Ed Gorman's Blog, page 34

Fred Blosser Reviews "Inherent Vice" from Cinema Retro

REVIEW: "INHERENT VICE" (2014) STARRING JOAQUIN PHOENIX AND JOSH BROLIN; BLU-RAY RELEASE


By Fred BlosserPaul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” drew almost uniformly positive A-list reviews on its limited theatrical release in December 2014 (to qualify for 2014 Academy Award nominations), and on its official nationwide release the following month. Not a surprise: Anderson has been a darling of critics since “Boogie Nights” (1997), and his script was based on a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon, an academically revered novelist. Box-office wasn’t so hot, though. The gross from the nationwide opening weekend was $381,000, and the total gross by the end of April only $11.1 million, just a little more than half the film’s reported budget. Observers theorized that the film was sunk by Pynchon’s perplexing, labyrinthine storyline about a pothead private eye in a Cinema Retro setting of 1970 Los Angeles. Well, maybe, but “Chinatown” (1974) was a commercial success with an equally twisty script, and Ross Macdonald, the dean of complex PI mysteries, sold well enough that he regularly made the New York Times bestseller list at the end of his career.In fact, Ross Macdonald and “Chinatown” are two strands of the movie’s DNA, along with Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” (1939) and “The Long Goodbye” (1954), the classic movies by Howard Hawks (1946) and Robert Altman (1973) that were based on the two novels, Roger Simon’s counterculture PI Moses Wine in “The Big Fix” (1973), turned into a 1978 film with Richard Dreyfuss, and arguably, the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” (1998). Mystery fans may enjoy teasing out the influences. Mainstream viewers may feel like they’ve already been there, done that. The private eye at the center of Pynchon’s story, Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), is visited at his beach shack by a former girlfriend, Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston). Shasta Fay’s sugar daddy, Mickey Wolfmann, a real estate mogul, has disappeared. Shasta Fay believes that he may have been put away against his will by his wife Sloane and Sloane’s boyfriend. She asks Doc to investigate. Doing so, the amiable, ambling PI encounters a series of high-rolling and low-life characters who seem to have little or nothing in common with each other. With a little digging, Doc begins to uncover one tenuous thread that seems to connect most of them, an association with something called “The Golden Fang.” The name may refer to a schooner used to ship dope from Southeast Asia, a criminal ring that uses the vessel, a fraternity of dentists, or a secluded sanitarium where Doc has a fleeting encounter with a spaced-out Mickey, or all of the above. With each character, the name carries a different connotation. When a cute Asian girl in a massage parlor reveals an important clue to Doc in a foggy alley, veteran mystery fans may wonder if Pynchon and Anderson are also channeling the venerable pulp trappings of Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu.Perhaps today’s moviegoers don’t read Chandler or Macdonald, or maybe attention spans have gotten shorter over the years. Like their predecessors, Pynchon and Anderson use a variety of tricks to keep viewers off-balance, principally the relentless introduction of new characters as suspects and red herrings, to the point that in one brief scene, Doc perplexedly writes all the names on a wall board and draws lines from one to the other to keep them straight. However, the ultimate unraveling of the mystery, when it arrives, seems pretty clear. For a real headscratcher, try Ross Macdonald’s “The Blue Hammer” (1976) some time.The film’s actual shortcomings lie more with Anderson than Pynchon, including inconsistent tone, uneven casting, and a decision to use a tired dramatic device as the way to relate the story -- voiceover narration by one of Doc’s other pals, trippy astrologer Sortilege (Joanna Newsom). Some critics defended Anderson’s choice as the only way that the filmmaker could feasibly spoon out chunks of information that Pynchon conveyed in his novel through the running narrative. But it seems like an easy and lazy out of a challenge that might have been surmounted in a more dramatically satisfying way with a little more thought. At that, it still leaves unexplained some prominent details that were clear in the novel but hazy in the film. For example, who is “Aunt Reet,” the eccentric elderly woman from whom Doc mines some basic intel about Mickey Wolfmann? Played by an unrecognizable Jeannie Berlin, the character actually is Doc’s aunt, as the novel explains, but she’s a puzzling cypher in the movie as she comes and goes in one brief scene. Neither are Doc’s working quarters in a medical building explained. Is he actually a physician? You have to read the novel to find out why he operates out of a medical office. I suspect that these puzzling, unexplained details were actually the main source of frustration for paying audiences, and not the mystery plot itself. Joaquin Phoenix is excellent as Doc, and Josh Brolin is amusing as his requisite cop nemesis, his performance hovering somewhere between the menacing persona of his character in “Gangster Squad” (2013) and his straight-faced send-up in “Men in Black III” (2013). In a bit perhaps inspired by “L.A. Confidential” (1997), Brolin’s character exploits the LAPD’s ties with Hollywood to land small roles in Jack Webb’s “Adam-12.” On TV, Doc watches a scene from the old show in which Brolin is digitally inserted in the background behind Martin Milner. The film’s best stunt-casting places Reese Witherspoon as Doc’s occasional playmate, Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball, and the two have the single best exchange of lines in the film:Doc: “I need something from you. I need to look at somebody’s jacket.”Penny: “That’s it? That’s no big deal. We do it all the time.”Doc: “What? You break into officially sealed records all the time?”Penny (casting a jaundiced glance): “Grow up.”The Warner Home Video Blu-ray presents the movie in high-def, richly saturated color. The special features include three trailer-style clip compilations, each focused on a specific element of the movie (paranoia, Shasta Fay, and the Golden Fang). An alternate, unused ending is included in the fourth feature, “Everything in This Dream.” It hews a little closer to the final chapter of Pynchon’s novel than the rather pedestrian finale that Anderson decided to use instead, in which Doc and Shasta Fay sorta get back together. Nevertheless, although closer, it’s still not up to Pynchon’s lyric, evocative conclusion. The package also contains a DVD version and a digital copy.CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZONPosted by Cinema Retro in DVD/Streaming Video Reviews & News on Monday, June 15. 2015

