Joe 12

 The end is nigh..the penultimate Joe D'Amato episode

Blaze (1969, Kenneth Roberts)

Blaze and it's sequel Flame represent the deep end of slavery lit, a genre that by its very nature is extreme and distasteful. Author Kenneth Roberts seems to have attempted to make these two books stand out from the Mandingo inspired pack by cutting straight to the pornographic jugular. Leading you to suspect that Kenneth Roberts was a pen name, since it's hard to believe that anyone remotely sane would use their real name on a pair of books like these.

 

Blaze shackles us in chains and frog marches us back to the 1740s, a shameful period of American history, where a male slave called Blaze is subject to an endless parade of indignities, racial abuse and unwanted sexual attention. Blaze is initially sold to Von Schloss, a bi-sexual Dutchman, who likes his slaves 'silent... monolithic and in priapic splendor'. Josette, Von Schloss's wife, turns a blind eye to his homosexual inclinations in return for allowing her to romp around with the black bucks he owns. However, Von Schloss predictably insists on a front row seat to the mixed combo action between Blaze and Josette. Blaze thinks he has landed on his feet, by becoming the sexual plaything of a rich, swinging couple. However, he is brought back down to earth when Von Schloss (literally) sells him down the river, passing him onto two of his associates. Tommy Scott, about the only decent whitey in the entire book, and Tommy's hard drinking brother Hugh, a no good bossman with an unfortunate habit of getting raging hard-ons whilst dishing out punishments to male slaves.

 

Roberts throws in all the elements - whippings, castration, racial slurs and interracial sex- that slavery lit loving audiences were crying out for back then. Roberts might have been a little ahead of his time too, his hypersexual narrative and graphic descriptions of sex acts anticipate the big screen 'porno chic' trend by a few years. The sexual demands placed on Blaze's muscular shoulders include servicing the black wenches owned by the Scott brothers for breeding purposes. As well as more socially taboo affairs with 'respectable' women like Josette and Miss Dolly, a randy Scouse trollop, fresh off the boat from Liverpool. All of which leads Blaze to the weary conclusion "I's a walkin' pair o' balls, nuthin' mo". A maxim repeated throughout the book, much to the amusement of racist white characters.

 

What's really surprising for something written in 1969, is how blatantly bi-sexual orientated this book is, with much of the unwanted sexual attention in the book coming from sexually adventurous white males. All of whom keep finding reason to play with Blaze's oversized penis and heavy ballsack (physical attributes that Roberts never tires of describing). It's not just whitey that Blaze has to fear, at one point Blaze is tricked into being fellated by a fellow slave called Teach, who is masquerading as one of the black wenches. Upon being discovered, Teach tries to sell Blaze on the gay lifestyle by telling him "likin' it, wasn't yo? Buck's Jes's good's a wench. Betta sometimes". The book pushes the homoerotic undercurrent of the slavery lit genre to the forefront, thanks to Hugh's lust/hate relationship with Blaze, which sees Hugh put Blaze through sadistic hell due to his closeted desire for him...in this book, each man whups the thing he loves. The tide begins to turn when Blaze realizes that his coveted sexuality gives him power over both men and women. Ultimately, Blaze is an uplifting story of how one man's endowment can be weaponized against racial oppression.

 

Blaze was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Flame (1970) put out by the publishing arm of Warner Brothers..no less. This move into the big league didn't persuade Roberts to tone down the Blaze formula one bit. If anything Flame is even further beyond the pale than it's predecessor, with not even horses and children being spared Roberts' lechery in the sequel novel.

 

Blaze is the kind of book that robs you a little of your humanity and dignity, just by having read it. Your enjoyment of the book will depend on how much you can block out the voice in the back of your head from saying "you're a terrible person for reading this". At the same time Blaze feels on the money in terms of historical accuracy, being so entrenched in the dialect and social mores of the period, that it ends up feeling like a book written in the 1740s, rather than a product of the 20th century. A triumph in the field of wall to wall degeneracy, Blaze is strong, dark meat.

Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead (1974, James Moffatt)

Surely the only book about Dracula to include a reference to Larry Grayson - it's dedicated to 'Larry- don't ever shut that door'- and countless italicized plugs for Seagram's 100 Pipers. The latter should of course tip you off to this being the work of James Moffatt writing as Etienne Aubin...a name derived from Moffatt's 1971 book 'Demo' where that surname is shared between heroic frenchman Rolande Aubin and his sexy daughter Nanette Aubin.

 

Originally promoted by New English Library as if it were part of Robert Lory's Dracula book series, Moffatt instead looks to have taken inspiration from the Hammer Dracula movies of the period. The opening scene of a vampire being traced to its crypt and stake being driven into its heart, cries out for a James Bernard musical accompaniment. Only for Moffatt to then pick a fight with the film company, with derogatory references to 'Christopher Lee making a bomb from having plastic teeth inserted into the corners of his mouth. Pig's blood trickling down the chin of some sexy, busty, non-acting dish as she frolics in the near nude across an artificial stage forest'. Yes, what better way to integrate yourself with the horror aficionados of the 1970s, than to piss all over Hammer films. Still you have to hand it to Moffatt, Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead is one of the all time great, attention grabbing horror titles, and one he could have easily sold to Hammer's rivals like Amicus and Tigon...had he not hated Jewish people so much.

 

Reading Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead is an experience akin to a very drunk person trying to tell you a scary story, despite being well past the stage of being able to string a sentence together. A drunk's rendition of the plot here, would go something like this "remember Maud who lived down the road, yeah well the priest had to drive a stake through her heart because she'd become one of the virgins of the undead. Anyway, I called up my friends, Douglas and Stafford, and told them we needed to hunt down Count Dracula, because he's a right bastard in real life. Then we decided that Dracula must be posing as an astrologer, but we didn't know for sure, so me and Douglas we went to a stone circle, and got distracted by this bird in light Levi trousers who had great looking knockers. Oh and Douglas is a powerful warlock by the way, and he realized that I was possessed, so he had Stafford burn a chest of drawers in my backyard, then I wasn't possessed anymore. Then I got into an argument with Douglas, and he pissed off, so I looked at my watch and it was 12:47am so I decided to hunt Dracula myself, and I found him in a field, and said 'hey you' but he completely ignored me. Anyway, pour another Seagram's 100 Pipers, we're both gonna need it".

 

I'm unsure as to how I could be so entertained by a book that stumbles around and ungainly falls on its arse every time it tries to function as horror or tell an intelligible story. Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead has the feel of an 'in-between marriages' book. Moffatt's big theme towards the end of the book being whether the hero should rush into a second marriage, his first having ended on a bitter note, whether this will cramp his bachelor lifestyle, and most importantly how it will effect his relationship with his cat. Until you've read it for yourself, you wouldn't believe how much of this book is taken up by the man/feline relationship...come for Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead, and stay for the adventures of Whisk the cat. The big takeaway from the book being that- in Moffatt's eyes- men and cats are much preferable company to women and vampires. Whilst the other love of Moffatt's life, Seagram's 100 Pipers, receives such an overkill of product placement here that the book would have been more accurately titled The Seagramic Rites of Dracula. Speaking of which...in order to trick the residents of Wiltshire and drink the blood of their womenfolk here Dracula is hiding out under the cunning name of Mister La Dacru...'cause that'll fool all those smart arses who saw through aliases like Dr. Acula and Alucard. James Moffatt...thank you, and also fuck you. Dracula and the Virgins of the Undead is the most fun you can have whilst having your intelligence insulted over 124 pages.

 

Even the Rainbow’s Bent (1977, Charlie Chester)

During the heyday of light entertainment many leading figures such as Eric Morecambe, Les Dawson and Irene Handl took the public by surprise by penning 'serious' novels, but when it came to going against expectations in print, Charlie Chester was in a field of his own.

