#301373 - Movie Mansion Madness BB-151 Bill Ward

Movie Mansion Madness
a novel by Lance Boyle
illustrated by Bill Ward
Bizarre Books BB – 151
Eros Publishing Co., Inc.
Wilmington, Delaware
1977

optimized for ebook viewing

and

optimized, pictures-only ebook

We have two theories about Movie Mansion Madness. Lance Boyle, whoever he is, didn't want to write a Bizarre Book. And the 12 Bill Ward illustrations that illuminate the manuscript were not created — as a set — by the artist, but were derived and assembled from other publications.

A work of 11 chapters, the first four recount an ornate family history about two English brothers who migrate to the US and become prosperous selling antiques in Manhattan. James moves to California and becomes a movie mogul. Stuart stays in New York and fathers the protagonist of this first-person narrative.

We meet the unnamed narrator at the door of the mansion on a stormy night. He's there, he believes, for the reading of Uncle James' will.

A female character first appears in chapter four, but she merely functions as a messenger. In the following chapter, our nephew finally meets his blistering, alluring Bizarre Books nemesis in high heels, who in this tome is named “the hostess.” He has a strong desire for her but as this a Bizarre Book, he can't have her and must submit to her desire to punish him with whips.

He doesn't find himself in bondage, but he can't leave the house. Few stories about Hollywood residential architecture can reach their conclusion without some reference to Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, and this work abides by that rule.

The introspective story-teller makes dozens of references to tinsel-town notables, including Hitchcock, Bogdanovich, Selznick, Goddard, Fritz Lang, John Wayne, Robert Donat, Bogart, Gary Cooper, Peter Lorre, Peckinpah, Fellini, Charles Bronson, Errol Flynn, Sidney Greenstreet, and Harold Lloyd. Film titles are used as metaphors for his difficult circumstances.

After he's beaten by his "lunatic demon" hostess the first time, he wakes up in a room by himself. When the lovely messenger of chapter four reappears in chapter seven mostly naked, he moves toward lusty congress. In chapter eight, he lets us know what actually happened. His prose disparages the style of certain "adult" paperbacks like Bizarre Books, which leads us to believe that he wrote this one with reluctance. (That, and a paucity of bdsm scenes. That, and the use of a homonym in his pseudonym.) Here, he sounds a little like Robert Bishop.

Well, hardcore buffs, when your humbled and increasingly house-broken narrator tells you that he is extending to you his most sincere and heartfelt sympathy, and his most genuine and em-pathetic condolence and commiseration, I hope that you will take him at his word.

Yes, my intellectually-tumescent friends, you have guessed it correctly - I have rather lamentable tidings regarding those well-laid plans to well-lay my alluring hostess' hostess. Yes, some regrettable tidings.

And what it all comes down to is this, my invisible, sleazy fan-club - it didn't happen. It didn't come off.

And there was no shivering or shaking. Nor any quivering. Nor any quaking. Nor any quavering. Nor any vibrating. Nor any shuddering. Nor any fluttering. Nor any rippling. Nor any twittering. Nor any riffling. Nor anything like that.

And need I tell you that there wasn't any sucking? There was no sucking. There was no slurping. There was no sloshing. There was no gurgling.

And there was certainly no flooding or flowing. And not a bit of gushing or oozing. No juicing. No sluicing. No streaming. No pouring. No laving. Not even any trickling. And no squirting. And no spurting. And no sputtering. And no spouting. . . .

Unfortunately, just as I was making a sexy type of lunge at the blonde beauty, the door swung open, and some mournfully-familiar gleaming began to dart around the shaded room. It was my hostess.

And she was in a foul mood. A very bad mood indeed. She looked like she was a bit unhappy with me for some reason.

At the end of the final chapter, the author provides an oblique summary of the story, and he switches from first person to third.

Naively allowing himself to be lured to a mysterious old mansion up in the Hollywood Hills, the nephew of a movie mogul finds that he is inextricably snared in a vicious web of weird and unnatural evil doings. He is tormented unmercifully; but he does not know why. He has absolutely no idea what, if anything, he might have done to deserve such cruel and heartless punishment. He has no idea at all why the enticing albeit iniquitous dominatrix enslaves and tortures him. He does not even know who she is, much less what possible motive she might have for inflicting such pain, such suffering, and such unbearable agony. Why all this malicious mistreatment? He does not know.

All he knows is that he is now her abject vassal, her slave; and he must do as he is told. He realizes that he must attempt to play her deadly game - though he hasn't even begun to unravel the rules. If in fact there are any.

And he has not a trace of a notion where her gruesome game will lead, where it will end. In reality, the helpless captive knows nothing at all.

Mr. Ward rendered his voluptuous beauties both desirable and dangerous. As they appear here, his sexy divas reflect the “innate splendor” the author describes. But there's discontinuity of character faces, hair-dos, and costumes that leads us to believe that this volume collects his fine ink work from other publications, as was done in Leather Girl and Pascaline.

Lance Boyle is a pretty good writer (he invents words) who knows something about film history. As his focus seems centered on the protagonist's family and feelings, the prose may fail to fulfill the expectations of Bizarre Books fans. Insight and wit brighten the account of a young man who becomes embroiled with forces beyond his control. Few changes were made to the easy-to-read prose. About 44000 words.

To align the pictures with text that relates to them, the typeface of the last seven chapters was made larger and pictures were added only to those chapters in the ebook. But few costumes or tableaux precisely match scenes as described in the story and most placements are arbitrary.

Optimized pictures appear first with complete characters. Virtual enlargement of fetish features follow, reducing the need for zooming and scrolling. Nudity.

Brightness, contrast and levels were adjusted, shadows reduced, and many specks retouched. Mr. Ward's erotic art transposed to ebook format with clarity.

A second ebook presents only the optimized pictures without text. Mr. Ward's 12 illustrations are optimized on 40 pages.

NOTE
Although some parts of pictures are obscured on this page, the ebook shows everything that's in the original.

Two optimized ebooks, delivered by download from your 30th Street Graphics account.