New from Stark House Press Douglas Sanderson Night of the Horns / Cry Wolfram

Douglas SandersonNight of the Horns / Cry Wolfram978-1-933586-72-4  $20.95Sanderson wrote a series of white hot thrillers in the 1950s which were published under his two pseudonyms, Martin Brett and Malcolm Douglas. But he also published a good many novels under his own name, and Stark House is proud to reprint two of them, the first a seedy tale of a Southern California lawyer whose life is ripped apart when he agrees to do a job for a racketeer, the second the story of a double-cross affair that takes place on the coast of Spain. Publisher Greg Shepard provides the introduction.
Douglas Sanderson: Pure Sweet HellBy Gregory ShepardDouglas Sanderson loved to travel. You could almost chart his travels in the books he wrote. Growing up in England, he first moved to Canada, where his first five novels were set. Then off to Europe—Yugoslavia and Spain, in particular—where he set his next four novels. Then back to Canada for one more mystery. Next, he took a trip around the States, which gave him the background for two more books. Then back to Europe again, where most of his final books were set—with the exception of one in Cuba and another in Africa—and including four novels that were published only in France. But really, it all started in Canada.Sanderson had just published his first book, Dark Passions Subdue, with Dodd, Mead and Company. It got a few good notices. Sanderson himself called it “an analysis of Puritanism in Montreal’s high society,” and that is certainly one way of looking at it. It is also a frank look at a group of gay men who jockey for the attention of an effete artist. Banned in England, the book did not sell well. But interestingly enough, the fellow whom Sanderson used as a model for his main character made him a bet that he couldn’t write a hardboiled thriller. As Sanderson paraphrased it in a 1990 interview with Lucas Soler for El Temps: “Mickey Spillane has sold 32 million copies of his books. I’ll bet you ten dollars you cannot write a thriller as he does.”The bet was on. Sanderson claimed that he had never read a tough guy thriller before, though in fact he had already published one mystery, Exit in Green, featuring a somewhat hapless main character, not at all in the Spillane mold. As the story goes, Sanderson went out to a local drugstore and did a bit of quick research in the paperback stand. He met some members of the Canadian Mounted Police. They shared stories about local drug dealers. Douglas had his hook. The result was Hot Freeze, a story of drug smuggling in Quebec. His publisher didn’t want him to use his real name because they were still trying to build a reputation around “Sanderson.” For Exit in Green he had used a name that had a family history, albeit a tricky one—Martin Brett—which he again employed for Hot Freeze.

