Andrew Cartmel's Blog, page 5

My Top Ten Crime Novels

A Facebook friend issued me a challenge this week to come up with my top ten favourite crime novels.

I immediately broke the rules of the challenge — I was supposed to post the cover of one book per day, and pass the challenge on to someone else. I didn't.

But I did come up with a top ten list which I thought I'd share with you...

I have imposed some rules of my own — keep it down to ten, and only one novel per author, otherwise at least half the writers on this list would have had multiple titles. So here we go:

Raymond Chandler — The Big Sleep. Certainly the Howard Hawks movie starring Bogart and Bacall didn't hurt this novel's prospects, but it was always a clear winner. The opening sequence where Marlowe meets General Sternwood in the greenhouse is unforgettable.

Agatha Christie — Murder in Retrospect (aka Five Little Pigs). This is not only a brilliantly clever whodunnit, it is also beautifully written with powerfully realistic and complex characterisation. And it is easily the finest of the many Christies I've read so far. Its only weakness is the silly title which invokes an irrelevant nursery rhyme. Hence my preference for the American Murder in Retrospect.

Dick Francis — Enquiry. I've read a lot of Dick Francis but this was the first and it remains most vivid in my memory, not least for the brilliant description of the hero's love interest, and the incredibly harrowing sequence where he almost gets chopped in half by a train.

Dashiell Hammett — The Maltese Falcon. If I had to choose just one crime novel as the greatest of them all, this would be it. It's coming up for a hundred years old but still feels fresh, sharp, modern and deeply cynical. Again, the great Bogart movie (directed by John Huston) does no harm to its reputation. This is the book that gave us the private eye novel as we know it.

Thomas Harris — Red Dragon. If Hammett created the private eye novel, this is the book that introduced serial killers and profilers into the literature and into the language. Before Harris did his research, no one had heard of any such things. After this book — and its sequel The Silence of the Lambs — they were suddenly tropes, with literally thousands of imitators. Astoundingly well written. Harris is a genius.

Ira Levin — A Kiss Before Dying. A masterpiece of suspense literature by one of the best writers in this (or any) genre, featuring one of the most ingenious narrative tricks ever devised for a crime novel. The psychopathic killer at the heart of the story is both unforgettably evoked and cunningly concealed from the reader. Levin moved on to writing classics of supernatural horror (Rosemary's Baby) and science fiction (The Stepford Wives) but he would return to pure crime and suspense for his late gem Sliver.

John D. MacDonald — The Drowner. I've read something like sixty novels by John D. MacDonald and I think there was only one dud in the whole bunch. A truly extraordinarily gifted writer, he's largely forgotten today but his influence lives on in the work of Thomas Harris, who has modelled his superlative prose style at least in part on MacDonald's and also in the work of Stephen King, who is influenced by MacDonald's subject matter, notably in this book.

Philip MacDonald — X v Rex (aka Mystery of the Dead Police). A serial killer novel before the term existed (1933). Philip MacDonald was a master craftsman who wrote dozens of crime novels under his own name but used a pseudonym ('Martin Porlock') for this one, perhaps because it was so darkly outrageous. It's the tale of a psychopath who decides to begin killing policemen at random... Terrifyingly modern.

Charles Willeford — Miami Blues. Ah, Charles Willeford. In a list of writers who are no strangers to dark humour, Willeford is the darkest and funniest. Labouring in the world of cheap paperback fiction he had been writing extraordinary, indelible novels for years (like Pick Up). This was his breakthrough to the big(ger) time, about a Miami cop called Hoke Mosely who would become his series character.

Charles Williams — The Sailcloth Shroud. Williams is a recent discovery of mine, and he immediately ranks with the best. This is a characteristic story of an innocent man caught up in murderous machinations and being hunted by both the police and the bad guys. Beautifully written, occasionally hilarious, and tremendously suspenseful.

(Image credits: The Maltese Falcon is from Facsimile Dust Jackets. The Big Sleep is from the same site. A Kiss Before Dying ditto. X v Rex? You guessed it. The hardcover of Murder in Retrospect? Yup. However, the Dell paperback is from Good Reads. Enquiry is from JW Hubbers' excellent Dick Francis site. The Corgi paperback of Red Dragon is from Good Reads. The Ballantine paperback of Miami Blues is also from Good Reads. The Drowner is also from there. The Sailcloth Shroud is my own scan of my own copy. The Spanish edition of X v Rex is from the fine Tipping My Fedora site.)

Man in Motion by Charles Williams

Here is another outstanding suspense novel from Charles Williams, with the emphasis on the word suspense. 

At times the tension in this book became so unbearable that I had to just set it aside for a couple of minutes.

Man in Motion (US title: Man on the Run) tells the story of Russell Foley, who has been framed for the murder of a cop.

It begins in headlong fashion, with Foley already on the run, jumping off a freight train into the dirt in the middle of a rain-swept night: "the rain was slowly washing mud out of my hair and down across my face."

"I was going round and round in an endless circle in a nightmare. I was a mechanical rabbit running for ever in front of a pack of hounds along a dark race-track..." 

Foley knows no one will believe his story and that if the police catch him he's done for.  

And Williams really puts us through the wringer in that short first chapter.

Then, from there, the tension only ratchets up...

At one point Foley has a close encounter with a cop. He escapes but is left, "limp and useless as jelly." So was I after reading it.

The story moves like a rocket, propelled by the life or death dilemma of the protagonist. But, fortunately for Foley. he is lucky enough to run across a classic Charles Williams heroine.

Williams writes women well, but even by his high standards Suzy Patton is an extraordinary character. 

She finds Foley hiding in her holiday cottage, which he has broken into, and wearing a blanket because his clothes are soaked.

She laughs and says he looks like a "displaced gladiator" or a "raffish Medieval monk who got caught in the wrong bedroom."

For her part, Suzy looks "as big and vital as a Viking's dream." Then she hears about how Foley was framed. "The hardboiled grey eyes were alight with interest."

She decides to help him and, voila, suddenly Suzy and Foley are a detective team!

Foley has a clue in the shape of a Latin femme fatale clue whom he believes really killed the cop. 

So Suzy gets herself ready to go out and track the murderess down, announcing, "The brunette being stalked by her only natural enemy."  (Suzy is a blonde.)

Man in Motion is enthralling, witty and thrilling. Extremely thrilling...

Just to complicate matters, as the story warms up, the real killers get on Foley's trail and try to silence him permanently, just in case he might be able to implicate them.

It's a classic double chase, even more intense than in The Sailcloth Shroud, exerting an inexorable hold on the reader from the first page.

And the writing is simply wonderful, with a strong line in sardonic humour.

The apartment where Foley had a fight with the late cop looks like the two of them "had been playing polo on bulldozers."
 
And when Foley asks if a drowned man was murdered, the response is, "Yeah,  unless he always went swimming with a Ford transmission tied to his leg." 

I feel I've hit the jackpot with my discovery of Charles Williams. You can expect to hear more from me about this forgotten but great American writer — soon.

(Image credits: The front and back of the Pan edition with cover art by 'Peff' — Sam Peffer — are scanned from my own prized copy. The Gold Medal cover — Man on the Run — is from Ipernity. The Mysterious Press ebook and the French Gallimard edition with the photo of the woman and the bathtub are from Good Reads. The Gallimard edition with the black and green cover is from Dialogues la Librairie. The Gallimard Serie Noir is from Amazon UK. The British Cassell hardcover with the rather crude cover painting is from Heritage Auctions.)

Malice by Sorkin and Frank

Aaron Sorkin is one of my screenwriting heroes. Scott Frank is no slouch, either.

They are two of the credited writers on Malice, a 1988 thriller directed by Harold Becker, also a considerable talent, who is best known for Sea of Love.

Becker describes the movie as being "in the Hitchcock vein", which indeed it is.

It was Aaron Sorkin's first movie job after the enormous success of his play A Few Good Men on Broadway had brought him out to Hollywood. 
 
Sorkin is very dismissive of the movie these days, calling it a "mess" and being rather negative about Harold Becker.

But Becker is much more generous towards him. "A wonderful writer," he says of Sorkin.
 
And Malice is far from being a mess. It is, in fact, a sly sucker-punch of a thriller which utterly deceived me and had me chuckling with pleasure. It's a small but genuine classic of the genre. 

At first the film appears to be a routine serial killer story. A predator is stalking the campus of a university in Massachusetts where Andy (Bill Pullman) teaches.

Meanwhile, allegedly charismatic surgeon Jed (Alec Baldwin) renews a high school friendship with Andy and begins to take rather too much interest in Andy's wife Tracy (Nicole Kidman).

All of these characters were uniformly cold and unengaging and I was on the verge of switching the movie off — but then, about a third of the way in, the whole serial killer story is abruptly wrapped up and we discover that the film is about something else entirely...

In fact, Becker refers to that entire self contained story as the "McGuffin" in this movie. You could also call it a red herring, distracting us from what is really going on.

And from this point on, Malice is simply great.

I don't want to say too much more, because I'm loath to reveal any of the splendid surprises in store for viewers of this gem.
 
But I will tell you that Anne Bancroft (Mrs Robinson from The Graduate) puts in a fabulous appearance as a drunken con-woman who schools Bill Pullman in the facts of life in the real world.  

"She's terrific," says Becker, "That was my favourite scene in the movie." Maybe mine too,
though there is close competition.

Nicole Kidman is fantastic and also has something of a jackpot scene — I agree with Becker's assessment that it's breathtaking. "That was good stuff," he says. "I enjoyed it." Me too, Harold.

And a young Gwyneth Paltrow features in one of her first screen roles, looking surprisingly Junoesque with long tresses, in a sharp and memorable appearance as an entitled brat of a student who is not long for this world.

The movie has a top cinematographer in Gordon Willis — nicknamed the 'Prince of Darkness' by Conrad Hall for his shadowy compositions in films like The Godfather.

And the music is by the magnificent Jerry Goldsmith, who provides a classic score featuring beautiful and ethereal voices.

"It was a great group," says Becker. "Maybe that's why I enjoyed the film so much."

Having seen Malice, I immediately did two things — I bought the CD of the Goldsmith music, and set about writing this post to alert you to the movie.

Oh yes, I meant to say... the film also features a scary old house on a cliff above the sea which looks very hokey and silly and is unworthy of a movie which otherwise is an ingenious, audacious and deeply satisfying thriller. 

If you are stuck at home, at a loose end, with time on your hands (and I'm writing this in April 2020, when a large portion of the world is in exactly that position) I suggest you spend an entertaining hundred minutes or so with Malice.

(Image credits: The movie poster, creases and all, is from Imp Awards. The MGM DVD cover and the Czech movie poster are from the Movie Poster Shop. 

Anne Bancroft drinking with Bill Pullman is from Hotflick. Nicole Kidman with windblown hair is also from Hotflick. The portrait of Anne Bancroft is from Pinterest. Gwyneth Paltrow is from Fatal Attractions on Twitter. The other images are from my copy of the DVD, and the CD of the gorgeous Jerry Goldsmith score, which I am listening to as I write this. By the way, the back of the DVD cover is a breathtaking extravaganza of error: Jonas McCord, the third credited screenwriter is listed here as "Jonas Sorkin" — presumably Aaron's long lost brother. Scott Frank is "Jcott Frank" (sic) and poor Jerry Goldsmith is "Gerry" Goldsmith. Someone deserves a stern talking to...)

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by George Axelrod

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a fun title, but Who the Devil is George Axelrod? might be another good one.

Although it's not a question I would need to ask myself — I've always taken a keen interest in screenwriters, and Axelrod is one of the best, with credits including The Manchurian Candidate and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

But it was as a playwright that he first made his name. In 1952 Axelrod had an enormous hit with The Seven Year Itch — another good title, and a phrase that has since passed into the language (meaning the point in a marriage when infidelity is likely to set in).

The success of Seven Year Itch swept Axelrod to Hollywood. It was such an overwhelming triumph that he feared it would paralyse him, and he'd never write another play.

However, his experiences in the surreal world of movie-making soon provided him with rich material for an inspired follow up...

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter was Axelrod's second outing on Broadway and another big hit, in 1955. It may surprise you to know that no one called Rock Hunter appears in the play.

That's because the title alludes to the kind of dumb, anodyne headlines you would get in those days in magazines for movie fans.

In fact, Axelrod's original title was Will Success Spoil Rock Hudson, a real movie star of that era. But threat of a lawsuit resulted in the (minor) name change.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter is a gorgeous, hilarious, wild satire about Broadway and Hollywood. 

It concerns a blonde bombshell of a movie star called Rita Marlowe, played by Jayne Mansfield in the original play.
 
And based on Marilyn Monroe, who had become a friend of Axelrod (there's a nice photo of the two of them hugging, which I'll include here). 

Also involved with Rita is a playwright named Mike Freeman who has just had a Broadway hit and is bound for Hollywood, where he fears he'll never write another play...

But most of all this sardonic fable is about a little nerd of a journalist called George MacCauley, who has come to the beautiful Rita's hotel room to interview her, for one of those magazines I mentioned...

And suddenly he discovers that he has the power to make this gorgeous star fall hopelessly in love with him and, what's more, in the blink of an eye he has a million bucks in the bank and a stellar career as a screenwriter (adapting Mike's play for the silver screen).

These goodies are all provided for him by a literary agent named Irving "Speedy" LaSalle... at the cost of ten percent of George's soul for each wish he makes come true.

Yes, to my surprise and delight, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter is not just a comedy, it's a supernatural comedy — a boisterous and merciless reworking of the Faust legend.

Through the agency (no pun intended) of Speedy LaSalle, George the nerd is swiftly en route to La La Land...

Where he will soon have one hand on Rita's shapely thigh and the other clutching a Best Screenplay Oscar, and only ten percent of his soul left...

George Axelrod — not to be confused with George MacCauley, the nerd on his way to Hollywood and damnation — writes like a dream. 

The quality of his work is divine, or "divoon" as Rita Marlowe might put it, "Absolutely divoon." Axelrod's parody of show-biz types is spot on, and remains accurate today.

And recasting the devil as a hustling agent is just one of the many touches of genius that characterise this play, and indeed much of George Axelrod's work.

Here is the devilish Irving LaSalle pitching a movie: "Picture if you will, a world gone mad — sipping vodka martinis and dancing the mambo in the very shadow of the H-bomb." 

Actually, when asked point blank if he is the devil, Irving replies "Nothing so exalted as that. I am merely the head of the Literary Department." 

This Irving "Speedy" LaSalle is inspired by — perhaps minus the whiff of brimstone — a legendary but very real literary agent called Irving "Swifty" Lazar who represented George Axelrod.

Indeed, the published version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter contains the wry notation: "Ten percent of this play is dedicated to Irving Lazar."

But while Axelrod had his revenge on Hollywood here, Hollywood soon had its revenge on him...

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter was duly made into a movie, and they threw out Axelrod's play completely. Suddenly Rock Hunter, who was merely a name mentioned in the original, became a central character.

The only thing they retained from the play was Rita Marlowe, again played by Jayne Mansfield. Who could throw her away?

The movie, directed by Frank Tashlin, has its moments, but none of the ruthless, hilarious brilliance of this play.

(Image credits: The dust jacket of the Random House hardback and the inner cloth cover with the photo of Jayne Mansfield inset on it are both scanned by me from my own prized copy of the play. The drawing by William Auerbach-Levy of Walter Matthau as Mike Freeman, Jayne Mansfield as Rita Marlowe and Orson Bean as George MacCauley is from the Museum of the City of New York. The photo of Walter and Jayne on the couch is from Pinterest. The green program cover is from Amazon. The inner title page from the same program is from Collectors dot com. The photo of Jayne smooching Orson Bean is from the Hollywood Reporter. Orson looking worried and holding a notebook with Jayne on the massage table smiling is from . The (somewhat crooked, sorry) Bantam paperback cover is from My Book Heaven at ABE. The portrait of Jayne in the white dress is by Lou Jacobs Jr. and is © 1978 Lou Jacobs Jr. and is from MPTV Images via . The Blinn Theatre Arts poster is from their YouTube trailer. George hugging Marilyn is from the Divine Marilyn blog. The movie poster is from a little known site you might nonetheless have stumbled across called Wikipedia...)

The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams

Isn't a book an amazing thing? You can fit one into your pocket and, whenever you want, take it out and open it and be plunged into another existence... 

In this case, into an existence that will have your heart pounding the way mine's pounding now. Because Rogers has just escaped the bad guys.

Okay, let's back up a little. Rogers is Stuart Rogers. The time is 1959 and the place is Southport, North Carolina. Rogers has brought a sailing boat he's purchased back from Panama, to renovate and resell.

Rogers is the hero of a novel — a truly brilliant novel of suspense — The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams, a new favourite author of mine whom I discovered with a book called The Concrete Flamingo.

And Rogers is indeed a hero, not like the protagonist of The Concrete Flamingo who was a doomed anti-hero. Although there's a pretty good chance Rogers is doomed, too...

When the police turn up at the boatyard where he is working on his vessel, he assumes they're after an "exuberant type off the shrimp boat" nearby. 

But, no, they have questions about the man who helped Rogers sail up from Panama, and who died of a heart attack en route.

And that's not all. They take him to the police morgue where, among the "grisly filing cabinets of a city's unclaimed and anonymous dead," Rogers is shown the third member of his crew.

"If you had any breakfast, better hang onto it," the cops tell him. The man has been brutally beaten to death and dumped into the water off a pier, his body washed to the surface by the propellers of a docking ship.

And so begins a nightmare ordeal for Rogers, as he tries to avoid ending up as dead as the other two. The police want to know what's going on and advise Rogers to tell them, "before you wind up in an alley with the cats looking at you."

The trouble is, Rogers doesn't know what's going on. And soon he's on the run — from both the police and the bad guys — in a race against time, trying to find out. 
 
Before he ends up, terminally, in that alley with those cats. "It was a weird sensation, and a scary one, being hunted," he reflects.

The Sailcloth Shroud is ingeniously plotted and magnificently well written. Talking to a policeman who gives nothing back is "like pouring information into a hole in the ground." And Rogers feels "a quick ruffling of anger" — presumably like wind on still water.

Water, and boats, feature potently in Williams's prose: "the surface of the bay burned like molten glass in the sun... It had rained during the afternoon, a slashing tropical downpour that drummed along the deck and pocked the surface of the water... I stared out at the water with its hundred gradations of colour from bottle green to indigo."

The Sailcloth Shroud is a beautifully written and elegantly intertwined blend of mystery and thriller. And it's utterly agonising when the bad guys close in on Rogers.

I won't give you any spoilers, but the mystery here has a fascinating and satisfying solution and the book features a violent and cathartic climax which is powerfully evoked.

Perhaps, like Rogers, you will find "it would be a long time before I forgot the horror of that moment."
 
Another marvellous book by Charles Williams. You can expect to hear more from me about this masterful writer.

(Image credits:The grey Pan 'handcuffs' cover, front and back, are scans by me of my own beloved copy. The yellow Pocket Books 7756, with its misleading cover painting by Stanley Borack — sailing hunk, bikini chick — is from a nice scan by Wunderstump from their eBay listing. The red Dell D410 and the Italian Longanesi edition Mai Dire Mai ('Never Say Never') are from Good Reads. The French edition, Péri en Mer ('Lost at Sea' or 'Perished at Sea') is from Le-Livre on ABE. The white cover paperback — 'Harper Suspense' — is from Amazon UK. The Viking hardcover front cover is from Waverly Books' eBay listing. The spread dustjacket of that edition is from Antiqbooks. The English hardcover ('Crime Connoisseur') originated on ABE but the link, like so many characters in this story, is now dead...)

The Concrete Flamingo by Charles Williams

What a pleasure — discovering an outstanding crime novelist who looks destined to become a favourite of mine.

I was already aware of Charles Williams, primarily through two films that were made from his books, The Hot Spot and Dead Calm. But he wasn't exactly on my radar. He is now.

When I happened upon a vintage copy of his novel The Concrete Flamingo on eBay (US title: All the Way) I was immediately taken with the striking cover art and tempted to give it a try...

What clinched the deal for me was discovering that the novel was the basis for a rare and obscure film noir that I love — The Third Voice, directed by Hubert Cornfield.

So I ordered the book, and the day after it arrived I'd devoured it...

But even before then I was scouring the web for other copies of his books.

Charles Williams is an excellent novelist. He can write with great economy and understated beauty — "We sat forward under the canopy to avoid the tatters of spray as the Blue Runner knifed into the light ground-swell."

The Blue Runner is of course a boat. Williams, like John D. MacDonald, wrote a lot about boats and the sea. And, like MacDonald, he uses Florida as his setting here.

Most of The Concrete Flamingo takes place on land, however — although a dead man's body ends up deep in the ocean: "in the gloom and the everlasting silence, with his chest crushed by the pressure."

These vivid observations come from Jerry Forbes, a cynical, intelligent drifter who is  possessed of an "elastic conscience."

Jerry finds himself targeted by a femme fatale called Marian Forsyth who has a use for him — he's the critical element in a wicked scheme she's dreamed up.

It is Jerry's great misfortune that he falls for Marian. But then, who wouldn't?

Marian is superbly evoked. "The blue eyes were coolly satirical... she was unbelievably exciting.... the slender patrician face with the long lashes like soot against the skin."

Dealing with her, Jerry feels like "an oaf at a county fair." Eventually, when she succumbs to his advances, she does so in "rather the way you'd buy a potato peeler from a salesman to get rid of him."

Nonetheless, Jerry falls for Marian so hard that he goes along with her scheme not for the $75,000 she's offering him (a tidy fortune in 1958) but because he loves her.

The poor fool. The poor noir fool.

Actually, "femme fatale" sells Marian short. She is a woman scorned. (In fact one of Williams's other novels is entitled Hell Hath No Fury — that's the one that became The Hot Spot).

Marian's plan is one of vengeance against the wealthy man who has dumped her for a younger, more beautiful woman — a scheming little gold digger. 

Marian wittily describes this usurper in piratical terms: "I could see the cutlass between her teeth as she came over the rail." 

The Concrete Flamingo is sharply funny, but it's also sharply tragic. Because the scheme Jerry finds himself inexorably caught up in is not just one of robbery. It's also murder.

Marian has a plan to take all of her former lover's money — and also his life. And it's a breathtakingly ingenious plan. "It all fitted perfectly, like the stones in an Inca wall."

This is a terrifyingly suspenseful story; almost unbearably gripping.

And even though it's a conspiracy to commit coldblooded murder, the reader can't help being swept up in admiration and fascination as the plan comes together, and hope against hope that none of those perfectly fitting stones in that Inca wall come loose...
 
You can expect posts on other Charles Williams novels soon.

And also on the movie The Third Voice, if I can bring myself to buy one of the slightly dodgy looking DVD-Rs that are for sale...

(Image credits: The front and back cover of the Pan edition are scanned by me from my own, now treasured, copy. The British hardcover, the eBook and the rather groovy Italian edition are from Good Reads. The front cover of the US Dell edition All the Way is from NoirBoiled Notes. The back cover is from this eBay listing. The Third Voice poster is from Pinterest. The Third Voice lobby card is from Movie Mem.)

Dracula by Gatiss, Moffat and Stoker

Like The Invisible Man, Dracula is a radical reinterpretation of a spooky classic of Victorian literature for our 21st century screens

Unlike The Invisible Man, though, this BBC-Netflix production gives full credit to its creator.

Bram Stoker is prominently named in the show's opening title sequence, right up there with writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat.

Gatiss and Moffat are, of course, responsible for Sherlock — a clever, highly successful and entertaining reworking of Conan Doyle's detective.

And they have both had a considerable impact as writers on Doctor Who, with Moffat going on to become the producer of that great science fiction warhorse. 

So there was every reason to hope for a similar high profile success with Dracula. But the three part mini-series — which is wildly loved by some enthusiasts — wasn't a hit.

And I think there's a basic and simple explanation for that. Because, although it sounds odd to say it, Count Dracula is a very boring character...
 
Of course, he can be a very scary bad guy — providing he only appears sparingly in the story. But if your plot requires seeing a lot of him, then he rapidly becomes wearisome. 

Because what does he do? He bites people. And that's about it. That's his schtick.


Yes, he's a charismatic Byronic seducer who exerts a powerful, eerie attraction etc. etc.

But again this is only effective if  he is rarely on the screen. 

Dracula needs to remain mysterious and remote. If you see a lot of him, he gets a lot less scary and his Byronic charisma gets tiresome.

And he just bites people.

If you do want to see a lot of Count Dracula, if you want him at the centre of your story, as Gatiss and Moffat clearly do, you need to give him more substance, more motivation... 

And more of a character arc than merely seducing and drinking blood.

This was done with great success in the 1992 movie called Bram Stoker's Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola Dracula and written by James V. Hart.

That movie presented Dracula as a tragic romantic hero with a doomed love affair that echoed down the centuries — and drove the plot and characterisation in that movie. 

A great idea, but as I've discussed elsewhere, it didn't originate with Hart and Coppola, but rather with writer Richard Matheson and director Dan Curtis in a 1973 TV movie, also called Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Unfortunately, Gatiss and Moffat haven't done anything comparable to this in their take on the Dracula legend. 

Of course, it's commendable that they didn't rip off the Hart/Coppola movie, which was itself a rip off of the Matheson/Curtis one...

But they also failed to come up with a viable alternative. And they badly needed to... Without something of this nature, the Gatiss/Moffat Dracula was a car without an engine...

It still has many cool things going for it, though. And it's well worth discussing. So much so that I plan to look at each episode separately, starting next week. Then I might also take an in-depth look at the Hart/Coppola movie... Keep your crucifixes and garlic ready.

(Image credits: The official poster is from Imp Awards. The highly imaginative Dracula billboard is a screenshot from this great time lapse photography clip at the BBC. Dracula in the red cloud is from the Radio Times; blood spattered Dracula is also from the Radio Times. The smiling and fanged pic is from Chronicle Live. The poster for the Matheson/Curtis Dracula starring Jack Palance is from Kult Guy's Keep. The Coppola Dracula poster is from Imp Awards.)

The Call of the Wild by Michael Green and Jack London

I tried to re-read Jack London's Call of the Wild recently and found I couldn't get much further than the kidnapping of poor Buck...

Buck is a pampered pet belonging to an affluent family who is stolen and transported across the continent and beaten into submission and forced to work as a sled dog in the far north. 

The gold rush has created a demand for such dogs, and criminals are only too willing to provide them.

The cruelty of Buck's treatment isn't ignored in the new film, but thankfully it's only briefly touched on and then Buck is sold to some rather nice people — a delightful couple who deliver the mail for the Canadian Post Office.

Perrault and Francoise are played by Omar Sy and Cara Gee, just the tip of the iceberg in a fabulous and remarkably strong cast. Buck's adventures with them are sheer pleasure, but it can't last...

The mail route gets cancelled and Buck is reluctantly let go, and sold to a trio of drunken and rather vicious dilettantes who are going gold prospecting with a gramophone and a case of champagne on their sled.

The dilettantes are played by Colin Woodell, Dan Stevens and Karen Gillan — I told you it was a fabulous cast.

And Dan Stevens remains in the story when the other dilettantes drop out, as the villain of the piece. 

He pursues Buck and Buck's final and best human companion, Harrison Ford as John Thornton, as they go on a journey of discovery, both outer and inner...

Buck himself is a CGI creation and, like the other critters in the movie, is far too expressive in a cartoony kind of way to ever seem real in any naturalistic sense.

But he did seem real to me in another, more important sense. I was engaged by his character and captivated by his story.

The film is written by Michael Green who recently wrote Murder on the Orient Express and co-wrote Blade Runner 2049. 

I think he's done a fine job of modernising and softening Jack London's original, making it accessible to multiplex holiday audiences, but still retaining a real sense of wonder.

I particularly liked his idea of personifying the call of the wild as a phantom black wolf who appears to Buck as a vision at key points in the movie.

The picture is directed by Chris Sanders, who has previously done animated films (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch) and photographed by Janusz Kaminski, who has shot almost all of Spielberg's features, including Schindler's List.

But the name I really want to draw your attention to is Kate Hawley, whose costume designs for Call of the Wild are so marvelous that she deserves an Oscar.

This is really a terrific film, and I adored it. 

I'm sure many would find it too phony or sentimental, but I laughed and I cried and I was enthralled.

Even if you don't like dogs — and I'm notoriously a cat person — I think you might enjoy it.

Give it a chance.

(Image credits: three posters from Imp Awards, Cara Gee and Omar Sy in a blue ice cavern from Vital Thrills, Dan Stevens in his red and black check cap from Tumblr, Omar Sy and Buck from ABC News, and some great photos from Karen Gillan's Twitter feed.)

The Invisible Man by Leigh Whannell and H.G. Wells

The Invisible Man is a fabulously good movie, and you should rush out and see it immediately.

I only have one complaint about it: it wouldn't exist without the H.G. Wells novel of the same title, but Wells gets no credit whatsoever — and Leigh Whannell hogs two writing credits — screenplay and screen story. WTF?

But Whannell does a terrific job on the script, and also on directing the movie.

And certainly his movie departs considerably from Wells' original novel.

It concerns an abused wife, Ceclia Kass — Elizabeth Moss in a stunning piece of acting — who manages to escape her controlling, vicious, enormous wealthy husband. Or does she?

When I tell you that the husband, Adrian Griffin, played with great creepy subtlety by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, is also a genius scientist working in the field of optics...


Well, then you can guess where this is going.

Or rather, you can't, because The Invisible Man delivers superb, scary surprises which will have you jumping out of your seat.
 
Besides the first class writing and directing mention should be made of the outstanding special effects, by Dan Oliver, and the pounding, menacing music score by Benjamin Wallfisch, which delivers huge, brutal slabs of sound.  

And the supporting cast is exemplary — Harriet Dyer as Cecilia's sister Emma, Aldis Hodge as Cecilia's friend a San Francisco cop, and Storm Reid as his daughter Sydney.

And also Michael Dorman as Griffin's brother Tom, who at first seems like an arrogant prick, and then in a memorable scene reveals unexpected vulnerability and empathy.

But above all we have Elizabeth Moss, courageously and brilliantly performing in a role which will make your heart pound with suspense and ache with sympathy for her...

This is a beautifully made film which absolutely delivers the good. Leigh Whannell has done a fantastic job.

He has a long track record working as a writer on horror franchises Saw and Insidious. But who could ever have guessed that he had a movie as great (I use the word advisedly) as this in him?

Nonetheless, he should have insisted on some kind of credit for H.G. Wells.

Wells' invisible man was even called Griffin...

(Image credits: mostly typographical posters at Imp Awards.)

Natural Born Killers by Quentin Tarantino

Like True Romance, Natural Born Killers (1994) was a script by Quentin Tarantino which he sold before he rose to fame with Reservoir Dogs, and which ended up being directed by someone else.

But unlike True Romance, Tarantino has disowned the movie that resulted.

In the case of True Romance, Tony Scott was a gifted director who was willing to serve the vision of the writer, without particularly imposing his own vision on the material.

Natural Born Killers, however, was directed by Oliver Stone — in my view, an even more interesting and talented filmmaker — who took a very different approach.

Tarantino's script was initially acquired by two young producers looking to break into the movie business, Jane Hamsher and Don Murray.

They then struck a deal with Oliver Stone, and became a small part of the juggernaut of a production that ensued.

The wild ride they embarked on, and the making of Natural Born Killers, is vividly and engagingly detailed in Jane Hamsher's book about the experience, one of the best about Hollywood in recent decades.

It describes how they rapidly fell out with Tarantino, who seemed not to want this early effort of his to end up on the screen. When Oliver Stone came on board, he took pains to try and make peace with Tarantino.

But soon Stone and Tarantino had fallen out, too. Because Tarantino didn't like the changes Stone was making to his screenplay.

"I've talked to actors who've read both your script and mine," Tarantino told him, "and they say mine is better."

"Quite diplomatically, Oliver responded that he'd led a different life than Quentin, and his moviemaking was an attempt to come to terms with the real violence he'd experienced... Of course he was going to make a different movie than Quentin."

The real violence in Stone's life came during his military service in Vietnam, which formed the basis for his early hit Platoon (an excellent film).

The fantasy violence in Tarantino's script comes from the killing spree embarked on by his protagonists, the outlaw couple Mickey and Mallory Knox, who would be played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis.

Mickey and Mallory are hardly likeable, but the media circus that surrounds them in the story isn't much better, personified as it is by the obnoxious reality TV host Wayne Gale, rather wonderfully portrayed by Robert Downey Jr sporting an Australian accent.

Stone should get full credit for cannily casting Downey, who was still far from being a major star in those days.

But not as much credit as he deserves for choosing his lead actors. It's hard to remember now, but at the time Woody Harrelson was famous for being in the sitcom Cheers, and precious little else (he'd done one other movie).

And Juliette Lewis was known only as the daughter in Scorsese's Cape Fear.

Both are superbly cast, and are perfect for their roles. Whatever Quentin Tarantino might think, Natural Born Killers is a powerful and memorable film and genuinely both experimental and transgressive.

Among the changes to his script that Tarantino objected to were the new scenes written by Dave Veloz, which portrayed Mallory's abusive childhood as a nightmarish sort of sitcom, which seems to be beamed in from the Twilight Zone.

These sequences are wildly original and highly effective.

Less successful are the scenes Stone introduced featuring what Shane Black might have called "a wise old Indian."

As Stone himself quipped, "I always have to have an Indian scene in my movies." But this detour into Native American mysticism doesn't really work.

What does work, and quite brilliantly, is the music in the film — much of it chosen by Jane Hamsher herself, including the Cowboy Junkie's version of 'Sweet Jane' — and the cinematography.

The film was photographed by Oliver Stone's regular collaborator, the great Robert Richardson — who didn't like the script. and had to be lured into working on it by Stone's promise of creative freedom:

"Oliver agreed to let Bob go wild, and use whatever film stocks, rear-screen projections, video, and other visual damage that he wanted to inflict."

And the photography in Natural Born Killers, with its deliberately phoney back projection and extraordinary coloured lighting, is often awe-inspiring, one of the great strengths of the film.

And whatever else Tarantino might have thought of Natural Born Killers, he was clearly impressed by the photography.

Because he soon hired Richardson as his regular cinematographer (starting with Kill Bill), which he remains to this day.

(Image credits: Only two official posters at Imp Awards. The one with the devil's head is from Aliexpress. The nice one of the road turning into two snakes is by Maxime Archambault and is from Curioos. The one with the splattery red sunglasses on a black background is by A Deniz Akerman and is from Society 6. The one with the red Japanese style background is from Image Abyss. The superb high angle illustration where the swirling headscarf forms a skull is from Cute Streak Designs. 

The director's cut one by Pop Culture Graphics is from Amazon UK. The grey one with the heart and the shotgun is from Vincent Van Doodle. The blueish-grey comic book style one by Darin Shock is from Inside the Rock Poster Frame. The wonderful expressionist cartoony one in green and white and red is by Jakub Hrdlicka, is from Terry Posters. The black and white (actually brown and white) image by Jack Applegate is from Dead Slow. The one with cigarette-and-gun smoke turning into art nouveau lettering is from Pinterest.)