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Double Feature
Double Feature Brings together two authors of the horrific into one volume, pairing Vernon D. Burns's insane creativity with the blossoming talent of Albert C. Clapp. Burns contributes the brand new novella, Furry Piranha, followed by Clapp's The Curse of the Skrewnicorn.
What do you get when you mix a batch of American tourists, a nuclear experiment gone wrong, a jungle, two ethnic tour guides, and the strangest evolution Earth has ever seen?
Furry piranha!
In the depths of the South American jungle, the sultry Amanda Handy wants nothing but to have a relaxing vacation while not falling in love with anyone. Love, after all, can hurt. But she hadn't factored into her equation the dashing Cliff Parker, a tall and chiseled man with puppy dog eyes that could melt a girl's heart like it was wax.
Neither one of them, however, recognized the true dangers surrounding them: a tribe of fearsome cannibals; the mutant fish flooding the river; and the dangers of traveling with a whole group of people with a past! Only by reading Furry Piranha will you learn just who the flesh eating bastards really are: us or the fish.
+ + +
After her untimely death in a freak car accident, Carrie finds herself alive once again in the body of a horse.
However, she is not just any horse. An ethically questionable scientist has made her the very first unicorn, affixing a large, sharp screw to her head. All is well until she finds herself cast out by the scientist who created her, and must find her way in a brutal world on her own. And it drives her insane. And she starts killing people at random.
The Curse of the Skrewnicorn is a unique tale of what happens when mankind does not take responsibility for its creations, begging the question, who is really the monster: the scientists, or the homicidal horse with a woman's brain.
What do you get when you mix a batch of American tourists, a nuclear experiment gone wrong, a jungle, two ethnic tour guides, and the strangest evolution Earth has ever seen?
Furry piranha!
In the depths of the South American jungle, the sultry Amanda Handy wants nothing but to have a relaxing vacation while not falling in love with anyone. Love, after all, can hurt. But she hadn't factored into her equation the dashing Cliff Parker, a tall and chiseled man with puppy dog eyes that could melt a girl's heart like it was wax.
Neither one of them, however, recognized the true dangers surrounding them: a tribe of fearsome cannibals; the mutant fish flooding the river; and the dangers of traveling with a whole group of people with a past! Only by reading Furry Piranha will you learn just who the flesh eating bastards really are: us or the fish.
+ + +
After her untimely death in a freak car accident, Carrie finds herself alive once again in the body of a horse.
However, she is not just any horse. An ethically questionable scientist has made her the very first unicorn, affixing a large, sharp screw to her head. All is well until she finds herself cast out by the scientist who created her, and must find her way in a brutal world on her own. And it drives her insane. And she starts killing people at random.
The Curse of the Skrewnicorn is a unique tale of what happens when mankind does not take responsibility for its creations, begging the question, who is really the monster: the scientists, or the homicidal horse with a woman's brain.
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 4, 2012
1 person is currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Vernon D. Burns
2 books10 followersVernon has been writing one book a week now for the last seventy two years, and he estimates that he has sent roughly 9,000 query letters to presses great and small. Very recently, at the age of 82, he teamed up with Guy and Campbell Publishing to finally bring his books to the public. He is also the author of such other classics as Sharkzilla, Cavern of the Diarrhia Monster, and the Gluyns, Elf Warrior Triacontatrology (thirty-book series).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 26, 2020
what can you expect when v.d. burns joins forces with clapp?? a double feature of highly refined literature that challenges us intellectually and reminds us what it means to be a reader, and how the written word can force us to re-examine our place in the culture that consumes us and can soothe our solitary insomniac "what does it all mean" woolgathering?
cracker, please. this is jizzgore at its finest and you know it. this is chocolate meeting peanut butter for the first time and bending it over a park bench in the middle of a playground full of catholic schoolgirls. this. is. greg's. mom.
and for all of you who thought that my taking a one-month break from the YA meant i would only be reading highbrow classics with impeccable pedigrees are clearly thinking of someone else.
book one: fuzzy piranha.
a timeless story of man vs. evolutionarily-precocious fish, and one which highlights burns' sensitivity to the plight of the modern woman and how we are all still trying to get the hang of the existential anguish that comes with freedom. also, brotherhood, patriotism, and why brown people what live in the jungles will never amount to much of anything. oh, and the beauties of intercourse and the mystery of menstruation revealed!
