Ed Gorman's Blog, page 9

Black Static #49 Now on SaleSunday, January 10th, 20...

Black Static #49 Now on SaleSunday, January 10th, 2016 | Posted by John ONeill
(Ed here: Thanks always to John ONeill and his great site BLACK GATE)  I’m hearing reliable reports that Black Static #49, published in Britain and shipped across the pond to eager readers here in America, is now available around the country.Issue #49 is cover-dated November/December, and contains six stories:

“Dirt Land” by Ralph Robert Moore
“Going To The Sun Mountain” by Thana Niveau
“The Toilet” by Stephen Hargadon
“Gramma Tells A Story” by Erinn L. Kemper
“The Ice Plague” by Tim Lees
“The Climb” by Simon Bestwick

The magazine’s regular columns include Coffinmaker’s Blues by Stephen Volk and Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker, plus two review columns: Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); and Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews). Their review columns are a model for anyone who wants to see how to do attractive magazine layout, with plenty of book covers, movie stills, and behind-the-scenes pics.Issue 49 is nearly 100 pages and comes packed with new dark fantasy and horror, and top-notch art. Black Static is the sister magazine of Interzone (see the latest issue here); both are published by TTA Press in the UK. The distinguished Andy Cox is the editor of both.The cover art, “Do Not Feed The Animal,” is by 2015 cover artist Martin Hanford.As usual, the magazine is filled with eye-catching b&w art. Black Static is consistently one of the sharpest looking magazines on the racks. Here’s the opening spread for Ralph Robert Moore’s “Dirt Land,” illustrated by Ben Baldwin. And “Going To The Sun Mountain” by Thana Niveau, illustrated by Vincent Sammy. And “The Ice Plague” by Tim Lees. Finally, here’s a glimpse at Tony Lee’s Blood Spectrum DVD/Blu-ray review column. See more details and excerpts from issue 49 at the TTA website.Black Static is edited by Andy Cox, and published by TTA Press. Issue #49 is cover-dated November/December 2015. It is 96 pages, priced at £4.99. Copies are usually around $9.99 here in the US. A six-issue subscription is £27 (UK) and £33 in the US. Order right from the TTA Press website.We last covered Black Static with issue #48

Gravetapping Now Available: "Truth Always Kills" by Rick Ollerman

GravetappingStark House Press’s latest original novel is now available in very attractive trade paperback and ebook versions. Its title is Truth Always Kills, and its author is Rick Ollerman. Rick is the king of the Introduction at Stark House—a vocation he has mastered—and his fiction is no less intriguing. 
I was given the opportunity to write the Introduction for Truth Always Kills, which was daunting since there was little chance I could introduce Mr. Ollerman’s work as well as he introduces the work of others. I gave it my best go, but it pales in comparison to the novel. A novel that is half parts suspense and crime, and very good.
Truth Always Kills can be purchased directly from Stark House’s website, or at Amazon—here is the trade edition, and here is the ebook.

The story of my novel NIGHTMARE CHILD

NOW AVAILABLE FROM CROSSROADS e books for $2.99
"NIGHTMARE CHILD is a bit different from any of Gorman's other horror works in that it has this off-center sense of humor that reminded me a great deal of Donald Westlake's writing style. Both display the ability to make readers sympathize with the dumbest of would-be villains, no matter how heinous their crimes."Allen Richards on Facebook
"The suspense builds and builds as the mysterious events surrounding Jenny unfold toward a perfect climax. At that point the short novel could easily have concluded, but instead Daniel Ransom goes ahead and takes it one step further with a final segment that really sets the overall horror of situation in stone. It was a perfect ending I didn’t see coming, though looking back, I now realize it was hinted at over and over again with several tiny well placed clues. More important it was a story and ending that makes me want to read everything else this author has written."William Malmborg on Facebook f
Ed here:
   Since I grew up on science fiction, fantasy and horror, it was only natural that when I began to sell novels I'd turn to those fields as markets. If nothing else I was certainly familiar with all the tropes.
   Looking back on those years I have to say there were some real highs and lows. The highs included winning an International Horror Writers Award (previous winners Stephen King and Richard Matheson) and the lows writing two novels so bad I won't have copies of  them in my house and refuse to discuss them when anyone deranged brings them up. They truly and profoundly embarrass me.    Last week on Facebook some readers began talking about one of the horror novels I wrote as "Daniel Ransom." Titled NIGHTMARE CHILD (not my title) it came and went faster than Jeb Bush's Presidential popularity. I recall that it got a few good reviews before it vaporized but it has hung on over the same years that have seen most of the other Ransoms go horror writer heaven.   I don't remember now what I had planned for the book (I'm not much of an outliner) but whatever it was did not appear anywhere in the first ten or so pages I typed out. In those days you got three even four book contracts for paperback originals because the market was expanding so quickly. Nightmare was the last book of three and frankly the first two, hard as I worked to make them otherwise, were not any different from dozens of others being published all over the world thanks to the success of Mr. King.    But something happened when I started to write this one. Without planning to I created two despicable people I knew nothing about. But they were, in some horrendous terrible unforgivable way, endearingly despicable. And I just followed them all the way through the book. There were decent people in the novel to be sure but what gave the book its originality was the black comic moments of the villains. I was even able to work in a scene about one of the ad agencies where I had worked--in The Hump Room as it was known, where some employees got to know each other better during the day. Take that Mad Men.   Judging by my mail over the years it's also effective as a ghost story, something else I hadn't planned on when I sat down to write it. I think if you like either mystery or horror you'll enjoy NIGHTMARE CHILD. It's not a masterpiece for the ages by any means but I do think it's a good read with a married couple straight out of Alfred Hitchcock's nightmares.

