STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM. Fida Cinematografica, Italy, 1976, as Una Magnum Special per Tony Saitta. American International, US, 1977. Stuart Whitman, John Saxon, Martin Landau, Tisa Farrow, Carole Laure, Jean Leclerc, Gayle Hunnicutt. Director: Alberto De Martino.

   Stuart Whitman does his best as a Canadian Dirty Harry in Strange Shadows in an Empty Room, an Italian crime movie filmed in Ottawa and Montreal. Sleazy with giallo flourishes, the movie follows Ottawa policeman Tony Saitta (Whitman) as he attempts to make sense of his sister’s bizarre poisoning death in Montreal.

   The top suspect is physician George Tracer (Martin Landau), who was having an affair with the young university student. But there are a few other people with secrets of their own who may have had something to do with the shocking crime.

   The movie follows Tony as he, along with his Montreal counterpart Ned Matthews (John Saxon), traverse the boulevards and back streets of Quebec’s largest city in an attempt to figure out what Tony’s sister’s death may have had to do with a murder and jewelry theft in Toronto. Along the way, Tony investigates the death of a transvestite, helps a blind woman stalked by a killer, and uncovers a romantic affair involving Tracer’s son.

   There’s a ridiculous car chase scene that goes on way too long, a fight scene in which Tony takes on three violent transvestites, and a series of illogical and implausible scenarios all culminating in a final shootout in which our antihero shoots down a helicopter with his Magnum.

   Not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but a surprisingly engrossing one for those in the mood for something that could only have been produced in 1970s Italy.

TRAIL OF THE VIGILANTES. Universal, 1940. Franchot Tone, Warren William, Peggy Moran, Andy Devine, Mischa Auer, Porter Hall and Broderick Crawford! Written by Harold Shumate. Directed by Alan Dwan.

   Hey, how’s this for an original Western plot: A lawman comes to town to look into a killin’ and discovers that a pillar of the community is actually running the gang of rustlers that murdered his friend.

   Oh you’ve seen it? Well maybe not, because this one has the intelligence not to take itself too seriously – or seriously at all.

   The intelligence starts with Franchot Tone as an Eastern dude sent West to root around the prairie and look for clues — thank gawd no one tried to pass the cosmopolitan Tone off as a cowboy. Even better, when he gets to the burg of Peaceful Flats and finds the sheriff handcuffed to a lamp post, the laughs start coming, and though they pause for action, they never really stop.

   Warren William, his career in sad eclipse, lends his usual polish to the role of dress-heavy, and his veneer of sophistication matches Tone’s perfectly. In direct contrast, Tone gets teamed up with Andy Devine as a cowboy who dreams of becoming a valet (?!) and Broderick Crawford, providing truculent muscle for any and all occasions.

   And then there’s Mischa Auer, who comes on as an Indian in a Medicine show, morphs into a Mexican, then a Bullfighter, a Cossack, an Acrobat, Magician and Southern Colonel (!) lending an air of pleasing surrealism to the whole thing.

   I should also put in a word for Peggy Moran as a predatory ingénue who spends most of the film trying to seduce Franchot Tone, an agreeable change-up on the usual formula, and she handles it well.

   Overall though, the chief attractions of Trail of the Vigilantes are writer Shumate’s ability to overturn the conventions and director Dwan’s relaxed approach to it all. Thus Tone never fires a shot, even in the big saloon shoot-out, but the film makes no big deal of it. On the other hand, his iffy horsemanship gets only passing notice till it emerges to rousing effect in that saloon melee.

   So what you have here is that rarity, a film that mocks itself yet remains true to form. Exciting, absurd, funny and formulaic in equal measure, Trail of the Vigilantes emerges as rare fun. And what more could you ask?

DONALD HAMILTON – The Frighteners. Matt Helm #25. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original, May 1989. Titan Books, softcover, 2016.

   According to the tiny number on the spine, this is #25 in the Matt Helm series, but inside the cover there’s a list of only 23 preceding this one. You figure it out. [In the age of the Internet, it is now very easy to verify that #25 is correct.] Helm takes up with three various female companions in this one, the first a bride on her wedding day.

