THE RED DEATH RAIN Reviewed
Dr Hermes
From December 1934, this Spider adventure has me exhausted just
from reading it. I don`t know how Wentworth does it; once the case
begins, he apparently runs all over Manhattan for three days and nights
without once stopping to eat or sleep (except when he`s knocked
unconscious). Professor Brownlee must be brewing him up some amphetamine
or something.
If you want frantic, headlong action as a single man fights
desperately to save the public from an evil mastermind, this book
delivers it. All over Manhattan, thousands of people suddenly start
screaming, clawing at their throats and dropping lifeless to the street.
It turns out someone has been tampering with tobacco and now cigarettes
are deadly. (What? Cigarettes are harmful? Come on now...) As Brownlee
explains to our hero, `...this gas has the power of building up the
nicotine in one cigarette to the killing point.`
It`s hard to realize today, when people pretty much have to go
outside to smoke, but in 1934 there were almost no restrictions on the
habit. Restaurants, theaters and stores were filled with people puffing
away. Men used pipes and cigars a lot more, but smoking was about as
common as wearing shoes. So the idea of poisoned tobacco must have
really hit home to readers of the story when it first came out. Imagine
all the guys on the subway, lighting up a cig and reading about people
dying horribly from smoking.
(And behind this is the fiendish plot to corner the market with safe
Denict cigarettes which will then gradually have dope introduced into
them, so that they will become addictive. Whoa...)
By this point, the Spider novels had moved on from their rather
traditional mystery origins and were starting to be apocalyptic disaster
stories with huge body counts and the end of the world seemingly at
hand. Right away, Wentworth`s sweetie Nita has been kidnapped by the
unknown enemy, his semi-friend Commissioner Kirkpatrick has apparently
turned against him and ordered him shot on sight, and his attempts to
warn the public are laughed at (they think he`s just another reformer
preaching about the evils of modern life.)
Well. The Spider has a real challenge this time.
In addition to being on the run from the police and heartsick over
Nita`s kidnapping, Wentworth finds he seems to be investigating two
seperate gang of Chinese criminals. One is led by a skeleton thin creep
with a red veil but the other, more serious threat, is the organization
run by the Red Mandarin... a genuine supervillain worthy of any pulp
hero`s mettle.
There are enough running gunfights and car chases and desperate
narrow escapes to make your average private eye think about changing
careers, but Wentworth thrives on this stuff. As fast as he sends a
bullet through a crook`s forehead, he`s reloading. I have to say that
(as Norvell Page presents him) the Spider is one of the most dangerous
characters in adventure fiction; I think he could hold his own against
Robert E. Howard heroes like Francis X. Gordon or even Solomon Kane.
It`s not so much that he`s cornered in a room with a dozen killers, it`s
more like they`re trapped in there with HIM. After a sword fight with
two giant guards and then plowing through a dozen Chinese fighters, when
Wentworth is finally brought down and dragged away, he starts laughing
at seeing the carnage he`s caused. That gave an uneasy chill.
Two scenes in particular stand out. In a small unlit room with a
group of gangsters, Wentworth sits on a corpse`s stomach and makes it
groan when he expells air from its lungs...and since this seems to
unnerve the crooks, he does it again and scares the thugs into thinking
the dead man is talking.
But what I will always remember from this book is one very unlikely
series of events. In crowded Manhattan, absolutely packed with
Christmas shoppers, several people scream and began thrashing around
from the poisoned cigarettes (is that a tautology?), and the mob starts
to panic. Hundreds will be hurt in the stampede, so Richard Wentworth
seizes a cornet and gets them all to start singing, `Silent Night`. I
kid you not. I don`t know if this scene stands up to cold examination,
but caught up in the heat of Norvell Page`s overwrought writing style, I
believed it while it was happening....
I should note here that Page (along with Harold Davis in a few Doc
Savage novels) seems to have to idea that hypnosis is some sort of
telepathic emanation, and that the moment the hypnotist is killed, all
his subjects will snap out of their spells wherever they are. Maybe he
was thinking of Dracula.
