FORBIDDEN. British Lion Film Corp, UK, 1948. Douglass Montgomery, Hazel Court, Patricia Burke, Garry Marsh, Ronald Shiner, Kenneth Griffith. Director: George King.

   By sheerest of chances, one imagines, I’ve come across both an episode of a TV show (Adam Adamant Lives) and a movie (Forbidden) which takes place along the “Golden Mile,” a stretch of Promenade between the North and South piers in Blackpool, England, filled (in its heyday) with carnival booths and amusement arcades, slot machines and various other means of taking money from the pockets of passers-by.

   The episode (Adam Adamant Lives) was the second of the series, “Death Has a Thousand Faces” (30 June 1966), in which Adamant (Gerald Harper) and Georgina Jones, his female assistant (Juliet Harmer) meet and recruit the third member of the program’s recurring cast, a barker by the name of William Simms (Jack May). Unaccountably, Simms does not appear in the third episode, reflecting some of the production problems the TV crew were having at the time.

   But this is not a review of Adam Adamant, nor of the Golden Mile, but of Forbidden, in which one actor on the way down, Douglass Montgomery – this was his last movie before heading over to solely a television career – meets one on the way up, Hazel Court, red-headed beauty of many a later Hammer horror film, several years in her future yet.

   She’s the girl behind a candy counter along the Golden Mile, and across the way is Montgomery’s booth, in which he sells tonics of all sorts for all kinds of maladies – a sort of stationary medicine wagon. Baldness, sore feet, upset stomach? Stop in, please.

   But it must pay well. Jim Harding (that’s his name) could be a research chemist instead, and for real, but his wife, determined to become an actress, has a standard of living that demands he say no to mere (and low-paying) academic pursuits.

   The girl’s name is Jane Thompson (played by Hazel Court) and she’s not his wife, but she’d like to be. But don’t get the wrong impression here. She’s an innocent and doesn’t know that he’s even married. But he does — boy does he ever — and here is where the noir aspect of this relatively mild British thriller kicks in.

   Harding is a weakling, though, though not strictly in a physical sense. Maybe mild-mannered is a sufficient description — not a forceful fellow at all. Things do take their course, however, and after his wife’s death and a suspenseful chase scene taking place in the tower high above the promenade, there is a happy ending – or at least an ending that’s as happy as it could be, given the circumstances.

   I’ve used the word “mild” a couple of times. As thrillers go, that just about sums this movie up in one word: mild. The presence of Hazel Court in this movie was enough to keep me watching it, even in black and white. She may, or may not, be reason enough for you.

[UPDATE.] 04-22-10.   While the DVD cover shown is that of the UK edition, I thought I should let you know that Forbidden has been commercially released in the US also, and that’s the copy I have.

TOM WEST – Ghost Gold. E. P. Dutton “Diamond D Western,” hardcover, 1950. Reprint paperback: Pocket #733, October 1950.

   I almost pitched Ghost Gold after the first few pages: the local bank is found robbed, a teller murdered, and a handsome stranger on the floor, unconscious, with the murder weapon in his hand.

   Well, it’s perfectly obvious he can’t be the killer, and equally obvious that someone’s going to walk his horse out from under him if he can’t prove his innocence. Looked like pretty standard stuff, and I didn’t feel like spending a whole book plodding toward the obvious.

   Fortunately, neither did the author, Tom West.. In short order our hero is cleared of the crime and on the track of the guilty owlhoots what done it. Which is also fairly standard stuff for a western, except that this one is peppered with a saucy supporting cast that livens up even a plot as stale as this one.

   West throws in a corrupt lawman with a stubborn streak, colorful heroine, drunken lawyer, doughty squatters, and best of all, a colorful detective, Scripture Sam, who goes about methodically collecting clues and sifting evidence in the best tradition, while mis-quoting the Bible and ventilating side-winders.

   Ghost Gold is worth reading just for this, but it also offers a few well-paced chases, gun-battles and a dandy wrap-up for the hombres. In all, a lively time and I’m glad I stuck with it.

Editorial Comments:   Tom West is not an author who’s remembered very much today, even, I suspect, by most collectors and connoisseurs of western fiction. But between 1944 and 1980 he wrote some 60 plus western novels, most of them as paperback originals, many by Ace in their “Double Novel” format.

   Of special note, I think, is the fact that he favored alliterative titles, ones such as Meddling Maverick (his first), Bushwhack Basin, Battling Buckaroos, Lobo Lawman, The Toughest Town in the Territory, and Bad Blood at Bonita Basin. Plus Ghost Gold as well, of course.

   I have a complete checklist of his westerns to post online, and I will, as soon as I can get to it, perhaps as early as next week.