Comedian, radio personality, water rat and tireless charity campaigner...one of the now forgotten feathers in Charlie Chester's cap was as a paperback writer. Chester first came into the orbit of publisher New English Library when he wrote his showbiz memoir 'The World of Full of Charlies' for them in 1974. Unexpectedly Chester then stuck around and entered into the spirit of NEL, writing crime thrillers that fully embraced the company's lurid ethos. Anyone seeing 'Cheerful' Charlie Chester's name as the author and assuming they were in for a chuckle filled romp, would have been in for a shock with Chester books like Symphony and Psychopath (1975) with its scenes of spanking, Soho prostitution and a pregnant woman being murdered during auto erotic asphyxiation. Chester's career sideline was reflected in the company he was keeping back then, associating with British sex film producer David Hamilton Grant, and -presumably through NEL- befriending notorious author James 'Richard Allen' Moffatt. Being a fly on the wall during a roundtable discussion between Charlie Chester, David Hamilton Grant and James Moffatt would, I'm sure, have been quite the experience. Moffatt even dedicated 1975's Perfect Assignment -one of his 'The Girl from H.A.R.D' sexy spy book series- to Chester 'friend, fellow-sufferer and a soapbox packed with energy'. However, there's evidence of Chester having had second thoughts about associating his real name with his NEL output, as he took to billing himself as 'Carl Noone' for his final three NEL books. Noone's career consisting of Mind Over Murder (1976), Sweet Cyanide (1976) and finally Even the Rainbow's Bent (1977) a mind-boggling tale of murder, cross dressing and vagina envy that defies genre and gender, and may well be the kind of book that you have to read for yourself to really believe it exists.

Even the Rainbow's Bent initially focuses on Billie Shapiro, a butch, middle aged lesbian with a possessive streak, who in part appears to have been modeled on Chester himself. Billie having written several racy novels under a false male name. Tragedy strikes Billie in the opening of the book when her small dog is hit by a car and dies. Still, what you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts, and consoling herself in the local library Billie attracts the sympathetic attention of librarian Janice Doyle. A younger woman who has gone off blokes and whose passive personality is a turn on to Billie's dominant one. After Janice is talked into spending the weekend with her, Billie decides she might not need to throw away that dog collar after all. Billie purposely hires out a book from the library called 'Obey Me, Or Else' sending a coded message to Janice as to what a whip cracking time she can expect at Chez Shapiro. Chester's NEL work leaves the impression that sadomasochism was a subject close to his heart. When Chester writes about the lesbians going horse riding, getting into tight jodhpurs, leather boots and feeling their riding crops, his descriptions suggests an author whose heart just skipped a beat. Likewise his dialogue really comes to life when it turns to their dom and sub dirty talk; Billie: "I'm going to have a feast looking at you, so you'd better get used to it hadn't you"...Janice: "If ever I look at anyone else, you have my permission to thrash me". The possibility that Chester himself had offbeat and misunderstood sexual tastes, may explain Even the Rainbow's Bent's empathy with outsiders to the acceptable societal norms. His adoption of a pen name here, allowing Chester greater freedom to explore the gay themes of the book. Temporarily leaving Billie and Janice behind in lesbian bliss, Chester then peaks through the window of their new neighbours.  Adrian, an effeminate 26 year old dressmaker, and his domineering mother Jessica Chayney, who keeps her son firmly under her thumb. While their relationship has echoes of the Billie/Janice one, in terms of age difference and dom/sub roles, the atmosphere in this household is far more sexually suffocating. Mrs. Chayney despises her son's obvious homosexually, her homophobia partly driven by hurt straight pride, his father having left her for another man, and partly by misguided concern, the father's pursuit of the gay lifestyle having lead him to the bottle. When Mrs. Chayney catches Adrian getting frisky with hunky gardener Mr. Keefe, she blows her top, banishes Keefe and destroys her son's chance at a homosexual romance. Driving Adrian, not to the drinks cabinet, as per his father, but to the makeup cabinet. Ladies clothes being Adrian's escape from the misery that his sexuality brings him, with his mother predictably preferring a heterosexual daughter to a homosexual son. One of the big questions of Even the Rainbow's Bent is whether Adrian is a gay man kowtowing to society and his mother's bigotry by passing himself off as female, or a heterosexual woman born in the wrong body. For the most part Chester appears to be on the side of Adrian being a gay man who does himself no favours by creating a female alter ego. Chester's mouthpiece for this being Janice, who becomes more forthright and outspoken as the book progresses, hilariously telling Adrian "why don't you say bugger the world and all that's in it and just find someone who wants to bugger you, it'll do you good". One suspects that if Janice had her way the book's tagline 'Adrian did not need love, he only wanted friendship', would have actually read 'Adrian did not need love, he only wanted buggering'.

