PAID TO KILL. Lippert Pictures, US, 1954. First released in the UK as Five Days (Hammer Films, 1954). Dane Clark, Cecile Chevreau, Paul Carpenter, Thea Gregory, Anthony Forwood. Screenwriter: Paul Tabori. Director: Montgomery Tully.

   This a film that’s been recently released in a box set of DVDs as a collection of “Hammer Noir” films, and while it’s slower moving than I’d like, the basic plot line is very much noirish in nature, and some of the scenes do show some stylish black-and-white touches. (More on this later.)

   It’s hard to say what a British company called Amalgamated Industries actually does, but Dane Clark, even though obviously American, is the head of it. He’s been doing well on the job until he takes one gamble too many, and when the deal fails to go through, the company is ready to go down the toilet with it.

   With no other recourse at hand, he blackmails a business associate into killing him so that his wife will receive his insurance money. (Insurance companies do not pay off in cases of suicide.)

   Well, at this point we all know where this s going, don’t we? The bad deal goes through, and life is livable again. But the would-be killer can’t be found in order to call the whole thing off. Not even Dane Clark’s highly efficient private secretary (who is obviously but quietly in love with him) can find a trace of him.

      There are some twists that follow in this otherwise very familiar story line, which are all to the good, but it’s the final scene that’s the icing on the cake — and makes this film as noir as noir could be. I wish I could tell you about it, I really do, but I think it best that I don’t.

   The story is better than good, to sum things up, and the acting, while a little flat at times, is as good as it needs to be. I like Dane Clark as an actor, but on the screen I’d have to admit that he’s often brooding and moodier than he really needs to be, with a hint of some hidden demons deep inside, or am I the only one who sees that?

D. B. NEWTON “The Claim Jumpers.” Novella. First published in Best Western, September 1952 as “Who’ll Take the Cowgirl?” First collected in Range of No Return (Five Star, hardcover, 2005; Leisure, paperback, December 2006).

   In his long foreword to the two-story book collection, Jon Tuska makes the case for his theory that D(wight) B(ennett) Newton would be a lot more known today if he hadn’t been pushed by his agent to have much of his work published under pseudonyms. Names other than his own that he used over the years were Dwight Bennett, Clement Hardin, Ford Logan, Dan Temple and Hank Mitchum (eight of the long-running “Stagecoach” series in the 1980s).

   There’s a lot of truth in that statement. I’ve enjoyed all of the novels I’ve read by the above “authors,” and going back to the later years of his pulp-writing days, both of the two stories in Range of No Return are very well done. (His first published pulp western was in 1938, and over the years he wrote 150 or so more of them.)

   “The Claim Jumpers” takes place at an actual event, the Cherokee Strip Land Run (Oklahoma, 1893), as have many other stories and dramatic films over the years. Newton’s story does not rely on its historical significance, however. Rather it’s one told on a personal basis, which to me makes it all the more effective. When three cowpoke partners lose their fourth in the plan they’ve come up with, one of them succumbs to the charms of a woman he happens to meet, and he asks her to help them out.

   Things don’t go well, however. Someone seems to have leaked their plans to some Sooners who have settled into the land the partners had planned on settling, and they’re well equipped with guns. Did the girl betray them? All signs point to it.

   This is a story that combines a historical background with both action and characters that have some character to them, and at 70 pages, there’s plenty of time for Newton to develop both.

— “Range of No Return.” Short novel. First appeared in Complete Western Book Magazine, June 1949. Also first collected in Range of No Return (see above).

   And if anything, “Range of No Return” is even better. At almost twice the length of “The Claim Jumpers,” the action is nearly non-stop, but more than that, it fits in naturally with the story Newton has to tell. No gunfire for the sake of gunfire.

   Which is that of a young rancher who was framed for rustling cattle in his home town five years ago. With the sheriff’s assistance, who believed him innocent, he made tracks for Mexico, but now that his notoriety has died down, or so he hopes, he’s back, trying to pick up where he left off before his troubles began.

   But he’s wrong. The local ranchers have not forgotten, including the female owner of the ranch next to his. There are a couple of small twists in the tale from this point on, but they’re, I admit, only minor ones. But Newton has a good eye for describing his characters, as well as the area of Arizona hills and grasslands he places them in. Even though the basic story line is a familiar one, this is a solid piece of writing.

   If you’re a fan of western yarns, you could do a lot worse than to check out more of Newton’s stories, even his early purely pulp fiction. It’s better than most.

