ESP AND YOU by Susy Smith

"An incubus is as good an excuse for hanky-panky as has even been invented."

Macfadden-Bartell's classy cover hides one sexy journey into the unknown from that "girl with the improbable name" (I still haven't figured out what that's supposed to mean) Susy Smith, as she uncovers incubi, succubi, ghost lovers, and mass sexual hysteria from the middle ages to modern day suburbia! That's only a part of her exploration of ESP, but man is it a heady brew to lead with.

Smith covers multiple cases of nuns (and Mohammedan girls too!) succumbing to sexual mania, lest we think the literature doesn't support the existence of incubi. Modern housewives and widows aren't immune either, though sometimes Smith says it's hard to tell whether they're being visited by departed lovers or by demons. This is one reason she advises against Ouija boards, as any old demon can call themselves whatever they want when you're pushing the planchette around. She also questions how many "genuine" cases of possession or visitation it really takes to kick off a fad or mania from otherwise unaffected ladies.

Smith carries on with a racy theme through subjects such as ESP in twins, with showgirls Lou and Lee Gerick explaining their psychic connection: once they even purchased identical all white outfits at the same time, despite the two of them being separated in Idaho and Hollywood!

Twins Lou and Lee ... or is it Lee and Lou?

Picture from a 1964 USO show they did.

Their card!

Smith outlines Freud and Jung's ESP experiences, cites heavily from Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, and interviews a man developing his ESP through LSD under the pseudonym Melvin Mallory. Poltergeists, witches, and vampires all come in for guest roles as well, with Smith very interested in the interplay between psyche, culture, and forces from beyond - how much of any given phenomenon is culturally expressed, or projected out from one's self, or otherwise influenced in ways we might not appreciate?

After so much steamy research, Smith has to assure us that the psychically gifted aren't just a bunch of perverts, though "still, all in all, Nandor Fodor found a lot of psychics who were weirdos!" And there's always Aleister Crowley, too!

According to Fodor's research, Smith tells us that spirits and demons can change one's sexual orientation through possession, leading to lesbianism and homosexuality in heterosexual mediums! Smith also hedges that perhaps these are cases of repressed feelings. Throughout this text, Smith comes back to the idea that no matter what strange forces may be at work, we are all human after all.

Susy includes a nice bibliography in her usual practice, though her discernment as to the quality of various sources may be a bit lacking at times - she admits as much when repeating somewhat shaky stories such as the fraudulent medium Eusapia Palladino, who Smith believes possessed genuine powers while still resorting to trickery from time to time. Sometimes, Smith says, we just can't be sure as to the true facts of a case and can only take people at their word, and she concludes that many of the stories she's covered are just too subjective to prove something one way or the other.

Smith also cites cases and correspondence from her own previous books including World of the Strange, previously reviewed at this blog.

She ends her saucy psychic tour with some final words from author R. Dewitt Miller:

ESP and You is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Macfadden-Bartell Books, 1972

HURRICANE by Gardner F. Fox

I am just a dreamer

But you are just a dream

You could have been 

Anyone to me

After the frozen flop of Steve Cohen's Avalanche, it's time to gird our loins for some sure-fire disaster madness in the hands of master genre writer Gardner F. Fox, as he takes us into the eye of the storm in HURRICANE!

If you didn't get the message from the "heedless hedonism" on the back cover, already on page 17 a youthful penis is swelling! Yowzas! It's that kind of disaster story, with loads of bed hopping and adultery and sexy mamas bedding young studs ... and God bless Gardner F. Fox for his economy of storytelling. Where it took Steve Cohen almost 400 pages to push out too many undercooked threads, Fox manages three or four nice, concise narratives in just under 200 pages, and delivers some beautiful descriptions of the pitiless storm as it arcs towards Dunes Point, playground of the horny HENRY class.

Holy canoli!

