Deadlier Than the Male: CRIMES BY WOMEN (1948)
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UNSEEN FRAZETTA: After the Fox (1966)
Between 1965 and 1983, Frank Frazetta provided artwork for no fewer than fourteen movie posters. You've probably seen some of them - maybe even all of them - but I doubt you've ever seen them like this.
Why's that? Because Frazetta packed most of them with so much action and detail, it's dang near impossible to take it all in at once.
Today we'll take a close-up gander at a couple of posters from the 1966 movie After the Fox.
Not bad, I admit. But let's take a closer look . . .
Pretty cool, eh? More UNSEEN FRAZETTA coming soon.
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Forgotten Books: YELLOWLEG by A.S. Fleischman
But right away, I knew I was in the hands of a hell of a writer. Fleischman's dialogue is sharp, inventive and revealing, and his prose is unrelentingly tough. Yellowleg (so-called because of the stripe on the trousers he's worn since the War Between the States) is as hardboiled a cowboy as I've seen anywhere, and he's put to the test when he locks horns with an equally hardheaded woman.
Yellowleg's sole reason to live is to track down the rebel soldier who scalped him during the war, leaving scars so deep he's kept his hat on, day and night, for the past eight years. Now at last he has the guy in his sites, and just when he's about to make his move, fate puts that hardheaded woman in his path. Along with a blood-simple young killer and the twisted, conniving weasel who scalped him, Yellowleg accompanies the woman on a mad quest into Apache territory.
This one held me from the first word to the last, and sent me on a search for more Fleischman. Sadly, this novel, first published by Gold Medal in 1960, appears to be his only adult western. But he did write exotic adventures, mysteries and a spy novel or two, and I look forward to them all. At some point in the '60s he began writing children's fiction, and never looked back. Though juvenile stuff has little appeal for me, there are two titles I might have to look at: Jim Bridger's Alarm Clock and Other Tall Tales, and Bandit's Moon, a tale of Joaquin Murieta.
In an interview with Gary Lovisi, Fleischman revealed that Yellowleg began life as a screenplay, and was optioned by Marlon Brando. When Brando made One-Eyed Jacks instead, Fleischman teamed up with Maureen O'Hara, and they got Sam Peckinpah to direct the film (retitled The Deadly Companions) starring O'Hara and Brian Keith.
I have not seen The Deadly Companions, but it's hard to imagine Brian Keith (one of the worst ever Davy Crocketts) as Yellowleg. Brando, on the other hand, would have been ideal.
As for the novel, the good news is that it's back in print, thanks to the fine folks at Stark House. Appearing in the same volume is the never-before-published novel The Sun Worshippers, described as a Chandleresque tale set in the California desert in the 1950s.
Yelllowleg started me on a Stark House binge. I immediately read Peter Rabe's Kill the Boss Good-by, which was equally good, and I'm now into Come Easy - Go Easy by James Hadley Chase. Next up - maybe The Sun Worshippers. We'll see. Stark House has also released at least two other Fleischman doubles: Look Behind You, Lady/The Venetian Blonde and Danger in Paradise/Malay Woman.
More Forgotten Books at Sweet Freedom.
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ELLERY QUEEN in Crackajack Funnies (1940)
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Art Gallery: DIME MYSTERY (1934)
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WANTED: Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia
THE GOOD NEWS: Keith Allan Deutsch is editing a new collection of stories featuring Frank Gruber's Oliver Quade, "The Human Encyclopedia.
THE BAD NEWS: He's still missing four stories. Can you help?
Here's the list of missing adventures:
"Brass Knuckles" (November 1936, Thrilling Detective)
"Murder on the Midway" (January 1937, Thrilling Detective)
"Pictures of Death" (February 1937, Thrilling Detective)
"Trailer Town" (August 1937, Thrilling Detective)
As I mentioned in my review of the 1966 Sherbourne Press collection, Brass Knuckles (that's HERE), Quade was the precursor of Gruber's most famous character, Johnny Fletcher. Like Johnny, Quade is a booksalesman, and like Johnny, has a slightly dimwitted pal/assistant. If you like the Fletcher books, you're sure to like the Quade stories too. My review of the first in the Fletcher series, The French Key, is HERE.
Nine of the ten tales in Brass Knuckles originally appeared in Black Mask, and one of those, "Dog Show Murder," was released as a film in 1939. My review of this one and only Oliver Quade movie is HERE.
I'm hoping Keith finds those Thrilling Detective tales, because I want read them.
