Because I'm a classy guy, I read this kind of rubbish. Back in the early 2000s I got a bit obsessed with buying old paperbacks from eBay and 2nd-hand shops, and the NEL books of the 60s and 70s were the kind of sought-after nonsense I picked up quite a lot of. One of my best jumble sale experiences was getting Skinhead and Chopper for 50p each. If you don't know what I'm on about, there's no explaining it.
Anyway, I've had this slender volume (110 pages, short even for this period of neo-pulp) for more than 10 years probably, and it finally pushed itself into my reading vision. It's average, but then really they all are. I suppose though it depends what you're used to.
The story would have made a decent episode of some Quinn Martin production in the 1970s, and who knows, maybe it did. A young cop goes undercover with The Beasts, who are meant to make the Hell's Angels look like a bunch of disorganized school kids. The head Beast has a plan; to take over seven square blocks of LA, rob all the banks, stores and civilians, then hightail it for Mexico. They are heavily armed, and there are lots of weapon-related terms that I have no idea about - what the hell is a 'grease gun', for example? Even though the plan is pretty tight, it gets thwarted by the cops and the army, mainly because the Beasts have no discipline and the young cop has tipped The Man that shit is going down. That's the kind of thing you say after reading this kind of litterachur.
The cover is the usual tat that was used to draw the juvenile eye in the early 70s, but the original American version is much better. There was a late 80s band named after the book, who had a track on that seminal Sub Pop 200 compilation.
Also there was an unrelated film of the same name in 1987, which sounds like the kind of thing I need to see. The imdb synopsis: Aliens come to Earth to fight has-been professional wrestlers.
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| The original American version (1968, I think) |
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