(original) (raw)
Tue 5 Nov 2024
Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:
STRANGE FASCINATION. Columbia Pictures, 1952. Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Mona Barrie, Rick Vallin, Karen Sharpe . Written, directed and produced by Hugo Haas.
This one really isn’t noir, but it’s got noir-ish features, I guess in the sense that it has an impending sense of doom, a femme fatale (to some degree), and a portrait of a man on a downward spiral.
The fatalistic plot follows Central European concert pianist Paul Marvan (Hugo Haas) as he makes his way to America, falls madly in love with a nightclub dancer half his age (Cleo Moore), and then proceeds to make bad decision after bad decision, ultimately ruining both his marriage and his professional life. It’s a decent enough work to be sure, but the plot is a little too simple for its own good.
A lower budget auteurist work if there ever was one, Strange Fascination has Czech-Jewish filmmaker Hugo Haas’s imprint all over it. Not only does he star in this moody drama film, he wrote, directed, and produced it. So it’s safe to say that everything in the film is his work and his alone.
To his credit, his portrayal of Paul Marvan is spot-on; Haas disappears completely into the role and imbues it with energy. He’s compulsively watchable. But otherwise, Strange Fascination is a somewhat languid affair, never quite able to deliver the punches it so desperately needs.
Mon 4 Nov 2024
DASHIELL HAMMETT “Corkscrew.” First published in The Black Mask, September 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).
A new deputy sheriff comes to a small town in the Arizona desert, His job is to clear out troublemakers for an irrigation company, but the story means more [than that even] before the anonymous deputy is discovered to be the Continental Op – simply by reflecting attitudes of the real West. (4)
— September 1968.
Sun 3 Nov 2024
Reviewed by TONY BAER:
RAOUL WHITFIELD – Border Brand. Steeger Books, softcover, August 2024. Originally serialized in Black Mask magazine, June through November 1928.
Mac ’twas a fighter pilot in the war to end all wars. Then was a teller in a bank.
Antonio Flores robbed the bank. And flew away with the cash in a single seater.
Mac was the teller Flores held up.
The bank fires Mac. Figure Mac didn’t try hard enough to stop Flores. Figure Mac was maybe in on it.
So Mac decides to chase after Flores. Across the border to Mexico.
There he teams up with a federal agent, name of Ben Breed.
Breed is hell of a pilot too. And a gunner. As well as Mac and Flores. And air battles are the main action here.
Whitfield does a nice job with the air battle descriptions, keeping me engaged though I’ve myself never been one to seek out air adventure. The other reason to read it is Whitfield’s prose. I think Whitfield maybe has the hardest, most staccato prose in showbiz. And that’s why I keep reading Whitfield and keep seeking him out. He’s a tonic. He’s spare. He’s terse. There’s no wasted word. Concision. Diamond cut. We can still learn a lot from Whitfield about how to say things briskly sans the bullshit.
I liked it.
Sat 2 Nov 2024
My Book, As Noted by Jonathan Lewis:
I want to let everyone know that my first novel, The Nuremberg Papers (Stark House Press) is now available on Amazon. When writing the book, I drew inspiration from various genres and subgenres in both literature and cinema, including classic detective fiction, stories about Nazi war criminals, film noir, suspense thrillers from the 1970s such as The Parallax View and Marathon Man, and movies and television shows set in gritty 1980s New York City.
Aside from the conspiracy thriller aspect of the work, there’s also a story about Jewish identity in postwar America that runs throughout the course of the novel. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you happen to appreciate the book, positive feedback on Amazon is more than welcome!
Fri 1 Nov 2024
Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:
THE SCREAMING SKULL. ABC, 14 February 1973. Telecast as part of a five entry late night series entitled The Classic Ghosts. Vincent Gardenia, Carrie Nye, David McCallum. Based on a story by F. Marion Crawford. Directed by
Gloria Monty.
I have to admit. For the first ten minutes or so, I was afraid that The Screaming Skull was going to be a stodgy, lifeless affair that merely plodded along. How wrong I was! Although it starts off slow and is exceedingly low-tech (it was filmed on video), this made-for-TV movie defies expectations and provides an hour plus of solid, extremely watchable supernatural entertainment.
An adaptation of F. Marion Crawford’s eponymous short story (1908), this comparatively unknown horror movie features David McCallum as Luke Pratt, physician with an interest in research.
Estranged from his wife (Carrie Nye) after the death of her son, Pratt finds solace in alcohol. All that changes when the doctor’s brother, Ollie (Vincent Gardenia) shows up and plants a diabolical idea in his head. It doesn’t take long for Luke to come up with what he thinks will be a foolproof plan to kill his wife. It’s after his wife’s murder that spooky things start happening, first to Luke and then to his brother.