i think this sentence is probably all you need to know to determine whether you are awesome enough for this book:
Howard grabbed hold of his asphyxiated wife’s semen-covered breasts and screamed as the whole motley crew went over the side into the unknown.
plus an added bonus of an ending you will never see coming because you are not a fucking lunatic with the drools and the love of pointy things and playing with buttons.
an easy five stars.
book two: stab of the screwnicorn.
this is albert c. clapp's contribution to literature, and it is a winner, by any definition.
this story takes an incident from the piranha story and just runs away with it into its own story. what a country! it opens with a phil collins quote and uses the master lyricist as a springboard into a tale of good intentions gone sour because of the ironic blindness of a visionary scientist caught up in his own efforts to improve our way of life on this spinning planet that lurches into a tale of zombie unicorns and revenge! also anal sex and a bizarre interlude about the failure of public works projects. and unicorn sex!! what could be better? why are you not reading this right now at this very minute???
i am pretty sure this work will win every major literary award this year, so read it now so you can say you read it when.
come to my blog!
cracker, please. this is jizzgore at its finest and you know it. this is chocolate meeting peanut butter for the first time and bending it over a park bench in the middle of a playground full of catholic schoolgirls. this. is. greg's. mom.
and for all of you who thought that my taking a one-month break from the YA meant i would only be reading highbrow classics with impeccable pedigrees are clearly thinking of someone else.
book one: fuzzy piranha.
a timeless story of man vs. evolutionarily-precocious fish, and one which highlights burns' sensitivity to the plight of the modern woman and how we are all still trying to get the hang of the existential anguish that comes with freedom. also, brotherhood, patriotism, and why brown people what live in the jungles will never amount to much of anything. oh, and the beauties of intercourse and the mystery of menstruation revealed!
i think this sentence is probably all you need to know to determine whether you are awesome enough for this book:
Howard grabbed hold of his asphyxiated wife’s semen-covered breasts and screamed as the whole motley crew went over the side into the unknown.
plus an added bonus of an ending you will never see coming because you are not a fucking lunatic with the drools and the love of pointy things and playing with buttons.
an easy five stars.
book two: stab of the screwnicorn.
this is albert c. clapp's contribution to literature, and it is a winner, by any definition.
this story takes an incident from the piranha story and just runs away with it into its own story. what a country! it opens with a phil collins quote and uses the master lyricist as a springboard into a tale of good intentions gone sour because of the ironic blindness of a visionary scientist caught up in his own efforts to improve our way of life on this spinning planet that lurches into a tale of zombie unicorns and revenge! also anal sex and a bizarre interlude about the failure of public works projects. and unicorn sex!! what could be better? why are you not reading this right now at this very minute???
i am pretty sure this work will win every major literary award this year, so read it now so you can say you read it when.
come to my blog!
September 8, 2012
I liked these little horse apples a smear better than the giant steaming pie of Gods of the Jungle Planet - the nonstop B-movie ("B" for Best!) flavor (honestly, the taste is off, way past its expiration date) of the name mixups, plot 180s, the jarring sensation that the reins of the writing are being yanked back and forth, the over-the-top slasher quality, and outright hilariousness all go down better in these sizes of doses. For me. :)
Write faster, Vernon D. Burns, your audience wants more.
Write faster, Vernon D. Burns, your audience wants more.
September 5, 2012
What can I say about Double Feature? What can be said about Double Feature? It is the story of (A) a bunch of stereotypes pretending to be characters who wander into the jungle for abstract reasons and then begin to die violently because of savage, cannibalistic natives and piranhas coated in fur; and (B) the story of a woman who dies because of her asshat boyfriend being a total piece of shit, and then comes back to life as a screwnicorn because of yet another asshat male, and then she is rejected by him, and so she goes on a rampage killing men with the big metal phallic symbol sticking out of her head.
I mean. . . why talk about the plot? These are plots straight out of nightmares, ruled more by the id than by any sense of internal logic. So I'm not going to talk about the plot. These authors don't need plots. They need drugs. Lots of drugs.
Vernon D. Burns seems absolutely obsessed with gender roles, constantly mocking them while seemingly unable to escape them. Some of the scenes are so fucking sexist you have to wonder if he somehow gets off on this. I mean, this IS his second book where a woman is knocked unconscious before being fondled and masturbated upon. And he has so far published 2 books, so 100% of his books include a scene like this. Also, this dude has a serious obsession with cum. Apparently some men can cum so profusely that "it was like he was peeing."
