BILL PRONZINI – Blowback. Random House, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints: Dale Books, 1978; Foul Play Press, 1984.

   As you may already know, this is the one that begins with the nameless private detective as he waits for the report on his lungs to come through. It is a tumor, he knows that now, but is it malignant?

   He means to sweat it out alone over the weekend, but a call for help from a friend takes him a short way out of himself, up into the mountains, to mix a little fishing with business.

   There are six men at the camp, and one woman, which is just the right mixture to provoke a murderous amount of jealousy and hatred, but how do a stolen Oriental carpet and a lone peacock feather enter in to it?

   Pronzini enjoys doing a tough-edged version of classical detection, and he may surprise a few who haven’t been paying close attention; but he adds something more — a rare view of someone confronted with and facing his own mortality, analyzing his life, comparing it with those of the pulp heroes he emulates.

   The fact that he, and others, still read their adventures makes certain their kind of immortality, and while I can’t tell you what the doctor’s report says, even without a name to call his own, there is a private eye who now can be added to the list of those who may in time be forgotten by many — by not by all.

MAN OF THE WEST. United Artists, 1958. Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O’Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner, Royal Dano, Robert J. Wilke, Dick Elliott, Frank Ferguson, Emory Parnell, Chuck Robertson. Screenplay by Reginald Rose, based on the novel The Border Jumpers by Will C. Brown. Music by Leigh Harline. Producer: Walter Mirisch; director: Anthony Mann. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   This film was chosen as an example of the films produced by Mirisch, beginning inauspiciously with the “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series, then in collaboration with his brothers in the Mirisch Production Company, advancing light years to the production of films such as Some Like It Hot, West Side Story, The Magnificent Seven, and In the Heat of the Night, garnering three Oscars for Best Picture, as well as numerous other awards.

   Mirisch had just written his autobiography, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, copies of which were available at a lobby signing.

   Mirisch was born in 1921, but the only concession to his age was the scheduling of his screening interview before instead of after the film. He was an engaging interviewee, with apparently total recall of his films, and the Cinephiles award was presented to him by George Chakiris, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in West Side Story.

   Man of the West was an early Mirisch film (and not a financial success), a dark Western in which Gary Cooper plays a reforned outlaw who, escaping a train holdup with two fellow passengers (Julie London and Arthur O’Connell), stumbles into the hideout of his former gang, led by his uncle (played by the decade-younger Lee J. Cobb).

   Cooper has to convince Cobb that he’s back to join the gang, which is planning a bank robbery. The climax of the film, the robbery in what turns out to be nightmarish ghost town, is an exciting and unconventionally shot shoot-out against what appear to be overwhelming odds for Cooper.

   There is something of an air of implausibility about the film (written by notable TV scriptwriter Reginald Rose) that may have contributed to the film’s failure at the box office. Nonetheless, the film has a fine cast and director, and whatever its shortcomings, it was still great fun to watch.

ELLERY QUEEN – Ten Days’ Wonder. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, 1948. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover & paperback. Film: La décade prodigieuse; French, 1971. Released in the US as Ten Days’ Wonder. Anthony Perkins, Michel Piccoli, Marlène Jobert, Orson Welles. Director: Claude Chabrol.

   I tried Ellery Queen back in High School and quickly tired of him/them because it wasn’t Raymond Chandler. But when someone hereabouts recommended Queen’s 1948 mystery Ten Days’ Wonder, I decided to give it a look.

   Well, Queen-as-author doesn’t exactly sparkle, and Queen-as-character never really comes alive on the page, but I found Wonder a pretty well crafted thing: something about a friend of Queen’s with a god-like father, sexy young step-mom, desire-under-the-elms, blackmail, blackouts and criminous suspicions.

   Given that Queen’s friend/suspect is a sculptor, the overall pattern of the thing (and hence the killer) is pretty transparent, but — given that pattern and the morality it references — there’s something sort of subversive in the way Queen-the-character keeps morphing: from sleuth to accomplice, from celebrity to pariah, then back to celebrity, all without himself changing.

