Back Cover Blurb:
"A seaside weekend .... violence breaks out ... a horrifying rape .... and
the fury of hell is reborn
The fairground stood on waste-land near the promenade. It was a Jumble of.
sideshows, amusement arcades, the ghost train, even a menagerie... Also there
was a fortune-teller – the Red Indian girl called Jane who sat quietly carving
grotesque wooden figures.
When Roy and Liz Catlin arrive on holiday with their daughter Rowena, they find
non-stop rain and a disturbing undercurrent of menace. Rowena is strangely
fascinated by the fairground – and particularly by the mysterious Jane.
Continually she returns there against her parents' wishes.
But the place has now become the focus of evil forces. Ugly deaths,
mutilations, mass killings erupt in a terrifying wave of destruction. For a
demonic slaughter is unleashed that can only end when an age-old score is settled."
The multi-genred Manitou Doll begins as a particularly savage Western (complete
with scalpings, racial epithets and the rape of a squaw), quickly transforms
into an equally savage biker novel (complete with more rape and a
preposterously violent gang battle at a funfair) before settling into a
supernatural revenge tale taking place during a family's lousy, rain swept,
holiday by the sea. Protagonist duties are shared between deaf, red haired girl
Rowena Catlin- who is gifted a wooden doll by Native American fortune teller
Jane- and her father Roy Catlin who sees an escape from his oppressive,
loveless marriage in the form of the aforementioned fortune teller, the mere
sight of her causing him "the early tremors of an erection". Will he
make a go of the marriage for the sake of his daughter, or follow where his
loins are leading him?
Taking precedence over this domestic drama is of course Manitou Doll's horror
elements, which emanate from Jane being raped by two Hell's Angels. A case of
history repeating itself, since back in the days of the Wild West Jane's
ancestor Mistai was raped by a US cavalry man and sought vengeance by making
wooden dolls, vessels for the spirit of Okeepa. Jane turns out to be a chip off
the old block when it comes to carving killer dolls and as a result it's soon
curtains for the Hell's Angels. However with Okeepa's vengeful spirit
unleashed, Jane quickly loses control of the situation as the various puppets
and wood carvings she made for the funfair she works at turn against British
holidaymakers...who soon discover they have more than bad weather to worry
about. Jane also angers Okeepa by copulating with a white man, a turn of events
that Roy's wife Liz isn't best pleased about either.
There are usually bits of Guy N Smith's own DNA scattered about the characters
in his books, and Manitou Doll is no exception. While Roy Catlin fails to live
up to Smith's pipe smoking, lithe bodied, aquiline featured ideal of manhood, epitomized
by the likes of Cliff Davenport and Mark Sabat, there are common bonds between
character and creator. Both Smith and Catlin have daughters who are deaf, and
neither are strangers when it comes to holding down tedious office jobs. Roy
being a wage slave to a firm of solicitors where his snooty superiors regard
him as a dogsbody...seemingly echoing Smith's days working at various branches
of the Midland bank. The success of Night of the Crabs allowed Smith to leave
the banking world behind and become a full time writer, Roy Catlin isn't so
fortunate. As such it's tempting to wonder if Smith saw Roy as the type of
disappointed, unfulfilled man that he could have become had Night of the Crabs
not started to fly off the shelves during the hot summer of 76.
It is easy to see why Smith's books (click-click-clickety) clicked with the
masses back in the 1970s and 1980s. If you want to know what a working class
holiday gone badly wrong was like back then, Manitou Doll nails that piece of
British history, perfecto. Rain stops play, cars break down, the AA have to be called
out, couples bicker and fail to connect with the holiday cheer, and the only
form of nearby entertainment is a clapped out fairground with tired animal
attractions and rigged fruit machines. Anyone going through such a humdrum
experience in real life could pick up a copy of Manitou Doll and be transported
to a version of their own reality that's enlivened by wild outbursts of
bloodshed, and the titillating fantasy of getting your end away with a Native
American fortune teller while the missus isn't looking.
As you might expect from a 1980s Guy N Smith book, Manitou Doll proudly sits on
the cultural naughty step these days. An evil dwarf, apparently the childhood
victim of polio is described as a “mis-shapen monstrosity” who resembles “a
gorilla in the way he moved”. While Jane confesses to Roy that she was raped by
Hell's Angels...but it turns out it's okay because she secretly enjoyed it
"although to all outward appearances I remained emotionless. I even
orgasmed". At which point Roy becomes jealous of the Hell's Angels, and
gets an erection thinking about it.
Manitou Doll arrived at a busy period in Smith's career (it's one of five
titles he had published in 1981) and as such it does feel like it's pages were
a dumping ground for whatever horrific idea or genre came into his overworked
head. Manitou Doll encompasses Western and biker elements, even throwing in
some 'animals on the rampage' carnage towards the end and falsely teasing a
possible return of the killer crabs at one point “whatever it was that followed
her was only yards away, slowing down now like some giant crab". Some of
his ideas fail to land, a few don't make a great deal of sense, but overall
Manitou Doll has more hits than misses when it comes to horror set pieces, and
it's impossible to argue that the punters weren't getting their money's worth
out of Smith here. A shrunken head in a jar, a macabre Punch and Judy show,
even more male 'protrusions' (a Smith trademark), and a double decapitation are
amongst the type of pulp horror excess that £1.25 bought you back in 1981.
Line
most likely to cause you to spit out whatever you are drinking at the time
"her eyes were riveted on the size of that which she would be compelled to
take inside her, it's length and thickness almost rivaling the handle of her
father's tomahawk".
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