The Naked Light (1970, James Moffatt)

 

One of the unintended effects of the Manson family murders at the end of the 1960s was to bring together the Canadian writer James Moffatt and British publisher New English Library. NEL wanted a quickie cash-in on the Manson phenomenon, and the fast writing hack Moffatt delivered 'Satan's Slaves'. A book so hastily written that Manson and his followers were still on trial by the time Moffatt completed it. Since Moffatt didn't really have enough material on Manson to fill an entire book, he padded Satan's Slaves out with exposés of other phoney gurus and religious conmen operating out of California. Moffatt also made several stabs in the dark about Manson's then unclear motivations. Something which managed to get Moffatt's publisher in hot water, when Moffatt used Satan's Slaves to link Manson with the Church of Scientology "Will it confirm that Manson got his start with them?". This resulted in the Scientologists taking legal action against NEL, eventually settling for an undisclosed financial sum and the agreement that Satan's Slaves was withdrawn from circulation.

Perhaps wisely, for their next Manson inspired book 'The Naked Light' Moffatt and NEL decided to drop the factual approach of Satan's Slaves and go the semi-fictional route. The Naked Light offers the unique spectacle of seeing the murder of Sharon Tate used as fodder for a Canadian author who was playing to a readership of conservative, bigoted Brits.

Our initial protagonist, greek drug dealer Stefanos Nikasnos is 'sweaty, hot and irritable' (a mood Moffatt may himself have been in when he wrote this book) as he navigates the LA traffic. In the first of many attempts to play to a patriotic British audience, Moffatt has Stefanos take pride in cutting in front of two German made cars "he had no love for the Teutonic bastards...he remembered what they had done to Greece during the war". Stefanos insists on only driving a superior, British made car.

Stefanos' client is Chloe Young, a hedonistic, heavily pregnant Hollywood actress...who in no way, shape or form is meant to remind you of Sharon Tate. Currently out of the country is Chloe's husband, Americo Batelli, a European filmmaker who is obsessed with witchcraft...who in no way, shape or form is meant to remind you of Rosemary's Baby director Roman Polanski. Stefanos just wants to deliver some drugs to Chloe's party, but gets talked into participating in a black mass and ends up porking the heavily pregnant actress on an altar while jaded Hollywood types gather round to chant the praises of Lucifer.

In yet another attempt to endear himself to a British audience, Moffatt then introduces us to Richard Boston, a darn decent British actor who has come up against a wall of xenophobia in Hollywood. Boston is regarded as a 'work stealing limey' and with his British reserve, struggles to fit in with new Hollywood what with all its stoned, rebellious, long haired, method actors. Hoping to make the swinging scene, Richard shows up at Chloe's party only to find that the only thing swinging is Chloe herself, hung from a rope with satanic symbols adorning her naked body. Five of her friends have met a similar fate, leading the cops to the conclusion 'a sick mind had been at work here. A mind tortured by witchcraft. A pornographic mentality twisted out of all reason on a bender of violent death'.

There are moments in The Naked Light where I wondered if Moffatt's inspiration for Richard Boston may have been Edmund Purdom. Although Purdom was long gone from Hollywood by the late sixties, there are quite a few similarities there. Both had come to Hollywood with the idea of appearing in big budget, biblical epics, only to suffer career setbacks due to an antagonistic relationship with the American press. Moffatt even gives Boston's love interest the name Lucy Christian, near identical to the woman Purdom effectively gave up Hollywood for... Linda Christian.

Having had their fingers burnt with Satan's Slaves, Moffatt and NEL discovered with The Naked Light that you can be as libelous and offensive about famous people as you like, as long as you write about them as if they were fictional characters. In that respect, The Naked Light leans more towards an example of Tate-spoitation, rather than Manson-spoitation. Moffatt could be a cold blooded bastard in his writing, but The Naked Light is exceptionally callous even by his standards. Keeping in mind that his main focus of hate here was a pregnant woman who had just been killed in a horrendous fashion and would have barely been cold in her grave when Moffatt cranked this out in 1970.

