Paperback 1125: The Passion Hunters / Orrie Hitt (Domino Books 72-712)

Paperback 1125: Domino Books 72-712 (PBO, 1964)

Title: The Passion Hunters    

Author: Orrie Hitt

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 4-5/10

Value: $10

[Chapter 2 Books, Winona, MN (July 2025)]

Best things about this cover: 

• Gee, your nose smells terrific!
• "Kissing's when I talk into your nose, right?"
• She's gonna have to open her eyes if she ever wants their faces to line up properly
• It looks like it's raining exclusively in her bed and on his shirt, with some kind of green aurora borealis in the background
• I keep quickly glancing at the cover copy and seeing the phrase "mouth-open season," which, given the picture, seems right

Best things about this back cover: 

• Fair game! It's a pun! Because they are pretty ("fair") and you hunt them. Or else they are a game you play at a carnival booth, like the ring toss. He does seem to be trying to bend her body into some kind of shape, perhaps in order to win a giant stuffed animal. "I thought you liked me, Brad. What about that embrace at the carnival booth?" "I was just trying to bend you into a knot so I could win that panda!"
• I am shocked, shocked, I say, to find that this Orrie Hitt book doesn't seem to have much of a plot. He's going deer-hunting. But he wants sex and money. But he'll settle for sex. Hitt me!
• "A trio of torrid temptresses!" Somewhere, there's a dyad of dumpy dames going "Hey, what about us!?"

Page 123~

Getting over the beaver channels was the worst, and before I cleared the swamp I didn't have to continue worrying about dropping him. He was already dead, the knife still in his belly, and from there on down the mountain I was an undertaker without a license.

OK, technically this is from p. 122, but once I saw the phrase "Getting over the beaver channels," there was no turning back. You understand.

~RP

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Paperback 722: Strange Longing / Orrie Hitt (Chariot Books CB-1626)

Paperback 722: Chariot Books CB-1626 (PBO, 1963)

Title: Strange Longing
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• This was also the cover for Axilla Fetishist Monthly (April 1963)
• One thing about saran wrap lingerie is: the itch.
• Man I wish the girl in the dark in the back ground were more in the light in the foreground.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Oh, don't mind me, I just wandered over to this side of the room and got tangled in the drapery somehow."
• Seriously, what is happening there?
• "Bunny soft"— I'm laughing quite hard right now.
• Ladies, if you really wanna sex up your bedroom patter, call it "the portals of the 'forbidden world'!"

Page 123~

"I don't do the kind of dances they'd want."
"Who cares about dancing? The men don't come inside the tent for that."
They got into another bottle of rye and Emily paraded around the room.

~RP

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Paperback 618: Easy Women! / Orrie Hitt (Novel Books 5065)

Paperback 618: Novel Books 5065 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Easy Women!
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: photo cover

From The Doug Peterson Collection (new acquisition)


Best things about this cover:

• Strangely, the part of all this nutso text that made me laugh hardest is "... ON IT!"
• So ... they're a bunch of lazy welfare queens, but they have orgies 24/7?! They sound ... industrious, at the very least. 
• That 10,000,000 number is less impressive when you consider he wrote about 100,000 books.
• I love the design on this, in the way that I love completely inexplicable things. I've never seen text obscure my view of the action quite so much as it does here. I think people are making out next to the blond woman's left cheek ... but who can say?
• I love how the one book Orrie Hitt has been dying to write is probably the one people have been least dying to read. "You know what this sleaze paperback needs more of? Ayn Rand." Said no one ever.

Best things about this back cover:

• Hang on, let me get my reading glasses and a cup of cocoa.
• I need to get ahold of "Animal Broad" and "Giant Orgy" asap.
• "Novel Books: Books for men who really like being men with other men in a way that is "virile" but *completely* not gay."
• I love how it's all "man" this and "man" that re: welfare, but of course the book is all about sluts.
• "You'll applaud his condemnation of their 24 hour-a-day orgies!"—oh, OK, so it's not a solid 24 hours of orgying, but one hour of orgying a day for 24 days. That's a *much* more reasonable orgy schedule. 

Page 123~

He had learned the meaning of power that night in Emily's room [1], the raw power of anger [2], and when he had reached home he had found love in his wife's arms, a wife who had smelled of scotch but who no longer drank [3].