   I do not believe I will be revealing too much of the story line if I tell you he’s impersonating her husband on a “honeymoon” trip to Mexico, on the trail of guns and revolutionaries. There is more that is not what it seems, and while there’s a fair amount if bloodshed, the complications of the plot will have your brain cells working overtime.

[ADDED LATER] I’ve actually probably understated the amount of bloodshed. This is a violent, male-oriented book, filled with talk of guns and the proper way to use them. Of all the quotes I could pick from this book, I liked the one on page 270 just about as well as any. This is Matt Helm, telling his own story: “As I’ve said before, we don’t play the hostage game, and he shouldn’t have tried it. He really shouldn’t.”

CHRISTOPHER NICOLE – Angel Rising. Anna Fehrbach #6. Severn House, hardcover, 2008.

   A fair summation from the prologue of the sixth entry in a series of the heroine of this sexy playful historical series by Christopher Nicole, a British writer of big sexy historical thrillers in the Wilbur Smith/James Leasor vein, best known here for his popular spy novels as Andrew York about professional assassin Jonas Wilde (*) and later CID operator Tallant in the Cockpit country of Jamaica.

    When I say sexy, I should point out I mean in the James Bond sense and not the Lady from L.U.S.T. or Man from O.R.G.Y. vein. While these may not stop at the edge of the bed neither do they overly dwell on activities between the sheets, the object being tease more than fulfillment. In fact the best I can describe this series is a cross between Ilsa She Wolf of the SS, Geoffrey Bocca’s soft core Commander Amanda titles about a sort of female Candide serving in the SOE during WWII, Modesty Blaise, and Flashman with far more ties to the latter two in style and mood.

   At eighteen in 1938 Austro-Irish Anna Fehrbach and her family are arrested during the Hitler putsch in Austria. Forced by the SS, who hold her family hostage, Anna becomes the top agent of the SD, their number one assassin and mistress of Reyhard Heydrich, at one point even pursuing an attempt on Joseph Stalin, but eventually Anna is recruited by MI6 and her future husband Clive Bartley and becomes a double agent, even planning the execution of Heydrich in Czechoslovakia and plotting the failed coup against Hitler.

   In and out of bed whether with Heydrich, Stalin, or Hitler Anna is a busy girl.

   That is all back story as this one begins at the end of the war when the Soviets under Stalin’s orders and MVD (predecessor to the KGB) head Beria’s directions decide along with the Americans and Anna’s ex-American lover, Joe Andrews, formerly OSS and now the fledgling CIA, agree Anna is too dangerous to live, and join forces to find and kill her leaving her with no where to hide, pursued and betrayed by the deadliest killers in the world not to mention vengeful Nazis.

   The chase takes her from the highlands of Scotland to Brazil, Germany and Switzerland, a confrontation with her SS trained and loyal Nazi sister, Katherine, and a reckoning with former lover Joe Andrews until Anna wins a brief respite and relieves the Soviets of a considerable sum of money along the way.

   Anna is described as amoral, but instead is something of an original moralist along the lines of Frank McCauliffe’s Augustus Mandrel, Mark Gattiss’s Lucifer Box, and Kyril Bonfigioli’s Mortdecai. She is all the more fun for it eschewing the tiresomely earnest purity of too many of contemporary fiction’s cold-blooded killers.

   This history is of the playful behind-the-scenes type, both accurate and imaginative, the plot fast moving, and the pleasure in watching the beautiful and brilliant Anna (she has an IQ of 173) outwit everyone and anyone trying to use her or kill her, and often both. It is a lighter variation of the kind of thing both Ian Fleming and William F. Buckley did, offering a playful peek at the inner workings of the great and powerful with their hair down and make-up off.

