Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes: "Spyang Ki Chung 'Little Wolf'"

This story shows us what Lobo was like before he hit the big time.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).

The story: "Spyang Ki Chung 'Little Wolf'" by Adkov Telmig

A monastery in Western Tibet.

Synopsis: Exiled Russian scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff scavenges in the desolate Western Plateau of Tibet. He is fully aware that agents from his home country are after him, and he nearly succumbs from the harsh weather and the heavy equipment he is lugging around. Luckily, he is rescued by a caravan of nomads and taken to a small mining town. In a largely deserted monastery, Vornoff meets and (after a fashion) befriends a three-foot-tall monk known as Little Wolf. Vornoff and Little Wolf visit a local market to buy food. There, Vornoff sees a man with some of the valuable uranium he desperately needs for his experiments. The man agrees to bring Vornoff plenty of uranium in exchange for a large sum of money.

With Little Wolf's help, Vornoff is granted permission from an aged monk to set up his equipment and perform his experiments within the monastery. He says he will use atomic power to create a race of supermen. When the man from the marketplace shows up with the promised uranium, Vornoff casually shoots and kills him. When Little Wolf asks him why he did this, Vornoff replies that he has no money but needed the uranium to continue his work. What else was he supposed to do? Little Wolf then asks to be part of Vornoff's experiment. Vornoff tells his companion that it will be painful but that he will emerge from the experience more powerful than he has ever been.

Two enemy agents, identified only as the Cold Men, show up at the monastery in their relentless hunt for the exiled scientist. Vornoff does not seem terribly concerned by their arrival because he now has a powerful bodyguard: Little Wolf, now supersized and mute. The formerly-diminutive monk makes quick work of the Cold Men, literally tearing their bodies apart. Vornoff decides that Little Wolf's name no longer suits him. From now on, he shall be called Lobo.

Excerpt:

A small detachment of Tibetan soldiers kept wary watch on the scrofulous lot. They stood in tight groups, warming their hands over fires in metal barrels. They stood out in their uniforms and furred hats. All of them seemed to smoke thin stick-like, oily-looking black cigarettes. They eyed Vornoff suspiciously, but none of them had questioned him or asked him for papers. It wasn’t the kind of town where questions were common. This was a good thing for Dr. Vornoff who had by now crossed four or five borders without the benefit of any official passports or permits.

Sardu and Ralphus: best friends.

Reflections: When I first downloaded my copy of Warm Angora Wishes from Amazon, I skimmed through it a little, just to get the lay of the land. I casually noticed that one story was about how Dr. Eric Vornoff (Bela Lugosi) and his mute henchman Lobo (Tor Johnson) from Bride of the Monster (1955) originally met in "the wilderness of Tibet." Someone had taken that throwaway line from the movie and made a whole prequel out of it. But I didn't want to spoil the story for myself, so I merely glanced at a few sentences and moved on. I suppose I was anticipating something like the story of how the Lone Ranger met Tonto. My curiosity level was at roughly six out of ten; prequels have a tendency to overexplain things that were better left unknown.

I could not have predicted anything like "Spyang Ki Chung," which is easily one of the strangest and most intriguing stories I've read so far in this collection. Obviously, the story has an outrageous central gimmick, i.e. that the huge, lumbering Lobo was once a dwarf in a monastery and that it was Vornoff who made him a giant. It's exactly the kind of imaginative leap you'd hope to find in an Ed Wood-inspired anthology. But what really makes the story memorable are its descriptive passages about Tibet. This is a land about which I know virtually nothing, so I was fascinated by the author's evocative yet unsentimental prose about the land and its people. "Spyang Ki Chung" is the first story in this collection to remind me of Cormac McCarthy. I wager it'll be the last, too.

This story also got me thinking about villains with dwarf sidekicks. That seems to be a semi-common trope in fiction, but I'm hard-pressed to think of good examples. Let's see. There's Sardu and Ralphus in Bloodsucking Freaks (1976), Dr. Evil and Mini-Me in The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), and Livia and the Imp in The Undead (1957). Didn't Hordak also have an imp on She-Ra (1985-1987)? Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island (1977-1984) was more mysterious than evil, so he doesn't count. Do Jabba the Hutt and Salacious Crumb from Return of the Jedi (1983) count? Maybe Salacious isn't a dwarf among his own kind, but he's dwarfed by Jabba.

Come to think of it, this might not be that common a trope.