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Overlooked Films: THE BLACK PIRATE (1926)
I was really looking forward to this one, because the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks version of The Mark of Zorro is one of my all-time favorite films. So hey, Doug as a pirate? That should be every bit as good, no? Especially since it's in Technicolor, and the New York Times reportedly called it "Glorious!"
The New York Times also praised the film's "unrivalled beauty . . . mindful of the paintings of the old masters." Well, that's true enough, I suppose. The swordfight on the beach (like that in the later Captain Blood) was stage to invoke a Howard Pyle painting. And the merchantman ship captured and occupied by the pirates is a beautiful set. Trouble is, not much really happens on it. Yeah, there's a lot of climbing around, and a very little fighting, but mostly the story is a love/lust triangle between Fairbanks, his sleazy pirate rival, and the Princess who just happens to be captured along with the ship. Most of the "beauty" comes from the fact this was filmed in an early version of Technicolor, which makes the ship look great, but doesn't do so well on skin tones.
Here's the basic plot: The pirates capture a ship, killing most of it's crew and blowing up the rest, along with the ship. Two men survive and swim to a desert island. Unluckily for the pirates, one of those men is Fairbanks. The other is his father, who quickly dies, making Fairbanks even more determined to extract vengeance. After killing the pirate captain in a duel, Fairbanks starts calling himself The Black Pirate and leads the crew in the attack on the merchantman. He then proposes they ransom the Princess and all get rich. It's all a trick, of course. He really intends to free the Princess, saving her from a Fate Worse Than Death at the hands of the #2 pirate. Instead, Fairbanks falls for her himself.
There's an interesting scene near the end that looks like a 1926 version of Thunderball. Fairbanks has an army of identically-clad warriors who swim underwater for an impossible distance to swarm onto the pirate ship. The battle royale that follows is bloodless, because the Fairbanks guys' method of fighting is to bury their opponents in a rugby scrum.
In all, it's an okay film, but hardly the swashbuckler you'd expect from the title. It's biggest failing was the misuse of Douglas Fairbanks. When he had fun, his audience had fun with him. And when he didn't . . . they got a pedestrian drama like The Black Pirate instead.
Check out the rest of this week's Overlooked Films at Sweet Freedom.
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SHADOW COMICS 4, 5 & 6 (1940)
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Western Round-Up: Charles Starrett
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Forgotten Books: KILL THE BOSS GOOD-BY by Peter Rabe
Kill the Boss Good-by, originally published by Gold Medal in 1956, grabbed me right from the start and never let go. The action centers around the not-so-old crime boss of the fictional Southwestern city of San Pietro. The boss, Tom Fell, runs the local gambling racket, as well as the horseracing track. He's the biggest fish in the San Pietro pond, but holds his position only at the pleasure of the upper tier mob bosses in Los Angeles.
Trouble is, Fell seems to be losing his grip - not only on his operation, but on reality. As the story starts, he's been out of sight for a month, having checked himself into a sanitarium. Only his wife and his most trusted flunky know where he is, and his little gambling empire is coming apart at the seams. Things are so bad that his brother-in-law the mayor is not getting his regular payoff, and the cops have grown so bold as to start raiding his gambling joints. Meantime, the L.A. guys are testing a new number two, to see if he has the stuff to take over Fell's territory.
After this setup, we meet Fell himself, and he's not what you'd expect. He's actually a likable guy, who's faithful to his wife and generous to his employees. He even shows great restraint in dealing with the guy who's angling to take over his job. He's sort of a nicer version of Tony Soprano. But though he appears to be functioning fine, he's feeling too fine, making him overconfident, ultra-ambitious and impatient with anyone who can't keep pace with him. And that means everybody, including the only two people who actually care for him.
Peter Rabe paints a fascinating portrait of Fell and the world that's rapidly slipping away from him. After buzzing through this one, I'm anxious to read the story Stark House paired it with, the 1958 Gold Medal thriller Mission for Vengeance. And Stark House has published at least five other Rabe doubles, and once Rabe triple, so there's plenty more where these came from.
More Forgotten Books at pattinase.
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Comic Gallery: SHEENA, Queen of the Jungle (1940)
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Pulp Gallery: GHOST STORIES (1926)
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Comic Gallery: Ken Shannon - Crime-Busting Private Eye (1951-52)
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Overlooked Films: A Few Dollars for Django (1966)
And that’s what it did - entertain me. And it wasted no time getting started. In the first seen our hero rides into a two-bit town wearing a Man With No Name hat and serape. When a gang of villains challenges him, he promptly kills them all. Then he tosses what appears to be a stick of dynamite into the tavern, so the head villain will come out an get shot. That done, he picks up the stick of “dynamite,” which is only a candle, and lights his cigarette. This guy has style.