SICARIO. Lionsgate, 2015. Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber. Director: Denis Villeneuve.

   When a young female FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is recruited to join an elite task force assigned to bring down a Mexican drug cartel, she agrees readily enough, but when she shows up for work, she finds herself on the outside and along only for the ride.

   And this is the problem. Not only is she totally confused as to what it that’s going on and what it is she should be doing, so is the viewing audience — and so was the scriptwriter. The story makes no sense at all.

   As it turns out, the task force is doing things totally illegally as far as respect of international borders is concerned. The ends justify the means? Well, maybe. The drug cartel and its elusive boss are doing very nasty things, and they deserve to be brought down. But why recruit someone who plays it straight and goes strictly by the book?

   It is also not to say that Emily Blunt is at all convincing as a tough head of a FBI SWAT team. She’s far too slight in size and stature. She’s a little girl playing with the big kids on the block in dress-up clothes. She’s very good at sitting in a car or a bus looking out the window wondering what it is that’s going on, but little else.

   Nor is the ending worth waiting for. It’s very dramatic, I grant you, and we do find out two things: (1) why Benicio Del Toro’s brooding liaison character has been hanging around since the beginning of the operation, and (2) the meaning of the film’s title (which translated means “Hitman,” or so I’m told).

   But when it comes down to it, Emily Blunt’s character is shoved aside for a good portion of the end of the film. While this does allow the real story to be told, it’s very unsatisfying that she’s not there to be part of it. Emily Blunt is the star of the movie, but there’s almost no reason she had to be in it. (Of course, if she isn’t, there’s no conflict of ideas, and it’s an entirely different story than the screenwriter intended to tell.)

   A complicated film, in other words, but one that just didn’t connect with me. The photography is nice, though.

GAVILAN. NBC/Mandy Films Inc in association with MGM Television. October 26 1982 – December 28, 1982, and March 18, 1983. Cast: Robert Urich as Robert Gavilan, Patrick Macnee as Milo Bentley and Kate Reid as Marion Jaworski. Created by Tom Mankiewicz – Executive Producer:Leonard Goldberg.

   Only ten of the thirteen episodes of GAVILAN aired. The series was a ratings failure from the beginning, finishing last in its Tuesday night timeslot against the CBS Tuesday Movie and ABC’s hits THREE’S COMPANY and 9 TO 5. NBC aired one episode on Friday opposite ABC’s TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY and CBS’s DALLAS where it finished last in that timeslot.

   YouTube has two episodes available for view. Watch the linked episodes below quick, while I was writing this a third episode “By the Sword” was pulled off YouTube. These episodes are from the syndicated (edited for time) version aired on TNT.

   The series featured Robert Urich as Gavilan, an ex-spy now consultant for the Dewitt Institute of Oceanography. Stories usually featured Gavilan working with a gorgeous brilliant woman who was working with the Institute on some project or a beautiful female spy pulling him back into life working for “the Company.”

   The series had its good moments, but it also had many of the flaws of 1980’s television. The plots were better than average but had to really stretch to connect to the Institute. In “By the Sword” the brilliant beautiful woman was a scientist working on a project to study the krill as a food source, but the plot was about an ancient samurai sword she stole from the Yakuza to regain her family honor.

   The stories were entertaining but mindless, predictable and too willing to sacrifice story and character for a joke or twist. In “By the Sword” the female scientist is trained in the martial art and had done something her entire family had not done in over a hundred years, got her family’s ancient honored Japanese sword back from the Yakuza. So in the final confrontation for the sword it is Gavilan – as she watched – who sword fights to the death for the sword and her family honor. Of course Gavilan out duels the unbeatable Master Samurai.

   The series has the sexist outlook that was mainstream thinking in the 80s. Much like Indiana Jones, Gavilan taught a college-level class, and like Indiana many of Gavilan’s students were gorgeous young women with a crush on him.

   There were equal amounts of eye candy – female, male and location. The brilliant independent female beauties would wear string bikinis and revealing gowns while Urich had skintight swim trunks and showed off his bare chest.

   GAVILAN stories didn’t lock him into the overused beachfront scenery of his home in Malibu but would travel the world to exotic locales. Yet while Gavilan might have traveled the world, the filming never convinced us he left Los Angeles or the MGM lot.

   Robert Urich is best known as Dan Tanna (VEGA$) or Spenser (SPENSER FOR HIRE), but he could hold the record as star for the most TV series failures. This fifteen-minute video strings together the theme opening to each of his twelve starring TV series.