For the “Martin Brett” anecdote, we must leave Canada and go back to England, where Ronald Douglas Sanderson was born on August 20th, 1920, in Beltinge, Kent, and grew up in a large family with three brothers (one a half-brother) and two sisters. While he was still a child, his father abandoned them, leaving his mother bring up the family. She and Douglas did not get along, two temperaments at opposite extremes.  She was the hard-headed pragmatist, he the temperamental artist. And she had a family to feed. After Père Sanderson left, a Mr. Brett began visiting the household, and after each one of his visits, there would always be more to eat in the house. So, when it came time to pick out a pseudonym for his first thriller, Sanderson chose “Martin Brett” as a way of letting his mother know that he full well knew what was going on back in Kent.   

Great Post on Andre DeToth's Day of The Outlaw

Day of the Outlaw12DEChttps://livius1.wordpress.com/categor...

This is from a site I just discovered Ride The High Country
Really fine work

For what;s it's worth this is one of my top ten westerns-nothing else quite like itRIDE THEHIGH COUNTRY:I like westerns, I like movies which could be described as chamber pieces, and I like snowy backdrops.  Day of the Outlaw  (1959), directed by Andre de Toth, checks all these boxes. It’s one of those films genre fans will enthuse about yet remains criminally underrated by others. It’s also a film where there’s not a huge amount of action; there is, however, a kind of relentless tension and a whole lot going on just below the surface. In short, the film is a sleeper, a tight and atmospheric classic just waiting to be discovered.I think one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching movies is to be found in the deceptively simple story, those tales which initially appear to be straightforward or predictable yet gradually develop into something much more complex and satisfying.  Day of the Outlaw  is a fine example of a work where layers of depth emerge bit by bit and draw you in before you’ve realized it. It opens in a wintry Wyoming town as two men, Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) and his foreman Dan (Nehemiah Persoff), ride in and bemoan the stringing of barbed wire and the consequent threat to the open range. Starrett’s blood is up and he vows a showdown with the homesteader responsible. The scene therefore is set for the kind of range war drama that’s been seen countless times. But this is a mere introduction, an opportunity to draw attention to the implacable and tough character of the lead. When it then becomes apparent that Starrett is in love with and covets the beautiful wife (Tine Louise) of his chief rival, the plot moves to another level. And still we’re only dancing around the periphery, for what really matters here is the journey – both literal and figurative – which Starrett (among others) will be forced to embark upon. In a deft piece of filmmaking sleight of hand the entire emphasis is moved away from that which the build-up has led us to expect. Just as we’re about to witness the duel between Starrett and his foe a bunch of newcomers arrive and take us off in a completely different direction. Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) is a Quantrill-like figure, a soldier with a tarnished reputation now reduced to leading a band of amoral cutthroats. Bruhn and his men are loaded down with stolen gold, but he’s got a bullet lodged inside him and the army hot on his heels. The enforced stopover in the snowbound town represents a trial of sorts for the bewildered and helpless residents, but it also holds out a kind of hope for two lost souls – Starrett and Bruhn. Both men find themselves in opposition and through that also find a way to regain a little of the humanity that years of hard living have almost stripped away.
go here for the complete article: https://livius1.wordpress.com/categor...

