Finally, after two years a Pulpfest! Last year there was no convention because of the virus and I had not missed a show in a very long time. I almost went to Pittsburgh anyway in 2020 just to morosely hang out at the hotel but I couldn’t talk anyone else into driving out. But this year there was a convention and I swore I’d make it, pandemic or no pandemic.

   Since one of our group decided not to drive with us, there was only four of us and we therefore did not need the larger van. Driving out was nice weather, unlike the horror story driving back at the end of the show. We arrived at 3 pm on Thursday and found the dealer’s room to be busy with most tables set up for business. I estimate well over 300 in attendance and a hundred or so tables. I heard that attendance was supposed to be a lot larger but there was a 25% cancellation during the past two weeks as collectors either bit the dust or decided to not attend due to the pandemic.

   The dealer’s room closed at 5 pm and was immediately followed by a great pizza party hosted by many of the dealers. I then hung out in the hotel bar with friends where I drank five pints of beer. I firmly believe that drinking a lot of beer helps scare away the virus. Also it was free, due to my fellow collectors who also believe that beer is the staff of life. Thank you Matt Moring, Richard Meli and the veteran whose name I did not catch. Later on the bartender claimed he did not pay the bar tab, and he came to me for payment. But I told him I only drink the beer. I don’t pay for it. Plus he’s a vet. He should get free beer.

   The next morning I got up and followed my usual practice of getting rid of hangovers by eating a large breakfast and drinking plenty of coffee. I have to admit the hotel serves the best and largest buffet breakfast that I have ever encountered. It was delicious.

   Then into action when the dealer’s room opened at 9 am. Masks were recommended and most started off wearing them but as the day progressed, the masks came off. I told Matt it was like a scene out of Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” in the November 1950 issue of Galaxy SF. Social distancing was followed, but then we stopped worrying and concentrated on buying pulps and books.

   What did I buy? Well Doug Ellis had some great art for sale, especially cover paintings and interiors by Hubert Rogers. I almost bought some but I talked myself out of buying any since I have stacks of art leaning against my walls and bookcases. However history was made as my old friend Digges La Touche bought a cover painting from a paperback. In 50 years he has never bought art, except for one Barbara Cartland paperback cover. He always concentrates on buying masses of pulps, but no more I guess. I stop buying art and he starts.

   I also found some of the extremely rare and hard to find large issues of Everybody’s from the WW I era. Sai Shanker had an excellent article in the new Pulpster about the history of Everybody’s. The magazine lasted 355 issues and went from slick to pulp. He will soon publish a collection of the best stories from the magazine. Speaking of upcoming books, Steeger Books, otherwise known as Matt Moring, will be coming out with a collection of “The Campfire” letters from Adventure in the twenties. These books are must buys if you collect fiction magazines.

   As usual I had a table and sold some rare items. This time I had some duplicates of of the Manhunt Detective imitators. These digest magazines were published in the fifties and sixties and have sexy covers showing girls fighting or killing some poor guy. Cool! I’ve been collecting these digest since 1956, so I’ve been at it for 65 years. Time flies when you are having fun, and I considering collecting magazines to be a hell of a lot of fun. My wife thinks different.

   The Pulpster 30 was given to all the attendees and it was the best issue yet of all the 30 issues. William Lampkin is the editor and Mike Chomko the publisher. Copies are available from Mike Chomko Books and I give this magazine my highest recommendation. It’s large format, 8 1/2 by 11, 60 pages, and in color. Several articles were on The Shadow, including interviews with artists Jerome Rozen and Graves Gladney. Other articles dealt with the love pulps (escape literature for three million maidens), the debut of online newgroups dealing with pulps, the history of Everybody’s by Sai Shanker, Tony Davis on editor Dorothy McIIwraith, and a Darrell Schweitzer interview with Hugh Cave.