   As usual Urich played the bland likable predictable hero, a character without much depth and a few quirks that came and went depending on the episode. In episode “By the Sword” machines hated him. Gavilan would argue, beg, and plead with machines such as his computer and jeep, and they would respond by breaking down when he needed them most (the computer he programmed called him a dummy) and returned to working when the problem passed. Gavilan’s conflict with machines was not mention in either of the other two episodes I have seen.

PIRATES. (11/9/82) Teleplay by Mark Frost.Story by Nicholas Corea.Directed by Clifford Bole. Supervising Produced by David Levinson. Produced by John Cutts. GUEST CAST: Michael Billington, Heather Menzies and Paul Koslo. *** A young naïve beautiful scientist hires the Institute to help her find the long lost treasure of the ship King Midas. A ruthless pirate and his crew learn of their mission and take over.

   Ah, 1980s action TV. The beautiful female scientist (played by Urich’s wife Heather Menzies) has spent years researching the history of the ship King Midas and its treasure of gold. She has a new theory of where the gold may be and she is paying the Institute to help her in her search. Gavilan is there for the Institute and has a “hunch” the gold is elsewhere on the ship. They argue cute. They hate each other cute. Guess how they feel about each other at the end.

   One quick dive and they find the gold where Gavilan’s hunch said it would be. Soon after, the pirates arrive. The highly educated bookworm is wearing a string bikini and yells at the pirates:

   â€œYou can’t do this to us, we’re scientists.”

   The pirate leader responds, “Oh yes we can, we’re pirates,” and he blows up the living area and all the treasure hunting equipment. It didn’t make sense but it made a great break to commercial.

   The story continues exactly as expected. Characters do as the plot demands, things blow up, and there is a chase. The chase is especially 80s.

   Gavilan only has a knife while the bad guys all have guns, but when Gavilan defeats any of them, does he grab their gun? Of course not, Gavilan is outnumbered and all he has is a knife, why would he want their guns?

DESTINATION HERO. (12/14/82) Written and Supervising Produced by Nicholas Corea – Directed by Charles Picerni -Produced by Stephen P. Caldwell – CAST: Michael Ansara, Laura Johnson, and Paul Picerni*** A gorgeous female spy from his past convinces Gavilan to get back in the spy business when his best friend from the spy days – the one who had saved Gavilan’s life – is about to be executed in a Turkish prison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sOC5SX1-K0&t=12s

   The corrupt government official, who belonged in an episode of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, was wasted here as the majority of time featured Gavilan outsmarting the bad guy’s idiot lackeys.

   The beautiful sexy female spy, who Gavilan does not like, wears sexy clothes and can’t make up her mind if she is a femme fatale or on the side of good.

   The script was weak. Just by chance Gavilan bumps into some lovable Greek terrorists and makes the comic relief characters an important part of the plan.

   There was a great twist near the end of the episode that was wasted. It should have ended the third act, with the final act dealing with the fallout and reasons for the twist.

   The direction was also flawed with several reaction shots that made no sense in the situation or with the character.

   Former James Bond writer Tom Mankiewicz (LIVE AND LET DIE) created the series. He and executive producer Leonard Goldberg had recently had success with HART TO HART.

   Reportedly Fernando Lamas was to play the part Patrick Macnee would take over after Lamas death. Milo was a family friend, conman and visitor that would never leave. Milo like any sidekick tried to help but usually got in the way. Macnee played Milo as a well-meaning loyal friend who was also a bumbling conman loser.

   Kate Reid was burdened with the part of Gavilan’s boss. There wasn’t much for her to do beyond remind the audience Gavilan was brilliant, was not a PI, and had a real job when he wasn’t dropping everything to go off on some adventure.

   GAVILAN never stood a chance opposite ABC hit series THREE’S COMPANY on Tuesday or CBS hit series DALLAS on Friday. There was nothing special or original about the series. There are moments that make you think of Magnum P.I. and every other TV action hero of the late 20thcentury, but that was not necessarily a bad thing for GAVILAN. There is a nostalgic charm to GAVILAN. It was supposed to be mindless fun, and for that it succeed more than it failed, but GAVILAN also lacked the substance and originality for it to be missed.

THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD. Lionsgate, 2017. Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Élodie Yung. Director: Patrick Hughes.