There's neglected housewife Cornelia, finding succor in her son Roger's buddy Don. Meanwhile, her husband Trevor is entranced by "gypsy soul" Brenda, who's hoping to pin her new pregnancy on the wealthy lawyer! Scummy businessman Bob whores out his wife Leona to clients, but prospect Evan wants to make a lady out of her. Fox weaves some delicious webs of sin and deceit, and then Hurricane Hedda smashes them all to pieces! Fox's description of the hurricane is quietly confident, as a scientifically acccurate storm surge threatens our characters. It's a nice balancing act between techno thriller overkill and the too-loose, glib afterthought of Cohen's avalanche.

Leisure's back page ads include two of Fox's Kyrik sword and sorcery entries, along with plenty of options across fiction and nonfiction genres.

You are like a hurricane

There's calm in your eyes 

And I'm getting blown away 

Somewhere safer where the feeling stays 

I want to love you but I'm getting blown away

Leisure Books gifts us a few typos in this story, such as horny housewife Cornelia "buiding" young Don's penis inside of her. Stay classy, Leisure Books!

Hurricane is available as an epub at the official Gardner F. Fox library. This racy disaster drama blows down the house and rates an easy 4/4! Thank God for Gardner F. Fox!

Leisure Books, 1976

COVER UPDATES: STRANGE POWERS OF E.S.P.

Here's a slightly unsettling hippie/boho cover for Brad Steiger's Strange Powers of E.S.P. by the Australian publisher Scripts, who it seems tended to pulpy fare ... just perfect for Steiger! Dig those smutty back page adverts, including two corkers "by an Australian author - Stuart Hall."

Scripts, 1970 (original pub. 1969)

SHADOW OF THE BEAST by Gerald DiPego

We're closing out the year with some Bigfoot terror! Prolific screenwriter and author Gerald DiPego brings us this backwoods Bigfoot survival thriller, which despite the blurb falls far short of Deliverance but still provides some interesting grist for the Bigfoot mill. Modern author Grady Hendrix has an in-depth review which makes note that this is the rare Bigfoot novel that keeps the sex strictly between Homo sapiens, though it's just as sleazy or more so than something like The Beast or the infamous Nights With Sasquatch, chock full as it is of rape and abuse. DiPego himself doesn't list the novel on his website. You've been warned!

Our protagonist Ruth Cassen is an anthropologist from Illinois with a wild pet theory - that the extinct prehistoric ape Gigantopithecus actually survived into the present day, accounting for modern sightings of Bigfoot. Author DiPego borrowed this idea from real life anthropologist Grover Krantz, who spent the latter half of his career using his technical knowledge to bolster the existence of Bigfoot as a prehistoric survivor. The Giganto theory stands as the most dominant "scientific" model for Bigfoot, as opposed to spiritual or occultic explanations for the beast which seem to have eclipsed stuffy old pseudoscientists like Krantz nowadays. Cassen joins a trek into the Oregon wilderness led by sleazoid guide Jack Lillion, who never met a man he couldn't lick or a woman he couldn't rape. In a hypothetical film adaptation, Cassen could be played by Brooke Adams or Karen Allen, while Lillion is just the type of rotten SOB that Leslie Nielsen perfected before his overwhelming comic turn in Airplane! There's plenty of disposable supporting characters along for the expedition, though DiPego pulls a neat trick and cuts the party down to its bare essentials midway through, after one of them suffers an accident and the majority quest on over the mountain, leaving Cassen, Lillion, the photographer Barthes and teenager Henry to face the Bigfoot and themselves in the deep woods in the middle of a raging storm. Barthes is another sleazebag character, abusing his model girlfriend as he taunts her with his industry connections, while Henry is a confused young man who develops a crush on the good Dr. Cassen. Ruth is hard up for a decent man and guides young Henry into manhood, an arc which wavers between touching, silly, and uncomfortable - perhaps like the real thing.