   PulpFest is known for the great programming and all the panels and discussions were outstanding. If I had to pick one above all the others I would have to highly recommend Laurie Powers’ “The Queen and Her Court: Great Women Pulp Editors.” It is obvious that Laurie spent a lot of time on this presentation which deserves to be reprinted in a print magazine or book. It is a great example of original pulp research and not just the rehashing of well known facts.

   Other programming was also noteworthy like the discussion on Shadow artists. This was supposed to be presented by David Saunders but he could not attend and Chet Williamson stepped in. I also liked Doug Ellis on Margaret Brundage and the discussion on Eva Lynd: Countess, Actress, and Cover girl. Eva Lynd was supposed to be the Guest of Honor but could not attend but she sent a very nice thank you film.

   This was also the first year of ERBFest. I hope these Edgar Rice Burroughs scholars and fans will return next year. As usual the presentation of The Munsey Award was a highlight of the programming. This year’s award was given to Rich Harvey who has not only published many pulp books and magazines, but more importantly, has been the organizer behind the annual one day convention, Pulp Adventurecon. There have been more that 20 of these shows usually held in Bordentown during November of each year. Congratulations Rich!

   The auction was held Saturday night and though there was no estate auction, many collectors contributed items of interest. Halfway through the auction an overpowering thirst descended upon me, and I adjourned to the bar where unlike Thursday and Friday, I had to pay for my own drinks. I forget which night it happened but the fire alarm went off, and we had to leave the hotel. Fortunately I had a full beer in hand and simply strolled out the door hoping that not too many pulps would be destroyed. Many other collectors had to get dressed and leave their beds. That’s what happens when you go to bed too early.

   I was glad to see that Blood n Thunder had not bit the dust. The Blood n Thunder 2021 Annual made its debut as well as Sam Sherman’s When Dracula Met Frankenstein. Both published by Ed Hulse’s Murania Press.

   Next year will be the 50th Anniversary of Pulpcon/Pulpfest. The first one was held in 1972 and I was there! I sure as hell wish all the other attendees were still around and we could have a panel discussing the good old days. But it’s getting down to The Last Man Standing and hopefully I’ll be present to talk about the way things were and what happened. In 1972 I was one of the youngest collectors present and now in 2021, I’m one of the oldest. My advice for a long life? Drink Beer and collect books, pulps, and art. It worked for me!

   Driving home on Sunday was a mess. Heavy rain and the nagging fear of water in the basement. But I dodged the bullet again and my basement was dry. My pulps and wife welcomed me home.

   I would like to thank the Pulpfest committee: Jack Cullers, Sally Cullers, Mike Chomko, Peter Chomko, William Lampkin, William Maynard, Tony Davis, Barry Traylor. I know I’m leaving out someone else and maybe Mike or Jack could list the correct committee in the comments.

   Windy City Pulp Convention is only a couple weeks away. I hope to see you there!

OUTSIDE THE WALL. Universal, 1950.Richard Basehart, Marilyn Maxwell, Signe Hasso, Dorothy Hart, John Hoyt, Joseph Pevney, Lloyd Gough, and Harry Morgan. Written by Henry Edward Helseth and Crane Wilbur. Directed by Crane Wilbur.

   No classic, but it’ll keep you watching.

   Richard Basehart plays Larry Martin, a convict just shy of 30, released after fifteen years in prison (do the math.) At loose ends on the outside, he gets a job in a TB sanitarium. A bit of exposition shows Martin to be tough and savvy, but lacking in social skills and completely at a loss with women — elements that will figure into the plot just ahead.

   About this time Martin sees newspaper headlines about a million-dollar heist of an armored car, the gang decimated in a shoot-out that left only two at large with the loot — and recognizes photos of head-perp Jack Bernard (John Hoyt) from the time he spent in stir. And as plot would have it, a few days later Bernard is admitted to the sanitarium under an assumed name, near death from TB.

   All this time, Martin has been struggling to establish a relationship with his co-workers, passing over pretty and pleasant nurse Celia (Signe Hasso) for greedy blonde Charlotte (Marilyn Maxwell.) When Charlotte lets him know she wants the “finer things” in life, Martin accepts a job offer from the fugitive Bernard.

