DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Big Knockover.” First published in The Black Mask, February 1927. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   Hoods from all over the country are imported into San Francisco to pull off a multimillion dollar double bank robbery, As the Continental Op investigates, most of the gunmen are found murdered, victims of a vicious double-cross. Papadopoulos, the headman, fools the OP and escapes. (4)

PEKING EXPRESS. Paramount Pictures, 1951. Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet, Edmund Gwenn, Marvin Miller, Benson Fong, Soo Yong. Director: William Dieterle.

   A remake of Shanghai Express (1932), William Dieterle’s Peking Express (1951) was apparently the first studio film to be set in Communist China. The plot follows humanitarian doctor Michael Bachlin (Joseph Cotton) as he attempts to make his way to Peking on a train to tend to an ill Chinese general. His traveling companions include his ex-lover, nightclub singer Danielle Grenier (Corrine Colvert), a priest (Edmund Gwenn), and Kwon (Marvin Miller), a seemingly mild-manner Westernized man attuned to world politics.

   Little does Bachlin know that Kwon is actually a ruthless bandit who deals in stolen pharmaceuticals in the supposedly non-existent black market.

   The movie has its fair share of action, but it’s extremely preachy as well and takes its good time to get going. It’s at least twenty to thirty minutes into the film before the viewer has some idea of who is important to the main thrust of the story and who isn’t.

   There’s also something very old fashioned about Peking Express that’s difficult to put into words, but easy to feel when watching. It almost feels like a silent film that came to full “talkie” life, if that makes any sense. Still, the train sequences are very well done and those who like movies set on trains will find a lot to appreciate here.

   Overall, a solid adventure film that benefits from a professional cast who took their roles seriously. But it’s nothing you’re going to want to watch a second time. It just doesn’t have enough energy for that.

TWISTED. Paramount Pictures, 2004. Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy García. Director: Philip Kaufman.

   Apparently people don’t like this movie very much. In fact, it currently has a 2% positive – that’s right two percent positive – rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The question then becomes: is it really that bad? My resounding answer is no. Not at all.

   Directed by Philip Kaufman, whose work I generally admire, Twisted is a paranoid thriller in which newly minted San Francisco detective Jessica Shepard (Ashley Judd) finds herself in a precarious position. Her lovers and one-night stands alike are turning up dead with cigarette burns on their hands.

   This is especially traumatic, given her parents’ death in a murder-suicide years ago. Luckily, she has a mentor in Police Commissioner John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson). But whom can she really trust? Her new partner (Andy Garcia), her psychiatrist (David Strathairn), and her ex-boyfriend (Mark Pellegrino) all seem like viable suspects. Eventually, Shepard (Judd) begins to doubt her own sanity and casts suspicion on herself.

   The main problem – and it’s a glaring one – with Twisted is that its resolution really doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s cheap and tawdry and strains credulity to the nth degree. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the movie is worthless. It’s an extremely watchable lowbrow sleazefest with a coterie of great character actors and a director who did his best with the deeply flawed source material.

   How’s that for a recommendation?
   

DAVID GOODIS – Somebody’s Done For. Banner B60-111, paperback original, 1967. Reprinted several times, including Stark House Press, softcover, 2023.

   Jander’s an ad man. For fun, he takes a dingy out the New Jersey coast.

   Only it capsizes. And he just about drowns.

   Ends up on some forgotten stretch of beach.

   And a girl. A strange and beautiful creature, pulls him up the shore, to save him from drowning in the tide.

   She takes him to a shack, warms him and feeds him.

   But don’t follow me and don’t ask questions.

   But he can’t help it. Like Orpheus descending.

   So he finds out where she’s from. And where she’s going.

   Thing is, her daddy is an escaped convict. Who lives in an abandoned house, with a couple of buddies from the clink. And his wife.

   And daddy’s crazy as a moon. I would say loon, but it’s overused. So moon. Crazy as a moon. And gun crazy.

   And Vera, the daughter. She brings home the bread. (Almost said bacon. All we’re missing is a tomato and some lettuce.) She’s the featured attraction at a gentleman’s club. Only she ain’t available. Which doubles her attraction. She’s belongs to one man and one man alone.

   Her daddy.

   Odd little book. And Goodis’s last.

   As unfulfilling as life itself.

DASHIELL HAMMETT “Tulip.” Fragment of an unfinished novel, written perhaps in the early 1950s. First appeared in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   The beginning, and last paragraphs of what might have been an autobiography of sorts, in which Tulip visits Pop, and the two of them have an unintelligible conversation. [Not rated.]

DANIEL BOYD – Hamlet Among the Pirates. Montag Press, softcover, August 2024.