Edward Grainger Reviews Vixen by Bill Pronzini

Vixen  by  [image error] Bill Pronzini is the newest addition to the Nameless Detective series where a femme fatale spells more than trouble for the semi-retired P.I. (available June 23, 2015). from the criminal elementThe Nameless Detective is semi-retired which, as Vixen opens, suits him just fine. As a pulp fiction enthusiast, he prefers spending his days reading and cataloging his book collection, or maybe catching an afternoon Giants game, but above all let, he likes having others run the investigative agency that he built. Of course, fans who have been following Nameless since his debut novel in 1971 know this idyllic existence won’t last long. And, thankfully, one of the most diabolical femme fatales in a long time— Cory Beckett—hires him to find her brother, Kenny. Bill Pronzini’s description is classic and yet seemingly fresh all at once:
But what you noticed first, and remembered most vividly, was her luminous gray green eyes. They had a powerful magnetic quality; I could feel the pull of them, like being drawn into dark, calm water. It was only when you got to know who and what she was that you realized the calm surface was a lie, that underneath there weren’t only smoldering sexual fires but riptides and whirlpools and hungry darting things with razor-sharp teeth.
Kenny was charged with stealing a $20,000 necklace from the wife of a wealthy and well-connected yachtsman named Andrew Vorhees. Cory says she wants to locate him before Kenny’s lawyer and the authorities discover he violated the agreement of his bail. Helping our main protagonist (and doing a healthy amount of the leg work) is Jake Runyon, another P.I. from Nameless’s agency, (a continuing strength is the author has enough robust supporting characters that zipping between them from chapter to chapter works like clockwork) who picks up Kenny’s trail near Port Sonoma marina. After the young man tries to make a break for it and Runyon captures him, the terrified skip-trace tells a whopper of a story.

He claims the owner of the necklace, Mrs. Margaret Vorhees, wanted to incriminate her sister, Cory, with stealing the jewelry, but Cory heard of her plan and managed to arrange for the item to be found in Kenny’s possession instead. Cory was able to detour Vorhees’ plan because she is sleeping with a man named Frank Chaleen who Mrs. Vorhees arranged to plant the incriminating evidence. Still with me? Hope so, because it is a marvelously inspired plot that asks so many demanding questions like why would Cory want her brother, who she has taken care of since her mom died, take the fall? Despite all her flaws, she seems to sincerely care for him or at least did at one time. How could her plan benefit them? Adding to the jumble it appears that Chaleen had an earlier affair with Mrs. Vorhees.

Events take a deadlier turn when Kenny finds a gun Cory has stashed away and overhears her plotting on the phone. It unnerves him enough that he relays it to Jake Runyon who he has begun to trust.Runyon said, “Tell me exactly what your sister said on the phone. Everything you can remember.”“ ‘Bitch deserves it for what she did.’ ” That mimicking falsetto again. “ ‘Be careful, darling, no mistakes. So much at stake for both of us once she’s out of the way.’ ”“Who did she mean by ‘bitch’?”“Mrs. Vorhees.”“Mentioned her by name?”“No, but I know that’s who she meant.”

Vixen continues to expand character development, suspense, and offers plenty of unexpected twists. If you thought General Sternwood was running a household of lunacy in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, then you are in for a 21st Century update on family values run amok. Or better. Yeah, I said it. Vixen by Bill Pronzini outshines that earlier classic by at least one fedora. Don’t believe me? Strip away the nostalgia we hold for all things Marlowe and read both books back to back and Vixen will sparkle brighter, just like Mrs. Vorhees’ gleaming necklace.

Brothers by Ed Gorman and Rich Chizmar Review Copies Available

      Facebook      Paul Fry tagged you in a post.    Paul FryJune 18 at 11:05amWe have PDF review copies for Ed Gorman's & Richard Chizmar's BROTHERS and for all of SST's other titles available if anyone is interested.

All we ask in return is that you please post a fair & honest review (on your review site or blog, or on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or on Goodreads etc.)

If you are interested please email me with the name of the title you'd like to review at paulfry@sstpublications.co.ukYou can now tag your friends in your status or post. Type @ and then type the friend's name. For example: "Had lunch with @John Smith."Learn more about tagging on Facebook.

What a Deal!