While Janice argues that Adrian needs to follow her lead and come out as gay, the book gives space to the counter argument that Adrian is what we'd today consider to be Trans. At one point Chester describes Adrian as 'what god had made him, a maiden in masculine attire' and when Adrian is temporarily freed of his mother's influence he chooses not to live as a gay man but pursue a female identity. Explaining the presence of his new self in town by introducing himself as his identical twin sister Adrienne. Nothing is too straight forward here though, when Adrian accidentally runs into one of Adrienne's admirers, Adrian is disappointed that the man has no sexual interest in him, and instead just keeps yakking about how he'd like to get off with Adrian's 'sister'. Indicating that Adrian really wants to be loved and accepted as a gay man, rather than as Adrienne.

For a book written by a heterosexual in 1977, Even the Rainbow's Bent isn't the tone deaf, avalanche of insensitivity that you might expect, even though it admittedly has it moments. It's a book that is ahead of its time in some respects, and of its time in others. Whereas lesbianism and sadomasochism were longtime acceptable turn-ons in NEL paperbacks, Even the Rainbow's Bent breaks taboos with its depiction of male homosexuality. Chester approaches Adrian's make out session with Mr. Keefe with the same erotic gusto as any of the straight and lesbian sex scenes in the book "he could feel the bulge of urgency almost bursting through his trousers". When Adrian first steps out as female, Chester breaks rank with an era where men in women's clothes were either seen as a freak show or figures of fun, and the mood is instead celebratory 'he really did look pretty. The makeup was absolutely right and the gown fitted him like the proverbial glove'.

We follow Adrian from the highs of turning the heads of all the men in a restaurant, to the inevitable fall back down to earth when a groping session with a straight guy leads to the discovery of Adrian's unwanted appendage and a traumatic gay bashing. However, Even the Rainbow's Bent doesn't consign all of its gay characters to a tear stained existence. As Adrian suffers as a result of his adopted female identity, Janice's acceptance of her lesbianism causes her to thrive in her new relationship. Even the Rainbow's Bent is refreshingly uncritical about lesbian and sadomasochistic relationships, with Chester admittedly having some possible skin in the game when it came to the latter. Billie might initially raise red flags as a sexual predator, zoning in on a younger, vulnerable and sexually questioning woman, but the book turns such preconceptions on its head, by making Billie and Janice a very loving and passionate couple, enhanced by their role playing adventures in the bedroom. Billie digs Janice's submissiveness, and Janice loves taking her punishments. Even the Rainbow's Bent does shine a light on the inconsistency between society's acceptance of lesbians compared to their male counterparts. Arguing that lesbians enjoy greater freedoms 'very few people challenged two girls sharing a room together, and yet the thought of two men loving was a matter of derision and laughter'. Although the true cause of Adrian's unhappiness is his mother and the confused men who reject him, instead his rage is more inwardly directed. His hostility being aimed at his gay father and especially Janice, ironically the one character in the book who had shown him any understanding. On account of what Adrian regards as her melding and questioning of his female identity, Janice becomes everything wrong and unfair in the world as far as Adrian is concerned. The fact that Janice has a fully functioning vagina, but has chosen not to use it to attract men, proves utterly intolerable to Adrian, who'd give anything to have a vagina. Here Chester inadvertently anticipates the more toxic elements of the Trans community. Yesterday's anti-Janice rants could be today's responses to J.K. Rowling's twitter feed.