Leigh Brackett

      Ed here: I grew up on Leigh Brackett novels and stories. Since she worked in so many genres  there was always plenty to read. Writers from Michael Connelly, James Sallis and Michael Moorcock have all praised her work. Here are excerpts from an extraordinary profile of Brackett and her husband the science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton. This is a great piece.Leigh Brackett:
Much More Than the Queen of Space Opera!by Bertil Falkpart 1 of 2http://www.bewilderingstories.com/iss...
I had come to interview Edmond Hamilton and slept one night in Leigh Brackett’s study, a small house besides the main building. After interviewing Ed, I also took the opportunity to interview Leigh Brackett, then a writer I had not read, except for a short Mercury story published in Swedish in 1941, though I had seen The Big Sleep. So I asked her about that period of her life.

“I was young and curious and was at the studio all the time during the shooting. One day Humphrey Bogart came over to me with a manuscript and asked if I had written the cues. I said no and he said, ‘They cannot be said’. You see, William Faulkner wrote wonderful Faulkner dialogues, but they were not written to be uttered. Faulkner went down in history as the screenwriter whose every single line was rewritten in Hollywood.”

“I was young and curious and was at the studio all the time during the shooting. One day Humphrey Bogart came over to me with a manuscript and asked if I had written the cues. I said no and he said, ‘They cannot be said’. You see, William Faulkner wrote wonderful Faulkner dialogues, but they were not written to be uttered. Faulkner went down in history as the screenwriter whose every single line was rewritten in Hollywood.”

                                          Later on, I got to know that Howard Hawks himself sat by ringside during the shooting and rewrote Faulkner’s lines more or less like the way a student’s essay is critiqued. Raymond Chandler visited the studio and was very pleased with the job Leigh Brackett had done. But a craft-union strike hit the movie business in the summer of 1946. No more script-writing jobs were available. Leigh Brackett went back to writing her space opera stories. And that is the way it was to be. She took on many assignments of different kinds over the years, but when done, she always returned to her space opera adventures.
Edmond Hamilton admired the ease with which his wife moved, in his own words:“from one kind of fiction to a completely different kind. In eighteen months, in 1956-57, she wrote not onlyThe Long Tomorrow but also two novels of crime and suspense, The Tiger Among Us, which became an Alan Ladd movie, and An Eye for an Eye, which formed the pilot for the “Markham” series on television. At the end of that period, she returned to Hollywood and to her old producer Howard Hawks, to write Rio Bravo, the first of a series of John Wayne action epics she wrote.”

