GEORGE DILNOT – The Crooks’ Game. Geoffrey Bles, UK, hardcover, 1927. Cherry Tree, UK, paperback, 1938/1945. Houghton, US, 1927. McKinlay, Stone & Mackenzie: “The Scotland Yard Library,” US, no date given. Also published in Detective Classics, May 1930.

   According to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, George Dilnot was the author of 22 works of detective fiction, two of them collaborations with Frank Froest, and another three of them Sexton Blake paperbacks in the 1930s. All but a handful were never published in the US, so any that weren’t are going to be scarce. Based on reading this one, which I purchased at PulpFest, I may go looking, but if no cheap inexpensive copies turn up, I won’t go into a funk about it.

   Dilnot’s hero is a rather down-to-earth gentleman by the name of Detective-Inspector Strickland of Scotland Yard, no first name ever stated, so far I can recall. The case revolves around a millionaire from the US, one Buck Shang, and his daughter Shirley. Having been pardoned from the jail sentence he was serving back in Colorado, he now goes by the name of Earl Millard.

   Some former associates have followed father and daughter to England, and they are determined to get two million dollars from them, no matter how they get it or who gets in their way, and that includes Inspector Strickland.

   What follows in the story is a grand game of murder, capture, escape and recapture, boat trips up and down the Thames, and all around London town, good sections and bad, accomplices, assorted gang members, double-crosses and twists galore. It’s a lot of fun to read, and not until you’re finished do you realize that only a very routine lot of detective work ever went on.

   One really striking surprise occurs well before the end of the book, with the unfortunate result being that it also ends the case as well. What follows from here is a long recap, mostly unnecessary, and a short romantic interlude at the very end.

   Which also means that Strickland is about to chuck his job at Scotland Yard and head to the US with the Millards (if I’m telling you anything I shouldn’t, I apologize), and yet Strickland showed up in one of Dilnot’s novels two years later, in The Black Ace, his second and final appearance, but still in England. I’m curious enough to make this the first one I may go looking for.

“Joaquin Murietta.” An episode of Stories of the Century.   Syndicated / Republic Pictures, 16 April 1954 (Season 1, Episode 13). Jim Davis, Mary Castle, with Rick Jason as Joaquin Murietta. Screenplay: Milton Raison. Director: William Witney.

   In this Stories of the Century episode, Matt Clark, Railroad Detective (Jim Davis) and his female partner, Frankie Adams (Mary Castle) take on legendary/quasi-fictional bandit Joaquin Murietta. Directed by William Witney, this episode plays like an extended serial or a very short B-Western. Unlike many other television Westerns from this era, the hero not only has a female partner, but a strong willed and independent one more than willing to speak her mind.

   The plot is adequate, but some details don’t make a whole lot of logical sense. The characters, such as they are, aren’t all that developed, although it should be noted that Murietta is portrayed as both as a ladies man and as a cruel bandit. Still, there’s action, gun-fighting, allusions to gold treasure a plenty. Most importantly, there’s a Whitneyesque drawn out, bare-knuckles fistfight at the very end. How could there not be?

   You can watch the entire episode on the YouTube videobelow:

THE SCARLET COAT. MGM, 1955. Cornel Wilde, Michael Wilding, George Sanders, Anne Francis, Robert Douglas, John McIntire, Rhys Williams, John Dehner, Bobby Driscoll. Director: John Sturges.

   The Scarlet Coat is at once a docudrama epic, a Revolutionary War era swashbuckler, and a war film. Directed by John Sturges, the movie stars Cornel Wilde as the fictional Major John Bolton of the Continental Army. His task: ferret out the traitor in the colonists’ midst, a trail that ultimately leads him to none other than the infamous historical traitor, Benedict Arnold (Robert Douglas). To accomplish this task, Bolton goes undercover as a deserter in British-controlled New York City where he aims to deceive Major John Andre (Michael Wilding) and the loyalist Dr. Jonathan Odell (George Sanders).

   Filmed in Cinemascope in Eastman Color on location in New York’s Hudson River Valley, The Scarlet Coat benefits from a stellar cast, and lavish, detailed costumes. Yet, when all is said and done, it’s the alternatingly flaccid and meandering script that makes the movie an altogether humdrum affair.