THE NIGHTMARE MAN. BBC-TV, UK, four-part mini-series, 01 May to 22 May 1981. James Warwick, Celia Imrie, Maurice Roëves, Tom Watson, Jonathan Newth, James Cosmo. Screenplay: Robert Holmes, based on the novel Child of the Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire. Director: Douglas Camfield.

   That both the screenwriter and the director were involved with the BBC’s Dr. Who, both before and after, suggests why this moderately well-plotted SF-thriller comes off so well.

   All four parts take place on a unnamed Hebrides island, up around Scotland way. About 35 square miles in size, the island has a police force of four men, headed by Inspector Inskip (Maurice Roëves), and a coast guard station with three more.

   Is that enough to protect the island’s inhabitants from a crazed killer whose victims have been mauled to death by a creature that seems to be half animal and half human? Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but the island is socked in by fog with no access to the mainland. Until the weather clears, the people on the island are strictly on their own.

   Pictured on the DVD cover are the two principal characters in this four-act play. James Warwick as Michael Gaffikin, the island’s dentist, an outsider who honorable intentions are questioned by the closely-knit townspeople in regard to the incipient love affair between him and the island’s druggist, Fiona Patterson, played the lovely Celia Imrie.

   Only once do we see the latter in anything resembling glamorous, however, during a dinner date with Gaffikin, in which she wears a daring low-cut dress. Otherwise she is as bundled up against the fog as the rest of the guys. Of course it is she who has previously mapped out the island, so it is also she who is their guide up and down and across some fairly rugged terrain (actually filmed in Cornwall), trying to reach campers in danger and to track the increasingly murderous intruder — who just may be an alien newly arrived from space.

   As usual in stories like these, the truth, while equally fantastic is also rather prosaic, making the fourth of the four episodes the weakest. It takes a lot of sedentary (standing around) exposition to make the details of the island’s attacker understood.

   But before then, by which I mean the previous three episodes, this is a fine example of horror fiction, slightly old-fashioned now and only moderately gory, one supposes, due to its being made for TV — shown only once, by the way, until recently released by the BBC on Regions 2 and 4 DVD.

   I watched all four episodes (two hours) in one evening. I couldn’t stop myself.

JOSHUA WILLARD – The Thorne Theater Mystery. Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1937. Reprint paperback: Prize Mystery novel #25, digest-sized, 1944, condensed.

   In upper New York State lies the town of Thorne, which contains the Thorne Theater and the last of the male Thomes with a pitch fork stuck in him. The show — an amateur production of Laugh, Lou, Laugh — must go on while Doctor Glover, the town’s coroner, investigates with the unhelpful assistance of the editor of the town’s newspaper.

   Despite what I would, to be overly considerate, describe as the author’s efforts to conceal the information, the murderer is evident almost throughout the novel.

   Go see Laugh, Lou, Laugh, and ignore the book, an even more dreadful amateur production than the show must have been.

Editorial Comments:   According to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, this is the only mystery novel that the author Joshua Willard wrote.

   I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I suspect it may have been the abridged edition that Bill read and reported on, but perhaps not. The mystery fiction published by Phoenix Press was, let’s face it, less than average, to put it kindly, by any standard or norm in place at the time or since.

   Follow the link above to Bill Pronzini’s well-known and very enjoyable essay on Phoenix Press and the brand of lending-library mystery fiction they published.

TURN TO THE RIGHT. Metro, 1922. Alice Terry, Jack Mulhall, Harry Meyers, George Cooper, Edward Connelly, Lydia Knott, Betty Allen, Margaret Loomis, Billy Bletcher, Eric Mayne, Ray Ripley. Scenario by June Mathis and Mary O’Hara, based on a play by Winchell Smith and Jack E. Hazzard; photography: John Seitz. Director: Rex Ingram, director. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   I saw this in 2005 at Cinefest, and I’m going to repeat the review, which, after a second viewing, still reflects my feelings.

   The program notes characterize this film as a comedy, but it’s actually a rural comedy/drama with characters familiar to audiences for generations: the hard-hearted landlord, the penniless widow he’s trying to evict, the country bumpkin who turns out to be something of a financial wizard, and the Alger-like country lad who fights against adversity and eventually achieves vindication and success.

   What is surprising is that the film is directed by Rex Ingram, better known for such films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Prisoner of Zenda, and not normally associated with traditional melodrama.

   This rural fairy tale has an ingratiating playfulness that allows the villain to save his face and the comic foils (memorably played by Harry Myers and George Cooper) to find redemption as well as win the hearts of two village maidens.

DANA HAND – Deep Creek. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, hardcover, February 2010. Trade paperback: Mariner Books, March, 2011.