And Albert Clapp? The other author writes almost exactly the same as Burns, and shares the same obsession with gender. In his case, there's a much clearer feminist message, and there is significantly less misogyny related to the female protagonist. But I wonder if this is just because she doesn't have a human-female body, and this renders her unsexed in a way that saves her from the misogyny thrust upon the other females in this novella, whose breasts "bounce like speed bags" when they jump.
Clapp seems to hate women slightly less than men, who he depicts as total mouth-breathers who are in a constant state of pain and turmoil whenever their testicles aren't expelling semen. (Other than the old scientist, who instead of wanting to control women through having degrading sex with them, wants only to turn them into frankenstein monsters and force them to do manual labor at his winery (Yes. He is a scientist and also a wine maker (although he apparently sucks at both jobs))).
So why did I enjoy this more than Gods of the Jungle Planet? This is why: Like Faulkner and many other great writers, V.D. Burns has a style that is hard to comprehend at first, and I now feel like I get the joke. Like, really, REALLY get it.
The joke is that we destroy each other through perpetuating stereotypes--gender and non-gender-based stereotypes--and that popular art does nothing but reflect this violence back upon us in a feedback loop, simplifying us into caricatures that ALSO become a part of our collective identity. Art is, then, both a result and a catalyst for hatred and violence against the social other, whether this is womankind, an ethnic minority, or even an age bracket. By pushing these roles upon ourselves and then reminding ourselves in a constant stream of narratives what these roles are, we are perpetuating the patriarchy.
Vernon's joke--seemingly his ONLY joke--is to go so over the top in social and fictional caricatures that we can still be shocked by them, and to never let up even when the joke has long since stopped being funny. This is Andy Kaufman wrestling. This is Bill Hicks doing the goatboy routine. This is an artist trying his damnedest to be funny in a way that makes you very uncomfortable, and shocks you into thought.
Is it accidentally a glorification of violence? Does it work as a nihilistic satire? Is it an echo-chamber for the neuroses expressed in other popular fiction, or is it just really, really, incredibly bad writing by an idiot?
I can't say what it is for you; for me, this is a meditation on the violence of divisive art, yet it is divisive art, and cannot help but desensitize us further. So, it is filled with more hopelessness than the lives of its shallow and buxom protagonists. This is tastelessly funny, but we're laughing at the hopelessness of our own condition, our own inability to put ourselves in the shoes of others, our constant effort to silence one another through cultural labels. This book....what can be said?
And I love the horse-secks joke on the last page.
I mean. . . why talk about the plot? These are plots straight out of nightmares, ruled more by the id than by any sense of internal logic. So I'm not going to talk about the plot. These authors don't need plots. They need drugs. Lots of drugs.
Vernon D. Burns seems absolutely obsessed with gender roles, constantly mocking them while seemingly unable to escape them. Some of the scenes are so fucking sexist you have to wonder if he somehow gets off on this. I mean, this IS his second book where a woman is knocked unconscious before being fondled and masturbated upon. And he has so far published 2 books, so 100% of his books include a scene like this. Also, this dude has a serious obsession with cum. Apparently some men can cum so profusely that "it was like he was peeing."
And Albert Clapp? The other author writes almost exactly the same as Burns, and shares the same obsession with gender. In his case, there's a much clearer feminist message, and there is significantly less misogyny related to the female protagonist. But I wonder if this is just because she doesn't have a human-female body, and this renders her unsexed in a way that saves her from the misogyny thrust upon the other females in this novella, whose breasts "bounce like speed bags" when they jump.
Clapp seems to hate women slightly less than men, who he depicts as total mouth-breathers who are in a constant state of pain and turmoil whenever their testicles aren't expelling semen. (Other than the old scientist, who instead of wanting to control women through having degrading sex with them, wants only to turn them into frankenstein monsters and force them to do manual labor at his winery (Yes. He is a scientist and also a wine maker (although he apparently sucks at both jobs))).
So why did I enjoy this more than Gods of the Jungle Planet? This is why: Like Faulkner and many other great writers, V.D. Burns has a style that is hard to comprehend at first, and I now feel like I get the joke. Like, really, REALLY get it.