The big finale has our beloved Nita in a cell, with a lustful
orangutan just aching to have his way with her. Now my first thought
was, `Not Clyde! He would never be so crude!` But a little research
shows that in fact subdominant male orangutans do routinely rape their
females as well as other males, despite the victim`s struggles. There
are even documented cases of orangutans raised in human households
becoming sexually aggressive with human females, and of course the
peoples who are native to the areas where these apes live have always
said the hairy brutes will occasionally carry off a woman for an
unpleasant experience. So I`ll never be able to watch EVERY WHICH WAY
BUT LOOSE again wtthout keeping a suspicious eye on that Clyde character
(although not even he found Sandra Locke attractive).
Bob Weinberg
Definitely one of the best Spider novels Page ever wrote, which puts
it right up at the top of the best hero pulp novels, period.
I read this one for the first time thirty-five years ago, and I still
remember the very pulpy but very effective last line of the novel.
bob w.
Lamont Cranston
out of ten - Kane would be the only one left standing.
Dr Hermes
On reflection, I agree. Solomon Kane in a sword duel would certainly
kill Richard Wentworth. But he wouldn`t have any easy time of it. Just
now starting to read the Spider novels and I`m surprised what a
dangerous guy Wentworth is. I would pit him with good odds against most
fighters in pulp fiction. Well, I think Conan, Tarzan or Doc Savage
could beat the Spider, but I daresay none of them would be eager to try
it again.
Kent Allard
drhe...@webtv.net (Dr Hermes) wrote:
> ...which will then gradually have dope introduced into
> them, so that they will become addictive. Whoa...)
Isn't this what the Phillip Morris company did anyway?
Cora Buhlert
> But what I will always remember from this book is one very unlikely
> series of events. In crowded Manhattan, absolutely packed with
> Christmas shoppers, several people scream and began thrashing around
> from the poisoned cigarettes (is that a tautology?), and the mob starts
> to panic. Hundreds will be hurt in the stampede, so Richard Wentworth
> seizes a cornet and gets them all to start singing, `Silent Night`. I
> kid you not. I don`t know if this scene stands up to cold examination,
> but caught up in the heat of Norvell Page`s overwrought writing style, I
> believed it while it was happening...
I first read this novel at around Christmas time which really
heightened the effect of this scene.
Terry McCombs
him and ordered him shot on sight,"
You know, that happened with such regularity that I have to wonder if on
some level Wentworth was not really more than a little needy when it
came to friends.
I Mean 'hey old pal let's do lunch, it's been almost three weeks since
you had a shoot to kill order put on my head for the 47th time.'
Sure he was always after the Spider, but he was banging on Wentworth's
door with a grudge about every other novel.
Terry
J Storm
more like they`re trapped in there with HIM."
Bill Jackson
> from reading it. I don`t know how Wentworth does it; once the case
> begins, he apparently runs all over Manhattan for three days and nights
> without once stopping to eat or sleep (except when he`s knocked
> unconscious). Professor Brownlee must be brewing him up some amphetamine
> or something.
>
Like most of the Spider stories, I've read, it seems to start in the
middle and hit the ground running, never leaving you a chance to catch
your breath. The emotional wringer Page could put you through was one
of his gifts as a writer. And we keep going back KNOWING what he's
gonna do to us.
As an aside, I did an internet search for Fantomas last week, hoping
to find some stories posted in the web and learn a little about him. I
did find a couple of sites (no stories, though), and what I did learn
was that I now know where all the Spider's villians learned their
trade. Fantomas was a Spider villian through and through! YEESH!
Really put the ANTI in anti-hero (and not much hero at that).
Roxor2
to find some stories posted in the web and learn a little about him. I
did find a couple of sites (no stories, though), and what I did learn
was that I now know where all the Spider's villians learned their
trade. Fantomas was a Spider villian through and through! YEESH!
