SMOKE BREAK: Vintage Cigarette Ads

Put down that paperback and have a smoke! Tobacco giant Lorillard spent good money on these ads, inserted into countless vintage paperbacks for their brands Kent, Newport, True, and Max. Whether sandwiched into UFOs and ghosts, smut, or swords and sorcery, we've seen our fair share here at the blog:

A True ad from Tark and the Golden Tide, from Leisure Books

On the bitter cold eve of December, here are some more warm and fuzzy vintage ads culled from the paperbacks:

Lorillard's patented "Kent Micronite" filter was infamously made of crocidolite asbestos between 1952-1956, touted then as a safety measure and taste enhancer. Cigarette plant workers, their families, and smokers all were devastated by exposure to the carcinogenic fibers. The cigarettes in these '70s ads are sporting a replacement cellulose filter, though as multiple cancer/cigarette archives online will tell you, no filter of any kind is going to make smoking any safer, and neither will smoking "low tar" cigarettes such as Lorillard's True, advertised below:

However, smoking could bag you some sweet swag at a discount! For the proof of purchase of just two packs of Kent Menthols, you could get 60% off an ugly utensil set, some hideous "permanent dinner candles," or a cheap camera or radio. You'd be throwing money away not to send for them!

Here's another ad for True, the low tar cigarette marketed to smart fellas who knew smoking wasn't great for you but couldn't quite kick the habit. Meanwhile, Max was Lorillard's cigarette for women, complete with an insulting ad campaign and gimmick as detailed by Stanford's Tobacco Archive:

Ads from the 1970s featured stylish women who explained, “The longer they are, the fewer I smoke.” Because the statement is completely false, the woman goes on to say, “It’s wacky, but it works. Max 120’s take longer to smoke so you don’t light up as often.” The truth of the matter is that the human body will seek a certain amount of nicotine to feed addiction, regardless of the length of the cigarette.

This pair of ads from Stanford's collection illustrate:

"Whadda I know, I'm just a dipshit woman!"

Look sexy as hell while killing yourself

$19.95 plus two pack bottoms doesn't seem like such a steal compared to the knickknacks on offer from Kent, but I dunno, maybe they were really nice body wraps. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

COSMIC DEBRIS: A Plasmadynamically Propelled Discoid UFO

An edifying series of schematics from one Kenneth W. Behrendt, as detailed in the essential history Phenomenon: Forty Years of Flying Saucers, ed. by John Spencer and Hilary Evans. Behrendt has written extensively about purported and theorized UFO technology:

Courtesy Avon Books, 1989 (original pub. 1988)

XAN by Patrick Tilley

XAN makes some big promises. It also has some big shoes to fill after Alien, Xtro, and the rest. Can author Patrick Tilley place his Xan among the superstars of '80s alien horror?

No way. Not even close.

Tilley had previously written a well received first contact story, Fade-out, so it's hard to tell what the hell he was doing here. He front loads his story with markers of thriller verisimilitude, noting that Hays, Kansas is a real locale and praying that nothing like this story ever happens, anywhere ... but he bungles everything afterwards, delivering a comically inept mess. The titular Xan is a ripe example, never rising above a generic bug eyed monster and spending most of his time smugly intoning about us pathetic humans (with our tiny brains!) as he body snatches and mind controls his way through the cast. Xan's species uses some ethereal "life force" as energy to cross the stars, and we just happen to be full of it! If he can gain control of the "green and browns" (the military, doy), he'll have an easy time filling up the tank for his next galactic jaunt. The stilted alien speak gets old and starts to read as parodic, and there's no originality in Tilley's rote portrayal of moth eaten monster tropes. Far from some horrific '80s techno terror beyond our comprehension, Xan comes off as a dusty retro dullard. His full title, Xan-Ubara-Q'han, even sounds like a fakey yellow peril villain from the 1800s, and his supercomputer is named Tariq for God's sake! Tilley's human characters don't fare any better and spend most of their time explaining the plot to each other. We never become invested in their struggle, and the story never surprises us, feebly offering potboiler twists and turns that go nowhere.

The novel goes on and on, filling pages with a whole lot of nothing as leads Clay and Laura Williams fret over their kids and yak it up with an endless cast of interchangeable military suits. Every so often, Xan deigns to grace us with his presence. The story is simply pathetic until black GI Carmody enters, and then it becomes downright racist with Tilley's fumbling attempts at AAVE:

What a jive turkey

"Heh-heh, foxy lady, don' try'n mess with D-C. Yo' liable to git one million volts right up yo' ass. You jive? Yo' lookin' at one ba-a-d mother." Sheesh! Our cardboard heroine Laura escapes his clutches easily enough, not that we care one way or another. A spoiler for the ending: eventually, Xan drains the whole cast, zips over to LA to zap a whole stadium full of puny humans, and then flies off into the galactic night, his energy cells overflowing with souls. Good riddance to him and to Tilley's wretched novel.