DiPego can be sensitive while sketching character interactions, but most of the time he prefers to brute force things with his creeps Lillion and Barthes. You'll be begging Bigfoot to show up and take these bastards apart, and thankfully (despite the back copy playing coy with whether the monster will be real or not) we finally do get some Bigfoot action at the climax. DiPego clearly did his research and took the subject seriously for the sake of his story, and it's a nice touch when Cassen sniffs out a phony footprint owing to its arch: Krantz said Bigfoot lacked one! It's another nice touch when Cassen realizes that, far from some prehistoric throwback, these Bigfoot have evolved into the Homo superior. Of course we're meant to contrast the savage Lillion and Barthes against these gentle forest people, and reflect on the greed and stupidity that leads all of our characters into this futile quest. Results are so-so, and the narrative feels truncated and underbaked.

The cover looks like it should be a stepback, but it isn't. This copy belonged to the U.S. Air Force. For a technically well done but unpleasant and underwhelming thriller, Shadow of the Beast earns two faked footprints out of four.

Signet Books, 1984

THE BEAST by Walter J. Sheldon

Carnal hunger! Horny Bigfoot has a long pedigree going back to the original "Sasquatch" people of British Columbia, who were said to abduct mates from neighboring tribes, and as Bigfoot evolved into a subhuman apeman in the '50s he kept his lust for human women, as can be attested by a multitude of stories from Men's Adventure magazines. The fine folks at The Men's Adventure Library have collected an indispensable volume of classic stories about Bigfoot, Yeti, and other cryptozoological monsters:

These stories were an ephemeral connection in the web of Bigfoot mythology, mostly forgotten until The Men's Adventure Library came along. Bask in this small representative gallery of horny Bigfoot taken from their Cryptozoology Anthology:

Suffice to say, Bigfoot smut is part and parcel of Bigfoot at large, which brings us to today's novel. A mountain man finds something unbelievable in a wilderness cave: bones, massive bones. Bones too fresh to be prehistoric, too massive to be human. The only thing he can take along is a gigantic molar, but it's enough. It's proof! Meanwhile, one special Bigfoot is having a crisis of consciousness in a mountain valley. Her name is Self, and she's starting to realize that she thinks, therefore she is. She's also starting to get some ideas about all the funny business going around the Bigfoot family unit, as Big Male chooses mates without regard to how any of the Bigfoot ladies feel. The Old One and Giver of Milk both say she should accept this as the way things are, but Self is already groping her way down a whole new path of being.

Like I said, horny Bigfoot is nothing new, but it's rare to see lady Bigfoot's perspective. Self makes for an engaging character. The same can't be said for the humans - "pink skins" as Self and her family call them - who organize a trek to bag a live Bigfoot. Sheldon loses his grace with these characters and their paint-by-numbers trials, which is just too bad. There's a lot of promise in the setup but the big Bigfoot action never quite arrives. Really, it's not the humans' story at all, which is fine, we might as well just jettison their deadweight!

How embarrassing!

This was Walter J. Sheldon's only novel after a career of SF short stories in the '50s. Still, I'm glad I read it. For a fair cop at a horny Bigfoot thriller, The Beast earns two massive molars out of four:

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1980

THE LOVERS' GUIDE TO SENSUAL ASTROLOGY by Marlowe and Urna Gray

Serious students of the astral arts should look elsewhere, as this book was meant to be read with one hand! The Grays admit they're writing a get-laid-quick guide right in the introduction, saying they don't want to get too caught up in the "whys and wherefores of astrological logic" and that it's an inexact science anyway. Laying out the rules in the next chapter the Grays instruct you to avoid learning your potential partner's star sign at all, and instead to rely on their "appearance sign" ... that is, what sign you think they look like based on the Grays' descriptions in this book! Seems a bit dodgy if you ask me, but let's take a look at Scorpio woman. She's always supposed to be a real hot number:

Well golly! "Your penis spurts all over himself, her, and you." I guess you can't argue with those results. Thousands of years of occult traditions are boiled down to the authors' wisdom: if they look up for it, they probably are!

Signet Books, 1974