   This dark tale of one of the byways of the history of the American Northwest begins with a particularly grim incident. Police Judge Joe Vincent, a one time marshal, is taking his daughter Nell fishing when they snag something big:

   Not just one man either. More than thirty bodies are eventually recovered, all Chinese miners. It is June of 1887 in the Idaho territory and Joe Vincent has just been thrown into the case of his lifetime, one that will take him on a personal journey and across countryside and through cities and a sham trial in Oregon before he uncovers the truth.

   Deep Creek is based on a forgotten but true incident of Northwestern American history, and Joe Vincent based on Judge Joseph Vincent, the man who investigated the mass murder.

   Written in a simple but powerful style by a pair of writers, Will Howarth and Anne Matthews, who have written eighteen books of non-fiction, Deep Creek derives its power from a story of three good, if complex people, drawn into a mystery both deeper and darker than they can imagine.

   As Vincent sets out to follow the trail of the bodies up river he is joined by Lee Loi, an ambitious investigator sent by the Sam Yu Company, and Grace Sundown, a half metis mountain guide with secrets of her own. Together they have to piece together how this brutal crime happened and why, while fighting their own demons and the inherent injustice of racial matters at the time.

   It might sound as if this is a particularly dark book, but that would be unfair. Above all, the book celebrates the simple goodness of three people who will not allow an injustice to go unmarked or strangers far from their home to go unavenged.

   Much of the novel has to do with those three investigators learning to trust each other as they encounter lies, deceit, and cover-ups at all levels and distrust from both those they want to help and those they hope to bring to bear for the crime. At times they face danger from unseen forces, and the violence of the brutal slaughter of the thirty Chinese is never far from the surface.

   The novel covers a time period from June of 1887 to August of 1892 but echoes the difficult history of the Asian immigrants to the American West through much of the 19th and the first half of the 20th Century.

   The ending of the book is a perfect touch of ironic justice, one that might have come from Jack London at his best. It echoes that and Traven’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre and brings a fine book to a perfect close.

   As with real life the novel is not tied up neatly in a package, and justice is not so much served as attempted by three good people and others like them that they meet and ally with. And the writing … the writing is simply beautiful:

   This one is something special, with some of the power of works by Ivan Doig and Jim Harrison as well as a compelling mystery and solid detective work by its three protagonists. It goes on a small shelf of powerful novels of the West such as those by Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Frederick Manfred, and Wallace Stegner. Once you read it, you won’t forget it.

Note: In 2005 the site where the bodies were found was recognized as a significant American historical place and renamed Chinese Massacre Cove. Final recognition for a forgotten crime.

WAKING THE DEAD. BBC, UK, Series 8: 06-07, 13-14, 20-21, 27-28 Sept 2009. Trevor Eve (Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd), Sue Johnston (Dr. Grace Foley), Wil Johnson (DI Spencer Jordan), Félicité Du Jeu (DC Stella Goodman), Tara Fitzgerald (Dr. Eve Lockhart), Stacey Roca (DS Katrina Howard).

   This long running series (back for four stories, each spread over two one-hour parts, no adverts) is as barmy as any that is currently being shown.

   Detective Supt. Peter Boyd, who runs a cold case squad, is so far over the top, irrational and prone to outbursts, that you wonder why anyone would work for him at all.

   However the stories are usually very watchable and often set up an intriguing premise. The problem is that the resolutions are always a complete letdown and never bother trying to explain who has done what and why.

   Boyd is never supervised and seems unbothered by his methods but this series went a step further and set Boyd up as some sort of avenger. Illogical and beyond reason but it can be entertaining.

THE STRANGER. RKO Radio Pictures, 1946. Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Orson Welles, Philip Merivale, Richard Long, Billy House. Screenplay: Anthony Veiller. Director: Orson Welles.

   The dark nature of this movie of course is what consigns it to the noir category, that plus the moody but still dazzling black-and-white photography, complete with unusual camera angles, especially during the many trips up and down the inside of the bell tower facing the green in a small one-horse town in Connecticut right after the war.

   But is it really a noir film? Not really by subject matter, that of a post-World War II manhunt. A former top member of Nazi party in Germany (Orson Welles) who by posing as a history teacher at a local academy, has somehow managed to infiltrate his way into local society so solidly enough that he is about to marry the daughter (Loretta Young) of a US Supreme Court justice who lives in town.

   On his trail is one man, a representative of the US government known only as Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson). His problem? He does not know the face of the man he is after, a world-class criminal who managed to keep his identity a secret while the Nazis were in power, a man with vicious ideas who preferred to do his nasty work behind the scenes only.

   The noirish concept of an innocent man in over his head through his own weakness and/or the sheer vicissitudes of fate do not apply here. Professor Charles Rankin, as he is known now, is a bad man, and as a killer who senses he is about to be trapped, he needs to be caught. It is only the camera work and Welles’ direction that makes this movie qualify as noir, and then by only the slimmest of margins.