Thinking of you, Al--Max Allan Collins

Heart-FeltJanuary 5th, 2016 by Max Allan Collins
I have mentioned in passing some health issues I’ve been dealing with, and perhaps I’ve even been a little coy about it. It’s not been my intention to burden my friends and readers (not mutually exclusive categories) with a boring account of what we’ve been dealing with. I say “we” because Barb has been at my side throughout, as you might imagine, but your imagination cannot do justice to just how fantastic she’s been.
I’m going to make this brief, because even if you’re concerned – and if so, thank you – you shouldn’t have to be bored with the details of somebody else’s health problems. Still, I’m a novelist, so this will most likely go into the situation in more depth than I should.
We’ve been dealing with this for a good eight months. I first got sick (somewhat ironically) when we visited the set of QUARRY in New Orleans late last May. The path has been torturous and frustrating, as it took a while to get this diagnosed, and it really shouldn’t have been. The roughest patch was a period of three weeks when I couldn’t sleep – couldn’t find a position that was comfortable enough – and for that period, I was getting maybe an hour a night.
The problem is a heart valve that needs replacing. There’s also a bypass, and before any of that can happen, I need to get one of my carotid arteries unclogged. The latter appears to be a fairly routine procedure. Open-heart surgery, however, is rather more sobering. But I have top-notch surgeons for both operations, and I feel confident I’ll be back at the old stand before too long.
This has stretched out maddeningly because when the condition was discovered, I was already in pretty bad shape. I needed to get myself back in shape, which consisted of medication and a few preliminary procedures (i.e., getting a jump start to correct an irregular heartbeat that had presented itself). For frustrating reasons (but good ones), I’ve had this surgery postponed on me something like eight times. In fact, Barb wishes I weren’t writing this, because that could happen again.
But right now the plan is for me to go in for the first of the two surgeries on Monday, January 4 (tomorrow, as I write this). And the heart surgery is set for January 5. If you are one of those loyal souls who check out this update the moment it appears each Tuesday morning, it’s likely I’ll be in the operating room as you read this.
There’s a chance – I honestly think not much of one – that my heart surgeon may postpone again, if he thinks I need more time to recover from the first procedure. If that’s the case, my son Nate will update this. He will also post updates on my status here and on Facebook in the several days following the procedures.
[Update from Nate: (Monday Jan. 4, 10 PM) Dad did have a minor complication after the first, successful procedure, and the docs are erring on the side of caution by (again) postponing the second surgery until some time next week. He is doing well and should be back home Tuesday to begin recuperating for the main event.]
You are welcome to post encouragement here and on Facebook, but I held this back so things wouldn’t get out of hand. I also accept prayers and positive thoughts and cash money.
The heart valve/bypass procedures will be followed by some rough weeks of recuperation – the first several, obviously, the most challenging. My next novel deadline isn’t till April 1 (no fooling), so I intend to take my first protracted “vacation” from writing in, well, as long as I can remember. I have been healthy as a horse my whole life (I was asked if I’d ever had surgery before, and I said, “Just my birth”) so there’s no precedent. Before you feel too sorry for me, know that I will be watching a lot of Blu-rays and reading a good number of the books that have piled up around here, and will be given even better treatment than usual by my lovely wife.
It’s possible I may get back to work sooner than the projected six weeks. I’m proud of myself that during this nasty period, I still wrote two episodic TV episodes (one of them for QUARRY) and the Mike Hammer novel, MURDER NEVER KNOCKS. And you may have already realized that I never missed one of these weekly updates.
Okay, we all know what’s important here – these weekly updates. I am going to write another three updates, in advance, dealing with forthcoming books. At that point, I am hopeful that I will be back doing this.
I am told I am “low risk.” Like anybody, I don’t hear the “low,” just the “risk.” So without getting too sentimental (or for that matter pessimistic) about it, I want to give all of you my heart-felt thanks. This has been a great career, and it will continue to be.
* * *