Luckily, the opening scene’s dead guys were only a small part of the gang that robbed the Miners Association, so the Association big wigs send our hero, a bounty killer named Regan (he’s never called Django) to Montana to kill the rest of them. And eventually, of course, he does.
In the process, he rides into the middle of a typical ranchers vs. farmers range war, where he impersonates a sheriff and gets cozy with the fresh-from-back-East daughter of a gunfighter-turned-farmer. Yeah, there’s a little bit of a plot here, but don’t worry. It never gets in the way of the killing.
Regan’s identity is eventually exposed by his “calling card,” his habit of shooting bad guys smack in the center of the forehead.
The dubbing, as is usually the case with these flicks, is sometimes good and sometimes horrible. The guy dubbing Regan (Anthony Steffan) sounds like he’s doing a bad Stewart Whitman impression. And the guy doing his Gabby Hayes-like deputy cackles like a lunatic.
The film’s chief drawback is it’s lack of grit. The town and all it’s inhabitants, good and bad, look clean and wholesome enough for an episode of Bonanza. Everybody’s clothes look brand new. Even the nastiest villains look like they’ve just shaved and brushed their teeth.
Near as I can tell, Steffen (a Brazilian by birth) went on to appear in at least three more films with Django in the title, and one each in the Ringo and Sabata franchises, along with many other miscellaneous oaters.
I wouldn’t mind seeing them, but I’m sure hoping they have more grit.
More Overlooked Flicks at Sweet Freedom.
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Pulp Gallery: DOC SAVAGE 4, 5 & 6 (1933)
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E.C. Comic Gallery: MOON GIRL (1947-48)
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Forgotten Books: LOVELY LADY, PITY ME by Roy Huggins (1949)
This is one of those books that's been sitting on my shelf so long it's growing hair on it. I knew it wasn't a detective novel, much less a Stu Bailey adventure, so it seemed low priority. Now that I've finally read I'm thinking, Damn. If I'd read this years ago, I could enjoying it now for the second time. Well, hey. I guess that's the breaks.
Lovely Lady, Pity Me was Roy Huggins' third and last novel, following The Double Take (1946, reviewed HERE) and Too Late For Tears (1949), another book I've neglected far too long. The 1959 paperback 77 Sunset Strip (reviewed HERE) doesn't count, because it's really three novelettes, loosely bridged to impersonate a novel.
Our hero here is John Swanney, West Coast Representative and writer for Nation's Week magazine. As the story opens, he's wanted for murder and on the run. In desperation, he drops in on his loyal co-worker Molly Royce and tells her how the hell he got into such a predicament. That story takes the first half of the book to tell.
In the flashback, we learn Swanney is estranged from his wife. They're still living in the same house, but she wants him out, and is demanding the house as a souvenir. It's a relief for him, then, when the magazine sends him to ritzy Palm Springs, to find out why the burg is on the skids. There he meets an enticing and mysterious woman he calls Ann (short for Anonymous) and begins a clandestine affair.
Trying to come to terms with his new-found knowledge, Swanny arranges one last secret meeting - and while he's having it, his wife gets murdered. He comes home, finds her dead, and has no alibi. Next thing you know the cops are hot on his trail.
This brings us back to the present, and the second half of the book is a mystery/thriller, as Swanney and friend Molly run from the law while trying to figure who really killed the wife. Huggins' prose is deliciously satisfying throughout. He's not trying to channel Raymond Chandler, as he did in The Double Take, but he still has some of that edge, mixed with a bit of James M. Cain. At one point, Swanney even jokes about his story turning in a "James Cain tank drama."
Late in the book, when Swanney opens the yellow pages and starts calling private detectives, he has a brief conversation with - you guessed it - Stu Bailey. This is great stuff!
More than ever, it's time for me to read Too Late For Tears.
More Forgotten Books at pattinase!
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LONE RANGER Comics: The Painted Covers Ride Again! (1951)
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Poster Gallery: THE CRIME DOCTOR
1943
1945
1946
Stay tuned for more adventures with The Crime Doctor!
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Art Gallery : John Carter of The Funnies (1939-40)
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More Pages to Explore .....