   That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t have its moments. Indeed, the film’s last thirty minutes or so have enough action and suspense to keep you engaged and anticipating what happens next.

   But it’s simply not enough to make up for the fact that, for much of the movie, the actors seem to be going through the motions more than anything else. Likewise, the friendly rivalry between Bolton and Andre over the fictional Sally Cameron (Anne Francis) seems forced, as if the screenwriters decided upon introducing a romantic subplot just for the sake of having one in the movie.

   And the character of Benedict Arnold, nominally the pivotal character, barely appears on screen, making the film more the story of British spy, John Andre than of the American spy, Arnold.

   The Scarlet Coat, which was not a commercial success, is not a bad film so much a as a movie which reached for a level of historical relevancy that, despite gallant effort, ultimately eluded its grasp. That’s not to say that it’s not worth watching. In a way, it still is, so long as you do so with tempered expectations.

RICHARD COWPER – Out There Where the Big Ships Go. Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1980. Cover art: Don Maitz.

   A wonderfully designed and colorful work of art for the cover of a fascinating collection of short stories, also colorful, sparkling and intricately designed. I’ve never read any of Richard Cowper’s novels, many but not all of which have been published in the US, and perhaps I shall. Or perhaps Cowper was an author like Harlan Ellison, and his forte was short fiction only. On the basis of this collection, it is worth finding out.

   The first story is also the title of the collection, and the cover illustrates it well. A young boy unknowingly turns out to be the generational catalyst for mankind on our evolutionary path to the stars, based on one chosen leader’s proficiency in The Game, designed by an alien race to determine whether or not we are ready.

   Trying to summarize the story in one paragraph such as the above I realize is a hopeless task. I’ll refrain from trying further and say only that while it’s an old idea, Cowper comes at it from a new direction and tells it in fine fashion.

    “The Custodians” is a gem of a story about free will versus a preordained universe, one that stretches over nearly a thousand years time but one that takes place only in an isolated monastery in Europe. The question is, will Marcus Spindrift’s final vision come true, or can it be averted? Or if he had published the Exploratio Spiritualis, would the world have taken its warning about greed and the search for power seriously enough to avert a full-fledged worldwide disaster?

   Once again its the telling, sharp and precise, yet again at an angle, that makes the difference between this story and anything similar written in a 1940s issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

    “Paradise Beach” is the shortest story in the collection, and the slightest, about a piece of art, a neo-anamorphic window, if you will, upon, well, a paradise that may be more real than even the artist (may have) intended.

    “The Hertford Manuscript” takes the hero of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and as a sequel of sorts to that story flings him into the past, that of London in 1665 and (temporarily?) strands him there. By the time you have finished this one, you will have suffered through the Great Plague nearly as much as being there yourself. Beautifully written.

   But in many ways, even more so is “The Web of the Magi,” the last story in the collection and by far the longest. In the year 1886 an engineer trying to map the path for a telegraphic link across the land of Persia finds himself in a lost world, one whence came the Magi of the Christmas story. Overseeing this world is a beautiful woman, of course, and the two of them make beautiful music together, but in trade for the key to such a paradise, there is always a …

   The story gets a little too mystical for me at the end, but until that time it had me as enchanted as the hero of the tale himself. This is a story that is nearly as much fantasy in style as science fiction, but somehow Cowper manages to keep at least one foot on the ground at all times. If you like lost race stories, you will love this one.

   This is a book that will be appeal to you if you prefer atmosphere rather than action in the science fiction that you read. I’m fond of space opera myself, but books such as this one seem to stay with me longer than do tales of derring-do on worlds light-years away from ours, as fun as they may be.

      

THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE. Sokal-Film GmbH, Germany, 1926; original title: Der Student von Prag. US title: The Man Who Cheated Life. Conrad Veidt, Werner Krauss, Agnes Estherhazy. Script by Henrik Galeen and Hanns Heinz Ewers, based on the short story “William Wilson” by Edgar Allan Poe (1839). Director: Henrik Galeen. Shown at Cinefest 18, Liverpool NY, March 1998.