   The book’s been out a while, but I’ve been in a long-lasting reading slump the past few months, and instead of having you wait for me to read it and tell you to buy it, I think it best if I for now just skip the middle step and tell you to buy it.

   Why? Maybe you already know this, but Daniel Boyd is actually our good friend and ace book and movie reviewer Dan Stumpf. He also leaves good comments here as well.

   Here below is Amazon’s cover image the book, should you care to buy it there, and after that a description of sorts of the story itself. (You can also click on the cover, follow the arrows, and (if all goes well) all kinds of wonderful things will (might) happen.)

         HAMLET ON THE HIGH SEAS!

When Captain Jacobus Hooke, Master of the
Dread Pirate Frigate DEBACLE, meets up with Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark, the action never stops.
Get ready for laughter and excitement, as a hard-working
Pirate Captain accidentally kidnaps the Melancholy Dane and finds
himself saddled with a princely hostage no one wants to ransom!

      Swordfights
      Strumpets
      Sea Battles
      Literary Allusions
      Surprise Encounters
      Super Storms
      And Just Plain Silliness

   Whether you know Shakespeare and HAMLET, or you just enjoy a good adventure story, this one will keep you turning the pages. Inspired by one brief reference to pirates in the play, Daniel Boyd creates a high seas adventure like no other.

STRANGE FASCINATION. Columbia Pictures, 1952. Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Mona Barrie, Rick Vallin, Karen Sharpe . Written, directed and produced by Hugo Haas.

   This one really isn’t noir, but it’s got noir-ish features, I guess in the sense that it has an impending sense of doom, a femme fatale (to some degree), and a portrait of a man on a downward spiral.

   The fatalistic plot follows Central European concert pianist Paul Marvan (Hugo Haas) as he makes his way to America, falls madly in love with a nightclub dancer half his age (Cleo Moore), and then proceeds to make bad decision after bad decision, ultimately ruining both his marriage and his professional life. It’s a decent enough work to be sure, but the plot is a little too simple for its own good.

   A lower budget auteurist work if there ever was one, Strange Fascination has Czech-Jewish filmmaker Hugo Haas’s imprint all over it. Not only does he star in this moody drama film, he wrote, directed, and produced it. So it’s safe to say that everything in the film is his work and his alone.

   To his credit, his portrayal of Paul Marvan is spot-on; Haas disappears completely into the role and imbues it with energy. He’s compulsively watchable. But otherwise, Strange Fascination is a somewhat languid affair, never quite able to deliver the punches it so desperately needs.
   

DASHIELL HAMMETT “Corkscrew.” First published in The Black Mask, September 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   A new deputy sheriff comes to a small town in the Arizona desert, His job is to clear out troublemakers for an irrigation company, but the story means more [than that even] before the anonymous deputy is discovered to be the Continental Op – simply by reflecting attitudes of the real West. (4)

RAOUL WHITFIELD – Border Brand. Steeger Books, softcover, August 2024. Originally serialized in Black Mask magazine, June through November 1928.

   Mac ’twas a fighter pilot in the war to end all wars. Then was a teller in a bank.

   Antonio Flores robbed the bank. And flew away with the cash in a single seater.

   Mac was the teller Flores held up.

   The bank fires Mac. Figure Mac didn’t try hard enough to stop Flores. Figure Mac was maybe in on it.

   So Mac decides to chase after Flores. Across the border to Mexico.

   There he teams up with a federal agent, name of Ben Breed.

   Breed is hell of a pilot too. And a gunner. As well as Mac and Flores. And air battles are the main action here.

   Whitfield does a nice job with the air battle descriptions, keeping me engaged though I’ve myself never been one to seek out air adventure. The other reason to read it is Whitfield’s prose. I think Whitfield maybe has the hardest, most staccato prose in showbiz. And that’s why I keep reading Whitfield and keep seeking him out. He’s a tonic. He’s spare. He’s terse. There’s no wasted word. Concision. Diamond cut. We can still learn a lot from Whitfield about how to say things briskly sans the bullshit.

   I liked it.

   I want to let everyone know that my first novel, The Nuremberg Papers (Stark House Press) is now available on Amazon. When writing the book, I drew inspiration from various genres and subgenres in both literature and cinema, including classic detective fiction, stories about Nazi war criminals, film noir, suspense thrillers from the 1970s such as The Parallax View and Marathon Man, and movies and television shows set in gritty 1980s New York City.

   Aside from the conspiracy thriller aspect of the work, there’s also a story about Jewish identity in postwar America that runs throughout the course of the novel. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you happen to appreciate the book, positive feedback on Amazon is more than welcome!