   Edward G. Robinson is as earnest as only Edgar G. Robinson could be, and Loretta Young I do not believe could look only lovelier. It is her predicament that is the most heartbreaking. In love with a man who is a monster, she cannot accept it, even as a mountain of facts begins to pile up against him.

   As for fierce-looking Mr. Orson Welles himself, he is dark, brooding and sullen throughout the movie. It is difficult to believe that the cheerful Loretta Young could fall in love with such a man, much less go on a honeymoon with him.

   It is also hard to believe, that even in simpler times, the credentials and background of the man to whom the daughter of a Supreme Court justice is married would not have been checked more thoroughly earlier on. Before enjoying this movie to the fullest, we in this more cynical age must accept that life (and politics) were easier then.

   Otherwise this well-meaning movie, the first to show footage of concentration camps in Germany, or so I am told, is only a well-designed and well-produced relic of the past, a magnificent artifact caught up in amber and preserved for us today, a different time altogether.

THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY. Universal, 1968. Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, Pamela Franklin, Jess Hahn. Based on a novel by Lionel White. Co-screenwriter & director: Hubert Cornfield. Co-director (uncredited): Richard Boone.

   After Gunn and P. J., this latest excursion back into my tawdry youth ended with The Night of the Following Day, co-written and directed, mostly, by Hubert Cornfield, based on The Snatchers, a Gold Medal paperback novel by Lionel White.

   The film was originally intended to star Richard Boone, but Marlon Brando, whose career was in eclipse at the time, owed Universal a movie, and Cornfield, who had done a few interesting B-films, jumped at the chance — only to have Brando bully him around the set and ultimately off the picture, which was finished by Richard Boone.

   Whoever’s responsible, this is a unique, moody and suspenseful piece, with sparse dialogue that sounds largely improvised around a plot that keeps falling apart. A young heiress is kidnapped by a very businesslike band of outsiders that includes Brando, Rita Moreno, Jess Hahn and Richard Boone.

   The professionalism quickly dissipates, though, when it develops that Moreno has a drug habit, Boone enjoys hurting their captive, and Hahn suffers from delusions of competence, leaving Brando to try to hold things together through a slow build-up to an impressively violent resolution.

   Slow-moving, I’ll grant you, but Night has an atmosphere of growing nastiness that keeps one watching. Performances are refreshingly natural throughout, and the plot twists itself nicely.

   All of which is very nearly spoiled by one of the lousiest endings ever committed on film, but like most endings, this one comes late in the film, after some very stylish action and a lot of suspense.

JAMES ANDERSON – Angel of Death. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, April 1989. First published in the UK: Constable, hc, 1978.

   Six members of a yachting party are deliberately yet randomly poisoned while sailing in the Caribbean. The question is, how did the killer make sure that the six who died were exactly the ones he was aiming for?

   Alec Webster, recently resigned from Scotland Yard, is the investigator in this highly unlikely combination of Agatha Christie and Aristotle Onassis. The puzzle is a clever one, though, and it’s exactly why I love stories like this.

   On the other hand, plots of this type have to be given lots of room to breathe. The main scheme in this one is worked out in some detail, but both the setup and solution are crammed into only a few chapters somewhere soon after the middle. It’s never given a chance to show how good it really is.

JAMES E. MARTIN – And Then You Die. William Morrow, hardcover, 1992. Reprint paperback: Avon, September 1993.

   In Cleveland PI Gil Disbro’s third case, he’s hired to find a missing wife, last seen in Nevada getting a divorce and gambling away a fortune.

   Things get complicated when his client is then found murdered, but Disbro, of course, stays on the job.

   The result is a fast-moving detective tale with good, sensitively macho dialogue and a tangled plot that somehow manages not to be spoiled by a twist that’s just two jots short of obvious.

HELEN REILLY – The Canvas Dagger. Random House, 1956. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 volume, April 1957. Paperback reprints: Bantam #1858, 1959; Ace Double #G-531, ca.1965, abridged, bound with Not Me, Inspector; Macfadden, 1970; Manor, 1974.

   A young woman in New York City witnesses a murder from a building across the street, and when the police don’t believe her, she and all the suspects in the case travel to Cape Cod, where more murders occur.

   Reilly’s prose varies from passably good to overwrought, but the ending is what does this one in, bringing in (hey?) Commies at the very last minute.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

    James Anderson: Assault and Matrimony.
    Helen Reilly: The Silver Leopard.

   Also, for an long essay on Helen Reilly’s mystery fiction by Michael Grost, go here on the main Mystery*File website. Included on that page is a complete bibliography for the author.