   A legendary German horror film that lived up to its reputation. Veidt is the student who sells his reflection to Krauss for the love of an heiress and is drawn into a nightmare that culminates In a magnificent sequence in which he confronts his mirror reflection and tries to destroy it.

   The haunting cinematography and art direction are by Guenther Krampf and Hermann Warm (art director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). A scene in which Krauss stands on a hilltop and orchestrates the elements and the activities of a hunting party reminded me of Veidt’s summoning of the storm in The Thief of Bagdad (Korda) and a long shot, later in the film, in which we see only the elongated shadow of Krauss’ arm and hand as he reaches up toward a garden terrace is equally unforgettable.

   Veidt is perfectly cast as the obsessed student and his deterioration is reflected in an extraordinary alteration of his face, which seems to grow thinner and more furrowed in the course of the film. A great film.

CHLOE, LOVE IS CALLING YOU. Pinnacle, 1934. Olive Borden, Red Howes. Georgette Harvey, Philip Ober, Francis Joyner, and The Shreveport Home Wreckers. Written and directed by Marshall Neilan.

   An intriguing little B-movie from 1934, with no one you ever heard of, perfunctory screenplay (the characters enter, explicate and move on to the next scene) and rudimentary direction. Needless to say, I found something worthwhile and memorable in it.

   The story is something about old black Mandy (Georgette Hervey) returning to her former home in the swamps with her grown-up light-skinned daughter Chloe (played by the lovely and tragic Olive Borden) and Jim Strong, another light-skinned black man, who loves Chloe in vain. Jim is played by Philp Ober, who will always be remembered for his short scene as Lester Townsend in North by Northwest, and who looks about as black as a Vanilla Wafer.

   It seems old Mandy has returned to take Voodoo Vengeance for the lynching of her husband, some fifteen years ago, and the opening scenes, as the roving camera tracks her skiff through the bayou are really rather effective. Likewise the notion of retribution for racial injustice is surprisingly daring for films of this era.

   Then, alas, we get into the plot, as Ol’ Colonel Watsisfuss sips mint juleps with handsome young Wade Carson and they tell us that Carson has been hired to look into thefts at the Colonel’s Turpentine Plantation or some such.

   They also tell us that old Colonel Whatisfuss, had an infant granddaughter who supposedly drowned in the swamp maybe fifteen year back or so.

   It takes about five minutes for Wade to meet Chloe while sleuthing in the swamp, and less time than that for them to fall in love, but Chloe knows their love can never be, because she be black.

   You have guessed the ending? So did I, but director Marshall Neilan (a rather interesting personality in his own right) walks us through it at his own pace, which could be charitably described as Lame. The acting is hard to judge fairly, given the spartan script fed to the unhappy thespians, but I have to say they handle themselves with a sincerity I found pleasantly disarming, with Chloe and her two suitors at odds while the Turpentine Rustlers and Voodoo Hoodoos hatch their fiendish plans between musical interludes by the Shreveport Home Wreckers, until we reach the ending, when poor distraught Chloe runs off through the swamp and is promptly grabbed by the local Voodooers for their weekly fish fry and human sacrifice.

   At which point the movie actually gets pretty good; the scenes of the Voodoo ritual are hauntingly evocative, with, big old Oak trees dripping Spanish Moss behind a huge bonfire, while black silhouettes writhe and dance in the foreground like souls out of Hell. And the images of poor Chloe tied to the sacrificial altar as Wade Carson and Jim Strong battle to her rescue recall the very best pulp-cover art, providing a lurid finish to a distinctly uneven but somehow memorable film.

“The Sting of Death.” An episode of The Elgin Hour. ABC-TV; 22 February 1955. (Season 1, Episode 11). Boris Karloff, Robert Flemyng, Hermione Gingold, Martin Green. Teleplay by Alvin Sapinsky, based on the novel A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard. Directed by Daniel Petrie.

         â€œMy dear sir, the game is afoot.”