   For an action comedy, The Hitman’s Bodyguard has a complicated plot, so let’s start with that, using the cast listing above, and in the same order. Ryan Reynolds is the bodyguard, two years earlier at the top of his game, but fallen into disgrace after he allowed one of his clients, a Japanese arms dealer, to be killed.

   Samuel L. Jackson is his client, a notorious hitman who has agreed to testify against Gary Oldman, the brutal dictator of Belarus, at the International Criminal Court, for crimes against humanity. Salma Hayek is Jackson’s wife, currently in prison, but as a bargaining chip, she will be released once Jackson testifies.

   Last but far from least is Élodie Yung, an inexperienced agent for Interpol whose assignment is to make sure Jackson makes it to the trial on time. To this end she hires Reynolds, an ex-lover, as an outside agent in charge of transport. He demurs but he finally agrees when he is promised his reputation will be restores.

   Almost all of the pieces are in place, but of course there are some twists ahead, as well as lots and lots of bullets, explosions and other spectacular firepower. Lots of chases too, on foot, by car, on motorbike, and around and around the canals of Amsterdam. If you like movies with high body counts, this is the film for you. It is also a “buddy” film, with the hitman and his bodyguard always in wickedly sharp banter with each other as they make one hair’s breadth escape after another.

   But at the heart of the film, though, what it really is, is a love story. Two of them, in fact. Jackson is willing to testify and in all likelihood go to prison, but in exchange for his wife Salma Hayek’s release, it is worth it. Theirs is love-hate relationship, but course we know that love will win out.

   As for Ryan Reynolds, he broke up with Élodie Yung when he became convinced that she had something to to with his big failure two years before, but the torch he carries for her is a mile long. Once again, we the viewer, know that all will end well, and indeed it does.

   Don’t watch this movie if either overpowering but well-filmed mayhem or lots (and lots) of swears bother you, but if not, I think you may enjoy this one as much as I did. It did well enough with audiences last year that a sequel is in the works, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.

KELLEY ROOS – One False Move. Jeff & Haila Troy #10 (*). Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1966. No paperback edition.

   This is a strange one. This was the first new book featuring the mystery-solving team of Jeff and Haila Troy in 17 years, and of all things, in spite of their obvious compatibility in all of their adventures in the 1940s, in One False Move, they’re divorced, and she has absolutely nothing good to say about her ex-husband

   What’s also very strange is that Haila, who tells the story, is only 28 in this one. If story time is the same as real time — and that’s a big “if” — that would make her two years old when the Troys solved their first case together in 1940. (*) The count is probably off up above when I called this number 10 in the series, as this assumes that “Beauty Marks the Spot” is number 9. That was a novella published separately in Dell’s 10-Cent series of paperbacks, but in fact it had been included earlier in Triple Threat, a collection of three tales published in 1949.

   Be all this as it may, if all this inconsistency can be ignored — and I confess I found it difficult — the mystery is a good (but not great) one. Haila is staying with her aunt in a small town in Texas where they are putting on a historical pageant in which Haila has agreed to take part. Dead is one of the crew. It is assumed he was blackmailing someone who finally decided he or she had had enough.

   All of the actors and stage crew are suspects, and all of them, once the investigation begins, are discovered to have been acting furtively and strangely, obviously with secrets to hide.. Overall this is a case in which clearing all of the false trails away is more interesting than the conclusion itself, but as detective stories go, this one is a solid one.

   Do Jeff and Haila get back together? You needn’t ask. In my opinion, though, and I’m only partly joking when I say this, there are times when authors should not be allowed to interfere in their characters’ lives, and this is one of them.

MURDER IN THE FLEET. MGM, 1935. Robert Taylor, Jean Parker, Ted Healy, Una Merkel, Nat Pendleton, Jean Hersholt, Arthur Byron. Director: Edward Sedgwick.

   A new electronic fire-fighting device is being installed on a navy cruiser, and someone is intent on stopping it, to the extent of committing murder. Robert Taylor is in charge of the installation, but as stalwart and handsome as he is, the movie’s still a disaster.

   Less than a quarter of the film is devoted to the mystery. The rest consists of busted romance (Jean Parker, primarily) and slapstick comedy (Ted Healy, minus his Three Stooges, and Nat Pendleton). What’s worse, to tell you the truth, I think I liked the comedy better.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Lee Sparler #1. Novelet. Published in Detective Fiction Weekly, 30 December 1939.