What a Deal! [image error]






What a deal!  20 novels for Kindle for under $3.00!  If you haven't bought this collection before, now's the time.

A Murder of Mysteries: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Mystery and Suspense - Kindle edition by Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, William Bayer, Robert J. Randisi, T.J. MacGregor, Bill Pronzini, Dave Pedneau, David Niall Wilson, Patricia Lee Macomber, Raymond Benson. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

A great one from Max Allan Collins: Mid-Year Movie Wrap-Up

Mid-Year Movie Wrap-UpJune 16th, 2015 by Max Allan Collins
I haven’t written as much about movies this year as in previous ones. That’s in part because Barb and I haven’t been going quite as much, having been burned too many times. But some of you enjoy my opinions on film, which this time I have lazily reduced into this look at most of the films we’ve seen in the first half of 2015.
MOVIES WE WALKED OUT ON:
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
THE AGE OF ADALINE
MOVIES WE SHOULD HAVE WALKED OUT ON:
TAKEN 3
RUN ALL NIGHT
INTERESTING INDIES:
EX MACHINA
IT FOLLOWS
MOVIES THAT WERE BETTER THAN THEY HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE:
McFARLAND USA
FURIOUS 7
JURASSIC WORLD
MOVIES THAT WERE WORSE THAN THEY HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE:
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
JUPITER ASCENDING
(Nate disagrees on both of these)
MOVIES THAT SHOULD HAVE SUCKED BUT DIDN’T:
POLTERGEIST
SAN ANDREAS
MOVIES I HATE THAT I WILL NEVER SEE:
MORTDECAI
PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2
HOT PURSUIT
ALOHA
BEST ACTION MOVIE IN YEARS:
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
BEST COMEDY IN YEARS:
SPY
* * *Here’s an advance look (sans type) of the cover by Stephen Gardner for the upcoming Dover reprint of A KILLING IN COMICS. Nicely moody, I think. Very happy to have the first two Jack and Maggie Starr’s back out.
Along those lines, here’s a short but sweet write-up on the reprint from Dover of STRIP FOR MURDER.
And check out this interesting piece on why the DICK TRACY movie didn’t get a sequel (yet), touching on my novelization and the two follow-up novels.
M.A.C.

From Pulp Serenade -- Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks

"Cruel Poetry" by Vicki Hendricks (Seprent's Tail, 2007)


Cullen Gallagher:
Vicki Hendricks’ earlier novels excelled at capturing single protagonists caught in insatiable and increasingly tightening vices. The protagonists of Miami Purity, Iguana Love, Voluntary Madness and Sky Blues all wanted a euphoric kick to jumpstart their dull lives—and they got it tenfold. With open arms, they welcomed sex, thrills, danger, and murder. Hendricks’ fifth novel, the Edgar-nominated Cruel Poetry, stands amongst her most sophisticated and complex works to date. Hendricks has expanded her view to encompass three narrators whose lives, desires, and crimes are intertwined into a thick knot of noir that can’t be undone.

Renata is what she calls a “pleasure enabler.” Residing in the Tropic Moons Hotel on Miami Beach, Renata lives on a steady stream of sex. Some are lovers, some are clients. It seems to make little difference to Renata. Among her clients is Richard, a married poetry professor whose addiction to Renata is jeopardizing his family and career. Next door to Renata is Julie, a young aspiring writer who listens through the wall and writes about what she hears. She, too, develops an obsession with Renata, and will do anything to protect her, even murder. Soon this trio finds themselves dodging cops, private eyes, drug dealers, jealous lovers, and even hungry, man-eating gators.