Forgotten Books Gravetapping BREAKFAST AT WIMBLEDON by Jack M. Bickham

GravetappingBreakfast at Wimbledon is the fourth novel featuring aging tennis pro Brad Smith. It was published in 1991 by Tor, and it has a certain nostalgia for me since it was the first Brad Smith, and Jack Bickham, novel I read back in the long ago. It is also pretty good, and represents Brad Smith’s transition from cold war to post-cold war hero.
Brad is uneasy when his old pal and CIA contact Collie Davis makes an unannounced appearance at his Bitterroot Valley Resort—
“Collie Davis did not make casual visits.”
—with good reason, as it turns out. Collie wants Brad to accept an invitation to play at Wimbledon. A legitimate terrorist threat has been identified, and it centers around a young Irish tennis star named Sean Cork. Brad’s job: play tennis, ingratiate himself with Sean Cork, and collect information. All very hands-off with no expected direct danger. Unsurprisingly, it is more complicated than it is supposed to be, and the danger is very real, and very personal, to Brad.
This is one of my favorite of the Brad Smith novels, and for more reasons than mere nostalgia. It brings something new to the series—terrorists rather than communists—without losing the atmosphere and tone of the previous novels. It helps that Brad’s Soviet nemesis Sylvester remains a key player, and it includes more tennis action than any of the novels since Tiebreaker, which is good since Mr. Bickham writes it so well. It is the longest, and includes the largest cast, of any of the novels. There is a drug crazy American tennis star playing doubles with Brad, an Irish entrepreneur millionaire with a taste for both money and tennis, the very naïve Sean Cork, and a bunch of terrorists that run the gamut in both sophistication and psychopathy.
The most interesting character is an MI5 agent named Clarence Tune. Tune is assigned to liaise with Brad, and keep him safe, which is telling on the perceived importance—or lack thereof—of Smith’s mission. Tune is not given high priority or sensitive assignments, and he is considered less an agent and more a liability by his peers. His character is summed early by Brad—
“Science has not told me so, but I think there must be some other substance excreted by people whose lives have been marked by failure. Such people emit a sour, acidic smell, the work of a few molecules, perhaps, and so primitive that it communicates on a psychic level I cannot understand.”
—if only partially accurate since Tune’s presence, and assistance, is essential to defeating the underlying terrorist plot. A plot that is not made clear until the final pages of the novel. The action is plausible, and the pacing is superb. It has the highest level of characterization of all the novels, and—despite an aged plot—is as readable today as it was 25 years ago. You are subscribed to email updates from Gravetapping.
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Cut Me In-The Collins/Crews/Collins/McBain Connection

      As I've mentioned here before I was never able to finish writing a novel until my good friend Max Allan Collins allowed to read his books in manuscript.  Seeing them in typescript was a less intimidating way of trying to comprehend what made them work. I filled most of a notebook with my observations and scenes that I'd Xeroxed.
     This was back in the very early 80s. Around that time I also happened to read a piece by the late Harry Crews about how, in order to comprehend a novel for himself, he read a Graham Greene book and then outlined it not only by storyline but by how many characters were in it, what purpose they served, theme, scenes that worked particularly well, etc. I'd done the same thing with (Al) Max's books but not in such an organized fashioned.
     Enter Collins number two.
     I was at a large library used book sale one September afternoon during this same period and found a mint condition copy of a hardcover mystery novel titled CUT ME IN by one Hunt Collins.       
    Now as I reader of science fiction from 1952 or thereabouts I recognized the name immediately. (I was no dummy; wasn't I in the Cosmic Space Club along with two guys named Bill Crider and Roger Ebert?) Ed McBain/Evan Hunter was Hunt Collins. I bought the book and gave it the Crews treatment.  I outlined the hell out of it.
    Enter McBain. Or rather, enter Charles Ardai and Hard Case Publishing.    


 Cut Me In -- Ed McBain










    Yep, it's now where it belongs. With a great
 Robert McGinnis cover and under the name that became even more famous than Evan Hunter.
   Essentially, it's a work novel. Josh Blake 
is a literary agent who works for an agency 
that bears resemblance to the late 
unlamented and notorious Scott 
Meredith Agency (yes, the one where 
Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake 
and Barry Malzberg Salzburg all 
worked at--see Mystery Scene website 
for some of Block's memories).
    The agency stuff is a lot of fun and the 
story is pure 50s. Who knew there 
were so many fabulous willing babes and 
so many potential killers as Blake 
discovers following the murder of hishis partner in the place?
    I enjoyed the hell out of it not 
because it's a masterpiece but because 
it is one of those books that remind me 
of where so many writers of my generation, 
certainly me, came from. And the `50s 
ambience if just right.
     For one thing those Jack Webb 
"Dragnet" dialogue patterns that Hunter 
was to make his own are here on full display. 
And Blake is such a solid take on the 
post-war hardboiled heroes. He is a 
lot like the protagonists of such 
novels as THE MAN IN THE 
GREY FLANNEL SUIT--troubled, 
uncertain, angry. Except of course 
the Madison Avenue men didn't 
run about solving murders. They were too
busy playing Mad Men. 
    You'll enjoy this novel as 
much as I did.