   It seems Bernard is paying protection to his ex-wife Ann (venomous Dorothy Hart) and needs Martin to deliver it while he’s laid up. Ann only seems interested in how soon Bernard will croak, but it soon develops that she has a few nasty friends (including a sadistic Harry Morgan) who think Martin must be the other survivor of the heist, and their ticket to the hot millions.

   From this point on, Outside the Wall gets agreeably tricky and enjoyably violent. Helseth wrote the novel basis of the classic Cry of the City, and he has a sure feel for dishonor among thieves. He’s not helped at all by Crane Wilbur’s flat-footed direction, and neither are the actors, but Richard Basehart gives out with a neatly-played character — smart and tough among the low-lifes he grew up with, but lost and vulnerable with ordinary folk, and quite unable to cope with the decent woman who wants to save him.

   The result is a film that mostly misses its potential. But it comes close enough to stay with.

      All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.

   Carson Robson is a name I’m sure will draw a blank from everyone reading this, but back in 1942 he put out a record (a 78) that when my brother and I found it in our parents’ collection, we played so often that I think we wore the grooves off. 78’s being rather fragile items, we both agree that it finally somehow got broken, but while we had it, we loved it.

   And guess what? My brother went looking, and found both sides on YouTube. Isn’t the Internet wonderful?
   

      Carson Robison – I’m Going Back To Whur I Come From

      Carson Robison – That Old Grey Mare Is Back Where She Used To Be

DONALD STOKES – Captive in the Night. Coward-McCann, hardcover, 1951. Signet 1006, paperback, 1953; cover by James Meese. Crest #126, paperback, March 1956. Wildside Press, trade paperback, 2020.

   Hansen is Blair Hansen, and here is Algeria. Eight years earlier he was there with the American Army in intelligence. Now he is back, contracted by the fat shady man named Kuhn (think Sidney Greenstreet crossed with Peter Lorre and maybe Eric Pohlman) he first encountered earlier, to get the ore from Kuhn’s iron mine out of a Berber valley under the control of the rebels led by Messali Haji and his men against the French colonizers.

   Blair is there too because of Mari, a woman he knew eight years earlier who betrayed him.

   Even before he can see Kuhn, a woman tries to trap him and Hansen has to deal with two Arabs sent to see why he is there. He doesn’t get along much better with the police, the Brigade. In the best tradition he has walked into a hornet’s nest, one part Warner Brothers movie, a little Beau Geste, and more than a little Mickey Spillane thrown in with a touch of Post War realpolitik and cynicism.

   The local color is well done if laid on a bit thickly, and the tough guy stuff rings true with our “hero” tough as a rusty nail and just about as toxic.

   If you like your action tough and relentless, your heroes unsentimental sociopaths, the action unrelenting, and no one particularly innocent, this is the book for you. Reading it you can just about cast the movie in your head.

   It’s not always pleasant, but it is vividly written, tough minded, and for all the romance of exotic settings and high adventure as hardboiled as anything you are likely to read:

   It’s all basic Hollywood action movie 101, but not bad for that. The action moves at a pace, the dramas of several characters weave in and out of the plot including Mari’s adult daughter Celeste and her husband George, and our hero gets by on toughness and an unwillingness to die.

   The cover of the paperback edition from Fawcett Crest is a doozy too, the perfect evocation of the novel.

● PATRICK RUELL – Death Takes the Low Road. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1974. Mysterious Press, US, paperback, 1987.

   A somewhat banal tale, but that’s the only thing that’s at all commonplace about this book. An almost Buchanesque tale of pursuit, the pursued (from the Highlands southwards) being one William Blake Hazlett, a University Registrar who may have a dark side to his life, and his girlfriend, Caroline Nevis, a determined young research student from the colonies (well, they were once!).