The plot set-up may sound typical, but once the story is in motion, Hendricks steps away from the beaten path and goes into some very unusual directions. It would be criminal to spoil the twists that Hendricks has in store for readers, but those are even hardly the best parts of the book. As the title indicates, there’s a larger effect at work in Cruel Poetry (a title which, by the way, would befit any of Hendricks’ other novels). The real mystery is how long will they last before their decadence lead them to irreversible self-destruction. It’s not the path that’s so gripping as the people on the path. Hendricks has crafted her richest cast yet, and by expanding the narrative to include three narrators and about a half-dozen strong supporting characters she’s also created her most engrossing and dramatic narrative.
Renata is anything but your ordinary femme fatale. (In fact, I wouldn’t apply this tag to her at all, as she turns out to be the least deadly of the bunch.) Hendricks imbues Renata with an unusual and compelling psychological make-up. Unlike her many companions, Renata does not live for pleasure: she lives to give pleasure. The absence of this key drive (which was crucial to so many of Hendricks’ previous books) takes the character in many surprising directions, and shows how Hendricks continues to push the traditions of noir into new territories and puts her distinctive mark on the genre.

From the very start of Cruel Poetry, Renata tells both Julie and Richard, “I’m a bad influence. I don’t love anybody.” Throughout the novel, she repeats this sentiment in any number of variations: “I’m not worth it” and “I’ll hurt you. I don’t know how to love anybody, any one person.” Renata is graced with an uncanny self-knowledge that reminds of Gloria Grahame. In movies like The Big Heat and Human Desire, Gloria stands alone in her understanding of how the world works, the path she is on, and how badly she will probably end up. Julie and Richard suffer from a classic case of “noir blindness,” in which the truth is right in front of them the whole time, not that they care to pay attention to it. As Rival Schools sing in their song “Shot After Shot,” “Love doesn't know anything / Only believes when it believes / Our thoughts don't know anything.” Julie and Richard’s quest for love leads to oblivion and obliteration. They want control not companionship, and their fantasies are defined by prisons rather than pleasures. They each only see themselves and Renata: there is nothing beyond the two of them. (This should be a clear indication that their dreams could never be realized. Chalk it up again to “noir blindness” that this lack of any rational future doesn’t ring any warning bells for anyone except for Renata.)

There’s something tragic about Renata’s honesty—she never deceives anybody, and yet nearly every character in the book tries to manipulate her in one way or another: through love, sex, murder, blackmail, promises of grandeur that could never be fulfilled. This makes Renata’s devotion to her “intimates” all the more sincere and, in a way, pathological. In a world as corrupt and duplicitous as noir, Renata is a rare symbol of virtue, a perfect embodiment of that contradictory “Miami Purity” (to allude to Hendricks’ earlier novel).

Julie and Richard—along with their predecessors in Miami Purity, Iguana Love and Sky Blues—are dreamers. They may also be delusional, self-centered, and unrealistic. Ok, yes, they’re all of those things, but they’re also driven by very normal desires of fulfillment, excitement, and companionship (sometimes love, sometimes just sex). Renata, on the other hand, is not a dreamer. She lives permanently in the now. Her talent for pleasure can be partially explained by this focused concentration on each individual moment, living it to the fullest without fear of consequence. She’s a pragmatist, and therefore the only one of her bunch capable of dealing with the problems that they put forth upon her. A dead body? She knows what to do. Pissed off drug dealers wanting more money? No problem. No money to give them? Even less of a problem. It’s no wonder that Julie and Richard are dependent on Renata. Though they both long to take her away and care for her like a lost child, more often than not they are the ones in need of Renata’s parenting. And as someone professionally skilled in both comfort and discipline, Renata can play the parts of both mother and father.

Renata’s absence of dreams, however, is a double-edged sword There’s a nihilistic impulse to her actions, an admission that her choices are ultimately meaningless and that tomorrow isn’t worth living for—only today is. We also see this same desire for oblivion in the skydiving of Sky Blues and the scuba diving of Iguana Love. In those previous books, the characters achieved it through complete sublimation into sensation—the ripping wind of a freefall, the liquid touch of the water. Cruel Poetry is Hendricks’ most bodily narrative yet. She’s never shied away from eroticism in her work, but in Cruel Poetry there’s something unusually intense about physical contact, even when they have their clothes on. (Renata’s are usually off, but Julie is rather reluctant to act on her feelings and jump out of her pants.)