Heart-Felt January 5th, 2016 by Max Allan Collins

Heart-FeltJanuary 5th, 2016 by Max Allan Collins
I have mentioned in passing some health issues I’ve been dealing with, and perhaps I’ve even been a little coy about it. It’s not been my intention to burden my friends and readers (not mutually exclusive categories) with a boring account of what we’ve been dealing with. I say “we” because Barb has been at my side throughout, as you might imagine, but your imagination cannot do justice to just how fantastic she’s been.
I’m going to make this brief, because even if you’re concerned – and if so, thank you – you shouldn’t have to be bored with the details of somebody else’s health problems. Still, I’m a novelist, so this will most likely go into the situation in more depth than I should.
We’ve been dealing with this for a good eight months. I first got sick (somewhat ironically) when we visited the set of QUARRY in New Orleans late last May. The path has been torturous and frustrating, as it took a while to get this diagnosed, and it really shouldn’t have been. The roughest patch was a period of three weeks when I couldn’t sleep – couldn’t find a position that was comfortable enough – and for that period, I was getting maybe an hour a night.
The problem is a heart valve that needs replacing. There’s also a bypass, and before any of that can happen, I need to get one of my carotid arteries unclogged. The latter appears to be a fairly routine procedure. Open-heart surgery, however, is rather more sobering. But I have top-notch surgeons for both operations, and I feel confident I’ll be back at the old stand before too long.
This has stretched out maddeningly because when the condition was discovered, I was already in pretty bad shape. I needed to get myself back in shape, which consisted of medication and a few preliminary procedures (i.e., getting a jump start to correct an irregular heartbeat that had presented itself). For frustrating reasons (but good ones), I’ve had this surgery postponed on me something like eight times. In fact, Barb wishes I weren’t writing this, because that could happen again.
But right now the plan is for me to go in for the first of the two surgeries on Monday, January 4 (tomorrow, as I write this). And the heart surgery is set for January 5. If you are one of those loyal souls who check out this update the moment it appears each Tuesday morning, it’s likely I’ll be in the operating room as you read this.
There’s a chance – I honestly think not much of one – that my heart surgeon may postpone again, if he thinks I need more time to recover from the first procedure. If that’s the case, my son Nate will update this. He will also post updates on my status here and on Facebook in the several days following the procedures.
[Update from Nate: (Monday Jan. 4, 10 PM) Dad did have a minor complication after the first, successful procedure, and the docs are erring on the side of caution by (again) postponing the second surgery until some time next week. He is doing well and should be back home Tuesday to begin recuperating for the main event.]
You are welcome to post encouragement here and on Facebook, but I held this back so things wouldn’t get out of hand. I also accept prayers and positive thoughts and cash money.
The heart valve/bypass procedures will be followed by some rough weeks of recuperation – the first several, obviously, the most challenging. My next novel deadline isn’t till April 1 (no fooling), so I intend to take my first protracted “vacation” from writing in, well, as long as I can remember. I have been healthy as a horse my whole life (I was asked if I’d ever had surgery before, and I said, “Just my birth”) so there’s no precedent. Before you feel too sorry for me, know that I will be watching a lot of Blu-rays and reading a good number of the books that have piled up around here, and will be given even better treatment than usual by my lovely wife.
It’s possible I may get back to work sooner than the projected six weeks. I’m proud of myself that during this nasty period, I still wrote two episodic TV episodes (one of them for QUARRY) and the Mike Hammer novel, MURDER NEVER KNOCKS. And you may have already realized that I never missed one of these weekly updates.
Okay, we all know what’s important here – these weekly updates. I am going to write another three updates, in advance, dealing with forthcoming books. At that point, I am hopeful that I will be back doing this.
I am told I am “low risk.” Like anybody, I don’t hear the “low,” just the “risk.” So without getting too sentimental (or for that matter pessimistic) about it, I want to give all of you my heart-felt thanks. This has been a great career, and it will continue to be.
* * *My pal Ed Gorman has been kind enough to pay tribute to Quarry by reviewing two of the recent books in the series. The review of THE WRONG QUARRY is a reprint, but the QUARRY’S CHOICE write-up is brand-new and a real corker.
The first novel in the series, QUARRY, got itself onto this fun top-reissues-of-last-year list. I’m on it with one of my favorites, the late great Ted Lewis. As usual, I deplore all such lists…unless I’m on them.
Here’s a nice (if somewhat guarded) Kindle Taproom review of FATE OF THE UNION.
Now check out this even-better FATE OF THE UNION review.
* * *Finally, I need to mark the passing of actor Wayne Rogers, who provided one of the best classic PI performances of all time in the too-brief CITY OF ANGELS TV series (1976). That series, and the Huggins/Cannell-created character Jake Axminster, had a huge impact on Nate Heller. Rogers, despite the short run of ANGELS, made such an impact as a private eye that he wound up playing a similar recurring character on MURDER SHE WROTE. He also portrayed real-life private eye Raymond Schindler in PASSION AND PARADISE (1989), about the Massie case, which I wrote about (including Schinder) in DAMNED IN PARADISE.
M.A.C.Tags: Quarry, Quarry's Choice, The Wrong Quarry
Posted in Message from M.A.C. |  21 Comments »