   Yes, it is nonsense, but not without some actual models in the case of Anna, albeit in a less superhuman mold. I don’t want to oversell this; it is fluff, but it is good fluff of the kind not seen as often as it should be these days, not bloated or self important, and Anna’s cheerful blend of amoral survival, healthy (and not so healthy) sexuality, and crisp action and violence is exactly the kind of beach read that used to be a summer staple before the advent of the hernia-inducing beach book.

   The writing is crisp and professional, the nonsense factor the tongue-in-cheek sort of the better Bond and Modesty Blaise imitators (which Nicole was), and as I said, the history accurate if playfully tweaked as only the better thrillers manage. Think Dennis Wheatley’s Gregory Sallust without the clunky info dumps.

   Best of all it never overstays its welcome unlike too many thrillers today.

   By the time Anna has earned her rest you will likely feel she fully deserves it and be wanting to join her on other adventures, done in a high style that seems to be lost to many of today’s more heavy-handed thriller writers and their earnest Boy Scout heroes. Pink champagne and caviar with a Vodka chaser taken in proper amounts makes a nice change up from the lite-beer and potato chip boys of too many modern thriller series.

   There is something to be said for style above all else in entertainment which is the only serious intent here.

    To be, as they say, continued.

            —

   (*) Jonas Wilde debuted in The Eliminator and went on to a long and successful career, most of the books published here in paperback by Berkeley and even resulting in a solid little film, Danger Route, starring Richard Johnson as Wilde, which Quentin Tarantino champions as a model of its kind and has often said the wanted to remake.

   As Nicole the author also penned a juvenile spy series about young agent Jonathan Anders (published here by Dell). He is a popular historical novelist in England with numerous series. The Anna Fehrbach series is up to the ninth entry in that series, and I warn you Nicole is nothing if not prolific…

      The Anna Fehrbach series —

1. Angel from Hell (2006)
2. Angel in Red (2006)
3. Angel of Vengeance (2007)
4. Angel in Jeopardy (2007)
5. Angel of Doom (2008)
6. Angel Rising (2008)
7. Angel of Destruction (2009)
8. Angel of Darkness (2009)
9. Angel in Peril (2013)

FRANCINE MATHEWS – Death in the Off-Season. Merry Folger #1. William Morrow, hardcover, 1994. Avon, paperback, 1995. Soho Crime, trade paperback, 2016.

   There are two facts worthy of immediate note here, before reading a word of the text: that this is yet another first novel trumpeting on the dust wrapper that it is “An Ima New Character Book” (as though anyone gave a damn yet if ever), and Morrow has it priced at $23. Twenty-three dollars. For an unknown. I simply don’t understand. Someone help me, please.

   Merry Folger us a detective on the Nantucket Police Department, and the daughter of the Chief. She catches her first murder case when the brother of a local farmer turns up unexpectedly at the farm after a ten year absence — murdered at the gate,

   Nobody knows why he returned; not the brother, not the lawyer and family friend, not Merry’s ex-love and the brother;s current employee. Nobody. But then somebody takes a shot at the brother, and Merry has to decide whose life to dig in.

   This is all too typical of a type of “mystery” that has become ubiquitous. It’s all about Relationships. Merry with her father. Merry with her ex-love. Merry with the brother. The brother with everybody. And on and on. As a crime novel, it’s silly, and the “investigation” bears about as much relationship[ to real police work as it does to … whatever. It’s told in third person from a number of viewpoints, primarily Merry’s and the brother’s, and the prose is adequate, no more. $23, my ass. Pass this up and read a romance.

       The Merry Folger series —

1. Death in the Off Season (1994)
2. Death in Rough Water (1995)
3. Death in a Mood Indigo (1997)
4. Death in a Cold Hard Light (1998)
5. Death on Nantucket (2017)

PANHANDLE. Allied Artists, 1948. Rod Cameron, Cathy Downs, Reed Hadley, Anne Gwynne, Blake Edwards. Screenplay by John C. Champion and Blake Edwards. Director: Leslie Selander.