   Lots of pace, lots of action, lots of humour. Reminiscent of the later on form Michael Innes. Very enjoyable.

● PATRICK RUELL – Urn Burial. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1975. Foul Play, US, hardcover, 1987.

   I wish I’d tumbled rather earlier to the fact that Ruell is Reginald Hill’s alter ego, Ruell being Hill’s less deductive, more active manifestation.

   Urn Burial concerns ambiguous local government man Sam Lakenheath and delightful fat girl archeologist Zeugma Gray. The scene is set on Thirlsike Waste, a remote and windswept area of Northern Britain where is disused research centre attracts strange people and stranger happenings.

   Mr. Ruell certainly has a talent to amuse and the even rarer talent of leavening the humour (and action) with sinister ingredients. The whole makes first class and riveting reading, and, as a bonus to those so inclined, the villains are of the archest and the natural is mingled with the supernatural. Super stuff.

● REGINALD HILL – A Pinch of Snuff. Collins, UK, hardcover. 1978. Harper, US, hardcover, 1978. Dell, US,paperback, 1984.

   Inspector Pascoe, imaginative, literate, sensitive; Superintendent Dalziel, ruthless, devious — quite a combination. even though they don’t always seem too keen on combining.

   The snuff in this investigation (their fourth, I think) is not at all what you might imagine, as our heroes become involved in the murky world of vice and porno films. And Mr. Hill is as devious as Dalziel and as literate as Pascoe in unraveling the mystery surrounding the filmed murder of one of the porno starlets.

   The author is rapidly becoming one of my favourites.

LOVE LAUGHS AT ANDY HARDY. MGM, 1946. Mickey Rooney, Lewis Stone, Fay Holden, Bonita Granville, Lina Romay, Sara Haden, Dorothy Ford. Director: Willis Goldbeck.

   This was the last of the Andy Hardy films before the 1958 reunion film, Andy Hardy Comes Home, and you certainly can tell the series had seen better days. Andy comes home from the war in this one, just before heading off for college as a 20 year old freshman.

   But since Mickey Rooney was something like 26 years old at the time, he looks absolutely ludicrous in a beanie, to say the least. And he’s also far too old to continue his usual juvenile approach to love and romance any longer, even though he’s serious enough about it now to be ready to pop the question to Bonita Granville. But as you can tell from the title,  it doesn’t work out, in a twist of the plot even more ridiculous then the sight of grown men wearing stupid little caps.

   Lina Romay may not set Andy’s heart on fire, but she does add a little spice to the proceedings. And while I haven’t been able to locate Dorothy Ford in any of my standard  references, in this movie she plays a coed who is about 6 foot 6 inches tall, and when she dances with Andy (who comes only about breast high), it is really something to behold:

   Overall, while I didn’t care that much for the picture, Judge Hardy’s patented father-to-son talk with Andy at the end of the movie is as good as ever (but ruined by the local station that interrupted it in mid-sentence for yet another commercial).

DEATH IN PARADISE “The Early Bird.” BBC, 18 February 2014 (Season 3, Episode 6). Kris Marshall, Sara Martins, Danny John-Jules, Gary Carr. Directed by Robert Quinn.

   An organized group of bird watchers is on the island of Sainte Marie looking for a rare green parrot known to exist there and nowhere else. You might not realize that birdwatching is a competitive sport, but it is so in this story. When one of the group is seen getting up early and heading off into the jungle to be first to spot the elusive bird, the others hurriedly get dressed and follow off together in his wake. To their surprise, they find the man dead, with a knife in his back.

   The problem facing the small but highly efficient police force on Sainte Marie is that the area is a restricted region to protect the birds, and all of the people within the sanctuary were in sight of each other between the time the victim was seen and when his body was found. Who could have done it, and more importantly, how?

   I’m usually not very good at puzzles such as this, but I’m going to pat myself soundly on the back by saying that the “how” was easy. I didn’t figure out “who,” but looking back, all of the clues were there. Not all of the episodes of Death in Paradise are “impossible crimes,” but they are all puzzle stories, and they’re awfully good in making sure all of the clues are there for the viewer to see. All you have to do is pay attention!