Really put the ANTI in anti-hero (and not much hero at that). >>
In the third issue of BLOOD 'N' THUNDER (out sometime in January) we're
reprinting the original first-edition covers of all the FANTOMAS novels, and to
accompany them we're running brief articles on both books and movies featuring
the character. It'll be a big part of our special "Mystery Man" issue.
Ed Hulse
Tom Holmberg
> << As an aside, I did an internet search for Fantomas last week, hoping
> to find some stories posted in the web and learn a little about him. I
> did find a couple of sites (no stories, though), and what I did learn
> was that I now know where all the Spider's villians learned their
> trade. Fantomas was a Spider villian through and through! YEESH!
> Really put the ANTI in anti-hero (and not much hero at that). >>
>
This is some info I posted on Fantomas a while back:
There's a recent "scholarly" book which has a chapter on Fantomas --the popular
French "pulp" character. Here's some info from Amazon.com on this
book. Many of Walz's observations on Fantomas would hold equally true
for such US pulp creations as The Spider and the Shadow. The book is
written in the current jargon of literary criticism and only one
chapter actually deals with Fantomas, so you may want to either try
getting the book through Interlibrary Loan or check it out at a book
store (I found it at Borders), before considering purchasing it.
Pulp Surrealism : Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century
France. Robin Walz. Hardcover - 215 pages (March 6, 2000)
Univ of California Press; ISBN: 0520216199. $35.
Book Description
In addition to its more well known literary and artistic origins, the
French surrealist movement drew inspiration from currents of
psychological anxiety and rebellion running through a shadowy side of
mass culture, specifically in fantastic popular fiction and
sensationalistic journalism. The provocative nature of this insolent
mass culture resonated with the intellectual and political pre-
occupations of the surrealists, as Robin Walz demonstrates in this
fascinating study. Pulp Surrealism weaves an interpretative history of
the intersection between mass print culture and surrealism, re-
evaluating both our understanding of mass culture in early twentieth-
century Paris and the revolutionary aims of the surrealist movement.
Pulp Surrealism presents four case studies, each exploring the out-of
the-way and impertinent elements which inspired the surrealists. Walz
discusses Aragon's Le paysan de Paris, one of the great surrealist
novels of Paris. He considers the popular series of Fantomas crime
novels; the Parisian press coverage of the arrest, trial, and execution
of mass-murderer Landru; and the surrealist inquiry "Is Suicide a
Solution?", which Walz juxtaposes with reprints of actual suicide faits
divers (sensationalist newspaper blurbs).
Although surrealist interest in sensationalist popular culture
eventually waned, this exploration of mass print culture as one of the
cultural milieux from which surrealism emerged ultimately calls into
question assumptions about the avant-garde origins of modernism itself.
About the Author
Robin Walz is Assistant Professor of History at the University of
Alaska Southeast.
BTW, Walz also has a Fantomas website.
Some info from the Walz book I found of interest, in re: the pulps.
The Fantomas novels were published on a monthly basis with 32 full-
length (380 pages) novels being written in as many months. Originally
the series was going to be called "Fantomus", but the publisher misread
the title and printed up a poster with "Fantomas" instead. Over 5
million copies of the original Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
novels were published.
Various (pulpish) appellations for Fantomas were "Lord of Terror" "The
Unseizable" "Genius of Evil" and "Master of Crime". The violence in
the Fantomas novels sometimes reached Spider proportions. In the book
La Fille de Fantmas, the "Lord of Terror" exterminates the entire crew
and passengers of an ocean liner by releasing plague-infested rats on
board which only he has been innoculated against. In other novel
Fantomas sinks another ocean liner for the purpose of making it appear
one of his false identities is dead. In another instance Fantomas
attacks a Paris department store by poisoning the perfume aspirators,
lining shoes on display with broken glass and filling gloves with toxic
chemicals. In La Livree du Crime, Fantomas sets off bombs in an
employment office full of young women. There is then horrific
descriptions of the mutilations of the girls. It turns out, however,
that rather than killing the women, Fantomas had filled the bombs with
blood, bone fragments and hunks of flesh in order to spread terror.