   This is the film that the later 1966 western movie The Texican was a re-imaging of. (You can read the review by Jonathan and posted here not too long ago.) The later film starred Audie Murphy in Rod Cameron’s part in the original, that of a former lawman now living as a reformed outlaw in Mexico, but who heads back north again to avenge the murder of his brother at the hands of an unknown bushwhacker.

   The villain in this original version is Reed Hadley, a role played by the much heavier Broderick Crawford in the later film, but both are equally mean and despicable. There are a few other changes made, but the basic storylines are about the same, emphasis on basic, and I’d say that the two movies are equally entertaining.

   Some things of interest about Panhandle on its own, however. It was filmed in sepia color, for no good reason that I could see, and because it’s such an uncommon choice, it takes a while to get used to, or it did me.

   While entertaining, the meandering plot really doesn’t know where it is going. When John Sands (Cameron) crosses the border heading north, he’s confronted by a sheriff he knew in the past, but after shooting the gun out of his hand, Sands continues his journey north. The incident does not come up again. Once in the town Hadley all but owns, some townsmen call on Sands to help bring justice to the town. Sands refuses and the incident does not come up again. After a breakneck brawl in a saloon and a subsequent shootout, a stranger has Sands’ back to good advantage. Turns out he (the stranger) works for the federal government (something to do with the panhandle country), but Sands refuses and the incident does not come up again.

   Sands also chooses the wrong girl, to my way of thinking, but we can certainly agree to disagree about that, if you’re so minded.

   One other thing. After seeing Blake Edwards play Floyd Schofield, one of Reed Hadley gunman’s hired gunmen, it is clear that Edwards made the right choice in switching from acting to writing. He’s the one on the right in the photo on the left. I don’t think anyone will disagree with me about that.

KID GLOVE KILLER. MGM, 1942, Van Heflin, Marsha Hunt, Lee Bowman, Samuel S. Hinds, Cliff Clark, Eddie Quillan, John Litel, Cathy Lewis. Director: Fred Zinnemann.

   An excellent cast and a future Oacar-winning director’s first feature length film — that’s all it takes for a movie to play out on the screen as if the studio (MGM) had loads of money poured into it when it hadn’t. It may also have the distinction of being the first film in which a police department’s crime lab had a major role in bringing a killer to justice.

   A very young Van Heflin, himself later an Oscar-winner, plays the Gordon McKay, the crusty head of the lab, while Marsha Hunt is his curvaceous new assistant. While nominally trying to solve the murder of the mayor who died when his car exploded when he tried to start it one morning, the banter between the two is near non-stop. One would think they’re attracted to each other, but of course neither of them will admit it.

   The audience knows very early on who the bad egg is, the suitably unctuous Lee Bowman (he was always good in such parts). The fun for the everyone watching, both then and now, is seeing how early forensics slowly narrows in on him, while quietly screaming out a warning to Marsha Hunt’s character when she acts as though she is falling for him, while McKay does his best to pretend to ignore her charms but not fooling anyone for a single minute

   There is a lot of zip to this movie, and not a scene is wasted. There is a lot of smoking in this movie, too, as the two main characters also make an amusing habit of one mooching cigarettes and lights from each other. Given a bit of byplay that a pass as a sign of the times, this one’s a class act, from the director on down.

NOTE: Walter Albert also reviewed this movie on this blog almost eight years ago. Check out his comments here

RETURN OF THE BAD MEN. RKO, 1948. Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan, Anne Jeffreys, “Gabby” Hayes, Jacqueline White, Steve Brodie, Tom Keene (as Richard Powers), Lex Barker, Tom Tyler, Robert Armstrong. Written by Charles O’Neal, Jack Natteford & Luci Ward. Directed by Ray Enright.

   Back in the 1940s Universal opted to draw in the horror movie fans by teaming up their monsters, starting with FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, continuing with HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN/DRACULA and even ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Columbia nodded to fashion with a vampire/werewolf team in RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE, but basically the fiendish team-up thing was the province of Universal — in Horror movies, that is.