Not even this disturbing change in Adrian's character however, can prepare you for Even the Rainbow's Bent's own extreme personality switch. Going from a moving, very human, gay themed book about Janice and Adrian's struggles to find acceptance, and into Pete Walker film territory… 'A wire clothes hanger bent into a loop and turned around the clothes rail supported the naked girl from her neck...the wire had bitten deep into the flesh and had almost disappeared'. After the naked body of a schoolgirl is discovered, and thereafter further naked women start turning up dead, the finger of suspicion gets pointed in the direction of them flagellation loving lesbians and the cross dressing homosexual misogynist who lives next door.

Chester died in 1997, leaving us to but speculate what motivated him to write a book like Even the Rainbow's Bent. I find it hard to believe that this was a commission or a subject matter that was forced on him. On the contrary, the book feels like a passion project, evidenced by the fact that NEL were clearly clueless as to how to market it. The back cover selling it as a serious drama about an unlucky in love guy 'thwarted in his search for the right girl, he strove for other ways to satisfy his desires', largely sidestepping the gay aspects of the book, and more inexplicably concealing the horror elements that await at the end of this rainbow. Even the Rainbow's Bent was one hell of a head-trip for naughty, nasty NEL to lead the public blindly into.

As a person who moved in showbiz circles, historically more open minded than mainstream society, it's possible that Chester was inspired by a sensitive soul from that world who was tormented by their sexuality or gender. Adrian's cross dressing is often euphemistically referred to in the book as his 'theatricals' and at one point his mother observes 'had he been a more robust boy with a bit more ego, he might have been a great actor'. Given where Chester goes with the character of Adrian however, I can't imagine any real life thespian would have been flattered by this particular homage. Nevertheless, Even the Rainbow's Bent gives the impression that Chester was relaxed and comfortable around male homosexuality, reflected in his frank language and the sexual tension he builds up between Adrian and Mr. Keefe. Making Chester’s relationship with James Moffatt, an author with a much more troubling and combative attitude towards homosexuality, all the more intriguing. What conversations Charlie and Jim must have had. Only when Adrian's misogyny and anti-lesbian rhetoric becomes all consuming, does the hand of friendship get withdrawn and Chester begins to distance himself from his creation. It's feasible that Chester related to Adrian in the sense of having to lead a double life and create a new identity, Adrian has Adrienne, Chester had Carl Noone. The most revealing aspects to Even the Rainbow's Bent with regards to Charlie Chester himself is when a nosey journalist intrudes on Billie's privacy and quizzes her on her writing career. The confessional tone here representing the closest Chester came to going on record about his NEL days. We get an insight into why Chester rechristened himself Carl Noone, when the dirt gathering journo asks "Do you ever wonder what people think of you and how much is reflected in your own life". Billie's cryptic reply being "I suppose every writer puts something from experience into their books, even if it is distorted". Even the Rainbow's Bent also sees Chester playing Superman and coming to the rescue of the BDSM community. At several points in the book Chester is at pains to point out that sadistic proclivities in the bedroom isn't necessary evidence of a violent personality outside of it. Nevertheless, Even the Rainbow's Bent does acknowledge that practitioners of such a lifestyle are at risk of negative attention from those who don't walk that beat, a fate that befalls the unfortunate Billie Shapiro.

The elephant in the room that needs addressing with regards to Charlie Chester's NEL career is that he sure was fond of writing about very young girls. This is more strongly felt in Symphony and Psychopath, with its John Lindsay-esque subplot about a schoolgirl's sexual run ins with her lesbian teacher and a pervert caretaker. On that level, Chester and James Moffatt were two peas in a pod...see also the infamous chapter eight of Moffatt's Skinhead. The trash fiction that men do lives after them. The schoolgirl fixation isn't as overt in Even the Rainbow's Bent, but it is still detectable. Adrian spies on schoolgirls through a peep hole, later one of them is found dead and naked, whilst the mood turns ogling when Adrian himself dresses as a schoolgirl 'black shoes and white socks, then the bare hairless legs...and as Adrian came down slowly he gradually revealed himself in a trim blue gym slip with a spotless white blouse'.