   And there’s an odd sub-text flirting with the nature [**WARNING**] of a God who imputes our fall to sin. Lenny Bruce put it more succinctly when he observed that if man is sinful, the fault lies with the manufacturer, and Fredric Brown put it more sharply with the God-as-comic-punster ending of The Screaming Mimi, but Queen’s handling of the notion has its merits.   [**END OF WARNING**]

   In 1972 Claude Chabrol did a pretty faithful movie version of Ten Days’ Wonder; Michel Piccoli plays a suitably colorless detective (here a philosopher, but for the French it’s pretty much the same thing); Anthony Perkins is neatly cast as the unstable sculptor; Marlène Jobert the cute step-mom; and Orson Welles, in the fakiest fake nose of his career, simply perfect as God-the-Father.

   Like most Chabrol films, it’s thoughtful rather than gripping, definitely watchable, but damn! that schnozz they stuck on Orson; I’ve seen better noses on a pair of Groucho glasses.

HEAT LIGHTNING. Warner Brothers, 1934. Aline MacMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Jane Darwell, Edgar Kennedy. Based on a play by Leon Abrams & George Abbott. Director: Mervyn LeRoy.

   There is some similarity between Heat Lightning and the much more famous The Petrified Forest, but the latter came along later (1936) and the plots (in my opinion) diverge rather quickly. But if you’re familiar with the later film, see how much alike the settings are: Heat Lightning takes place in the middle of the Mohave desert and an isolated gas station/restaurant/tourist camp is miles from the nearest town.

   Two women, sisters, own the place. The older (and wiser) has a past she would like to think is forgotten (Olga, played by the efficient but rather glum and weary-looking Aline MacMahon), while Myra (Ann Dvorak) is looking forward to a future involving men and romance that she’s not likely to have, not as long as her older sister has any say about it.

   For such an isolated location, there is a lot of traffic that goes by, but perhaps because it is one of those places that a sign saying “Last Gas for 20 Miles” is the absolute truth. Some come in, add water to a radiator, gas up and have a couple of Cokes (for a grand total of $3.65) before heading off again, while others hang around for a while.

   The latter include a pair of fleeing would-be bank robbers — or make that killers, since at least one guard was killed in the process — one of whom knows Olga from before; and in fact they knew each other very well. Also staying overnight are two wealthy divorcees (Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly) returning from Reno, along with their hardworking chauffeur (Frank McHugh), who on occasion is called upon to do other jobs as well.

   Criminals on the run, an old flame, and two rich women make for a combustible situation, and the 63 minutes of running time is almost not enough to fit it all in. This was one of the last movies made before the Code came into being, and while there are no overt sexual scenes, there are several times there is no doubt what was going on when the cameras weren’t around and weren’t rolling.

   The overall plot may be a little predictable, but not entirely. How will Olga get rid of George (Preston Foster) or will she fall for him again? The drama itself unfolds in fine fashion, with more than a dash of humor saucily tossed into the boiling kettle, figuratively speaking. The photography and staging are more than fine, enhanced by the equally fine remastering job done to the film before it was recently released on DVD.

   Recommended.

MIKE JAHN – The Quark Maneuver. Ballantine; paperback original; 1st printing, March 1977.

   Add yet another liberated lady to the growing list of female action sleuths we have seen recently. Her knowledge of karate helps save the lives of a pair of cops at the mercy of two blacks with automatic rifles underneath the Queensboro bridge and involves her in their subsequent pursuit of a Quark-carrying madman capable of bringing on World War III.

   What’s a Quark? Only a portable surface-to-air missile powerful enough to bring down the plane carrying Hua Kuo-feng, the premier of China, into New York City for a UN summit conference.

   Her name is Diana Cantardo, and she runs a pretty fair restaurant on 59th Street, but she soon finds that romance and adventure are much more fun. I concur whole-heartedly and hope that that won’t be the last we see of the delightful Miss Cantardo, truly a beauty with brains, as she tackles more cases with her new friend Lieutenant DiGioa, who is not as old as he first appears.

   I do have one gripe, though, about an ending that’s both too loose and yet too tightly plotted. See if you don’t agree.

Rating:   B.

[UPDATE] 04-15-11.   The Quark Maneuver was Michael Jahn’s first mystery novel, and it won an Edgar for Best Paperback Original in 1978. Nonetheless, this was Diana Cantardo’s first and only appearance in book form. I kept looking for a followup at the time, to no avail.

   In 1982 with Night Rituals, Jahn began a series of novels featuring Bill Donovan, head of Manhattan’s West Side Major Crimes Unit. Over the years Donovan has been promoted to Chief of Special Investigations for the NYPD, with ten in the series so far and the 11th due next year.