Filmed with a decidedly Gothic sensibility, The Screaming Skull relies as much on atmosphere as anything else to tell its story. The music, in particular, helps with the mood. Although it must be said that it’s a little overwrought at times. As I mentioned earlier, this movie was filmed entirely on video, which gives it a unique flavor. But unique doesn’t mean bad and low-tech doesn’t mean low quality. It’s not a must-see, but it’s quality work. Recommended for fans of ghost stories in particular.
Thu 31 Oct 2024
DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Scorched Face,” First appeared in The Black Mask, May 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).
Two daughters disappear this time. (What is the younger generation coming to?) The Continental Op discovers the den of vice, pornography and blackmail they have fallen into. His restraint in persuading Pat Reddy to suppress evidence is admirable. (5)
— September 1968.
Tue 29 Oct 2024
Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:
DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA. CBS, 1974. Jack Palance, Simon Ward. Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner/ Murray Brown. ScreenplayL Richard Matheson, based on the novel by Bram Stoker. Director: Dan Curtis.
Dan Curtis’ Dracula, while steeped in a foreboding Gothic atmosphere, lacks the bite that a vampire movie should have. Filmed as a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s horror novel, the movie stars Jack Palance as the titular villain. Palance rages and sneers throughout the proceedings, each time making him a little less supernatural than a fearsome vampire should really be. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t put on a good performance. Rather, it’s that Richard Matheson’s screenplay is – to be perfectly blunt – somewhat dull and muted.
Another problem with this made-for-television adaptation is that it’s all plot and no story. After watching it, I can’t seem to recall any moment in the entire film where the audience is asked to identify in any meaningful way with the characters who get caught up in Dracula’s web. Everything seems to be held at an emotional distance. There’s a lack of energy that’s hard to describe, but easy to feel. Case in point: Dr. Van Helsing, as portrayed by Nigel Davenport, is rather lackluster. Surely the famed vampire killer should have some passion?
There are, however, two very important plusses that the movie does have. First, the set design and lighting were exquisite. Second, the score by Robert Cobert fits perfectly with the aforementioned Gothic atmosphere. But these aren’t enough to make me recommend this Dracula adaptation over either the original with Bela Lugosi or the Francis Ford Coppola-helmed one in which Anthony Hopkins portrays Van Helsing.
Mon 28 Oct 2024
REVIEWED BY CONNOR SALTER:
WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM – Monster Midway: An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1953. Dunce Books, softcover, 2021.
William Lindsay Gresham wrote Nightmare Alley (1946), arguably one of the great American novels about carnivals. Readers familiar with the Bret Wood-edited anthology Grindshow: The Selected Writings of William Lindsay Gresham (2013, see Walker Martin’s Mystery*File review) will know Gresham also published many articles and short stories about “the carny.”
Monster Midway, first published in 1953 and recently reissued by small press Dunce Books, offers a detailed look into the carnival as an attraction and self-contained world. Gresham describes many larger-than-life figures: daredevil motorcyclists, snake handlers, knife throwers, airplane stunt pilots, and human oddities (the more accepted term for people with disabilities performing in “freak shows”). Interviews with the performers explore what the carny life looks like, and why some go from trying it for a season to living it for a lifetime.
During an October 2023 visit to Gresham’s archived papers at Wheaton College’s Marion E. Wade Center, I discovered he kept a huge folder of this book’s reviews. Many were positive, although less-impressed reviewers noted it is based on previously published articles. While this is true, it’s notable that aside from a chapter on Houdini (more than that later), Gresham has rewritten the material enough that the book reads in one consistent style.
It’s also an entertaining style: incredible topics explained with Hemingwayesque language (short, simple). His “tell big things in a small voice” often amplifies his ideas. For example, Gresham takes time to discuss technical details that make feats understandable while underlining the risks (like why a daredevil motorcycle ramp must be just the right height to avoid killing drivers).
The style may be read as an extension of Gresham’s approach in Nightmare Alley and perhaps helps explain why his second novel Limbo Tower (1949) flounders. Critics have sometimes argued Nightmare Alley is overheated, especially in sexual scenes like a Freudian psychoanalyst making a patient paint her toenails. (As far as I know, Stanley Kubrick hadn’t read Gresham’s book before he made Lolita, but stranger things have happened.)
Gresham’s content may get pulpy in Nightmare Alley but especially compared to many contemporaries who started in the pulps, his writing style is spare. Limbo Tower (reviewed by me earlier in Mystery*File) is more operatic. It opens with a faux Islamic parable about blind men and an elephant before shifting to events in a hospital, filling the early chapters with references to golden sunlight that make the setting feel otherworldly. But the promise something incredible will happen in the limbo tower never arrives.
Gresham returns to telling big events in a small voice in Monster Midway and it works. The events may be “uninhibited,” but not how Gresham writes.
Occasionally, he does something a little outré, like writing himself into the story. The chapter on knife throwing opens with a folk singer doing the trick in a club, and it’s only after the trick succeeds that Gresham reveals he’s talking about himself (he dabbled in folk singing in the 1930s-1940s).