I'm holding out hope that Chester was one of the 'good ones', if only because authoring such books would surely have been way too incriminating for anyone with dark secrets in their closet. The real bad eggs of that era keeping a wide berth from anything saucy, or actively coming out against permissiveness, as in the case of Jimmy Savile, or voicing their support for the banning of top shelf magazines, as in the case of Clement Freud. So, I have my fingers crossed, very tightly, that Charlie Chester reserved making a beast of himself to the printed word.

In the cold light of day, it has to be conceded that Charlie Chester wasn't a born novelist. His career was mainly played out on the radio, and his books feel as if they were meant to be heard over the wireless than actually read. His writing style is strictly no frills, relying on basic descriptions so that everything can be quickly and easily visualized by the audience. A very, radio play mentality. Chester also has a habit of overwriting dialogue scenes with unnecessary parting pleasantries, and gossipy rehashing of incidents we've already read about. This might well be a realistic depiction of how people speak in real life, but on paper just comes across as padding or a book in need of a tighter edit.

Chester's books do paint him as an avid cinema-goer, who wasn't above a bit of pilfering. Symphony and Psychopath's shy, obsessive protagonist is compelled to murder women in order to immortalize them in symphonies, and comes across like a Charlie Chester take on Peeping Tom (1960), only with music, rather than film as the killer's creative outlet. On the other hand, Even the Rainbow's Bent reads like Chester and James Moffatt got pissed one night on Seagram's 100 Pipers and ended up at a Fleapit cinema double bill of The Killing of Sister George and Psycho. Even the Rainbow's Bent is also reminiscent of Norman J Warren's Prey, what with its lesbian couple and a sexually confused male getting into drag, just minus the Sci-Fi elements of the Warren film and with a more positive depiction of lesbianism. Since Prey and Even the Rainbow's Bent were released within about a month of each other though, the similarities there really do have to have been coincidental.

Given the sensitivity and controversy that now surrounds the subject of gender identity; it's unlikely that a famous person would today consider writing a book like Even the Rainbow's Bent. At least not without the courage of the Cowardly Lion. I can guarantee three things about Even the Rainbow's Bent, that you'll never have read a book quite like this before, that you'll never be able to think of Charlie Chester in the same light again, and that you'll never forget Adrian/Adrienne "let's leave Mother in the cellar, she likes it down there with her wines".

More Chainsaw Terror

There's a buzz in the air as Clive, Nick and myself discuss Shaun Hutson's Chainsaw Terror

Joe 11

 The D'amato journey continues into 2025

Jackboot Girls (1971, James Moffatt)

 

Written by that renowned schweinehund James Moffatt, shortly before coming to prominence with his 'Richard Allen' Skinhead novels. Moffatt must have thought he'd won the pools, or a lifetime's supply of Seagram's 100 pipers when somebody at New English Library approached him with the words every alcoholic, far right leaning hack writer longs to hear "how do you fancy writing a book about sexy female Nazis, Jim?". In keeping with the Dad's Army maxim of 'Don't tell him your name' however, Moffatt chose to bill himself as Leslie McManus for this slice of Nazi smut. A pseudonym he'd revive for his subsequent books dealing with the sexy side of WW2, including Operation Backlash, Unfaithful Enemy (tag line: 'Hitler's Germany was one hell of a place for an old fashioned love affair') and the four book 'Churchill's Vixens' series.

According to Jackboot Girls you can tell allot about a woman by the way she sits on a chair. If she shows a generous amount of thigh she is 'seeking inequality and seduction', if she shows little of her undergarments she is a virgin, and if she sits down in a manner that is devoid of passion, she must be a lesbian. One such dispassionate sitter is Helga Schwartz, who is tormented by the fact that her lesbianism is preventing her from fulfilling her promise in the SS. "All her life, Helga Schwartz had fought her lonely battle of passion under the impression her lesbianism could not be espied". Not even laying back and thinking of Hitler, helps Helga overcome her revulsion at heterosexual sex. Fortunately for Helga, there happens to be an opening in the SS for a lesbian interrogator. Based on the thinking that fraulein on fraulein seduction will be a more effective way of loosening the lips of female prisoners than rape and torture by male Nazis.