WARREN MURPHY & RICHARD SAPIR – Destroyer World: The Movie That Never Was. Unproduced screenplay based on the novel Created The Destroyer. Ballybunnion Books, trade paperback, 2004. Kindle edition currently available on Amazon.

   In the foreword of this book featuring Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s unsold spec screenplay, Warren Murphy explains how, when, and why they decided to write a screenplay based on their popular paperback series, The Destroyer.

   In the mid-1970s, after turning down Chuck Norris agent’s request for film rights (back when Norris was most known as a karate champion), Murphy and Sapir decided to try writing their own screenplay. The script shows their inexperience at the time with the movie business. For example, no professional screenwriter would include camera angles or instructions for the actors how to act.

   The script’s best feature is the Murphy and Sapir writing style that made the books so popular. Both understood their characters better than those involved with the 1985 film or the 1988 pilot for an ABC-TV series.

   Someone is starting riots in major American cities. Mr. Smith of top-secret organization CURE hires the Master of Sinanju to train CURE’s new lone assassin. The last Master of Sinanju, Chiun may look like a tiny frail old man, but he can walk up walls and rip apart steel with his hands.

   Selected to be CURE’s assassin, without his knowledge, Remo is framed and executed for murder. With Remo “dead,” Chiun trains Remo to become The Destroyer. Remo’s first case, if he is ever ready and willing, is to stop the madman behind the riots.

   Sadly, the script is a mess. The book begins where the would-be movie should have, with Remo’s “death.” Why is Conn MacCleary the focus of so much of the first half of the story? This movie should be about Remo and Chiun. Visually, Remo or Chiun or the bad guys should be in every scene.

   Most of the movie is over by the time Remo turns from jerk to hero and goes after the lame villain Buddy Bower, owner of a hamburger fast food chain, who plans to become President by creating civil unrest (his method for creating the riots would have been visually laughable).

   Murphy, in his foreword, wrote he thought what went wrong with the 1985 film Remo Williams was the lack of a Big Villain. A problem this script shared. Maybe Buddy Bower could have been a Big Villain if the script had spent more time showing him and his evil plan at work. Instead, the script had characters talk about the riots while showing such pointless scenes as the President deciding to approve CURE’s assassin, Chiun traveling on an airplane, and every detail of the frame of Remo including his trial.

   Why didn’t the script take the obvious path? After Remo “dies,” fetch Chiun, show more of Remo’s training and less talking, while visually establishing the evil power of the villain, and then send our hero out to stop the bad guy. If Murphy and Sapir’s script had followed that path, they might have created a Destroyer movie series to rival the 1970s Bond movies.

JAMES ANDERSON – The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy. McKay Washburn, hardcover, 1975. Avon, paperback, 1978. Poisoned Pen Press, trade paperback, June 2006.

   Fans of the typical English house party mysteries of the 1930s, rejoice — the Golden Age is back! James Anderson’s book has it all, including a list of characters and a plan of the house and, as the worried Inspector Wilins puts it: “Foreign envoys. International jewel thieves. American millionaires. European aristocracy.”

   Though he keeps saying he is not sanguine, Inspector Wilkins manages to unravel the many-stranded plot and sort out a head-spinning series of complications, with the help of a (semi-)amateur assistant.

   Guests at the Earl of Burford’s stately home include his diplomat brother Richard and some foreign envoys trying to work out an agreement; an American oil millionaire interested in the Earl’s fabulous gun collection and his wife; a strangely enigmatic and beautiful Baroness; society bore Algy Fotheringay, who gets his just desserts; an early-Christie type ingenue, down on her luck; and possibly the Wraith, a society jewel thief.

   As might be expected, Anderson has a lot of fun with this, though he does it affectionately without playing for laughs. There are ultimately two murders, which naturally take place during a violent thunderstorm when no one stays in his room.

   Egg Cosy has all the joys, and some of the weaknesses, of the classic mysteries of the Golden Age. The latter include a few poorly delineated characters and the convention of having a culprit launch into a long and detailed confession upon being accused, rather than clamming up and sending for a lawyer.

   On the plus side are the situation itself, the marvelously convoluted plot and its multi-part solution, somewhat reminiscent of early Queen. There is even a secret passage!

