'The Whip Mad Monster of Monte Cortino'

 

You know, 'The Whip Mad Monster of Monte Cortino', despite being pitched as a 'true' story, sounds suspiciously like a low budget exploitation film.  Probably filmed in the Philippines.  Or Mexico.  Indeed, I'm pretty sure that I've seen something where 'The skulls of a dozen brides decorated his jungle hacienda'.  A few years earlier and he doubtless would have turned out to be a Nazi war criminal, continuing his deprivations in modern day South America while wearing a false moustache.  Instead, the 'Whip Mad Monster', judging by that cover illustration at least, appears to be an overweight Mexican bandit type, complete with an ammunition belt straining to fit around his belly.  Yes indeed, we're back in the wild, wild world of US men's magazines, in this case the December 1962 issue of Real Men, where pictures of a semi-naked woman strung up and being given a whipping was seen as a good way of selling a magazine.

As noted many times before, the formula for these publications rarely deviated from the staples of sex, violence and war, with only the explicitness of their covers and strap lines varying over time.  By the early sixties they were becoming less and less subtle, blatantly serving up violence against women as sexual fantasy.  They were, of course, simply following the times - the sixties might not yet have been swinging and full of free love, but the enthusiasm for sexual liberation was already evident.  Whether it was the salacious 'inside story behind the headlines' of 'Sex in the Clip Joints', (doubtless presented as a cautionary tale for wholesome young male readers venturing into the big city for the first time), or, for the more experienced and adventurous male reader, the 'Island of the Nymphos - Paradise for the Woman Hungry Man', Real Men had the sexual revolution covered.  Of course, all that sex had to balanced by some violence - against women in the cover story, or in World War Two in 'The Spy Trap They Baited With Murder', or even behind the Iron Curtain in 'I Escaped From East Berlin'.  It's everything every red-blooded young male craved for in the early sixties.  Best of all, it was all true, (sort of)!