Pick Up A Pulp [87]: SIN DOLL by Orrie Hitt

 

"Your beauty. you're a very beautiful girl, Cherry. Not only your face by your body."

   "Well, thank you."

  "You could do something with it if you wanted to. You could make your beauty pay you some pretty big dividends. Do you know that?" 

Right from the outset, you know what sort of book this is. 

Originally published in 1959, the sleaze racket of the time could be considered moderate by today's standards, however, for Cherry, the buxom beauty at the centre of the plot, 1959 was a time when nudity and posing for pictures was near one of the worst professions a girl on the make could have. The only problem was - she needed money and was prepared to put her morals aside to get that green - to an extent that is. 

Singing in cafe's, undertaking menial work in factories and working as a receptionist/bookkeeper didn't provide enough dough to make way for the big smoke, that, coupled with a deadbeat boyfriend with an equally dead end job, lead Cherry down a path she never thought she'd walk; posing for nudes pictures. 

Seems a little tame, however when accosted to ramp things up and move into filming R-rated acts with strangers, the line she'd not cross was firmly drawn and oddly enough - her firm 'no' resulted in better long term life prospects. Enter Tom, her photographer who happened to be madly in love with her, whispering sweet nothings and promising her a wedding ring and to keep the nude pictures he took of her to himself - damn the money! Cherry seems pleased with this, however, life has a way of complicating things...if only she didn't have these other urges...

Sin Doll is pure sleaze pulp; from big city dreaming Cherry down to Millie, a stripper/sex worker who tries and succeeds in helping Cherry discover her sexual orientation, the pages drip with lust.

Yet there's more to the story which makes Orrie Hitt's style so easily readable and enjoyable. True, sexploitation is the name of the game, however Cherry's character is as well rounded as her curvaceous wares with Hitt writing her as a fully independent woman with sass and charisma to burn with a sense of self worth which puts her head and shoulders above the males who try (and fail) to take advantage of her. I wouldn't go as far as calling this a 'coming of age story', however there are some themes akin to that style of narrative. 

REVIEW: Hell-O-Ween by David Robbins

Halloween night sees the mysterious Caverna del Diablo play house to a group of teens looking to scare one of their classmates out of his mind. Who would’ve thought it would be those cruel pranksters who’d be the first to fall to pieces (literally) on the scariest night on the calendar? 

A spooky Halloween themed romp this is not. There’s no costume dress up, no trick or treating, and no mass consumption of candy. The  author simply uses the celebration of the ‘dead returned’ as a means to get a bunch of horny teens (three couples and two uncomfortable outcasts) into a dire situation deep inside a the caverns of a supposedly haunted cave. 

The teens are pretty generic for these types of books but that doesn’t make them any less readable. I mean, they’re generally written as fodder for the proverbial meat grinder and that’s exactly the way their short spans play out with each couple slowly but steadily falling under the blood lust gaze of the cave dwellers, until meeting their gruesome demise. A sturdy stomach is required to get through some of the chapters… 

There is, however, a shallow undercurrent of a backstory; class nerd Cory Fleming doesn’t know why he’s suddenly invited to hang with the cool group of kids on Halloween, but doesn’t give the invite much thought, after all, his long time crush is part of said group so maybe he stands chance at wooing her with his nerdiness so she leaves her jock boyfriend and swoons into his open arms? Not as unlikely as you’d think… 

Turns out Cory is the pawn in a cruel game and finds himself stranded in the dark without a light source, left to wade his way through the darkness with little hope of reaching the surface. I found the bullying more hard to swallow than the other horror elements, so reader beware. 

Hell-O-Ween is a lot of fun once you get passed the bullying elements. At it’s core it’s a survival horror with some nice tension and a heathy dose of sex thrown in to keep things firmly in the R-rated section of the horror aisle. The characters, as mentioned serve their purpose and make for decent reading despite not hanging around all that long.

This is the first horror novel of David Robbins’ I’ve read (first novel was Blood Cult) and I really liked it. I’ll certainly be on the look out for more!