Western Noir--Jake Hinkson

from Criminal Element

Ed here: Jake Hinson writes fine noirish fiction and fine noirish essays. Here's just one more example.
Noir is like a disease. Its symptoms are moodiness, despair, guilt, and paranoia. There were early strains of it in German Expressionism; in the crime fiction of Woolrich, Holding, and Cain; in the prewar American cinema of Welles, Ingster, and Huston. The first full-fledged outbreak started somewhere in the war years. Some say Street Of Chance in 1942; others point to Double Indemnity and The Woman In The Window in 1944. Gradually noir spread out of the crime genre, however, and attached itself to different genres. Perhaps the first victim was the cinematic stalwart, the Western.At first glance the Western would seem antithetical to noir. (A fetishist for strict definitions would probably insist that noir be defined essentially as a crime genre. I’m taking more of a thematic approach, here, interpreting noir as something closer to a moral thesis: that people are weak and existentially screwed.) The tropes of the Western—sunlight, open spaces, nature—would seem to immune to the noir disease. But make no mistake, the Western caught the disease. A genre that seemed to be the quintessence of American optimism, a genre that seemed to embody the notion of moral clarity, slowly gave way to darker themes and more neurotic characters.
for the rest go here:
http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/...-
plains-jake-hinkson-noir-western-film-robert-mitchum-barbara-stanwyck

From The Criminal Element The Five Best Heist Films You’ve Never Seen WALLACE STROBY

From The Criminal ElementThe Five Best Heist Films You’ve Never SeenWALLACE STROBYYou may know the classics of the heist genre—John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, Stanley Kubrick’sThe Killing, Jules Dassin’s Rififi, etc.(for an overview of the essentials, check out Jake Hinkson’s entries in “The Art of the Steal”).  But there are plenty of other excellent heist films you may have missed. Take a look at five under-appreciated heist films that are nonetheless gems of the form, all available on DVD:1.)  Armored Car Robbery (1950): A taut, violent action-melodrama that clocks in at a cracking 67 minutes. Richard Fleischer’s low-budget noir classic may have an unimaginative title, but it delivers on all fronts. A great lineup of character actors (including William Talman, Gene Evans, and Steve Brodie) play the heisters. On their trail is standby Charles McGraw as Lt. Jim Cordell, a cop so tough that his idea of comforting the wife of a newly slain partner is to utter this immortal line.With a suspenseful airport-set finale (predating The Killing by five years), wry humor, and great L.A. locations circa 1949 (including the original Wrigley Field and environs), Armored Car Robbery is one of the best Bs ever. Fleischer directed a handful of noirs (including The Narrow Marginand the similarly themed Violent Saturday), but this is his masterpiece. 2.)  Payroll  (1961) aka I Promised To Pay: Another armored car robbery, this one of a factory payroll in Britain’s gritty, industrial Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. After the heist goes sour and the driver is killed, his widow (Billie Whitelaw) plots revenge, eventually turning the gang members against each other. Veteran director Sidney Hayers helms a formidable cast of British stage actors, including Whitelaw (Hell is a City), and the great Tom Bell (Prime Suspect). Hayers directed the equally effective 1962 horror film Night of the Eagle (aka Burn Witch Burn), as well as several Avengersepisodes, before crossing the Atlantic for a long career in American TV. The 1960s were the Golden Decade of British heist movies, which also includedThe League of Gentlemen, A Prize of Arms, Robbery, and, of course, The Italian Job. One caveat for those on this side of the pond: the Region 2 Optimum DVD has no subtitles, and those faux-Geordie accents and rapid-fire slang can be hard to decipher.
for the rest go here:
http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/...