Well, today we finish our exploration of stories by Robert Bloch translated by Frits Lancel into Dutch and printed in the 1970 book Troost me, mijn robot. Troost me, mijn robot presented 17 tales of science fiction and horror and we've read 15 of them, leaving two for us to enjoy or endure today. I've been thinking I had three left because I forgot I read "The Model Wife" back in 2019. Oops. ("The Model Wife" is so super racist you probably shouldn't be seen reading about it anyway.)
"Edifice Complex" (1958)
You know how in the first Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story, 1939's "The Jewels in the Forest" AKA "Two Sought Adventure," our treasure-seeking heroes walk into a building that turns out to be a living monster? Well, Bloch uses the same gag here in "Edifice Complex" as the twist ending of a sordid outer space crime story about murderers and drug addicts.
A jerk who owns a space ship has hired a whore and is flying with her to some desolate alien planet. She is horny but he keeps putting her off, gives her some drugs that I guess are supposed to remind readers of cocaine to inhale and she gets totally loopy. We learn that this jerk met a guy back in the space port who had some diamonds--our main character tortured him to death to learn where he got the diamonds. Apparently his victim got them on the planet to which they are headed--some primitive carnivorous spear-carrying natives ate the torture victim's friend while he was in the ship and the natives, thinking him a god, gave him the diamonds as an offering of thanks.
On the almost featureless desert planet the murderer ties the loopy girl up and strips her naked, leaving her on a hill near a smelly longhouse or hut so the natives will see her. He figures after the locals eat her they will offer him some diamonds. He waits in the hut, watching. It turns out that the guy he tortured has tricked him--there are no intelligent natives on this planet, and what look like long huts are giant snakes. One of the huge snakes slithers up and eats the prostitute as the murderer watches--he doesn't realize the "hut" he is in is another giant monster until it is too late.
This story has some selling points--there is noteworthy violence against women as well as some gruesome gore--but the plot doesn't hold together all that well; the reasons the murderer waits in the smelly hut instead of in his ship, and leaves the bound girl alone for the natives to find instead of sticking by her to negotiate for her sale, are not very convincing. And what do these snakes the size of houses eat normally?--no other animals and no plants are in evidence, and human spacefarers can't be that common.
Barely acceptable.
This is another sordid story about a drug addict, but set in the 20th century. In Mexico City three years ago, Sherry the actress abandoned her husband Roger the director for Santo, some kind of local crime boss or something whose thugs beat the hell out of Roger. (Yes, people nowadays would see this story as kind of racist.) Roger has been out of show biz since then, and Sherry, abandoned by Santo not long after she left Roger, had Santo's child aborted, has been having sex with lots of creepy guys, and has become addicted to heroine--to get the stuff she has resorted to appearing in porn films. (You 21st-century kids are going to have to trust me when I tell you that many people in 1961 didn't consider having an abortion, injecting heroin into your thighs and being a sex worker to be the acts of heroism we know they are today.)
One of the men Sherry cheated on Roger with before Santo came around, screenwriter Martin, won an Academy Award last year and he has a new script he would like Sherry to star in, but it is implied Sherry can only take advantage of this opportunity if she can get Roger to direct her in it. So she goes to his Mexico City apartment to see her husband for the first time in three years in hopes he will take her back. Sherry tries to convince Roger she still loves him, and when Roger doesn't seem interested, she plays her trump card--Roger was crazy about her sexy body, and her breasts are still firm, so she whips off her clothes, figuring Roger won't be able to resist her. Roger just laughs at her--she hasn't realized that Santos's thugs beat him so severely he lost his sight. The unpardonable crime mentioned in the title is "mopery," the act of exposing yourself to a blind person; I hadn't heard of this joke before, but according to wikipedia it is an old one and even appears in Revenge of the Nerds, which I guess I wasn't paying attention to very closely when I watched it so many decades ago.
Again we have a story that does not hold together very convincingly. Why did these Americans stay in Mexico City--Sherry seems to hate it down there. How do Sherry and Martin not know Roger is blind--wouldn't one of them read it in the trades or hear it on the grapevine? How does Sherry not notice Roger is blind when she is standing right next to him?
Thumbs down.
You've reviewed enough crap stories to las for a while (thanks!), now how about something by the world's greatest short story writer, R. A. Lafferty?
ReplyDeleteIt could happen!
Delete