The Naked Light adopts a similar format as Moffatt's 'J.J. More' sex paperbacks like The Massage Girls and The Walk-On Girls, in which a character embarks on an investigation into a salacious topic. Eventually settling on the aforementioned Lucy Christian as his main protagonist, the bulk of The Naked Light is taken up by Lucy -a publicist for a movie company -talking to various Hollywood oddballs who knew the Sharon Tate proxy character and receiving an overwhelmingly damning verdict. Some of the opinions including "that girl was a bitch from the word 'Go'. She reeked sex and evil" as well as "Chloe deserved to die. I feel sorry for Americo. He's got to live with the disgrace she's left behind". I'm not sure if even the people who actually killed Sharon Tate hated her as much as Jim Moffatt does in the pages of The Naked Light.

Geographically, the Hollywood setting of this book might be thousands of miles away from the working class London of Moffatt's skinhead novels but his bitter, hateful tone is as distinct as ever. Moffatt might have inadvertently nailed his own writing style when he claims of one character 'every sentence held it's venomous poison'.

Lucy acts as both Moffatt's conservative mouthpiece -our girl hates draft dodgers, pornographers and homosexuals, but loves her Governor Reagan- while at the same time being the object of Moffatt's less conservative lust 'when she was naked under the sheets, she would perform with the agility of a snake, the passion of the demented and the urgency of a spinster'. In her attempts to uncover the truth about Chloe, Lucy's gets the dirt from Mrs. Wilmott, Chloe's devoutly catholic housekeeper who got fed up with cleaning up the used contraceptives and dead cats (sacrificed to satan). While Axel Sturm, a Swedish playboy shocks the Victorian minded Miss Christian with his open bisexuality (classic line: "Do I seem like a man who would permit buggery?"). Lucy also chats with Mala, a lesbian and Anglophile who dines out at a mock English pub. A setting that allows Moffatt to work in his obligatory plug for the Seagram's company...it seems no Hollywood lesbian would be seen dead without a glass of 'Seagram's V.O.' in her hand. As with the lesbian character in Skinhead Girl, Moffatt appears, if not exactly tolerant, then a little more relaxed with gay female characters than a gay male ones.

Speaking of which, by far the most explosive of Lucy's encounters is with 'Mish-Mash' a gay radio DJ who has jumped on the hippie bandwagon and encourages his listeners to appose the Vietnam war and call for Governor Reagan's resignation. For a homophobic author Moffatt sure could write like an old bitch at times, of poor Mish-Mash, Moffatt has this to say 'his listeners could not see his face. Nor his flabby body. Nor his feminine features and the balding head'. While Lucy can tolerate all manner of trash talk about Chloe from straights, Mish-Mash's homosexual misogyny "Chloe Young was an immoral bitch...she used her cunt..to gain fame" proves to be the straw that breaks the Christian's back "remember I'm a woman with one of those things between my legs" she barks back.

At one point, Moffatt just decides to start writing what appears to be a completely different book and indulges in his passion for 1930s Hollywood gangster movies. Suddenly we get Mafia goons trying to smuggle Chloe's killer to Canada, and the secondary character Captain Jim Herschfeld transformed into a Dick Tracy type figure. Right down to Herschfeld acquiring a young boy as a sidekick -akin to Tracy's 'The Kid' character- who Herschfeld decides to adopt on the spot and take into his home. This despite the fact that the boy isn't even an orphan. Herschfeld's rationale there being that since the boy's father beats his mother, the mother makes loud noises during sex, and the boy's sister is a prostitute, the boy is therefore the ideal choice for helping him solve sex murders. Life experiences having given the boy 'relatively advanced knowledge of manly affairs'.

Never shy of voicing his opinions, Moffatt is like Mount Vesuvius here, spilling all that hot lava on decadent, soulless Hollywood, permissive actors, non-virgin actresses, police corruption, kitchen sink dramas, sex clubs, the type of Fish and Chips that is served in LA (inferior to the British version of Fish and Chips, of course) and just about everything else under the evening sun. Oddly the same soapboxing about Hollywood being the new Sodom and Gomorrah that renders Satan's Slaves such a pontificating bore, is what makes The Naked Light such a wild ride. Wallowing in sex, drugs and witchcraft almost as much as he does warning about the dangers of sex, drugs and witchcraft. Here an angered Mr. Moffatt makes for an entertaining Mr. Moffatt for a change...and I'm sure NEL raised a glass of Seagram's V.O. to the fact that at least he didn't manage to piss the Scientologists off this time.