Rising in the ranks, Helga soon finds herself head of the Wolverines, an all female battalion of Nazi interrogators, after her ex-lover Gertrude puts in a good word for her with Himmler. Proving that even in the Nazi party, it's not what you know, it's who you know. The Wolverines fear nothing, apart from it seems naked, overweight people. Titillated by the idea that her latest victim Inge Kloffer, will be a sexy, slender thing, Helga is horrified to discover that the SS have sent her anything but. Poor Inge suffering the indignity of being judged too fat to be tortured by regular Nazis. Leading Helga to call in Lizabet Langendoff, a Wolverine with a strong stomach for S&M, having been tied up and beaten by a trusted family member as a Jungfrau. It's difficult to know which inflicts the greater humiliation on Inge, Lizabet's whip or Moffatt's poisoned pen with his references to her as 'big, flabby breasted, rolling hipped' and an 'ungainly sow'.

Lesbianism and sadomasochism are the two main themes of Jackboot Girls, with little else getting in the way. In terms of sleaze, Moffatt was at the top of his game here, the book's Nazi theme playing to both his fascistic and dirty old man tendencies. Moffatt being Moffatt he opts to tell the majority of the book from a Nazi perspective, and proves to be as disturbingly adept at getting into the heads of extreme German nationalists, as he later would with extreme English nationalists in his Skinhead novels. The rare breathing space between degeneracy here finds Moffatt gushing over the Fatherland and the grandeur of Nazi Germany, Helga being particularly impressed with Himmler's lair 'a full sized painting of Hitler surrounded by German flags helping to subdue the Security Chief's overwhelming personality'. While Moffatt's anti-Semitism, which would later flare up in his novels 'Boot Boys' and 'Glam', here finds an outlet when the only significant Jewish character in the book, Rolf Dottinger, turns out to be cowardly and treacherous, willing to sell out the resistance in return for safe passage to Poland.

It's only way into the book that it finds something resembling a moral compass, and a dissenting, heterosexual, anti-Nazi voice in uber-stud Alois Krauss. Vowing revenge on the Nazis for the death of his wife, Alois doesn't let his bereavement get in the way of bringing dick to a dictatorship. Not only is Alois getting his end away with lovesick Vera, the resistance fighter posing as his new wife, but also attracts the amorous eye of resistance head Elke Liebl. Leading to the side splitting observation "he felt like a prime bull being examined for flaws by a female farmer who needed the beast for best-breeding purposes". Alois and Elke's ensuing sex session warrants an entire chapter of its own, and brings Alois to the scientific conclusion that Elke must be ninety percent nymphomaniac and ten percent adventuress.  Jackboot Girls does give the impression that Moffatt was in a horny, morning mood when he wrote this thing, even his description of the sun rising has an air of indecency about it 'blushing dawn arrived in his hotel room like a giggling schoolgirl timidly making a surprise arrival'.

Moffatt displays a worrying admiration for his female Nazis, for more so than he would later do with his English skinheads. Helga lives in the shadow of failure, and is under constant pressure to break prisoners and get results. Moffatt's Nazis are also a suspiciously compassionate bunch. Helga's lover Frieda Weber is a self confessed romanticist, filled with good will for the British troops "how kind they had been, how considerate of the aged and the struggling poor'. Later, a male Nazi displays a momentary flash of conscience and allot of chauvinistic double standards by being shocked at female on female sadism, even though he'd think nothing of dishing out the same to a male prisoner 'a woman- no, a fiend! A woman and her victim another woman! Gott Im Himmel!'.