   Even though he got a huge cover blurb, most assuredly on the name value of the story’s author, Erle Stanley Gardner, as a private eye, Lee Sparler turned out to only be a one-and-done. By this time in 1939 Gardner was winding down his pulp-writing career. Perry Mason and the Donald Lam and Bertha Cool books were a lot more profitable, I’m sure.

   As a character, Sparler is worth talking about, though, and I could do no better than to use the words of Theo. W. Garr, president of The Planet Investigations, Inc. Here he is describing the qualities of the operative he plans to assign to a prospective client’s case:

   I don’t know how often a sales pitch like this would really be effective, but of course the client says yes, maybe a little doubtfully, but yes. His daughter, he believes, is being blackmailed. She’s always broke, and he thinks she’s been pawning her jewelry. Without letting her know she’s being watched, Sparler’s job is find out what’s going on. Which he does, and as it turns out, everything his boss said about him is true.

   I think Gardner had a lot of fun writing this story, and it shows. The twists in the tale that you expect in a Gardner story are only minor ones, however, and in fact, to my way of thinking, the story ends far too soon. I enjoyed it, though. It’s too bad that Lee Sparler had only the one adventure, but we can always hope that he got the girl.

GUMSHOE. Columbia, 1971. Albert Finney, Billie Whitelaw, Frank Finlay, Janice Rule, Fulton Mackay, and Bill Dean. Written by Neville Smith. Directed by Stephen Frears.

   A quirky little mystery/comedy/drama that deserves to be better remembered.

   In the early 1970s, Cinephiles and Cineasts knew all about film noir, and looked back on it with affection. But to ordinary Cinners in the movie-going public, it all seemed a bit passé, and so this clever pastiche went largely unseen and unsung. Too bad, because it’s a dandy little film.

   The story, as far as I can make out, centers on Eddie Ginley (Finney) a failure at 31 who ekes out a living as a Bingo Caller and dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. His long-time girlfriend (Whitelaw) left him to marry his brother, and he’s seeing a Psychiatrist:

   For a birthday present to himself, he puts an ad in the paper:

   To his surprise, a mysterious phone call summons him to meet with a shady fat man, who gives him an envelope with a picture of a girl, a thousand pounds, and a gun. So the chase is on: to find the girl, learn who wants to kill her, and why—a chase complicated by his ex-girlfriend-now-sister-in-law; a femme fatale (Rule) who wants him off the case; and the real hit man who was supposed to pick up the package Eddie got by mistake.

   If it all sounds complicated, well that ain’t the half of it, and it’s further obfuscated by sudden shifts in tone from action to drama to comedy. This was the first feature film of Stephen Frears (and of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, come to think of it) and he opts for speed, with lines bouncing around like something from a Howard Hawks movie:

   The Big Sleep comes to mind, doesn’t it? And like that classic, Gumshoe leaves no time to wonder if it makes sense –which it doesn’t. What it does is provide 86 minutes of laughs, surprises, suspense and drama. And what more could you ask, anyway?

MAX ALLAN COLLINS & MICKEY SPILLANE, Editors – Murder Is My Business. Dutton, hardcover, 1994. Signet, paperback, 1995.

   I do wonder just a bit how large Spillane’s editorial contributions were. God, I’m cynical. Collins’ introduction sheds no light on the subject, though he assures us that he “chatted” with Spillane about it, and that “they” invited writers to submit. This is the first in a projected series of themed collections from Dutton, all with the Spillane imprimatur.

   I usually don’t do anthologies, but I liked the theme of this one — murder for hire — and it looked like it had a decent list of authors, though a few I hadn’t read before. There are 17 stories in all, 16 originals and a 1953 novella by Spillane written for but never published in Colliers, ranging in length from Edward Wellen’s 3-pager to Spillane’s 177.

   [A partial list of other authors: Paul Bishop, Lawrence Block, Collins, John Lutz, Stephen Mertz, Warren Murphy, Carolyn Wheat and Teri White.]

   I’m sure I’m not a good judge of shorter fiction, so take my opinions with a block or two of salt. I was not terribly impressed with the collection. There were a few good stories — Block’s tale of a melancholy killer, Carolyn Wheat’s offbeat story, John Lutz’s lighthearted tale of a retired cop, and Warren Murphy’s Trace story — a raft of so-so’s and a few that I thought were just really bad.

   One of these was by Daniel Helpingstine, and if you said “who he?”, well, so did I, but I won’t be trying to find out more. The Spillane novella was a blast from the past, with all the attendant faults and virtues. I don’t think it’s worth the money, and I like hired killer stories. Check it out of the library.