   Superb live melodrama from television’s Golden Age features Boris Karloff as the mysterious beekeeper Mr. Mycroft, and Robert Flemyng as Mr. Sidney Silchester, a bachelor teacher on holiday in Sussex who finds himself in the midst of a murderous plot of sinister proportions all because he has an inordinate taste for honey.

   It seems Mr. Hargrove, a local beekeeper has found a way to suppress rival bee populations and cornered the honey market locally, but he has also spread out from that occupation and recently killed Mr. Mycroft’s dog, Musgrave. The mysterious Mycroft is convinced, as he tells Mr.Silchester, that Hargrove plans to expand his experiments, and it seems he may be right when Silchester’s housekeeper Alice (Hermione Gingold) announces poor Mrs. Hargrove was stung to death.

   But it isn’t until the nervous Mr. Silchester is targeted by the Master Criminal, as Mr. Mycroft, describes Hargrove, that a tense game of cat and mouse develops with life and death at stake.

   H. F. Heard’s novel, and its sequel, Reply Paid, feature Mr. Mycroft and Mr. Silchester in two sinister adventures mixing science fiction (Heard penned the classic SF novel Doppleganger), horror, and mystery in a tasty mix for those with a taste for Sherlockian lore equal to Mr. Silchester’s taste for honey, and this well written and directed drama by Alvin Sapinsky and director Daniel Petrie more than rewards on both levels.

   Karloff and Flemyng are obviously enjoying themselves, with the former relishing his chance to play Sherlock Holmes, however obliquely. There are numerous nice touches in the script from the book, and one nice bit as Karloff hangs a coat hastily over a fore and aft on a peg by the door. It’s clear Karloff relished this part.

   This one is well worth catching, with fine performances all around, and only a few minor problems with props like walking sticks that fall over, bandages that won’t stick, and spectacles that come off at inopportune times to remind you it was done live aside from the sets and painted backdrops, and even those contribute to the fun here.

   All and all this entertains as far more than a curiosity. The book was filmed again as The Deadly Bees by Freddie Francis with Frank Finlay and Guy Doleman, minus Mycroft and the Sherlockian bit as a straight suspense/horror outing with a subplot involving a rock star with a nervous breakdown that always seemed totally out of left field to me. It isn’t awful, but it has none of the charm of this well acted 52 minute production on a shoestring budget.

   And you have to admit the idea of Boris Karloff as Sherlock Holmes is worth watching in and of itself.

TWO FLAGS WEST. 20th Century Fox, 1950. Joseph Cotten, Linda Darnell, Jeff Chandler, Cornel Wilde, Dale Robertson, Jay C. Flippen, Noah Beery Jr., Harry von Zell, John Sands, Arthur Hunnicutt. Director: Robert Wise.

   I watch a lot of movies. A lot. So it takes quite a bit for a film, or a sequence in a film, to really and truly stand out in my mind. You know what I’m talking about — those indelible moments when you realize that an actor has been perfectly cast and his character does something in a manner that takes you by surprise.

   There’s a moment like that at the tail end of Two Flags West, a thematically and visually captivating Western directed by Robert Wise. The movie, which takes place in New Mexico during the Civil War, tells the story of a formerly imprisoned Confederate Calvary unit which joins up with the U.S. Army. Leading the men, the so-called ‘Galvanized Yankees’ from Dixie is Col. Clay Tucker (Joseph Cotton) who, after rueful consideration, decided to take up an offer from Union Captain Mark Bradford (Cornel Wilde): in exchange for their liberation from a Yankee prison camp, Tucker and his men will serve out West with the U.S. Army and fight the Indians.

   As you might imagine, things don’t go so smoothly. Not only does Tucker butt heads with the acerbic and borderline sadistic Major Henry Kenniston (Jeff Chandler), he ends up developing romantic feelings toward Kenniston’s now widowed sister-in-law, Elena (Linda Darnell), a Spanish girl from California. Problem is: both Kenniston and Captain Bradford (Wilde) also have romantic inclinations toward her.

   Fortunately, this soap opera aspect to the film doesn’t overpower its other major theme, namely the reconciliation between North and South. Indeed, much of the film is best understood as a character study of two men — the farsighted Tucker (Cotton), a landowner from Georgia and the bitter, vengeful Kenniston (Chandler), a shortsighted man prone to rage.