   What also makes the series so much fun to watch is all of the good-natured camaraderie displayed on the part of the series regulars. Such is the case here.

L. SPRAGUE de CAMP & FLETCHER PRATT – The Carnelian Cube. Lancer 73-662, paperback, 1967. Cover by Kelly Freas. Previously published by Gnome Press, hardcover, 1948.

   While on an archaeological expedition, Arthur Finch discovers a magical red cube of stone that gives its possessor the ability to dream himself into any world he pleases.

   Unfortunately, dream worlds do not always satisfy the wishes that produce them. A perfectly rational world stifles ambition and progress. A world where individuality is supreme is full of conflict, with cooperation nearly impossible. A world of scientists has no feeling for human life. But Finch dreams on, looking for his ideal world.

   A disappointment. The wacky adventures promised merely struggle against dullness. As a vehicle for social commentary, this story creaks and sputters. Lots of ideas in satirical form, but interest lags. In fact, the only thing that maintains this series of adventures as a novel is the underlying prospect of finding a return to Finch’s original world.

   But even this is denied the reader. Lots of questions are never answered (is this typical of fantasy?), not the least of which is the possible physical existence of these dream worlds with histories which seem closely identical to our own. Collapse in real life must be inevitable, if not immediate. Such is the substance of dreams.

Rating: **

THE BLACK SLEEP. Bel-Air Productions/United Artists, 1956. Basil Rathbone, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, Herbert Rudley, Patricia Blake, Phyllis Stanley, Tor Johnson. Director: Reginald Le Borg.

   The eponymous black sleep in the movie’s title is not a state of being. Rather, it is a thing – a fictional mysterious potion from the Indian subcontinent that puts its users into a deep, quasi-hypnotic state. It’s therefore fittingly ironic that a movie about a sleep-inducing substance is, for the first thirty minutes or so, rather soporific itself.

   Despite the best efforts of the always enjoyable Basil Rathbone to liven things up with philosophical speeches about medicine and the human condition, the first half of The Black Sleep is a stilted, talky affair.

   All that changes in the second half. That’s when this Bel-Air production decides to let its inhibitions fall asunder and for schlocky insanity to ensue. How insane, you ask? Let’s just say that John Carradine portrays a stark raving madman locked in a basement dungeon who believes he is a Crusader out to conquer Jerusalem.

   Like many other horror films from the late 1950s and early 1960s, The Black Sleep is set in Victorian England. Rathbone portrays Sir Joel Cadman, an esteemed surgeon who embarks on a series of highly unethical medical experiments on live human subjects. He has his reasons, of course. His beloved wife has been in a coma for months and he believes that, with the right among of experimentation on others, he can find a way to successfully operate on her and bring her back to full life.

   Cadman, in a conniving manner, enlists the aid of Dr. Gordon Ramsay (Herbert Rudley) to further his work. It’s only a matter of time, however, before Ramsay learns the true nature of Cadman’s vicious work.

   The true star of this horror film, however, is neither Rathbone nor Rudley. That honor goes to veteran character actor Akim Tamiroff. Here, he portrays Odo, a Romani tattoo artist in cahoots with Sir Joel (Rathbone). With a smile a mile wide and his notable South Caucasian accent, Tamiroff chews the scenery and makes the whole affair far livelier than it would have been in his absence.

   Final word about the billing: aside from John Carradine, the movie also has two other horror greats listed in the cast; namely, Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. Neither actor has any lines. Chaney portrays a brute whose brain and mind were destroyed by Cadman’s experiments, while Lugosi portrays Cadman’s mute butler.

   It’s always nice to see these greats on screen, but there’s something obviously very sad about how low both actors’ star powers had fallen by the mid-1950s. This was to be Lugosi’s last complete cinematic role, excepting the truly atrocious Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957).