TITANIC:
FORBIDDEN STORIES HOLLYWOOD FORGOT

Short-Fiction by
JACK FRITSCHER

Full Text Reviews:

Vulcan Magazine Vol. 1 No. 1

Vulcan Magazine Vol. 1 No. 1
by Tim Brough

"Love and Slumming."

Okay, that about wraps this one up.

Or how?s about: "Now I know why handguns Should be outlawed."

This is the fourth collection of Jack Fritscher's short stories, collected from three decades of sensual erotica. But perhaps this time, more than in any other of the collections, Titanic displays his razor sharp wit. The temptation to just list line after memorable line in this batch of stories is tough to resist.

Tied loosely together by a Hollywood concept, Titanic is also something else that many never expect from a collection of Fritscher's magazine work. There is very little SM involved here. Plenty of man on man horseplay, more than a few uncircumcised cocks (the book could just as easily been subtitled Memories of Headcheese) and lots of hypermasculine images, but the ropes and the dungeons are pretty much kept locked in the projection booth. That doesn?t make the pieces any less wild, in fact, it enhances the craziness of a story like "CBGB 1977" and reminds you that the 70's in New York weren?t all boogie nights at Studio 54.

Yes, the sex is fast and dirty, and often, funny. Funny in a way that suggests whimsy, which is pretty much a lost art in American humor, where a fart joke is easier to insert than a set up for a pattern of good belly laughs. To have a starlet so shamelessly exploit her he-she sexiness in ?Aqua-Nymph? will make many squirm in the fact that they're more than a little female icon worshiping suckler, all while looking for Fritscher's usual cask of rough players. Think Bette Davis. Or even Cher. Not leather. Glitter. And as I suggested earlier, a wit that doesn't dissolve into The Night the Drag Queen Bitched Herself to Death (not THERE'S a movie I'd like to see...).

OKAY! You want the nasty! Read "Buck's Bunkhouse Discipline: The Screenplay." (You thought no-one concerned themselves about porn film plotting!) "Three Bears In A Tub," which attempts to answer the question of how much sex can you fit into a single sentence. It's a gasping run-on of he-men in the wild for reel men in the big screen world. There's not a story here among Titanic's dozen that won't leave you with a 16mm smile. I'll indulge myself with one more quote to close this VULCAN EYES: "Most people prefer masculine men...masculine in the best sense, not macho in the worst."

Nawwwww...better still: "SMEGMA! SMEGMA!"

Blue Bar
Copyright Jack Fritscher, Ph.D. & Mark Hemry - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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