Hendricks has been compared with James M. Cain, particularly his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice with its doomed trajectory from desire to death. At first glance, Renata’s declaration, “We’ll figure something out. We’re together in this,” reminds of the iconic line from Double Indemnity: “Straight down the line.” A closer examination, however, shows the dialogue to be quite different. Hendricks is able to innovatively rework noir traditions into something very much her own. There’s something selfish and self-destructive about the lovers of Double Indemnity: if one is going down, so is the other. On the contrary, there is something decidedly selfless about Renata. She’s right that she doesn’t love anyone, but she’s one of the most faithful and giving characters I’ve encountered in noir. She doesn’t bring down those around her; she holds them up while they try to drag her down. Her strength, acumen, and insight into human weakness (even her own), is to be admired. With Renata, Hendricks has crafted an original and haunting character that defies stereotype and breaks the mould.

Cruel Poetry unfolds in a rapturous haze of pleasure and paranoia. This sordid Miami noir is infectious, delirious, and totally gripping.
You might also like:


"Iguana Love" by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail, 1999)

"Sky Blues" by Vicki Hendricks (Minotaur, 2002) "Florida Gothic Stories" by Vicki Hendricks (Kitsune Books, ...

Now Available: Sapphires Aren't Forever - Christine Matthews

(From James Reasoner's blog)A random act of violence sets the stage for SAPPHIRES AREN’T FOREVER, a chilling novel of mystery and suspense, as one woman faces an unseen adversary…and an unforeseen future. Chloe Weber, once a promising law student, still can’t remember the details of the crime that stole one of her best friends’ lives…and forever changed hers. Fearful of the big city dangers in Chicago, she finds refuge in Endo, a small “artsy” town found along the northern shores of Lake Michigan. A wannabe jewelry designer, Chloe meets a kindred spirit in Dinah, who helps her get settled. But all the while, the mystery of what happened to Chloe and her friends is heightened when the second of the victims is found murdered. Chloe realizes she’ll never be at peace until she takes matters into her own hands—despite the protests of her cop-boyfriend--and unravels the startling reason behind the vicious attacks.

Posted by James Reasoner at 7:19 PM No comments:  Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels: Christine Matthews, mystery fiction

ABC's The Movie of The Week

ABC's The Movie of the Week

Ed here: I watched a lot of these. They aired at a time when I was cleaning up from a fourteen year run of alcohol and drugs. I watched a lot of TV n those TV. They were a form of comfort food for me, even the cheesier ones. One of the great ones was "Dr. Cook's Garden" a failed Ira Levin stage play redeemed here by a great script and an amazing dark performance by no less than Bing Crosby. Many of them were solid entertainments and "Duel" was of course a small masterpiece. 

from that most excellent site http://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com


Made-for-TV movies eventually got a bad rap, which explains why they pretty much faded from network television in the 1990s. But I still fondly recall what I call the "Golden Age of the TV Movie": the early 1970s when ABC began broadcasting its Movie of the Week.


Every Tuesday night, ABC introduced a world premiere telefilm in a ninety-minute time slot (about 72 minutes without commercials). The success of the series can be attributed, in part, to the variety of its films: suspense (The Longest Night), horror ( The Night Stalker ), science fiction (Night Slaves), World War II action (Death Race), comedy (The Daughters of Joshua Cabe), Western (The Hanged Man), serious drama (That Certain Summer), film noir (Goodnight, My Love) and even kung fu (Men of the Dragon). Many of the telefilms were also pilots for TV series--some of which made it as regular series (The Six Million Dollar Man) and some that didn’t (The Monk with George Maharis as a private eye).Several films earned critical plaudits, such as Brian's Song, Duel, That Certain Summer, Tribes, and The Point. Occasionally, one would be released theatrically in either in the U.S. or Europe--often with additional footage--after its TV broadcast. That was the case with Steven Spielberg's suspenseful chase drama Dueland The Sex Symbol with Connie Stevens playing an actress loosely inspired by Marilyn Monroe.
I'm always surprised by how many of the ABC Movie of Week telefilms are fondly remembered by fellow film buffs. For example, people may not remember the title of Trilogy of Terror--but mention the creepy TV movie with Karen Black about the killer doll and a lot of folks will know it.
The original Movie of the Week debuted on Tuesday night in 1969. It was so successful that ABC launched a Movie of the Weekend, which subsequently shifted to mid-week so there were Tuesday and Wednesday Movies of the Week installments. The final Movie of the Week was broadcast in 1976.

