GUN THE MAN DOWN. United Artists / Batjac Productions, 1956. James Arness, Angie Dickinson, Emile Meyer, Robert Wilke, Harry Carey Jr., Michael Emmet. Director: Andrew V. McLaglen.
I had somewhat high hopes for Gun The Man Down. Not only is it a Batjac film — John Wayne’s production company — but it also features Gunsmoke star James Arness in a leading role. Sadly, I came away disappointed and, truth be told, somewhat frustrated at what clearly could have been a much better revenge story.
Arness portrays Rem Andersen, a man who stupidly decides to throw his lot in with a bank robber duo. When their first bank job together goes awry, Rem ends up wounded and at the mercy of law enforcement. The brains of the operation, Matt Rankin (Robert Wilke) not only gets away with the loot, but also rides away with Rem’s girl, Janice (Angie Dickinson). After spending a year in jail, Rem decides to get even with those who betrayed him. Standing in his path is not only a gunfighter named Billy Deal, but also a small town sheriff (Emile Meyer) and his deputy (Harry Carey, Jr.) Truth be told, none of the characters apart from these latter two are particularly compelling.
Although it starts off with promise and is well photographed and competently staged, Gun The Man Down simply never rises above its formulaic and mediocre plot. Even worse, the film eventually bogs down in a poorly lit night gunfight, a sequence which not only lasts far too long, but one that doesn’t give the viewer ample opportunity to even decipher what’s going on. Not that it really matters much, given how low the stakes seem to be in this rather uninteresting tale featuring a protagonist who is incredibly difficult to root for.
DANGER ON THE AIR. Universal Pictures, 1938. Nan Grey, Donald Woods, Jed Prouty, Berton Churchill, William Lundigan, Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher, Edward Van Sloan, Lee J. Cobb, (Peter) Lind Hayes, Louise Stanley. Based on the Doubleday Crime Club novel Death Catches Up With Mr. Kluck, by Xantippe. Director: Otis Garrett.
Despite too many characters and too much plot to be crammed into a 70 minute running time, this proved to be an enjoyable little murder mystery. This is, of course, what happens when a full length detective novel is the basis of a film — “crammed” is exactly the right word.
As perhaps the title would suggest, most of the movie takes place in a radio studio, setting that movie audience in 1938 would have little chance seeing for themselves on their own. Dead is one of the biggest sponsors the Cosmopolitan Network has, an obnoxious micro-manager and lecherous old goat named Caesar Kluck. He’s someone who people take objection to at first meeting, so the killer could be almost anyone.
Teaming up to solve the case are a studio technician (Donald Woods) and a girl production assistant (Nan Grey). They’re somewhat of a mismatched couple. He’s studious and dull; she’s vivacious and very pretty. There are loads of veteran character actors on the scene as well, but the film also includes some relative newcomers such as Peter Lind Hayes (who does voice imitations of then current radio stars, including Bing Crosby) and Lee J. Cobb, who at a very young age played an aged ethnic janitor with considerable ease.
Because of the short running time, the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, zigzagging this way and that so that everybody in the studio is shown as a possible suspect, and worse, the killer’s motive comes right out of some magician’s hat. Bear with it though, and you may enjoy this one as much as I did.
SUZANNE BLANC – The Green Stone. Harper & Brothers, 1961. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition. Lancer 73-533, paperback, 1966. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1984.
The green stone is an emerald worth $1200, a fortune in the Mexican town of San Luis. It draws three strangers inexorably together, and it changes the lives of all three. Inspector Menendes, viewed with suspicion both because he is an educated Indian and because he is a policeman (presumed to be brutal and corrupt), must find the stolen gem in order to validate himself.
Jessie Prewitt, the little North American señora who accidentally comes into possession of the stone, must deal not only with increasing danger but also with refocusing her life after the sudden end of her marriage.
And Luis Perez, who has lifted himself from poverty by creating a job as the town guide, sees the emerald as the means to security, the escape from the ever-present threat of poverty in a society where one misstep is a tumble into destitution, and where there is no second chance.
The unfolding of the plot is simple. Three Indians from a village near San Luis murder a tourist couple to steal their money and, incidentally, the emerald ring. Clues vanish. Inspector Menendes is left with nothing to go on but his own intuition and his knowledge of the area where villagers scorn the Indians, Indians remain silent, both groups see the North Americans as legitimate sources of money, and everyone fears the police.
Suzanne Blanc’s strength is her sharp depiction of life in San Luis and of her characters as each struggles and changes. The Green Stone is a hauntingly sensitive novel.
Two of Blanc’s other novels are also set in Mexico: The Yellow Villa (1964) and The Rose Window (1967); a third, The Sea Troll (1969), takes place on board ship.
Additional Notes:The Green Stone was nominated for two Edgars — one for Best First Novel, which it won, and Best Novel. Inspector Menendes appeared in all three of Blanc’s novels taking place in Mexico.
There is a long story about the album from which this song originally came, beginning with the fact that it was totally bogus. If the vocalist on this song sounds suspiciously like Bob Dylan, you would be right. Other members of this non-existent super-session group included Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney. You can read more about it by going here:
SAFETY LAST! Hal Roach Studios, 1923. Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young, Westcott Clarke. Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor.
Harold Lloyd silents are, as a class, wonderfully inventive, well-thought-out and screamingly funny, and here’s an example. Everyone has seen the picture of Lloyd hanging off the clock while climbing the side of a building in Safety Last!, but the sequence itself is one of sheerest genius:
For starters, the film is about 90 minutes long, and the whole last third of it is devoted to that climb up the building, which is as carefully crafted as a suspense set-piece. Lloyd has arranged to win himself a promotion and the hand of his childhood sweetheart by having a friend climb the building as a Publicity Stunt.
