What we have here today, folks, is a classic "man vs. beast" story from the December 1958 issue of REAL MEN magazine. The tale is as thrilling as any that can be found of this type and it reads in many ways like a straight horror story. Of course, we're not talking high literature here, but Willard Breen's writing is crisp and engaging.
Written in the typical "true adventure" first person, it tells the tale of the author and his partner, who have traveled to Honduras to conduct a seismographic study in the jungles above the Belize River, north of Cayo.
In the native village there, the men hear a story about a "horrible black monster" that reared up out of the brush and dragged a boy from the village into the forest. The two men volunteer to help find him, but the local brujo warns of a Muhanamatz, a legendary ape-like monster with shaggy hair that walks like a man and lives in the deepest parts of the jungle is to blame for the boy's abduction. Not to be deterred, the men set out into the forest after the boy until they come upon a cave (full of vampire bats, of course), which they sense is the home of the Muhanamatz.
This is a pretty cool story and has many of the tropes that can be found in this kind of men's adventure fiction: exotic locale, native villagers, the tribal witch-doctor or shaman, a mysterious creature that is killing people, and of course, an oiled-up naked native girl dancing in the firelight.
Don't leave here today without reading this! And, also, don't forget to come back later to read the next installment of Jack Katz's classic comic series, THE FIRST KINGDOM!
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| Cover by Vic Prezio, who later worked for Warren. |
BONUS! Ed Wood's ORGY OF THE DEAD photo spread from RASCAL Vol. 5 No. 1.
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| Movie tie-in paperback. Intro by Forrest J Ackerman! |
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