XAN earns a miserable 0/4 rating and can sit with the worst of the worst published dreck.

Grafton Books, 1986

THE CAT by Andrew Sinclair

She threw back that shiny hair

Like the mane on a Delta queen

Gonna spend my last dime on a telephone call

'Cause she's the wildest thing I've ever seen

A beautiful, powerful, sleek black panther, quite a prize indeed for someone with too much money and not enough sense. That's Jebb, an idle richie rich with a private zoo, and despite some gorgeous wrought iron filigree we know that the Cat, of course, cannot be caged. "As gripping as Jaws," and for once that ubiquitous blurb has some teeth, for this particular animal attack story concerns THE CAT'S predations on Jebb's home, the twisted little village of Wittlemead, and the rotten black heart that's exposed as the beast rends and tears through the flesh of its inhabitants. Wealthy, penny pinching Jebb skimped on his security measures, as the cat's escaped from that antique Victorian cage in his private menagerie and is now having his neighbors and passers by for lunch! Our zoo fool throws the odd honest cop's investigation back in his face with the bold announcement of his standing dinner plans with the Chief Constable - yes, it's that kind of town. And sitting on top of this steaming midden of sex, lies, and disemboweled corgis is Peter Gwynvor, last of a once-proud line, reduced to pathetic dinner parties in his crumbling manse with the handful of locals who will bother. There's the dull, droning chicken queen Lucy Maidstone (her hi-tech industrial flocks soon to be laid waste), the local charity monger slash rubbernecker Mrs. Stott (her corgis soon to be rent limb from limb), old scuzzy Jebb himself, and of course the promiscuous Claudia and her parents, the Major and Lydia, old Africa hands we're told. Claudia is double dealing with Peter and his manservant Mr. Spring, though her overheated plotting is of no concern to either man, both of them far too enraptured in their own miseries. The Cat has plans for all of them, or at least Fate has plans for them to meet the Cat ...

Little kids, corgi dogs and fox hounds, bored sentries, innocent chickens ... no one is safe when the Cat strikes. And despite Jebb's best efforts, soon the creature's depredations cannot be denied, and the entire county goes into a frenzy. Fleet Street comes calling, Claudia does a nude spread as the Cat Girl based on her close encounter (almost eaten while rolling in the grass with the stolid Mr. Spring), and Peter has to consider what all of this petty bullshit means: his titles, his land, his (lack of an) heir, this Wittlemead which seems to be rapidly shaking itself apart. It's all very, very British, and many of the cast find themselves unable to let go of the former glories and shame of Empire. The modern British Army is, of course, totally inept in their attempts to catch the Cat, but the Major believes his experience in Africa hunting beasts (and men like beasts, he joyfully reflects) will aid him. The Cat proves him wrong. Mr. Spring prepares for a showdown with the Cat as well, drawing on his violent past in the Hell of the Pacific, and his brutal training may well make him a match for the beast. Peter meanwhile falls into a love triangle with Claudia and her sister, and mopes about until one too many atrocities snap him out of his funk and he too prepares to stalk the cat - after delivering a sermon, of course! Normally Peter's annual speech is a quiet affair for Remembrance Day (wherein the village mourns its 30 young men lost in the Great War, "most of them wasted in one minute by one machine-gun at Ypres"), but facing this new evil Peter gets a little more worked up, speaking truths that must be on everyone's mind at the moment:

"For the beast is within us. We confront him daily. He walks the dark places of our minds, the thickets of our wants. Envy is the beast, that envy which makes us rend the reputations of our friends and neighbours. Sloth is the beast, which lets us wallow in our beds after gorging on dead flesh. Malice is the beast, as we lie in wait to rip apart our chosen victims. Wrath is the beast, as we frighten away what we fear may be true. Lust is the beast in the darkness of our desires. The seven times seven sins are the claws of the beast, and they scratch us into doing what we know we must do."

Before the Cat escaped, Jebb had been worrying sick over the rising threat of having to obtain some kind of permit for his private zoo or to allow (gulp) the public to view his animals. He was scared stiff by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, which motivated plenty of killer cats in British animal attack novels as well as sightings of real life Alien Big Cats (ABCs) after owners supposedly dumped their illicit kitties. Moving across the animal kingdom, the back page ad is for Sphere Books' paperback of the all-American Alligator, by Shelley Katz.