The joke is that we destroy each other through perpetuating stereotypes--gender and non-gender-based stereotypes--and that popular art does nothing but reflect this violence back upon us in a feedback loop, simplifying us into caricatures that ALSO become a part of our collective identity. Art is, then, both a result and a catalyst for hatred and violence against the social other, whether this is womankind, an ethnic minority, or even an age bracket. By pushing these roles upon ourselves and then reminding ourselves in a constant stream of narratives what these roles are, we are perpetuating the patriarchy.
Vernon's joke--seemingly his ONLY joke--is to go so over the top in social and fictional caricatures that we can still be shocked by them, and to never let up even when the joke has long since stopped being funny. This is Andy Kaufman wrestling. This is Bill Hicks doing the goatboy routine. This is an artist trying his damnedest to be funny in a way that makes you very uncomfortable, and shocks you into thought.
Is it accidentally a glorification of violence? Does it work as a nihilistic satire? Is it an echo-chamber for the neuroses expressed in other popular fiction, or is it just really, really, incredibly bad writing by an idiot?
I can't say what it is for you; for me, this is a meditation on the violence of divisive art, yet it is divisive art, and cannot help but desensitize us further. So, it is filled with more hopelessness than the lives of its shallow and buxom protagonists. This is tastelessly funny, but we're laughing at the hopelessness of our own condition, our own inability to put ourselves in the shoes of others, our constant effort to silence one another through cultural labels. This book....what can be said?
And I love the horse-secks joke on the last page.
June 8, 2013
This was so vile. Like, SO VILE. This was gross. It was both gross like, EEEEeeeeeewwwwwwWWWWWWWW, and also like, CAN’T UNSEE! So, it kind of covered a spectrum of gross. My favorite part of Furry Piranha is the surprise, twist ending. My favorite part of The Curse of the Screwicorn is the long saga of the soccer field turned unicorn hideout. Shield your children from this book, folks. Cheerleaders were harmed in its making.
And animals. Animals were harmed.
And trees, and, like, parking lots, and things like that were harmed, too.
Also, it turns out Joel Cunningham is one fucked up mother fucker. But, possibly a genius.
I read a lot of this book at work on my lunch breaks, so that was a little weird. It wasn’t so much weird in the contrasts as in the similarities. Sometimes my job is a little bit like listening to an audio of a Guy and Campbell book. I love my job.
For those of you who insist on some kind of flap-copy summary in a review, Double Feature is a collaboration between renowned authors Vernon Burns and Albert Clapp. If you haven’t heard of those two, then you haven’t been paying attention. Pulp-literary movers and shakers. Furry Piranha takes place in South/Central/North America (in Brazil, where the Mexicans live). Or, does it? The Curse of the Screwicorn takes place in the frigid blizzards of San Francisco. Furry Piranha is the story of one man with a giant penis learning to see himself as he truly is. The Curse of the Screwicorn is the story of a woman taking vengeance against the men who ruined her life. It is kind of like the TV show Revenge, but with less kung fu and guns and more unicorns. Screwicorn is more of a boy book, you know, what with its more unicorns and less kung fu.
And, as always, if you’re looking for bestiality, Guy and Campbell is where to go.
Again, can’t unsee.
And animals. Animals were harmed.
And trees, and, like, parking lots, and things like that were harmed, too.
Also, it turns out Joel Cunningham is one fucked up mother fucker. But, possibly a genius.
I read a lot of this book at work on my lunch breaks, so that was a little weird. It wasn’t so much weird in the contrasts as in the similarities. Sometimes my job is a little bit like listening to an audio of a Guy and Campbell book. I love my job.
For those of you who insist on some kind of flap-copy summary in a review, Double Feature is a collaboration between renowned authors Vernon Burns and Albert Clapp. If you haven’t heard of those two, then you haven’t been paying attention. Pulp-literary movers and shakers. Furry Piranha takes place in South/Central/North America (in Brazil, where the Mexicans live). Or, does it? The Curse of the Screwicorn takes place in the frigid blizzards of San Francisco. Furry Piranha is the story of one man with a giant penis learning to see himself as he truly is. The Curse of the Screwicorn is the story of a woman taking vengeance against the men who ruined her life. It is kind of like the TV show Revenge, but with less kung fu and guns and more unicorns. Screwicorn is more of a boy book, you know, what with its more unicorns and less kung fu.
And, as always, if you’re looking for bestiality, Guy and Campbell is where to go.
Again, can’t unsee.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews