ALISTAIR MacLEAN – River of Death. Collins, UK. hardcover, 1981. Doubleday, US, hardcover, 1982. Fawcett Crest, US, paperback, 1983.

RIVER OF DEATH. Cannon Films, 1989. Michael Dudikoff, Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence, Herbert Lom, L.Q. Jones. Based on the novel by Alistair MacLean. Director: Steve Carver.

   I imagine a conversation between Alistair Maclean and his editor going something like this: “Imagine a story where you have an adventurer, an Allan Quatermain sort ripped straight from the pages of H. Rider Haggard, who discovers that a Nazi war criminal is not just hiding in South America, but that he’s hiding in a lost city originally founded by a hitherto unknown Indian tribe!” That is, to be sure, an intriguing premise to a story.

   But there are obvious questions raised by the idea. How did the Nazi get there? What is he doing there? Just hiding out or up to something far more nefarious? And who is this adventurer who gets the honor of serving as the tale’s protagonist?

   Sadly, it’s the near complete dearth of character development, to say nothing of the achingly dull plot, which relegates Maclean’s River of Death to a minor work in the author’s far more distinguished canon. Hamilton, the hero of the story, is introduced to the reader almost simultaneously with other characters, all of whom will play far lesser roles in the plot.

   There’s no real moment in the first third of the novel when the reader gets a feel for Hamilton and learns why he might be so motivated to return to the site of this so-called lost city. That, along with the fact that many of the characters seem to speak exactly alike, is unnecessarily confusing and does very little to keep one engrossed, let alone interested, in what’s transpiring.

   And then there are the Nazis. In the novel’s prologue, which is undoubtedly the best part of the work, Maclean is at his best at least as far as this work is concerned. He paints a picture of two Nazi war criminals. It’s the end of the war, when it’s clear to all but the most deluded fanatics that Germany is about to be a defeated power. Two S.S. officers, Van Manteuffel and Spaatz, decide to abscond to South America with treasures they have looted from a Greek monastery.

   But Nazis aren’t the sorts to play fair. It’s no surprise that Von Manteuffel, a poorly developed arch-villain if there ever were one, decides he’d rather have the loot all to himself and have his would-be partner in crime out of the way.

   Fast-forward several decades. Spaatz, who managed to survive Van Manteuffel’s bullet, is now working and living in Brazil under the laughably generic name Smith. He hires Hamilton, the story’s hero-adventurer, to lead him into the Amazonian jungle under the pretense that he’s interested in seeing the lost city for himself. What he’s really after, of course, is revenge. He knows that Van Manteuffel is living a Kurtz-like existence out in the jungle.

   Most of the novel follows Hamilton and Smith, along with a motley crew of thrill seekers, as they traverse rough terrain, fight off Indian tribes, and learn each other’s deepest secrets. The dialogue is forgettable, as are the descriptions of the group’s infighting. Like slogging through the rainforest, it requires patience to get where you’re going.

   And, unfortunately, the payoff isn’t really worth it. Yes, they find Van Manteuffel and the implication of the ending is that the bastard gets his just desserts. Nevertheless, it all left me with a feeling of “so what.” Unlike Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil (reviewed here), which raised all sorts of ethical and political questions, Maclean’s work seems to be content with just following through with a mildly quirky, albeit intriguing, premise.

   The cinematic adaptation of Maclean’s work isn’t much better than the novel itself. What starts off as a sweaty, low-budget adventure film with potential to punch well above its weight, ends up faltering under the weight of so many 1980s action movie clichés. You’ve got some gunfights, some explosions, uncivilized natives, and the cruel and sadistic Nazis.

   Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasence, who portray the two Nazi war criminals, could have put in solid dramatic performances rather than the cartoonish ones they deliver here. Michael Dudikoff, who plays Hamilton, is stilted from the very beginning. He radiates as much personality as his character in the novel. Which is to say almost none. It’s a shame. When given the opportunity to do so, he was capable of so much more than phoning it in.

   The one exception is L. Q. Jones. A veteran of many Sam Peckinpah productions, Jones is a welcome presence in River of Death. He plays a shifty fixer, the type of guy you might very well meet in a small town Brazilian watering hole a million miles from nowhere. It’s a real good role for him and one that I admit kept me watching the movie longer than I would have otherwise.

KIND LADY MGM, 1935. Aline MacMahon, Basil Rathbone, Mary Carlisle, Frank Albertson, Dudley Digges, Murray Kinnell, Justine Chase, Eiley Malyon, Barbara Shields, and Donald Meek. Screenplay by Bernard Schubert, from the play by Edward Chodorov, from the story by Hugh Walpole (which is a bit of a downer). Directed by George B. Seitz.

   A real treat: literate, suspenseful, perfectly played and subtly directed.

   Aline MacMahon carries her end skillfully as a middle-aged woman who has become a bit too retiring – not cutting off social ties exactly, but fraying them considerably, perfectly content to stay at home in her fine London townhouse attended by her cook and maid.

   Then, on Christmas Eve, she sees a penniless sidewalk artist (Basil Rathbone in a chameleonic mode) outside her house, invites him in, and listens sympathetically as he speaks of his wife and child. He leaves with a bit of charity and her expensive cigarette lighter, and she thinks no more of it until he calls again a few nights later and tries to sell her one of his paintings.

   He points out his wife, waiting outside, and (as if on cue) she collapses in the street. Rathbone runs for a doctor (Murray Kinnell) who says the woman must be put in bed immediately, apparently thinking she lives there, and carries her to an upstairs bedroom for a few days’ rest.

   And thus has her home been invaded. Rathbone, suddenly imperious, irritates the cook into quitting, browbeats the maid, and when some friends of his sick wife come to call, they insist — forcefully — on staying, imprisoning Ms MacMahon in her own house, then proceed to sell the furnishings and take over her bank accounts as they plan her untimely end.

   The basic story is cunningly wrought, opened out nicely by scenarist Bernard Schubert without losing the essential claustrophobic nature of the piece. The players do quite well by it, notably Rathbone starting off poor-but-proud and moving on to insufferable. Dudley Digges radiates good-natured cheer like fingernails on a chalkboard, and his wife and daughter….

   Well, this is a subtle touch that screams for attention. Director George B. Seitz uses body language cunningly throughout the film: Basil Rathbone seems to tower over everyone and stand entirely too close. Dudly Digges doesn’t sit on the couch; he sprawls. As soon as his wife enters the house she starts fondling the table legs(!), and the daughter can’t keep her hands off things, picking up delicate knick-knacks, rifling through makeup, and generally behaving like a klepto-fetishist. The whole effect is of an alien invasion, and it’s damn creepy.

   Aline MacMahon shines throughout this part of the film, but she does it quietly. Drugged by Rathbone & co., she resists the opiates but tries not to let them see, keeping her movements restrained to the point where sometimes we the viewers aren’t sure how clearly she’s thinking. Then she slips someone a note, gives a veiled warning, or otherwise lets us know there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

   Two other performances of note: as Aline’s nephew-in-law who senses something amiss, Frank Albertson throws in a brash portrayal that seems to have come from another movie — completely at odds with the other players, but somehow right for the part. Five year later he was doing the same schtick in Man-Made Monster to less effect.

   And then there’s Donald Meek, the eternal milquetoast, displaying delightful heroism as a little guy with a stubborn streak. It’s a surprising, comic and totally delightful moment in a film that kept me watching with equal parts suspense and pleasure.

ALICE KIMBERLY – The Ghost and the Dead Man’s Library. Penelope Thorton-McClure & PI Jack Shepard #3. Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, September 2006.

   Even though this was both written and published for the “cozy mystery” market, there are a few things going on that might attract the attention of male readers as well. It did me. For one thing, Penelope McClure owns and operates an independent bookstore in a small town in Rhode Island. For seconds, the entire plot revolves about an obscure set of the collected work of Edgar Allan Poe — and even better, there’s a strong hint that there’s a code to a unknown treasure hidden within their pages.

   But wait, wait, as they say, there’s more. The bookstore is haunted. The ghost of a private detective named Jack Shepard, who died in the 1940s, can only be seen and heard by Pen, however, and yet they communicate well enough for him to be her assistant of sorts whenever she gets involved with a case of murder, which seems to occur fairly often.

   Shepard’s way of speaking comes straight from the second or third tier of detective pulps. The quotes from the stories at the beginning of each chapter come from the better pulps of the same era, however, and these fit in very well, often to perfection.

   But as in all the cozies I’ve read or know about, Pen has other problems. Besides the death of the frail old man who gave her the books to sell for him, Pen also has to keep her store going, deal with customers and the like, and as a major subplot, her 10-year-old son’s being bullied at school.

   Even with Jack’s help, Pen’s attempt to solve the mystery is quite amateurish, which in all honesty, is exactly how it should be. The secret behind Jack’s murder, which occurred in the bookstore in 1949, is left to be revealed in later books, perhaps. Altogether, an interesting concept for a series, but for me — not a member of its primary target audience — this particular entry promised quite a bit more than it was able to deliver.

Bio-Bibliograhical Notes:   Alice Kimberly is the joint pen name of a husband and wife writing team (Marc Cerasini and Alice Alfonsi) who also write a series of “Coffeehouse Mystery” novels as Cleo Coyle.

       The Haunted Bookshop series —

The Ghost and Mrs. McClure. 2004

The Ghost and the Dead Deb. 2005
The Ghost and the Dead Man’s Library. 2006
The Ghost and the Femme Fatale. 2008
The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion. 2009
The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller, as by Cleo Coyle. 2018

FIRECREEK. Warner Brothers/Seven Arts, 1968. James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Inger Stevens, Gary Lockwood, Dean Jagger, Ed Begley, Jay C. Flippen, Jack Elam, James Best, Barbara Luna, Jacqueline Scott, Brooke Bundy. Screenplay: Calvin Clements. Director: Vincent McEveety.

   You can see the rage in his eyes. Burning, passionate, unbridled rage – the type of rage that makes a decent man able to kill. That’s what you see in Jimmy Stewart’s eyes in the latter part of Firecreek, a slightly better than average Western from Warner Brothers-Seven Arts.

   Stewart portrays everyman Johnny Cobb, a farmer and part-time sheriff who, when pushed to the emotional breaking point by a gang of outlaws who have holed up in his small town, turns tough as nails and determined as hell to uproot the criminality that has taken root in his midst.

   Henry Fonda portrays the film’s villain, Bob Larkin. But Larkin’s not so much evil as he is a victim of circumstance, a passive actor in life who has become the brains of a mercenary outfit. When Larkin and his crew arrive in the small town of Firecreek, it’s not long before they discover they can have their way with the town. A town that Cobb eventually thinks is worth fighting for.

   But he’s fairly alone in that sentiment. Even the town’s shopkeeper, a former lawyer by the name of Whittier (Dean Jagger) thinks the town is filled with losers, himself among them. And truth be told, he’s got a point. There are quite a few social misfits and outcasts in Firecreek, including an Indian woman with a white baby and an overly flirtatious blonde girl living with her cruel, vindictive mother.

   Much like Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952), Stewart finds that the townsfolk are reluctant to stand up to the evil that is slowing eroding the social fabric of their community. But unlike that classic work of cinema, Firecreek aims for a greatness that it is unable to achieve.

   Part of this is due to the overly obtrusive score by Alfred Newman, one that was surely meant to heighten the emotional sentiment of certain scenes, but ends up overwhelming them in a saccharine haze. Furthermore, the movie, particularly for the first hour, feels more like an extended television melodrama than a feature film.

   A final note: Firecreek was released in 1968. It’s not that it’s a bad movie – Stewart and Fonda are such fine actors that they can carry nearly any vehicle – but that the movie appeared in theaters at a time that America and American cinema were rapidly changing. There’s something very 1950s about the whole production and most of all with Stewart’s character’s moral purity.

   Read one way, his character may have been (unintentionally or otherwise) meant to represent the old order standing up to a wild and out of control counterculture that didn’t respect traditional bourgeois values. After all, the following year, audiences watched Henry Fonda’s son Peter cruise the American road with Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (1969). Johnny Cobb may have won the battle in Firecreek, but by the 1970s, American cinema wasn’t too keen on showcasing the simple, morally pure Johnny Cobbs of the world.

DIAMOND MEN. Lions Gate, 2000. Robert Forster, Donnie Wahlberg, Bess Armstrong, Jasmine Guy. Screenwriter-director: Dan Cohen.

   This a movie with a lot of facets to it, and I can’t think of a better word to use. What it is at the beginning, is a road film. After having had a heart attack and no longer insurable, a long time diamond salesman by the name of Eddie Miller (Robert Forster) is forced to show his replacement, Bobby Walker, the ropes (Donnie Wahlberg).

   It does not go well. Forster is in his mid-50s, laid back, likes jazz and quiet motels at night. Bobby is young, brash (ultra brash) and likes a lot of night life (girls picked up in bars).

   But then, not too surprisingly, it turns into a buddy film. If two men sit next to each other in the front seat of a car for miles on end, taking the same sales route through central Pennsylvania over and over again, they begin to talk to each other and reveal things about themselves, no matter how opposite in personality they are. Things they certainly wouldn’t bring up on their first day together, which goes disastrously bad.

   Eddie’s wife died several years ago. They had a happy marriage, and Eddie has not had a date with a woman since. Bobby decides to do something about that. This does not go well, but Bobby persists, and the film now transforms itself from a raunchy-ish sex film to a romantic one. What Eddie does not know, though, is that Katie (Bess Armstrong), the woman Bobby has found for him has a — shall we say — past.

   At which point the movie decides to go in a totally different direction, one that I won’t tell you about because I have to leave something for you to see on your own. And while this is a very minor film, by Hollywood blockbuster standards, I think you should. See it yourself, that is.

   And one of the major reasons why is the presence of Robert Forster in this film. He has one of those faces that looks lived in, with the ability to make you know what he’s thinking by simply watching his face, maybe even more than by the words he’s saying. I don’t know how it does it, but he does.

ROBERT GALBRAITH – Lethal White. Cormoran Strike #4. Mulholland Books, hardcover, September 2018.

   That’s the question Robin Ellacott, secretary and operative of Cormoran Strike’s small detective agency asks herself on her wedding night when she learns her former boss wants her back after they have made national news capturing the Shakewell Ripper in the previous novel, Career of Evil.

   Her relationship with her wounded war veteran boss, Strike, is complicated at best, the two a team reliant on each other, but dancing around the other issues coming from their relationship, him dealing with his missing leg and painful stump and she with anxiety attacks after nearly being killed by the Shakewell Ripper.

   A year later things are still at loggerheads when an emotionally and mentally disturbed boy named Billy shows up in Strike’s office with a story of a crime he witnessed as a child: “Ages, I was a kid … Little Girl it was, but after they said it was a little boy. Jimmy was there, he says I never saw it, but I did. I saw him do it, Strangled. I saw it.”. Billy’s memory is inexact, but Strike believes him and takes up the case.

   His new found fame makes it harder to keep a low profile though. People expect him to be delving into something major and clam up. Meanwhile he and Robin, the latter only a year into a marriage she still questions, have to navigate their increasingly difficult relationship and her less than perfect marriage.

   The unlikely murder of a little girl, or was it a little boy, takes Strike and Robin from the back streets of London to the secret sanctums of Parliament, to a grand manor house in the country, with one obstruction and red herring after another thrown in their path as they try to uncover the truth behind a confused boy’s memory of a crime no one believes he witnessed and a tie to a priceless painting hiding in plain sight and worth killing for.

