Let's pretend, at least for the duration of this review, that there never was a Black Samurai, movie, despite the fact that if anyone was born to play the role in a cinematic adaptation of this 1970s pulp novel, it was Jim Kelly. And hell, for that matter, no book seems better suited for transformation into an action film than this non-stop thrill ride full of martial arts, explosions, violence, and all-around action. As I read this book on the train ride to and from work every day, only one thing kept popping into my mind as pertains to the movie: what the hell went wrong?

Black Samurai was the first book in what would become a pulp series throughout the mid-1970s, telling the story of Robert Sand, an American GI on leave in Japan during the Vietnam War. While trying to help an elderly black man who is being harassed by a couple of racist American soldiers, Sand is shot in the belly and left for dead, maintaining consciousness only long enough to see the frail, ancient Japanese man suddenly burst into a blur of action and decimate the attackers.

After Sand recovers, he becomes a disciple of the old man, who is soon revealed to be one of the greatest martial arts and samurai trainers left in the world. Sand endures the grueling training to become a samurai, and soon wins the respect and admiration of his Japanese peers, even becoming the best of all the students.

Sand's life is shattered one night when a gang of mercenaries invades the samurai training compound, slaughtering Sand's samurai brothers and murdering his master, but not, of course, before the samurai do a healthy dose of damage to the invading forces. Sand manages to escape, and soon learns the identity of the mercenaries. They are a cutthroat band of terrorists and war criminals lead by a bloodthirsty ex-general named Tolstoy, the man responsible for, among other war atrocities, the Mei Lei massacre in which American soldiers raped and murdered an entire town of innocent Vietnamese, then burned the place to the ground.

Tolstoy wants revenge against the men who punished him for his proactive, initiative-taking go-getting, and he has assembled a force of like-minded individuals who all have a grudge against America. They attacked the samurai compound because the old master's granddaughter happens to married to the prince of Vietnam.

Sand is contacted by a former US president who does not exist but sounds a whole hell of a lot like LBJ, unless there were other tall, loud-mouth, wealthy, brash Texans in power during the time. They call him Clarke here. I think I've seen a lot of movies and read a lot of books where the fictional President of the United States is named Clarke. I don't know what it is about that name, but when we finally do elect a President Clarke, we're in for one hell of a ride.

I think one of the big problems with American politics these days is that we don't have enough hell-raisers in office. I mean, where are the Teddy Roosevelts? Where are the Presidents who pound booze, smoke, and curse? Where are the leaders who shake their fist and punch things? Where are the Presidents who are alive? For as long as I can remember, we've had a parade of zombie-like figureheads with not an ounce of emotion or jigger of interest about them. Thirty years of Millard Fillmore. It's time for a vibrant President who don't take no shit from no one, who calls people "sumbitch" and isn't afraid to show a little honest-to-God emotion.

Anyway, I can't wait until we finally get a Clarke in office. The particular Clarke of this story hires Sand to stop Tolstoy and protect the Presidential daughter, who Clarke figures is the next kidnap victim. Sand accepts not so much so he can help Clarke, but more so he can take revenge for the murder of his brothers and rescue his master's granddaughter, with whom, in yet another plot complication, Sand is hopelessly in love.

Damn, can Sand possibly have any more shit to deal with? How about the fact that Tolstoy's entire plan is to recreate his biggest hit, the Mei Lei massacre, only by slaughtering an entire town's population in America? And Sand has only a week to stop him.

The violence and action is pretty much nonstop in this book, and fans of '70s pulps will note that unlike many of its contemporaries such as the Nick Carter series or the Destroyer books, this has almost no sex at all, and what little there is is not detailed at all. In the Killmaster books, of course, sex was plentiful and described in fairly explicit detail. Not so here, where the focus is entirely on violence and action. To be honest, that's just fine with me. 167 pages of non-stop ass-kicking is a real treat.

But what sets Black Samurai apart from and above its pulp peers is not just the insane amount of bloody action it contains, but it's attention to actual decent writing and character development. The two main good guys of Sand and President Clarke are both nicely fleshed out and believable. Sand is not some emotionless killing machine who cannot be stopped. We get to see him angry, frightened, tired, out of breath, and determined. His feats are superhuman, but not so superhuman as to seem ludicrous, and the situations he gets into depend far less on the stupid luck and coincidence that helped out guys like James Bond, Remo Williams, and Nick Carter time and time again.

Likewise, Clarke is a slightly larger than life character who the author makes sure to bring down to a very real, very human level often enough to make him vulnerable and interesting. He is a foul-mouthed Texas baron, but he also becomes a sick-to-his-stomach worried father when he realizes his baby is in danger and there's nothing he can do to protect her.

But the best part about Black Samurai's attention to characters is the supporting cast of villains. Most of the time, pulps present us with very one-dimensional, cartoonish villains who are evil through and through for no real reason other than the fact that they are evil. But Tolstoy's cast of killers are each given distinct personalities and motivations with which the reader can sympathize. James Winters, for example, is a rather likeable Irishman who is a wanted IRA terrorist. His desire to free his country from british rule by any means neccessary is understandable, even if one doesn't agree with his methods. And his reasons for despising America, aside from their support of England in the Irish/English debate, makes him even more sympathetic. While visiting American to buy weapons, Winters and his wife were cornered and attacked by corrupt cops who wanted to steal all his money and rape his wife. Instead, they succeeded only in brutalizing and murdering her.

Like Winters, each man is given understandable motivation that goes beyond the simple "because he's evil!" A black man who has been the victim of violent racism since the day he was born. An Arab terrorist who hates America because of its support of Israel. And Tolstoy himself, a crazy man who feels he was punished severely for simply doing his duty. His insane and misguided, not to mention terribly wrong, but at least he's given some degree of depth. There are also minor characters, mostly martial arts masters, who are also given decent if predictable characterization. Their main motivation is not to help Tolstoy, but rather to test their own skill against a fighter as accomplished as Sand.

It helps make the book a lot more interesting and even more believable despite all the wild action that takes us from Japan to Saigon to France to New York, since no self-respecting pulp espionage novel would ever be satisfied with a single domestic location. The story never slows down of becomes dull, and the body count and gore factor are both incredibly high, making for an all-around exciting, fast-paced read that I highly recommend.

And it all makes me wonder. With the action so plentiful, with it all laid out in a very cinematic style, how come the movie sucked so bad? I mean, Jim Kelly is the Black Samurai. Of that there can be no doubt. He looks and acts the part perfectly. But the movie was simply foul and boring. Of course, maybe if they'd actually made this story into the movie instead making one about a voodoo cult kidnapping some millionaire's daughter, they might have done better. But no, they had to go and make the lame-ass movie they did, completely missing out on all the wild action and excitement of this first Black Samurai story. Maybe someday, someone will do it again and get it right. It shouldn't be too difficult.

So far, of the many 1960s-1970s pulps into which I've delved, Black Samuraiis the best written, the most action-packed, and the most believable for its relative lack of scenes where the hero gets caught and escapes only through sheer luck. Those types of scenes are funny once, but after you've read Nick Carter getting captured for about the thousandth time, you start wondering if maybe he just plain sucks at his job. Sand, on the other hand, doesn't always succeed, but he never relies on coincidence or out-of-the-blue luck. He usually relies on fists, brains, and his trust katana, though not always in that order. There are several more books in the Black Samurai series, all of them written by Marc Olden, so I look forward to digesting them all. If they're as good as the first one was, then I'm in for many an enjoyable commute.

Labels: Espionage