Originally published in hardcover as The Surrey Cat

Class, gash, and gore - the stuff of British horror! They call her THE CAT, and she earns a solid 3/4 stars!

Sphere Books, 1977 (original pub. 1977 as The Surrey Cat)

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE CALENDAR: November 1975

November's Triangle is full of TERROR as we mark the finding of the wreck of the USS Scorpion, the final departure of the Mary Celeste, and one of the Triangle's most famous victims, Joshua Slocum - the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo! After a lifetime at sea, Slocum had become a major celebrity with his bestselling book Sailing Alone Around the World (1900), but "by 1909, Slocum's funds were running low; book revenues had tailed off. He prepared to sell his farm on Martha's Vineyard and began to make plans for a new adventure in South America. He had hopes of another book deal." He made his fateful departure and was never seen again. Kusche covered the facts as known and some speculation in The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved:

It's not known if Slocum ever made it near any of the nominal borders of the Triangle, or managed to sail on through to the Orinoco River or elsewhere, but his legend lives on as a mystery of the sea, as does debate over the seaworthiness of the Spray, the sailing sloop in which he sailed across the world and then disappeared.

Lawrence David Kusche, 1974

CROC by David James

"In the twenties it started," Boggs began, but then he stopped. Andrea was staring at him, disbelief in her eyes, but waiting for him to continue.

"All the rich bitches from uptown were raising hell, going to parties, driving their fast cars, putting in swimming pools in their penthouse places. But it got boring after awhile. No one was satisfied. They wanted something new, something different. So some of them began stocking their pools with baby alligators and crocodiles. Only the fad didn't last long, so they dumped the things down the sewers rather than kill them."

David Hagberg returns as David James for another pseudonymous thriller, following up his disaster novel Blizzard with some real creature feature carnage in Croc! NYC sewer worker Boggs loses his partner Fascetti to an impossible monster after probing a cave-in off the cross-town line, and after almost getting chomped himself he's press-ganged by Fascetti's widow into returning to the sewers with a .45 to kill the beast!

Things do not go as planned. In Hagberg's universe this is down to both institutional problems and the vagaries of the personalities involved - and boy does Croc have some characters! Boggs is a rummy lifer working the shit detail in the Sanitation Dept., and Hagberg spins some eloquent characterization as he contemplates what amounted to his life, staggering knee-deep through the pitch black sewers (with a shitty '70s flashlight, batteries draining fast) pursued by the monster croc - dreams, failures (many), and what-ifs and could-have-beens, some involving his dearly departed partner Fascetti, who almost (almost!) named Boggs his firstborn's godfather.

If you ever had to use these, you know Boggs is doomed ...

Andrea Fascetti, meanwhile, was all set for a good life as a good wife, and now has to clean up this fucking mess, which she splits 50/50 between the croc and Boggs. Her iron core - hidden inside a Talia Shire type beauty which the male characters are by turns enraptured, aroused, and a little frightened by - might never have come out if not for this tragedy, and makes one consider the multitude of invisible lives of midcentury housewives, forever standing behind their husbands. As things spin out of control, the authorities finally plunge into action, and here again Hagberg draws us in with a cast of cops, scientists, and bureaucrats who could have been cardboard cutouts but instead are all either a bunch of fuckups, barely holding it together, or just plain weird! His reptile expert Koch gives us just a light info dump on crocodilians, telling us that based on size and disposition our killer is most likely a saltwater crocodile - he's thriving down in the sewer, too, because they like brackish water! This quick rundown is typical of Hagberg's light touch - he never lingers on genre conventions when we've got enough of an idea to keep moving. In fact, even though his Croc ultimately has a low body count comparable to Katz's Alligator, Hagberg moves things so fast and furious that we never feel cheated. The setting, characters, and monster feel authentic without over explanation, and Croc can rest comfortably as an accomplished monster mash right next to John Sayles and co.'s 1980 film Alligator  - though Croc lacks that film's sharp satire, aiming for more resigned humor from Hagberg's cast of screwups and freaks. Hagberg does get some sly jabs in with Bremberger, the up-and-coming pol whose attempts at self-promotion through crocodilian crisis get shot down at every turn.

Croc (or Croc') was originally graced with the crackerjack man-vs-beast cover above, courtesy its 1976 debut from Belmont Tower Books. The New English Library edition lacks a certain dynamism by comparison, despite a decently fierce croc and a hard-to-see hand slipping beneath the sewage. NEL doesn't miss a trick plugging its moneymaking Crabs series from Guy N. Smith though!

Croc is available to read and download at archive dot org. For some lean, gritty thrills, Croc earns 4/4 stars.

New English Library, 1977 (original pub. 1976)