   If the the events of the night in question and the whereabouts of all the people and guns are just about impossible to keep straight, that’s all part of the game. There are indications of a possible sequel at the end — I hope there is one, as it’s a fun book, well worth reading.

       The Inspector Wilkins series —

1. The Affair of the Blood Stained Egg Cosy (1975)
2. The Affair of the Mutilated Mink Coat (1981)
3. The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks (2003)

FUGITIVES FOR A NIGHT. RKO Radio Pictures, 1938. Frank Albertson, Eleanor Lynn, Allan Lane, Bradley Page, Jonathan Hale, Russell Hicks, Paul Guilfoyle, Ward Bond. Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo, based on a story Richard Wormser. Director: Leslie Goodwin.

   Matt Ryan (Frank Albertson) is a would-be actor who ends up as a stooge for the studio [a “yes man” who does anything he’s asked], pushed around by studio head Maurice Tenwright (Russell Hicks) who assigns him first to arrogant heart throb John Nelson (Allan Lane), who wants out of his contract with Tenwright, then fading but charming and gentlemanly leading man Dennis Poole (Bradley Page), who Tenwright is using as weapon against Nelson.

   Poole is a real change from Nelson, he can’t even stand to use the term stooge when referring to Matt, but his star is rapidly blinking out, and his only real value is to be held over Nelson’s fat head as a threat since his last two films did terrible box office.

   Matt’s girl, publicist Ann Wray (Eleanor Lynn), has seen enough of Hollywood and just wants Matt to open a hamburger stand and get out of the dirty racket. Anything other than stay in the demeaning job as stooge — a menial and soul-numbing position as a punchline for everyone else’s joke.

   And she may be right. At an illegal casino in the desert where all the studio big wigs are gathered along with nasty gossip columnist Monks (Paul Guilfoyle), there is a police raid, and in the confusion Tenwright is shot and killed.

   Wry police Captain Jonathan Hale suspects Matt, who with help from Ann escapes into the desert night. Now wanted by the police for murder, Matt has to prove he didn’t kill Tenwright and reveal who really did.

   The suspects, along with the police Captain, gather at Poole’s house as Poole tries to stall them to give Matt a chance to escape, but Matt and Ann are headed right for Poole’s because they think they know the killer.

   There is nothing special here; this is a solid B movie with an attractive cast and capable direction, moving at a pace, but what’s notable is how much of Trumbo’s voice makes it onto the screen. The film is cynical, bitter, sardonic, and almost no one is decent or even likable.

   Tenwright is manipulative and backstabbing, Nelson arrogant and self absorbed, Monks a snarling coward, and for most of the film Matt all too willing to be everyone’s doorstep. Even Hale is star struck, vain, and full of himself, last seen in the film admiring himself in the mirror while quoting “all is vanity.”

   This is by no means film noir, but it is bitter, cynical, and fairly nasty in tone for a B programmer, and you have to imagine that was Trumbo’s doing.

DECOY. Syndicated TV. First aired October 14,1957; 39 30min episodes aired at various times around the country. Cast: Casey Jones: Beverly Garland. Executive producer: Everett Rosenthal; technical advisor: Margaret Leonard, Detective 1st Grade (Ret.).

   Decoy is best remembered as the first American TV series to feature, as its main character, a policewoman.

   The series’ episodes were “based upon true and actual cases.” Decoy was dedicated to the Bureau of Policewomen of the city of New York. The stories had little humor and were thick with melodrama. Decoy was much like Dragnet, but with a more feminine point of view. As Joe Friday did, Casey Jones narrated the episodes.

   Decoy featured crime stories dealing with the social issues of the times. Often the villains were portrayed as victims themselves. It was common for at least one bad guy to find redemption in the end.

   In “High Swing,” Casey goes undercover replacing a murdered ‘Come On’ girl, a woman who picks up guys in a bar and leads them to a place to be mugged. The killers were a nice old couple trapped by a tragic past that left the wife hooked on morphine.

   Casey did not have a regular partner, instead she was assigned to a different department every week. She might be in uniform, undercover, or the officer in charge. She worked on any type of crime and in any area of the city. Her fellow male officers accepted a policewoman as routine and treated her with respect.

   While little is revealed of Casey’s life beyond being a policewoman, we do see the effects each case has on her. At the end of every episode, Casey would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, often sharing how the case had affected her.