[1] 50 Shades of Orrie!
[2] Uh oh ... someone go check on Emily.
[3] So either she started drinking again or some Scotch-slathered brute 24-hr-orgied her. You can guess which scenario I prefer.

~RP

P.S. the spine reads "A NOVEL BOOK / IS A MAN'S BOOK!"—At this point, I'm surprised they didn't just cover the whole book in cocks.

[Follow Rex Parker at Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 559: The Promoter / Orrie Hitt (Beacon Books 142)

Paperback 559: Beacon Books BB142 (PBO, 1957)

Title: The Promoter
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $20
Best things about this cover:

• "So ... you're here for the free Tai Chi lesson?"
• I love his smugfuck face: "What can I say? It's like the tagline says, I love my work."
• I like her. I really hope she takes all his money and leaves him tied up and half-naked in that room.
• Love the trash can peeking out from around the corner. Just in case you thought this story was classy.
• "On the surface she was all smooth legs and orange sweaters, but deep down inside, she was ... the Teen Temptress of Trash Town."

Best things about this back cover:

• ZZZZZZZddZZZzzzzZZZZZZZap!
• Oh, you crazy kids and your cellar clubs (!?!).
• "Cellar club" sounds like a serial killer's euphemism for "place where I keep the bones of my victims."
• "His best weapons were women ... sure, they're a little cumbersome, but once you learn to swing one you can do some Serious damage."

Page 123~

Nothing further was known about her until she had appeared in the city, five years previously, and had set herself up in the model agency business. Her credit rating vouched for the fact that she had been successful—No one had any outstanding bills against her. Her association with Andy Willis who, by the way, was from Billings, Montana, had been a routine thing.

People forget there was a time in American history when being from Billings, Montana was considered fascinating and exciting, possibly because that time never actually existed.

~RP

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Paperback 479: The Torrid Teens / Orrie Hitt (Beacon B294)

Paperback 479: Beacon B294 (PBO, 1960)

Title: The Torrid Teens
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50

Best things about this cover:

• Home. Run.
• Too many great things to list. The title! The garters! The menacing shadow men! I mean, I realize that this painting depicts what appears to be a sexual assault in progress, and obviously sexual assault is bad, but as sensational covers go, this one is gold. 
• This book should be called "Everyone's Hands Were Awesome." A triad of terrifically expressive hands.
• "You told ma you'd be home for dinner at 6, and as you can clearly see from my visible watch face, it's almost 6:30. Why must you succumb to vileness and the twisted desire to stay out past dinner time?"

Best things about this back cover: 

• One of the ugliest line drawings I've ever seen on a paperback cover. Reeks of Dickensian squalor. 
• I think he's trying to do this trick where he lights a match using only his teeth and her breast.
• Why does honesty always have to be so brutal? What did we ever do to honesty?

Page 123~

"The kids in the gang were pretty good to you," he said. "They could have told the cops you were with them on the rumble, but they didn't. That could have hurt you a lot and I don't think it would have made your mother very happy."

Little did he know that her mother was actually a long-time subscriber to "Rumble Fancier" magazine.

~RP

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Paperback 435: Pushover / Orrie Hitt (Beacon Books 139)

Paperback 435: Beacon Books 139 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Pushover
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: George Geygan

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• So is Easy Pickin the name of the guy mashing the blow-up doll with his face? Because that apostrophe-S is confusing me.
• Giant Keyhole!
• Can you really call her a "pushover" if tied her hands behind her back to force compliance?
• I'm guessing the tops of heads are really hard to draw because that guy's ... let's call it "hair" ... is a mess.
• I would call this "Great Girl Art" if she didn't look like a corpse from the neck up.

Best things about this back cover:

• I honest-to-god laughed when I first looked at this. "FELL, I say! FELLLLLLLLL!"
• Love how the final word stands out so strongly because a. it's in all-caps b. it's the only word set completely against a white background, and c. it's right on her tits—the tits of the girl who has apparently (happily) been Pushed Over. They even used three long dashes to make sure it showed up on her torso! Design work: A+.
• "Sweet Sucker Game" = a long-forgotten blaxploitation film.

Page 123~

"Peoples," he greeted us, waving at nobody in particular. He got out of his chair, stumbled over a rug and almost fell down. "Have a drink! Have a damn drink, why doncha?"

I'm considering making "Have a drink! Have a damn drink, why doncha?" the next tagline for the header of this blog. That's good dialogue! Damn good!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]