    Lethal White is a long book, in fact, it weighs in at over six hundred pages, but then it is written by someone known for writing densely plotted long books readers plunge into willingly. Perhaps the remarkable thing about this series and Galbraith (which has inspired television adaptations, too) is that you won’t find a single mention in the hardcover edition of this book that Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of one of the most popular and successful writers of the last few decades, J. K, Rowiling of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts fame.

   Fairly compared to the best of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Peter Robinson, Robert Galbraith deserves all the attention and accolades even without knowing who lies behind the pseudonym. Cormoran Strike and Robin are believable characters, flawed and human, and among the most attractive and intriguing sleuths currently around.

   I know many of you aren’t great fans of these dense long books and wonder how the writer can call anything that long suspense or maintain the mystery element, but I can only say in this one case it feels effortless, and unlike many writers who work at this length, the attractive detectives are on stage for all the action, always at the center of things, in a book that mixes hard-boiled, classical, satire, and romance in a heady mix.

   Writing like that makes taking on six hundred plus pages a pleasure.

A. A. FAIR – The Bigger They Come. Donald Lam & Bertha Cool #1. William Morrow, hardcover, 1939. Pocket #228, paperback; 1st printing, September 1943.

   In this, the first book Erle Stanley Gardner wrote under this name, we learn the following: how Donald Lam happened to get hired by the Bertha Cool Detective Agency, that that may or may not be his real name, some details about Bertha’s life with the late Mr. Cool …

   And how to commit a murder and not be punished for it. If this is not a hard-boiled novel, it is the toughest next thing to it. You can also always count on legal shenanigans in a Gardner book — and more puzzle in the plot than in all of the mysteries written last year, combined.

VIGILANTES OF BOOMTOWN. Republic, 1947. Alan Lane (as Red Ryder), Robert Blake, Roy Barcroft, Peggy Stewart, George Cheseboro, Ted Adams and John Dehner. Screenplay by Earl Snell, based on characters created by Fred Harman. Directed by R.G. Springsteen.

CITY OF BAD MEN Fox, 1953. Jeanne Crain, Dale Robertson, Richard Boone, Lloyd Bridges, Rodolfo Acosta, John Doucette, Frank Ferguson, Percy Helton, Leo Gordon, Harry Hines and Don Haggerty. Writtten by George W. George and George Slavin. Directed by Harmon Jones.

   Something prompted me to watch a double bill of VIGILANTES OF BOOMTOWN (Republic, 1947) and CITY OF BAD MEN (Fox,1953) two undistinguished but very enjoyable B-westerns centered around the Corbett-Fitzsimmons prizefight in Carson City Nevada in 1897.

   VIGILANTES is a classic Red Ryder flick from Republic, with Alan Lane as the cowboy hero deputized to keep order in Carson City during the fight, young Robert Blake as Little Beaver, his Indian pal (and alleged comic relief) veteran Nasty Roy Barcroft as – well – as the veteran nasty who means to steal the gate receipts, and John Dehner, of all people, as Fitzsimmons. It’s a modest time-killer, but fast and unpretentious enough to make it fun.

   Republic was losing interest in Red Ryder about this time, and it shows. Crowd scenes are sparse, sets are familiar, and the action, while up to Republic’s usual high standard, somehow seems a bit blasé. What carries it through is the novelty of the idea and the professionalism of the players. Alan Lane, on the verge of getting his own series, is as stoically heroic as ever, Roy Barcroft flashes his evil grin with practiced malevolence, and when they square off for yet another fight, it’s with all the enthusiasm of yet another battle between Right and Wrong.

   CITY OF BAD MEN is slightly more ambitious, filmed in color with lots of extras and a characters a bit more shaded: Dale Robertson as an embittered soldier of fortune, deputized to keep order in Carson City during the fight, a young Lloyd Bridges (looking eerily like Randy Quaid!) as his edgy kid brother, and aspiring nasty Richard Boone as Johnny Ringo, who means to steal the gate receipts. I will also call attention here to Don Haggerty, an actor who had a long and mostly-uncredited career, as another rival owlhoot; the script doesn’t give him much to do, but he does it well.

   Again, it’s all pretty fast-paced and helped along considerably by Charles G. Clarke’s photography. Clarke was an old hand around Hollywood, whose credits include TARZAN AND HIS MATE, and he makes the thing very pleasing to the eye. Harmon Jones keeps things moving swiftly, with a sure hand on the action scenes.

   Both films, though, overlooked a ploy I would have thought almost obligatory: they both feature a struggle between the hero and the heavy while the prizefight is in progress, but apparently neither director thought to inter-cut the good-guys/bad-guys battle in the dust with the prize-fighters in the ring.

   Or maybe they did, and just figured it’d be too obvious. Whatever the case, both movies got along just fine without my help.

  ROBERT J. RANDISI – Stand-Up. Miles Jacoby #6. Walker, hardcover, 1994. Perfect Crime, softcover, 2012.

   Miles Jacoby is at a crossroads in his PI career. One of the best PI’s in New York is offering him a partnership, and he’s tempted. Before he can finalize a decision, though, two cases pop us. One involves a stand-up comedian who thinks someone has stolen all his jokes, and the other a strongarm friend who’s involved in some way in a gangster’s murder. Jacoby finds himself bouncing back and forth between them, and both of them generate bodies and blood.

   Before I say anything more, let me say this: I wish to hell that crime writers would either quit trying to use microcomputers as part of their plots, or get someone who knows something about them to check the manuscripts. I am so tired of their fuck-ups I could just scream. Don’t they realize that there are enough people out there now who are computer-literate that they can’t get away with it? Pfui. Bah.

   Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I can say that this was a typical Randisi book — breezy, facile, competent, lots of snappy dialogue, fast-moving. I like Jacoby as a character, and the supporting cast too. The plot has a pulpy feel to it this time; not that that’s necessarily bad, you understand, but I seem to remember earlier books having a little more depth.

   Easy, pleasant reading, but it’s nothing you’ll remember a week later. I always have the feeling Randisi could do a lot better if he’s just take the time.

      The Miles Jacoby novels —

Eye in the Ring (1982)
The Steinway Collection (1983)
Full Contact (1984)
Separate Cases (1990)
Hard Look (1993)
Stand Up (1994)

THE TERROR WITHIN. Concorde Pictures, 1989. George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreeff, Terri Treas, John LaFayette, Tommy Hinckley. Director: Thierry Notz.

   Is this low-budget exploitation schlock, a wry homage to David Cronenberg and body horror cinema, or something that was deliberately made so it could be marketed for the late 1980s VHS market? Maybe it’s all three. For that’s the best way in which to describe The Terror Within. A movie that, at its core, is an unmistakably derivative post-apocalyptic science fiction/horror mash-up and that shamelessly borrows from such notable horror movies as Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974) and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). At its best, it attempts to channel those films’ main themes in a manner that’s at least vaguely entertaining.

   Both of these aforementioned films notably involved scenarios in which otherworldly — and decidedly unwelcome — beings ensconced themselves within human hosts’ bodies. Because that’s the main thrust of what happens in this Roger Corman-produced feature that had only a limited theatrical release.

   Set in the Mojave Desert after a biological weapons catastrophe that has wiped out the vast majority of humanity, the film follows the efforts of a small group of scientists holed up in an underground bunker while busy researching the effects the catastrophe had on their ecosystem. As you might well imagine, all is not well in this depopulated wasteland. The fallout has created a new race of mutants commonly referred to as gargoyles.

    Not only are they hideous, with the obligatory sharp teeth and guttural sounds, but they also have the capacity to impregnate human female hosts. It’s when a pregnant female survivor makes her way to the scientists’ bunker that the real trouble begins. I don’t think I’m giving away that much of what follows when I say that a mutant child is born and that little bugger grows up real fast. Judging the way it behaves in the bunker, you would think it had been raised by wolves.