   The series was filmed, some of it outdoors in the New York area. The productions values were on par with network television of that time. Most of the episodes remain entertaining, yet dated, crime melodrama.

   The writing was weakened by the melodrama. It is hard today not to laugh at lines such as in “The Sound Of Tears”: “There were no kisses in the park that night (pause) unless you want to count the kiss of death.”

   The direction was adequate for its time except for the episode “Across the World.” Casey goes undercover to find a killer, but she is found out, beaten badly, and ends up in the hospital (and out of most of the episode!). Director Teddy Sims apparently had only one camera and limited time. Characters were reacting to things the camera did not show, characters off camera had conversations with others on camera, and it had the worse chase scene ever filmed.

   A talented underrated actress, Beverly Garland was the best part of Decoy. Watching her share the screen with a guest cast that included such talent as Peter Falk, Martin Balsam, and Suzanne Pleshette remains the best reason to watch Decoy.

SOURCES: Internet Archives offers episodes to watch for free. Classic TV Archives has a good episode guide. And the series is available on DVD.

SEVEN THIEVES. 20th Century Fox, 1960. Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach, Alexander Scourby, Michael Dante, Berry Kroeger, Sebastian Cabot. Based on the novel by Max Catto. Director: Henry Hathaway.

   Context first. To Catch a Thief was filmed in 1955, while Ocean’s Eleven premiered in August 1960. Seven Thieves beat the latter to the gate by a few months, its first showing being in March that same year.

   Of course you can’t really consider To Catch a Thief as a caper film, not in the strictest sense of the word, I don’t think, and there were a number of others that were that came in between, but since both it and Seven Thieves take place in Monte Carlo with the Casino a major part of the plot, it was of course the film I first thought of when I began to watch the latter.

   Only problem is, Thief was filmed in beautiful Technicolor, and Thieves is in “glorious” black and white. As befitting a “noir” film, one supposes, but then why was it filmed in Cinemascope? The noir aspects are minor. Why not have followed Hitchcock’s example and gone with color as well? Monaco is such a beautiful place. It deserved it.

   Thieves is also not nearly as good, plotwise, as Thief, but it is better than Eleven (filmed in color) but whose fame depends on the actors playing in it than the rather disposable details of stealing all that money from the Las Vegas casinos, all to no avail.

   Something always has to go wrong in caper and/or heist films. We’ve said that before on this blog, and Thieves in the long run is no different. But for a suspense film, it runs a leisurely course from nearly beginning to end. Even the twists in the plot are leisurely.

   I will not be the first to have pointed this out, I am sure, but what plot behind the caper in Thieves reminded me of most was those that appeared every week on the Mission Impossible television show. Meticulous detail, timed to the second, but while nothing ever seems to go exactly to plan, and a lot of sweat appears on everyone’s brows, there is little to fear that anything goes seriously wrong.

   But of course it does, and I will refrain from telling you just when it does, assuming that you will one day wish to watch this picture. And yet the ending, while perhaps persuaded in the direction it takes by a board of censors, goes down smoothly enough – save the very last scene, where sheer luck seems to be involved more than bad happenstance, if there is a difference, and I believe there is.

   I don’t believe that Edward G. Robinson ever gave a bad performance, and he’s in fine form in this one as the disgraced elderly Professor who puts the details of the theft together, with Rod Steiger coming on board to keep the other players in line. Steiger himself seems a bit out of place among the other members of the gang, a miscellaneous group to say the least, but he’s quite effective, and (surprisingly) quietly so.

   Joan Collins was also in fine form, and here I’m speaking physically as well as performing her role well. She is a dancer in a jazz nightspot in Thieves, brunette, beautiful, slim, lissome and slender, with her two sensuous dance numbers well choreographed by Candy Barr, one of the most well-known true strippers of the day.

   There is some interplay between the members of the gang, some more committed than others, but mostly between Robinson and Steiger, whose character needs a lot of convincing to come in on the job, then later on an attraction between Steiger and Joan Collins begins to bloom.

   The heist itself? While complicated, rather ordinary, I’d have to admit. But being no particular fan of the Rat Pack myself, I’d recommend this one over its more direct contemporary, even though it’s not nearly as well known, even before the remake of Ocean’s crew at work came along and made the earlier version even more famous.