'I Joined the International Sex and Terror Underground'

This is either the last or the last but one issue of Man's Book Periodical from October 1973 - there might have been one further issue in 1974, but I've not been able to find any details.  In contrast to many other men's magazines that managed to stagger into the seventies, Man's Book Periodical retained its traditional format to the bitter end.  Sure, the story titles became more lurid, but it continued to focus on supposedly 'true' stories rather than transform into an entirely sex-orientated pin up magazine.  It even retained cover paintings rather than photo covers to the end.  First published in 1962, it notched up over seventy issues, publishing five or sex issues a year, but never adhering to a strict bi-monthly schedule.  Having said that it resisted the shift to being entirely sex orientated, this issue, going by the stories trailed on the cover, does seem more than a little sex obsessed.

'I Joined the International Sex and Terror Underground', (which I'm assuming is the story being illustrated on the cover), begs the question as to what the application process is?  Is it a subscriber only organisation?  Is there an entrance exam?  Do you have to be nominated by existing members and undergo some kind of initiation test, where you have to sexually torture someone with your left trouser leg rolled up?  Is there a secret handshake by which fellow members identify themselves?  And that's before we get to the matter pf what such an underground actually does?  Is it random sex and terror, or is there a political ideology behind it?  The illustration seems to imply that it has something to do with abducting jet setters, killing the guys and raping and torturing the women.  But hey, if that doesn't appeal or your application was rejected, I guess that you could instead go 'Inside America's Newest Strip of Sin and Slaughter' - note that this is merely the newest such venue, implying that they were already widespread across the USA.  'Maria X's Fearful Ordeal: Buried Alive in the Crypt of Horror' sounds as if it was inspired by one of the European sex and horror films - more often than not directed by Jesus Franco - popular in the early seventies, that usually involved semi-naked women being chased around some crumbling Gothic pile by a perambulatory corpse.  

Last, but not least, we have the obligatory attempt to play on the sexual inadequacies and insecurities of young American males: 'Ten Ways to Tell if You're Sexually Maladjusted'.  Top of the list could be that you read magazines promoting sex terrorists and retail sex and death emporiums.  That and watching continental films with undertones of necrophilia.  By 1973, while this sort of content still had an audience, the format in which Man's Book Periodical presented it was looking seriously anachronistic, making its demise inevitable.