White Squaw series. The premise is simple enough. A half-breed woman named Rebecca Caldwell sees her whole family (grandfather, mother, and sisters) get handed over to savage Sioux by her outlaw relatives. She gets raised among the Indians, learns how to fight, ride, have sex with any man she sees, etc., and when she reaches adulthood sets out to get revenge on her low-down kin, a quest that carries her through over 2 dozen books...
What makes the series, ahem, memorable to a 14-year-old boy was the nonstop sex and mayhem. Seriously, these were some of the most blood and sex-drenched novels I think anyone ever read. If a whole chapter went by without any knifing, shooting, hanging, or screwing I don't remember it. Torturous deaths and horrid rapes abounded (even more horrid, many of the women wound up enjoying the rapes, except when they got murdered or plotted to castrate their attackers) and scenes of the most jawdroppingly sadistic nature were set on paper with no one batting an eye. And in the midst of all of this was that beautiful, merciless, horny Amazon Becky Caldwell, the White Squaw. Seriously, this woman collected more tail than a hundred fur trappers. She made Max Blackrabbit's Zig-Zag look like a model for chastity.
And not even that was the worst. The author of the series was a big fan of the Confederacy. Maybe too big of a fan. Any black character who showed up was either a skanky ho or had dialogue of the "Tonight we rapes us some waht wimmen" variety. Uh, yeah. Confederates were always heroes, blacks were better off as slaves (after all, whenever they got erections the blood stopped flowing to their brains -- no, seriously, they did this. Yikes.), and 'Yankees' were the scum of the Earth. You did not easily forget one of these books when you read it.
You may wonder why I enjoyed it, aside from the whole "14 years old and it has sex". Basically it was the sheer horribleness that saved it. There was no way on earth you could take these novels the least bit seriously. They were utterly, gloriously unrestrained trash and never pretended to be anything else. And when you were a lonely and frustrated 14-year-old boy, you WANTED someone like Becky Caldwell to show up looking for a room to stay in!
On to the next. We go from a bloody, depraved vision of the Old West to a bloody, depraved vision of modern America... modern America as seen through the lens of the Satanic Panic by way of Dirty Harry, that is! Basically, cults of unholy Satanic sorcerors and their vampire and werewolf minions (the latter of whom reproduce by raping men and women, shown in loving detail, which transforms the victims into more werebeasts*; how did furry fandom ever miss this?) are running rampant across the country. Entire towns are running Satanic orgies complete with human sacrifices on a scale that would make the Aztecs shudder.
Of course, no one knows anything about this, even the non-Satanic people in the controlled towns. No one -- except for Our Hero, ex-Green Beret turned Protestant Preacher Sam Balon. The series starts with Sam and eventually goes on to his son. Hapless innocents get raped and massacred by Godless Satanists; the Godless Satanists then get mowed down in wholesale lots by the Gun-Toting Christians. This series has it all -- rape, sadism, rape, cannibalism, rape, incest, rape, massive shootouts, rape, rape, rape, and rape. Did I mention they have rapes? Because they do. Man, do they ever. What with all the scenes of lovingly-detailed rape and mass sexual perversion, accompanied by graphic sadism and Black Masses held by naked and voluptuous high priestesses o' evil, one gets the sneaking suspicion that the author was working through some of his own kinks.
Seriously, when describing this series, the word steamy comes to mind. Creepy is another, and not in any good way. The nonstop sexual brutality gets numbing after a while, as does the fact that every woman subjected to this either becomes a pure and devout Christian (by the standards of the series, that is; these are not "Christian Lit" by any stretch of the imagination) or becomes one of the sluts of Satan, eagerly doing the nasty with her father and the rest of her male relatives at the drop of a pitchfork.
The plotting is cringeworthy at best. At one point, there are 3-4 versions of the Anti-Christ running around, with one of them a smokin' hot Satanic witch. But that's okay, as the forces of good give the hero and his wife a son who can shoot golden death beams at evil people that turn them into demons before incinerating them. It's all in Scripture. Um, yeah, dude, whatever.
This series has to be a satire. I mean, even bad writing has its limits, doesn't it?
Doesn't it?
Man, I have to get some of those books again. Ah, the innocent days of yesteryear...
* -- Basically, the werewolf stand-ins (the Beasts) are anthro wolves who are forever kidnapping women who they then infect with their dread seed via wild werewolf sex, transforming them into more anthro wolves/werewolves. There was at least one such scene per book, all in loving detail. For a bonus, the morphed woman sometimes got to eat her former boyfriend/husband afterwards! Again I ask, just how did the furs miss these books?