Sam Moffie’s “To Kill the Duke” might nicely be the funniest and most entertaining novel ever written about Hollywood and movie history. And Moffie is not afraid of casting some of Hollywood’s greatest legends-each in terms of movie stars, directors, producers, and films-for his plot and characters. This time Moffie has penned a hilarious re-creation of the filming of “The Conqueror.”

Whilst I have never observed this 1956 film, as a film buff, of course, I’ve heard about it. It really is reputedly a single of the worst films ever produced, even though it had every thing going for it that really should have produced it a hit-an all star cast, like John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead being directed by Dick Powell, himself a screen legend and becoming made by Howard Hughes. Moffie creates a fictionalized-but not as well fictionalized-version of the film’s production, which is actually stranger than fiction and had some notable flaws. John Wayne as Genghis Khan just wasn’t believable, specifically when he refused to take voice lessons to pull off the function. And then there was the location-Hughes bought land in Utah from the U.S. government for $ 1 to film the movie. How could he get it so low cost? Since it was the victim of nuclear fallout from nearby government weapon testing. In reality, most of the crew and cast would finish up dying from cancer in future years, presumably from the nuclear fallout, and Moffie supplies an substantial list at the book’s end of all the cast and crew (and fictional characters), detailing their careers and deaths. I was impressed that Moffie even corresponded with 1 of the stuntmen whilst researching the book-of course, most of the cast and crew are lengthy dead.

As if a novel about “The Conqueror” were not sufficient to please fans of The Duke and old movie buffs, Moffie mixes the Cold War into the story. The plot begins in the U.S.S.R. with Ivan, who is hired to perform as projectionist to Joseph Stalin not only does Stalin get pleasure from watching American films, but he likes to dress up like the characters in Westerns, and he has a desire to have John Wayne assassinated. Just before long, Ivan and some of his fellow Soviets locate themselves in Hollywood, creating their own films while they try to figure out how they can get close sufficient to John Wayne to carry out Stalin’s plan.

Moffie delivers a lot of surprising twists and turns along the way. I found myself checking on the web to discover out what was correct and what fiction, and I was shocked by how a lot was true, considering that as I said, the story behind “The Conqueror” is stranger than fiction.

I laughed out loud quite a few instances although reading this book. Some of Moffie’s humor borders on the crude, but most of it is just plain funny and slightly exaggerated. The crude consists of Howard Hughes’ sexual efforts to discover stress relief, and a Jew named Trotsky 7 whom Stalin keeps around with the job of holding his penis when he pees. But even this humor is extremely funny I only point it out in case it would turn off some potential readers. Other hilarious comical scenes contain Susan Hayward’s obsession with raspberry lime rickeys that make her demand Hughes locate out the precise recipe for her preferred drink before she agrees to be in the film. All through the book the dialogue sparkles to the point of Moffie obviously enjoying himself so significantly that the plot slows down a bit, but I doubt most of his readers will care because it’s so funny.

My only genuine criticism of “To Kill the Duke” genuinely has to do with the plot becoming a bit slow. Moffie has a lot of breaks in between scenes, but he only has six chapters in a 355-page novel, and the chapters alternate amongst the Soviet characters and the Hollywood characters. I feel if Moffie had divided his chapters up a lot more and alternated them more it would have produced the book’s pace a bit stronger. There were also much more typos than there really should be, but these concerns did very little to impact my enjoyment of the novel.

I believe “No Mad” remains my favorite of Moffie’s novels, but the idea and storyline of “To Kill the Duke” is really original, and whilst I haven’t read a lot of novels about Hollywood, this 1 is the finest I’ve read.