   In Westerns it was much the same. The success of big-budget hits like JESSE JAMES, BELLE STAR and BILLY THE KID prepared the ground for Outlaw Biopics like BADMEN OF MISSOURI and WHEN THE DALTONS RODE, but it was RKO that brought on the Owlhoot Rallies with BADMAN’S TERRITORY (1946) and RETURN OF THE BAD MEN (’48) to be followed up by BEST OF THE BAD MEN (’51.)

   RETURN pits Billy the Kid, The Daltons, Bill Doolin, the Younger brothers and the Sundance Kid against Randolph Scott, which seems a trifle unfair — to them. Mostly it’s a silly thing, with tiresome comic relief from Gabby Hayes and a clunky romantic conflict between Jacqueline White as Scott’s fiancée and Anne Jeffreys as the outlaw gal redeemed by her love for the square-jawed lawman. Sigh.

   But hold on thar, there’s more to RETURN OF THE BAD MEN than you might expect. The story offers plenty of ridin’ shootin’ and fightin’, and director Ray Enright delivers it with maximum pace and camera angles well-judged to emphasize each shot and every punch.

   Enright also gives the film a surprising mix of moodiness and realism, as when the bad guys advance on a ranch house military-style, darting from cover to cover, or a jerky tracking shot of the Sundance Kid at the end of a long chase, his tired horse staggering beneath him as they stumble into his Ghost Town Hideout.

   Said Sundance is played with edgy nastiness by Robert Ryan, who brings a jarring but welcome touch of noir to the whole thing. Cameraman J. Roy Hunt (of SHE and FLYING DOWN TO RIO) frequently lights him from below, a disturbingly unnatural effect for a Western, and Enright composes his shots so that Sundance always looks like an outsider in a band of outcasts.

   Ryan himself more than lives up to the concept, snarling and glowering in between strangling Anne Jeffreys and gunning down Charles Stevens in cold blood. Best of all, his acting collides beautifully with Randy’s stoic decency, giving the whole thing a dramatic conflict that surprised me no end.

   RETURN OF THE BAD MEN is almost by definition a pre-destined Dumb Movie, but it sparkles with flashes of intelligence I will remember longer than many “important” films.
   

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Lord of the High Places.” Speed Dash #12. Top-Notch Magazine, February 1, 1928.

   When I started reading this story, I was under the distinct impression that it was the very first appearance of Richard “Speed” Dash, since Gardner spent so much space explaining who he was and what skills he had. Not so. I was wrong about that. With the resources available to anyone on the Internet in today’s world, it was not difficult to learn that it came along well after the middle of the series. Speed Dash’s first adventure into crime-solving appeared in the February 1, 1925, issue of Top-Notch Magazine. There were twenty in all, all for the same magazine.

   In his early days Speed Dash worked in side shows and circuses as an acrobat, or in particular a so-called “human fly,” with the strength and ability to climb nearly perpendicular surfaces, using, we are told, only the tips of his fingers. But after doing a regime of experimental exercises prescribed by a noted psychiatrist, he developed what is called in the vernacular a photographic memory, and he decided to turn his talent to crime-solving.

   In “Lord of the High Places” he his hired by a rich debutante who is looking for adventure. She has been shown a map of hidden treasure on an island somewhere in the South Seas, and wanting some excitement in her otherwise boring life, she has agreed to finance the venture, but only if she can convince Speed Dash to come along.

   The map is a phony, of course, and Dash is prepared for that, but what he does not plan on is that all of his backup contingencies will fail, and he and the two women are quickly caught between the gang they came in with, another rival gang of pirates, and the savage natives already on the island. See the cover for the means that Dash finds of making his escape. It is quite accurate.

   This is the first adventure of Speed Dash I have read, and it will probably be the last, as I have sold off all my copies of Top-Notch Magazine in which his adventures were recorded. I do not think I am missing anything, however. Action-adventure is not typical Erle Stanley Gardner fare, and he is no better than average at it. Many pulp writers knew their exotic locales a whole better than I think Gardner did.

   An interesting change-of-pace, in other words, but far from essential, even for Gardner fans.