The catchy theme to the Movie of the Week opening was written by Burt Bacharach. Its actual title is "Nikki," named after Burt's daughter with Angie Dickinson. Click on the clip below to view the full opening for When Michael Calls, a thriller with Ben Gazzara, Elizabeth Ashley, and Michal Douglas. At the end of the clip is preview for the following week's movie, The Screaming Woman, starring Olivia de Havilland. Unfortunately, the video quality doesn't do justice to the bright, colorful graphics.


In terms of originality, the only network that competed with ABC was CBS, which launched CBS Tuesday Night Movie in 1972. It sent speeding helicopters (Birds of Prey), ancient evil Druids (The Horror at 37,000 Feet), and, most memorably, Gargoyles to battle its TV-movie rival at ABC.

Crosby as Dr. Cook.Sadly, only a handful of these films are available on DVD (and even then, the prints are usually inferior in quality). I’d love to see TCM get the rights to the Movie of the Week. It’d be great to see Bing Crosby in Dr. Cook’s Garden again and see if the film as good as I remember.
Below is a sampling of the telefilms that played on The Movie of the Week (to include the Tuesday and Wednesay editions and The Movie of the Weekend on Saturday). Note that several movies featured performers from the classic film era:


Seven in Darkness (1969)Daughter of the Mind (1969) with Gene Tierney & Ray MillandGidget Grows Up (1969) Honeymoon with a Stranger (1969) The Over-the-Hill Gang (1969) with Walter Brennan & Andy DevineThe Ballad of Andy Crocker (1969) The Immortal (1969) Wake Me When the War Is Over (1969) Along Came a Spider (1970) Carter's Army (1970) Crowhaven Farm (1970) How Awful about Allan (1970) with Anthony Perkins & Julie HarrisNight Slaves (1970) 
The Over the Hill Gang Rides Again with Walter Brennan & Fred AstaireRun, Simon, Run (1970) The Love War (1970) Tribes (1970) Brian's Song (1971) Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate (1971) with Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Sylvia SidneyDr. Cook's Garden (1971) Duel (1971) In Broad Daylight (1971) In Search of America (1971) Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971) The Birdmen (1971) The Devil and Miss Sarah (1971) The Feminist and the Fuzz (1971) The Point! (1971) The Reluctant Heroes (1971) A Great American Tragedy (1972) Goodnight, My Love (1972) Moon of the Wolf (1972) That Certain Summer (1972) The Astronaut (1972) The Daughters of Joshua Cabe (1972) with Buddy Ebsen & Sandra DeeThe Longest Night (1972) 
Madame Sin (1972) with Bette Davis & Robert WagnerThe People (1972) The Screaming Woman (1972) with Olivia de HavillandWomen in Chains (1972)  A Cold Night's Death  (1973) A Summer Without Boys (1973) Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) Female Artillery (1973) Go Ask Alice (1973) Isn't It Shocking? (1973) Satan's School for Girls (1973) Shirts/Skins (1973) The Girl Most Likely to... (1973) The Girls of Huntington House (1973) The Man Without a Country (1973) with Cliff RobertsonThe Night Strangler (1973) The Third Girl from the Left (1973) Get Christie Love! (1974) Hit Lady (1974) Houston, We've Got a Problem (1974) Killdozer (1974) Locusts (1974) The Mark of Zorro (1974) The Morning After (1974) Thursday's Game (1974) Winter Kill (1974)Posted by Rick29 at 11:28 PM 16 comments 
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Labels: dr. cook's garden, duel, movie of the week, rick29 (author),trilogy of terror
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