Vic Valentine, Private Eye: 14 Vignettes by Will Viharo

(pb; 2019: story anthology--tenth book in the Vic Valentine series)

From the back cover

“Lounge lizard. International man of misery. Space cadet. Dog walker. Lover. Loner. Fighter. Fool. Vic Valentine has been all of these things and more, and less─much less. These fourteen torrid tales of forbidden love, shameless lust, surrealistic horror, existential mystery, pointless mayhem, and just plain stupidity spanning Vic’s pathetic life collectively illuminate the darkest corners of the human condition, without revealing a single goddamn truth, other than we’re all lonely globs of ephemeral flesh wandering aimlessly around a big ball of shit hanging by a thread in a vast, apathetic world.

“Welcome to the hypnotic, erotic, neurotic world of Vic Valentine, Private Eye.”

Overall review

14 Vignettes is a great addendum collection of Vic Valentine works, filling in timeline gaps relating to the P.I.-turned-dog walker’s life. As is often the case with Vic, his neurotic and sexual worldview revolves around multimedia interests (especially music and movies), women, tiki bars and frelled-up, over-the-top situations. This unique, entertaining and pulpy string of stories is not a book for the prudish or the politically correct, but it should not be, because otherwise it would not be the fun, worthwhile read it is. It put me in the mindset of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise anthology, Pieces of Modesty, the way it filled in certain gaps in her storyline. Both are worthwhile purchases.

Review, story by story

“Feet First”: Vic engages the services of a prostitute. Set during the Love Stories Are Too Violent for Me era, this story has meaningful and clever banter. I love the finish, which has wild, fresh ending like the best stories do.

“Vein Attempt”: In Seattle,Vic tries to seduce a sexy phlebotomist (Brigitte), who is a dead ringer for a French porn actress Fans of director-writer Jean Rollin may especially like this one.

“By Any Other Name”: Sex-, jazz- and CBGB-suffused microtale. This prequel to the first Vic Valentine novel  is chatty and entertaining, and ably sets up Love Stories Are Too Violent for Me.

“Doc and Me”: Vic’s final conversation with his longtime friend-landlord-bartender─they talk about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), as well as the virtues and vices of its 2003 remake (and most remakes, in general). They also converse about the therapeutic value of breasts, friendship and the beautiful diversity of the East Bay, California─especially Oakland. Warm homage to the above subjects, this, one of my favorite entries in this collection.

“Pawn of the Dead”: Vic reminisces about his brother (Johnny), who died at a young age, with whom Vic shared common passions: punk/CBGB, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and other late Seventies influences.

“Just Breathe”: Vic has a hallucinogenic slipstream of a case, involving a secretive woman (with whom he has a fling), a blood bank, and an ending that may be the beginning of something sweet or horrifying.

“Sick as a Dog”: Vic has an affair with a married woman (Katey), the owner of one of the dogs he walks. She is a woman with a secret, beyond her wielded butcher knives, pet-play and other sado/masochistic psychodramas.

“Blowing Smoke”: In high school, Vic hooks up with a classmate (Dolly), whose love of oral sex─giving and receiving─hides surprising truths she would rather not talk about. Great end-line to this one.

“Westwood Ho”: Los Angeles, late Eighties. Vic, hired to find a missing stripper (Roxi), accomplishes his mission. A brief, tender and honest friendship results. One of my favorite stories int 14 Vignettes.

“Googie Grindhouse”: Prior to the events of the “Westwood Ho,” “Feet First” and Love Stories, Vic and Valerie─later known as Rose─fly from New York to Los Angeles, where she, independent, sets the tone of their future encounters. Romantic, harsh and sometimes nightmarish work.

“Tiki Bar Bounce”: Vic gives a shout-out to his favorite, real-life tiki bars, many of them located in the East Bay-San Francisco, California region. Sexy women, mainly Monica, also get some printed love. There is also a real-life cocktail recipe! Fun, sometimes trip-out read, especially when Radon, a recurring Viharo character, appears.

“Pulp Beat”: Vic tells the story of how he became a private eye. It involves a naïve college student (Brenda), a spontaneous lie and a Berkeley-to-San Francisco BART ride. This tale takes place before Vic meets Doc and other characters, introduced in Love Stories. This is one of my favorite selections in this collection.

“Page Turner”: Vic dreams he is another man (Will Viharo), shark-fishing in Florida with actor Christian Slater. Fun meta-work.

“Illville”: A post-Vic Valentine: Space Cadet story, this. Vic details his slip-swirl days with recent movies by Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, his wife (Val), ghosts (Doc), and life in general. This is a solid, post-“Mental Case Files”* wrap-up, and satisfying bookend to this fourteen-tale anthology.

(*The “Mental Case Files” are Viharo’s most recent Vic Valentine novels: Vic Valentine: International Man of Misery, Vic Valentine: Lounge Lizard for Hire and Vic Valentine: Space Cadet.)

Fascination: The Celluloid Dreams of Jean Rollin by David Hind

(pb; 2016: nonfiction)

From the back cover

“May 1968. Paris is awash with violence and public unrest. In a small cinema, where a surreal film is showing, another riot is taking place. Here, the enraged audience smashes up the auditorium, tear out the seats, and chase the film’s director out onto the street. This is the premiere of Jean Rollin’s feature debut, The Rape of the Vampire.

“As an outsider of French cinema, Rollin’s films are unique and dreamlike. They offer tales of mystery and nostalgia, obsolescence and seductive female vampires with a thirst for blood and sex. It is a cinema at once strange, evocative and deeply personal.

“Funding his own projects, Rollin defiantly made the films he wanted to make and in so doing created a fantastique genre unlike any other. The Nude Vampire, The Living Dead Girl and The Grapes of Death are among those films now celebrated as the work of an auteur, one who confounds preconceived notions of ‘Eurotrash’ cinema.

“This book is devoted to the director and all his work, across all genres, including a nascent French hardcore pornographic film industry. Written with full co-operation from Jean Rollin, shortly before his death in 2010, it contains exclusive interviews and archive material.”

Review

Fascination is one of my all-time favorite nonfiction reads about filmmakers. Hind concisely and honestly recounts─in a creativity-focused overview─the events and works of Rollin’s life, as well as cataloging Rollin’s mostly distinctive cinematic output.

By financial necessity, Rollin’s films had female nudity: his producers required it. That said, the writer/director and his faithful crew members imbued many of his better, not-quite-mainstream films with poetic, haunting, playful and often elegiac moods, mixing sex with simply-stated Gothic romanticism, as well as thought-provoking themes of science fiction, horror and other elements that stick in one’s mind long after seeing said films. 

Love or hate his non-hardcore and low-budget work, most of his non-pornographic films are distinctive, not easily dismissed as outright, brainless─if sometimes scene-meandering─Eurosleaze pieces. (To dismiss them as such suggests a lazy-minded, prudish stubbornness.)

This is a must-own book for any Rollin fan, or anybody who might be curious about him. Rollin is an underrated and worthwhile auteur (in the truest sense, as in: he wrote and co-produced most of his films).