Unfortunately, the friend is wanted by the Police and spotted just before he starts his climb. So he and Harold arrange that Harold will climb the first floor, then duck in a window where his friend will don his coat and continue the climb.
But the Cops spot him again and begin chasing him frantically so that he never just quite has the time to make the switch, and Harold has to keep going “just one more floor.”
There is a marvelous few minutes where the buddy tosses a rope out for Harold but is chased from the room before he gets to tie it to anything! This is followed by a nerve-wracking stretch where Harold strains, contorts, scratches and all-else to get hold of the rope that will be his death-trap, and a heart-stopping span where he gets it waving just enough to almost reach, then launches himself out, grabs it and plummets down to … well, see the movie:
FRANK PARRISH – Sting of the Honeybee. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1979. Perennial Library, US, paperback, 1983. First pubished in the UK by Constable, hardcover, 1978.
Dan Mallet is a poacher by choice, not by necessity. He’s also a part-time burglar, but at this he’s still very much an amateur. A pony he pilfers and some stolen clocks eventually prove to be his undoing — major contributing factors in the huge predicament he soon finds he’s gotten himself into, in this, his second book-length adventure.
There is no detection involved. A gangster who comes down to the West Country from London reveals his true colors very early on. To regain his boyhood farm from the two little and quarrelsome old ladies who now own it, the man is willing to go to any lengths, and only Dan knows the trouble they’re in.
In truth he’s in no position to do much about it, but the suspense story that follows as he tries is an exciting one, retaining a great deal of the deep, raw flavor of the untamed English countryside. As always, it’s tremendously satisfying to read a mystery that’s both well-written and well-contrived.
— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 4, No. 2, March-April 1980 (slightly revised).
The Dan Mallet series —
Fire in the Barley, 1977.
Sting of the Honeybee, 1978.
Snare in the Dark, 1982.
Bait on the Hook, 1983.
Face at the Window, 1984.
Fly in the Cobweb, 1986.
Caught in the Birdlime, 1987.
Voices from the Dark, 1993.
I EAT YOUR SKIN. Cinemation Industries, 1971. William Joyce, Heather Hewitt, Walter Coy, Dan Stapleton, Betty Hyatt Linton, Robert Stanton. Screenwriter-Director: Del Tenney.
Forget the title because it has almost nothing to do with the movie itself. There’s no skin eating, let alone full-on cannibalism in this low budget independent horror film. Originally titled Zombie Bloodbath and then later Voodoo Blood Bath, I Eat Your Skin wasn’t released to theaters until several years after it was made and then only under a title meant to allure drive in theater moviegoers. Paired on a double bill with the gory grindhouse feature I Drink Your Blood (1971), this was the rather tepid, clunky one that apparently disappointed those seeking the same intensity as the main feature.
For that reason, along with a title that suggests it’s something other than what it is, I Eat Your Skin has received a bad rap. Now don’t allow me to give you the impression that it’s somehow a neglected gem or a great horror movie just waiting to be rediscovered. It’s neither of those things.
But it’s an actually fun, almost innocently so, mid-1960s horror movie that never takes itself too seriously and has a great calypso vibe.
Think of it as a throwback to the zombie movies of the 1930s and 1940s wherein an intrepid protagonist seeks to investigate the strange things happening on a remote island. The special effects are lousy and the dialogue isn’t memorable, but there’s everything you would expect in such a movie including a madman employing a scientist to create an army of the living dead.
As a late night – make that a very late night – feature movie, this one isn’t half bad. Definitely recommended for zombie fans.
JOHN DICKSON CARR – The Eight of Swords. Dr. Gideon Fell #3. Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1934. Paperback reprints include: Detective Novel Classic #32, digest-sized, circa 1942; Berkley G-48, 1957; Collier AS466V, 1962; Zebra, August 1986.
This early Carr novel seems to show the author still trying to find his voice, and not quite succeeding. Even though it has a deliciously complicated puzzle plots, I don’t consider this to be one of his better ones.
It starts out in broad farce, with a house party being remembered by all those present with the sight of a bishop sliding down a banister and a poltergeist popping a vicar in the eye with a bottle in ink, and ends in a much darker mood with what Carr believes to be authentic American gangsters having a shootout on the same estate in the dead of night.
The dead man (for there is one) was a reclusive gent who tried his best to fit into proper British society, but never quite did. There is no locked room in this story, but the circumstances surrounding his murder is so complicated it takes a whole crew of detectives to sort it all out.
There is Fell himself, of course, as both a shabby, comic figure and the most brilliant man in the room; the bishop, an amateur criminologist par excellence, at least in his own mind; his son, whom he sent to Columbia University to learn criminology but who never attended a class; and a mystery writer named Henry Morgan, who along with his charming wife decides that solving a real life crime may be as much fun as writing one.
There is also a ginch involved, a term invented (I believe) by none other than John Dickson Carr, an absolutely delectable girl the bishop’s son falls in love with at first sight. She has very little to do with the story, but every one of Carr’s heroes needs a ginch on hand to keep bth the romantic aspects covered and his mind otherwise occupied.
But any of Carr’s tales, no matter how he tells them, depends on the solution, and this one’s a doozy. It takes 19 pages to explain this one, and I have to admit I was nowhere close to figuring this one out. Stories relying on too may people doing too many unusual things on the same night as they do in this book could never happen in real life, but if you can get over that not insignificant hurdle, final chapters like this ought to be remembered forever.
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