These “journalist becoming the material” moments are fun, not unlike Hunter S. Thompson’s work. But if so, it’s early Thompson (On the Road with the Hell’s Angels), objectively describing strange worlds without any surrealism (for that, read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72). Gresham is daring without being extreme (or indulgent, as Thompson became).
The fact Gresham never gets too indulgent also means he can explore things with a little distance. That distance is helpful when he looks at paradoxes between a performer’s public image and private life. For example, he notes how safety-conscious daredevil drivers are, and quotes one driver saying his son admires his work but wants to be a baseball player. Or maybe he’s told his son to be a baseball player. Gresham never deconstructs anyone cynically, but he pokes at their paradoxes a little.
The one moment where Gresham doesn’t dissect his subjects enough is in his chapter on Houdini. It reads like hagiography as he talks about his childhood love for Houdini’s tricks, then goes behind the scenes to explain how assistants and tools enabled the master’s work. This chapter sets the stage for his less-gushing 1959 book Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls, but perhaps predicts why his book on Houdini has been surpassed.
Gresham is often credited with writing “the first great Houdini biography,” the first to correct many mistakes about Houdini’s life and show how he accomplished his tricks. Very true, but one thing Gresham doesn’t do that later biographies do better is face how much Houdini’s ruthless ego made him and killed him. Houdini’s ruthless self-confidence made him try what no one else tried, brag he could take any punch… then die via a ruptured appendix when he got when he wasn’t prepared.
Gresham lays the groundwork for exploring that kind of paradox in Monster Midway but never goes far enough (in his Houdini chapter or his later biography). It’s never easy to interrogate childhood heroes.
One or two missed opportunities aside, Monster Midway remains entertaining today. As his wife Joy Davidman commented in their letters, it proves that Gresham went from being an outsider looking into carnivals to being a “true carny” insider.
___
About the Reviewer: G. Connor Salter is a writer and editor. He has contributed over 1,400 articles to various publications, including Mythlore, The Tolkienist, and Fellowship & Fairydust. His interview with mystery author Clayton Rawson’s son was published here earlier in Mystery*File.
Sun 27 Oct 2024
Reviewed by TONY BAER:
RICHARD STARK – Plunder Squad. Random House, hardcover, 1972. Avon, paperback, 1985. University of Chicago Press, trade paperback, 2010.
So I’d already read nearly all of ’em, the Parkers. The Hunter thru Butcher’s Moon. (I ain’t interested in Comeback, etc.) But this one had passed me by. For no reason. And this one resolves the George Uhl problem left off in Sour Lemon Score. So I wanted to read it for that closure.
Anywho, Parker’s in a rut. Things ain’t working out. And he needs money. Badly.
But still not badly enough to take the first couple jobs lined up for him. And the one he finally takes. That one’s completely fucked up too.
So basically this one lines up three jobs. He declines two, and the third one goes to shit.
Meantime, two interesting things happen in this one.
First is that George Uhl, asshole I mentioned earlier, decides it’s time to kill Parker. You can guess how that ends.
Second is a kind of cool scene where Parker opens the door to find Dan Kearney standing there. Yeah that Dan Kearney. It’s a reverse image of a scene from Joe Gores’ Dead Skip.
Anyway. Aside from those two things, nothing really happens in this one. And you can skip it, from a narrative stand point.
On the other hand, why would you want to? Parker’s in good form, as is Westlake. And there’s a paucity of great hardboiled lit. So hey, why not? You owe it to yourself and I owe it to me, to read all the Parkers, Hunter thru Butcher’s Moon.
And like it, you will, says Yoda. Like it, you will.
Sat 26 Oct 2024
Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:
TRAP. Warner Brothers, 2024. Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills. Written & directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Picture it: a middle-aged man and his pre-teen daughter are at a pop music concert. The performer in question, one Lady Raven, is on the top of her game and has legions of devoted fans. Then imagine the middle-aged man starts noticing something is off-kilter; there are simply way too many police around. What might be going on?
That’s the premise of Trap, a recent film from prolific director M. Night Shyamalan. Josh Hartnett, whose performance carries the film, stars as Cooper, a seemingly normal guy from the Philadelphia suburbs. As it turns out, he is far from normal. In fact, he’s “The Butcher,” a serial killer that has been stalking the city. And the concert? Well, that’s an elaborate trap that has been set for him.
Now, that might sound like a ludicrous premise. But trust me: when it works, it works. As a suspense flick filmed with a sense of fun and one that fortunately doesn’t take itself too seriously, Trap is an above average escapist thriller.
It’s important to remember that screenplays need to be original, but not too original. They can’t be so off the beaten path as to confuse audiences. There’s a reason why genres and subgenres have tropes. Trap succeeds in being both a familiar “serial killer” movie and something entirely new. While it might not be palatable to all tastes, there’s a lot here to appreciate. For the squeamish, don’t worry. The movie relies on suspense rather than gore to get its point across.