Despite Helga expressing women's lib like sentiments, becoming annoyed that male subordinates refer to her as fraulein rather than obersturmbannfuhrer, only a fool would mistake Moffatt for a feminist. In a move to appeal to a red blooded readership, Moffatt's Sapphic schweinehunds invariably fall prey to the 'Wham, Bam, Thank you, obersturmbannfuhrer' desires of heterosexual males. While Goering, the only significant male homosexual in the book, is depicted as a sexual predator, using alcohol to corrupt young, fresh faced soldiers who are (literally) willing to bend over backwards to serve Nazi Germany. For all of the claims of a secret bond existing between gays and lesbians, theorized by Moffatt in Jackboot Girls 'it was common knowledge that lesbians and, especially homosexuals walked a higher path than those indulging in normal male-female sex', Helga's relationship with Goering ultimately suggests that there's no honour among Nazi homosexuals.

While playing to his strengths as a writer, Jackboot Girls also exhibits a few of Moffatt's flaws as well. There's the usual Moffatt tendency to flood the book with very similar characters... Jackboot Girls subscribing to the idea that there's no such thing as too many whip wielding Nazi lesbians. Jackboot Girls' narrative paradoxically manages to be both overly complicated and little more than a series of sex and torture set pieces slung together. There are so many characters in Jackboot Girls that it is probably best approached as an anthology piece, with Helga and Frieda being the only consistently reoccurring ones. In keeping with the WW2 movies of the day, German characters converse in English, only occasionally breaking into basic German. There's an overkill of 'Nein', 'Mein Gott', 'Jawohl' here, which in a post 'Allo Allo! world can't help but add a layer of unintentional hilarity to Jackboot Girls, in spite of Moffatt's deadly serious approach to the material.

Only towards the end of the book does its Nazi allegiance give way to Canuck pride. Moffatt, who was Canadian by birth but of Irish heritage, gives away his own nationality by reliving the German Alois Krauss of his hero/stud role and replacing him with the Canadian Edward Spencer Morash. An even more hard living, virile and patriotic example of manhood, Canadians clearly being the true master race in Moffatt's opinion. Edward proudly confessing under Nazi integration "I'm single, enjoy beer and rye whisky, gamble only on big name horse-races or poker and I've been bedding gals since I was fourteen". The references to Edward venturing to Soho for sexual thrills, does make you wonder just how much personal research Moffatt had done into that neck of the woods. Illusions to Soho vice being common in his books, and the major backdrop for 1973's Massage Girls, written under the name 'J.J. More'. Edward takes the war to the bedroom, getting tied up and set upon by Nazi vixens, who are posing as English girls in order to gain his sympathy as well as the top secrets he keeps. Since he was a Canadian living in Britain, one wonders if Moffatt wasn't writing from personal experience when it comes to the culture clash that erupts between the German girls, who've been educated in England, therefore indoctrinated in English ways of politeness and decency, and the crude, tough talking, working class Canadian. Edward delights in offending the prudish Nazi ladies, shocking them with his frequent usage of the word 'screw', before letting them have it with the double barrel vulgarity of "you Kraut whores- clear out".

Jackboot Girls stands as tribute to Moffatt's unsavory imagination, to which it seems there were no limits. Few sadomasochistic avenues go unexplored here. Apart from Canadian Edward, no characters emerge with any honour. Moffatt's women are sadists and murderers, men folk from both sides of the battlefield aren't above committing vengeful gang rape. Jackboot Girls owes a debt to older WW2 themed Men's magazines, while bluntly expanding on their S&M preoccupations. In some respects however, Moffatt was a little ahead of his time here, anticipating Ilsa- She Wolf of the SS, made by his fellow Canadians, and the Naziploitation to come from Italy. Jackboot Girls is a prime example of why New English Library books ended up being called Nasty NELs, yet mysteriously avoided the censorious backlash that would later plague the video industry, whose more extreme offerings would inherit the 'nasty' nickname. Maybe NEL's masterstroke was to keep any potential enemies close and on the payroll. Not long after they let loose the whip cracking, leather boot licking Jackboot Girls onto an unsuspecting British public, NEL also published Mary Whitehouse's autobiography 'Who Does She Think She Is'. The latter proved a particularly lucrative venture for Whitehouse, who always remained silent over the sleazy excesses of her fellow NEL writers. Funny, that.