   It’s not until the film’s very end, when Kenniston finally redeems himself, that one realizes that Two Flags West is no ordinary Western. Filmed in crisp black and white under the skillful direction of Wise, it’s definitely a minor gem that fans of the genre should seek out.

JOHNNY ROCCO. Allied Artists, 1958. Richard Eyer, Stephen McNally, Coleen Gray, Russ Conway, Leslie Bradley, James Flavin. Screenplay: James O’Hanlon, based on a story by Richard Carlson. Director: Paul Landres.

   The answer to the first question you are probably asking is, No, it’s not the same Johnny Rocco. Far from it. Just about as far opposite as you can get. Richard Eyer, who was 13 when this movie was made, plays the title role, and he looks even younger.

   He plays the son of a small-time hoodlum in this film, a young boy who adores his single-parent father, and the affection is mutual, although the kid does get tough love in return. The reason Tony Rocco takes Johnny on his latest job for the mob is so he and his partner in crime can get back across the Mexican border with fewer questions asked.

   What they didn’t count on a motorcycle cop trying to pull them over for speeding, and what Tony the father really didn’t count on is that his fellow mobster would pull a stunt that gets the cop killed. With Johnny in the car, as a terrified witness.

   If this is a noir film, you might classify it under “inspirational noir.” Johnny’s teacher (Coleen Gray) knows something is wrong — he is withdrawn in class and can speak only by stuttering — and she is ready to help him if he will let her. And while on the run to sort things out, Johnny finds a brief sanctuary in a Catholic church, where the priest finds a place for him in the boys’ choir.

   Richard Eyer’s career as a child lasted less than ten more years, but in playing a young wholesome lad in trouble in this movie, he is outstanding. The terror he has after what happened, the fear in his eyes, his worry about his Dad, all 100% believable. Even his stuttering sounds natural. An actor three or four times his age could not have done it better.

THE HAUNTED PALACE. American International Pictures, 1963. Long title: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace. Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney, Frank Maxwell, Leo Gordon, Elisha Cook Jr. Screenplay: Charles Beaumont, based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe and the story “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” by H.P. Lovecraft. Director: Roger Corman.

   Except for the poem that Vincent Price reads off screen at the film’s end, there’s nothing Edgar Allan Poe about Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace. With a straightforward, although at times disappointingly flaccid, screenplay by Charles Beaumont, this alternatingly captivating, creepy, and quixotic film is actually a cinematic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”

   Price is perfectly cast in a dual role as the fiendish warlock, Joseph Curwen and as Curwen’s descendent, the one and only Charles Dexter Ward. Nearly two hundred years prior, an angry mob of New England townsfolk burned Curwen to death as a means of stopping the strange diabolical man from practicing sorcery in a little town called Arkham.

   Young girls used to disappear in the middle of the night and end up in Curwen’s castle on the hill. The men of Arkham were going to have none of that. Not on their watch. There was even talk that Curwen was capturing them in order to breed their beautiful girls with a hideous monster, all in order to create a superhuman master race.

   Flash forward. Enter Charles Dexter Ward. A man from all appearances a kind and gentle, if somewhat naïve man. He’s got a lovely bride Anne (Debra Paget) and a claim on his ancestor’s forbidding estate. As you might imagine, it’s not too long before the evil forces of the past storm the present and the spirit of Curwen takes possession of Charles Dexter Ward’s body.

   What evil schemes does the resurrected spirit of Curwen have in mind? Does he even work for himself or for the old gods, those malevolent spirits of yesterday just waiting to reclaim their earthly inheritance?

   The Haunted Palace reminds us that horror need not be gruesome, that it can be done tongue in cheek, with a wink to the audience, all the while raising issues about the ethics of science and, in this case, eugenics. Unlike so many contemporary horror films, this one is steeped in history, atmosphere, and the New England Gothic literary tradition.

   Although at times it feels incomplete, with too many strands never fully sewn together, this outing by Price in a dual role as two men overtaken by forces they can’t fully comprehend is definitely worth a look.